generic updates

impact defense
 ABR

No ABR impact – alt causes and it’s hype

Cara 1-27-17 – Ed Cara is science writer for The Atlantic, Newsweek, and Vocativ. ("The
Attack Of The Superbugs," 1-27-2017, Vocativ, http://www.vocativ.com/394419/attack-of-the-
superbugs/)//jkuffour
For all of our modern comforts, few deserve as much appreciation and praise as antibiotics do. Since their initial, almost accidental discovery in the 1920s, they’ve saved countless lives, rescued untold limbs from
amputation, and wiped out entire kinds of disease from all corners of the globe. But their sway over the bacterial kingdom has slowly been fading, a reality that has led many to worry about the worst coming in the
not-too-distant future — the end of antibiotics. The end of antibiotics isn’t yet to come, though. It’s already happening right in front of our eyes. Once-easily fought infections are now Herculean struggles between
bacteria and doctors across the world. And unless humanity can mount a massive global campaign to tamp down antibiotic resistance while developing effective new drugs soon, this germ warfare will only get
worse. Consider one recent case: In January, local Nevada doctors, along with the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, reported the death of a 70-something woman in Washoe County. She was
hospitalized and diagnosed with sepsis, a widespread inflammation triggered by infection that ravages the body. Despite their efforts, the woman proved unresponsive to any treatment. After falling into septic
shock, her organs rapidly shut down and she soon died. Samples from one of her infected wounds had tested positive for a bacteria called Klebsiella pneumoniae that was at least partly resistant to all 14
available antibiotics the hospital had in stock. The CDC, brought in for more testing, additionally found her passenger was truly resistant to at least a whopping 26 antibiotics found in the U.S., including the aptly-
called “last resort” drugs colistin and tigecycline. About the only good news was that, thanks to quickly isolating her away from other patients, the doctors seemingly stopped the infection from spreading any
further. “We’ve never seen that before [in our area],” Dr. Lei Chen of the Washoe County Health District told Vocativ, referring to the bacteria’s invulnerability. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria are a common enough
danger in the U.S., with at least two million infections and 23,000 deaths caused by them annually, according to the CDC, but few are as hardy as the woman’s strain was, repelling both conventional and last-
resort drugs. The Nevada case is what doctors call a pan-resistant infection. And while these are still rare occurrences, no one is really sure for how long. “It underscores that this type of thing can happen,” said
Dr. Randall Todd, Director of Epidemiology & Public Health Preparedness at Washoe County. “But we don’t ever want it to be common.” If there’s any germ likely to become commonly pan-resistant in the near
future, it’s something like K. pneumoniae. The bug is part of a group typically found in the gut called Enterobacteriaceae. Broader still, these bacteria are gram-negative, a term that describes their inability to be
colored by a violet dye that scientists use to see bacteria under the microscope. Like a laundry load of tighty whities mixed in with your sister’s red blazer, they instead turn pinkish, but only after a second dye is
added. Unfortunately, the same thing that leaves them pink — their unique, thicker cell walls — also gives gram-negative bacteria a built-in buffer against many antibiotics. And our ongoing antibiotic arms-race
has only steeled their defenses. Enterobacteriaceae, especially, have learned to deter drug after drug thrown at them, making them one of the most serious threats out there, according to the CDC. Some strains
have even picked up genes that let them resist a powerful “break glass in case of emergency” line of drugs called carbapenems, leading to Carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE). What’s worse, CREs
also tend to be resistant to every other antibiotic that came before it, earning them the charming nickname of “nightmare bacteria” from former CDC Director Tom Frieden. In our desperation, we’ve dusted off
ancient drugs, like colistin, which had fallen out of favor because of their toxic side-effects and so-so performance, to use as an absolute last measure against CREs. But in recent years, bacteria have started to
adapt to it too. Last year, U.S. Army researchers confirmed the presence of a particular colistin resistance gene, MCR-1, in a sample of E. coli (another Enterobacteriaceae) collected from a woman in
Pennsylvania. It was only the latest appearance of MCR-1, but the first to be found in a person within the United States. Though the patient’s strain was thankfully susceptible to standard antibiotics, MCR-1, along
with a similar gene MCR-2, is troubling because of where it’s been found — on a loop of free-moving DNA called a plasmid. Bacteria have plenty of ways to transfer genes to one another, but plasmids are their
version of a private charter plane. Plasmid genes jump from one species to another with little hassle, and often through sources far away from human contact. Indeed, MCR-1 was first discovered in the farm
animals of China, where colistin had frequently been used in animal feed, though it may have existed since at least the 1980s. In response, China moved to ban colistin as a feed additive in October, but the genie
has long since left the bottle — MCR-1 has been spotted in over 30 countries as of now, in both meat and man. Though the possibility of MCR-1 attaching onto a CRE bacteria is dreadful enough, the Nevada
case proves that it isn’t the only route to pan-resistance. The woman in question had recently returned from a trip to India, where she was hospitalized several times for a fractured femur that turned into a bone
infection over a two-year period. It’s likely that, aided by repeated antibiotic treatments and a weakened immune system, her body became a stewpot of resistance, with the strain of K. pneumoniae that eventually
killed her collecting mutations like some sort of demented Katamari ball. There’s no official tally, but at least several hundred cases of CRE are detected in the U.S. annually, most often in hospitals. And while
estimates are tricky, research suggests that 10 to 15 percent of CRE strains may also have pan-resistance to collistin and tigecycline. Elsewhere, we’re on our last legs against the common STD gonorrhea. The
titular bacteria that causes it, Neisseria gonorrhoeae, is now usually resistant to most front-line drugs, which prompted the CDC and other health agencies to recommend treating it with a combination therapy of
one standard antibiotic mixed with another emergency antibiotic, in 2010. But there are already scattered reports of gonorrhea steadily becoming hardier against both, if not completely resistant yet, including
during an outbreak in Hawaii that began last April. “I would not be shocked to read tomorrow that a colistin resistant CRE or N. gonorrhoeae resistant to both antibiotics used in the current combination therapy has
been found,” said Dr. Anne Farewell, a bacterial geneticist at the University of Gothenburg’s Center for Antibiotic Resistance in Sweden, over email. Her message had eerily been sent mere hours before the
report on the Nevada case was published. There are other dark horse candidates for pan-resistance, like tuberculosis. Since 2007, there have been several reports of what’s being called totally drug-resistant TB,
which would be the last grim stage of an ongoing evolution seen since the 1940s. But according to Dr. Mario Raviglione, director of the World Health Organization’s Global TB Program, we don’t have the
resources needed to confirm if these cases are truly, completely resistant. What is known that, despite successes in driving down cases of resistant TB, there are still pockets of the world where rates continue to
climb, particularly in poorer countries like India. All told, it’s estimated that around 10 percent of all resistant TB cases fall under the extensively drug-resistant TB umbrella, meaning they repel the first and second-
line of drugs. In many ways, though, looking for the single tipping point of pan-resistance is a distraction, morbidly curious about it as we might be. “It is largely a question of semantics,” explained Farewell. “When
a colistin resistant CRE arises but a doctor is able to treat it with a very toxic old drug that requires hospitalization for many months and causes significant long term damage to the patient, is that ‘The Superbug’
or not quite?” “We are already in the middle of this crisis, not waiting for the next shoe to drop,” she added. Antibiotic-resistant infections kill at least 700,000 people worldwide a year right now, according to an
exhaustive report commissioned by the UK in 2014, and without any substantial medical breakthroughs or policy changes that slow down resistance, they may claim some 10 million deaths annually by 2050 —
eclipsing cancer in general as a leading cause. These deaths largely won’t come from pan-resistant infections, just tougher ones. A preventable death there, a preventable death here. Leaving that aside,
antibiotics, along with proper sanitation and nutrition, gird our entire way of living. Most every invasive surgery, pregnancy, organ transplant and chemotherapy session we go through will become riskier. Other
diseases like HIV, malaria or influenza will become deadlier, since bacteria often exploit the opening in our immune system they leave behind. And already precarious populations like those living with cystic

For all the warranted gloom, though, Farewell does think there are reasons to be
fibrosis, prisoners, and the poor will lose years off their lives.

hopeful. “I don’t think we are doing enough, but the scientific community along with many government al and
private foundations are very actively involved in finding not only new antibiotics, but
new solutions to this problem,” she said. There’s been a noticeable change in attitude and
increased urgency surrounding antibiotic resistance, she said, one that she hadn’t seen even five years ago, let alone twenty. Until
recently, that attitude change could be seen from places as high up as the U.S. federal government. In 2014, former President Obama issued an executive order aimed at addressing antibiotic resistance, the first
real acknowledgement of the problem from an administration, devoting funding and outlining a national action for combatting resistance. Through its federal agencies, the administration pushed to reduce antibiotic
use on farms and encouraged doctors to stop using them in excess. “There has been a lot of work done the last couple of years, much of it spurred by [Obama’s] National Action Plan,” said Dr. David Hyun, a
senior officer for Pew Charitable Trusts’ Antibiotic Resistance Project. The CDC, in particular, has used its funding to open up regional labs that allow them to better detect and respond to antibiotic-resistant
outbreaks like the Nevada case, he said. They ultimately hope to create an expansive surveillance system that can easily keep track of resistance rates on a national, state and regional level. A parallel system

also exists for monitoring resistance in the food chain, shepherded by the CDC and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In fact, it was this sort of cooperation between
national and local health agencies that enabled Nevada doctors to stop the worst from
happening, said Dr. Lei Chen. The swift identification of a possible CRE strain by the hospital, coupled with the woman’s medical history, led to a precautionary quarantine, while also prompting
Chen’s public health department and eventually the CDC into action. And it may help prevent future cases from spilling into the

public. According to Chen, the CDC has allocated funding this year to all of Nevada’s state public health departments so they can better detect CRE and other dangerous resistant strains. Under the
Trump administration, there’s no telling how these small victories will hold up or whether they will advance. All references to antibiotics once found on the Whitehouse.gov site have been removed, including a link
to the Obama administration’s national action plan, and the fact that they’re already tried to bar USDA scientists from discussing their work with the public while stripping funding from other public health agencies

Even with the best public policy, however, there’s no clear light at the end of the
isn’t encouraging.

tunnel. Antibiotic resistance has gradually been worsening, even within the last 15 to 20 years, when superbugs like methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) first became widely known, said
Hyun. The effort needed to develop new drugs has been in short supply, hamstrung by

pharmaceutical companies ’ inability to recoup the costs of bringing new antibiotics to

market. That’s because, unlike the latest heart medication, any new antibiotics will have to be treated like the last drops of water during a drought, used as little as possible — the exact opposite way to
make money off a new product. Yet, much like climate change, the financial toll of not doing anything will total in the trillions years down the road. And it already numbers in the billions now, according to the CDC.
Of course, we need bacteria to survive. And most need or pay no mind to us in return. Even pan-resistant bacteria don’t really mean harm. Some have been found in perfectly healthy people, a fact that’ll either

There’s no army of sentient E. coli that will rise

comfort you or keep you awake at night, only causing problems when our immune system wavers.

up and someday overthrow the human race. But barring the cavalry showing up, a new fear of ours will learn to settle in, almost unnoticed. It’ll creep in
when we pick our heads up from a nasty fall that scrapes our skin open or breaks our bones; when we wave goodbye to our loved ones before they enter an operating room, or when we cradle our newborns into

a world teeming with the living infinitesimal, wishing there was still a way to shield them from it as our parents once could for us. A fear of naked vulnerability. The antibiotic
apocalypse will be gentle , if it fully arrives, but it won’t be any less devastating to the human spirit.

No impact to ABR – can’t get past anti-biotics

Smith 16 – Drew Smith is the former R&D director at MicroPhage and SomaLogic. (“The Myth
Of The Post-Antibiotic Era,” 6/14/16, https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2016/06/14/the-myth-
of-the-post-antibiotic-era/#db027696fa83)//jkuffour

The worst-case scenario would be that it would be like 1940 , only without a raging World War. Keep in mind
that by 1940, before the introduction of penicillin, deaths from infectious diseases in the US had been
reduced by 90% from their 19th century levels [1]. This reduction was entirely due to the provisions of clean food, water,
and vaccines. We have (or should have) better systems for delivering these public health goods than we did 75 years ago.

But there is never going to be a post-antibiotic era . Antibiotic therapy will continue to be
effective most of the time . If antibiotic therapy is informed by rapid microbiology testing , then it will
be effective nearly all of the time . Very few bugs are, or will be, pan-resistant and
untreatable by antibiotics. Even the worst superbugs —MRSAs, CREs, ESBLs, and now MCR-1s— are
almost always susceptible to at least one clinically useful antibiotic (XDR TB is the most troubling
exception to this rule).

What has changed is that resistance to at least one first-line antibiotic is now common, and doctors
will have to
become smarter about their prescribing practices. They can no longer mindlessly write scripts based on
signs and symptoms alone and expect good results every time. Doctors consistently underestimate local levels of resistance, and
exhibit high levels of complacency about the impacts of resistance on their practices [2] [3] [4] . This culture of complacency will
have to change.

empiric therapy [5], will

Antibiotics will continue to be effective, but our traditional method of prescribing them, called
become increasingly ineffective. This will require a change in the way that we use antibiotics,
but will not be an end to the usefulness of antibiotics . That is an important distinction to keep in mind when
reading articles about the coming antibiotic apocalypse: change, yes; the end, no.
 Africa
Africa’s stabilizing
Straus 13 – Scott Straus is Poli Sci prof @ University of Wisconsin and African Arguments
researcher @ Guardian African Network. (“Africa is becoming more peaceful, despite the war in
Mali,” 1/30/13, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jan/30/africa-peaceful-mali-war)

In fact, as I show in a recent piece in African Affairs, looked at since the end of the cold war, wars are not becoming more
frequent in sub-Saharan Africa . To the contrary: according to the Uppsala Armed Conflict Data Program, the pre-eminent tracker of
warfare worldwide, wars in the 2000s are substantially down from their peak in the early 1990s.

Even if one counts an uptick during the past two years , there were about one-third fewer wars in sub-Saharan Africa in the
period compared to the early-to-mid 1990s.

Another prevailing view is that sub-Saharan Africa is the most war-endemic region. Not so, especially if one looks at the continent's history since 1960.
Wars in sub-Saharan Africa (compared to other world regions) are not longer or more frequent on a
wars-per-country basis. Those distinctions effectively go to Asia, where between wars in India, Afghanistan, the Philippines, and
Vietnam, among others, wars are more frequent and longer lasting.

The pattern holds true for extreme cases of mass killing, like Rwanda in 1994 and Darfur in the mid-2000s. Such events are on the decline in Africa;
viewed across time, Africa is also not the regional leader of such events on a per-country basis.

My point is not to engage in crude regionalism, but rather to suggest that what often transpires as common sense about sub-Saharan Africa is wrong.

The bigger point is that we may be

witnessing significant shifts in the nature of political violence on the
continent. Wars are on the decline since the 1990s, but the character of warfare is also changing. Today there are fewer big
wars fought for state control in which insurgents maintain substantial control of territory
and put up well-structured armies to fight their counterparts in the state – Mali not withstanding.
Such wars were modal into the 1990s. From southern Africa in Angola, Mozambique, Namibia, and even Zimbabwe to the long wars in the Horn in
Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Sudan to the Great Lakes wars in Rwanda and Uganda, the typical armed conflict in Africa involved two major, territory-holding
armies fighting each other for state control.

Today's wars typically are smaller. They most often involve small insurgencies of factionalised
rebels on the peripheries of states. Today's wars also play out differently. They exhibit cross-border dimensions, and rather than drawing funding from
big external states they depend on illicit trade, banditry, and international terrorist networks.

Typical of today's wars are the rebels in Casamance, in the Ogaden region of Ethiopia, various armed groups in Darfur, and the Lord's Resistance
Army. The latter typifies an emerging trend of trans-national insurgents. The LRA moves across multiple states in the Great Lakes region. Northern
Mali is another case in point – prior to seizing control of the north, the Islamists moved across multiple countries in the Sahel. Once they gained
territorial control in 2012, they attracted fighters from Nigeria and across North Africa. Moreover, these are not non-ideological wars, as Gettleman
claims. The jihadis in Mali and Somalia, the separatists in Casamance, and the rebels in Darfur are certainly fighting for a cause.

To be sure, no one in his or her right mind could claim that warfare or political violence has ended in Africa. Many countries in the region have features
that political scientists believe make countries vulnerable to armed conflict: weak states, high dependence on natural resources, and horizontal
inequalities. Of the recent armed conflicts in Somalia, Sudan, Mali, the Central African Republic, Chad, and eastern Congo, one obvious commonality
is the lack of effective state control. Rebels survive in remote regions where state authority is tenuous. The fact of weak states in these and other
countries will not end any time soon.

Moreover, other forms of violence deserve greater scrutiny. Consider, for example, electoral violence. As African states have turned to multiparty
elections, so too has the risk of violence during those electoral campaigns increased. Electoral violence on the scale of Kenya in 2007 and 2008, Côte
d'Ivoire in 2010, or Zimbabwe in 2008 is not the norm, but in many locations there is often some form of violence between incumbent and opposition
forces. Yet we know substantially less about patterns and causes of electoral violence.

Consider too violence over vital resources, such as land, water, and pasture. Trends are harder to detect, but one new data collection effort from the
University of Texas shows an increase in such violence events since the early 1990s. With climate change, rapidly growing urbanisation, and other
changes that increase the pressure on vital but often scarce resources, we can expect more violence of the type recently seen in northern Kenya. Yet
again, we know much less about this form of violence.

What explains the recent decline in warfare across Africa? I don't know for certain, but would point to geo-political
changes since the end of the cold war.

First, the
end of the cold war meant that the opportunities for rebels to receive substantial
weaponry and training from big external states declined . To be sure, states across Africa still meddle in the affairs
of their neighbors, but insurgent funding from neighbouring states is usually enough to be a
nuisance to, but not actually overthrow, existing governments .

Second, the
rise of multi-party politics has sapped the anti-government funding, energy, and talent
away from the bush and into the domestic political arena.
Third, Chinais a rising external force in sub-Saharan Africa. China's goals are mainly economic, but
their foreign relations follow a principle of non-interference. To my knowledge, China supports states,
not insurgencies.
Finally, conflict
reduction mechanisms, in particular international peacekeeping and regional
diplomacy, have substantially increased on the continent. Peacekeeping is more prevalent and
especially more robust than in the 1990s. Regional bodies such as the African Union, Eccowas, Eccas, IGAD, and SADC are quite active in most

conflict situations. They have exhibited greater resolves in conflicts as diverse as Côte d'Ivoire, Sudan, the Central African
Republic, and Madagascar.

The four posited mechanisms are hypotheses, each of which deserves greater scrutiny and empirical testing. But taken
together , they suggest plausible ways in which the incentives of insurgents and even state
leaders to fight have been altered in recent years . They give reason to expect that while
war is clearly not over in sub-Saharan Africa, we should continue to observe a decline in
its frequency and intensity in coming decades .

No war
Barrett 5 – Robert Barrett is a Strategic Studies and Conflict Resolution Centre for Military
and Strategic Studies PhD, University of Calgary Canada, MA, Conflict Analysis and
Management. (“Understanding the Challenges of African Democratization through Conflict
Analysis,” 6-1-5,
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID726162_code327511.pdf?abstractid=726162
&mirid=1)
Westerners eager to promote democracy must be wary of African politicians who promise democratic reform without sincere
commitment to the process. Offering money to corrupt leaders in exchange for their taking small steps away from autocracy may in
fact be a way of pushing countries into anocracy. As such, world financial lenders and interventionists who wield leverage and
influence must take responsibility in considering the ramifications of African nations who adopt democracy in order to maintain elite
political privileges. The obvious reason for this, aside from the potential costs in human life should conflict arise from hastily
constructed democratic reforms, is the fact that Western donors, in the face of intrastate war would then be faced with channeling
funds and resources away from democratization efforts and toward conflict intervention based on issues of human security. This is a
problem, as Western nations may be increasingly wary of intervening in Africa hotspots after
experiencing firsthand the unpredictable and unforgiving nature of societal warfare in both Somalia and
Rwanda. On a costbenefit basis, the West continues to be somewhat reluctant to get involved
in Africa’s dirty wars , evidenced by its political hesitation when discussing ongoing sanguinary
grassroots conflicts in Africa. Even as the world apologizes for bearing witness to the Rwandan genocide without
having intervened, the United States, recently using the label ‘genocide’ in the context of the Sudanese conflict (in
September of 2004), has only proclaimed sanctions against Sudan, while dismissing any suggestions
at actual intervention (Giry, 2005). Part of the problem is that traditional military and diplomatic approaches at separating
combatants and enforcing ceasefires have yielded little in Africa. No powerful nations want to get embroiled in

conflicts they cannot win – especially those conflicts in which the intervening nation has very little interest .
 Asia War
No Asia war
Bisley 14 – Nick Bisley is PhD @ LSE, Professor of IR @ La Trobe University (Australia) and
Executive Director of La Trobe Asia. (“It’s not 1914 all over again: Asia is preparing to avoid
war”, 3/10/14, http://theconversation.com/its-not-1914-all-over-again-asia-is-preparing-to-avoid-
war-22875)
Asia is cast as a region as complacent about the risks of war as Europe was in its belle époque. Analogies are an understandable way of trying to
make sense of unfamiliar circumstances. In this case, however, the historical parallel is deeply misleading. Asia is
experiencing a period of uncertainty and strategic risk unseen since the US and China reconciled their differences in the mid-1970s. Tensions among
there are very good
key powers are at very high levels: Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe recently invoked the 1914 analogy. But

reasons, notwithstanding these issues, why Asia is not about to tumble into a great
power war . China is America’s second most important trading partner. Conversely, the
US is by far the most important country with which China trades. Trade and investment ’s

“golden straitjacket” is a basic reason to be optimistic . Why should this be seen as being more effective than
the high levels of interdependence between Britain and Germany before World War One? Because Beijing and Washington are not content to rely on

markets alone to keep the peace. They are acutely aware of how much they have at stake . Diplomatic
infrastructure for peace The
two powers have established a wide range of institutional links to
manage their relations. These are designed to improve the level and quality of their
communication, to lower the risks of misunderstanding spiralling out of control and to
manage the trajectory of their relationship. Every year, around 1000 officials from all ministries led by the top political
figures in each country meet under the auspices of the Strategic and Economic Dialogue. The dialogue has demonstrably improved US-China relations
across the policy spectrum, leading to collaboration in a wide range of areas. These range from disaster relief to humanitarian aid exercises, from joint
training of Afghan diplomats to marine conservation efforts, in which Chinese law enforcement officials are hosted on US Coast Guard vessels to
enforce maritime legal regimes. Unlike
the near total absence of diplomatic engagement by Germany
and Britain in the lead-up to 1914, today’s two would-be combatants have a deep level of
interaction and practical co-operation. Just as the extensive array of common interests has led
Beijing and Washington to do a lot of bilateral work, Asian states have been busy the
past 15 years. These nations have created a broad range of multilateral institutions and
mechanisms intended to improve trust , generate a sense of common cause and promote regional
prosperity. Some organisations, like the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), have a high profile with its annual leaders’ meeting
involving, as it often does, the common embarrassment of heads of government dressing up in national garb. Others like the ASEAN Regional Forum
there are more than 15 separate
and the ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting Plus Process are less in the public eye. But

multilateral bodies that have a focus on regional security concerns. All these organisations are trying to
build what might be described as an infrastructure for peace in the region. While these
mechanisms are not flawless, and many have rightly been criticised for being long on dialogue and short on action, they have been
crucial in managing specific crises and allowing countries to clearly state their commitments and priorities.
 Bees
We Gucci bees Gucci
Ingraham 16 – Christopher Ingraham writes about politics, drug policy and all things data. He
previously worked at the Brookings Institution and the Pew Research Center. ("Believe it or not,
the bees are doing just fine," 10-10-2016,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/10/10/believe-it-or-not-the-bees-are-
doing-just-fine/?utm_term=.84be02d3efad)//jkuffour
You've probably heard the bad news by now that bees were recently added to the endangered species list for the first time. But if
you're part of the 60 percent of people who share stories without actually reading them, you might have missed an important detail:
namely, that the newly endangered bees are a handful of relatively obscure species who live
only in Hawaii.

The bees you're more familiar with — the ones that buzz around your yard dipping into flowers, making honey,
pollinating crops and generally keeping the world's food supply from collapsing? Those bees are doing just fine, according
to data released by the USDA this year.

In 2015, there were 2.66 million commercial honey-producing bee colonies in the United
States . That's down slightly from the 2.74 million colonies in 2014, which represented a two-decade high. The number of
commercial bee colonies is still significantly higher than it was in 2006, when colony
collapse disorder — the mass die-offs that began afflicting U.S. honeybee colonies — was first documented.
Those 2.66 million colonies represent a greater number than just about any year since the late 1990s. How's that possible,
considering all the die-offs we've been hearing about?

As I wrote last year, America's beekeepers are busy at work managing their colonies and
replacing the ones that die off. Beekeepers have a number of ways to replenish their
stock: They can split one healthy colony into two. They can also breed their own queen
bees , which can be sold to other keepers in need of a queen to start a new colony.
How the honey bee population affects you

The Obama administration announced the first national strategy to promote the health of bees and other pollinators, following the
sharp decline in colony numbers in recent years. USDA bee scientist Jay Evans explains why honeybees are so important and how
bees affect food prices. (Alice Li/The Washington Post)

For the 2017 season, 3 pounds of bees plus a queen will set you back about $100 or so.

The thing is, all of this colony-splitting and queen-breeding takes time, money and effort. It means that the main effects of colony
collapse disorder aren't being felt by the bees themselves, but by the people who breed and manage them. Beekeeping is a
business, after all.

“Honey bees are not about to go extinct,” Kim Kaplan, a researcher with the USDA, said in an email. “It is the
beekeepers who are in danger, facing unsustainable economic losses."

The cost of those losses are currently getting passed on to the consumer. The average retail price of honey has roughly doubled
since 2006, according to the National Honey Board. And pollination services, where keepers drive semi-trucks full of bees from farm
to farm to pollinate crops, are getting more expensive, too.

Of course, the discussion above concerns only commercial bees that are managed by humans and businesses. Wild bees —
whether they're honeybees or one of our 4,000 other native bee species — face different difficulties. If those species suffer die-offs,
there's nobody around to breed new queens and help them recover. Wild bees are on their own.

Recent research has shown that the use of certain insecticides called neonicotinoids has been linked to declines in wild bee
populations. But assessing the true magnitude of the effect is difficult, because it's a lot harder to survey wild bee populations than
domesticated ones.
For now, the placement of seven bee species into the Endangered Species List might be less of a sign that America's bees are in
dire straits and more of an indicator that our other 3,993 bee species are probably doing fine.

By and large, our domesticated honey producers appear to be doing just fine, too.

No bees impact
Watts 16 (Anthony, AMS certified meteorologist with 25 years of experience who also
operates a weather technology and content business, “Bee-pocaclypse called off, bees doing
OK, global warming was never a cause”, https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/02/17/bee-
pocaclypse-called-off-bees-doing-ok-global-warming-was-never-a-cause/)
It’s only slightly less ridiculous than the other bee killing theory that year – cell phones. I published a story about the loony idea that was proposed by some researcher in Europe

about “cell phone radiation may be killing bees”. I pointed out that it was garbage then, as it is now. In 2012, I published a post saying global warming is off
the hook for the issue, due to the discovery of a phorid fly parasite that had been
spreading through colonies due in part to the commercial trucking of bees on demand. Now in a new set of data from
USDA , publicized in a story from the Washington Post today, it turns out bee colonies are
now at a 20 year high , and that beekeepers have basically solved the problem on their
own . Call off the bee-pocalypse : U.S. honeybee colonies hit a 20-year high The trouble all began in 2006 or
so, when beekeepers first began noticing mysterious die-offs. It was soon christened
“colony collapse disorder,” and has been responsible for the loss of 20 to 40 percent of managed honeybee colonies each winter over the past
decade. The math says that if you lose 30 percent of your bee colonies every year for a few years, you rapidly end up with close to 0 colonies left. But get a load

of this data on the number of active bee colonies in the U.S. since 1987. Pay particular attention to the
period after 2006, when CCD was first documented. As you can see, the number of honeybee

colonies has actually risen since 2006 , from 2.4 million to 2.7 million in 2014, according to data tracked by
the USDA. The 2014 numbers, which came out earlier this year, show that the number of managed
colonies — that is, commercial honey-producing bee colonies managed by human beekeepers — is now the highest it’s been in 20
years . So if CCD is wiping out close to a third of all honeybee colonies a year, how are
their numbers rising? One word: Beekeepers. A 2012 working paper by Randal R. Tucker
and Walter N. Thurman, a pair of agricultural economists , explains that seasonal die-offs
have always been a part of beekeeping : they report that before CCD, American
beekeepers would typically lose 14 percent of their colonies a year , on average. So beekeepers
have devised two main ways to replenish their stock. The first method involves splitting one
healthy colony into two separate colonies: put half the bees into a new beehive, order
them a new queen online (retail price: $25 or so), and voila: two healthy hives. The other method involves simply buying a
bunch of bees to replace the ones you lost. You can buy 3 pounds of “packaged” bees, plus a queen, for about $100 or so. Beekeepers have been doing this sort of thing since
the advent of commercial beekeeping.
 Bird Flu Defense

Their bird flu impact evidence is all hype – bird flu is not uniquely deadly
and human infections are declining
Hellsten & Nerlich 10 – Assistant Professor of Science Commucation at the VU University in Amsterdam & Professor of
Science, Language, and Society at the Unviersity of Nottingham (Iina & Brigitte, "Bird flu hype: The spread of a disease outbreak
through the media and Internet discussion groups" Journal of Language and Politics,
http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/1360/1/Hellsten-NerlichFormattedNew.pdf)

The public discussion surrounding bird flu is not a unique event, but rather part of a
series of other discourses associated with new diseases and epidemics, such as mad cow
disease, and the related Creutzfeld-Jacobs Disease in humans in the 1980s and 1990s in the UK, and the SARS epidemics in 2003.
These previous epidemics provide a background for the current debate on bird flu in the public, and therefore deserve a brief
discussion in this article. The avian influenza virus, H5N1, first infected a human in 1997 in Hong Kong. In this initial phase, 6 of the
18 human infections were lethal. In 2003 the virus infected humans in Hong Kong, Thailand and Vietnam, this time 32 out of the 42
infections were fatal. At the 4 same time several outbreaks of the disease in poultry in Korea, Vietnam, Japan, Thailand, Cambodia
and Indonesia, and Malaysia were reported. The first human victim in Cambodia was reported in February 2004, one year after the
outbreak of the disease in poultry, and in Indonesia during July 2005, almost one and half years after the infection in poultry. In the
summer of 2005 a new risk emerged when Russia reported an outbreak of bird flu in poultry in Siberia after finding dead migratory
birds in July 2005. Within one month Kazakhstan, Tibet and Mongolia also reported the discovery of dead migratory birds carrying
the infection. The virus subsequently spread, allegedly, through migratory birds to Turkey, Romania and Croatia in
October 2005 and onwards to Germany, France and the United Kingdom. The research conducted by the World Health
Organization (WHO) revealed that the Spanish Influenza that had killed approximately 40-50 million people in 1918 had been
These two features: the fast spread of
caused by a mutated avian influenza virus, similar to H5N1 (www.who.org).
the diseases via migratory birds and findings of a common “avian” link between H5N1
and the 1918 pandemic increased public perception of the risk and threat posed by the
disease. By February 2006 the virus had spread via migratory birds to Nigeria, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Greece, Italy, Slovenia,
Austria, Germany, France and Hungary, but no human infections were reported, although cats and pigs have occasionally been
infected with the virus. The
threat of the bird flu has continued to receive attention in the news
media (although the issue seems to be fading out slowly in 2008), and new research on the virus is published at a steady pace.
Although the number of cases where humans are infected remains low , the mortality rate is still
high. In June 2008 the cumulative number of confirmed cases of H5N1 was 384 of which 243 were fatal
(http://www.who.int/csr/disease/avian_influenza/country/en/). In the next section, we will discuss the uses of the terms bird flu and
H5N1 in the context of previous “new” diseases and epidemics.

Their authors only write about bird flu for more funding – it’s exaggerated
Hellsten & Nerlich 10 – Assistant Professor of Science Commucation at the VU University in Amsterdam & Professor of
Science, Language, and Society at the Unviersity of Nottingham (Iina & Brigitte, "Bird flu hype: The spread of a disease outbreak
through the media and Internet discussion groups" Journal of Language and Politics,
http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/1360/1/Hellsten-NerlichFormattedNew.pdf)

Up until 2003 the amount of medical articles published on this topic remained steady at
around 20-30 articles per year, mainly using the term H5N1. Post-2003 this number
exploded from 77 published in 2004 to 848 articles published in 2006. This more than
exponential growth in published articles points to an increasing interest in the H5N1 virus in medical
research, and perhaps, a scramble for increasing funding opportunities allocated to
epidemiological research. In more qualitative terms, in biomedical journals, a large part of the publications deal with
research on characterizing various aspects of the H5N1 virus and its mutations, based on samples of the virus collected from
different locations as well as analyses of the structural properties of the virus (e.g. Guan et al. 2003). Interestingly, until 2004 the
term “bird flu” is far less used than the scientific term H5N1, indicating that a mainly scientific topic morphed into an issue of popular
In addition to
concern around that time. From 2003 onwards, a new sub-debate within the broader issue on bird flu emerges.
scientific studies reporting on the virus itself, an increasing number of reviews, intended
for wider audiences beyond the field of biomedicine, appear in the database (e.g. review by
Okabe 2003). In 2005, yet a new type of sub-topic appears: summaries of the existing research on the virus as well as condensed
overviews of the state-of-the-art in bird flu research (e.g. Cox 2005). At the same time, the popularity of the simpler term “bird flu”
increases. In this sense, the medical writing on H5N1 and bird flu starts to feed on itself and
it also starts to fragment. Surprisingly, the “pandemic” frame plays only a minor role in 6 creating hype, as scientists
have predicted the emergence a pandemic ever since the first human infections were confirmed in 1997. In summary, the
sharp increase in the number of biomedical publications is predominantly related to the
increase in summaries and reviews of the various social aspects of the disease, instead
of an increase in actual, biomedical research into the H5N1 virus. This change partly explains the
sudden emergence of the popular term “bird flu” within the Pubmed indexed articles. Bird flu therefore began to be used
ambiguously as referring either to H5N1 in poultry, or to H5N1 transmitted from poultry to humans (both happening here and now) or
to a potential pandemic of bird flu where the virus has mutated and become transmissible between humans and spreads globally
(something that has not happened so far).

Bird flu unlikely to mutate

Parkinson 6 – health correspondent (Caroline, BBC News, “Bird Flu: Is it still a threat?”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6159600.stm)
The fear is that the H5N1 virus will combine with a human flu virus and mutate into a
pandemic strain which could spread easily between people. There have been no
indications over the last 12 months that this is any closer. But the virus has not gone away.
It has changed, as all viruses do. And there have been cases, such as a cluster in Indonesia,
where family members have contracted bird flu. But, importantly, it was H5N1 they caught,
and not a mutated strain. Dr Hay said: "There is some evidence of variation in the strain,
but there is no evidence the virus has an increased capacity to spread. We haven't seen
any change."
 Democracy
No DPT – their ev doesn’t assuming diverging interests and covert attacks
Downes and Lilley 10 – Alexander B. Downes is the Associate Professor of Political
Science and International Affairs at George Washington University and Mary Lauren Lilley is a
BA in political science from Duke. (“Overt Peace, Covert War?: Covert Intervention and the
Democratic Peace,” May 28, 2010, Security Studies, Volume 19, Issue 2, pages 266-
306)//jkuffour
Democracies, as is now widely known, rarely if ever go to war with one another. Yet there are a number of instances in which
democracies have covertly used forceful means short of war to remove elected governments
from power, a phenomenon we label covert foreign regime change. The United States and Great Britain, for example,
engineered the downfall of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq in 1953. The United States then helped topple
Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz the following year and assisted rebels in Indonesia hoping to overthrow Sukarno in 1957–58.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered the CIA to remove Patrice Lumumba, Prime Minister of the Congo, in 1960, and the United
States also played an important role in the removal of Cheddi Jagan in British Guyana and João Goulart in Brazil in the 1960s. Most
famously, perhaps, the Richard Nixon administration attempted to prevent the Chilean socialist Salvador Allende from taking office
in 1970 and later encouraged the Chilean military to depose him. 1 What are the implications of this practice for theories of
democratic peace (DP)? A number of scholars have suggested that inter-democratic covert interventions constitute a possible
anomaly for DP (Democratic Peace). Although these commentators do not always specify which theory of DP they believe is
Realist critics, such
contradicted by inter-democratic covert intervention, those who do generally point to norms arguments.
as Sebastian Rosato, argue that instances of covert regime change among democracies suggest that
“ democracies do not always treat each other with trust and respect when they have a
conflict of interest ,” thereby undermining a key plank of norms explanations for DP . 2 With regard to the
United States, Stephen Van Evera points out that in nine of the eleven cases “in which elected nationalist or
leftist regimes in the Third World have adopted policies that disturbed Washington…the
United States attempted to overthrow the elected government.” Van Evera concludes that “American
leaders have favored democracy only when it has produced governments that support American policy. Otherwise they have sought
to subvert democracy.” 3 Similarly, Patrick James and Glenn Mitchell identify what they call the “potential victims of the democratic
peace”: weak, isolated democracies, which—by trying to escape a situation of structural dependence on a powerful democracy—
threaten the economic interests of that state. 4 According to James and Mitchell, “ Covert attacks provide a serious
challenge to the cultural premise of democratic peace ”; such interventions , Rosato writes, suggest
that “democratic trust and respect has often been subordinated to security and economic
interests.” 5
 Disease
No impact to disease
Cotton-Barratt 2/3/17 – Owen Cotton-Barratt is a PhD in Pure Mathematics from Oxford,
Lecturer in Mathematics at Oxford, and Research Associate at the Future of Humanity Institute.
(“Existential Risk: Diplomacy and Governance,” 2/3/17, https://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/wp-
content/uploads/Existential-Risks-2017-01-23.pdf)//jkuffour
there are
For most of human history, natural pandemics have posed the greatest risk of mass global fatalities.37 However,
some reasons to believe that natural pandemics are very unlikely to cause human
extinction . Analysis of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) red list database has shown that of the
833 recorded plant and animal species extinctions known to have occurred since 1500,
less than 4% (31 species) were ascribed to infectious disease .38 None of the mammals and
amphibians on this list were globally dispersed, and other factors aside from infectious
disease also contributed to their extinction. It therefore seems that our own species,
which is very numerous, globally dispersed, and capable of a rational response to
problems , is very unlikely to be killed off by a natural pandemic. One underlying
explanation for this is that highly lethal pathogens can kill their hosts before they have a
chance to spread , so there is a selective pressure for pathogens not to be highly lethal.
Therefore, pathogens are likely to co-evolve with their hosts rather than kill all possible
hosts.39

Their impact is hype

Orent 15 – Wendy Orent is anthropologist and freelance science writer whose work has
appeared in The Washington Post, The LA Times, The New Republic, Discover, and The
American Prospect, instructor in science journalism @ Emory. (“Ignore predictions of lethal
pandemics and pay attention to what really matters”, LA Times, 1/3/15,
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-orent-pandemic-hysteria-20150104-
story.html)//jkuffour

Prophets of doom have been telling us for decades that a deadly new pandemic — of bird flu,
of SARS or MERS coronavirus, and now of Ebola — is on its way. Why are we still listening? If you look back at the furor
raised at many distinguished publications — Nature, Science, Scientific American, National Geographic — back in, say, 2005, about a potential bird flu
(H5N1) pandemic, you wonder what planet they were on. Nature ran a special section titled — “Avian flu: Are we ready?” — that began, ominously,
with the words “Trouble is brewing in the East” and went on to present a mock aftermath report detailing catastrophic civil breakdown. Robert Webster,
a famous influenza virologist, told ABC News in 2006 that “society just can't accept the idea that 50% of the population could die. And I think we have
to face that possibility.” Public health expert Michael T. Osterholm of the University of Minnesota, at a meeting in Washington of scientists brought
together by the Institute of Medicine, warned in 2005 that a post-pandemic commission, like the post-9/11 commission, could hold “many scientists …
accountable to that commission for what we did or didn't do to prevent a pandemic.” He also predicted that we could be facing “three years of a given
hell” as the world struggled to right itself after the deadly pandemic. And Laurie Garrett, author of what must be the urtext for pandemic predictions, her
1994 book “The Coming Plague,” intoned in Foreign Affairs that “in short, doom may loom.” Although she followed that with “But note the may,” the
article went on to paint a terrifying picture of the avian flu threat nonetheless. And such hysteria still goes on : Whether it's over the
MERS coronavirus, a whole alphabet of chicken flu viruses, a real but not very deadly influenza pandemic in 2009, or a kerfuffle like the one in 2012
over a scientist-crafted ferret flu that also was supposed to be a pandemic threat. Along the way, virologist Nathan Wolfe published “The Viral Storm:
the Dawn of a New Pandemic Age,” and David Quammen warned in his gripping “Spillover” that some new animal plague could arise from the jungle
and sweep across the world. And now there's Ebola. Osterholm, in a widely read op-ed in the New York Times in September, wrote about the
possibility that scientists were afraid to mention publicly the danger they discuss privately: that Ebola “could mutate to become transmissible through
the air.” “The Ebola epidemic in West Africa has the potential to alter history as much as any plague has ever done,” he wrote. And Garrett wrote in
Foreign Policy, “Attention, World: You just don't get it.” She went on to say, “Wake up, fools,” because we should be more frightened of a potential
scenario like the one in the movie “Contagion,” in which a lethal, fictitious pandemic scours the world, nearly destroying civilization. But there were
fewer takers this time. Osterholm's claims about Ebola going airborne were discounted by serious scientists, and Garrett seemingly retracted her
 The scientific world has changed
earlier hysteria about Ebola by claiming that, after all, evolution made such spread unlikely.

since 2005. Now, most scientists understand that there are significant physical and
evolutionary barriers to a blood- and fluid-borne virus developing airborne
transmission , as Garrett has acknowledged. Though Ebola virus has been detected in human alveolar cells, as Vincent Racaniello, virologist
at Columbia University, explained to me, that doesn't mean it can replicate in the airways enough to allow transmission. “Maybe … the virus can get in,
but can't get out. Like a roach motel,” wrote Racaniello in an email. H5N1, we understand now, never went airborne because it attached only to cell
receptors located deep in human lungs, and could not, therefore, be coughed or sneezed out. SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, caused
local outbreaks after multiple introductions via air travel but spread only sluggishly and mostly in hospitals. Breaking its chains of transmission ended
the outbreak globally. There probably will always be significant barriers preventing the easy
adaptation of an animal disease to the human species. Furthermore, Racaniello insists that there are
no recorded instances of viruses that have adapted to humans , changing the way they
are spread. So we need to stop listening to the doomsayers, and we need to do it now. Predictions of lethal pandemics
have — since the swine flu fiasco of 1976, when President Ford vowed to vaccinate “every man, woman and child in the United States” —

always been wrong. Fear-mongering wastes our time and our emotions and diverts resources from where they should be directed — in
the case of Ebola, to the ongoing tragedy in West Africa. Americans have all but forgotten about Ebola now, because most people realize it isn't
coming to a school or a shopping mall near you. But Sierra Leoneans and Liberians go on dying.
 Drugs
Cartels won’t attack the US enough to provoke a response---they’ll de-
escalate violence
Stewart 11 – Scott Stewart is a former U.S. State Department special agent. (“The Buffer
Between Mexican Cartels and the U.S. Government”, 8-17-11,
http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20110817-buffer-between-mexican-cartels-and-us-
government#axzz3D37Ei7zA)//jkuffour
As we have discussed in our coverage of the drug war in Mexico, Mexican cartels, including the VCF, clearly
possess the capability to construct and employ large vehicle-borne improvised explosive
devices (VBIEDs) — truck bombs — and yet they have chosen not to. These groups are not averse to
bloodshed, or even outright barbarity, when they believe it is useful. Their decision to abstain from certain activities,
such as employing truck bombs or targeting a U.S. Consulate, indicates that there must
be compelling strategic reasons for doing so. After all, groups in Lebanon, Pakistan and Iraq have demonstrated that
truck bombs are a very effective means of killing perceived enemies and of sending strong messages. Perhaps the most

compelling reason for the Mexican cartels to abstain from such activities is that they do
not consider them to be in their best interest. One important part of their calculation is
that such activities would remove the main buffer that is currently insulating them from
the full force of the U.S. government: the Mexican government. The Buffer Despite their public
manifestations of machismo, the cartel leaders clearly fear and respect the strength of the world's
only superpower. This is evidenced by the distinct change in cartel activities along the
U.S.-Mexico border, where a certain operational downshift routinely occurs . In Mexico, the
cartels have the freedom to operate far more brazenly than they can in the United States,
in terms of both drug trafficking and acts of violence. Shipments of narcotics traveling through Mexico tend to
be far larger than shipments moving into and through the United States. When these large shipments
reach the border they are taken to stash houses on the Mexican side, where they are typically divided into smaller quantities for transport into and
through the United States. As
for violence, while the cartels do kill people on the U.S. side of the
border, their use of violence there tends to be far more discreet; it has certainly not yet
incorporated the dramatic flair that is frequently seen on the Mexican side, where bodies are often
dismembered or hung from pedestrian bridges over major thoroughfares . The cartels are also careful not to

assassinate high-profile public figures such as police chiefs, mayors and reporters in
the United States, as they frequently do in Mexico.
 Environment
No enviro impact
Brook 13 – Barry Brook is Professor at the University of Adelaide, leading environmental
scientist, holding the Sir Hubert Wilkins Chair of Climate Change at the School of Earth and
Environmental Sciences, and is also Director of Climate Science at the University of Adelaide’s
Environment Institute, author of 3 books and over 250 scholarly articles, Corey Bradshaw is an
Associate Professor at the University of Adelaide and a joint appointee at the South Australian
Research and Development Institute, ("Worrying about global tipping points distracts from real
planetary threats", Brave New Climate, March 4, 2013,
http://bravenewclimate.com/2013/03/04/ecological-tipping-points/)
at the global-scale, ecological “tipping points” and threshold-like “planetary
Barry Brook We argue that

boundaries” are improbable. Instead, shifts in the Earth’s biosphere follow a gradual, smooth
pattern . This means that it might be impossible to define scientifically specific, critical levels of biodiversity loss or land-use change. This has important consequences
for both science and policy. Humans are causing changes in ecosystems across Earth to such a degree that there is now broad agreement that we live in an epoch of our own
making: the Anthropocene. But the question of just how these changes will play out — and especially whether we might be approaching a planetary tipping point with abrupt,
global-scale consequences — has remained unsettled. A tipping point occurs when an ecosystem attribute, such as species abundance or carbon sequestration, responds
abruptly and possibly irreversibly to a human pressure, such as land-use or climate change. Many local- and regional-level ecosystems, such as lakes,forests and grasslands,

behave this way. Recently however, there have been several efforts to define ecological tipping points at the
global scale. At a local scale, there are definitely warning signs that an ecosystem is about to
“tip”. For the terrestrial biosphere, tipping points might be expected if ecosystems across Earth respond in similar ways to human pressures and these pressures are uniform,
or if there are strong connections between continents that allow for rapid diffusion of impacts across the planet. These criteria are, however,

unlikely to be met in the real world. First, ecosystems on different continents are not
strongly connected . Organisms are limited in their movement by oceans and mountain
ranges, as well as by climatic factors, and while ecosystem change in one region can affect the global circulation of, for example, greenhouse
gases, this signal is likely to be weak in comparison with inputs from fossil fuel combustion and

deforestation. Second, the responses of ecosystems to human pressures like climate

change or land-use change depend on local circumstances and will therefore differ between
locations . From a planetary perspective, this diversity in ecosystem responses creates an essentially gradual
pattern of change, without any identifiable tipping points. This puts into question attempts to define critical levels of land-use
change or biodiversity loss scientifically. Why does this matter? Well, one concern we have is that an undue focus on planetary tipping points

may distract from the vast ecological transformations that have already occurred. After all, as much as four-
fifths of the biosphere is today characterised by ecosystems that locally, over the span of centuries and millennia, have undergone human-driven regime shifts of one or more
kinds. Recognising this reality and seeking appropriate conservation efforts at local and regional levels might be a more fruitful way forward for ecology and global change
science. Corey Bradshaw (see also notes published here on ConservationBytes.com) Let’s not get too distracted by the title of the this article – Does the terrestrial biosphere
have planetary tipping points? – or the potential for a false controversy. It’s important to be clear that the planet is indeed ill, and it’s largely due to us. Species are going extinct
faster than they would have otherwise. The planet’s climate system is being severely disrupted; so is the carbon cycle. Ecosystem services are on the decline. But – and it’s a
big “but” – we have to be wary of claiming the end of the world as we know it, or people will shut down and continue blindly with their growth and consumption obsession. We as

the latest “craze”

scientists also have to be extremely careful not to pull concepts and numbers out of thin air without empirical support. Specifically, I’m referring to

in environmental science writing – the idea of “planetary tipping points” and the related
“planetary boundaries”. It’s really the stuff of Hollywood disaster blockbusters – the world suddenly shifts into a
new “state” where some major aspect of how the world functions does an immediate about-face. Don’t get me wrong: there are plenty of localised examples of such tipping
points, often characterised by something we call “hysteresis”. Brook defines hysterisis as: a situation where the current state of an ecosystem is dependent not only on its
environment but also on its history, with the return path to the original state being very different from the original development that led to the altered state. Also, at some range of
the driver, there can exist two or more alternative states and “tipping point” as: the critical point at which strong nonlinearities appear in the relationship between ecosystem
attributes and drivers; once a tipping point threshold is crossed, the change to a new state is typically rapid and might be irreversible or exhibit hysteresis. Some of these
examples include state shifts that have happened (or mostly likely will) to the cryosphere, ocean thermohaline circulation, atmospheric circulation, and marine ecosystems, and

there are many other fine-scale examples of ecological systems shifting to new (apparently) stable states. However, claiming that we are
approaching a major planetary boundary for our ecosystems (including human society), where we witness such
transitions simultaneously across the globe, is simply not upheld by evidence. Regional tipping points are unlikely to

translate into planet-wide state shifts. The main reason is that our ecosystems aren’t that
connected at global scales. The paper provides a framework against which one can test the existence or probability of a planetary tipping point for any
particular ecosystem function or state. To date, the application of the idea has floundered because of a lack of specified criteria that would allow the terrestrial biosphere to “tip”.
From a more sociological viewpoint, the claim of imminent shift to some worse state also risks alienating people from addressing the real problems (foxes), or as Brook and
colleagues summarise: framing global change in the dichotomous terms implied by the notion of a global tipping point could lead to complacency on the “safe” side of the point
and fatalism about catastrophic or irrevocable effects on the other. In other words, let’s be empirical about these sorts of politically charged statements instead of crying “Wolf!”
while the hordes of foxes steal most of the flock.

Environment resilient
Kareiva et al 12 – Peter Kareiva is Chief Scientist and Vice President, The Nature
Conservancy, Michelle Marvier --professor and department chair of Environment Studies and
Sciences at Santa Clara University, Robert Lalasz -- director of science communications for The
Nature Conservancy, Winter, (“Conservation in the Anthropocene,”
http://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/journal/past-issues/issue-2/conservation-in-the-
anthropocene/)
2. As conservation became a global enterprise in the 1970s and 1980s, the movement's
justification for saving nature shifted from spiritual and aesthetic values to focus on biodiversity.
Nature was described as primeval, fragile, and at risk of collapse from too much human use and
abuse. And indeed, there are consequences when humans convert landscapes for mining, logging,
intensive agriculture, and urban development and when key species or ecosystems are lost.¶ But
ecologists and conservationists have grossly overstated the fragility of nature, frequently arguing that
once an ecosystem is altered, it is gone forever. Some ecologists suggest that if a single species is lost, a
whole ecosystem will be in danger of collapse, and that if too much biodiversity is lost,
spaceship Earth will start to come apart. Everything, from the expansion of agriculture to
rainforest destruction to changing waterways, has been painted as a threat to the delicate inner-
workings of our planetary ecosystem.¶ The fragility trope dates back, at least, to Rachel Carson, who
wrote plaintively in Silent Spring of the delicate web of life and warned that perturbing the
intricate balance of nature could have disastrous consequences.22 Al Gore made a similar argument in his
1992 book, Earth in the Balance.23 And the 2005 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment warned darkly that, while the expansion of
agriculture and other forms of development have been overwhelmingly positive for the world's poor, ecosystem degradation was
simultaneously putting systems in jeopardy of collapse.24¶ The trouble for conservation is that the
data simply do not
support the idea of a fragile nature at risk of collapse. Ecologists now know that the
disappearance of one species does not necessarily lead to the extinction of any others,
much less all others in the same ecosystem. In many circumstances, the demise of formerly
abundant species can be inconsequential to ecosystem function. The American chestnut,
once a dominant tree in eastern North America, has been extinguished by a foreign disease, yet
the forest ecosystem is surprisingly unaffected. The passenger pigeon, once so abundant that its flocks
darkened the sky, went extinct, along with countless other species from the Steller's sea cow
to the dodo, with no catastrophic or even measurable effects .¶ These stories of
resilience are not isolated examples -- a thorough review of the scientific literature
identified 240 studies of ecosystems following major disturbances such as
deforestation, mining, oil spills, and other types of pollution. The abundance of plant and
animal species as well as other measures of ecosystem function recovered, at least partially, in
173 (72 percent) of these studies .25¶ While global forest cover is continuing to decline, it
is rising in the Northern Hemisphere, where "nature" is returning to former agricultural
lands.26 Something similar is likely to occur in the Southern Hemisphere, after poor countries achieve a similar level of economic
development. A 2010 report concluded that rainforests that have grown back over abandoned
agricultural land had 40 to 70 percent of the species of the original forests.27 Even Indonesian
orangutans, which were widely thought to be able to survive only in pristine forests, have been found in surprising numbers in oil
palm plantations and degraded lands.28¶ Nature is so resilient that it can recover rapidly from even
the most powerful human disturbances. Around the Chernobyl nuclear facility, which melted
down in 1986, wildlife is thriving, despite the high levels of radiation.29 In the Bikini Atoll, the
site of multiple nuclear bomb tests, including the 1954 hydrogen bomb test that boiled the water in the area, the
number of coral species has actually increased relative to before the explosions.30 More recently,
the massive 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was degraded and consumed by bacteria at a
remarkably fast rate.31¶ Today, coyotes roam downtown Chicago, and peregrine falcons astonish San
Franciscans as they sweep down skyscraper canyons to pick off pigeons for their next meal. As
we destroy habitats, we create new ones: in the southwestern United States a rare and federally
listed salamander species seems specialized to live in cattle tanks -- to date, it has been found in no other
habitat.32 Books have been written about the collapse of cod in the Georges Bank, yet recent trawl
data show the biomass of cod has recovered to precollapse levels.33 It's doubtful that books will
be written about this cod recovery since it does not play well to an audience somehow addicted
to stories of collapse and environmental apocalypse.¶ Even that classic symbol of fragility -- the
polar bear, seemingly stranded on a melting ice block -- may have a good chance of surviving global
warming if the changing environment continues to increase the populations and northern ranges
of harbor seals and harp seals. Polar bears evolved from brown bears 200,000 years ago during
a cooling period in Earth's history, developing a highly specialized carnivorous diet focused on seals. Thus, the fate of
polar bears depends on two opposing trends -- the decline of sea ice and the potential increase of energy-rich prey. The history
of life on Earth is of species evolving to take advantage of new environments only to be at risk
when the environment changes again.¶ The wilderness ideal presupposes that there are parts of
the world untouched by humankind, but today it is impossible to find a place on Earth that is
unmarked by human activity. The truth is humans have been impacting their natural
environment for centuries. The wilderness so beloved by conservationists -- places "untrammeled by man"34 -- never
existed, at least not in the last thousand years, and arguably even longer.
 Failed States
No failed states impact
Patrick 11 - (Stewart M, IR PhD @ Oxford, senior fellow, director – program on international
institutions and global governance @ Council on Foreign Relations, “Why Failed States
Shouldn’t Be Our Biggest National Security Fear,” 4/15/11 http://www.cfr.org/international-
peace-and-security/why-failed-states-shouldnt-our-biggest-national-security-fear/p24689)

In truth, while failed states may be worthy of America's attention on humanitarian and development grounds, most of them

are irrelevant to U.S. national security . The risks they pose are mainly to their own
inhabitants. Sweeping claims to the contrary are not only inaccurate but distracting and
unhelpful, providing little guidance to policymakers seeking to prioritize scarce attention and resources.¶ In
2008, I collaborated with Brookings Institution senior fellow Susan E. Rice, now President Obama's permanent representative to the
United Nations, on an index of state weakness in developing countries. The study ranked all 141 developing
nations on 20 indicators of state strength, such as the government's ability to provide basic services. More
recently, I've examined whether these rankings reveal anything about each nation's role in
major global threats: transnational terrorism, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, international crime
and infectious disease.¶ The findings are startlingly clear . Only a handful of the world's failed states pose security
concerns to the United States. Far greater dangers emerge from stronger developing countries that
may suffer from corruption and lack of government accountability but come nowhere near qualifying as failed states.¶
The link between failed states and transnational terrorism , for instance , is tenuous . Al-Qaeda
franchises are concentrated in South Asia, North Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia but are markedly absent in
most failed states, including in sub-Saharan Africa. Why? From a terrorist's perspective, the notion of finding
haven in a failed state is an oxymoron . Al-Qaeda discovered this in the 1990s when seeking a
foothold in anarchic Somalia. In intercepted cables, operatives bemoaned the insuperable difficulties of
working under chaos, given their need for security and for access to the global financial and
communications infrastructure. Al-Qaeda has generally found it easier to maneuver in corrupt but functional states, such as
Kenya, where sovereignty provides some protection from outside interdiction.¶ Pakistan and Yemen became
sanctuaries for terrorism not only because they are weak but because their governments lack
the will to launch sustained counterterrorism operations against militants whom they value for other purposes.
Terrorists also need support from local power brokers and populations. Along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, al-Qaeda finds
succor in the Pashtun code of pashtunwali, which requires hospitality to strangers, and in the severe brand of Sunni Islam practiced
locally. Likewise in Yemen, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has found sympathetic tribal hosts who have long welcomed
mujaheddin back from jihadist struggles.¶ Al-Qaeda has met less success in northern Africa's Sahel region, where a moderate, Sufi
version of Islam dominates. But as the organization evolves from a centrally directed network to a diffuse
movement with autonomous cells in dozens of countries, it is as likely to find haven in the banlieues of Paris or
high-rises of Minneapolis as in remote Pakistani valleys.¶ What about failed states and w eapons of mass
destruction? Many U.S. analysts worry that poorly governed countries will pursue nuclear, biological, chemical or radiological
weapons; be unable to control existing weapons; or decide to share WMD materials.¶ These fears are misplaced. With two
notable exceptions — North Korea and Pakistan — the world's weakest states pose minimal prolif eration

risks , since they have limited stocks of fissile or other WMD material and are unlikely to
pursue them. Far more threatening are capable countries (say, Iran and Syria) intent on pursuing WMD,
corrupt nations (such as Russia) that possess loosely secured nuclear arsenals and poorly policed nations (try
Georgia) through which proliferators can smuggle illicit materials or weapons.¶ When it comes to crime, the story is more complex.
Failed states do dominate production of some narcotics: Afghanistan cultivates the lion's share of global opium, and war-torn
Colombia rules coca production. The tiny African failed state of Guinea-Bissau has become a transshipment point for cocaine bound
for Europe. (At one point, the contraband transiting through the country each month was equal to the nation's gross domestic
product.) And Somalia, of course, has seen an explosion of maritime piracy. Yet failed states have little or no
connection with other categories of transnational crime, from human trafficking to money
laundering, intellectual property theft, cyber-crime or counterfeiting of manufactured goods.¶ Criminal
networks typically prefer operating in functional countries that provide baseline political order as
well as opportunities to corrupt authorities. They also accept higher risks to work in
nations straddling major commercial routes. Thus narco-trafficking has exploded in Mexico, which has far
stronger institutions than many developing nations but borders the United States. South Africa presents its own
advantages. It is a country where “the first and the developing worlds exist side by side,” author Misha Glenny writes. “The first
world provides good roads, 728 airports . . . the largest cargo port in Africa, and an efficient banking system. . . . The
developing world accounts for the low tax revenue, overstretched social services, high
levels of corruption throughout the administration, and 7,600 kilometers of land and sea borders that have
more holes than a second-hand dartboard.” Weak and failing African states, such as Niger, simply cannot compete .

Failed states index proves – failed states are memes

Mazarr 14 – (Michael J., public policy PhD @ U Maryland, Professor of National Security
Strategy at the National War College, “The Rise and Fall of the Failed-State Paradigm”,
January/February 2014, Foreign Affairs, http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/140347/michael-j-
mazarr/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-failed-state-paradigm)

From one angle, the concern with weak states could be seen as a response to actual conditions on the ground.
Problems had always festered in disordered parts of the developing world. Without great- power conflict as an urgent national
security priority, those problems were more clearly visible and harder to ignore. From another angle, it could be seen as a

classic meme
intellectual fad riding to prominence through social diffusion, articles by prominent
-- a concept or

thinkers, a flurry of attention from the mainstream press, and a series of foundation grants, think-tank projects,
roundtables, and conferences.¶ From a third angle, however, it could be seen as a solution to an unusual concern
confronting U.S. policymakers in this era: what to do with a surplus of national power. The United
States entered the 1990s with a dominant international position and no immediate threats.
Embracing a substantially reduced U.S. global role would have required a fundamental
reassessment of the prevailing consensus in favor of continued primacy, something few in or around the U.S. national
security establishment were prepared to consider. Instead, therefore, whether consciously or not, that establishment generated a
new rationale for global engagement, one involving the application of power and influence to issues that at any other time would
have been seen as secondary or tertiary. Without a near-peer competitor (or several) to deter or a major war on the
horizon, Washington found a new foreign policy calling: renovating weak or failing states .¶
THE DECLINE OF A STRATEGIC NARRATIVE¶ The practical challenges of state-building missions are now widely appreciated.
They tend to be long, difficult, and expensive, with success demanding an open-ended commitment to a messy, violent, and
confusing endeavor -- something unlikely to be sustained in an era of budgetary austerity. But the last decade has driven home
intellectual challenges to the concept as well.¶ The threat posed by weak and fragile states, for
example , turned out to be both less urgent and more complex and diffuse than was
originally suggested . Foreign Policy’s Failed States Index for 2013 is not exactly a roster of
national security priorities ; of its top 20 weak states, very few (Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan) boast
geostrategic significance, and they do so mostly because of their connection to terrorism. But even the threat of
terrorism isn’t highly correlated with the current roster of weak states; only one of the top 20,
Sudan, appears on the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism, and most other weak states have only
a marginal connection to terrorism at best.
.
 LA Instability
No impact to LA instability
Cardenas 11 – Mauricio Cardenas is a senior fellow and director of the Latin America
initiative at the Brookings Institution. (“Think Again Latin America,” 3-17-11, Foreign Policy,
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/03/17/think_again_latin_america?page=full)//Kent
Denver-NK and jkuffour

"Latin America is violent and dangerous." Yes, but not unstable . Latin American countries have
among the world's highest rates of crime, murder, and kidnapping. Pockets of abnormal levels of violence have emerged in
countries such as Colombia -- and more recently, in Mexico, Central America, and some large cities such as Caracas. With 140,000
homicides in 2010, it is understandable how Latin America got this reputation. Each of the countries in Central America's "Northern
Triangle" (Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador) had more murders in 2010 than the entire European Union combined. Violence
in Latin America is strongly related to poverty and inequality. When combined with the insatiable international appetite for the illegal
drugs produced in the region, it's a noxious brew. As strongly argued by a number of prominent regional leaders -- including Brazil's
former president, Fernando H. Cardoso, and Colombia's former president, Cesar Gaviria -- a strategy based on demand reduction,
Although some fear the Mexican drug
rather than supply, is the only way to reduce crime in Latin America.
violence could spill over into the southern United States , Latin America poses little to no
threat to international peace or stability . The major global security concerns today are the proliferation of nuclear
weapons and terrorism . No country in the region is in possession of nuclear weapons -- nor has
expressed an interest in having them. Latin American countries , on the whole, do not
have much history of engaging in cross-border war s. Despite the recent tensions on the
Venezuela-Colombia border, it should be pointed out that Venezuela has never taken part
in an international armed conflict. Ethnic and religious conflicts are very uncommon in
Latin America. Although the region has not been immune to radical jihadist attacks -- the
1994 attack on a Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires, for instance -- they have
been rare . Terrorist attacks on the civilian population have been limited to a large extent
to the FARC organization in Colombia, a tactic which contributed in large part to the
organization's loss of popular support.
No South American nukes
Marvin 14 – Taylor Marvin is a Master of International Affairs student at University of
California, San Diego's School of Global Policy and Strategy. ("Why Are There No Nuclear
Weapons in South America?," 8-7-14, Political Violence at a Glance,
http://politicalviolenceataglance.org/2014/08/07/why-are-there-no-nuclear-weapons-in-south-
america/)//jkuffour
As part of its occasional ‘Would Someone Please Explain This to Me” series, Political Violence @ a Glance recently asked readers
to suggest questions about the world of conflict and international relations. Reader Nawal Ali asks:

Why has Latin America been so free of nukes or at least a nuclear weapons program? Is it because technical requirements for
nuclear weapons development are much higher then civilian nuclear ventures or is it something else at play?

The 1967 Treaty of Tlatelolco banned nuclear weapons in Latin America. But the treaty’s
existence does not fully answer this question — if Latin American states really desired nuclear weapons they would develop them
anyway and accept the consequences, refuse to fully abide by the treaty, or would not have signed it in the first place. Today’s
Latin America includes several countries that likely possess the technological and financial
resources to develop nuclear weapons, with effort — Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico all spring to mind. One of
these countries, Brazil, has long sought a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, a body whose current permanent members
all possess nuclear arms. Latin America is also no stranger to arms races, with a little-known early 20th century dreadnought race
between Argentina, Brazil, and Chile being the most famous example. And as David R. Mares writes in his excellent book Violent
Peace: Militarized Interstate Bargaining in Latin America, interstate conflict, or at least militarized interstate bargaining, is more
common in the region than commonly known. Chile militarized its long border during the country’s period of dictatorship, Argentina
nearly went to war with Chile over Beagle Channel islands in the late 1970s, and violent rhetoric between Chile and its neighbors
persists.

So if several Latin American countries have the resources to develop nuclear weapons, and arguably at least some incentive to do
so, why does the region remain nuclear weapons-free?
The simplest answer is that nuclear weapons have gone out of style. As John Mueller has extensively argued, despite decades of
proliferation fears the number of nuclear-armed states has grown slowly. In an era where interstate war is comparatively rare, the
value of a nuclear security guarantee has shrunk when nuclear weapons’ diplomatic and image costs have grown. As the
threat of major war has receded both around the world and in the region — which is partially due

to US hegemony in Latin America, as Joe Young noted — the practical security gains from nuclear
weapons have declined . Given the time, effort, and resources required to acquire nuclear weapons, if states cannot
expect enough security or prestige gains to justify their costs they will be more hesitant to invest in them. Tellingly, countries that
have armed in the last few decades have tended to be isolated or facing extraordinarily dangerous security situations: Israel, North
Korea, Pakistan, and South Africa are all a little of column A, and a little of column B. None of the Latin American states with the
resources to develop nuclear arms are, or more arguably have been, in this situation.

Beyond security, nuclear weapons are no longer seen as a path to international status. If a
Latin American country armed itself today with a nuclear weapon it would be more likely
to receive global condemnation than great power prestige. Indeed, in the modern era aircraft carriers
are arguably a more important military status symbol than nuclear weapons. For Latin American countries anxious to improve their
international standing, prestige stems from economic growth and membership in international organizations like
the BRICS bloc (see Oliver Stuenkel’s writing on Brazil and the BRICS), and conventional weapons, rather than nuclear status.
(Though it is worth noting that in Latin America this argument is partially a circular one, as Brazil is one of the world’s most politically
and economically prominent non-nuclear states.)

But it is important to remember that despite these explanations the lack of nuclear weapons in Latin America is not an accident;
Argentina and Brazil both launched, and then abandoned, nuclear weapons programs.
Mitchell Reiss examines this aborted nuclear arms race in detail as a case study in his 1995 book Bridled Ambitions: Why Countries
Constrain Their Nuclear Capabilities. In the 1970s Argentina developed a secret enrichment facility and by the early 1980s could
“theoretically” enrich weapons-grade uranium. At the same time each branch of the Brazilian military had a separate nuclear
weapons program, the Air Force built an underground nuclear test chamber hidden in the Amazon (though Brazil was not actually
capable of carrying out a nuclear test), and the country maintained that it had the right to set off a test nuclear explosion.

Both countries had incentives to develop nuclear weapons, and while their development programs ran into severe technical
problems and were never close to success, it’s plausible that they could have eventually produced weapons with enough time and
effort. So why did Argentina and Brazil shelve their nuclear weapons programs?

First, Reiss writes, both

countries’ weapons programs moved slowly enough — partially due to serious
setbacks caused by nuclear states’ refusal to export their sensitive technologies — that
their governments had
ample opportunity to shutter them. Secondly, both realized that a nuclear arms race was a
mutual losing game . Brazil’s great size advantage meant that Argentina could never match a Brazilian nuclear arsenal in
absolute terms over the long run, but also that Brazil would lose relative prestige if Argentina developed nuclear weapons. Third, the
existing Treaty of Tlatelolco, which both countries had signed but not fully abided by, provided a convenient “out” and a more
acceptable alternative to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which both countries resented and had initially cooperated to oppose. Fourth,
bilateral relations improved in the late 1970s and soon afterwards Argentina and Brazil’s transitions to democracy reduced their
governments’ desire for the bomb. Argentina’s humiliating loss in the Falklands War increased its incentive to gain a nuclear
deterrent, but also helped usher in a civilian government much less interested in nuclear weapons.

Finally, simple
good diplomacy and the desire for international approval allowed Argentina
and Brazil to mutually agree to abandon nuclear ambitions, and anyway while both were rivals for a
leading position in South American neither saw war as any real possibility, which lowered the contest’s stakes. In a series of
agreements in the early 1990s both agreed to shutter their nuclear weapons programs and fully abide by the Treaty of Tlatelolco,
though Brazil remains interested in developing a nuclear-powered attack submarine. While some allege that Brazil could
develop nuclear weapons on short notice or use work on nuclear submarine propulsion as cover for a weapons
program, it is difficult to see any real rational for such a drastic step in the near future.
 ME War
No Middle East escalation
Gause 11 – (F. Gregory, professor of political science at the University of Vermont, and was
director of the University's Middle East Studies Program. PhD in pol sci from Harvard, 12/21/11,
“Don't Just Do Something, Stand There!”
www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/12/21/america_arab_spring_do_nothing?page=0,0)
An Argument for a Modest and Self-Restrained American Policy If
we back away from the domestic politics of Arab states (as well as those of
Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan) and look
at the region in classic balance-of-power terms, we need not be so
concerned about American regional interests. This is a multipolar region where balancing
dynamics operate. Those balancing dynamics are complicated by the appeal of cross-border identities and ideologies, a factor that can be
exploited by ambitious regional powers (as with Nasserist Arab nationalism in the 1950s and 1960s or Iran's ties with Islamist groups in the Arab world
today). But the modern history of the region indicates that no local power can achieve a dominant position
and thus put at risk American interests in oil access. If the United States, the most powerful country in
the history of the world, could not impose its hegemony on the region, then it should not be too worried

about Iran , even an Iran with nuclear weapons , doing so. In this case, system dynamics work in America's
a few

favor. Those systemic dynamics are strengthened by the fact that the most powerful state in the region militarily, Israel,

and the richest state in the region, Saudi Arabia, are opposed to regional hegemonic plays and are
both allied with the United States. Each is an uncomfortable ally in its own way: Saudi Arabia for the obvious reasons and Israel,
increasingly, because of its obstinacy regarding a two-state solution with the Palestinians. But their power helps to serve American
geopolitical interests in the region during a period of enormous change and uncertainty. Turkey's
re-entry as an active player into regional politics also works in America's favor. While the AKP government will
occasionally cause headaches, particularly in its stance toward Israel, having another strong (both domestically and internationally)
state playing the regional game makes it even more unlikely that Iran, or any other state, can
achieve a position of regional hegemony. Thus, the United States should approach regimes in the region, new and
old, autocratic and democratic, with a minimalist agenda based on state-to-state interests. New democratic regimes will
be as concerned about balancing dynamics as their old authoritarian predecessors. They will turn to
Washington for help in their own balance-of-power games (to some extent, this is already happening on Syria). If one state chooses to adopt a hostile
position toward the United States, its neighbors will probably seek out U.S. help. America can afford to take a less
involved, less intense interest in the region and step in as needed to prevent the worst
outcomes -- which can be done without a large U.S. land-based military presence in Iraq,
Afghanistan, or anywhere else. The term of art in the international relations scholarship is "offshore balancing." That should be the
overriding guide to American Middle East policy, not intense involvement in the domestic politics of regional states. I am not
advocating a complete U.S. political or military disengagement from the region. Maintaining U.S. bases in the small Gulf

states is a relatively cost-effective way of sustaining a military capability in an important area. ( Bahrain is
becoming more problematic on this score; the U nited S tates has no interest in having
bases in unstable countries and getting caught up in their domestic politics .) Washington
should engage with all regional governments, even Iran, on a regular basis. It should encourage
balancing dynamics, bolstering those threatened by America's regional enemies. If circumstances are
propitious (though I think this will be rare in the immediate future), Washington should push for progress on the Arab-Israeli front. But America
should avoid plunging into the domestic affairs of Arab states, even when it thinks it has influence there. Egypt is
the perfect example. America's $1.3 billion in annual aid to the Egyptian military certainly gives the United States some leverage over it. But America
should not use that to try to micromanage what will inevitably be a complex and drawn-out process of negotiations among the Army, the newly
empowered Islamists, other factions in the new parliament, and the body selected to write a new constitution about just what the relationship between
the Army and new political order will be. The United States should simply make it clear that continued aid to the Egyptian military depends on Egyptian
foreign-policy decisions toward America and on Egypt's peace treaty with Israel. Of course, the ground rules of U.S. foreign policy have changed, even
for an offshore balancer. The United States needs to communicate those ground rules to allied Arab governments and their publics: Washington
cannot provide aid to militaries that brutally suppress nonviolent popular demonstrations as a matter of regular policy. Washington will issue statements
in support of democratic reform and human rights across the board, affecting allies and adversaries equally. If allies do not like that, tough for them. But
these minimal guidelines are far different from the interventionist programs being put forward by both neoconservatives and liberal internationalists in
an effort to guide the politics of the Arab world. The
United States is well positioned to restrain itself in this period of flux in the
Middle East. It needs only to make the choice to do so.U.S. vital interests are not threatened . America's power to
prevent such threats is still significant. Regional balance-of-power dynamics work in America's
favor. The United States can afford to let developments play out, not getting too exercised by the Islamist wave in the
region but not encouraging it through active democracy promotion either. America can husband its resources rather than
waste them in the pursuit of chimeras, like liberal democratic Arab states at peace with Israel and strongly allied with the United
States. It can take the moral high ground in a way that neoconservatives and liberal interventionists do not appreciate, by not interfering in the domestic
politics of Arab states. America
can confidently stand aside and wait for regional states, driven by regional
dynamics, to come to it for assistance and support. A decade of failed efforts to remake the

politics of the region should be enough . Washington needs to learn the wisdom of the White Rabbit and just stand there in
the Middle East.
 Nagorno-Karabakh
No Nagorno-Karabakh impact
Stratfor 15 (Strategic Forecasting, Inc., American publisher and global intelligence company,
provides strategic analysis and forecasting, “Why Progress on the Nagorno-Karabakh Standoff
May Be Imminent”, 11/14/15, https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/why-progress-nagorno-
karabakh-standoff-may-be-imminent)

Armenia and Azerbaijan may be making diplomatic progress toward

After a decades-long standoff,

resolving their bitter dispute over the breakaway territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. Both countries claim the semi-
autonomous region, which lies along the southern half of their shared border, but since the end of a six-year war over the territory in 1994, Armenia has
exercised control there and in seven adjacent regions also wrested from Azerbaijani rule. For 15 years, Russian support for Armenia has kept
Azerbaijan from mounting another viable challenge to retake Nagorno-Karabakh. However, Russia's
increasingly fragile
position amid its standoff with the West and Azerbaijan's ability to leverage this change
may soon prompt deals on several of the regions adjacent to Nagorno-Karabakh.
Analysis

The dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh between Armenia and Azerbaijan is one of several frozen conflicts in the former Soviet space that have persisted
since the collapse of the Soviet Union. After the end of the war in the early 1990s, there was a period of relative calm. But over the past year, military
clashes along the border have intensified as Azerbaijan has increased cross-border raids and shootouts.

In what may be a harbinger of changes to come, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made an unannounced visit to Armenia on Nov. 9 in what
some local media have billed as a "secret" trip to discuss Nagorno-Karabakh. Russia has played a significant role in the
dispute, both as the main mediator in political negotiations between the two countries and as
Armenia's de facto security guarantor. (Russia has 5,000 troops in Armenia.) But after years of defending Armenia's claims,
Russia may be more open to negotiating with Azerbaijan now that Moscow is under
increased pressure from the West.

Azerbaijan is being seen as a potential alternative energy supplier to the Europeans, and
Meanwhile,

Baku is using its newfound political clout to lobby Moscow to change its position on
Nagorno-Karabakh . Azerbaijan has expanded economic and security cooperation and
has cultivated a more active diplomatic relationship with Russia. At the same time, it is becoming more
aggressive toward Armenia, conducting cross-border raids and initiating shootouts along the line of conflict more frequently.

A Diplomatic Resolution

Stratfor has previously laid out several potential directions the Nagorno-Karabakh standoff could go. As Azerbaijan grows bolder, it may reach an
agreement with Armenia that gives it control of the regions surrounding the breakaway territory. If the diplomatic route fails, Azerbaijan may increase
the scale of its military activities. And of course, there is always the possibility that the tense standoff will drag on, tensions unabated.

[image omitted]

Recent developments suggest the three major parties involved are seriously considering the first scenario: a

diplomatic ally brokered resolution to the conflict. On Nov. 11, several Armenian newspapers, referring to their own sources
as well as to media reports from Russia, ran articles and commentaries framing Lavrov's recent visit to Yerevan as an appeal for Armenia to return five
out of seven territories adjacent to Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan. In exchange, Russia would place its own troops in these territories to guarantee
that war would not resume and also to convince Azerbaijan to end its economic blockade of Armenia. Citing sources involved in
the negotiation process , the Russian daily Kommersant added that the Lachin corridor — a key supply route into Nagorno-Karabakh
from Armenia proper — would remain in Armenia's control, as would the region of Kalbajar. Azerbaijan, for its part, would end
military hostilities and commit itself to peace talks .
 Poverty
World getting better – poverty down now
Radelet 16 – Steven Radelet is a PhD, Chair in Global Human Development at Georgetown
University and is a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. ("Prosperity Rising,"
Jan/Feb 2016 Foreign Affairs, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2015-12-14/prosperity-
rising)//jkuffour

Since the early 1990s, daily life in poor countries has been changing profoundly for the
better: one billion people have escaped extreme poverty, average incomes have
doubled, infant death rates have plummeted, millions more girls have enrolled in school,
chronic hunger has been cut almost in half, deaths from malaria and other diseases have
declined dramatically , democracy has spread far and wide, and the incidence of war —
even with Syria and other conflicts— has fallen by half . This unprecedented progress goes
way beyond China and India and has touched hundreds of millions of people in dozens of
developing countries across the globe, from Mongolia to Mozambique, Bangladesh to Brazil.
Yet few people are aware of these achievements, even though, in aggregate, they rank among
the most important in human history. In 2013, the Swedish survey organization Novus Group
International asked Americans how they thought the share of the world’s population living in
extreme poverty had changed over the last two decades. Sixty-six percent of respondents said
that they thought it had doubled, and another 29 percent said that it hadn’t changed. Only five
percent knew (or guessed) the truth: that the share of people living in extreme poverty had fallen
by half.
Perhaps that ignorance explains why Washington has done so little to take advantage of these
promising trends, giving only tepid support to nascent democracies, making limited investments
in economic development and in new health and agricultural technologies, and failing to take the
lead in building more effective international institutions. Whatever the reason, many developing
countries are now responding to what they perceive as the United States’ indifference by
looking elsewhere—especially toward China—for deeper engagement and advice on how to
keep growing. At the same time, climate change, the slowdown in global growth, and rising
tensions in the Middle East and beyond have begun to threaten further progress. As a result,
the United States now risks missing out on a historic chance to strengthen its global leadership
and help create a safer, more prosperous, and more democratic world—just at the moment
when it could help the most.
ONE GIANT LEAP

Global poverty is falling faster today than at any time in human history . In 1993, about
two billion people were trapped in extreme poverty (defined by the World Bank as living on less
than $1.90 per day); by 2012, that number had dropped to less than one billion. The
industrialization of China is a big part of the story, of course, but even excluding that
country, the number of extreme poor has fallen by more than 400 million. Since the 1980s, more
than 60 countries have reduced the number of their citizens who are impoverished, even as
their overall populations have grown.
 This decline in poverty has gone hand in hand with much faster economic growth.
Between 1977 and 1994, the growth in per capita GDP across the developing countries
averaged zero; since 1995, that figure has shot up to three percent. Again, the change is
widespread: between 1977 and 1994, only 21 developing countries (out of 109 with populations
greater than one million) exceeded two percent annual per capita growth, but between 1995 and
2013, 71 such countries did so. And going backward has become much less common: in the
earlier period, more than 50 developing countries recorded negative growth, but in the later one,
just ten did.
The improvements in health have been even bigger. In 1960, 22 percent of children in
developing countries died before their fifth birthday, but by 2013, only five percent did. Diarrhea
killed five million children a year in 1990 but claimed fewer than one million in 2014. Half
as many people now die from malaria as did in 2000, and deaths from tuberculosis and AIDS
have both dropped by a third . The share of people living with chronic hunger has fallen by
almost half since the mid-1990s. Life expectancy at birth in developing countries has
lengthened by nearly one-third, from 50 years in 1960 to 65 years today. These
improvements in health have left no country untouched, even the worst-governed ones.
Consider this: the rate of child death has declined in every single country (at least those
where data are available) since 1980.
Meanwhile, far more children are enrolling in and completing school. In the late 1980s, only 72
percent of all primary-school-age children attended school; now, the figure exceeds 87 percent.
Girls in developing countries have enjoyed the biggest gains. In 1980, only half of them finished
primary school, whereas four out of five do so today. These leaps in education are beginning to
translate into better-skilled workers.
Then there is the shift to democracy. Prior to the 1980s, most developing countries were run
by left- or right-wing dictators. Coups and countercoups, violence and assassinations, human
rights abuses—all formed part of regular political life. But starting in the 1980s, dictators began
to fall, a process that accelerated after the Cold War. In 1983, only 17 of 109 developing
countries qualified as democracies, based on data from Freedom House and the Center for
Systemic Peace; by 2013, the number had more than tripled, to 56 (and that’s not counting the
many more developing countries with populations of less than one million).
As those numbers suggest, power today is far more likely to be transferred through the
ballot box than through violence, and elections in most countries have become fairer and
more transparent. Twenty years ago, few Indonesians could have imagined that a furniture
maker from central Java would beat one of Suharto’s relatives in a free and fair election,
as Joko Widodo did in 2014. Nor would many have predicted that Nigeria, then still under
military rule, would in 2015 mark its first peaceful transfer of power between parties, or that
Myanmar (also called Burma) would hold its most successful democratic election the same
year. Across the developing world, individual freedoms and rights are honored to a much
greater degree, human rights abuses are rarer, and legislative bodies have more power.
Yes, many of these new democracies have problems. And yes, the march toward democracy
has slowed since 2005—and even reversed in some countries, such
as Thailand and Venezuela. But in many more—from Brazil to Mongolia to Senegal—
democracy has deepened. Never before in history have so many developing countries been so
democratic.

As states have become wealthier and more democratic, conflict and violence within
them have declined . Those who think otherwise should remember that as recently as the
1980s and early 1990s, much of the world was aflame, from Central America to Southeast Asia
to West Africa. There were half as many civil wars in the last decade as there were in the
1980s, and the number of people killed in armed conflicts has fallen by three-quarters.
Three major forces sparked this great surge in development progress. First, the end of the Cold
War brought an end to the superpowers’ support for some of the world’s nastiest dictators and
reduced the frequency of conflict. As ideas about economic and political governance began
to change, developing countries introduced more market-based economic systems and
more democracy. Second, globalization created vast new opportunities for economic
growth. Increased flows of trade, investment, information, and technology created more
jobs and improved living standards . Third, new and more effective leaders—in politics,
business, religion, and civil society—began to forge deep change. Where courageous figures,
such as Nelson Mandela in South Africa, stepped forward, countries progressed; where old-
style dictators, such as Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, remained in power, countries languished.
 Prolif
No prolif impact
Mueller 16 – (John, Woody Hayes Senior Research Scientist, Mershon Center for
International Security Studies; Adjunct Professor, Department of Political Science, Ohio State
University, 6/5/16, “Embracing Threatlessness: US Military Spending, Newt Gingrich, and the
Costa Rica Option,” http://politicalscience.osu.edu/faculty/jmueller/CNArestraintCato16.pdf)

For decades there has been almost wall-to-wall alarm about the dangers supposedly inherent in
nuclear proliferation.

However, the proliferation of nuclear weapons has been far slower than has been commonly
predicted over the decades primarily because the weapons do not generally convey much
advantage to their possessor.
And, more importantly, the effect of the proliferation that has taken place has been substantially
benign : those who have acquired the weapons have “used” them simply to stoke their
egos or to deter real or imagined threats.67 The holds even for the proliferation of the
weapons to large, important countries run by unchallenged monsters who at the time they
acquired the bombs were certifiably deranged: Josef Stalin who in 1949 was planning to change the climate of the Soviet
Union by planting a lot of trees, and Mao Zedong who in 1964 had just carried out a bizarre social experiment that had
resulted in artificial famine in which tens of millions of Chinese perished.68

Despite this experience, an aversion to nuclear proliferation continues to impel alarmed concern, and it was a chief motivator of the
Iraq War which essentially was a militarized antiproliferation effort. The war proved to be a necessary cause of the deaths of more
people than were inflicted at Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.69

The subsequent and consequent Iraq syndrome strongly suggests there

will be little incentive to apply military
force to prevent, or to deal with, further putative proliferation. Thus, despite nearly continuous
concern—even at times hysteria—about nuclear developments in North Korea and Iran, proposals to use military force (particularly
boots on the ground) to deal with these developments have been persistently undercut. The invasion of Iraq presumably did prevent
that country from going nuclear—assuming it ever would have been able to put together the effort.70 However, it scarcely seems
maintaining huge forces-in-
likely that there will be much sympathy for repeating that disastrous experience. Thus,
being to deal with the proliferation problem scarcely seems sensible, even though almost
everybody still considers proliferation to be major security concern. What seems to be required in these cases,
as generally with the devils du jour of the Cold War era, is judicious, watchful, and wary patience.

States won’t miscalculate

Sapolsky 16 – (Harvey M, Professor of Public Policy and Organization, Emeritus, at MIT and
the former Director of the MIT Security Studies Program, 2016, “Getting Past Nonproliferation,”
in Should We Let the Bomb Spread, p. 18)

Nuclear-armed nations are often at war, but not with each other . Nuclear weapons sober
regional tensions by giving great caution to aggressive actions. The dangers of escalation
restrain the inclination to use even low levels of military force in disputes with nuclear-
armed opponents. War is full of surprises, which makes it too dangerous for nuclear
powers to fight one another. One miscalculation about likely opponent reactions could be one too many
in any encounter.
Deterrence prevents every prolif impact
Sapolsky 16 – (Harvey M. , Professor of Public Policy and Organization, Emeritus, at MIT
and the former Director of the MIT Security Studies Program, 2016, “Getting Past
Nonproliferation,” in Should We Let the Bomb Spread, p. 21-22)

The fear , of course, is that without the NPT barrier, not just friendly nations in Europe or Asia but
also hostile, unstable, and/or terrorist-supporting regimes in the Middle East will
go nuclear. A
How long will a
nuclear weapon in their hands is more frightening than a nuclear weapon in Russian and Chinese hands.
nuclear-armed Saudi Arabia survive as a kingdom? Wouldn’t Iran give some to Hezbollah
or Qatar and a couple to Hamas?

Deterrence and forensics work .31 Nations that threaten the United States will discover that
they face a most formidable and tenacious opponent. Post-NPT nuclear weapons will
remain difficult to obtain , costly to protect, and very, very risky to gift, lend, or trade. The
extreme caution that applies to attacks on nuclear powers applies also to those who
would hand nuclear weapons to their terrorist enemies as the links are sure to be
revealed. Often the terrorists are as much a threat to others as they are to the United States. The weapon that they
steal from you may be used against you, so there is strong incentive to protect nuclear
weapons from theft and against handing them to others.
 Protectionism
No protectionism impact
Ikenson 12 - (Daniel, director of the Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies at the
Cato Institute, “Trade Policy Priority One: Averting a U.S.-China “Trade War””, March 5th,
http://www.cato.org/publications/free-trade-bulletin/trade-policy-priority-one-averting-uschina-
trade-war)
An emerging narrative in 2012 is that a proliferation of protectionist, treaty-violating, or otherwise illiberal
Chinese policies is to blame for worsening U.S.-China relations. China trade experts from across the
ideological and political spectra have lent credibility to that story. Business groups that once counseled against U.S. government actions that might be
perceived by the Chinese as provocative have changed their tunes. The term "trade war" is no longer taboo. The media
have portrayed the United States as a victim of underhanded Chinese practices, including currency manipulation, dumping, subsidization, intellectual
property theft, forced technology transfer, discriminatory "indigenous innovation" policies, export restrictions, industrial espionage, and other ad hoc
impediments to U.S. investment and exports. Indeed, it is beyond doubt that certain Chinese policies have
been provocative, discriminatory, protectionist, and, in some cases, violative of the
agreed rules of international trade. But there is more to the story than that. U.S. policies, politics, and attitudes have contributed
to rising tensions, as have rabble-rousing politicians and a confrontation-thirsty media. If the public's passions are going to
be inflamed with talk of a trade war, prudence demands that the war's nature be properly
characterized and its causes identified and accurately depicted. Those agitating for tough policy actions
should put down their battle bugles and consider that trade wars are never won . Instead, such wars claim victims indiscriminately and
leave significant damage in their wake. Even if one concludes that China's list of offenses is collectively more egregious than that of the United States,
the most sensible course of action — for the American public (if not campaigning politicians) — is one that avoids mutually destructive actions and
finds measures to reduce frictions with China. Nature of the U.S.-China Trade War It
should not be surprising that the
increasing number of commercial exchanges between entities in the world's largest and
second largest economies produce frictions on occasion. But the U.S.-China economic
relationship has not descended into an existential call to arms. Rather, both governments
have taken protectionist actions that are legally defensible or plausibly justifiable within
the rules of global trade. That is not to say that those measures have been advisable or
that they would withstand closer legal scrutiny, but to make the distinction that, unlike
the free-for-all that erupted in the 1930s, these trade "skirmishes" have been prosecuted
in a manner that speaks to a mutual recognition of the primacy of — if not respect for —
the rules-based system of trade . And that suggests that the kerfuffle is containable and
the recent trend reversible .1
 Russia War
No US-Russia war
Peck 14 - (Michael , Contributor on defense and national security for Forbes, “7 Reasons
Why America Will Never Go To War Over Ukraine”, 3/5/2014,
http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelpeck/2014/03/05/7-reasons-why-america-will-never-go-to-
war-over-ukraine)
America is the mightiest military power in the world. And that fact means absolutely
nothing for the Ukraine crisis. Regardless of whether Russia continues to occupy the
Crimea region of Ukraine, or decides to occupy all of Ukraine, the U.S. is not going to get into
a shooting war with Russia . This has nothing to do with whether Obama is strong or
weak. Jimmy Carter or Ronald Reagan would face the same constraints. The U.S. may
threaten to impose economic sanctions, but here is why America will never smack
Russia with a big stick:¶ ¶ Russia is a nuclear superpower . Russia has an estimated 4,500 active
nuclear warheads, according to the Federation of American Scientists. Unlike North Korea or perhaps Iran, whose nuclear
arsenals couldn’t inflict substantial damage, Russia could totally devastate the U.S. as well as the rest of the
planet. U.S. missile defenses, assuming they even work, are not designed to stop a massive Russian strike. For the 46 years
of the Cold War, America and Russia were deadly rivals. But they never fought . Their
proxies fought : Koreans, Vietnamese, Central Americans, Israelis and Arabs. The one time that U.S. and Soviet forces
almost went to war was during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Neither Obama nor Putin is crazy [silly] enough to want to repeat that.
[Image: U.S. Marine Corps vehicle during amphibious assault exercise.] U.S. Marine Corps vehicle during amphibious assault
exercise. Russia has a powerful army . While the Russian military is a shadow of its Soviet glory days, it is still a
formidable force. The Russian army has about 300,000 men and 2,500 tanks (with another 18,000 tanks
in storage), according to the “Military Balance 2014″ from the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Its air force has
almost 1,400 aircraft, and its navy 171 ships, including 25 in the Black Sea Fleet off Ukraine’s coast. ¶ U.S. forces are more capable
than Russian forces, which did not perform impressively during the 2008 Russo-Georgia War. American troops would enjoy better
training, communications, drones, sensors and possibly better weapons (though the latest Russian fighter jets, such as the T-50,
The Russian military is not composed of
could be trouble for U.S. pilots). However, better is not good enough.
lightly armed insurgents like the Taliban, or a hapless army like the Iraqis in 2003. With advanced weapons
like T-80 tanks, supersonic AT-15 Springer anti-tank missiles, BM-30 Smerch multiple
rocket launchers and S-400 Growler anti-aircraft missiles, Russian forces pack enough
firepower to inflict significant American losses. Ukraine is closer to Russia. The distance between Kiev and
Moscow is 500 miles. The distance between Kiev and New York is 5,000 miles. It’s much easier for Russia to send troops and
supplies by land than for the U.S. to send them by sea or air. The U.S. military is tired . After nearly 13 years
of war, America’s armed forces need a breather. Equipment is worn out from long
service in Iraq and Afghanistan, personnel are worn out from repeated deployments overseas, and there are still
about 40,000 troops still fighting in Afghanistan. The U.S. doesn’t have many troops to send . The U.S. could
easily dispatch air power to Ukraine if its NATO allies allow use of their airbases, and the aircraft carrier George H. W. Bush and its
hundred aircraft are patrolling the Mediterranean. But for
a ground war to liberate Crimea or defend Ukraine, there is
just the 173rd Airborne Brigade in Italy, the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit sailing off
Spain, the 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment in Germany and the 82nd Airborne Division at
Fort Bragg, North Carolina. While the paratroopers could drop into the combat zone, the Marines would
have sail past Russian defenses in the Black Sea, and the Stryker brigade would
probably have to travel overland through Poland into Ukraine. Otherwise, bringing in
mechanized combat brigades from the U.S. would be logistically difficult , and more important,
could take months to organize. The American people are tired. Pity the poor politician who tries to
sell the American public on yet another war, especially some complex conflict in a distant
Eastern Europe nation. Neville Chamberlain’s words during the 1938 Czechoslovakia crisis come to mind: “How horrible,
fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas-masks here because of a quarrel in a far away country
America’s allies are tired . NATO sent troops to support the
between people of whom we know nothing.”
American campaign in Afghanistan, and has little to show for it. Britain sent troops to
Iraq and Afghanistan, and has little to show for it. It is almost inconceivable to imagine
the Western European public marching in the streets to demand the liberation of Crimea, especially considering
the region’s sputtering economy, which might be snuffed out should Russia stop exporting natural gas. As for military capabilities,
the Europeans couldn’t evict Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi without American help. And Germans fighting Russians again? Let’s
not even go there.

No Russia war or escalation---checks prevent escalation even if low level

conflict occurs.
Tsygankov 16—(Andrei, Professor at the Departments of Political Science and International
Relations at San Francisco State University, “5 reasons why the threat of a global war involving
Russia is overstated,” Russia Direct, 19 Feb, http://www.russia-direct.org/opinion/5-reasons-
why-threat-great-power-war-involving-russia-overstated)

First, whatever the rhetoric, major powers are not inclined towards risky behavior when
their core interests are at stake. This concerns not only the nuclear superpowers, but
also countries such as Turkey. The prospect of confronting Russia's overwhelmingly superior military should give
pause even to someone as hot-tempered as Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan. Even if Erdogan wanted to pit Russia against
NATO, it wouldn’t work.

So far, NATO
has been careful to not be drawn into highly provocative actions, whether it
is by responding to Russia seizing the Pristina International Airport in June 1999, getting involved
on Georgia’s side during the military conflict in August 2008 or by providing lethal military assistance
and support for Ukraine. Unless Russia is the clear and proven aggressor, NATO is unlikely to support Turkey and begin
World War III.

Second, Russia remains a defensive power aware of its responsibility for maintaining
international stability . Moscow wants to work with major powers, not against them. Its insistence on
Western recognition of Russia’s interests must not be construed as a drive to destroy the foundations of the international order, such
as sovereignty, multilateralism, and arms control.

Third, the United States has important interests to prevent regional conflicts from escalating or becoming trans-regional. Although its
relative military capabilities are not where they were ten years ago, the
U.S. military and diplomatic resources
are sufficient to restrain key regional players in any part of the world. Given the power rivalry
across several regions, proxy wars are possible and indeed are happening, but they are unlikely to
escalate .
Fourth, unlike the Cold War era, the contemporary world has no rigid alliance structure. The so-called
Russia-China-Iran axis is hardly more than a figment of the imagination by American neoconservatives and some Russia
conspiracy-minded thinkers. The
world remains a space in which international coalitions overlap
and are mostly formed on an ad hoc basis.

there is no fundamental conflict of

Fifth, with the exception of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Greater Syria (ISIS),
values and ideologies. Despite the efforts to present as incompatible the so-called
“traditional” and “Western” values by Russia or “democracy” to “autocracy” by the United
States and Europe, the world majority does not think that this cultural divide is worth
fighting for.
Despite the dangers of the
world we live in, it contains a number of important, even underappreciated,
checks on great powers’ militarism . The threat talk coming from politicians is often
deceiving . Such talk may be a way to pressure the opponent into various political and
military concessions rather than to signal real intentions. When such pressures do not
bring expected results, the rhetoric of war and isolation subsides .

Then a dialogue begins. Perhaps, the increasing frequency of exchanges between Obama and Putin since December
2015 - including their recent phone conversation following the Munich conference - suggest a growing recognition that the record of
pressuring Russia has been mixed at best.
 Trade
No trade war
Alden 12 – Edward Alden is a Bernard L. Schwartz senior fellow at the Council on Foreign
Relations (CFR), specializing in U.S. economic competitiveness. (“What Exactly Is a “Trade
War”? Time to Abolish a Silly Notion,” http://blogs.cfr.org/renewing-america/2012/10/23/what-
exactly-is-a-trade-war-time-to-abolish-a-silly-notion, October 23, 2012)

I have a suggestion for everyone who writes about international trade: it is time to bury , once and for all, the concept
of a “trade war.” The phrase is so ubiquitous that it will be awfully hard to abolish; I have probably been guilty myself from time to time.

Indeed, it is almost a reflex that every

time the United States or some other nation takes any action
that restricts imports in any fashion, reporters and editorial writers jump to their keyboards to warn that a
trade war is looming. But it is a canard that makes it far harder to have a sensible discussion about U.S. trade policy. No sooner had
President Obama and Mitt Romney finished their latest round of “who’s tougher on trade with China?” in their final debate Monday night than the New
York Times – to take one of many possible examples – warned that “formally citing Beijing as a currency manipulator may backfire, economic and
foreign-policy experts have said. In the worst case, it could set off a trade war, leading to falling American exports to China and more expensive
Chinese imports.” But what exactly is a “trade war”? To take the U.S.-China example, the notion seems to be that, if the United States restricts Chinese
imports, China will respond by restricting imports of U.S. goods, in turn leading to further U.S. restrictions and so on and so on until trade between the
two countries plummets. The closest historical example is the reaction to the infamous Smoot-Hawley tariff act of 1930, which raised the average U.S.
tariff on imports to historically high levels. As trade historian Douglas Irwin of Dartmouth has show persuasively, Smoot-Hawley did not cause the Great
Depression, and probably did not even exacerbate it very much since trade was a tiny part of the U.S. economy. But Smoot-Hawley did result in Great
Britain, Canada and other U.S. trading partners raising their own tariffs in response. Irwin suggests that the higher tariffs were probably responsible for
about a third of the 40 percent drop in imports between 1929 and 1932, and perhaps a slightly higher percentage of export losses. And the new trade
barriers put in place took many decades to dismantle. With imports and exports today comprising roughly a third of the U.S. economy, and the few
remaining tariffs mostly in the single digits, the consequences of similar tit-for-tat tariff increases today would be far more severe. But what are
the chances of such a “trade war” actually occurring? Pretty close to zero , for two big reasons. First, in
1930, there was no World Trade Organization, no North American Free Trade Agreement,
no European Community/Union – in short, no rules to prevent countries from jacking up
tariffs or imposing quotas whenever governments felt domestic political pressure to do so. Today, such unilateral action is
largely forbidden . Indeed, the tit-for-tat measures we have seen in the U.S.-China trade relationship have all been taken within the framework
of WTO rules. When the Obama administration curbed purchases of Chinese steel in 2009 under the “Buy
America” provisions of the stimulus, for example, China responded with an “anti-dumping” case which led to tariffs on
imports of U.S. steel. But the United States challenged that action in the WTO, and just last week

the WTO ordered China to lift the duties. No trade war – instead the phrase “see you in court” comes to mind.
Secondly, almost every nation in the world seems fully aware of the dangers of aggressive
protectionism . One of the striking things about the Great Recession– which resulted in global trade volumes plunging by more than 12
percent in 2009, the biggest drop since World War II – is how little of the protectionism that is permitted under WTO rules actually occurred. Chad
Bown of the World Bank has documented the surprising low level of new trade barriers
imposed during the recession and its aftermath. The danger of competitive currency devaluations – which are not clearly covered
under WTO rules – is a greater threat than tariffs. This is one of the reasons that Romney’s pledge to label China a
currency manipulator could be playing with fire, particularly after more than seven years in which the value of the renminbi has been
creeping up steadily against the dollar. And his suggestion that the United States would impose tariffs in

response is just silly – it would be a blatant violation of WTO rules and would quickly be
slapped down as such. Again, however, no trade war – just an unfavorable WTO decision with which a Romney administration
would quickly comply.

Multilateral trade is dead

Chalsee & Wang 1/16/17 — Julien Chalsee is Professor of International Economic Law @
the Chinese University of Hong Kong; member of the World Economic Forum's Global Councils
Network (Trade and Investment); Ph.D. in Law, University of Aix-Marseille Qian Wang is LL.B.
(JD equivalent) in International Economic Law from East China University of Political Science
and Law; Law Research Assistant @ the University of Hong Kong. (“Was 2016 the year the
world turned its back on free trade?” 1/16/17, Huffington Post,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/the-conversation-global/was-2016-the-year-the-
wor_b_14211056.html)

The IMF suggests three explanations for the decline in trade regimes: the slowdown in
global economic growth ; the halt in trade and investment liberalisation agreements (which started long
before the freezing of the Trans Pacific Partnership or the Trans Atlantic Trade and Partnership agreements); and
the maturity of international production chains that would have exhausted their advantages.

Geopolitical competition in global trade agenda-setting among the US, the European Union and
emerging powers, such as China and India, and increasingly popular protectionism
rhetoric in national trade debates also explain the failure or lack of cooperation in the multilateral trading
system.

Three types of explanations

IMF experts estimate that the slowdown in economic growth since 2012, after the temporary
catch up in 2010 and 2011, explains by itself “about three-quarters of the dramatic
slowdown trade”.
Proof of this, they argue, is that it’s investment products, and secondarily, durable household goods, such as
cars, whose trade has slowed down the most. They note that slowdown of goods consumption affects
143 countries out of 171 under review, including China, Brazil and the nations in the Euro area, among others.

In this respect, the period between 2012 and 2016 will have been particularly volatile in terms of
world trade , resulting from the collapse of oil and commodity prices. The IMF notes that
this fall itself resulted in a 10.5% contraction of all international trade in 2015, when looking at all
products.

This has resulted in considerable loss of purchasing power for many countries and billions of consumers,
and thus a reorientation of demand at the expense of durable goods, which have become inaccessible
to many. Added to this are national trade imbalances - the surpluses of some countries and the

deficits of others - that have also acted as a brake on trade.

The second explanation for shrinking international trade stems from the general global climate , which has
become more protectionist . The IMF notes that, in the 1990s, an average of 30 trade liberalisation
agreements were signed annually between countries. But barely ten such agreements have been
signed each year since 2011.
Free trade agreements include deeper provisions that go beyond trade barriers and more partners
can significantly reduce the cost of trade, which, in turn, helps boost trade flows.

The third reason for the brake on trade is the decline

in the growth of global value chains, which is the idea
that the process of production consists of many stages and occurs across borders. But this
phenomenon, which developed at a very high rate after China’s accession to the WTO in 2001 as the country emerged as a global
supplier, has now reached cruising pace.
Similarly, the fall
in the cost of cross-border transportation and international cost of
telecommunications, which had contributed so much to trade, would also have met its limit. And they
probably contribute modestly to the decline of global trade.

Buteven as they worry about the disappointing numbers, countries remain very divided on what to do next.
In fact, we may
be witnessing the return of an economic nationalism that threatens withdrawal
from the global market.
Politics Updates – 7-27
Trump Bad UQ
 Uniqueness

GOP infighting means nothing will pass now

Sean Sullivan & Robert Costa, 7/24/17, GOP's internal feuds threaten legislative goals of Trump,
party, Washington Post, lexis, A01 ach

Six months after seizing complete control of the federal government, the Republican Party
stands divided as ever - plunged into a messy war among its factions that has escalated in
recent weeks to crisis levels. Frustrated lawmakers are increasingly sounding off at a White
House awash in turmoil and struggling to accomplish its legislative goals. President Trump is
scolding Republican senators over health care and even threatening electoral retribution.
Congressional leaders are losing the confidence of their rank and file. And some major GOP
donors are considering using their wealth to try to force out recalcitrant incumbents. "It's a lot of
tribes within one party, with many agendas, trying to do what they want to do," Rep. Tom
MacArthur (R-N.J.) said in an interview. The intensifying fights threaten to derail efforts to
overhaul the nation's tax laws and other initiatives that GOP leaders hope will put them back on
track. The party remains bogged down by a months-long health-care endeavor that still lacks
the support to become law, although Senate GOP leaders plan to vote on it this week. With his
priorities stalled and Trump consumed by staff changes and investigations into Russian
interference in last year's election, Republicans are adding fuel to a political fire that is showing
no signs of burning out. The conflict also heralds a potentially messy 2018 midterm campaign
with fierce intra-party clashes that could draw resources away from fending off Democrats. "It's
very sad that Republicans, even some that were carried over the line on my back, do very little
to protect their President," Trump wrote on Twitter on Sunday afternoon, marking the latest sign
of the president's uneasy relationship with his own party. Winning control of both chambers and
the White House has done little to fill in the deep and politically damaging ideological fault lines
that plagued the GOP during Barack Obama's presidency and ripped the party apart during the
2016 presidential primary. Now, Republicans have even more to lose.
Trump Agenda Bad
 Link
Passing centrist policies broadens Trump’s appeal and greenlights his
agenda
Noah Bierman, 7/27/17, Trump leans on base amid stalled agenda, Hartford Courant, p5, lexis, ach

Mostly the base remains stalwart, however, while even some of Trump's closest advisers,
including Gingrich, worry that the president could be squandering an opportunity to expand his
support, and with it his ability to leave a larger policy imprint. "He's being advised that he needs
to keep (his base) at all costs," said Christopher Ruddy, chief executive of the conservative
Newsmax Media and a longtime friend. "I think that advice is not particularly good." Ruddy
believes the base's fealty gives Trump latitude to reach beyond his comfort zone - to seek more
centrist policies on taxes, education and infrastructure, for example - and broaden his support.
Debt Ceiling Neg
 Will Pass
Will pass before the recess- delay threatens passage
Eric Pianin, 7/25/17, (Washington Editor and D.C. bureau chief) Raise the Debt Ceiling Now,
or Face Another Post-Summer Crisis: Meadows, Fiscal Times,
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2017/07/25/Raise-Debt-Ceiling-Now-or-Face-Another-Post-
Summer-Crisis-Meadows, ach
Rep. Mark Meadows, R-NC, one of the most influential conservatives in the House, said
Monday he favors quick action this summer to raise the debt ceiling, taking a stand on an issue
that is threatening to divide the GOP and raise the risk of a first-ever default on U.S. borrowing
later this fall. Meadows, chair of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, said in an interview it
would be a mistake to postpone action on authorizing increased borrowing authority for the
Treasury. He argued that the White House and Republican congressional leaders have no
choice but to undertake the politically odious task and should do it now instead of allowing it to
become greatly complicated by controversial budget and spending issues in late September or
early October. Meadows said that he and the nearly 40 other members of the Freedom Caucus
had taken an official position that “we believe that we need to go ahead and act in July – get it
off the table . . . and make a decision right away.”
 AT Veteran’s Bill
Veteran’s Choice bill failed
NICHOLAS FANDOS, 7/26/17, Bill to Fund Program For Veterans Falls Short, New York Times, p
14, lexis, ach

Congressional lawmakers struggled on Tuesday to reach an agreement to prop up a popular

multibillion-dollar health care program that allows veterans to see a private doctor at
government expense. This was supposed to be a relatively easy task, meant to buy lawmakers
time as they debated the future of the program. As recently as last week, Republican leaders
were considering using a bill temporarily funding the Veterans Choice Program as a vehicle to
raise the debt ceiling, a perennially bitter pill for Republicans. Instead, House Republicans put
forward a plan that would pay for the visits by diverting funds from elsewhere in the department
and would not allocate additional funds for in-house care. In doing so, they galvanized enough
opposition among Democrats and a raft of veterans groups fearful of creeping privatization that
the bill unexpectedly failed Monday night to clear the necessary threshold on the House floor.
Debt Ceiling Aff
 Not TOA
No debt ceiling until after the recess
Karen Maley, 7/24/17, Short-term yields spike on fears of acrimonious debt ceiling talks, Australian
Financial Review, p 28, Lexis, ach

But US lawmakers have ignored his pleas. They're due to leave for their summer recess on
Friday and aren't due to return back to Capitol Hill until early September. That means that US
Congress isn't likely to start discussing debt-ceiling legislation for at least six weeks.
 Agenda Crowd Out Link answers

Lack of agenda plan and tax reform already crowd out the debt ceiling
Michael Collins 7/24/17, Congress racing the clock on spending, debt limit; Four of 12 bills in the
House are to come up for a vote this week, USA Today, p3a Lexis, ach

"We've got a train wreck coming," Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., fumed recently. Congress is to
begin its summer recess next month, yet "we've got the debt limit, we've got no appropriations
bill passed," McCain said, pounding the lectern. "All of these things are piling up, and we've got
about 30 days to do it in, and so far I have seen no plan, no plan to address these challenges."
What's more, Republicans are looking to tackle a major overhaul of the federal tax code -- a
time-consuming task that threatens to further divide the GOP and could complicate efforts to
pass appropriations legislation and raise the debt ceiling.
Base Aff
 Non unique
Trump’s treatment of Sessions is an insult to his base, collapses remaining
support
Brent Budowsky, 7-27-2017, (LLM, former aide to Sen. Lloyd Bentsen (D-Texas) and former
Rep. Bill Alexander (D-Ark.)" When Trump insults Sessions, he insults his conservative base,"
The Hill, http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/the-administration/344085-when-trump-insults-
sessions-he-insults-his-conservative, ach
Let's consider Trump's abusive treatment of Sessions from a second point of view: Trump's
unprecedented barrage of public insults against Sessions, day after day, during the past week,
is an insult to his conservative base that regards Sessions as one of their political heroes. When
was the last time any president engaged in an ongoing onslaught of public insults against a
member of his cabinet, let alone the leader of the Department of Justice, which is supposed to
be above partisan politics and petty insults? One can only imagine what it feels like for a cabinet
member to wake up every morning for a week, knowing he will probably be insulted by the
president. There is an obsessive weirdness and cruelty to Trump's treatment of Sessions that,
to my knowledge, is unprecedented in American presidential history. While I strongly disagree
with most of the actions taken by Attorney General Sessions, it is far more politically important
that huge numbers of people in the Trump base and the conservative base side with Sessions
and are deeply offended by Trump's publicly abusive treatment of him. In the last 48 hours,
there has been an uprising of support for Sessions from the conservative movement, the Trump
base, a significant number of Republican members of the House and Senate and conservative
opinion-makers in the media. In increasing numbers, they are going public, supporting Sessions
and calling on the president to end his attacks against him. On the matter of opposing the firing
of Sessions and replacing of him with a recess appointment, there is now a de facto alliance,
which will be short-lived indeed, between progressives such as myself, who do not want Trump
to remove Sessions and Mueller to obstruct justice, and conservative supporters of Sessions,
who believe in what Sessions stands for. Perhaps Trump does not intellectually understand that
by humiliating Sessions, he is insulting and alienating key groups at the core of his political
support, without whom he would face a catastrophic collapse of his already-low national
support.

Sessions fight and lack of policy accomplishments will tank the base
Henry Gass and Patrik Jonsson, 7/26/17, Why split with Sessions may pit Trump agenda against
Trump himself; As the first Republican senator to endorse Trump, Attorney General Jeff Sessions is seen
as the standard-bearer of the kind of conservative nationalism that carried the billionaire to the White
House., Christian Science Monitor, lexis, ach

"But Trump doesn't care about Trumpism.... And if he sees his narrow self-interest conflicting
with the ideological agenda, then the ideological agenda falls by the wayside," adds Professor
Pitney, author of "The Art of Political Warfare." The prospect of Trump sacrificing policy goals to
try to protect himself and his family from the Mueller investigation, or for any other reason, may
even begin to alienate his own supporters, some experts believe. "If [Sessions] gets thrown
under the bus, a lot of conservatives in the South will have their suspicions confirmed that
[Trump] is the guy who says, 'You're fired' on TV, not the guy who can be a real effective
president," says Dave Woodard, a Clemson University political science professor in South
Carolina. "The South has a little under a third of the population of the country," he adds. "That's
a solid base and you don't want to alienate it. It seems to me like this could." An undercurrent of
dissatisfaction may already exist within Trump's base. Matt Drudge, founder of the right-leaning
Drudge Report, is "growing impatient" with the administration, CNN reported today, because he
believes Trump is "not following through on his campaign promises - the ideals that helped him
win and also brought Drudge's backing."

Trump is losing conservative media support

Rob Tornoe, 7/25/17, Rush Limbaugh offers a surprising rebuke of Trump, Philadelphia Tribune,
lexis, ach

President Trump's continued criticisms of Attorney General Jeff Sessions are beginning to
cause a split among conservative media figures who had largely backed him during his first six
months in office. On Tuesday, Trump turned up the heat on Sessions, calling him out along with
acting FBI chief Andrew McCabe in a series of early-morning tweets for not pursuing "Hillary
Clinton crimes." Trump's comments came after the president took repeated swipes at Sessions
on Monday, referring to him as "our beleaguered A.G." and wondering why he wasn't "looking
into Crooked Hillary's crimes & Russia relations?" Trump has ratcheted up his attacks in recent
days after revealing in a New York Times interview that he would not have chosen Sessions as
his attorney general if had known that Sessions would recuse himself from all investigations into
Russian meddling during the 2016 campaign. According to my colleague Chris Mondics, any
move to replace Sessions "surely will be part of a larger effort to rein in independent counsel
Mueller, if not get rid of him altogether." The Associated Press reported that firing Sessions
could "raise the specter" of Trump asking Sessions' appointed replacement to fire Robert Muller,
the former FBI director and special counsel who is investigating Russia's meddling in the 2016
election. "Sessions should have never recused himself, and if he was going to recuse himself,
he should have told me before he took the job and I would have picked somebody else," Trump
said, calling Sessions' decision "very unfair." Sessions is popular among Trump's conservative
base and is one of the president's most loyal backers. He was among the first establishment
Republicans to support Trump during the 2016 campaign. Right-wing talk radio host Rush
Limbaugh, whose popular syndicated show is broadcast daily on 1210 WPHT, defended
Sessions as a "by-the-book" attorney general and legal mind, and said Trump's continued
swipes at him are "unseemly." "It's also a little bit discomforting, unseemly, for Trump to go after
such a loyal supporter this way," Limbaugh said on his radio show Monday, noting that Sessions
has made it clear he doesn't intend to resign. "After Trump gave him the invitation to quit,
Sessions doubled down on how much he loves the job, how much he's going to continue to love
the job, how he's gonna keep performing the job while appropriate," Limbaugh said. The
opinions of conservative media figures like Limbaugh carry weight with Trump, who is keenly
aware of the outsize role they have in molding opinions among his conservative base. It's such
an important consideration that Trump has reportedly asked his advisers how firing Sessions
"would play in the conservative media," according to the Washington Post. Limbaugh isn't the
only prominent Trump supporter who has come to Sessions' defense. Former Speaker of the
House Newt Gingrich, a strong ally of the president and a frequent guest on Fox News, said he
would "strongly oppose" the firing of Sessions due to his support among Trump's base. "His
base thinks that on things like [violent street gangs] and sanctuary cities that Sessions is doing
a fine job, and I think his base would be confused," Gingrich said, adding that Trump's
comments alone could have serious repercussions for his entire White House staff. "Anybody
who is good at team building would suggest to the president that attacking members of your
team rattles the whole team," Gingrich said. Fox News host Tucker Carlson joined other
conservative media figures in defending Sessions, calling Trump's actions a "useless, self-
destructive act" and said the president's repeated attacks are a "worrisome sign the president
may be forgetting who is on his side."

Trump’s base is revolting over Sessions

Rhys Blakely, 7/27/17, Trump faces backlash for attacks on Sessions; United States Recess offers
the chance for White House to dodge Senate, The Times (London), p 32, lexis, ach

This upset conservatives who have usually been in Mr Trump's corner. Mr Sessions
championed what he called an "honest populism" - a precursor of Mr Trump's "America First"
credo - long before Mr Trump entered politics. Joe Walsh, a conservative talk radio host, said
his listeners were "confused or pissed off … Most don't like the way he is handling Sessions,
because Sessions is a good conservative". Establishment Republicans were also uneasy.
Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina senator, said: "Jeff Sessions is one of the most decent
people I've met in my political life. He's a rock-solid conservative, but above else he believes in
the rule of law." Breitbart, the right-wing website that has been one of Mr Trump's most
steadfast foot-soldiers, warned the president that his base was on the brink of revolt.

The economy thumps Trump’s popularity

Heather Long, 7/27/17, Trump's marks on economy slipping, Washington Post, A12, lexis, ach

Unfulfilled vow on health care, 'Washington chaos' to blame, analysts say President Trump likes
to dismiss polls, but there is one number that has always been pretty spot-on about Trump:
whether voters trust him to grow the economy. Throughout the 2016 campaign, no matter how
low his overall poll numbers dived, voters would still give Trump high marks on the economy. He
typically polled 50 percent - or better - when voters were asked if they "trust" Trump to "do a
better job" on the economy in polls by Fox News and CNN. Hillary Clinton, in contrast, struggled
to poll above 45 percent on the key issue. On Oct. 7, The Washington Post broke the news of
the bombshell "Access Hollywood" tape, in which Trump made lewd and sexually aggressive
comments about women. Trump's poll numbers tanked. Clinton surged ahead by six or seven
points in most polls. But even then, Trump's numbers on the economy barely dipped. He had a
commanding lead over Clinton on the economy question by the time Fox News conducted its
poll on Oct. 15 to 17. After the election, the "Trump bump" on the economy continued. The stock
market soared and consumer and business confidence jumped, according to the University of
Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index, the Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index and
the NFIB Small Business Optimism Index. "People went from being despondent to being
overconfident and euphoric," said Peter Atwater, who studies sentiment data as president of
Financial Insyghts. Since Trump took office, Fox News has been asking Americans whether
they "approve" or "disapprove" of Trump's handling of the economy. Trump's numbers on the
economy were 48 percent through most of the spring, even as his overall presidential approval
numbers sank to 40 percent (or worse). But the latest Fox poll, released last week, showed they
fell to 45 percent on the economy. For the first time in his presidency, more Americans
disapproved of how he was managing the economy than approved, according to the poll. It
could end up being a temporary dip. Polling data is noisy. Plus, his approval on the economy is
still better than his overall rating. But it's not the only sign of trouble. Atwater blames the health-
care fiasco for the decline. Trump has not been able to deliver a victory to repeal and replace
the Affordable Care Act. It's a tangible promise to voters that is going unfulfilled - and raising
serious doubts about whether Trump can get anything else done in his "MAGA-nomics" agenda.
"The danger of this administration is they don't have a win yet for Trump's most supportive
base," Atwater said. The latest Washington Post-ABC News poll found an approval rating of 43
percent for Trump's handling of the economy (45 percent among registered voters). A
Bloomberg News poll out last week found just 46 percent like the president's economic
leadership. These polls haven't tracked the issue over time, though. Quinnipiac University,
which has been polling regularly about Trump and the economy, has seen a marked increase in
disapproval. In early March, disapproval on the economy was 41 percent. Now it is 49 percent.
The uptick began in late March. Consumer and business confidence indexes are still higher
than they were a year ago, but they, too, are starting to wane. The most telling is the University
of Michigan monthly survey of consumers. "When directly asked to evaluate economic policies
of the Trump administration, just 17 percent of all consumers rated them favorably," Richard
Curtin, director of the University of Michigan survey, wrote in his June report. Even among
Republicans, he wrote, "favorable policy ratings fell to 37 percent from 51 percent three months
ago." Overall, consumers are pretty happy with the state of the U.S. economy, but when the
University of Michigan asked them about future expectations, their views were gloomier. David
Kotok, chief investment officer of Cumberland Advisors, said "Washington chaos" is causing the
shift in sentiment. The stock market is still at all-time highs, but the chatter among investors and
chief executives about the Trump administration isn't euphoric anymore. "There is no question
that the administration's tweets, talks and fake-new-versus-real-news politics are creating a
chaotic view among observers," Kotok said. It's a critical point for the Trump administration. The
president has come up empty-handed, again, on health care as senators in his own party don't
think there is a good enough plan to replace the Affordable Care Act. Trump has promised 3
percent growth. To get that, he needs American families and businesses to spend and invest
substantially more. They won't spend if they aren't feeling good about the future. If companies
don't start investing more in new plants and equipment and more research, he's unlikely to get
more than the 2 percent economic growth that he deplored when Barack Obama was president.
Trump had hoped to be an economic savior for many. Faith in his ability to do that is slipping.
 No Link
Trump’s base will never abandon him OR the Sessions fight thumps
Noah Bierman, 7/27/17, Trump leans on base amid stalled agenda, Hartford Courant, p5, lexis, ach

All presidents pay special attention to their supporters, but the imperative grows more urgent
when they face trouble. President Bill Clinton similarly played to Democrats' liberal base for self-
preservation during the impeachment trial of the late 1990s, though he maintained channels to
congressional Republicans. Trump, who describes politics as a transactional game of winning or
losing, seems to have no use for the usual rhetoric or actions intended to soften partisan lines
between elections. He has not made a concerted effort to broaden his appeal. Now, with low
popularity ratings among the general public, he is banking all the more on his political base.
Those supporters have shown little sign of wavering. "There's a large bloc of people, including
sophisticated people, who are just so sick of Washington, who will overlook almost anything as
long as he shapes it up," said Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker and Trump confidant.
Yet if Trump isn't taking his supporters for granted, neither is he always pleasing them. For a
week, Trump has tested those bonds by attacking Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a favorite of
many conservatives for his hard-line views on immigration and crime. That has prompted
backlash not only from GOP senators who served with Sessions when he represented
Alabama, but also from such media loyalists as Rush Limbaugh and Breitbart News.

Only Sessions or a recession could shake Trump’s base

ROSS DOUTHAT, 7/27/17 A Trump Tower of Utter Folly, New York Times, p27, lexis, ach

Next on our tour is the level of mass politics, where Trump's war on Sessions is one of the few
things short of a recession that could hurt him with his base -- which he needs to hold, since he
isn't doing anything to persuade anyone outside it. Of course many Trump supporters will side
with him no matter what and lots don't care about Sessions one way or another. But the
Trumpian core also includes conservatives who like Sessions for ideological reasons, who trust
Trump in part because Sessions vouched for him, and who don't like or trust very many other
people (the family, the New Yorkers, the ex-Democrats) in Trump's inner circle. Which is why
Trump's campaign against Sessions has already brought him negative coverage from Breitbart,
Tucker Carlson and various pro-Trump or anti-anti-Trump pundits -- making it an extraordinary
act of political malpractice from a White House that lacks a cushion for such follies.
Base Neg
 Base Popularity High
Trump’s transgender military ban shores up his base.
Robert Samuels & Jenna Johnson, 7/27/17, Trump's LGBT views shift in the moment,
Washington Post, A01 lexis, ach

For decades leading up to President Trump's Wednesday tweets announcing a ban on

transgender people in the military, the businessman-turned-politician has approached the LGBT
community on nonideological terms. Trump's relationships with LGBT people, and his evolving
positions on issues, have been transactional, according to people who have interacted with him,
focused largely on how the community might affect his interests in the moment. Only a year
ago, candidate Trump presented himself as a social liberal seeking to move the Republican
Party left on gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender rights. He vowed that he would do more
than Democrat Hillary Clinton to protect LGBT people. He defended the rights of Caitlyn Jenner,
the country's most well-known transgender advocate, to use whichever bathroom she wanted in
Trump Tower. And he added "Q" to his discussion of the "LGBTQ community" in his Republican
National Convention speech to show he was in the know. "People are people to me, and
everyone should be protected," he told The Washington Post in a May 2016 interview. But
circumstances have been changing since Trump entered the White House. Although Trump's
staff has met with LGBT advocates and he has hired several New Yorkers who have supported
LGBT rights in the past, his administration has taken positions more in tune with the president's
social conservative base. It has quietly rolled back protections for transgender schoolchildren,
removed information about LGBT rights from the White House website and declined to
recognize LGBT Pride Month in June. Although Trump's staff has met with LGBT advocates and
he has hired several New Yorkers who have supported LGBT rights in the past, his
administration has taken positions more in tune with the president's social conservative base. It
has quietly rolled back protections for transgender schoolchildren, removed information about
LGBT rights from the White House website and declined to recognize LGBT Pride Month in
June. Trump's tweets on Wednesday delivered yet another victory to the political right -
including many House Republicans whose support he needs for his policy agenda - while
surprising many Republican LGBT activists who had hoped that he would end the culture war
within the party. Those familiar with Trump say his stances aren't contradictory but rather
illustrate the consistency of his instincts to shape his views depending on the moment. "I don't
believe Donald Trump has a personal animus toward LGBT individuals," said Gregory T.
Angelo, president of the Log Cabin Republicans, which represents gay conservatives and allies.
"This smacks of politics, pure and simple."

Conservative media and evangelical policies are keeping Trump’s base

happy now
Noah Bierman, 7/27/17, Trump leans on base amid stalled agenda, Hartford Courant, p5, lexis, ach

The White House's hospitality for Salem Radio Network, a nationwide chain of Christian and
conservative stations, underscores President Donald Trump's continued courtship of - and
increased dependence on - core supporters as he confronts a stalled agenda and investigations
into whether his campaign colluded with Russia and whether he sought to obstruct the probes.
The play-to-the-base strategy empowers those advisers and conservative media pushing a
more nationalist, populist and evangelical agenda for Trump. The latest example was his
announcement via Twitter on Wednesday, which surprised the Pentagon, to block transgender
people from military service despite his prior promises "to fight" for LGBTQ rights.

Trump is polling above 80% with his base

Jim Malone, 7-26-2017, (National correspondent covering U.S. elections and politics) "Trump
Rallies Supporters Amid Chaotic Week in Washington," Voice of America,
https://www.voanews.com/a/donald-trump-rallies-supporters-chaotic-week-
washington/3960316.html ach
Youngstown was also a reminder that, while Trump has historically low approval ratings for a
new president, he remains popular with his core supporters. "He retains pretty good numbers
with Republican voters, usually 80 percent approval or better," noted University of Virginia
political analyst Kyle Kondik.

Polls show Trump’s base holding strong

David Thornton, 7-26-2017, "Poll: GOP Is Now The Party of Trump," Resurgent,
http://theresurgent.com/poll-gop-is-now-the-party-of-trump/ ach
President Trump is drawing criticism from all sides these days. His erratic behavior, frequent
tweeting and personal attacks against Attorney General Jeff Sessions have drawn criticism from
even staunch Trump supporters. A new poll shows that one group is still standing by the
president: Republican voters. The new poll by Rasmussen found that Republicans support
Trump over Republican members of Congress by a margin of almost three to one. When asked
whether their views more closely relate to the president or congressional Republicans, 33
percent aligned with President Trump compared to 12 percent who support the congressional
Republican caucus. The finding comes amid polling that shows that most Americans disapprove
of President Trump by double-digit margins. An analysis of past presidential polling by
FiveThirtyEight found that Trump is more unpopular than almost any president since the dawn
of modern polling in 1945. The sole competitor is Gerald Ford, whose popularity plummeted
after he pardoned Richard Nixon, who resigned in the wake of the Watergate scandal. Overall,
likely voters remain sharply divided. The poll found that a total of 45 percent of respondents
identified with Republicans, either in Congress or the White House, while 44 percent identified
with Democrats. This is well within the three percent margin of error for the poll. Twelve percent
were undecided on which party they favored. The findings support past polls that indicated that,
in spite of his missteps and lack of accomplishment, President Trump’s base is holding firm.
Even though he is hemorrhaging support among moderates and independents, he remains
popular among members of the Republican Party, more popular, in fact, than longtime members
of the GOP.

Trump is holding rallies that maintain base support

Jim Malone, 7-26-2017, (National correspondent covering U.S. elections and politics) "Trump
Rallies Supporters Amid Chaotic Week in Washington," Voice of America,
https://www.voanews.com/a/donald-trump-rallies-supporters-chaotic-week-
washington/3960316.html ach
Stoking the base In the midst of it all, Trump held a campaign-style rally Tuesday in Ohio before
thousands of enthusiastic supporters and a smattering of protesters who were booed by the pro-
Trump crowd. For Trump, a health care victory in the Senate — far from certain — might turn
around his low poll numbers and get his agenda back on track. With that in mind, the president
was in campaign mode during his rally in Youngstown, Ohio. "No president has done anywhere
near what we have done in his first six months. Not even close," Trump told the crowd. Trump
seems to enjoy the energy of supporters who so far have remained loyal no matter how low he
dips in national polls.
Midterms Aff
 Dems Lose- Fundraising
DNC is losing the fundraising race badly- hurts midterm prospects
Byron York, 7/26/17, (Chief political correspondent for the Washington Examiner) Why are
Republicans trouncing Democrats in fundraising?, State Journal- Register Lexis, ach

The Republican president has a job approval rating around 40 percent. The GOP has an
unfavorability rating around 56 percent. And Republicans trail Democrats by nine points in an
average of "generic ballot" polls. All of which makes it notable that the Republican National
Committee is trouncing the Democratic National Committee when it comes to raising money,
especially from small donors. The numbers are striking. In June, the RNC raised $13.5 million to
the DNC's $5.5 million. For 2017 so far, the RNC has raised $75.4 million to the DNC's $38.2
million. The RNC started the year with $25.3 million in cash-on-hand. Now it has $44.7 million.
The DNC started the year with $10.5 in cash-on-hand. Now, that has fallen to $7.5 million. As of
June 30, the RNC reported $0 in debt. The DNC reported $3.3 million in debt. A look inside the
numbers is even worse for the DNC. Looking at collections from small donors - that is, those
who contributed less than $200 - the RNC raised $10.5 million in the months of May and June.
The DNC raised $5.3 million from small donors in the same time period. The RNC's money total
is a record - more than was raised in any previous non-presidential election year. That is true for
June, and for all of 2017 as well. The $75.4 million raised this year compares to $55.4 million for
the same period in 2015; to $51.2 for the same period in 2014; to $41.1 million for the same
period in 2013, and so on going back. "It's definitely a reflection of support for President Trump,"
said RNC spokesman Ryan Mahoney. "Our small-dollar donors are giving at a record pace
because they believe the RNC is supporting President Trump, and they like that." The obvious
reason for the Democrats' troubles is that they lost the White House, the House and the Senate
last year. Now, the party appears to have a particularly bad hangover. One data point: In 2013,
after Republicans lost their second presidential election in a row and many believed the party
faced years in the electoral wilderness, the RNC still raised more money in the January-June
period, $41.1 million, than the $38.2 million the Democrats have raised so far this year. There is
much discussion about the intensity of Democratic opposition to President Trump, and indeed
Democrats showed a lot of fundraising enthusiasm in the losing Georgia 06 congressional race
that turned into a referendum on the president. But the fact is, the passions behind The
Resistance have not, or have not yet, turned into support for the main vehicle of opposition to
Trump, the Democratic Party. Democrats have simply not gotten over the Hillary-Bernie split
that plagued the party last year. And they have not decided what they will be in the future.
Remember, this is a party that won the White House in 2008 and 2012 on the strength of the
Obama coalition of minorities, young people, and the college educated - the group political
journalist Ron Brownstein calls the "coalition of the ascendant." It's not an exaggeration to say
that many believed demographics favored them so heavily that they were virtually guaranteed
Democratic victories in the years ahead. And then the Trump victory reminded them that there
are still a lot of working-class voters in the country who aren't necessarily natural Democrats.
 Dems won’t win- general
Dems lack strategy and campaign issues
Victor Davis Hanson, 7/27/17, Trumps circular firing squad is hurting everyone, Mercury News, lexis,
ach

So far, Trumps most furious Democratic opponents have not been able to offer alternative
visions to Trumps agenda that might help them win back Congress in the 2018 midterm
elections. Higher taxes, more government regulations, less gas and oil production, loose
immigration policies and the promotion of identity politics are not really winning issues.

Dems lack midterm strategy, voter enthusiasm.

Clarence Page, 7/26/17, To build enthusiasm, Democrats rebrand, The Morning Call, p 13, lexis, ach

On a day when President Donald Trump unleashed a Twitter storm that senselessly attacked
his own attorney general, among other targets, the future might seem to be so bright for
Democrats that they ought to be wearing sunscreen. But as history shows us, you should never
underestimate the Dems' ability to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory. Just ask Hillary
Clinton. After Trump's upset victory, Democrats are left with a White House and Congress
controlled by Republicans - and too many voters with a confused sense of what or whom the
Democrats stand for. So it was with the fierce urgency of next year's midterm elections that
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York took a group of his fellow party leaders
across the Potomac to Berryville, Va., a town of 4,000 in a county won handily by Trump, to
unveil a rebranding of the party. Their big message: It is not enough to have Trump to run
against; Democrats need to offer people and programs to vote for. "In the last two elections,
Democrats, including in the Senate, failed to articulate a strong, bold economic program for the
middle class and those working hard to get there," Schumer said. "We also failed to
communicate our values to show that we were on the side of working people, not the special
interests. We will not repeat the same mistake." Schumer's declarations of party unity glossed
over significant divisions in Democratic ranks that mirror the Grand Old Party's internal divide. It
is a gap between the party's moderate, centrist establishment and the left-progressive populists
who turned out for independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders' maverick campaign. Both parties
have establishment leaders who want to get things done, but it is their immoderate extremes
that have most of the energy and excitement that gets people to the polls, especially in midterm
and other off-year elections. For the 2018 midterm elections, a recent Washington Post-ABC
News poll offers signs of hope and peril for the Dems. Only 38 percent of registered voters favor
Republican control to promote the president's agenda, according to the poll, while a slight
majority of registered voters - 52 percent - say they want Democrats to control the next
Congress. Yet Republicans still show an advantage in voter enthusiasm. A 65 percent majority
of Republican and GOP-leaning independents said they were certain they will vote next year,
compared to 57 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents.
 No Link

The GOP will keep campaigning against HRC. Policies don’t matter
John Wagner, 7/25/17, Trump and Republicans keep trying to turn conversation to Hillary Clinton,
Washington Post, A04, lexis, ach

For many Republicans, the 2016 election is still alive and well - a go-to counterargument as
Trump's agenda bogs down and questions multiply around the Trump campaign's possible
improper contacts with Russian officials. The latest example came Monday night when Trump,
in an address to a Boy Scouts Jamboree in West Virginia, chided Clinton for not working hard
enough in key Midwestern states that unexpectedly turned red on election night. "Do you
remember that incredible night with the maps?" Trump asked the Scouts. Earlier in the day,
taking to Twitter, Trump asked why investigators and his "beleaguered" attorney general, Jeff
Sessions, aren't "looking into Crooked Hillarys crimes & Russia relations?" In both public
pronouncements and on social media, the president and his allies - including the Republican
National Committee - are arguing, often with scant evidence, that Trump's former rival engaged
in similar, if not worse, behavior. The mere mention of Clinton, who remains a reviled figure
among Trump's core supporters, also serves as a reminder of how much worse they think things
would be if she were in the Oval Office. "This certainly seems to be a preoccupation, and as far
as I can tell, it's unprecedented," said Doug Heye, a Republican consultant and former RNC
communications director. Trump, in many respects, has never stopped reliving last year's
election. He still makes frequent references to his triumph over Clinton, even in official White
House speeches. In an interview last week with New York Times reporters, he quickly
mentioned Clinton's failure while first lady to help pass a comprehensive health-care bill. From
the podium of the White House briefing room, Trump spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders
has also tried to shift the focus to Clinton. "Look, I think if you want to talk about having
relationships with Russia, I'd look no further than the Clintons," she said, citing a speech former
president Bill Clinton had given to a Russian bank, among other things. More recently, the RNC
has started making a habit of focusing on Clinton in research memos distributed to reporters,
White House and Capitol Hill staffers, GOP party leaders and other Washington insiders. One
recent memo highlighted Clinton's initial opposition to a set of Russian sanctions while secretary
of state. Another detailed internal discussions among Clinton's campaign staff - brought to light
in hacked emails - about whether to make an issue during the primaries of fraud allegations
related to the wife of Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.). Yet another highlighted opposition research
done last year by a Democratic consultant regarding a leading Trump associate, allegedly with
the assistance of the Ukrainian Embassy - an exercise that Trump boosters have argued comes
closer to collusion with a foreign government than anything proven about the Trump campaign.
Still another memo last week carried the subject header "Hillary Clinton" but was about another
subject entirely: the governor's race in Virginia. An RNC aide acknowledged that the use of
Clinton's name was an attempt to get more attention. Republican operatives say Clinton
remains fair game, even though she holds no government office and has given no indication
that she plans to run for anything again. "The Democrats are completely divided and without a
leader," said RNC spokesman Michael Ahrens, adding that Clinton's plans for a new advocacy
group, Onward Together, "shows she isn't trying to exit the political arena anytime soon."
Republican hands say some of the focus on Clinton is the result of her being in the headlines
recently, including stories last week about an investigation that found the U.S. Postal Service
engaged in violations of federal law by pressuring managers to approve letter carriers taking
time off to campaign for Clinton last fall. During the recent Group of 20 summit, Trump also
referred to Clinton's daughter, Chelsea, in a tweet after he caught flak for briefly turning over his
seat to daughter Ivanka during a session with other world leaders. Claiming a double standard,
Trump asserted that if the same thing had happened under a Hillary Clinton presidency, the
"Fake News" would have cheered the move. Undoubtedly, part of the reason that Clinton
remains a popular target for Trump and his allies is that she remains a largely unpopular figure.
A Bloomberg News poll this month found 39 percent of Americans rating her favorably and 58
percent unfavorably. That hasn't changed much since the election and is about where Trump
stands: His favorable rating was 41 percent while his unfavorable rating was 55 percent in the
same poll. Among Republicans, Clinton is even more of an anathema. Only 11 percent of
Republicans viewed her favorably in a Gallup poll last month. "I don't know if there's some grand
scheme here," Barry Bennett, a Republican operative who advised Trump during the general
election campaign, said when asked about all the attention Clinton is still receiving. "She's a
great motivator for our party. She makes Trump look popular." The focus on Clinton has also
reverberated in conservative media, including on Fox News.
 No Impeachment
Losing badly in the midterms won’t lead to impeachment.
LAWRENCE MARTIN, 7/26/17, Will Dump Trump gain momentum? Don't bet on it, The Globe and
Mail (Canada), p A11, lexis, ach
Political precedent. The Trump Republicans have won some small electoral contests to date,
most notably one in a Georgia congressional district, where the Democrats spent lavishly. The
first big test will be the 2018 midterm elections. Even though the Democrats show few signs of
recovery, Mr. Trump could lose badly in both the Senate and the House of Representatives. But
that would hardly be reason enough to get the knives out. Given the way of U.S. politics, it
would be par for the course. Midterm election disasters for incumbent parties have become
commonplace. Barack Obama suffered humiliating losses in both the 2010 and 2014 midterms,
George W. Bush the same in 2006, Bill Clinton the same in 1994. With the bar so low, it will be
hard for this President to come under it.
general aff updates
cte aff updates
 2ac pension crisis internal link
Education reform and the pension crisis are intertwined – debts tradeoff
with education spending
Cetel 17 (Jonathan Cetel is the executive director of the Pennsylvania Campaign for
Achievement Now (PennCAN)., June 6th, 2017, “Pa.'s pension crisis is really an education crisis
- here's why: Jonathan Cetel”,
http://www.pennlive.com/opinion/2017/06/pas_pension_crisis_is_really_a.html, nassal)
As a former teacher and current education advocate, my comfort zone is talking about the typical issues in education policy:
standards, curriculum, governance, and human capital, among others. Until recently, one topic I wasn't comfortable talking about
was pensions. My eyes would glaze over when I heard words like unfunded liability, vesting and accrual rates. My feeling was we
should let the actuaries and fiscal hawks worry about budget woes while the advocates focus on classrooms and kids. But what I've
learned is that youcan't be a serious advocate for schools and ignore pensions. The pension
crisis is, in reality, an education crisis -- as the title of our latest report suggests: "Pennsylvania Pension Benefits
Don't Add-Up For Teachers And Taxpayers." The 260,000 educators who are part of PSERS deserve
retirement security and students deserve adequately funded public schools. Proposed pension
plan gives new state and public school employees – and current ones who choose to make a switch – three retirement savings
plans from which to choose. Here are some basic details of the proposal. It is increasingly clear that neither of these goals can be
achieved unless significant changes are made to Pennsylvania's public pension system. For instance, our research revealed that
the vast majority of teachers would be better off in an alternative retirement plan because they do not remain in the profession or the
state long enough to reap the full benefits of Pennsylvania's public pension system. Based on actuarial projections released by
PSERS, only .52 percent of teachers entering the profession at age 25 are projected to remain in the system until normal retirement
age (35 years of service). Teachers are not even guaranteed an annual annuity upon retirement unless they are vested (aka, 10
years of service), which nearly two-thirds of teachers today will never reach. Due to the lack of flexibility and portability of PA's
pension system, teachers who leave the profession or move out of the state prior to vesting have essentially given a no-interest loan
to PSERS. Which means, the majority of educators are subsidizing the pensions of a small percentage of their colleagues who
remain in the system their entire career. School districts are not fairing much better under Pennsylvania's current pension system.
Bill may be greased to pass, but effect on budget-crushing pressure from past pension mistakes appears to be minimal. Gov. Tom
Wolf and the General Assembly deserve credit for embracing a new school funding formula and continuing to increase education
spending. However, more than half of the new education dollars in the past few years bypassed the classroom and went to
pensions. Ultimately, school districts have experienced net losses each year Governor Wolf has
been in office because increased revenue from the state has been offset by mandated cost increases,
primarily pensions. As pension costs eat up a greater portion of districts' budgets,
spending in other important areas have been cut. From 2010 to 2015, pension costs
increased by 261 percent. In that same period, funding for career and technical education
fell by 3.8 percent, spending on classroom supplies fell by 9.3 percent, and after-school programming fell by 47 percent. If
left unfixed, pension costs will consume an even greater percentage of the state's
education spending. The Independent Fiscal Office estimates that, by 2020, $1 out of every $5 the state
invests in K-12 education will go directly to pensions. Pension reform is education
reform. Pennsylvania has an opportunity to address this crisis through legislation
moving through the General Assembly. And we hope the findings of our report will
encourage our fellow education advocates to get engaged on this issue.
 2ac econ brink now
The brink is now – we’re on the verge of a crisis
Financial Service 17 (Financial Service, provides educational resources to the broad
public audience through a daily podcast, editorials, current news and resource links on
salient financial market issues., June 28th, 2017, “Public Pension Crisis Reaching A
Tipping Point”, https://seekingalpha.com/article/4084458-public-pension-crisis-reaching-
tipping-point., nassal)
With several states and local governments across the country facing insurmountable
public pension obligations, and a few cities having already declared bankruptcy to cope with the problem, it's
becoming increasingly clear that the current system is unsustainable and will have to
change. Lawrence McQuillan, a senior fellow at the Independent Institute and author of the book California Dreaming:
Lessons on How to Resolve America's Public Pension Crisis, explains why this is a crisis, how we got to this point and the
reforms that are needed. Is
It Safe to Call It a Crisis? The short answer is, yes, we're likely at the
beginning of a crisis. From a national perspective, all state and local government pension debt
amount to $4.7 trillion, McQuillan stated. "This is money that should be in the bank today, but
isn't, in order to pay for pension benefits that have already been earned," he said. Though
contributions have increased in recent years to make up for the shortfall, public pension liabilities are still climbing at a
much faster rate and are unlikely to be reversed even under the most rosiest scenarios, notes Bloomberg, based on a
recent study by Moody's: The optimistic "best case" of cumulative 25% investment return would reduce net pension
liabilities by just 1% through 2019 year-end because of past bad investment returns and weak contributions. Meanwhile,
the "base case" scenario of 19% returns would see net pension liabilities rise by 15%. Because of this problem,
politicians around the country are scrambling, said McQuillan.
at: reg-neg cp
 2ac reg-neg cp
Neg reg is normal means for education – here’s some examples
Coglianese 97 Cary Coglianese is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy, Harvard
University, John F. Kennedy School of Government, and Affiliated Scholar at Harvard Law
School. ("Twenty-Eighth Annual Administative Law Issue: Article: Assessing Consensus: The
Promise and Performance Of Negotiated Rulemaking," Duke Law Journal, 46 Duke L.J. 1255,
April 1997, LexisNexis)//BPS
Supra Note 75: The Augustus F. Hawkins-Robert T. Stafford Elementary and Secondary
School Improvement Amendments of 1988, Pub. L. No. 100-297, 1431(b), 102 Stat. 130, 189
(requiring the Secretary of Education to "submit regulations on a minimum of 4 key
issues to a modified negotiated rulemaking process as a demonstration of such
process"); Price Anderson Amendments Act of 1988, Pub. L. No. 100-408, 19, 102 Stat. 1066,
1083-84 (requiring the use of negotiated rulemaking to determine whether radiopharmaceutical
licensees should be indemnified); Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Applied Technology
Education Act Amendments of 1990, Pub. L. No. 101-392, 501(c), 104 Stat. 753, 830
(requiring the Secretary of Education to "submit regulations on at least 2 key issues to a
negotiated rulemaking process"); Higher Education Amendments of 1992, Pub. L. No. 102-
325, 497, 106 Stat. 448, 633 (stating that "after holding regional meetings and before publishing
proposed regulations... the Secretary... shall submit such regulations to a negotiated rulemaking
process"); Housing and Community Development Act of 1992, Pub. L. No. 102-550, 114(b), 106
Stat. 3672, 3691 (requiring negotiated rulemaking for "any proposed regulation... changing... the
performance funding system [for] vacant public housing units"); Student Loan Reform Act of
1993, Pub. L. No. 103-66, 4021, 107 Stat. 341, 353 (requiring use of negotiated rulemaking for
all standards, criteria, procedures, and regulations implementing the federal direct student loan
program); Improving America's Schools Act of 1994, Pub. L. No. 103-382, 1601(b), 108 Stat.
3518, 3609-10 (requiring negotiated rulemaking process for regulations implementing
amendments to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965); Indian Self-
Determination Contract Reform Act of 1994, Pub. L. No. 103-413, 105(2), 108 Stat. 4250,
4269-70 (stating that "rulemaking processes under this Act... shall [be guided by] the
"Negotiated Rulemaking Act of 1990'"); Native American Housing Assistance and Self-
Determination Act of 1996, Pub. L. No. 104-330, 106(b), 110 Stat. 4016, 4029 (requiring the use
of negotiated rulemaking for all regulations promulgated under the Act); Health Insurance
Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, Pub. L. No. 104-191, 216, 110 Stat. 1936, 2007
(requiring negotiated rulemaking for regulations relating to a risk sharing exception to penalties
provided under federal health care programs); Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug
Administration, and Related Agencies Appropriation Act of 1997, Pub. L. No. 104-180, 734(d),
110 Stat. 1569, 1603 (requiring negotiated rulemaking for housing assistance regulations);
Balanced Budget Act of 1997, Pub. L. No. 105-33, 1856(a), 111 Stat. 251, 270 (requiring
negotiated rulemaking for financial solvency standards for provider sponsored organizations
under Medicare).
Perm do the CP – the plan could be through congress or negotiated
rulemaking
US Code 17 (Title 20: Education. Chapter 70: "Strengthening and improvement of elementary
and secondary schools improving the academic achievement of the disadvantaged general
provisions." 20 USCS § 6571)//BPS

§ 6571. Federal regulations

(a) In general. The Secretary may issue, in accordance with subsections (b) through (d)
and subject to section 1111(e) [20 USCS § 6311(e)], such regulations as are necessary to
reasonably ensure that there is compliance with this title [20 USCS §§ 6301 et seq.].

(b) Negotiated rulemaking process.

(1) In general. Before publishing in the Federal Register proposed regulations to carry out
this title [20 USCS §§ 6301 et seq.], the Secretary shall obtain the advice and
recommendations of representatives of Federal, State, and local administrators, parents,
teachers, principals, other school leaders (including charter school leaders),
paraprofessionals, and members of local school boards and other organizations involved
with the implementation and operation of programs under this title [20 USCS §§ 6301 et
seq.].
(2) Meetings and electronic exchange. Such advice and recommendations may be obtained
through such mechanisms as regional meetings and electronic exchanges of information. Such
regional meetings and electronic exchanges of information shall be public and notice of such
meetings and exchanges shall be provided to interested stakeholders.
(3) Proposed regulations. After obtaining such advice and recommendations, and before
publishing proposed regulations, the Secretary shall--
(A) establish a negotiated rulemaking process on, at a minimum, standards, assessments
under section 1111(b)(2) [20 USCS § 6311(b)(2)], and the requirement under section 1118
[20 USCS § 6321] that funds under part A [20 USCS §§ 6311 et seq.] be used to
supplement, and not supplant, State and local funds;
(B) select individuals to participate in such process from among individuals or groups
that provided advice and recommendations, including representation from all geographic
regions of the United States, in such numbers as will provide an equitable balance
between representatives of parents and students and representatives of educators and
education officials; and
(C) prepare a draft of proposed policy options that shall be provided to the individuals
selected by the Secretary under subparagraph (B) not less than 15 days before the first
meeting under such process.
(4) Process. Such process--
(A) shall not be subject to the Federal Advisory Committee Act (5 U.S.C. App.); and
(B) shall, unless otherwise provided as described in subsection (c), follow the provisions
of subchapter III of chapter 5 of title V, United States Code [20 USCS §§ 561] (commonly
known as the " Negotiated Rulemaking Act of 1990 ").

(5) [Deleted]

(c) Alternative process for certain exceptions. If consensus, as defined in section 562 of title
5, United States Code, on any proposed regulation is not reached by the individuals selected
under subsection (b)(3)(B) for the negotiated rulemaking process, or if the Secretary determines
that a negotiated rulemaking process is unnecessary, the Secretary may propose a
regulation in the following manner:
(1) Notice to Congress. Not less than 15 business days prior to issuing a notice of proposed
rulemaking in the Federal Register, the Secretary shall provide to the Committee on Health,
Education, Labor, and Pensions of the Senate, the Committee on Education and the Workforce
of the House of Representatives, and other relevant congressional committees, notice of the
Secretary's intent to issue a notice of proposed rulemaking that shall include--
(A) a copy of the proposed regulation;
(B) the need to issue the regulation;
(C) the anticipated burden, including the time, cost, and paperwork burden, the regulation will
impose on State educational agencies, local educational agencies, schools, and other entities
that may be impacted by the regulation;
(D) the anticipated benefits to State educational agencies, local educational agencies, schools,
and other entities that may be impacted by the regulation; and
(E) any regulations that will be repealed when the new regulation is issued.
(2) Comment period for Congress. The Secretary shall--
(A) before issuing any notice of proposed rulemaking under this subsection, provide
Congress with a comment period of 15 business days to make comments on the
proposed regulation, beginning on the date that the Secretary provides the notice of
intent to the appropriate committees of Congress under paragraph (1); and
(B) include and seek to address all comments submitted by Congress in the public
rulemaking record for the regulation published in the Federal Register.
(3) Comment and review period; emergency situations. The comment and review period
for any proposed regulation shall be not less than 60 days unless an emergency requires
a shorter period, in which case the Secretary shall--
(A) designate the proposed regulation as an emergency with an explanation of the
emergency in the notice to Congress under paragraph (1);
(B) publish the length of the comment and review period in such notice and in the
Federal Register; and
(C) conduct immediately thereafter regional meetings to review such proposed regulation
before issuing any final regulation.
(d) Limitation. Regulations to carry out this title [20 USCS §§ 6301 et seq.] may not require local
programs to follow a particular instructional model, such as the provision of services outside the
regular classroom or school program.
(e) Rule of construction. Nothing in this section affects the applicability of subchapter II of
chapter 5, and chapter 7, of title 5, United States Code [5 USCS §§ 551 et seq. and 701 et seq.]
(commonly known as the "Administrative Procedure Act") or chapter 8 of title 5, United States
Code [20 USCS §§ 801 et seq.] (commonly known as the "Congressional Review Act").

Agencies decide if reg neg is appropriate

Schuck and Kochevar 14 Peter H. Schuck and Steven Kochevar are from Yale Law
School. ("New Approaches for A Safer And Healthier Society: Article: Reg Neg Redux: The
Career of a Procedural Reform," Theoretical Inquiries in Law, July 2014, 15 Theoretical Inq. L.
417, LexisNexis)//BPS
While section 563 provides agencies with tools to determine whether or not reg neg is
appropriate, Congress makes this determination itself in some specific cases by
requiring agencies to use reg neg. For instance, the No Child Left Behind Act requires that
the Department of Education use reg neg before promulgating certain regulations under
the Act. n32 Essentially, section 563 allows any agency to opt in to reg neg, but Congress
may preclude agency determinations on the issue by mandating that they follow a
negotiated approach.
 2ac- Reg Neg Fails
Reg Neg Fails- the most powerful actor makes all the decisions and
oppresses the rest
Freeman and Langbein 01- Jody Freeman is a Professor of Law, University of California,
Los Angeles, Laura Langbein is Professor, School of Public Affairs, American University
(“REGULATORY NEGOTIATION AND THE LEGITIMACY BENEFIT”, July,
http://www.law.harvard.edu/faculty/freeman/legitimacy%20benefit.pdf)JK
Respondents’ reports about the information that they needed to participate effectively quite
closely tracked their answers about learning. The most frequent type of information needed was
technical-scientific (33%), followed by information about the positions of others (18%),
knowledge of the issues (18%), legal information (10%), and economic-cost information
(5%).128 Only 6% of respondents reported needing no additional information to participate in
reg neg.129 Participants relied on a number of sources for information, including
themselves (29%), EPA (20%), other participants (17%), and members of their own coalition
(14%).130 The responses strongly suggest that not all of the participants were equally
situated in the negotiated rulemaking with regard to information . EPA and large
organizations called upon their own resources or those they could control, while
participants with fewer resources most frequently relied on other entities for the
information on which they based their decisions.131 Some participants did report obtaining
funds from the Agency for research or consultants.132 In many instances (60% of mentions),
respondents replied that necessary information did not become available during the
course of the reg neg .133 Technical and scientific information was deemed to be most
lacking (20% of mentions), followed by information about the positions of others (13% of
mentions), and economic or cost information (10%), while the remaining 40% of responses
indicated that no essential information was lacking.134 This suggests, contrary to the critics’
assertions,135 that the process does expose much, albeit not all, of the essential
information for informed decision making. Reg neg participants reported as reasons for
the absence of information, when it was missing, that it was known by some but not
shared (31%), that it was too expensive to obtain (23%), or that it was simply not
available (20%).136 However, of those who reported a lack of information, 23% indicated that it
ultimately became available at some point in the negotiation process From the Phase I data, it
appears that the strategic withholding of information—thought to be common in conventional
rulemaking—was perceived by some participants (31%) to be an issue in reg neg as well.138
When reservations about the quality of information surfaced, they were more likely to
come from groups with limited resources.139 Environmentalists were the least likely to
report that they had all of the information they needed; indeed, no environmental representative
mentioned this, compared to 70% of business mentions and 36% of EPA mentions.140
Environmentalists were also most likely to report that they needed scientific and technical
information: 64% of their mentions referred to this, compared to about 25% for business and 0%
for the EPA.141 Another dimension of information not directly probed in the interviews emerged
when several respondents reported having difficulty absorbing and understanding the
implications of information offered during the course of the negotiated rulemaking.142 Others
referred to a number of technical presentations that occurred simply to establish a minimum
level of technical competence in the issue under presentation.143 This matter is significant for a
number of reasons. As Kerwin and Langbein reported: The intense education that surely
occurs in reg neg can properly be viewed as an effort to mitigate the information
asymmetries that critics of reg neg assume will persist with this technique. Still,
observations of certain participants suggest that some participants will enjoy the
powerful advantage of access to and control of superior information which, unless
offset, will give them disproportionate control of the agenda relative to the control
exercised by smaller, less well-informed, interests . There is a good case to be made that
the role of information is as or more important in negotiated rulemaking than in its
conventional counterpart due to the pressures created by deadlines and other aspects of
the negotiation process. Hence, the problem of information asymmetry that figures so
prominently in criticisms of governmental decision-making has been partially addressed
in negotiated rulemaking but not completely eliminated .144

Reg neg fails- no consensus, delays, political

Hussain 6/21/17- Suhauna (“‘I Can’t Overstate How Deeply Dull the Process Is’”,
http://www.chronicle.com/article/I-Can-t-Overstate-How/240410?cid=wcontentlist_hp_latest)JK
When the U.S. Education Department proposes a rule, one reaction is guaranteed across
the political spectrum: dread at the prospect of more negotiated rule-making. That’s when
about 30 people, each with distinct and often opposing views, will crowd around a
rectangular table in a departmental conference room in Washington and work, despite
notorious tedium, to come to an agreement. The sessions are known as "neg-reg," which
annoys Barmak Nassirian, director of federal relations and policy analysis at the American
Association of State Colleges and Universities. The formal term is "regulatory negotiation," he
notes, so it should be dubbed "reg-neg." The department recently announced plans to
embark on another round of neg-reg for two Obama-era accountability initiatives,:
borrower "defense to repayment" and gainful employment, which have already been
through the process. (One complication: The gainful-employment rule is already in effect, and
there is some dispute over whether the secretary of education, Betsy DeVos, has the authority
to delay regulations that have been made final.) “On really controversial things, it can turn
into political theater instead of meaningful policy discussions .” Use of negotiated rule-
making became more frequent after 1998, often for recently enacted legislation. In recent years,
however, many new regulations have been introduced directly by the Education
Department, according to a 2015 report by the Task Force on Federal Regulation of Higher
Education, and so are less likely to achieve consensus in neg-reg. Some observers and
past participants think hashing out an issue for months is valuable only in some cases, while
others think negotiations do serve to improve the final provisions. Virtually everyone agrees
on one thing, though: The process is profoundly dull. "There are unfortunately three
kinds of negotiators," says Mr. Nassirian. "The kind that makes things happen, the kind
that watches things happen, and the kind that wonders, ‘What happened?’ " Higher-ed
journalists and policy wonks moan on Twitter about the voluminous required readings prepared
by the Education Department. They crack up at mundane mistakes in drafts of the provisions.
The process, from when a regulation is announced to when it is made final, takes roughly
18 months. "I can’t overstate how deeply dull the process is," said Ben Miller, senior
director for postsecondary-education policy at the Center for American Progress. As the
Education Department’s budget has shrunk, neg-reg has also become more physically
uncomfortable for participants, Mr. Nassirian said. Sessions used to be held in hotel
ballrooms, but now they happen in a conference room, which Mr. Nassirian said sometimes
doesn’t have the capacity to hold all of the observers. Talking It Through Neg-reg is valuable for
rules that involve intensely technical issues, for example disbursement or federal financial-aid
procedures. The process provides an opportunity for experts in the field to talk it through, said
Mr. Miller. Even then, he said, neg-reg’s usefulness depends on the quality of the panel and the
facilitator. "On really controversial things, it can turn into political theater instead of meaningful
policy discussions," he said. In the case of topics like gainful-employment and borrower-
defense, in which agreement is almost certainly out of reach, the Education Department
and the stakeholders must still go through the lengthy process in an effort to claim the
strength of a consensus, said Clare McCann, who worked on the borrower-defense neg-reg at
the department before becoming a senior policy analyst at New America, a Washington think
tank. There was a moment near the last session for the borrower-defense regulation
when a committee was close to agreement, she said, but some members had flights to
catch. They were asked to stay -— but a consensus was never reached. Now the
department wants to renegotiate borrower-defense; a new rule will probably not be
published until November 2018 and wouldn’t take effect until July 2019. The intent of
negotiated rule-making is important, says Michael Itzkowitz, a senior policy adviser at Third
Way, a nonpartisan think tank. These regulations affect millions of people and help safeguard
the $130 billion in federal student loans and grants that go to colleges each year. But in
discussing these rules, only a token one or two students are brought to the table, Mr.
Nassirian said. Colleges and universities wield a disproportionate level of influence in
negotiation sessions compared with that of students, Mr. Miller said.

Reg Neg fails- Their Author

Holley-Walker 7 --- Dean and Prof. of Law @ Howard University of Law, J.D. from
Harvard (2007, Danielle, Nebraska Law Review, “THE IMPORTANCE OF
NEGOTIATED RULEMAKING TO THE NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND ACT” Vol. 85,
accessed 7-11-17, via SSRN) #AREZ JK
This Article argues that the substantive failures of NCLB are magnified and exacerbated
in the negotiated rulemaking process. Negotiated rulemaking offers the promise of
collaboration between the DOE, state education officials, local school boards, teachers,
parents, and students to achieve the goals of NCLB. Instead, the voices of the non DOE
officials are being ignored during the negotiated rulemaking proces s. The valid critiques
of many aspects of the Act, such as the burdens on state resources, are left unaddressed
during the rulemaking process. Instead of the administrative process leading to the best
practices to achieve statutory goals, it becomes another roadblock to success for NCLB
Here is a rehighlighted version of their 1nc card- Reg negs fail in the squo
and the CP can’t overcome the problems in their card. The CP is merely
just a rehashing of the same bad process
Lubbers 8 – Prof. of Law @ American University (Jeffrey S., “ACHIEVING POLICYMAKING
CONSENSUS: THE (UNFORTUNATE) WANING OF NEGOTIATED RULEMAKING” written for
American University Washington College of Law, accessed 7-10-17 via SSRN) #AREZ JK

This in turn has led to a related fifth reason for the demise of negotiated rulemaking - the
emergence of "reg-neg lite." While I cannot find any previous use of this term, early on there
were examples of "informal negotiated rulemakings." n81 Some even involved FACA chartered
committees. n82 Of course, there is nothing wrong with agencies using techniques other than
"formal" reg-neg to learn the views of affected stakeholders, and it may even be preferable
when consensus seems impossible. Indeed the EPA, once the government's leader in
conducting reg-negs, has clearly moved away from doing so, conducting only one in the last
seven years. This is not happenstance; [*1002] one of the EPA's leading officers in this area
wrote in 2001 that the agency's emphasis had shifted toward "facilitation of public meetings and
workshops." n83 Such meetings may certainly be useful, but they are less likely to produce
consensus-based rule texts.
Moreover, such meetings should not be seen as a substitute for achieving negotiated
consensus where possible. It may even be misleading to participants if an agency convenes
such meetings without notifying the participants of their real, less ambitious purpose. The
Association of Conflict Resolution, in its authoritative 1997 Best Practices for Government
Agencies: Guidelines for Using Collaborative Agreement-Seeking Processes (ACR Guidelines),
articulates this concern as follows:
Misunderstanding between the agency and stakeholders can occur if the agency calls a
meeting for one purpose, but tries to achieve another. One example is convening a
process for information sharing and then expecting agreements to emerge. Another is holding
meetings under the guise of consensus building, when information gathering is the sole and
intended purpose, or portraying a public relations (opinion changing) initiative as a collaborative
process. Misuse of collaborative processes diminishes the likelihood of their future use.
The same cynicism that sometimes marks public reaction to government's efforts to
solve problems can extend to improperly used collaborative processes. n84
Another shortcut that may appear attractive to agencies is to skimp on the convening or
facilitating functions, perhaps by using agency officers for this purpose. This practice would be
penny-wise and pound-foolish because of the importance of laying the groundwork for a
successful negotiation committee at the convening stage and the crucial role of the facilitator
during the negotiation [*1003] phase. The ACR Guidelines also raise concerns about this
practice:
If an agency or department considers using a facilitator from within government (whether inside
or outside the sponsoring agency), several questions should be asked: Is it likely participants
will regard the facilitator as unbiased and capable of being equally accountable to all
participants? Will the facilitator be able to act independently, or will he or she be under the
direction of the agency? Will participants feel comfortable consulting or confiding in the facilitator
when the going gets tough? n85
More generally, even when the agency hires outside contractors, "the selection criteria for
facilitators or mediators should be based on experience, skill, ability, and acceptability to
participants, and not solely on costs." n86
Anecdotal evidence is that agencies are using their own officers more often in reg-negs and are
certainly moving away from the full reg-neg process envisioned (though admittedly not
mandated) by the Negotiated Rulemaking Act.
A sixth reason for the waning of reg-neg may be that criticism by several respected scholars has
had an impact even though these critics seem to be in the minority. The criticism has two main
tenets. The first one, led by Professor William Funk, suggests that reg-neg leads agencies to
too easily shirk their responsibilities to uphold the public interest by accepting the consensus
rule - thus turning the regulatory responsibility to the regulated, sometimes leading to results
that are outside the agency's legal authority. n87 The second strain of criticism, led by Professor
Cary Coglianese, suggests that the reg-neg's purported savings of time and litigation costs are
illusory. n88 Professor Harter has forcefully rebutted these latter concerns, n89 and this is not
the place for a thorough re-airing of these debates. Nor am I the most objective observer. But I
will opine that Professor Funk's concerns are largely theoretical, and that if the convening stage
is done correctly, the right stakeholders and the agency representatives are all around the table.
Moreover, if the resulting rule somehow strays outside of the agency's statutory authority, it can
be challenged by an adversely affected person in court.
As for the empirical debate concerning time savings and reduced [*1004] court challenges, I
would say that it misses the point to some degree. First, I think Professor Harter clearly has the
better of the argument when it comes to court challenges. As he argues, no reg-negged rule has
been overturned, n90 and the courts have not been receptive to challenges to the reg-neg
procedure itself. n91 Even if reg-neg does take longer than paper rulemaking (which I do not
concede), n92 a large but hard-to-measure benefit of the process is the buy-in of the
stakeholders in the rulemaking and eventual implementation of the rule. Thus, even a longer
process would be worth it if the resulting rule proved to be more durable and easier to
implement because of the reg-neg process.
But, perhaps for all of the six reasons suggested above, most agencies have stopped using reg-
neg voluntarily. Other than the one EPA reg-neg mentioned above, only four agencies (Interior,
Labor, Transportation, and the Postal Service) have voluntarily considered establishing reg-neg
committees from 2000 to the present. Fifteen of the twenty-two reg-neg committees formed
were done so due to specific statutory mandate, seven of them by the Department of Education,
three by HUD, two by DOT and HHS, and one by Interior. n93 This can be problematic because
it leapfrogs over the convening process and may only serve to punt a nonnegotiable issue from
Congress to the agency. As the National Performance Report states:
Reg-neg should rarely, if ever, be required by statute for particular rulemakings because its
success depends on the voluntary participation of all participants, including the agency.
Moreover, Congress should recognize that short statutory deadlines to issue proposed or final
rules, especially if they are shorter than two years, may preclude the use of negotiated [*1005]
rulemaking. n94
The Department of Education's statutorily mandated reg-negs have been especially
troubled. Several of them have been challenged in court n95 and one commentator has gone
so far as to allege that the Department "has intentionally created negotiated rulemaking
committees that inadequately represent the interests of parents and students" by
intentionally "excluding representatives of parents and students who might disagree with
the agency's policy choices." n96
V. Conclusion
While I do not discount the possibility that other types of agency facilitation of public meetings
may be useful, the waning of the use of negotiated rulemaking is unfortunate. Not
because it is a panacea, but because when used in a properly targeted way, it can be very
effective." Indeed. the conclusion to a detailed article describing a recent major California
reg-neg concludes: The present rulemaking does indicate one set of circumstances
where the [reg-neg] was quite beneficial. Furthermore, by its detailed description of the
actual negotiations. This article shows how the dynamics of regulatory negotiation are very
different from those in a notice and comment rulemaking. It demonstrates how, in one
situation, regulatory negotiation can help parties with very different interests reach
creative solutions to regulatory problems. The federal government acutely needs creative
solutions to regulatory problems. Negotiated rulemaking is one of the few "regulatory
reform" initiatives that does not raise political hackles : and it has been shown to be of
proven value in solving some knotty regulatory problems. The White House should
breathe new life into it by providing real support for it, not just lip service; Congress
should support agency use of the technique with funding and should eschew mandating it
indiscriminately, and both branches should support the revival of the Administrative Conference
to lend encouragement and aid to the agencies in its use.
 2ac- AT: Court Clog
Turn- Reg Negs cause the people not in the reg neg to sue
Robelen and Olson 02- Erik W. Robelen Assistant Editor at Education Week & Lynn Olson
managing editor of special projects for Education Week (“Groups Challenge Makeup Of
Rulemaking Panel”, 3/20/02, http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2002/03/20/27esea.h21.html)JK
The Department of Education failed to adequately represent parents and students on a
negotiating panel named to help craft new federal rules on standards and testing,
advocacy groups for civil rights and disadvantaged children charged this month. They
say the agency disregarded explicit language in the "No Child Left Behind" Act of 2001 about
the composition of the "negotiated rulemaking" panel. That congressional direction, in the
groups' view, was intended to ensure that key beneficiaries of the new law—students and
parents—had ample say on regulations for carrying it out. But department officials and several
panelists defended the committee's composition. Shortly after the committee convened last
week, the panelists voted against adding more participants. The panel proceeded over
three days, March 11-13, to discuss and debate a first draft of the regulations written by the
Education Department. To the chagrin of some of those same advocates seeking a seat at the
table, the panel tentatively agreed to give states considerable latitude in designing their testing
systems. Meanwhile, the last word on the negotiating panel's composition may not have been
heard. The Center for Law and Education, a Washington-based advocacy group, and
three other groups have sued the Education Department in a bid to compel changes in
the panel before the regulations move forward . A ruling in the federal lawsuit, filed here,
is not expected until well after the panel finishes its work this week. If the plaintiffs
prevail, that work could be null and void. "There is enormous disproportion around this
table," Paul Weckstein, a co-director of the Center for Law and Education, told the panelists as
they prepared to begin the negotiations. The new federal law, a reauthorization of the
Elementary and Secondary Education Act, says the department must select participants in the
negotiations "in such numbers as will provide an equitable balance between representatives of
parents and students and representatives of educators and education officials." Mr. Weckstein
noted that there were 19 educators and education officials at the table. By contrast, "there
are two parents, one from public schools, and one from private schools," he said. "It is
hard to perceive any rationale under which that represents equitable representation
between those two bodies."

Students and Parents sue schools- Reg negs don’t involve them or the
issues they care about
Wasser 09- James Wasser is superintendent of the Freehold Regional High School District
(“‘I’m Calling My Lawyer’”, 9/18/09,
http://www.aasa.org/SchoolAdministratorArticle.aspx?id=6506)JK
A superintendent details his prudent policies and diligent follow up for reducing costly lawsuits against the school district by James
Wasser The last words I heard, before the sharp click on the other end of the phone, were “I’m going to sue you.”
Although I’ve heard those words many times during my career as a school administrator, they
still evoke feelings of trepidation and concern. Trepidation for yet another lawsuit and concern for the many wasted hours and
dollars that will be spent on a frivolous lawsuit. As state and federal legislation continues to place greater academic expectations
and unfunded mandates on public schools, we cannot afford to waste a single minute or another dollar to fight unwarranted
litigation. I’ve been in public education for more than 30 years and have watched our society became more litigious every year. I’ve
heard parents shout “I’m calling my lawyer ” when their children blatantly violated
school policy and when new redistricting plans were introduced to balance student
enrollments. And, of course, I’ve heard district employees utter the infamous threat when their pay increments were withheld
despite documented poor performance. Smartest Action In an age of immediate gratification, “I’m calling my lawyer” has
become a mantra designed to calm and validate the person making the threat while
intimidating the person at the receiving end of the comment. I’ve even been threatened
with a lawsuit for closing (and for not closing) schools on a snow day. Fortunately most of these
threats die a quick death upon the advice of an attorney who rationally advises the case has no merit. But what about the other
cases — and the other lawyers who feel there’s nothing to lose and perhaps a substantial monetary win to gain? By the very nature
of our business, public education is, without a doubt, vulnerable to legal attacks: Title VII, Title IX, claims under the Conscientious
Employee Protection Act, allegations of employee/student misconduct, bullying, discrimination, etc. The fear of being sued has
forced public school teachers and administrators across the country to re-evaluate what they do and modify traditional curricular
activities and co-curricular programs. It’s simply easier and certainly less expensive to modify or eliminate programs than to have to
deal with the worry of lengthy litigation. When our district’s legal expenses topped $500,000 during the 2003-2004 school year,
Freehold Regional High School District administrators and board of education members agreed something had to be done. The
number of lawsuits, the amount of administrative/staff time preparing for and appearing in the courtroom and subsequent expenses
were unacceptable. These lawsuits were taking public money and valuable time away from our students. Thus began the
development of a pro-active action plan that resulted in a significant reduction of new litigation and lowered our legal expenses by
almost 40 percent after three years. The first thing and probably the smartest thing we did was hire a school board attorney on a
retainer arrangement to attend all board meetings and be on-call for questions and emergencies. Because our attorney is a partner
in a large firm, we are able to receive legal advice and assistance even when our particular attorney is not available. Additionally, an
attorney on retainer can aggressively respond to a potential claim at its initial stage and help to resolve the issue before it escalates
into a lawsuit. Previously the school district employed several law firms on an as-needed basis. One firm handled general legal
issues, another firm dealt with personnel matters and negotiations, and a third was brought in for special cases. Having different
attorneys and separate law firms assume responsibility for different types of issues prevented a thorough familiarity with the school
district and often resulted in an inordinate amount of time reviewing district policies and procedures. There was a definite lack of
continuity. Furthermore, by not having an attorney on retainer, we tended to wait until situations exploded and we were in the midst
of a legal battle. The attorney met with district administrators and board members to assiduously review the district’s settled and
pending lawsuits and their impact on the district budget. As a group, we reviewed the key issues surrounding each claim and
preventive steps that could have minimized or eliminated the litigation. An immediate offshoot of these meetings was a review and
revision of the district’s existing school policies and procedures. By examining each district policy we searched for loopholes that
could weaken our legal position during litigation. We established a formal protocol of specific procedures to follow when
investigating or dealing with existing or potential problems. This pro-active measure is instrumental in helping school administrators
to deal with potential problems before they escalate into serious situations and litigation. Helpful Handbooks To minimize frivolous
litigation against school districts, we have to understand what motivates people to sue in the first place. The most common
motivators include one or more of these factors: failure to communicate; lack of understanding or knowledge; passion and emotions;
stubbornness and pride; and greed. The importance of a solid communications plan with networks connecting staff, parents,
students and the community at large cannot be understated. Press releases explaining revised district policies were published in
local newspapers and the school district newsletter. They also were posted on the school district website and included in the faculty
manual and the student-parent handbook. We also introduced the Superintendent’s Message, a monthly video posted on the
website to discuss pertinent topics and policy updates. We knew that the more access the public had to our policies, the better our
chances for compliance. The student-parent handbook was expanded to include both district policy and disciplinary consequences
for violations. We inserted a form at the beginning of each handbook requiring both the student and parent to sign and return the
form indicating they received and reviewed the handbook. Having student and parent signatures verifying acknowledgement of the
district’s discipline code has played a pivotal role in reducing parent accusations of unknown policies or prejudicial treatment of their
children. We experienced an immediate drop in disciplinary-related lawsuits once lawyers and/or judges learned the student and
Student issues often escalate into
parent had signed a student-parent handbook acknowledgement form.
expensive lawsuits because students and parents perceive teachers and administrators
as being unreachable or insensitive. As emotions rise, so do the number of lawsuits.
Professional development should include sensitivity training and procedures to deal with student issues in a timely and effective
manner. Communication and empathy from teachers and administrators plays a significant role in minimizing potential lawsuits.
Experience has shown that when a principal responds immediately to an unfortunate student injury by calling the parent, visiting the
hospital and conducting follow-up visits to the home, parents are less likely to find fault with the school district and pursue legal
action. Developing a more pro-active role in the academic and disciplinary support process, I initiated a superintendent’s disciplinary
hearing for students who had serious behavior and/or attendance problems. By holding these hearings (comprised of the
superintendent, student, parents, principal and appropriate teacher), we are able to address three things: (1) the unacceptability of
the problem behavior; (2) the cause of the behavior; and (3) appropriate measures to remedy the problem. Each hearing concludes
with the student signing a contract specifying expected behavior goals and specific graduated consequences for noncompliance.
Rather than simply suspend a student for disciplinary violations, we have found that the coordinated effort and interest of
administrators, staff and parents to work with the student to improve school performance is a positive motivator in reducing negative
behavior. These hearings also have helped reduce the number of student disciplinary problems. They enable school administrators
to deal with minor problems before they escalate and become litigious. Another cost-effective measure undertaken by the district
was to revise the student expulsion hearing process. Previously, the entire board sat on student expulsion hearings at the
conclusion of the public board meeting (often after midnight). Tension, coupled with fatigue, resulted in heated discussions and
subsequent lawsuits. Today a board expulsion committee (composed of three school board members, the superintendent, an
assistant superintendent and the principal) meets with students and parents after school. Improved communication between school
officials and parents and the dissemination of district policies have significantly reduced legal costs for both the district and parents
Legal challenges by
by eliminating the need for an attorney to be present at the hearings. Personal Involvement
parents and students have definitely affected the way teachers interact with students.
Rather than face the threat of time-consuming, frivolous litigation, teachers often cave to parental demands. Too often teachers find
the time and expense needed to defend grading an essay paper with a D compared to a C-minus is simply not worth it. Additionally,
many teachers avoid dealing with students in a one-on-one situation for fear it makes them vulnerable to accusations of
inappropriate conduct. While colleges and universities prepare young teachers to teach their academic subject, these training
programs fail to prepare them for essential non-academic issues, such as appropriate interactions with students and parents.
Leaving nothing to chance, I personally conduct an annual workshop to ensure that our young teachers (some only four years older
than many of our students) are familiar with school district policies and expectations and understand the fine line between
acceptable and unacceptable behavior and communication between teachers and students. As an administrator, I have learned to
take nothing for granted. While it is important to establish procedures to investigate allegations, it is equally imperative that staff
members be familiar with the proper procedures for investigating a potential problem or dealing with an existing matter. A small
annual investment of time to review school district protocol with staff can result in large savings against charges of procedural
inconsistencies. Evaluating teacher performance is another area where administrators have become increasingly more cautious
over the years. Internal challenges from staff often become more disruptive to the school environment and pose a greater threat of
time and money than those from students and parents. Staff evaluations and corrective action plans often raise challenges from
teachers. Once we were sued for changing an administrator’s title, even though the salary and responsibilities remained the same.
Other legal challenges by staff included an administrator who claimed he should not have to conduct certain building-level
administrative duties such as cafeteria duty and a staff member who felt he should not have to return parent phone calls within 24
hours. School administrators across the country find themselves engaged similarly in costly lawsuits over staffing issues that could
have been avoided by the implementation of pro-active district strategies. Our school district’s creation of a professional relations
committee composed of central-office administrators (including the superintendent) and representatives of the teachers’ association
(including the association president) has proven to be highly effective in opening professional dialogue. The meetings provide a
forum for staff and administration to discuss issues of concern on such matters as the need for procedural consistency among our
six high schools, discipline procedures, the increasing use of technology and old policies that may need revamping. The meetings
enable staff to review district procedures — for example, new grading programs, computer use policies and student testing
procedures — and offer possible recommendations to strengthen and improve the policies or at least understand why the procedure
exists. A major outcome of these meetings has been an increase in staff requests for in-service training opportunities. This pro-
active approach to open and honest dialogue with staff representatives has played a significant role in reducing contract violations
and formal grievances that result in expensive legal fees. Challenges from teachers can be greatly minimized by following four basic
tenets: Maintain open communications; treat all staff fairly and respectfully; be consistent in policy and procedure; and maintain
proper and thorough documentation. Always Vulnerable The
American legal system makes it easy to file a
lawsuit regardless of the merit of the case. What we need is legislation that protects
school districts from having to use public funds to fight frivolous lawsuits. The number of
frivolous lawsuits would drop dramatically if the person filing the lawsuit was made responsible for the court costs, the district’s
attorney fees and substitute teacher costs if the plaintiff was unsuccessful. Unfortunately , public schools always will
be vulnerable to legal challenges by students, parents and staff. We can’t eliminate all
lawsuits , but we can and must make policy changes to minimize the filing of frivolous suits, in turn allowing educators to spend
more time in the classroom and less time in the courtroom

Past education Reg Negs included 15 people not every school district
Stratford 14- Michael (“Let the Rule Making Begin”, 2/20/14,
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/02/20/education-department-kicks-
negotiations-rules-student-aid)JK
A 15-person panel appointed by the U.S. Education Department on Wednesday began a
months-long negotiating process aimed at developing a package of regulations relating
to student aid programs. Negotiators began to tackle an ambitious regulatory agenda,
first announced by the Obama administration last year, that includes new rules for distance
education, Parent PLUS loans and campus debit cards. Meeting for the first time Monday,
members of the panel and department officials began to explore those issues in broad
discussions, which will continue for the rest of this week. Lawyers from the department
said they would then draft proposed rules before the panel reconvenes for three more
days in March. Another three-day session of negotiations is scheduled for May.

No court clog net benefit- Reg negs by law can only include 25 members
DOE 08- Department of education (“The Negotiated Rulemaking Process for Title IV
Regulations - Frequently Asked Questions”, 8/25/08,
https://www2.ed.gov/policy/highered/reg/hearulemaking/hea08/neg-reg-faq.html)JK
The Department selects negotiators for a committee from the list of nominees with the
goal of providing adequate representation for the affected parties while keeping the size
of the committee manageable. By law, a federal agency must limit membership on a
negotiated rulemaking committee to 25 members unless the agency head determines that a
greater number of members is necessary for the functioning of the committee, or to achieve
balanced membership. Typically, the Department convenes committees of 12 to 15
negotiators, as well as an alternate for each negotiator to ease attendance concerns for
negotiations consisting of multiple sessions. Each committee includes at least one Department
representative.

Fair Representation for reg neg is impossible- we will insert this chart into
the debate
Lombardo 16- Marianne Lombarano (“Tracking ESSA Implementation: What
Would A Fair ESSA Neg-Reg Process Look Like?”, 2/10/16,
https://edreformnow.org/what-would-fair-essa-neg-reg-process-look-like/)JK
 neg – at: reg-neg 2ac competition answers
Normal means of the plan is not reg-neg – rulemaking is DOE alone post-
ESSA
Tuttle 16 (Lynn Tuttle, Senior Regulatory Policy Advisor, Center for Advocacy, Policy, and
Constituency Engagement; “U.S. Department of Education Concludes Negotiated Rulemaking”
NAFME (National Association for Music Education); April 25, 2016; https://nafme.org/essa-neg-
reg-concludes/ - LK)
The recent negotiated rulemaking process that has been playing out on Supplement, not Supplant has
collapsed, and the U.S. Department of Education now anticipates writing rules on their
own. ¶ USED’s Negotiated Rulemaking Committee met for its third and final round on Monday and Tuesday of this past week,
April 18-19. The Committee, made up of a variety of stakeholders, including lay people, educational leaders, civil rights leaders, and
administrators, had an extremely difficult task set in front of it: to finalize rulemaking language around a variety of assessment issues
as well as Supplement, not Supplant, part of the rules for Title I-A funding. After 2 very contentious days, including a mid-day break
on Tuesday in order to try and hold the Committee together, negotiated rules were created for all the assessment areas. Of interest
is the nuanced language around students with the most significant cognitive disorders, and that PARCC and Smarter Balanced will
be included in the list of accepted national assessments which districts could select for their high schools to use instead of their
state level assessments. This announcement, ironically, came a day prior to New Jersey having to suspend all of its PARCC testing
due to glitches with the online testing platform.¶ Supplement,
not Supplant now back in the hands of the
Department¶ After a week of battles with Congress around the draft Supplement not Supplant language (see for more details),
the U.S. Department of Education’s 3rd and final attempt at negotiated rulemaking language fell apart during this week’s Committee
meeting. On one side were state and local administrators, concerned that the language would tie the hands of districts, and
potentially force them to move teachers in order to meet the proposed rule language from the Department which deals with a “per
pupil amount of state and local dollars in each Title I school that is equal to or greater than the average amount spent per pupil in
non-Title I schools.” Civilrights leaders, on the other hand, want to make certain that the federal funds are truly supplemental,
and going to support the most vulnerable of our nation’s school children. They favored this type of
specificity in the rulemaking language. Administrators on the Committee offered language utilizing other measures of
state/local fund investment in schools, such as “FTE” counts of teachers, but they couldn’t sway the Education
Department.¶ With the Committee unable to find consensus, the Supplement, not Supplant
rulemaking now falls back into the hands of the U.S. Department of Education. The public will
have an opportunity to review and comment on the language once it is posted through the formal rulemaking procedure. We are
currently awaiting the posting of the draft rules around accountability
systems, which are now under review by
the Office of Management and Budget prior to being published for public comment.

Reg neg is an important process for education policy – competes with the
aff on immediacy and normal means, the DOE is likely to write their’s on
their own – net benefits are politics and circumvention
Natow 16 (Rebecca S. Natow is a higher education policy expert and a senior research associate with
the Community College Research Center at Teachers College, Columbia University. She is coauthor of
The Politics of Performance Funding for Higher Education: Origins, Discontinuations, and
Transformations and Performance Funding for Higher Education. “Higher Education Rulemaking: The
Politics of Creating Regulatory Policy” JHU Press; September 6, 2016; pages 38-42; accessed at
https://books.google.com/books?id=2h0EDQAAQBAJ&pg=PA40&lpg=PA40&dq=%22education+policy%
22+AND+%22negotiated+rulemaking%22&source=bl&ots=bg-
HxPIXtP&sig=19P0leLczqsRgAWSDKwf7oQqQZs&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjy6K6ympvVAhVD3IMK
HZ_xDtUQ6AEIYTAK#v=onepage&q=%22education%20policy%22%20AND%20%22negotiated%20rule
making%22&f=false - LK)
The next step in the rulemaking process is to draft a proposed rule, which will appear in the Federal Register as a Notice of
Proposed Rulemaking. While personnel within an agency are often tasked with writing the language of an NPRM (Golden, 1998;
Kerwin & Furlong, 2011), many higher education regulations are written with the help of negotiated
rulemaking committees (Pelesh, 1994). Negotiated rulemaking refers to including in the drafting of the
NPRM individuals and groups who will potentially be affected by the proposed rule (Harter, 1982;
Kerwin 8c Furlong, 2011; Lubbers, 1998; Pelesh, 1994; Pritzker & Dalton, 199 5). The Higher Education Act (2012)
requires that negotiated rulemaking be used when regulating Title IV financial aid programs. In
theory, negotiated rulemaking is supposed to result in regulations that are more agreeable

to the individuals and groups affected by them , because it makes these parties part of the
NPRM drafting process (Coglianese, 1997; Harter, 1982; Kerwin & Furlong, 2011; Pelesh, 1994; Pritzker & Dalton, 1995). ¶
Negotiated rulemaking for higher education tends to follow the following procedure, as
prescribed by law.1 First, the Department of Education holds regional meetings (Higher Education Act,
2012, § 1098a[a][2]), attended by potentially affected parties, at various locations across the country,
to discuss the goals and rules of forthcoming negotiated rulemaking sessions and receives
recommendations as to which parties should serve on negotiated rulemaking panels. The Higher
Education Act states that at the regional meetings, the department should obtain information and

suggestions from a wide range of individuals and groups , including higher education
institutions, organizations in the student loan industry, students, and legal representatives of
student interests (Higher Education Act, 2012). At a 2008 regional meeting at Texas Christian University, a Department of
Education official explained in some detail how regional meetings fit into the negotiated rulemaking agenda-
setting process:¶ Basically, we start off with public hearings like this. We seek public comment
about issues—from the public, and concerns the public has. We do it through the hearings here and through
written comments you can submit that are—you can submit it to the address in the Federal Register notice. We’ll
take those public comments in a review of What we see in the Act and go back and develop the idea of
what areas we need to negotiate on, the subject areas for committees, and we’ll be publishing a notice
about that, and we’ll announce what subject areas we’re going to negotiate, what the proposed committees are, and
request nominees for those committees to come and participate in the negotiation process.
(Public Regional Hearing on Negotiated Rulemaking, 2008a, p. 2.).¶ After the regional meetings, the Department

of Education meets with selected representatives of stakeholder constituencies for the

process of negotiated rulemaking , to discuss the content that should be included in a
proposed rule (Higher Education Act, 2012; Higher Education Opportunity Act, 2008; Kerwin & Furlong, 2011; Lubbers, 1998;
1998 Amendments, 1998; Pelesh, 1994; Pritzker 8c Dalton, 1995). Negotiators are selected by the Department of
Education based on nominations received in response to a request for the same; the nominations are to be
collected publicly, from across a broad array of stakeholders in the higher education arena (Hillman
et al., 2015; Pelesh, 1994). The Higher Education Act requires the department to select negotiators from “industry” in addition
to Washington insiders and to include “both large and small participants, as well as individuals
serving local areas and national markets" (Higher Education Act, 2012, § 1098a[b][1]).¶ Negotiated
rulemaking meetings are moderated by “a neutral, competent convener, preferably
skilled in the techniques of mediation ” (Kerwin 8c Furlong, 2011, p. 207). Negotiated rulemaking
sessions often take several days, sometimes separated by weeks at a time. For example, the
negotiated rulemaking committee that met to develop what later became the first Gainful Employment Rule met on multiple
occasions between the months of November 2009 and January 2010 (Program Integrity: Gainful Employment, 2010). Ideally,
¶

the negotiated rulemaking team reaches “consensus” on the language to be included in the
NPRM (Pelesh, 1994, p. 156; Pritzker & Dalton, 1995, p. 1; see also Kerwin & Furlong, 2011, p. 207). Such consensus
occurs when “each interest represented concurs in the result, unless all members of the committee agree at
the outset to a different meaning” (Pritzker & Dalton, 1995,¶ p. 8).2 Respondents of this study who have participated in
negotiated rulemaking explained that typically, the Department of Education provides some potential
language for a proposed rule at the beginning of a negotiated rulemaking session, and then
together the negotiators analyze the language and debate recommendations for change. In the
course of a few sessions of negotiating , ideally the language of the NPRM becomes
increasingly more agreeable to participants and consensus is reached. If consensus on a
proposed rule is achieved, then the agreed-upon language is used in the NPRM, and participants in
the negotiation are not permitted to comment in a negative manner on it during the notice-and-
comment phase. But if all negotiators—including the department’s negotiator who is a member of the committee—do
not agree on the NPRM language, then the department’s personnel draft the NPRM, and all participants are free to
comment as they please (see also Kerwin & Furlong, 2011; Lubbers, 1998; Pelesh, 1994; Pritzker & Dalton, 1995). ¶
Negotiated rulemaking is fairly typical When federal higher education policy is being
regulated . However, there are several circumstances under which the Department
of Education is not required to conduct negotiated rulemaking. The Higher Education Act
Department of Education need not conduct negotiated rulemaking if “the Secretary
states that the
[of Education] determines that applying such a requirement with respect to given regulations is
impracticable, unnecessary, or contrary to the public interest. . . and publishes the basis for such
determination in the Federal Register at the same time as the proposed regulations in question are first published” (Higher
Also, although the Higher Education Act requires negotiated
Education Act, 2012, § 1098a[b][2]).
rulemaking for most regulations of federal student aid programs, the implementation of other
aspects of the Higher Education Act do not typically require negotiated rulemaking. In those
instances, Department of Education personnel write the proposed rules (Golden, 1998; Kerwin & Furlong,
2011).

Their aff would be reviewed by the OMB, not a reg neg – because of it’s
large scale economic impact, inherency, or use of grants/entitlements
Natow 16 (Rebecca S. Natow is a higher education policy expert and a senior research associate with
the Community College Research Center at Teachers College, Columbia University. She is coauthor of
The Politics of Performance Funding for Higher Education: Origins, Discontinuations, and
Transformations and Performance Funding for Higher Education. “Higher Education Rulemaking: The
Politics of Creating Regulatory Policy” JHU Press; September 6, 2016; pp. 42; accessed at
https://books.google.com/books?id=2h0EDQAAQBAJ&pg=PA40&lpg=PA40&dq=%22education+policy%
22+AND+%22negotiated+rulemaking%22&source=bl&ots=bg-
HxPIXtP&sig=19P0leLczqsRgAWSDKwf7oQqQZs&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjy6K6ympvVAhVD3IMK
HZ_xDtUQ6AEIYTAK#v=onepage&q=%22education%20policy%22%20AND%20%22negotiated%20rule
making%22&f=false - LK)

Sometimes proposed regulations are the subject of the same negotiated rulemaking sessions
but are issued as separate NPRMs. This was the case with regard to the first Gainful Employment Rule. The meaning
of “gainful employment in a recognized occupation” was negotiated together with several other topics relating to maintaining the
“integrity” of Title IV financial aid programs; however, when the NPRM for most of the “program integrity” rule was released, the only
aspects of “gainful employment” that joined it were ones that covered “technical, reporting, and disclosure issues” (Program Integrity
Issues, 2010b, p. 34808; see also Epstein, 2010). The bulk of the first Gainful Employment Rule’s proposal was released separately
a short time later, and both went on to become separate final rules (Program Integrity: Gainful Employment, 2011).¶ The
Office
of Management and Budget reviews certain draft NPRMs to ensure that they meet particular
standards of the law and objectives of the prevailing presidential administration (Kerwin & Furlong,
2011; US General Accounting Office, 2003). Under Executive Order 12866 (1993), the OMB’s Office of

Information and Regulatory Affairs must review and approve “significant” rules, with
“significant” referring to a rule that could (1) Have an annual effect on the economy of
$100 million or more or adversely affect in a material way the economy, a sector of the economy,
productivity, competition, jobs, the environment, public health or safety , or State, local, or tribal
governments or communities; (2.) Create a serious inconsistency or otherwise interfere with an action
taken or planned by another agency; ( 3) Materially alter the budgetary impact of
entitlements, grants, user fees, or loan programs or the rights and obligations of
recipients thereof ; or (4) Raise novel legal or policy issues arising out of legal mandates, the
president’s priorities, or the principles set forth in this Executive Order. (Executive Order No. 12.866,
1993, p. 51738; see also US General Accounting Ofi‘ice, 2003, p. 23).

Education regulation is now required to be Notice and Comment

Talbert 15 (Kent D. Talbert “Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) Dear
Colleague Letter: Notice and Comment Rulemaking Required ” Education Law Review;
September 20, 2015; http://www.educationlawreview.com/2015/09/family-educational-rights-
and-privacy-act-ferpa-dear-colleague-letter-notice-and-comment-rulemaking/ - LK)
A little over a month ago the U. S. Department of Education released a draft FERPA Dear
Colleague Letter (guidance) seeking public comments (due October 2, 2015) on its preliminary
legal view that there are very limited circumstances whereby a university may share student
medical records with its own legal counsel.¶ Under the Department’s proposed guidance,
“institutions [of higher education] that are involved in litigation with a student should not share
student medical records [under FERPA’s “school official” exception, 20 USCS § 1232g(b)(1)(A),
34 C.F.R. § 99.31(a)(1)] with the institution’s attorneys or courts unless the litigation in question
relates directly to the medical treatment itself or the payment for that treatment, and even then
disclose only those records that are relevant and necessary to the litigation.Ӧ While the
Department’s request for public comment on its draft letter is positive, it is at the same time
curious. The Department’s highly restrictive reading of FERPA (at least in its draft) cries out for
regular Notice and Comment rulemaking in the Federal Register, not a Dear Colleague
guidance letter. ¶ Taking such a restrictive reading of the law via a Dear Colleague Letter raises
fundamental legal questions. Where federal departments or agencies have given binding effect
to Dear Colleague Letters, Memoranda, Bulletins, Circulars, Manuals, Advisories or other forms
of “guidance,” courts have set-aside such letters and related, requiring the government to go
back and follow regular Notice and Comment requirements of the Administrative
Procedures Act. Iowa League of Cities v. EPA_ 711 F.3d 844, (8th Cir. 2013); see also
Appalachian Power Co v EPA, 208 F. 3d 1015, 1021-1028 (D.C. Cir. 2000). For a more detailed
discussion, see Robert A. Anthony, Interpretive Rules, Policy Statements, Guidances, Manuals
and the Like–Should Federal Agencies Use Them to Bind the Public? 41 Duke L. J. 1311
(1992); William Funk, Interpretive Rules Symposium: A Primer on Legislative Rules, 53 Admin.
L. Rev. 1321 (2001); Gwendolyn McKee, Judicial Review of Agency Guidance Documents:
Rethinkng the Finality Doctrine, 60 Admin. L. Rev. 371 (2008).
Waivers CP Answers – BFHHR
politics
 links to nb

Waivers are perceived as coercive and cause major congressional

backlash – Obama’s ESEA plan proves
Riley 12 (Benjamin Riley is the founder of Deans for Impact, a new organization composed of
deans of colleges of education working together to transform educator preparation in the US. He
previously worked as the policy director for a national education nonprofit organization and as a
deputy attorney general for the State of California, working primarily on education-related policy
issues., March 2012, “Waive to the Top: The Dangers of Legislating Education Policy from the
Executive Branch”, http://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/-waive-to-the-top-the-
dangers-of-legislating-education-policy-from-the-executive-branch_151023576072.pdf, nassal)
The Political Risk The
next major risk facing the administration’s ESEA Flexibility plan is that
political forces will coalesce to oppose and kill it. How likely is that to happen? Thus far, the administration
has handled the politics of waivers brilliantly. The eleven states that have been granted a waiver already—Colorado, Florida,
Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Tennessee—are diverse both
geographically and politically, which is further evidence of the bipartisan loathing for NCLB. With twenty-six additional states
applying in the second round, the coalition of the waiver-willing is broad and deep. And at least with some constituencies, the
administration benefits from the fact that the waivers preserve a robust federal role in education, at least compared to ESEA-related
bills approved by the US Senate and House of Representatives education committees over the past year. That said, it is a
tired-but-true cliché in politics that the winds can shift quickly. Numerous states have
expressed reservations about waivers, including Alabama, Alaska, California, Louisiana,
Montana, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, Texas, West Virginia, and Wyoming. Already some very
red states (Utah and South Carolina) are starting to reconsider their adoption of Common Core
standards, which are all but a requirement to receive a waiver. And Congressional
Republicans have made no secret of their disgust at the administration’s waiver plan:
“Rather than work with us,” said Rep. John Kline, chairman of the House Education and the Workforce
Committee, “Secretary Duncan and the President have decided to issue waivers in exchange
for states adopting policies [they] want them to have, not changes that we’ve put into
law.”18 Meanwhile, on the left side of the ledger, Randi Weingarten, the influential president of the American Federation of
Teachers, says parts of the all-or-nothing waiver package give her “cause for concern.”19
Similarly, Governor Jerry Brown of California would no doubt like to see NCLB-related
mandates lifted, but at the moment seems intent on submitting a waiver request that will not meet any of the administration’s
conditions. Sure, California is an aberration and Governor Brown marches to the beat of his own drum, but the state is responsible
for educating 20 percent of our nation’s kids. Add Texas (representing 8 percent of children nationwide) and the other holdout
states, and suddenly you realize that, even if every state that applies for a waiver receives one, which is unlikely, more than one-
third of the nation’s children will continue to attend schools subject to NCLB’s mandates.
Ultimately, the fact that the president himself delivered the waiver announcement is proof that he and his advisers think this is a
winning issue, politically. And if he and Secretary Duncan can continue to control the message of increased flexibility and less
teaching to the test—then they will succeed in winning over the public. But if
both the right and left flanks peel off,
particularly as folks delve into the details of approved waivers, the administration may
find itself defending a policy with very few allies. Which outcome is more likely? My professional pundit’s
Magic 8 Ball says, “Outlook Hazy.”
federalism
 links to federalism

Granting waivers that condition federal education policy to states in

exchange for reforms is coercive and forces states to comply with federal
policies – Obama’s NCLB waiver proves
Will 11 (George Will is a columnist for The Washington Post., September 24th, 2011,
“Federalism, coerced”, http://archive.jsonline.com/news/opinion/federalism-coerced-
131011493.html/, nassal)
Many Americans, having grown accustomed to Caesarism, probably see magnanimity in that front-page headline. Others, however, read it as
redundant evidence of how distorted American governance has become. A president "gives" states a "voice" in education policy concerning grades K
Here is how federal
through 12? How did this quintessential state and local responsibility become tethered to presidential discretion?
power expands, even in the guise of decentralization: Ohio Sen. Robert Taft (1889-1953) was "Mr. Republican,"
revered by conservatives chafing under the domination of the GOP by Eastern money that preferred moderates such as New York Gov. Tom Dewey,
the GOP's 1944 and 1948 presidential nominee. In "The Roots of Modern Conservatism: Dewey, Taft, and the Battle for the Soul of the Republican
Party," Michael Bowen, historian at Pennsylvania's Westminster College, recounts how Taft leavened his small-government orthodoxy with deviations,
including federal aid to primary and secondary education. In
the 79th Congress (1945-47), Taft sponsored
legislation to provide such education more than $8 billion over 25 years. The sum was huge
(the 1947 federal budget was $34.5 billion), and the 25-year horizon said federal intervention would not be temporary. Taft
drafted his bill with help from the National Education Association (NEA), the teachers union which today is an appendage of the Democratic Party,
Taft's bill "included provisions to guarantee that
except when the relationship is the other way around. Bowen says
states would not cede control of their educational systems to federal authorities." Guarantee?
Today we are wiser. The bill passed the Senate but died in the House. Such federal aid to education came in 1965, the year of liberals living
exuberantly, which produced Medicare and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). The latter completed the long repudiation of the idea
that some sectors of life are fenced off from federal supervision. In 1976, the NEA made its first endorsement of a presidential candidate; Jimmy Carter
reciprocated by creating the Education Department. George W. Bush's No Child Left Behind (NCLB) was the eighth
reauthorization of the ESEA. It is due for a ninth, but the Obama administration considers the Republican-
controlled House of Representatives icky and the separation of powers tiresome, so it is dispensing with legislation in favor
of coercion -- what has been called "coercive federalism." Education Secretary Arne
Duncan is offering states waivers from NCLB's most annoying provisions if the states
will accept administration conditions for education policy. The slow-motion but steady submission of primary
and secondary education to Washington proceeds in the name of emancipation. Emancipation, that is, from the lofty idealism of preposterous
expectations -- NCLB's loopy decree that by 2014 there will be 100 percent proficiency in reading and math. This incentive to report chimerical
progress has produced exactly that: Many states have defined proficiency down so their tests will show
more progress than does the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the federal
test. When Duncan warned (exaggeration in the service of supposedly constructive panic) that 82 percent of the nation's 100,000 public schools
could be labeled failures next year, states clamored for relief, which is offered in the form of waivers: Washington's
dictation of education policy through legislation will be waived if states embrace
Washington's dictation of education policy by executive branch fiat. Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., chairman
of the Education and the Workforce Committee, questions the "legal authority to grant conditional waivers in
exchange for reforms not authorized by Congress." Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., is less delicate. In a letter to Duncan,
Rubio tartly says the rule of law is at risk: "NCLB allows the secretary to grant waivers for
existing provisions under the law, but nowhere does the law authorize waivers in
exchange for the adoption of administration-preferred policies." Furthermore, Rubio writes, the
waivers "would entail states having to adopt a federally approved 'college and career
ready' curriculum: either the national Common Core curriculum standards, or another
federally approved equivalent." Rubio says: "Such activities are unacceptable; they violate
three existing laws" that "prohibit the federal government from creating or prescribing a
national curriculum." For the sake of argument, let us, as lawyers say, stipulate that the measures Duncan's waivers would make
mandatory are the niftiest ideas for education since Socrates sat down on a log with a student. That is beside the point. Two points, actually: The
expansion of federal power inevitably expands executive discretion that marginalizes
Congress. And since Taft, we have lived and learned.

Creating new conditions in exchange for waivers violate the Spending

Clause and destroys federalism
Black 15 (Derek W. Black is a Professor of Law at the University of South Carolina School of
Law. His areas of expertise include education law and policy, constitutional law, civil rights,
evidence, and torts. He litigated issues relating to school desegregation, diversity, school
finance equity, student discipline, and special education at the Lawyers' Committee for Civil
Rights Under Law., April 2015, “Federalizing Education by Waiver?”,
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2485407, nassal)
II. THE CONSTITUTIONAL LIMITS OF WAIVER CONDITIONS IN FEDERALLY FUNDED PROGRAMS NCLB waivers implicate two
major constitutional constraints: the limits on Congress’s spending power and the limits
on Congress’s ability to delegate lawmaking authority to administrative agencies.
Spending power limits are relevant because NCLB is a federal spending program that grants the Secretary of Education power
to terminate federal funds and impose sanctions on those states and districts that are in violation of NCLB’s requirements. The statute also
grants the Secretary the option to waive those requirements. Congress, no doubt, can extend these powers
to the Secretary without violating the Spending Clause, but when the Secretary imposes new conditions in
exchange for waivers, the new conditions implicate Spending Clause limits that (a)
require clear and advance notice of conditions and (b) prohibit coercive conditions that
amount to compulsion. Administrative and constitutional questions also arise as to whether the Secretary has been or can be granted
the power to impose conditions in exchange for waivers. First, the Secretary can only exercise those powers conveyed to him by Congress. Thus,
the statutory text of NCLB must either explicitly grant the Secretary power to impose
conditions or contain language that implies such a power. Otherwise, conditioning
waivers would be beyond the scope of the Secretary’s authority. Second, if the authority to
condition does exist, the authority to condition is not open-ended. The scope of
permissible conditions would be limited explicitly by statutory text or implicitly by the
overall scope of the statute. Third, the Constitution prohibits Congress from implicitly or
explicitly delegating certain powers to the executive, namely legislative powers. A waiver
power that did not include precise limits on the Secretary’s authority to condition
waivers would reach the outer boundaries of Congress’s delegation authority, if not cross over
them. To avoid striking down broad delegations on constitutional grounds, the Court has increasingly narrowly construed statutory texts and found
agencies’ action beyond the scope of their authority. In other words, a
delegation of questionable constitutionality
makes it even more likely that a court would find that an agency has exercised power
beyond the scope of the underlying statute. Under either of these approaches—spending or delegation—conditional
NCLB waivers, as currently exercised, place an enormous amount of coercive power in the
hands of the Secretary and upset the balance of power between the states and the
federal government in a way not intended by Congress or permitted by the Constitution.
The following sections address each of these doctrines in turn.

Waivers coerce states into accepting terms of new requirements without

prior notice – causes an overreach of federal power
Black 15 (Derek W. Black is a Professor of Law at the University of South Carolina School of
Law. His areas of expertise include education law and policy, constitutional law, civil rights,
evidence, and torts. He litigated issues relating to school desegregation, diversity, school
finance equity, student discipline, and special education at the Lawyers' Committee for Civil
Rights Under Law., April 2015, “Federalizing Education by Waiver?”,
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2485407, nassal)
This unilateral action is remarkable not only for education policy but also from a
constitutional balance-of-power perspective. Some scholars and politicians have called for the expansion of conditional
waivers in other areas of federal regulation.7 Yet, as efficacious as unilateral action through statutory waiver might be, conditional waiver power is
unconstitutional absent carefully crafted legislative authority. Secretary Duncan lacked that authority. Thus, the
federalization of education through conditional waivers was momentous, but legally unfounded.
When Congress passed NCLB in 2002, the waiver condition terms that Secretary Duncan imposed were
inconceivable. The key provisions of NCLB required states to move all students to academic proficiency by 2014 and ensure that all
teachers of core subjects were highly qualified.8 While setting these national goals, the Act left the substance of meeting these
goals to states and school districts. States and districts retained control of the
curriculum they would teach, the standards for that curriculum, the exams they would
use to test students, the meaning of academic proficiency, and the certification and
evaluation of teachers.9 The federal role was to hold states accountable for meeting the
standards that states themselves would set.10 Scholars characterized NCLB as a model of
cooperative federalism, through which states and the federal government shared
responsibility.11 To be clear, this was a new and significant federal role, but a limited one. NCLB,
however, was beset by numerous flaws. Many states manipulated their standards and tests in an effort to manufacture higher levels of “proficiency.”12
The requirement that all students reach proficiency, however, was just too high. The same was true in regard to requirement for highly qualified
teachers. By the summer of 2011, eighty percent of the nation’s school districts were a few months away from failure under the Act due to insufficient
progress toward full proficiency, and the number of failing schools would only grow until the final deadline of 2014.13 Failure under the Act would
trigger stiff sanctions, including the restructuring of schools and districts and the potential loss of funds.14 Both Congress and the President anticipated
this failure and its disastrous consequences for education coming well in advance. Amending NCLB had been a topic of national debate since at least
2008.15 In 2010, President Obama issued an official blueprint for reforming the Act.16 Bitter political division over health care and the economy,
however, blocked almost all legislation in Congress, and NCLB reform became an indirect casualty. NCLB, fortunately, included an escape clause. It
This waiver power,
granted the Secretary of Education the power to waive noncompliance and its consequences for states.17
coupled with the impending failure of eighty percent of school districts, became the
means through which the Obama Administration implemented its educational agenda
outside of the legislative process. Rather than simply waive noncompliance and avert the disastrous consequences for districts
until new legislation passed, the Secretary placed specific conditions on the waivers. To receive a
waiver, states would have to meet an entirely new set of requirements pertaining to
curriculum, student achievement data, and teacher evaluations.18 Tellingly, these terms were
identical to those the President had proposed to Congress in 2010,19 and which Congress
chose not to adopt—terms that the Administration had previously indicated would move education in an entirely different
direction from NCLB.20 Therein lies the key. Without any specific legislative authority, the
Secretary imposed new conditions on states that go beyond the scope of the underlying
statute. States’ impending failure, the consequences they would face, and the Secretary’s power to
waive noncompliance permitted the Secretary to coerce states into accepting terms of
which they had no notice they would ever face when they first agreed to participate in
NCLB. Until the circumstance presented itself, the Department had not even intimated that it had the
power to impose policy through waivers. To the contrary, it had petitioned Congress for new legislation.21 Moreover, given
the scope of the policy changes the Administration sought, it is not clear that the changes could have been
constitutionally achieved through waiver even had NCLB explicitly granted the Secretary
power to condition waivers. No doubt, NCLB reform was absolutely necessary, and the Administration’s reforms may have been a
step in the right direction. In the past, numerous leading scholars, including the author of this Article, have repeatedly advocated for the expansion of
the federal role in education.22 But scholars
have predicated federal expansion in education on new
legislative measures that Congress should take to increase its stake in funding and
supporting education.23 No one imagined that the federal government could substantively
reform curriculum standards and teacher evaluations without new legislation, much less
do it preemptively through administrative action. The waiver process happened so
quickly and unilaterally that it was not until it was over that Congress, state officials, and scholars seriously
considered whether the Secretary did, in fact, have the power he purported to exercise.24
The extent of Congress’s constitutional authority to condition federal funds and delegate power to agencies controls the answer.

Cp links to federalism – allows the federal government impose any

unilateral action on states without constitutional constraints
Black 15 (Derek W. Black is a Professor of Law at the University of South Carolina School of
Law. His areas of expertise include education law and policy, constitutional law, civil rights,
evidence, and torts. He litigated issues relating to school desegregation, diversity, school
finance equity, student discipline, and special education at the Lawyers' Committee for Civil
Rights Under Law., April 2015, “Federalizing Education by Waiver?”,
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2485407, nassal)
Third,the Constitution prohibits Congress from delegating its lawmaking function to
agencies.33 The Court has adopted a permissive standard to police congressional delegations,
requiring only that Congress articulate an “intelligible principle” to guide agency action.34
This Article argues that, because waivers occur in a much different context than traditional delegations and are one step further
removed from congressional will, the Court should apply the intelligible principle standard more rigorously to conditional waivers. But even under the current liberal

approach, a power to condition NCLB waivers as the Secretary might deem necessary
raises constitional concerns because such a power would permit the Secretary to
impose terms that know no bounds. Given the nature of education, the Secretary would possess
unilateral power to pursue almost any policy imaginable and eliminate the democratic
processes at the local, state, and, more recently, federal levels that have always debated
and decided these issues. As such, the delegation would be different in scope and nature than the delegations previously upheld by the Court. A court,
however, need not even reach the intelligible principle analysis because NCLB does not explicitly grant the Secretary power

to condition waivers. Thus, the waivers also fail on statutory grounds. Even if a court inferred that Congress had
implicitly granted the Secretary the authority to impose conditions on NCLB waivers, the
power would not include the authority to condition waivers with terms that fundamentally
alter the underlying legislative framework.35 At most, waiver power implies an authority to
condition waivers with terms designed to ensure substantial and continued compliance
with the existing legislative framework. Waivers of that sort are more appropriately understood as partial
waivers, not full waivers with new conditions attached. Moreover, the Supreme Court has increasingly construed statutes narrowly when
the power asserted by an agency would otherwise push the constitutional bounds of permissible congressional delegation.36
 perm solves

The perm solves – the combination of the aff’s federalism and disciplined
devolution creates a balance that shields the link to the net benefit
1NC Kurzweil 15 (Director, Educational Transformation Program, Ithaka S+R; Lecturer in
Law, Columbia Law School (Martin A., “Disciplined Devolution and the New Education
Federalism,” 103 Cal. L. Rev. 565 (2015), HeinOnline, p.588)
What makes disciplined
devolution distinctive and worthy of attention is that it combines offsetting features of
each of the individual models. It is conceivable that the combination of waiver, cooperative federalism,
and experimentalism could cancel out the positive aspects of one or more of the other strategies. But as I explain below and explore
through the example of K- 12 education, there is reason to believe that disciplined devolution achieves a
complementary balance, in that features of each of the converging governance strategies
address potential weaknesses of the others while preserving their benefits.
solvency deficits [waivers]
 unconstitutional

Waivers are an unconstitutional and coercive overreach of federal power

Black 15 (Derek W. Black is a Professor of Law at the University of South Carolina School of
Law. His areas of expertise include education law and policy, constitutional law, civil rights,
evidence, and torts. He litigated issues relating to school desegregation, diversity, school
finance equity, student discipline, and special education at the Lawyers' Committee for Civil
Rights Under Law., April 2015, “Federalizing Education by Waiver?”,
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2485407, nassal)
David Barron and Todd Rakoff’s recent article, “In Defense of Big Waiver,” offered the first thorough analysis of agency power to impose policy through
statutory waivers.25 That article, however, preceded the final evolution of the NCLB waiver process and did not fully contemplate the issues NCLB
waivers have raised—issues that accentuate the balance of powers at stake between Congress and agencies, and the federalism tensions between
the federal and state governments. In particular, the
NCLB waiver process raises the issue of whether
Congress must articulate a conditional waiver power and the extent to which Congress
must set any limits on the conditions an agency can impose. As currently written, NCLB lacks explicit
language pertaining to the scope of the waiver power, much less the power to impose conditions.26 Neither scholarship nor judicial opinions directly
address this fundamental problem of allocating conditional waiver authority between the executive and the legislature. Against this dearth of literature,
this Article reasons that imposing new conditions through waiver that go beyond the scope of an
organic statute violates the Spending Clause, the nondelegation doctrine, and the
organic statute itself. First, Spending Clause doctrine requires that Congress clearly
articulate all conditions on federal funds in advance.27 While there are distinctions between agency conditions and
statutory conditions, post facto imposition of new conditions on federal funds through waiver
violates the clear notice rule embodied in Spending Clause precedent. NCLB does not suggest,
and indeed even contradicts, the conditions that the Department of Education ultimately
imposed on states.28 In other words, Spending Clause doctrine restricts agencies’ ability to use
conditional waiver power to change the rules of the game in unexpected ways—which is what
Secretary Duncan did Second, Spending Clause doctrine prohibits Congress from using federal
funds to coerce states, to the point of compulsion, to adopt federal policies.29 As Samuel
Bagenstos explains, “when Congress takes an entrenched federal program that provides large
sums to the states and tells states they can continue to participate in that program only if they also
agree to participate in a separate and independent program,” Congress
unconstitutionally coerces states.30 With waivers, an agency rather than Congress is coercing
states, but the same principle applies insofar as the agency is exercising delegated authority. To continue receiving NCLB
funds and remain compliant, the Secretary required states to adopt an entirely new set of
conditions that fundamentally transformed the structure and substance of NCLB—one of the
more entrenched federal programs in existence—into an independent program focused on a nationalized curriculum and teacher assessments.31 The
funds at stake with NCLB waivers were not as large as those in
the National Federation of Independent Business
v. Sebelius32—the only case in which the Court has found conditions unconstitutionally coercive—but
NCLB funds and nonmonetary sanctions have an analogous impact on states and districts. As such, the Secretary’s conditions
raise serious questions as to whether he may have unconstitutionally coerced states. Third,
the Constitution prohibits Congress from delegating its lawmaking function to
agencies.33 The Court has adopted a permissive standard to police congressional delegations,
requiring only that Congress articulate an “intelligible principle” to guide agency action.34
This Article argues that, because waivers occur in a much different context than traditional delegations and are one step
further removed from congressional will, the Court should apply the intelligible principle standard more rigorously to conditional waivers. But even
under the current liberal approach, a power
to condition NCLB waivers as the Secretary might deem
necessary raises constitional concerns because such a power would permit the
Secretary to impose terms that know no bounds. Given the nature of education, the Secretary would
possess unilateral power to pursue almost any policy imaginable and eliminate the
democratic processes at the local, state, and, more recently, federal levels that have
always debated and decided these issues. As such, the delegation would be different in scope and nature than the
delegations previously upheld by the Court. As such, the delegation would be different in scope and nature than the delegations previously upheld by
the Court. A court, however, need not even reach the intelligible principle analysis because NCLB
does not explicitly grant the
Secretary power to condition waivers. Thus, the waivers also fail on statutory grounds. Even if a court
inferred that Congress had implicitly granted the Secretary the authority to impose
conditions on NCLB waivers, the power would not include the authority to condition
waivers with terms that fundamentally alter the underlying legislative framework.35 At most,
waiver power implies an authority to condition waivers with terms designed to ensure
substantial and continued compliance with the existing legislative framework. Waivers of
that sort are more appropriately understood as partial waivers, not full waivers with new conditions
attached. Moreover, the Supreme Court has increasingly construed statutes narrowly when the power asserted by an agency would otherwise
push the constitutional bounds of permissible congressional delegation.36

And, extinction

Henkin, Former President of the American Society of International

Law & Law Professor at Columbia, 88
(Louis, “The Constitutional Framework,” The Atlantic Community
Quarterly, Spring)
Lawyers, even constitutional lawyers, argue “technically,” with references to text and principles of
construction, drawing lines, and insisting on sharp distinctions. Such discussion sometimes seems ludicrous when
it addresses issues of life and death and Armaggedon. But behind the words of the Constitution and
the technicalities of constitutional construction lie the basic values of the United States–limited government even at the
cost of inefficiency; safeguards against autarchy and oligarchy; democratic values represented differently in the presidency and in
Congress, as well as in the intelligent participation and consent of the governed. In the nuclear age the technicalities
of constitutionalism and of constitutional jurisprudence safeguard also the values and concerns of
civilized people committed to human survival .
 Legal risk/SOP DA

The counterplan imposes illegitimate waivers that don’t have a legal basis
and hurt separation of powers
Riley 12 (Benjamin Riley is the founder of Deans for Impact, a new organization composed of
deans of colleges of education working together to transform educator preparation in the US. He
previously worked as the policy director for a national education nonprofit organization and as a
deputy attorney general for the State of California, working primarily on education-related policy
issues., March 2012, “Waive to the Top: The Dangers of Legislating Education Policy from the
Executive Branch”, http://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/-waive-to-the-top-the-
dangers-of-legislating-education-policy-from-the-executive-branch_151023576072.pdf, nassal)
The Legal Risk The first risk facing the ESEA Flexibility plan: does the administration possess
the actual authority to grant waivers with conditions? The first thing to note is that section 9401 of
ESEA clearly gives the secretary of education the authority to waive NCLB’s accountability provisions, the widely loathed adequate
yearly progress (AYP) metric. Specifically, the law requires states to explain how a proposed waiver would
“increase the quality of instruction [and] improve the academic achievement of students”
and to “describe, for each school year, specific, measurable educational goals . . . that
would be affected by the waiver and the methods to be used to measure annually such
progress for meeting such goals and outcomes.”7 What section 9401 does not obviously
do, however, is provide the ED with the authority to prescribe the methods states seeking a
waiver will use or—perhaps more important—set additional conditions to obtain a waiver. The
statute is simply silent on this front. Maybe the ED can designate in advance what “methods” it deems acceptable—for
example, adopting Common Core standards, focusing on the bottom 10 percent of schools, and developing teacher evaluations—but then
again, maybe not. The absence of a prohibition does not equal a mandate of authority.
What do the courts say about this? By now, it is well established that Congress, as befits the branch of government
entrusted to enact laws, is authorized by the Constitution’s spending-power clause to attach
conditions to the receipt of federal funds in pursuit of a policy objective. The Supreme
Court recognizes four restrictions, however, on Congress’s authority in this respect. First, any condition
attached to federal funds must promote general welfare (which, in practice, means anything goes). Second,
and most important, the condition must be “unambiguous, enabling the state to exercise
their choice knowingly, cognizant of the consequences of their participation.” Third,
conditions are illegitimate if they are unrelated to the purpose of the law or regulation
they are attached to (for example, Congress could not attach a Medicare provision to No Child
Left Behind). Finally, other constitutional provisions may independently bar the grant of
federal funds.8 Returning now to NCLB, Congress has applied all sorts of conditions to the receipt of
federal education funding. Indeed, the entire federal education accountability regime (testing,
AYP, and standards) set forth under NCLB involves states creating state plans that meet the
requirements of the various titles that comprise NCLB (for example, Title I funds low-income schools, and Title II
supports teacher training). So, no one seriously questions whether Congress possesses the authority to condition education funding
in this fashion. But the question of whether the Department of Education has the authority to
attach explicit conditions to education funding is another matter entirely.9 While case law
addressing this question is sparse, one interesting decision does hint at how a court might view this issue: Commonwealth of Virginia Department of
Education v. Riley. 10 The Riley case involved the intersection between federal education law—in this case, the Individuals with Disabilities Education
Under IDEA (much like NCLB), the federal government
Act (IDEA)—and Virginia’s state education policy.
provides financial assistance to states to fund the education of disabled students, provided that
states submit a plan that grants “all children with disabilities the right to a free
appropriate public education.”11 For many years, Virginia had a policy wherein it ceased to
provide a free education to disabled students who were expelled or suspended long-term
for misconduct unrelated to their disabilities. Upon learning of this in 1993, the ED threatened to
withhold the entirety of Virginia’s annual $60 million IDEA grant unless Virginia agreed to
provide educational services (such as private tutoring) to the disabled students who had been expelled or suspended long-term.12
In other words, the ED imposed a condition on Virginia receiving federal education funding. The
United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit wasted little time invalidating the ED’s attempt to meddle with Virginia’s education policy. The
court found that IDEA requires states only to provide disabled children with access to
free public education; the act does not require states to “provide education services even
to those handicapped youths who have forfeited the right to a free education by willfully
engaging in contumacious conduct.”13 The court also held that “for Congress to condition
a state’s receipt of federal funds, it must do so clearly and unambiguously.” Put another way, if
“Congress has not unequivocally conditioned receipt of federal funds in the manner
claimed by the Department of Education,” then the ED cannot require states to adopt its
favored policy. The court concluded that because neither the text of IDEA, nor its
legislative history, nor even its purpose “suggests, much less mandates with the clarity necessary to confirm that
Congress actually confronted and deliberately decided,” that states must provide private tutoring to disabled
students who are expelled.14 Ultimately, the court decried the Department of Education’s
intrusion upon Virginia’s education policy as violating the Tenth Amendment to the
Constitution. In the words of Judge Michael Luttig: I would think that a Tenth Amendment claim of the highest order lies where, as here, the
Federal Government withholds the entirety of a substantial - 3 - For superintendents, principals, and teachers fearing the stigma of being placed in
NCLB’s regime of “program improvement,” this newfound flexibility provides antacid-like relief. federal grant on the ground that the States refuse to
fulfill their federal obligation in some insubstantial respect rather than submit to the policy dictates of Washington in a matter peculiarly within their
powers as sovereign States. In such a circumstance, the
argument as to coercion is much more than rhetoric;
it is an argument of fact.15 The application of Riley to NCLB waivers should be obvious. In
both instances, the ED has imposed a condition that does not derive from a clear and
unambiguous congressional mandate. Nonetheless, there are some caveats. For one thing, the Riley decision is what
lawyers like to call “distinguishable” from the administration’s waiver proposal. Whereas Virginia had no choice but to comply with federal demands to
receive IDEA funding, the administration’s ESEA Flexibility offer provides states with a genuine choice: (1) seek a waiver, or (2) maintain the status quo
under NCLB. Of course, both the president and US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan have said NCLB is broken, so this choice is some what
Hobson’s-like, but that may not matter legally. Finally, a complicated question also exists surrounding who has the legal standing to stop the
administration from granting waivers. States that have received a waiver are obviously not going to litigate, and states that do not apply for a waiver
would have trouble showing any “injury” that could be traced to the administration’s granting of waivers to other states. The most obvious candidate,
then, may be Congress itself, but “the law of congressional standing . . . is a doctrine fraught with analytical inconsistency and uncertainty.”16 Still, one
has to wonder whether House Speaker John Boehner’s legal team is looking into the possibility. Despite the legal haziness, one might reasonably ask:
how should a court adjudicate the legality of ESEA Flexibility? Certainly, the goals embodied in the administration’s proposal sync up nicely with many
already contained in NCLB. It is also a powerful legal defense to point out that states are not obligated to seek a waiver. And the fact that everyone
agrees that NCLB is broken will not be lost on a judge. At the same time,
a very serious separation-of-powers
argument can be made against conditional waivers: “Given that Congress cannot act, I
am acting,” Obama said when he announced the waiver plan, but that is not exactly how
our tripartite system of “small-d” democratic government is supposed to work.17 And while most leftof-center readers
will not be persuaded by Judge Luttig’s plea to the Tenth Amendment, consider the following hypothetical scenario: It is January 2013, and our newly
elected Republican president has offered waivers to states under the Affordable Care Act, provided they agree to raise the Medicaid eligibility age,
reduce health benefits for illegal immigrants, and defund family planning efforts. Many Republican governors eagerly apply for and receive such
waivers while Democrats scream bloody murder, and America drifts toward two separate health care systems, one red and the other blue. The problem
with political expediency is that eventually the perpetrator may become the victim.

Separation of powers solves nuclear war

Forrester 89 (Ray, Professor at Hastings College of Law, “Presidential Wars in the Nuclear
Age: An Unresolved Problem,” George Washington Law Review, Aug, 57 Geo. Wash. L. Rev.
1636, LN) we don’t endorse gendered language.
A basic theory--if not the basic theory of our Constitution--is that concentration of power in any one
person , or one group, is dangerous to mankind. The Constitution , therefore, contains a strong system of
checks and balances, starting with the separation of powers between the President,
Congress, and the Supreme Court . The message is that no one of them is safe with unchecked power. Yet, in what is probably the most
dangerous governmental power ever possessed, we find the potential for world destruction lodged in the discretion of one person. As a result of public indignation aroused by
the Vietnam disaster, in which tens of thousands lost their lives in military actions initiated by a succession of Presidents, Congress in 1973 adopted, despite presidential veto,
the War Powers Resolution. Congress finally asserted its checking and balancing duties in relation to the making of presidential wars. Congress declared in section 2(a) that its
purpose was to fulfill the intent of the framers of the Constitution of the United States and insure that the collective judgment of both the Congress and the President will apply to
the introduction of United States Armed Forces into hostilities, or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances, and to the
continued use of such forces in hostilities or in such situations. The law also stated in section 3 that (t)he President in every possible instance shall consult with Congress before
introducing United States Armed Forces into hostilities or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated. . . . Other limitations not essential to this
discussion are also provided. The intent of the law is clear. Congress undertook to check the President, at least by prior consultation, in any executive action that might lead to
hostilities and war. (*1638) President Nixon, who initially vetoed the resolution, claimed that it was an unconstitutional restriction on his powers as Executive and Commander in
Chief of the military. His successors have taken a similar view. Even so, some of them have at times complied with the law by prior consultation with representatives of
Congress, but obedience to the law has been uncertain and a subject of continuing controversy between Congress and the President. Ordinarily, the issue of the
constitutionality of a law would be decided by the Supreme Court. But, despite a series of cases in which such a decision has been sought, the Supreme Court has refused to
settle the controversy. The usual ground for such a refusal is that a "political question" is involved. The rule is well established that the federal judiciary will decide only
"justiciable" controversies. "Political questions" are not "justiciable." However, the standards established by the Supreme Court in 1962 in Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186, to
determine the distinction between "justiciable controversies" and "political questions" are far from clear. One writer observed that the term "political question" (a)pplies to all
those matters of which the court, at a given time, will be of the opinion that it is impolitic or inexpedient to take jurisdiction. Sometimes this idea of inexpediency will result from
the fear of the vastness of the consequences that a decision on the merits might entail. Finkelstein, Judicial Self-Limitation, 37 HARV. L. REV. 338, 344 (1924)(footnote
omitted). It is difficult to defend the Court's refusal to assume the responsibility of decisionmaking on this most critical issue. The Court has been fearless in deciding other
issues of "vast consequences" in many historic disputes, some involving executive war power. It is to be hoped that the Justices will finally do their duty here. But in the
meantime the spectre of single-minded power persists, fraught with all of the frailties of human nature that each human possesses, including the President. World history is filled
with tragic examples. Even if the Court assumed its responsibility to tell us whether the Constitution gives Congress the necessary power to check the President, the War
Powers Resolution itself is unclear. Does the Resolution require the President to consult with Congress before launching a nuclear attack? It has been asserted that "introducing
United States Armed Forces into hostilities" refers only to military personnel and does not include the launching of nuclear missiles alone. In support of this interpretation, it has
been argued that Congress was concerned about the human losses in Vietnam and in other presidential wars, rather than about the weaponry. Congress, of course, can amend
the Resolution to state explicitly that "the introduction of Armed Forces" includes missiles as well as personnel. However, the President could continue to act without prior
consultation by renewing the claim first made by President (*1639) Nixon that the Resolution is an unconstitutional invasion of the executive power. Therefore, the real solution,
in the absence of a Supreme Court decision, would appear to be a constitutional amendment. All must obey a clear rule in the Constitution. The adoption of an amendment is
very difficult. Wisely, Article V requires that an amendment may be proposed only by the vote of two-thirds of both houses of Congress or by the application of the legislatures of
two-thirds of the states, and the proposal must be ratified by the legislatures or conventions of three-fourths of the states. Despite the difficulty, the Constitution has been
amended twenty-six times. Amendment can be done when a problem is so important that it arouses the attention and concern of a preponderant majority of the American
people. But the people must be made aware of the problem. It is hardly necessary to belabor the relative importance of the control of nuclear warfare. A constitutional
amendment may be, indeed, the appropriate method. But the most difficult issue remains. What should the amendment provide? How can the problem be solved specifically?
The Constitution in section 8 of Article I stipulates that "(t)he Congress shall have power . . . To declare War. . . ." The idea seems to be that only these many representatives of
the people, reflecting the public will, should possess the power to commit the lives and the fortunes of the nation to warfare. This approach makes much more sense in a
democratic republic than entrusting the decision to one person, even though he may be designated the "Commander in Chief" of the military forces. His power is to command

the war after the people, through their representatives, have made the basic choice to submit themselves and their children to war. There is a recurring
relevation of a paranoia of power throughout human history that has impelled one leader
after another to draw their people into wars which , in hindsight, were foolish, unnecessary,
and , in some instances, downright insane . Whatever may be the psychological influences that drive the single decisionmaker to these irrational
commitments of the lives and fortunes of others, the fact remains that the behavior is a predictable one in any government
that does not provide an effective check and balance against uncontrolled power in the
hands of one human . We, naturally, like to think that our leaders are above such irrational behavior. Eventually, however, human nature, with all its
weakness, asserts itself whatever the setting. At least that is the evidence that experience and history give us, even in our own relatively benign society, where the Executive is

subject to the rule of law. (*1640) Vietnam and other more recent engagements show that it can happen and
has happened here. But the "nuclear football" --the ominous "black bag" -- remains in the sole
possession of the President . And, most important, his decision to launch a nuclear missile would be, in fact if
not in law, a declaration of nuclear war, one which the nation and, indeed, humanity in general, probably
would be unable to survive.
 Circumvention

Waivers don’t solve – enforcement is too difficult and states circumvent

Riley 12 (Benjamin Riley is the founder of Deans for Impact, a new organization composed of
deans of colleges of education working together to transform educator preparation in the US. He
previously worked as the policy director for a national education nonprofit organization and as a
deputy attorney general for the State of California, working primarily on education-related policy
issues., March 2012, “Waive to the Top: The Dangers of Legislating Education Policy from the
Executive Branch”, http://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/-waive-to-the-top-the-
dangers-of-legislating-education-policy-from-the-executive-branch_151023576072.pdf, nassal)
The Implementation Risk Now let us imagine a happy scenario for the administration, in which an
overwhelming majority of states have obtained an ESEA waiver, and the skilled attorneys at the US
Department of Justice have successfully slain the rash of lawsuits filed around the country. Under such a
scenario, the president can declare victory and feel confident that our nation’s education system is back on track.
Or can he? Well, no. Because even if the administration survives the clear-and-present
political and legal risks it faces, that will still leave the task of making sure the states
actually implement the policies they have adopted and that these policies actually
improve the education we provide to our children. To be sure, this is a risk inherent to any
change in education policy but one that is significantly heightened here. It is all too easy
for state departments of education to pretend to be faithfully implementing federal law
while secretly (or not so secretly) working to undermine it. If the civil servants who are
responsible for executing the administration of state education policy conclude that waivers will
not be around for very long, how hard will they work to implement waiver-related policy?
How hard would you work on a project if you thought it might be scrapped in a year or
so? There is also the nontrivial concern that the ED lacks the capacity to oversee fifty different
state education programs, some of which will be waiver programs and others of which will continue to function under NCLB’s
accountability metrics. The latter states might reasonably assume that, since President Obama and Secretary Duncan have
declared NCLB broken, the ED will not be in a position to enforce accountability metrics. The result
may be the creation of a two-tiered federal education system—where waiver states are
held accountable and NCLB states are not held accountable—that will be radically
complicated to oversee. This is a patchwork quilt that is already threatening to come
apart at the seams.
 Political Backlash

Waivers were already implemented under the Obama administration and

failed because of legal and political backlash
Riley 12 (Benjamin Riley is the founder of Deans for Impact, a new organization composed of
deans of colleges of education working together to transform educator preparation in the US. He
previously worked as the policy director for a national education nonprofit organization and as a
deputy attorney general for the State of California, working primarily on education-related policy
issues., March 2012, “Waive to the Top: The Dangers of Legislating Education Policy from the
Executive Branch”, http://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/-waive-to-the-top-the-
dangers-of-legislating-education-policy-from-the-executive-branch_151023576072.pdf, nassal)
In early February 2012, President Barack Obama delivered long-awaited news: it is the end of No
Child Left Behind as we know it. To quote from Monty Python, No Child Left Behind (NCLB) has “ceased to be, shuffled off its
mortal coil, run down the curtain, and joined the choir invisible.” In a speech delivered at the White House, President Obama announced
that eleven states will no longer be required to meet NCLB’s requirements for improving student
learning. “We’ve offered every state the same deal,” he declared. “We’ve said, if you’re willing to
set higher, more honest standards than the ones that were set by No Child Left Behind,
then we’re going to give you the flexibility to meet those standards.”1 A quick history lesson on recent
education legislation: No Child Left Behind is the name for the current reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), a
statute passed by the United States Congress that has established federal education policy since 1965. For the last five years or so, a general
consensus has emerged among education policymakers and practitioners that NCLB is seriously flawed and in need of fixing. Though ESEA
technically expired in 2007, it will remain the law of the land until a new law replaces it, which is something Congress has, until this point, failed to do.2
And so NCLB has continued to lumber along, zombie-like, despite its rejection by virtually every major education constituency, including teachers,
parents, and policymakers. Meanwhile, two years ago, the Obama administration launched a competition called Race to the Top (RTT). States were
invited to compete for federal dollars in return for adopting challenging academic standards (known as the Common Core State Standards), turning
around low-performing schools, building useful data systems, and recruiting and training effective teachers and principals. During the two phases of the
competition, the US Department of Education (ED) received applications from forty-six states and awarded grants to eleven states and the District of
Columbia. Although competitive grant programs can be politically unpopular— particularly when there are more losers than winners— President
Obama remains an enthusiastic supporter of RTT, calling it “the most meaningful reform of our public schools in a generation.”3 With numerous
schools facing NCLB-related penalties— an estimated 48 percent of schools failed to make adequate yearly progress in 20114—the
Obama
administration announced in September 2011 that it would offer states “waivers” to get
out from under NCLB. This proposal, which the administration refers to as ESEA Flexibility, takes many of the
ideas underlying RTT and expands their application in order to slay the NCLB zombie.5 To
receive a waiver, states must adopt college- and careerready standards (read: the Common Core);
develop a plan to identify and improve the bottom 15 percent of schools (or “priority” and “focus”
schools); and develop teacher and principal evaluation systems “based on multiple valid
measures, including student progress over time.”6 In essence, this system could be called
“Waive to the Top.” For the moment, the administration’s waiver plan looks to be a winning strategy on a number of fronts. President
Obama, for instance, can point to waivers as an example of the administration’s taking bold action while a do-nothing Congress dithers and squabbles.
Governors and state chiefs that receive waivers can claim victory back home and allege that they have freed their state from the tyranny of NCLB’s
onerous requirements. And for superintendents, principals, and teachers fearing the stigma of being placed in NCLB’s regime of “program
improvement,” this newfound flexibility provides antacid-like relief. Yet, there
are hints of storm clouds gathering afar.
Indeed, the central thesis of this piece is that the
administration’s ESEA Flexibility plan carries three
serious risks—primarily legal, but political and operational as well—that may prove to be its
undoing. This should give both waiver skeptics and supporters pause, because once we get past the political rhetoric, there are real
kids whose education opportunities will be affected should this country descend into
education policy chaos. What follows is an assessment of the rocky road ahead.
 No Authority

The counterplan unconstitutionally devotes lawmaking powers to the DOE

that failed under Obama
Hess 11 (Frederick M. Hess is a resident scholar and the director of Education Policy Studies
at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he works on K–12 and higher education
issues., June 14th, 2011, “"Waivers" Are Fine...Back-Door Legislating Via "Strings"? Not So
Much”, http://www.frederickhess.org/2011/06/waivers-are-fineback-door-legislating-via-strings,
nassal)
First, as a general matter, the executive branch is not empowered to make laws. It's empowered to
execute the laws that the legislative branch writes (hence, the term "executive branch"). If Duncan doesn't like that,
or finds it too restrictive, he can take it up with Madison...or Montesquieu. But that's the deal. Second, the executive and the
legislative branches are not co-equal. The American founders very explicitly embraced
the logic of legislative supremacy, which is why Article I of the Constitution is devoted to
the legislative branch and spells out all those cool powers, and why the legislative branch, and only the
legislative branch, gets to write laws. Congress can sometimes choose to delegate rule-
making and administrative authority to executive agencies (e.g. the SEC or FDA), but it has not
done so in this case. The executive branch has no authority to issue legislative timelines to Congress,
and Cabinet secretaries have no authority to impose their will if Congress doesn't behave as they'd like. In 2001, Congress passed the No Child Left
Behind Act. Like it or not (and, as readers know, I've never been crazy about it), NCLB
is the law of the land until
Congress says otherwise. The law gives Duncan the authority to grant waivers, but not to
use that authority to compel states to adopt other measures as a quid pro quo. This
scheme for back-door legislating of which Duncan seems so proud, and to which it appears ED's general
counsel has (unbelievably) signed off, is as politically tone-deaf as it is Constitutionally offensive. I can only imagine how
loudly (and reasonably) Obama partisans would scream if a Romney administration started using Heath Care Reform Act waivers as a strategy to
compel states to accept legislative changes that Congress wouldn't endorse.
 at: not doe

Waivers are done by the DOE

Brown and Ayers 11 (Cynthia G. Brown is Vice President for Education Policy at the
Center for American Progress. Jeremy Ayers is the Senior Education Policy Analyst at the
Center., Jeremy Ayers is the Associate Director of Federal Education Programs at the Center
for American Progress, September 23rd, 2011, “Education Waivers 101”,
https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education/news/2011/09/23/10295/education-waivers-
101/, nassal)
What is a waiver? ESEA, like almost all federal laws, allows states to forego, or waive, certain
requirements of the law as long as they receive permission from the federal
government—in this case the Department of Education. Some aspects of the law cannot be
waived, such as civil rights protections, programs for parent involvement, and certain fiscal requirements around the allocation of
funds. But the rest is fair game. States submit applications for waivers, including input from their school districts,
to the secretary for consideration. They must identify what parts of the law they wish to have waived, why they are
seeking such a waiver, and what actions they will take to ensure students continue to make academic progress. The
secretary has full discretion to decide which requests are granted but must publish who
receives a waiver in the Federal Register.
solvency deficits [disciplined devolution]
 disciplined devolution fails

Disciplined devolution fails – state non-compliance, changing

administrations, lack of flexibility, and weak enforcement
1NC Kurzweil 15 (Director, Educational Transformation Program, Ithaka S+R; Lecturer in
Law, Columbia Law School (Martin A., “Disciplined Devolution and the New Education
Federalism,” 103 Cal. L. Rev. 565 (2015), HeinOnline, p.588)
Yet achieving the full potential of disciplined devolution may prove elusive. The ways in
which the education example fell short of disciplined devolution's predicted benefits
reflect a precarious balance of centralizing and decentralizing forces. While the internal
pressure of these competing forces has disrupted implementation, exogenous forces
pose a potential systemic risk. Political change, premature legislative lock-in of
substantive policy changes, a decrease in the federal government's leverage, or a failure
to recognize the nature and benefits of the new structure could each tip the model into a
mandate-based, top-down governance structure or leave policy making to states without
adequate oversight. The political risk to disciplined devolution takes three forms. First, a
change in administration could lead to a change in the agency's approach to policy or
interstate relations. Second, a continuing administration may change its approach as the
political calculus changes. Finally, changes in the political climate in states may disrupt
the model. The potential for each of these political changes exists in the education context, as
national Republican politicians have positioned themselves against the Obama Administration's policies, 360 teachers' unions and
other Democrat-leaning advocates continue to pressure the Administration to roll back elements of the initiatives,361 and
aspects of the reforms remain controversial in the states.362 A second risk for disciplined
devolution is federal legislation that prematurely locks in substantive policies without
preserving the governance structure. Success of some policies in some contexts may convince Congress to
require those policies in all contexts. Legislative incorporation of the lessons learned through policy
experimentation is helpful to disciplined devolution, but only if flexibility to deviate is retained.
Such flexibility is necessary to motivate critical policy analysis on the part of state and
local actors and to permit continued experimentation and adaptation. Legislators are
liable to mistake success of a particular policy for success of the policy-making process
and act on that mistake to cripple the policy-making process. There is some evidence of this risk
in existing bills to reauthorize ESEA. 363 Although premature legislative incorporation of
substantive policy runs a risk of shifting the balance to uniform centralization,
excessively delaying an update to default legislation may also undermine the framework.
It is critical for disciplined devolution that the default statutory scheme remains credible. If it is not, states will have
no reason to take it seriously, and the federal agency's leverage will be diminished. The risk of
legislative obsolescence is illustrated by NCLB's requirement that all students achieve grade-level
proficiency on statewide tests by the end of the 2014 school year. The 2014 deadline, and its related
funding penalties, was a major motivator for states to participate in ESEA Flexibility. Now that t he deadline has passed,
states with waivers may assume that the provision is moot, or that the Education
Department's threats to withdraw funding are not credible, and cease to take their
commitments under ESEA Flexibility seriously. The NCLB default has also been
weakened by the Education Department's willingness to negotiate alternative
arrangements with the handful of states that did not apply for or were denied a waiver.365 A
final, pervasive risk is that the relevant federal and state actors fail to recognize the
nature of the new governance structure and therefore unwittingly take steps that weaken
it. In other words, disciplined devolution might disappear without anyone realizing it existed in
the first place. There is a high risk of such a category error in the education case study. As
discussed above, most education commentators have not focused on the structural changes
of Race to the Top and ESEA Flexibility at all, and those who have generally mistake them for
federal incursion or unaccountable decentralization.366 If the Administration or Congress takes action on
the basis of either of these characterizations, rather than the disciplined devolution understanding, it would jeopardize the regime.
Lessening the rigor of evaluation and monitoring to mitigate a perceived federal
incursion would lead some states to shirk their substantive commitments and reduce the
incentive for collaborative policy experimentation. Conversely, making the federal role more
prescriptive to combat a perceived lack of accountability or standardization would limit
states' flexibility to tailor policies and experiment. It might also lead them to demonstrate
formal compliance while ignoring or undermining the underlying federal goals (as under
NCLB and ESEA).
at: impact
 Devolution Elsewhere Solves

Disciplined devolution is other areas like ACA and welfare solve their
impact
1NC Kurzweil 15 (Director, Educational Transformation Program, Ithaka S+R; Lecturer in
Law, Columbia Law School (Martin A., “Disciplined Devolution and the New Education
Federalism,” 103 Cal. L. Rev. 565 (2015), HeinOnline, p.588)
Throughout this Article, while analyzing closely only the education context, I have maintained that
disciplined devolution has more general applicability. The Article points to programs under the
ACA and welfare-towork in which features of disciplined devolution are evident or incipient.370 On
the one hand, it may be that the dynamic I have described in the education context is not feasible
in these or other contexts. On the other hand, the structure may be achieved by recognizing its potential applicability,
incorporating any missing components, and adapting them as required by the context. As increasingly fractured national politics
push more and more policy making to federal administrative agencies and down to the state and local level,experiments in
alternative governance structures-some more successful than others-are likely to
blossom. The benefits identified by this Article's analysis of the new education federalism suggest that disciplined devolution
has the potential to be one of the successful alternatives, and that it would be worthwhile to seek out opportunities to apply and
reinforce nascent instances of it.
kritik answers
2AC Stuff
 2ac at: interpreting poetry bad
Interpretation is inevitable. When you vote, you have made a value
judgment on the speech and thereby decided what it means.
Sontag 66. Susan Sontag – http://www.uiowa.edu/~c08g001d/Sontag_AgainstInterp.pdf
The fact is, all Western consciousness of and reflection upon art have remained within the confines
staked out by the Greek theory of art as mimesis or representation. It is through this theory that art as such -
above and beyond given works of art - becomes problematic, in need of defense. And it is the defense
of art which gives birth to the odd vision by which something we have learned to call
"form" is separated off from something we have learned to call "content," and to the well-
intentioned move which makes content essential and form accessory. Even in modern times,
when most artists and critics have discarded the theory of art as representation of an outer reality in favor of the theory of art as
subjective expression, the main feature of the mimetic theory persists. Whether
we conceive of the work of art
on the model of a picture (art as a picture of reality) or on the model of a statement (art as the statement
of the artist), content still comes first. The content may have changed. It may now be less figurative, less lucidly realistic.
But it is still assumed that a work of art is its content. Or, as it's usually put today, that a work of art by definition says something.
("What X is saying is . . . ," "What X is trying to say is . . . ," "What X said is . . ." etc., etc.) 2 None of us can ever retrieve that
innocence before all theory when art knew no need to justify itself, when one did not ask of a work of art what it said because one
now to the end of consciousness, we are stuck with the
knew (or thought one knew) what it did. From
task of defending art. We can only quarrel with one or another means of defense. Indeed, we have an
obligation to overthrow any means of defending and justifying art which becomes
particularly obtuse or onerous or insensitive to contemporary needs and practice. This is
the case, today, with the very idea of content itself. Whatever it may have been in the past, the idea of content is today mainly a
developments in many arts may seem to
hindrance, a nuisance, a subtle or not so subtle philistinism. Though the actual
be leading us away from the idea that a work of art is primarily its content, the idea still exerts an
extraordinary hegemony. I want to suggest that this is because the idea is now perpetuated in the guise of a
certain way of encountering works of art thoroughly ingrained among most people who take
any of the arts seriously. What the overemphasis on the idea of content entails is the perennial, never consummated project of
interpretation. And, conversely, it is the habit of approaching works of art in order to interpret them that sustains the fancy that there
really is such a thing as the content of a work of art. 3 Of course, I don't mean interpretation in the broadest sense, the sense in
which Nietzsche (rightly) says, "There
are no facts, only interpretations." By interpretation, I mean here a
conscious act of the mind which illustrates a certain code, certain "rules" of
interpretation. Directed to art, interpretation means plucking a set of elements (the X, the Y, the Z, and
so forth) from the whole work. The task of interpretation is virtually one of translation. The interpreter says, Look, don't you
see that X is really - or, really means - A? That Y is really B? That Z is really C? What situation could prompt this curious project for
Interpretation first appears in the culture of
transforming a text? History gives us the materials for an answer.
late classical antiquity, when the power and credibility of myth had been broken by the
"realistic" view of the world introduced by scientific enlightenment. Once the question that haunts
post-mythic consciousness - that of the seemliness of religious symbols - had been asked, the ancient texts were, in their pristine
form, no longer acceptable. Then interpretation was summoned, to reconcile the ancient texts to "modern" demands. Thus, the
Stoics, to accord with their view that the gods had to be moral, allegorized away the rude features of Zeus and his boisterous clan in
Homer's epics. What Homer really designated by the adultery of Zeus with Leto, they explained, was the union between power and
wisdom. In the same vein, Philo of Alexandria interpreted the literal historical narratives of the Hebrew Bible as spiritual paradigms.
The story of the exodus from Egypt, the wandering in the desert for forty years, and the entry into the promised land, said Philo, was
Interpretation thus
really an allegory of the individual soul's emancipation, tribulations, and final deliverance.
presupposes a discrepancy between the clear meaning of the text and the demands of
(later) readers. It seeks to resolve that discrepancy. The situation is that for some reason a text has become
unacceptable; yet it cannot be discarded. Interpretation is a radical strategy for conserving an old text, which is
thought too precious to repudiate, by revamping it. The interpreter, without actually erasing or rewriting
the text, is altering it. But he can't admit to doing this. He claims to be only making it intelligible, by
disclosing its true meaning. However far the interpreters alter the text (another notorious example is the Rabbinic and
Christian "spiritual" interpretations of the clearly erotic Song of Songs), they must claim to be reading off a sense that is already
there. Interpretation in our own time, however, is even more complex. For the contemporary zeal for the project
of interpretation is often prompted not by piety toward the troublesome text (which may conceal
an aggression), but by an open aggressiveness, an overt contempt for appearances. The old style
of interpretation was insistent, but respectful; it erected another meaning on top of the literal one. The modern style of
interpretation excavates, and as it excavates, destroys; it digs "behind" the text, to find a
sub-text which is the true one. The most celebrated and influential modern doctrines, those of Marx and Freud,
actually amount to elaborate systems of hermeneutics, aggressive and impious theories of interpretation. All observable
phenomena are bracketed, in Freud's phrase, as manifest content. This manifest content must
be probed and pushed aside to find the true meaning - the latent content - beneath. For Marx, social
events like revolutions and wars; for Freud, the events of individual lives (like neurotic symptoms and slips of the
tongue) as well as texts (like a dream or a work of art) - all are treated as occasions for interpretation. According
to Marx and Freud, these events only seem to be intelligible. Actually, they have no meaning without interpretation. To understand is
to interpret. And to interpret is to restate the phenomenon, in effect to find an equivalent for it. Thus, interpretation
is not
(as most people assume) an
absolute value, a gesture of mind situated in some timeless realm of capabilities.
Interpretation must itself be evaluated, within a historical view of human consciousness.
In some cultural contexts, interpretation is a liberating act. It is a means of revising, of transvaluing, of escaping the dead past. In
Today is such a time, when the project
other cultural contexts, it is reactionary, impertinent, cowardly, stifling. 4
of interpretation is largely reactionary, stifling. Like the fumes of the automobile and of heavy industry which befoul
the urban atmosphere, the effusion of interpretations of art today poisons our sensibilities. In a
culture whose already classical dilemma is the hypertrophy of the intellect at the
expense of energy and sensual capability, interpretation is the revenge of the intellect
upon art. Even more. It is the revenge of the intellect upon the world. To interpret is to
impoverish, to deplete the world - in order to set up a shadow world of "meanings." It is
to turn the world into this world. ("This world"! As if there were any other.) The world, our world, is
depleted, impoverished enough. Away with all duplicates of it, until we again experience
more immediately what we have
deleuze supplement – bfhhr
deleuze aff
 at: marx
Orthodox materialism is wholly insufficient for today’s capitalism –
the determining of capital as an isolated and principle motor for the
progression of history within the frame of class relations neglects the
intersecting nature of struggles and enables capital to satisfy
demands using isolated gains in the system while continuing
operation through different spheres ignored as not “directly relevant”
to class analysis
Shukaitis 9. Stevphen, research fellow at the University of Leicester Centre for Philosophy and Political
Economy, Imaginal Machines: Autonomy & Self-Organization in the Revolutions of Everyday Life, p. 21-23, published
2009 //saenl

Class composition analysis is most often associated with forms of heretical Marxism
developed in Italy between the 1950s and 1970s. While it is difficult to treat class composition
analysis as a coherent and unified whole, it is marked by several distinct characteristics.
Notable among these is the consideration of class not as an immutable fixed identity, but as a
constantly evolving form of social relations expressed through technical and political
composition. Technical composition involves particular forms of labor that exist in a historical
situation, while political composition expresses the formation of the working class as an evolving
historical entity which develops through solidarity created during its struggle against
capitalism. The focus on class struggle as a dynamic motor of changing class relations is
an image that capital has strived to accommodate itself to in an attempt to convert class
struggle into the driving force of its own development. This is often referred to as the “reversal of
perspective.Ӧ The history of capitalism is all too often narrated in such a way that capital
appears to be the principal, and sometimes the only, actor . At best, labor and social
struggles merely react to the effects of a continuing pattern of development with little
hope of exerting any real influence. Harry Cleaver describes this as narrating from capital’s
perspective where capital envisages the working class as “a spectator to the global waltz
of capital’s autonomous self-activating development” (1979: 27). By shifting our focus to the
self-activity of the working class and its struggles against capitalism we pave the way
for exploration of how transformations in capitalism are a product of responses to social
struggles rather than simply an expression of the eternal dynamics of capitalist
development. These ongoing struggles against capitalism and the attempt of capital to
reabsorb their energies into its own workings create cycles of composition and decomposition.
A cycle of decomposition is little more, although that is more than enough, than the struggle of capital
against its subordinate position in relation the determination by the insurgencies against
it. Struggles increase the political composition and unity of the working class, its ability to act increasingly as
a self-determining force, which capital then responds to with a vast array of technologies of
domination, from psychology to economics, machines and methods of labor discipline, monetary inflation
and planned crises. One common example is the argument that the revolts and strikes against factory
work in the 1960s and 1970s caused capital to respond through the creation of new forms of
decentralized flexible production and organization, much like the forms that workers had
created for themselves by resisting the factory lines . It is argued that this is what caused
the transition from the factory line (characterized by standardized, repetitive labor) to forms of flexible
and mobile production forming a diffuse social factory.¶ The historical goal of class
composition was to assess the relation between social struggles and the changing
dynamics of capitalist relations, with a view toward understanding these dynamics and
better identifying how struggles could more effectively intervene to undermine and
subvert the workings of capital. Class composition analysis then came to involve not only looking at
struggles within the bounded factory and workplace, but also other forms of struggle that had not previously been
considered as a component of class struggle, such as the unwaged, housewives, agrarian workers and
students. This reconceptualization and recategorization of the working class in a broader
sense allows one to sense the diversity and strength of anticapitalist resistance beyond
the reactive struggles of factory workers in response to the latest dictates. As different
moments and forms of struggle connect with one another and find ways to extend themselves in the creation of
higher forms of social antagonism and resistance, they create a cycle of struggles.¶ Expanding these
cycles of struggle depends on understanding how struggles are communicated through what
Romano Alquati referred to as their vertical and horizontal articulations (1970). Struggles are
articulated vertically in their location within existing circuits of capitalist production and
reproduction, while their horizontal articulation is characterized by how they are embodied
and linked spatially. Understanding the changing nature of capitalist relations demands
an appreciation of the varied and connected layers through which struggles articulate
themselves and operate within, otherwise it is all too easy to fall back into an analysis
that sees the working of capital as being a closed and self-determining system . The Zerowork
Collective, attempting to summarize how these ideas have developed and to find ways to adapt them to new circumstances, argued
that the dynamics and cycles of struggle could be broken down to four interconnected
levels:¶ (1) The analysis of struggles: their content, direction, how they develop and
circulate, the ways in which workers find ways to bypass the technical constrictions of
production and find ways to affirm their own power¶ (2) How different struggles within varied sectors of
the working class affect and resonate with each other, how they affect the relations of
different parts of the working class under capitalism with each other and how they attempt to redefine and subvert
these enforced divisions¶ (3) The relation between working class struggles and their “official”
institutions (trade unions, political parties, etc.), keeping in mind that struggles often do not originate
from these organizations and may have to struggle against them as an obstacle to their own
development¶ (4) How these aspects are related to capitalist responses and organization in
terms of generalized social planning, technological development, patterns of employment, and the
ongoing transformation of capitalist society (1992: 111-112).

Their image of a total revolution is a tragic mythos of a lost past –

they fight on terrains already demarcated by their opponents,
ensuring they are beaten before they begin
Bifo 14. Franco “Bifo” Berardi, 2014, HUMANISM AND AUTOMATION: In the aftermath of the
last possible uprising
And Phenomenology of the end is not a political text, far from it. It is concerning the end of Modern Humanism and the shift from the
These notes are intended to situate this
realm of conjunction to the realm of connection, in the field of sensibility.
text in the present historical context. When I finished writing this text, in the years 2011-2012, an uprising of
sort was underway. Students were marching in London to protest against the cuts in
education, and a group of rioters surrounded the Charles and Camilla limousine, do you
remember?The Spanish acampada of May June 2011, and the Greek people’s strenuous
resistance tried to overthrow the financial dictatorship. In vain. In the Spring of 2011 the
Arab cities saw the widest uprising ever: young people were fighting against local
dictators and global financial capitalism. But the movement of precarious cognitive
workers, the avant-garde of the Egyptian and Syrian rebellions proved unable to lead a
long lasting democratic transformation of their countries, and the process was hijacked
and diverted by all kinds of identitarian fanaticism, and turned finally into a military
confrontation opposing nationalism and fundamentalism. In September 2011 the uprising
exploded in New York city, and the outburst of Occupy Wall street was followed by a fresh
wave of occupations aiming to the reactivation of the social body of cognitive precarious
labor. The occupy spirit resounded in many places of the world, particularly in the Gezi Park protests and occupations, in the Brasilian
massive protests of Summer 2013. These processes of uprising have been different as different are the cultural contexts and the
political outcome, but they share nonetheless a common ground: the social composition of labor, the emerging force of cognitive
workers simultaneously global and precarious. Precarious cognitarians gave the global process a common character and meaning:
the search of autonomy of knowledge and technology from the grip of financial capitalism. If the attempt to resist and subvert the
corporate capture of knowledge has been the defining novelty of this movement, the recomposition of the social and erotic body of
Media-activism, the
the general intellect is in my opinion the hidden meaning of the overall process named Occupy.
development of P2P technologies, and also the experimentation of alternative currencies
can be viewed as examples of the attempt to re-appropriate the product of knowledge, while
the occupation of spaces has been the example of a process of recomposition of the erotic body of society and an attempt to conjoin
with the cognitive potency of the networked general intellect.But at the end of the day both these processes
have proved unable to break the chain of debt and financial automatisms that are
provoking the impoverishment of social life. The 2011 uprising has turned into the ultimate
catastrophic defeat: in the Arab world military dictatorship and fundamentalism are now
occupying all the political space. In New York city twelve months after Occupy Wall Street
the movement changed its name into Occupy Sandy, realizing that only the catastrophe
has been left to be occupied. In Europe the defeat takes a special meaning, marking the end of a long historical cycle:
the conflict that started in Paris in June 1848, the gigantic conflict opposing workers against capitalists
is over, and the workers have lost. Forever. There will be no return match, there will be no
revenge. Social history is not like a chess championship: if you lose the game you cannot
arrange the pawns on the chessboard and start a new game. In social history when the worker
class has been defeated everything changed on the chessboard, and the pawns changed
their color and their shape, and they are no more were they were. Therefore social imagination has to find the way
to a new process, the chessboard itself has to be changed, as the field of action will shift from politics to techno-
science, from economic negotiation to the desertion of the economy, to the creation of non-economic spheres of
symbolic action. The 2011 uprising erupted in different political and social situations, and in the different contexts people were
nurturing different expectations. But a common consciousness emerged: financial capitalism is destroying the
future of the precarious generation worldwide, and simultaneously is submitting
knowledge production. Precarization is affecting every sphere of working activity, but precariousness is particularly suited
to the recombinant networked labor, particularly those forms of labor that can be reduced to information. This is why precarity is the
general form of cognitive labor. By the point of view of the precarious cognitive work, the 2011 uprising was the beginning of a new
process that will traverse the social landscape in the decades to come. But the rebellion of precarious cognitive work has to get free
The late
of the legacy of the late modern proletarian revolts and the historical legacy of the industrial conflicts of the past.
modern proletarian revolt is over, as the industrial worker class has been defeated long
ago, since when the opportunity offered by the technological revolution was missed. The
possibility of a general redistribution of work time was missed, and the worker’s movement marched against technological innovation
Now it is too late to subvert this defeat. I don’t think that the old
rather than taking advantage of it.
history will vanish. There will be more rebellions, more riots, more wars and scarcities and
huge mass mobilization, and rage and despair. You can bet on it. As huge as they will be,
they will only be residuals: ineffective, unable to touch the core of financial abstraction,
unable to change the direction of the automated machine. Residuals will be the bodies, the sentiments,
the events the will and the rage and the violent despair. History is dead because the Evolution, as a demented
inescapable flow, is submerging the traces of historical teleological consciousness. And
Evolution has no aim, no rationality and no intention. Like Nature it is blind, and Nature is now taking its
revenge.

Their coalitions play into the trap of liberalism, demanding collective action
and conformity to the universal category of class – that necessitates lash
out against anything marked as queer or not useful to their movement
Winnubst 6. Shannon Winnubst, professor of Women’s and gender studies at Ohio State
University, Queering Freedom, pg. 76 //saenl
Functioning within an ontology of contained space, Lacan’s accounts of ego-formation capture the dilemma of
intersubjectivity endemic to the model of liberal individualism. While Lacan points toward the dynamics of
rec- ognition and their self-splitting as necessary and constitutive of ego- formation, the fundamental autonomy of the
liberal individual remains the desired telos of all development. The fundamental criterion
of one’s social legibility remains one’s demarcation from all others and the social world
itself. Driven by the dynamics of narcissism, the kind of recognition that Lacan idealizes remains one that
is grounded in a self that is ontologically separable from all other entities. Cynthia Willett diagnoses
this dilemma as the struggle between the two dominant models of human subjectivity in western cultures since the Enlightenment: the liberal

subject “who defines itself through active self-agency or possessive self-ownership and
claims . . . the right to protect a private space” and “the (post-Hegelian) subject who
discovers who he is through the recognition bestowed upon him by other persons” (2001, 6).
As Willett also argues, these remain two sides of the same coin: each of these models of

subjectivity assumes that separability from others and the social world constitutes the
fundamental endpoint of all desires . Utter self-sufficiency, achieved either through will power or through
transcending the recognition of others, is what humans must ultimately seek according to both of these

models. Both of these models, Locke’s liberal individual and Lacan’s authoritative ego, operate
within an economy of scarcity that is grounded in a model of desire that can never find
any external satisfaction. Both models are driven by lack, which each thinker conceives as
the ontological condition of humans, and which develops further into an explicitly
aggressive drive in Lacan’s accounts. Furthermore, in Lacan’s accounts, the symbolic cannot function
without sufficient distance between and delineation of singular entities: bodies must be
separate and distinct for one to call out the narcissistically cathected aggression
against and toward the other. Relations between selves on both of these models
subsequently function through protective gestures that must be repeated constantly.
Standing out into the ontologically empty space of this aggressive and threatening social
scene, one must mark one’s territory and construct strong and clear borders around it.
The self becomes the fortress that must be protected. And the narcissism that initiated
the aggressive formation of the ego closes itself off from the wider social world into a
cultural solipsism: the self must be contained and the social world must protect its
fragile containment. Desire , the dynamic that drives ego-formation and this attenuated notion of intersubjectivity for Lacan,
ultimately remains trapped in this fortress of the narcissistic self. When experienced by
the hegemonic subject position that finds the world to be its self-reflective mirror, this
desire wallows in sameness and lashes out aggressively against all that is different. When
experienced by the abjected position, this desire cannot effectively resist its submission to the violent

world which abjects it. Grounded in the fundamental need for the other, this model of the
self frames the world as a collection of finite beings who may violate and threaten its
own small place in the world: scarcity precludes abundance; and These are the terms
of our culture, a culture of phallicized whiteness. And they are the terms I want to develop further as I turn toward possible responses
to these dilemmas.
 at: action good
Attempts to attach all actions to a servility to productivity are uniquely life-
denying – this unique teleology fragments existence
Bataille 45. Georges Bataille, The Dark Lord amongst other things, On Nietzsche, 1945, Pantheon
Books. pg xxvi-xxvii *modified for language and clarity
Nonetheless, I don’t want my Inclination to make fun of myself or act comic to lead readers astray. The basic problem tackled in this
chaotic book (chaotic because It has to be) Is the same one Nietzsche experienced and attempted to resolve in his work—the
problem of the whole human being. “The majority of people.” he wrote. “are a fragmentary,
exclusive image of what humanity is: you have to add them up to get humanity. in this sense, whole eras and
whole peoples have something fragmentary about them; and it may be necessary for humanity’s growth for it to
develop only in parts. It is a crucial matter therefore to see that what is at stake is always the
idea of producing a synthetic humanity and that the inferior humans who make up a majority
of us are only preliminaries, or preparatory attempts whose concerted play allows a whole
human being to appear here and there like a military boundary marker showing the extent of humanity’s advance.”
(The Will to Power) But what does that fragmentation mean? Or better, what causes it if not a need

to act that specializes us and limits us to the horizon of a particular activity? Even if it
turns out to be for the general interest (which normally Isn’t true), the activity that subordinates
each of our aspects to a specific result suppresses our being as an entirety. Whoever
acts, substitutes a particular end for what [they are], as a total being: in the least specialized cases
it is the glory of the state or the triumph of a party. Every action specializes insofar as it is

limited as action. A plant usually doesn’t act, and isn’t specialized; it’s specialized when gobbling up flies! I cannot
exist entirely except when somehow I go beyond the stage of action. Otherwise I’m a
soldier, a professional, a man of learning, not a total human being. The fragmentary state of
humanity is basically the same as the choice of an object. When you limit your desires to
possessing political power, for instance, you act and know what you have to do. The
possibility of failure isn’t important—and right from the start, you insert your existence
advantageously into time. Each of your moments becomes useful. With each moment, the

possibility is given you to advance to some chosen goal. and your time becomes a march toward that
goal —what’s normally called living. Similarly, If salvation is the goal, Every action makes you a
fragmentary existence. I hold onto my nature as an entirety only by refusing to act—or at
least by denying the superiority of time. which is reserved for action. life is whole only
when it isn’t subordinate to a specific object that exceeds it. In this way. the essence of
entirety is freedom. Still. I can’t choose to become an entire human being by simply
fighting for freedom. even if the struggle for freedom is an appropriate activity for me—
because within me I can’t confuse the state of entirety with my struggle. It’s the positive practice

of freedom , not the negative struggle against a particular oppression , that has lifted me
above a mutilated existence . Each of us learns with bitterness that to struggle for freedom is first of
all to alienate ourselves. I’ve already said it; the practice of freedom lies within evil, not beyond it.
while the struggle for freedom is a struggle to conquer a good. To the extent that life is entire within
me, I can’t distribute it or let it serve the Interests of a good belonging to someone else, to
God or myself. I can’t acquire anything at all: I can only give and give unstintingly, without the gift ever having
as its object anyone’s interest . (In this respect. I look at the others good as deceptive, since if I will that good H’s to
Only in empty longing , only in an
find my own, unless I identify it as my own. Entirety exists within me as exuberance.
unlucky desire to be consumed simply by the desire to burn with desire, is entirety wholly
what ills. In this respect, entirety is also longing for laughter. longing for pleasure, holiness, or
death. Entirety lacks further tasks to fulfill .)
 at: images of suffering bad
Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good – the alternative is silence,
which is infinitely worse.
Kleinman and Kleinman 97. Arthur, Maude and Lillian Presley Professor of Medical Anthropology, and Joan, sinologist,
Research Associate, Medical Anthropology Program at Harvard, “The appeal of experience; the dismay of images: Cultural appropriations of suffering
in our times,” Social Suffering, pg. 16-18, google books

It is necessary to balance the account of the globalization of commercial and professional

images with a vastly different and even more dangerous cultural process of appropriation: the
totalitarian state's erasure of social experiences of suffering through the suppression of images.

Here the possibility of moral appeal through images of human misery is prevented, and it is their
absence that is the source of existential dismay. Such is the case with the massive starvation in China from 1959 to 1961.
This story was not reported at the time even though more than thirty million Chinese died in the aftermath of the ruinous policies of the Great Leap
Forward, the perverse effect of Mao's impossible dream of forcing immediate industrialization on peasants. Accounts of this, the world's most
devastating famine, were totally suppressed; no stories or pictures of the starving or the dead were published. An internal report on the famine was
made by an investigating team for the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. It was based on a detailed survey of an extremely poor
region of Anwei Province that was particularly brutally affected. The report includes this numbing statement by Wei Wu-ji, a local peasant leader from
Anwei: Originally there were 5,000 people in our commune, now only 3,200 remain. When the Japanese invaded we did not lose this many: we at least
could save ourselves by running away! This year there's no escape. We die shut up in our own houses. Of my 6 family members, 5 are already dead,
and I am left to starve, and I'll not be able to stave off death for long.(30) Wei Wu-ji continued: Wang Jia-feng from West Springs County reported that
cases of eating human meat were discovered. Zhang Sheng-jiu said, "Only an evil man could do such a thing!" Wang Jia-feng said, "In 1960, there
were 20 in our household, ten of them died last year. My son told his mother 'I'll die of hunger in a few days.'" And indeed he did.(31) The report also
includes a graphic image by Li Qin-ming, from Wudian County, Shanwang Brigade: In 1959, we were prescheduled to deliver 58,000 jin of grain to the
State, but only 35,000 jin were harvested, hence we only turned over 33,000 jin, which left 2,000 jin for the commune. We really have nothing to eat.
The peasants eat hemp leaves, anything they can possibly eat. In my last report after I wrote, "We have nothing to eat," the Party told me they wanted
to remove my name from the Party Roster. Out of a population of 280, 170 died. In our family of five, four of us have died leaving only myself. Should I
say that I'm not broken hearted?(32) Chen Zhang-yu, from Guanyu County, offered the investigators this terrible image: Last spring the phenomenon of
cannibalism appeared. Since Comrade Chao Wu-chu could not come up with any good ways of prohibiting it, he put out the order to secretly imprison
those who seemed to be at death's door to combat the rumors. He secretly imprisoned 63 people from the entire country. Thirty-three died in
prison.(33) The official report is thorough and detailed. It is classified neibu, restricted use only. To distribute it is to reveal state secrets. Presented
publicly it would have been, especially if it had been published in the 1960s, a fundamental critique of the Great Leap, and a moral and political
delegitimation of the Chinese Communist Party's claim to have improved the life of poor peasants. Even today the authorities regard it as dangerous.
The official silence is another form of appropriation. It prevents public witnessing . It forges a
secret history, an act of political resistance through keeping alive the memory of things denied.34
The totalitarian state rules by collective forgetting , by denying the collective experience of suffering,

and thus creates a culture of terror. The absent image is also a form of political appropriation;
public silence is perhaps more terrifying than being overwhelmed by public images of atrocity.
Taken together the two modes of appropriation delimit the extremes in this cultural process.(35)
Our critique of appropriations of suffering that do harm does not mean that no appropriations are
valid. To conclude that would be to undermine any attempt to respond to human misery. It would
be much more destructive than the problem we have identified; it would paralyze [halt] social action . We
must draw upon the images of human suffering in order to identify human needs and to craft
humane responses.
 at: clash/deliberation
Internal deliberation outweighs external deliberation – their theory is
inversed
Goodin 3. Robert E., Reflective Democracy, “Democratic Deliberation Within,” p. 169
The focus of deliberative democrats is ordinarily on deliberation in its ‘external‐
collective’ aspect, but deliberation also has an ‘internal‐reflective’ aspect to it, which
consists of the weighing of reasons for and against a course of action; in that sense, it can
and ultimately must take place within the head of each individual, even in external‐collective
settings. Deliberative democrats suppose that outcomes will be democratically legitimate
only in so far as they emerge through external‐collective processes of deliberation
involving a free and equal exchange among everyone who will be affected by them, and that ideal seems
eminently feasible in small‐scale societies, but in large‐scale mass societies, they are not and cannot be. The challenge facing
deliberative democrats is thus to find some way of adapting their deliberative ideals to large‐scale society, where it
is not
feasible to arrange face‐to‐face discussions across the entire community; solutions to that
problem are not easily found. After briefly surveying various flawed attempts to rescue external‐collective forms of deliberative
democracy from the problems of time, numbers, and distance, the author offers a
counterproposal: that we ease the
burdens of deliberative democracy in mass society by altering our focus from the
‘external‐collective’ to the ‘internal‐reflective’ mode, shifting much of the work of democratic deliberation to
within the head of each individual; deliberation, on this account, is less a matter of making people

‘conversationally present’ and more a matter of making them ‘imaginatively present’ in

the minds of deliberators. The different sections of the chapter are: Two Types of Deliberation; Unsuccessful
Adaptations—[of deliberative democracy in large‐scale mass societies]; Another Approach: Deliberation Within; Dangers of Internal
Deliberation; Informing the Democratic Imagination; and From Democratic Deliberation to Democratic Legitimacy.
 at: democracy solves
Democracy is tired myth – elites control politics and there’s zero
correlation between public opinion and democratic change
Gilens and Page 14. Martin, Professor of Politics at Princeton University, and Benjamin, Gordon S. Fulcher
Professor of Decision Making at Northwestern University, “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest
Groups, and Average Citizens”, American Political Science Association, Perspectives on Politics, September 2014 |
Vol. 12/No. 3, p. 575-577

Each of our four theoretical traditions (Majoritarian Electoral Democracy, Economic-Elite Domination, Majoritarian Interest-Group
Pluralism, and Biased Pluralism) emphasizes different sets of actors as critical in determining U.S. policy outcomes, and each
tradition has engendered a large empirical literature that seems to show a particular set of actors to be highly influential. Yet nearly
all the empirical evidence has been essentially bivariate. Until
very recently it has not been possible to test
these theories against each other in a systematic, quantitative fashion. By directly pitting
the predictions of ideal-type theories against each other within a single statistical model
(using a unique data set that includes imperfect but useful measures of the key independent variables for nearly two thousand policy
issues), we
have been able to produce some striking findings. One is the nearly total failure
of “median voter” and other Majoritarian Electoral Democracy theories. When the
preferences of economic elites and the stands of organized interest groups are
controlled for, the preferences of the average American appear to have only a
minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy . The failure of
theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy is all the more striking because it goes against the likely effects of the limitations of our
data. The preferences of ordinary citizens were measured more directly than our other
independent variables, yet they are estimated to have the least effect. Nor do organized
interest groups substitute for direct citizen influence, by embodying citizens’ will and
ensuring that their wishes prevail in the fashion postulated by theories of Majoritarian
Pluralism. Interest groups do have substantial independent impacts on policy, and a few groups (particularly labor
unions) represent average citizens’ views reasonably well. But the interest-group system

as a whole does not . Overall, net interest-group alignments are not significantly related to
the preferences of average citizens. The net alignments of the most influential, business-
oriented groups are negatively related to the average citizen’s wishes. So existing interest
groups do not serve effectively as transmission belts for the wishes of the populace as a
whole. “Potential groups” do not take up the slack, either, since average citizens’ preferences have little or
no independent impact on policy after existing groups’ stands are controlled for.
Furthermore, the preferences of economic elites (as measured by our proxy, the preferences of “affluent” citizens)
have far more independent impact upon policy change than the preferences of average
citizens do. To be sure, this does not mean that ordinary citizens always lose out; they fairly often get the policies they favor,
but only because those policies happen also to be preferred by the economically-elite citizens who wield the actual influence. Of
course our
findings speak most directly to the “first face” of power: the ability of actors to
shape policy outcomes on contested issues. But they also reflect—to some degree, at least—the
“second face” of power: the ability to shape the agenda of issues that policy makers
consider. The set of policy alternatives that we analyze is considerably broader than the set discussed seriously by policy
makers or brought to a vote in Congress, and our alternatives are (on average) more popular among the general public than among
interest groups. Thus
the fate of these policies can reflect policy makers’ refusing to consider
them rather than considering but rejecting them. (From our data we cannot distinguish between the two.) Our
results speak less clearly to the “third face” of power: the ability of elites to shape the public’s preferences.49 We know that
interest groups and policy makers themselves often devote considerable effort to
shaping opinion. If they are successful, this might help explain the high correlation we find between elite and mass
preferences. But it cannot have greatly inflated our estimate of average citizens’ influence on policy making, which is near zero.
What do our findings say about democracy in America? They certainly constitute
troubling news for advocates of “populistic” democracy, who want governments to respond primarily or
exclusively to the policy preferences of their citizens. In the United States, our findings indicate, the

majority does not rule —at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes. When a majority
of citizens disagrees with economic elites or with organized interests, they generally
lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the U.S. political system,
even when fairly large majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do not
get it. A possible objection to populistic democracy is that average citizens are inattentive to politics and ignorant about public
policy; why should we worry if their poorly informed preferences do not influence policy making? Perhaps economic elites and
interest-group leaders enjoy greater policy expertise than the average citizen does. Perhaps they know better which policies will
benefit everyone, and perhaps they seek the common good, rather than selfish ends, when deciding which policies to support. But
we tend to doubt it. We believe instead that— collectively—ordinary citizens generally know their own
values and interests pretty well, and that their expressed policy preferences are worthy of respect.50 Moreover, we
are not so sure about the informational advantages of elites. Yes, detailed policy knowledge tends to rise with income and status.
Surely wealthy Americans and corporate executives tend to know a lot about tax and regulatory policies that directly affect them. But
how much do they know about the human impact of Social Security, Medicare, food stamps, or unemployment insurance, none of
which is likely to be crucial to their own well-being? Most important, we
see no reason to think that
informational expertise is always accompanied by an inclination to transcend one’s own
interests or a determination to work for the common good. All in all, we believe that the public is likely to
be a more certain guardian of its own interests than any feasible alternative. Leaving aside the difficult issue of divergent interests
and motives, we would urge that the superior wisdom of economic elites or organized interest groups should not simply be
assumed. It should be put to empirical test. New empirical research will be needed to pin down precisely who knows how much, and
what, about which public policies. Our findings also point toward the need to learn more about exactly which economic elites (the
“merely affluent”? the top 1 percent? the top one-tenth of 1 percent?) have how much impact upon public policy, and to what ends
they wield their influence. Similar questions arise about the precise extent of influence of particular sets of organized interest groups.
And we need to know more about the policy preferences and the political influence of various actors not considered here, including
political party activists, government officials, and other noneconomic elites. We hope that our work will encourage further exploration
of these issues. Despite
the seemingly strong empirical support in previous studies for
theories of majoritarian democracy, our analyses suggest that majorities of the American
public actually have little influence over the policies our government adopts. Americans do
enjoy many features central to democratic governance, such as regular elections, freedom of speech and association, and a
policymaking is dominated by powerful
widespread (if still contested) franchise. But we believe that if
business organizations and a small number of affluent Americans, then America’s claims
to being a democratic society are seriously threatened. Clearly, when one holds constant net interest-
group alignments and the preferences of affluent Americans, it makes very little difference what the general
public thinks. The probability of policy change is nearly the same (around 0.3) whether a
tiny minority or a large majority of average citizens favor a proposed policy change (refer to
the top panel of figure 1).
 at: competition bad
Speaking strategically in order to win is acceptable – we have to work with
what we have
Welsh 13. Scott, Prof @ Appalachian State U, The Rhetorical Surface of Democracy: How
Deliberative Ideals Undermine Democratic Politics ** we don’t endorse gendered language.
lvie seems to be trying to describe a mode of rhetorical deliberation between strategic speech and the pursuit of power.
Speaking strategically in order to win an audience's favor is democratically acceptable, he
argues, because it improves the effectiveness of dissent and thereby ensures that multiple
points of view are considered. 97 However, trying to undermine the effectiveness of
dissenting voices through dismissing their views as irrelevant or treacherous, in order to
maintain public support, is not democratic because it attempts to limit the range of opinions
bearing upon a decision. Yet, in trying to thread this needle, lvie reveals the underlying problem with thinking about
democracy as a form of decision-making at all. Rather, as the Nietzschean side of Carsten argues, rhetorical speech
attempts to cut a pathway through an audience's diverse beliefs and attitudes in order to
maximize support for one's own position and reduce support for all the rest. This means
trying to identify the path of least rhetorical resistance and making competing roads
harder to travel. Effective speakers do not aim to invite further discussion. Rather, they
try to make it seem as though hardly any change of mind is being sought or that the right answer is
obvious. They want an audience to believe that they are simply saying, better, what members of the audience have thought all
along. In other words, further deliberation or careful reflection is precisely what effective
rhetoric tries to avoid (unless one's aim is to discourage audience members from taking a side in anticipation that the
audience is likely to side with one's opponents). Hence, speakers do not pursue increased reflection or
better-vetted judgments in the abstract. Rather, they attempt to win support for plans of
action that reflect their own preexisting judgments. Reflection can result from rhetorical contest, of course,
but only as a result of the overall contest in which competing speakers attempt to politically corner their opponents. An
enlarged contest is not a function of a speaker's willingness to explicitly acknowledge,
overtly engage, or respect opposing rhetorics. In other words, political inclusion is not
something those in power do for the excluded. Rather, in every instance, the excluded
should expect that "inclusion" will only result from their own efforts to construct and
perform politically effec- tive rhetorics. Thus, we might even regard the hypothetical politician who is
unconcerned with re-election as the ultimate threat to democracy because, as Chambers reminds us and to Plato's chagrin, the
To choose democracy is to render
contest for power is what ultimately holds officials accountable in democracy.
decisive the ongoing contest for the support of an inherently conflicted, unevenly
informed majority. Hence, Jonathan Bernstein gets it just right in an essay for the New Republic when he says that
ineffective rhetoric is rhetoric that is not adequately rooted in a compelling political theory. 98 What he means by a "political" theory,
however, is an account of how a particular rhetoric might tip the contest for institutional power in one 's favor. If a compelling theory
cannot be articulated, it is likely the rhetoric (and the "underlying" proposal) that needs to change.
 at: link of omission
Dwelling in the past inscribes a sad affect that prevents change – prefer a
future oriented responsibility
Campora 13. PhD in philosophy and editor of the Journal of Nietzsche Studies, Christa Davis,
“Nietzsche, Agency, and Responsibility,” The Journal of Nietzsche Studies Volume 44, Issue 2, Summer
2013,
http://muse.jhu.edu.libproxy.dixie.edu/journals/journal_of_nietzsche_studies/v044/44.2.acampora.html

one perishes (in Zarathustra’s own case, “a

At least part of what follows from this, as Zarathustra appears to see it, is that
hundred” times or more) in realizing the creative capacities he envisions. He reaches this conclusion after linking
“creation” and “redemption from suffering”: “Creation—that is the great redemption from suffering, and
life’s growing light. But that the creator may be, suffering is needed and much change.
Indeed, there must be much bitter dying in your life, you creators. Thus you are the advocates and justifiers of all impermanence” (Z
II: “Upon the Blessed Isles”). In
renewing itself and thereby redeeming itself from suffering, the
soul perishes, “passing through a hundred cradles and birth pangs,” or at least that which is impermanent in [End Page 146]
it dies.16 In addition to setting aside concerns about whether these ideas are properly attributed to Nietzsche, I am going to set
aside their plausibility (for it could very well be that Zarathustra’s or Nietzsche’s ideas about these matters are not especially good),
since again, I am simply considering what the image is supposed to depict.17 In this case, it would appear that what
Zarathustra has in mind is a kind of self that he conceives in terms of a creative process
rather than as an enduring entity or substance. This suggests that one somehow, mysteriously, gives
birth to oneself repeatedly and perpetually. This certainly strains the imagination, and how it differs significantly
from Münchhausen’s effort “to pull oneself up into existence by the hair, out of the swamps of nothingness” (BGE 21), I leave for
others to attempt to explain. My interest here is how the character Zarathustra thinks this image would be received by his disciples,
how even he thinks about this view: “Many a farewell have I taken; I know the heartrending last hours” (Z II: “Upon the Blessed
Isles”). In other words, Zarathustra acknowledges our attachments to these selves; their passing is significant, not something
Redemption, in Zarathustra’s image, turns on
frivolously dismissed or passed over, much less gleefully celebrated.
dying that might be appropriately mourned or lamented, but it also has the prospect of
love if we can see ourselves in terms of becoming the next generation and loving it,
nurturing and caring for it as a mother would. The multiple personalities that appear in this image of the mother and child, though,
might seem to suggest that instead of one doer behind the deed, there are scores in a lifetime, and perhaps even more than one at
a time (vertiginously, both mother and child) behind each. But Zarathustra undercuts that second possibility in the statement that
immediately follows his acknowledgment of the sense of loss in such a process: “But thus my creative will, my destiny, wills it. Or, to
say it more honestly: this very destiny—my will wills” (“Aber so will’s mein schaffender Wille, mein Schicksal. Oder, dass ich’s euch
redlicher sage: solches Schicksal gerade—will mein Wille” [KSA 4, p. 111]). Zarathustra’s correction of his grammatical habit is
indicative of what follows from the image he just evoked: it is not that his will is responsible for (in the sense of
“stands behind”) a creative act that results in his destiny; rather it is this very destiny (“thus it shall
be”) that he wills, that he positively affirms. His will is not the cause of how things turn out; rather his will is more
properly thought of as affirming that and how this creative activity occurs (that is, that creativity
necessarily involves such passing). It does not precede it as cause; rather, it is and comes to be in
the willing itself. The relevant distinction to notice is that his will is an affirmation, not a
preexisting source of origination.18 Zarathustra continues to flesh out what he envisions
his disciples would have to give up, how they would have to think differently if they truly
take in what he offers them. He recognizes they have significant investments in these
ideas and that they would experience forsaking them as a loss, one that potentially [End
Page 147] undermines their very sense of themselves. In this context he returns to the mother-child image in
“On the Virtuous,” which Pippin suggests as a possible alternative to the lightning-flash picture as act description. In the same
section, prior to the instance Pippin mentions, Zarathustra invokes the mother-child relation when he tells his disciples, “You love
your virtue as a mother her child” (Z II: “On the Virtuous”). In this case, he is underscoring how precious virtue is to his disciples, and
the words:
how this is indicative of a certain purity, sincerity, and earnestness, which make them “too good” for “the filth of
revenge, punishment, reward, retribution” (the primary conceptual byproducts of the
process of the slave revolt in morality that results in the creation of the bad conscience in
GM I and II). And since they are appropriately disposed thus, Zarathustra claims, they should give up expectations they have and
ideas they hold about the value of their virtues and how they might serve as a basis for entitlement or claim on others: “[W]hat
mother ever wished to be paid for her love?” (Z II: “On the Virtuous”). Zarathustra evokes another image to stand in the stead of
thinking of virtue as something that deserves reward (even itself) and that is of the light of a dying star: “[L]ike a dying star is every
work of your virtue: its light is always still on its way even when the work has been done. Though it be forgotten and dead, the ray of
its light still lives and wanders.” “Your virtue,” he says, “is your most loved self (Z II: “On the Virtuous”).19 So, when he later
counsels his disciples “that your self be in your deed as the mother is in her child—let that be your word concerning virtue” (Z II: “On
the Virtuous”), I think we
are meant to recall the idea of the regenerating self linked earlier with
destiny (and its attendant conception of willing as affirmation rather than cause), as well
as this image of what happens to the “dead” ones thereafter: their light continues to shine, to give the
appearance of the star it was before even though it is gone. This shining light, it seems to me, is related to the lightning flash in GM
I:13, to which I now return. Expressions Rather than Intentions Pippin draws out important features of Nietzsche’s depiction of
agency as analogous to the lightning-flash picture to show that Nietzsche is concerned with expression rather than intention in his
portrayal of human action. This is important because Nietzsche, in anticipating a postmoral future in Beyond Good and Evil, links the
birth of morality proper with the location of moral worth and value in intention (and in valuing selflessness, or what is done for the
good of all, above all else). Nietzsche anticipates that in overcoming morality, we will also overcome
this emphasis on
intention and the idea that it is the locus of value, and he seems to think we have a significant
opportunity to do just that because we already have reasons to be suspicious about the
relation between our [End Page 148] intentions and actions (BGE 32; cf. BGE 3, 6, 12). Yet Pippin is
concerned to show that actions are different from events and that the lightning-flash analogy is not reductive. Recall Pippin’s claim
that “we cannot say ‘there are only deeds,’ not agents, just as we cannot say that the flash is just an electrical discharge in the air.
Clearly, a certain sort of meteorological event is ‘expressed,’ and so a phenomenally identical ‘flash’ might not be lightning, but could
be artificially produced. It would be a phenomenally identical event, but not lightning. Its distinctness depends on what it is
expressing” (76–77). What distinguishes deeds, it might seem, turns on what is being expressed. So, my arm just going up and my
willing my arm to go up, though phenomenally identical, would be distinguished on account of one being the expression of nerve
damage that results in confused signals to the brain, say, and the other as the expression of my will. Pippin states that when
Nietzsche suggests “the deed is everything,” there is still a doer, but it is in rather than behind the deed (77); thus a doer remains.
What distinguishes the expression in the second case (that of deed rather than event) is that it is done by a doer (presumably, some
sort of agent) rather than something else. But it is unclear from the presentation how this amounts to a demonstration of the
difference rather than just an assertion. Pippin’s substitution of “in” for “behind” the deed is intriguing. We might consider whether
when Nietzsche writes “das Thun ist Alles,” we have a statement of identity or a statement of predication. The latter might be
construed as an assertion that “everything is (in) the deed,” which is Pippin’s view. The former (identity) interprets it as a claim that
“the deed is everything”—that is, the deed, the doing, is all there is. While I have sympathy for Pippin’s view and his interpretation of
Nietzsche’s views as consistent with a kind of expressivism more generally, I am not yet certain this is Nietzsche’s position. If Pippin
grants that both occurrences (phenomena, events) such as lightning flashing and human acting can be expressive, then it is not
clear to me that he has shown how acts are distinguished from events, other than asserting that acts are the expressions of doers
What drives Pippin to
whereas events are not. We still need to know more about the doing and why it needs a doer.
claim this distinction between event and deed is his desire to retain a sense of
responsibility in Nietzsche’s view; it stems from the belief that responsibility requires an
agent, a doer of some sort. I think we can get a robust sense of responsibility without getting
caught up in this puzzle, which might just be an artifact of the very conception of agency
Nietzsche appears to be trying to surpass. One might respond that surely the lightning is not just the flash, and
so, following the analogy, the doer is not just or only the deed. A conceptual distinction among various aspects of a unified
phenomenon is clearly possible, so even if it is the case that lightning and the flash, the doer and the deed, are not actually
separable (Pippin proffers an “inseparability thesis” [77–78]), they can be conceptually distinguished. But the distinction identified in
What
this case—between [End Page 149] doer and deed—is not what is wanted by Pippin and others who discuss this passage.
would determine the distinction they want, the subjective distinction—that a
phenomenon results from the action of a subject—in the event? What makes the
subjective distinction genetically different as an act rather than a mere event? Sticking with the
analogy for just a moment longer, it is also worthwhile noting that, more precisely speaking, it is not the case that lightning flashes.
There is simply lightning flashing, and that is one of the ways in which a particular meteorological event is expressed. Nietzsche
It would seem that
draws the analogy of human action as like an event, both of which can be characterized as expressive.
what needs explanation or exploration are the possibilities for expression that would
distinguish human actions from others beyond saying that the distinction rests on
human actions as being the expression of agents—nothing is gained in such a claim.
Nietzsche’s depiction suggests that strength expresses itself in action or strength is expression in
action, not that strong agents express themselves in action. If it cannot be said that an agent can be
strong in any meaningful sense without expressing strength, then why bother with the superfluous distinction between the deeds
and the doer in such cases? Agents
are strong by virtue of expressions of strength. Why suppose there is
an agent, somehow already strong, expressing strength? The
depiction of agency in terms of a doer behind
a deed does more than simply provide an explanation for action as Nietzsche suggests in his account
of the development of morality. There are other motivations for holding the agent as distinct if not separable from the deed; our
Thinking of oneself as in one’s deed like a mother is in the
attachment to this distinction runs deep.
child would have the effect of transforming such attachment: it would at once create
some distance (distinct from identification) while at the same time affirm a sort of genetic
continuity. For one’s children, one has hopes but not intentions—one has a longing, desiring
for, a wanting something for the child. This can succeed or fail, it can turn out well or not—
embracing this image would still allow one to make such judgments and apply relevant
evaluative criteria however they might be defined. While I cannot do much more here than begin to frame
questions about the contours of this admittedly peculiar, indeed, uncanny conception of what might be construed as a kind of
if the moral aims of retribution
ethicality beyond morality, it seems possible at least to take notice of the fact that
and reward no longer abide, the problems of responsibility and accountability that drive much
discussion in the secondary literature of Nietzsche’s alternative to morality “in the narrow sense” (BGE 23) more or less
dissolve, or at least they are redirected. Nietzsche anticipates this in his discussion of punishment in On the Genealogy of
Morality, particularly in GM II:10, where he imagines a society strong enough that it does not need to
punish: “It is not unthinkable that a society might attain such a consciousness of power that it could allow itself the [End Page
150] noblest luxury possible to it—letting those who harm it go unpunished. […] This self-overcoming
of justice: one knows the beautiful name it has given itself—mercy.”20 This idea and its relation to an alternative sense of
responsibility that might flow from the image of our deeds as more like our children than executive orders is compatible with Pippin’s
emphasis on the centrality of psychology for Nietzsche and with his concerns about the disastrous effects of the failure of desire and
the complexity and necessity of erotic attachment. It
might be fruitful to explore how it could be the case
that in thinking of ourselves as in our deeds as mothers are in children would not only
transform our sense of what our deeds are (and ourselves in them) but also our attachments to
them. By way of conclusion, I wish to suggest an outline of how a sense of creative power akin to the creation of life that
mothering entails might well attend the revised conception of agency that is available in the lightning-flash passage as well as the
one that Pippin himself flags from Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Embracingthis revised conception of agency
does not require us to sustain our attachment to a doer (rather than focusing on doing), regardless of
whether it is behind or in the deed. Moreover, preserving the attachment to the doer might well be
indicative of our abiding attachment to morality. A New Picture of Responsibility As to how subjects are in
expressions, Pippin offers “the inseparability thesis”: the subject, while not identical to its expression, is nevertheless inseparable
from it. This certainly seems to follow analytically from our use of language—how could one have expression without something
expressing? I wish to make two points about this concern. Pippin grants that even the lightning flash is an expression (of a certain
meteorological event), and so nothing more is needed in the event. What leads him to suppose there is a doer in the deed that
distinguishes the kind of expression human actions entail is his desire to distinguish between acts and events. But there is nothing in
Nietzsche’s text that suggests he shares this concern. Additionally, we can question whether we can conclude from the fact that we
can achieve conceptual separation between doer and deed that such distinction is real to the extent that the extension of
responsibility should apply. I think this is Pippin’s true and ultimate concern: “Should not Nietzsche be aware that, by eliminating as
nonsensical the idea that appears to be a necessary condition for a deed being a deed [as opposed to a mere event]—a subject’s
individual causal responsibility for the deed occurring—he has eliminated any way of properly understanding the notion of
responsibility, or that he has eliminated even a place for criticism of an agent?” (80n15). But Pippin’s “any” here is too much and too
quick. Ifcausal responsibility is not the only or even primary way in which one can be
responsible, or if our ways of critically assessing actions [End Page 151] and persons shifted
such that responsibility was somehow less significant in our deliberation and
estimations, then it might not be so bad if it should happen to be that, in fact, Nietzsche is fully
aware that “causal responsibility” would be undermined by the picture argument he is advancing, and that,
precisely, is his point. I have indicated two distinct alternatives. Since I cannot fully develop them here, I shall settle with drawing out
their differences and how Nietzsche could plausibly hold either such view.21 (There is at least one other alternative: Nietzsche could
be offering us a view that undermines responsibility in a sense we might want to retain. Assuming we have other reasons for
retaining it, I think we would be better off rejecting Nietzsche’s views on these grounds rather than trying to find ways to
accommodate ourselves to his position or attributing to him views he does not articulate just so we can retain our attachments.)
Pippin demonstrates sensitivity to these concerns, so it would be especially helpful to hear more from him about how he sees these
addressed in Nietzsche’s texts. That causal
responsibility is not the only form of responsibility is clear
from the mother-child image to which Pippin refers. Whereas
causal responsibility (particularly for the
purposes of accountability and criticism) looks backward to the past, a mother’s sense
of responsibility for her child is nearly entirely future oriented (setting aside tantrums in public places,
the boasting one does among family and friends, and the shame and regret one might suffer when the child does some monumental
harm to others). In other words, the
abiding sense of responsibility a mother has for a child,
primarily and for the most part, stems not from the fact that she “caused” the child in
contributing genetic material and giving birth but from a form of love (and terror) that is given
shape in the promise for the future of that child. It is care about the future of the child
that typically and for the most part motivates a mother’s (any parent’s) sense of
responsibility.2

Dwelling within the past deactivates agency

Zupancic 3. Alenka Zupancic, “The Shortest Shadow: Nietzsche’s Philosophy of the Two,”
pg. 47-49
This is perhaps the moment to examine in more detail what Nietzschean “forgetting” is
actually about. What is the capacity of forgetting as the basis of “great health”? Nietzsche claims that memory entertains
some essential relationship with pain. This is what he describes as the principle used in
human “mnemotechnics”: “If something is to stay in the memory it must be burned in: only that which
never ceases to hurt stays in the memory.”27 Thus, if memory is essentially related to pain
(here it seems that Nietzsche claims the opposite of what psychoanalysis is claiming: that trau- matic events are the privileged objects of repression;
yet pain is not the same thing as trauma, just as “forgetting” is not the same thing as repressing), then
forgetting refers above all
to the capacity not to nurture pain. This also means the capacity not to make pain the
determining ground of our actions and choices. What exactly is pain (not so much physical pain, but,
rather, the “mental pain” that can haunt our lives)? It is a way in which the subject internal- izes and
appropriates some traumatic experience as her own bitter treasure. In other words, in relation to the
traumatic event, pain is not exactly a part of this event, but already its memory (the “mem- ory of the body”).
And Nietzschean oblivion is not so much an effacement of the traumatic encounter as a preservation of its ex- ternal
character, of its foreignness, of its otherness. In Unfashionable Observations, Second Piece (“On the Utility and Lia-
bility of History for Life”), Nietzsche links the question of forget- ting (which he employs as a synonym for the ahistorical)
to the question of the act. Forgetting, oblivion, is the very condition of possibility for an
act in the strong sense of the word. Memory (the 57 the ascetic ideal “historical”) is eternal
sleeplessness and alert insomnia, a state in which no great thing can happen, and which
could even be said to serve this very purpose. Considering the common conception according to which memory is
something monumental that “fixes” certain events, and closes us within their horizon, Nietzsche proposes a sig- nificantly
different notion. It is precisely as an eternal openness, an un- ceasing stream, that
memory can immobilize us, mortify us, make us incapable of action. Nietzsche invites us to imagine the
extreme ex- ample of a human being who does not possess the power to forget. Such a human being would be condemned to see becoming every-
where: he would no longer believe in his own being, would see everything flow apart in turbulent particles, and would lose himself in this stream of
becoming. He would be like the true student of Heraclitus. A human being who wanted to experience things in a
thoroughly historical manner would be like someone forced to go without sleep.28
Memory holds us in eternal motion—it keeps opening numerous horizons, and this is
precisely how it immobilizes us, forcing us into frenetic activity. Hence, Nietzsche advances a thesis that
is as out of tune with our time as it was with his own: “every living thing can become healthy, strong and fruitful
only within a defined horizon; if it is incapable of drawing a horizon around itself and too
selfish, in turn, to enclose its own perspective within an alien horizon, then it will feebly waste away or hasten to its
timely end.”29 Of course, Nietzsche’s aim here is not to preach narrow-mindedness and pettiness, nor is it simply to affirm the ahistorical
against history and memory. On the contrary, he clearly states that it is only by thinking, reflecting,
comparing, analyzing, and synthesizing (i.e. only by means of the power to utilize the past for life, and to reshape past
events into history) that the human be- ing becomes properly human .Yet, in the excess of history, the hu- man being
ceases to be human once again, no longer able to create or invent. This is why Nietzsche insists that “every great historical event”
is born in the “ahistorical atmosphere,” that is to say, in con- ditions of oblivion and closure: Imagine a man seized and
carried away by a vehement passion for a woman or for a great idea; how his world changes! Looking back- ward he feels he is blind, listening around
he hears what is unfa- miliar as a dull, insignificant sound; and those things that he perceives at all he never before perceived in this way; so palpable
and near, colorful, resonant, illuminated, as though he were appre- hending it with all his senses at once.All his valuations are changed and devalued; .
. . It is the most unjust condition in the world, nar- row, ungrateful to the past, blind to dangers, deaf to warnings; a tiny whirlpool of life in a dead sea of
night and oblivion; and yet this condition—ahistorical, antihistorical through and through— is not only womb of the unjust deed, but of every just deed
as well; and no artist will create a picture, no general win a victory, and no people gain its freedom without their having previously desired and striven to
accomplish these deeds in just such an ahistorical condition. . . . Thus, everyone
who acts loves his action infinitely
more than it deserves to be loved, and the best deeds occur in such an exuberance of love that, no matter what, they must be
unwor- thy of this love, even if their worth were otherwise incalculably great.30 If we read this passage carefully, we note that the point is not simply
that the capacity to forget, or the “ahistorical condition,” is the con- dition of “great deeds” or “events.” On the contrary: it is the
pure surplus
of passion or love (for something) that brings about this closure of memory, this “ahistorical condition.” In
other words, it is not that we have first to close ourselves within a defined horizon in
order then to be able to accomplish something. The closure takes place with the very
(“passionate”) opening toward something (“a woman or a great idea”). Nietzsche’s point is that if this surplus
pas- sion engages us “in the midst of life,” instead of mortifying us, it does so via its
inducement of forgetting. Indeed, I could mention a quite common experience here: whenever something
important happens to us and incites our passion, we tend to forget and dismiss the
grudges and resentments we might have been nurturing before. Instead of “forgiving” those who might
have injured us in the past, we forget and dismiss these injuries. If we do not, if we “work on 59 our memory” and strive to
keep these grudges alive, they will most probably affect and mortify our (new) passion. It could also be interesting to relate Nietzsche’s reflections from
the quoted passage to the story of Hamlet, in which the imperative to remember, uttered by Hamlet’s father’s Ghost, plays a very promi- nent role.
Remember me! Remember me!, the Ghost repeats to Hamlet, thus engaging him in the singular rhythm that characterizes the hero of this play—that of
the alternation between resigned apathy and fre- netic activity or precipitate actions (his killing of Polonius, as well as that of Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern; his engagement in the duel with Laertes . . .). This movement prevents Hamlet from carrying out the very deed his father’s Ghost
charges him with. Many things have been said and written about the relationship between action and knowledge in this play, and about how knowledge
prevents Hamlet from acting. Although the two notions are not unrelated, it might be interesting to consider this also in terms of memory (not only in
terms of knowledge). It could be worthwhile to contemplate the role played by the imperative of memory. Could we not say that one of the fundamental
reasons for the difficulty of Hamlet’s position is precisely the structural incompatibility of memory and action— that is to say, the fact that
action
ultimately always “betrays” memory? And do we not encounter something similar in the wider phenomenon of melancholy (in
the play, Hamlet is actually said to be “melancholic”) as a never-ending grief that keeps alive, through pain, the memory of what was lost? Additionally,
although we can recognize in this kind of melancholy a form of fidelity (for in- stance—to use Nietzsche’s words—fidelity to “a woman or a great idea”),
this kind of fidelity, bound to memory, should be distin- guished from fidelity to the very event of the encounter with this woman or idea. Contrary to the
first form, this second form of fi- delity implies and presupposes the power to forget. Of course, this does not mean to forget in the banal sense of no
longer remember- ing the person or the idea in question, but in the sense that forgetting
liberates the potential of the
encounter itself, and opens up—precisely through its “closure”—the possibility of a new
one
deleuze neg
 at: affect
No scientific basis for affect – psychological orientations are a result of
social surroundings which means the judge should evaluate material
consequences before rhetorical ones
Martin 13. Professor in the Department of Anthropology @ New York University, Emily, “The
Potentiality of Ethnography and the Limits of Affect Theory,” Current Anthropology: Vol. 54, No.
S7)
scholars in the humanities have recently engaged with research in neuroscience to posit a
Many

view of a precognitive, preindividual stage of human perception that promises unrealized

dimensions of potentiality. Here are some descriptions of affect in the words of two theorists from quite different disciplines. Nigel Thrift, a geographer,
writes, In this paper I want to think about affect in cities and about affective cities … and, above all, about what the political consequences of thinking more explicitly about these
topics might be—once it is accepted that the political decision is itself produced by a series of inhuman or pre-subjective forces and intensities. (Thrift 2004:58) Eric Shouse, a

cultural critic, states, An affect is a non-conscious experience of intensity; it is a moment of unformed and unstructured potential.
… Affect is always prior to and/or outside of consciousness. (Shouse 2005) There are a number of importantly different varieties of affect theory. Some are indebted to Silvan
Tomkins’s (2008) writing and others to Francisco Varela’s work on open systems, often in the style of Deleuze and Guatarri (1987; Varela 1999). But taking into account their
differences, historian Ruth Leys (2011) summarizes some of the main assumptions they hold in common: “For the theorists in question, affects are ‘inhuman,’ ‘pre-subjective,’
‘visceral’ forces and intensities that influence our thinking and judgments but are separate from these. Whatever else may be meant by the terms affect and emotion … the
affects must be non-cognitive, corporeal processes or states” (437).7 For such theorists, affect is, as Brian Massumi (2002) asserts, “irreducibly bodily and autonomic” (28).
Other enthusiastic contributors to affect theory from a wide range of fields, include Eve Sedgwick, Patricia Clough, Lauren Berlant, Elizabeth Grosz, Rosie Braidotti, Kathleen
Stewart, Lawrence Grossberg, Elizabeth Wilson, and Antonio Damasio.8 This work relates directly to the theme of potentiality. Massumi, one of the most widely read writers on
affect theory, stresses its connection with “potential” in a chapter called “Autonomy of Affect.” Something that happens too quickly to have happened, actually, is virtual. The
body is as immediately virtual as it is actual. The virtual, the pressing crowd of incipiencies and tendencies, is a realm of potential. In potential is where futurity combines,
unmediated, with pastness, where outsides are infolded and sadness is happy (happy because the press to action and expression is life). (Massumi 2002:30–31; italics in
original) The definition Massumi gives to the concept of potential here seems to be “unlimited.” In particular, the affective realm is not limited by what he sees as the constraints

of sociolinguistic meaning. What motivates these scholars? They do not all agree on every point, and I will be glossing over their differences
here, but Leys identifies some common motivations. Centrally, they claim that the role of reason and rationality in

politics, ethics, and aesthetics has been overvalued. It is too disembodied and “unlayered” an account of the way people actually form opinions (Leys
2011:436). Given this, they adopt the position that humans are corporeal creatures with important

subliminal affective intensities and resonances that are decisive in the way we form
opinions and beliefs . They share an insistence that we ignore affects at our peril because they can be manipulated deliberately and because they contain
the potential for creativity and transformation. In sum, the affects are independent of and before language. They are before
“intentions, meanings, reasons, and beliefs”; they are “non-signifying, autonomic processes that take place below the level of conscious awareness and meaning”; they are
“‘inhuman,’ ‘pre-subjective,’ ‘visceral’ forces that influence our thinking and judgments” even though they are noncognitive and corporeal (Leys 2011:437, 443). Among the
affects, at the physiological level, categories that are cognitively separate (such as sad or pleasant) get connected, and this is one way the affects are thought to open up new
and creative potential (Massumi 2002:29). Massumi—following Deleuze—considers that the affects are characterized by “intensity” rather than content. Affective states,
characterized by intensity, are nonsemantic, nonlinear, autonomous, vital, singular, indeterminate, and disruptive of fixed (conventional) meanings. Hence the affects provide a
rich reservoir of unpredictable potentiality. All this means there is a gap between the signifying order (content, meaning, convention) and the affective order. What exactly is the
gap? According to Leys (2011), there is “a constitutive disjunction between our emotions on the one hand and our knowledge of what causes and maintains them on the other,
because … affect and cognition are two separate systems” (437). These theorists generally argue that affect is independent of meaning and signification; they deny the role of
There is a gap or “radical dichotomy between the ‘real’
intentionality and meaning at the affective level (Leys 2011:450).

causes of affect and the individual’s own interpretation of these causes” (Tomkins, quoted in Leys
2011:437). In Tomkins’s view, affects are “phylogenetically old, automatic responses of the organism that have evolved for survival purposes and lack the cognitive
characteristics of the higher-order mental processes and are separate from them” (Leys 2011:437). The affects are located subcortically in the brain, in the part of the brain that

affect programs” are genetically

processes universal, natural kinds (such as the so-called basic emotions). The “basic emotions” or “

hardwired responses, products of human evolution, that are expressed in autonomic behavioral patterns (such
as characteristic facial expressions for fear or disgust) (Damasio 1994; Leys 2011:438–439; Sedgwick 2003). There is one part of affect theory that relates directly to the theme
of potentiality. This is the supposition that there is no way to include both mind and body in an account of meaning, making it necessary to posit a level below the gap where
bodily aspects of affect go on; it is the unformed, precognitive aspects of the lower level of the affects that make them seem filled with potential. This move separates

intentionality or meaning from affect and assumes that intentionality and meaning are purely mental or cognitive. There are many points at which
this argument can be criticized .9 Some critics have shown in detail how the psychological
evidence that is the basis for the tenets of affect theory is questionable and out of date
(Leys 2010). Others have detailed the ways affect theorists sometimes misread biological and psychological
research (Papoulias and Callard 2010). For example, in a 1985 experiment by Benjamin Libet, subjects were asked to decide to flex a finger at will and to note the
exact time they made the decision. The experimenters also measured the exact time of any rise in the subject’s brain activity and the exact time of the subject’s finger flexing.
The results showed that there was a 0.2-second delay between the brain’s activity spike and the subject’s decision, then a 0.3-second delay between the subject’s decision and
his finger flexing. In all, there seemed to be a half-second delay between the subject’s brain’s initial activity and the subject’s finger actually flexing (Libet 1985). This half-second
gap provides Massumi (2002:29) with the evidence of a gap between (lower) brain activity and (higher)
decision, intentionality and action. He concludes that material processes of the brain generate our thoughts; conscious thoughts, decisions, and
intentions come too late to be very significant. At most they are reflections after the fact. No one would doubt that

the brain is necessary for thought and action. But Massumi and other affect theorists place too much weight on this experimental
evidence. Other studies have shown that Libet’s evidence is open to contrary interpretations from its publication in 1985 up until the present (Banks and Isham 2009, 2010;
Gomes 1998). At the very least, before drawing such far-reaching conclusions, one would hope scholars of cultural phenomena would consider the experimental structures that
generate psychological data. As I noted earlier, the psychological subject becomes a particular kind of stripped down entity, a data-emitting being whose subjective experience

The mistakes and

is outside the frame of the experiment. Perhaps this is not the most adequate model for understanding human intentionality.

confusions in this position are laid bare by the approach pioneered in the Cambridge
Expedition and later pursued in Wittgenstein’s account of intention, remembering, and
other psychological terms. That account argues that our criteria for whether they have happened are normative and conventional. These
criteria are located in use, not in the interior psyche. Saying that criteria for meaning are normative and conventional does
not mean that everyone must agree, that there is harmony, or that there is not conflict or change. It means that criteria for meaning cannot arise from the mind of a single,
isolated individual or from a primitive part of the brain. Drawing on Wittgenstein, Elizabeth Anscombe argued for a social account of intentional actions. Anscombe was arguing
against the common-sense view of an intention as composed of an action plus an interior mental state. Looking at the ways we speak of an action as done “intentionally,” she
concluded that “intention” in everyday language means something done as an action of a whole person, a moral agent, “under a description.” The relevant description would

What is at stake is whether

include the past and present social contexts relevant to the person as much as his or her interior states (Anscombe 1957).

we understand intentional human action as gaining its meaning in an interior, hidden,

and thus socially inaccessible space instead of in the light of social experience. Anscombe worked
in a Wittgensteinian mode to move intentionality away from the private interiority of the mind into the space of social interaction, where meaning in language is constituted.

I tell someone: “I’m going to whistle you the theme

Wittgenstein conveyed this message through many homely examples:

…” It is my intention to whistle it, and I already know what I am going to whistle. It is my

intention to whistle this theme: have I then already, in some sense, whistled it in
thought? (Wittgenstein 1967:2e) One would like to ask: “Would someone who could look into your mind have been able to see that you meant to say that?” Suppose I
had written my intention down on a slip of paper, then someone else could have read it there. And can I imagine that he might in some way have found it out more surely than
that? Certainly not. (Wittgenstein 1967:8e; italics in original) The point is that intentionality emerges from the whole structure of events from the inception of the notion to the

We decide whether someone had a certain intention not by referring to an

execution of the action.

event or template in the mind but by whether his or her gestures, postures, words, and actions
fit with a socially defined notion of being about to whistle a tune or meaning to say
something. Sometimes a mental event (whistling the tune or saying the words in one’s head) might precede the
action and sometimes not, but in any case, that interior event could not constitute a
usable criterion for whether someone was intending to whistle or meaning to speak.
Removing any interest in intentionality—conceived as a social process, as affect theory does— removes socially
produced contexts of use as a necessary and sufficient basis for what actions and
words mean to people. Tackling mathematics, the realm of symbolic life perhaps most difficult to regard as contingent on social norms, Wittgenstein
commented that people found the idea that numbers rested on conventional social understandings “unbearable” (Rhees 1970). Why is there resistance
to allowing the meaning of human acts to rest on social understandings all the way down? Why such an
idea is unbearable returns us to the Cambridge Expedition. Rivers and the others thought that plunging into a different social and physical environment would make them
different people, comparable in many ways to the islanders. In this view there is a vast reservoir of potential for change and creative adaption. But this view also entails that
there are limits to human experience set by whatever social contexts are relevant. It does not compare with Massumi’s (2002) virtual realm, the “pressing crowd of incipiencies
and tendencies” (30). Perhaps it is any limitation that seems unbearable in the present era, where the drumbeat of the necessity for constant growth is heard and felt
everywhere. Saying that social context limits what is relevant does not close off experiences that are unconscious, inchoate, or unspeakable. Anthropologists and sociolinguists
have long found ways to address the entirely social meanings of things that are repressed from speech or action but nonetheless contain powerful kinds of potentiality. Years
ago Gayle Rubin (1975) analyzed the “sex/gender system” as a “set of arrangements by which a society transforms biological sexuality into products of human activity” (159).
More recently, in Brainstorm, Jordan-Young (2010) rephrases this: “Gender … is a social effect, rather than the result of human biology. Sex in this regard is conceived as the
remainder—the material body, and those bodily interactions that are necessary to reproduce it” (13). Borrowing from this way of putting it, we could say that like the sex/gender

system, the affect/intentionality system is a set of arrangements by which a society

transforms neurological processes into products of human activity . Affects are a social
effect rather than the result of human biology . Intentions in this regard are conceived as
the remainder—the material brain and those neurological interactions that are necessary
to reproduce it.
 scenario planning
Scenario analysis is pedagogically valuable – enhances creativity and self-
reflexivity, deconstructs cognitive biases and flawed ontological
assumptions, and enables the imagination and creation of alternative
futures.
Barma et al. 16. Naazneen, UC Berkeley political science PhD, “Imagine a World in Which’: Using Scenarios
in Political Science”, International Studies Perspectives 17 (2), pp. 1-19,
http://www.naazneenbarma.com/uploads/2/9/6/9/29695681/using_scenarios_in_political_science_isp_2015.pdf

Over the past decade, the “cult of irrelevance” in political science scholarship has been
lamented by a growing chorus (Putnam 2003; Nye 2009; Walt 2009). Prominent scholars of international affairs have
diagnosed the roots of the gap between academia and policymaking, made the case for why political science research is
valuable for policymaking, and offered a number of ideas for enhancing the policy relevance of scholarship in international relations and comparative
politics (Walt 2005,2011; Mead 2010; Van Evera 2010; Jentleson and Ratner 2011; Gallucci 2012; Avey and Desch 2014). Building on these insights, several initiatives have

been formed in the attempt to “bridge the gap.”2 Many of the specific efforts put in place by these projects focus on providing scholars with
the skills, platforms, and networks to better communicate the findings and implications of their
research to the policymaking community, a necessary and worthwhile objective for a field in which theoretical debates, methodological training, and publishing norms

tend more and more toward the abstract and esoteric. Yet enhancing communication between scholars and policymakers is only one

component of bridging the gap between international affairs theory and practice. Another crucial component of this bridge is the generation of
substantive research programs that are actually policy relevant —a challenge to which less concerted attention has been
In a field that
paid. The dual challenges of bridging the gap are especially acute for graduate students, a particular irony since many enter the discipline with the explicit hope of informing policy.

has an admirable devotion to pedagogical self-reflection, strikingly little attention is paid

to techniques for generating policy-relevant ideas for dissertation and other research topics. Although numerous
articles and conference workshops are devoted to the importance of experiential and problem-based learning, especially through techniques of simulation that emulate policymaking processes (Loggins 2009;

This article
Butcher 2012; Glasgow 2012; Rothman 2012; DiCicco 2014), little has been written about the use of such techniques for generating and developing innovative research ideas.

outlines an experiential and problem-based approach to developing a political science research

program using scenario analysis. It focuses especially on illuminating the research generation and pedagogical benefits of this technique by describing the use of scenarios in the
annual New Era Foreign Policy Conference (NEFPC), which brings together doctoral students of international and comparative affairs who share a demonstrated interest in policy-relevant scholarship.3 In the
introductory section, the article outlines the practice of scenario analysis and considers the utility of the technique in political science. We argue that scenario analysis should be viewed as a tool to stimulate
problem-based learning for doctoral students and discuss the broader scholarly benefits of using scenarios to help generate research ideas. The second section details the manner in which NEFPC deploys
scenario analysis. The third section reflects upon some of the concrete scholarly benefits that have been realized from the scenario format. The fourth section offers insights on the pedagogical potential
associated with using scenarios in the classroom across levels of study. A brief conclusion reflects on the importance of developing specific techniques to aid those who wish to generate political science

scholarship of relevance to the policy world. What Are Scenarios and Why Use Them in Political Science? Scenario analysis is perceived most commonly as a technique for examining the
robustness of strategy. It can immerse decision makers in future states that go beyond conventional
extrapolations of current trends, preparing them to take advantage of unexpected
opportunities and to protect themselves from adverse exogenous shocks. The global petroleum company
Shell, a pioneer of the technique, characterizes scenario analysis as the art of considering “what if” questions about possible future worlds. Scenario analysis is thus

typically seen as serving the purposes of corporate planning or as a policy tool to be used in
Yet scenario analysis is not inherently limited to these uses . This
combination with simulations of decision making.

section provides a brief overview of the practice of scenario analysis and the motivations underpinning its uses. It then makes a case for the utility of the
technique for political science scholarship and describes how the scenarios deployed at NEFPC were created. The Art of Scenario Analysis We
characterize scenario analysis as the art of juxtaposing current trends in unexpected
combinations in order to articulate surprising and yet plausible futures , often referred to as
“alternative worlds.” Scenarios are thus explicitly not forecasts or projections based on
linear extrapolations of contemporary patterns , and they are not hypothesis-based
expert predictions . Nor should they be equated with simulations , which are best characterized as
functional representations of real institutions or decision-making processes (Asal 2005).
Instead, they are depictions of possible future states of the world , offered together with a
narrative of the driving causal forces and potential exogenous shocks that could lead to those futures . Good
scenarios thus rely on explicit causal propositions that, independent of one another, are plausible—yet, when combined, suggest surprising and sometimes controversial future worlds. For example, few predicted
the dramatic fall in oil prices toward the end of 2014. Yet independent driving forces, such as the shale gas revolution in the United States, China’s slowing economic growth, and declining conflict in major Middle
Eastern oil producers such as Libya, were all recognized secular trends that—combined with OPEC’s decision not to take concerted action as prices began to decline—came together in an unexpected way. While
scenario analysis played a role in war gaming and strategic planning during the Cold War, the real antecedents of the contemporary practice are found in corporate futures studies of the late 1960s and early
1970s (Raskin et al. 2005). Scenario analysis was essentially initiated at Royal Dutch Shell in 1965, with the realization that the usual forecasting techniques and models were not capturing the rapidly changing
environment in which the company operated (Wack 1985; Schwartz 1991). In particular, it had become evident that straight-line extrapolations of past global trends were inadequate for anticipating the evolving
business environment. Shell-style scenario planning “helped break the habit, ingrained in most corporate planning, of assuming that the future will look much like the present” (Wilkinson and Kupers 2013, 4).
Using scenario thinking, Shell anticipated the possibility of two Arab-induced oil shocks in the 1970s and hence was able to position itself for major disruptions in the global petroleum sector. Building on its
corporate roots, scenario analysis has become a standard policymaking tool. For example, the Project on Forward Engagement advocates linking systematic foresight, which it defines as the disciplined analysis
of alternative futures, to planning and feedback loops to better equip the United States to meet contemporary governance challenges (Fuerth 2011). Another prominent application of scenario thinking is found in
the National Intelligence Council’s series of Global Trends reports, issued every four years to aid policymakers in anticipating and planning for future challenges. These reports present a handful of “alternative
worlds” approximately twenty years into the future, carefully constructed on the basis of emerging global trends, risks, and opportunities, and intended to stimulate thinking about geopolitical change and its
effects.4 As with corporate scenario analysis, the technique can be used in foreign policymaking for long-range general planning purposes as well as for anticipating and coping with more narrow and immediate
challenges. An example of the latter is the German Marshall Fund’s EuroFutures project, which uses four scenarios to map the potential consequences of the Euro-area financial crisis (German Marshall Fund

Several features make scenario analysis particularly useful for policymaking.5 Long-
2013).

term global trends across a number of different realms—social, technological, environmental, economic, and political—
combine in often-unexpected ways to produce unforeseen challenges. Yet the ability of
decision makers to imagine, let alone prepare for, discontinuities in the policy realm is constrained
by their existing mental models and maps. This limitation is exacerbated by well-known
cognitive bias tendencies such as groupthink and confirmation bias (Jervis 1976; Janis 1982; Tetlock 2005).
The power of scenarios lies in their ability to help individuals break out of conventional
modes of thinking and analysis by introducing unusual combinations of trends and
deliberate discontinuities in narratives about the future. Imagining alternative future
worlds through a structured analytical process enables policymakers to envision and
thereby adapt to something altogether different from the known present . Designing Scenarios for Political
Science Inquiry The characteristics of scenario analysis that commend its use to policymakers also make it well suited to helping political scientists generate and develop policy-relevant research programs.

Scenarios are essentially textured, plausible, and relevant stories that help us imagine
how the future political-economic world could be different from the past in a manner that highlights policy challenges and opportunities. For example,
terrorist organizations are a known threat that have captured the attention of the policy community, yet our responses to them tend to be linear and reactive. Scenarios that explore how seemingly unrelated
vectors of change—the rise of a new peer competitor in the East that diverts strategic attention, volatile commodity prices that empower and disempower various state and nonstate actors in surprising ways, and
the destabilizing effects of climate change or infectious disease pandemics—can be useful for illuminating the nature and limits of the terrorist threat in ways that may be missed by a narrower focus on recognized
states and groups. By illuminating the potential strategic significance of specific and yet poorly understood opportunities and threats, scenario analysis helps to identify crucial gaps in our collective understanding

Very simply,
of global politicaleconomic trends and dynamics. The notion of “exogeneity”—so prevalent in social science scholarship—applies to models of reality, not to reality itself.

scenario analysis can throw into sharp relief often-overlooked yet pressing questions in
international affairs that demand focused investigation. Scenarios thus offer, in principle, an
innovative tool for developing a political science research agenda. In practice, achieving this
objective requires careful tailoring of the approach. The specific scenario analysis technique we outline below was designed and refined to
provide a structured experiential process for generating problem-based research questions with contemporary international policy relevance.6 The first step in the process of creating the scenario set described
here was to identify important causal forces in contemporary global affairs. Consensus was not the goal; on the contrary, some of these causal statements represented competing theories about global change
(e.g., a resurgence of the nation-state vs. border-evading globalizing forces). A major principle underpinning the transformation of these causal drivers into possible future worlds was to “simplify, then exaggerate”
them, before fleshing out the emerging story with more details.7 Thus, the contours of the future world were drawn first in the scenario, with details about the possible pathways to that point filled in second. It is
entirely possible, indeed probable, that some of the causal claims that turned into parts of scenarios were exaggerated so much as to be implausible, and that an unavoidable degree of bias or our own form of
groupthink went into construction of the scenarios. One of the great strengths of scenario analysis, however, is that the scenario discussions themselves, as described below, lay bare these especially implausible
claims and systematic biases.8 An explicit methodological approach underlies the written scenarios themselves as well as the analytical process around them—that of case-centered, structured, focused

The use of scenarios is similar to

comparison, intended especially to shed light on new causal mechanisms (George and Bennett 2005).

counterfactual analysis in that it modifies certain variables in a given situation in order to

analyze the resulting effects (Fearon 1991). Whereas counterfactuals are traditionally
retrospective in nature and explore events that did not actually occur in the context of known history, our scenarios are deliberately forward-
looking and are designed to explore potential futures that could unfold. As such, counterfactual analysis is especially well suited to identifying
how individual events might expand or shift the “funnel of choices” available to political actors and thus lead to different historical outcomes (Nye 2005, 68–69), while forward-looking scenario analysis can better

We see scenarios as a
illuminate surprising intersections and sociopolitical dynamics without the perceptual constraints imposed by fine-grained historical knowledge.

complementary resource for exploring these dynamics in international affairs, rather

than as a replacement for counterfactual analysis, historical case studies, or other methodological tools. In the scenario process developed for NEFPC, three distinct scenarios are
employed, acting as cases for analytical comparison. Each scenario, as detailed below, includes a set of explicit “driving forces” which represent hypotheses about causal mechanisms worth investigating in
evolving international affairs. The scenario analysis process itself employs templates (discussed further below) to serve as a graphical representation of a structured, focused investigation and thereby as the
research tool for conducting case-centered comparative analysis (George and Bennett 2005). In essence, these templates articulate key observable implications within the alternative worlds of the scenarios and
serve as a framework for capturing the data that emerge (King, Keohane, and Verba 1994). Finally, this structured, focused comparison serves as the basis for the cross-case session emerging from the scenario

The scenario process described here has thus been

analysis that leads directly to the articulation of new research agendas.

carefully designed to offer some guidance to policy-oriented graduate students who are
otherwise left to the relatively unstructured norms by which political science dissertation ideas
are typically developed. The initial articulation of a dissertation project is generally an idiosyncratic and personal undertaking (Useem 1997; Rothman 2008), whereby students
might choose topics based on their coursework, their own previous policy exposure, or the topics studied by their advisors. Research agendas are thus typically developed by looking for “puzzles” in existing
research programs (Kuhn 1996). Doctoral students also, understandably, often choose topics that are particularly amenable to garnering research funding. Conventional grant programs typically base their funding
priorities on extrapolations from what has been important in the recent past—leading to, for example, the prevalence of Japan and Soviet studies in the mid-1980s or terrorism studies in the 2000s—in the

The scenario approach to generating research ideas

absence of any alternative method for identifying questions of likely future significance.

is grounded in the belief that these traditional approaches can be complemented by

identifying questions likely to be of great empirical importance in the real world, even if
these do not appear as puzzles in existing research programs or as clear extrapolations from
past events. The scenarios analyzed at NEFPC envision alternative worlds that could develop in the
medium (five to seven year) term and are designed to tease out issues scholars and
policymakers may encounter in the relatively near future so that they can begin thinking
critically about them now . This timeframe offers a period distant enough from the present
as to avoid falling into current events analysis, but not so far into the future as to seem
like science fiction. In imagining the worlds in which these scenarios might come to pass, participants learn strategies for
avoiding failures of creativity and for overturning the assumptions that prevent scholars
and analysts from anticipating and understanding the pivotal junctures that arise in
international affairs.
agamben supplement
top-shelf agamben materials
 1nc agamben k
education is a tool of sovereignty – students are submitted to
categorization and accelerated line drawing for the sake of neoliberal
training – curriculum functions to indoctrinate children into state loyalty
and separation from their impotential
Lewis 11 - PhD. in educational philosophy from UCLA, Associate Professor at the University of North Texas, author of
several philosophical examinations of education policy – (Tyson, “Rethinking the Learning Society: Giorgio Agamben on Studying,
Stupidity, and Impotence,” November 2011, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11217-011-9255-6)//elliot

From De Anima, Agamben argues that Aristotle enables us to think two kinds of potential:
generic and effective. A generic conceptualization of potentiality explains how a child is able to
grow up to be a particular type of person with a particular occupation (a Statesman for
example). Through education, the child suffers an ‘‘alteration (a becoming other) through
learning’’ (Agamben 1999, p. 179) where ‘‘the passage from the act implies an exhaustion and
destruction of potential’’ (Agamben 2005b, p. 136). It is precisely this model of potentiality that
currently informs discourses of the learning society, which emphasize investment into
potentiality in order to fully actualize this potential in the form of constant measurement of
performance outcomes. Here the ontology of the child is structured according to the strict
logic of ‘‘not yet’’: not yet an adult, not yet a citizen, not yet a productive member of
society. Thus the child must suffer an alteration through learning that destroys the not
yet in order to fully actualize a latent potentiality for adulthood, citizenship, or
productivity. In all sectors of the learning society, emphasis is on measuring and quantifying
the effects of learning inputs, including school accountability, economic performance, citizenship
involvement, etc. Yet, to fully actualize potentiality is to destroy it. In this schema, potential
in other words becomes subordinate to actuality—it is in some senses what makes the actual
possible but also what must be eliminated in order for the passage to the act to be complete and
thus for the subject to rightfully take his or her place within the allotted order of things (either in
relation to the economic, the political, or the social). Potentiality is sacrificed in order for the child
to learn x skills for x purposes predetermined in advance by experts in the field of educational
research. Yet Agamben argues that there is a second notion of potentiality in Aristotle’s work
which can be referred to as ‘‘effective potentiality’’ in that it represents a ‘‘conservation of
potential in the act and something like the giving of potentiality to itself’’ (2005b, p. 136). This is
the type of potentiality that interests Agamben the most. Those who have knowledge are in
potential, meaning that they equally have the capacity to bring knowledge into actuality
and not bring knowledge into actuality. Agamben then gives the example of an architect who
‘‘is in potential insofar as he has the potential to not-build, the poet the potential to not-write
poems’’ (1999, p. 179). By conserving itself, potential remains (im)potential. (Im)potential in my
usage is not simply impotence, but is an active capacity for not-doing or not-being. To
experience (im)potentiality is therefore the experience of not-writing that enables the poet to
develop proficiency through sustained reflection, planning, speculation, imagination, etc.
Agamben summarizes: (im)potential ‘‘permits human beings to accumulate and freely master
their own capacities, to transform them into ‘faculties’’’ (Agamben 2011, p. 44). Rather than a
stumbling block that must be continually denied, repressed, or overcome, Joanne Faulkner
argues that Agamben’s theory of (im)potential ‘‘refers not simply to incapacity but rather to a
being-able that abstains from doing’’(Faulkner 2010, p. 205) that permits a new relation to one’s
own impotency. Thus, all theories of potentiality must also and equally be theories of the
(im)potential, for it is the impotential of potentiality that enables free choice. In fact, it is the
giving of potentiality to itself that is the experience of freedom. Agamben writes, ‘‘Here it is
possible to see how the root of freedom is to be found in the abyss of potentiality… To be free
is, in the sense we have seen, to be capable of one’s own impotentiality…’’ (Agamben 1999, p.
183). What makes us human, according to Agamben, is precisely the capacity to not be, to
remain (im)potential. It is this paradoxical existence which opens history to contingency—to the
potential to act otherwise or to be otherwise. Evil in this sense is derivative of a flight from
an indetermining (im)potentiality into the logic of pure or complete actualization. It is a
denial of the constitutive link between growth and impotence. Citing Agamben, ‘‘Evil is only
our inadequate reaction when faced with this demonic element [our impotential], our fearful
retreat from it in order to exercise—founding ourselves in this flight some power of being’’
(Agamben 2007b, pp. 31–32). Thus to enable students to experience their potential means that
they must be given the chance to experience their impotence, their capacity not to be. In the
learning society, education has become obsessed with the measure of what someone can do in
order to fulfill a particular role within the economy, yet for Agamben, this obsession with
assessment and verification of actualization is itself a form of evil that destroys the students’
freedom to not be.

The impact is the sovereign’s ability fuel the global biopolitical war against
all bodies deemed as illegitimate – the ballot should side with the global
movement against sovereignty
Gulli 13 – professor of history, philosophy, and political science at Kingsborough College in
New York, (Bruno, “For the critique of sovereignty and violence,”
http://academia.edu/2527260/For_the_Critique_of_Sovereignty_and_Violence, pg. 1)
We live in an unprecedented time of crisis. The violence that characterized the twentieth century,
and virtually all known human history before that, seems to have entered the twenty-first century with
exceptional force and singularity. True, this century opened with the terrible events of September 11. However,
September 11 is not the beginning of history. Nor are the histories of more forgotten places and people, the events
that shape those histories, less terrible and violent – though they may often be less spectacular. The singularity of this
violence, this paradigm of terror, does not even simply lie in its globality, for that is something that our
century shares with the whole history of capitalism and empire, of which it is a part. Rather, it must be seen in the fact
that terror as a global phenomenon has now become self-conscious . Today, the struggle is
for global dominance in a singularly new way, and war –regardless of where it happens—is also
always global . Moreover, in its self-awareness, terror has become, more than it has ever been, an
instrument of racism. Indeed, what is new in the singularity of this violent struggle, this racist and
terrifying war, is that in the usual attempt to neutralize the enemy, there is a cleansing of
immense proportion going on . To use a word which has become popular since Michel Foucault, it is a
biopolitical cleansing. This is not the traditional ethnic cleansing, where one ethnic group is
targeted by a state power – though that is also part of the general paradigm of racism and
violence. It is rather a global cleansing , where the sovereign elites, the global sovereigns in
the political and financial arenas (capital and the political institutions), in all kinds of ways target those who do
not belong with them on account of their race, class, gender, and so on, but above all, on account
of their way of life and way of thinking . These are the multitudes of people who, for one
reason or the other, are liable for scrutiny and surveillance, extortion (typically, in the form of over-

taxation and fines) and arrest, brutality, torture, and violent death . The sovereigns target anyone
who, as Giorgio Agamben (1998) shows with the figure of homo sacer, can be killed without being sacrificed –
anyone who can be reduced to the paradoxical and ultimately impossible condition of bare life, whose only horizon is death itself. In
this sense, the biopolitical cleansing is also immediately a thanatopolitical instrument. The biopolitical struggle
for
dominance is a fight to the death. Those who wage the struggle to begin with, those who want to dominate,
will not rest until they have prevailed. Their fanatical and self-serving drive is also very much
the source of the crisis investing all others. The point of this essay is to show that the present crisis, which is
systemic and permanent and thus something more than a mere crisis, cannot be solved
unless the struggle for dominance is eliminated . The elimination of such struggle implies the
demise of the global sovereigns, the global elites – and this will not happen without a global
revolution, a “restructuring of the world” (Fanon 1967: 82). This must be a revolution against the
paradigm of violence and terror typical of the global sovereigns. It is not a movement that
uses violence and terror, but rather one that counters the primordial terror and violence of the
sovereign elites by living up to the vision of a new world already worked out and cherished by
multitudes of people. This is the nature of counter-violence : not to use violence in one’s own
turn, but to deactivate and destroy its mechanism . At the beginning of the modern era, Niccolò Machiavelli
Freedom , Machiavelli says,
saw the main distinction is society in terms of dominance, the will to dominate, or the lack thereof.
is obviously on the side of those who reject the paradigm of domination: [A]nd doubtless, if we consider
the objects of the nobles and of the people, we must see that the first have a great desire to dominate, whilst the latter have only the
wish not to be dominated, and consequently a greater desire to live in the enjoyment of liberty (Discourses, I, V). Who can resist
applying this amazing insight to the many situations of resistance and revolt that have been happening in the world for the last two
years? FromTahrir Square to Bahrain, from Syntagma Square and Plaza Mayor to the streets of
New York and Oakland, ‘ the people’ speak with one voice against ‘the nobles ;’ the 99% all
face the same enemy: the same 1%; courage and freedom face the same police and military
machine of cowardice and deceit, brutality and repression. Those who do not want to be
dominated, and do not need to be governed, are ontologically on the terrain of freedom , always-
already turned toward a poetic desire for the common good , the ethics of a just world . The
point here is not to distinguish between good and evil, but rather to understand the twofold nature of power – as domination or as
care. The biopolitical (and thanatopolitical) struggle for dominance is unilateral, for there is only one side that wants to dominate.
The other side –ontologically, if not circumstantially, free and certainly wiser—does not want to dominate; rather,
it wants not to be dominated. This means that it rejects domination as such . The rejection of
domination also implies the rejection of violence, and I have already spoken above of the meaning of counter-violence in this sense.
other side “would prefer not to” be dominated,
To put it another way, with Melville’s (2012) Bartleby, this
and it “would prefer not to” be forced into the paradigm of violence. Yet, for this preference, this
desire, to pass from potentiality into actuality, action must be taken – an action which is a
return and a going under, an uprising and a hurricane . Revolution is to turn oneself away
from the terror and violence of the sovereign elites toward the horizon of freedom and care,
which is the pre- existing ontological ground of the difference mentioned by Machiavelli between the nobles
and the people, the 1% (to use a terminology different from Machiavelli’s) and the 99%. What is important is that the
sovereign elite and its war machine, its police apparatuses, its false sense of the law, be done
with . It is important that the sovereigns be shown, as Agamben says, in “their original proximity to
the criminal” (2000: 107) and that they be dealt with accordingly . For this to happen, a true sense of
the law must be recuperated, one whereby the law is also immediately ethics . The
sovereigns will be brought to justice . The process is long, but it is in many ways already
underway. The recent news that a human rights lawyer will lead a UN investigation into the
question of drone strikes and other forms of targeted killing (The New York Times, January 24, 2013) is an
indication of the fact that the movement of those who do not want to be dominated is not
without effect . An initiative such as this is perhaps necessarily timid at the outset and it may be sidetracked in many ways by
even positing , at that institutional level, the possibility that drone
powerful interests in its course. Yet,
strikes be a form of unlawful killing and war crime is a clear indication of what common reason
(one is tempted to say, the General Intellect) already understands and knows. The hope of those who
“would prefer not to” be involved in a violent practice such as this, is that those responsible
for it be held accountable and that the horizon of terror be canceled and overcome. Indeed, the
earth needs care . And when instead of caring for it, resources are dangerously wasted and
abused, it is imperative that those who know and understand revolt –and what they must
revolt against is the squandering and irresponsible elites, the sovereign discourse, whose
authority, beyond all nice rhetoric, ultimately rests on the threat of military violence and police
brutality
study education and it’s malicious intent, but refuse participation - the
alternative’s radical embracement of impotentiality is necessary to
deactivate and divorce education from violence and sovereignty
Snoek 12 (Anke, PhD in Philosophy Department @ Macquarie U., Agamben’s Joyful Kafka, pgs
48-52)//elliot
According to Agamben, study
is an important strategy for living outside the law and making it
inoperative. In what sense can study be a strategy? Study has a long tradition in Judaism as a
form of resistance. In 586 BC, Jerusalem was plundered by the Babylonian king
Nebuchadnezzar and the temple of the Jews destroyed. Many Jews died and the rest were
taken captive and brought to Babylonia. During the Babylonian exile, when they no longer had a
temple and were forbidden to practise their faith, the Jewish people focused on the study of their
holy books. After the Persian king Cyrus defeated Babylonia and issued a decree in 537 BC that
the exiled Jews could return to their homelands and rebuild their holy sanctuaries, 40,000 Jews
returned to rebuild the temple. But the religion of the Jews was already marked by exile and in
70 AD the temple was again destroyed, this time by the Romans. The temple was not rebuilt
and study has since then become the true temple of the Jews. The Jewish religion is no longer
focused on worship but on study. This gave the scholar a messianic significance (IP, 63).
Talmud means 'study'; the original meaning of Torah is not ‘law' but 'instruction'. Mishnan, the
set of rabbinic laws, is derived from a root that has 'repetition' as its basic meaning. The study
Agamben is aiming at does not have a predetermined goal : getting a degree and a good
position in society, or getting some valuable insight that can be used to overthrow a
political structure. Just as the strategy to close the door of the law was especially hard
because the law does not prescribe anything and the task of the Messiah is paradoxical
because there is no original structure of the law to restore, so study also lacks a
transcendent meaning it can aim at, a goal it can set. As far as etymology is concerned, the word studium
is closely related to a root that indicates a collision, a shock or influence. Study and surprise are closely related in that sense.
Whoever studies finds oneself shocked, amazed and is, in a certain sense, stupid (cf. studium, stupefying). On the one hand, study
Agamben sees a close affinity with Aristotle's
is undergone and, on the other, undertaken. Here
description of potentiality, which is passive on the one hand - an undergoing - and active
on the other - an unstoppable drive to undertake something, to do something, to engage
in action. Study is the place where undergoing and undertaking converge; it is a gesture (IP, 64).
The rhythm of studying is an alternation between amazement and clarity, discovery and loss, doing and undergoing. This
combination of undergoing and undertaking yields a kind of passive activity, a radical
passivity . Something happens without seeming to happen. Agamben argues that study is pre-eminently
unending. Study does not have an appropriate end nor does it desire it. This gives the scholar a woeful
air. At first glance, the students in Kafka's works seem to be of little use or significance. Nevertheless, Benjamin contends that they
have a major role to play: 'Among Kafka's creations, there is a clan which reckons with the brevity of life in a peculiar way. The
students who appear in the strangest places in Kafka's works are the spokesmen for and leaders of this clan'.30 Agamben is in
complete agreement with this view: [T]he latest, most exemplary embodiment of study in our culture is not the great philosopher nor
the sainted doctor. It is rather the student, such as he appears in certain novels of Kafka or Walser. (IP, 65) It
is precisely
the apparent uselessness of the students and the hopelessness of study that plays such an
important role in the strategy they develop with respect to power. Katka's useless students without
Schrift So the students operating in Kafka's stories have an important characteristic: their
studies seem to be useless. In Amerika, Karl sees a strange young man: He watched silently as the man read in his
book, turned the pages and occasionally checked something in another book that he always picked up at lightning speed, often
making entries in a notebook, his face always bent surprisingly low over it. Could this man be a student? He did seem to be
studying. ... 'You're studying?' asked Karl. 'Yes, yes', said the man, using the few moments lost to his studies to rearrange his
books.31 (...) "And when will you be finished with your studies?' asked Karl. 'Its slow going', said the student. ... *[Ylou can be happy
about having given up your studies. I myself have been studying for years, out of pure single-mindedness. It has given me little
satisfaction and even less chance of a decent future.32 Karl explains his problems with Delamarche to the student. The student
cannot really help him either; he does not offer Karl any insight in what he must do and even advises him to remain with Delamarche
'absolutely'.33 Karl wonders where studying had got him - he had forgotten everything again.34 The most extreme
example of a student, in Agamben's view, is Melville's Bartleby, the scriber who stopped
writing. According to Benjamin, Kafka's students have also lost the Schrift. This can mean either that they have stopped writing
or that they have lost the Schrift in the sense of the Torah, the object of study. According to Scholem, the students have not lost the
Schrift or the Torah, but they can no longer decipher it (cited in HS, 51). Nonetheless, Benjamin's genius is apparent, according to
Agamben, precisely in the fact that the students have lost the Schrift. Their commentaries on the Schrift, on the Law, are notes in
the margin of a blank page.35 Study does not lead to an a priori determined goal; Kafka does not attach any promises to study that
are traditionally attached to the study of the Torah. According to Agamben, the messianic tension of study is turned around here. Or
better: it has gone beyond itself. Its gesture is that of a power that does not precede but follows its action, which it has left behind
forever, of a Talmud that has not only announced the reconstruction of the temple but has already forgotten it. 'At
this point,
study shakes off the sadness that disfigured it and returns to its truest nature: not work,
but inspiration, the self-nourishment of the soul' (IP, 65).36 Kalka's assistants are members of a
congregation who have lost their house of prayer. His students have forgotten how to write, have lost the Schrift. Now nothing stops
them on their *[u|ntrammeled, happy journey'.37 The study of the horse Bucephalus But the most enigmatic example of the student
in Kafka's work may be Alexander the Great's horse Bucephalus, who happens to become a lawyer to the surprise of his
colleagues. We have a new lawyer, Dr. Bucephalus. In his outward appearance there is little to recall the time when he was the
warhorse of Alexander of Macedonia. ... I recently saw a quite simple court usher with the knowing eye of a little racetrack regular
marvelling at the lawyer as the latter, lifting his thighs high, mounted step by step with a stride that made the marble clang. In
general the bar approves the admission of Bucephalus. ... Nowadays, as no one can deny, there is no great Alexander. To be sure,
many know how to commit murder ... and many feel that Macedonia is too narrow ... but no one, no one, can lead the way to India.
Even in those days India's gates were beyond reach, but their direction was indicated by the royal sword. ... Today ... no one shows
the way; many carry swords but only wave them in the air and the gaze that tries to follow them grows confused. Perhaps, therefore,
it is really best, as Bucephalus has done, to immerse oneself in law books. Free, his flanks unburdened by the loins of the rider, by
quiet lamplight, far from the tumult of Alexander's battle, he reads and turns the pages of our old books.38 In his interpretation of
this story, Werner Kraft concludes that law is set over against myth in the name of justice: instead of taking part in the mythical (pre-
law) struggle, Bucephalus devotes himself to law.39 Benjamin sees this as a serious misunderstanding of Kafka's story. Indeed, the
goal is to unmask mythical juridical violence and human beings, like the horse Bucephalus, must tame the mythical forces at
whatever cost (SE, 63). But, according to Benjamin, what is new about this 'new lawyer', what is new for the legal profession, is that
he does not practise law but only studies it, reading in tranquil lamplight. Bucephalus is free: his flanks are no longer squeezed by
The door to justice is not to employ
Alexander the Great's thighs and he is no longer carrying the latter on his back.
law but to make it inoperative - not by practising law (which would be a repetition of the mythical forces,
given that law is in force without significance), but by doing nothing more than studying it. 'The law
which is studied but no longer practiced is the gate to justice'.40 Bucephalus' strategy against law is
thus study. Agamben remarks that it is decisive that the law that is not practised but only
studied does not itself become justice but only the door to it. The study of the law has no
'higher purpose' - that is why the law has become inopera¬tive.4' 'That which opens the
passage to justice is not the abolishment of the law but its deactivation and inactivity -
that is, another use of the law' (SE, 63). This is a law that is liberated from all discipline and all
relation to sover¬eignty . Bucephalus depicts a figure of the law that is possible after its link with violence and
power has been deposed, a law that is no longer in force and applied (SE, 63-64), just as the study of
doorkeepers by the man from the country makes it possible to remain living outside the law. Agamben then outlines the following
picture of the future: One day humanity
will play with law just as children play with disused
objects, not in order to restore them to their canonical use, but to free them from it for
good. (SE, 64)
Accepting the plan as a legitimate subject of debate eviscerates solvency.
Appeals to legality fail absent study and de-activation of the fictional lines
of inside and outside created by the sovereign guardians
McLoughlin 13 [Daniel McLoughlin, professor of law at the University of South Wales, “The
Fiction of Sovereignty and the Real State of Exception: Giorgio Agamben’s Critique of Carl
Schmitt,” Law, Culture and the Humanities 0(0) pg. 17]

State of Exception suggests that the studious deactivation of the law is exemplified by Kafka’s
characters.86 While his reading of Kafka is only one strand of the politics of inoperativity within his work, it is nonetheless an
important one for our purposes, given Agamben’s tendency to illuminate the relationship between messianism, nihil- ism and law
Kafka’s characters seek to “deactivate”
through Kafka.87 To conclude, then, I briefly examine the way in which
the law; how this might relate to the production of a “real state of exception”; and how
Agamben conceives the stakes of this politics of “use.”¶ According to Homo Sacer, Kafka’s
parable “Before the Law” represents the “struc- ture of the sovereign ban in an
exemplary abbreviation.”88 The story begins with the “man from the country” approaching
the door of the law, only to be informed by its gatekeeper that, although the door is
open, he cannot enter at the moment . The man asks if permission will be forthcoming: the gatekeeper
responds that it is possible, “but not now,” 89 and that, although he is welcome to enter the door
without permission, he will only encounter door after door , and guardian after guardian ,
each more fearsome than the last. Taking a seat before the door of the law, the man from
the country then waits for days and years, all the while trying to convince the gatekeeper
to grant him entry. Still before the law in old age, with little time left to live, he sees a
radiance streaming from the gateway to the law . As his life begins to fade, the man from
the country asks why in all this time no-one else has attempted to gain entry, to which
the doorkeeper responds: “No one else could ever be admitted here , since this gate was
made only for you . I am now going to shut it.” 90¶ According to Agamben, “Before the Law” is
usually read as a tale of “irremediable defeat,”91 a story of the impossibility of surpassing
the structure of sovereignty. Agamben, by contrast, argues that the man from the country
is engaged in a patient and ultimately successful attempt to deactivate the law’s “being
in force without sig- nificance.” At the end of the story, despite the risk to his life entailed by his
struggle with the law, the man remains alive and the door to the Law is shut. In his essay “K,”
Agamben elaborates on this reading with a subtle yet important shift of emphasis: the lesson of the man from the
country is, he argues, that the deactivation of the law does not require the study of law itself,
but rather, the “long study of its doorkeepers.” 92 While the law is absent in Kafka’s
world, what keeps it at work is the fact that the guardians of the law claim to act on its
behalf . If one wants to deactivate the law, then the decisive politi- cal struggle is not with
law itself, which is already inoperative, but with those who cover over this fact with the
claim that they represent the law. In the same essay, Agamben makes a similar point about The Castle: the land
surveyor who tries to gain access to the castle does not engage in a struggle “against God or supreme sovereignty ... but against
the angels, the messengers and functionaries who appear to represent it ... (it is) a conflict with the fabrications of men (or of angels)
regarding the divine.”93¶ This helps to illuminate the sense in which the real state of exception can simultane-
ously be a situation to which we are subject; a situation that has been exposed as such by Benjamin; and also
a crucial political task to undertake that will “help in the struggle against Fascism.” In
Agamben’s account of Paul, the coming of the messiah has deacti- vated the law and yet the law
remains at work; in his analyses of the state of exception the law is suspended yet
remains in force; in his reading of Kafka, the Law is absent yet still present . In each instance,
then, there is a messianic tension between an “already” existing lawlessness that is “not
yet” fully experienced as such, because it is being cov- ered over by authority: the katechon
in Paul, the guardians of the law in Kafka, and those trying to control the state in his
account of the exception. To produce a real state of exception is to deactivate the law ,
which requires undermining the claims of the repre- sentatives of the law and the
political divisions that they maintain on this basis . While the lawlessness of the real state
of exception is at work, it can only come to light in and through a “conflict with the
fabrications of men” about the continued existence of law.94¶ Agamben sees the politics
of deactivating the law as the only appropriate (and indeed conceptually viable )
response to the state of emergency as rule . As we have observed, Schmitt’s analysis of sovereignty closed
down the idea of pure violence and the possi- bility of a radically revolutionary act through the idea of the force-of-law, which placed
the power to suspend the law into the hands of the state and those who seek to control it. However, Benjamin’s eighth thesis turns
the tables on Schmitt, as the idea of sover- eignty becomes utterly implausible when the state of
emergency is the rule. Within the contemporary political horizon, then, it is conceptually impossible to
claim legal author- ity and legitimacy: as Agamben asserts in The Church and the Kingdom “nowhere on
earth today is a legitimate power to be found .”95 What is conceptually possible, how-
ever, is a politics that seeks to deactivate the law by neutralizing the claims to legality
made by those who present themselves as its guardians. It is only through such a politics that the
lawlessness of the ‘‘real state of exception’’ is experienced as such, as any poli- tics that makes claims to legal

authority rests upon the fiction of sovereignty and hence continues to conceal the
deactivation of the law.¶ What is at stake in this account of the real state of exception is an attempt to break with the
sense of political stagnation that characterizes contemporary politics. In a frag- ment from The Coming Community entitled “Halos,”
Agamben recounts a version of a parable about the Kingdom of the Messiah told to Ernst Bloch by Walter Benjamin: “The
Hassidim tell a story about the world to come that says everything there will be just as it
is here. Just as our room is now, so will it be in the world to come; where our baby
sleeps now, there too it will sleep in the other world. And the clothes we wear in this
world, so too we will wear there. Everything will be as it is now , just a little bit
different.” 96 After recounting Benjamin’s version of the parable, Agamben goes on to say that “the tiny
displacement does not refer to things, but to their sense and their limits ... the parable
introduces a possibility there where everything is perfect, an ‘otherwise’ where every-
thing is finished forever.”97 For Agamben, then, the sense of “inversion” that is charac- teristic
of Benjamin’s messianism brings to light a possibility to be otherwise . Similarly, Agamben’s
messianic inversion of sovereignty responds to a sense of political closure by trying to
introduce a sense that it is possible for things to be otherwise .¶ Throughout his political work, he
asserts that the political tradition has reached its end due to the increasing indistinction of
the fundamental oppositions (law/anomie, politics/ life) that have historically delimited
the political and thereby made it possible . The con- ceptual and institutional structures
that framed and helped to make sense of our political experience have collapsed and it
is not possible to return to their shelter .98 Despite this crisis, we do not seem capable of
conceiving of political experience beyond the terms offered by the political tradition, and
the theory of sovereignty plays a key role in this sense of political closure, anchoring all
political experience to the law , and foreclosing the idea of a political action that breaks
with the order of legal violence.¶ By undermining the idea of sovereignty, Benjamin’s eighth thesis re-opens the con-
ceptual possibility of a politics of pure violence. Pure violence is, Agamben writes, mani- fest in the purification
of violence: that is, in the “exposure and deposition ”99 of the nexus between violence and
law. This is precisely what Benjamin achieves in his philo- sophical combat with Schmitt, meaning that the eighth thesis is a
manifestation of the politics of pure violence at the level of theory.100 But while Benjamin may have disabled the
apparatus of sovereignty at a philosophical level, the force-of-law is consistently
invoked by the messengers and guardians of the law to justify the anomic violence that
is leading us towards catastrophe .101 Benjamin’s eighth thesis then grounds Agamben’s
call for, and attempt to theorize the conditions of, a messianic politics dedicated to
bringing to light the inoperativity of the law that is already at work in the politics of our
time. For Agamben, to live messianically means to take the illegitimacy of state power as the
premise of one’s politics : to act on the basis that the law is already inoperative , that the
claims to authority of its representatives are a fiction , and that their power needs to be
deactivated.
 2nc – impact framing
Evaluate all impact uniqueness claims through the lens of global civil war
that cuts down actions within the system—only total rejection of
sovereignty makes possible practices preventing crises from occurring
rather than responding to them once they do.
Agamben 2 [Giorgio Agamben, famous philosopher, “Security and Terror,” Theory and Event
5:4]
Neither Turgot and Quesnay nor the Physiocratic officials were primarily concerned with the prevention of famine or the regulation of
While
production, but rather wanted to allow for their development in order to guide and "secure" their consequences.
disciplinary power isolates and closes off territories, measures of security lead to an
opening and globalisation; while the law wants to prevent and prescribe, security wants
to intervene in ongoing processes to direct them. In a word, discipline wants to produce
order, while security wants to guide disorder. Since measures of security can only
function within a context of freedom of traffic, trade, and individual initiative, Foucault
can show that the development of security coincides with the development of liberal
ideology.¶ Today we are facing extreme and most dangerous developments of this
paradigm of security. In the course of a gradual neutralisation of politics and the
progressive surrender of traditional tasks of the state, security imposes itself as the
basic principle of state activity. What used to be one among several decisive measures of
public administration until the first half of the twentieth century, now becomes the sole
criterion of political legitimation. Security reasoning entails an essential risk. A state which has security
as its only task and source of legitimacy is a fragile organism ; it can always be
provoked by terrorism to turn itself terroristic.¶ We should not forget that the first major organisation of terror
after the war, the Organisation de l'Armée Secrète (OAS) was established by a French General who thought of himself as patriotic
and who was convinced that terrorism was the only answer to the guerilla phenomenon in Algeria and Indochina. When
politics, the way it was understood by theorists of the "Polizeiwissenschaft" in the eighteenth century, reduces itself to
police, the difference between state and terrorism threatens to disappear . In the end it
may lead to security and terrorism forming a single deadly system in which they
mutually justify and legitimate each others' actions .¶ The risk is not merely the
development of a clandestine complicity of opponents but that the hunt for security
leads to a worldwide civil war which destroys all civil coexistence . In the new situation -- created by
the end of the classical form of war between sovereign states -- security finds its end in globalisation: it
implies the idea of a new planetary order which is, in fact, the worst of all disorders . But
there is yet another danger. Because they require constant reference to a state of exception,
measures of security work towards a growing depoliticization of society . In the long run, they
are irreconcilable with democracy .¶ Nothing is therefore more important than a revision
of the concept of security as the basic principle of state politics. European and American
politicians finally have to consider the catastrophic consequences of uncritical use of
this figure of thought . It is not that democracies should cease to defend themselves, but
the defense of democracy demands today a change of political paradigms and not a
world civil war which is just the institutionalization of terror . Maybe the time has come to
work towards the prevention of disorder and catastrophe, and not merely towards their
control. Today, there are plans for all kinds of emergencies (ecological, medical, military),
but there is no politics to prevent them . On the contrary, we can say that politics secretly
works towards the production of emergencies. It is the task of democratic politics to
prevent the development of conditions which lead to hatred, terror, and destruction --
and not to reduce itself to attempts to control them once they occur.
 2nc - ethics
The only ethical position is to refuse the sovereign fiction of lines between
inside and outside.
Edkins and Pin-Fat 5 [Jenny Edkins, professor of international politics at Prifysgol Aberystwyth
University (in Wales) and Veronique Pin-Fat, senior lecturer in politics at Manchester Universit,
“Through the Wire: Relations of Power and Relations of Violence,” Millennium - Journal of
International Studies 2005 34: pg. 14]

One potential form of challenge to sovereign power consists of a refusal to draw any
lines between zoe- and bios, inside and outside .59 As we have shown, sovereign power does
not involve a power relation in Foucauldian terms. It is more appropriately considered to have
become a form of governance or technique of administration through relationships of
violence that reduce political subjects to mere bare or naked life. In asking for a refusal to
draw lines as a possibility of challenge, then, we are not asking for the elimination of power
relations and consequently, we are not asking for the erasure of the possibility of a mode
of political being that is empowered and empowering, is free and that speaks: quite the
opposite . Following Agamben, we are suggesting that it is only through a refusal to draw any lines at
all between forms of life (and indeed, nothing less will do) that sovereign power as a
form of violence can be contested and a properly political power relation (a life of power as
potenza) reinstated . We could call this challenging the logic of sovereign power through
refusal . Our argument is that we can evade sovereign power and reinstate a form of power
relation by contesting sovereign power’s assumption of the right to draw lines , that is,
by contesting the sovereign ban. Any other challenge always inevitably remains within
this relationship of violence . To move outside it (and return to a power relation) we need not only to
contest its right to draw lines in particular places, but also to resist the call to draw any
lines of the sort sovereign power demands.¶ The grammar of sovereign power cannot be
resisted by challenging or fighting over where the lines are drawn . Whilst, of course, this is a
strategy that can be deployed, it is not a challenge to sovereign power per se as it still
tacitly or even explicitly accepts that lines must be drawn somewhere (and preferably
more inclusively). Although such strategies contest the violence of sovereign power’s
drawing of a particular line, they risk replicating such violence in demanding the line be
drawn differently . This is because such forms of challenge fail to refuse sovereign power’s
line-drawing ‘ethos’, an ethos which , as Agamben points out, renders us all now homines sacri
or bare life .¶ Taking Agamben’s conclusion on board, we now turn to look at how the assumption of
bare life can produce forms of challenge. Agamben puts it in terms of a transformation: ¶
This biopolitical body that is bare life must itself instead be transformed into the site for
the constitution and installation of a form of life that is wholly exhausted in bare life and
a bios that is only its own zoe-.... If we give the name form-of-life to this being that is only
its own bare existence and to this life that, being its own form, remains inseparable from
it we will witness the emergence of a field of research beyond the terrain defined by the
intersection of politics and philosophy, medico-biological sciences and jurisprudence .60
 2nc - framework
Our framework is necessary to transform debate into “playful study,” a
space in which the judge can operate as a messianic teacher and unlock
the revolutionary creativity of students – the only aff ballot is one that
confines teaching to a framework loyal to the sovereign
Lewis 11 - PhD. in educational philosophy from UCLA, Associate Professor at the University of North Texas, author of
several philosophical examinations of education policy – (Tyson, “Rethinking the Learning Society: Giorgio Agamben on Studying,
Stupidity, and Impotence,” November 2011, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11217-011-9255-6)//elliot

The role of the teacher is not simply to give us an opportunity to study (or to speak/ respond),
but also to give us inspiration in our moments of sadness (our experience of impotence), thus
transforming our relationship to our (im)potential to be or not to be this or that. Agamben argues, ‘‘…so
as to be able to write, so as to become an inspiration also for us, the teacher had to smother his inspiration, come to terms with it;
the inspired poet is without works’’ (1985, p. 60). In other words, the teacher passes from potentiality to actuality, thus destroying
inspiration in order to give it as a gift to his or her students in the form of completed works. This description seems rather hastily
the best teachers
drawn. Agamben’s characterization of the teacher has to be questioned. For instance, we could argue that
are not those whose work has passed into actuality—i.e. completed a body of definitive work
that offers students ‘‘solutions’’ or ‘‘answers’’ or more tentatively ‘‘models’’ for action,
scholarship, or proper research—but rather whose work remains (im)potential. Thus what is
most inspirational about Marx’s Capital or Benjamin’s Arcades Project is precisely their status
as fragments, as reminders of the stupidity of the authors, of the remnants that haunt us. These
books are fragments, or rather shadows that present the unpresentable darkness of their times.
They exist in a state of suspension between pure potentiality and actualization, between ‘‘no
longer’’ (without capacity or power) and ‘‘not yet’’ (translating this capacity into a particular form,
a particular individuation within the allotted order of things) and thus potent reminders of the act
of restless studying that led both into the labyrinth of shadows that define historical materialism.
In this sense, the teacher’s particular work is to help transform the messianic mood from one of
sadness to inspiration. As opposed to the anxiety of learning to meet standards or expel
students, the teacher in Agamben’s formulation helps the student transform the infinite sadness
and pain of study into a type of intellectual activity that has ‘‘joyously forgotten its goal’’ (2007c, p.
86) to become this or that in order to sustain a relation of immanence with its own impotence.
When sadness becomes joy it effectively transforms from study to playful study as the
messianic moment of educational freedom. Here we must correct Agamben by articulating his scant and incomplete
comments on the student/teacher relationship with his theory of assistants. Drawing on Kafka’s work, Agamben argues that the
world is populated by strange figures called ‘‘assistants’’ who seem to be sent to ‘‘help’’ us and yet ‘‘they have no knowledge, no
skills, and no equipment’’ (2007c, p. 29). Although bumbling and unable to give direct help, these figures are ‘‘attentive observers’’
or ‘‘messengers who do not know the content of the letters they must deliver, but whose smile, whose look whose very posture
It is in their apparent impotence that they ‘‘embody the type of
‘seems like a message’’’ (Ibid., p. 29).
eternal student’’ who cannot finish anything, whose non-act (inability to give a gift to humanity)
is in the last instance the ultimate gift: the gift of (im)potentiality. It is my contention that these assistants are
the best teachers precisely because they remain stupefied, constantly in a state of study. We could argue that teachers are akin to
the strange menagerie of mythical creatures which Agamben finds in children’s books: gnomes, fairies, and other subjects between
the divine and the human, the living and the dead. Teachers are therefore not simply students or not-students,
they are not-not-students whose ‘‘inconclusive gesture’’ (Ibid., p. 30) of help is all the help we need
to study. As such, the teacher becomes paradoxically close yet distant from his or her students
in a shared messianic moment of study wherein the teacher–student dialectic is rendered
inoperative without passing to its end. Stated differently, the teacher is not simply someone who
explains (as in Bingham and Biesta’s model of the stultifying schoolteacher) but is not something else either. Thus if explanations
are given, they are useless, stupid explanations that inspire rather than stultify. Perhaps this stupefying teacher who
gives the gift of inconclusiveness to his or her students is best personified by Plato himself! In the
Idea of Prose Agamben recounts a rather odd story concerning a lecture given by an aging Plato. Announced as a lecture
concerning the Good, students were subsequently disappointed when Plato rambled on and on about mathematics finally
pronouncing that ‘‘One’’ is Good. By the end of the lecture, ‘‘Even those like Aristotle and Speusippus, who stayed until the end,
were embarrassed and tonguetied’’ (Agamben 1995, p. 108). Plato had become an enigma to his students, and thus his
pedagogical gesture was conclusive in its very inconclusiveness. For Agamben this story reveals the danger of reducing education
to a thematic treatment of a problem—of reducing paideia to mere representation or verification. Yet, beyond Agamben’s analysis,
we could argue that Plato’s approach poses another danger: stupifying students which leaves them
‘‘embarrassed.’’ Thus the teacher, while remaining an impotent assistant, must be keenly aware
of the mood induced by impotent education and work to shift from hesitation toward inspiration.
Otherwise students will, as with Plato, ‘‘swap glances and shake their heads’’ (Ibid.) until some
simply get up and leave, thus abandoning the examination of their own (im)potential through
continuous playful study. In this sense, the circulation of inspiration forms the knot that ties students and teachers together
in a mutual circle of reinforcing stupidity. Teachers remind us of what we have forgotten: our relationship to
whatever, to specialness, to infancy. Thus, while we might question the sacrificial nature of
teaching which Agamben describes, he nevertheless reframes the question of teaching in order
to focus on the precise dimension of teaching which is missed in the learning society.

You are certainly not a policy-maker—pretending you are causes absolving

of individual responsibility—ensures the aff’s impacts are inevitable and
link turns their cede the political arguments.
Kappeler 1995 (Susanne, Associate Professor at the School of Humanities and Social
Sciences, Al Akhawayn University, “The Will to Violence”, p. 10-11, MT)
We are the war' does not mean that the responsibility for a war is shared collectively and diffusely by an entire society which would
be equivalent to exonerating warlords and politicians and profiteers or, as Ulrich Beck says, upholding the notion of `collective
irresponsibility', where people are no longer held responsible for their actions, and where the conception of universal responsibility
becomes the equival ent of a universal acquittal.' On the contrary, the object is precisely to analyse the specific and differential
responsibility of everyone in their diverse situations. Decisions to unleash a war are indeed taken at particular levels of power by
those in a position to make them and to command such collective action. We need to hold them clearly responsible for their
our habit of focusing on
decisions and actions without lessening theirs by any collective `assumption' of responsibility. Yet
the stage where the major dramas of power take place tends to obscure our sight in relation to
our own sphere of competence, our own power and our own responsibility leading to the well-
known illusion of our apparent `powerlessness’ and its accompanying phe nomenon, our so-called
political disillusionment. Single citizens even more so those of other nations have come to feel secure in
their obvious non-responsibility for such large-scale political events as, say, the wars in Croatia and Bosnia-
Hercegovina or Somalia since the decisions for such events are always made elsewhere. Yet our insight
that indeed we are not responsible for the decisions of a Serbian general or a Croatian president tends to mislead us into
thinking that therefore we have no responsibility at all, not even for forming our own judgement, and thus into
underrating the responsibility we do have within our own sphere of action. In particular, it seems to
absolve us from having to try to see any relation between our own actions and those events, or
to recognize the connections between those political decisions and our own personal decisions.
It not only shows that we participate in what Beck calls `organized irresponsibility', upholding the apparent lack of connection
between bureaucratically, institutionally, nationally and also individually or ganized separate competences. It also proves the
phenomenal and unquestioned alliance of our personal thinking with the thinking of the major powermongers: For we tend to
think that we cannot `do' anything, say, about a war, because we deem ourselves to be in the wrong situation;
because we are not where the major decisions are made. Which is why many of those not yet
entirely disillusioned with politics tend to engage in a form of mental deputy politics, in the style
of `What would I do if I were the general, the prime minister, the president, the foreign minister or the minister of
defence?' Since we seem to regard their mega spheres of action as the only worthwhile and truly
effective ones, and since our political analyses tend to dwell there first of all, any question of what I would do if I
were indeed myself tends to peter out in the comparative insignificance of having what is
perceived as `virtually no possibilities': what I could do seems petty and futile. For my own action I
obviously desire the range of action of a general, a prime minister, or a General Secretary of the UN finding expression in ever more
prevalent formulations like `I
want to stop this war', `I want military intervention', `I want to stop this backlash', or `I want a
moral revolution." 'We are this war', however, even if we do not command the troops or participate in so-
called peace talks, namely as Drakulic says, in our `non-comprehension’: our willed refusal to feel
responsible for our own thinking and for working out our own understanding, preferring innocently to drift
along the ideological current of prefabricated arguments or less than innocently taking advantage of the
advantages these offer. And we `are' the war in our `unconscious cruelty towards you', our tolerance of the `fact that you have a
yellow form for refugees and I don't' our readiness, in other words, to build ident ities, one for ourselves and one for refugees, one of
our own and one for the `others'. We share in the responsibility for this war and its violence in the way we
let them grow inside us, that is, in the way we shape `our feelings, our relationships, our values'
according to the structures and the values of war and violence. “destining” of revealing insofar
as it “pushes” us in a certain direction. Heidegger does not regard destining as determination (he
says it is not a “fate which compels”), but rather as the implicit project within the field of modern practices
to subject all aspects of reality to the principles of order and efficiency, and to pursue reality down to the
finest detail. Thus, insofar as modern technology aims to order and render calculable, the
objectification of reality tends to take the form of an increasing classification, differentiation, and
fragmentation of reality. The possibilities for how things appear are increasingly reduced to those that enhance calculative
activities. Heidegger perceives the real danger in the modern age to be that human beings will continue
to regard technology as a mere instrument and fail to inquire into its essence. He fears that all
revealing will become calculative and all relations technical, that the unthought horizon of
revealing, namely the “concealed” background practices that make technological thinking possible, will be forgotten. He
remarks: The coming to presence of technology threatens revealing, threatens it with the possibility that all revealing will be
consumed in ordering and that everything will present itself only in the unconcealedness of
standing-reserve. (QT, 33) 10 Therefore, it is not technology, or science, but rather the essence of
technology as a way of revealing that constitutes the danger; for the essence of technology is
existential, not technological. 11 It is a matter of how human beings are fundamentally oriented toward
their world vis a vis their practices, skills, habits, customs, and so forth. Humanism contributes to this danger insofar as
it fosters the illusion that technology is the result of a collective human choice and therefore subject to human control. 12
 turns racism
this explains every manifestation of antiblackness in the United States
Lewis 11 - PhD. in educational philosophy from UCLA, Associate Professor at the University of North Texas, author of
several philosophical examinations of education policy – (Tyson, “Rethinking the Learning Society: Giorgio Agamben on Studying,
Stupidity, and Impotence,” November 2011, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11217-011-9255-6)//elliot

*this ev is modified for ableist language

We can now summarize Agamben’s critique of neoliberal democracy—and in turn the discourse
of learning. The problem with neoliberalism is that ‘‘today’s man believes himself capable
of everything, and so he repeats his jovial ‘no problem,’ and his irresponsible ‘I can do
it,’ precisely when he should instead realize that he has been consigned in unheard of
measures to forces and processes over which he has lost all control. He has become blind
not to his capacities but to his incapacities, not to what he can do but to what he cannot, or can
not, do’’ (Agamben 2011, p. 44). It is this Promethean hubris that bothers Agamben—a hubris
that is also found in the capitalist logic of infinite expansion and profit generation. This is the
very same hubris that, in neoliberal education, argues that children should maximize their
activity and in turn ‘‘pull themselves up by their own bootstraps’’ through a self-initiated
entrepreneurialism. Such theories impoverish politics and education precisely in the moment
they estrange us from (im)potential. These theories of entrepreneurial optimism in the capacity
to self-realize, self-generate, and self-manage our potential so as to manifest it in the form of an
economically viable commodity (human capital) are not empowering so much as disempowering
theories that deny the very real freedom of (im)potentiality—our capacity to be otherwise, to
think otherwise, to live otherwise. Only with the experience of (im)potential does the student
begin to realize the contingency of his or her ideas and the fragility of his or her world. In the
learning society, students are denied access to a relation with (im)potential. This does
not mean they are reduced to a pure lack or gap but rather that they become a pure
generic potentiality subjected to relentless actualization according to the needs of the
market or the nation-state. In their constant quest for actualization of latent potentiality,
markets strangle the (im)potential of the student and thus leave the student without a sense of
agency, without a sense of freedom. Rather than recognize the failures of the market and the
limitations of neoliberal democratic government as internal manifestations of a constitutive
impotence, impotentiality (the capacity to not-be) is projected outward onto the radical other. For
Faulkner, this means that 3rd World children in particular become the screen onto which
developed countries project their own internal anxieties. Faulkner writes, ‘‘Children in the
developing world—whose material circumstances cannot support our fantasies of childhood
innocence—are ignored, a source of embarrassment to our prosperity’’ (2010, p. 208). Thus if
the learning society submits a child’s (im)potential to the rule of actualization (cleaving the child
from an ethical relation to his or her whatever being), then the disavowed impotential is
subsequently projected outward onto the vulnerable other whose fate remains forever a source
of humanitarian paternalism and deferred anxiety over the contingencies of our own fragile
economic and political systems. If Faulkner focuses on the global south, we could just as easily
turn to poor, minority children in inner-city schools in the United States in order to witness a
similar phenomenon. In such schools, the dominant logic is not one of investment into the
potentialities of entrepreneurial selves, but rather systematic abandonment that attempts to
drain life of its educational supplement (Lewis 2006). Noguera (2007) argues that social,
economic, and political forces have resulted in diminishing educational returns for poor African
American boys in particular. According to Noguera, African American boys are now more likely
than other groups to (a) be suspended or expelled from school, (b) classified as ‘‘mentally
retarded [having learning disabilities]”and placed in special education classes, and (c) absent
from honors courses. In turn, Black males tend to internalize low expectations and thus identify
with and enact behaviors that reinforce their academic ‘‘failure.’’ In short, neo-liberal society
effectively manages anxieties concerning its own impotence by projecting it onto the internally
excluded other: African American boys. But what is important to note is that this is not simply
the projection of a lack or gap (as in Bingham and Biesta’s critique of learning). High-stakes
testing, zero tolerance policies, and teachers and administrators who lack commitments to the
multicultural, low income communities they serve constantly demand that African American
boys actualize their impotence through policies and procedures that create a self-fulfilling
prophesy. In other words, ‘‘According to the neoliberal discourse of learning, the student must
be an entrepreneur who is engaged in constant selfmanagement in order to ‘‘correct their
potentialities’’ by maximizing outputs. In the case of young Black boys, the insidious obverse of
this logic reveals itself. Rather than correct their potentialities by maximizing outputs, the
governmentality of the self transforms into an impossible mandate: to maximize one’s own
failure by internalizing the expectations of abandonment. In other words, the paradoxical charge
seems to be: ‘‘master your capacity for incapacity’’—thus cleaving potentiality from
impotentiality, leading to an educational caste system that reproduces class and race divisions
in the United States. Blame for failure can thus be projected onto these boys all the while
misrecognizing that they have been burdened with the mandate to fully actualize neoliberalism’s
own ‘‘not yet.’’ Missing in this picture is the connection between education and (im)potentiality—
not the separation of potential from impotential but their constitutive co-belonging. The liberal
democratic battle against (im)potentiality finds its full realization in biometric technologies.
Biometric logics, techniques, and technologies mark the ‘‘unstoppable drifting of political power
toward governmentality’’ (Agamben 2011, p. 51) and of the neoliberal democratic state. Here
identity is no longer associated with a social persona recognizable by others and has become
pure biological information that is catalogued and compiled by machines. This is an ‘‘identity
without and identity’’ (Ibid., p. 52) that is only recognizable through ‘‘the virtual intimacy with the
apparatus’’ (Ibid., p. 53) or Machine which calculated and stores our biological infomatics. If
Jacques Ranciere (cited in Bingham and Biesta 2010) argues that the school exhibits the logic
of society as a whole, then perhaps we can return to the school in order to understand how the
discourse of learning is itself part of this biometric matrix. For instance, standardization
movements in the United States have replaced quantitative assessments made by teachers
based on classroom observation of their students with the abstract numerical data of high-
stakes tests. Here education properly becomes reduced to learning—learning as the
mechanical production of a numerical datum that can only be recognized by the Machine of
standardization. This data is then used to either (a) optimize the performance capacities of the
students, the teachers, and the school or (b) abandon those who do not meet these
expectations. Education, which used to be an intimate activity of self-formation (Bildung),
becomes a statistical breakdown of data points that can no longer be recognized as an intimate
and highly personal expression of self-transformation and growth. The logic of learning is
therefore the cognitive equivalent to biometrics, both of which establish extensive archives in
order to manage the health, productivity, and security of the nation-state according to the rule of
profit assessment and actualization (of avowed potentiality and disavowed impotentiality). Yet, if
the model of learning is inadequate for theorizing the relationship between self, education, and
freedom, then does Agamben give us the resources necessary to contemplate and ultimately
put into practice an alternative mode of education whose starting point is effective potentiality
and whose goal is not actualization of a particular end but rather (im)potential (not as a lack of
power or as an inertia but rather as the appearance of a power/capacity in itself, as the
possibility of new possibilities)? In the following section, I will argue that in the margins of
Agamben’s project, we find an alternative theory of ‘‘studying’’ that bridges his politics with a
very different understanding of education than that found in neo-liberal learning discourses.
 at: perm
rejecting sovereign lines in every instance is the key to solvency
Edkins and Pin-Fat 05. Jenny Edkins, professor of international politics at Prifysgol
Aberystwyth University (in Wales) and Veronique Pin-Fat, senior lecturer in politics at
Manchester Universit, “Through the Wire: Relations of Power and Relations of Violence,”
Millennium - Journal of International Studies 2005 34: pg. 14

One potential form of challenge to sovereign power consists of a refusal to draw any
lines between zoe- and bios, inside and outside .59 As we have shown, sovereign power does not
involve a power relation in Foucauldian terms. It is more appropriately considered to have become
a form of governance or technique of administration through relationships of violence
that reduce political subjects to mere bare or naked life. In asking for a refusal to draw
lines as a possibility of challenge, then, we are not asking for the elimination of power
relations and consequently, we are not asking for the erasure of the possibility of a mode
of political being that is empowered and empowering, is free and that speaks: quite the
opposite . Following Agamben, we are suggesting that it is only through a refusal to draw any lines at all
between forms of life (and indeed, nothing less will do) that sovereign power as a form
of violence can be contested and a properly political power relation (a life of power as potenza)
reinstated . We could call this challenging the logic of sovereign power through refusal .
Our argument is that we can evade sovereign power and reinstate a form of power relation by

contesting sovereign power’s assumption of the right to draw lines , that is, by
contesting the sovereign ban. Any other challenge always inevitably remains within this
relationship of violence . To move outside it (and return to a power relation) we need not only to contest its
right to draw lines in particular places, but also to resist the call to draw any lines of the
sort sovereign power demands. The grammar of sovereign power cannot be resisted by
challenging or fighting over where the lines are drawn . Whilst, of course, this is a strategy
that can be deployed, it is not a challenge to sovereign power per se as it still tacitly or
even explicitly accepts that lines must be drawn somewhere (and preferably more
inclusively). Although such strategies contest the violence of sovereign power’s drawing of a
particular line, they risk replicating such violence in demanding the line be drawn
differently . This is because such forms of challenge fail to refuse sovereign power’s line-
drawing ‘ethos’, an ethos which , as Agamben points out, renders us all now homines sacri or bare
life . Taking Agamben’s conclusion on board, we now turn to look at how the assumption of bare life can
produce forms of challenge. Agamben puts it in terms of a transformation: This
biopolitical body that is bare life must itself instead be transformed into the site for the
constitution and installation of a form of life that is wholly exhausted in bare life and a
bios that is only its own zoe-.... If we give the name form-of-life to this being that is only its
own bare existence and to this life that, being its own form, remains inseparable from it
we will witness the emergence of a field of research beyond the terrain defined by the
intersection of politics and philosophy, medico-biological sciences and jurisprudence .60
Agamben is asking that bare life be transformed into form-of-life; in other words, he is calling for
what we have named the assumption of bare life. Such an assumption of bare life also entails a
refusal to draw lines and indeed, is predicated upon it.61 In what follows we return to the scene
with which we started this paper, the case of asylum seekers who sew their lips shut. We
consider this act as an example of a form of action
 at: passivity
Their constant demand for pragmatism makes effective resistance to
sovereignty impossible – rather than prescribing concrete action for
education reform, we must embrace impotentiality as the only effective
form of resistance
Snoek 12 (Anke, PhD in Philosophy Department @ Macquarie U., Agamben’s Joyful Kafka, pg
82-85)
***Language Modified
Given the preceding sketch Agamben gives of power and possibilities (the law's being in force without significance, the subtle
the questions arise: what
reverse found in Kafka's work of this situation, Againben's praise of creatures without work),
ought we to do now? What form of resistance is possible for us? How should we act?
What can we do? This is actually one of the major criti- cisms on Agamben's work, that in it, at least when read
superficially, Agamben nowhere seems to formulate any explicit answer to the question
of resistance. The Italian political philosopher Antonio Negri, also one of Agamben's close friends, points out that Agamben
was never directly involved in political struggles and he sees this as a great lack in his philosophy.'
Agamben's work is often described as a radical passivity .1 This passivity can be seen both as a
strength and a weakness of his work. Agamben's passivity is not a regular powerlessness, but seems
to come close to (Mahayana) Buddhism, an exercise in doing nothing.4 This passivity also shows evidence of
a radical paradigm shift in thinking about power and resistance, a movement that is often attributed to Foucault and whose traces
Agamben is fundamentally opposed to the
can be found in Kafka avant la leltre. As is evident from the above,
tendency of metaphysical politics to attribute an identity to the human being, to allocate to him
[or her] a work of his [or her] own. If the human being has no identity of his [or her] own and no activity of
his [or her] own, then this also has consequences for our traditional view of actions as being
fundamentally embedded within end-means relationships, as goal oriented in essence.
Our views of activities and activism must therefore be thoroughly revised in line with our revision
of the possibility of a transcendent work of man. Kafka's opera singing executioners or questioners Deleuze once defined power as
the act in which the human being is cut off from its potentiality. But, Agamben states, 'There is, nevertheless, another and more
insidious operation of power that does not immediately affect what humans can do - their potentiality - but rather their
"impotentiality", that is, what they cannot do, or better, can nor do' (N, 13). Given that flexibility is the primary quality the market
requires from us, the
contemporary human, yielding to every demand by society, is cut off
from his [or her] impotentiality, from his ability to do nothing. Just as we saw previously, politics
is a politics of the act , of the human individual being at work. The irresponsible motto of
the contemporary individual, 'No problem, I can do it', comes precisely at the moment
'when he [or she] should instead realize that he [or she] has been consigned in unheard of
measure to forces and processes over which he [or she] has lost all control' (N, 44). This flexibility
also leads to a confusion of professions and callings, of professional identities and social roles, because people are no
longer in touch with their inability. Agamben sees an example of this in Kafka's Vie Trial. In the last chapter, just
before his death, two men enter through Joseph K.'s door. They are his questioners/executioners, but Joseph K. does not recognize
them as such and thinks that they are *[o)ld second-rate actors or opera singers?'5 Agamben argues that, in Katka's world, evil is
presented as an inadequate reaction to impotentiality (CC, 31). Instead of making use of our possibility of 'not being', we fail it, we
flee from our lack of power, 'our fearful retreat from it in order to exercise ... some power of being' (CC, 32). But this power we try to
evil does
exercise turns into a malevolent power that oppresses the persons who show us their weakness. In Kafka's world,
not have the form of the demonic but that of being separated from our lack of power.
Nothing makes us more impoverished and less free than this estrangement from
impotentiality . Those who are separated from what they can do, can, however, still
resist; they can still not do. Those who are separated from their own impotentiality lose,
on the other hand, first of all the capacity to resist. (X, 15) And it is evident, according to Agamben, from the
example of Hichmann how right Kafka was in this (CC, 32). Eichmann was not so much separated from his

power as from his lack of power , tempted to evil precisely by the powers of right and law
(CC, 32). What should one do? A clash with activists At the end of 2009, Agamben gave a lecture in honour of the presentation of a
collection of texts written by the T'iqqun collective. This French collective has written several political manifestoes and in 200S their
compound was raided by the anti terrorist brigades. The charges were quite vague: belonging to an ultra left and the anarcho-
autonomous milieu; using a radical discourse; having links with foreign groups; participating regularly in political demonstrations.
The evidence that was found was not weapons, but documents, for example a train schedule. Although Agamben calls these
charges a tragicomedy and accuses French politics of barbarism6, in his lecture he emphasizes another important political value of
the T'iqqun collective. This collective embodiesFoucaults idea of the non subject. One of the latter's greatest merits is that he
thought of power no longer as an attribute that a certain group had over another, but as a
relation that was constantly shifting . A second merit of Foucaults thinking was the idea of non authorship. The
subject itself, its identity, is always formed within a power relation, a process that Foucault termed
'subjectivization techniques' In Foucault, the state attempts to form the subject via disciplinary

techniques and the subject responds via subjectivization techniques: it internalizes the
expectations of the state in the formation of its own identity. That is why Foucault
rejects the idea of a subject and the idea of actorship, of attributing an act to a subject .
Hence, as long as we continue to think in terms of a subject resisting oppressive power
via deliberate action, we cannot liberate ourselves from power relations. The gesture Tiqqun
instead is making is, according to Agamben, not one of looking for a subject that can assume the role of saviour or revolutionary.
Rather, they begin with investigating the force fields that are operative in our society (instead of focusing on the subject). In
new possibilities can arise that are not
describing these fields of force and the moment they become diffuse,
dependent on a subject. The discussion that followed this lecture provides a very clear picture of Agamben's position.
Many activists present at the lecture asked what his theory entailed concretely with respect to the
direction in which they should go. Agamben's constant reply was that anyone who poses
this question has not understood the problem at all. I always find it out of place to go and
ask someone what to do, what is there to be done? ... If someone asks me what action, it
shows they missed the point because they still want me to say: go out in the streets and
do this? It has nothing to do with that. (OT) Inactivity as active resistance to the state was
hardly conceivable for many of the left wing activists present at Agamben's lecture at Tiqqun. Although the state
acknowledges the anti-law tendencies in the writings of the Tiqqun collective, the activists present at
Agamben's lecture failed to recognize this specific form of resistance. What Agamben attempted to show
was that the power of the T'iqqun collective lay precisely in the fact that they did not

prescribe any concrete actions but sought unexpected possibilities in 'being thus'. In
that same sense, Agamben's analysis of Kafka's work should not be seen as a manual for
activist freedom but as a description of small opportunities, of examples in which the
power relation is diffuse and that we must attempt to recognize, create and use. Agamben
shows us different possibilities and means for resistance, but these are not regular acts with a goal;
rather, they are means without end. As Kishik pointed out, Agamben's work is an attempt to "*make means meet"
(not with their ends, but with each other)'.7 One way to achieve this is through gestures. The gestures of the people in the
Oklahoma theatre and elsewhere in Kafka's work, the shame of Joseph K. and the 'as not' in Kafka's 'On Parables' show us that
there are other strategies, aside from active resistance, to reverse political situations.
 at: learning good
studying destroys the student.
Lewis 11 - PhD. in educational philosophy from UCLA, Associate Professor at the University of North Texas, author of
several philosophical examinations of education policy – (Tyson, “Rethinking the Learning Society: Giorgio Agamben on Studying,
Stupidity, and Impotence,” November 2011, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11217-011-9255-6)//elliot

Studying is, for Agamben, ‘‘interminable’’ (1995, p. 64). His description continues: ‘‘Those who
are acquainted with long hours spent roaming among books, when every fragment, every
codex, every initial encountered seems to open a new path, immediately left aside at the next
encounter, or who have experienced the labyrinthine allusiveness of that ‘law of good neighbors’
whereby Warburg arranged his library, know that not only can study have no rightful end, but
does not even desire one’’ (Ibid.). With each new book discovered, each new reference tracked
down, the trail of clues becomes more elusive and the end more and more distanced from the
student. Thus ‘‘studying and stupefying are in this sense akin: those who study are in the
situation of people who have received a shock and are stupefied by what has struck them,
unable to grasp it and at the same time powerless to leave hold’’ (Ibid.). Studying makes us
stupid, and preserves the state of stupidity without end. Justin Clemens provides a wonderful
summary of this condition: ‘‘The scholar, smacked across the forehead by an unexpected
enigma, who is no longer convinced that he or she knows what he or she is supposed to know,
compulsively pursues his or her stupefacation [sic] through the texts that he or she may once
have thought that they [sic] had known, deranged by details which now shift and crawl and
become other than they are meant to have been.’’ This infernal quality of studying produces a
pain not unfamiliar to anyone who has undergone intense and concentrated research—without
clear direction, without a clear methodology, without an end in sight, we stumble along on a
quest for new clues. Masschelein and Simons (2010) have drawn upon Agamben to describe
study as an educational ‘‘stateless status’’ without destination—the dwelling in a scholarly
potentiality that is not concerned with any particular educational standard of measurement or
any particular economic outcome. To study is to undergo a certain inoperativity where we are, to
appropriate a phrase from Thomas Carl Wall’s insightful study of Agamben, ‘‘exposed to all
its[thought’s] possibilities (all its predicates)’’ and yet are ‘‘undestined to any one or any set of
them’’ (1999, p. 152). Studying in this sense is not reducible to simply (a) ‘‘giving’’ information to
children to fill in a lack or (b) a ‘‘social orthopedics’’ that correct their potentialities in accordance
with the imperative of economic survival. Life-long studying is not the same as life-long learning.
If the latter emphasizes outputs and performance assessments in order to meet the constantly
changing needs of the economy, then the former resists such instrumental ends and instead
dwells in the moment of stupidity without end. Stupidity is thus the gift that thought gives itself in
order to remain (im)potential. Stated differently, it is the guarantee that thought can actualize
itself without extinguishing itself. If we simply remain mired in the ontology of generic
potentiality and its relationship to learning, studying remains a burden, and the goal of
education becomes an attempt to overcome this latency period as quickly as possible,
separating the experience of education from an ethical relation to our (im)potential. Thus
there is a rush to meet national standards through testing (‘‘we have to meet standards now so
that you can become productive workers!’’) or there is a rush to close the gap between
education and political praxis (‘‘we have to act now in order to change the world!’’) or there is
the rush to finish the dissertation (‘‘the only good dissertation is a done dissertation!’’). In these
perspectives, studying is an obstacle, an irritant, an infuriating reality whose only utility is its
instrumental value for reaching another end.
 at: biopower bad
No link – we are a criticism of sovereign power, which is distinct
Roldan, 12 – B.A. in Criminology and Sociology from the University of Illinois, Chicago (Yolanda, “Sovereign Power and Biopower – Foucault,”
http://uicsocialtheory.weebly.com/13/post/2012/12/sovereign-power-and-biopower-foucault-yolanda-roldan.html)//elliot

Foucault explains power in depth to his readers. There are five things that he says about power. He says that power is not an
object, power is relational, power is productive, and power is intentional. He explains that power can be gained and one way to gain power is by having
knowledge. Foucault explains that power is continual and varies. Power is always changing over time. It has matrices of transformation and power is
In his piece titled “History of
also persuasive. Foucault also says that power operates in a way that helps it reproduce itself.
Sexuality,” he tells us about sovereign power. This is the power that gives you the right over the
ability to decide between life and death. He also explains that this has turned into the power to
expose someone’s life to death. For example, sovereign power could be the power that a president has to send someone to war. He
also talks about direct power and indirect power. Direct power is the punishment that a sovereign power is able to
enforce. The indirect power is the power that the sovereign power has to expose someone’s life to
death. Basically it is the right to take life or let live. One example that I thought of when reading this was our justice system and
the death or life sentence. There are some states in our government that have the death sentence. This is the sentence that one receives when they
commit a crime so horrible that the judge of that case believes that the criminal deserves to be put to death. In a way, that judge holds sovereign
power. He is exercising his right to take a life when he sentences someone to death. He can also exercise his power to let live by sentencing someone
to life in prison instead of death. A life sentence is when someone who commits a crime bad enough gets sentenced to spend the rest of their life in
Another type of power that Foucault talks about is Biopower. While sovereign power was a
prison.
way that people in power would take lives, biopower was the exact opposite of that. Biopower is a
way that someone can exert complete and total power over someone else. The reason for doing
this would be to better promote life. Foucault explains that biopower is needed to protect lives instead of
taking them. This transformed the system from the right to take life or let live to the right to foster life. An example that I thought of when reading
this was universal health care. Universal healthcare is when a government supplies their whole country with healthcare. With universal health care no
one has to pay for health care and no one has to pay for medical services. This is, in a way, the government exercising its right to promote life. If
everyone has healthcare and is being taken care of all their medical issues, and the government is paying for it then they are promoting the life of their
citizens.
 at: state inevitable
The nihilistic system of sovereignty thrives on its continued pre-supposed
inevitability, which necessarily limits the forms a “human” can take,
eviscerating the possibility of a happy life
Prozorov 10 [Sergei Prozorov, professor of political and economic studies at the University of
Helsinki, “Why Giorgio Agamben is an optimist,” Philosophy Social Criticism 2010 36: pg. 1065]

‘[There] is often
In a later work, Agamben generalizes this logic and transforms it into a basic ethical imperative of his work:
nothing reprehensible about the individual behavior in itself, and it can, indeed, express
a liberatory intent. What is disgraceful – both politically and morally – are the
apparatuses which have diverted it from their possible use. We must always wrest from
the apparatuses – from all apparatuses – the possibility of use that they have captured .’32 As we

shall discuss in the following section, this is to be achieved by a subtraction of ourselves from these
apparatuses, which leaves them in a jammed, inoperative state . What is crucial at this point is that
the apparatuses of nihilism themselves prepare their demise by emptying out all positive
content of the forms-of-life they govern and increasingly running on ‘empty’, capable
only of (inflict- ing) Death or (doing) Nothing.¶ On the other hand, this degradation of the apparatuses
illuminates the ‘inoperosity’ (worklessness) of the human condition, whose originary status Agamben has affirmed from his earliest
works onwards.33 By rendering void all historical forms-of-life, nihi- lism brings to light the absence of work that characterizes
human existence, which, as irreducibly potential, logically presupposes the lack of any destiny, vocation, or task that it must be
subjected to: ‘Politics is that which corresponds to the essential inoperability of humankind, to the radical being-without-work of
human communities. There is pol- itics because human beings are argos-beings that cannot be
defined by any proper oper- ation , that is, beings of pure potentiality that no identity or
vocation can possibly exhaust .’34¶ Having been concealed for centuries by religion or
ideology, this originary inoperos- ity is fully unveiled in the contemporary crisis , in which it
is manifest in the inoperative character of the biopolitical apparatuses themselves, which
succeed only in capturing the sheer existence of their subjects without being capable of
transforming it into a positive form-of-life:¶ [T]oday, it is clear for anyone who is not in absolutely bad faith that
there are no longer historical tasks that can be taken on by, or even simply assigned to, men. It was evident start- ing
with the end of the First World War that the European nation-states were no longer capa- ble of taking on
historical tasks and that peoples themselves were bound to disappear.35¶ Agamben’s metaphor for this condition is
bankruptcy: ‘One of the few things that can be¶ declared with certainty is that all the peoples of
Europe (and, perhaps, all the peoples of the Earth) have gone bankrupt’ .36 Thus, the destructive
nihilistic drive of the biopolitical machine and the capitalist spectacle has itself done all
the work of emptying out positive forms-of-life, identities and vocations, leaving
humanity in the state of destitution that Agamben famously terms ‘bare life’. Yet, this
bare life, whose essence is entirely con- tained in its existence, is precisely what
conditions the emergence of the subject of the coming politics : ‘this biopolitical body that is bare
life must itself be transformed into the site for the constitution and installation of a form-of-
life that is wholly exhausted in bare life and a bios that is only its own zoe .’37¶ The
‘happy’ form-of-life , a ‘life that cannot be segregated from its form’, is nothing but bare
life that has reappropriated itself as its own form and for this reason is no longer
separated between the (degraded) bios of the apparatuses and the (endangered) zoe that
functions as their foundation.38 Thus, what the nihilistic self-destruction of the appara-
tuses of biopolitics leaves as its residue turns out to be the entire content of a new form-
of-life . Bare life, which is, as we recall, ‘nothing reprehensible’ aside from its con- finement
within the apparatuses, is reappropriated as a ‘whatever singularity’ , a being that is only
its manner of being, its own ‘thus’.39 It is the dwelling of humanity in this irreducibly
potential ‘whatever being’ that makes possible the emergence of a generic non-exclusive
community without presuppositions, in which Agamben finds the possi- bility of a happy
life .¶ [If] instead of continuing to search for a proper identity in the already improper and
sense- less form of individuality, humans were to succeed in belonging to this impropriety as such, in making
of the proper being-thus not an identity and individual property but a singularity without
identity, a common and absolutely exposed singularity, then they would for the first time
enter into a community without presuppositions and without subjects .40¶ Thus, rather
than seek to reform the apparatuses, we should simply leave them to their self-
destruction and only try to reclaim the bare life that they feed on . This is to be achieved by the
practice of subtraction that we address in the following section.
links
 IDEA
Disability as a rights issue merely shifts the pieces of the puzzle – the
state becomes legitimized as an actor for helping a small minority of
disabled people while maintaining the capacity to demarcate the
disabled as bare life – this turns the aff
Reeve 9 (Donna Reeve is a disability studies theorist with a PhD from Lancaster
University, Chapter 13 Biopolitics and bare life: does the impaired body provide
contemporary examples of homo sacer?, Arguing About Disability: Philosophical
Perspectives, Routledge-Cavendish, 2009, *LD)
*edited for gendered language

Discussion I have provided some examples of how Agamben’s work, in particular his use of the figure of
homo sacer moving within the state of exception represented by a ‘camp’, can be
applied to the experiences of disabled people . In addition to showing how juridical laws around
mental health and abortion in the UK can give rise to ‘spatial’ states of exception , I have suggested
that the suspension of ‘moral’ laws can similarly lead to ‘psychic’ states of exception . However,
Agamben is not without his critics. One major criticism is that his work is too apocalyptic (Bull 2004) and paints an image where there is no escape
from the camp. For example, in the case of Camp Delta, the detainee is only freed when President Bush revokes the ‘state of emergency’ or a military
tribunal takes place – both are sovereign actions. Foucault wrote about the interconnection between power and knowledge and suggested that
resistance emerges because of the existence of power and in opposition to it (Foucault 2000b). Resistance can exist because there is something to
push against and challenge such as normalising discourses. However, Agamben describes a situation which is far more uncertain and precarious, in
which chaos is normal and the exception has become the rule. Therefore resistance is a much more slippery concept here simply because there is
The only possible alternative to this would be a form of ‘escape’
nothing tangible which can be resisted.
from the camp, which provides an opportunity for ‘something other’ (Diken and Laustsen 2005: 13),
the possibility of a creative line of escape. For disabled people, where pragmatic solutions to the problems associated
with living in a disabling society are required, this looks like a dead end theoretically. If Foucauldian approaches, like post-structuralism generally, have
been criticised for their inability to make a difference to the material disadvantage associated with disablism (Thomas 1999), then Agamben would

appear to offer even less to disability studies. However, the world we live in is becoming more uncertain and
fragmented and this affects disabled people as well as others in society . In a recent
article in a grassroots magazine, Mike Oliver and Colin Barnes discussed the problems
facing the disabled people’s movement at the start of the twenty-first century (Oliver and Barnes
2006). They concluded that focusing on disability as a rights issue will not remove disablism and

will only benefit a small minority of disabled people : ‘At worst, it will legitimise further
the rhetoric of those who support an inherently unjust and inequitable society and
hamper further the struggle for meaningful equality and justice’ (ibid.: 12). For these two writers, the
growing professionalisation of disability rights and the gradual closures of organisations
of disabled people such as centres for independent/integrated living (CILs) has contributed
to the decline of the disabled people’s movement . The government has adopted ‘social
model speak’ but has failed to improve significantly the life of many disabled people (Prime
Minister’s Strategy Unit 2005). As far as the general population are concerned, disabled people are
protected by anti-discrimination law, the Disability Discrimination Act. However, terms
like ‘reasonable adjustment’ mean that exclusion is still the reality for some disabled
people; but it can be difficult to continue protesting about exclusion when others assume
the ‘problem’ has gone away because ramps and disabled parking spaces are now more
commonplace. Therefore disabled people live in an age where inclusion and exclusion can
and do coexist in many areas of their lives and it is becoming increasingly difficult to
challenge disablism effectively . Thus the work of Agamben can be applied to the current situation we find ourselves in, if only to
Agamben also
understand the effects of the slippery usage of social model terminology by the government and other public bodies.
describes how every society, however modern, decides who its homo sacer is, whose life is seen
as ‘life devoid of value’ (Agamben 1998: 139). Recent proposed changes to the welfare system include the moving of one million
disabled people off incapacity benefits and into some form of paid employment (Preston 2006). This emphasis on employment as the only appropriate
route out of poverty has led to the concern that those disabled people who are unable to work because of their impairment/impairment effects will: feel
‘written off’ and of no value because they are not able to work. Disabled people need a decent income (so comprehensive benefits advice is crucial),
good social and health care, as well as access to education, and training, in order to play their full part in society according to their abilities. Non-
disabled people who are unable to
workers should not be written off as non-citizens. (Reith 2005: 8; my emphasis) Thus
work could end up being seen as noncitizens just like homo sacer, as bare life (zoē)
outside the polis. I have offered some starting suggestions as to how the ideas of Agamben might be applied to the experience of disablism
and whilst some useful insights can be gained, it is not easy to see how successful escape attempts might be made from some of the states of
exception I discussed earlier. In the case of prenatal diagnosis the law needs to be changed (a sovereign decision) to ensure that late termination is
only allowed in cases where the life of the mother is at risk or if the foetus will die before birth or during the first twenty-eight days of life (Shakespeare
2006a); the state of exception will then disappear. In addition, prospective parents need much more accurate information about what it means to have
a disabled child so that they make an informed choice about the fate of an impaired foetus (ibid.). Parents who then decide to continue with the
pregnancy provide the escape route for the impaired foetus by allowing him
or her [them] to be born. Similarly it will be down to
legal processes to ensure that people experiencing severe mental distress do not
become subject to ‘indefinite detention’. However, creative lines of escape are far more
feasible if one considers the psychic states of exception I discussed earlier. In part this is because one is
dealing with informal, conventional ‘rules’ of behaviour rather than juridical laws. In the example of interaction with strangers, I discussed how people
with visible impairments can be left feeling invalidated and vulnerable when stared at by others, or when asked intrusive questions. One solution to this
problem will come with time – the ‘rules of engagement’ with disabled people will become more widely known and accepted as disabled people
become more visible in society, supported by the gradual erosion of disablist images and prejudices. Inclusion in schools will produce future
generations of people who are accustomed to having disabled friends and colleagues. However, in the short term, lines of escape can be observed as
individual disabled people find ways of dealing in a creative way with the prejudices of others. For example, some will take on the role of being an
educator, showing the other person that disabled people do not need to be feared (Reeve 2006). This does take effort and a certain amount of emotion
work on the part of the disabled person to help the other person ‘deal with their fears and preju dices [about disability]’ (Reeve 2006: 104). Whilst this
should not be necessary, it does smooth the social interaction and has the potentially altruistic outcome in easing future interactions between that
person and other disabled people. It also returns control to the disabled person over the social encounter and they can then move out of the state of
Agamben, drawing on his
exception and back into the social world, effectively returning zoē to the polis. Conclusion I have used the work of
concepts of homo sacer and states of exception, to consider various examples of structural and psycho-
emotional disablism. These reveal contemporary states of exception – spatial and psychic – which
provides a valuable description of the increasingly uncertain, contradictory and
fragmented world that disabled people can find themselves in. Foucauldian approaches have been useful in
understanding the technologies of power which differentiate the normal from the abnormal; the focus on the suspension of law
and production of exception described by Foucault’s student Agamben offers additional insight
into the uncertain world which many disabled people face in the UK, and elsewhere, at the start of the twenty-
first century. In particular I have introduced the concept of psychic states of exception to explore psycho-

emotional disablism within interpersonal interactions, in which others act as sovereign to

the disabled person, their attitudes and actions either including or excluding homo
sacer from the mainstream . The bodies of homines sacri are all around us – in addition
to the well- documented figures of the refugee and political detainee, I would include the impaired
foetus, the person with severe mental distress, the disabled person experiencing hate crime. The consequences of longer life expectancies in Western
people will experience impairment at some point in their life – anyone
societies means that more
can become disabled. Thus the continual ‘taken-for-granted non-impaired body’ represents a
theoretical oversight in this post-structural turn where uncertainty and difference are
fundamental considerations in contemporary social theory about the body. Whilst there is an
interest in theoretical figures such as cyborgs and monsters, no connection is made between these figures and the lived experience of disabled people
(garland-Thomson 2005). As well as applying Agamben’s ideas within disability studies, it
is vital that the lived experience of
disabled people becomes part of the mainstream of social theory with the impaired body
being acknowledged as providing yet more examples of contemporary homo sacer.
 Natives
Sovereignty produces the conditions for violence against indigenous
people – Native people exist in a constant state of exception – the
plan merely reproduces the ideology of Native capitulation to the
state
Rifkin 12 (Mark Rifkin, Director of the Women’s and Gender Studies
Program and Professor of English at the University of North Carolina,
Indigenising Agamben: Rethinking Sovereignty in Light of the 'Peculiar5
Status of Native Peoples, Agamben and Colonialism, Edinburgh University
Press, Pg. 83-86, 2012, *LD)
While in the next section I will address how biopolitical and geopolitical dynamics work together, specifically in the translation of Native peoples into
aggregates of individual domestic subjects (as either a race or a culture), I first want to explore in greater detail how the
production of
national space depends on coding Native peoples and lands as an exception. Administrative
mappings of US jurisdiction remain haunted by the presence of polities whose occupancy precedes that of the state and whose existence as
collectivities repeatedly has been officially recognised through treaties. The Supreme Court decisions with which I began all register this difficulty. In
Cherokee Nation v Georgia, the court explicitly finds that the ‘acts of our government plainly recognize the Cherokee nation as a state5, indicating they
the majority
are ‘a distinct political society, separated from others, capable of managing its own affairs and governing itself5 (16). Yet
opinion also insists, ‘The Indian territory is admitted to compose a part of the United
States5, adding, ‘They occupy a territory to which we assert a title independent of their
will5 (17). Following a similar line of reasoning, US v Kagama insists, ‘the colonies before the Revolution and the States and the United States
since, have recognized in the Indians a possessory right to the soil [. . .] But they asserted an ultimate title in the land itself5 (381), and Justice
Rehnquist in Oliphant v Suquamish argues, ‘Indian tribes do retain elements of “quasi-sovereign55 authority after ceding their lands to the United
States5 although ‘their exercise of separate power is constrained so as not to conflict with the interests of [the US5s] overriding sovereignty5 (208-9).
Each of these formulations acknowledges a tension between the kinds of political
identity and authority suggested by the ability to enter into formal agreements with the
US and the claim that such otherwise (or previously) ‘distinct political societies]5 are
fully enclosed within the boundaries of the state, and thus subject in some fashion to its
rule. Presenting US-Indian relations as ‘peculiar’ or ‘anomalous5 marks that tension, but such a description depicts the treaty system and the
workings of federal Indian law as neither regular domestic law nor foreign policy. The oddity can seem to inhere in the treaties themselves, a supposed
irregularity which US lawmakers sought to remedy in the late nineteenth century by ending the practice of treaty making.10 The ‘peculiarity of the treaty
system, though, is less a function of the constitutional status it confers on Indian policy (enacting it through documents that, in the words of Article VI of
the US Constitution, make it ‘the supreme law of the land5) than the underlying contradiction to which the treaty system points. Treaties
register and mediate a structural disjunction between the continuing existence of
autochthonous Native collectivities which predate the formation of the US and the
adoption of a jurisdictional imaginary in which such collectivities are imagined as part of
US national space. More than merely recognising Native peoples as ‘distinct political societies]5 with whom the US must negotiate for
territory, however, the treaty system also seeks to interpellate Native polities into US political
discourses, presupposing (and imposing) forms of governance and occupancy that
facilitate the cession of land.11 While in one sense acknowledging Native peoples as ‘separate5 entities from the US, the treaty-
based Indian policy of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries also sought to confirm the US5s ‘ultimate title in the land itself5, thereby indicating
Dispensing with treaties, though, does not
the stresses generated by the narration of Native nations as domestic.
eliminate such strain, or the normative difficulties it creates for validating US authority
over Native populations and lands, instead simply trying to displace the problem of
legitimacy which still returns insistently to trouble US legal discourses.12 The potential disjuncture in
US jurisdiction opened by the presence of non-national entities with claims to land ostensibly inside the nation is sutured over by proclaiming a
Presented as simply logically
‘sovereignty5 that supposedly alleviates the potential ‘conflict5 between US and Native mappings.
following from Native peoples5 residence on ‘territory admitted to compose a part of the
United States’ (Cherokee Nation v Georgia: 18), the invocation of sovereignty casts them
as exceptional, an aberration from the normal operation of law but one contained within
the broader sphere of US national authority. 'Indian tribes5 have only a 'possessory right’ or 'quasi-sovereign’ claims, but
'ultimate title’, the decisions reassuringly indicate, lies with the US. Yet rather than providing an underlying

framework in which to situate indigenous populations, sovereignty instead appears as a

mutable figure that enables their occupancy to be portrayed as 'peculiar’ . Discursively, it bridges the
logical and legal chasm between the political autonomy indexed by the treaty system and the depiction of them as domestic subjects. US
political discourses seek to contain the instability of the settler-state by repeatedly
declaring the nation’s geopolitical unity, but at moments when that avowal is brought
into crisis by the continuing presence and operation of Native polities, the topos of
sovereignty emerges, as if it exists before and beyond the specific legal questions at
stake in any particular case or act of policy making. As Judith Butler suggests, 'it is not that sovereignty exists as a
possession that the US is said to "have” [. . .] Grammar defeats us here. Sovereignty is what is tactically produced
through the very mechanism of its self-justification’ (Butler 2004: 82).13 The citation of sovereignty in this
completely open-ended, but rhetorically foundationalising, way suggests a potentially unlimited capacity to (re)define what will count as the organising
framework of political order. The
performative citation of sovereignty by the US depends on the
creation of a state of exception for Native peoples. The content of 'sovereignty’ in the
decisions is the assertion of the authority to treat Native peoples as having constrained,
diminished political control over themselves and their lands, and such a contention rests
on the assumption that despite their existence before and after the founding of the US as
'separate people[s], with the power of regulating their internal and social relations’ (US v
Kagama: 381-2), they somehow do not have equivalent status to 'foreign’ nations. As Agamben
observes, 'the state of exception is [. . .] the principle of every juridical localization, since only the state of exception opens the space in which the
The jurisdictional
determination of a certain juridical order and a particular territory first becomes possible’ (Agamben 1998: 19).
imaginary of the US is made possible only by localising Native peoples, in the sense of
circumscribing their political power/status and portraying Indian policy as an aberration
divorced from the principles at play in the rest of US law, and that process of exception
quite literally opens the space for a legal geography predicated on the territorial
coherence of the nation. Those political collectivities whose occupancy does not fit the geopolitical ideal/imaginary of the state are left
abandoned by it, ‘exposed and threatened on the threshold5 of the juridical order that is made possible and validated by their exception (28). From that
perspective, settler-state sovereignty can be viewed as producing the impression of
boundedness by banning - rendering ‘peculiar5, ‘anomalous5, ‘unique5, ‘special5 - competing claims to place and
collectivity.14 This line of thought further suggests that if the validity of national policy is presented as being derived from the underlying fact of
sovereignty, such a claim to legitimacy itself relies on the promulgation of an exception which rests on nothing more than the absoluteness with which it
is articulated and enforced.
 Non-Citizens
people are people, citizenship is arbitrary: their notion of citizenship reifies
exclusion through drawing lines around nationality – this maintains the
violent sovereignty of the nation-state
Cohen 99 – Nell and Herbert Singer Professor of Political Thought at Columbia University -
(Jean, “Changing Paradigms of Citizenship and the Exclusiveness of the Demos,” International
Sociology 14.3, September 1999, 245-268)//elliot
It is this paradigmatic conception of citizenship that has lost its power to convince today.
But it always had a disturbing ambiguity that has now become apparent: are the uniform equal rights and respect owed to every
citizen due to their individual status as legal persons or to their membership status as belonging to a particular political community?
To put this differently, is
the legal recognition of the rights-bearing individual presumptively
granted to all human beings on this model or only to the citizens of a particular state?
Marshall's happy consciousness regarding citizenship as a principle of inclusion and
equality and his assumption that the components of the citizenship principle come
together in a frictionless way paper over this ambiguity. In fact, he never confronted it because he simply
assumed, like so many others, that the identity component of the citizenship principle into which he hoped to integrate the working
If we shift perspective
class through social rights was a given: the cultural identity of the demos construed as a nation.
away from the substantive rights of citizenship (Marshall's focus) to the formal
dimension of membership things look rather different. The background presupposition of the modern
paradigm of citizenship is that citizenship involves membership in a sovereign, territorial nation-state within a system of states. The
nation-state is not only a territorial organization monopolizing legitimate rule within a bounded space, it is also, as Brubaker rightly
argues, a membership organization (Brubaker, 1992). Citizenship in such a state is an instrument of social closure. It
always
has an ascriptive dimension and it always establishes privilege insofar as it endows
members with particular rights denied to non-members (today, primarily, the resident
alien or foreigner). Thus, in the modern system of states, the republican ideal of the self-determining demos merges with
the sovereign state's interest in control over all those in the territory through the construction of national citizenship as a formal
category of membership. Exclusion and inequality , not inclusion, thus attach to citizenship seen
as a membership principle (Brubaker, 1992). To be sure, certain republican political theorists
noted long ago the tendency of the nation-state to violate the egalitarian logic of
constitutional democracy by fostering inequality and exclusion vis-a-vis national
minorities and aliens. Hannah Arendt (1973) argued that this danger is intrinsic to the nation-state
system . Because the nation-state equates the citizen with the member of the nation it
collapses a political/legal category into a category of identity and perverts the egalitarian
logic of the constitutional state by rendering those who are not members of the nation
implicitly into second-class citizens. On the republican account, the problem lies in the reduction of the political
principle of citizenship to a substantive exclusionary conception of collective identity: nationality. Accordingly Arendt argued
for disaggregating citizenship from ascriptive criteria of national belonging (ethnic or cultural)
and insisted that civil and political rights of citizens should not be allocated on the pre-
political basis of nationality. States should not be nation-states but civic polities that grant citizenship on legal criteria
(Arendt, 1973).
 Commons
Anti-capitalist struggles’ ideological rejection of all things capital
causes mass violence – empirics prove its fascist tendencies
O’Malley 12 (JP O’Malley is a contributor for the Daily Beast, “Communism and
Fascism: The Reason They Are So Similar”, Daily Beast, September 28, 2012,
http://www.thedailybeast.com/communism-and-fascism-the-reason-they-are-so-similar, *LD)
*edited for gendered language

Two 20th-century ideologies promised a utopian vision that would ensure infinite
happiness. They both stemmed from a political, social, and cultural construct that erased traditional ideas regarding good and evil. Both
believed in the destruction of the old world, to build a new international order; each deplored what they saw as the
pathetic ennui of bourgeoisie existence; each ideology’s shared purpose was to recruit
members of the new utopia. Those ideologies happen to be communism and fascism,
which together brought an orgy of violence, killed millions, and led humanity to its
darkest hour, where the final destination was the deplorable Gulags and the gas
chambers of Auschwitz. Vladimir Tismaneanu, a professor of comparative politics at the University of Maryland, noticed how
communism and fascism, despite coming from separate ends of the political spectrum—extreme left for the former and extreme right for the latter—
surprisingly have much in common. To comprehend the barbarism that plagued the last century, Tismaneanu contends that we must fully come to
grips with the thought process that inspired so much destruction. So he sets off to scrupulously examine the intellectual origins, crimes, and failures of
these two radical movements in The Devil in History: Communism, Fascism and Some Lessons of the Twentieth Century. Tismaneanu isn’t the first to
explore this subject matter. In Fascism and Communism, historians Francois Furet and Ernst Nolte, one French and one German, debated the
genealogy of the two movements. And in Fascism, Communism and the Consolidation of Democracy: A Comparison of European Dictatorships,
Gerhard Besier edited a book of essays that explored the mutual influences both political movements clung to. While Tismaneanu’s effort shares
certain similarities with both texts, his central argument focuses for the most part on ideology, and not specific historical events. Tismaneanu’s book
takes its title from the Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski’s observation that Bolshevism
and fascism represent two
incarnations of the disastrous presence of the devil in history. They were two sides of
the same coin of totalitarianism —a political, social, and cultural construct that erased
traditional ideas regarding good and evil. Tismaneanu’s lucid narrative walks us through
an intellectual landscape that traces the trajectory of totalitarian thinking back to its
origins. This began in 1848, when Karl Marx, along with Fredrick Engels, wrote The Communist Manifesto, and ended, ostensibly, with the
collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Tismaneanu spends the majority of his time clearly defining Marxism, neglecting fascism a bit, but there is good
reason why he would do this. Marxism as a political theory is over 160 years old. In that time it has gone through various phases, titles, and schisms,
including critical, post, and anti-Marxism. Marxism
as a political idea was a failure from the beginning,
Tismaneanu contends, because of “its lack of sensitivity to the psychological makeup of
mankind[people],” and because it underestimated “the needs of many for deep spiritual or cultural
sources of meaning, and thus the profound importance of the human right to privacy.”
When Vladimir Lenin implemented Marx’s ideas into “a potent political weapon of
ideological transformation of the world,” he put totalitarianism into action . Without
Lenin’s dogmatic vision, which kickstarted the Russian Revolution in October 1917, there
would be no totalitarianism, as we now know it. Thus the course of Western civilization, and indeed world history,
would have been entirely different. The ideas that Lenin propagated—igniting the insurrection of the

masses in politics, making the individual a mere particle in comparison to the absolute
belief in the cause—paved the way for all forms of totalitarian thinking that shaped the
20th century . In The Better Angels of Our Nature, the evolutionary psychologist and cognitive scientist Steven Pinker specifically equated
communist ideology with violence and genocide. Yet he failed to account for how capitalist values also contributed to
a significant amount of violence over the course of the 20th century. When I challenged him on this matter in an interview last year, Pinker responded
by saying: “However much we might deplore the profit motive, or consumerist values, if everyone just wants iPods, we would probably be better off
than if they wanted class revolution.” Tismaneanu, I believe, would agree. Capitalism, despite being an imperfect system with many problems,
understands what Marx failed to grasp: if you socialize the means of production, you undermine the incentives to work and produce poverty instead of
wealth. Furthermore, anyone in the communist system unlucky enough to be born in the wrong
class or ethnic group were branded enemies of the regime, becoming helpless victims in
the mass killings that so often took place in the name of ideology. As an ideology, Marxism is open to
more interpretation than fascism, which arose in Italy in 1919, and died, as a dominant political movement in Europe, along with two of its most famous
prophets: Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. It favors actions over intellectual reason, so it’s a harder concept for an academic to dissect with the same
scrutiny as Marxism. The closest Tismaneanu reaches in defining fascism is to quote Mussolini, who wrote in 1932, in the Enciclopedia Italiana:
“Fascism is a religious conception in which man [the human] is seen in his [their] immanent relationship with a superior law and with an objective Will
[sic] that transcends the particular individual and raises him [them] to a conscious membership in a spiritual society.” For a more thorough definition, it
might be better to turn to political scientist Robert Paxton: “A form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline,
humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a massed-based party of committed nationalist militants,
working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without
ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.” Tismaneau notes that all fascists shared a common bond in the idea of
leadership, their abhorrence of liberalism, and a belief in ultranationalism. But he fails to note exactly what German and Italian fascism shared in
common, or how different their worldviews actually were. For example, it’s worth mentioning that Mussolini had little interest in the racial theory that
became central to the Nazis' distorted ideology. Neither was anti-Semitism as widespread in Italy as it was in Germany. What Tismaneau is clear on is

how Bolshevism and Nazism both desired a scapegoat to achieve their end goals . In
communism this was defined by class, and in National Socialism by race. Each movement
subsequently believed this would lead to a triumphant historical epoch: in Nazism, the vision was the thousand-year Reich, while in
communism, history would disappear completely, and the proletariat would rule forever. If
communism and fascism merged into “a baroque synthesis,” as Tismaneanu puts it, there were, nevertheless, key distinctions between the two. While
In communism,
Bolshevism was a dictatorship of the proletariat, Nazism was a dictatorship with a voting consensus behind it.
totalitarian thinking was completely enthralled to the party line, whereas in fascism, all ideas stemmed from
the magnetic personality of the infallible leader. The underlying problem with both political movements,

however, was their absolute commitment to ideology , which the late Czech president and writer Václav Havel
once described as offering “human beings the illusion of identity, of dignity, and of morality while making it easier for them to part with them.”
 Prisons
The 1AC simply reaffirms the prison industrial complex by legitimizing the
government’s ability to demarcate bare life – the plan simply masks the
violence of prisons as a mode of creating the homo sacer
Czajka 16 (Agnes Czajka is a lecturer in the Department of Politics &
International Studies at the Open University, “Inclusive Exclusion: Citizenship
and the American Prisoner and Prison”, Routledge Studies in Political Economy:
A Socialist Review, March 7, 2016, *LD)
*edited for gendered language
Entrenching Exclusion The drawback of intrastate exclusion into penitentiary institutions, of course, is its relatively temporary character.
Although an increasing number of prisoners in both noncamp and camp institutions are
confined permanently, or for long stretches of time, most will be released
back into society at one point or another. As they will be no more desirable and no less superfluous or abject than they
were prior to their expulsion, modes for their continued exclusion (if not physical, at least institutional and structural) are necessary. Thus, for

those who are not sentenced to death or life imprisonment, both noncamp and camp
prisons are increasingly becoming temporary stops on a road to permanent social,
political, and economic intrastate exclusion . The United States has perhaps the most
extensive and comprehensive guidelines for the permanent removal of former prisoners
from “respectable” society . The process is often referred to as “invisible punishment,” “collateral consequences,” or “civil
disabilities” and “civil death.” The last reference harkens back to traditions carried into Europe from ancient Greek and Roman civilizations
whereby offenders suffered a “civil death” that entailed the loss of all civil rights,
confiscation of property, and exposure to injury or even to death, as the outlaw could be
killed with impunity.46 Reduced to bare life and effectively effaced from the realm of
humanity (even though still physically present), the offender, like all those reduced to
bare life, could be killed without being murdered , as he or she [they] was at best an animal. Presently, the
rescinding of the political rights of citizenship revolves around the disenfranchisement
of individuals convicted of felony offences. All but two states (Maine and Vermont, where both prisoners and former
prisoners are allowed to exercise their right to vote) disenfranchise those imprisoned on felony convictions.47
Alaska and a handful of other states have also retained disenfranchisement provisions in regard to crimes of “moral turpitude.”48 Of the states that
disenfranchise prisoners, only thirtyone restore their rights automatically upon release from prison and the completion of parole.49 The remaining
states all institute some form of permanent disenfranchisement. Alabama, Florida, Iowa, Kentucky,
Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, and Virginia require former felons to obtain pardon from the state’s governor, or in the case of Nebraska
and Nevada, from the Board of Pardons. In Delaware, individuals convicted of murder, manslaughter, any felony constituting a sexual offence, or an
offence against public administration involving bribery, improper influence, or abuse of office are not eligible to have their voting rights restored. A
similar ban exists in Tennessee where those convicted of murder, aggravated rape, treason, or voter fraud after 1 July 1986, or rape after 30 June
1996, are permanently disenfranchised. Wyoming institutes a lifetime ban for those convicted of one violent felony, while Maryland and Arizona
permanently disenfranchise individuals convicted of two violent felonies. For residents of those five states, the only avenue available for the restoration
of civil rights is a presidential pardon. Thus,
while in all states the right to vote can be regained
theoretically, the intricacy of the process and the resources required to follow it through
make it extremely difficult in practice. Consequently, the number of former convicts who
regain the right to vote is extremely low. For instance, of the 200,000 ex-felons residing in
Virginia between 1996 and 1997, only 404 had the right of franchise restored.50 Prisoners
convicted of federal offences face additional barriers , as at least sixteen states bar these offenders from using
State procedure to restore voting rights, necessitating in effect a presidential pardon.51 It is not surprising, therefore, that millions of
Americans are currently prohibited from voting . The most recent national statistics available indicate that
approximately 4.7 million Americans — one in fortythree adults — have currently or
permanently lost their right to vote due to a felony conviction.52 This represents an increase of
0.8 million from a few years ago, when one in fifty adults were disenfranchised.53 Of the
4.7 million disenfranchised Americans, 1.4 million are individuals who have successfully
completed their prison sentences.54 On a state-by-state basis, fourteen states are currently excluding over two percent of their
population.55 In most states, a large portion of this population has already “done their time ,” including
parole. In Alabama, for instance, 80.3% of the disenfranchised population are ex-felons; in Mississippi, the figure stands at 86.2%; in Virginia at 80.3%,

and in Wyoming, 73.8% of the disenfranchised population have fully served their sentence. 56 Incarceration-related
disenfranchisement disproportionally affects African American and other visible
minority populations . Approximately 1.4 million African American men — 13 percent of
the African American population — are disenfranchised due to felony convictions.57
According to data obtained by Human Rights Watch, two states have disenfranchised
one in
three African Americans, while eight states have disenfranchised one in four.58 States with the
highest rates of African American disenfranchisement include Alabama, which disenfranchised 31.5% of its black population; Delaware 20.0%; Florida
31.2%; Iowa 26.5%; Mississippi 28.6%; New Mexico 24.1%; Texas 20.8%; Virginia 25.0%; Washington 24%, and Wyoming, which refuses the right to
vote to 27.7% of its black population.59 According to projections, given the current rates of incarceration, more than
30% of the next generation of African Americans will be disenfranchised at some point in
their lives.60 The “civil death” of ex-felons is not achieved by disenfranchisement alone,
even though it seems that the majority of research and agitation by human rights organizations and prison rights activists is dedicated to this cause. In

addition to being disqualified from one of the fundamental political rights of citizenship ,
former felons are also ineligible for many of the economic rights accorded to “worthy”
and “respectable” American citizens . First, Section 115 of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation
Act of 1996 (more commonly referred to as the Welfare Reform Act of 1996) allows states to permanently

disqualify anyone convicted of a felony drug offence from receiving welfare and food
stamp benefits .61 While states can opt out of this provision, forty-three states currently enforce the ban in
full or in part. Twenty-two states deny both welfare and food stamp benefits entirely and permanently to all individuals previously convicted of
felony drug offences;62 three states deny both benefits to those convicted of the sale of drugs only;63 seven states deny benefits partially or for a
temporary period,64 and in ten states, benefits are dependent on the ex-convict’s participation in drug treatment.65 Only nine states have opted out of
women, African
the ban completely.66 According to a study by Patricia Allard, which analyzed the specific impact of the ban on
American women (and surely by extension, the African American population in general)
are disproportionately affected: more than 48 percent of those affected by the ban are
African American women (approximately 35,000 women).67 Second, individuals convicted of
felony drug offences are also subject to discrimination with respect to public housing . A
1996 government policy
called the One Strike Initiative authorized local public housing authorities to obtain criminal conviction records of adult applicants or tenants for
screening and eviction purposes. In accordance with the initiative, local
public housing authorities are empowered
to deny housing to individuals previously convicted of drug offences, or those presently
“suspected” of drug involvement.68 Since the implementation of this law, the number of applicants
denied public housing due to criminal backgrounds doubled, from 9,835 to 19,405.69 Third, a
1998 Amendment to the Higher Education Act suspended eligibility for student loans for
anyone convicted of a drug offence . The amendment promises to deny or delay all
federal financial aid (including grants, loans, and work assistance) for postsecondary
education. During the 2000-2001 school year, more than 43,000 students were adversely affected by the
amendment.70 Fourth, a lifetime public employment ban exists in several states , including at least six
of the states that also fully or partially enforce the welfare and food stamp ban.71 While other states do not technically impose the ban, broad
discretionary powers in hiring procedures increase the likelihood that previously
convicted felons will not be hired in public service.72 In addition, a number of states prohibit
ex-felons from obtaining occupational or professional licenses in fields such as
education, childcare, social work, nursing, dentistry, health, physical therapy, and
accounting. The trend towards more symbollic exclusions of former convicts from the
communities into which they are released is also gaining wider acceptance. The web-
based prisoner and parolee search engines, which provide the user with all of the personal information of ex-prisoners
(including their addresses upon release) are one example. Even broader postdetention exclusionary measures are imposed on sex
offenders. Under the regime of “Megan’s Laws” entrenched by federal and state governments in 1996, federal and state authorities are permitted to not
only keep a registry of all former sex offenders in their jurisdiction for periods extending from ten years to life, but also to notify the public of their
whereabouts through mailings, posters, media announcements, and CD-ROMs containing the files of all ex-offenders coded by geographical area. By
1998, convicted sex offenders in every state were
subject to registration, with some states enforcing the law retroactively — as of that year, nearly 280,000 sex offenders were listed in registries across
the country.73 In Louisiana, former sex offenders must notify their landlords, neighbours, and the directors of the local school and municipal parks (in
writing) of their penal status. They must post warnings of their presence in a community newspaper within thirty days of their arrival. In addition, the law
authorizes “all forms of public notification,” including posters, handbills, and bumper stickers, and a judge may even request that former sex offenders
wear “distinctive garb” that readily identifies them as such.74 The consequences
of such draconian deprivations are
not difficult to comprehend. In 2001 alone, 600,000 individuals — roughly 1,600 a day —
were released from state and federal prisons.75 With little or no government assistance,
restricted access to public housing and postsecondary education, and with extremely
limited job opportunities, the staggering rates of recidivism encountered by many
counties are not surprising . In Allan County, Indiana, where recidivism rates mirror the national average, 63 percent of offenders
are returned to prison for technical violation of parole or on new charges within the first year of release, 78 percent within two years, and more than 90
percent within three years.76 Other studies reveal that a large number of prisoners are drawn from a
relatively small number of neighborhoods . In Baltimore, for instance, 15 percent of the city’s neighborhoods account for
56 percent of prison releases.77 Combined, the studies suggest that offenders, former offenders, and
those soon to be imprisoned not only come from the same neighborhoods, but are
indeed the same individual. Thus, as Michel Foucault aptly argues, recidivism seems to represent a
triumph rather than a failure of the prison system, as it produces an “enclosed illegality”
of criminals who are perpetually recycled through the penal system and are
consequently incapable of contaminating “respectable” citizens and their
neighborhoods, while at the same time functioning as an example for these citizens of
the dangers of nonconformity .78 Making a similar argument, Loïc Wacquant notes that the vicious circle of
imprisonment, ghettoization, and reimprisonment contributes to the ongoing
construction of American identity:
Around the polar oppositions between praiseworthy ‘working families’ —
implicitly white, suburban, and deserving — and the despicable ‘underclass’ of
criminals, loafers, and leeches, a two-headed antisocial hydra personified by the
dissolute teenaged ‘welfare mother’ on the female, and the dangerous ‘gang banger’ on
the male side — by definition dark skinned, urban and undeserving. The former are
exhaled as the living incarnation of genuine American values, self-control, deferred gratification,
subservience of life to labor; the latter is vituperated as the loathsome embodiment of their abject
desecration, the ‘dark side’ of the ‘American dream’ of affluence and opportunity for
all…And the line that divides them is increasingly being drawn, materially and
symbolically, by the prison .79

Conclusion The inclusive exclusion of superfluous, abject, and dangerous populations has
reached a feverish pitch in contemporary American society. Perhaps the first step to challenging the

increasing frequency of such intrastate expulsion, and the related attempt to purify the ranks of citizens, is the realization that the state of
exception is gradually becoming the rule . Through an analysis of the exclusion of certain populations into the liminal
spaces that are camp prisons, this paper attempts to do just that.
 Race
Biopower is the root cause of racism – racism stems from the sovereign’s
ability to enact violence on people that pose threats to the normalized
society and greater good
Mendieta 2 (Eduardo Mendieta is a Colombian-born Professor of Philosophy at
Penn State University, and acting director of the Rock Ethics Institute, Professor
of Philosophy at Penn State University, To Make Live and Let Die – Foucault on
Racism, Pg. 5-10, April 25, 2002, *LD)
The narrative developed by Foucault in these lectures is more fractious and detailed that I am portraying. The canvass that Foucault is panting in these
lectures concerns not just the wars that gave birth to our society, and its novel forms of knowledge, it also concerns something which I find fascinating,
and provocative: the invention of a people. To counter and challenge the power of the invaders, as well as the power of popes and kings, and using the
narratives to unmask their acts of usurpation and tyranny, elements within a social body begin to appeal to the
ideas of a people, which then refers to a race, which then refers to a populations, and
then is enshrined in the anodyne notion of “society.” From a Foucauldian perspective, the objects of
scientific study are partly constituted by the disciplines that seek to study them. So, just
as psychiatry produces the madman, and sexology the sexual deviant, and so on,
political theory in conjunction with historical discourse, produces a people. But the discourse of
political rationality that emerged since the sixteenth century does not secrete a univocal idea of a people. As the political rationality

of the modern state develops and grows in intensity, as it augments its claims to power,
a people becomes a nation, becomes a population, becomes a biological phenomenon
to be tended by all the sciences at the service of the state . Analogously to how sexuality became the locus of
the production of control, insofar as it was the pivot of interaction between individuals and their surrounding social environment, race also
became the pivot around which the biopower state came to exert its claims, so as to be
able to produce certain power effects . What is provocative here is the link that Foucault establishes between the emergence
of biopower and the constitution of something that we have now become accustomed to calling society, by which we in fact mean a population, a
people, a particular nation. For Foucault the emergence of political rationality is directly linked to the constitution of the object over which it must act.
political theory has to attend to the
And here I am able to foreground one of the central lessons of these lectures, namely that
emergence of political rationality in terms not of its rationality, or claims to reason, but in
terms of its modalities of operation. Behind political rationality does not stand reason, or rather, reason is not the
alibi of political rationality; instead, political rationality has to do with the horizon of its
enactment. If we accept that Foucault is a historical nominalist, and he is a nominalist through and through, in the way that Rorty reads him, and
correctly I would argue, then there is no reason behind political power . Political power itself cannot be mystified.

There is no power without the horizon of its enactment and the vehicles of its
transmission. This is still a misleading way of putting. The effects produced by a certain way of organizing
the social body, of studying it, of policing it, of taking care of it, of making sure that its
health and protection are attended to in the most detailed and careful ways possible,
produce a confrontation of forces, whose momentary stalemates, clashes, subjugations and dispersal, are summarized in the
name of power. And that power is the power over life. The political rationality of the modern state

is above all a rationality grounded in the way it tends to the life of the population . The
power of the biopolitical state is a regulation of life, a tending, a nurturing and
management of the living. The political rationality of the modern total state is
management of the living body of the people. This logic was epitomized in the paroxysm of the Nazi state, but also in
the communist states, with their Gulags.

I have thus far discussed Foucault’s triangulation between the discourses of the production of truth, the power that these discourse enact and make
available to social agents, and the constitution of a political rationality that is linked to the invention and creation of its horizon of activity and
surveillance. I want now to focus on the main theme of this courses’ last lecture. This theme discloses in a unique way the power and perspicacity of
Foucault’s method. The theme concerns the kind of power that biopower renders available, or rather, how biopolitics produces certain power effects by
thinking of the living in a novel way. We will approach the theme by way of a contrast: whereas the power of the sovereign under Medieval and early
Modern times was the power to make make live and to let die. Foucault discerned here a telling asymmetry. If the sovereign exercised his power with
the executioner’s axe, with the perpetual threat of death, then life was abandoned to its devices. Power was exhibited only on the scaffold, or the
guillotine –its terror was the shimmer of the unsheathed sword. Power was ritualistic, ceremonial, theatrical, and to that extent partial, molecular, and
calendrical. It was also a power that by its own juridical logic had to submit to the jostling of rights and claims. In the very performance of its might, the
power of the sovereign revealed its limitation. It is a power that is localized and circumscribed to the theater of its cruelty, and the staging of its pomp.
In contrast, however, the
power of the biopower state is over life [expand]. And here Foucault
asks “how can biopolitics then reclaim the power over death?” or rather, how can it
make die in light of the fact that its claim to legitimacy is that it is guarding, nurturing,
tending to life? In so far as biopolitics is the management of life, how does it make die, how does it kill? This is a similar question to the one
that theologians asked about the Christian God. If God is a god of life, the giver of life, how can he put to death, how can he allow death to descend
upon his gift of life –why is death a possibility if god is the giver of life? Foucault’s answer is that in order to re-claim death, to be
able to inflict death on its subjects, its living beings, biopower must make use of racism;
more precisely, racism intervenes here to grant access to death to the biopower state. We
must recall that the political rationality of biopower is deployed over a population, which is understood as a continuum of life. It is this continuum of life
that eugenics, social hygiene, civil engineering, civil medicine, military engineers, doctors and nurses, policeman, and so on, tended to by a careful
management of roads, factories, living quarters, brothels, red-districts, planning and planting of gardens and recreation centers, and the
gerrymandering of populations by means of roads, access to public transformations, placement of schools, and so on. Biopolitics is the result of the
development and maintenance of the hothouse of the political body, of the body-politic. Society has become the vivarium of the political rationality, and
biopolitics acts on the teeming biomass contained within the parameters of that structure built up by the institutions of health, education, and
production.

This is where racism intervenes, not from without, exogenously, but from within,
constitutively. For the emergence of biopower as the form of a new form of political
rationality, entails the inscription within the very logic of the modern state the logic of
racism . For racism grants, and here I am quoting: “the conditions for the acceptability of
putting to death in a society of normalization. Where there is a society of normalization,
where there is a power that is, in all of its surface and in first instance, and first line, a
bio-power, racism is indispensable as a condition to be able to put to death someone, in
order to be able to put to death others. The homicidal [meurtrière] function of the state,
to the degree that the state functions on the modality of bio-power, can only be assured
by racism “(Foucault 1997, 227) To use the formulations from his 1982 lecture “The Political Technology of Individuals” –which incidentally, echo
his 1979 Tanner Lectures –the power of the state after the 18th century, a power which is enacted
through the police, and is enacted over the population, is a power over living beings, and
as such it is a biopolitics. And, to quote more directly, “since the population is nothing
more than what the state takes care of for its own sake, of course, the state is entitled to
slaughter it, if necessary. So the reverse of biopolitics is thanatopolitics.” (Foucault 2000, 416).
Racism, is the thanatopolitics of the biopolitics of the total state . They are two sides of one same political
technology, one same political rationality: the management of life, the life of a population, the tending to the continuum of life of a people.

And with the inscription of racism within the state of biopower, the long history of war
that Foucault has been telling in these dazzling lectures has made a new turn: the war of
peoples, a war against invaders, imperials colonizers, which turned into a war of races,
to then turn into a war of classes, has now turned into the war of a race, a biological unit,
against its polluters and threats. Racism is the means by which bourgeois political
power, biopower, re-kindles the fires of war within civil society. Racism normalizes and
medicalizes war. Racism makes war the permanent condition of society, while at the
same time masking its weapons of death and torture. As I wrote somewhere else, racism banalizes
genocide by making quotidian the lynching of suspect threats to the health of the social
body. Racism makes the killing of the other, of others, an everyday occurrence by
internalizing and normalizing the war of society against its enemies. To protect society entails we be
ready to kill its threats, its foes, and if we understand society as a unity of life, as a continuum of the living, then these threat and foes are biological in
nature.

II

In a recent essay Tom McCarthy notes that “the development of conceptual tools for analyzing the racialized dimensions of modern and contemporary
politics has lagged, and the shift from legally institutionalized patterns of social domination to domination anchored in the lifeworld cultures and
traditions, norms and values, socialization patterns and identity formations have remained largely untheorized in liberal political theory.” (2) In response
to this diagnosis, McCarthy proceeds in this essay to articulate a critique of the ideal-nonideal theory dichotomy, which he develops in confrontation
with John Rawls’s political philosophy. After some serious and devastating critiques of Rawls’ theoretical blindness to race, notwithstanding Rawls’s
perfunctory references to the endurance and recrudescence of racism in contemporary American society, McCarthy closes by offering the points of
departure for a critical theory of race. This theory would seek to combine the normative, the empirical, and the critical. Such a critical theory of race
seeks to combine these elements because from the standpoint of ideal normative political theory “there are no theoretical means at hand for bridging
the gap between a color-blind ideal theory and a color-coded political reality, for the approach of ideal theory provides theoretical mediation between
the ideal and the real –or rather, what mediation it does provide is usually only tacit and always drastically restricted.” (9). Instead, a critical theory of
race would begin as a “critique of the present,” by means of which we seek to alter our self-understanding by offering genealogies of “accepted idea
and principles of practical reason.” (8)

I bring McCarthy’s essay up, and the laudable goals therein discussed, because I want to argue that Foucault’s work is relevant not only for scholarly
and academic reasons, but also because Foucault’s
work on race, biopolitics, and the emergence of
political rationality, are particularly relevant in our contemporary context precisely because they can
help us develop the kind of approach McCarthy delineates. Foucault’s work allows us to combine, just as McCarthy urges us to do, the empirical, the
normative, and the critical, in terms of genealogies about our “accepted ideas and principles of practical reason.” Furthermore, Foucault’s work is the
more relevant because, and this is going to be main argument, we are at a historical juncture in which the institutions, or dispositifs, knowledges, truths,
and docile bodies produced by their interactions have reached the acme of their pervasiveness and sophistication. In 1976, when Foucault was
lecturing on race, biopolitics, and the discourses of truth in terms of the production of historical knowledges, he did so as an European looking back on
Auschwitz, the Gulags, and the racial valances of totalitarianism, on the one hand, and revolutionary moments, on the other. Our contemporary
today when we seek
perspective, as well as our locus of reflection, is different. And it is in light of this changed context that I think that
to develop a critical theory race we have to pay particular attention to three areas of research, or fields
of genealogical exploration, which would allow us to understand how our political ideas and norms came to be what they are. These three areas
concern: racial violence performed by a population upon its own body-politic, racial violence
by the state, and the production of the body-politic by the state and its attendant
disciples, technologies, and projects of population control. The first two areas are covered by the history of racist
institutions in the United States. More specifically, if we understand racism to be about the management of life

by creating a caesura in the living body of the population, which requires an urgent and exceptional vigilance, one that might call for
an emergency and extreme measure, namely that of putting to death the now
internalized threat ; if, in other words, we understand racism as the normalization of the state of emergency against a biological threat,
then we must seek to understand those institutions that normalize the mechanisms for
dealing with racial threats. I will suggest that two institutions that have performed this role in the
United States were, and continue to be, lynching and the death penalty.
Lynching, we like to assume, was a non-normative, non-legal, non-state violence. A certain population, racially self-identified, performed this violence
on racialized citizens; lynching, in other words, is racial violence enacted by the body-polity upon itself. Yet, as the recently published work by Philip
Dray At the Hands of Persons Unknown the Lynching of Black America demonstrates exhaustively and vividly how lynching was a normalized and
normalizing institution that took decades of pressure from outsider to cease, even if not entirely stop. Lynchings proceeded with the explicit knowledge
of the “respected members” of the community, and with the tacit approval of the “legal and police” authorities of the communities. Lynching was the
routinization of racial violence, and what is clear is that it was neither unpredictable nor an atavistic paroxysm, which explains its long life in the US. A
“geneaological and archeological” analysis of lynching will reveal how it operated on the basis of the assumption that blacks were a threat to the health
of the social body, and how this threat had to be expunged by the “healthy” members of community, and the punishment of the violator of the health of
the community had to be performed by a justice and power made routine, anonymous and quotidian.

the death
The death penalty, on the other hand, is the refinement of the lynching system, and we used Rev. Jesse Jackson’s phrase,
penalty is but a legalized lynching, a lynching barely concealed behind the veneer of
medicalization, legalization, and professionalization. It is in fact uncanny, although not entirely incidental, that
Robert Jay Lifton’s and Greg Mitchell’s book Who Owns Weath? Capital Punishment, the American Conscience, and the End of Executions, have
three chapters, under the second part entitled Executioners, dealing with: 4. Wardens and Guards, Chaplains, and Doctors; 5. Prosecutors and
Governors; 6. Jurors and Judges. Chapter four is particularly important because there we are given illustrations of how a
biopolitics state
uses the technologies of normalization, and the discourses of normalization, to make the
killing of citizens not only legal, but also necessary and even indispensable. On the one hand,
there are the technologies of the normalization of the process of killing, which is enacted upon guards and wardens. On the other hand, there are the
medical discourses, as well as sciences, that intervene in the normalization of the putting to death of citizens. What is noteworthy in Lifton and
Mitchell’s book is that they foreground how the putting to death of another human being is made
acceptable by rendering the act of killing anonymous, that is, perfunctory and
mechanized. Responsibility for killing is diluted; in fact, this responsibility is dissolved as
the machines that aid in the executions introduce uncertainty. The other element that is foregrounded by
Lifton and Mitchell that is interesting for an analysis of the racists dispositifs of the biostate, is the way in which both medicine and
psychiatry are constitutive of the whole process of putting to death of citizens. In fact, it is
indeed arguable that putting to death by means of some sort of “machine” that seeks to minimize
the pain of the victims (the guillotine, gas chamber, lethal injections) are ways in which
medicine interviews on behalf of the state to make more efficient and legitimate the
suicidal function of the biostate. The final area of investigation, the one in which the state actually participates in the production
of the living body of a population, has to do with the genomics, which one may argue intervenes in the living body of a populations in ways never before
anticipated. Contemporary genomics, I would argue, are a continuation of 19th and early 20th
century eugenics. For like the earlier eugenics, contemporary genomics seeks to produce the best body-politic that is possible. On one
hand, we have to study the role of the state in developing the whole area of genomics, by means of the Human Genome Project. On the other, we
have to study the way in which the technologies related to the human genome are given rise to a series of challenges that touch on the legal, political,
and scientific issues. On one hand, we have the production of these knowledges and sciences by the state. On the other hand, we have the attempts
by the state to regulate legally and fiscally the ways in which people may have access to some of these technologies. At the same time, we have the
movements to resist the state’s monopolization of these technologies. As we face the challenges of genomics and biotechnology, a political philosophy
that approaches questions of justice and enduring inequality merely in terms of ideal and normative models, may actually become a hindrance to our
grappling with the ways in which the power of the biostate is being exponentially augmented by its institutions of biopower, and how that biopower is
racialized, racializing, and always auguring and inciting to racial violence.
at: aff answers
 at: agamben is colonialist
The instance of Agamben’s application to aboriginal struggles should be a
case in point—strategically employing Agamben is key to challenging
colonialism
Abbott 13. Matthew Abbott, professor of philosophy at the University of Ballarat in Australia,
“Political Ontology and Colonialism: Impasses of Theory and Practice,” Settler Colonial Studies,
DOI:10 Published online: 08 Jun 2013 pg. 5

Simone Bignall’s ‘Potential Postcoloniality’ is similarly accomplished. It highlights the aporias

posed for Australian sovereignty by the country’s settler colonial past and present,
arguing convincingly that the ‘ongoing colonial dispossession of Australia’s Aboriginal
people destabilises the security of the settler consciousness and the cohesiveness of
the national culture, challenging the self-evidential legitimacy and uniform authority of
the transplanted sover- eign power’ (261). She turns in particular to the declaration in
2007 of a state of emergency in the Northern Territory’s Aboriginal communities (ostensibly
because of poor living standards and endemic child abuse). The measures taken during
the “intervention” that followed were so aston- ishing they warrant quoting her at length:
determining how welfare payments may be spent and making welfare payments
contingent upon chil- dren’s school attendance; controlling access to goods and
services; conferring extra powers of police to enter private property without warrant
when an Aboriginal person is believed to be affected by alcohol; requiring that detailed records
be kept for three years of all users of computers purchased with government funds; and
mandating compulsory participation in the ‘Work for the Dole’ scheme, which makes payment of
unemployment pension benefits contingent upon recipients under- taking ‘voluntary’ labour.
Beyond these measures of state intervention in the conventionally private sphere of
habitation and individual choices concerning personal action, the legislation also
conferred upon the Commonwealth significant powers to intervene in – or to suspend –
existing structures of Aboriginal self-determination and community governance. These
included the power of government to vary or terminate funding agreements; to specify how
funding will be spent; to oversee local gov- erning processes; to supervise and control
community councils; to assess and appoint community store managers; and to exclude any
person, including a traditional owner, from land compulsorily leased back to government (263).

Bignall’s analysis of these events – which focuses on the relevance of Agamben’s work
on homo sacer, the camp, sovereign decision , and the sacred in coming to understand
and critique them – is powerful. She does not simply get to work on them with an
Agambenian toolbox: she qualifies and nuances his thought, strategically deploying his
concepts while simultaneously challenging them. She concludes with a skilful account
of what it means to be “contemporary” in Agamben’s sense of the word, and a critical
analysis of whether and how “whatever being” and the ‘coming community’ can help us
think the transformative potentials dormant in Australia’s postcolonial condition. If the
essays of this final section are the most interesting in the volume, however, it is not only
because they open political ontology to the risk of a transformative encounter with
colonialism. It is also because of how they critically develop the political ontological
method. They themselves are contemporary in the Agambenian sense. In Bignall own
words, they recog- nise ‘the darkness in the present era’, but turn to it for the sake of
what in its obscurity remains ‘virtual and potential’ (272).

They are wrong on multiple levels—Agamben’s ontology of power is an

important tool for criticizing theory and praxis in colonialism
Abbott 13. Matthew Abbott, professor of philosophy at the University of Ballarat in Australia,
“Political Ontology and Colonialism: Impasses of Theory and Practice,” Settler Colonial Studies,
DOI:10 Published online: 08 Jun 2013 pg. 1

Yet in the case of Agamben such questions of theory and practice run deeper even than
usual. Arguably they go to the heart of his philosophy. It is not just that we need to do more
than crudely ‘apply’ his thought to any particular concrete problem; as a form of
fundamental ontology, Agam- ben’s thinking challenges our usual ways of articulating
problems , and in particular our opposi- tions between theory and practice, thought and
politics . Indeed with its thoroughgoing commitment to clarifying and problematising
categories of means and ends, use and inoperativity, paradigmaticity and exemplarity,
Agamben’s philosophy explicitly – and aporetically – addresses the conceptual
assumptions implicit in any attempt at setting thought to work. Agamben’s phil- osophy
is, as I have argued, best understood not in terms of critical theory but as political ontol-
ogy.2 This means finding practical relevance for, say, anti-colonial struggle in Agamben
requires one tread carefully. The merit of this collection is that – in its best moments – it
shows not only that it is possible but also just how productive it can be. Some of the
encounters between Agam- benian philosophy and colonial studies in this book are
encounters in the true sense of the word: afterwards, neither party should be able to go
on in quite the same way . They show something basic about Agamben’s thought (and
political ontology more generally). Its value does not consist primarily in its ability to
describe and/or critique the present, but rather in the potential it holds for thinking its
transformation . As Leland de la Durantaye argues in his contribution to the text, historical
exigency is crucial to Agamben’s philosophy, such that for him ‘there is no line of
thought which is not strategic’ (231). This makes confronting it with the conceptual and
political problems of colonial studies all the more interesting: it means bringing his
thought to bear on some of the world’s most pressing political struggles, while bringing
those struggles to bear on his thought.
The first section of the book – Colonial States of Exception – collects essays by Yehouda
Shenhav, Sergei Prozorov, and Marcelo Svirsky. With its breadth and urgent, personal tone,
Shen- hav’s piece was an appropriate choice as the book’s opening chapter (even if it does not
present an entirely illuminating argument regarding Agamben and colonialism). Turning to both
Walter Ben- jamin’s ‘Critique of Violence’ and Franz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth, it
works to rectify the conspicuous absence of any ‘sustained analysis of the “exception”
in the history of imperial- ism’ (21) from Agamben’s work. Unlike most of the other
contributions to the volume, Shenhav’s essay does not restrict itself to analysing any particular
colonial formation, roaming between Algeria, Egypt, India, and Israel (which, Shenhav argues,
has continued to colonise Gaza via ‘“exceptional” practices’ (27) since the official withdrawal in
2005). Prozorov’s typically provo- cative essay deploys Agambenian analyses of exception,
anomie, and legitimacy, showing their relevance for critiquing what he terms the ‘the
postcommunist condition’ in contemporary Russia: the precarious social situation that emerged
out of the dissolution of the Soviet empire and the ‘internal decolonisation’ (34) this entailed.
Prozorov uses the ‘late-Soviet neologism’ bespedel – a bit of underworld slang that describes
actions which do not conform ‘with the tacit and infor- mal norms’ (37) governing criminal
behaviour – as he develops an account of the forms of cor- ruption, inequality, violence, and
police brutality that have thrived under the Putin regime. Bespedel, argues Prozorov, ‘is
ultimately the best Russian translation for what Agamben terms “the state of exception”’ (39). As
he shows, Agamben’s philosophy should make us wary of any easy analysis of Putin’s Russia
in terms of simple disorder, institutional decay, lawlessness, or whatever: rather, what
distinguishes Putinism is its paradoxical capacity to order and stabilise disorder and anomie
themselves. Prozorov thus refuses the idea that the state of bespedel could be overcome
through a return to order, arguing that what it has revealed is precisely the contingency of
historical order as such. This is why he turns to the possibility of the appropriation of
anomie itself, seeking a form of politics that would see it stop ‘being the privilege of the
sovereign, authorising its recourse to violence’ and instead be ‘extended to the entire
domain of social praxis’ (48). Svirsky’s piece carries out a solid analysis of the politics of
exceptionality in Israel, working to supplement Agamben’s own philosophy of the exception with
the immunitarian paradigm of Roberto Esposito and Deleuze and Guttari’s theories of desire. If
the piece is a little glib in its attacks on Agamben for his insufficient attention to political
specifities,3 it nevertheless presents a series of powerful critiques of the pathologies of
contemporary Zionism. It concludes with some interesting remarks on the possibility of
profaning, in Agamben’s particular sense of the word, Israel’s programmes of
conscription and racial segregation.

The example of his native Italy is a good example—although Agamben

never explicitly wrote about the history of colonialism in Italy, his theory is
an important tool for understanding it
Abbott 13. Matthew Abbott, professor of philosophy at the University of Ballarat in Australia,
“Political Ontology and Colonialism: Impasses of Theory and Practice,” Settler Colonial Studies,
DOI:10 Published online: 08 Jun 2013 pg. 3

The third section of the book is Biopolitics and Bare Life. David Atkinson’s ‘Bare Life in Italian
Libya’ employs Agamben’s theories of bare life and the exception in a reconstruction of
Italy’s own colonial history, in particular of the internment and genocide of Cyrenaicans
in a system of concentration camps in the early 1930s. Atkinson’s reconstruction is
compelling, and he certainly makes a case for the usefulness of Agambenian concepts
in understanding this and other examples of colonial domination , though questions
remain as to what, exactly, has been accomplished – whether historiographically or
philosophically – by showing that ‘we can identify ... states of exception in inter-war
Cyrenaica’ (167). The second part of the essay, where Atkinson speculates as to why
Agamben ‘does not consider examples from the Italian colo- nial experience, nor even mention
them, in his publications’ (156), is less convincing. The ques- tion is worth asking, but even if we
accept Atkinson’s answer – that Italian intellectuals of Agamben’s generation suffer from
‘colonial amnesia’ (170) – it clarifies little about any particular limits of or essential
lacunae in his philosophy. On first reading, Ariella Azoulay and Adi Ophir’s ‘Abandoning
Gaza’ might seem theoretically rather thin; soon enough, however, it becomes clear that
Agamben’s philosophy has informed this astute polemical history of the Gaza Strip in a
subtle yet pervasive way. Like Shenhav, the authors show that Israel’s official withdrawal
was in fact the pretext for a new, more insidious form of domination, such that ‘[t]he
condition under which Palestinians live and die, love and work, raise children and pray to
God is determined, to an extent quite unprecedented in the contemporary world, by a
series of quite simple acts of state’ (182). The piece concludes with an intriguing point: in
Gaza it appears that the usual functioning of the state of exception – in which
‘application is suspended’ while ‘law, as such, remains in force’ (Agamben, quoted 196) –
has been reversed. For residents of the Gaza Strip, in other words, Israeli law itself has been
suspended yet its “applications” remain brutally in force. Silvia Grinberg’s ‘Colonial
Histories’ presents a history of the shantytowns of Buenos Aires, arguing they are ‘marked
by the kind of “abandonment” Agamben associates with the sovereign exception’ (204).
The apparent structural differences between shantytown and camp in Agam- ben’s sense mean
the claim that the inhabitants of the former ‘are the homines sacri of the twenty-first century’
(219) is difficult to cash out, but Grinberg makes an impressive attempt. As she argues, a
shantytown is defined not only by extreme poverty but also by ‘the illegal status of the
occupation of its territory’ (212). Echoing Azoulay and Ophir, then, Grinberg argues that the
form of sovereign violence typical of the shantytown is a violence that abandons : a
power that dominates not directly but indirectly, through various forms of withdrawal.
Especially interesting here is the attention the piece pays to the problem of the ordinary
and the exceptional; the argument is that the apparent extremity of these exceptional
spaces is under- written by a paradoxical ordinariness . The singularity of the
shantytown – and part, I take it, of what may distinguish it from a camp – is that
‘normalisation ... contains the most dangerous aspect of these realities’ (221). Grinberg
concludes her essay by making a highly suggestive link between this zone of
indistinction between the ordinary and the extreme and the destruction of experience
typical of life in capitalist modernity (and which, as she notes, Agamben analysed ‘years
before his studies into biopolitics’ (221)).

Method, History and Potentiality is the fourth and final section of the book. Durantaye’s essay
‘The Paradigm of Colonialism’ follows up on the apparent impasses of theory and
practice in Agambenian political ontology. He reads Agamben’s short 2006 lecture
‘Metropolis’ – one of the very few places in which the philosopher deals explicitly with
colonialism – in order to draw out a series of important questions regarding method. In particular
Durantaye shows how Agamben gestures not toward a history of colonialism (as Agamben
states in another context, ‘I am not a historian’), but rather at a study of the colony as a
paradigm that might ‘circumscribe a larger group of phenomena’ (quoted 234). This
methodological procedure makes it possible to develop a surprising argument: the lines of
demarcation between the colony and the metropole that mark the experience of
colonialism have, in our time, come to be ‘intimately bound up with life in all our cities’.
Treating colonialism as a paradigm, in other words, should compel us to read the
‘complex compartmentalisation, observation and subjectification’ characteristic of life in
the late capitalist city in terms of the colonial apparatus, locating the ‘division between a
mother city and its colonies’ (237) beyond its usual spatial modalities. Two points should
be emphasised here. The first is how definitively this separates Agamben’s thinking from
more traditional, historical accounts of colonialism (in which the claim that colonial con-
ditions obtain in contemporary Paris, Berlin, and London would appear rather
preposterous). The second is that this distance from the empirical is – thought it may
seem paradoxical – exactly what constitutes the properly political and irreducibly
strategic element in Agamben’s thought. Political ontology steps back from the ontic
field of political struggle only to only to intervene into it an arguably more radical –
though of course, also more ambiguous and under- determined – way than critical
theoretical, historical, empirical, or indeed more traditional pol- itical philosophical
methods allow. This is why Agambenian thought is at its best when it refuses to be
content with providing a critical account of a particular historical event or series of
phenomena: above all, it should move strategically through the past toward a strategic
engage- ment with the present, thinking its blindspots and political lacunae with a view
to their exploita- tion. As Durantaye shows, the colonial paradigm could perhaps be
exploited like this in the name of what Agamben calls ‘ungovernability’ (quoted 237).
 at: consequentialism
Consequentialism specifically fails in the context of the war on terror—
proves our link arguments and link turns the aff
Moscoso 11. Leopoldo A. Moscoso, professor of political philosophy at the University of
Madrid, “Citizens, Aliens and Suspects in an Age of the War on Terror: The Question of
Emergency Powers in Western Post-Democracies,” ITALIAN JOURNAL OF PUBLIC LAW -
VOL. 3 ISSUE 2/2011
Pg. 319

Concerning the effects now, the study of the new manifestations of political violence
requires, on the one hand, reconsidering the problem of the rationality of action.
Observers are well aware that suicide-bombers attempts are not tactic – they therefore cannot
be accounted for in terms of the calculation of any utility function. The balance account
of costs and benefits for the martyr is estimated, so to speak, sub specie aeternitatis –
hence the enormous difficulties experts on violence face to predict (not to say prevent)
this type of episodes. On the other hand, terrorist violence brings the observer back to the
normative problem concerning the explanation/justification of political action through its
consequences. If some political actions may find a warrant in their consequences, then
the same principle might be applied when the time comes for the validation of counter-
terrorist measures. Provided that its effects turned out to be as expected, would it be
legitimate to vindicate the war on terror exclusively on the grounds of its effects? The
answer is clearly negative as soon as other considerations are introduced, besides the
government’s responsibilities with the physical security of its citizens. Even under the
threat of terror, societies have responsibilities with the humanity of the single activist,
with the humanity of the activist’s organizations, and with the humanity of their original
communities. The use of beneficial effects/legitimate goals as an alibi to warrant the
choice for immoral or illegitimate means eliminates whatever restrictions might remain
for the party of violence to resort to the same scheme.
 at: foucault/everyday violence
The system of everyday violence was always double with broader
sovereign violence and those situations need to be considered in context—
this argument deradicalizes the alternative and proves that the permutation
is morally bankrupt. Any attempt to act within the system is in vain.
Prozorov 10. Sergei Prozorov, professor of political and economic studies at the University of
Helsinki, “Why Giorgio Agamben is an optimist,” Philosophy Social Criticism 2010 36: pg. 1054

This totalized image of the global state of exception has been criticized as both hyper-
bolically excessive and internally contradictory. Paul Passavant has argued that Agamben’s
theory suffers from a contradictory concept of the state that also plagues his affirmative
vision of the ‘coming politics’.7 While Agamben is most famous for his deconstruction of
the logic of sovereignty that radicalizes Schmitt’s conception,8 he has also, from his
earliest work onwards, confronted the more dispersed, ‘governmentalized’ modes of power
relations characteristic of late capitalism in the manner highly influ- enced by Guy Debord’s
work on the society of the spectacle.9 Against the argument that this conjunction of
sovereignty and governmentality in the analysis of late-modern power relations
constitutes a contradiction, we must recall that this duality of the con- temporary
apparatus of power is explicitly affirmed by Agamben himself, who, similarly to
Foucault’s claim for the indissociability of sovereignty, discipline and government,10
regularly insists that ‘ the system is always double ’.11 The inextricable link between the two
aspects of the contemporary social order consists in the nihilistic deployment of life itself as a
(post-)historical task. Both state sovereignty and the late-capitalist society of the spectacle
are biopolitical and thus permanently feed into each other . The contempo-rary neo-liberal
governmentality extends the operation of economic rationality to life itself, whereby life
is conceived as a paradigmatic form of enterprise,12 and in this manner expropriates the
being-in-language that defines human existence and subjects it to the laws of exchange-
value or, in Agamben’s later works, ‘exhibition value’.13 Con- versely, sovereign power
expropriates the potentiality of human existence, transforming it into the bare life that it
then grounds itself in and applies itself to in the perpetual state of exception. The state
does nothing more than sustain the spectacle with its apparatuses of security, while the
spectacle does nothing more than perpetually produce the degraded forms-of-life that sovereign
power can apply itself to.
Yet, how can this claim about the mutual reinforcement of the sovereign state and the society of
the spectacle under the aegis of biopolitical nihilism ground any optimistic disposition? It is
precisely this totalized image that allows Agamben to claim that in the contemporary
situation there is nothing to lose from a total ‘halting of the machine’ .14 On the one hand,
Agamben refuses both the possibility of reforming or even revolutio- nizing social life by
re-engaging with sovereignty, e.g. through the political struggle for hegemony along the lines
of Laclau’s populism or the Habermasian formation of a more inclusive political community
through communicative action. Neither is there any point in a Derridean deconstructive
subversion of sovereignty in the name of the undeconstruc- tible justice and ‘democracy
to come’, which serves only to highlight the undecidability at the heart of the law, which
is essential to the latter’s existence.15 Since the state of anomie is the constitutive
outside of any nomos, it is bound to remain inscribed within it irrespectively of the way
the positive structure of order is transformed. The state of exception and its product, the
bare life of homo sacer, are not a ‘political problem’ to be resolved within any positive
system, but rather a problem of the political itself. 16 Any search for a more effective,
‘exception-proof’ positive order is entirely in vain , espe- cially in today’s condition of
nihilism , in which the vacuity of historical forms-of-life has brought the sovereign ban
to the foreground as the sole substance of politics .
 at: legal expertism
You should adopt a critical stance towards what counts as evidence—
expert models of legal calculation are exclusionary and manipulations of
the juridical process by disciplinary knowledge
Amoore 08. Louise Amoore, Reader in Political Geography, Department of Geography,
University of Durham, “Risk Before Justice: When the Law Contests Its Own Suspension,”
Leiden Journal of International Law, 21 (2008), pg. 857

The connecting of dots celebrated by Baker is exactly the work of link analysis deployed across
integrated databases. The 9/11 commission documents are replete with references to the
need to ‘connect the dots’ in order to provide evidence before the event. Indeed, private
commercial models for connecting dots – such as those developed by IBM, Microsoft,
Oracle, Raytheon, and Accenture, and later deployed in major contracts to manage US and
UK borders – were reported by the commission as a means by which ‘the events of 9/11
could have been anticipated and prevented’. The representation of evidence before the
event as the solution to catastrophe risk in the war on terror has cleared substantial
space for expert models of calculation. As Valverde and Rose note, in historical context ‘a
plurality of different forms of expertise have attached themselves to the institutions and
procedures of the law’.48 At historical moments when law turns to expertise to authorize
legal judgments and decision, it reconsiders the basis of legal evidence. It becomes
possible, then, for expert risk managers to claim that the evidence for the events of 9/11
was already present before the attack, indeed, that if their procedures and risk
judgements were to be authorized in decisions to deport, detain, or intercept, future
terrorist crimes could be prevented.

If law is to prise open public space to contest the deployment of pre-emptive evidence ‘before
the fact’, then it must first confront the contingency and perform- ativity of all forms of
evidence .49 In many ways there is nothing at all new in the authorization of experts to
judge criminality in advance or, as Foucault de- picts twentieth-century medico-legal
judgement, ‘expert opinion shows how the individual resembles his crime before he has
committed it’.50 To confront the con- tingency of legal categories is also to acknowledge law’s
intrinsic role in determining ‘the way in which we see and are given to the world to be seen’ –
what Costas Douzi- nas refers to as the ‘legal screen’.51 If the legal screen is interposed
between the world of data, facts, and evidence and the making of social, political, and
legal judgements and decisions, then pre-emptive evidence may itself be authenticated.
Consider, by way of example, the case for data mining and biometric identifiers made by
Michael Chertoff to the European Parliament:
In June 2003, using PNR data and other analytics, one of our inspectors at Chicago’s O’Hare
airport pulled aside an individual for secondary inspection and questioning. When the secondary
officers were not satisfied with his answers they took his fin- gerprints and denied him entry to
the United States. The next time we saw those fingerprints – or at least parts of them – they
were on the steering wheel of a suicide vehicle that blew up and killed 132 people in Iraq.52
The spectacular nature of the presentation of evidence – its intricate staging and performance –
is writ large in Chertoff’s appeal to new forms of fingerprint evidence. The conventional scene of
crime fingerprint evidence, itself historically authorized by science and expertise, is invoked here
to authenticate the biometric used to make a pre-emptive judgement at the border. Evidence at
the threshold of unknown futures, although prevalent in novel forms in contemporary
security practice, is actually authorized in ways that are not dissimilar to the
commonplace and prosaic work of legal representations of what counts as evidence.
 at: legal solutions good
We control how the plan as case law is interpreted as their attempt to
return to legal normalcy necessarily produces exceptional use of executive
powers in the future as the law gets fuzzier and fuzzier and they refuse to
deal with its murkiness
Agamben 05. Giorgio Agamben, famous philosopher, The State of Exception, pg. 39

The concept of application is certainly one of the most problematic categories of legal
(and not only legal) theory. The question was put on a false track by being related to Kant’s
theory of judgment as a faculty of thinking the particular as contained in the general. The
application of a norm would thus be a case of determinant judgment, in which the gen- eral (the
rule) is given, and the particular case is to be subsumed under it. (In reflective judgment it is
instead the particular that is given, and the general rule that must be found.) Even though Kant
was perfectly aware of the aporetic nature of the problem and of the difficulty involved in
concretely deciding between the two types of judgment (as shown by his theory of the example
as an instance of a rule that cannot be enun- ciated), the mistake here is that the relation
between the particular case and the norm appears as a merely logical operation.
Once again, the analogy with language is illuminating: In the relation between the general
and the particular (and all the more so in the case of the application of a juridical norm),
it is not only a logical subsumption that is at issue, but first and foremost the passage
from a generic propo- sition endowed with a merely virtual reference to a concrete
reference to a segment of reality (that is, nothing less than the question of the ac- tual
relation between language and world). This passage from langue to parole, or from the
semiotic to the semantic, is not a logical operation at all; rather, it always entails a
practical activity, that is, the assumption of langue by one or more speaking subjects and
the implementation of that complex apparatus that Benveniste defined as the enunciative
function, which logicians often tend to undervalue . In the case of the juridical norm,
reference to the concrete case entails a “trial” that always involves a plurality of
subjects and ultimately culminates in the pronunciation of a sentence , that is, an
enunciation whose operative reference to reality is guaranteed by the institutional
powers.

In order to pose the problem of application correctly, it must there- fore first be moved from
the logical sphere to the practical. As Gadamer has shown (1960, 360, 395/378–79, 418), not
only is every linguistic inter- pretation always really an application requiring an effective
operation (which the tradition of theological hermeneutics has summarized in the maxim that
Johann A. Bengel placed at the beginning of his edition of the New Testament: te totum applica
ad textum, rem totam applica ad te [apply all of yourself to the text; apply all of it to yourself]),
but it is also perfectly obvious (and Schmitt had no difficulty theorizing this obviousness) that,
in the case of law, the application of a norm is in no way contained within the norm and
cannot be derived from it ; other- wise, there would have been no need to create the
grand edifice of trial law. Just as between language and world, so between the norm and
its application there is no internal nexus that allows one to be derived im- mediately
from the other.

In this sense, the state of exception is the opening of a space in which application and
norm reveal their separation and a pure force-of-law realizes (that is, applies by ceasing to
apply [dis-applicando]) a norm whose application has been suspended . In this way, the
impossible task of welding norm and reality together , and thereby constituting the nor-
mal sphere , is carried out in the form of the exception , that is to say, by presupposing
their nexus . This means that in order to apply a norm it is ultimately necessary to
suspend its application, to produce an exception . In every case, the state of exception
marks a threshold at which logic and praxis blur with each other and a pure violence
without logos claims to realize an enunciation without any real reference.

The plan is MEANINGLESS as they cannot tell you definitively what the rule
of the norm that dictates its interpretation will be in the future—only the
alternative has a method to meaningful change the nomos of modern
politics
Amoore 08. Louise Amoore, Reader in Political Geography, Department of Geography,
University of Durham, “Risk Before Justice: When the Law Contests Its Own Suspension,”
Leiden Journal of International Law, 21 (2008), pg. 851

In the context of post-9/11 worlds, however, the historical fungibility and con- tingency of
risk, and its relation to law, have somewhat fallen away from analyses of the world and
our place within it. In Ulrich Beck’s reading, for example, the ‘world risk society’ reaches its
limit when science and law can no longer respond to the proliferation of ‘potentially
catastrophic and uninsurable events’.21 For Richard Ericson and Aaron Doyle, a similar risk
limit is reached in a ‘terrorism that strikes at the heart of risk society’, rendering past ways
of taming chance and uncertainty impossible, and presenting ‘a stark reminder of the
limits to risk assessment and management’.22 And yet it is not the case that risk society
has reached its limits at the threshold of a world depicted in terms of catastrophe
(whether terrorism, climate change, landslide, or flooding), but rather that risk is
precisely a technology of limits – a means of pushing at what is possible. Because, as
Ewald says, ‘there is no risk in reality’, then risk exists only as a ‘way we have come to
understand the world and its problems’.23 To define a world that is ‘post-9/11’ or
characterized by the ‘war on terror’, then, is not to reach the limits of risk at all, but to
come to understand the world deploying novel risk technologies with new and startling
implications for law.24
In the incorporation of risk management into contemporary security practice, the sheer
unpredictability or incalculability of terrorist attack has not led, then, to the placing of
limits on risk. On the contrary, it has made radical uncertainty the very basis for action via
risk calculations. Thus, for example, Ron Suskind’s account of the post-9/11 Bush
administration’s ‘one per cent doctrine’ positions the risk of catastrophe as the essence of a
security decision: ‘if there is a one per cent chance of an event coming due, act as though
it were a certainty’.25 In effect, the precautionary principle is brought into security
practice, ‘inviting one to anticipate what one does not know’ and making decisions ‘not
in a context of certainty, nor even available knowledge, but of doubt, premonition,
foreboding, fear and anxiety’.26 In contrast to risk models that seek to prevent or to predict,
then, those dominating security domains are pre-emptive – they function precisely by
allowing movement, permit- ting life to play out. In his identification of risk as central to the
security apparatus, Michel Foucault describes ‘the emergence of a completely different
problem’ that orientates itself to ‘allowing circulations to take place, controlling them,
sifting the good and the bad, ensuring things are always in movement’.27 Integral to the
idea of risk is the always already present possibility to govern on the very basis of uncertainty –
via ‘differential risks’, ‘risk zones’, ‘different curves of normality’.28
Just as the designation of emergency or exception does not suspend the deploy- ment of risk as
a means of governing, so the space of exception depicted by Agamben is not as ‘empty’,
‘anomic’, or ‘kenomatic’ as he suggests.29 As Fleur Johns has argued in relation to
Guanta n ́ amo Bay, although the security measures and violence may ‘imply an extra-
legal status’, in fact the detainees held there have ‘been the focus of painstaking work of
legal classification’.30 Far from a designation of exception that suspends international
law, we see a space that teems with the classifications, categories, and judgements of
‘petty sovereigns’ or ‘experts in unease’, whose actions are authorized in and through
law itself.31 The ‘elaborate, multi-stage screening and evaluation process’ of Guanta n
́ amo, as
described by Johns, is in fact precisely mirrored by the risk practices of data mining,
screening, algorithmic decision, and scoring at multiple international borders.32 In a very
real sense the transforma- tions in ideas of state responsibility under international law are
echoed by shifts in public–private modes of risk management.33 The proliferation of risk
norms as modes of governing life, then, itself requires a complex and abundant
programme of legislation and legal intervention. Far from being an empty or anomic space,
the contemporary assemblage of law, risk, and norm abounds with the drawing of sov-
ereign lines, the designation of citizenship and degrees of citizenship – all of which
rely on a mobile form of norm/anomaly in order to differentiate and discriminate.

In pre-emptive modes of risk management, though, and in contradiction to the idea of anomic
space, the norm governs in a specific way and with quite partic- ular implications for law.
For Ewald, the norm represents a ‘means of producing the common standard, a rule for
common judgement that makes law possible in modern societies’. 34 In the contemporary
war on terror, meanwhile, we are seeing the emergence of a more mobile form of norm
than that which Ewald identifies with prudential or insurance-led modes of risk. In
contrast to a common standard or rule, the norm extends into domains of adjudicating on
suspicions, identifying anomaly, verifying the movements and transactions of the
ordinary, and designat- ing the threshold of the out of the ordinary . As Foucault explains
with regard to risk and the security apparatus, while disciplinary relations of law to norm
‘started from a norm’ such that ‘the normal could be distinguished from the abnormal’,
we see instead ‘the plotting of the normal and the abnormal...the interplay of differential
normalities’.35 Thus, for example, in the advancement of risk scoring and data mining of airline
passengers and border-crossers, the common standard or rule of immigration norms is
overridden by a mobile deployment of norm/anomaly derived from associations made
inside integrated databases. In this sense, it is not strictly the norm that insinuates itself
inside contemporary legal complexes, but rather processes of differentiated
normalization that always fall short of and exceed the norm as common standard. Indeed,
a key concern of legal activists seeking to contest risk profiling is that the population
targeted cannot know the norm against which they will be judged .36 Put simply, pre-
emptive risk practices reserve the right always to apply differential ‘common standards’,
normalities, and anomalies .

The plan is not sufficient—postmodern law itself authorizes and is

authorized by specific regimes of risk management which operate through
a myriad of ways both legally and through the law to enact the risk society
Amoore 08. Louise Amoore, Reader in Political Geography, Department of Geography,
University of Durham, “Risk Before Justice: When the Law Contests Its Own Suspension,”
Leiden Journal of International Law, 21 (2008), pg. 849

The controversy of European extradition of data to the United States – as well as its subsequent
ebbing away into apparently extra-legal, even apolitical, procedures (‘this is not profiling’;
‘private companies handle your data this way every day’, and so on) – is but one glimpse of a
broader set of difficulties in how we have come to understand the relationship between law and
norm. For, as law becomes ever more closely intertwined with a proliferating assemblage
of expertise, risk consulting, administration, and discretion, it inhabits an inescapable
paradox . On the one hand, law represents established rules, rights, and judgments – the
‘rule of law’, ‘which rests absolutely with every valid legislative act and consists in the
production of legal effects’.9 For many legal activists, as for civil liberties and human
rights lawyers, it is precisely the defence of this rule of law that is most at stake in the
challenging of apparent ‘suspensions’ such as those in the US Patriot Act. As lawyer and
director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) Marc Rotenberg put it, ‘the
EPIC juridical programme is in many ways not radical at all, but profoundly conservative.
At least to the extent that it seeks to protect law made in Congress some thirty years
ago.’ 10 In this sense one might suggest, even if superficially, that law is engaged in the
contestation of ‘counter laws’ that represent its own suspension .11 And yet it is
precisely law and juridical designation that make possible the authorization of
judgments by other means that appear to us as extra-legal : a risk classification that
revokes the rights of a citizen, an algorithmic judgement that places a person on a
‘selectee list’ for secondary security checks. Understood this way, it is not strictly the case
that, as Foucault says, ‘law recedes’, but that ‘acts that do not have the value of law acquire
its force’.12 Thus, as in the floating suspension of visa waiver in favour of pre-emptive risk
screening, the legal category of citizen is broken down and denuded, replaced with
dissected degrees of recognition that are dependent upon ‘risk’, ‘conduct’, or ‘past
patterns of travel’. It is not the case that ‘law recedes’ as risk advances, but rather that
law itself authorizes a specific and particular mode of risk management .

As a consequence of the particular modern entanglement of law and norm, the legal
contestation of risk measures instituted as discretionary administrative author- ity faces
a quite specific set of problematics. Understood as a technique of governing, risk is
uncertainty made certain. That is to say, it acts on the uncertain future in a way that
undercuts law’s conventional reliance on precedent, evidence, and judgement in the
present . Risk technologies, as they have emerged in the contemporary war on terror, favour
instead the rendering of pre-emptive decisions that do not calculate probability on the basis of
past evidence, but rather on the horizon of what may happen in the future.13 The risk calculus,
then, has distinct and specific implications for international law, making possible an
array of interventions – from detention, deportation, or ‘secondary’ security to asset
freezing and ‘blacklisting’ – that operate in place of, and in advance of, the legal
thresholds of evidence and decision.14
In the sections that follow, I begin by mapping the contours of the contemporary risk–norm–law
complex, then move to explore the means by which specific contem- porary risk practices
undercut the grounds for historical legal intervention: evidence, the judgement of the
expert witness, and the legal subject as bearer of rights are all reoriented in a risk regime
that acts pre-emptively and authorizes with indefinite and indeterminate limits. It is my
argument that the law, as it becomes inextricably bound up with novel administrative and
discretionary risk practices, is confronted with something of the contingency and
fragility of its own essence , its own essential categories. To be clear, it is not the case that
the scope for critical international legal intervention is entirely eradicated. After all, there can be
little doubt that it is often by means of law and legal intervention that the normalization of
risk practices is brought to public attention and made extraordinary. Indeed, in the
absence of the legal challenges to practices of pre-emptive data mining, many of which actually
revealed previously concealed security practices, would there be space for public engagement
with the use of risk techniques in the war on terror? In the process of contesting the growing
ubiquity of risk profiling, scoring, and screening, though, the law must confront its own
paradox. As Mariana Valverde and Nikolas Rose suggest in their powerful genealogy of law
and norm, ‘the codes, instruments and practices of law have functioned to extend the
powers of administration over life in the name of reason’, and yet at the same time, ‘the
discourse of rights and legality have been deployed as a principal critique of the
extension of such rationalized powers over life’ .15 As risk practices in the war on terror
operate on and through a distinctive and novel terrain of the uncertain future, the
capacity of juridical intervention to contest the exposure of people to dehumanizing
technologies itself faces new potentials and limits.
 at: schmitt
Their view about the inevitability of enmity and its possible productive
deployments don’t assume the generalization of the state of exception
which co-opts and contains these possibilities
McLoughlin 13. Daniel McLoughlin, professor of law at the University of South Wales, “The
Fiction of Sovereignty and the Real State of Exception: Giorgio Agamben’s Critique of Carl
Schmitt,” Law, Culture and the Humanities 0(0) pg. 15

This account of the “mystery of anomia” provides a crucial lens through which to read
Agamben’s account of the distinction between real and fictitious states of excep- tion.
Schmitt’s justification of sovereign violence is solidly grounded in the tradition that says
that the state is necessary to prevent civil war . However, the normalization of the state
of emergency means that, instead of political actors using anomie to preserve or create
law, there is only a condition of generalized violence. The contemporary state is thus a
threat to the very life it is ostensibly designed to protect: far from being a force that
protects its citizens from civil war (katechon), the contemporary state is a lawless power
(anomos) that is “leading the West towards global civil war.” 75 For Benjamin, life in the
absence of the Torah is just life: similarly, for Agamben, life in a real state of exception
has “shed every relation to law.” 76 While political violence in the normal- ized state of
exception is very real, under such conditions, the sovereign claim that this violence acts
with the force-of-law is a fiction. This is because Schmitt maintains that political violence
in the state of exception is the necessary precondition of law and order and so carries
the force-of-law. This idea keeps the law working beyond its sus- pension, differentiating the
state of exception from chaos, and maintaining the rela- tionship between anomie and law.
However, this claim is only plausible as long as the state of exception remains
temporary : once the exception becomes the rule, it is no longer conceptually viable to
assert that anomie is different from chaos. Benjamin’s eighth thesis thus brings about a
real state of exception by unmasking the force-of-law

as a fiction . This nullifies the Nothing of sovereignty, severs the relationship between law and
anomie that sovereignty had maintained, and brings to light the absolute inop- erativity of the
law.
For Agamben, however, the idea that sovereignty is a fiction that covers over the
inoperativity of law does not only apply to the claims of the contemporary state: the law
is, he writes, founded “on the essential fiction according to which anomie (in the form of
auctoritas, living law, or the force of law) is still related to the juridical order .”77 For
Agamben, then, the sovereign claim to act with the force-of-law has always been a fic-
tion. In order to develop this claim and what is at stake in it, we need to examine Schmitt’s
critique of Weimar liberalism, before returning to Agamben’s Benjaminian critique of Schmitt.
Their authors would support the status quo—vote neg on presumption
Sanders 11. Rebecca Sanders, professor of political science at the University of Toronto,
Im)plausible legality: the rationalisation of human rights abuses in the American ‘Global War on
Terror’, The International Journal of Human Rights, 15:4, pg. 608

Observers have emphasised similarities between the Bush administration’s theory of

executive power and the concept of sovereign decisionism. Indefinite detention and
attacks on habeas corpus protections at Guanta n ́ amo have produced a lawless zone or
‘legal black hole’ where detainees have no rights except those designated by the presi-
dent.25 As elaborated by William Scheuerman:

In the spirit of Carl Schmitt , influential voices in the administration interpret the
executive branch’s authority to determine the fate of accused terrorists along the lines of
a legal black hole in which unmitigated discretionary power necessarily holds sway. For
the Bush Admin- istration, as for Schmitt, the weaknesses of the existing legal regime
for terrorism are not simply a lamentable reminder of the limits of statutory law , or
reason for reforming inter- national law in order to make it better suited to the challenges
of terrorism. It interprets the existing legal lacunae instead as evidence for the necessity of a
fundamental norm-less realm of decision making in which the executive possesses full
discretionary authority.26
The Bush legal team, argues Sanford Levinson, posits a vision that:
. . . if accepted, would transform the United States into at least a soft version of 1984,
where our own version of Big Brother will declare to us who is our enemy du jour and
assert his own version of a ‘triumph of the will’ to do everything and anything – including
torture – in order to prevail.27
According to Scott Horton, ‘Schmitt’s thinking and analysis – the weakness of liberalism,
the utility of “law-free” zones, the demonization of adversaries, the subordination of
justice to politics’ have been reflected in the Bush administration’s ‘war on the rule of
law’. 28

The alternative may be ideal, but the blending of exception and norm in the
1ac is disastrous particularly in light of Schmitt’s theory
Minca 06. Claudio Minca, professor of socio-spatial analysis at Wageningen University in the
Netherlands, “Giorgio Agamben and the New Biopolitical Nomos,” Geogr Ann, 88 B (4): 387

At this threshold, the sovereign does not only decide the exception: ‘he (sic) now, de facto,
produces the situation as a consequence of his decision on the exception’ (Agamben,
1995, p. 190; 1998, p. 170; see also 2004, p. 49). The permanent state of excep- tion is thus
not a dictatorship but simply a ‘space free of law’ (2004, p. 68), and it is for this reason
that Carl Schmitt, already in the 1950s, warned against the risks of the exception
becoming the norm – and explicitly accused American foreign policy of having always
treaded the amb iguous line of exceptionality and exception , thus contributing to the
progressive dismemberment of the European nomos without, at the same time,
proposing/imposing another, pre- cisely with the intention of maintaining a global spatial
order based within ‘force without significance’, an order without territory. What we
witness today is not a new ius publicum Americanum, based within a new American nomos,
because the aim of the permanent state of exception is precisely that of not defining a
stable relation be- tween political-juridical order and territory but, rather, of always
keeping open the possibility of playing at the threshold of indistinction between the
norm and its (dis)application . The ‘localized dislocation’ that marks the political
paradigm of modernity of which Agamben speaks is thus in- scribing a geography with a
void at its centre , a geo- graphy lacking any spatial theory; a geography that continually
produces and dismembers spaces with- in which everything is, literally, possible. In
these spaces, not only is everything allowed, but the re- lation between norm and
exception is based upon the event, not the order – as on London’s Under- ground that
warm July day – thus leaving an enor- mous, previously unthinkable space to sovereign
decision, a decision able to move, at will, within the confines of the (dis)application of
the norm .

Schmitt’s attempt to explain the state of exception as part of the law fails—
it obfuscates the way that the state of exception is carved out as totally
without law, the exception that gives the other applications of the law their
meaning—this approach independently turns the case
Agamben 05. Giorgio Agamben, famous philosopher, The State of Exception, pg. 51

Let us now try to summarize the results of our genealogical inves- tigation of the iustitium in the
form of theses.
(1) The state of exception is not a dictatorship (whether constitu- tional or unconstitutional,
commissarial or sovereign) but a space de- void of law, a zone of anomie in which all legal
determinations—and above all the very distinction between public and private—are
deacti- vated. Thus, all those theories that seek to annex the state of exception
immediately to the law are false; and so too are both the theory of ne- cessity as the
originary source of law and the theory that sees the state of exception as the exercise of
a state’s right to its own defense or as the restoration of an originary pleromatic state of
the law (“full powers”). But fallacious too are those theories, like Schmitt’s , that seek to
inscribe the state of exception indirectly within a juridical context by grounding it in the
division between norms of law and norms of the realization of law, between constituent
power and constituted power, between norm and decision . The state of necessity is not
a “state of law,” but a space without law (even though it is not a state of nature, but
presents itself as the anomie that results from the suspension of law).
(2) This space devoid of law seems, for some reason, to be so essential to the juridical
order that it must seek in every way to assure itself a rela- tion with it , as if in order to
ground itself the juridical order necessarily had to maintain itself in relation with an
anomie. On the one hand, the juridical void at issue in the state of exception seems
absolutely un- thinkable for the law ; on the other, this unthinkable thing nevertheless
has a decisive strategic relevance for the juridical order and must not be allowed to slip
away at any cost.

(3) The crucial problem connected to the suspension of the law is that of the acts
committed during the iustitium, the nature of which seems to escape all legal definition .
Because they are neither transgressive, exec- utive, nor legislative, they seem to be
situated in an absolute non-place with respect to the law.
(4)The idea of a force-of-law is a response to this undefinability and this non-place. It is
as if the suspension of law freed a force or a mystical element, a sort of legal mana (the
expression is used by Wagenvoort to describe the Roman auctoritas [Wagenvoort 1947, 106]),
that both the ruling power and its adversaries, the constituted power as well as the
constituent power, seek to appropriate . Force of law that is separate from the law, floating
imperium, being-in-force [vigenza] without ap- plication, and, more generally, the idea of a
sort of “degree zero” of the law— all these are fictions through which law attempts to
encompass its own absence and to appropriate the state of exception, or at least to
assure itself a relation with it. Though these categories (just like the con- cepts of mana or
sacer in the anthropology and religious studies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries) are
really scientific mythologemes, this does not mean that it is impossible or useless to
analyze the function they perform in the law’s long battle over anomie. Indeed, it is
possible that what is at issue in these categories is nothing less than the definition of
what Schmitt calls “the political.” The essential task of a theory of the state of exception
is not simply to clarify whether it has a juridical na- ture or not, but to define the
meaning, place, and modes of its relation to the law.
Schmitt would hate their aff way more than the alternative—the normative
abstraction of the plan should be rejected
McLoughlin 13. Daniel McLoughlin, professor of law at the University of South Wales, “The
Fiction of Sovereignty and the Real State of Exception: Giorgio Agamben’s Critique of Carl
Schmitt,” Law, Culture and the Humanities 0(0) pg. 16

Schmitt is deeply critical of Kelsen’s jurisprudence. Characterizing his own legal thought
as a “philosophy of concrete life,”82 Schmitt insists that the normative abstrac- tions of
the legal system only have meaning in relation to concrete political existence. From this
perspective, the grundnorm is a mystification that conceals the political origins of legal
order . What makes legality possible, according to Schmitt, is not subjective fiction projected by
a jurist, but the state’s objective capacity to guarantee the continued exis- tence of the law in the
face of its enemies. The sovereign exception is the moment in which state authority
appears in its purity: a power to enforce the law, separated from the norms of law
themselves.

On this topic, Schmitt can only be a neg author

Agamben 05. Giorgio Agamben, famous philosopher, The State of Exception, pg. 58

That the state of exception has become the rule is not a simple intensification of what in
the Trauerspielbuch appeared as its undecid- ability. One must not forget here that both
Benjamin and Schmitt had before them a state—the Nazi Reich—in which the state of
exception proclaimed in 1933 had never been repealed. From the jurist’s perspec- tive,
Germany found itself technically in a situation of sovereign dicta- torship, which should
have led to the definitive abolition of the Weimar Constitution and the establishment of a
new constitution, whose fun- damental characteristics Schmitt strove to define in a
series of articles between 1933 and 1936. But what Schmitt could in no way accept was
that the state of exception be wholly confused with the rule . In Dictatorship he had already
stated that arriving at a correct concept of dictatorship is impossible as long as every
legal order is seen “only as a latent and inter- mittent dictatorship” (Schmitt 1921, xiv). To
be sure, Political Theology unequivocally acknowledged the primacy of the exception,
insofar as it makes the constitution of the normal sphere possible; but if, in this sense,
the rule “lives only by the exception” (Schmitt 1922, 15/15), what then happens when
exception and rule become undecidable?
From Schmitt’s perspective, the functioning of the juridical order ul- timately rests on an
apparatus—the state of exception—whose purpose is to make the norm applicable by
temporarily suspending its efficacy. When the exception becomes the rule, the machine
can no longer func- tion . In this sense, the undecidability of norm and exception formulated in
the eighth thesis puts Schmitt’s theory in check. Sovereign decision is no longer capable of
performing the task that Political Theology assigned it: the rule, which now coincides
with what it lives by, devours itself . Yet this confusion between the exception and the
rule was precisely what the Third Reich had concretely brought about, and the obstinacy
with which Hitler pursued the organization of his “dual state” without promulgat- ing a
new constitution is proof of it. (In this regard Schmitt’s attempt to define the new material
relation between the Führer and the people in the Nazi Reich was destined to fail.)
Their Schmittian argument links to the aff more than the alt
Agamben 05. Giorgio Agamben, famous philosopher, The State of Exception, pg. 34

This clarifies why in the preface Schmitt can present the “essen- tial distinction between
commissarial dictatorship and sovereign dic- tatorship” as the “chief outcome of the
book,” which makes the con- cept of dictatorship “finally accessible to jurisprudential
consideration” (Schmitt 1921, xviii). Indeed, what Schmitt had before his eyes was a
“confusion” and “combination” between the two dictatorships that he never tired of
denouncing (203). Yet neither the Leninist theory and practice of the dictatorship of the
proletariat nor the gradual exacerba- tion of the use of the state of exception in the
Weimar Republic was a figure of the old commissarial dictatorship; they were, rather,
something new and more extreme, which threatened to put into question the very
consistency of the juridico-political order, and whose relation to the law is exactly what
Schmitt sought to preserve at all costs .
 at: sovereign power good
The alternative is profane re-appropriation of sovereign power—our target
is not sovereign power as such but its possible deployment
Prozorov 10. Sergei Prozorov, professor of political and economic studies at the University of
Helsinki, “Why Giorgio Agamben is an optimist,” Philosophy Social Criticism 2010 36: pg. 1067

Without this act of letting oneself be, Agamben’s affirmation of ‘being-thus’ would
degenerate into a resigned acceptance of the tyranny of actuality , whereby nothing at
all would be able to happen . Indeed, this is exactly what takes place in the extreme
forms of the state of exception , where potentiality is entirely expropriated by the
sovereign and its subjects are abandoned to dwelling in absolute necessity, exemplified
by the camps . Contrary to frequent misunderstandings, Agamben’s critique of sovereign
power does not target sovereignty as such , but rather its expropriation and
sacralization in the sep- arate sphere of the state .75 The ‘real’ state of exception
consists precisely in the profane reappropriation of this power of letting oneself be by
the entire society. It is therefore not surprising that despite his insistence on Bartleby’s ‘being
capable only without wanting’, Agamben finally reintroduces the theme of decision, when he
addresses the question of how a life of potentiality becomes possible. In order for
potentiality not to degenerate into an ‘eternal recurrence’ that effaces contingency by
elevating the actual to the status of the willed, Bartleby ‘decided to stop copying’ , he
‘must stop copying, must give up his work’.76 It is precisely in this sovereign decision that
the novella leaves unaccounted for that Bartleby sets aside his potentiality not to stop
copying but does not thereby translate potentiality into actuality, but rather materializes
it as a possibility that exists in its own right .77 This materialization neither collapses
potentiality into actuality nor leaves it in the privative mode of something merely inactual.
Whatever being that is truly sovereign in relation to itself is entirely contained in the actual
existence of potentiality that has set aside its potentiality not to be and given itself to
itself and can now not not-be. Agam- ben’s coming community of happy life is characterized
by precisely this mode of being ‘actually potential’, i.e. absolutely contingent.
 at: specific impacts outweigh
The aff maintains the idea that wars can ever end, that there is a civilized
way to go about preventing war, masking the structures of American
liberalism that perpetuate some form of warfare against all that is un-
American at all times. Distinguishing between where there is and is not an
open military assault going on is bad
Gregory 11. Derek Gregory, professor of geography at the University of British Columbia, “The
Everywhere War,” he Geographical Journal, Vol. 177, No. 3, September 2011, pg. 239

Duffield (2001, 309) once described the borderlands as ‘an imagined geographical space
where, in the eyes of metropolitan actors and agencies, the characteris- tics of brutality, excess
and breakdown predominate’. There, in the ‘wild zones’ of the global South, wars are
supposed to occur ‘through greed and sectarian gain, social fabric is destroyed and
developmental gains reversed, non-combatants killed, humanitarian assis- tance abused
and all civility abandoned’. This imagi- native geography folds in and out of the rhetorical
distinction between ‘our’ wars – wars conducted by advanced militaries that are
supposed to be surgical, sensitive and scrupulous – and ‘their’ wars. In reality, however,
the boundaries are blurred and each bleeds into its other (Gregory 2010). Thus the US-led
invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001 combined a long- distance, high-altitude war from the
air with a ground war spearheaded by the warlords and militias of the Northern Alliance
operating with US infantry and Special Forces; counterinsurgency in Afghanistan and Iraq has
involved the co-option of ragtag militias to supplement US military operations; and in Afghani-
stan the US Army pays off warlords and ultimately perhaps even the Taliban to ensure that its
overland supply chain is protected from attack (Report of the Majority Staff 2010).
In mapping these borderlands – which are also shadowlands, spaces that enter European
and Ameri- can imaginaries in phantasmatic form, barely known but vividly imagined – we jibe
against the limits of cartographic and so of geopolitical reason. From Rat- zel’s view of der
Krieg als Schule des Raumes to Lacoste’s stinging denunciation – ‘la géographie, ça sert,
d’abord, à faire la guerre’ – the deadly liaison between modern war and modern geography has
been conducted in resolutely territorial terms. To be sure, the genealogy of territory has multiple
valences, and Ratzel’s Raum is not Lacoste’s espace, but a criti- cal analysis of the
everywhere war requires carto- graphic reason to be supplemented by other, more abile
spatialities. This is not only a matter of tran- scending the geopolitical, connecting it to the bio-
political and the geo-economic, but also of tracking space as a ‘doing’, precarious, partially open
and never complete. It is in something of this spirit that Bauman (2002, 83) identifies the
‘planetary frontier- lands’ as staging grounds of today’s wars, where efforts to ‘pin the
divisions and mutual enmities to the ground seldom bring results’. In the course of ‘inter-
minable frontierland warfare’, so he argues, ‘trenches are seldom dug’, adversaries are
‘constantly on the move’ and have become for all intents and purposes ‘extraterritorial’. I
am not sure about the last (Bauman is evidently thinking of al Qaeda, which is scarcely the
summation of late modern war), but this is an arresting if impressionistic canvas and the fluidity
con- veyed by Bauman’s broad brush-strokes needs to be fleshed out. After the US-led
invasion of Iraq it was commonplace to distinguish the Green Zone and its satellites (the
US political-military bastion in Baghdad and its penumbra of Forward Operating Bases)
from the ‘red zone’ that was everywhere else. But this cat- egorical division is
misleading. The colours seeped into and swirled around one another, so that occupied Iraq
became not so much a patchwork of green zones and red zones as a thoroughly
militarised landscape saturated in varying intensities of brown (khaki): ‘intensities’
because within this warscape military and paramilitary violence could descend at any
moment without warning, and within it precarious local orders were constantly forming
and re-forming. I think this is what Anderson (2011) means when he describes insurgencies
oscillating ‘between extended periods of absence as a function of their dispersion’ and
‘moments of disruptive, punctual presence’, but these variable intensities entrain all sides in
today’s ‘wars amongst the people’ – and most of all those caught in the middle.
This is to emphasise the emergent, ‘event-ful’ quality of contemporary violence, what Gros
(2010, 260) sees as ‘moments of pure laceration’ that punc- ture the everyday, as a diffuse and
dispersed ‘state of violence’ replaces the usual configurations of war. Violence can erupt on a
commuter train in Madrid, a house in Gaza City, a poppy field in Helmand or a street in
Ciudad Juarez: such is the contrapuntal geog- raphy of the everywhere war. It is also to
claim that, as cartographic reason falters and military violence is loosed from its frames,
the conventional ties between war and geography have come undone: that, as Münkler
(2005, 3) has it, ‘war has lost its well-defined contours’. In what follows, I propose to take
Münkler at his word and consider three borderlands beyond Afghanistan and Iraq that illuminate
some of the ways in which, since 9/11, late modern war is being trans- formed by the slippery
spaces within which and through which it is conducted. I focus in turn on ‘Af-Pak’, ‘Amexica’ and
cyberspace, partly because these concrete instances remind us that the every- where war is
also always somewhere (Sparke 2007, 117), and partly because they bring into view features of
a distinctly if not uniquely American way of war.
 at: state of exception wrong

All theories of executive power must begin with the state of exception
Agamben 05. Giorgio Agamben, famous philosopher, The State of Exception, pg. 24

In truth, the state of exception is neither external nor internal to the juridical order , and
the problem of defining it concerns precisely a threshold, or a zone of indifference,
where inside and outside do not exclude each other but rather blur with each other . The
suspension of the norm does not mean its abolition, and the zone of anomie that it
establishes is not (or at least claims not to be) unrelated to the juridical order . Hence the
interest of those theories that, like Schmitt’s, compli- cate the topographical opposition into a
more complex topological re- lation, in which the very limit of the juridical order is at issue. In
any case, to understand the problem of the state of exception, one must first correctly
determine its localization (or illocalization). As we will see, the conflict over the state of
exception presents itself essentially as a dispute over its proper locus.
Only an approach that makes sense of the state of exception can explain
and formulate effective solutions to the status quo
Kamalnath 13. Anthea J. Kamalnath, JD from the University College London, the first Advocacy Chair
for the United States National Committee for United Nations Women, first Choate Rosemary Hall Fellow
of Rhetoric, tutor for the Los Angeles Public Library’s Adult Literacy Program, shares awards for her
public speaking with former President Bill Clinton, [this may be on a blog, but our author is so qualified]
“United States of Exception,” http://antheakamalnath.wordpress.com/tag/agamben/

The only explanation for the sheer lack of discourse, let alone intelligent discourse, in
relation to the topic of the Obama administration’s gross expansion of executive powers
and its support of unconstitutional provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act
2012 (NDAA) is that we are in a “state of exception”, characterized by anomie at best and
idiocy at worst. Cicero said, “There can be war without tumult, but no tumult without
war.” President Obama signed the NDAA into law Dec 2011. The NDAA is not a simple
extension of the Patriot Act. The NDAA allows for indefinite detention of any person suspected
of terrorism or posing a threat to the executive, both American citizen and foreign national,
without probable cause and with zero promise of due process. Although the NDAA secures
the end of Guantanamo Bay as a detention center, it allows the executive to literally sign
off on death warrants – shoot-to kill lists of suspected terrorists, some American, some
under 18.
In the 1920s, German legal theorist Carl Schmitt coined the term “state of exception”, a
moment in government when there is a “suspesion of the entire existing judicial order”.
Following the September 11th attacks, the subsequent Patriot Act of 2001 and Guantanamo
Bay , Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben elaborated on this historical phenomenon with his
books “Homo Sacer” and “The State of Exception.” I read the latter in college and it changed the
way I saw the world.
For Agamben (and the tradition that produced him Carl Schmitt, Walter Benjamin, Jacques
Derrida), a “state of exception” is neither internal nor external to the juridicial order, and
the problem of defining it concerns a threshold, or a zone of indifference, where inside
and outside do not exclude each other but rather blur with each other. It introduces a
zone of anomie into the law in order to make the effective regulation of the real possible.

Agamben argues that this “state of exception” was already codified in Roman law; the Roman
iustitium, literally “the suspension of the law”, was an archetypal state of exception. “Iustititium”
gave the Roman Senate expansive powers in the face of threats to the Republic. Iustitium was
declared following the death of the sovereign, a legal manifestation of grief through suspension
of the order: Durkheim’s anomie. Grief is arguably dehumanizing; a state of exception is the
reversal of the human to the non-human, the fate of enemy combatants captured and
detained in Guantanamo Bay with no legal identity and no legal rights .

The National Defense Authorization Act is the final act of the “state of exception”: the no
man’s land of Guantanamao Bay has been done away with, only to be brought home.
The NDAA FY 2012 allowed the executive to kill an American citizen without due process,
without charging him with a crime, and to hide behind the shield of executive powers. And he
did. At any previous time in American history, a summary execution by the executive
without due process would have been considered cold-blooded murder and an act of
tyranny. Yet no one blinked an eye.
This indifference is not a normal condition for society; it is a pathological psychological
state, a social “state of exception”. I will never understand the vocal enthusiasm of those
who claim they are proud of our President, the NDAA undoes every decent thing President
Obama has achieved in office. The politcians will pontificate, the lawyers will legislate, but
the people should always pay attention.
 at: switch side debate good
Making us switch sides puts our aff in the camp but we cannot be
contained
Parker 12. Simon Parker, professor in the centre for Urban Research (CURB) at the University
of York, “Between Between the Reservation and the Camp: Neoliberal Governmentalities of
Exceptional Urban Space,”
http://academia.edu/3750825/Between_the_Reservation_and_the_Camp_Neoliberal_Governm
entalities_of_Exceptional_Urban_Space, Paper originally presented to the University of
Manchester, Urban Rights GroupSeminar, 29 May 2012, pg. 2

As James Scott argues in Seeing Like a State, it is important to understand why the state
has always been the enemy of “people who move around” . ‘Nomads and
pastoralists...hunter gatherers, Gypsies, vagrants, homeless people, itinerants, runaway
slaves, and serfs have always been a thorn in the side of states’, and to this list one
should certainly add enemy combatants affiliated to non-state ‘terror organisations’,
refugees, asylum seekers and undocumented migrants. ‘Efforts to permanently settle
these mobile peoples (sedenterization)’, Scott continues, ‘seemed to be a perennial state
project—perennial in part because it so seldom succeeded’ (Scott 1998, 1). While this is
true of certain counter-publics who needed to be contained because they could not be
expelled (for example indigenous peoples in the colonised territories of the ‘New
World’), for those with weak or repudiable claims to territorial residence a biopolitics of
repulsion and expulsion has come to structure the exceptional spatiality of an
increasingly supra-national state security apparatus (Graham et al. 2007).
As Foucault reminds us, policed bodies have always been the subject of physical
separation and removal from the healthy body politic—a process that gave rise to the
physical, permanent institution of the prison, the clinic and the asylum (Foucault 1977,
2001). In these heterotopic spaces, the suspension of civic rights gave rise to a disciplinary
order in which the state enjoyed qualitative and quantitative control over the abject
which had as its end the intensification and extension of ‘bare life’ (Agamben, 1998) and
where law and moral order, these most essential and fundamental aspects of the civic
community, are indefinitely suspended (Parker 2010).

The camp therefore represents a controlled space of the ‘social dead’ — the deferment of
whose physical death is merely a question of expediency or technical-administrative
exigency (Goldhagen 1996). But its manifestation and recombination extends beyond
annihilationist regimes of biopolitical extinction and 'ethnic cleansing' into the banal
spaces of the everyday urban world where the twin space of controlled exceptionality
and exclusion--'the reservation'--also features strongly within more familiar landscapes
of abjection.
agamben aff answers
 2ac agamben
The k has ZERO explanatory power – the plan tactical deployment is
effective and alters the essence of the law – no risk of escalating violence
Ross 12 [“Agamben’s Political Paradigm of the Camp: Its Features and Reasons” Alison Ross
is Lecturer in Critical Theory in the Centre for Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies,
Monash University, Australia, Constellations Volume 19, No 3, 2012, p. Blackwell Publications]

The difficulty here is that Agamben, given the ahistoricity of his theory, is unable to provide an
account of why the state of exception has become a problem at this particular point in time.
Similarly, he claims that the law is more likely to bring violence into play now, in the present
historical juncture, than ever before, a claim that pertains to questions of fact. Agamben, however,
cannot draw a link between the thesis concerning law’s “constitutive violence” and current
circumstances because he pays no attention to issues such as historical relationships between
political institutions and policing mechanisms, which disciplines like political sociology deal with.
Agamben’s ontological theses regarding the “essence” of the law do not help in attending to the
historical problem his theory needs to be able to address: namely, to show the process by which
“the state of exception has become the norm.” More generally, it is difficult to see how his
commitment to such theses sheds any light on the workings of the law. Agamben sees the
purported “legitimacy of law” as a ruse of the liberal state, which in the social contract narrative claims legitimacy
for law on account of its protection of otherwise vulnerable life. This position may usefully be compared with Foucault’s comments
on the same topic. Foucault addresses the topic of law’s legitimacy from two different angles. First, he sees in political philosophy’s
interest in the question of the features that qualifysovereign power as legitimate a tendency to avoid the crucial question of how
“legitimate” power actually operates. In this sense, the account he provides in his work on prisons of how law’s violence manifests in
penal institutions is a critique of the adequacy of the theory of sovereignty to form an accurate picture of the complex forces and
instruments involved in social organization.32 Second, in his 1978–9 lectures on biopolitics, Foucault argues that liberalism is a
government of life rather than the exercise of sovereignty over life and death. His analysis of the policy direction of post-war German
intellectuals is premised on the assumption that their activities were strategically meaningful. Their social integration and state
building initiatives were based on the goal of economic success. Even their “power politics” were staked on rapid economic
growth.33 Foucault’s analysis of liberalism follows an injunction comparable to his focus on reformist manuals and prison plans in
Discipline and Punish. Institutional practices do not function independently of what people think about them. They are intelligible
precisely because they embody strategically considered ends (even if these ends are not realized or contained by those
The premise of
strategies).34 C _ 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 428 Constellations, Volume 19, Issue 3, 2012
Agamben’s analysis, in contrast, renders power senseless. What possible intelligible motives might
Agamben’s sovereign have for wanting perpetual and unlimited disposition over the physical
existence of its subjects in the manner of a Nazi camp warden? This question cannot be raised
in Agamben’s scheme. Moreover, it is precisely because the law is not – as Agamben’s analysis assumes –
an objective mechanism that could function independently of what people think about it that he
obscures how the different ways in which the law is experienced as legitimate (e.g., in its
strategic deployment to realize specific ends) can affect its “essential nature.” This renders
Agamben’s thesis of the “constitutive violence” of the law, if not unintelligible, at least inscrutable. Is it the
way political institutions are shaped or the way human individuals are conceptualized in legal doctrine that produces this state of
affairs? The
deficiencies of this perspective can partly be found in the ontological nature of his
framework, which thus has very little to do with an inquiry into institutional features and practices. It
aims to pose questions regarding legal institutions and practices at the “fundamental” level of the forces or elements that drive
history. His
fascination with the terminology of the “exception” as the incisive political vocabulary
for our times is a case in point. His use of this terminology marks out extreme situations not as
anomalous, but as if they had general significance. This mode of argumentation necessarily looks
past the task of analyzing institutional functioning because it imports the grammar of such
functioning from the “exceptional” situation. iii. Agamben treats those subject to law as totally
passive “bodies.” His focus on the camp situation is telling because this is the only situation where
his doctrine seems to work: in the extermination camp, action does not meet other actions, but bodies. Foucault insisted
that this type of situation was not a relation of power, but one of submission to force.35 Similarly, sociological models of
social interaction differentiate the study of social organization defined as actions influencing
other actions from situations of crude force. Since he is so often contemptuous of the
assumptions of liberalism, it is worth comparing Agamben’s position on this question of force
with that of liberalism. Classical liberal theory acknowledges the ultimate dependence of order on relations of force; it holds
the unification of the aggregate force of society under a single coercive law to be the virtue of the state. The purpose of such force is
there are limits on the capacity of force to decide
the protection of the members of its aggregate body. However,
conflicts internal to this aggregate body. These limits are a central topic in liberal political
philosophy, which sees reliance on force to manage social conflicts as a sign of the system’s
weakness: such reliance places inflationary pressure on force, thus devaluing it. “Force” as it is
understood and used in liberal political theory is a differential quantity that has to present itself and be received as a “quality,” as
authority, on the pain of dissipation. In The State and the Rule of Law, Blandine Kriegel reads the history of theories of the state
in these terms, emphasizing the perils of naked reliance on force pointed out in such theories. She notes, for instance, that
theorists of the state since Bodin have found the state that restrains itself in its use of force and its
extension of powers more powerful than one with unlimited powers.36 The question of force can also be
approached from the perspective of other mechanisms that are important for social organization and that presuppose the existence
of distinct currencies that pertain to the different media of the social system. Liberal theory acknowledges the findings of political
sociology that describes how social order is constituted through, for instance, symbolic integration and economic instruments. Social
integration and organization take place in multiple dimensions or media: symbolic (cultural, ideological, etc.), C _ 2012 Blackwell
Publishing Ltd. Agamben’s Political Paradigm of the Camp: Alison Ross 429 economic, and political (participation in collective
decisions at various levels).37 Talcott Parsons attempted to define the problem of social interaction in terms of “systems of action”
that use different “symbolically generalized media of communication” where action influences action. As part of this approach, he
maintained the importance of patterns of interaction in establishing and reinforcing expectations for the functioning of such media.
When a cultural system changes, this marks the introduction of a new pattern whose meaning is intelligible to and expected by
social actors.38 In particular, Parsons was interested to account for the interaction between social, cultural, and personality
systems. These relationships are all bidirectional according to him; that is, these symbolic systems are intelligible to agents whose
action is susceptible to the “actions” of social and cultural systems of meaning.39 This approach is important not just because of the
elements it deploys to explain social organization, but because of the image it produces of such organization. I will return to this
point in my concluding remarks to this paper. The economic system is based on interactions in which actors select actions that will
optimize their ends. They want to act “in the most profitable way [to achieve] the highest benefits when costs are substantial.” In this
system, the symbolic medium of money is ordered according to a specific set of norms for its use and acquisition. Within the system,
money is not replaceable by force. For instance, as a legitimate means for acquiring property, the use of money as a symbolic
mechanism of exchange forbids as illegitimate “the use of force” for property acquisition.40 Similarly, in
the political system,
force is understood as an abortive way of managing conflicting goals since it is susceptible to
counter-action by the force of others. It thus fails to make decisions that could bind everyone in
a social system. The political system uses forms of collective decision-making to maximize the realization of actors’ specific
goals. Legitimate political power is a general medium that can make collectively binding and effective
decisions in a way that force cannot.41 Insofar as such mechanisms are effective, they are real;
and they need to be understood and analyzed in terms of their actual mechanics and dynamics,
not dismissed as masks.42 With these comments I do not intend to mount a defence of liberal political philosophy. Rather, I
want to ask whether Agamben’s style of analysis allows things to be seen more clearly than they are in sociologically influenced
liberal theory. Agamben’s criticisms of law are directed to the potential he sees realized in the camps to hold life in a relation of
exposure to pure force. Of course, the critical stand he takes on law is explicable in terms of the ontological perspective he adopts,
but weneed to ask whether adopting this stance helps us illuminate current political
circumstances. Why, for instance, does he choose to explain what happens in the camp as a
potential of liberal law, rather than as a degradation of liberal protections?43 Additionally, how useful are
categories crafted in the field of jurisprudence, which have their proper register of application within this field, for the purpose of
describing what occurs in extreme situations like the camp? What
makes the camp analogy especially
unsuitable as a paradigm for understanding the organization of a society is that the “camp
population,” unlike society, is not meant to have a future (and here one needs think of all those things that are
required for a society to have a future: from material production to symbolic identity, etc.). The murderous contempt
shown the camp inmate is simply not a viable option for a state.

The plans deployment of the exception alters the constitutive features of

the law
Brännström 8 [Leila,Lund University Law Faculty, How I learned to stop worrying and use the
legal argument A critique of Giorgio Agamben’s conception of law, NoFo 5 [April 2008], p. sage
journals]

6. How Agamben creates a terrifying object called law In Agamben’s writings law is represented as a uniplanar surface, even if
a sophistication is present as the surface is twisted to the form of a Möbius strip (cf. Agamben 1998, 15, 37). Despite the twist, law
is still represented as a homogeneous entity with a single border. The twist in the surface represents that, in Agamben’s
wording, ‘law is outside itself’ (Agamben 1998, 15). A state of affairs he claims instantiates itself in paradoxes like the im/possibility
of legal creation ex nihilo and the im/possibility of the legal regulation of legally banned situations – for example legal codification of
self-defense or the right of resistance against unlawful law. The paradoxical structure of law is, in turn, claimed to explain how life,
violence, and sovereignty are simultaneously inside and outside the legal order. The paradoxes that Agamben
enumerates are however engendered in the first place by his understanding of law as a mystic,
monolithic, unilaterally productive, and ahistorical entity. As Agamben’s reasoning suppresses
temporality and depopulates the legal field, paradoxes arise as a result of treating law as an
object rather than a practice that is performed. Behind the fear of law that Agamben shows
when he says that an ‘unprecedented biopolitical catastrophe’ is awaiting us if we do not break
with the current politico-legal rationality, is a representation of law as an object – as a machine –
standing outside history and affecting the course of events. Foucault has argued that if the state is abstracted and
hypostatized – as a cold-blooded monster or the instrument of class repression – it appears to be the driving force
behind all sorts of effects, which leads to the overvaluation of the ‘state-problem’ and causes
inflationary effects such as statophobia. He reminds us that the state is nothing more than a
flexible bundle of juxtaposed practices (Foucault 2006, 112–115). Similarly, law is not all too powerful or
all too powerless; it is a protean combination of law-producing and reproducing practices and
does not have an existence outside of that. Agamben’s way of treating law as a point of
departure rather than as a the result of complicated social processes and as the origin of historical power
relations rather than their effects is somewhat ironic since the crux of his argument seems to be that law
does not have an independent life. His point, after all, is that the hold that law has over life can be broken and what
is ultimately at stake in the state of exception, in legal production and decision-making and in biopolitical matters, is extrajudicial (cf.
Agamben 2005, 11, 87–88). NoFo 5 [April 2008] 43 41 Another example of such overestimation of the legal point of view in
Agamben’s work would be the overstatement of the differences between incarcerated aliens and incarcerated citizens.
Agamben’s black and white image of law has its counterpart in his notion of bio-power as the
controlling of the (increasingly blurred) borderline between life and death. Bio-power is here reduced to a
question of either/or, eradicating all differentiation in the administration and management of life. It is all the more problematic as the
control of the borderline is construed as a legal matter which is particularly troubling as law is equaled to repression and the state is
the sole legal agent mentioned. The transposition of law and repression obscure the fact that some legal norms, rather than
immediately directing and appraising behavior, distribute competences or legal powers which allow legal subjects to introduce
changes in legal status through contract or other arrangements. Think for instance of the biopolitical effects of patenting human
Neither is bio-power necessarily exercised
genome or the markets for surrogacy motherhood or for human organs.
by the state or even through legal action. As Lemke appropriately points out, it is ‘more and more the
scientific consultants, economic interest groups, and civil societal mediators that define the
beginning, the end and the value of life, in consensus conferences, expert commissions, and
ethical counsels’ (Lemke 2005, 11). Since Agamben seems to equate power and repression it comes
as no surprise that he cannot see that bio-power can be exercised in ways radically different
from those of the Nazi-regime. It is not wholly accidental that the biopolitical decisions of market
actors scenting investment opportunities and those of us who quit smoking because we are acting in a biopolitically
responsible way, go unnoticed in Agamben’s story. Agamben overestimates here, as elsewhere, the role of law in a
story where the (narrow and distorted) legal point of view tends to substitute reality.41

ALT doesn’t solve – degenerates into totalitarianism and is hopelessly

utopian
Kohn 6 [Margaret, assistant professor of political science @ the u of Florida, Bare Life and the
Limits of Law, Theory and Event 9.2]

Is there an alternative to this nexus of anomie and nomos produced by the state of exception?
Agamben invokes genealogy and politics as two interrelated avenues of struggle. According to Agamben,
"To show law in its nonrelation to life and life in its nonrelation to law means to open a space between them for human action, which
once claimed for itself the name of 'politics'." (88) In a move reminiscent of Foucault, Agamben suggests that breaking
the discursive lock on dominant ways of seeing, or more precisely not seeing, sovereign power is the only
way to disrupt its hegemonic effects. Agamben clearly hopes that his theoretical analysis could contribute to the
political struggle against authoritarianism, yet he only offers tantalizingly abstract hints about how this might work.
Beyond the typical academic conceit that theoretical work is a decisive element of political struggle, Agamben seems to
embrace a utopianism that provides little guidance for political action. He imagines, "One day humanity will
play with law just as children play with disused objects, not in order to restore them to their canonical use but to free them from it for
good." (64) More troubling is his messianic suggestion that "this studious play" will usher in a form of justice that cannot be made
juridical. Agamben might do well to consider Hannah Arendt's warning that the belief in justice
unmediated by law was one of the characteristics of totalitarianism. It might seem unfair to focus too much
attention on Agamben's fairly brief discussion of alternatives to the sovereignty-exception-law nexus, but it is
precisely those sections that reveal the flaws in his analysis. It also brings us back to our original question about
how to resist the authoritarian implications of the state of exception without falling into the liberal trap of calling for more law. For
Agamben, the problem with the "rule of law" response to the war on terrorism is that it ignores
the way that the law is fundamentally implicated in the project of sovereignty with its corollary logic
of exception. Yet the solution that he endorses reflects a similar blindness. Writing in his
utopian-mystical mode, he insists, "the only truly political action, however, is that which severs
the nexus between violence and law."(88) Thus Agamben, in spite of all of his theoretical
sophistication, ultimately falls into the trap of hoping that politics can be liberated from law, at least
the law tied to violence and the demarcating project of sovereignty.

No impact uniqueness – state and politics inevitable – and four DA’s to the
alt
Passavant 7 [The Contradictory State of Giorgio Agamben, Paul, Associate Professor of
Political Science Ph.D., Wisconsin at Madison M.A., Wisconsin at Madison B.A., Michigan, p.
Sage Publications]

I have argued that Agamben has two competing theories of the state in play within his work. His first theory
of the state posits the state in a determined relation to the economy. From this position, he can more easily
describe political change as the economic forces determining the state bear within them the seeds of the coming community. This is
a theory, however, that disguises its reliance on a form of power to secure the conditions of possibility for a common relation to
communicability, and he does not address the consequences of the possible weakening of that form of power—the globalization of
spectacular capital—for the commonality that it enabled. If spectacular capital should weaken, on one hand, or if it produces not
commonality but polarities, on the other, then presumably the commonality that it theoretically enabled would either wane with the
weakening of this power formation or simply not exist. Agamben’s second theory of the state posits the state
as a determining force over human life. Agamben establishes the state in this determining position by borrowing from
Schmitt’s theory of sovereign decisionism. Yet, in so doing, he erects a theoretical roadblock preventing
passage to the coming community. Although I have suggested that he has conceived of three
possible ways whereby subjects might decide to act to render this state power inoperative or perform
actions enabling the suspension of sovereign law and messianic passage beyond this sovereign state, each of these three
forms of political subjectivity fails to do the theoretical work demanded of it. Bartleby’s manifestation of a
pure potentiality might render inoperative modern state government as Foucault has described it by disrupting the linkages among
the series of institutions and subjects that the modern state relies upon to govern, but it is unclear how Bartleby would affect the
Schmittian unitary sovereign decision maker upon which Agamben bases his theory of the state in Homo Sacer. Agamben also
points to anomic 168 Political Theory Downloaded from ptx.sagepub.com at UNIV OF MICHIGAN on July 4, 2013 carnivals to
suggest that states of emergency can become something more, and his theory of the gesture might contribute to a description of
how a carnival might become something politically revolutionary. This would require, however, forcing the gesture into a relation of
transcendence with regard to carnivalesque performances—an unacceptable move for a theory that embraces immanence to the
extent that Agamben does. It also misrepresents why the carnivalesque harbors emancipatory political potential within it. Finally,
Agamben indicates, through the example of the apostle Paul and the remnant of those who faithfully adhere to messianic law, the
possibility of active political subjects adequate to the challenge of state sovereignty. This argument, however, contradicts his earlier
positions embracing potentiality over the acts emblematic of sovereign decisions, and an experience of being beyond any idea of
law. It also, by relying on a determinate situation to create the conditions of possibility for a successful speech act, occludes the
forms of power needed to maintain this situation against other ontological possibilities much as his first theory of passage beyond
the state of integrated spectacle did. This argument also begs the question of how this messianic community might relate to that
which remains other to its situation. That is, Agamben must address the very questions that his ontological
approach to state sovereignty intended to avoid— questions of power and otherness. In sum,
Agamben remains haunted by the very problems that motivated not only his critique of the state
but also his attempt to remove this inquiry from political philosophy to “first” philosophy. 43 At
the end of Agamben’s theory of the state, politics remains. There are four implications of this critique
for political theory and the state. First, the modern state is poorly understood as transcendent, unitary, and
sovereign. The “state” encompasses a variety of institutions, many of which predate modernity.44 The
Foucauldian understanding of government, I suggested, is the practice by which articulations between these institutions are
forged—and non-state institutions are joined to this chain—and they are mobilized toward various purposes. The plural nature of
Second, if we treat the state as an
this ensemble is precisely what gives extension to the modern state.45
ensemble of institutions, then the concept of a state of emergency is poorly suited to
understanding our political present. Agamben rightly criticizes the USA PATRIOT Act in State of
Exception. This law, like most laws that are passed in an ongoing legal system, amends a variety of other laws
and sits on a foundation created by these other laws, such as the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act
of 1996. The Antiterrorism Act created the possibility of attributing guilt by association since it criminalized the provision of material
support for Passavant / The Contradictory State of Giorgio Agamben 169 Downloaded from ptx.sagepub.com at UNIV OF
MICHIGAN on July 4, 2013 organizations that the administration deems “terrorist”—provisions that the USA PATRIOT Act builds
upon.46 From this perspective, current policies are less “exceptional,” unfortunately, and more a
continuing development of a national security state apparatus that has been built through
legislation like the National Security Act of 1947, through discourse, and through the creation of stakeholders (the military-
industrial complex).47 In other words, another state formation is struggling to emerge through the ruin
of liberal democracy in the United States, and this emergence (and ruin) is hastened by those who
seek to enhance surveillance and presidential powers, while diminishing the power of courts and
legislative oversight as a response to September 11, 2001.48 Third, any social formation is
constituted by elements of both contingency and determination. By emphasizing pure
potentiality, Agamben misses this and either cherishes the excessive quality of pure potentiality
to the neglect of the exigent needs of the present, or neglects how the active political subjects
he does defend are embedded within finite commitments that necessarily persevere through the
foreclosure of other possibilities. Some contemporary political theorists concerned with injustice and the lack of
democracy also emphasize contingency, excess, and potentiality over determination, finitude, and acts.49 These theorists
correctly seek to disrupt oppressive patterns. Since politics—hence political change—would not
be possible under conditions of absolute determination, emphasizing contingency or excess
makes sense. Yet reflection upon the retraction of certain state services from places like the Bronx during the late 1970s
permits us to see how neither justice nor democracy is served by excessive economic duress or violence. Not only are these
contingencies unjust, but also their incapacitating effects prevent democratic practices of government where the latter necessarily
State actions that mitigate chaos,
presupposes some collective capacity to direct and achieve collective purposes.
economic inequality, and violence, then, potentially contribute to the improved justice of outcomes and
democracy. Political theorists must temper celebrating contingency with a simultaneous consideration of the complicated
relation that determination has to democratic purposes.50 Fourth, the state’s institutions are among the few with
the capacity to respond to the exigency of human needs identified by political theorists. These
actions will necessarily be finite and less than wholly adequate, but responsibility may lie on the side
of acknowledging these limitations and seeking to redress what is lacking in state action rather
than calling for pure potentiality and an end to the state. We may conclude that claims to justice
or democracy based on the wish to rid ourselves of the state once and for 170 Political Theory
Downloaded from ptx.sagepub.com at UNIV OF MICHIGAN on July 4, 2013 all are like George W. Bush claiming to be
an environmentalist because he has proposed converting all of our cars so that they will run on
hydrogen.51 Meanwhile, in the here and now, there are urgent claims that demand finite acts
that by definition will be both divisive and less than what a situation demands.52 In the end, the
state remains. Let us defend this state of due process and equal protection against its ruinous
other.
 2ac/1ar law good
No alternative to the law/legal system---other ideas bring more inequality
and abuse
Jerold S. Auerbach 83, Professor of History at Wellesley, “Justice Without Law?”, 1983, p. 144-
146
As cynicism about the legal system increases, so does enthusiasm for alternative dispute-settlement
institutions. The search for alternatives accelerates, as Richard Abel has suggested, "when some fairly powerful interest is threatened by an increase in the number or
magnitude of legal rights.*'6 Alternatives are designed to provide a safety valve, to siphon discontent from courts. With the danger of political confrontation reduced, the ruling

alternatives prevent the use of courts

power of legal institutions is preserved, and the stability of the social system reinforced. Not incidentally,

for redistributive purposes in the interest of equality, by consigning the rights of disadvantaged
citizens to institutions with minimal power to enforce or protect them. It is, therefore, necessary to
beware of the seductive appeal of alternative institutions. They may deflect energy from political
organization by groups of people with common grievances; or discourage effective litigation
strategies that could provide substantial benefits. They may, in the end, create a two-track justice system that dispenses informal "justice" to poor
people with "small" claims and "minor" disputes, who cannot afford legal services, and who are denied access to courts. (Bar associations do not recommend that corporate law

firms divert their clients to mediation, or that business deductions for legal expenses—a gigantic government subsidy for litigation—be eliminated.) Justice
according to law will be reserved for the affluent, hardly a novel development in American history but one that needs little
encouragement from the spread of alternative dispute-settlement institutions. It is social context and political choice that determine whether courts, or alternative institutions, can
render justice more or less accessible—and to whom. Both can be discretionary, arbitrary, domineering—and unjust. Law can symbolize justice, or conceal repression. It can

Despite the
reduce exploitation, or facilitate it. It can prohibit the abuse of power, or disguise abuse in procedural forms. It can promote equality, or sustain inequality.

resiliency and power of law, it seems unable to eradicate the tension between legality and
justice: even in a society of (legal) equals, some still remain more equal than others. But diversion from the legal system is likely to
accentuate that inequality. Without legal power the imbalance between aggrieved individuals
and corporations, or government agencies, cannot be redressed. In American society, as Laura Nader
has observed, "disputing without the force of law ... [is| doomed to fail."7 Instructive examples document

the deleterious effect of coerced informality (even if others demonstrate the creative possibilities of indigenous experimentation). Freed
slaves after the Civil War and factory workers at the turn of the century, like inner-city poor
people now, have all been assigned places in informal proceedings that offer substantially
weaker safeguards than law can provide. Legal institutions may not provide equal justice under law, but in a society ruled by law it is their
responsibility. It is chimerical to believe that mediation or arbitration can now accomplish what law

seems powerless to achieve. The American deification of individual rights requires an

accessible legal system for their protection. Understandably, diminished faith in its capacities will encourage the yearning for alternatives.
But the rhetoric of "community" and "justice" should not be permitted to conceal the deterioration of community life and the unraveling of substantive notions of justice that has
accompanied its demise. There is every reason why the values that historically are associated with informal justice should remain compelling: especially the preference for trust,

harmony, and reciprocity within a communal setting. These are not, however, the values that American society encourages or sustains; in their absence there
is no effective alternative to legal institutions. The quest for community may indeed be "timeless and universal."8 In this century, however,
the communitarian search for justice without law has deteriorated beyond recognition into a stunted off-shoot of the legal system. The historical progression is clear: from

But injustice without law is an even worse

community justice without formal legal institutions to the rule of law, all too often without justice.

possibility, which misguided enthusiasm for alternative dispute settlement now seems likely to
encourage. Our legal culture too accurately expresses the individualistic and materialistic values that most Americans deeply cherish to inspire optimism about the
imminent restoration of communitarian purpose. For law to be less conspicuous Americans would have to moderate

their expansive freedom to compete, to acquire, and to possess, while simultaneously elevating
shared responsibilities above individual rights. That is an unlikely prospect unless Americans
become, in effect, un-American. Until then, the pursuit of justice without law does incalculable
harm to the prospect of equal justice.
Your dismissal of EVERYTHING legal is a MASSIVE over-generalization.
And none of your arguments demonstrate that EVERY SINGLE INSTANCE
of legalism is counter-productive. Your blanket rejection of ALL legalism
turns the left into the right and it creates exclusions against
disenfranchised groups who have worked to use the law.
Wilson 95 James G. Professor of Law, Cleveland State University. Arizona State Law Journal,
Fall, 27 Ariz. St. L.J. 773

Karl Popper maintained that the Left is even more bedeviled by excessive rationalism than the Right. 309 Still influenced by Hegel
and Marx, leftists tend to believe they can scientifically diagnose and cure all of society's ills. Their
truths are self-evident and live in harmony. Because they know what [*839] is "reasonable," anyone
who disagrees with them must be "prejudiced." Indeed, many members of the Left are attracted to conspiracy
theories to explain why their self-evident truths do not immediately triumph. 310 They gain excessive confidence in
their beliefs, because few would disagree that our society suffers from class conflict, sexism,
racism, and cultural intolerance. Their fury at the American judiciary, which refuses to adopt all of
their ends immediately or completely, leads them to attack the entire legal enterprise. All existing
judicial ends and means become suspicious, because some judicial means and ends do not
satisfy their substantive standards. If some or all of the judges are class warriors or sexists, then it
follows that all their means are equally tainted. Rules are no longer tools available to decisionmakers of all
ideological perspectives, but become venal weapons of oppression. Thus, the leftist zeal to purge the system
of prejudice creates a prejudice against judicial means that traditionally has been used to
advance a wide range of ideologies. The Left and Right end up resembling each other by strictly
applying different litmus tests to both judicial ends and judicial means to determine if a particular decision is politically correct. At the
least, leftists feel they have successfully indicted the legal system by demonstrating its lack of logic. Roberto Unger described
modern liberalism as riddled with antimonies -- logical contradictions. 311 Thus, they claim that balancing tests' indeterminacies or
courts' fluctuations between forms reveals liberalism's incoherence. Technical
problems are translated into core
dilemmas of political philosophy. This article's examples demonstrate that there is no "logical" contradiction in using
different means to satisfy conflicting ends. Legal opinions are enthymemes, not logical syllogisms. One should not expect complete
coherence, because all legal enthymemes are premised upon prevailing public norms, which are not and need not be completely
internally consistent. Most of us are understandably ambivalent about our fellow citizens. For instance, each of us wants to be
treated individually (substantive justice) and equally (formal justice). Less abstractly, most of us are torn between maximizing one's
own advantage and generating a civil, stable society. The
legal Left's fascination with theory is particularly tragic,
clients cannot afford the
because leftist lawyers need to use all available technical tools to alter [*840] society. Their
luxury of lawyers trained exclusively in grand theory, "correct" outcomes, and indifference to legal
technique.
 1ar alternative
No alt – incremental political reform key – the K is an incomplete strategy
Colatrella, 09 [Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, vol.9. no.1 Nothing Exceptional:
Against Agamben, Steven Colatrella University of Maryland University College, Europe,
http://www.jceps.com/PDFs/09-1-05.pdf]
Conclusion: State Transformation without State of Exception In failing to take into account the
expropriation of the slave, the enclosure of the commons, the expropriation of the peasantry and
the burning of the witch, the occupation of the colonized’s lands, the IMF Structural Adjustment
Program and the repression needed to impose it against resistance, hasn’t Agamben also failed
to provide his own theoretical framework with the tools needed to explain the survival or death of
the Jew in the Nazi camp, his own paradigmatic example? If we find, as Isabella Clough-Marinaro has34, that the camps for Roma in Italy today are classic examples of homo sacer,
right down to publicly exposed showers on concrete enclosures surrounded by barbed wire, needn’t we try to understand what these new horrors have to do with the rolling back of the welfare state in Europe?;
with the attack on employment and wages?; with the intensified exploitation that includes that of the undocumented immigrants and the public discourses demonizing them?; with the increased law and order
regimes, campaigns against crime that criminalize the Roma, the undocumented and other minorities that have allowed the Italian military to be deployed in the streets to keep an eye on the population; with the

Agamben, as Clough-Marinaro demonstrates, is indispensable

creation of such scapegoats to divide the working class exactly at such a time of attack on hard-won social gains?

to help analyze the camps in the first place, but I would argue that he is of nearly no help at all to help us strategize about
what to do about them, because he doesn’t understand what any of it has to do with class relations, relations of expropriation, exploitation and class struggle against these. And that
means he can’t understand what the latter has already accomplished and what it has yet to accomplish. To understand this, we need to understand the welfare state itself as it has

developed. To do that we need to understand democracy, which in turn requires us to think about the state, as

Agamben calls on us to do, but to do so in a way that goes beyond the drama of the state of
exception to include the historical accomplishments of the class struggle, particularly those other two categories, democracy
and the welfare state. While this is not the place to enter into a full discussion of these issues, which I address elsewhere35, a brief summary of my argument on democracy is useful to make clear my differences
with Agamben’s approach. Modern democracy is part of what Polanyi calls the “double movement36” of expropriation and the establishment of the self-regulating market and the efforts by society to defend itself
from this process. Modern democracy is born from the English and French Revolutions37, from the anti-slavery movement in the US, and from the labor and socialist movements in Europe38. Mass democratic
movements that have furthered this process have been fought either to retard the separation of the people from the land and access to means of production and subsistence, or to provide new guarantees of

the commitment of ordinary people to

meeting these needs and providing livelihood to those already expropriated and now exploited. Put differently,

democracy comes from their need and desire to use it to do something; democracy is an
instrument of popular classes to defend and extend their interests. If, as I have argued, citing various authors’ work to the point,
the protection of individual rights, avoidance of becoming homo sacer, and prevention of the
state of exception required material foundations, those material foundations have, in modern
times, required political protection. The modern democratic class struggle, the establishment of democracy and its
extension, remain, along with defending or reestablishing control of subsistence and means of production directly in the hands of the people (the commons), the best means
of avoiding the fate that Agamben warns us about. This means that the too-facile dismissal of all
legal, democratic or constitutional protections, hard-won by generations of struggle, that appear
in his analysis that the state of exception is already unexceptional but rather the rule, disarms
the very efforts needed to protect us from the state power. The democratic movements have broken down the sterile and false separation
between the oikos and the polis argued for by Hannah Arendt40, and the similar separations between everyday life and social reproduction and public life, between zoe and bios. This is not by chance: slave
plantations were private homes; the family enterprise studied by Marx was considered virtually an extension of the owners’ household; the needs of working families for subsistence or health care, or the infant
mortality rate, unwanted pregnancies and their impact on women’s lives and the mortality rate of women in childbirth were all considered private affairs, not public or political ones. It was the accomplishment of

Agamben sneeringly dismisses, indeed scarily

the modern workers and women’s movements, of modern democracy, to change this state of affairs.

demonizes this accomplishment as “biopolitics”: What comes to light in order to be exposed apud Westminster is, once again, the body of homo sacer,
which is to say, bare life. This is modern democracy’s strength, and at the same time, its inner contradiction: modern democracy does not abolish sacred life but rather shatters it and disseminates it into every
individual body, making it into what is at stake in political conflict. And the root of modern democracy’s secret biopolitical calling lies here: he who will later appear as the bearer of rights, and according to a curious
oxymoron, as the new sovereign subject…can only be constituted as such through the repetition of the sovereign exception and the isolation of corpus, bare life, in himself. If it is true that law needs a body in

Agamben
order to be in force, and if one can speak, in this sense, of “law’s desire to have a body”, democracy responds to this desire by compelling law to assume the care of this body.41 39

provides us with some of the most facile and dangerous thinking, passing for profundity, imaginable: “Once their
fundamental referent becomes bare life, traditional political distinctions (such as those between Right and Left, liberalism and
totalitarianism, private and public) lose their clarity and their intelligibility and enter into a zone of indistinction .” Agamben,

Homo Sacer, p.122. This statement, with the word “capitalism” replacing the phrase “bare life” could have been written by an adherent of

the Third International’s Third Period, whose disastrous policies helped bring about precisely the
states of exception – Nazi victories – that Agamben is concerned about. Agamben goes on to
argue, incredibly, that the very right of habeas corpus by requiring the sheriff to exhibit the body of the
accused undermines the liberty of the accused, an interpretation unique in the thousand-year
history of habeas corpus rights whose defense has quite rightly underpinned many oppositions
to Bush administration tactics in the War on Terror, and whose history has recently been provided a
radical defense and materialist interpretation by Linebaugh already cited. The long process of
democracy “compelling law to assume the care of the body” instead is the accomplishment of
centuries of struggles by ordinary people precisely to move the state out of the business of
killing and into the business of providing health care and education. This is what led Ernest Gellner to state, while overstating the
case, “"At the base of the modern social order stands not the executioner but the professor… The monopoly of legitimate education is now more important, more central than the monopoly of legitimate
violence.42” That the European social democratic welfare state coincided with the European Union’s one great accomplishment, the end of wars between the nation-states of Europe should give us pause for
thought43. That the abolition of the death penalty followed these developments should make the relationship clear. What seals the argument is that the revived militarism, political repression and demonization of
unpopular minority groups in Europe follow upon the efforts directed by the EU Commission and signed on to by every EU member government to privatize, liberalize markets, overcome workers’ resistance to
“flexible” work organization, and impose neoliberal globalization44. The relationship between the democratic class struggle to defend subsistence and basic needs and the defense of individual rights and
limitation of state power should be clear. That it isn’t should be attributed to an elitist, too-sophisticated by half approach to the state, democracy and class struggle that appears radical but in fact undermines the

The movements for democracy, the class and gender

very foundations of democracy and social welfare by not making these struggles an integral part of its analysis.

are, as Marx explained to the First International, not extensions of state power,
struggles that brought it about and have continued to try to extend it to more spheres of life

but partial transformations of the state from a police apparatus and killing machine for the ruling
class into a set of functions whose institutions and cadre now concern themselves with caring
for the needs of society’s members, with all the contradictions and flaws that studies of the welfare state have demonstrated but with all its benefits too: However, the
more enlightened part of the working class fully understands that the future of its class, and, therefore, of mankind, altogether depends upon the formation of the rising working generation. They know that, before

workers must be saved from the crushing effects of the present system. This can only be effected by
everything else, the children and juvenile

converting social reason into social force, and, under given circumstances, there exists no other
method of doing so, than through general laws, enforced by the power of the state. In enforcing such laws,
the working class do not fortify governmental power. On the contrary, they transform that power,
now used against them, into their own agency. They effect by a general act what they would vainly attempt by

a multitude of isolated individual efforts. Let us look briefly at two examples in which states of exception were declared by democratically elected governments. In
India, Indira Gandhi’s declaration of a state of emergency, while arguably “overdetermined,” came at a particular period characterized by a large strike movement by workers and resistance to policies of her
son Sanjay involving two forms of enclosure: slum clearance – expropriation of the poor from their housing – and forced sterilization46. The latter explicitly meets Agamben’s criteria for biopolitics in a democracy
leading to a state of exception – though strangely he does not cite it as an example to strengthen his argument. This omission is perhaps due to the fact that, despite Indira Gandhi’s government being
characterized by some policies favorable to the lower castes and the rural poor at times, it can hardly be seen as a welfare state or an example of social democracy. That is, its entry into biopolitical policies- the

The end of
forced sterilization campaign – was purely repressive and not also a form of “care of the body” or social needs. It wasn’t democratic enough, in other words, to be demonized by Agamben.

the state of emergency came about through normal democratic means, namely an election that threw
Gandhi out of office. Agamben, we might point out, has no theory to address the ending of states of
exception. Marx, again speaking for the First International’s General Council defined the Lincoln administration as, “the only example on record in which the Government fought for the people’s
liberty, against a section of its own citizens.”47 Agamben, quite reasonably lists Lincoln’s suspension of Habeas Corpus during the Civil War as one of the historic states of exception declared by western liberal
democracies that he sees as a precursor to today’s menaces. He is right, but in fact this goes to the heart of my argument against his approach. Three questions can be asked here: was the declaration of a state
of emergency, as it were, or to be more precise, the use of exceptional measures, in the actual and not just declared defense of the interests of the popular classes and democracy rather than subversive of
these? Was there a real emergency, in the sense that there was a plausible threat, not just to some lives and property say, but to the whole democratic order and survival of the society and of the interests of the
popular classes? And was the declaration temporary and withdrawn after a short time and when the emergency was over? I think that a plausible case can be made that the answer is yes to all three of these,
whereas in the case of say, the internment of the Japanese-Americans during World War II, which involved the expropriation of land and property from the victims, the answer would certainly be no to the first two.
But isn’t all this just a social democratic argument, one that forgets the long history of proletarian attempts to establish direct democracy through the Paris Commune, the Soviets, the Workers Councils? Didn’t
Marx also argue that “the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made State machinery, and wield it for its own purposes.”? Indeed, is this not why Negri and others have been drawn to a kind of photo-
negative version of Schmitt’s state of exception – the revolutionary moment in which the proletariat or the multitude can rewrite both the material and the legal constitutions? The experience of recent and current
movements and radical left governments in Latin America challenges the idea that a state of exception is needed to carry out constitutional transformation. In Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and elsewhere, major
changes are being carried out and new constitutions written48. These experiences, despite great diversity in their proposals, debates and outcomes, as well as of course the national contexts in which they occur,
have several common features. First, they involve an alliance between an elected representative government and a mass movement that is itself quite diverse, but which is based on the working majority of the
population; second they involve attempts to meld traditional representation using existing institutions and various forms of direct democracy at the workplace, neighborhood, and municipality; third, the new
constitutions result from a large-scale discussion with serious input and participation from the grassroots and associations of all types; fourth, constitutional changes have been put to referenda votes, so it is the
people, in an expression of Rousseau’s General Will, that can approve changes in which they participated both at the level of their associations and through representatives in drafting; fifth the changes affect the
material constitution – the distribution of property, the rights of people to land or subsistence or income, as well as the legal apparatus; sixth, these movements typically involve movements of exactly those groups
historically designated as homo sacer: the indigenous people of the continent. These movements and governments are certainly not without their contradictions, particularly regarding the role of the executive and
relationship of leader to movement. But it would be a mistake to deny the autonomy, now greater, now lesser, of the movements from the heads of government, even in Venezuela49. No state of exception has
been used to impose these changes; rather the only risks of a state of exception have come during the coup attempt by the opponents of President Chavez of Venezuela, with backing from the Bush
Administration, and the recent coup in Honduras, overthrowing President Zelaya. The mass democratic, proletarian movement that has opposed that coup testifies powerfully to the theses in this essay. Similarly,
though in a very different context, the mass occupation of the capital Bangkok by pro-democracy demonstrators in Thailand, largely farmers and urban workers, and the massacre they suffered at the hands of the
military, the monarchy and the elites they protect, under martial law, again suggests that the lines are increasingly clearly drawn between one set of class forces demanding democracy so as to use democratic
government and their own organized movement to meet the needs of the majority, and those who are willing to destroy civil liberties and democratic institutions if necessary, in order to impose and sustain
neoliberal capitalist globalization and the inequalities it creates. Even the examples from the region that do not easily fit this model, such as the Zapatista movement in Mexico and the radical democracy briefly
created and crushed in Oaxaca have not been attempts at all or nothing insurrections, but have seen themselves as part of larger processes needed to democratize Mexico. Can these approaches work where
both traditional social democracy and the revolutionary tradition of direct democracy have failed to fully transform the state from a machine for killing – from a permanent state of exception – into an instrument of

The struggles of peoples who have resisted expropriation for 500 years
the people to meet their needs under their control?

deserve our patience as they work out how to deal with conditions that Agamben has only
interpreted for us. The point remains to change them.
 1ar at: law collapsing now
Legal culture not declining now - progressive applications of the law solve
– the k is an overly essentialist narrative
Schotel, 09 [Bas Schotel, professor University of Amsterdam, DEFENDING OUR LEGAL
PRACTICES: A LEGAL CRITIQUE OF GIORGIO AGAMBEN’S STATE OF EXCEPTION
STATE OF EXCEPTION,, Amsterdam Law Forum, p. sage publications]
VI. Critique Let us return to Agamben’s provocative questions directed at lawyers. According to Agamben we are silent about the
killing machine, which concerns us because it is inherently tied to law: the state of exception. Our
legal culture is in radical decline, because we have not come up with an adequate theory of the state
of exception. We have been incapable of addressing the two forces at work: law and life. We have not been able to create an open space where we can play with the elements and create new
meaning of life and law. These accusations do not hold. In earlier reviews it has been correctly pointed out that lawyers are not silent and that

especially in court lawyers have raised their voice, which Agamben totally omits in his thesis. Reference to those excellent reviews should suffice, if they would not have conceded

already too much to Agamben’s thesis.10 These misrepresentations (or outright omissions) of what lawyers are doing are not harmless or innocent omissions. They

constitute a dangerous move away from a contextual understanding of law as practice of

practical reasoning. Instead Agamben moves us to a kind of ontological and even metaphysical notion of law.
To appreciate my concern one may simply ask one question: what is left – in concrete and practical terms - of the law if we adopt Agamben’s thesis? What are

lawyers doing when Agamben will have it his way? In spite of all his good intentions and legitimate concerns, Agamben covertly advocates a ‘selling out’ of our

legal practice. So rather than giving Agamben a charitable reading, and tolerate the ‘often alien tenor’11 of his work, I will
show its fundamental inadequacy to provide a plausible account of the current legal practice and law in general. Both
his methods to describe law as the descriptions of it are deeply flawed. VI.1 Law Has Normative Force At the outset of his
thesis Agamben runs into fundamental difficulties. His concern is the impunity of violations of international law by governments that nevertheless still claim to be applying law. If we take Agamben’s diagnosis and

Humphreys pertinently pointed out

his solution seriously, there is actually no way we can tell whether there are violations of international law in the first place. The only 10

Agamben’s omission to say anything on judicial review and practices. Still, he believes the book to “constitute a radical and
hopefully controversial challenge to predominant account of modern law’s expansion as a simple and necessary global extension of the rule of law”. Humphreys 2006, supra note 5,, p. 687. In another excellent
and more critical review, Vik Kanwar argues that in spite of Agamben’s misrepresentation of the lawyer’s silence in terms of a theory of the state of exception, Agamben presents us an ethically compelling
argument: “we must abandon the expectation that security can be achieved by making others insecure”. Kanwar, supra note 5, p. 575. 11 Humphreys 2006, supra note 5, in his abstract. 121 AMSTERDAM LAW

under his theory there is no legal

FORUM VOL 1:2 thing Agamben can claim is that killings, incarcerations, infliction of hardship, in short violence acts are taking place. But

standard available to qualify these acts as violations. This is probably the greatest danger of his
theory. It cannot identify outright abuse of the law and bad faith, while this is clearly what was
going on with the Bush government.12 By giving too much credit to the discourse of these governments and taking this discourse as
his starting point, there is no concern for him to deal with. The simple fact that violence is used
could not concern him as such. It may only worry him if there is a normative standard according
to which this violence is wrong, unjust illegitimate, or illegal. In other words, Agamben is in blatant contradiction.
The simple fact that he believes that governments are violating current international and domestic law means
that they have normative force. It means that they are supposed to be obeyed and that as such
they constitute reasons for action. If so, then already this simple but fundamental point makes
Agamben’s enterprise practically obsolete. It seems that he realises this contradiction, since he
hardly ever speaks of violations, abuses and misuses of the law. VI.2 Lawyers Are Not Silent Agamben’s failure to recognise
his own need to rely on the normative force of existing law explains why he cannot or does not want to hear
the lawyers. Yet lawyers are far from silent. For sure, they may not engage in philosophical inquiry into the
genealogy and etymology (!) of obscure phenomena of Roman law, they have been raising their voice in
the context of a particular practice, i.e. legal practice. Just to take the example of the treatment
of Guantanamo detainees: lawyers of all ranks, affiliation and function have been fighting the violations of international and domestic law.
From the justices of US Supreme Court and professional human rights defence lawyers,13 law clinic students14, to Pentagon officials, and former military defence lawyers.15 The lawyers are

equally talkative when it comes to theorising the state of exception. As Kanwar nicely shows, constitutionalist produced “a great
deal of legal writing” on the issue, they may not have reached “any consensus on these issues, but that is not the same as remaining silent”16 In short, as long as the legal practice can assert that violations of law
12 See D. Bromwich, ‘The Co-President at Work’, The New York Review of Books, November 20, 2008. 13 See Boumediene v. Bush 553 U.S. _(2008); Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, 548 U.S.__ (2006); Rasul v. Bush,
542 U.S. 466 (2004). 14 B. Goldstein, Storming the Court: How a Band of Yale Law Students Sued the President - and Won, New York: Scribner 2005. 15 Senior legal staff in the Pentagon issued numerous legal
objections against the treatment of Guantanamo detainees. See A. Lewis, ‘Official American Sadism’, The New York Review of Books, September 25, 2008. 16 V. Kanwar, supra note 5, p. 574, and pp. 572-574
giving us an triggering view how a real debate with the constitutionalist would sound like. 122 REVIEW: A LEGAL CRITIQUE OF AGAMBEN’S STATE OF EXCEPTION 2009 are taking place, the law has
normative force. In other words, Agamben’s philosophical concern seems to vanish and his first accusation has
been proven false. VI.3 The Law Is Being Applied Agamben may object to my previous points that all those lawyers that are raising their voice are only referring to a law that is
formally in force but not applied: “force-of-law”. Again, he is wrong from an empirical perspective. The Supreme Court cases

cited earlier show that gradually but progressively the Guantanamo practices are invalidated.17
But let us, for argument’s sake, concede that gross violations are taking place with impunity to
the effect that the law is actually not-applied. This empirical claim raises important methodological and
normative issues. What is the level of compliance needed for a law to be qualified as ‘applied’? What do we measure: the quantity or the quality of the compliance? Or do we only measure the violations?

What Agamben needs are standards to evaluate whether or not a law, a set of laws or even the
law itself, is bankrupt. But this means that he has to provide us with an account of the functions
and capabilities of law. Obviously, he fails to do so. This alone should already dismiss his
claims. For it shows a categorical refusal to account for even the most minimal features of a
phenomenon he seeks to criticise, even revolutionise. Let me briefly illustrate how one’s definition of the functions of law matters to determining
law’s effectiveness.18 If the focus is on guiding behaviour, then failure to comply with the law will sooner amount to its ineffectiveness. By contrast, if the function of the law is more a matter of restorative justice

law is more complex and

then violations do not really affect its effectiveness. What matters is whether sooner or later the norms are – ex post – enforced on the violators. Of course,

may have a variety of functions. But this goes just to show that one should distinguish between different branches of law, because often the functions change accordingly.
Also, we must consider the experience of the law with applying particular norms. For example, some human rights are quite old while others very recent. One cannot expect the new right to be as effective as the
older one.19 17 See for a treatment of Rasul v. Bush and British case law on executive emergency measures, Humphreys 2006, supra note 5, pp. 684-687. Further to the invalidation of the executive measure
suspending habeas corpus by the Supreme Court in Rasul v. Bush, government sought to legalise the suspension by Congressional legislation. Boumediene v. Bush in turn invalidates this attempt. 18 See for
example Tom Campbell’s categorisation of the functions that rules may perform. His main divide is between coordination and control rules. The coordination rules can be broken down into facilitative rules,
convenience rules, distributive rules and output rules. T.D. Campbell, The Legal Theory of Ethical Positivism, Aldershot: Dartmouth 1996, pp. 50-52. 19 For example, habeas corpus being an old legal right has
become a very effective human right. By contrast, the rules prohibiting genocide are still extremely new – in terms of (criminal) law. The courts and the legal profession in general have very little experience with
applying these laws. Interestingly the same goes actually for habeas corpus outside the traditional jurisdiction of the state (see Boumediene v. Bush). Hence, the importance of distinguishing also within areas of
the law.
 at: bare life impact
No impact – institutional safeguards make reduction to bare life impossible
– case turns the K by preventing substantial exclusion
Heins, 05 [Volker, visiting professor of political science at Concordia University and Senior
Fellow at the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt, German Law Journal No. 5,
http://www.germanlawjournal.com/article.php?id=598]
According to this basic Principle of Distinction, modern humanitarian action is directed towards those who are caught up in violent
conflicts without possessing any strategic value for the respective warrin g parties. Does
this imply that classic
humanitarianism and its legal expressions reduce the lives of noncombatants to the "bare life" of
nameless individuals beyond the protection of any legal order? I would rather argue that
humanitarianism is itself an order-making activity. Its goal is not the preservation of life reduced to
a bare natural fact, but conversely the protection of civilians and thereby the protecti on of elementary
standards of civilization which prevent the exclusion of individuals from any legal and moral
order. The same holds true for human rights, of course. Agamben fails to appreciate the fact that human rights
laws are not about some cadaveric "bare life", but about the protection of moral agency. 33 His
sweeping critique also lacks any sense for essential distinctions. It may be le- gitimate to see "bare life" as a
juridical fi ction nurtured by the modern state, which claims the right to derogate from othe rwise binding norms in times of war and
emergency, and to kill individuals, if nece ssary, outside the law in a mode of "effec- tive factuality." 34 Agamben
asserts
that sovereignty understood in this manner con- tinues to function in the same way since the
seventeenth centur y and regardless of the democratic or dictatorial structure of the state in
question. This claim remains unilluminated by the wealth of evidence that shows how the
humanitarian motive not only shapes the mandate of a host state and nonstate agencies, but also
serves to restrict the operational freedom of military commanders in democracies, who can- not act with
impunity and who do not wage war in a lawless state of nature.
 at: global civil war impact
There is no warrant to this claim and no coherent way for them ot solve it
Scheuerman, 06 [William E. Survey Article: Emergency Powers and the Rule of Law after 9/11*
Political Science, Indiana University, Bloomington, The Journal of Political Philosophy: Volume
14, Number 1, 2006, pp. 61–84]
Though inscribed within the law, the emergency is simultaneously external to it; the emergency explodes the confines of the legal
order while necessarily resting and thereby belonging to it. As a reading of the complex twists and turns of Schmitt’s reflections on
this paradox, Agamben’s text has much to recommend it. Agamben is justified in pointing out that emergency power has become
a ubiquitous facet of contemporary politics, though his analysis provides few useful pointers for how we
might distinguish effectively between some emergency settings (e.g., Nazi Germany) and others
(Guantanamo Bay). Troubling as well is Agamben’s implicit assumption that a mere exegesis of
Schmitt (mixed in with just enough references to other fashionable thinkers) suffices to illuminate the causally
complex trends generating the trend towards executive-centered emergency government. When
Agamben addresses the legal and empirical literature on emergency power, he is too
dismissive.34 Like other recent postmodern commentators on Schmitt and emergency power, he mistakenly assumes
the possibility of accepting much of Schmitt’s argumentation without sufficiently confronting its
authoritarian logic. Having endorsed many features of Schmitt’s theory of emergency power, for example, Agamben
concludes that “the task at hand is not to bring the state of exception back within its spatially and temporally defined
boundaries in order to then reaffirm the primacy of a norm and of rights,” that is, somehow firm up the rule of law, “since it is not
possible to return to the state of law.”35 In a Schmittian vein, Agamben believes that a deep analysis
of emergency power necessarily discredits the rule of law. But how then might we ward off the
specter of rampant executive prerogativeand emergency government, both of which Agamben, in contrast
to Schmitt, abhors? The final pages of his little book leave us with nothing more than the deeply
mysterious suggestion that rather than trying to salvage the rule of law we need to “halt the
machine” by showing the “central fiction” of the “very concepts of state and law,” in order
“ceaselessly to try to interrupt the working of the machine that is leading the West toward global
civil war.”36 Agamben’s obscure pronouncements are sure to keep some segments of the
academic world busy, but they also help ensure that the postmodern Schmitt revival will have
little impact on actual political and legal policy makers. The same cannot be said about a second and more
impressive group of recent analysts, consisting chiefly of jurists teaching in U.S. law schools, SURVEY ARTICLE: EMERGENCY
POWERS AFTER 9/11 69 33Agamben 2005, p. 33. 34See, for example, his dismissive remarks about Rossiter (Agamben 2005, pp.
6–9). 35Agamben 2005, p. 87. 36Agamben 2005, p. 87. who rely in a more subtle and selective fashion on Schmitt in order to
criticize existing liberal democratic legal regulation of the emergency reforms. In contradistinction to both Schmitt and contemporary
postmodern authors, they express strong normative commitments to the rule of law and offer thoughtful, though ultimately
problematic, constructive proposals for redesigning emergency laws. Their ideas have already gained significant attention in
academic circles, and it is by no means obvious that they will remain without political impact.
 at: state of exception impact
The state of exception can be contained---no impact – also answers their
Pozorov collapse now argument because the law is sustainable and
resilient
Jennifer Mitzen 11, PhD, University of Chicago, Associate Professor of Political Science at Ohio
State University, Michael E. Newell, “Crisis Authority, the War on Terror and the Future of
Constitutional Democracy,” PDF
But what Agamben has potentially overlooked is the conversation between the government,
public and media concerning the state of exception. Waever’s desecuritization theory tells us that it is possible for
continued debate and media coverage to desecuritize a threat in whole or in part (Waever, 1995). As the War on Terror progressed,
more academics and government officials began to speak out against the usefulness of interrogations, the
reality of the terrorist threat and the morality of the administration’s policies. Some critics suggested that the terrorist threat was not as
imminent as the Administration made it appear, and that “…fears of the omnipotent terrorist…may have been overblown, the threat presented within
the United States by al Qaeda greatly exaggerated” (Mueller, 2006). Indeed, as Mueller points out, there have been no terrorist attacks in the United
States five years prior and five years after September 11th. The resignation of administration officials, such as Jack Goldsmith, who, it was later
learned, sparred with the administration over Yoo’s torture memos, their wiretapping program and their trial of suspected terrorists also contributed to
this shift in sentiment (Rosen, 2007). The use of the terms “torture,” and “prisoner abuse,” that began to surface in critical media coverage of the War
on Terror framed policies as immoral. As
the public gradually learned more from media coverage, academic
discourse, and protests from government officials, the administration and its policies saw
plummeting popularity in the polls. Two-thirds of the country did not approve of Bush’s handling of the War on Terror by the end of
his presidency (Harris Poll) and as of February 2009 two-thirds of the country wanted some form of investigation into torture and wiretapping policies
(USA Today Poll, 2009). In November 2008 a Democratic President was elected and Democrats gained
substantial ground in Congress partly on promises of changing the policies in the War on Terror.
Republican presidential nominees, such as Mitt Romney, who argued for the continuance of many of the
Bush administration’s policies in the War on Terror, did not see success at the polls. Indeed, this
could be regarded as Waever’s “speech-act failure” which constitutes the moment of
desecuritization (Waever, 1995). In this sense, Agamben’s warning of “pure de-facto rule” in the War on
Terror rings hollow because of one single important fact: the Bush administration peacefully transferred
power to their political rivals after the 2008 elections. The terrorist threat still lingers in the far reaches of the globe,
and a strictly Agamben-centric analysis would suggest that the persistence of this threat would
allow for the continuance of the state of exception. If Agamben was correct that the United
States was under “pure de-facto rule” then arguably its rulers could decide to stay in office and to
use the military to protect their position. Instead, Bush and his administration left, suggesting that
popular sovereignty remained intact.

No state of exception now – empirics and clarity

Humphreys, 06 [Lecturer in International Law He was formerly Research Director at the
International Council on Human Rights Policy in Geneva, London School of Economics, The
European Journal of International Law Vol. 17 no.3 © EJIL 2006; all rights reserved EJIL (2006),
Vol. 17 No. 3, 677–687 doi: 10.1093/ejil/chl020 Legalizing Lawlessness: On Giorgio Agamben’s
State of Exception Stephen Humphreys*, p. sage journals]
2 Sovereign Checks Fascinating, provocative and erudite, State of Exception is nevertheless frequently as gnomic as it is
compelling: at times a little more clarity or probing would be welcome. The assertion of a permanent state of
exception since W orld W ar I, described as ‘a laboratory for testing and honing the functional mechanisms and apparatuses
of the state of exception as a paradigm of government’,39 is short of both empirical substantiation and conceptual
clarification. Still, at first sight, the available data would seem to bolster Agamben’s case. Constitutional
provisions allowing for states of emergency have effectively globalized in the course of the 20th century – at least 147 countries had
something of the sort by 1996.40 Governments have taken regular – in some countries constant – recourse to this mechanism: in
 However, this
1978 an estimated 30 countries were in some form of state of emergency;41 by 1986 the number was 70.42
added detail does little to illuminate Agamben’s main argument concerning the emergence of a
new juridical space at global level: developments within individual countries rather reflect than
drive this larger pattern, and focusing on them tends to open up areas of easy contestation that
are not fundamental to his point. In any case, the increasingly loud official insistence on a new condition of emergency
without visible end – a supposed paradigm shift echoing through the din of the ‘war on terror’ – is by far the better indicator of this
book’s central thesis. What is uniquely valuable here is the penetrating search for the broad juridical precedents that underpin these
fantastic claims of security imperatives and lend them traction. It may be best to view this book as opening a potentially fruitful
avenue for legal scholars to explore with more precise tools. A more worrying gap throughout the book is its minimal and
inconclusive discussion of the separation of powers.43 Agamben registers historical moments of contestation
between executives and legislatures for control over the state of exception. Today many countries require
parliamentary ratification, sometimes post hoc, of the executive or presidential prerogative to ‘decide on
the exception’.44 He frequently characterizes sovereign expansion in terms of recourse to the decree, and clearly views
parliamentary marginalization as an indicator of the same phenomenon. Certainly there is no shortage of examples,
both past and present, of parliaments bowing too easily to executive demands couched in terms of
emergency. At bottom, however, parliamentary oversight appears in this story as an ambiguous side-
issue, not fundamentally decisive. The question raised here – but not answered – is whether the institutional
division of government power can prevent or retard the state’s proclivity to expansionary legalism – or whether on the contrary it is
rather an irrelevance or even a catalyst – as Hannah Arendt once suggested: ‘the principle of separation of power . . . actually
The
provides a kind of mechanism built into the very heart of government, through which new power is constantly generated’.45
possible importance of the judiciary – not only in ascertaining the law but also in cordoning off its domain – is not
discussed at all. This is the more striking as judicial processes are at the centre of recent debate
on the state of emergency. The US Supreme Court and Britain’s Law Lords both ruled in 2004 on cases relating directly to
executive emergency measures. The UK case, A. v. Secretary of State for the Home Department, involved judicial review of the
government’s derogation from its human rights obligations and subsequent indefinite detention without trial of eight non-nationals.46
The Lords examined both points: whether there was in fact a situation of emergency requiring derogation (there was), and whether
the actions taken were ‘proportional’47 to the threat (they were not). On the first question, Lord Bingham wrote for the majority: It is
perhaps preferable to approach this question as one of demarcation of functions or . . . ‘relative institutional competence’. The more
purely political (in a broad or narrow sense) a question is, the more appropriate it will be for political resolution and the less likely it is
to be an appropriate matter for judicial decision. . . It is the function of political and not judicial bodies to resolve political questions.
The present question seems to me to be very much at the political end of the spectrum.48 Lord Bingham’s position focuses the
grammar of Schmitt’s dictum – ‘sovereign is he who decides on the exception’ – and although some commentators wished for a
more rigorous burden on the government to ‘advance clear and convincing evidence’ of the need for derogation powers,49 few
questioned the basic principle articulated – that of a deferential model of separation of powers.50 Bingham’s conclusion is also in
keeping with – and relied upon – the case law of the European Court of Human Rights, which has deferred to national authorities on
derogation decisions in all but one instance.51 That 1969 finding concerned a military regime – Greece was, crucially, not a
democracy at the time – which had effectively triggered the conditions leading to ‘emergency’.52 In response to the ruling, Greece
withdrew from the Council of Europe.53

Law doesn’t have an essence ---

Deranty, 4 [Jean-Philippe; Professor of Philosophy – Macquarie University-Sydney)
“Agamben’s challenge to normative theories of modern rights” borderlands 3:1]
All this explains why Agamben chooses to focus on the decisionistic tradition (Hobbes, Heidegger, Schmitt). With it, he
wants to isolate
the pure essences of all juridical orders and thus highlight the essential violence structuring
traditional politics. Since the law essentially appears as a production and capture of bare life, the political
order that enunciates and maintains the law is essentially violent, always threatening the bare life it has produced
with total annihilation. Auschwitz is the real outcome of all normative orders. The problem with this
strategic use of the decisionistic tradition is that it does not do justice to the complex relationship
that these authors establish between violence and normativity, that is, in the end the very
normative nature of their theories. In brief, they are not saying that all law is violent, in essence or in its
 rather that law is dependent upon a form of violence for its foundation. Violence can found
core,
the law, without the law itself being violent. In Hobbes, the social contract, despite the absolute
nature of the sovereign it creates, also enables individual rights to flourish on the basis of the
inalienable right to life (see Barret-Kriegel 2003: 86).

Turns the K – DA to the alt

MacLeod, 04 [Alex, Professor of Politics, University of Quebec a Montreal, Escaping the logic of
the exception Spain after March 11 2004 Alex Macleod, Université du Québec à Montréal, p. pdf]
At a press conference held shortly after the terrorist attacks in Madrid on March 11 2004, the well-known film director Pedro
Almódovar declared that the outgoing conservative government had been preparing to declare a state of exception, thereby carrying
out a virtual coup d’état, on the very eve of the elections due to take place on March 14, in an attempt to stave off a possible defeat
(Hermoso, 2004). This accusation was hotly denied by the leader of the governing People’s Party, (Partido Popular - PP), and
Almódovar himself admitted later he was only repeating rumours. Whatever the truth of these “rumours”, what cannot be disputed is
the fact that the Spanish government never invoked formally or informally a state of exception, even though the 1978 Constitution
specifically provides for such a measure. In other words, the Spanish government has apparently refused to follow the “logic” of the
exception, the logic which many liberal democratic governments claim they have no choice but to follow to meet a situation of crisis,
threat or apprehended threat, especially one involving terrorism. Spain has also avoided the sort of security paranoia which seized
the US and British governments after 9/11. This paper will focus on whether this has in fact happened, and if so, why, and what it
tells us about the notion of “state of exception”, especially as theorized by Carl Schmitt and Giorgio Agamben. In particular, it will be
argued, following Neal (2005) that “the
usefulness and insight of the concept of the ‘state of exception’ is
undermined by Agamben’s frequent invocation of the idea of a permanent state of exception”.
Agamben pronounced this idea of a trend towards the spread of a permanent state of exception notably in the first volume his Homo
Sacer, originally published in Italy in 1995. Thus he claimed that “in
our age, the state of exception comes more
and more to the foreground as the political structure and ultimately begins to become the rule”
(Agamben, 1998: 20). Eight years later, and two years after 9/11, he published his State of Exception in which he appeared to revise
his position to some extent. At one point, he reiterates his original position that “the voluntary creation of a permanent state of
emergency (even if it is not declared in a technical sense) has become one of the essential practices of contemporary states,
including those we call democratic” and that “the state of exception tends more and more to be presented as the dominant paradigm
of government in contemporary politics” (Agamben, 2003: 11, 12).1 However, a few pages later he suggests instead that “the
declaration of the state of exception is being progressively replaced by an unprecedented 1 At the time of writing I only had the
French version of State of Exception at hand. All translations from French and Spanish in this paper are the author’s, unless stated
otherwise. generalization of the security paradigm as a normal technique of government” (Agamben, 2003: 29). I will argue here that
it is imperative to situate every state
whichever one of these formulations gets closest to defining the present situation,
of exception, real, apprehended, potential or just possible, in its socio-political and cultural
context, rather than to present it simply as part of an inexorable world-wide tendency. The paper
will begin by looking at how the Spaniards have defined and refined the concept of state of
exception. It will then look briefly at the events of March 11, or 11-M as they are known in Spain, and the general terrorist
problematic facing Spanish society. It will then offer some reflections on the concept of the state of exception in the light of the
Spanish experience.
 at: coming community alt
Alternative community isn’t coming now – no basis for its emergence
Cmiel, Professor of Cultural History at Iowa, 96 (Kenneth, “The Fate of the Nation and the
Withering of the State”, American Literary History, Spring, p. 196, JSTOR)
If community cannot be a closed thing, if it is forever open to the potentially new, then the dream of a national community is simply impossible. In Agamben's community, the idea of some- thing being "un-

American'' makes no sense, for there is no defining essence in a "whatever singularity.'' Yet Agamben is also aware that capitalism and the state
will continue. Indeed, he recognizes that after the fall of Communism they are sweeping the
globe. Politics, in the future, Agamben argues, will not be community building but the perpetual
project of communities against the state "a struggle between the State and the non-state (humanity), an insurmountable disjunction between whatever singularity
and the State organization'' (84). I doubt Agamben's new community is actually coming. It remains far from

clear that communities without identities are emerging anywhere except in the febrile
imaginations of a few philosophers. It is not that I dislike the dream. It is for me the most attractive dream there is. It is that I am skeptical that
such "whatever singularities'' are possible on more than the level of personal behavior. Politics
is too clunky for such subtlety. Even the new social movements seem far more down-to-earth
and prone to defining themselves than Agamben's theorizing. Politics, alas, demands more
leaden language. Still, the image of the state fighting communities is one worth pondering. Its distance from earlier welfare state thinking could not be more dramatic. Instead of
the state embodying the will of the nation we have a picture of numerous communities at war
with the state. It is, and I say this with no relish, a far more plausible picture of our emerging politics than Walzer's happy pluralism. Just think of insurance companies, Perotistas, and gay and
lesbian activists-all communities distrustful of the states all committed to struggling with the state. Agamben does not ask what this perpetual warfare

will do to government. Like Walzer, he assumes that the state will trudge on as before. Yet if this
warfare between humanity and the state is constant, is it not plausible to surmise that hostility to
the state will become permanent? With the fiction that the state embodies the nation's will dying,
who will defend the state? Who will keep it from becoming the recipient of increasing rancor and
from being permanently wobbly? Isn't that a good way of understanding recent politics in the
US? And as for Agamben's own Italy- the past decade has revealed a public far more disgusted with the state than even in America.
 at: edkins and pin-fat alt
Even Prozorov thinks your alt is intellectual diarrhea
Prozorov 5 (Sergei, Department of International Relations at Petrozavodsk State University,
“X/Xs: Toward a General Theory of the Exception”, Alternatives 30 (2005), 81-112)

More specifically, the same argument concerns the

principle of sovereignty as the ontological condition of
power relations. Within the context of critical theories of international relations, this entails
abandoning the facile critique of sovereignty as either allegedly outdated in the conditions of "globalization" (which
is itself a discourse that disavows sovereignty without actually dispensing with it)-'^ or inherently authoritarian, and hence to be
supplanted by more "decentered" or "inclusive" forms of political organization (a sterile valorization of "better X without Xs"). The
temptation to dispense with sovereignty in critical thought is easily understandable: after all, the
ultimate lesson of Schmitt's political ontology is that at the heart of any order, including the Utopian
configurations that preoccupy much critical research, is the constitutive decision that is irreducibly violent, an
instance of pure force emanating from the void. In my reading, sovereignty as an Xs concept is a
permanent reminder of the impossibility of immaculate conception in political life and thus an
irritable stain on every tidy script of a "better society" Insofar as one does want to pursue a proper critique of
sovereignty, it must logically be an enterprise whose discomforting contours are hinted at by Edkins and Pin-Fat: "it is only through a
refusal to draw any lines at all (and indeed nothing less will do) that sovereign power (as a form of violence) can be contested and a
if it is the constitutive violence of the logic of sovereignty that is
properly political power relation reinstated."'"" Thus,
the target of criticism, the proper avenues of critique appear self-defeatingly extreme, if not outright
inconceivable: the total refusal to draw dividing lines and installing limits is ultimately a call to
dispense with the very principle of order. However, as my discussion suggests, it is more fruitful not to
criticize sovereignty, but to focus on its own critical functions. Particularly in the Schmittian "quasi-
transcendental" understanding, the concept appears to be far from outdated or "conservative," but rather belongs squarely to the
critical register, insofar as we understand critique in the analytic sense of elucidating the conditions of possibility of phenomena
rather than in the normative sense of arguing over different versions of "good life." Thus, against the claim of Edkins and
Pin-Fat that "resistance to sovereign power takes place when there is a demand for a return to properly political power
relations,"101 I venture an argument that appears to be the distilled essence of Schmitt's thought: any return to properly
political power relations must traverse the moment of reassertion of sovereign power as the transgressive
foundation of politics. Recalling my criticism of the Agambenian gesture of collapsing the X/Xs distinction, let me suggest
that the critique of the excessive nature of X (the sterility of depoliticized and technicized
administration of people and things in various positive forms of order) must not throw the baby
away with the bathwater by disavowing the excess of X that remains unsubsumed under the X
principles and logically has nothing to do with the excessiveness of X. The quaintly paradoxical
character of resistance proposed by Edkins and Pin-Fat may be illustrated with the examples from the
"nonpolitical" domains we have addressed: it is as if the resistance to the monotony of doctrinal prescriptions of behavior in a
religion must necessarily take the form of atheism or the dissatisfaction with the routines of married life must lead to the cessation of
all romantic interest. In short, rather
than "repoliticize" the existing order, the denial of its sovereign
excess leaves one with little other than a sense of resignation and cynical pessimism.

The ALT’s repudiation of line drawing precludes the creation of more

effective political strategies
Owens, 09 [Patricia, Reader in International Relations (International Relations), university of
Sussex, Reclaiming 'Bare Life'?: Against Agamben on Refugees, International Relations 2009
23: 567, p. sage publications]
One way to illustrate this, and one of the most distinctive and evocative elements of Agamben’s notion of sovereign power, relates
to what he describes as the sovereign’s capacity to decide on the ‘human victim that may be killed and not sacrificed’.34 This
victim is named homo sacer (sacred man) who in Roman law was a person who might be killed
with impunity but not ‘sacrificed’ in a religious ritual.35 Agamben argues that growing numbers of
people are vulnerable to this specific form of violence. The suspension of the law, the creation of emergency
conditions that legitimise torture, open-ended incarceration and/or killing without punishment all lead to death that is not
honoured, mourned or memorialised.36 The refugee camp, for Agamben, is an exemplary zone of indistinction where individuals
can be subject to various forms of violence without legal consequence on territory that is outside the normal juridical order.
Even forms of resistance to
Refugees are produced as (or reduced to) ‘bare life’ literally and metaphorically in camps.
sovereign power such as refugee hunger strikes or lip-sewing, as witnessed in the Woomera detention camp
in Australia, are reduced to expressions of ‘bare life’. Such an act, write Jenny Edkins and Véronique
Pin-Fat, following Agamben, ‘viscerally reveals and draws attention to the refugees’ own person
as the bare life produced by sovereign power: it is a re-enactment of sovereign power’s production of bare life on
the body of the refugee’.37 Sovereign power, for Agamben, is not founded on the collective political will of individual
subjects (as in Hobbes and John Locke). It is founded on the submission of naked life to the protection of the
sovereign. The old republican and Marxist divisions – between subjects and citizens, and between classes – are superseded.
The more fundamental political distinction is between ‘naked life’ and the variety of different forms or modes of life, such as ‘worker’,
‘voter’ or ‘consumer’ which modern individuals are able to sustain as a supplement to their condition as biological beings. Hannah
Arendt’s account of the political realm as constituted ‘in-between’ people as they act in concert, and Carl Schmitt’s understanding of
politics as defined by the distinction between friend and enemy, are similarly replaced. Jürgen Habermas’s quasi-liberal effort to
In the face of the camps, Agamben claims,
theorise a cosmopolitan law of world citizenship is beside the point.38
we need to throw out the entire tradition of classical (and much ‘critical’) political (and international)
thought. Modern citizens exist on a continuum with refugees; they are a better-tended herd but
are increasingly indistinguishable from homo sacer. We must abandon the classical concept of human rights,
‘and the rights of asylum’ he argues, ‘must no longer be considered as the conceptual category’ around which we organise the
political struggles of refugees.39 How, if at all, can ‘sovereign power’ be challenged? For Edkins and Fin-
Fat, following Agamben, we have to repudiate all distinctions or drawing of lines between ‘forms
of life’. Indeed, they celebrate the life that sovereign power has sought to produce. In the case of refugees who protest their
arbitrary and prolonged detention by sewing together their lips and sometimes their eyes, they write that, ‘the refugees’ sewn
muteness, deafness and blindness shows that our bare life is, indeed, all we have left under sovereign power’.40 The ‘complete
embrace of bare life’ is the only way to ‘unmask’ the violence of sovereignty and re-establish more open relations of power.41
Rather than a tragic act of defiance, refugee lip-sewing becomes an exemplary form of political resistance: an action that reveals a
deeper meaning in the acceptance of bare life. On this view, humans who are reduced to bare life in refugee camps should not seek
reinstatement as political beings in the terms set out by sovereign power: that is, as citizens of their own polity. This would be to
Edkins and Pin-Fat argue that humans must
reinforce ‘the very lines on which sovereign power depends’.42 Rather
‘acknowledge’ their ‘status as nothing but life and demand … recognition as such’.43 It is just as
well since, according to Agamben, we have little choice. ‘In the camps’, he writes, ‘city and house
became indistinguishable, and the possibility of differentiating between our biological body and
our political body – between what is incommunicable and mute and what is communicable and
sayable – was taken from us forever.’44 Beyond ‘bare life’ If we take Agamben’s claims seriously
then it is difficult to imagine a global political order less free than the one we inhabit today. The
disciplining of individuals and the management of populations by the primary organs of sovereign power, states and their
international organisations, occurs to such an extent that the liberal constitutional state and the totalitarian regime seem to be two
sides of the same coin. The liberties and freedoms achieved in the constitutional democracies appear ‘doublesided’. In Agamben’s
words, they ‘simultaneously prepared a tacit but increasing inscription of individuals’ lives within the state order, thus offering a new
and more dreadful foundation for the very sovereign power from which they wanted to liberate themselves’.45 This is nowhere more
evident than in what Agamben describes as the affiliation between the internment camps established during the interwar period,
which housed, among others, Jews, Armenians, Spanish republicans and Russians, and the Nazi concentration camps of World
War II.46 The first camps in Europe were built to house refugees. The subsequent ‘succession of internment camps – concentration
camps – extermination camps’, he argues, ‘represents a perfectly real filiation’.47 This argument is made through a reversal of the
relationship Hannah Arendt identified between the Nazi-run death camps and the structure of totalitarian rule. According to
Agamben, it was the triumph of naked life that produced total domination, not the other way around. Since modern politics
is already a space of ‘indistinction’ between biological and political life, the concentration camps
follow. The re-inclusion of bare life in modern politics was fully realised in the totalitarian camps of the twentieth century. They
were ‘the most absolute biopolitical space that has ever been realized – a space in which power confronts nothing other than pure
biological life without any mediation’.48 The Nazi regime was just the most extreme, and for Agamben it
would appear inevitable, form of ‘the political space in which we still live’.49 We were already
living in a world of camps – both metaphorically and literally – by the time the gas chambers were built.
There is a continuum, not a fundamental disjuncture, between camps, Agamben argues, because there is a continuum between
constitutional democracies and the Nazi regime; both reduce populations to ‘bare life’: one to govern and manage people on
for many, such claims are
grounds of nationality, the other to exterminate on grounds of race. No doubt,
unconscionable. Nonetheless it is worth contrasting Agamben’s ideas on the unidirectional logic of sovereign power with
Arendt’s writing on the historical and political origins of various forms of camps, a distinction which Agamben refuses. This is
because, up to a point, Agamben is right. One of the political problems of our time is the collapsing of bios into zoe¯. The ‘politically
most pernicious doctrine of the modern age’, as Arendt has put it, is ‘that life is the highest good, and that the life process of society
is the very center of human endeavor’.50 Agamben is even right to suggest that the inclusion of bare life in modern politics was
fully realised in the totalitarian camps of the twentieth century. However, largely under the influence of Schmitt and Foucault, he
takes the critique of Downloaded from ire.sagepub.com at UNIV OF MICHIGAN on July 8, 2013 RECLAIMING ‘BARE LIFE’
575 political distinctions too far. Ultimately, we can refuse the way so-called ‘biopolitics’ is presented by Agamben and
others as marking the limit of all public–private distinctions and the priority and autonomy of the public realm. But the refusal must
be based on an explicit account of the problems with the merging of zoe¯ and bios and a defence of some form of reinstatement of
the distinction. Centring her thought on a defence of what totalitarianism seeks to wipe out, Hannah Arendt is the thinker who has
done most to establish such a theoretical and empirical agenda.51 First,
it is important to distinguish between
different forms of camps to dislodge the notion of a ‘perfectly real filiation’ between internment
camps (for refugees) and extermination camps. In Origins of Totalitarianism, Arendt argued that Nazi
concentration camps were necessary instruments of total domination, but they were also
incomprehensible in terms of normal categories of thought. Detention and concentration camps have long
been used ‘for “suspects” whose offences could not be proved and who could not be sentenced by ordinary process of law’.52 Like
those that detain refugees, these camps can be comprehended as part of an imperial power arrangement and the principle behind
them, their underlying justification in the eyes of their creators, is that ‘everything is permitted’. Everything is permitted in the name
of national security, the right of territorial sovereignty and to protect the way of life of ‘normal’ citizens. Everything is permitted
including the elimination and degradation of individuals and whole groups. However much they conflict with humanitarian law, state
functionaries are able to defend imperial camps with appeals to instrumentality. In contrast, Arendt argued, Nazi
camps were
unprecedented – different in kind not just intensity from imperialism’s camps. The totalitarian camps were entirely
‘anti-utilitarian’ from the perspective of the German state in total war. They were made to function as
‘normal’ even in the face of total military defeat. The underlying principle justifying this was not that ‘everything is permitted’, but that
‘everything is possible’. Their purpose was not ‘merely’ to degrade human beings by treating them as a means to an end, but to
Their purpose was to
destroy the concept of human being as such, and to make humans superfluous as human beings.53
eradicate not just the Jews but human dignity itself. Their ‘radical evil’ was that they came as close as we have
seen to transforming humans into mere things.54 While emphasising the horrible originality of the extermination camps, Arendt took
great pains to uncover the specific configuration of large-scale historical processes that ‘crystallized into totalitarianism’.55 These
included the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century explosions of statelessness, rightlessness, mob violence, imperialism and anti-
Semitism. One of her most innovative arguments was that late nineteenth-century wars of imperial conquest helped sow the seeds
of twentiethcentury total war in Europe. But the outcome – the rise of a new form of totalitarian government – was not the inevitable
product of some metaphysical properties of ‘sovereign power’, as argued by Agamben. It was wholly contingent on the particular
way modern processes transformed what was politically possible. Crucially, for our discussion here, Arendt showed how the
laboratories for altering human nature began with the creation of more and more rightless and stateless persons. Moreover, in light
Downloaded from ire.sagepub.com at UNIV OF MICHIGAN on July 8, 2013 576 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 23(4) of the
‘calamity of the rightless’, she formulated new political grounds for human dignity.56 This is why Arendt remains a central figure in
the history of political thought regarding refugees. Refugee Studies replaces her with Agamben at its peril.57 Arendt had been a
stateless Jewish refugee during the war and was detained at a camp in France before she escaped and fled to the United States.
She was what might be called a ‘stateless non-person’ for 18 years. As Richard Bernstein has put it, her ‘experience of, and
reflection upon, statelessness taught her what politics means, and why it is so essential to be a citizen in a polity to live a fully
human life’.58 But she was no straightforward defender of the concept of ‘human rights’ and certainly not in its classical formulation
of the ‘Rights of Man and of the Citizen’ or the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.59 Agamben is largely following Arendt when
he argues that human rights should not be viewed in such terms – as representing some ever-present pre-political, pre-legal human
attribute meant to regulate and constrain state power. It was Arendt who first argued that the problem with this formulation is the
assumed existence of a biological being with some in-born human dignity which, she argued, cannot be shown to exist in a
politically meaningful way. She was scathing of all abstract and individualist conceptions of rights. The problem, she wrote, is that:
they presume that rights spring immediately from the ‘nature’ of man … The decisive factor is that these rights [in the classical
conception] and the human dignity they bestow should remain valid and real even if only a single human being existed on earth;
they are independent of human plurality and should remain valid even if a human being is expelled from the human community.60 It
was Arendt’s consistent position that no coherent legal or political structure can emerge from ‘man’ in the singular because politics is
based on plurality – that there are many and not one of us; in her gendered terminology, ‘the fact that men, not Man, live on the
earth and inhabit the world’.61 Given that the ontological basis of politics is plurality, Arendt argued, the human being qua human
being in which our ‘nature and essence is the same for all’, is politically irrelevant.62 While Arendt never criticised the idea of human
rights with the same vehemence as in her writing of the 1940s, she never dissociated herself from the claim that there is no such
thing as in-born human dignity separate from the concrete laws and institutions that are created to uphold certain rights. ‘Equality’,
she wrote, ‘in contrast to all that is involved in mere existence, is not given to us, but is the result of human organization … We are
not born equal; we become equal as members of a group on the strength of our decision to guarantee ourselves mutually equal
rights.’63 Arendt gave concrete illustration of what happened when human beings have nothing to fall back on except their status as
zoe¯. As already indicated, the classical concept of human rights presupposed the existence of a natural ‘human being as such’.
Arendt was one of the first to identify the central and still unresolved problem with this formulation. Those most in need of so-called
‘inalienable’ rights – stateless persons and refugees, those without a right to citizenship – are in no position Downloaded from
ire.sagepub.com at UNIV OF MICHIGAN on July 8, 2013 RECLAIMING ‘BARE LIFE’ 577 to claim them. ‘The Paradox involved in
the loss of human rights’, she wrote, ‘is that such loss coincides with the instant when a person becomes a human being in
general.’64 She went so far as to unfavourably compare the condition of statelessness to that of slaves in the ancient world. At least
the latter, she remarked, ‘still belonged to some sort of human community’.65 ‘Arendt’s idea’, as Étienne Balibar has written, ‘is not
that only institutions create rights, whereas, apart from institutions, humans do not have specific rights, only natural qualities. Her
idea is that, apart from the institution of the community ( … in the sense of the reciprocity of actions), there simply are no
humans.’66 Arendt’s political humanism contrasts sharply with the effort of Agamben and others to reclaim ‘bare life’: that is, to
centre political resistance to sovereign power on what Arendt would describe as the ‘abstract nakedness of being nothing but
human’.67 Edkins and Pin-Fat write that when refugees sew their lips together as an act of political protest they can be interpreted
as ‘assuming the very bare life that sovereign power imposes on them in order to demonstrate the relationship of violence in which
they have been placed’.68 To some extent this is right. As Joseph Pugliese has put it: The act of suturing your lips stages the
graphic disruption of the social contract as founded principally on an ethics of speech and dialogue: in the face of a regime that pays
no heed to your pleas and petitions for refuge and asylum, that juridically eviscerates your right to free speech, the withdrawal of
language signals despair at the very possibility of ethical dialogue. Your sewn lips bear testimony to the failure of the nation to speak
an ethical language of hospitality and responsibility toward the traumatised refugee seeking asylum. Your sutured lips open up the
violent disjunction between law and justice.69 Refugee lip-sewing
can be seen as a rebellion against the
desperate oblivion imposed by state power. The ability to martyr or otherwise harm oneself can
be seen as one of the last vestiges of moral personhood. Detained as an ‘enemy alien’ in France, Arendt later
recalled some discussion among the camp inmates of an act of collective suicide; ‘not being free to create our lives or the world in
which we live’, she later reflected, ‘we nevertheless are free to throw life away and to leave the world’.70 However, while Arendt was
adamant that such acts are not anti-political since they do not glorify violence, by themselves they could not be the fullest
expression of a political life.71 To challenge claims about lip-sewing as a political embrace of ‘bare life’ is not to ‘other’ such acts as
culturally backward or irrational, as some Australian officials sought to do with Woomera’s refugees.72 Nor is it to deny that they are
a form of political action: an insertion into the human world which brings with it the possibility of beginning something new. It is to
suggest, with Arendt, that the violence exposed but also committed through lip-sewing can form the basis of
a new politics if it is acted upon and talked about over and over again; if, in other words, bare life is repudiated
and a new worldly community is formed around resistance to injustice: Downloaded from ire.sagepub.com at
UNIV OF MICHIGAN on July 8, 2013 578 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 23(4) that is, when individuals begin to
create a public space in-between them. ‘Strictly speaking’, Arendt maintained, ‘politics is not so much about human
beings as it is about the world that comes into being between them and endured beyond them’.73 To engage in political
action is to participate in founding and sustaining a common, political world that can last longer
than a natural human life. This is partly a matter of the inherent artificiality of politics. To speak and act in public
is to wear a kind of ‘mask’ – a public persona that is ‘given and guaranteed by the body politic’,
not the natural body.
 at: whatever being alt

Conservative and libertarian fill-in

Paul Passavant, Ph.D., Hobart and William Smith College Associate Professor of Political
Science, December 2010, Yoo's Law, Sovereignty, and Whatever, Constellations Volume 17,
Issue 4, pages 549–571

For some on the left, it has become conventional to celebrate, if not cultivate, pluralism, whether this means multiple
forms of being or multiple interpretive possibilities with regard to texts. It has also become
conventional to be critical of “sovereignty” and of “law.” Multiplicity is thought to be a threat to
sovereignty, and this threat is thought to be democratizing or a force that resists oppression. The
Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben exemplifies these tendencies within contemporary political and legal theory. In some of his
earlier and less well-known work, he aspires toward a “coming community” that he calls “whatever being .”
Whatever being embraces the infinite communicative possibilities of language as pure means beyond a preoccupation with true or false propositions.
In his best-known work, Agamben
links sovereignty to the production of rightless subjects and the Nazi
death camps. He urges us to rethink the very ontological basis of politics in the West, creating a human being
beyond sovereignty or law, in order to avoid perilous outcomes. One key to surpassing the logic of sovereignty, according to Agamben, is whatever
being's positive relation to the singularities of life and the multiplicities of communication. Whatever being is also being outside of law. If “law” persists
in this “coming community,” it would be a “law” that has become deactivated and deposed from its prior purposes. “Law” will have become an object for
play – something to be toyed with the way that children might come upon a disused object and play with it by putting it to uses disconnected from
whatever purpose this object might once have had. Why does the fact of playful communicative possibilities lead to either more democracy or a less
brutal world? The
most conservative United States Supreme Court justices have recently embraced the fact that
texts are open to multiple interpretations. For example, Samuel Alito has suggested that the meaning of public monuments is
open to multiple interpretations that may shift over time to avoid a potential First Amendment establishment clause problem over a monument of the
Ten Commandments in a public park.1 Yet, as the late Justice Blackmun has written regarding state endorsement of religion, “government cannot be
premised on the belief that all persons are created equal when it asserts that God prefers some.”2 Recognizing
the possibility of
multiple interpretations, as this instance shows, does not lead necessarily to outcomes friendly to democracy.
In this essay, I investigate how playing with the multiplicity of communicative possibilities can, contrary to

Agamben's expectations , actually facilitate aspirations for unitary sovereign power . My

argument unfolds in the context of the legal arguments put forward by Bush administration lawyer John Yoo, particularly those enabling torturous
interrogations. Those, like Agamben, who favor interpretive pluralism in itself rarely, if ever, have right-wing
supporters of unchecked presidentialism in mind. Reading the scholarship and legal memoranda of John Yoo,
formerly in the Bush administration's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) and presently a University of California, Berkeley law professor, however,
approaches an experience of pure mediality or of law that has become deposed or
disconnected from its purposes. Yoo is well known as the author of the key legal memoranda asserting the president's discretionary
power to make war, to engage in warrantless surveillance, and, most infamously, justifying torturous methods of interrogation. Some scholars refer to
Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland to describe the experience of reading Yoo's legal memos.3 Is John Yoo an exemplar of the
whatever being and pure mediality that Agamben describes and to which he contends politics should aspire? In this paper, I describe how
Yoo gestures toward pure mediality, as he indicates the experience of language itself as pure communicability or as pure means in his legal work when
he emphasizes the openness of law to being exposed to new, different, flexible, or plural interpretive possibilities. I argue, however, that Yoo is not well
described as whatever being. His work repeats too consistently in the direction of absolute presidential decisionism to be open to whatever. Instead,
Yoo's work may capture a broader development within our society that Agamben describes as the emergence of whatever being. Without saying that
there has been no resistance to the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping and policies of torturous interrogations, the contrast between the
response to the Nixon administration and the Bush administration is striking. Richard Nixon resigned one step ahead of impeachment in the midst of
mass protests against his presidency. The articles of impeachment, for instance, addressed how Nixon engaged in warrantless wiretapping, and
refused to execute laws passed by Congress faithfully while repeatedly engaging in conduct that violated the constitutional rights of citizens. Congress
also passed major acts of legislation to prevent a president such as Nixon from ever again abusing power the way he had. These laws include the War
Powers Act of 1973, the Budget Impoundment and Control Act of 1974, and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978. In contrast,
almost no one seems to have noticed that the Bush administration claimed power to make war
at the president's sole discretion. Additionally, upon learning that the Bush administration engaged in criminal acts of surveillance,
Congress amended FISA in the summer of 2008 to expand the government's power to spy on
Americans, while immunizing from legal accountability non-state actors who collaborated with the then-criminal acts of
government officials who followed Bush's illegal orders. Congress tried to make it impossible for those detained to question, legally, their detention or to
bring the torturous treatment they endured to a court's attention, while allowing the intelligence agencies to continue to engage in torturous acts by
passing the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (MCA). This complicity on the part of Congress cannot be explained on partisan grounds as many
Democrats voted in favor of the MCA, and upon becoming the majority party in Congress, they have not rescinded it. Indeed, it was a Democratic-
controlled Congress that brushed the Bush administration's illegal surveillance under the rug in 2008.4 Moreover, upon taking power in 2006, the
Department of Justice
Democratic leadership immediately stated that they would not pursue impeachment. Former Reagan administration
lawyer Bruce Fein has decried the lack of outrage at the Bush administration's illegalities by
suggesting that the nation has become a collection of constitutional “illiterates.”5 Perhaps law is
being deposed as Agamben suggests . Both Agamben's and Fein's observations may also indicate
a failure of what Michel Foucault would call disciplinary power – the power to constitute subjects capable of exercising power, here the
powers of liberal democracy – a failure that Gilles Deleuze has identified with the emergence of societies of control, and a subjective and ontological
diversity that Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri call the “multitude.”6 They also indicate
practices of textual “interpretation”
where interpretative acts extricate legal texts from the narratives that once oriented their
purposes and animated these texts for a republican and anti-monarchical polity. Robert Cover argues,
however, that law is part of a narrative practice constitutive of subjects and a way of life.7 Insofar as interpretive practices become extricated from the
possibility of narrative, then, we may indeed doubt the continuing existence of “law,” as Agamben posits. Psychoanalytic theory also identifies a loss of
a structuring meaning in contemporary society and describes this as the decline of symbolic efficiency.8 In sum, there appears to be a phenomenon
emerging in contemporary society that a variety of different theoretical and political perspectives are struggling to grasp and evaluate. While
Agamben welcomes the failures of disciplinary powers as enabling the emergence of whatever
being and the “coming community,” it is a cause for concern among those seeking to keep the faith with
republicanism, with liberal democracy, or with a Constitution representing these aspirations. In this light, we can be more specific than Agamben about
the kind of threat that whatever being poses to the state or to sovereignty. Contrary
to Agamben's contentions, I find that
whatever being is no threat at all to the kind of unitary sovereignty that Agamben uses to theorize the state in his book
Homo Sacer. Why would it be? Whatever being would be equally at ease with the legal justifications
on behalf of a “unitary” sovereignty as it would anything else. If we, however, give the achievements of the people
their due and consider the question of sovereignty from the perspective of popular sovereignty, of the assemblies and assemblages of power through
which liberal democratic states seek to extend themselves and to govern at a distance, then whatever being is very much a danger to this type of
power. Whatever being can be understood as facilitating a process of deposing this law and this
state. A relation of whatever to the installation of a state of unchecked presidential powers and
torture can be the death knell of popular sovereignty dedicated to the purpose of opposing
tyranny. Whatever being is not the enemy of any state or form of “sovereignty.” It is the enemy
of popular sovereignty. Whatever ruins democracy. If we want more than unchecked
presidential power and torture, then we will have to dedicate ourselves to certain
purposes , like resisting tyranny and recalling that this was the purpose of the U.S. Constitution.

‘Whatever being’ promotes policy paralysis and changes nothing

Joseph ‘2
(Miranda; Associate Professor of Women’s Studies – Arizona University) Against the Romance
of Community p. xxix-xxxi
In The Coming Community, Giorgio Agamben quite similarly suggests that in order to displace the discriminations
that constitute community we should approach the experience of community with an attitude he
calls “whateverness.” For Agamben, “whatever” is not “indifference” but rather “being such as it is…In this conception such-and-such being
is reclaimed from its having this or that property, which identifies it as belonging to this or that set, to this or that class (the reds, the French, the
Muslims) – and it is reclaimed…for belonging itself” (1-2). His project is, like Nancy’s, to refuse universalizing ambitions, common properties, and
identities in favor of what both refer to as exposure: “If humans could, that is, not be-thus in this or that particular biography, but be only the thus, their
singular exteriority and their face, then they would for the first time enter into a community without presuppositions and without subjects, into a
communitcation without the incommunicable” (Agamben, 65). While Agamben claims that “[whatever being] is neither apathy nor promiscuity nor
resignation” (10), in working to evoke “the impotent omnivalence of whatever being” (10), he excludes the
possibility of articulating even contingent subjects and political goals. He celebrates the Tiananmen protests for
“the relative absence of determinate contents in their demands (democracy and freedom are notions too generic and broadly defined to constitute the
While I generally disagree with those who argue that poststructuralist
real object of a conflict…)” (85).
theory promotes political passivity or paralyzing relativism, Nancy and Agamben would certainly
seem to offer grist for that complaint since in fact they do quite explicitly promote passivity. But,
more important to me, they seem to miss the whole reason that community is interesting at all, which is to
say the fact that community generates not an attitude of “whatever” but rather the strongest of
passions. And those passions cannot be erased with a theoretical magic wand. Community is
one of the most motivating discourses and practices circulating in contemporary society. While
attempts to imagine alternative forms of collectivity can be valuable acts of discursive
articulation – and the feminist theorizations of community of/as difference have been to a limited degree effective in shifting the practices of
feminists – Nancy and Agamben’s theories share with the feminist rearticulations of community reviewed here the
important flaw of failing to appreciate the extraordinary power and persistence of a dominant
discourse of community. Collectivities often persist in their projects despite the catachrestical
and disputed nature of the identity terms under which they are mobilized; despite the ontological
impossibility of identity, people do work together. Further, while few of us on the left have shifted, somewhat, our strategies
for collective action, the not-surprising truth is that the critique of community offered by feminist poststructuralists has
made not a dent in the pervasive and celebratory deployment of community in popular culture
and even on what used to be the left. In attempting to recuperate by giving new meaning to
community, both of these approaches fail to address one of the most important implications of
the critical literature on community I have reviewed here. What the critiques of community imply, and what some state explicitly, is
that fundamental practices of modernity – liberalism, the nation-state, identity political
emancipatory movements, and, I argue, most important, capitalism – depend on and generate community.

Whatever being re-inscribes existing hierarchies

Shimakawa ‘4
(Karen; Univesity of California – Davis) “The Things We Share: Ethnic Performativity and
‘Whatever Being’” The Journal of Speculative Philosophy 18.2
Giorgio Agamben's "whatever being" offers a possible alternative way to conceive of (communal)
subjectivity that does not depend on stable political identity categories for its integrity, without
requiring one to dispense with categories altogether. Unlike the common English parsing of whatever,
Agamben's use of the term is differently nuanced: "[whatever being] is not 'being, it does not matter which,' but rather 'being such
that it always matters'" (Agamben 1993, 1).3 The
impulse to include/be included is retained, though not
assigned to a particular or stable grounds of inclusion: "such-and-such being is reclaimed from its having this or
that property, which identifies it as belonging to this or that set, to this or that class (the reds, the French, the Muslims)—and it is
reclaimed not for another class nor for the simple generic absence of any belonging, but for its being-such, for belonging itself" (1-2,
emphasis in original). Belongingitself, according to Agamben, is a state of being that acknowledges the (social
and affective efficacy of the) desire
for inclusion while, at the same time, resisting the concretization of
static categories (defined racially, nationally, sexually, religiously, or otherwise) that would afford not only
inclusion, but also exclusion. What would it mean, Agamben asks, to acknowledge the [End Page 151] desire to belong to
identity categories as that which binds us across the boundaries of such categories? To define subjectivity as "being as such," that
is, at the level of the impulse to belong (belonging itself), rather than at the point of inclusion in an established social
category/community?4 It is important to emphasize that Agamben does not advocate a dissipation of belonging per se—his is not
a dismantled universalist/humanist leveling program. "It is the Most Common that cuts off any real community," he writes; "[whatever
being] is neither apathy nor promiscuity nor resignation" (10), Instead, whatever being constitutes a mode of (prospective) subject
formation that achieves some of Kristeva's deject's ends (that is, the rough articulation of a subject position) without producing a
concretized, jettisoned abject; and for those who might otherwise find themselves on the "wrong" side of that
(nationalizing/racializing) abjection equation, perhaps Agamben's conception of "being as such" describes a strategic response to
abjection that does not simultaneously reaffirm its logic; that is, it offers an alternative to abjection that does not result in simply
"claiming a place" at the dejects' table. Indeed, Agamben articulates "whatever being" in terms that are provocatively
complementary to Kristeva's: whereas Kristeva's abject is "simply a frontier," Agamben situates whatever being precisely at the
border or "threshold" between inside and outside, "a point of contact with an external space that must remain empty" since, in order
to locate a recognized "outside" one must claim (even if only implicitly) a particular "inside," the zone/community in/to which one
belongs (and from which an "outside" is distinguishable). Rather, he argues, "the outside is not another space that resides beyond a
determinate space ... it is, so to speak, the experience of the limit itself" (68). By locating subject's formation in whatever being, that
is, in the impulse to belong, he creates a concomitantly concretization-resistant zone of not-belonging. That is, just as Kristeva's
abject is less a particular object/concept than a function (i.e., explusion/differentiation), so Agamben's "outside" is simply that which
is implied by whatever being/belonging itself: the impulse to not-belong otherwise/elsewhere (always resisting the temptation to
locate that otherwise/elsewhere in concrete terms). "Whatever, in this sense," Agamben writes,"is the event of an outside" (67,
emphasis in original). The problem, of course, is that we do not (yet) live in the world Agamben
envisions; "the event of an outside" is affixed inevitably to a geographical/social/political site,
turning that "event" into an "identity." How might artists, specifically Asian Pacific American artists, contribute to
Agamben's project of reconceiving our notions of subjectivity, community, and exclusion? What relation does that "event
of an outside" bear to the identity-stratified culture in which we find ourselves? As noted above, for
Asian Pacific Americans, a simple denial of the materiality of that stratification results only in
erasure/assimilation to the hierarchies currently in place (just as an insistence on the
significance and uniqueness of a particular stratum may cement its place in those hierarchies). I
[End Page 152] want to argue that the contingency, interactivity, and embodiedness of performance enables it to negotiate this
apparent impasse by asking: what would it mean for a subject who is marked as marginal/abject to perform such an "event of an
outside"?
general kritik supplements
Psychoanalysis
 Psycho-neolib k of decoupling
The notion of “decoupling” is a agential fantasy that obscures the root
cause and disavows the infeasibility of decoupling strategies—turns the
case and means they can’t solve
Fletcher and Rammelt 17—*Ph.D., Associate Professor in the Sociology of Development
and Change group at Wageningen University in the Netherlands; **Ph.D., Postdoctoral
Researcher in International Development Studies at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, and a
Lecturer at the Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies, University of Amsterdam (*Robert and
**Crelis, 2017, “Decoupling: A Key Fantasy of the Post-2015 Sustainable Development
Agenda,” Published in Globalization, vol. 14, no. 3, pp. 450-467, Accessed 7/14/17, HWilson)
ABSTRACT
Central to the United Nations’ post-2015 development agenda grounded in the
Sustainable Development Goals is the notion of ‘ decoupling’ : the need to divorce
economic growth from its ecological impact. For proponents, decoupling entails
increasing the efficiency with which value is derived from natural resources in order to
reconcile indefinite economic growth with environmental sustainability. However, even
advocates admit that the idea of decoupling remains poorly conceptualized and subject
to scant empirical investigation . This persistent commitment to a highly questionable
idea suggests the possibility of a deeper psychological dynamic at work here. Drawing
on Lacanian psychoanalytic theory , in this article we therefore analyze decoupling as a
‘fantasy’ that functions to obfuscate fundamental tensions among the goals of poverty
alleviation , environmental sustainability , and profitable enterprise that it is intended to
reconcile. In this way, decoupling serves to sustain faith in the possibility of attaining
sustainable development within the context of a neoliberal capitalist economy that
necessitates continual growth to confront inherent contradictions .

Introduction
‘Decoupling’ is the key term in a growing discussion of the potential to separate sustained
economic growth from its environmental impact. While the concept has received relatively little
direct public attention thus far, it is fast becoming a central component of the post-2015
development agenda grounded in the United Nations’ (UN) newly minted Sustainable
Development Goals (SDGs). Indeed, one could argue that decoupling is foundational to this
agenda, since, as we will show, without decoupling, the goals themselves will be unlikely to be
achievable. In this article, therefore, we explore the growing push for decoupling within the
context of the SDGs. We outline the concept’s development and increasing promotion within the
post-2015 agenda. We then discuss how the concept has been analyzed to date within a
growing body of scholarly literature. Subsequently, we undertake a detailed dissection of the
most extensive attempt to define a decoupling agenda to date via a series of reports recently
published by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to inform the SDG agenda.
We demonstrate that these reports, while ostensibly promoting the potential of decoupling
to contribute to genuine sustainable development, actually accomplish the opposite ,
revealing—in conjunction with a growing body of evidence from other sources—how
infeasible this aim actually is. We analyze this paradoxical situation from the perspective
of Lacanian psychoanalysis , suggesting that decoupling may constitute a central
‘ fantasy’ of the SDG agenda that ‘disavows’ the agenda’s infeasibility and thus defers
the fundamental question of whether it is in fact possible to achieve the type of
‘sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth’1 that the SDGs promise within
the framework of a neoliberal capitalist economy . We conclude by highlighting fruitful
directions for future research on the decoupling agenda as it continues to develop and unfold.
Introducing Decoupling
According to UNEP, the decoupling concept was first advanced in 2001 by the Organisation
for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which presented it ‘as one of the main
objectives in their policy paper “Environmental Strategy for the First Decade of the twenty-first
Century”’ (UNEP, 2011a, p. 4). The concept built on previous discussion of ‘eco-efficiency’
advanced by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, defined as the
delivery of ‘competitively priced goods and services that satisfy human needs and bring
quality of life while progressively reducing environmental impacts of goods and resource
intensity throughout the entire lifecycle’ (Schmidheiny, 1992, in UNEP, 2011a, p. 4).
Subsequently, the European Union (EU) adopted decoupling as a component of its 2005
Thematic Strategy on the Sustainable Use of Natural Resources under the 6th Environmental
Action Program.
UNEP’s own focus on decoupling began with establishment of an International Resource Panel
(IRP) in 2007 to provide ‘independent, coherent, authoritative and policy relevant scientific
assessments on the management of natural resources and the environment for the highest net
benefit of present and future generations’ (UNEP, 2014, p. xii). This IRP published its first
report, Decoupling natural resource use and environmental impacts from economic growth
(UNEP, 2011a) in 2011 as a component of the overarching Green Economy initiative (UNEP,
2011b) that UNEP promoted that same year in the lead-up to the 2012 Rio+20 Earth Summit
(Wanner, 2015). As IRP co-chairs, Ernst Ulrich von Weizsa¨cker and Ashok Khosla explained,
‘Decoupling human well-being from resource consumption is ... at the heart of the Green
Economy Initiative of UNEP’ (2011a, p. xi).
Yet, while the Green Economy frame itself has largely faded from public discussion following the
heated controversy it inspired at Rio+20 (see Tienhaara, 2014; Wanner, 2015), UNEP has
continued to actively champion the decoupling concept specifically. The IRB’s first report
was intended to be followed by several others, the second of which, focused on ‘Technologies,
Opportunities and Policy Options’ (UNEP, 2014) for achieving decoupling, was released in
2014. Via these reports, UNEP hoped to ‘inspire Member States to embed sustainable resource
management and the concept of decoupling in the post-2015 development agenda’ (Steiner,
2014, p. xv), as well as to make it ‘a key issue in the on-going deliberations on the Sustainable
Development Goals (SDGs)’ (UNEP, 2014, p. xii). This aim appears to have been largely
successful. In the lead-up to finalizing the SDGs, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon
emphasized the need to ‘decouple economic growth from environmental degradation’ (2014, p.
23) as a key ingredient of the agenda, while the prominent economist Jeffrey Sachs, a key
advisor to Ban in SDG formulation, subsequently released a book endorsed by the UN SG in
which Sachs wrote of what he termed the new Age of Sustainable Development, ‘The end
result, if successful, would be to “decouple” growth and dangerous overuse of primary
resources and ecosystems’ (Sachs, 2015, p. 218). The Sustainable Development Solutions
Network led by Sachs to oversee SDG implementation has further emphasized that ‘[t]he key is
for all countries, rich and poor, to adopt sustainable technologies and behaviors that decouple
economic growth from unsustainable patterns of production and consumption’.2 Decoupling
has been championed by other prominent actors as well. The OECD (2014) has reiterated
the importance of the concept, as has the EU in its 7th Environmental Action Program (EEA,
2013). The concept has also been promoted by influential civil society organizations, including
the Breakthrough Institute (2014, 2016), New Climate Economy (2014, 2015), and Ecosystem
Marketplace.3 All signs, in short, point to decoupling becoming a central component of the
renewed global development agenda.
The concept, however, is not without its critics. Næss and Høyer (2009) problematize
discussion of decoupling in sustainable development dating back to the seminal Bruntland
Report (World Commission on Environment and Development [WCED], 1987). In Prosperity
without growth, Jackson (2011) devotes a chapter to dispelling the ‘myth of decoupling’ by
arguing against its economic feasibility . Wanner, similarly, critiques decoupling as a
central ‘myth’ of the Green Economy agenda (see also Tienhaara, 2014), while Caradonna
et al. (2015) identify it as a foundational ‘fantasy’ of the Breakthrough Institute’s (2014)
Ecomodernist Manifesto. In a series of blog posts, Burton (2015, 2016a), along with other
members of his Steady State Manchester team (2014), challenges ostensible evidence for
decoupling advanced by New Climate Economy (2014, 2015) (see also Spash, 2014).
Isenhour (2016) and Isenhour and Feng (2016) offer a detailed critique of the decoupling
agenda pursued by the Swedish state in partnership with China. More extensively, Steinberger,
Krausmann, Getzner, Schandl, and West (2013), Wiedmann et al. (2015), Amate (2014), and
Burton (2016b) all highlight a dearth of demonstrable decoupling across a range of societies
(both developed and developing), while Ward et al. (2016) point to the fundamental
impossibility of decoupling on an aggregate global scale.

All of these previous analyses, in short, cast substantial doubt on the viability of a
decoupling agenda. Here, we draw all of this together to outline the various serious questions
concerning the possibility of decoupling that proponents envision. Yet, we go beyond this as
well. Previous studies have remained largely focused on critiquing the decoupling
agenda on its own terms, explaining why, with respect to its own criteria for success, it is
unlikely to be achieved. What this analysis does not explain is why decoupling
continues to be so widely promoted despite such glaring gaps in its formulation. How,
in other words, is the ‘ myth’ or ‘ fantasy’ of decoupling sustained in the face of such
obvious deficiencies?

Decoupling as Neoliberal Fantasy

This is the key question that we take up in this paper. While this question can be approached
from a variety of perspectives, we suggest that Lacanian psychoanalysis is particularly
productive given its central focus on fantasy as a foundation of ideology. Lacanian
theory is grounded in a conceptual separation among three realms: the Real, the Symbolic, and
the Imaginary. The Real is Lacan’s placeholder name for the fundamentally unknowable (in
his terms ‘impossible’) reality that we attempt to make sense of and control in the realm of
the Symbolic. Due to the Real’s impossibility, however, it inevitably exceeds our
Symbolic efforts to bring order to it. Yet, rather than acknowledging this reality, we tend
to ‘suture’ this gap in the realm of the Imaginary through recourse to fantasy , which
Zˇizek calls ‘the frame through which we experience the world as consistent and
meaningful’ (1989, p. 138). Fantasy, in this sense, functions to offer both the prospect of
successfully knowing and controlling the Real as well as an a priori explanation for this
is, inevitably, not achieved. In this way, fantasy constitutes ‘a means for an ideology to
take its own failure into account in advance’ (Zˇizˇek, 1989, p. 142). This function of
fantasy is commonly sustained through ‘disavowal’, less a state of denial per se than one
of ‘half-knowing’ (Zˇizˇek, 1989) in which the fantasy’s illusory nature is superficially
acknowledged, yet it is still adhered to nonetheless . As Zˇizˇek describes, disavowal thus
follows the formula: ‘I know very well, but still ... ’ (1989, p. 12). Usefully, this perspective
collapses the common divide between explanation on individual and collective levels,
depicting subjectivity as constructed through social processes shaped by
psychodynamic mechanisms as well.

From this perspective, decoupling can be viewed as a central fantasy giving force to a
vision of a ‘ sustainable development’ for neoliberal capitalist economies , and in the
process providing essential ideological support to the SDG agenda. Commentators have
of course long asserted the presence of fundamental environmental limits to indefinite
economic growth . Mainstream pundits tend to point to population growth and
overconsumption as the root of the problem (e.g. Meadows, Meadows, & Randers, 1972;
Meadows, Randers, & Meadows, 2005; Turner, 2008), while more radical critics contend
that the capitalist economy itself is incompatible with sustainability due to inherent
contradictions that render it unstable if not incessantly growing (e.g. Bellamy Foster,
2000; Malm, 2016; Næss & Høyer, 2009; O’Connor, 1988, 1998). This is particularly true of
capitalism’s contemporary neoliberal form . While the term neoliberalism has been
employed in various ways (see esp. Flew, 2011), most precisely it is defined as the political
economic regime promoting intertwined processes of privatization, deregulation,
decentralization, marketization, and commodification that have become globally
hegemonic since the 1980s (Castree, 2010). Disdaining mechanisms of collective
resource aggregation and redistribution as inefficient and unwieldy, neoliberalism must
thus promote economic growth as its ‘ one true and fundamental social policy’ (Foucault,
2008, p. 144). Under neoliberalism, consequently, capitalism has sought to internalize the
environmental impacts of growth to an unprecedented degree in what O’Connor (1994)
calls a system’s evolution into an ‘ecological phase’. In this way, as Bu¨scher (2012, p. 29)
points out, neoliberalism promotes ‘the paradoxical idea that capitalist markets are the
answer to their own ecological contradictions’ .
The global sustainable development movement can thus be understood, in large part, as a
grand effort to deny the reality of environmental limits , to prove that sustainability is in
fact compatible with indefinite economic growth . An insistence of this compatibility, indeed,
has been a central component of the UN’s sustainable development agenda since its inception
(Næss & Høyer, 2009). As the Bruntland Report asserted,
Far from requiring the cessation of economic growth, [sustainable development]
recognizes that the problems of poverty and underdevelopment cannot be solved unless
we have a new era of growth in which developing countries play a large role and reap
large benefits. (WCED, 1987, p. 40)
The SDGs reaffirm this faith in their insistence on the continued need for ‘sustained,
inclusive and sustainable economic growth’, as previously noted.

Decoupling as fantasy sustains this faith in the face of increasing documentation of the
dramatic environmental consequences of economic growth to date. In this sense,
decoupling can be seen as key ideological pillar of the neoliberal environmental project
in general (Wanner, 2015). The capacity of neoliberalism to sustain its ‘non-death’ in the
face of persistent failure, both in the environmental realm and elsewhere, has provoked
debate among critical analysts (Crouch, 2011; Fletcher, 2013a, 2013b, 2014; Peck, 2010;
Wilson, 2014). Most agree that the neoliberal economic system is supported by a
particular ideology seeking to obfuscate apparent failure and thus allowing proponents to
ignore potential critiques. However, why and how this obfuscation occurs is a matter of
contention. Marxists, represented most centrally by prolific theorist David Harvey, tend to argue
that ‘a benevolent mask full of wonderful-sounding words like freedom, liberty, choice, and
rights’ conceals ‘the grim realities of the restoration or reconstitution of naked class power’
(2005, p. 119) at the heart of the neoliberal project. Others, such as Peck (2010), accept that
some neoliberal proponents, at least, are genuine in their desire to see their project succeed on
its own terms and are merely blinded to its failure by the internal logic of their perspective.

Building on this latter approach, an emerging body of work has drawn on Lacanian
psychoanalysis to describe the ways in which neoliberal ideology is sustained through
fantasies of success constantly deferred into the future that help to explain away
present failure (see Dean, 2008; Wilson, 2014), and a growing subset of this literate has
applied this analysis to environmental governance in particular (see Fletcher, 2013a,
2013b, 2014; Stavrakakis, 1997; Swyngedouw, 2011). Drawing on this, we contend here that
decoupling can be understood as a central fantasy of neoliberal environmental
governance obfuscating the fundamental tension between the indefinite economic
growth and the environmental sustainability this fantasy insists are reconcilable.

What is Decoupling?
UNEP’s reports remain the most extensive effort to outline a decoupling strategy to date and
contain most of the elements contained in similar proposals. The first report explains that
‘decoupling means using less [sic] resources per unit of economic output and reducing
the environmental impact of any resources that are used or economic activities that are
undertaken’ (UNEP, 2011a, p. xv). In a foreword to the report, former UNEP Executive Director
Achim Steiner elaborates, ‘Decoupling at its simplest is reducing the amount of resources such
as water or fossil fuels used to produce economic growth and delinking economic development
from environmental deterioration’ (Steiner, 2011, p. xiii).
The report proceeds by first explicitly acknowledging the limits to growth debate, asserting that
‘it is time to recognize the limits to the natural resources available to support human
development and economic growth’ (2011a, p. 74). At the same time, UNEP asserts that
economic growth remains necessary to reduce poverty; as Steiner states,
it is clear in a world of nearly seven billion people, climbing to around nine billion in 40
years’ time, that growth is needed to lift people out of poverty and to generate
employment for the soon to be two billion people either unemployed or underemployed.
(2011, p. xiii)
Yet, this necessity for growth must confront the reality that ‘[o]n a worldwide scale,
resource consumption is steeply on the rise ... and resource consumption is still a
reliable companion of economic prosperity’ (von Weizsa¨cker & Khosla, 2011, p. xi). Hence,
UNEP advances decoupling as ‘a necessary precondition for reducing the levels of
global inequality and eventually eradicating poverty’ (2011a, p. 75) while remaining within
biophysical resource limits. Indeed, the organization asserts in a subsequent report that ‘to
maintain stable future economies and natural life support systems, resource productivity
increases would need to be greater than the rate of economic growth for the world as a whole.
This is called “decoupling”’ (UNEP, 2014, p. 6). Hennike, one of the reports’ main authors,
elsewhere states simply that ‘Staying within “planetary boundaries” is impossible without
decoupling’ (2014, p. 1).
The case for decoupling is grounded in a series of key conceptual distinctions. The first is
between ‘relative’ and ‘absolute’ decoupling, the former designating a reduction in ‘the rate of
use of (primary) resources per unit of economic activity. This “dematerialization” is based on
using less material, energy, water and land resources for the same economic output’ (2011a, p.
xxiv). Absolute decoupling, by contrast, describes an overall decrease in resource use even as
the total economy grows. UNEP likens this scenario to the (in)famous Environmental Kuznet
Curve.
The second key distinction is between ‘resource’ (i.e. input) and ‘impact’ (i.e. output) decoupling,
where ‘resource decoupling could be referred to as increasing resource productivity, and impact
decoupling as increasing ecoefficiency’ (2011a, p. xxiv). Third, UNEP distinguishes ‘material’
from ‘immaterial’ resources, the former being those ‘whose value is characterized by the
qualities that render it useful for certain applications’ (2011a, p. xxi) and the latter those ‘whose
use has no effect on the qualities that make them useful; nor can they easily be given an
economic value’ (2011a, p. xxi). The main material resources UNEP identifies are energy,
materials, water and land (2011a, p. xxii) while examples of immaterial resources include ‘the
song of a bird inspiring a composer’ and ‘the shine of a star used by a captain to find his way’
(2011a, p. xxi). The key difference between these categories, of course, is that unlike material
resources ‘[u]sing immaterial resources does not change the qualities that make them useful, or
reduce the range of available applications’ (2011a, p. xxi).
Finally, UNEP differentiates ‘economic’ and ‘physical’ growth, the former designating an
increase in GDP or similar financial measures of economic value, the latter representing the
material inputs and stockpiles providing the basis for this value.
It is in terms of these various distinctions that the case for decoupling unfolds, the main
objective being to promote ‘non-material economic growth’ that minimizes physical growth
based in material resources, thereby increasing the gap between economic value, resource use,
and environmental impact—a dynamic termed ‘dematerialization’. In this way, UNEP asserts, ‘it
becomes conceptually possible for economic growth (defined now as money flow, or value) to
be decoupled from physical growth of the economy (material resource accumulation and
consumption) and associated environmental pressures’ (2011a, p. 34). But the discussion goes
much further than this, quoting Ekins (2000) favorably as contending,
It is clear from past experience that the relationship between the economy’s value and
its physical scale is variable, and that it is possible to reduce the material intensity of
GNP. This establishes the theoretical possibility of GNP growing indefinitely in a finite
material world. (in UNEP, 2011a, p. 34, emphasis in original)
Achieving this requires a paradigm shift in which ‘prosperity ceases to mean increasing
consumption of material goods’ and instead becomes geared toward the desire to
‘participate meaningfully and creatively in the life of society’ (2011a, p. 35)—for, as
Gallopin points out, ‘While demographic growth and material economic growth must
eventually stabilize, cultural, psychological, and spiritual growth is not constrained by
physical limits’ (2003, p. 27; in UNEP, 2011a, p. 34).
Through which mechanism is decoupling to be achieved? UNEP’s answer, simply stated, is
‘innovation’:
The key to decoupling in practice will be innovations that make it possible to increase
resource productivity, thereby reducing metabolic rates ... Innovation for resource
productivity, therefore, may well define the core challenge for sustainable resource
management for the coming decades. (2011a, p. 38)

The report is quick to claim that this is not a mere ‘ techno-fix’ , however, highlighting two
forms of innovation—‘institutional innovation’ and ‘relational innovation’—in addition to
technological advance.
While UNEP acknowledges that ‘state intervention is required to sustain high levels of
consistent investment in innovation’ (2011a, p. 38), the main mechanisms proposed for
this intervention are quintessentially neoliberal . While qualifying that ‘there is clearly no
“one size fits all” prescription or instrument’ for implementing its vision, UNEP’s follow-up 2014
report claims that decoupling ‘is often best stimulated by creating favourable conditions for
investment in resource productive innovation, and letting market forces provide the best
solutions’ (2014, p. 12). This report identifies ‘a number of areas where current policy
structures coming out of past government decisions steer economies away from resource
productivity’, specifically mentioning: (1) ‘Subsidies of up to US$1.1 trillion each year for
resource consumption’; (2) ‘Taxation of people’s work through labour taxes’, which ‘[t]ogether
with distortions from subsidisation of resources ... reduces the return on investment in resource
efficient technologies and techniques’; and (3) ‘Regulatory frameworks for markets [that] have
often been created in ways that discourage long-term management of resources, but rather
promote their wasteful early use’ (2014, p. 10).
Sustaining the Fantasy
While the perspective outlined above appears optimistic about the potential of
decoupling to achieve its lofty goal of reducing global poverty by stimulating
environmentally sustainable economic growth, UNEP’s own analysis in fact strongly
undermines itself in a variety of ways, revealing a reality quite at odds with its
enthusiastic proclamations. In this way, UNEP follows a common strategy in which
(a) a statement of a win-win scenario, i.e. the opportunities that globalization and
agribusiness open up for the ‘poor’, [is] followed by (b) a caveat in the form of a reality
check usually starting with a ‘but’, which emphasises the challenges in achieving the
desired win-win scenario. (Oya, 2009, p. 597; see also Li, 2011)
In terms of both conceptual and empirical substantiation, the 2011 report admits, the decoupling
concept remains largely vacuous: ‘The conceptual framework for decoupling and understanding
of the instrumentalities for achieving it are still in an infant stage’ (von Weizsa¨cker & Khosla,
2011, p. xi). Empirically, meanwhile, decoupling is quite difficult to measure, a difficulty
compounded in the case of impact decoupling:
Socio-technical changes that have reduced negative environmental impacts in the
past may have resulted in the decoupling of economic growth from certain
specific impacts, while other impacts remained unchanged or even accelerated .
Therefore, it can be problematic to consider impact decoupling in general without
acknowledging that specific interventions can have unintended consequences or
else ignore some impacts. It follows that it may be difficult to design a system-wide
set of interventions capable of decoupling resource use from all negative
environmental impacts simultaneously. (2011a, p. xxvi)
In short, ‘Across those scale levels, impact decoupling is not easy to assess’ (2011a, p. 19).
Burton (2016b), for example, highlights the serious methodological uncertainties behind recent
data from the World Resources Institute and others pointing to absolute decoupling in carbon
emissions.
The limited evidence for decoupling that does exist generally refers to relative decoupling, since
‘[a]bsolute reductions in resource use are rare’ (2011a, p. xxv). And even in places where some
relative decoupling seems to have occurred, UNEP acknowledges that this may be offset by ‘a
shifting of the material and environmental burden into developing countries’ (2011a, p. 16)
through offshoring production. For example:
Even in the two countries which arguably have made the most explicit efforts
towards decoupling, Japan and Germany, and where at first glance domestic
resource consumption shows stabilization or even a modest decline, deeper analysis
shows that many goods contain parts that have been produced abroad using
major amounts of energy, water and minerals. Thus some of the advanced
countries are managing the problem of high resource intensity by ‘ exporting’ it
elsewhere . The Report observes that trade—not surprisingly—is generally enhancing
energy use and resource flows and thus, overall, impeding rather than promoting
decoupling. (2011a, p. xi)
In addition, UNEP recognizes that evident decoupling may be further offset by ‘a “rebound
effect”, or more accurately a Jevons Paradox , in which ‘ efficiency gains in resource use
may paradoxically lead to greater resource use’ (2011a, p. xvi). In sum, the 2014 report
admits, ‘breaking the link between human well-being and resource consumption is
necessary and possible but in reality is hardly happening’ (2014, p. xii).

It is at this point, then, that the disavowal begins in earnest. Despite the preceding
admissions of methodological complexities, for instance, UNEP elsewhere claims evidence for
some modest relative resource decoupling on a global scale:
Annual global resource extraction and use increased from about 7 billion tons (7 Gt) in
1900 to about 55 billion tons (55 Gt) in 2000, with the main shift being from renewable
biotic resources to nonrenewable mineral ones. Even in the existing economic
environment of continuously declining resource prices, some decoupling of resource use
from economic activity has taken place: the world economy has been dematerializing.
(2011a, p. 17, emphasis added)
In this statement, dramatically increasing resource extraction is interpreted as evidence of
dematerialization itself!
Gender
 Natives links
Citizenship for natives is recognized based on a patriarchal system – the
government’s conception of borders and who owns land assumes that
natives are incapable of holding onto territory because their culture does
not invest in territorial masculinity
Gurr, 2014
(Barbara, WGSS Teaching Advisor and Associate Professor at the University of
Connecticut, “Reproductive Justice,” Accessed via Project Muse, Date Accessed:
7/27/17 – KSA)
For example, the Dawes Allotment Act of 1887 imposed heteropatriarchal land ownership
on Native people as part of the effort to transform traditional collective relationships with
land into a more individualized model consistent with the US conceptualization of private
ownership. Native families were required to register a male head of household in order to
be allotted a segment of agency land, which was then to be inherited through male
primogeniture. These registration lists continue in the early twenty-first century to inform Tribal
enrollment criteria for many Native nations, as they provide an early census of Tribal
membership. The Dawes Act also furthered the national production of a collective
ethnicity by releasing Native land previously held in trust by the federal government to
be settled by white settlers and developed by growing industrial business interests,
further fracturing and reducing Native landholdings originally guaranteed by treaty.
According to the historian Judith Nies (1996), between 1881 and 1900 Native landholdings were
cut in half, from 155 million acres to 77 million. By the end of the nineteenth century, official
policy had not only severely reduced Native lands, it also allowed for federal control of
Tribal resources in trust for Native peoples, further eroding notions of Tribal sovereignty
and inaugurating a formal status for Native nations as wards of the government rather than
citizens of their own Tribal communities or even the US as a whole. 56 • Chapter 5 Ironically,
political moves such as the Dawes Act, intended to further assimilate Native Americans into
the American mainstream, also further implicated the federal government in a paternalistic
role unique to its relationship with Native people. The status of Native nations as wards of
the government whose land is held in trust is certainly a direct rejection of political sovereignty
for Native nations; simultaneously, however, this paternalistic relationship furthers the
responsibilities of the federal government to care for its Native citizens. This increasingly
demonstrated federal conceptualization of Native nations as a type of subnation within the
larger collective, similar to a special interest group but with quasi-sovereign status. This view
was reinforced by the 1924 Indian Citizenship Act, in which Congress granted US
citizenship to all Native people. As citizens of the United States and of their state of
residence, Native people became eligible for all benefits of US citizenship, including social
welfare programs; however, the act further complicated concepts of Native identity by
essentially imposing a tripartite citizenship, as Native people became de facto citizens of
their regional state and the United States as well as their Tribal nation. The control over
Native identities assumed by the US government has encouraged reliance on formalized
blood quantum rules to validate claims to Native identity and increasingly restrictive
mechanisms for achieving federal recognition of Tribal status, as discussed further below and in
the next chapter.
 Vaccines – natives
Medicine, particularly vaccines, were used as a form of imperialism to
sequester native populations or for strategic value to wipe out “hostile”
natives - even when health care is provided it is not adequate and feeds
into a history that promotes westernized values
Gurr, 2014
(Barbara, WGSS Teaching Advisor and Associate Professor at the University of
Connecticut, “Reproductive Justice,” Accessed via Project Muse, Date Accessed:
7/27/17 – KSA)
Imperialist Medicine Along with treaties and war, medicine and health care also served the
goals of the settler State’s ambitions. The origins of sustained efforts to utilize Western
medicine in Indian Country began in earnest in the late 1700s with the use—and testing—
of smallpox vaccines among Native American Tribes, most notably the Arikara and Mandan.
Diane Pearson (2004) argues that these vaccinations were an essential aspect of the
imperialist agenda of American expansion, as medical treatments were used as trade
items and to generate goodwill among Native communities. Western medicines were not
offered universally to Native groups; availability of vaccinations was limited by geographic
isolation as well as limited funds (Brown 2006; see also Pearson 2003). Significantly, they
were also withheld from those groups occupying valued territory or presenting a
possibly hostile resistance to American expansion (Pearson 2003; Rockwell 2010). This
was particularly apparent with the Indian Vaccination Act of 1832, the first piece of legislation
specifically targeting Native American health. Rockwell argues that “vaccinations were less an
example of generous social policymaking and more an example of a means to facilitate
removals and broader policy” (2010, 152), noting that decisions about whom to vaccinate
and when aided Native American allies, bolstered economic partnerships, and excluded
Natives seen as enemies. Producing the Double Discourse • 57 The growing prevalence of
medical care as an enticement in treaty negotiations throughout the nineteenth century is linked
to the emerging health needs in Native communities at this time. Contact and interactions
with European and European American social, political, and military forces produced
social chaos for many Native communities as well as introducing what David Stannard refers to
as “microbial pestilence” (1992, xii). The strategic availability of Western medicine to certain
communities, particularly through treaty negotiations, thus became a tool of medical
imperialism as it was increasingly sought by Native communities but its distribution was
dictated by State interests. For example, in the 1836 treaty between the United States and the
Ottawa and Ojibwe peoples (the first time health care in exchange for land was explicitly offered
in a treaty between the United States and Native nations), the federal government promised
to provide annual payments for vaccines and other medicines as well as the service of a
physician as long as the Ottawa and Ojibwe remained on their treaty-allotted land. Thus
access to health care was contingent upon meeting State-mandated conditions, and these
conditions specifically included a physical containment of Native bodies, separate from the
general population. By the beginning of the twentieth century, the indigenous population,
which had numbered in the millions in the mid-sixteenth century, had been reduced by
wars, starvation, epidemics, forced relocations, and numerous massacres to
approximately 228,000 (Snipp 1991). Confined to reservations, often denied access to
resources such as nutritious food, traditional ceremonies, and adequate housing, the
health conditions of Native people were truly dire. The most visible victims of the
widespread health crisis in Indian Country were children and infants. In an attempt to curtail the
near-daily deaths of Native children across the country, in 1912 Commissioner of Indian Affairs
Robert Valentine ordered all Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) field agents to “take immediate
steps to greatly reduce infant mortality. Save the babies!” (quoted in Emmerich 1997). The
entire BIA was mustered in service to the health of Native children, though it was field matrons
in particular, the white women who provided health care and education in reservation
communities, who served on the front lines of the campaign. The focus on the well-being of
Indian children presented a strategic opportunity to further assimilate Native families
through the doctrine of scientific motherhood, an ideology that combined European
American gender roles (particularly around femininity) and European American
valorization of empirical science. The concepts that formed the foundation of scientific
motherhood were predicated on racial and ethnic divides that presumed Northern
European superiority. Indigenous practices were devalued and displaced as Native
women were encouraged to adopt the European American tenets of female,
heteronormative domesticity that dominated the late Progressive era. 58 • Chapter 5 Field
matrons, baby clinics, mandatory educational sessions, and even baby festivals and
competitions promoted European American notions of hygiene and disease prevention for
babies and children, while Native parenting practices, such as the use of cradle-boards, were
actively discouraged. Native mothers, in particular, were framed by the Bureau of Indian
Affairs as incompetent and even dangerous to the well-being of their children, and many
children were removed, often permanently, from their homes and families during these
years (see Emmerich 1997). Indian Agent Walter West, the superintendent on the Southern Ute
Agency during the campaign era, wrote that a special effort has been made to impress upon the
. . . Indian mothers, the necessity of taking proper care of children, and to teach them . . . the
better methods of caring for and feeding the young [by] showing the advantage of vaccination of
children . . . daily bathing for baby, children sleeping alone, offering the baby frequent drinks of
boiled water, etc. . . . also the disadvantages of . . . putting babies in tight bound native
containers, lack of proper care of person and clothing of child. (Department of the Interior 1917)
Specially designed education sessions and festivals were often held on “pay day,” the
day when enrolled members of a Tribe could obtain from government agents the
commodity supplies (most often food) promised in their treaty agreements. Access to
resources was often linked to programs such as these as well as church attendance (Powers
1986). The coerced attendance at such events was not always entirely successful, but many
Native women embraced these efforts as traditional subsistence practices, family forms, and
healing modalities were increasingly distorted or destroyed through the reservation system, or
simply could not be accessed, or were no longer effective in meeting the new challenges
brought on by colonization. Many European American practices undoubtedly benefited the
health of Native children, although their value was contingent on the distortion of previous
ways of living and the simultaneous move to a poorly resourced reservation system. The
promise of better health thereby became further entrenched in assimilation efforts by
progressively displacing indigenous knowledge and practices and linking access to treaty rights
such as commodities to the assimilative efforts of churches and the BIA’s education sessions. In
some ways, the preconception care model of the early twenty-first century is reminiscent
of the Save the Babies campaign of the early twentieth century: the ultimate goal is healthy
babies, not necessarily healthy women, and the strategies embedded in each approach
reflect heteropatriarchal assumptions about women’s roles as mothers, while relegating
their health (as mothers, as women, as adolescents) to a secondary status in relation to
Producing the Double Discourse • 59 potential or real children. At the same time, just as the
Save the Babies campaign provided genuine relief to at least some degree, preconception care
may also work to reduce maternal and infant morbidity and mortality. As well, both campaigns
incorporated or have the potential to address longstanding social contexts that contribute to
poor health conditions. The infant mortality rate did indeed decrease through the efforts of the
Save the Babies campaign, but the overall health of Native people continued to deteriorate.
Health facilities on reservations in the early twentieth century were poorly equipped and
poorly staffed, despite high rates of tuberculosis, trachoma, smallpox, and other
infectious diseases as well as ongoing high rates of infant mortality. The majority of health
care was provided in off-reservation facilities, requiring Native patients to be removed, often for
long periods of time, from their families and communities. At the same time, Native peoples’
access to their traditional healing practices was increasingly curtailed. The
criminalization of Native spiritual practices through the 1883 Indian Religious Crimes
Code and the 1892 Rules for Indian Courts limited the ability of Native people to seek
tradition-oriented healing modalities, thus increasingly restricting them to the poorly
articulated health-care model offered by the federal government. For Native women,
restrictions were further imposed by the ongoing social dislocation of lay midwives, brought on
by the professionalization of medical practice in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
Queerness
 Stem
STEM creates an environment where queer people feel like they have to
pass – leads to ressentiment
Hughes 2017
(Bryce E., Assistant Teaching Professor Adult and Higher Education at Montana
State University, “Managing by Not Managing”: How Gay Engineering Students
Manage Sexual Orientation Identity,” Journal of College Student Development,
Volume 58, Number 3, April 2017, pp. 385-401 (Article), Accessed via Project
Muse, Date Accessed: 7/27/17 – KSA)
Sexual Minorities in Engineering and Other STEM Fields Research on sexual minorities in
STEM is scarce. In the only prior empirical study of sexual minority engineering students, Cech
and Waidzunas (2009, 2011) found that lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) engineering
students at one university experienced barriers and challenges unique to being sexual
minorities that impeded their academic success, their participation in professional
networks, and their ability to integrate their sexual orientation with their emerging
professional identity (Cech & Waidzunas, 2009). For example, one student reported
overhearing classmates use the slur “faggot” while another had been told by a peer to
keep her sexual orientation to herself. Students also reported gendered expectations
within engineering related to stereotypes of gay and lesbian people—specifically, gay
men’s credibility as engineers was called into question due to being stereotyped as
feminine (Cech & Waidzunas, 2011). Participants in Bilimoria and Stewart’s (2009) study of
LGB science and engineering faculty echoed these findings. Faculty and students in both of
these studies described a heteronormative environment where sexual orientation simply
was not discussed (Bilimoria & Stewart, 2009; Cech & Waidzunas, 2011). April 2017 ◆ vol 58
/ no 3 387 Managing Sexual Orientation Identity Heteronormativity is the cultural
presumption that heterosexuality is preferable to any other expression of sexual
orientation and is rooted in a binary understanding of gender (Chandler & Munday, 2011).
The result is the normalization of heterosexuality within engineering and a consequent
perception that sexual minorities are incompatible with the field (Cech & Waidzunas,
2009). Many felt a need to compartmentalize their lives and pass, meaning they
continually monitored their interactions with others so as not to inadvertently disclose
their sexual orientation to others (Woods & Lucas, 1993; Yoshino, 2006). Unfortunately,
compartmentalization led to internal anguish and participants often isolated themselves
from their colleagues and peers as a result (Bilimoria & Stewart, 2009; Cech & Waidzunas,
2011). Possibly the silence in the literature on the experiences of sexual minorities in
STEM is reflective of a cultural silence around LGBT issues within these fields
 Vaccines
Medicine and vaccines are never neutral – only privileged bodies get
access to medicines and even when minority populations do get
vaccinated that comes after a long history of problematic practices and
experiments
Brown, 2015
(Jayna, Associate professor of English and ethnic studies at the University of
California, Riverside, “Being Cellular: Race, the Inhuman, and the Plasticity of
Life,” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, Volume 21, Numbers 2-3,
June 2015, pp. 321-341 (Article), Accessed via Project Muse, Date Accessed:
7/27/17 – KSA)
In our historical moment, it could be argued that the lives of most humans are mediated in
some way by science and technology. But not all bodies are scientized in the same way.
While privileged bodies enjoy life-enhancing scientific processes such as vaccines, organ
transplants, and other sophisticated medical procedures, other, often racialized bodies
become useful as raw sources and labor, valued for their biological capacities. As studies
of medical racism show, black people have historically been objects of scientific
exploration and the involuntary recipients of painful, often fatal medical practices. The
mass production of HeLa cells first began at Tuskegee at the same time that doctors
were conducting syphilis experiments on black men at Tuskegee’s medical facility. Black
men and women have been continually surveilled, cataloged, and experimented on. With these
histories in mind, it is understandable that telling Lacks’s story would be an attempt to
posthumously grant her the humanity such invasive practices negated for so many others.

Embracing inhumanness is key to rupture problematic medical practices

and associations of disease with black, queer, and disabled bodies
Brown, 2015
(Jayna, Associate professor of English and ethnic studies at the University of
California, Riverside, “Being Cellular: Race, the Inhuman, and the Plasticity of
Life,” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, Volume 21, Numbers 2-3,
June 2015, pp. 321-341 (Article), Accessed via Project Muse, Date Accessed:
7/27/17 – KSA)
We see this anxiety around HeLa cells, as they have spread rapidly and thoroughly.
Because of their initial wide dispersal, HeLa cells reside in laboratories across the nation.
The cells’ “unusually malignant behavior” has enabled them to invade all cell lines that
scientists believed to be separate, invalidating decades of cancer research. HeLa’s legacy
of sabotage lives on, with the 2013 discovery of HeLa contamination found in bladder cancer
cell lines. The initial discovery of the contamination instantly brought to the attention of
scientists and the public the fact that Henrietta Lacks was black, and the first scientist to
declare the contamination assumed that her race was the reason for the cells’ unusual
power to reproduce.87 All sorts of racial narratives resonated with this case, including
white fear of racial miscegenation and the oversexualization of black women, as well as
the injustice of Lacks’s family surviving in poverty while huge profits are made from their
mother’s cells. Black, queer, and disabled people know what it is to be considered
inhuman. We feel the politics by which the human is legitimated, how the lines around
the human are policed, and the inhuman ways that racialized, disabled, and queer bodies
are treated. We are painfully aware of “the way power is present in any attempt to represent
material reality.”88 But we (an assumptive we, not a falsely inclusive one) are less ethically
bound to honor the boundaries of a bodily sovereignty never granted to us.89 What
would it look like to take as our provocation the idea that we embrace our inhumanness?
To let go of the assumption of heteronormative human (and racial) superiority, and open
up to new forms of sociality and modes of being? Henrietta Lacks lived on past the human.
The continuing life of the HeLa cell line troubles the boundaries between the human and
the inhuman, in much the same way that poor, black bodies across the world do. Perhaps a
history of cervical cancer may reveal the inhumane ways that medical science has
neglected black, disabled, and queer people, as well as the environmental factors that
helped create the vibrant HeLa cells in the first place. I am tempted to personify HeLa
myself. But my interpretation would be that Henrietta Lacks has had a truly ironic revenge. She
has invaded, and will not leave, as she haunts the labs, wreaking havoc for generations.
338 GLQ: A JOURNAL OF LESBIAN and
 Impact framing
Discourses that prioritize extinction level impacts are problematic because
they presume a form of biological connection and reproductivity
Brown, 2015
(Jayna, Associate professor of English and ethnic studies at the University of
California, Riverside, “Being Cellular: Race, the Inhuman, and the Plasticity of
Life,” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, Volume 21, Numbers 2-3,
June 2015, pp. 321-341 (Article), Accessed via Project Muse, Date Accessed:
7/27/17 – KSA)
This essay is profoundly interested in the plasticity of life and the possibilities, real and
imagined, for “utterly new mode(s) of existence.” It reaches for the potential for alternative
versions of life and liveliness. I seek to reclaim “life” from its association with
heteronormative reproduction and family structures and the human rights discourses
that attach themselves to the term. I seek to detach it from conservative “right to life”
discourse as well as a liberal politics of inclusivity, including the plea for societal recognition
in the political agendas of some LGBTQI and POC social movements. I wonder if reparation and
restoration to the category human is enough of an aim. Claims that human life depends on
being socially legible ironically reinscribe a politics of exclusion. I also call into question a
persistent biological determinism that tries to assign value and meaning to particular
biological formations. Thinking about cells invites speculation about alternative
genealogies outside the heteronormative model. What other forms of kinship, and mutual
care, are possible when we let go of this model? Science has allowed for African
Americans to search for their ancestors through tracing their DNA. While the search for a
restored human connection is an exciting use of new technologies, we might take further
advantage of these scientific abilities to explore the queerness of the biological, to
broaden our thoughts about biological life away from notions of ancestral descendancy to
the possibility of ethical connections and political affiliations that do not rely on being
related. DNA similarity does not restore a lost kinship; in fact, it can be interpreted as
erasing the very foundations of kinship as based in heterosexual reproduction
set col supplement
 link – natives aff
Increasing the accessibility of Native education only re-affirms the logic
and myths of colonization – that re-sutures violent narratives of Manifest
Manners while depoliticizing resistance movements – the alternative is a
native humanistic tease that rejects the imposition of meaning onto
indigeneity entirely
Athanasiu 16. Eva Marie, Thesis in the Faculty of Information, University of Toronto,
Survivance Stories: Indigenous Resistance and Cultural Labour in Canada, 2016 //saenl
Manifest manners erase Indigenous presence and experience.
3.6 DEMYSTIFYING MANIFEST MANNERS
These “treacherous and elusive” (Vizenor, 1994, p. 8) practices and ways of thinking reduce
histories of colonial violence to oneor two-line false narratives of polite engagements in
nation-building. “[H]ow ironic”, writes Vizenor (1994), “that the most secure simulations are unreal
sensations […]” (p. 8). Vizenor derives simulations from two sources. The first is Jean Baudrillard (1994), who wrote about
tactics of deception ; in the sphere of manifest manners, these are deployed under the pretense of
truth, justice, and good governance . The second is manifest destiny, a belief that structures the
superiority of non-Indigenous settlers above Indigenous peoples. This belief, argues Vizenor
(1994), “ would cause the death of millions of tribal people from massacres, diseases, and

the loneliness of reservations ” (p. 4). Non-Indigenous cultural work supported agendas of
annihilation . Quoting from American literary scholar Larzer Ziff’s Writing in the New Nation, Vizenor (1994) observes how “[…] masters of
manifest manners in the nineteenth century, and earlier […] used words to replace rather than to
represent Indian reality” (p. 8). For example, the word Indian: “[…] a navigational miscalculation, an
unintended maritime invention, but the irony becomes a political simulation 33 of the
thousands of distinct Native cultures […and] strengthened the notion of Natives as an
absence ” (Vizenor, 2012, p. 31-32). Through literature, film, photography, and memories
institutionalized in archives, cultural production perpetuates absence : “[…] the
surveillance of the social science and the invention of the other concealed the genius of natural

the shimmer of survivance stories ” (Vizenor, 1999, p. 168). Manifest

reason, the ironies of tribal imagination, and

manners replaced “[d]ynamic Native cultures, the crucial economic experiences of

continental trade routes, the diplomatic savoir faire of the fur trade, and the mastery of trickster stories and
other creative narratives that anticipated postmodern literary discourse […]” (Vizenor, 2012, p. 26).
In Section 3.7, I elaborate on the violence and potential healing of education, but it is important to
discuss the role of academic predecessors who built the institutions in which I learn and
from which I benefit. Gramsci’s theory of cultural hegemony (2003) includes a network of political
and civil activities designed to coerce populations under their rule . Gramsci points out how
systems of education reproduce state-sanctioned cultural narratives ,
portraying this work as serving a “positive educative function”; thus
the oppressor can position itself as a benevolent educator (p. 258). Vizenor (2012)
universities support and produce manifest manners : “[…] the mundane drivel of
addresses how

untold numbers of scientific studies, structuralist models, dubious empirical documents,

federal reports […] thousands of doctoral dissertations dominated the interpretations and
considerations of Native cultures. This putative archive has engendered simulations,
perverted Native epistemologies, and generated a historical absence of Natives ” (pp. 26-27).
Vizenor addresses the archival function of education systems , and brings our attention
to projects of absence . Emma LaRocque (2015) emphasizes how imperative it is to counter archives of absence: “[…] as long
as all the racist and dehumanizing archival, historical and literary portrayals continue to
circulate in our library and publication systems ”, writes LaRocque, “ we are put in a situation of
having to continually address this materially, especially as each new generation of
students enter our classrooms […] we are not in a position to ‘resist no longer’ ” (p. 20).
LaRocque, Jason Edward Lewis, and Smith explain that imagining the outcome of struggle requires presence. “Our absence from the
future imaginaries of the settler culture should worry 34 us,” writes Lewis (2014); “ Absence implies non-existence, or, at the very
least, non-importance. A people that are absent in the future need not be consulted in the
present about how that future comes about. A culture that is assumed not to be important one hundred
years from now can be discounted now, for what are the consequences?” (p. 58). Imagining the outcome of struggle is
particularly important when reflecting on the vision of the colonial project. Smith (2012) identifies imagination as a crucial element: “Colonialism
was, in part, an image of imperialism, a particular realization of the imperial imagination. It
was also, in part, an image of the future nation it would become” (p. 43). During the nineteenth century, non-
Indigenous simulations of Indigenous peoples blossomed in the cultural imagination of
North America; these tactics of deception (Vizenor, 2009) persist . For example, Canada’s origin story
continues to grow from a dubious cultural narrative, the white settler colony myth (Abele and Stasiulis, 1989, p.
269). The myth re-presents national development with a story of social and economic progress, built from white male settler labour; first in the fur and
lumber trades, and eventually through industrialized systems of production, including farming and manufacturing. These efforts culminated in a period
between the late 1860s and the First World War, which Abele and Stasiulis (1989) note is often referred to as a “key formative period of Canadian
development […] the ‘age of classical monopoly capitalism’” (pp. 243-244). Digging deeper into this portrayal of Canada’s growth, Abele and Stasiulis
(1989) remind readers how the narrative excludes the experiences and contributions of Indigenous workers, as well as other non-Indigenous or non-
Anglophone immigrants, including women and children. “Few workers match this image in any society, and certainly in Canada at any period” (p. 169).
Even more troubling, is the
erasure of Indigenous survivance stories: Seeing Canada as a white
settler colony denies, first, the significance of the very long period of Native occupation,
before Europeans arrived. It does not provide, either an accurate description of the early contact period (which lasted at least three hundred years).
Few of the first Europeans were settlers. They came with the commercial objective of harnessing Native labour power for profit, and there was a long
period of struggle over the terms of this commercial relationship […] Native labour and Native resistance were crucial for early class and state
formation. (p. 268) 35 The white settler colony myth drags a harmful and persistent Canadian history, in which Indigenous experiences and histories
are presented as optional and other, rather than as legitimate, challenging, and productive. The myth is also an economic narrative, minimizing
contributions of Indigenous workers in building the Canadian nation-state. Thus, Canada’s
economic growth is detached from the work of Indigenous peoples, who are portrayed as hindering
economic development. The age of classical monopoly capitalism—a period presented in non-Indigenous histories as one of immense political and
economic growth—coincides with legislation produced to suppress and regulate the actions and identities of Indigenous peoples: the Indian Act of
The Indian Act
1876. A consolidation of earlier documents, the Act culminated in the codification of Preconfederation methods.
prescribed the naming and identification of Indigenous peoples and the governance of
Indigenous communities; later amendments controlled education , relocation, cultural
practices , and many other facets of gathering , contributing , and proclaiming
Indigenous ways of being. McCallum (2014) addresses concerted efforts in her own discipline to create Indigenous absence, in

particular ignoring Indigenous labour histories: “Until

recently, imperialism and Canadian nation building have
been understood as two distinct projects, often distinguished by the world wars” (p. 10). History developed as a discipline
from a nationalist imperative; “[…] the idea that Canadian history should fashion, foster, and defend the

Canadian nation and the identity of Canadians is foundational to its existence as a profession” (p. 236).
This process, circling around the imaginary nation-state, “[…] subtly and unsubtly presents […] Canadian history, as not the project of Aboriginal
people and non-white people more generally” (p. 236). The history McCallum critiques is a project of absence; “it is always easier for historians to find
proof of absence than of presence when it comes to Native people,” she writes, “and especially when it comes to Native women.” Calling other
professional historians to action, she declares “[w]e must be careful not use absence as a method and a foundation of our work” (2014, p. 10).
McCallum introduces absence, not only as a facet of historical narratives, but also as a practice . The antidote is to
build memory from presence . 36 Myth, rooted in the work of Roland Barthes (1991) is a type of speech, constructed and imposed
onto a cultural text in order to manipulate its perceived meaning. Destructive transformation is a critical aspect of
the process; myth is “ depoliticized speech ” (p. 142; italics added for emphasis). Barthes’ declaration suggests the
first sign is ultimately political, bearing purpose and persuasion. Myths are especially deceptive in their
trickery. For example, reflecting on the UN Declaration for the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Arthur Manuel
(2015) explains how the document emerged from concerted efforts to denounce […] the innocent-sounding doctrine of
discovery, which was the tool—the legal fiction— Europeans used to claim our lands for themselves […] The Americas were first portrayed as
terra nullius on European maps. But in almost all cases, Europeans were met, at times within minutes of their arrival, by Indigenous peoples […] the
doctrine of discovery remained because it was a legal fig leaf they could use to cover
naked thievery. (p. 3) Manuel’s use of legal fiction, fig leaf, and naked thievery highlight how the use of story facilitated and normalized
violence. In his guest editorial for the Canadian Journal of Native Education, Taiaiake Alfred (2011) writes about the myths produced by colonial nation-
states, and the antidotes available to Indigenous peoples. Describing contemporary colonialism with words and phrases such as deceptive, cloaks,
double-speak, and politics of distraction, Alfred argues that education can dismantle stories supporting the continued dispossession of Indigenous
peoples (p. 7). Alfred and Manuel show how myth loses its complicated history, becomes difficult to
decode, and achieves disturbing and “blissful clarity” (Barthes, 1991, p. 143). This
accomplishment diffuses potential interrogation, debate, and change : “[…] In passing from history to
nature, myth acts economically: it abolishes the complexity of human acts […]” (Barthes, 1991, p. 143),
reducing power structures to a simplified progression of normalcy. Barthes unearths the challenging crux of decoding any myth, namely the blithe
Myth does not
assuredness in its presentation; the way a myth slips easily into bodies of shared knowledge through apparent naturalization.

simply point to or suggest – it is; exists, enmeshed in the original sign without betraying
any sense of its intrusion : “…its function is to distort, not to make disappear” (Barthes, 37 1991, p. 120). Myth
semblances of grotesque masquerade loom heavy.
commits fully to the invisible transformation of the sign; still,

Through “ native humanistic tease ” (Vizenor, 2009, p. 85), Indigenous cultural workers can
subvert narratives such as the white settler colony myth (Abele and Stasiulis, 1989). Starting from Indigenous

historicity, workers can rebuild stories that are meaningful and functional, rejecting “the
notions and misnomers that are read as the authentic and sustained representations of
Native American Indians” (Vizenor, 1994, pp. 5-6). For example, Vizenor’s (2012) use of the term “[…] postindian
reduces the significance of the word indian by a simple prefix that indicates ‘after in
time,’ or after the invention of the indian and the simulation of Natives” (pp. 31-32).
 link – generic
Native schooling is inherently colonial – it leverages the false image of the
Indian over the realities of existence which normalizes control
Athanasiu 16. Eva Marie, Thesis in the Faculty of Information, University of Toronto,
Survivance Stories: Indigenous Resistance and Cultural Labour in Canada, 2016 //saenl

Oppressors use education to legitimize power and violence; normalizing their place
through a system of banking education , they “attempt to deny individuals the ability to
see themselves in the world”, and to see the world as transforming. They also “attempt to
destroy in the oppressed their quality as ‘considerers’ of the world” (Freire, 2000, p. 129).
Considering suggests reflecting and engaging; the capacity to continually act and reflect
is a critical component of Freire’s theory of humanization: “Human activity is praxis; it is transformation
of the world […it] is theory and practice; it is reflection and action” (2000, p. 125). Oppressors are incapable
of fully realizing these dynamic and productive systems. Denying these iterative processes—
theory and practice, reflection and action, continuation and transformation—is the praxis of domination , in which
oppressors deny peoples “ the right to say their own words and think their own
thoughts” (Freire, 2000, p. 126). Banking education creates a system of “[…] immobilizing and fixating forces”, which “fail to acknowledge men
and women as historical beings […]” (Freire, 2000, p. 84). Freire’s theory enmeshes Gramsci’s cultural hegemony (2003) and Barthes’ myth (1991);
Gramsci details how the educative function of the state essentially maintains and fulfills the desire for control, while Barthes exposes the role of myth in
creating seamless propaganda. Maskegon-Iskwew (2005) underscores the harm by citing Freire, explaining how a colonizer-colonized culture creates
“exclusionary conditions 39 […and] systematically submerges issues of race beneath a colourless version of liberal democracy… aggressively limiting
cultural specific dialogue” (p. 196). Two examples illustrate recent incidences of banking education. Artists Jackson2Bears and Renee Nejo share
memories of colonial
grade-school education. 2Bears is a scholar and multimedia artist; he contributed to the
Ghost Dance exhibition, and his work will be studied in Chapter 5—Analysis. Nejo is a video game designer whose work is featured in
kimiwan ‘zine, a publication focused on Indigenous culture; her work will also be studied in Chapter 5, along with other selections from kimiwan ‘zine. In
This is
his personal essay My Post-Indian Technological Autobiography, 2Bears (2014) recalls an experience that continues to haunt his work:
‘Indian week’ […] our classroom is vulgarly decorated with [….] a virtual dog’s breakfast of ‘Indian’
paraphernalia: teepees, totem poles, headdresses […] Being the only ‘Indian’ in my class […] I will
lead the group through a series of demeaning actions to the tune of Mother Goose’s ‘Ten
Little Indians’. (p. 13-14) In this quotation, 2Bears illustrates how educational institutions participate in
colonial violence . In Indigenous arts and culture zine kimiwan, Renee Nejo (2014) remembers the absence of Indigenous stories in the
classroom: When I was young, and we were starting to learn about Manifest Destiny in school, I couldn’t wait. This was a subject that I actually knew a
little about outside of school. It was part of who I am. I felt like my little heart had a lot to offer to the conversation, but when it came time to read in
class, that’s all we really did. There
was no discussion, no real interaction […] [t]his is what set the tone for me with
the banality of her educational experience, in which
regard to my identity: ‘nobody cares’. (p. 27) Nejo identifies
the institution denied its own humanity by excluding the history of the state that enabled
its existence. Freire deciphers manipulations by oppressors, much like Barthes’ theory of myths. Previous examples provided in the thesis,
selected from writing by Vizenor, Manuel, Abele and Stasiulis, and Alfred, show how storytelling can support and smooth the presentation of power;
shifting and twisting to maintain stability. Keira Ladner (2014) offers a useful comparison: “In
the past the government of
Canada employed the brute force of the state and legislatively destroyed 40 and
obliterated Indigenous sovereignty and Indigenous structures of governance” (p. 230). Similar to
Aguirre and Coulthard’s illustration of crisis-based modes of governance in Chapter 2—Literature Review, Ladner shows how conciliatory
policies loom large today; “acting as though its genocidal dreams have been realized […the]
state refuses to acknowledge or deal with any of the remnants of these structures […]” (p.
230). Educational institutions were deemed one of the most effective structures in which to
absent Indigenous peoples. In 19th century Canada, the Department of Indian Affairs (DIA) and Christian missionary churches
jointly organized non-Indigenous education of Indigenous children. The Indian Act granted the DIA control over the
education system, including the power to open and operate schools, and mandate attendance for
Indigenous children. McCallum (2014) emphasizes how “[e]ducation, in schools devised and controlled by non-Native people, had

always been a factor of the civilizing mission in Canada.” Continuing, she explains that, “[a] main goal of
federally controlled Indian education has been to reorient Native children away from
community , family, and culture towards the state and Canadian status quo citizenship” (p. 28). The
system was thus destructive, designed with the intent to pull community apart. The Canadian nation-state manipulated education
as an extensive vehicle of control, producing a system of myths reinforcing a colonizer-colonized set of hierarchies, denying Indigenous histories, and
The state designed and implemented school systems to service the aims
the hope for continuation.
of a white settler colony made in the image of its British imperial predecessors. Forced into residential schools,
children were, to borrow from the writing of Paulo Freire (2000), “’integrate[d]’ into the structure of
oppression” (p. 74). Freire also delves into “the myth of the industriousness of the oppressors and the laziness and dishonesty of the
oppressed, as well as myths of the natural inferiority of the latter and the superiority of the former” (p. 139); these myths were also at play in the
production of residential schools, integrating Freire’s banking education with “a paternalistic social action apparatus” (p. 74). False but powerful support
systems, these myths were reinforced through violence, including the physical, emotional and sexual abuse of students; the implementation of curricula
uninformed by the histories, spiritualties, or cultures of students and their families; restrictions on Indigenous proclamations, including bans on
speaking languages from home, forcing religious 41 conversion, and breaking family networks through the mandated removal of children from their
families to attend non-Indigenous schools. Detailing the dark intersections between institutional education and organized labour, McCallum (2014)
reveals that, “[…] Indian residential schools were fully dependent upon the manual labour of
Indian students ” and details “the clear function that Indian affairs played not only in the
training, but also in the recruitment , contracting , disciplining , and regulation of Native
labour ” (p. 236). McCallum points out how manual labour in residential schools had a gendered
educative function tied closely to the civilizing violence of colonialism: “Manual labour education was
strictly divided along gender lines, reflecting broader ideologies in Canadian society in which
‘suitable tasks’ were supposedly innate according to gender” (pp. 28- 29). As he writes, “outdoor work was
reserved for men, whereas women were confined to the indoor domestic sphere” (p. 236). The state used education and child

labour to build and reinforce the new colonial nation . Indigenous children were educated
in the mechanisms of low-wage and gendered labour, and attempts were made to
assimilate them by denying Indigenous histories and ways of being. The Truth and Reconciliation
Commission Final Report (2015) remembers how Indigenous families tried to change a system of violence. In a section called Resistance: ‘I am the
parents and students did resist
father of this child’, Justice Murray Sinclair retells these histories: Collectively and individually,

the residential school attack on Aboriginal families and communities. On occasion, they won
small victories : a child might be discharged; a day school might be built. However, as long
as Aboriginal people were excluded from positions of control over their children’s
education , the root causes of the conflict remained unresolved . (121) Children escaped
from schools—one of the most common ways to evade the system— supported other children, and created safe spaces in
the school; barricading a room to prevent staff from entering, for example (2015, p. 121). Some
attempted to burn their schools down. Parents kept children at home, often risking jail time and forsaking one of the only
formal education opportunities available, even if they wanted otherwise (p. 119). 42 Freire (2000) challenges banking education with problem-posing
education, which “[…] involves a constant unveiling of reality […] strives for the emergence of consciousness and critical intervention in reality” and
Problem-posing education is relevant in this thesis, because it
“takes the people’s historicity as their starting point” (pp. 81 and 84).
“affirms men and women as being in the process of becoming—as unfinished,

uncompleted beings in and with a likewise unfinished reality”, valuing individual

contributions to collective action (p. 84). Extending outward “[…] people develop the power to perceive critically the way

they exist in the world […] come to see the world not as a static reality, but as a reality in process , in
transformation ” (p. 83). Further in this thesis, in Chapter 5—Analysis, I will show how one of the participants considers Indigenous creation
stories precisely as a way to view the world as a constantly transforming entity, and to understand the roles of individuals within larger systems.
Freire’s theory of problem-posing education parallels Vizenor’s theory of survivance, and Simpson’s theory of resurgence, in which the continuation
and transformation of Indigenous cultures is a meaningful and necessary way of thinking.
 alt – shadow of the indian
Instead, we affirm the absence and shadow behind which the false image of
the Indian lies – that generates new forms of scholarship that inform
resistance – anything else is inauthentic banality which feeds the hand of
the colonizer
Howse 10. Erica, Degree of Master of Arts (Art History) at Concordia University, Postindians
and Reservation X: Individualism and Community Sovereignty in Contemporary North American
First Nations Arts Discourse, Library of Canada, Published Heritage Branch, April 2010 //saenl
PART V : Postindian Warriors of Survivance Vizenor's perspective has been accessed for this thesis mainly through two lengthy texts: Manifest
Manners (1994) and Postindian Conversations (1999), a transcribed interview conducted by Robert A. Lee.40 In 1928-29 René Magritte painted Ceci
n'est pas une pipe [Figure 5] as part of his series The Treachery of Images; in 1976 Andy Warhol created his American Indian Series and included
several silkscreen portraits of Russell Means (Lakota), Means having achieved the kind of celebrity Warhol considered as leader of the American
Indian Movement during the 1973 occupation of Wounded Knee. And in 1994 Vizenor put Warhol's portrait of Means on the cover of his text Manifest
Manners [Figure 6] and wrote of the image, "This portrait is not an Indian."41 Vizenor declares this image a sign, and as such a
signifier ofsomething known, nameable and therefore static. In the case of Magritte's Ceci ? 'est pas une pipe the point was that the pipe was only an
image, and not the thing itself, to make the viewer explicitly aware of the difference and the implied power of images. Through Baudrillard the
conclusion drawn is that there
is only an absence behind such a sign; ironically, however, the contradiction
between the statement and the image raises possibilities through the very
pronouncement: While Vizenor is a renowned fiction writer I do not have the space here to delve into that aspect. Postindian Conversations
does discuss some of his better known works at great length. 41 Gerald Vizenor, Manifest Manners, 1 8. 30 Russell Means ... is not a portrait of an
Indian. The portrait of an Indian, the silkscreen acrylic image of the American Indian by Andy Warhol, is denied by the assertion, 'This is not an Indian.'
The portraiture is the absence; the assertion is an ambiguous discourse on simulations and the sources oftribal identities.42 The ambiguity of the
phrase is important. When Vizenor writes that 'This is not an indiana he means also that behind the image is a postindian:
"Postindian simulations are the absence not the presence of the real, and neither
simulations of survivance nor dominance resemble the pleasurable vagueness of
consciousness."43 The use of the words presence and absence is significant. A presence is impossible in an image; the image is a re-
presentation, but Vizenor does offer in its stead the trace of the shadow and shadow survivance,
which are that 'pleasurable vagueness of consciousness.' He writes: The theories of structuralism, the myths of the universal and
unexpected harmonies, and objective dissociations of natural tribal reason are dubious
tropes to power in the literature of dominance. The simulations of manifest manners, causal
evidence, objectivism, and transitive action have no referent, no sense of postindian play in

language and experience , no shadows in silence, and no coherence of natural reason . The
tribal referent is in the shadows of heard stories; shadows are their own referent, and
shadows are the silence and simulations of survivance .44 As I understand Vizenor in these passages, he is
arguing for Appiah's space-clearing gesture, the shadow of the real in a simulation of survivance.
Survivance is another neologism of Vizenor's which means "a native sense of presence, the motion of sovereignty and
the will to resist dominance. Survivance is not just survival but also resistance , not heroic or
tragic, but the tease of tradition, and sense of survivance outwits Vizenor, Manifest Manners, 52-53. Vizenor, Manifest Manners, 98. 31 dominance and
victimry." Since
all representations are simulations, and can never hope to re-present the
real , a better simulation would be one which seeks to simulate the shadow , that space
where identity is found, where survivance lives , but which can never be identified . Vizenor
coined the term 'postindian' because Indian is an invention which signifies nothing more than the colonial construction; it is "an

occidental misnomer."46 He writes that "the Indian is a simulation , the absence of natives ; the
indian transposes the real, and the simulation of the real has no referent, memory, or native stories. The
postindian must waver over the aesthetic ruins of indian simulations."47 This critique of the term indian 48 uses Baudrillard's
theories of simulation towards its deconstruction. A simulation is a representation of the
real without connections to the real, the hyperreal in Baudrillard's terms: "Simulation is no longer that of a territory,
a referential being, or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal. The territory no longer
precedes the map, nor does it survive it - [there is now the] precession of simulacra - that engenders the
territory."49 There is no longer anything behind the signifier, there is no referent, and the word connotes only an
absence behind the hyperreal. Baudrillard describes the era ofsimulation as inaugurated by a liquidation of all referentials - worse: with
their artificial resurrection in the systems of signs, a material more malleable than
meaning, in that it lends itself to all systems of equivalences, to all binary oppositions, to all
combinatory algebra. It is no longer a question of imitation, nor duplication, nor even parody. It is
a question of substituting the signs of the real for the real, that is to say of an operation of deterring every real
process via its operational double, a programmatic, metastable, perfectly descriptive machine that offers
all the signs of the real and shortcircuits all its vicissitudes.50 Clearly Vizenor, through Baudrillard, objects to
the closed-definition oîindian created by colonialism, the displacement of natives by a sign of colonial invention, and further, Vizenor argues, that the
"Indian is the absence, natives the presence, and an absence because the name is
discoverable, and a historical simulation of distinct native cultures."51 The word 'discoverable' is
important here as it relates to a search for a static meaning or truth about indians . The artificial

referentials suggested by simulations ofthe real are manipulable by those who create and
determine their meanings. The colonial era coincided with the rise of science and faith in
empiricism to make comfortable the unknown , providing a rationale for the colonial
mindset that sought not only to discover but to conquer and acquire . While for Vizenor the indian is
known, the postindian, in contrast, is "long past the colonial invention ofthe indian ... we are the

postindians. That says more about who we are not; which is significant in identity politics, and nothing about

who we are or might become as postindian." Appiah argues that there is some similarity betwixt those 'post's, and I suggest that

the similarity is shared by Vizenor's postindian. The 'spaceclearing gesture' is achieved here by re-placing
the colonial
construction indian and thus creating the opportunity for postindians to re-present
themselves , and I think implied here is that there will not be a re-definition , at least in a modern or colonial sense but
instead an evasion of definition . The argument is against definition, opposed to a
scientific 50 Ibid, 2. The double, and doubling, is an idea I hope to return to, as it keeps reappearing, though it seems with different motivations
in different contexts. 51 Gerald Vizenor, Postindian Conversations (Lincoln & London: University ofNebraska Press, 1999), 84. 33 discovery
and a necessarily static identification of indians. Change and also, importantly, contradiction are possibilities. Postindian
contains within it both the indian and the postindian. I previously interpreted Vizenor's argument as one which advocated against people and
behaviours that served to support colonial stereotypes of indian. It seems to me now, however, that Vizenor's ideas are more complicated than that.
Lee writes at the end of his review essay, "The Only Good Indian is a Postindian?" (2000) as follows: Seeing,
unseeing. Single
vision, double vision. Vizenor has throughout negotiated a discursive style in kind with the massive contradance which he believes has
been the story of Native America since Columbus first registered his 'gentle' Arawak/Guanahani in 1492. His own writings, accordingly, and one can
mix metaphors, tease boundaries, assume contrary voices, or avail
concede sometimes elusively, have indeed not hesitated to
themselves of an authorial - a literary crossblood - irony both gentle and fierce, general and local.
Controversy was rarely so adept.5 Lee's own writing is almost as sensitive and elusive as Vizenor's; Lee nonetheless suggests that Vizenor argues
both sides in order to make the shadows advance. Vizenor may judge or support contradictory
positions but in doing so
highlights the inaccessibility of truth and/or the impossibility of judgement. Lee writes of Vizenor's
"Shadow Survivance" chapter from Manifest Manners that "If, indeed, the call is for a new 'ghost dance literature,' a new 'shadow literature ofliberation',
the essay offers no less in and of itself; a call to remedy and, at the same time, the very embodiment ofremedy."54 When asked by Neal Bowers in an
interview if Vizenor saw himself as "an Indian voice, as a mediator, [or] a balancer" Vizenor replied: "I did for a time, but I don't think so now. I think I'm
an upsetter. ... In organizations I was an upsetter, an institutional 53 Robert A. Lee, "The Only Good Indian is a Postindian?" Loosening the Seams:
Interpretations ofGerald Vizenor (Bowling Green Ohio: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 2000), 277. 54 Ibid, 274. 34 upsetter but at the
same time seeking a balance." I am prompted to think of Vizenor's use of the
trickster as a strategy, if you will, though not the
strategic essentialism of Spivak, to counter essentializing notions of the Indian. Vizenor has spoken
about the trickster at many times and in a variety of ways. In chapter one of Narrative Chance: Postmodern Discourse On Native American Indian
The trickster, then is a
Literatures (1993) he elaborates in a way which embodies the trickster as much as defines that character's role.
comic and communal sign, a discourse in a narrative with no hope or tragic promises. The trickster is neither the "whole
truth" nor an isolated hypotragic transvaluation of primitivism. [page] The trickster is as aggressive as
those who imagine the narrative, but the trickster bears no evil or malice in narrative voices. Malice and evil would silence the
comic holotropes; there would be no concordance in the discourse. Neither the narrator, the characters, nor the audience would share the narrative
event. . . . The trickster as a semiotic sign is imagined in narrative voices, a
communal rein to the unconscious, which is
comic liberation; however, the trickster is outside comic structure, "making
it" comic rather than inside comedy, "being
it." The trickster is agonistic imagination and aggressive liberation, a "doing" in narrative points of
view and outside the imposed structures .56 But, can Vizenor's trickster and therefore also postindian be understood as
merely a postmodern manner of essentialism? Manifest Manners argues that the contemporary symptoms of manifest destiny are manifest manners:
"the course of dominance, the racialist notions and misnomers sustained in archives and
lexicons as 'authentic' representations of Indian cultures. Manifest manners court the destinies
of monotheism, cultural determinism, objectivism, and the structural conceits of savagism and
civilization."57 If plurality proposes that, while endless, groups of Others might yet be catalogued,
defined and represented , and the Neal Bowers, "An Interview with Gerald Vizenor," MELUS, 8.1 (Spring, 1981): 45. Vizenor,
Gerald, ed. "A Postmodern Introduction." Narrative Chance: Postmodern Discourse on Native American Indian Literatures. Norman & London:

University of Oklahoma Press, 1993, 3-16. 57 Vizenor, Manners, vii. 35 postindian position suggests that any and all
definitions be interrupted , or upset in Vizenor's terms, has Vizenor re-essentialized the postindian as interruption and contradiction
via the trickster? If this is indeed a strategy the denial of identity becomes the means to insist on self-determination. Baudrillard also writes of
simulation that "Something
has disappeared: the sovereign difference, between one and the other, that
constituted the charm of abstraction." I would like to make something of Baudrillard's use of the word 'sovereign.' Although in
translation, Baudrillard's early arguments in his text Simulacra and Simulation provide a heavy critique of anthropology and science in general, leading
me to believe that his choice of 'sovereign' to illustrate the difference between a signifier that references the real and a simulation that has no referent
describes the loss of connection between a referent and sign and therefore hints at the loss of power a referent experiences to influence the use of a
simulation (now not a signifier) and its re-inscription over time. The simulation is conflated with the referent and is more powerful through its
dissemination while the referent is relegated to an absence without a voice, to a lack of real representation, perhaps inevitably considering the power of
signs. Simulation's denial by Vizenor is the battle cry ofthe word warrior. Speaking of ethnology as a science whose fact-finding mission supersedes all
else Baudrillard asserts that " In order for ethnology to live, its object must die; by dying, the object
takes its revenge for being 'discovered' and with its death defies the science that wants
to grasp it ."59 When Baudrillard writes "dying" is that what he means? This supports the idea that at some point the simulation was a signifier -
is it just inevitable 58 Baudrillard, Simulacra, 2.
 alt – survivance
The alternative is a politics of survivance – only generating new narratives
that reject colonial tropes can reclaim indigeneity
Athanasiu 16. Eva Marie, Thesis in the Faculty of Information, University of Toronto,
Survivance Stories: Indigenous Resistance and Cultural Labour in Canada, 2016 //saenl
survivance embodies
3.5 SURVIVING AND RESISTING: ACTS OF SURVIVANCE Gerald Vizenor’s (1994) theory of
the active process of resistance , representing both continuation and transformation ;
suffix –ance indicates an active state, but 31 also a larger condition of existence. Vizenor primarily considers survivance in the
playground of literary production , where Indigenous authors are “postindian warriors
[who] encounter their enemies with the same courage in literature as their ancestors
once evinced on horses […] they create their stories with a new sense of survivance ” (p. 4).
Pulling out a reiterating narrative , Vizenor connects contemporary cultural workers with
their ancestors. He explains to his readers that decoding history is a necessary undercurrent in
acts of literary survivance, situating Indigenous literary production as part of a resistance
continuum. Journeying through literary networks, Vizenor (2009) alludes to the close connection between survivance
and ways of speaking, suggesting it “could be the fourth person or voice in Native stories”;
survivance privileges multiple ways of knowing and rejects the “monotheism” that represents singular, non-
Indigenous ways epistemologies (p. 103). The fourth voice embodies challenging and alternative
narratives that can counter dominant and oppressive stories. For Vizenor, survivance is “[…] presence over
absence” and “the continuation of stories, not a mere reaction” (p. 85). Creating presence is the root of survivance. Storytelling
is an immense survivance act, because the tumbling and knitting up of stories provides an opportunity to create shared spaces
where writers can eschew static narratives, more closely reflecting both the changes and anchors in the lives of the Indigenous
communities to which they belong. Survivance involves both action and reflection, but “[t]he theory is earned by interpretations” (p.
89). Interpretations form through literary production, in which theory and practice function cohesively: representing survivance, and
being survivance. An
intellectual force, survivance lives in the productive tension between
theory and practice. Discussing the theory and practice of Indigenous futurisms, Grace Dillon (2014) embodies the
process of survivance in the following quotation: “[…] dreaming ahead into our possible futures, and to the multiple senses of
futurism that remain interwoven, tied, and ultimately freed by the embedding of our pasts and presents as well” (p. 6). Dillon
illustrates how dreaming
into being involves collecting, knitting up, and unravelling:
interwoven, tied, and ultimately freed. The following story illustrates how survivance grows in Indigenous networks
of information communication. In February of 1964, the first radio program produced by Indigenous workers, concerning Indigenous
current events and culture, Indian Magazine, was broadcast in Canada. 32 The event created a new iteration of information
communication networks, like the “signals of survival” studied by Cheryl L’Hirondelle (2014), in Chapter 2—Literature Review. Host
Brian Maracle called Indian Magazine, “the first major effort to let Native people tell their own story to the
Canadian public” (CBC Digital Archives, 1984). One of Indian Magazine’s early projects involved documenting and
proclaiming stories of Indigenous activism; in 1965, the program reported on a protest of more than four hundred
Indigenous members of the Kenora, Ontario community, who marched on the town hall and made appeals to
the municipal government. In subsequent years, Indigenous communities across Canada organized
similar actions. Indian Magazine—later renamed Our Native Land—became a national program in 1968, and continued to
document Indigenous perspectives on resistance. By its final episode in 1985, each individual involved with the program contributed
to a media archive documenting and declaring Indigenous presence.
 at: identity
Personal expression fails – it’s co-opted into the lifeless capitalist
commodification of native identity – much like the Inuit in Canada, their
scholarship is only rendered important insofar as it can be exploited to
perpetuate colonization itself
Howse 10. Erica, Degree of Master of Arts (Art History) at Concordia University, Postindians
and Reservation X: Individualism and Community Sovereignty in Contemporary North American
First Nations Arts Discourse, Library of Canada, Published Heritage Branch, April 2010 //saenl
Philip Deloria (Dakota Sioux) considers the specific social and political contexts that have affected notions of Indian identity. In
his chapter "Counterculture Indians and the New Age" from Playing Indian (1998), Deloria applies arguments related to Fuss's 30 Lucy Tutsweetuk &
Simeonie Kunnuk, "Lucy Tasseor Tutsweetuk, vol. 13, no. 4 (Winter 1998): 22. 31 Gerald McMaster and Lee-Ann Martin, Indigena (Hull, QC,
Vancouver & Toronto: Canadian Museum ofCivilization, Douglas & Mclntyre, 1992), 20. 23 and Spivak's feminist and postcolonial critiques to the
Native context in the United States. He comments that even
while appropriation has run rampant in the era of the New
Age, Indian identity has remained powerful and authentic but on bases more social and political than culturally essential in
the traditional sense. Indianness retained a certain degree of power, however, and that power suggests that markers of Indian difference necessarily
remained in place. Ironically, the social realities that New Age devotees tended to avoid helped fuel the sense of Indian-white difference that made
Indianness meaningful. Indians lived poverty-stricken lives on faraway reservations. Their poverty and geographical and
social distance marked them as different - and thereby authentic. Incorporative multiculturalism, on the other hand, has
tended to focus on distinctive cultural contributions - food, music, language - and to attenuate cultural differences within a larger human whole. The
asymmetrical relations of power that both undergird and undermine the system linger, however, in
the uneasy collective unconscious. Mexican food, for example, is a more palatable ethnic gift than Mexican agricultural stoop
labor, although in its concrete expression of social inequality and physical distance, it is the latter that defines whatever authenticity one might find in
tortillas and frijoles.32 But
what dangers are inherent in this approach? Is equating the political
and social essence of a marginalized people, their authenticity, with the oppressive realities of
marginalization problematic? How to resist the pull to essentialize , in the traditional way, social
and political realities remains a difficulty. What is at stake seems to be the separation of
culture from social and political realities . The example of stoop labour perhaps provides a key - it is the connection to the
land that both precedes and denies any colonial claim. Is it necessarily the low paid hard manual labour that
makes the differences, or might it be that it represents a unique engagement with the land?
While identity has been and remains distinct, the intangible and unknowable is here accessible through the land, can be represented by the land.
What seems key, and is present in the Philip Deloria, "Counterculture Indians and the New Age," Playing Indian (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1998), 177. 24 constructivist perspective that Fuss challenges, is that social and political contexts, including

land rights, must yet be seen as changing and changeable , as well as linked to cultural

expression . Further, the very notion of essentialism has not been sufficiently challenged or imagined in
ways that account for contemporary acknowledgments of social and political realities. As these theorists posit, communities are fluid ,
temporal , and permeable ; any definition based solely on cultural signposts risks
making a community seem static , ahistorical , and closed, not to mention discoverable and
appropriable , at least in an individualistic society that overvalues personal exploration and
undervalues tradition, particularly those of Others.33 Deloria argues that colonizers, and later white activists from all causes,
appropriated Aboriginal symbols, among others, as a means to create an identity distinct
from their original countries. I have suggested that whenever white Americans have confronted
crises of identity, some of them have inevitably turned to Indians. What might it mean to be not-
British? The revolutionaries found a compelling array of ideas in Indianness. What did it
mean to be American? What did it mean to be modern? To be authentic? 34 That
Canadians can adopt the Inukshuk as an Olympic symbol [Figure 3] dilutes , in Deloria's terms, the
 weight that symbol carries in its generative social and political contexts. Symbols of rebellion
also often became representative of general critiques of society from a variety of perspectives and thus
undermined their original political power . [Whites] devalued words like Indian and nigger and deemphasized the social
realities that came with those words. Such attempts to create political solidarity worked to the benefit of
whites, but they could have negative political consequences for Indians and African
Americans. After all, those social realities underpinned civil rights protests. And if whites claimed and The idea of communities as fluid, temporal
and permeable is central to McMaster's proposition Reservation X, discussed in Part V. 34Ibid, 156. 25 then diluted the very words that described
This naming and subsequent
those social worlds, they could offer in return only a power more linguistic that actual.35
appropriation lends significant weight to the interrogation of labels - if Othering is some
form of projecting onto groups that which is lacking or problematic in one's own, the re-
appropriation of that label once given shows a desire to confront that which is denied
through the act of naming . This leads to Vizenor's questioning of the word Indian as well as his coining the term postindian
as an act of resistance, additionally giving credence to Baudrillard's assertion that referents
lose their 'sovereign difference' in a world of simulations . The notion of change can be also related to
hybridity. It is not just that culture changes through time, but that groups understood as distinct begin to mix. Can Spivak's subaltern be understood to
apply to hybrid groups? Can this be viewed as a location of and respect for hybrid groups in addition to unknown or unrecognized groups, which are
hybridity is termed
certainly too numerous to encapsulate or understand within the principle of plurality. Vizenor's conception of
'crossblood;' he explains the purpose of the term as he responds to Lee's inquiries in Postindian Conversations. He says we must resist any
easy reference to crossbloods, as if that combined word and metaphor were a recognizable entity. The cross and the blood are
unnamable. The tease of a crossblood presence in native histories is over the simulation
of a seam, a double seam , as you suggest, of established poses, appearances, interpretations, and loose
assertions of identity .36 In many ways this understanding of, this respectful 'hands off approach, to identity is a step forward. But what
Spivak allows for is a strategic use of identity where Vizenor seems to deny it, because of its harmful side effects. What of the implications this Ibid,
164-65. Vizenor, Postindian, 82. 26 resistance to identity might have on sovereignty as related to territorial demands? Vizenor elaborates in Manifest
Manners, The notions of crossbloodism, determinism, and racialism, maintain the
sentiments of weakness , that crossbloods are a descent from pure racial simulations. . . . The manifest manners of
nationalism as sources of tribal identities are both means of association and resistance;
some tribes are simulated as national cultural emblems, and certain individuals are honored by the nation and the tribe as

real representations. Vizenor is suggesting that identities , as problematically conceptualized in modernist discourse, are
always fabrications and are always harmful because some thus become more highly
valued than others . As an example recall the Inukshuk and the Vancouver Olympic logo: certainly
the Inuit have become a highly 'valued' indigenous group in Canada, proven by this choice to 'use' them
to represent Canada, in no small part because of their perceived authenticity when compared to other

groups. But have communities, or even the idea of community, been lost because of an emphasis on
hybridity, plurality, specificity and individuality? Has resistance to modernity inadvertently resulted in the
loss of something real and valuable, a kind of meaning? Or is this debate merely a distraction from the very real and vibrant Aboriginal
communities and cultural practices which continue, not to mention the fact that the Native population in Canada now surpasses 1 .3 million people?
McMaster dealt most recently with the issue of hybridity in the exhibition Remix, which opened at the National Museum ofthe American Indian in New
York. A quote on the pamphlet reads: These artists all share various degrees of Native ancestry, yet they see other sides to their humanity, as well,
including humor, the impact of borders and boundaries, death and dying, commodity fetishism, history and memory, the relationship between words
The gathering of, these individuals
and images, and the possibility of 37 Vizenor, Manifest Manners, 59. 27 transformation.

signifies a new articulation of identity that we've come to call " post-Indian ." Nationality,
ethnicity, and cultural tradition are simply starting points. Beyond lie the discoveries of contemporary artists
exploring self-knowledge and self-definition . For this brief moment, a community comes
together. I like the temporality suggested in that last line, it indicates that communities are subject to time, as, indeed,
they have always been. Where hybridity suggests a mixing of communities, our efforts to define
community and hybridity are tasks, themselves exceptional, i.e. ahistorical. McMaster's use of the term
post-Indian, here hyphenated and with a capital I, but in quotes, makes a link with Vizenor's arguments, while at the same time suggesting
limits on them. KC Adams' (Scottish and Cree) Cyborg Hybrid Series (1998-2010) speaks specifically to the experience of having mixed Aboriginal and
European heritage in Canada today. Evoked in these photographs, and particularly in "Former Land Owner " Cyborg Hybrid Adam (2005) [Figure 4],
are stereotypes, colonial photography, technology, representation, identity, tradition, postmodernity, individuality and community. My first impression is,
really, one of whiteness, which contrasts with the subjects' brown skin. These photos rely predominantly on whiteness as a visual element, a reference
to the European ancestry of each portrait's subject, and colonialism's overwhelming oppression historically; but also, in the context of cyborgs, robotics
and technology, to sterility. The reference to Macintosh and their preference for white is surely no mistake. The complicated nature of Adams' project
The juxtaposition of stereotypical signifiers, beaded in white across their chests, which here
becomes apparent.
must be meant to signify the opposite, i.e. the inherent undefineability of individuals,
coupled with the 38 McMaster, REMIX, p. ? 28 impression of sterility, suggests the lifelessness of science
and classification . The artist writes ofthe project on her website: Cyborg Hybrids is a digitally altered photo series that attempts to
challenge our views towards mixed race classifications by using humorous text and imagery from two cultures. The subjects are Euro-Aboriginal artists
who are forward thinkers and plugged in with technology. They follow the doctrine of Donna Haraway's "Cyborg Manifesto," which states that a cyborg
is a creature in a technological, post-gender world, free of traditional western stereotypes towards race and gender. 9 Is Adams' here advocating or
critiquing the kind of sterility in a post-everything world? The term post-gender here evokes Vizenor's postindian. In a world of
in a world without
technological sterility are we without stereotypes, without the italicized or capitalized indiani More provocatively,

some form of recognized community, are we necessarily sterile , in some senses this
might suggest 'white-washed' of our histories, the negative but also, and more
importantly, the positive? Or is KC Adams suggesting that the desire to whitewash our histories is impossible, through the faces,
through the traces left on the shirts of oppression and as well the traditional jewellery the subjects of the portraits wear, thus supporting a Reservation
X perspective which embraces hybridity? Is identity and community important only as long as there are those who would use it against an-Other? In a
post-identity world hybridity is arguably irrelevant - but is it? Does hybridity draw attention to the issues post-identity politics have sought to deny,
thereby reaffirming the importance of identity? Or has just the opposite occurred, have
post-identity politics confirmed that
identity was and is a non-issue, a contrived creation ofthe colonial imagination?
anti-blackness answers
aff answers
 2ac anti-blackness/wilderson
Anti-blackness is ongoing but not inevitable – all human systems are
changeable, they take too narrow a view of history and marginalize
resistance
Gordon 15 - Professor of Philosophy and Africana Studies at the University of Connecticut,
European Union Visiting Chair in Philosophy; Nelson Mandela Visiting Professor of Politics and
International Studies at Rhodes University, South Africa
(Lewis, transcribed from https://youtu.be/UABksVE5BTQ, 6/13/15, “What Fanon Said”)
The first thing to bear in mind you may wonder why in the beginning of the talk I talked about philosophical anthropology. And many people when they are trying to talk about

Many people want to have closed

social change they never think about what a human being is and this is something Fanon pays attention to.

conceptions of human beings because then human beings can be predicable . In fact, in fanons
writing he gave an example. One of the problems is that when he would walk in reason seems to walk out. One problem we have to bear in

mind when we try to look at the question of human beings in terms of rigid closed
systems is that we often are trying to get as a model of how we work as theorists on
issues of social change that are actually based on what we can call law like
generalizations . Now what is a law like generalization? It is when you make sure that whatever you say has no contradiction down the line. So if you are to say
this much [gestures with hand] the next stage must be consistent with that, and the next stage until you are maximally consistent. Do you get that? But here is the problem – and
I can just put it in a nut shell- nobody, nobody in this room would like to date, be married to, or be a best friend with a maximally consistent person. You know what that is. It’s
hell. And this tells you something, because if somebody where maximally consistent, you know what you would say that person is not reasonable. And we have a person here
who does work on Hegel that can point out this insight, that a human being has the ability to evaluate rationality. Now why is that important? Because you see the mistake many

of us make is we want to push the human being into that maximized law like generalization
model . So when we think about our philosophical anthropology, some people, our question about intersectionality for instance, what some people don’t understand is
nowhere is there ever a human being who is one identity.People talk about race – do you ever really see a race
walking? You see a racialized man or woman, or transman or transwoman. Do you ever see a class
walking? Class is embodied in flesh and blood people. And we can go on and on. So if we enrich our philosophical anthropology

we begin to notice certain other things. And one of the other things we begin to realize is that we commit a serious
problem when we do political work. And the problem is this. The question about Wilderson for
instance. There is this discussion going on (and a lot of people build it out of some of my early books). I have a category I call, as a metaphor, an antiblack
world. You notice an indefinite article – an anti-black world . The reason I say that is because the world is
different from an anti-black world . The project of racism is to create a world that would be
completely anti-black or anti-woman. Although that is a project, it is not a fait accompli .
People don’t seem to understand how recent this phenomenon we are talking about is. A lot of
people talk about race they don’t even know the history of how race is connected into
theonaturalism. How, for instance, in Andalucia and the pushing out of the Moors. The
history of how race connected to Christianity was formed. A lot of people don’t
understand that – from the standpoint of a species whose history is 220,000 years old,
what the hell is 500 years? But the one thing that we don’t understand too is we create a
false model for how we study those last 500 years . We study the 500 years as if the
people who have been dominated have not been fighting and resisting. Had they not
been fighting and resisting we wouldn’t be here. And then we come into this next point because you see the problem
in the formulation of pessimism and optimism is they are both based on forecasted
knowledge, a prior knowledge. But human beings don’t have prior knowledge. And in
fact – what in the world are we if we need to have guarantees for us to act. You know
what you call such people? Cowards. The fact of the matter is our ancestors – let’s start with enslaved ancestors. The enslaved
ancestors who were burning down those plantations, who were finding clever ways to poison
their masters, who were organizing meetings for rebellions, none of them had any clue what
the future would be 100 years later. Some had good reason to believe that it may take 1000 years. But you know why they
fought? Because they knew it wasn’t for them. One of the problems we have in the way we think
about political issues is we commit what Fanon and others in the existential tradition
would call a form of political immaturity . Political immaturity is saying it is not worth it
unless I, me, individually get the payoff. When you are thinking what it is to relate to other generations – remember Fanon said the problem
with people in the transition, the pseudo postcolonial bourgeoisie – is that they miss the point, you fight for liberation for other

generations . And that is why Fanon said other generations they must have their mission. But you see some people fought and said
no I want my piece of the pie. And that means the biggest enemy becomes the other
generations. And that is why the postcolonial pseudo-bourgeoisie they are not a bourgeoisie proper because they do not link to the infrastructural development of the
future, it is about themselves. And that’s why, for instance, as they live higher up the hog, as they get their mediating, service oriented, racial mediated wealth, the rest of the
populations are in misery. The very fact that in many African countries there are people whose futures have been mortgaged, the fact that in this country the very example of

What happens to people when they have no future? It now

mortgaging the future of all of you is there.

collapses the concept of maturation and places people into perpetual childhood . So one of the
political things – and this is where a psychiatrist philosopher is crucial – is to ask ourselves what does it mean to take on adult responsibility. And that means to

understand that in all political action it’s not about you . It is what you are doing for a
world you may not even be able to understand . Now that becomes tricky, because how do we know this? People have
done it before . There were people, for instance, who fought anti-colonial struggles, there are people (and now
I am not talking about like thirty or forty years ago, I am talking about the people from day one 17 18 century all the way through) and we have no idea
th th

what we are doing for the 22nd century. And this is where developing political insight
comes in. Because we commit the error of forgetting the systems we are talking about are
human systems . They are not systems in the way we talk about the laws of physics. A
human system can only exist by human actions maintaining them. Which means every
human system is incomplete. Every human being is by definition incomplete . Which means you
can go this way or you can go another way. The system isn’t actually closed. How do we know it? The
reason we are seeing all of this brutality in the world today is because the systems are
breaking down. If the systems were working they wouldn’t have to worry. You know how have an effective system? You make people mentally be their own
prisoners. IF the system were really working, you wouldn’t have to have the police because

you all would do it for them. It’s the very fact that the system is breaking down that we are seeing heightened brutality. The problem with heightened
brutality is that it is not sustainable. There are studies, for instance, if you look at a paper called Mr. Y, done by the military advisors in this country. They

argue that using military force to maintain the United States’ strength is not sustainable.
They argue what is sustainable is for a nation to learn to be good citizens in the world . Which means it
has to build up its infrastructure, education, human relations, it has to deal with the ecology, the environment, all of those things. And this is what many people are learning all
over the world. And so one of the things we have to bear in mind then is this: when we begin to engage in these struggles we have to understand how we have to think

If we look at neoconservativism, they want to take us back to the 17th century,

differently.

Hobbesianism, its all about order, control. That is what you are seeing in the streets right now, here in this country, and Latin America, and some parts of Europe.
And then you have neoliberalism. Neoliberalism wants to have free markets and at the same time it wants to create a
unique form of vulnerability which it places through 19th century thought which is that
you are to look at yourself as an individual. Neoliberals say that they don’t believe in group rights, only individual rights. Now you know
what an individual is when you are dealing with a mechanism like a government or society. An individual is simply a vulnerable being. So in effect, that

conception of rights is to ensure you have a population that’s completely vulnerable to

the domination of the system. Now the problem is, many people when they respond to neo-
conservatism and neo-liberalism, attack it through being anti-globalism. Because we’ve got neo-
conservative globalism and neo-liberal globalism. So what they do is abrogate, they give up the concrete levels in which people

can build alternative ways of imagining a global future. Now, here’s the thing. On neo-liberalism, the idea is to make you
forget the 20th century. Why? The 20th century was the age of revolution. They want you to think 19 th, 18th, and 17th century. And then they tell you every revolutionary effort in
the 20th century failed andthis is where Fanon is interesting. Because you see, he brings an insight
that you need to understand the concept of failure differently. And I’ll give an example. A lot of things that I’ve
worked with, in groups that I’ve worked with, communities where we work together, every time we have a project, we always had people and somebody

who says “don’t do that.” And you’ll say “why?” And they’ll say “we tried.” You see what I’m getting at?
If I couldn’t do it, nobody could do it. But what they don’t understand is that their failure
already started setting the conditions for a new kind of relation. When I was president of the Caribbean
Philosophical Association I went and lectured in nearly every country in which there were slaves, to deal, in 2008, with the end of the British Atlantic slave trade. If you

hear the popular histories, you’ll hear that “slave revolts failed.” The crappy history you have
is that one day a group of people in England, in France, in Denmark said “you know, slavery is a
really bad thing, let us get rid of it.” Now that is not the actual history, everywhere I went and
looked at the archives and local history, every single instance, there was a slave revolt. Every single one ---

the Sharpe Rebellion in Jamaica is what led to the question of getting rid of the Atlantic
Slave Trade. If you look at Denmark, if you look among the Dutch, the Dutch, had a much larger slave trade, the British were pirates, they took it over. And when you
go look at history, and I’ll give you an example, a lot of y’all don’t know that Denmark had a big, had a whole colonial structure. And if you go to Copenhagen, you’ll see a statute
of a man, I forget his name, a governor, and it says “freed the slaves.” Okay? Now, you go to St. Martin you’ll get the real story, here is the story. It always boggles my mind how
slavery functions, they had the fort, and they had enslaved people bring the supplies and everything into the fort. It also boggles my mind that slave masters had slaves cook for
them, but anyways, the people would come in and deliver supplies and one morning the governor woke up and outside the entire fort, it was surrounded by black enslaved

They had machetes, pitchforks and they just

people wearing white. You better watch out when you see some Africans wearing white.

looked at the fort. The governor looked out and said “disband,” and they just stood there. And then he
said, he ordered to aim the guns to them, “disband or we’ll shoot.” And the people stood, and then he
ordered “fire.” And none of the guns worked, because every day they came in they
replaced gunpowder with sand. And then you know what he said? “Well now you’re all
free.” The thing about Danes is that they were all Lutherans, their law was the governor’s law, and if he says you’re free, you’re free. And now, those islands were not of
use to the Danes and there was a period of equality, rights, and they sold the islets to the United States that implemented segregation and all kinds of other things, but the point

The point is you have one history where it says he freed the slaves, and then the
is different.

actual history where the slaves freed themselves. Nowhere in history, this is the Fanonian point, nowhere in history, any kind of
domination, not just enslaved communities, we’re talking about structural violence of many kinds, and people talk about, for instance: Who created the

women’s movement? The answer is women, and men, but mostly women, who cared
about their liberation. We are able to look at the world different because women fought.
It’s not that they sat down and said “treat me better.” They got up and went out in the
streets. Every instance of people doing political activism really works. The error people
make is that they think just because in the past, there were, so called “overcome”
rebellions, they don’t realize that rebellions change the conditions. And thus there is no such thing, this
is why I brought in the Fanon example, he didn’t fight with the presumption he would
win, he fought because he had to . And why did he have to? It wasn’t in the sense of self-defense, he had to precisely because he
knew it was the right thing to do . Real political work is about doing what is necessary when
an understanding because it should be done and it’s not about you. If we come to the concrete levels, you need to argue, look

closely at what you’re doing, if it’s going to be action beyond you, you know what you call that? If it’s only about you, it’s not only

narcissism and selfishness , and even hate, but if it’s about those that transcend you, if you are
not the reason, but because it’s right and for subsequent generations, what do you call it
when you really do something for others? The word, and it connects to the revolutionary
force that you see in the entirety of the black radical tradition, is a word that may sound
corny, but it’s true, the word is love . There’s a difference in political work connected to
love because its purpose is to make grow, to make happen that which is absent. Love
and power, in that sense, works.
Reducing anti-blackness to the level of ontology is counter-productive—
cements nihilism and has no alt
Rogers 15 - Associate Professor of African American Studies & Political Science University of
California, Los Angeles.
(Melvin, “Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Wounded Attachment: Reflections on Between the World and Me
Fugitive Thoughts”, August 2015, http://www.academia.edu/14337627/Ta-
Nehisi_Coatess_Wounded_Attachment_Reflections_on_Between_the_World_and_Me)
The Dream seems to run so deep that it eludes those caught by it. Between the World and Me
initially seems like a book that will reveal the illusion and in that moment open up the possibility
for imagining the United States anew. Remember: “Nothing about the world is meant to be.” But
the book does not move in that direction. Coates rejects the American mythos and the logic of
certain progress it necessitates, but embraces the certainty of white supremacy and its
inescapable constraints. White supremacy is not merely a historically emergent feature
of the Western world generally, and the United States particularly; it is an ontology . By this I
mean that for Coates white supremacy does not structure reality; it is reality. There is, in
this, a danger . When one conceptualizes white supremacy at the level of ontology, there
is little room for one’s imagination to soar and one’s sense of agency is inescapably
constrained . The meaning of action is tied fundamentally to what we imagine is possible for
us. “The missing thing,” Coates writes, “was related to the plunder of our bodies, the fact that
any claim to ourselves, to the hands that secured us, the spine that braced us, and the head
that directed us, was contestable.” The body is one of the unifying themes of the book. It
resonates well with our American ears because the hallmark of freedom is sovereign control
over our bodies. This was the site on which slavery did its most destructive work: controlling the
body to enslave the soul. We see the reconstitution of this logic in our present moment—the
policing and imprisoning of black men and women. The reality of this colonizes not only the
past and the present, but also the future . There can be no affirmative politics when race
functions primarily as a wounded attachment —when our bodies are the visible
reminders that we live at the arbitrary whim of another. But what of those young men and
women in the streets of Ferguson , Chicago , New York , and Charleston —how ought we
to read their efforts? We come to understand Coates’s answer to this question in one of the
pivotal and tragic moments of the book—the murder of a college friend, Prince Jones, at the
hands of the police. As Coates says: “This entire episode took me from fear to a rage that
burned in me then, animates me now, and will likely leave me on fire for the rest of my days.”
With his soul on fire, all his senses are directed to the pain white supremacy produces, the
wounds it creates. This murder should not be read as a function of the actions of a police officer
or even the logic of policing blacks in the United States. His account of this strikes a darker
chord. What he tells us about the meaning of the death of Prince Jones, what we ought to
understand, reveals the operating logic of the “universe”: She [referring to his mother] knew that
the galaxy itself could kill me, that all of me could be shattered and all of her legacy spilled upon
the curb like bum wine. And no one would be brought to account for this destruction, because
my death would not be the fault of any human but the fault of some unfortunate but immutable
fact of ‘race,’ imposed upon an innocent country by the inscrutable judgment of invisible gods.
The earthquake cannot be subpoenaed. The typhoon will not bend under indictment. They sent
the killer of Prince Jones back to his work, because he was not a killer at all. He was a force of
nature, the helpless agent of our world’s physical laws. But if we are all just helpless agents
of physical laws, the question might emerge again: What does one do? Coates
recommends interrogation and struggle . His love for books and his journey to Howard
University, “Mecca,” as he calls it, serve as sites where he can question the world around him.
But interrogation and struggle to what end? His answer is contained in his incessant
preoccupation with natural disasters. We might say, at one time we thought the Gods were
angry with us or that they were moving furniture around, thus causing earthquakes. Now we
know earthquakes are the result of tectonic shifts. Okay, what do we do with that
knowledge? Coates seems to say: Construct an early warning system—don’t misspend
your energy trying to stop the earthquake itself. There is a lesson in this: “Perhaps one
person can make a change, but not the kind of change that would raise your body to
equality with your countrymen…And still you are called to struggle, not because it
assures you victory, but because it assures you an honorable and sane life.” One’s
response can be honorable because it emerges from a clear-sightedness that leaves one
standing upright in the face of the truth of the matter—namely, that your white counterparts will
never join you in raising your body to equality. “It is truly horrible,” Coates writes in one of the
most disturbing sentences of the book, “to understand yourself as the essential below of your
country.” Coates’s sentences are often pitched as frank speech; it is what it is. This produces a
kind of sanity, he suggests, releasing one from a preoccupation with the world being other than
what it is. Herein lies the danger : Forget telling his son it will be okay. Coates cannot even
muster a tentative response to his son; he cannot tell him that it may be okay. “The
struggle is really all I have for you,” he tells his son, “because it is the only portion of this world
under your control.” What a strange form of control. Black folks may control their place in the
battle, but never with the possibility that they, and in turn the country to which they belong, may
win. Releasing the book at this moment —given all that is going on with black lives under
public assault and black youth in particular attempting to imagine the world anew —
seems the oddest thing to do . For all of the channeling of James Baldwin, Coates seems
to have forgotten that black folks “ can’t afford despair .” As Baldwin went on to say: “I
can’t tell my nephew, my niece; you can’t tell the children there is no hope.” The reason
why you can’t say this is not because you are living in a dream or selling a fantasy, but
because there can be no certain knowledge of the future. Humility, borne out of our lack
of knowledge of the future, justifies hope. Much has been made of the comparison between
Baldwin and Coates, owing largely to how the book is structured and because of Toni
Morrison’s endorsement. But what this connection means seems to escape many
commentators. In his 1955 non-fiction book titled Notes of a Native Son, Baldwin reflects on the
wounds white supremacy left on his father: “I had discovered the weight of white people in the
world. I saw that this had been for my ancestors and now would be for me an awful thing to live
with and that the bitterness which had helped to kill my father could also kill me.” Similar to
Coates, Baldwin was wounded and so was Baldwin’s father. Yet Baldwin knew all too well
that the wounded attachment if held on to would destroy not the plunderers of black life,
but the ones who were plundered. “Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to
destroy the man who hated and this was an immutable law .” Baldwin’s father, as he
understood him, was destroyed by hatred. Coates is less like Baldwin in this respect and,
perhaps, more like Baldwin’s father. “I am wounded,” says Coates. “I am marked by old
codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” The chains reach out
to imprison not only his son, but you and I as well. There is a profound sense of
disappointment here. Disappointment because given the power of the book, Coates seems
unable to linger in the conditions that have given life to the Ta-Neisha Coates that now
occupies the public stage. Coates’s own engagement with the world—his very agency—
has received social support. Throughout the book he often comments on the rich diversity of
black beauty and on the power of love. His father, William Paul Coates, is the founder of Black
Classic Press—a press with the explicit focus of revealing the richness of black life. His mother,
Cheryl Waters, helped to financially support the family and provided young Coates with
direction. And yet he seems to stand at a distance from the condition of possibility suggested by
just those examples. One ought not to read these moments above as expressive of the
very “Dream” he means to reject. Rather, the point is that black life is at once informed
by, but not reducible to , the pain exacted on our bodies by this country. This eludes
Coates . The wound is so intense he cannot direct his senses beyond the pain .

All sentient beings have agency—their arg is the worst form of negativity
Robinson 4 [Reginald Leamon, prof law @ Howard U, researcher on the relation between
race and academic thought “Human Agency, Negated Subjectivity, and White Structural
Oppression: An Analysis of Critical Race Practive/Praxis” American University Law Review 53,
no.6 (August 2004): 1361-1419]

Under Praxis, Yamamoto argues that left scholars must serve ordinary people’s practical
needs.25 Right now, these scholars do not relate to political lawyers and community
activists. By existing in separate worlds, neither group has helped to co-create26 “racial
justice.” As such, theoretical writings and traditional civil rights strategies move
institutions not toward racial justice, but toward liberal solutions.27 So long as this gap continues,
law will retreat from racial justice. In surmounting this gap, Yamamoto requires scholars, lawyers, and activists to work together
(e.g., consortium). Under Practice or Praxis, Williams and Yamamoto intend to pursue a justice concept, in which antisubordination
becomes the singular end.28 This end promises to give to ordinary people, especially those engaged in
the human agency (or empowerment) that they lack . For example, Yamamoto advocates for a
interracial conflict,
“racial group agency,” one oddly standing on racial identity and personal responsibility.29 Unfortunately, Practice and
Praxis cannot achieve this end . Relying on classical CRT methodology, Williams and Yamamoto
assume that ordinary people like blacks lack human agency and personal responsibility.
They presume that white structural oppression buries ordinary people alive under the
weight of liberal legalisms like Equal Protection, rendering them subtextual victims.30 I
disagree. Pure consciousness is always prior, and all sentient beings have agency.
Despite the sheer weight of the legal violence, slaves never forgot their innate right to be
free; they retained a pure consciousness that never itself was enslaved.31 Moreover,
slaves acted purposefully when they picked cotton and when they fought to be free.
Slaves planned revolts, killed masters, overseers, and each other, ran away, picked
cotton, and betrayed other co-conspirators; all examples of human agency. Today, despite danger
and violence, ordinary people co-create lives of joy, peace, and happiness. Antebellum
slaves co-created spaces in which they knew joy, peace, and happiness. In the modern
era, ordinary people like blacks have pure consciousness and human agency too.
Despite daily examples of human agency, Williams and Yamamoto posit that ordinary
people lack real, practical control over their lives.32 By taking this position, they
reproduce a major premise in CRT: slavery, Jim Crow, racism, and racial discrimination
have subordinated the lives of ordinary people.33 Put succinctly, white structural oppression (e.g.,
supremacy) impacts the micropractices of ordinary people. By implication, it negates their racial identity,
social values, and personal responsibility. If so, then criminal courts mock ordinary
people like blacks when the state punishes them for committing crimes.34 If so, the New York
Times unfairly punished Jayson Blair, and he was correct to fault it for encouraging plagiarism and for rewarding his unprofessional
behavior.35
Failing to address these implications, Williams and Yamamoto direct us to white
structural oppression and divert us from the real, practical control that ordinary people
exercise when they go to work or commit a crime . In this way, Williams and Yamamoto can only empower
ordinary people if they eradicate white racism, for only then will ordinary people have human agency. Practice and Praxis
fail because they ignore how ordinary people use mind constructs. A mind construct
means any artificial, causal, or interdependent arrangement of facts, factors, elements, or
ideas that flows from our inner awareness.36 Representing core beliefs,37 a mind
construct allows us to make sense of our personal experiences and social reality. A mind
construct is not reality, but ordinary people believe that it is.38 Practice and Praxis also
fail because they refuse to deconstruct mind constructs of ordinary people. Intending to
adhere to CRT’s methodology, Williams and Yamamoto believe that these mind
constructs cannot cocreate experiences, and thus white structural oppression must be
an external, objective reality. By refusing to interrogate these mind constructs, they tell us that the proper locus of
white structural oppression must be white mindsets. By and large, while white mindsets co-create racial oppression, other mind
constructs cannot. Whites have power; others do not. Whites victimize blacks; ordinary people cannot co-create their own
oppression experience.39 Working within CRT methodology, Williams and Yamamoto cannot re-imagine
ordinary people as bearers of human agency, the power to act purposefully that includes
how we use our mind constructs to co-create and to understand experiences and
realities. By failing to see ordinary people as powerful agents, Williams and Yamamoto have tied personal liberty not only to
liberal legalism and white appreciation, but also to CRT’s liberal agenda.40
 at: inaccessible
Black people can use the law---teachers in the south mobilized students
through policy development and institutional organization at the local level
– they achieved significant gains in-line with community goals
Malczewski 11 – Professor of History @ NYU
(Joan, Journal of Policy History, 23.3)
in the Deep South, the Jeanes teachers there still promoted centralization and
While progress was significantly slower

networks that could open opportunities for participation in policy development. A state network of Georgia Jeanes
teachers issued monthly reports in order to share accomplishments and news with other
teachers across the state, but also with the state division and with philanthropic agents, and the teacher in Dooley reported that a district teachers’ association meeting was held with
representatives from seven counties present.115 In 1935, Helen Whiting was appointed the Georgia State Supervisor of Colored Elementary Schools in the Division of Negro Education, and began to administer
reading achievement tests throughout the state by the end of her first year.116 She issued regular “itinerary reports” about her work in the field, including suggestions to teachers that would promote centralization,
such as adopting the State Reading Program in counties and seeking assistance from the county supervisor.117 The Georgia state agent, reflecting upon a decade of progress, noted that “the State Agents for
Negro Schools, unlike the other state school supervisors, are free to move in and out among both white and Negro groups without considering the political implications of every step taken . . . the counties in
Georgia now provide secondary schools for Negroes at public expense . . ., [which] has been accomplished by visiting the various counties and outlining a program with the stimulus of state and philanthropic

Much credit has been given to the black churches in the South for their role in community
funds.”118

organizing, and where the church was administratively part of a broader national or state
organization, it could have a profound role in connecting the community outward. However, the
schools also had this ability through their connection to northern philanthropists, state and local political systems, and, as an institution that was largely ignored, as a site
for mobilization. Teachers there were able to encourage institutional innovation at the local
level. As society became more interdependent, this was a crucial link to the social and political structure that
disenfranchisement kept out of reach, and an important institutional site for participating in the
development of policy. Jackson Davis, acting as field agent for the GEB, was asked to describe the accomplishments of the Jeanes teachers. “They
succeeded in organizing the people into school community associations and bringing to
bear the united sentiment of the community in favor of better school buildings, longer terms and more practical work in
the schools by introducing simple industries. . . . The schools lost their isolation.”119 Public-private collaboration was essential to education development in the South and ultimately resulted in a stronger

black
centralized school system. The [End Page 346] concept of “agency” can be defined along a continuum that includes anything from subtle forms of resistance to group insurgency.120 However,

teachers were able to engage with collaborative relationships, and in doing so exercised
agency more broadly defined, helped to establish centralized administrative capacity in the lower tiers of government, and undermined the strength of sectional interests. It is not
possible truly to understand black agency in the South without understanding the
institutional venues in which it operated. Schooling helped to make political opportunity structures more permeable. In addition to people like Annie Holland
and Helen Whiting, public-private collaboration and centralization also provided venues for blacks like W. T. B.

Williams, who served as a field agent for the Jeanes Fund, and Hollis Frissel as principal of the Tuskegee Institute, to have significant influence on policy

decision that affected rural communities. The actions of individual reformers were important, but it is essential also to understand the broader dynamic of
interest groups and institutions that challenged the political structure. Schooling provided an institutional venue for rural blacks to

mobilize, and it should be placed more centrally in the reform dynamic as an early institutional site for the mobilization of blacks. Rural black reformers
recognized the value of promoting an education system not just as an end in itself, especially given the value placed on it as the antithesis to
slavery , but also as a means to create avenues for greater participation in the political and social structure. They participated in the expansion of government at the local level through their efforts to
create organizational capacity, and promoted voluntary organizations that created a common culture within and beyond local communities and broadened frames of support for their own agenda.121 In this

regard, both conceptually and institutionally, “education” became the central meeting point for reformers, and the place in which organizational forms, parallel structures, and new identities
were created ultimately to overcome southern opposition to educational advancement.
Institutions as a starting point is especially important in the context of
racial politics
Themba-Nixon 2k
(Makani Themba-Nixon, “Changing the Rules: What Public Policy Means for Organizing,”
Colorlines. Oakland: Jul 31, 2000. Vol. 3, Iss. 2; pg. 12)
. Policy is for wonks, sell-out politicians, and ivory-tower eggheads.
The flourish and passion with which she made the distinction said everything

Organizing is what real, grassroots people do. Common as it may be, this distinction doesn't bear out in the
real world. Policy is more than law. It is any written agreement (formal or informal) that specifies how an
institution, governing body, or community will address shared problems or attain shared goals. It spells out the terms
and the consequences of these agreements and is the codification of the body's values-as represented by
those present in the policymaking process. Given who's usually present, most policies reflect the political agenda of powerful elites. Yet, policy can be a force for change-

especially when we bring our base and community organizing into the process. In essence, policies are the codification of power

relationships and resource allocation. Policies are the rules of the world we live in. Changing the world means

changing the rules. So, if organizing is about changing the rules and building power, how can organizing be separated from
policies? Can we really speak truth to power, fight the right, stop corporate abuses, or win racial justice without
contesting the rules and the rulers, the policies and the policymakers? The answer is no-and
double no for people of color. Today, racism subtly dominates nearly every aspect of
policymaking. From ballot propositions to city funding priorities, policy is increasingly about the control, de-funding, and disfranchisement of communities of color. What Do We Stand For? Take the
public conversation about welfare reform, for example. Most of us know it isn't really about putting people to work. The right's message was framed around racial stereotypes of lazy, cheating "welfare queens"
whose poverty was "cultural." But the new welfare policy was about moving billions of dollars in individual cash payments and direct services from welfare recipients to other, more powerful, social actors. Many of
us were too busy to tune into the welfare policy drama in Washington, only to find it washed up right on our doorsteps. Our members are suffering from workfare policies, new regulations, and cutoffs. Families
who were barely getting by under the old rules are being pushed over the edge by the new policies. Policy doesn't get more relevant than this. And so we got involved in policy-as defense. Yet we have to do more

Living wage ordinances,

than block their punches. We have to start the fight with initiatives of our own. Those who do are finding offense a bit more fun than defense alone.

youth development initiatives, even gun control and alcohol and tobacco policies are finding
their way onto the public agenda, thanks to focused community organizing that leverages power for community-driven
initiatives. - Over 600 local policies have been passed to regulate the tobacco industry. Local coalitions

have taken the lead by writing ordinances that address local problems and organizing broad support for them. - Nearly 100 gun control and
violence prevention policies have been enacted since 1991. - Milwaukee, Boston, and Oakland are among the cities that
have passed living wage ordinances: local laws that guarantee higher than minimum wages for
workers, usually set as the minimum needed to keep a family of four above poverty. These are just a few of the examples that demonstrate how organizing for local policy
advocacy has made inroads in areas where positive national policy had been stalled by
conservatives. Increasingly, the local policy arena is where the action is and where activists are finding success . Of
course, corporate interests-which are usually the target of these policies-are gearing up in defense. Tactics include front groups, economic pressure, and the tried and true: cold, hard cash. Despite these barriers,

grassroots organizing can be very effective at the smaller scale of local politics. At the local level, we have
greater access to elected officials and officials have a greater reliance on their
constituents for reelection. For example, getting 400 people to show up at city hall in just
about any city in the U.S. is quite impressive. On the other hand, 400 people at the state house or the Congress would have a less significant impact.
Add to that the fact that all 400 people at city hall are usually constituents, and the impact is even greater. Recent trends in government underscore

the importance of local policy. Congress has enacted a series of measures devolving
significant power to state and local government. Welfare, health care, and the regulation of food
and drinking water safety are among the areas where states and localities now have greater rule. Devolution has some negative
consequences to be sure. History has taught us that, for social services and civil rights in particular, the lack of clear federal standards and mechanisms for accountability lead to uneven enforcement and even
discriminatory implementation of policies. Still, there are real opportunities for advancing progressive initiatives in this more localized environment. Greater local control can mean greater community power to
shape and implement important social policies that were heretofore out of reach. To do so will require careful attention to the mechanics of local policymaking and a clear blueprint of what we stand for. Getting It

Much of the work of framing what we stand for takes place in the shaping of demands. By
in Writing

getting into the policy arena in a proactive manner, we can take our demands to the next level.
Our demands can become law, with real consequences if the agreement is broken. After all the organizing,
press work, and effort, a group should leave a decisionmaker with more than a handshake and his or her word. Of course, this work requires a certain amount of

interaction with "the suits," as well as struggles with the bureaucracy, the technical language,
and the all-too-common resistance by decisionmakers. Still, if it's worth demanding, it's worth having in writing-whether as law, regulation, or
internal policy. From ballot initiatives on rent control to laws requiring worker protections, organizers are leveraging their power into written policies that are making a real difference in their communities. Of course,

policy work is just one tool in our organizing arsenal, but it is a tool we simply can't afford to ignore.
Their argument is self-fulfilling---it’s time to assume proprietorship over
institutions
Reed 95 – PhD, Professor of Political Science @ U Penn (Adolph, "What are the Drums
Saying, Booker?": The Curious Role of the Black Public Intellectual, The Village Voice)
In rejecting all considerations of
More significantly, the public intellectuals’ style has baleful effects on the scholarly examination of black American life.

standards of evidence and argument as expressions of naive positivism, the cultural politicians
get to make the story up as they go along. Graduate students can figure out that this gambit has
two very attractive features: it drastically reduces the quantity of digging and thinking one has to
do, and it clears the path to public visibility and academic recognition. Of course, it’s not as if black public intellectuals
were the only hustlers in an academic world largely defined by the politics of reputation; and all in all it’s good that black people are getting paid, too. So why should anyone be

concerned? The answer is that the public intellectuals cohere around a more or less deceptively
conservative politics that is particularly dangerous at this moment in our history. Political conservatism is
fundamental to the Black Voice busi-ness now no less than in 1895, and Stanley Crouch and Shelby Steele have shown that it is sometimes the sole requirement. One can
qualify for the job only by giving white opinion makers a heavy dose of what they want to hear. Gates didn’t get to be a world- class Black Voice until he denounced the bogey of
“black anti- Semitism” all over the op-ed page of The Mew York Times and went on to reassure Forbes's readership, that “yes, there is a culture of poverty,” calling up the image
of a “sixteen-year-old mother, a thirty-two-year-old grandmother and a forty-eight-year-old greatgrandmother,” noting for good measure that “It’s also true that not everyone in
any society wants to work, that not all people are equally motivated. There! Was that so hard to say?” He has since secured his public intellectuality in a series of essays in The
New Republic and elsewhere whose main point is to endorse the “vital center,” and he extols the lost Jim Crow world in Colored People, a memoir that could have been tided
Up From Slavery on Lake Wobegon. West’s conservative moralism and victim blaming has made him Bill Bradley’s favorite conduit to the Mind of the Negro and a hit on the

Most insidious, though, is the retrograde sham that masquerades as a leftist

business school lecture circuit.

“cultural politics.” Rather than an alternative, deep structural “infra” politics, as Kelley and others contend, the cultural politics focus is a
quietistic alternative to real political analysis . It boils down to nothing more than an
insistence that authentic, meaningful political engagement for black Americans is expressed not
in relation to the institutions of public authority—the state—or the workplace—but in the clandestine
significance assigned to apparently apolitical rituals . Black people, according to this logic,
don’t mobilize through overt collective action. They do it surreptitiously when they look like they’re just dancing, or as a colleague of mine
ironically described it, “dressing for resistance.” In a Journal of American History article, supposedly about black working- class opposition, Kelley asks rhetorically: “If a worker
turns to a root doctor or prayer rather than to a labor union to make an employer less evil, is that ‘false consciousness’?” He compares a conjuror’s power favorably to that of the
CIO, the Populists, and theNAACP. This is don’t-worry, be-happy politics. Resistance flows from life by definition. There is no need to try to create it because it’s all around us;
all we have to do is change the way we define things. Then we can just celebrate the people’s spontaneous infrapolitics and show white people how to find it and point out to

We can make radical politics by climbing the tenure ladder and feeling good about
them that Gramscianism is an African survival.

our collective black selves through the pride of vicarious identification with the embedded theoretical sophistication of the folk. Worst of all,
though, the black public intellectual stance derives from and presumes a condition of political

demobilization . And for good reason. The posture of the Racial Voice requires—and, as the centennial of Washington’s perfidy should remind us, helps to
produce—a black population that is disfranchised and incapable of articulating its own agendas as a citizenry. Thus the black intellectuals’

insistence on defining politics centered in the exercise of state power as inauthentic, which in turn
underwrites all the Aesopian interpretive twaddle in black cultural studies. (Interestingly, in chastising proponents of
codes prohibiting hate speech, Gates has complained self-righteously about an identity politics that pays no attention to public policy. His point would go down better if it came

Before
with a little self-criticism from one whose scholarly reputation— supposedly the source of his prominence—is based on precisely the view that he disparages.)

disfranchisement in the South black people didn’t have to express their politics surreptitiously;
they crafted and fought to realize their agendas through public policy, and after
disfranchisement they fought for sixty years to be reenfranchised so they could do it again. And the
record of overt black political action outside the South is unbroken. What the current environment demands from black

intellectuals who would comment on public affairs is not more whining about disparagement
of the “black body” in Western culture (as if that were news) or examination of
representations of representations or noodling about how, if we apply the right spin, everything black people do is resistance to oppression. And
most of all there is no need for interpretations that presume an uncomplicated, conveniently mute black reality;

there’s already a surfeit of analysis propelled by the collective black subject—“black people want, feel, etc.” As
is true on the left generally, what is desperately called for is stimulation of informed discussion
among black Americans, and between blacks and others, that presumes proprietorship of
the institutions of governance and policy processes on an identical basis with other citizens and aims at crafting
agendas that define and realize black interests accordingly. We should be in the forefront of the
fight against ratification of the balanced budget amendment, crafting responses to so-called tort
reform, fighting corporate globalization, and finding ways to counter the assault on the Bill of
Rights. The cultural politicians1 fixation on youth definitively illustrates their bankruptcy. Not only are young people the least connected, the most alienated, and the least
politically attentive cohort of the black population, they’re also the ones whites are most interested in. “Willie, why do they have those welfare babies? What must we do so that
they won’t take my car stereo?” What a felicitous coincidence. (85-90)
 at: reform impossible
Political progress happens. Recognizing that doesn’t produce
complacency, and building politics is far more valuable than theorizing
about anti-institutional black agency
Reed 15 – professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania
(Adolph, “The James Brown Theory of Black Liberation,”
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/10/adolph-reed-black-liberation-django-lincoln-selma-glory/)
What approach to political action can follow from the contention that the Thirteenth Amendment
was empty window dressing and that black slaves’ emancipation was like James Brown’s
backward, Nixonian ideal of self-help? The perspective that shrivels the scope of black political
concern to expressing racial “agency” similarly diminishes the significance of the Fourteenth and
Fifteenth Amendments, the US Supreme Court’s 1944 Smith v. Allwright decision that outlawed
the infamous “white primary” (and exponentially increased black voting in the South), the 1954
Brown decision, 1964 Civil Rights law, and 1965 Voting Rights Act as if all were in some twisted
way racially inauthentic because acknowledging their significance as moments in the struggle
for social justice detracts from the James Brown Theory of Black Liberation. That ideological
commitment is what impelled Ava DuVernay to make the seemingly gratuitous move of falsifying
Martin Luther King Jr’s relationship with the Johnson administration around the Selma
campaign: “I wasn’t interested in making a white savior movie,” she replied to critics, “I was
interested in making a movie centered on the people of Selma.” Of course, she doesn’t do the
latter either, but her commitment to not “making a white savior movie” also led her to
misconstrue the tension between the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Selma, which stemmed precisely from the SNCC
activists’ objection that King and his organization maintained secret, backdoor dealings with the
Johnson administration. The psychobabbling bromides that elevate recognition and celebration
of black agency rest on an ideological perspective that in practical terms rejects effective
black political action in favor of expressive display . It is the worldview of an element of the
contemporary black professional stratum anchored in the academy, blogosphere, and the world
of mass media chat whose standing in public life is bound up with establishing a professional
authority in speaking for the race. This is the occupational niche of the so-called black public
intellectuals. The torrent of faddish chattering-class blather and trivial debate sparked by
Michael Eric Dyson’s recent attack on Cornel West in the New Republic illustrates the utter
fatuity of this domain, as if there were any reason to care about a squabble between two
freelance Racial Voices with no constituency or links to radical institutions between them. In an
illustration of what this game is all about, the Nation, sensing space for competing brands,
projected some Alternative Black Voices into this circus of spurious racial representation in a
piece entitled “6 Scholars Who Are ‘Reimagining Black Politics.’ ” Twenty years practically to the
week before publication of Dyson’s essay, I took stock of what was then the newly confected
category of the Black Public Intellectual and noted that the notion’s definitive irony was that its
avatars were quite specifically not organically rooted in any dynamic political activity and in fact
emerged only after opportunities for real connection to political movements had disappeared.
Nor were the “public intellectuals” connected to any particular strain of scholarship or criticism.
Rather, their status was no more than a posture and a brand. By the early 2000s, it was
possible to see young people entering doctoral programs with their sights on the academy as a
venue for pursuing careers as public intellectuals — i.e. among the free-floating racial
commentariat. And that was before the explosion of the blogosphere and Twitterverse, which
have exponentially increased both avenues for realizing such aspirations and the numbers of
people pursuing them. But the politics enacted in those venues is by and large an ersatz politics,
and the controversies that sustain them are by and large ephemeral, vacant bullshit — the
“feud” between Iggy Azalea and Azealia Banks, whether black people were dissed because
Selma wasn’t nominated for/didn’t win enough Oscars, and so on. In the context of this sort of
non-stop idiotic bread and circuses — and this may be an apt moment to remind that the
blogosphere is open to any fool with a computer and Internet access — it is good to reflect on
one of the crucial moments in American history when the linking of social and political forces
presented a clear choice between egalitarian and inegalitarian interests, and masses of black
people joined with others to strike a consequential blow for social justice and to wipe the
scourge of slavery from the United States. No, it wasn’t a final victory over inequality — it didn’t
usher in a utopian order, and the greatest promises opened by the triumph were unfulfilled or
largely undone. But it was one of the most important victories that egalitarian forces have won,
along with those of the twentieth-century labor, civil rights, and women’s movements, and it is
worth reflecting on it and the ways it changed the country for the better . That struggle
against the slaveholders’ insurrection, along with those latter movements, also underscores the
fact that the path to winning the kind of just world to which a left should aspire requires
building a politics that seeks, as the old saying goes, to unite the many to defeat the few. Any
other focus is either unserious or retrograde.
 at: black nihilism
Nihilism’s fatalism makes resistance to white supremacy impossible--
despair locks in the idea that black bodies are commodities to be used or
incarcerated—cynicism in the face of police violence against black people
leaves no method for resistance or self-affirmation --- hope for political
change is NOT mutually exclusive with spiritual hope, in fact the two can
be re-inforcing --- prefer evidence from black theological leaders
Evans 14 [Mahsea Evans is an ordained minister, educator, and poet who has dynamically
engaged the topics of spirituality, religious pluralism, and social transformation through writings,
lectures, and workshops over the last 10 years. He received his Masters of Divinity degree from
the Pacific School of Religion and is completing his MA in Ethics and Social Theory from the
Graduate Theological Union., “Hope Matters: Black Nihilism in the Post-Ferguson Moment,”
December 7, 2014,
https://reflectblack.wordpress.com/2014/12/07/hope-matters-black-nihilism-in-the-post-ferguson-
moment]

The genius of our black foremothers and forefathers was to create powerful buffers to
ward off the nihilistic threat, to equip black folk with cultural armor to beat back the
demons of hopelessness, meaninglessness, and lovelessness. Cornel West is a larger than life
character; an impressive man paradoxically enrobed in the simplicity of his all black three piece suits. He is a whirlwind of wisdom
whipping through vectors of verbosity leaving listeners both charmed and challenged by the appearance of his wide smile, and wild
hair. Admittedly, I find his presentation of prophetic earnestness in the Obama era a “little much” at times. He aspires to be that lone
wolf archetype; righteously crying out in midst of a meadow of the fawning uncritical masses. Still, despite my reservations on his
present public persona, there is not much I can argue with substantively and his brilliance is undeniable. With that, I did not know
what to expect when reading his book, Race Matters. Surprisingly, the short essay format and his elegant yet accessible language
made the text very approachable and his concepts clear. Though written decades ago, it still seems particularly relevant for today.
West argues that the usual approaches to confront the issues of racism from traditionally liberal or conservative
perspectives are not enough. These paradigms of action inevitably fail because they do not adequately
address the “murky waters of despair” that lead to nihilism. West defines nihilism as the
“profound sense of psychological depression, personal worthlessness and social despair so widespread in black
America.” He also associates it with the “lived experience of coping with a life of horrifying meaninglessness, hopelessness, and
(most important) lovelessness.” This destructive feeling is baked into the makeup of a white
supremacist society that originally regarded black bodies not as humans, but as
commodities to be exploited and later as masses to be regulated or incarcerated. However, West
points out that throughout history, blacks combated racist systems by implementing
multiple modes of resistance including the creative and cultural ways that sought to protect the spirit of the people; a
project of soul survival. Today, there remains an insistent need to sustain and create new “powerful
buffers” that counter the racist cultural narratives of black worthlessness in order to
affirm that black lives do in fact matter. Events like the unrest in Ferguson and the non-
indictment of the police officer who killed Eric Garner in Staten Island can lead one to
become seduced by a insidious cynicism; a disposition of the soul that causes one to give up and give in to
despair. Hopelessness is equivalent to a type of death, therefore life-affirming efforts to

combat nihilism is vital. Scriptures says that “where there is no vision, the people perish.” In like manner, where
there is no hope, there is no sense of meaning or motivation to continue the struggle for a more
just world. Author and cultural critic Ta-Nehisi Coates talks about the existential threat of nihilism
especially within the Ferguson moment. He discusses the presence of fatalism and the
rage that can sometimes stem from the feelings of hopelessness and helplessness. The
thrust of his argument is that, despite its justification, “fatalism is not an option” because it saps the
energy to fight on to make life better for future generations. He argues that our own presence
today is the evidencing or manifestation of the hope of our ancestors. As such, we are obligated to struggle on and
resist the urge to give up. Coates discussed these ideas while being interviewed by Chris Hayes on MSNBC. The whole
segment is worth the watch! West ends his first chapter by exploring an idea which he terms a “politics of conversion.”
It is an approach to making change rooted self love and in restoring a “hope for the future and a
meaning to struggle.” Maybe the task for today’s leaders, and especially spiritual leaders within the
black community, is to not only support political efforts to effect change, but to creatively re-

imagine new ways to equip our communities against the existential and spiritual threat of
nihilism . I wonder what new creative expressions and methods could emerge if we allow our
imaginations to be unfettered and free? Still, no matter what strategies of resistance
spiritual
and self-affirmation develop as we navigate through this Ferguson moment, one thing
that will always remain true is that hope matters.
neg cap k supplement
 1nc capitalism vs afro-pessimism
The AFF isn’t grassroots activism, it’s astro-turf – premising radical politics
on fatalistic structural arguments ensures they’re nothing more than a
simulacra of black militancy, ultimately devolving into a hyper-
individualistic fantasy that reifies racial neoliberalism and locks in white
supremacist power structures
Reed 16 [Adolph Reed, Jr., professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania,
“Splendors and Miseries of the Antiracist ‘Left,’” NonSite.org, November 6, 2016,
http://nonsite.org/editorial/splendors-and-miseries-of-the-antiracist-left-2#foot_src_19-9888]

This is not simply a matter of stipulating different criteria for assigning the label “political
movement.” BLM’s amorphousness reflects and enables another tiresome political
pathology that has become increasingly common in an era when an actually insurgent
left is so remote from living memory and cargo-cult politics is so prominent. Activists,
typically without visible institutional connections, stage more or less flamboyant events that
often evoke nostalgic associations with earlier insurgencies – civil rights/Black Power
demonstrations, sit-ins, militant “street action,” even purely rhetorical appropriation of
the phrase “general strike” as a reference that sounds appealingly militant, totally
disconnected from any concrete practice. Prior to BLM, Occupy and, more cynically, the
Tea Party were the most highly publicized illustrations of this phenomenon, which is
similar to an ad agency approach to movement-building. The point of these
performances is to project simulacra of popular insurgency, which then become
justification for issuing press statements and manifestos and, depending on the mood
of the moment and skills of the operators, being recognized as spokespersons for the
fictive movement. In the public interest world such groups are described as “astro-turf,”
as contrasted to grassroots .

Proliferation of this Kabuki theater politics among leftists stems in part from the
dialectic of desperation and wishful thinking that underlies the cargo-cult tendency ; it is
commonly driven by an understandable sense of urgency that the dangers facing us are
so grave as to require some immediate action in response. That dialectic encourages
immediatist fantasies as well as tendencies to define the direct goal of political action as
exposing, or bearing witness against, injustice . Occupy, for instance, proceeded from
premises at least overlapping a tendency I have described as the Myth of the Spark, the notion that
single events or dramatic acts can in themselves galvanize mass mobilization. That was also the
dream that too many enthusiasts crafted for themselves about the Sanders campaign. Fetishization of the power of social
media feeds the fantasy that movement-building can be automatic and instantaneous.
That disposition is exacerbated in a context in which organizing as a project of
deepening and broadening an actual base through building solidaristic relationships
around shared interests is not part of an activistist culture in which radicalism is more
posture and performance than strategic pursuit of a program. The strains of Trotskyism
and anarchism popular in some activist quarters are drawn to spontaneist and
voluntarist approaches to politics , which fit comfortably as well with the logic of insta-
celebrity generated through Potemkin internet and social media campaigns.
From that perspective, one of the most revealing and chilling features of the BLM phenomenon has been the unself-conscious clarity with which Alicia
Garza and other of its prominent personalities represent, and no doubt genuinely understand, crafting and projecting their individual personae as
identical with advancing political objectives.22 The potential for opportunism is great because the inertial material imperatives impel in that direction
and unrestrained because the “movement” has no concrete constituency to which its spokespeople are accountable. What we get instead are
shopworn calls to distinguish the really authentic BLM voices – i.e., what DeRay McKesson was until he wasn’t – from the fakers and hustlers and
those who are genuinely grassroots from those who aren’t. So Birch and Heideman finger McKesson as epitomizing a “black professional class selling
a desiccated form of opposition to racism as radical politics.” What distinguishes this “desiccated form of opposition to racism” from the good, radical
This
anti-racism they insist is out there? The only clue we have is that McKesson embodies the former. Yet a year ago he embodied the latter!
kind of political differentiation grounded on claims to racial authenticity rehearses the
product cycle in the hip-hop industry in the 1990s, in which an act started out packaged
as authentic or hardcore, attained success and became crossover and thence became a
target against which those that follow proclaim their own real authenticity. This sort of
politics is also, as we’ve seen at least since Black Power, a hustler’s paradise . And all the millennial
versions of New Age-y bullshit about leaderlessness and structurelessness obscure the
fact that absence of organizational mechanisms of accountability enable anyone to say
anything, or deny anything said, in the name of the “movement.”
Overestimation of the political significance of protest and a related, all too familiar
problem of confusing militancy and radicalism contribute to exaggerating the
significance of eruptions like those associated with BLM. Militancy is a posture;
radicalism is linked to program for social transformation, and protests do not
necessarily challenge power relations at all. In some ways, as political scientists have pointed out for generations,

they can validate existing power relations insofar as they appeal to established authority
to accommodate their demands and pursue more effective incorporation into extant
governing coalitions . Although they are so commonplace now that most people no doubt
rehearse them unreflectively, presumptions that protest actions and militant postures are
intrinsically radical or follow a natural trajectory leading them toward radicalism depend
on the nostalgic wishful thinking and forms of fallacious reasoning I’ve already
discussed.
But Birch and Heideman’s narrative is also plagued by their utter innocence of the history of the last half-century of black politics, which is truly
They
astonishing, especially in light of their profound self-assuredness, though I suspect the former may be a key enabling condition for the latter.
show no knowledge or understanding of the relation of black political development to the
growth of the large national, state, and local public-private anti-discrimination and
diversity apparatus, or of the broader incorporation of black people into the various
distributive regimes, market-based and not, that constitute and reproduce hegemonic
neoliberalism. At this moment, in one tiny illustration of this phenomenon, my mother is engaged in dealings with a black-owned or black-
fronted firm – not clear whether it’s for-profit or a non-profit NGO — that is enmeshed in a web of boondoggles outsourced from the Road Home
program that the state of Louisiana created and administers in concert with the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development to provide
assistance to people who suffered property damage in Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Granted, the Road Home is an extraordinary policy intervention, and this is a trivial illustration. But this instance’s trivial and quotidian character is in a
way the point. Thissort of public-private, outsourced, marketized or semi-marketized activity is
a node in an ever-expanding and reorganizing array of opportunity structures generated
through neoliberalism and that contribute to its legitimation as everyday reality. More
accurately, this activity and the individuals and organizations that participate in

it constitute neoliberalization as an evolving political-economic, cultural and ideological

order . People reproduce their material existence, not to mention pursue the
entrepreneurial dreams that attest to the extent of Thatcherite ideological victory,
through such nooks and crevices in the social administrative apparatus, whose public
and private extrusions become ever more difficult to disentangle. At the same time, those
structures and processes of neoliberalization are enmeshed with evolving black politics .
The fact is that black people not only have access to these opportunity structures; they
also participate in the processes that generate, shape, and legitimize them . The
ambiguous relations of many prominent BLM figures and other black antiracist voices to
the corporate and nonprofit interests that drive the assault on public goods and working
people’s living standards underscore the class contradictions that antiracist politics
papers over.
The black political regime that emerged out of contestation and negotiation over the terms on which the victories of the 1960s would be consolidated
institutionally was rooted from its inception in the dynamics simultaneously articulating market-driven pro-growth politics from the municipal level
through national Democratic politics.25 It
is not simply that the center of gravity of black politics
accommodated to the regime of regressive redistribution and punitive social policy as it
took shape and became hegemonic. Race -conscious black political discourse and
practice, grounded on underclass ideology and a sharply class-skewed communitarian
rhetoric of uplift and self-help and racial redistribution – anti-disparitarianism — as the
crucial metric of social justice helped to define the left wing of Democratic neoliberalism
over the 1980s and 1990s. Moreover, black people participate as active and committed agents
in the processes of neoliberalization, public and private – charterization of public
education, devolution and outsourcing of the social service sector, direct and indirect
attacks on public goods and labor standards in the name of individual enterprise (e.g.,
Uber, which openly promotes itself as providing opportunities for black Americans) or
“community development,” private contracting at all levels, including the rent-
intensifying real estate development that is unhelpfully called gentrification. Any serious
left critique of black politics has to take those dynamics into account and must proceed
from examining the actual complexities and contradictions, including class
contradictions, in contemporary black political life .
That is why my colleagues and I who authored “On the End(s) of Black Politics” singled out as problematic “the conceptual and political confusion that
underwrites the very idea of a Black Freedom Movement.” Formulations
like Black Freedom Movement and Black
Liberation Struggle suffer from the circularity problem: they posit what needs to be
demonstrated through historical and political analysis. This is not simply a formal flaw.
Those formulations impose an idealist coherence, what is in effect a racial supra-
consciousness or the teleological equivalent of a vanguard party, that obscures the
history of political differentiation among black Americans and its significance for
understanding both past and present. They posit a transcendent goal – empty signifiers
like “freedom,” “liberation,” or “self-determination” — that most crucially unites and
defines black Americans’ political aspirations. This presumption that a deeper racial
truth , constant across historical and social contexts , guides black politics requires
diminishing the significance, and often enough necessitates the procrustean erasure, of
the historical specificity of political dynamics involving black Americans at any moment
in order to sustain the teleological narrative of fundamental continuity.
This problem and its counterproductive implications are apparent in the many versions
of tortured analogy – e.g., “new Jim Crow” – purported , ever more convolutedly , to fit
contemporary racial disparities into reductionist narratives that reify the white
supremacist ideology and practice hegemonic at the end of the nineteenth century and
beginning of the twentieth as the essential normative center of gravity of American
politics and thus the source of racial disparities in the present. This interpretive
commitment hinges on a fundamentally static view of race /racism and the primacy of its
social power . Which is to say, this view of race’s primordial force – uniting top-shelf racists like Madison Grant and

Charles Murray with earnest anti-racists like Birch and Heideman – may be the one thing in the last century that
really hasn’t changed . In response to these increasingly tortured attempts to preserve
monocausal narratives stressing the centrality of racism in explaining apparent inequalities, Chowkwanyun and
I observe that “they bring to mind Kuhn’s account of attempts to accommodate mounting
anomalies to salvage an interpretive paradigm in danger of crumbling under a crisis of
authority.”28 The further away we move from conditions under which black Americans
confronted officially enforced and tolerated subordination and discrimination on openly
and directly racial grounds, the more Rube Goldberg-ish arguments that “racism”
nonetheless remains the fundamentally causal force determining black Americans’ and
other nonwhite groups’ life chances must become. As I have argued, a key effect of that
commitment to race-first political interpretation is to shift the fulcrum of debate from
examination of the discrete, contextually specific dynamics that reproduce inequalities to
the label we must attach to them.

The affirmative orients political resistance around an ahistorical account of

racist violence that obscures the centrality of Marxist political economy
and the liberatory power of pragmatic political change
Reed 17 (Adolph, Jr, Prof of Political Science @ U of Pennsylvania, “Revolution
as ‘National Liberation’ and the Origins of Neoliberal Antiracism,” Socialist
Register 2017, ed. Gregory Albo and Leo Panitch, p. 299-322)

Whatever it may have been at earlier historical moments, antiracism as a contemporary

politics is not necessarily aligned with projects of broad social transformation animated by the
egalitarian vision that prompted the twentieth century’s iconic revolutions. Rather,
antiracist politics in the United States and elsewhere in the West and much of Latin America
can be, and often enough has been, an antagonistic alternative to such projects of broad
transformation. That is, notwithstanding a persistent inclination among leftists to consider it a
discourse at least in dialogue with the left, antiracism is as likely now to be an ideological and
practical programme that fits more comfortably within neoliberalism than with a socialist
left. In the United States especially, but increasingly in Western Europe and Canada also,
antiracism and other political tendencies based on ascriptive identities – that is, those
expressing what one supposedly is rather than what one does2 – commonly reject
Marxist and other socialist politics as insufficiently attentive, if not inimical, to the
special position and needs of racial or other ascriptively defined populations understood
to be oppressed in ways that are not causally or most consequentially rooted in capitalist
political economy. In fact, these tendencies commonly object to the universalizing
perspectives associated with socialism and Marxism in particular as Eurocentric (or
phallocentric, or heteronormative) homogenization that denies the specificity of
ascriptive groups’ distinctive perspectives, grievances and demands. To the extent the
political orientation from which antiracist and other identity-based tendencies proceed is more
‘groupist’ than broadly solidaristic, the vision of a just society around which they cohere can
be more in line with liberal interest-group pluralism than with a left that relates its lineage
or marks its affinities to the broad tradition that generated the revolutionary movements
of the last century. Eric Hobsbawm pointed to this tension in the mid-1990s indicating that,
while the left naturally has supported movements advocating for the rights of stigmatized
groups, identity groups ‘are not committed to the Left as such, but only to get support for their
cause wherever they can’.3 Openness to this kind of politics stems partly, as Hobsbawm points
out, from the left reflex to support the cause of the oppressed. The victories won in the
second half of the twentieth century against ideologies and regimes of ascriptive
hierarchy, chiefly those grounded on narratives of race and gender, made leftists, and
labour, all the more conscious of past failings with respect to inattentiveness to,
acceptance or even overt embrace of ascriptive inegalitarianism. The generation of
leftists who emerged in the 1960s came of age with the militant anti-colonial movements and
national liberation struggles in what was then known as the Third World, the civil rights struggle
in the United States, and anti-apartheid struggles in South Africa, as well as the resurgent
women’s movement. That generation was also likely to be self-critical regarding what were
perceived as failings and limitations – some would say ossification, even debasement or
perversion – of the dominant practical models of socialism in Eastern Europe and
elsewhere on the capitalist periphery. The New Left generation’s inclination to criticize
‘really existing socialism’ extended also to the orthodox Marxist parties in the West,
which were easily enough seen as out of touch with the new spirit of insurgency coming from
youth, minority groups in advanced capitalist societies, and Third World movements of
national liberation. In the US, many displayed similar scepticism toward the trade union
movement, which in the eyes of many radicals had settled into a narrow, self-interested class
collaborationism. This is a familiar story to Socialist Register readers, and one I summarize very
schematically. In addition to Hobsbawm’s account mentioned above, Leo Panitch and the late
Ellen Meiksins Wood have discussed these developments more extensively, especially the
impact of the intellectual left’s movement both into the academy and away from an intellectual
and epistemic commitment to class struggle.4 Several features of that moment are pertinent for
making sense of the subsequent development of antiracist politics in itself and the left’s
embrace of it. Disillusionment with democratic centralism and sclerotic bureaucratism fed
a skeptical attitude toward organizational and intellectual discipline, as well as toward
commitment to specific visions and programmes of social transformation. Those
tendencies became exacerbated over the 1980s and 1990s as left activity retreated increasingly
into universities. In that climate, as more and more of the left came to be defined by moral
stance rather than strategic politics and practical programme, self-criticism and
atonement regarding racism and sexism on the part of labour and the left in the past, and
bearing witness against injustice in the present, loomed steadily larger as an element of
left political discourse, especially in the US. And then, with rote repetition of ever more
deeply embedded commonsense knowledge, the narrative of labour’s and the left’s past
failings with respect to racial and gender inequalities was increasingly shed of nuance,
to the point that in recent decades it has become a truism in some activist circles that
failure to challenge ascriptive inequalities, or even active reproduction of them, has been
a definitive characteristic of the working-class-based left and trade unions, and is
substantially responsible for the decline of either or both.5 Commitment to the accusatory
narrative can underwrite extraordinary historical misrepresentation, for example, Eugene
Debs’s statement that socialism has ‘nothing special to offer the Negro’ is taken as
evidence of his indifference to racial inequality – when his intent was exactly the
opposite.6 A left that had by and large given up the goal of radical social transformation
and the objective of pursuing political power for the purpose of realizing that goal
became less distinct from liberalism. Such a left, as Russell Jacoby notes, ‘ineluctably
retreats to smaller ideas, seeking to expand the options within the existing society’.7
Militant embrace of the discourses of identity politics, most notably antiracism, has
helped to sustain an appearance that the left is not in retreat but remains on the cutting
edge of transformational politics. That is because of the prominence of a view that
construes ‘oppressions’ rooted in race and gender, etc., as both foundational to
American society – or the West – and so deeply embedded that most whites/men are in
denial about their power. From that perspective the civil rights movement’s legislative
victories in the 1960s were superficial and could not address the deep-structural sources
of racism and sexism, which are effectively ontological and therefore beyond the reach
of normal political or social intervention. Thus the struggle against these sources of
inequality is always insurgent because their power never diminishes. CONTEMPORARY
ANTIRACISM’S AHISTORICAL CHARACTER Representing racism as a transhistorical
phenomenon, sometimes character- ized as a ‘national disease’ or ‘original sin’, underwrites
a claim that it continues to shape life chances for blacks and other nonwhites as it did in
earlier periods when, as W. E. B. Du Bois put it, ‘the walls of race were clear and straight;
when the world consisted of mutually exclusive races; and even though the exact edges
might be blurred there was no question of exact definition and understanding of the meaning of
the word’, that is, when notions of racial hierarchy were hegemonic and were open and
explicit principles of social and political organization.8 That view, to the extent that it
understands racism as transcending patterns of historically specific social relations,
presumes primordial understandings of race/racism as a phenomenon shared by both
postwar racial liberalism and the earlier racial determinism it challenged. This is,
moreover, a political problem as well as an intellectual one. The politics crafted in this
antiracist framework has a rearguard character that is expressed in its proponents’
tendency to rely on evocation of past racist practices – law professor Michelle Alexander’s
book The New Jim Crow is one prominent illustration9 – to mobilize outrage about injustices
in the present. The argument by means of historical analogy, i.e., that current injustices
that may seem to derive most directly from different, more complex sources are more
significantly understood as like latter-day instances of racist practices in the past, rests
on the trope that the current outrages demonstrate the deep continuity of racism as a
force and at least suggests the inadequacy of the victories of the civil rights struggle. Yet
that trope is also in effect an acknowledgment that big victories on that front have indeed been
won. Otherwise there would be no basis for assuming that the comparison would have rhetorical
force. Condemnation of an act or practice by comparing it to slavery or Jim Crow could provoke
the desired effect only if we can assume consensus that slavery and Jim Crow were bad things.
Moreover, sustaining the conviction that racism remains most significantly causal of
contemporary patterns of inequality requires terminological gymnastics which enable
positing racism – ‘institutional’, ‘structural’, even ‘post-racial’ – as, at least by default, the
causal explanation for inequalities that appear statistically as racial disparity and are
lived as such in day-to-day life. In fact, historical analogy typically stands in lieu of
empirical argument to explain why we should automatically see contemporary disparities
as evidence of the unspecified workings of a generic racism rather than as products of
current and concrete political-economic processes that are very much ‘presentist’
elements of the regime of steadily intensifying regressive redistribution, the
mechanisms, that is, that constitute the telos of neoliberalism. Assertion of the centrality
of racist ideas and practices among labour and the left is similarly ahistorical both as a
representation of the past and in its implications of continuity in the present. It is more
allegory or fable than historical account. Presumptions, stances, and practices that now
would be clearly recognized and negatively sanctioned as racist certainly were common
enough in the Marxist left and the labour movement in the nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries. The appropriate basis of comparison – if one wants to make the sort of moral
assessment that many critics of those institutions intend – would, however, not be early
twenty-first century sensibilities, but whether racism and sexism were more prominent
within unions and left politics than within other contemporaneous institutions. Frankly, from an historicist
perspective this sort of exercise in moralistic calculation seems rather puerile, but, because antiracist criticisms of the left in the present depend so heavily on claims regarding the past, it is necessary to address them. Toward that end an important first step is
recognizing that what race means and does not, how it has operated as a politically and ideologically potent category, as wel l as its meanings and significance, have evolved over time and context. The period of revolutionary ferment out of which the Bolshevik
revolution emerged coincided with the historical moment when the race idea was at or approaching its apogee in the history of the world, before or since. At the beginning of the twentieth century race science identified between three and sixty-three ‘basic’ races in
the world, including between three and six, or even thirty-six, in Europe alone.10 That ambiguity was the inevitable result of efforts to establish precise characteristics of a nonexistent phenomenon: ‘races’ simply do not exist as natural populations. Race theorists
assumed that their efforts at taxonomic specification failed because generations of population movement and mixing had diluted original, ‘pure’ racial types; so they looked for racial essences beneath national or linguistic affiliations. This conviction in turn supported
the manifestly unscientific approach of positing a priori ideal types and attempting to classify existing populations ‘racial ly’ by comparing the frequencies of geographical distribution of physical characteristics imputed to the ideal racial types constructed in the race

Marxists and other leftists were more likely to dissent from hegemonic racialism
scientists’ taxonomies.11

than others , but race-thinking permeated political and intellectual discourse and everyday common sense. It was reproduced among progressives, Fabians and many socialist reformers, as well as conservatives, in dominant notions of
evolution as progress. Teleological presumptions about fixed stages of cultural and social evolution and the comparative method in Victorian anthropology that considered contemporary ‘primitives’ as living versions of ancestral Europeans reinforced the tendency –
convenient for proponents of colonial expansion – to rank populations hierarchically on the basis of natural limits and capacities ascribed to them. And even many revolutionaries believed that colonial domination was justified because ‘backward’ peoples needed
periods of tutelage to prepare them for the modern world. Many English race scientists were convinced that the indigenous working class was racially different from the aristocracy. Just as some socialists opposed imperialist expansionism on egalitarian grounds,
others opposed it on racial grounds, expressing fear of degeneration through contact with racially inferior populations.12 Often class struggle was fought at least partly on the terrain of racialist ideology. In the latter half of the nineteenth century fights in the
American West over importation of Chinese labour and Japanese immigration also centred around racialist ideologies. Railroad operators and other importers of Chinese lab our imagined and openly asserted that those workers’ distinctive racial characteristics made
them more tractable and able to live on less than white Americans; opponents, including the California labour movement, argued that those very racial characteristics would degrade American labour and that Chinese were racially ‘unassimilable’. But it was the
employer class, not the workers likely to be displaced or impoverished, who established the debate on racial terms. Post-bellum southern planters imported Chinese to the Mississippi Delta region to compete with black sharecroppers out of the same racialist
presumptions of greater tractability, as did later importers of Sicilian labour to Louisiana sugarcane and cotton fields.13 Large-scale industrial production in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries depended on mass labour immigration mainly f rom the
eastern and southern fringes of Europe. The innovations of race science – that is, of racialist folk ideology transformed into an academic profession – promised to assist employers’ needs for rational labour force management and were present in the foundation of
the fields of industrial relations and industrial psychology. Hugo Münsterberg, a founding luminary of industrial psychology, included ‘race psychological diagnosis’ as an element in assessment of employees’ capabilities, although he stressed that racial or national
temperaments are averages and considerable individual variation exists within groups. He argued that assessment, therefore, should be leavened with consideration of individuals’ characteristics and that the influence of ‘group psychology’ would be significant ‘only
if the employment not of a single person, but of a large number, is in question, as it is most probable that the average char acter will show itself in a sufficient degree as soon as many members of the group are involved.’14 As scholarship on race sc ience and its
kissing cousin, eugenics, has shown, research that sets out to find evidence of racial difference will find it, whether or not it exists. Thus race science produced increasingly refined taxonomies of racial groups, and the apparent specificity of race theorists’ just-so
stories about differential racial capacities provided rationales for immigration restriction, sterilization, segregation and other regimes of inequality and subordination, including genocide. It also generated practical applications to assist employers in assigning workers
to jobs for which they were racially suited. A ‘racial adaptability’ chart used by a Pittsburgh company in the 1920s mapped thirty-six different racial groups’ capacities for twenty-two distinct jobs, eight different atmospheric conditions, jobs requiring speed or precision,
and day or night shift work.15 Of course, all this was bogus, nothing more than narrow upper-class prejudices parading about as science. It was convincing only if one shared the folk narratives of essential hierarchy that the research assumed from the outset. But
the race theories did not have to be true to be effective. They had only to be used as if they were true to produce the material effects that gave the ideology an authenticating verisimilitude. Poles became steel workers in Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Buffalo, Chicago, and

As a significant social
Gary, not for any natural aptitude or affinity but because employers and labour recruiters sorted them into work in steel mills. RACIALIST IDEOLOGY’S MATERIAL FOUNDATIONS

force, racialist ideology has always been anchored to material imperatives, in both
domestic and international domains. It became commonsense truth to the extent that it
connected with the perspectives and interests of powerful elites. Like all ideologies of
ascriptive difference, it would pre-empt debate over evolving programmes of exploitation
and domination by reading them into nature. While the discourse of white supremacy
certainly has had no shortage of sincere adherents, it became hegemonic over the
second half of the nineteenth century because it comported well with upper-class
prejudices and capitalists’ economic programmes. That is how, as the Pittsburgh racial adaptability chart illustrates, it became
the conceptual frame of reference within which other groups and strata came to understand their social position, articulate their own interests and thus constitute themselves
practically as groups. In the US for instance, in the late 1830s and 1840s, in a context of rising abolitionist sentiment and the democratization of public discourse associated with
the spread of universal (white male) suffrage, white supremacist ideology undergirded and propelled a shift in defences of slavery. Previously, pro-slavery arguments centred on
defending the institution as a ‘necessary evil’, an unpleasant and even morally dubious requirement of the plantation- based economic order of the southern states. One
antebellum planter put the matter succinctly: ‘For what purpose does the master hold the servant? Is it not that by his labor, he, the master, may accumulate wealth?’16 In the
changing political climate, the rhetorical centre of gravity of defences of slavery shifted to an argument that the institution was indeed a positive good for all involved, including
the enslaved. This moment coincided with the formation of the embryo of what by the end of the century would become race science. As the sectional crisis sharpened in the
late 1840s and early 1850s, propagation of white supremacist ideology – both rhetorically and institutionally, through carrots and sticks – became important as a basis for
accommodating non-slaveholding southern whites to the possibility of secession. Appeals to racial solidarity provided a narrative of political cohesion and negatively sanctioned

To be clear, indicating that it had a material foundation is not to suggest that

dissent.

embrace of white supremacy was ‘purely’ instrumental, even among proto-race scientists
and pro-slavery ideologues. An important feature of ideologies of ascriptive difference is
that they hopelessly cloud the distinction between principled belief and pursuit of self-
interest. Josiah C. Nott and George R. Gliddon, the authors of Types of Mankind, one of the most prominent texts of mid-nineteenth century race theory, both no doubt believed sincerely that the races they identified were equivalent to separate
species and that blacks were naturally fit for enslavement. They were also, respectively, a wealthy slave-owning Alabama physician and an English Egyptologist who also wrote on the cotton economy in Egypt.17 A striking testament to the harmonizing power of
ideology is the appearance of an antebellum field of slave medicine, devoted to identification and treatment of conditions peculiar to blacks. Among those was drapetomania, a ‘disease of the mind’ that afflicted slaves with an irrational inclination to ‘run away from
service’. Samuel A. Cartwright, the slave-owning Louisiana physician who discovered and reported the malady in the early 1850s, when ‘positive good’ arguments had become dominant among slavery’s defenders, was convinced that he had identified a genuine
medical condition, preposterously transparent as it seems to a twenty-first century sensibility.18 White supremacist ideology, and the racialism in which it was embedded, operated similarly, of course, in relation to European and American colonialism in the late
nineteenth century. Pioneer sociologist Edward A. Ross in 1901 laid out an especially clear account that links scientific rac e theory, rooted in the neo-Lamarckian evolutionism common in the early social sciences, and an argument for imperialism and colonization
as inexorable imperatives of the ‘vigorous’ races.19 In an illustration of the complex ways that hegemonic racialism could work, Ross had been fired from the Stanford University faculty the year before for having run afoul of Jane Lathrop Stanford, widow of Leland
Stanford of the Union Pacific railroad and domineering force on the University’s board of trustees. Ross had earned Mrs Stanford’s ire for two particular transgressions: he militantly advocated, in league with trade unions, intensified enforcement of Chinese
exclusion on racial grounds (Union Pacific was a principal proponent of importing Chinese labour, also on racial grounds); and he advocated with equal militancy public ownership of utilities.20 Rudyard Kipling, a literal product of British imperialism, extolled ‘The
White Man’s Burden’, which – in a gush of enthusiasm at the US’s recent acquisitions from the Spanish- Cuban-American War – he urged Americans to take up. I am agnostic with respect to how earnestly Kipling held the brew of condescension dressed as altruism
projected in his infamous contention. We can say with certitude, though, that he understood that there was much more to colonialism than altruistic tutelage. In response to Kipling, one of the most emphatic racists of th e day in American politics, Democratic US
Senator from South Carolina Benjamin R. ‘Pitchfork Ben’ Tillman, denounced imperialist expansionism on racial grounds, stressing concerns that sustained contact with inferior populations would lead to white racial degeneration.21 By the turn of the twentieth
century racialist ideology had become a global frame of reference through which arguments about colonialism and economic and political hierarchy were commonly conducted. Therefore, it should not be surprising th at opposition to those hierarchies would be
expressed, at least initially, in that same language. An oft-cited instance of that perception is W. E. B. Du Bois’s 1903 observation that ‘the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the colour line’, which he went on to specify as ‘the re lation of the darker
and lighter races of men in Asia and Africa and the islands of the sea’.22 In the US, mass disfranchisement of blacks and imposition of strictly codified white supremacist apartheid in nearly all the South made the colour line particularly salient as a bulwark against
egalitarian political interests. This is consistent with how ascriptive ideologies naturalize contingent material relations of inequality by making them invisible within narratives of fixed hierarchy. The racialized discourse of tutelage, persistence of the presumptions of
the Victorian comparative method, and direct and overt racialized domination all reinforced a similar understanding of the driving impetus of colonialism. It was reasonable for egalitarian opponents to assume either that racialist ideology was the proximate source of
the inequality and exploitation, or that combating that ideology was a necessary precondition for attacking the inequality. It is noteworthy that both in the US and in much of the fin-de-siècle colonial world, as Du Bois’s colour line apothegm illustrates, the first
tentative expressions of modern political assertiveness from the dominated populations were formulated within the paradigm of tutelage of th e underdeveloped. The nascent professional and functionary classes in the colonies and the American South, the ‘new
men’, as Judith Stein describes them, began to yield a stratum who pursued advocacy for subordinate populations alongside managerial authorit y over, and organized guidance of, their progress toward self-government. In the US that stratum of racial advocates,
often describing themselves as ‘race men’ and ‘race women’, attained civic voice in the context of mass disfranchisement and shared a commitment to the large ideal of ‘racial uplift’.23 This established a recognized social role and occupational niche for the rac e or
ethnic group leader as a sort of freelance broker or ethnic-group entrepreneur. Booker T. Washington and Du Bois were prominent voices of this stratum. Both in the US and colonial territories this politics of group advocacy often rested on racialist presumptions
about the subordinate populations’ general backwardness and the stewardship role the group’s more cultivated and advanced members should play in leading the masses out of their benighted state. This was a petition politics that addressed governing elites as its
principal audience because it understood them to be the only source of e ective political agency. That meant as well that the mission of group uplift was defined within parameters set by the ruling class. By the 1930s racialist ideology was increasingly under attack
on biological, anthropological, and political fronts, in part as an expression of the left’s social momentum, which helped to buttress and disseminate egalitarian ideas and sensibilities. In that environment, the Great Migration from the Jim Crow South to big cities in
the North and Midwest encouraged popular mass politics among black Americans, particularly as black workers were incorporated into the new industrial unionism. Mass organization as a political form as well as trade unionism also spread through much of the
colonial world. In both settings, insurgent politics understandably joined opposition to racism with opposition to exploitation, as defences of those hierarchical regimes still depended on racialist arguments and would continue to do so for several decades. But the
cultural and ideological victory of egalitarianism over racialism that consolidated in post-Second World War intellectual life came with a very large asterisk. What was largely defeated was the historically specific strict bio-determinist discourse of race that had
prevailed as common sense between the last decades of the nineteenth century and the first quarter of the twentieth. Walter B enn Michaels and Werner Sollors have shown that the retreat from race to culture in theories of social di erence that began in the 1920s
was in some ways more an exchange of one metaphor of essential di erence for another than a rejection of the notion of essent ial group di erence. As historian of anthropology George Stocking, Jr points out, from its origins in the early twentieth century the modern
culture idea never fully escaped race theory’s presumptions.24 In the postwar years, culture increasingly supplanted race in discourses legitimating inequality, particularly regarding exploitation of colonized societies and racial minorities in the US. In its taxonomy of
‘stages of development’, modernization theory in the academic study of comparative political development merely rehearsed hoary racialist accounts, such as that by E. A. Ross cited above, and the logic of the Victorian comparative method, while dressing them in
a later generation’s scientistic raiment. Robert Vitalis has shown recently how the academic field and political practice of international politics in the US remained rooted in substantively racialist paradigms well into the 1960s.25 And the State Department’s and other
national elites’ concerns about the impact that domestic civil rights agitation could have on US imperial designs in former c olonial territories led to a concern with damage control that generated, on the one hand, censorship of news broadcast abroad and intense
monitoring and policing of domestic activists’ overseas engagements and, on the other, liberal Cold Warriors’ pressure on the domestic front in support of some versions of the movement’s aims.26 AMBIGUITIES OF RACE AND CLASS IN POSTWAR
INSURGENCIES Anti-colonial and national liberation movements also paid attention and to some extent drew inspiration from the postwar black American insurgency and vice versa. At least through the 1950s, movements on both planes of insurgency mobilized in
general terms on a popular front basis. In both spheres – economic position and racial or national category – each signified the other. In the black American case, the postwar insurgency, which had germinated since the mid-1930s, incubated by industrial unionism
and socialist agitation, was propelled partly by a tension between what Preston Smith characterizes as racial democratic (i.e., committed to radical equality of opportunity within American capitalism) and social democratic tendencies and programmes.27

in quotidian experience racial

Occasionally, the ultimate contradiction between those tendencies would erupt as open conflict around specific initiatives. H owever,

discrimination and subordination and economic exploitation and degradation seemed,

and on one level were, elements in a singular system of oppression. For leftists in both
loci of insurgency, pursuit of redistribution along racial and class lines each seemed to
be a necessary condition for successful pursuit of the other, if they were not treated as
indistinguishable. By the end of the Second World War, even very conventional black liberals
and moderates were emphatic that continued growth of industrial unionism and expansion
of public social wage policies were indispensable for black Americans’ advancement
toward equality.28 For many, including activists, the social-democratic and racial-democratic imperatives were so tightly melded that, even on those
occasions when tension between them erupted into explicit conflict in relation to specific initiatives, the sources of conflict typically were interpreted as deriving from individual,
idiosyncratic di erences rather than more portentous ideological contradiction. A downside of the popular front style of politics, which was very successful through the major
legislative victories of the mid-1960s, was that it proceeded from an abstract commitment to the interests of the race as a whole as a governing norm for political judgment,
which was by definition murky and facilitated evasion of those sharp, potentially zero-sum disagreements over political vision that would surface in strategic or even tactical
debates. This murkiness left many popular front black radicals ill- prepared for a critical moment in the mid-1960s when the submerged class contradiction sharpened in debate

That tension in black politics was at

over ways forward after the legislative victories against segregation. THE CLASS CONTRADICTION

its core a class contradiction; racial democracy is the social ideal of the aspiring
professional-managerial and business strata. Failure, inability or reluctance to address
class dynamics in black politics as such, while understandable in the context of dynamic
racial popular front insurgency as a strategic desideratum or even simple oversight, nonetheless
has had consequences for subsequent understandings of the relation of race and
politics and assertions of the scope of authentically black political interests that
eventually undermined possibilities for sustaining a working-class agenda in black
politics. Antagonistic reactions from both antiracist activists and political elites to Senator
Bernie Sanders’s campaign for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, on a platform
inspired by social democracy, threw into bold relief the extent to which what is now generally
recognized as black politics is fundamentally a professional- managerial class programme
that constitutes the left-wing of neoliberalism. This politics actively invokes the cultural
authority of earlier moments of black insurgency, shorn of their working-class
programmatic character, and spectres of the racial order it opposed, to align with a
neoliberal ideal of social justice – parity in the distribution of capitalism’s costs and
benefits among recognized ascriptive categories – as the boundary of the politically
thinkable , even among a nominal left. This odd state of affairs is the product of several developments in postwar American politics, beginning with the impact of the business counterattack on labour in the years after the war and the aggressive
anti-communism of the late 1940s and 1950s, and including the terms on which the victories of the mid-1960s were consolidated institutionally within black politics and the country at large. And, perhaps counter-intuitively, identification with Third World anti-colonial
and national liberation movements in the 1960s and 1970s played a significant role in rendering invisible the class dynamics that shaped the thrust and impact of post-segregation black politics. The decade after the end of the Second World War was a key moment
in helping form the trajectory that has culminated in contemporary antiracist politics in the US. Two linked pressures, one suppressive and the other affirmative, shifted the balance in black popular front radicalism sharply in favour of the racial-democratic tendency.
The reactionary anti- communist offensive of those years, as was its domestic intent, stigmatized and s uppressed expressions of socialist or anti-capitalist politics or critique. Its effects on accelerating purges of the left from the labour movement are well known.
Leah N. Gordon and Risa Golubo have examined its impact on the strategic orientation of blac k politics and racial advocacy.29 Crucially, aggressive, putschist anti-communism and its ‘loyalty’ apparatus drove a retreat from political-economic interpretations of the
bases of racial inequality and toward an individualist, psychologistic perspective focused on racism as prejudice, bigotry, or intolerance. On the affirmative side of the ledger, that new racial liberalism divorced from political economy encouraged a litigation strategy of
challenging the codified apartheid in the South as violating the guarantees of equal protection against discriminatory state action provided by the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution. By the mid-1940s the federal courts had shown that that direction could
produce positive results for litigants, and that potential opening impelled a focus on the segregationist southern order and its infringements on the civil rights of blacks as a class of individuals. Of course, segregation violated the Fourteenth Amendment no more in
1954, when the US Supreme Court found state-sponsored racially segregated education unconstitutional by definition, than it had in 1896, when the Court’s ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson upheld codified segregation in the ‘separate but equal’ doctrine. Moreover,
black activists had fought against the segregationist regime with whatever means available since before Plessy had established it as legitimate. What had changed was the political and cultural centre of gravity with regard to racial inequality and discrimination. To

. The fabled 1963 March on

be sure, the social-democratic tendency in black politics did not disappear. It remained an important engine of popular political action through the 1960s

Washington was organized principally by labour leader A. Philip Randolph’s Negro

American Labor Council, and was officially called the March on Washington for Jobs and
Freedom, organized and carried out with considerable trade union support. The impetus for
the protest in Memphis at which Martin Luther King, Jr was assassinated was a sanitation
workers’ strike that was an outcropping of a regional organizing campaign of the American
Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME). Labour and class-related
issues were central to much of the militant action that made up the high period of
southern civil rights activism from the 1940s through the 1960s, as well as a two-decade
long struggle – mainly outside the South, where ruling-class dominance was too complete –
for local, state, and federal Fair Employment Practices legislation. This would extend
beyond anti-discrimination efforts to authorize public intervention in labour markets to
pursue full employment, which had been a central goal of black political agitation – and
the black-labour-left alliance in which it was embedded – since the war years. Even in the South, however, as
the Memphis case illustrates, labour and class issues were often as not high on the movement’s agenda. Even such proceduralis t liberal staples of the anti-segregation struggle as restoration of voting rights were linked in the minds of activists and rank-and-file
movement supporters to working-class and labour objectives. NATIONAL LIBERATION, BLACK POWER AND CLASS POLITICS As Cold War liberalism and postwar racial li beralism converged, activists increasingly tended to link the civil rights agenda to the Cold
War international agenda, especially regarding the decolonizing Third World, characterizing southern segregationists as out of step with world opinion and harmful to national security. Thus, at the same time as politically attentive black Americans drew inspiration
from and inspired decolonization and national liberation movements abroad, many also found it at least instrumentally useful to identify their domestic struggles with US international aspirations. Not many perceived that there was a possible contradiction between
those positions. Black Americans’ identification with anti-colonial struggles rested on an almost unavoidable and a ectively powerful sense of common, or at least comparable condition. I recall, on first seeing the film soon after its release, finding the ‘Battle of
Algiers’ immensely resonant; it seemed that I had lived some of it as a child and adolescent in New Orleans and other American cities. But that general identification was also in important ways superficial and naïve, and it would eventually become implicated in the
critical defeat of the social-democratic tendency in black politics in the late 1960s and 1970s. Black American Third Worldism was more nationalist than revolutionary. Going back to Du Bois’s apothegm about the colour line – and it is much less known that he
essentially recanted it by the early 1950s, specifically describing race as an ‘excuse’ in class war30 – black identification with colonized populations stemmed partly from an idealized racial nationalism that presumed white supremacist constructions of the stakes of
western imperialism. Du Bois’s 1928 novel Dark Princess is a romance based on the premise of a global rising of united peoples of colour.31 In the 1930s and even into the war, many black Americans cheered on Japanese imperialism as a non-white challenge to
white supremacy.32 The roots of the characterization of black Americans’ position as an instance of ‘domestic colonialism’ in the early 1960s lay in an e ort not merely to elevate the black insurgency’s power and significance through association with Third World
struggles, but also to advocate a model of national liberation as a programme and approach for black politics in the US.33 Third Worldism was in general more a rhetorical phenomenon than a substantively programmatic one. Marxist revolutionaries on the capitalist
periphery embraced it as an aspiration. Mao propounded a ‘three worlds’ theory, and Cuba still maintains the Organización de Solidaridad con los Pueblos de Asia, África, y América Latina (OSPAAL). Left governments in Venezuela and elsewhere have drawn on
imagery at least evocative of Third Worldism and Non-Alignment in their e orts to organize regional and supra-regional (typically based on common export commodities) economic and political blocs. The Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América
(ALBA), with member states in South America, Central America, and the Caribbean, is arguably the most extensive and successful of those e orts. For the most part, however, the history of Third Worldism and the Non-Aligned Movement as predicated on the goal
of global alliance of ‘peoples of colour’ – anti-imperialist or otherwise – has been very much oversold.34 Moreover, the view that non-whiteness provides a basis for transnational political alliance simply rehearses the mystification that colonialism had been driven
fundamentally by white supremacist ideology. As Fanon observed early in the period of decolonization, that mystification, in identifying racial transfer of formal authority as the essence of national liberation, also obscured the extent to which imperialism was al ways
first and foremost a class project, of which colonialism buttressed by racialist fables was only one historically specific form. In any event, as anti-colonial and national liberation struggles intensified in the 1960s against the backdrop of the escalating Indochina War,
Western leftists, almost as a reflex, generally supported those insurgent movements and defended them against inegalitarian critics and imperialist state power; doing so was consistent with the left’s egalitarian and democratic values. Many of those movements
contained different ideological and class tendencies, a complexity often obscured by their populist rhetoric, which posited claims to represent the authentic ‘people’. How class dynamics played out in national liberation movements that succeeded in winning
independence and official self-determination is well known. Even several of those movements that embraced socialism and attempted to link the national liberation struggle to a popular class politics – e.g., the FLN in Algeria, the African National Congress in South
Africa and those that came to power in the former Portuguese colonies in Africa – were ultimately incorporated into the logic of capitalist globalization in ways that articulated with domestic class contradictions.35 In the US, escalation of the war on Vietnam

the Black
encouraged greater attentiveness in the left to imperialist interventionism, and over that decade armed national liberation or revolutionary struggles intensified in much of the former colonial world and Latin America. At the same time

Power nationalist embrace of the domestic colonial analogy and the discourse of
national liberation gave a radical halo to what was, militant rhetorical flourishes aside,
programmatically an ethnic politics fully incorporable with the pluralist interest-group
system. Notwithstanding the sincere convictions of adherents, Black Power was,
consistent with ethnic politics in general, very much a class-based affair, harnessing an
abstract and symbolic racial populism to an agenda that centred concretely on
advancing the interests and aspirations of new political and entrepreneurial strata which
emerged from the victories of the civil rights movement and demographic racial
transition in American cities.36 In relation to a history of racial exclusion, it was reasonable
and appropriate that many leftists supported what was substantively a programme for inclusion
on a racial-democratic model. And the rhetorical militancy and racial-populist symbolism
associated with Black Power, including the tropes of national liberation, reinforced the
sense that it was a radical or revolutionary tendency that leftists should support. For
more than half a century that view of Black Power has obscured the significance of the
mid-1960s debate in black politics over the movement’s direction in the wake of the
legislative victories. On one side, a working- class and labour-based black radicalism,
propounded principally by A. Philip Randolph and his associate and longtime civil rights
activist Bayard Rustin, argued that the struggle for black equality faced new, larger
challenges opened by the defeat of Jim Crow that required building a different sort of
movement centred on the familiar black-liberal-labour-left alliance. In questioning whether
‘civil rights movement’ even remained an accurate description, Rustin argued, in a widely read
essay published a year before Stokely Carmichael introduced the Black Power slogan to the
world, that the next phase of the struggle called for expanding the movement’s vision
‘beyond race relations to economic relations’. He argued that it could not succeed ‘in the
absence of radical programs for full employment, abolition of slums, the reconstruction
of our educational system, new definitions of work and leisure. Adding up the cost of such
programs, we can only conclude that we are talking about a refashioning of our political
economy. ’ For that reason, he contended: ‘The future of the Negro struggle depends on whether the contradictions of this society can be resolved by a coalition of progressive forces which becomes the effective political majority in the United
States. I speak of the coalition which staged the March on Washington, passed the Civil Rights Act, and laid the basis for the Johnson landslide – Negroes, trade unionists, liberals, and religious groups.’37
 1nc alt evidence

The alternative rejects the aff in favor of a collective demand for

communism – anything short of explicit communism makes black
liberation impossible
Black Workers Congress 82 [“The Black Liberation Struggle, the Black Workers
Congress, and Proletarian Revolution,” 1982, http://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-2/bwc-
1/section4.htm]

Despite oppression, exploitation and racial discrimination, the out-right murder and
imprisonment of our peoples by a handful of racist-imperialist, the Black liberation
movement has kept on pushing, like a powerful train headed for freedom. Through hundreds of years of unremitting
struggle the Black liberation movement has been steadily maturing despite the class
forces that have held the reign of leadership. In recent times the most important and
significant trend has been the dramatic awakening of the Black working class in its fight
for its own independent organization and ideological and political leadership of the Black
struggle. The Black Bourgeoisie (Uncle Toms) has already proven to the masses of Black
people that it is incapable of leading the great struggle for Black emancipation, and not only are
these “Toms” incapable of leading the struggle, they themselves have proven to be one of its mortal

enemies. The main forces of the Black Liberation movement are the Black proletariat Black youth, revolutionary intellectuals and students, and
other revolutionary nationalists in the Black community, with the Black proletariat in the lead as the key and most through going revolutionary class.
The political task of the Black liberation movement is complete emancipation of Black
people through a revolutionary union with the entire U.S. working class, of which it is an
important part, to overthrow capitalism and imperialism in the U.S. In a word, Black
Liberation today means freedom for Black people through proletarian revolution. Which
road should the Black liberation struggle travel? Should it take the road of Jesse Jackson and “Black Capitalism”?
Should it rely on Mr. Muhammad and Allah’s wheel in the sky to save the Black Masses?
Should it take the “pork chop” road of cultural nationalism – Immamu Barakaism? Should it dream with Stokely Carmichael
of returning to Africa to “free Ghana”. Should it take the road of electing the black
Bourgeoisie to puppet, show-front, positions of mayor, City-councilman, Legislators, and
Congressmen? Or should it take the road of “Pan-Africanism”, where the Black masses are asked to play “first aid” for the liberation struggles
in Africa? Of all these “roads” which one is correct? Anyone who takes a serious look at the world today
cannot help but see that oppressed and exploited peoples are locked in a death-bed
struggle against international capitalism. Who can deny that the major enemy of the
peoples of Asia, Africa, Latin America, are a gang of international imperialist, head by the two
“super-powers” the U.S. and the Soviet Union? Who are the murderers of the miners of South Africa? The peasants and workers of Vietnam? The
Attica Brothers? The people of Chile? The Indians at Wounded Knee? Who is responsible for police brutality in Detroit? In Chicago? In Atlanta? Who
benefits from the high price of bread and meat? Who benefits from the lowest possible wages? Whether we like it or not our position in the world as an
oppressed people does not allow us to follow the bankrupt road of U.S. imperialism which is heading for its doom. In
the present
international situation, the Black masses must line up with the heroic peoples of the
world who have struck blow after blow at imperialism, or we must line up with the
imperialists themselves who send their puppets into the Black communities to preach
“Black Capitalism”. There is no third path . Only the Black proletariat deserves to lead the Black liberation movement. As
far as we are concerned, none of the other classes in the Black community can do it. If none of the
bourgeois and petty bourgeois “isms” cited above is capable of lighting the road for the
Black liberation struggle, then what is? We say it is Marxism-Leninism and the Thought of Mao Tse Tung. All those who
genuinely (in word and deed) take up Marxism-Leninism and Mao’s Thought and put it into practice are communists. Chairman Mao runs it down like
this: “Communism is at once a complete system of proletarian ideology and a new social
system. It is different from any other ideology and social system, and is the most
complete, progressive, revolutionary and rational system in human history”. (New Democracy)
REVOLUTIONARY IDEOLOGY OF THE MODERN ERA Marxism-Leninism and the Thought of Mao Tse Tung is the ideology of the working class in
the present era. It takes its name from the great teachers of the working class and oppressed-Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao Tse Tung.
Without Marxism-Leninism Mao Tse Tung Thought to guide it, the Black liberation movement cannot
possibly be victorious. And whom do we think is most hostile to this ideology,
proletarian ideology? What class and their lap dogs do the most to try and poison our
minds against communism? The very same class that is the cause of our oppression and
exploitation–the imperialist ruling class and their agents in the Black Nation. While constantly
preaching to us about the “horrors and perils of communism”, the imperialist bourgeoisie and their lackeys in the
U.S. have concocted the most insane arguments possible for the rejection of communist
ideology. Everyone, knows how the bourgeoisie hates everything which hints of socialism and communism. We are even treated to the spectacle
of a person like ’Senator Eastland’ of Mississippi, practically a slaveholder today, talking about how communism is “bad for the people”. What people is
this blood-sucker talking about? Certainly not Black people, especially those who work on “his” plantation, or even the masses of white people for that
matter. Eastland knows that communism is “bad” for people like himself, ex-slaveholders and modern imperialists, who communists and communism
seek to wipe off the face of the earth. No, it is not so difficult to see the motives behind the massive anti-communist hysteria in the U.S.
The
buffoons who really take the cake are those among us. The Jesse Jacksons, Imamu
Barakas, Thomas Mathews, Stokely Carmichaels, and the jive Black politicians and sinister Black capitalists who
roam about the Black community. These people feel that Senator Eastland is not enough, he needs an echo. After the many
years of bitter experience that Black people have had in this country one would have thought, perhaps, that when ’massa’ says “something is bad for
you”, that it is likely to be something good. Malcolm summed it up this way: “There are basically two kinds of Negroes. The first kind of Negro when he
sees his master is sick he says good, let him die. If he sees his master’s house burning down he prays for a strong wind. He hates his master because
he wants to be free. The other kind of Negro is a fool. He identifies himself with his master. When the ’massa’ wants something, he runs and gets it.
When the master gets sick, he says: “’massa’ we sick?” This Negro loves his master because he wants to stay a slave.” So it is today. The Black
Nation is and has always been divided into classes, and each class has its own ”ism”, and there are even different groups within the same class with
different “isms.” The ruling circles of the U.S. preach that capitalism is the best of all possible worlds. Black bourgeois forces echo and mimic the “big”
This same Black
bourgeoisie under the cover of “assimilationism” “integrationism” and now and then, “back to Africanism.”
bourgeoisie spreads its own form of nationalism, “bourgeois nationalism.” Mr.
Muhammad talks about meeting Allah on a street corner in Detroit one cold winter day. Therefore,
Islamism is the road to freedom and salvation, even though it hasn’t served the Arabs too
well in. the Middle East; in fact it hinders their liberation . And there is the ”Black ’Christian Nationalism” of
certain Black preachers who are trying to convince us how “revolutionary” Christianity can be if you only paint Jesus Black! And then there’s Imamu
Baraka (Swahili for “high priest”) who loves to enlighten us by calling Marxism-Leninism “a honky thing.” There is the “Pan-Africanism” of the Black
bourgeois and petty bourgeois classes who want to fight the U.S. and Portugal in Africa, but who don’t want to fight the rulers of the U.S. and Portugal
who live in the United States and who murder Black people right under their noses! And they do this without the blessings of the African revolutionaries
who have consistently told them that the best way to help Africa become free and independent is to take up the struggle against U.S. imperialism right
inside the U.S.A. Additionally, the Black bourgeois and petty bourgeois classes have the many other “isms” of ’cultural nationalism’, communalism,
there are so many “isms” in the Black community representing
’lumpenism’, and etc., etc., etc.. Since
the interests of the Black bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie, what is wrong with the
Black proletariat having Communism for its ideology, since it is the one ideology which
doesn’t rely on magic, and the one ideology standing up to the imperialists of the world,
and the one ideology which has changed the material conditions for over a billion of the
world’s people? Clearly it is the only ideology leading people to their liberation in the
modern era. When Imamu Baraka claims that Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse Tung Thought is a “Honky Thing”, what is he really saying? Is he
saying that the millions of dead Vietnamese workers and peasants who were guided by this outlook were dying in the interest of a “honky thing?” Is he
saying that the great Chinese revolution was led by a “honky thing?” Or maybe he is saying that the great TANZAM Railway Project’ which is being
The entire international anti-
built through Zambia and Tanzania, with the fraternal aid of the Chinese, is a “honky thing” project.
imperialist united front today depends on the international proletariat and its ideology of
Marxism-Leninism and the Thought of Mao Tse Tung as a guiding light and an
unshakable force. For Imamu Baraka and his like to reject Marxism-Leninism means they are rejecting the leading role of the Black
proletariat in the Black liberation movement, and in the final analysis, selling out the Black liberation movement altogether. Despite their phrase-
mongering, people
like Baraka cannot possibly have the interests of the Black Nation at heart.
These elements like Baraka himself, accuse us communists of “dividing Black people
along class lines,” “keeping us from all uniting as one,” etc. But they are wrong. It is not
us communists who “divide Black people along class lines,” but the objective
development of society itself. Booker T. Washington preceded the Bolshevik Revolution by fifty years! Whether we like it or not,
class divisions exist in the Black community and they will not, be “wished” away by
rhetoric, only by the establishment of world communism and a classless society. Black
magic just will not do!

Class is better starting point—intersecting inequality is real, but Marxism is

key to historicize it and address collective imperatives
Taylor 11 [Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, on the editorial board of the International Socialist
Review and a doctoral student in African American Studies at Northwestern University; “Race,
class and Marxism,” SocialistWorker.org, http://socialistworker.org/2011/01/04/race-class-and-
marxism]

Marxists believe that the potential for that kind of unity is dependant on battles and struggles against racism today. Without a commitment by revolutionary organizations in the here and now to the fight against
racism, working-class unity will never be achieved and the revolutionary potential of the working class will never be realized. Yet despite all the evidence of this commitment to fighting racism over many decades,

Marxism has been maligned as, at best, "blind" to combating racism and, at worst, "incapable"
of it. For example, in an article published last summer, popular commentator and self-described "anti-racist" Tim Wise summarized the
critique of "left activists" that he later defines as Marxists. He writes: [L]eft activists often marginalize people of color by operating
from a framework of extreme class reductionism, which holds that the "real" issue is class, not race, that "the only color that matters is green," and that issues like racism are mere "identity politics," which should
take a backseat to promoting class-based universalism and programs to help working people. This reductionism, by ignoring the way that even middle class and affluent people of color face racism and color-
based discrimination (and by presuming that low-income folks of color and low-income whites are equally oppressed, despite a wealth of evidence to the contrary) reinforces white denial, privileges white
perspectivism and dismisses the lived reality of people of color. Even more, as we'll see, it ignores perhaps the most important political lesson regarding the interplay of race and class: namely, that the biggest
reason why there is so little working-class consciousness and unity in the Untied States (and thus, why class-based programs to uplift all in need are so much weaker here than in the rest of the industrialized
world), is precisely because of racism and the way that white racism has been deliberately inculcated among white working folks. Only by confronting that directly (rather than sidestepping it as class reductionists
seek to do) can we ever hope to build cross-racial, class based coalitions. In other words, for the policies favored by the class reductionist to work--be they social democrats or Marxists--or even to come into

being, racism and white supremacy must be challenged directly. Here, Wise accuses Marxism of: "extreme class reductionism,"
meaning that Marxists allegedly think that class is more important than race; reducing
struggles against racism to "mere identity politics"; and requiring that struggles against
racism should "take a back seat" to struggles over economic issues. Wise also accuses so-
called "left activists" of reinforcing "white denial" and "dismiss[ing] the lived reality of people of color"--which,

of course, presumes Left activists and Marxists to all be white. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - What do Marxists
actually say? Marxists argue that capitalism is a system that is based on the exploitation
of the many by the few. Because it is a system based on gross inequality, it requires various
tools to divide the majority--racism and all oppressions under capitalism serve this purpose.
Moreover, oppression is used to justify and "explain" unequal relationships in society that enrich the minority that live off the majority's labor. Thus, racism developed

initially to explain and justify the enslavement of Africans--because they were less than human and undeserving of liberty and freedom.
Everyone accepts the idea that the oppression of slaves was rooted in the class relations of exploitation under

that system. Fewer recognize that under capitalism, wage slavery is the pivot around which all other
inequalities and oppressions turn. Capitalism used racism to justify plunder, conquest and slavery, but as Karl Marx pointed out, it also used racism to divide and
rule--to pit one section of the working class against another and thereby blunt class consciousness. To claim, as Marxists do, that racism is a product of

capitalism is not to deny or diminish its importance or impact in American society. It is simply to explain its origins
and the reasons for its perpetuation. Many on the left today talk about class as if it is one of many oppressions, often describing it as "classism." What people are really
referring to as "classism" is elitism or snobbery, and not the fundamental organization of society under capitalism. Moreover, it is popular today to talk about

various oppressions, including class, as intersecting. While it is true that oppressions

can reinforce and compound each other, they are born out of the material relations shaped
by capitalism and the economic exploitation that is at the heart of capitalist society. In other words, it
is the material and economic structure of society that gave rise to a range of ideas and ideologies to justify, explain and help perpetuate that order. In the United States, racism is the most important of those
 Marx himself was well aware of the centrality of race under
ideologies. Despite the widespread beliefs to the contrary of his critics, Karl

capitalism. While Marx did not write extensively on the question of slavery and its racial impact in societies specifically, he did write about the way in which European capitalism
emerged because of its pilfering, rape and destruction, famously writing: The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and

entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the
turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of Black skins, signalized the rosy dawn of the era of
capitalist production. He also recognized the extent to which slavery was central to the world economy. He wrote: Direct slavery is just as much the pivot of bourgeois industry as
machinery, credits, etc. Without slavery you have no cotton; without cotton you have no modern industry. It is slavery that has given the colonies their value; it is the colonies that have created world trade, and it is
world trade that is the pre-condition of large-scale industry. Thus slavery is an economic category of the greatest importance. Without slavery North America, the most progressive of countries, would be
transformed into a patriarchal country. Wipe out North America from the map of the world, and you will have anarchy--the complete decay of modern commerce and civilization. Cause slavery to disappear and
you will have wiped America off the map of nations. Thus slavery, because it is an economic category, has always existed among the institutions of the peoples. Modern nations have been able only to disguise
slavery in their own countries, but they have imposed it without disguise upon the New World. Thus, there is a fundamental understanding of the centrality of slave labor in the national and international economy.
But what about race? Despite the dearth of Marx's own writing on race in particular, one might look at Marx's correspondence and deliberations on the American Civil War to draw conclusions as to whether Marx
was as dogmatically focused on purely economic issues as his critics make him out be. One must raise the question: If Marx was reductionist, how is his unabashed support and involvement in abolitionist

If Marx was truly an economic reductionist, he might have surmised that slavery
struggles in England explained?

and capitalism were incompatible, and simply waited for slavery to whither away. W.E.B. Du Bois in his Marxist
tome Black Reconstruction, quotes at length a letter penned by Marx as the head of the International Workingmen's Association, written to Abraham Lincoln in 1864 in the midst of the Civil War: The contest for
the territories which opened the epoch, was it not to decide whether the virgin soil of immense tracts should be wedded to the labor of the immigrant or be prostituted by the tramp of the slaver driver? When an
oligarchy of 300,000 slave holders dared to inscribe for the first time in the annals of the world "Slavery" on the banner of armed revolt, when on the very spots where hardly a century ago the idea of one great
Democratic Republic had first sprung up, whence the first declaration of the rights of man was issued...when on the very spots counter-revolution...maintained "slavery to be a beneficial institution"...and cynically
proclaimed property in man 'the cornerstone of the new edifice'...then the working classes of Europe understood at once...that the slaveholders' rebellion was to sound the tocsin for a general holy war of property
against labor... They consider it an earnest sign of the epoch to come that it fell to the lot of Abraham Lincoln, the single-minded son of the working class, to lead his country through the matchless struggles for the

Not only was Marx personally opposed to slavery and actively

rescue of the enchained race and the Reconstruction of a social order.

organized against it, but he theorized that slavery and the resultant race discrimination that flowed from it
were not just problems for the slaves themselves, but for white workers who were constantly under the threat of losing work to slave labor. This did not mean
white workers were necessarily sympathetic to the cause of the slaves--most of them were not. But Marx was not addressing the issue of consciousness, but objective factors when he wrote in Capital, "In the
United States of America, every independent movement of the workers was paralyzed as long as slavery disfigured a part of the Republic. Labor cannot emancipate itself in the white skin where in the Black it is

Moreover, Marx understood the dynamics of racism in a modern sense as well--as a means by which workers
branded."

who had common, objective interests with each other could also become mortal enemies because of
subjective, but nevertheless real, racist and nationalist ideas. Looking at the tensions between Irish and English workers, with a nod toward the American situation
between Black and white workers, Marx wrote: Every industrial and commercial center in England possesses a working class divided into two hostile camps, English proletarians and Irish proletarians. The
ordinary English worker hates the Irish worker as a competitor who lowers his standard of life. In relation to the Irish worker he feels himself a member of the ruling nation and so turns himself into a tool of the
aristocrats and capitalists of his country against Ireland, thus strengthening their domination over himself. He cherishes religious, social and national prejudices against the Irish worker. His attitude is much the
same as that of the "poor whites" to the "niggers" in the former slave states of the USA. The Irishman pays him back with interest in his own money. He sees in the English worker at once the accomplice and

This antagonism is artificially kept alive and intensified by the press, the pulpit, the comic papers, in short by all the
stupid tool of the English rule in Ireland.

means at the disposal of the ruling classes. This antagonism is the secret of the impotence of the English working class, despite its organization. It is the secret by which the

capitalist maintains its power. And that class is fully aware of it. Out of this quote, one can see a Marxist theory of how racism operated in contemporary society, after
slavery was ended. Marx was highlighting three things: first, that capitalism promotes economic competition between workers ; second, that

the ruling class uses racist ideology to divide workers against each other; and finally, that when one group

of workers suffer oppression, it negatively impacts the entire class.

 at: racism root cause of slavery
The claim that race produced slavery is an empirical one—thus you should
judge the evidence for it based on historical fact, not abstract theory. Most
aff evidence is solely conclusionary—consensus goes neg
Drescher 97 [Seymour, Department of History, University of Pittsburgh; Slavery & Abolition, 18: 3, 212 — 227]

Perhaps the best point of departure is the collective volume that emerged from the fortieth anniversary conference on Capitalism
and Slavery, held at Bellagio, Italy, and was published in 1987. The editors, Barbara L. Solow and Stanley L. Engerirían, divided the
non-biographical contributions into three parts, corresponding to three major hypotheses on the relationship between economic
development and slavery in the British empire. We may appropriately test the first hypothesis most briefly. Williams only briefly
broached the subject and his assessment has not been of major historiographical interest in the subsequent literature. Williams took
the position thateconomic factors rather than racism occupied pride of place in the switch to
African labour in the plantation Americas, that slavery 'was not born of racism' but rather slavery
led to racism. Although some recent interpretations make racial preferences and inhibitions central to the choice of African
labour, Williams's order of priorities, if not his either-or approach, is supported by a survey of hundreds of
articles. They show virtual unanimity on the primacy of economics in accounting for the turn
toward slave labour. Non-economic factors, such as race or religion, entered into the development
of New World slavery only as a limiting parameter. Such factors affected the historical sequence by which entire human
groups (Christians, Jews, Muslim North Africans, Native Americans) were excluded from liability to enslavement in the Atlantic
system. Since Williams published his book, the main change in the historiographical context of origins is an increase in the number
and variety of actors brought into the process. That broader context complicates the role of any exclusively 'African' racial
component of the slave trade. From
the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries, slavery, even the
English colonial varieties, was hardly synonymous with Africans. Nor were Africans
synonymous with slaves. In the African sector of the Atlantic system Europeans were
forced to regard Africans (and Afro-Europeans) as autonomous and even locally dominant
participants in the slave trade. They were often dominant militarily and were certainly
dominant in terms of their massive presence and limited vulnerability to local diseases.
Even in the Americas, Africans did not arrive only as captives and deracinated slaves.

Race is a product of capital, produced to justify disparate labor practices—

they have it backwards
Tom Keefer, a member of Facing Reality, an anti-imperialist, anti-racist collective in Montreal , 2003
http://newsocialist.org/old_mag/magazine/39/article03.html

The brutality and viciousness of capitalism is well known to the oppressed and exploited of this world. Billions
of people throughout the world spend their lives incessantly toiling to enrich the already wealthy, while throughout
history any serious attempts to build alternatives to capitalism have been met with bombings, invasions, and blockades by imperialist nation states.
Although the modern day ideologues of the mass media and of institutions such as the World Bank and IMF never cease to inveigh against scattered
the capitalist system they lord over was called into
acts of violence perpetrated against their system, they always neglect to mention that
existence and has only been able to maintain itself by the sustained application of systematic
violence. It should come as no surprise that this capitalist system, which we can only hope is now reaching the era of its final demise, was just as
rapacious and vicious in its youth as it is now. The "rosy dawn" of capitalist production was inaugurated by the
process of slavery and genocide in the western hemisphere, and this "primitive accumulation of capital" resulted
in the largest systematic murder of human beings ever seen. However, the rulers of society have found that
naked force is often most economically used in conjunction with ideologies of domination and
control which provide a legitimizing explanation for the oppressive nature of society. Racism
is such a construct and it came into being as a social relation which condoned and secured
the initial genocidal processes of capitalist accumulation--the founding stones of contemporary bourgeois society.
While it is widely accepted that the embryonic capitalist class came to power in the great bourgeois revolutions of the 17th and 18th centuries, what
is comparatively less well known is the crucial role that chattel slavery and the plunder of the "New World" played
in calling this class into being and providing the "primitive accumulation of capital" necessary to
launch and sustain industrialization in Europe. The accidental "discovery" of the Western Hemisphere by the mass murderer
Christopher Columbus in 1492 changed everything for the rival economic and political interests of the European states. The looting and pillaging of the
"New World" destabilized the European social order, as Spain raised huge armies and built armadas with the unending streams of gold and silver
coming from the "New World", the spending of which devalued the currency reserves of its rivals. The only way Portugal, England, Holland, and France
could stay ahead in the regional power games of Europe was to embark on their own colonial ventures. In addition to the extraction of precious
minerals and the looting and pillaging of indigenous societies, European merchant-adventurers realized that
substantial profits could also be made through the production of cash crops on the fertile lands surrounding
the Caribbean sea. The only problem was that as the indigenous population either fled from enslavement
or perished from the diseases and deprivations of the Europeans, there was no one left to raise the sugar,
tobacco, cotton, indigo, and other tropical cash crops that were so profitable. A system of waged labour would not work for the
simple reason that with plentiful land and easy means of subsistence surrounding them, colonists would naturally prefer small
scale homesteading instead of labouring for their masters. As the planter Emanuel Downing of Massachusetts put it in
1645: "I do not see how we can thrive until we get a stock of slaves sufficient to do all our business, for our children's children will hardly see this great
continent filled with people so that our servants will still desire freedom to plant for themselves, and not stay but for very great wages."
Capitalistic social relations have always been based on compulsion, and they require as a
precondition that workers possess nothing but their capacity to labour. The would-be developers of the
wealth of the "New World" thus turned to forced labour in complete contradiction to all the theories of bourgeois economists because unfree labour was
the only kind of labour applicable to the concrete situation in the Americas. Although slavery is now, and has almost always been
equated with unfree Black labour, it was not always, or even predominantly so. Capitalists
looked first to their own societies in order to find the population to labour in servitude on the large-
scale plantations necessary for tropical cash crop production. Eric Williams, in his groundbreaking work Capitalism and Slavery, noted that
in the early stages of colonialism "white slavery was the historic base upon which Negro [sic]
slavery was constructed." Between 1607 and 1783 over a quarter million "white" indentured
servants arrived in the British colonies alone where they were set to work in the agricultural and industrial processes of the time. The
shipping companies, ports, and trading routes established for the transport of the poor,
"criminal", and lumpen elements of European society were to form the backbone of the future
slave trade of Africans. Slavery became an exclusively Black institution due to the dynamics of
class struggle as repeated multi-ethnic rebellions of African slaves and indentured European
servants led the slaveholders to seek strategies to divide and conquer. The fact that an African
slave could be purchased for life with the same amount of money that it would cost to buy an
indentured servant for 10 years, and that the African's skin color would function as an
instrument of social control by making it easier to track down runaway slaves in a land
where all whites were free wage labourers and all Black people slaves, provided further incentives for
this system of racial classification. In the colonies where there was an insufficient free white population to provide a
counterbalance to potential slave insurgencies, such as on the Caribbean islands, an elaborate hierarchy of racial privilege
was built up, with the lighter skinned "mulattos" admitted to the ranks of free men where they
often owned slaves themselves. The concept of a "white race" never really existed before
the economic systems of early capitalism made it a necessary social construct to aid in
the repression of enslaved Africans. Xenophobia and hostility towards those who were
different than one's own immediate family, clan, or tribe were certainly evident, and
discrimination based on religious status was also widespread but the development of modern
"scientific" racism with its view that there are physically distinct "races" within humanity, with
distinct attributes and characteristics is peculiar to the conquest of the Americas, the rise of
slavery, and the imperialist domination of the entire world. Racism provided a convenient
way to explain the subordinate position of Africans and other victims of Euro-colonialism, while at the same time providing
an apparatus upon which to structure the granting of special privileges to sectors of the working class admitted as members of the "white race". As
David McNally has noted, one of the key component of modern racism was its utility in resolving the
contradiction as to how the modern European societies in which the bourgeoisie had come to
power through promising "freedom" and "equality" were so reliant on slave labour and
murderous, yet highly profitable colonial adventures. The development of a concept like racism
allowed whole sections of the world's population to be "excommunicated" from humankind, and
then be murdered or worked to death with a clear conscience for the profit of the capitalist class.
 link – we-skepticism
They say the pronoun “we” sucks
Sexton 16 [Jared Sexton, Professor of African American Studies at UC Irvine, “Afro-Pessimism:
The Unclear Word,” Rhizomes 29 (2016), http://www.rhizomes.net/issue29/sexton.html]

[6] Astonishingly, all of this refuses to countenance the rhetorical dimensions of the discourse of
Afro-Pessimism (despite the minor detail that its principal author is a noted creative writer and its first major statement is found in an
award-winning literary work of memoir) and the productive theoretical effects of the fiction it creates ,
namely, a
meditation on a poetics and politics of abjection wherein racial blackness
operates as an asymptotic approximation of that which disturbs every claim or formation
of identity and difference as such.[2] Afro-Pessimism is thus not against the politics of
coalition simply because coalitions tend systematically to render supposed common interests
as the concealed particular interests of the most powerful and privileged elements of the
alliance. Foremost, Afro-Pessimism it seeks, in Wilderson's parlance, " to shit on the inspiration of the
personal pronoun we " (143) because coalitions require a logic of identity and difference ,
of collective selves modeled on the construct of the modern individual , an entity whose
coherence is purchased at the expense of whatever is cast off by definition . The subject
of politics is essentially dividual and there is in effect always another intervention to be
made on behalf of some aspect of the group excluded in the name of the proper.[3] The
ever-expansive inclusionary gesture must thus be displaced by another more radical
approach: an ethics of the real , a politics of the imperative , engaged in its interminably downward
movement. This daunting task entails making necessity out of virtue, as it were, willing the need for the black radical imagination
and not just its revisable demand. If certain scholars whose work has been instructive or inspirational for Afro-Pessimism miss this
point too, it may have something to do with the search for a method of gaining agency that, while rightly suspending the assumption
of an a priori agent, nonetheless rushes past the hidden structure of violence that underwrites so many violent acts, whether
spectacular or mundane.

The impact is extinction

Dean 12 [Jodi, Professor of Political Science at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, The
Communist Horizon, Verso: Brooklyn, NY, 2012, p. 12-19]

Some might object to my use of the second-person plural "we" and "us"-what do you
mean "we"? This objection is symptomatic of the fragmentation that has pervaded the
Left in Europe, the U K, and North America. Reducing invocations of "we" and "us" to sociological
statements requiting a concrete, delineable, empirical referent, it erases the division
necessary for politics as if interest and will were only and automatically attributes of a
fixed social position. We-skepticism displaces the performative component of the
second-person plural as it treats collectivity with suspicion and privileges a fantasy of
individual singularity and autonomy . I write "we" hoping to enhance a partisan sense of
collectivity. My break with conventions of w1iting that reinforce individualism by
admonishing attempts to think and speak as part of a larger collective subject is
deliberate . The boundaries to what can be thought as politics in certain segments of the post-structuralist and anarchist Left
only benefit capital. Some activists and theorists think that micropolitical activities , whether
practices of self-cultivation or individual consumer choices, are more important loci of
action than large-scale organized movement-an assumption which adds to the difficulty
of building new types of organizations because it makes thinking in terms of collectivity
rarer, harder, and seemingly less "fresh." Similarly, some activists and theorists treat
aesthetic objects and creative works as displaying a political potentiality missing from
classes, parties, and unions. This aesthetic focus disconnects politics from the
organized struggle of working people , making politics into what spectators see . Artistic
products, whether actual commodities or commodified experiences, thereby buttress capital as they circulate
political affects while displacing political struggles from the streets to the galleries .
Spectators can pay (or donate) to feel radical without having to get their hands dirty. The dominant class retains its
position and the contradiction between this class and the rest of us doesn't make itself felt as such. The celebration
of momentary actions and singular happenings-the playful disruption , the temporarily controversial film or
novel-works the same way. Some on the anarchist and post-structuralist Left treat these flickers as the only
proper instances of a contemporary left politics. A pointless action involving the momentary expenditure of
enormous effort-the artistic equivalent of the 5k and 10k runs to fight cancer, that is to say, to increase awareness of cancer without
actually doing much else-the singular happening disconnects task from goal. Any "sense" it makes, any meaning or
relevance it has, is up to the spectator (perhaps with a bit of guidance from curators and theorists). Occupation contrasts
sharply with the singular happening. Even as specific occupations emerge from below rather than through a coordinated strategy,
their common form-including its images, slogans, terms, and practices-links them together in a mass struggle.The power of
the return of communism stands or falls on its capacity to inspire large-scale organized
collective struggle toward a goal. For over thirty years, the Left has eschewed such a goal ,
accepting instead liberal notions that goals are strictly individual lifestyle choices or
social-democratic claims that history already solved basic problems of distribution with the
compromise of regulated markets and welfare states – a solution the Right rejected and capitalism destroyed. The Left failed
to defend a vision of a better world, an egalitarian world of common production by and for the collective people.
Instead, it accommodated capital, succumbing to the lures of individualism,
consumerism, competition , and privilege, and proceeding as if there really were no
alternative to states that rule in the interests of markets. Marx expressed the basic
principle of the alternative over a hundred years ago: from each according to ability, to each
according to need . This principle contains the urgency of the struggle for its own
realization. We don't have to continue to live in the wake of left failure, stuck in the
repetitions of crises and spectacle. In light of the planetary climate disaster and the ever-
intensifying global class war as states redistribute wealth to the rich in the name of
austerity, the absence of a common goal is the absence of a future (other than the ones imagined in
post-apocalyptic scenarios like Mad Max). The premise of communism is that collective determination
of collective conditions is possible, if we want it.
 link – incivility/aggressiveness
Making an aggressive spectacle is ultimately neoliberal
McGowan 4 [Todd, Associate Professor of Film and Television Studies at the University of
Vermont, The End of Dissatisfaction? Jacques Lacan and the Emerging Society of Enjoyment,
SUNY Press (Albany, NY): 2004, p. 189-90]

Such interpretations of contemporary aggressiveness and its attendant violence succumb

to the thinking of the perpetrators—that is, to their belief in the transgressive nature of
their activity—failing to see that they remain wholly within the orbit of authority. Rather
than putting the symbolic identity of the subjects at risk — and thus moving beyond the
confines of symbolic authority — these actions reaffirm that identity — and thus reaffirm
that authority as well .21

Incivility and aggressiveness seem to us as if they are fundamentally antisocial

behaviors. When we experience outbursts of incivility or aggressiveness, we feel as if the
social fabric is in the process of collapsing, as if we are descending into anarchy. But the
contemporary uncivil or aggressive subject evinces, in most cases, an allegiance to the
fundamental commandment of the society of enjoyment — the command to enjoy . We
must reinterpret the incivility we encounter in light of this prevailing commandment.
Subjects have Explosions of Incivility, Aggressiveness, and Violence 189 become
increasingly uncivil not because they have divested themselves from authority figures
and social rules but because they have invested themselves most enthusiastically .

Whatever the underlying causes behind them, incivility

and aggressiveness seem to have an
unambiguous—which is to say, unambiguously negative—status.
Of all the symptoms that characterize the society of commanded enjoyment, incivility
and aggressiveness are clearly those that receive the most universal criticism. It is not only
cultural critics that decry contemporary outbreaks of aggressiveness, but almost everyone living in this society. Whereas one
might potentially see something appealing or liberatory in the transformation of paternal
authority, the rise of the image, the shrinking of distance, or even the retreat into privacy,
the same could not be said of incivility and aggressiveness. These symptoms seem to
have no positive valence, and we cannot easily imagine someone who might celebrate
their emergence.
Nonetheless, incivility
and aggressiveness do have another side to them, a side that has
remained largely unexplored. These symptoms are indicative of a subjective disposition
within the society of enjoyment willing to challenge the dictates of symbolic authority. In
this sense, contemporary incivility and aggressiveness hold out the possibility for producing
radicalized subjects, subjects unwilling to accept injustice or a lack of freedom simply
because symbolic power authorizes it. This dimension of subjectivity in the society of
enjoyment manifests itself, for instance, in the protests that have met the recent meetings of the World Bank.
Such protests stem from an ability to be uncivil and a refusal to accept enforced
dissatisfaction that the turn to the society of enjoyment informs. The problem is, however, that we
too often direct our incivility toward the wrong targets, not toward the figures of symbolic
authority but toward the victims of it. The contemporary tendency toward incivility has
the ability to assist us in contesting and freeing ourselves from symbolic authority, but
only when we first recognize the extent of our allegiance to this authority today in the
society of commanded enjoyment. Too often incivility is nothing more than the
contemporary expression of complete docility .
 at: alt too white
Marxist theory was the catalyst of nearly every 20th century anti-colonial
revolution around the world
Eagleton 11 [Terry, Distinguished Professor of English Literature at Lancaster University, Why
Marx Was Right, 2011, Yale University: New Haven, CT, p. 215-7]

Marxists were thus in the van of the three greatest political struggles of the modern age:
resistance to colonialism, the emancipation of women and the fight against fascism. For
most of the great first-generation theorists of the anticolonial wars, Marxism provided
the indispensable starting point . In the 1920s and ’30s, practically the only men and
women to be found preaching racial equality were communists. Most African nationalism
after the Second World War, from Nkrumah and Fanon onwards, relied on some version of
Marxism or socialism . Most communist parties in Asia incorporated nationalism into their
agendas. As Jules Townshend writes: While the working classes, with the notable exceptions of
the French and Italian, seemed to be relatively dormant in the advanced capitalist countries [in
the 1960s], the peasantry, along with the intelligentsias, of Asia, Africa and Latin America were
making revolutions, or creating societies, in the name of socialism. From Asia came the
inspiration of Mao’s Cultural Revolution in 1966 in China and Ho Chi Minh’s Vietcong resistance
to the Americans in Vietnam; from Africa the socialist and emancipatory visions of Nyerere
of Tanzania, Nkrumah of Ghana, Cabral of Guinea-Bissau and Franz Fanon of Algeria; and
from Latin America the Cuban Revolution of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara From Malaysia
to the Caribbean, Ireland to Algeria, revolutionary nationalism forced Marxism to rethink itself. At
the same time, Marxism sought to offer Third World liberation movements something
rather more constructive than replacing rule by a foreign-based capitalist class with rule
by a native one. It also looked beyond the fetish of the nation to a more internationalist vision.
If Marxism lent its support to national liberation movements in the so-called Third World,
it did so while insisting that their perspectives should be international-socialist rather
than bourgeoisnationalist.
 at: bifo / baudrillard / pomo
Yes, the world has more decentralized networks, but capitalism is still a
thing
Eagleton 11 [Terry, Distinguished Professor of English Literature at Lancaster University, Why
Marx Was Right, 2011, Yale University: New Haven, CT, p. 163]

We should not be surprised, then, that advanced capitalism breeds delusions of

classlessness. This is not just a façade behind which the system conceals its true inequities; it
is in the nature of the beast. Even so, there is a telling contrast between the dressed-down
matiness of the modern office and a global system in which distinctions of wealth and power
yawn wider than ever. Old-style hierarchies may have yielded in some sectors of the
economy to decentralised, networkbased, team-oriented, information-rich, first-name,
openneck- shirted forms of organisation. But capital remains concentrated in fewer
hands than ever before , and the ranks of the destitute and dispossessed swell by the
hour . While the chief executive smoothes his jeans over his sneakers, over one billion
on the planet go hungry every day. Most of the megacities in the south of the globe are
stinking slums rife with disease and overcrowding, and slum dwellers represent onethird
of the global urban population . The urban poor more generally constitute at least one-
half of the world’s population .≤ Meanwhile, some in the West seek in their evangelical fervor
to spread liberal democracy to the rest of the globe, at the very point that the world’s destiny is
being determined by a handful of Western-based corporations answerable to nobody but their
shareholders. Even so, Marxists are not simply ‘‘against’’ the capitalist class, as one might
be against hunting or smoking. We have seen already that no one admired their magnificent
achievements more than Marx himself. It was on these achievements—a resolute
opposition to political tyranny, a massive accumulation of wealth which brought with it the
prospect of universal prosperity, respect for the individual, civil liberties, democratic rights, a
truly international community and so on— that socialism itself would need to build .

Just because the working class has become dispersed doesn’t mean that
capitalism is irrelevant – the unemployed of informal economy, the global
slum population, and classical working class total billions of people in
opposition to the ruling class
Eagleton 11 [Terry, Distinguished Professor of English Literature at Lancaster University, Why
Marx Was Right, 2011, Yale University: New Haven, CT, p. 173]

Yet the spread of the technical and administrative sectors has been accompanied by a
progressive blurring of lines between working class and middle class. The new
information technologies have spelled the disappearance of many traditional
occupations, along with a drastic dwindling of economic stability, settled career structures
and the idea of a vocation. One effect of this has been an increasing proletarianisation of
professionals, along with a re-proletarianisation of branches of the industrial working class. As
John Gray puts it, ‘‘The middle classes are rediscovering the condition of assetless
economic insecurity that afflicted the nineteenth-century proletariat.’’∫ Many of those who
would be traditionally labelled lower-middle class—teachers, social workers, technicians,
journalists, middling clerical and administrative officials— have been subject to a
relentless process of proletarianisation , as they come under pressure from tightening
management disciplines. And this means that they are more likely to be drawn to the cause of
the working class proper in the event of a political crisis. It would, of course, be an excellent
thing for socialists if top managers, administrators and business executives were to
throw in their hand with their cause as well. Marxists have nothing against judges, rock
stars, media magnates and majorgenerals flooding enthusiastically into their ranks. There is no
ban on Rupert Murdoch and Paris Hilton, as long as they were to prove suitably repentant and
undergo a lengthy period of penance. Even Martin Amis and Tom Cruise might be granted
some form of junior, strictly temporary membership. It is just that such individuals, given their
social status and material position, are more likely to identify with the current system. If,
however, it was for some curious reason in the interests of fashion designers but not postal
workers to see an end to that system, then Marxists would focus their political attention on
fashion designers and strongly oppose the advance of postal workers. The situation, then, is
by no means as clear-cut as the Death-of-the-Worker ideologues would suggest. In the
top echelons of society we have what can justly be called the ruling class, though it is by
no means a conspiracy of wicked capitalists. Its ranks include aristocrats, judges, senior
lawyers and clerics, media barons, top military brass and media commentators, high-
ranking politicians, police officers and civil servants, professors (a few of them political
renegades), big landlords, bankers, stockbrokers, industrialists, chief executives, heads of
public schools and so on. Most of these are not capitalists themselves, but act, however
indirectly, as the agents of capital. Whether they live off capital, rents or salaried
incomes makes no difference to this point. Not all those who earn a wage or salary are
working class . Think of Britney Spears. Below this top social layer stretches a stratum of
middle-class managers, scientists, administrators, bureaucrats and the like; and below
them in turn lies a range of lowermiddle- class occupations such as teachers, social
workers and junior managers. The working class proper can then be taken to encompass
both manual labourers and the lower levels of white-collar workers: clerical, technical,
administrative, service and so on. And this is a massive proportion of the world population.
Chris Harman estimates the size of the global working class at around two billion, with a
similar number being subject to much the same economic logic.Ω Another estimate puts
it at around three billion.∞≠ The working class seems to have disappeared rather less
successfully than Lord Lucan.∞∞ Nor should one forget the enormous slum population of
the world, growing at an extraordinarily fast rate. If slum dwellers do not already form a
majority of the global urban population, they soon will. These men and women are not part of
the working class in the classical sense of the term, but neither do they fall entirely outside
the productive process. They tend rather to drift in and out of it, working typically in low-
paid, unskilled, unprotected casual services without contracts, rights, regulations or
bargaining power. They include hawkers, hustlers, garment workers, food and drink sellers,
prostitutes, child labourers, rickshaw pullers, domestic servants and small-time self-employed
entrepreneurs. Marx himself distinguishes between different layers of the unemployed;
and what he has to say about the ‘‘floating’’ unemployed or casual labourer of his own day, who
count for him as part of the working class, sounds very similar to the condition of many of
today’s slum dwellers. If they are not routinely exploited, they are certainly economically
oppressed; and taken together they form the fastest growing social group on earth. If they
can be easy fodder for rightwing religious movements, they can also muster some
impressive acts of political resistance. In Latin America, this informal economy now
employs over half the workforce. They form an informal proletariat which has shown
itself well capable of political organisation; and if they were to revolt against their dire
conditions, there is no doubt the world capitalist system would be shaken to its roots.
Marx held that the concentration of working people in factories was a precondition of their
political emancipation. By bringing workers physically together for its own self-interested
purposes, capitalism created the conditions in which they could organise themselves
politically, which was not quite what the system’s rulers had in mind . Capitalism cannot
survive without a working class , while the working class can flourish a lot more freely
without capitalism. Those who dwell in the slums of the world’s megacities are not
organised at the point of production, but there is no reason to suppose that this is the
only place where the wretched of the earth can conspire to transform their situation. Like
the classical proletariat, they exist as a collective , have the strongest possible interest in
the passing of the present world order, and have nothing to lose but their chains.∞≤ The
demise of the working class, then, has been much exaggerated. There are those who speak of
a shift in radical circles away from class to race, gender and postcolonialism. We shall be
examining this a little later. In the meantime, we should note that only those for whom class is
a matter of frock-coated factory owners and boiler-suited workers could embrace such a
simpleminded notion. Convinced that class is as dead as the Cold War, they turn instead to
culture, identity, ethnicity and sexuality. In today’s world, however, these things are as
interwoven with social class as they ever were.
 at: soviet union
Russia’s revolution wasn’t Marxist – impoverishment and socialism in one
country caused failure
Eagleton 11 [Terry, Distinguished Professor of English Literature at Lancaster University, Why
Marx Was Right, 2011, Yale University: New Haven, CT, p. 16-18]

Marx himself never imagined that socialism could be achieved in impoverished

conditions. Such a project would require almost as bizarre a loop in time as inventing the Internet in the Middle Ages. Nor did
any Marxist thinker until Stalin imagine that this was possible, including Lenin, Trotsky and the rest of the Bolshevik leadership.
You cannot reorganise wealth for the benefit of all if there is precious little wealth to
reorganise. You cannot abolish social classes in conditions of scarcity, since conflicts
over a material surplus too meagre to meet everyone’s needs will simply revive them again. As Marx comments
in The German Ideology, the result of a revolution in such conditions is that ‘‘ the old filthy

business’’ (or in less tasteful translation, ‘‘the same old crap’’) will simply reappear. All you will get is
socialised scarcity . If you need to accumulate capital more or less from scratch, then the
most effective way of doing so, however brutal, is through the profit motive. Avid self-interest
is likely to pile up wealth with remarkable speed, though it is likely to amass spectacular poverty at the same
time. Nor did Marxists ever imagine that it was possible to achieve socialism in one

country alone. The movement was international or it was nothing. This was a hardheaded
materialist claim, not a piously idealist one. If a socialist nation failed to win international
support in a world where production was specialized and divided among different
nations, it would be unable to draw upon the global resources needed to abolish scarcity.
The productive wealth of a single country was unlikely to be enough. The outlandish notion of
socialism in one country was invented by Stalin in the 1920s, partly as a cynical rationalisation
of the fact that other nations had been unable to come to the aid of the Soviet Union. It has no
warrant in Marx himself . Socialist revolutions must of course start somewhere. But they
cannot be completed within national boundaries. To judge socialism by its results in one
desperately isolated country would be like drawing conclusions about the human race
from a study of psychopaths in Kalamazoo . Building up an economy from very low levels
is a backbreaking, dispiriting task. It is unlikely that men and women will freely submit to
the hardships it involves. So unless this project is executed gradually, under democratic
control and in accordance with socialist values, an authoritarian state may step in and
force its citizens to do what they are reluctant to undertake voluntarily. The militarization
of labour in Bolshevik Russia is a case in point. The result, in a grisly irony, will be to undermine the political
superstructure of socialism (popular democracy, genuine self-government) in the very attempt to build up its economic base. It
would be like being invited to a party only to discover that you had not only to bake the
cakes and brew the beer but to dig the foundations and lay the floorboards. There
wouldn’t be much time to enjoy yourself. Ideally, socialism requires a skilled , educated ,
politically sophisticated populace, thriving civic institutions , a wellevolved technology,
enlightened liberal traditions and the habit of democracy . None of this is likely to be on
hand if you cannot even afford to mend the dismally few highways you have, or have no
insurance policy against sickness or starvation beyond a pig in the back shed . Nations with a
history of colonial rule are especially likely to be bereft of the benefits I have just listed, since
colonial powers have not been remarkable for their zeal to implant civil liberties or democratic institutions among their underlings.
As Marx insists, socialism also requires a shortening of the working day —partly to provide men
and women with the leisure for personal fulfillment, partly to create time for the business of political and
economic self-government. You cannot do this if people have no shoes ; and to distribute shoes
among millions of citizens is likely to require a centralised bureaucratic state. If your nation is under invasion from
an array of hostile capitalist powers, as Russia was in the wake of the Bolshevik revolution, an autocratic
state will seem all the more inevitable . Britain during the Second World War was far from an autocracy; but it
was by no means a free country, and one would not have expected it to be.
 !!!Prisons Aff/Neg Updates!!!
Notes
Aff Updates
Radicalization Adv
 1AC Lone Wolf

Prisons foster radicalization and risk lone wolf terrorism

Hickey 16 --- EWTN production assistance, previously a senior writer for the federal reserve
board. (Jennifer Hickey, 1/5/16, “Ripe for radicalization: Federal prisons 'breeding ground' for
terrorists, say experts”, Fox News. http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/01/05/ripe-for-
radicalization-federal-prisons-breeding-ground-for-terrorists-say-experts.html)//ET

America’s federal prisons have become a “ breeding ground ” for radical Islam, warn critics,
who say imprisoned terrorists are more likely to spread their beliefs than renounce them. As
law enforcement authorities lock up more home-grown terrorists, experts are warning the success could turn sour if jailhouse
jihadists are allowed to infect fellow inmates. Prisons
have long been criticized for a culture that can
make some inmates more dangerous than when they entered, but the possibility that
typical felons could become lone wolf terrorists upon earning parole is a disturbing new
wrinkle. “If we continue to downplay the threat, we do so at our own peril,” said Patrick Dunleavy, author of “The Fertile Soil of
Jihad: Terrorism’s Prison Connection.” The aggressive recruitment of Americans by ISIS has resulted in a spike in domestic terror-
related convictions. Some 71 people are imprisoned in the U.S. on ISIS-related charges, including 56 individuals arrested in 2015,
the most terrorism arrests in a single year since September 2001, according to George Washington University’s Program on
Extremism nolenpic3Expand / Contract (Alton Nolen, who is accused of beheading a former co-worker at a food processing plant in
Oklahoma, is believed to have converted to Islam while doing time.) In addition, the FBI has said it is currently conducting more than
900 investigations into ISIS-linked radicalization, including cases in all 50 states. There are hundreds more federal inmates serving
time for terrorist activities related to other terror groups. An estimated 100 are scheduled for release in the next five years, according
to the Congressional Research Service. Still more terror suspects could be transferred to U.S. prisons from Guantanamo Bay in the
coming months. In this photo taken Thursday, May 14, 2009 and reviewed by the U.S. military, Guantanamo detainees pray before
dawn near a fence of razor-wire inside the exercise yard at Camp 4 detention facility, at Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base, Cuba.
President Barack Obama says he is restarting U.S. military tribunals for the small number of terrorist suspects among all the
detainees held at Guantanamo, though with several new legal protections for defendants. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley)Expand /
Contract Terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay could soon be transferred to U.S. prisons, where critics say they could influence other
inmates. (Associated Press) “We have never been faced with such a large number of terror inmates before,” said Rep. Peter King,
R-N.Y., during a recent Homeland Security Committee hearing on countering violent extremism in prison. King and others say the
federal Bureau of Prisons must do a better job of monitoring and, if necessary, isolating inmates who could radicalize others behind
bars. Dunleavy, a retired deputy inspector in the criminal intelligence unit of the New York Department of Correctional Services, said
criminals have been radicalized in prisons for years , and predicted it will only get worse.
He cited Chicago gang member Jose Padilla, who converted to radical Islam while doing time
in jail in the 1980s , and was later accused of plotting to set off a radiological “dirty bomb ”
in the U.S. He is now serving a 21-year sentence for conspiring to commit acts of terror overseas. More recently, ex-convict
Alton Nolen was arrested in a September, 2014 attack at his former place of employment,
a food processing plant in the Oklahoma City suburb of Moore. Nolen, who is awaiting trial, allegedly
beheaded a 54-year-old female worker while yelling Islamic slogans. Dunleavy believes Nolen converted to
Islam while serving time in an Oklahoma prison after attacking a police officer in 2010. In
between Padilla and Nolen, Dunleavy says there were “scores of others” who became radicalized in
state and federal prisons, either by listening to fellow inmates or hearing sermons on contraband
devices smuggled into prisons and shared. Kevin James, who while serving time at Sacramento’s New
Folsom Prison on robbery charges in 2004, founded his own jihadist movement and recruited fellow
inmate Levar Washington to join his cause. Upon Washington's release in 2005, he plotted to attack Los
Angeles-area synagogues, the Israeli Consulate, the Los Angeles airport and U.S. military recruiting offices. James, remained in
federal prison, where some critics fear he could be radicalizing more inmates to his cause.
Tens of thousands of federal prison inmates have converted to Islam while serving time,
and many others have found other religions. Most do not subscribe to a violent
interpretation of the faith, but it takes only a few to create a threat, according to Mark Hamm, a
 “It is not the sheer number of
professor at Indiana State University who specializes in the field of prison radicalization.
prisoners following extremist interpretations of religious doctrines that poses a threat,”
Hamm told FoxNews.com. “Rather, it is the potential for the single individual to become radicalized.”
Estimates of the number of terrorists behind bars could be too low because some could be serving time on weapons-related crimes,
rather than terror-related. Those suspects are especially dangerous, Dunleavy said, because their involvement in terror plots may
not be disclosed to prison officials who might otherwise be able to monitor them.

Prisons are breeding grounds for lone wolf radicalization

Burke 15 --- data informatics at 3M. (JASON BURKE, 10/16/16, “The Myth of the Lone Wolf”,
Vice. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/nn9qab/the-myth-of-the-lone-wolf)//ET
Question: What do the following Islamic militants, all recently active, have in common? Michael
Adebowale, who stabbed soldier Lee Rigby to death on the streets of London in 2013; Amedy Coulibaly, who killed four
people when he took over a Jewish supermarket in Paris on January 9, 2015; Cherif Kouachi, who killed 11 when he attacked
the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in the French capital two days earlier; Mohammed Merah who killed seven in
southern France in 2012; Omar Abdel Hamid El-Hussein, who shot dead two in Copenhagen in February this year. Answer one:
They are all young Muslim men living in the West. Answer two: They have all been described as "lone wolf"
terrorists, actors who do not have connections with any major extremist group such as al-

Qaeda or the Islamic State. Answer three: They have all spent time in prison. That prisons feature
frequently on the CV of many militants is no surprise. Prisons are the perfect incubators
for extremist violence of all types, as they are for other forms of criminal behavior. You
get all the people who are involved in a particular illegal activity together and then lock
them up with each other. This is clearly far from ideal. It is particularly problematic if you are dealing with a phenomenon
like terrorist activity, including Islamic militancy, which is composed of a series of informal cells, networks, and groups. If you think of
militant groups as a type of gang, offering protection, solidarity, a sense of belonging, useful resources, even economic (and sexual)
opportunity or advantage, then it will come as no surprise that they thrive behind bars. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, one of the most
savage figures of the last couple of decades, was turned from a street thug into an aspirant jihadi in a Jordanian jail. This
transformation may have been less dramatic than it looks. Al-Zarqawi simply swapped one gang for another. Read: America
Incarcerated, VICE's series about mass incarceration Over the last century different governments have
made successive attempts to deal with the problem. One tactic has been to segregate
extremists from other "vulnerable" prisoners. But that risks simply reconstituting the
groups you are trying to break up behind bars and reinforcing their cohesion . Abu Bakr al-
Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State, built most of the contacts that would allow him to go on to create the organization he now
leads while incarcerated in a US-run prison camp in Iraq in 2004. Ayman al-Zawahiri, the current head of al-Qaeda, was held in an
Egyptian prison for his membership of networks that had been behind the 1981 assassination of President Anwar Sadat. There is
famous footage of him haranguing the court from a cage full of other like-minded militants. Many went on to play key roles in the
The other option for authorities is to disperse the
various extremist campaigns that followed.
extremists. There are usually not very many of them, so this is a tempting strategy. Over the last ten years, the
number of Muslim prisoners in England and Wales has doubled, according to recent statistics, but only a hundred or so
of these have been convicted of terrorist offenses. Yet experience shows that the Islamic militant ideology
is highly contagious, and dispersing such men—unless they are held incommunicado in solitary confinement—risks contaminating
others with its virus. Merah, Kouachi, and Coulibaly all appear to have become interested in violent extremism while in prison. The
latter two were influenced by a charismatic older militant detained before 9/11 on a charge of planning to blow up the US embassy in
Paris. Al-Zarqawi had been influenced by well-known clerics. Is there a solution? Only in part. What
happens in prisons
reflects what is happening in the rest of a society. In 20 years of reporting on Islamic militancy in the UK and
elsewhere, I have noticed one clear trend: the spread of the ideology to ever more young men, and some women. It remains a
minority, of course, but a minority that is much larger than before. Read on VICE News: Here's How France Plans to Curtail Islamic
Radicalization Within Its Prisons The truth is that almost no one "self-radicalizes," any more than any teenager "self-interests" in
narcotics, a particular music scene, or an extreme sport that involves significant physical risk. The psychological barriers to
participation in acts of violence are higher than for most activities, but the basic mechanics of how people become involved in them
are the same. Terrorism is a social activity, albeit an immoral and abhorrent one, and no one becomes a terrorist on their own.
There is no access to radical websites in prison, but in almost all the above cited cases individuals ended a jail sentence more
committed to violent ideologies than before. What's most important in the making of a terrorist is not some kind of character
deficiency, nor psychopathic or sadistic tendencies, but something much more banal: who you spend time with and what they say
and do. And if this is true in prisons, it is also true outside of them, too. This is why it's important to realize that so-called lone
wolves do not really exist. Of the five militants mentioned at the top of this article, only two acted alone, and one of these—the
Frenchman Mohammed Merah—was connected to a militant faction in Pakistan. They were
all part of networks, and were
acting in the belief that they were part of a much broader community of militants. Trying to
tackle extremism inside is necessary, but will only be possible if extremism outside is tackled, too.

That causes Trump to retaliate and lash out abroad --- undermines U.S. cred and
massively increases islamophobia
Byman 17 --- senior fellow at Brookings. (Daniel, 3/3/, “Trump and the next terrorist attack”,
Brookings. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/markaz/2017/05/03/trump-and-the-next-terrorist-
attack/)//ET
The days after a terrorist attack are trying for any president. Initial reports of responsibility are often
wrong, and the public response is a loud mix of fear, demonstrations of support for the victims, and calls for revenge. Americans
look to the president and his advisors for information on the scope and scale of the threat, and as the repositories of national
security information, the presidents has a tremendous opportunity to control our national narrative. As the cries grow ever louder,
the president must show resolve and reassure the American people that the U.S. will respond effectively. At the same time, he must
Trump will bungle the response to a jihadist terrorist attack
avoid overreacting. I worry that President
on U.S. soil, making the fear worse at home and helping the terrorists score a win. Although
I’m on record saying that the terrorism danger to the U.S. homeland has so far proven manageable, some attacks are likely
regardless of who occupies the Oval Office. Since September 11, 2001, 95 Americans have died from jihadist-linked attacks on U.S.
soil—an average of almost six a year. Of course, we’ve seen near-misses like the 2009 “underwear bomber,” who was able to to slip
with the rise of lone wolves , who are difficult to identify
a bomb through airport security. Especially
and disrupt, it is not realistic to expect the government to stop every terrorist attack.
Finally, because of the steady success of the U.S.-led military campaign against the Islamic State, we should expect a rise in
terrorism as the group seeks to demonstrate its relevance as it loses territory and prestige in the region. So we should recognize
that some attacks are likely and, for Trump critics, that they are not inherently linked to who won the 2016 election. If and when it
happens, it won’t prove anyone was right to vote for Hillary. Trump’s response , however, will tell us a great
deal. The best response in the hours after an attack involves a mix of rhetoric, leadership, and caution. The president should
publicly honor the dead and reassure Americans that the government is working to hunt down the guilty and care for those injured.
At the same time, he should point out that American Muslims have proven vital allies against terrorism. As FBI Director James
Comey put it, “They do not want people committing violence, either in their community or in the name of their faith, and so some of
our most productive relationships are with people who see things and tell us things who happen to be Muslim.” Almost half of all tips
An immediate retaliatory strike —one that on its surface would
on extremism come from the community.
signal toughness and thus be attractive to a president who talks about toughness a lot—
might be a mistake. Initial information on responsibility or the extent of overseas links is often
flawed or incomplete, and it is useful for the administration to assess a full range of
options before plunging in. Since the Trump administration is already hitting the Islamic
State hard, it’s difficult to imagine an easy way to ratchet up the pressure that does not
involve significant costs or downsides. Instead, various agencies should be scrutinizing intelligence and security
procedures to determine culpability and identify real and potential holes while the military and intelligence agencies assess options
overseas. Basedon his initial record in office and rhetoric on the campaign trail, however,
Trump might opt for a disastrous approach. The president acts out of impulse, whether
this involves sarcastic tweets to Arnold Schwartzenegger or the sudden decision to
bomb Syria after the regime’s use of chemical weapons. It’s safe to say that restraint and
deliberation are not characteristics of this administration—or the man himself. Perhaps even worse,
this administration has a track record of mismanaging policy processes. This includes
signature items like the “Muslim Ban” executive order or less prominent but important
announcements, like the supposed deployment of an aircraft carrier to Korea . This bungling
and the president’s many about-faces on issues have damaged his credibility as a messenger and are likely to make people more
The president is likely to
skeptical of the content of his statements and actions in the aftermath of a terrorist attack.
want to overreact abroad. He seems to want to appear tough more than he wants to be effective. So he boasted, for
example, about dropping a massive bomb on Islamic State targets in Afghanistan without waiting to learn whether it achieved its
objectives. On the campaign trail, the president wanted to “bomb the shit out of them” even though it was not clear an increase in
the scale of bombing would achieve much. Trump might also expand the war, bringing it to new zones that have
only a tenuous Islamic State or al-Qaida presence. He has already authorized the intensification of US operations targeting
Shabaab and increased the pace of strikes targeting terrorist groups more generally. Even more worrisome is what
the President might do at home. On the campaign trail, the President repeatedly
conflated Muslims and terrorists, and with tensions and emotions running high after an
attack this demonization might be especially likely. In the name of border security, he might further
limit immigration and travel from Muslim-majority countries or try to single out Muslims
over other faith communities. He might embrace the decision to declare the Muslim Brotherhood a
terrorist group even though this would be counterproductive and cause difficulties with
several allies. Surveillance of Muslim communities around the country might be stepped
up, further alienating Muslims from law enforcement and make them less likely to turn in
suspected terrorists . After 9/11, the United States detained over one thousand Muslims, gaining almost no useful
intelligence but harming relations with the community. As Daniel Benjamin, a former senior counterterrorism official, warns,
“Repairing the damage from that crackdown took years.” Such unthinking
measures might benefit Trump
politically while inadvertently helping the terrorists operationally. Trump would look tough, and his
argument that the terrorism danger is high and Muslims are the enemy would be vindicated, at least to his supporters and to some
The Islamic State would gain more evidence to back up the
who are undecided on this question.
narrative that the United States is hostile to Muslims, while the vast majority of Muslims
who loath the group would be less eager to work against it because it means working
with what they see as a hostile government. It’s just the American people who would suffer.

Trump lashout over terror goes nuclear and destroys heg

Street 16 [Tim, fellow of the Sustainable Security Programme at the Oxford Research Group,
previously researcher with the British American Security Information Council, Ph.D. from
Warwick University, 11/30/16, “President Trump: Successor to the Nuclear Throne,”
http://www.oxfordresearchgroup.org.uk/publications/briefing_papers_and_reports/president_tru
mp_successor_nuclear_throne]
If these warnings weren’t troubling enough, no less a figure than Henry Kissinger argued on BBC’s Newsnight that ‘the
more likely
reaction’ to a Trump presidency from terror groups ‘will be to do something that evokes a
reaction’ from Washington in order to ‘ widen the split’ between it and Europe and damage the US’s
image around the world. Given that Trump has already vowed to ‘bomb the shit out of ISIS’ and refused to rule out
the use of nuclear weapons against the group, it goes without saying that such a
scenario could have the gravest consequences and must be avoided so that the US does not play into
the terrorists’ hands. Looking more widely, President-elect Trump’s existing and potential cabinet appointments, which Glenn
Greenwald has summarised as ‘empowering…by and large…the traditional, hard, hawkish right-wing members of
the Republican Party’ also point to the US engaging in future overseas conflicts, rather
than the isolationism which many in the foreign policy establishment criticised Trump for
proposing during the presidential campaign. William Hartung and Todd Harrison have drawn attention to the fact that
defence spending under Trump could be almost $1trillion (spread over ten years) more than Obama’s most recent budget request. Such projections,
alongside Trump’s election rhetoric, suggest that the new nuclear monarch will try to push wide open the door to more spending on nuclear weapons
and missile defense, a situation made possible, as we have seen, by Obama’s inability to implement progressive change in this area at a time of
persistent Republican obstruction. Conclusion The problem now, for the US and the world, is that if Trump does make good on his campaign promises
then this will have several damaging consequences for international peace and security and
that if Trump does not sufficiently satisfy his supporters then this will likely pour fuel on the flames at home, which may then quickly spread abroad. The
people of the US and the world thus now have a huge responsibility to act as a restraining influence and ensure that the US retains an accountable,
transparent and democratic government. This responsibility will only grow if crises or shocks take place
in or outside the US which ambitious and extremist figures take advantage of , framing
them as threats to national security in order to protect their interests and power. If such
scenarios emerge the next administration and its untried and untested President will find themselves with a

range of extremely powerful tools and institutional experience at their disposal, including
nuclear weapons, which may prove too tempting to resist when figuring out how to
respond to widespread anger, confusion and unrest, both at home and abroad.

Trump’s middle east policy is uncertain and limited now, but increased
involvement causes Russia draw in and great power nuclear conflict
Simpson 6/21/17 --- research fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows. (EMILE SIMPSON,
“This Is How Great-Power Wars Get Started”, Foreign Policy.
http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/06/21/this-is-how-great-power-wars-get-started/)//ET

Even theadministration itself seemed confused about how to respond to the implications
of its own strategy, as was clear from its plainly contradictory signals on the Qatar crisis:
While President Trump initially enthusiastically endorsed the blockade of Qatar in public, his national security team sought to de-escalate it behind the
scenes, and this calmer line seems to be prevailing. So,
what does Washington positively want? Who knows.So,
what does Washington positively want? Who knows. Although the most likely outcome of the Qatar crisis at this point is a U.S.

brokered de-escalation , it is likely that a jilted Doha will subsequently look to become less dependent on the United States by building
up existing relations with Turkey, which already has a base in Doha; Russia, which already has strong commercial links with the emirate (Qatar owns a
large stake in Rosneft, for example); and Iran, with whom it needs good relations given the need to cooperate over the shared exploitation of natural
gas fields in the Persian Gulf. The limits of having no positive political strategy are also evident in Iraq and Syria. In Iraq, the United States military has
effectively helped clear ground for Iranian Shiite militias to backfill, which contradicts the administration’s anti-Iranian position. The only real alternative
is to support a greater governance role for Kurdish groups, potentially as part of an enlarged independent Kurdish state. But so far, the U.S. position
has been to support the unity of Iraq. In Syria, the situation is more complex, because unlike the Iraqi Kurds, who have reasonably good relations with
Ankara, the Turkish government is vehemently opposed to any kind of independent Kurdish state in northern Syria. But the U.S.-led coalition
Does the United
overwhelmingly relies on Kurdish ground forces in Syria, and they hold most of the ground cleared from the Islamic State.
States support a Kurdish state in northern Syria? We don’t know. Has it provided any
alternative to a Kurdish state in northern Syria? No. Is the territory still legally part of
Syria? Yes. Unsurprisingly, there is serious confusion on the ground, which has produced the U.S.-Russian escalation we see today. So back to
the original question: Are we are headed toward a great-power conflict in the middle east? In my view, until the U.S.
presents a positive political strategy, we will continue to have direct clashes between Russian-

supported Shiite militias and U.S. forces, which may well produce an accident in which
either Russia shoots down a U.S. plane or vice versa. Even then, I think that neither Washington nor Moscow
would rationally want a conventional fight. But conflict dynamics are never wholly rational ; far from it.

Violence can generate new emotional pressures in conflict and spin out of control in a
direction nobody anticipated. Besides the risk of escalation with Russia, the more the United States starts
directly attacking Shiite militias, the more likely the Iranian nuclear deal will completely
break down. This would reopen the possibility of a U.S. war with Iran. Even before that point, Iran
would likely react to counter the United States in the region by exerting much more
aggressive influence over Baghdad. The nightmare scenario would be an Iranian puppet
like ex-Prime Minister Nouri alMaliki getting back into power, and issuing a demand for U.S. forces to leave
Iraq, which would put Washington in a vexed position of either accepting or returning to direct rule.
 2AC Middle East Involvement UQ
Middle east involvement is low now --- Trump appeasing russia
Safwan and Ensor 7/20/17 (Luna Safwan and Josier Ensor, “Donald Trump ends covert
CIA aid to Syrian rebels in 'win' for Russia”, The Telegraph.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/07/20/donald-trump-ends-us-programme-supporting-
syrian-rebels-fighting/)//ET

President Donald Trump has decided to halt a covert CIA programme to arm and train rebels
fighting Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, a move Russia has long pushed for it. The
programme had been established by Mr Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama in 2013 to put pressure on Assad to relinquish power.
Mr Trump is reported to have made the decision nearly a month ago, after an Oval Office meeting
with national security adviser H.R. McMaster and CIA Director Mike Pompeo.
 2AC Trump Retal
Leads to Antimuslim crackdown and middle east lashout
Szuplat 4/24/17 --- served as a foreign policy speechwriter and as a deputy director of
White House speechwriting under President Barack Obama. (Terence Szuplat, “We already
know what President Trump will say if terrorists strike in the U.S.”, Washington Post.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/04/24/we-already-know-what-
president-trump-will-say-if-terrorists-strike-in-the-u-s/?utm_term=.09659f3aa8cc)//ET
If President Barack Obama was sometimes criticized for seeming to appear too calm or cerebral
after terrorist attacks — noting (correctly) that groups like ISIS don’t pose an “existential
threat” to the nation — Trump’s first impulse , quite possibly by tweet, may be to actually hype
the attack . “Really bad shooting,” he tweeted after the Orlando attack, “many people dead and wounded.” “Horror beyond
belief,” he declared after a terrorist plowed a truck into a crowd in Nice, France. And, in Trump’s telling, it will only get worse. “Many
others are going to be dying,” he said after the November 2015 attacks in Paris, “they’re sitting in a hospital in many cases waiting to
die.” The terrorists, according to Trump, are a colossus. We face a “global jihad” that wants “to change your religion,” he told a rally
after the San Bernardino shooting. “They’re shutting down the world,” he insisted after the attacks in Brussels last year. As he did
after the bombings in New York and New Jersey, he may recite a list of attacks, foreign and domestic — “one unthinkable atrocity
after another” — including gruesome descriptions of murders and beheadings. America, he’ll warn darkly, as he did in his speech to
Congress, risks becoming “a sanctuary for terrorists.” Culpability , in Trump’s view, will extend far beyond the
perpetrator. He’ll likely blame family members, as he did after Chattanooga, when he said that the killer’s “father wasn’t exactly an
angel … this is something that maybe goes from the father to the son.” He’ll blame local Muslim Americans, as he did
after San Bernardino, when he repeatedly — and falsely — claimed that “many, many” Muslim neighbors saw guns and bombs “all
over the apartment” but failed to report it to police. [I reported Omar Mateen to the FBI. Trump is wrong that Muslims don’t do our
part.] Trump
will almost surely once again blame the Muslim American community as a
whole, which he has accused of harboring “great hatred” for the United States. “It’s their fault,”
he has said, because Muslim Americans are “not helping us.” In reality, a number of suspected terrorists have been arrested over
the years thanks to leads from law-abiding, patriotic Muslim Americans. If Trump continues to engage in this demagoguery after the
hate crimes against Muslim Americans will likely surge again — and
next attack,
responsibility for that violence will rest in no small part with the president himself. Trump
may claim credit for having foreseen the attack, as he did after Orlando, when he tweeted, “Appreciate the congrats for being right
on radical Islamic terrorism.” Another danger is that he’ll be so eager to point to any incident as justification for his own policies that
he’ll rush to label an incident as terrorism before law enforcement even has the facts. “It looks like another terrorist attack,” he said
of last week’s shooting of police officers in Paris — before French authorities had even stated whether they were investigating it as
terrorism. “It just never ends,” he added, “and I’ve been saying it for a long time.” Friday morning, he almost seemed to relish that
the attack could “have a big effect” on the French presidential election. Pointing to his supposed prescience, he’ll seek to
position himself — as all authoritarians do — as the only safeguard against the “evil” that is
“pouring into” the country . In one respect, he’s already laid the groundwork. The “so-
called” judge who first blocked his ban on visitors and immigrants from certain Muslim countries,
Trump tweeted, “put our country in such peril. If something happens blame him and
court system.” If a future attacker is a refugee — like the assailant at Ohio State was — Trump will argue that he “should not
have been in our country” in the first place. Even if the killer is an American citizen, born and raised here — like
the shooter in Orlando — Trump will point to his immigrant parents “because we allowed his family to come
here.” After all, Trump claims the real problem is the “Trojan horse” of Muslim immigrants themselves because of “their likelihood of
being recruited into the terror cause at some later date, which is going to happen in many, many cases” — another assertion without
any evidence. Most ominously, Trump and his administration will almost certainly use the
next attack as the casus belli for new, harsher measures in its war against “radical
Islamic terrorism,” which he said after the attack on a Berlin Christmas market “continually slaughter Christians,” echoing
terrorist propaganda that portrays this struggle as an escalating fight between religions and civilizations. “ This is just the

beginning ,” he has said repeatedly, “ we have to fight fire with fire ,” and the next attack will give
him the stage upon which to make his case. While Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis has apparently convinced
the president to give up on the idea of waterboarding suspected terrorists, what about other aggressive interrogation techniques?
Trump has said we need to “expand our laws so that we could do certain things.” Increased surveillance of mosques? “We have no
choice,” he has said, “because something is happening in there.” A
database to track Muslim immigrants and
refugees already in the country? “A watch list,” he has said, “is fine.” A willingness to tolerate
increased civilian casualties when targeting terrorists in places like Syria, Iraq, Yemen
and Somalia? “We have to fight so viciously and violently,” he said after last year’s attack on the Istanbul airport. [Trump
says Syrian refugees aren’t vetted. We are. Here’s what we went through.] And what if Congress, the courts and the American
people oppose his moves? Trump will frame the future as a stark choice between his way or an American apocalypse. “If we don’t
get tough,” he predicted after Orlando, “we’re not going to have our country anymore. There will be nothing, absolutely nothing, left.”
So much for summoning American resilience and resolve in the face of terror. At that moment, science tells us, Trump will have a
powerful ally — our own brains. Thanks to millions of years of human evolution, when confronted with a threat, we’re hard-wired to
react first and think later. Fear is “very easy to trigger and hard to turn off,” explains Joseph LeDoux, professor of neuroscience at
New York University, “in order to think logically and make decision based on facts, we have to get past our non-thinking brain.” But
how? “Awareness of being in this physical state,” says LeDoux, “can serve as a cue to engage in a cognitive state.” In other words,
to be forewarned is to be forearmed. Knowing in advance how Trump will try to manipulate our emotions after another attack better
equips us to resist his attempts to exploit our fears. And when he does, it will be essential to remember basic facts. Since the 9/11
attacks, 95 people have been killed in the United States in terrorist attacks committed by about a dozen individuals apparently
inspired in part by al-Qaeda or ISIS, according to the New America Foundation. Every single one of those 95 deaths is a tragedy. At
the same time, every attacker responsible for those 95 domestic deaths was an American citizen or a lawful resident. And not a
single American has been killed in a terrorist attack inside the United States by an individual from the Muslim countries included in
his travel ban. [I risked my life for the U.S. Army in Iraq. When I landed in America, I was detained.] A dozen attacks over 15 years
does not make the United States “a sanctuary for terrorists.” Over roughly the same time period, by comparison, gun violence has
killed more than 400,000 Americans — “one unthinkable atrocity after another” about which Trump says little. The next attack on
U.S. soil will be frightening enough. As a nation, we’ll grieve the loss of innocent fellow Americans. After nearly two years of reckless
tweets and hate-filled tirades, we also now know what will likely come next. When Trump steps before the cameras and addresses
the nation, his words will be his own; his “passions and prejudices,” as Alexander Hamilton warned us about so long ago, on display
for all the world to see. But demagogues only succeed when their audiences surrender their agency over their own minds and
hearts; when we allow the heated emotions of the moment to overwhelm the facts and enduring values we know to be true. We’ve
been put on guard. Whether we succumb to Trump’s fearmongering or rise above it is entirely up to us.
 AT: Lone Wolf Adv
<get institutions check trump cards from heg bad sustainability>
Lone wolf terror’s not a threat and education exacerbates it
Tures 15 --- professor of political science at LaGrange College (John A. Tures, 11/14, “The
Myth of the Lone Wolf Terrorist”, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-a-tures/the-myth-of-the-
lone-wolf_b_8563886.html)//ET
On November 13, 2015, I presented research to a conference that my students and I worked
on concerning so-
called “lone wolf” terrorism attacks or those by small groups. That night, fellow conference
participants watched in horror on the big screen hotel at the events unfolding in Paris that night, where hundreds of people at a
concert hall, nightclub, and stadium were killed. Did we learning anything from our analysis of such cases from 2013 through 2015
many of these
that we presented yesterday, as well as sources providing data from years before 2013? We learned that
cases are mislabeled “lone wolf” attacks , which give the false impression that this
terrorism is so random in its nature that it can’t be stopped. The myth of the lone wolf
terrorist is one that assumes terrorists are born that way. They are lifelong solitary individuals, akin to the
Unabomber, striking at a completely random target, only to disappear into the shadows, without a hint to law enforcement. But that’s
not always the case. Terrorists are actually more likely to be made, not born. We found that such lone attackers are tend

to be male, a little more likely to have more than a high school education , and have
experienced a recent change, like a lost job, a broken relationship, a move to a new area, or something that altered
one’s traditional life. These folks, having experienced some socially dislocating event, often find
a new community, either in person or online, with a politically-active group. This goes for
someone who chooses a radical Islamic group, a right-wing group, or even a left-wing organization, each of which pursues more
confrontation than normal political activism. Such a strategy is not an accident . Western powers have been largely
able to curtail state-sponsors of terrorism. Even non-state actors like Al-Qaeda, who felt that their
transnational status would make them harder to stop, could be neutralized for a time. The
same happened to domestic groups like the KKK or neo-Nazis. So terror networks needed a different strategy. In order to carry out
their asymmetric warfare, terrorist
organizations would need attackers beyond the normal
network. Terrorists would seek to recruit such disgruntled individuals to the cause, and let
them figure out how an attack could be carried out on their own. These terror groups sacrificed command and control power over
these new followers. But, in theory, such new recruits could be harder to track, and stop. These “ lone wolves,” are
therefore anything but “lone .” Though the media, government, and even terrorists like ISIS themselves use the term,
these new terror recruits are still connected to the group, even if such people do not
have face-to-face contact or fly to the Middle East or some domestic compound for
training. These new recruits bring in family members, or even other like-minded individuals. Yet we found cases like the Boston
Marathon Bombing, the Oklahoma City Bombing, or even 9/11 attacks carried out by “lone wolves.” We found that in 24 cases
between 2013 and 2015, 22 were labeled “lone wolves” even though only a third actually
involved a solitary attacker. This research coincides with evidence found from pre-2013
studies.

No risk of lone wolf terror

Harwood 15 --- mother jones author. (MATTHEW HARWOOD, 2/5/15, “Lone Wolf Terrorists
Are Exceedingly Rare, So Why Does Everyone Keep Talking About Them?”, Mother Jones.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/02/government-using-fear-lone-wolf-terrorist-justify-
police-state/)//ET
Inside the United States,
136 people died due to individual terrorist attacks between 1940 and
2012—each death undoubtedly a tragedy, but still a microscopic total compared to the 14,000
murders the FBI has reported in each of the last five years. In other words, you shouldn’t be losing
sleep over lone-wolf attacks. As an American, the chance that you’ll die in any kind of
terrorist violence is infinitesimal to begin with. In fact, you’re four more times likely to die
from being struck by lightning . If anything, the present elevation of the lone-wolf terrorist to
existential threat status in Washington creates the kind of fear and government
overreach that the perpetrators of such attacks want to provoke. If individual terrorists
are the “new nightmare,” it’s only because we allow them to be. Lone Wolf ≠ Muslim During
the December hostage crisis at a café in Sydney, Australia, orchestrated by Man Haron Monis, an Iranian immigrant, former CIA
Deputy Director Michael Morell had this dire prediction: “[W]e’re going to see this kind of attack here,” he told “CBS This Morning.” “It
shouldn’t surprise people when this happens here sometime over the next year or so, guaranteed.” This was typical of the recent
rhetorical escalation by officials and former officials in the national security state when it comes to this kind of terror. But Morell’s
prediction was no prediction at all. Such attacks do occur here. One had, for instance, been solved a little more than a month earlier.
Eric Matthew Frein was apprehended the day before Halloween through an intensive search in the Pocono mountains of
Pennsylvania after shooting two state troopers outside a police barracks with a sniper rifle in September. Officer Corporal Bryon K.
Dickson II died, while Trooper Alex T. Douglass was wounded. Frein, whom authorities initially called an “anti-government
survivalist,” was eventually charged with two terrorism counts after he told police that the shootings were a way to “wake people up.”
They also found a letter he had written to his parents stating that he wanted to “ignite a fire” because only “another revolution can
get us back the liberties we once had.” Individual violence like this, whether labeled as terrorism or not, is nothing
new. It’s been dealt with for decades without the kind of panic, fear-mongering, and
measures being instituted today. After all, according to Spaaij, between 1968 and 2010, 45% of all
individual terrorist attacks recorded in 15 countries occurred in the United States. However,
as Spaaij and his research partner Mark Hamm discovered, these figures are distinctly bloated. The reason
is simple: included in them are numerous examples of “individual” terrorist acts inspired
by al-Qaeda-style ideology that actually resulted from law enforcement-instigated or -
aided plots. Spaaij and Hamm found that at least 15 of these had occurred between 2001 and 2013. In them, a “lone”
perpetrator would actually be involved with, and often directed or encouraged by, a
government informant or undercover agent. This adds up to about 25% of post-9/11
cases of lone wolfism in the US, though the label is hardly accurate under the
circumstances. These are essentially government stings, which not only inflate the
number of individual terrorism incidents in the US, but disproportionately focus law
enforcement attention on American Muslim communities.
 AT: ME Retaliation Scenario
Trump’s middle east terror policy is good and prevents war
Cook 17 – politico journalist. (STEVEN A. COOK, “What Trump Gets Right About the Middle
East”, Politico. http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/07/05/what-trump-gets-right-about-
the-middle-east-215330)//ET

But setting aside the Qatar fiasco, the truth is that Trump’s Middle East policy is not universally bad. In fact, in many ways, it
a sound understanding of what the United States can achieve in the region and,
reflects

importantly, what it cannot. The administration’s recent effort to pressure Iran and
Russia on Syria, for instance, seems to reflect the return of a more traditional American
approach to the Middle East—and one we could be better off with. In a much-hyped speech delivered to officials from over 50 Arab and Muslim
countries in Saudi Arabia in May, Trump said, “We are not here to lecture—we are not here to tell other people how to live, what to do, who to be, or how to worship.” To many
forms and varieties of commentator, this was a cynical abdication of American values and another Trumpian assault on human decency and good taste, made worse by the fact
that people like Egypt’s strongman, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, gleefully welcomed the president’s words. It was everything Trump’s outraged critics said it was—but in this case the
president happened to be right. It would be wonderful for the peoples of the Middle Eastern if democracy broke out across the region, but the record of the past 16 years

The Trump administration seems to

indicates that U.S. efforts to promote more open and just societies has not worked.

understand this and has pragmatically shifted American policy to achievable goals like
rolling back the Islamic State and challenging Iran’s efforts to extend its influence around
the region. Attempts at social engineering in the Middle East have a long history of
failure. In July 1798, a French military contingent landed in the Egyptian port of Alexandria. Its mission was to protect French trade, expand France’s influence in the
Mediterranean and weaken British access to the Indian subcontinent. Western colonizing missions in the region also were often “civilizing” missions. More than half a century
later, Egypt’s leader, Ismail Pasha, employed decommissioned officers from the Union and Confederate armies to train the Egyptian military. In almost a decade of service, they
did much more than instruct Egypt’s officer class. They also worked on education reform and taught Egyptians technical skills. The French and American expeditions in the late
18th and mid-19th centuries were the forerunners of sorts of the economic and military assistance the United States has poured into Egypt since the late 1970s. The logic
behind this aid—aside from buying peace between Egypt and Israel—was straightforward: Economic assistance would help generate economic growth, which would give the
Egyptian regime and its leader legitimacy, making it less likely that there would be a revolution or instability in a country that was critically important to American goals in the
Middle East. The military aid was meant to ensure that the Egyptian officer corps could both defend the country without threatening Israel and support the prevailing political
system. Mohammad bin Salman WASHINGTON AND THE WORLD Saudi Arabia’s New Crown Prince Is a Bumbling Hothead. Trump Needs to Treat Him Like One. By
AARON DAVID MILLER and RICHARD SOKOLSKY It was not until President George W. Bush’s “Freedom Agenda” that the United States used its assistance to promote
democratic change in Egypt and the rest of the region. By the time Bush announced the strategy in 2003, the September 11 attacks had already created a near bipartisan
consensus on the importance of encouraging democratic change in the Middle East. The effort met with resistance from Saudi and Egyptian leaders especially, who
characterized American efforts as a neocolonial project that violated the sovereignty of their countries. By 2006—with Iraq burning, Hamas’ victory in the Palestinian elections,
and leaders like Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak continuing to jail opponents, intimidate the news media and rig elections—it seemed clear that Bush had over-estimated American
leverage and moral suasion. A 2009 internal audit by the U.S. Agency for International Development found that from 2004 to 2008, the “impact of USAID/Egypt’s democracy and
governance programs was unnoticeable.” This was, however, less of a problem with assistance programs than the Egyptian government, which was determined to undermi ne
American efforts to promote reform. That is why the uprisings and protests in 14 Arab countries that began in December 2010 seemed to many within the policy community to
be a golden opportunity for the United States to help Middle Easterners’ own efforts to build new societies. But the policy prescriptions and recommendations that emerged from
the so-called Blob of experts and former government officials—calling for the United States to persuade a host of countries across the world to invest politically and financially in
democratic transitions, for instance—were overly ambitious and largely hollow. Yet lack of imagination was not the main problem. Any American effort to forge more democratic
and open political systems in the region was bound to fail because the sense of purpose and joy on display in the famous squares of the Middle East masked deeply divided
societies. The uprisings did not produce any leader or group of leaders who provided satisfactory answers to questions about identity, the proper form of government, the
relationship between the individual and the state, and the role of religion in society. In the debates over these big ideas, the national unity that seemed to hold during the
protests quickly gave way to existential struggles over the heart and soul of Arab countries. Under these circumstances, it did not matter whether U.S. government officials or
policy intellectuals were uniquely insightful or singularly creative. They never really had a chance. It mattered little to those on the ground whether President Barack Obama co-
authored an op-ed in the Washington Post with Tunisia’s president and offered that country the status of “major non-NATO ally,” or that Secretary of State John Kerry
demanded that Syria’s Bashar Assad must go, or that Obama withheld military equipment from Egypt. Sisi repressed people anyway, and Assad and his allies continued spilling
blood at a shocking rate. Tunisia was more receptive to the United States, but its limited success has had less to do with U.S. policy than the wisdom of some Tunisian leaders
and a good deal of luck. The uprisings and their subsequent failure, or lack of success, were an Arab story. For all its power, the United States was relegated to surfing the news
cycles as it tried to manage competing demands from Middle Eastern capitals, European allies and the peanut gallery in Washington. Whether by insight or accident, Trump has
signaled that he and his administration understand the limits of American power in the Middle East and will thus pursue a policy that goes back to basics—ensuring the free flow
of energy, helping to secure Israel, preventing any single country (except the United States) from dominating the Persian Gulf, fighting terrorism and countering proliferation.
Admittedly most of what the administration has done so far, besides firing cruise missiles at Syria for Assad’s use of chemical weapons, has been rhetorical. But at least the
president’s words demonstrate some insight into the nature of domestic struggles in the Middle East and how irrelevant the tools of American diplomacy are to resolving them.

Whether by insight or accident, Trump has signaled that he and his administration
understand the limits of American power in the Middle East and will thus pursue a policy
that goes back to basics—ensuring the free flow of energy, helping to secure Israel,
preventing any single country (except the United States) from dominating the Persian Gulf, fighting
terrorism and countering proliferation. Admittedly most of what the administration has done
so far, besides firing cruise missiles at Syria for Assad’s use of chemical weapons, has been rhetorical. But at least the president’s words demonstrate
some insight into the nature of domestic struggles in the Middle East and how irrelevant the tools of American diplomacy are to resolving them.
 Disease A/O

Overcrowding prisons leads to disease spread

James Hamblin, 7-18-2016, (MD, senior editor at The Atlantic "Mass Incarceration Is Making
Infectious Diseases Worse—And Not Just for Prisoners," Atlantic,
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/07/incarceration-and-infection/491321//)MBA
HBJ
There were no condoms in prison, only plastic bread bags and occasional rubber gloves, in Tela La’Raine Love’s experience. As a transgender woman locked among men in Louisiana’s Orleans Parish Prison, she recalled in an essay last year, “In order to preserve

Some countries do make

some safety and dignity, I always chose a man before one tried to impose his will on me.” It was that dynamic—sex “out of fear and necessity”—that left her with HIV.

condoms available to prisoners, while others cite security issues , or blanket prohibitions of sex. Only last year, California became the

Even in places where condoms are available, guards sometimes

second state to require that condoms be available to all prisoners.

limit distribution as a form of control. In the medical journal The Lancet this week, researchers at Johns Hopkins cite this as one factor in the spread of infectious diseases in prisons. The
researchers argue that this spread amounts to a human-rights abuse and a violation of international law—a cruel and inhuman failure to ensure humane prison conditions. The penal system remains a source of diseases that spread among prisoners at rates far

Of more than 10 million incarcerated people in the U.S. alone, 4

exceeding those in the communities from which they came.

percent have HIV, 15 percent have hepatitis C, and 3 percent have active tuberculosis.
These diseases are part of our criminal justice system, then, metered out and sanctioned
implicitly by the state. The penal system is also a primary reason that these diseases
can’t be eliminated globally, and the problem goes well beyond condoms, according to Chris Beyrer, the Desmond Tutu Professor of Public Health and Human Ri ghts at Hopkins, who edited the Lancet

research series. He spoke with me by phone from South Africa, where he is co-chairing the International AIDS Conference in Durban. He sounded distraught over the fact that HIV infections stopped declining years ago in the United States, and are now stable

the spread of disease within prisons is a small factor compared to the

around 45,000 every year. In his findings,

effects of releasing inmates into the community with no access to treatment. Even in
prison systems where people have antiviral medications, the primary problem is really the lack of care once they go back into the community. When a

That creates a serious risk for

person with HIV, for example, has an interruption in their treatment regimen, the virus comes roaring back. Those people are infectious again, and often highly so.

their sexual partners, and anyone with whom they may share needles. The scale of the
problem is due to the fact that so many people are incarcerated in the first place, which Beyrer traces to the war on drugs. “It’s abundantly

clear that incarceration is a failure in terms of reducing substance abuse, but it also has these consequences for HIV, hepatitis, and TB,” he said. “We've been promoting this language around an ‘AIDS-free generation,’ but, in fact, failing ourselves.” A practical
approach to all of this is a new idea, but one that is supposed to be guaranteed by a recent international agreement. In 1955, the UN adopted a set of guidelines for the rights of prisoners, known as the Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners. While
they represented a major advance at the time, they were still minimal, lacking an understanding of how infections spread, and of substance abuse, and mental illness among prisoners, among myriad other roads that lead to prison and out of it. It took 60 years for
the world to espouse more comprehensive standards, but the General Assembly finally agreed on an update to the rules in December of 2015. Now known as the Mandela Rules—for the man who was effectively given tuberculosis as part of his sentence—they
start from the basic premise that prisons must protect human rights and dignity. People need adequate food, sanitation, ventilation, and to be protected from violence. Basic as that may sound, former UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Nigel Rodley called this a
“real deontological reorientation of the philosophy of penal institutional management”—a move toward understanding prisons as places of preparation for reintegration into society. With that came a focus on health, which may be the most striking advance in the

They say that prisoners “should enjoy

rules: They guarantee a full range of diagnostic, prevention, and treatment services, including mental health and drug-dependency treatment.

the same standards of health care that are available in the community, and should have
access to necessary health-care services” and be organized in a way that ensures
continuity of treatment and care after release. And this is yet, in many places, not happening. Cutting off basic treatments as soon as a person walks out of their cell is a
failure to protect the public health and, really, a failure to provide care at all—a violation of the Mandela Rules. And it perpetuates inequality in individual communities. As black men are disproportionately incarcerated, infectious disease spreads disproportionally in
black communities. Among transgender women of color in the U.S., the rate of HIV infection is 27 percent, inextricably linked to the incarceration rate, and some 35 percent of transgender prisoners in the U.S. report sexual victimization while incarcerated. “The
unfortunate reality is that when heroin and other injected drug use was largely confined to minority, inner city populations, all the approaches were about law, zero tolerance, mandatory minimum sentencing,” said Beyrer. “Now that heroin is a problem of rural and
suburban white communities, suddenly we're talking about compassion and managing overdose and drug treatment, and less about policing.” For decades, many Republicans insisted, for example, on maintaining the federal ban on needle and syringe exchange—
despite clear evidence that needle and syringe exchange is a safe, cheap, and effective way to prevent HIV and hepatitis. That decision was reversed in December by none other than Mitch McConnell, in the wake of HIV and hepatitis outbreaks in Indiana and

So an approach to infectious diseases must involve reform in criminal law, toward

Kentucky.

justice systems that do not treat substance abuse with imprisonment. For people who do
make it to prison, care of infectious diseases is not care if it does not continue upon
leaving. These policies will come from an emphasis on the penal system as a tool of rehabilitation, and an institution where human rig hts demand protection.
Modelling Adv
 Africa
US prisons are modeled by Africa and Latin America
Clark, 2017
Doug Bock 5-28- , (Contributor "Why Is America Trying To Rebuild The World’s Prisons?," BuzzFeed, https://www.buzzfeed.com/dougbockclark/america-remakes-the-worlds-prisons?utm_term=.llRexqy8Y#.kpW6Yjm89//)MBA
HBJ

The US sees prisons across the Middle East and West Africa as key fronts in the war
against extremism, and believes the world would be a safer place if they were run the
American way. The State Department has helped build scores of facilities abroad, and
trained 50,000 correctional officers — but is the US's much-criticized prison system really a good model for others? CAÑON CITY, Colorado — The chain of events that brought Zakari Hamadou

to the US began with gunfire at the central prison in Niamey, the capital of Niger, on the afternoon of June 1, 2013. Hamadou is the director of rehabilitation for prisons in the landlocked West African country — no small order given that Niger is ranked by the United
Nations as the least developed nation in the world, and its jails are overrun with extremists. A former journalist and NGO leader with no prior experience in correctional facilities before he took the job, Hamadou has a scholarly manner that seems at odds with the
rather brutish world of Nigerien prisons. A description of the Niamey prison from a US Embassy cable sent in spring 2013 showed the extent of the challenges Hamadou faced. Within the prison’s yellow brick walls, 850 men were crammed into a space designed for
350, and its courtyards were described as resembling as an “outdoor flea market.” The cable continued, “The officers who work at the prison (including the director himself) … mostly do not intervene in the affairs of the inmates. The prison director stated that his

philosophy was to provide as many liberties as possible.” As a result “ inmates are allowed to make unmonitored phone calls ... and make jewelry which they
can sell to outside vendors, even though the metal could also be used to make weapons in the prison.” It was amid this chaos that, shortly before 3 p.m., a prisoner armed himself with an automatic pistol, likely smuggled inside with baskets of food that family
members brought inmates to sustain them in the underfunded system. At the penitentiary’s rusted gates, he shot two guards, who, like all Nigerien wardens, were national guards with no training in running a penitentiary. As the remaining security forces returned
fire, a pickup truck charged the entrance and fighters allied to the Islamist militant group Boko Haram attacked guards and bystanders. By the time Nigerien security forces finally regained control, 22 prisoners had escaped, including a high-profile Islamist extremist

who had murdered a US diplomat with a pistol shot to the chest in the streets of Niamey. The unrest at the prison was symptomatic of greater
violence sweeping the region. an al-Qaeda-linked insurgency had conquered more West of Niger,

than half of Mali in 2012 before French troops beat it back the next year. Across Niger’s
southeastern border, Boko Haram took much of northeastern Nigeria in 2014, razing
towns, enslaving women, and conscripting men — ultimately displacing more than 2 million people, 100,000 of whom fled into Niger. That year, Boko Haram assumed the

By the time Nigerien security forces finally regained control, 22

title of the world’s deadliest group, according to the Global Terrorism Index.

prisoners had escaped, including a high-profile Islamist extremist. The attack confirmed
to officials in Niger the scale of the problems they faced within their prisons, so they
turned to their counterparts in the US for guidance . Their concerns were matched by many in Washington, DC, where US State Department officials believe prisons

across West Africa and the Middle East represent key fronts in the battle against Islamist extremism. And for nearly two decades, the US had been operating a program to teach foreign officials how to run prisons the A merican way. So it was that, in June 2015,
Hamadou walked across the tarmac of Niamey’s tiny airport to the plane that would take him out of Africa for the first time. Hamadou’s trip to the US — which would see him visit some of the country’s most sophisticated prison facilities — was part of that bid by the
State Department to make prisons worldwide look more like those in the US. Hamadou was just one of the tens of thousands of foreign correctional officers, from five continents, who have been taught US incarceration techniques. The program began in Latin
America during the “war on drugs” of the early 2000s, spread through the Middle East during the “war on terror,” and then to the rest of the world as part of an Obama-era counterterrorism strategy. The State Department has trained around 50,000 prison officers
across the world over the past decade and those officers have educated at least another 60,000. It is currently involved in the prison systems of 38 countries, deploying more than 100 full-time advisers. The scale of the US’s efforts to remodel prisons around the
world in its image raises some serious questions, given the reputation of its own correctional facilities. The US has been criticized at home for its overreliance on solitary confinement and its out-of-control prison population — although the US has only 5% of the
world’s population, it contains 25% of its prisoners, or more than 2.2 million people. And scandals have hit US prisons abroad, from Guantanamo to Abu Ghraib, while a US detention center in Iraq was where ISIS’s leaders first organized. US efforts to remake
foreign prisons have made considerable strides since the debacles in the Middle East in the early 2000s, but as Donald Trump adopts a hard-power foreign policy, the US may again find itself embroiled in controversial overseas facilities. Already the new president
has stated his interest in bringing back Bush-era policies such as the CIA’s notorious “black site” prisons. Which forces us to ask: What does it mean if prisons around the world become more like the US’s? One of the West African visitors to the International
Correctional Management Training Center. Doug Bock Clark for BuzzFeed News One of the West African visitors to the International Correctional Management Training Center. Hamadou’s knowledge of US prisons mostly came from watching documentaries with
names he remembered as The Hell of Prison and The Most Dangerous Women in the Globe. As a result, when he first came to the US, he “believed American prisons were dangerous, f ilthy, and rife with drugs and gangs.” Twenty-four hours after leaving Niger,
Hamadou landed in the US, for a lay over at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, the busiest in the world. Every day, around 275,000 travelers transit through Hartsfield-Jackson — nearly as many as pass through Niamey’s airport in a year — and he felt
overwhelmed by the crowds. When he got to Colorado, a bus drove him south through ranchland pinched between red rock mountains — cowboy country that looked nothing like New York or Los Angeles, the America he knew from the movies. Prisons lined the
highway as the bus approached Cañon City, the self-proclaimed “Corrections Capital of the World.” A dozen penitentiaries crowd the region, including the federal Supermax, the US’s highest-security prison, which houses senior members of al-Qaeda. Hamadou’s
bus rumbled past bullet hole–pocked signs warning motorists not to pick up hitchhikers and a Confederate flag stitched with the words “I Ain’t Coming Down” draped across a farmhouse fence. Finally, it drove up to a squat sandstone-colored prison surrounded by
garlands of concertina wire: the International Correctional Management Training Center, the little-known institution at the heart of the US government’s effort to reshape prisons around the world. Since fall 2011, the ICMTC has operated as a school training the next
generation of prison wardens from across the globe. It is run by the State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) with help from the Colorado Department of Corrections. When he first came to the US, he “believed
American prisons were dangerous, filthy, and rife with drugs and gangs.” Hamadou was not alone in his journey to the ICMTC: 27 other wardens and government officials from Niger, Mali, and Senegal filed off the bus with him to spend three weeks studying US
penitentiaries. When they returned home, they too would be charged with putting their newfound knowledge to use, running their nations’ prison systems in the fight against extremist groups. The outside of the ICMTC still looks like the prison it once was, but the
first of Hamadou’s many surprises came when he entered: Inside, the facility had all the amenities of a hotel. “This facility is very clean, well-organized, and impressive,” he said. During his visit, Hamadou slept in a former cell that had been transformed into a privat e
bedroom, complete with a plasma-screen TV. When he got hungry he walked past pictures of smiling prisoners employed in rehabilitative work programs to a kitc hen stocked with gala apples and fresh milk from a farm run by prisoners. He Skyped home from the
computer lab. Prisoners from a nearby minimum-security facility cooked and cleaned for him, and the compound’s security guards chauffeured him around Cañon City. He couldn’t help but be impressed — he was living a lifestyle nicer than many people in Niger,
but in a former US prison. The raising of the flag of Senegal at the ICMTC. Doug Bock Clark for BuzzFeed News The raising of the flag of S enegal at the ICMTC. The goal of the INL officials was to woo their West African guests. They knew that many participants
regarded the US prison system with suspicion and sought to impress them by showing off the best of it, a common tactic of the State Department that some observers have called “policy tourism.” Each morning at 8 a.m., Hamadou would take a seat in a high-end
office chair in the first row of the ICMTC classroom, from where he watched instructors deliver PowerPoint presentations on four flatscreen TVs, while translators simultaneously reworked the lectures into French, which the delegates listened to on headphones . The
training provided by the US varies widely per the needs of the visiting country, though it has increasingly tended toward addressing extremism. For countries like Afghanistan that are mired in conflict, the US has offered military-style training to strengthen prisons
against attacks and invested in deradicalization programs. In Mexico and other nations plagued by drug trafficking, the US has advised them on isolating drug kingpins so they cannot run their cartels from behind bars. In the case of the West African countries, which
had basic but rapidly expanding prison systems, this has meant beginning with the nuts and bolts of running a penitentiary. O ver the course of the three-week program, the visitors learned to differentiate and separate extremists from general prison populations.

The US also trained the West African delegates in fundamental prison techniques such
as how to search for contraband (including cell phones, drugs, and weapons), because many had never received any formal instruction. During field trips to nearby prisons, Hamadou marveled at the
surveillance cameras, metal detectors, and control rooms where dozens of screens revealed every corner of the facilities. He filled legal pads with notes and laughed with his colleagues at why-didn’t-we-think-of-that moments, like when they learned to use “shadow
boards” on which the silhouettes of tools prisoners borrowed were painted, so guards could tell immediately whether any were missing. Inside one prison, he became teary upon witnessing the cleanliness of the cellblocks and the respect with which the prisoners
and guards appeared to treat one another. Hamadou and the West Africans also visited several facilities run by Colorado Correctional Industries, one of the largest prison-industry programs in the US, which employs about 1,600 inmates and operates 37 industrial
shops and farms. These factories produce a wide range of goods, from stuffed animals to all the license plates for the state of Colorado. One of its aquaculture farms supplies 1.2 million pounds of tilapia a year to grocery stores, which in the past have included
Whole Foods. CCI also runs the largest water buffalo dairy in the country, and the West Africans were shocked to find animals native to their continent being milked in the Rockies. In a furniture factory run by CCI, a safety-goggled guide led the delegation to a 10-
foot-long Frankenstein machine: a crane-like arm, a toolbox head complete with drill bits and a rotating saw, and a sliding table, all of which danced in coordination along three axes, controlled by a touchscreen computer. Over the screech of saws, he yelled, “This
HOLZ-HER Pro Master 7123 robot does the work of half a dozen machines that take up 20 times the floor space!” A convict fed a slab of wood into the robot, and the group watched in astonishment as it spooned out a doorknob hole and precisely drilled sockets for
the hinges, transforming the plank into a cabinet door. Hamadou gaped. Afterward, he profusely thanked the guide for the demonstration, and the West Africans who could not speak English gave him a thumbs-up repeatedly. As everyone else walked away,
Hamadou lingered, running his hands over the machine, his fingers cleaning lines in the sawdust. Some of his prisons were built of mud bricks and most lacked electricity. Later, he said, “I really liked the CCI factories, and got many good ideas for reintegration.” But
then he sighed, “The level of our development is so different.” Ultimately, these efforts to change the opinions of the West Africans about US prison systems worked. “I’m excited to go back and use what I’ve learned,” Hamadou said as his time at the ICMTC ended.
But as much as Hamadou and the other West Africans had enjoyed their three weeks at the ICMTC, they had also occasionally been unsettled. One afternoon, on a tour of the Fremont Correctional Complex, one of the guests asked a correction officer with a
handcuff-shaped tie clip why there were so many people who looked like Africans in prison. Later, the group stood aside to let hundreds of manacled prisoners parade past. Madi Laouel Toukou, one of the wardens from Niger, said, “There’s so many people of
every color, age, race! What have they done? What have they done?” The International Correctional Management Training Center Doug Bock Clark for BuzzFeed News The International Correctional Management Training Center Though the INL’s plans for Niger’s
prisons are unique to the country, if the West Africans had wanted to know what the impact of US prison export had been in the past, they only had to look south to Colombia. It is there, where last year the minister of justice declared a state of emergency in the
nation’s prisons due to overcrowding and inhumane conditions, that the US first tried to remake foreign prisons on a large sc ale. In the late 1990s, drugs were flooding the US from Colombia, and the Clinton administration determined that they presented the clearest
threat to US stability. Starting in 2000, the US spent $140 million to help overhaul the country’s justice sector, of which $7 million was put toward technical assistance in prisons. This investment was part of Plan Colombia, an $8 billion aid program that is still the
largest outside the Middle East and Afghanistan since the end of the Cold War. Quite quickly, the INL realized its efforts to combat the criminals by training foreign police forces were futile without effective jails to hold them. Six new prisons were constructed
between 2000 and 2003 based on blueprints of the Federal Correctional Complex in Coleman, Florida. Over the next dozen years, 16 more prisons were built, adding 30,545 beds, representing a 70% increase in the capacity of the system. Guards were trained with

US instruction manuals translated word for word into Spanish. A US-style criminal justice framework was even imposed. Rudy Giuliani was hired as

an adviser by Colombia and pushed his infamous “broken windows” approach to criminal legislation. Giuliani’s consultation was as a private citizen and head of his own security consulting firm, but he encouraged “tough-on-crime” laws explicitly modeled on ones he

passed while mayor of New York. Later he would export the same US criminal justice framework to many
countries from Serbia to Mexico. As Julie de Dardel, a researcher at the University of Neuchâtel in Switzerland, would later write: “ Colombia had
become the laboratory of a little-studied aspect of globalization: the export of US
criminal and prison policies.” Yet conditions in Colombian prisons have remained
abysmal, and the reforms were often counterproductive. Colombian prison police
trained according to US techniques have been accused of human rights abuses. Drug
lords continued to run their organizations from behind bars . Overcrowding has increased because of “broken windows” legislation that led to the

punishment of minor offenses with harsh sentences. The widespread use of solitary confinement has been criticized by civil rights groups. Michael Reed-Hurtado, a Colombian lawyer, human rights activist, and senior lecturer at Yale, who has studied US
involvement in Colombia's prisons, explained its failure by saying: “The prison is a cultural institution, and the needs that Colombia has for its prisons are not what the US has. Importing US prisons is not a solution. All that does is import the problems of US prisons.”
“Colombia had become the laboratory of a little-studied aspect of globalization: the export of US criminal and prison policies.” The US, however, was intent on learning from these failings, and in 2011 the former ambassador to Colombia, William Brownfield — who
had been involved in the reshaping of Colombian prisons — was appointed assistant secretary of state for the INL. He was tasked with overseeing the bureau’s rapidly expanding efforts to sculpt prisons worldwide. When I spoke to Brownfield at his office near the
end of the Obama presidency, he said, “The Colombian prison system is a significant policy success, though we learned some lessons from our work there the hard way.” Brownfield also spoke of learning from the US’s misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, which
present clear examples of the risks of US involvement in prisons overseas. In perhaps the most notorious case, Camp Bucca, a US detention center in Iraq near the port city of Umm Qasr, earned the nickname “Jihadi University” during the Bush administration.
Much of the leadership of ISIS, including its head, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was detained there and able to recruit from the general prison population, giving chalkboard lessons on suicide bom bing and convening Sharia courts that held so much sway that many

Inadvertently, American-run prisons in Iraq

inmates refused to play table tennis, watch TV, or accept health care or vocational training for fear of running afoul of them. “

strengthened the insurgency they were supposed to weaken,” said Jeremi Suri, a
professor at the University of Texas, Austin, who has studied the history of prisons in
Iraq. The vacant detention center in Khan Bani Saad, near Baghdad, is an example of wasted US taxpayer money. Carolyn Cole / Los An geles Times via Getty Images The vacant detention center in Khan Bani Saad, near Baghdad, is an example of
wasted US taxpayer money. In Iraq, the US trained 15,000 correctional officers and added at least 6,000 new beds to the country’s penitentiaries. But much of that infrastructure was never used, as Iraqis complained they had not been consulted about what they
actually wanted. Construction of the Khan Bani Saad prison outside of Baghdad began in 2004 with the intention that it would be completed in 2005 and hold 3,600 prisoners. After years of overruns, the unfinished prison was abandoned in 2007, along with $1.2
million in unused construction materials. The US inspector general described the project as “$40 million wasted in the desert.” The US ran into similar problems while rebuilding Afghanistan's prison system. Several prisons and detention centers were built, but most
have fallen into ruin — sometimes even before they opened, in the case of one prison in Baghlan Province that was built with shoddy materials on a seismic fault line. By 2012, the INL had trained at least 7,000 Afghan correctional officers who taught 90% of the
basic training courses in the country. However, in 2013, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan reported that they had found “sufficiently credible and reliable evidence” that hundreds of detainees had been tortured and mistreated by wardens, many
of whom were likely trained by the US. Brownfield was forthright about the struggles the US has had working in foreign prisons: “I acknowledge that at best we get a C+ to a B- on getting Afghanistan, Colombia, and Iraq to use their prison systems in a way that
meets their counternarcotics, anti-crime, or their counterterrorism objectives.” But he remained proud of the INL’s work overall. “I’d s ay that in terms of improving human rights standards and our allies’ basic prison management we were successful — because in
each case we have started from a prison system that was truly below bare minimum, even in Colombia,” he said. “In terms of responsibility, we try to train and equip our allies, but at the end of the day whatever they do must be the responsibility of that n ation.” The
INL’s work in Niger represents the implementation of many of those hard-earned lessons. The INL asks its partners what they want to learn and designs ICMTC courses accordingly. Instead of focusing solely on locking extremists away, the INL has recently
invested over $1 million in rehabilitation in West Africa, and the US is no longer exporting blueprints for foreign prisons. Currently, the INL has contracted the US construction consulting firm Hollingsworth Pack to design a high-security prison that will be constructed
specifically for Niger. There will be space for prison industries, a mosque, and special screens shading the buildings to keep the complex from overheating in the equatorial sun. It will have different types of cells to segregate extremists, and walls specifically
designed to withstand car bombs and repel other assaults. Scott Hollingsworth, the director of Hollingsworth Pack, said, “Our goal is not just to build walls, but a prison that exactly fits Niger’s needs.” What the US’s in volvement with foreign prisons will look like
during the Trump presidency remains to be seen. An INL expert, who was not authorized to speak on the record, said the bureau was unsure how much of the Obama-era strategy will remain in place with the new administration, though the White House’s expanded
military budget and bellicose foreign rhetoric signaled that it might not last long. “Though of course there is some degree of uncertainty and unpredictability, as there is with every transition, but we're continuing our good work every single day,” the official said.
Reasoning that it is significantly more difficult, dangerous, and expensive to tackle extremism on the battlefield, the Obama administration had promoted rehabilitation programs and ones that strengthened civil society — particularly a country’s police, courts, and
prisons — a strategy known as Countering Violent Extremism (CVE). However, by the beginning of the Trump administration, Obama-era CVE programs were already under fire for failing to produce quantitative results — though defenders contend they have been
underfunded and successes are hard to measure because they are often counterfactual, like a prison break that never happens. Today, they seem to be prime targets for the cuts to foreign aid that Trump has threatened. Trump’s actions suggest that he may seek a
return to the policies favored by the second Bush administration. The INL official suggested new policies would probably focus on Islamist extremism. A draft of an order to reopen Bush’s “black site” prisons, facilities located in foreign countries where the CIA
detained and sometimes tortured prisoners, has circulated at the White House. Trump has spoken openly of his desire to reinstitute waterboarding. He has also promised to fill Guantanamo with “bad dudes,” reversing Obama’s drawdown of prisoners. Ultimately,
applying Trump’s “America First” doctrine to the US’s involvement in foreign prisons may mean that the progressive aspects of its intervention are replaced by old policies that contributed to the lessons learned by Brownfield.fwal Zakari Hamadou in a class at the
ICMTC. Doug Bock Clark for BuzzFeed News Zakari Hamadou in a class at the ICMTC. On the afternoon of July 9, Hamadou signaled for the lights to be turned off in the ICMT C’s classroom. Then he began explaining a numbers-heavy PowerPoint presentation he
called up on four wall-mounted TV screens. The capstone of the ICMTC course was for each group of foreign officials to present a business plan for a prison industry program in their country. Hamadou and the rest of the Nigeriens had sipped green tea while
discussing what their program should be. Yearning for the more sophisticated equipment available to US prisons would do them no good, he felt, as many of Niger’s facilities lacked electricity. Instead, he and the other Nigeriens considered farming pearl millet or
raising chickens. Then Hamadou hit upon the answer: goats. The kind he had grown up herding on his family’s farm. Special red Nigerien goats renowned for their hardiness, the quality of cheese their milk produced, and their ability to put on fat quickly. The prisons
could run goat dairies, selling cheese, meat, and young goats. A Nigerien officer stands near motorcycles used by assailants at the prison at Koutoukale, near Niamey, following an attack on October 17, 2016. Boureima Hama / AFP / Getty Images A Nigerien officer
stands near motorcycles used by assailants at the prison at Koutoukale, near Niamey, following an attack on October 17, 2016. A shaggy, ruddy Nigerien dairy goat appeared on the four TV screens. Hamadou explained to the US instructors that he and his
colleagues had calculated that the 160 goats they would buy would produce 12,000 liters of milk annually, which could be sold for about $50,000 after being turned into cheese. Former extremists would learn skills that would help them become employed on their
release rather than fighting for Boko Haram to earn a wage. Once the presentation concluded, two Nigeriens walked around the classroom with a tablet displaying a picture of a goat, earnestly urging the other participants to admire the animal up close. The next
day, Hamadou strode to the front of the classroom wearing an emerald-colored boubou, a traditional West African robe, and received a certificate of Correctional Industries Development. US officials dressed in suits and West Africans wearing Tuareg turbans and
elaborate headscarves took pictures with their cell phones. He addressed the assembly in French, which the translators repeated in English in to earpieces: “Our countries don’t have the same technology, but we have learned from you. We admire Colorado for your

But during the weeks he

supermarkets, your malls, your roads, and your level of development.” He was excited to return to Niger and implement what he had learned, infused with the can-do attitude of the ICMTC.

had been away, the region had already grown more violent — and the instability has
worsened every month since. Boko Haram fighters have kept up a relentless series of
scorched-earth raids in Niger, razing whole villages and sending thousands of citizens
fleeing. The head of Niger’s ruling party has publicly acknowledged the military’s
inability to protect citizens who remain in the contested border region. By mid-2016, the coalition army had fractured leaving
Niger to struggle alone, and US officials were openly contemplating establishing permanent military bases in West Africa to fortify the region. While the US has had some success in transforming the world’s prisons, whether the world’s prisons will be better off being
more like the US’s remains to be seen. The influx of Boko Haram prisoners had overwhelmed Nigerien penitentiaries, as facilities constructed for just a few hundred detainees were soon holding over a thousand. The US-designed prison in Niger is scheduled to be
completed in 2019, too slow to mitigate the deluge of freshly detained extremists, so Niger transferred 500 Boko Haram prisoners to Nigeria. In the meantime, the INL has provided designs for a tent prison camp, like the kind used in Iraq and Afghanistan, that the
European Union will build to segregate the most dangerous militants. In the year and a half since Hamadou returned to Niger, the goat dairies have not been realized on a large scale. In August 2016, the Nigeriens who had traveled to the US convened a
conference to teach other wardens what they had learned at the ICMTC and discuss further plans for the dairies. But only one warden who visited the ICMTC has made a dairy at his prison, a small one composed of several dozen animals. A few other prison
industries have sprung up, such as the same warden having his charges grow tomatoes, potatoes, and eggplants to bolster the insufficient supply of food provided by the government. But larger prison industries have yet to take hold. And prisons remain
dangerously overcrowded with extremists. However, other INL-backed efforts have shown more results. When Koutoukale prison, which holds Niger’s most dangerous extremists and is led by one of the wardens who attended the ICMTC, was attacked in October
2016 by insurgents with machine guns and explosive belts, the guards rebuffed the assault, killing one attacker. INL-supported reforms that would create a professional warden corps to replace the national guards who currently oversee the pris ons has passed
legislative hurdles and will likely be implemented later this year. Classification systems to divide extremists from normal prisoners and tighter security protocols have been implemented at several prisons. And, partly inspired by its work with the INL, the Nigerien
government has opened a deradicalization center in the country’s conflict zone, where more than 100 former Boko Haram fighters are being re-educated in a more peaceful vision of Islam, and it will soon expand. Having committed to spend approximately $6 million
on prison reform in Niger in 2015, the INL program has had both setbacks and successes — transforming a nation’s prison system is a vast and complex undertaking, full of potential pitfalls and with limited measurab le rewards. “While the jury is still out about
whether our programs are going to stop violent extremism in its tracks in West Africa, I do suggest to you that our partners have gone an enormous distance since we have started working with them,” said Brownfield.

SQ African prisons cause massive radicalization

Rόisín Hinds October 2013 (Dr Salma Belaala (University of Warwick) and Dr Haifaa Jawad
(University of Birmingham) who provided consultancy and expert input for this report. “Islamic
Radicalisation in North and West Africa Drivers and approaches to tackle radicalization”
GSDRC is a partnership of research institutes, think-tanks and consultancy organisations with
expertise in governance, social development, humanitarian and conflict issues
http://www.gsdrc.org/docs/open/islamicradicalisationnwafrica.pdf//)MBA HBJ
Prisons play a significant role in the narratives of radical and militant
Radicalisation in prisons

movements and have been identified as ‘breeding grounds’ and ‘incubators’ (ICSR, 2012) (Christmann, 2012)

for radicalisation . The vulnerability of the prison environment, combined with over-crowding and inadequate staffing levels amplify the conditions that lend themselves to radicalisation (ICSR, 2012; Mulcahy, M errington, & Bell, 2013).

In Nigeria, for example, evidence indicates that Boko Haram has radicalised and
recruited members through prisons. 4 Upon leaving prison, radicalised ex-prisoners can have a significant influence on the wider community (Wolf, 2013, p. 569). In the case of Tunisia, Wolf

(2013, p. 569) finds that the release of high profile ultra-conservatives and militants – who were imprisoned under the former regime – was one of the key factors that has led to the increasing influence of Salafists. Local culture and community Some
academic literature emphasises the community that radical Islamist groups offer
followers as an appealing dimension of radicalisation . Boubaker (2011, p. 67), for example, contends that Wahhabi groups are welcoming to all people and

provide them with membership in a community: ‘By going to the right mosque or visiting the right internet sites, adherents gain friends, get married, and get help in finding an apartment or starting a business’ (Boubaker, 2011, p. 67). The collapse of local culture in
rural areas also plays an important role in the process of radicalisation. Belaala (2009) finds that jihadism is an ideological response to the collapse of local culture and a lack of political belonging to the national modern identity. Inter-religious rivalries Drawing from
empirical research in five W est African states, Ismail (2013, p. 240) finds evidence that inter-religious rivalry has been a contributing factor to the radicalisation of some Muslim groups. The growth of evangelical Christian churches and the ‘proselytisation activities’ of
their movements have been perceived as a ‘challenge’ to Islam that warrants a response from Muslims (Ismail, 2013, p. 240). As the evangelical Christian doctrine advocates a breakaway from orthodox Churches, so the response of some Muslim communities has
been to pursue ‘a return to puritanical Islam’ (Ismail 2013, p. 240). In 4 See: http://www.issafrica.org/iss-today/understanding-the-dynamics-of-islamic-radicalism-in-nigeria-is-keyto-bringing-boko-haram-to-book 8 Nigeria, rivalry between Muslim and Christian groups
– which is textured by ethnic divisions – has led to several violent clashes in Kano, Kaduna, Bauchi and Jos (Ismail 2013, p. 240). 4. Evidence on approaches to tackle radicalisation There is a growing recognition among scholars that de-radicalisation and counter-
radicalisation programmes can be a more effective way of tackling extremism than purely militaristic approaches (ElSai’d & Harrigan, 2012; IPI, 2010). While de-radicalisation refers to policies and approaches that aim to de-radicalise groups and individuals, with the
aim of re-integrating them into society and preventing further violence (El-Sai’d, 2012b), counter-radicalisation is a term used to describe approaches that intend to prevent the emergence or rise of violent radicalisation in society. There is a broad body of literature
that explores the theory and implementation of strategies to tackle radicalisation. While much of this tends to focus on de-radicalisation efforts in Europe and America, there is emerging literature on programmes from Asia and North Africa. 5 Most of these tend to be
countrybased approaches that are driven by national or local government. Given the multiplicity of drivers of radicalisation, the issue of how to address this phenomenon is similarly complex. In a review of national strategies to target radicalisation, the United
Nations Counter-Terrorism Implementation Task Force (UN-CTITF) identified nine types of national programmes: prison programmes; education; promoting inter-cultural dialogue; tackling economic and social inequalities; global programmes to counter
radicalisation; the internet; legislation reforms; developing and disseminating information; and training and qualifying agencies involved in implementing counterradicalisation policies (UN-CTITF, 2008). Experts recommend that de-radicalisation approaches should
tackle, amongst other dimensions, the socio-economic and political problems in which radicalisation thrive. Marks (2013, p. 114), for instance, argues that de- and counter-radicalisation efforts should involve ‘structural solutions’ which seek to mitigate the conditions
of socio-economic marginalisation, including, for instance, civilian oversight of internal security forces and transparency in the rul e of law. Religious rehabilitation / Religious dialogue Religious rehabilitation is an important component of de-radicalisation for two
reasons: first, it helps to delegitimise the actions of radical groups and terrorists; and second, it is necessary to refute the theoretical and ideological justifications of such movements (El-Sai’d, 2012b, p. 14). One of the best known examples of this type of
intervention is the Saudi Arabian religious dialogue programme. Targeting prison detainees, this gives the opportunity for moderate religious scholars and prisoners to debate and discuss a range of issues including interpretations of religion, jihadism and
relationships between Muslims and non-Muslims (El-Sai’d, 2012b, p. 14). Drawing from experience here and elsewhere, El-Said (2012b, p. 14) emphasises that Islamic scholars involved in these types of programmes should be knowledgeable and highly respected
within their community. In Indonesia, a central component of de- 5 A second edition of Dr Hamed El-Sai’d’s publication ‘De-radicalising Violent Extremist: Counter Radicalisation and De-radicalisation Programs and their Impact in Muslim Majority States’ is currently

under review. When published, this will include case studies on de-radicalisation from African countries, such as Sudan and Mauritania, for the first time. 9 radicalisation efforts involves
working through networks and individuals with religious credibility (Ranstorp, 2009). Though Saudi Arabia was able to attract a

sufficient number of scholars with these credentials, other religious dialogue programmes in Malaysia, Yemen and Jordan struggled due to their inability to attract suitable religious leaders.

African radicalization causes instability

Jeremy H. Keenan, January 26, 2016, (Professorial Research Associate at the School of
Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London, and a Visiting Professor at the
School of Law at Queen Mary University of London. "Instability and Terrorism in Africa’s Sahel:
A Primer," Just Security, https://www.justsecurity.org/28972/instability-terrorism-africas-sahel-
primer///)MBA HBJ

Africa’s Sahel region has been in the international news a lot since 2012, largely
because of its increasing political instability and insecurity . More recently, the region has gained attention because of a terrorist attack on the

Radisson Blue Hotel in Mali’s capital, Bamako, on November 20, 2015 — the attack killed 22 people, including two attackers — and a similar attack on the Splendid Hotel in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, on January 15 of this year, which left a death toll
of 30. At least four militant jihadist groups have claimed responsibility for one or both of the attacks. These include al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), al-Murabitoune, Ansar al-Dine, and the Macina Liberation Front (FLM). Members of MUJAO (Mouvement
pour l’unicité et le jihad en Afrique de l’Ouest), now mostly dispersed amongst these other four groups, were also probably involved. Following the Ouagadougou attack, the BBC called the Sahel a “new frontier” in the war on terror. But it has been a “new” front for
some time now. Similar words were used by Washington in 2003 when the Bush administration referred to the Sahel, which had just experienced its first encounter with post-9/11 terrorism, as “a second front in the global war on terror.” The response of President
Bush was to launch the Pan-Sahel Initiative (PSI) in 2004, followed by the Trans-Saharan Counterterrorism Initiative (TSCTI) in 2005. Both programs were based largely on fabricated, “false-flag” and exaggerated incidents of “terrorism.” (I discusses this at greater
length in my books on terrorism in the Sahara, The Dark Sahara and The Dying Sahara.) The Sahel is possibly Africa’s least known region. The word “sahel” in Arabic means “shore” and refers literally to the southern “shore” of the Sahara; a semi-arid zone roughly
600 miles wide between the desert and the savannah and about 3,500 miles long from the Atlantic to the Red Sea and Indian Ocean. Today, the term is used increasingly in a geopolitical context to refer to the countries of the western Sahel , namely Mauritania,
Mali, Niger, and Chad, and now, as a result of the January 15 attack, Burkina Faso. These countries have become increasingly destabilized politically — first, as a result of Washington’s PSI and TSCTI, and more recently (since 2011), by the fall-out from Muammar
Qadhafi’s overthrow in Libya. The Sahel is Africa’s most ethnically, linguistically, and culturally diverse region, being the interface between Islamic and non-Islamic Africa, and between “white-skinned” (Arabs and Berbers) and “black-skinned” Africans, racial
designations that are still used in the region today. The Sahel is home to Muslims, Christians, and animists; nomads and farmers; Arabs, Berbers, and African tribes alike. Its extraordinarily rich ethnic diversity and power structures are rooted in the ancient kingdoms
and empires of Ghana, Kanem-Bornu, Mali, Wolof, Songhai, and Fulani that emerged between the 8th and 19th centuries. The region was under French colonial rule from the late 19th century until 1960. Since then, its countries have remained linked by their shared
historical and colonial experiences, their predominant Islamic “sufi” religion, and their shared problems of recurring drought, underdevelopment, poverty, and now terrorism. The post-colonial era has seen a painful, drought-driven, and often conflict-ridden shift from
the predominance of nomadism and herding (especially in the north) to subsistence and commercial agriculture. In the last decade-and-a-half, the region has also added the contemporary lifestyles of the digitalized world: cell phones and the social media. The
population of these four Sahel countries is estimated at 50 million people, plus a further 17 million if Burkina Faso is included. Racial divisions were prominent in both pre-colonial and colonial times, and are still socially and politically relevant today. In 2014, for

the Mali government urged the killing of “white-skinned” Arabs and Berbers whom it
example,

designated as “terrorists,” the region is

while in Mauritania, slavery and the mentality of slavery are still the country’s most defining social characteristic. Even though almost wholly Muslim,

riven by different Islamic movements, many of which have come to the fore and been the
cause of serious conflict in the last few years. The main tension is now between the region’s traditionally more moderate Sufi beliefs and more fundamentalist Wahhabi doctrines, with the last four years seeing the

rise of violent “salafist-jihadism.” In Mali and Niger especially, independence in 1960 resulted in political power being vested in the African peoples of the more densely populated southern regions. The previously dominant Tuareg and Arab tribes of the north
became ethnic minorities. Post-colonial Mali and Niger have both been characterized by a series of unsuccessful revolts by Tuareg groups against their south ern rulers in Bamako (Mali) and Niamey (Niger). Following the US’s launch of its global war on terror into
the Sahel in 2003, corrupt governments in Bamako and Niamey provoked Tuareg rebels to take up arms in order to portray them as “terrorists” and so gain further military and financial support from Washington. The overthrow of the Qadhafi regime in Libya in 2011
further destabilized much of the Sahel — notably Mali and Niger — and triggered a further Tuareg rebellion in northern Mali, known to Tuareg as “Azawad.” By April 2012, the Tuareg rebels had put the ill-equipped and ill-led Mali army to flight. However, the rebels,

A military coup d’état in Bamako

having declared an independent Azawad, were themselves soon sidelined by “salafist-jihadist” insurgents covertly backed by Algeria’s secret intelligence serve.

and the collapse of Mali into a state of crisis left southern Mali on the brink of falling to
the insurgents. With regional and international organizations dithering, France took it
upon itself to intervene militarily in Mali in January 2013 in what was known as Operation Serval. However, far from destroying the jihadists, the French military intervention merely
dispersed them to Tunisia and Libya, and across the Sahel. In mid-2014, France expanded its military “counterterrorism” operation throughout the Sahel as part of Operation Barkhane, the successor to Operation Serval. However, in spite of a UN peacekeeping
force of some 10,000 in Mali, at least 3,800 French troops spread across the Sahel, and contingents of several hundreds of Dutch, Swedish, and German troops aided by US “specialists,” radical violent extremism has taken a deeper hold of the Sahel. 2015 saw

while Mali suffered an average of about two jihadist attacks per

Boko Haram spreading from Nigeria into Niger and Chad,

month. Jihadist ideology in the region is being couched increasingly in language that is
opposed to the weak, ineffective, and corrupt local governments, as well as the West and
especially France, whose military presence in the region would appear to be
exacerbating rather than diminishing extremist militancy. Spokespersons for the jihadist groups are now even talking about the creation of a Saharan

This historical and political context points toward the greater need to understand the
caliphate.

Sahel before rashly developing another round of military missions in the area. While the
Sahel isn’t a “new” front in the war on terror, it is certainly one deserving closer
attention. Decades of division and instability — and years of counterproductive Western
counterterror operations — mean the region is a fertile recruiting ground for terrorist
organizations.

African Instability goes global

Glick 7 (Caroline, Senior Middle East Fellow – Center for Security Policy, “Condi’s African
Holiday”, 12-12,
http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/home.aspx?sid=56&categoryid=56&subcategoryid=90&n
ewsid=11568)
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice introduced a new venue for her superficial and destructive stewardship of US foreign policy during her
The Horn of Africa is a dangerous and strategically vital
lightning visit to the Horn of Africa last Wednesday.

place. Small wars, which rage continuously, can easily escalate into big wars . Local
conflicts have regional and global aspects . All of the conflicts in this tinderbox , which
controls shipping lanes from the Indian Ocean into the Red Sea, can potentially give rise
to regional, and indeed global conflagrations between competing regional actors and
global powers . Located in and around the Horn of Africa are the states of Eritrea, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan and Kenya. Eritrea,
which gained independence from Ethiopia in 1993 after a 30-year civil war, is a major source of regional conflict. Eritrea has a nagging border dispute
with Ethiopia which could easily ignite. The two countries fought a bloody border war from 1998-2000 over control of the town of Badme. Although a
UN mandated body determined in 2002 that the disputed town belonged to Eritrea, Ethiopia has rejected the finding and so the conflict festers. Eritrea
also fights a proxy war against Ethiopia in Somalia and in Ethiopia's rebellious Ogaden region. In Somalia, Eritrea is the primary sponsor of the al-
Qaida-linked Islamic Courts Union which took control of Somalia in June, 2006. In November 2006, the ICU government declared jihad against
Ethiopia and Kenya. Backed by the US, Ethiopia invaded Somalia last December to restore the recognized Transitional Federal Government to power
which the ICU had deposed. Although the Ethiopian army successfully ousted the ICU from power in less than a week, backed by massive military and
financial assistance from Eritrea, as well as Egypt and Libya, the ICU has waged a brutal insurgency against the TFG and the Ethiopian military for the
past year. The senior ICU leadership, including Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys and Sheikh Sharif Ahmed have received safe haven in Eritrea. In
September, the exiled ICU leadership held a nine-day conference in the Eritrean capital of Asmara where they formed the Alliance for the Re-
Liberation of Somalia headed by Ahmed. Eritrean President-for-life Isaias Afwerki declared his country's support for the insurgents stating, "The
Eritrean people's support to the Somali people is consistent and historical, as well as a legal and moral obligation." Although touted in the West as a
moderate, Ahmed has openly supported jihad and terrorism against Ethiopia, Kenya and the West. Aweys, for his part, is wanted by the FBI in
connection with his role in the bombing of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. Then there is Eritrea's support for the Ogaden separatists
in Ethiopia. The Ogaden rebels are Somali ethnics who live in the region bordering Somalia and Kenya. The rebellion is run by the Ogaden National
Liberation Front (ONLF) which uses terror and sabotage as its preferred methods of warfare. It targets not only Ethiopian forces and military
installations, but locals who wish to maintain their allegiance to Ethiopia or reach a negotiated resolution of the conflict. In their most sensationalist
attack to date, in April ONLF terror forces attacked a Chinese-run oil installation in April killing nine Chinese and 65 Ethiopians. Ethiopia, for its part has
fought a brutal counter-insurgency to restore its control over the region. Human rights organizations have accused Ethiopia of massive human rights
abuses of civilians in Ogaden. Then there is Sudan. As Eric Reeves wrote in the Boston Globe on Saturday, "The brutal regime in Khartoum, the
capital of Sudan, has orchestrated genocidal counter-insurgency war in Darfur for five years, and is now poised for victory in its ghastly assault on the
region's African populations." The Islamist government of Omar Hasan Ahmad al-Bashir is refusing to accept non-African states as members of the
hybrid UN-African Union peacekeeping mission to Darfur that is due to replace the undermanned and demoralized African Union peacekeeping force
whose mandate ends on December 31. Without its UN component of non-African states, the UN Security Council mandated force will be unable to
operate effectively. Khartoum's veto led Jean-Marie Guehenno, the UN undersecretary for peacekeeping to warn last month that the entire
peacekeeping mission may have to be aborted. And the Darfur region is not the only one at risk. Due to Khartoum's refusal to carry out the terms of its
2005 peace treaty with the Southern Sudanese that ended Khartoum's 20-year war and genocide against the region's Christian and animist population,
the unsteady peace may be undone. Given Khartoum's apparent sprint to victory over the international community regarding Darfur, there is little
reason to doubt that once victory is secured, it will renew its attacks in the south. The conflicts in the Horn of Africa have
regional and global dimensions . Regionally, Egypt has played a central role in sponsoring and fomenting conflicts. Egypt's
meddling advances its interest of preventing the African nations from mounting a unified challenge to Egypt's colonial legacy of extraordinary rights to
the waters of the Nile River which flows through all countries of the region.

African ag is key to global food security

-countries are investing in new practices, transport is crucial
Zandre Campos, 16 – CEO and ABO Capital, and international firm that invests in companies
throughout Africa to help create global value (Huffington Post, “Why Africa’s Oil Crisis Could
Lead to Growth”, 10/14/16, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/zandre-campos/why-africas-oil-crisis-
co_b_12471882.html)
African agriculture is at a turning point . Just like traditional big-donor countries such as China and Brazil, African
countries are increasing their expenditures on agriculture with the support of new
policies and resources. According to CNN, Africa has the largest share of the world’s
uncultivated land , with rain-fed crop potential. United Nation research shows that by 2050, the world
population is projected to reach 9.7 billion. By raising productivity and modernizing
agriculture, Africa has the potential to feed 9 billion people because it has 65% of world’s
remaining arable land. The future of the African agriculture market is bright because the continent has a lot of natural
resources and agricultural conditions that other continents do not have.

Food crises goes nuclear

FDI 12 – Future Directions International ’12 (“International Conflict Triggers and Potential
Conflict Points Resulting from Food and Water Insecurity Global Food and Water Crises
Research Programme”, May 25, http://www.futuredirections.org.au/files/Workshop_Report_-
_Intl_Conflict_Triggers_-_May_25.pdf)

There is a growing appreciation that the conflicts in the next century will most likely be
fought over a lack of resources.¶ Yet, in a sense, this is not new. Researchers point to the
French and Russian revolutions as conflicts induced by a lack of food. More recently, Germany’s
World War Two efforts are said to have been inspired, at least in part, by its perceived need to
gain access to more food. Yet the general sense among those that attended FDI’s recent workshops, was that the
scale of the problem in the future could be significantly greater as a result of population pressures,
changing weather, urbanisation, migration, loss of arable land and other farm inputs, and increased affluence in the developing
world.¶ In his book, Small Farmers Secure Food, Lindsay Falvey, a participant in FDI’s March 2012 workshop on the issue of
food and conflict, clearly expresses the problem and why countries across the globe are starting to take note. .¶ He writes
(p.36), “…if people are hungry, especially in cities, the state is not stable – riots, violence, breakdown of law
and order and migration result.”¶ “Hunger feeds anarchy.”¶ This view is also shared by Julian Cribb, who in his book, The
Coming Famine, writes that if “large regions of the world run short of food, land or water in the decades
that lie ahead, then wholesale, bloody wars are liable to follow.” ¶ He continues: “An increasingly
credible scenario for World War 3 is not so much a confrontation of super powers and their allies, as a
festering , self-perpetuating chain of resource conflicts.” He also says: “The wars of the 21st Century are
less likely to be global conflicts with sharply defined sides and huge armies, than a scrappy mass of failed states, rebellions, civil
strife, insurgencies, terrorism and genocides, sparked by bloody competition over dwindling resources.” ¶ As another workshop
participant put it, people do not go to war to kill; they go to war over resources, either to protect or to gain the resources for
themselves.¶ Another observed that hunger results in passivity not conflict. Conflict is over resources, not because people are going
hungry.¶ A study by the I nternational P eace R esearch I nstitute indicates that where food
security is an issue, it is more likely to result in some form of conflict. Darfur, Rwanda,
Eritrea and the Balkans experienced such wars. Governments, especially in developed countries, are
increasingly aware of this phenomenon.¶ The UK Ministry of Defence, the CIA, the US C enter for S trategic and
I nternational S tudies and the Oslo Peace Research Institute, all identify famine as a potential
trigger for conflicts and possibly even nuclear war .
 2ac – Africa cards

Current African prison education programs failing

DENNIS CRUYWAGEN, 5-17-2017, "SA prisons overcrowded by 137%," African news
network 7, http://www.ann7.com/sa-prisons-overcrowded-by-137//)MBA HBJ

Although figures differ from prison to prison, South Africa’s prisons are overcrowded by
137%, the Minister of Justice and Correctional Services, Michael Masutha, has disclosed. Briefing the media before he tabled his budget in Parliament yesterday, he said he had established a task team in November 2015 to drive a review of the parole

“Key to our capacity to

system. While a draft position paper was ready, consultations were still continuing. Once this was concluded, the cabinet and Parliament would be approached with draft legislation.

deliver on our core mandate is adequate infrastructure which must be in a proper state.
Nationally, our overcrowding is at 137% and varies from centre to centre depending on
factors including the size and location of the centre, ” Masutha said. There are plans to reduce overcrowding by relocating offenders from overcrowded to less

“A continued increase in the offender population has presented unavoidable

overcrowded centres.

challenges of overcrowding in our correctional facilities over the years ,” he said. Masutha said there was an urgent need to
create additional bed space, as well as to take care of existing infrastructure. “Utilisation of offender labour will go a long way in reducing the level of dilapidation in our facilities,” he said. “I have seen many of our regions taking advantage of offender labour to do

Our responsibility is to rehabilitate all those

some of the critical maintenance work. This must be applauded.” On the rehabilitation of offenders, Masutha said: “

admitted to our centres and marshal them onto a new path showcases . The thrust of offender rehabilitation

correctional centres as places of new beginnings where education and skills

development , are the beating hearts of corrections.”
 Latin America + Venezuela

American prison system gets modeled – they have info and aid exchanges
Plan Colombia, 11-23-2013, "The US Prison Industrial Complex exportation to Latin
American Countries," DECARCERATE PA, http://decarceratepa.info/radio/us-prison-industrial-
complex-exportation-latin-american-countries//)MBA HBJ

We have so many prisoners in Colombia and the US started building more prisons to
allieviate overcrowded prisoner to build massive prisons. These prisons have the same
layout as the prisons in the US. The conditions are like the US. They are very bad. We still have
overpopulation . When you go into these prisons, you see that you know inside the prison they are living inside and outside the cells, the b athrooms, halls, there isn’t enough space in these prisons. When you have to live in a

bathroom or corridor you are a target for someone to bog you of the clothes and sneakers or kill you for whatever reason. The prisons are very bad and overpopulation
has become worse than before. When I see the first prison built with the American
standards in Colombia , they make a lot of noise, but they never told the people and country that this prison they built it without a sewage system without toilets so if you go to the toilets most of the time like 60% of the

time it doesn’t work. And its really disguting because people do it in plastic bags and throw it outside of the windows so outside of the prison is an infestation of flies that you sense outside of the prison, so the conditions
are really bad even with the US standards and model. Well this is a What do you think of the condition of the US government?

country with more prisoners than other country in the world. Prison has really become a
private enterprise. So the extension of the prison companies outside of the US in the
sector they will cover the sector in other countries They really aren’t working properly, .

so they ask the government to go into other countries like Colombia. They must take care to maintain population in other

countries like Colombia

Solvency
 Education Good
Massive literature review proves that education is critical to stop recidivism
ERIC Westervelt and Lois Davis 15 –*Education Correspondent**senior policy researcher at
the RAND Corporation (“Measuring The Power Of A Prison
Education”;7/31;http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015/07/31/427741914/measuring-the-power-of-
a-prison-education)//pk
The Obama administration Friday is taking a small step toward expanding adult prisoners'
access to federal Pell grants. The money would help pay for college-level classes behind
bars. Federal and state prisoners have been ineligible for the grants since Congress banned
the practice two decades ago. But the Education and Justice Departments today will
announce a limited pilot program that gets around the ban — at least on a temporary,
experimental basis. The goal is to test the effectiveness of higher education programs for a
U.S. prison population that has grown dramatically — by nearly 50 percent since the initial
ban. Today, America's state and federal prisons hold some 1.6 million people. There's
strong evidence that a range of prison education programs help reduce recidivism and
improve a prisoner's chances of thriving once released. To help unpack the research, I reached out to
Is there any data on what
Lois Davis. She studies the issue as a senior policy researcher at the RAND Corporation.
impact the federal ban on Pell grant funding has had on recidivism and other outcomes
after prisoners are released? After that 1994 inmate exclusion, we saw a dramatic drop in the number of inmates
participating in college programming. Today, we see — looking across the 50 states — about 32 states offer some type of college or
post-secondary courses to adult inmates. Unfortunately, these programs are substantially underused
because many inmates lack a means to pay for them . That's why the potential for Pell grants to improve
access to college is great. It removes a key barrier: a lack of funding. Some states provide state funds for college programs or
maybe by individual donations or foundations. But currently, for the most part, it's up to the inmate and their families to pay for these
programs. The Obama administration is set to restore Pell grant access on a limited, pilot basis. Is this move overdue in your view? I
do feel that it's overdue. This population is one with low education attainment . About 40 percent
of [prisoners] lack a high school education . Sixteen percent of state prisoners have a high school diploma.
Education can have a huge effect in really helping them to gain the skills they need and
prepare them to be employed. So as we look at the larger picture of how we reduce mass
incarceration and investments in correctional budgets, part of that discussion needs to
be what programs have the potential to really help us reduce those high costs we are
currently paying as a society. Mandatory minimums and harsh sentences for drug offenses have helped fill U.S.
prisons, including with many nonviolent drug offenders. Prison education programs — is this money well-spent? When I go around
and talk to different audiences about the work we're doing in this area I will invariably have someone from the audience come up to
me after and say, "The reason why I'm here is because my son, or cousin or brother is incarcerated." And invariably it's for drug-
Mass incarceration
related crimes. So it's not the typical picture people may have of these hardened, career criminals.
has touched so many segments of society now and our drug policies have been an
important factor in that. Just being able to ensure that they have the basic skills and
education that will give them a shot at staying out of trouble when they get released is a
big benefit to society. Education as the centerpiece of an effective re-entry strategy?
That's exactly right. When we think about the school to prison pipeline story — about the
failure of the educational attainment for many of these individuals — when they get to prison it is a
chance to address those deficits. You did a thorough literature review — a meta-analysis — of

prison education programs in America . What did you find in terms of employment and
the chance a released prisoner might return to prison? We looked at 30 years of
research, to look at what we know about the effectiveness of prison education for
inmates . What we found was that, if an individual participates in any type of correctional
education program — whether it be adult basic ed, GED preparation, college education or vocational training —
they had a 13 percentage point reduction in their risk of being re-incarcerated. That's an
enormous reduction in the ris k. And for those that participated in post-secondary education programs — college
programs — their reduction in risk of reincarceration was 16 percentage points. A substantial reduction. Some taxpayers say, "Don't
spend my tax money on educating criminals. It's better used helping law-abiding citizens." What did you find about the overall cost-
effectiveness of these programs? Education is a relatively low-cost program you can provide to
inmates . But, when you look simply at direct costs, we find that for every dollar invested in
a prison education program it will ultimately save taxpayers between $4 and $5 in
reincarceration costs. That's an enormous savings. Just to break even, you'd only have to reduce the
risk of reincarceration by one to two percentage points. But, the fact that there is a 13-point reduction in risk means
you really are achieving substantial cost savings. And this is a conservative estimate of
savings because we are not taking into account the indirect costs both to crime victims
and the criminal justice system.
Education is human right should be available to prisoners --- independently
it reduces violence
CLINT SMITH 6/27 – Ph.D. Candidate at Harvard University and a National Science Foundation
Graduate Research Fellow, (“The Lifelong Learning of Lifelong Inmates”;
2017;https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/06/why-prison-education-is-about-
more-than-lowering-recidivism/531873/)//pk
Policy circles tend to predicate the purpose of education singularly on reducing
recidivism and increasing post-release employment opportunities. According to that line
of logic, then, investing time and resources in individuals who will not be released is a
waste. If the purpose of education for incarcerated individuals is instead understood as
something that exists beyond social and vocational utility, then prisons take on new
meaning . Perhaps prison educators and policymakers would more fully consider how such
spaces serve as intellectual communities that restore human dignity within an institution
built on the premise of taking that dignity away. In a recently published article for the
Harvard Educational Review, I argue that providing education to incarcerated individuals
should not be based on a myopic conception of efficacy; instead people in prison
deserve education because the collective project of learning is and should be
understood as a human right. The community of learners that Lance and his classmates have built has nothing to do with whether or not they will
one day be released. (The names of the inmates referenced throughout this essay are the same pseudonyms I used in the aforementioned article.) “I am suffering in this place.
Day after day, week after week, year after year, decade after decade.” In one of our workshops the class reads an excerpt of Jhumpa Lahiri’s 2003 novel, The Namesake, a
story that centers around the protagonist’s—Gogol’s—struggle to assimilate into “traditional” American culture as a first-generation Bengali immigrant. The novel, a fluid
meditation on family and identity, found resonance with a group of men whose lives have, in many ways, come to be defined by the cages in which they’re kept. While Gogol’s
existential struggle stems from straddling cultural bifurcations, Darryl’s stems from an effort to define himself beyond the criminal caricature the world has imposed on him.
“Sometimes you get so caught up in how the rest of the world sees you,” he once remarked, “that you start to believe it.” The power of literature does not lie in resonance with
the particular, but the way that the particular speaks to a broader, more universal truth. That an American-born black man who has spent decades in prison can see himself in
the tale of a first-generation, Ivy-League Bengali immigrant speaks to how art, at its best, renders borders of difference obsolete. That morning, moved by the book’s reflections
on family, Darryl, serving his 43rd year in prison, wrote an essay. He described the despair of having the small moments—the ones that so often shape the contours of an
individual’s relationships with loved ones—stripped away. An excerpt reads: I am suffering in this place. Day after day, week after week, year after year, decade after decade,
walking up and down hallways; going from room to room in the same building, under surveillance 24 hours a day. The keepers start the kepts’ day off with the intercom
announcement at five minutes to 7 a.m. “Five minutes to count! Five minutes to count!” The kept stir to life from a night of visiting who knows what or where, perhaps a dream of
being home with mother and siblings or wife and children, sitting at the table to eat a meal of turkey, mashed potatoes with gravy, squash, and cranberry sauce. Then looking
down to the end of the table and Taser in hand; turning around and seeing bars of the doorway which was not the same doorway he had entered through. Silence filled the room

To
after he shared his essay. Slowly, Leo began to nod his head. He looked towards Darryl. “Yea,” he said, pausing and then nodding for a few moments. “Thank you.”

date, much of the research on prison education is centered on the correlation between
prison education and recidivism—the tendency of an individual to reoffend. A 2013 meta-
analysis by the RAND Corporation, in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Justice,
found that incarcerated people who participated in correctional education programs have
43 percent lower odds of recidivating than those who did not. Furthermore, those who
participated in such programs were 13 percent more likely to land post-release
employment than those who had not. That number would likely be higher if
discrimination against the formerly incarcerated weren’t so profound. These data are
compelling, but they disregard the fundamental role of prison education. Education is a
human right — a recognition of dignity that each person should be afforded. It isn’t merely something
that attains its value through its presumed social utility—or, worse, something that society can take away from an individual who’s convicted of breaking the social contract.
That’s true even for the men I work with, nearly all of whom are serving life sentences, as are nearly 160,000 other people across the country for crimes ranging from first-
degree murder to stealing a jacket. This reality—that those I taught would never leave the prison’s premises—recalibrated my understanding of the purpose of prison-education

programs. Do those serving life sentences deserve access to educational opportunities never having a future beyond bars? The answer is yes and necessitates that in-
prison education serves additional goals beyond reducing recidivism. These men are not perfect. They are
complicated. They have made mistakes. In other words, they are human. For Jill McDonough, a creative-writing professor at the University of Massachusetts who has taught in
prisons throughout the state for the past two decades, prison educators and researchers should consider what education can provide that might not fit neatly into a spreadsheet.
“I don’t need prison education to have quantifiable outcomes. I understand our incarcerated populations are our responsibility; we decided they don’t get freedom,” she told me,
emphasizing that the criminal-justice system cannot simply remove people from society without subsequently providing them with the services they need. “If I were in prison, I’d
want to take classes, to sit in a group of like-minded people excited and scared to challenge ourselves, to be able to give myself over to the work.” For McDonough, focusing too
intently on quantifiable outcomes obscures what the essence of education, in prison or otherwise, is truly about. “I have been able to teach someone with a life sentence to write
a sonnet, to hear that they worked on it with such focus that hours slipped by,” she continued. “That’s enough.” Arthur Bembury, who is formerly incarcerated and now serves as
the executive director of Partakers, an organization that provides mentorship to incarcerated men and women participating in the Boston University Prison Program, echoed
McDonough’s belief that those serving life sentences shouldn’t be left out of the conversation around carceral education. “A lot of people ask why do we accept lifers into our
program, if they’re not getting out? Why are we putting our resources behind somebody that doesn’t have a rap date?” he said. “One is: It instills a culture of dignity. And two:
Lifers are a force within the prison system where they mentor other people.” Substantial social science demonstrates the efficacy of offering educational programs that are not

Prison-education programs focused on art and literature,

geared toward vocational output, or even reducing recidivism.

for example, keep prisons safer, as people are less likely to engage in violence when
they have there is something meaningful and edifying to look forward to. Education, whether
inside or outside of a prison, creates its value in ways that aren’t always simple to measure.
Nor should they be. One does not read a poem by Gwendolyn Brooks with hopes that it
will grant him a career in engineering; he does so because poetry helps him see
something in the world that he might not have seen before. One does not read an essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson
because it statistically enhances her likelihood of staying out of the criminal-justice system; she does so because there is something to be gained from reading literature and
exchanging ideas that tell her something about who she is in the world. In a political moment defined by its obsession with cutting programs that “[sound] great” but “don’t work,”
McDonough’s words may prove particularly essential: Committing to a set of values that may not reveal themselves neatly on a spreadsheet is just as important as adhering to

they are
the values that are easiest to calculate and assess. These men are not perfect. They are complicated. They have made mistakes. In other words,

human. And it is precisely this humanity that demands a space where they can ask and
question and create and grapple with all that makes the world what it is—a place where
social and intellectual community might be restored in a way that reestablishes an
individual’s agency. The agency a carceral institution inherently attempts to strip away.

Prison education saves money and helps resolve recidivism

Lisa Roose-Church 4/6 – Central Michigan University (“Education behind bars works, but it can
be hard to come by”;2017;Livingston
Daily;http://www.livingstondaily.com/story/news/local/community/livingston-
county/2017/04/06/education-in-prison/99999514/)//pk
When critics question whether inmates should receive educational opportunities, Michigan
Department of Corrections spokesman Chris Gautz points to a basic statistic: 95% of inmates will be

released . Gautz frames it this way: Which version of a parolee do you want living next door to you, the person with no skills and
no education who returns to crime or the educated person who seeks gainful employment? Studies, including a 2013
RAND Corporation report, show that prisoner education saves taxpayers an estimated $5
in re-incarceration costs for every $1 spent on education. “ Prison education isn’t about
rewarding bad behavior but about correcting damaged character ,” said Christopher Zoukis, author
of “College for Convicts: The Case for Higher Education in American Prisons.” “ We
as a nation do a great job at
punishing the wrongdoer and allowing the victim to feel and see that the perpetrator of
crime is receiving just desserts,” added Zoukis, a 31-year-old federal inmate in Virginia.
“But, we often forget that these people one day leave prison. Today’s prisoners are
tomorrow’s neighbors.” Educational partnerships The role of incarceration-based education
programs – ranging from the general education development, or GED, to post-secondary courses –
has long been debated, but those in the criminal justice system say the cost of educating an inmate is money well spent. At the
county level, about half of Michigan's county jails allow inmates – who are housed for one year or less – to complete the GED. Some
county jails bring in a teacher while others partner with area high schools or colleges. However, many of the state’s smaller county
jails lost the ability to provide educational programs in 2016 when their local community corrections offices closed. In Alpena
County, Sgt. Scott Gagnon said the loss of community corrections has been devastating. “ That was a big source for
us. … If people don’t have education, they don’t get jobs and they continue the vicious
cycle ,” he said. “I’m kind of at the mercy of willing partners with regards to any programming.”

Prison education can change mindsets and get uninterested people on

board
Paul Phillips 3/21 - principal of Weston College(“‘Prison education is the catalyst for changing
lives’”;2017;https://www.tes.com/news/further-education/breaking-views/prison-education-
catalyst-changing-lives)//pk

Reforms to prison education should be welcomed, but for the new measures to succeed
the current under-resourcing of prisons must be addressed The government’s recently published Prisons
and Courts Bill will give governors greater powers over education, employment and health budgets. As principal of an institution that provides offender
learning for several prisons across the South West I believe that allowing governors greater flexibility in terms of the curriculum they are able to offer
can only be a good thing. However, for the new measures to succeed, the current under-resourcing of prisons needs to be addressed. At present lack
of funds means education is frequently disrupted in prison; prisoners who participate in education need to be released from the cells to do so and if that
cannot occur because of a shortage of prisoner officers and other issues, then delivering the full complement of learning becomes more difficult.
Obviously the priority is the safety of the prisoners and the prison itself, and
unfortunately presently there is little individual governors can do; meanwhile, some
prisoners may find their education disrupted if they find themselves moved from one
institution to another – which can mean that tracking the individual in terms of
maintaining continuity of provision is a challenge. Others may be moved to another part of the country entirely and
perhaps to an area which might be less enlightened when it comes to delivery of education. Despite all these restraints over the past six years I have
witnessed real progress especially where we have concentrated on identifying companies who will readily engage in giving jobs or traineeships to
prisoners when they have completed their sentences. Though sadly, at the moment, there are certain qualifications under the current regime that we
are unable to get funding for and yet which can be crucial for people who are entering the world of work. For instance, costs do not permit the provision
of working towards a Construction Skills Certification Scheme – a card needed to work at environments such as building sites. Should prison governors
be able to establish a really robust partnership with the educational provider to create that kind of future for the prisoner, then it could be a winning
combination. Prison education leads to ‘amazing transformations’ I have spent time in every
one of the prisons we look after and witnessed amazing transformations; I have seen
prisoners who were totally disengaged and who started off with a relatively low level of
skills training, and seen them advance to a level where some are now doing degree
study. I have seen others achieve qualifications, engage with an employer and gain
progression in that environment and seen others develop a skill and get training in
setting up their own business. When you meet a prisoner, often they have never been exposed to
education, or perhaps had a very bad experience of it. This is an issue for both the prison itself, and for the
teaching and learning provider, to help reintroduce them to learning and show them all the advantages that can bring. But they still need
that support mechanism when they fulfil their sentence. There is sadly a minority who
feel that support for them once they leave prison is not great and who reoffend to return
to an environment that they see as safe and secure. People who think they have seen life
should spend just a day in one of our prisons and they will not leave – whatever their
preconceived ideas they have – without thinking how well off they are in what they have
experienced in life compared to these people. From my perspective, the government has to realise
that teaching and learning is the way forward – it’s the catalyst to changing those lives.

Prisons should reappriopriate money toward education to solve

overcrowding
Christopher Zoukis 17 –author of Federal Prison Handbook (“Packed Prisons Are A Result Of
Misdirected Focus”;2017;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/packed-prisons-a-result-of-
misdirected-focus_us_5935dd68e4b0c670a3ce679d)//pk
The study makes a valid point that should be underscoring the change needed across
the entire American prison system: “Drug use rates have historically been highly
correlated with educational status, and remain so. College graduates have the lowest rates of current drug use (4.8
percent).” In other words, if you reduce dependency on drugs through access to education, you
will dramatically reduce the number of people in prison. Let’s go back to Oklahoma. Each inmate costs
the state approximately $16,322 per year. Comparatively, Oklahoma spends about $8,531 per year per student, according to the
National Education Association. The 27 task force recommendations, if adopted, would reduce the state’s prison population by
9,267, and save $1.9 billion. Recommendations are intended to focus prison spaces on serious, violent offenders and improve and
enhance rehabilitation and re-entry practices. Without adopting the recommendations, and continuing on its present path, a press
release states, Oklahoma’s prison population will rise by 25 percent, and require three more prisons to be built. The
American
prison system is spending more money perpetuating and creating criminals in prison
than the education system is spending on vulnerable, at-risk populations. This is
education that could keep reduce the number of young offenders from entering the
criminal justice system. America needs to reassess who gets locked up and the reasons
for being incarcerated . Currently, the largest population in prisons in the country are
non-violent drug offenders. That an enormous number of youth that go into prison for
drugs come out transformed into hardened criminals. If the criminal justice system were
truly sticking to the objectives of punishment, protection and rehabilitation, there would
be a far greater emphasis on accessible education consistently across facilities , a
system that only locks up those that truly need to be behind bars for protection and
rehabilitation, and the country could shift the money it saves on mass incarceration
toward education, effecting a reduction in criminal behavior and reducing the strain on
the penal system.

Education is critical to end the cycle of recidivism

Katie McBeth 16 - (“Education, Recidivism, and Prison Reform: Creating the Prison-to-School
Pipeline”;Oct 25th;https://intpolicydigest.org/2016/10/25/education-recidivism-and-prison-reform-
creating-the-prison-to-school-pipeline/)//pk
Due to the severity of their sentences (despite the severity of the crime) many of these citizens are
labeled as felons, and considered to be second-class citizens after release according to
American law. They are barred from voting, from purchasing firearms, and pariahs in their own community; unable to get jobs
or housing. The lack of support they receive, as well as lack of ability to acquire a steady

income, nearly forces them to return to a life of petty crime or addiction. The cycle
spirals on, and our system seems to be created solely to encourage the centrifugal force
of our prison complex. The Prison-to-School Pipeline Currently, the prison problem is gaining notoriety
among politicians on both sides, which has increased efforts to reverse the so-called “school-to-prison pipeline.” President Obama
became the first residing president to visit an active prison in July of 2015. In the last few years of his term, President Obama has
focused a large portion of his efforts on prison reform. In June of this year, news broke of a pilot program that Pres. Obama created
known as “Second Chance Pell.” Currently, prisoners in Federal and State facilities are banned from receiving Pell Grants or
financial aid for higher education due to the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act (signed and supported by Bill
Clinton). Considering the increasing price of education, denying grant access is particularly harmful to people who are already
struggling with poverty and socio-economic issues. Pres. Obama’s program, although currently only open to 12,000 prisoners that
will be released within three years, is a meaningful move for reform. Instead of feeding into the prison-to-school pipeline, the Obama
administration hopes to create a fluid school-to-prison pipeline for inmates. Diversity in Education Education could be
the key to ending the cycle of recidivism . It is through higher education that many people
are able to advance their career and increase their income. As Michael Crow, president of Arizona State
University, said in a speech with Los Diablos in August 2016: “ The most significant issue limiting the nation

is the inability to have equal educational attainment across all people…Low education
keeps people in poverty. Educational achievement is the most predictive variable to
social mobility. Without education, it is not likely that people will move up
socioeconomically.” Crow is one of the rare leaders in education who acknowledges the gap in diversity on his campus.
As he is setting a precedent for other University leaders, Crow is providing ample opportunities for lower-economic students to get
accepted to the school’s many prestigious programs. His model of opening education access to all qualifying students, regardless of
income, was a revolutionary move from a research institution. If more schools followed the model that ASU has created, it would not
only benefit disadvantaged students, but would benefit schools, technological innovation, and increase graduation rates.
Programs that give education access to prisoners, or provide instant access to a secure
job after they’ve been paroled, have been shown to reduce recidivism for those
candidates by over 40 percent in some cases. Bard College is one of those examples. One teacher with the
Bard Prison Initiative of Bard College, Yun Qin, noted that over 350 students with BPI have earned degrees, and less than 4 percent
have returned to prison since their release. Compared to the recidivism rate in 2005-2010, when two-thirds of all released inmates
were rearrested within a five-year time frame, the success of BPI shows that higher education could make a phenomenal difference
A Universal Benefit Formerly incarcerated people are not the
in the lives of non-violent offenders.
only ones who will benefit from a more diverse student base. As Jay Halfond, professor at Boston
University Metropolitan College, notes in his recent Huffington Post article, “Ideally, the learning experience
exposes students to new ways of thinking, to an array of ideas and possibilities, and to
meeting others outside their comfort zone…Universities take bold and controversial measures to construct a
diverse milieu – by the ethnic, national, socio-economic mix of students they recruit. These college years are pivotal to what
students study, whom they get to know, their professions, their outlook on the world, [and] it is too rich an opportunity to overlook.
Our future success in overcoming differences, fragmentation, and conflict might very well depend on this.” Within New York City,
many colleges have already decided to “ban the box” that asks about a prospective student’s criminal record. President of John Jay
College of Criminal Justice in New York, Jeremy Travis, wrote an op-ed praising the inclusion of released inmates into college
courses. He notes: “Higher education should be open to all. But a larger principle is at stake: Public universities can play a critical
role in the country’s emerging criminal justice reform movement…Providing high-quality educational opportunities will enhance
public safety, improve employment prospects for those who return home, and reaffirm the human potential of our fellow citizens
behind bars.” According to a PBS report that covered the unprecedented growth of our prison system: “Black
men under
the age of 35 with no high school diploma are now more likely to be in jail than working
in the labor market.” President Obama’s plan to allow incarcerated persons to pursue an education despite their current
status could provide thousands of people of color behind bars with a chance to leave the prison industrial complex for good.
Education requires money and provides opportunities, and opportunities provide money
to survive in our society and contribute to its wellbeing. The conversation has already
started and developed a potentially policy-changing plan, and now we have to move into
action and actively make a difference. Show support and compassion for prisoners that
want to seek out better opportunities through higher education. Elect officials that reflect your values,
and write to those in office letting them know where their constituents stand on these issues. Our prison industrial
complex is devouring the lives of thousands every day, and we can do something to end
the cycle.
Prison education is empowering and results in massive benefits for
prisoners
Kim, Kony 16 - Ph.D @ UC Berkeley(“Restoring Human Capabilities After Punishment: Our
Responsibilities Toward Incarcerated”;UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and
Dissertations;https://search.proquest.com/openview/ffa13f47f1a1c9eb863c1be240366d20/1?pq
-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750&diss=y)//pk
quality education is a contested and unequally distributed good. Just as
3.4.4 Education as a fertile capability In our society,

ncarceration disproportionately impacts the most disadvantaged Americans, quality

i

education is regularly accessible only to the privileged, acting as an amplifier of

socioeconomic inequalities. Indeed, low educational attainment is among the strongest
predictors of incarceration in our society, as well as a predominant characteristic among
the incarcerated population. Quality education at any level is also a fertile capability in its
own right, fostering a range of skills, affiliations, and credentials that make lifelong
health and stability more readily attainable. Among incarcerated Americans, any amount
of educational attainment is positively correlated with better outcomes in all the high-
priority areas of need, and higher education in particular is strongly predictive of
success in reintegration. Thus, under the CA, we have reasons to treat education not only as a high-
priority need in reintegration, but also as an entitlement for individuals whose
capabilities have been stunted by poor access to education. Providing quality education
for this population is a matter of both corrective and prospective justice: it’s a way to
redress the injustice of unequal access, mitigate the harms of inhumane punishment,
and secure a just future by fertilizing central capabilities. 60 A formidable barrier to these steps is the corrosive disadvantage of
criminal stigma, which drives popular perceptions that incarcerated Americans are less than full citizens and, as such, don’t deserve educational opportunities. This stigma has long prevented voters and public
officials from devoting resources to education (and other capabilities) for incarcerated adults. In recent years, the voting public has somewhat warmed to the notion of basic education and job training as means to
reduce recidivism; but support for such programs remains limited, conditional, and rooted in stereotyped perceptions of prisoners. So, despite some growing willingness to meet the basic welfare needs of

it’s important to explore

incarcerated Americans, there remains strong resistance to expanding their access to quality education, especially higher education. For these reasons,

the notion of education as a fertile capability, illuminating its robust connections to all
the central capabilities, as well as its moral significance as a scarce and unjustly
withheld social good. These are the tasks I undertake in Chapter 4. 3.4.5 Self-narrative as a fertile capability Social stigma, as noted above, is a corrosive disadvantage for
incarcerated Americans, restricting their pathways to reintegration: it fuels various forms of legal exclusion and informal discrimination, impeding day-to-day survival as well as high-level policy reform. Eliminating
this stigma will require transforming our society’s cultural narratives about crime and prison, along with popular perceptions of criminals and prisoners: spoken and unspoken assumptions about who they are or
can become. It will require affirming incarcerated Americans’ moral status as persons possessing dignity, their capacities to exercise responsible agency, their many forms of vulnerability, and their potential to
develop as individuals and to contribute to society. This task, the transformation of cultural narratives and popular perceptions, requires expanding and deepening the public discourse so that it can support
alternative narratives and perceptions. As such, in large part, it requires equipping incarcerated Americans to construct their own self-narratives both as “former offenders” and as valuable members of society.
Indeed, respect for their dignity and agency requires enabling them to participate in public discourse and contribute to its development, especially when that discourse concerns who they are and what they’re
entitled to as citizens. Thus, insofar as we as a civilized society are committed to penal reform, reintegration, self-determination, and democracy, we must pursue measures that empower all incarcerated
Americans to develop and articulate their authentic self-narratives. As I argue at length in Chapter 5, we have other compelling reasons to secure the capability of self-narrative for incarcerated Americans.
Empirical research indicates that selfnarrative reconstruction may be essential to rehabilitation, and that certain self-narrative templates in particular can promote a slew of vital social and psychological benefits,
specifically for adults navigating reintegration. In fact, efforts to secure the conditions necessary to develop an adaptive self-narrative – i.e. the acquired skills, social interactions, and learning opportunities – would
also redress several resource deficits that are common among incarcerated Americans. Thus, the freedom to develop a self-narrative is not only a means to removing the corrosive disadvantage of stigma; it’s
also a means to redress multiple capability deficits and expand multiple capabilities that are vital to incarcerated Americans’ long-term wellbeing. 61 3.5 Capabilities as a matter of political responsibility The CA
offers a robust framework for developing a policy agenda that fulfills our shared political responsibilities toward incarcerated Americans. At the same time, it affords conceptual resources that enrich our
understanding of that shared responsibility. To bear our political responsibilities regarding our penal system, as I argued in Chapter 2, we must redress the harms produced by structural injustice and reform the
social arrangements that have been producing them. Our political responsibilities will be discharged when we’ve established a correctional system that (1) treats all individuals with respect according to their status
as equal citizens and human persons; (2) enables them to take responsibility for their actions and ultimately for their life trajectories, which includes ensuring they have opportunities to remedy the causes and
consequences of their crimes; and (3) equips them to join others in bearing responsibility for the justness of social arrangements, including penal practices. Through the lens of the CA, we can understand the
harms produced by penal injustice as numerous interrelated capability deprivations that violate thresholds of basic decency. Further, using principles derived from the CA, we can flesh out the imperatives and
objectives entailed by our obligations of redress and reform, enriching our vision of just correctional system as follows: 1. A correctional system that treats all individuals with due respect for their dignity is one that
brings everyone up to threshold levels of all central capabilities, and in ways that properly account for their vulnerability – that is, their specific forms of dependency and disadvantage. 2. A correctional system that
empowers individuals to take responsibility for their conduct is, in part, one which diagnoses and addresses existing deficits in agency, namely by cultivating and repairing the capacities for reasoned choice as
needed; and it is one which also respects the reasoned choices of mature adults, namely by providing but not imposing opportunities to grow and to develop their full potential. 3. A correctional system that equips
individuals to join their fellow citizens in bearing political responsibility for justice is one that ensures their post-release success in all the key areas of need – education, employment, family relations, health care,
and housing – so that, with their welfare needs (central capability entitlements) secured, they are well positioned to contribute meaningfully to their families, workplaces, civic institutions, and political communities.
Finally, by taking seriously the CA’s imperative, we arrive at the conclusion that the development of fertile capabilities (such as education and self-narrative) and the elimination of corrosive disadvantages (such
as stigma and harsh incarceration itself) are matters of heightened obligation. These intervention points should be the focus of collective action as we, diversely situated Americans, work together to bear our

Higher Education as a Fertile Capability for Incarcerated Americans

political responsibility for penal injustice. 62 4

“If we have reason to believe that educational opportunities, both inside prison and in
the community, can improve reentry outcomes – by reducing recidivism, enhancing
human capital, improving family functioning, and connecting returning prisoners to
career opportunities – how would we make that happen?”131 When Jeremy Travis posed this query in 2011, he was addressing
advocates and reformers who were eager to tackle the “how” component, in part, because they wholly accepted the “if” component. Numerous empirical studies had
established by then that participation in correctional education (“CE”), especially post-secondary correctional
education (“PSCE”), can help break cycles of incarceration and recidivism. Since then, such evidence has

continued to accrue. Yet, despite the evidence, the American public remains ambivalent about investing resources in PSCE. While advocates have
emphasized that PSCE programs reduce crime and save taxpayer dollars, opponents object that lavishing higher
education on criminals is unjust and wasteful. Thus the two sides argue past each other, with neither rooting its arguments in concern for the human dignity, civic membership, or life prospects of incarcerated
Americans. In the interests of upholding our core values as a political community, I argue, we must squarely engage with the questions of political morality that underlie this policy debate. If the key economic
question is “What CE policies and programs are cost-effective as a matter of tax dollars and human capital?” then the key ethical question is this: “Given the past and ongoing deprivations unjustly suffered by
incarcerated Americans, to what educational opportunities might they now be entitled as a matter of justice?” My task in Chapter 4 is to show that the CA can enrich and advance our public discourse by providing
answers to this unexamined ethical question – and, specifically, by providing robust grounds for the argument that all incarcerated Americans should have access to quality CE programs, including PSCE

. By recognizing varied ways in which education enriches human

programs, that equip them to pursue flourishing lives

life, the CA clarifies the distinctive roles that quality higher education can and should
play in the lifelong wellbeing of incarcerated Americans. I begin in Section 4.1 with background, explaining why CE is a high-priority
need and tracing PSCE’s scarcity to collective disregard for the wellbeing of incarcerated adults. In Section 4.2, I argue that the CA should serve as an overarching framework for CE policy, with human capital
and human rights models serving ancillary roles. In Section 4.3 I establish that, while all forms of CE merit support, PSCE should be prioritized as a fertile capability, in large part because it stands to serve CE’s
capability-expansive objectives in distinctly impactful ways. In Section 4.4, I engage with objections from conservative and liberal critics, drawing on Nussbaum and Young to uphold my argument for prioritizing
PSCE. In Section 4.5, I consider the role of stigma as a corrosive disadvantage, and I conclude that access to PSCE is particularly crucial for empowering incarcerated Americans to lead the way in dissolving the

Correctional experts have designated education as a high-

roots of stigma. 4.1 Higher education as a willfully unmet need

priority need for incarcerated Americans: not only because so many individuals arrive in
prison with educational deficits, but also because access to CE can significantly improve
their prospects for long-term wellbeing. Yet public support for CE has fluctuated in tandem with shifting political and economic incentives, and funding for
PSCE in particular has been singled out for public opposition and elimination. In light of PSCE’s recent history in this country, summarized below, I argue that securing broad support for PSCE will entail a
normative shift in public discourse. Rather than appeal solely to political and economic incentives, which have proved unstable, advocates need to adopt a framework that rests on unconditional respect for the

human dignity of incarcerated Americans. 4.1.1 Confirmed economic and social benefits As long as current trends continue, about 700,000
Americans will transition from prison to society each year, and roughly half will be re-incarcerated within a few years of release.132
While the causes of recidivism are complex and difficult to untangle, evidence has made clear that access to education, especially college, can break the cycle.133 Most incarcerated

Americans have had inadequate schooling and, as a whole, have much lower levels of
educational attainment than the general population. 134 But studies show that those who
participate in CE prior to release have lower recidivism rates,135 better job prospects,136 and
better chances for economic stability.137 Recidivism reduction effects are especially
pronounced for PSCE participants,138 who are also more likely to avoid misconduct in prison,
to act as peer mentors and positive role models,139 to support their children’s health and
education, to achieve upward social mobility, and to pursue careers that ultimately
improve their communities.140 Thus, while all forms of CE programming have the potential to yield tangible benefits, evidence indicates that PSCE is a particularly effective
and cost-effective means to reduce tax dollars spent on correctional discipline and law enforcement, to increase contributions to the tax base, and to yield long-term savings by interrupting intergenerational cycles

quality PSCE remains underfunded and scarce,

of poverty.141 4.1.2 Political and economic drivers of scarcity Despite the evidence in its favor,

largely as a result of political and economic circumstances.142 As explained below, the recent decimation of PSCE programs can
be traced to a politically motivated act of Congress in 1994, and ongoing efforts to restore these programs have been hampered by budgetary constraints. Rise and fall of PSCE: 1960s to 1990s The rise of PSCE
was sparked by two developments in the 1960s:143 first, a shift in penal philosophy that favored education as rehabilitation; second, establishment of the federal Pell Grant Program under Title IV of the Higher
Education Act.144 Since virtually all incarcerated Americans qualified for student aid based on their lack of income, Pell grants quickly became the main funding source for PSCE.145 Pell-funded PSCE programs
multiplied throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, finding favor among state prison administrators as effective means to improve institutional order and reduce recidivism on the federal government’s dime.146 But
the early 1990s saw the rise of “penal populism” and tough-on-crime policies enacted to appease fearful American voters. As part of this trend, through a provision of the Violent Crime Control and Law
Enforcement Act in 1994, Congress categorically disqualified all incarcerated adults from receiving Pell Grants.147 In the surrounding debates, members of Congress who endorsed this provision made explicit
their intent to mollify popular anxieties about crime, the economy, the job market, and access to higher education.148 In fact, the fiscal impact of this decision on the federal budget was minimal.149 But the
intended political message was clear and well received, and the operational effects were drastic. Once the federal government cut funding for PSCE, most state governments followed suit, and the number of
PSCE programs began to plummet almost immediately – by 44 percent within a single year. Over the next fifteen years, from 1994 to 2008, that figure dwindled from over 350 to eight. 150 Economic downturn:
2008 to present When the 2008 recession hit, state-level spending sharply declined for all forms of CE, causing the contraction of literacy, adult basic education, secondary education, and vocational training
programs in prisons nationwide.151 Today, although virtually all prisons offer some form of CE, program quality and capacity remain limited and inconsistent.152 Meanwhile, PSCE relies on patchworks of funding
that vary significantly by state. Of the 32 state prison systems now affording access to PSCE, most require students to pay their own way, and many offer only selfstudy courses that don’t culminate in accredited
degrees.153 Concerned to address the unmet need for CE, particularly PSCE, private and public actors in some states have begun to develop pilot projects and local partnerships between educational and
correctional institutions. Private foundations have played important roles in funding these initiatives, which have generated promising results and a good deal of positive press.154 In order to sustain these
initiatives and bring them to scale, however, broad-based popular support and significant public investments will be necessary.155 4.1.3 Moralistic roots of political opposition At present, Americans collectively
lack the political will to turn these initiatives into sustainable, far-reaching policies. Despite growing acceptance for more basic forms of CE, voters in some states have fiercely rejected proposals to expand PSCE,
and other states have passed laws to limit or ban spending on PSCE specifically. As the public discourse has made clear, such actions are typically not motivated by rational economic concerns alone, but rooted
in moralistic narratives of retribution and stigmatization.156 The ultimate factor fueling opposition to PSCE today, as in 1994, is not the fiscal cost itself; it’s a culturally entrenched set of attitudes and judgments
that make voters unwilling to bear that cost, even though the net material benefits would likely be significant. This being so, purely economic arguments – particularly those framing PSCE as an investment in
human capital – won’t dissolve the most vehement objections.157 Human capital arguments draw deserved attention to concrete data and validly spotlight PSCE’s cost-effectiveness, but they can’t account for the
non-economic concerns that matter to many individuals and communities on all sides of the debate. Further, these arguments leave intact the root problem of stigma: the collective impulse to treat people with
criminal histories as second-class citizens, or as sub-human, even when doing so is fiscally costly. Thus, rather than continue to rely on economic rationales, advocates for PSCE should shift the terms of the
debate. 4.2 Education as human capital, capability, and right Why and how does education matter? Who should have guaranteed access to it? What kind of access, and how much of it, should be guaranteed?
These are the foundational questions at the heart of political debates over PSCE funding. While opponents often frame higher education as a privilege that criminals don’t deserve, advocates in turn tend to frame
it as an economic investment that promises to transform unskilled criminals into productive workers. Each side characterizes education and its value in a narrow way that talks past the other side, and that fails to
consider the full humanity and citizenship of incarcerated persons. To build a compelling case for significant public investments in PSCE, advocates should instead adopt a normative framework that recognizes a
broader range of ways in which education contributes value to human life, and that calls for a robust commitment to the wellbeing of incarcerated persons. This is a framework that the CA, but not the human
capital model, can provide. Below I make clear why this is so, arguing for an approach that adopts the CA as an overarching framework, with the human capital and human rights models serving ancillary roles.

Typology of education’s value One key to the CA’s ethical advantage over the human
4.2.1

capital model is its capacity to recognize a fuller range of human needs and values, and
accordingly a richer array of normative reasons for improving access to education. The CA holds that education contributes to the quality of life in at least five ways – first through its intrinsic value, and additionally

education can hold intrinsic value: a person may derive direct

through four distinct forms of instrumental value: • First,

satisfaction from the learning process, or from the pursuit of knowledge, just for its own
sake. • Additionally, education can play a range of instrumental roles, which vary along two
dimensions: individual versus collective, and economic versus non-economic. o As for economic
value, education can produce individual benefits by enabling a person to find and secure

decent employment, thus elevating his standard of living; and, when broadly available, it
can produce collective benefits by supporting the expansion of a skilled workforce and
promoting overall economic growth. o As for non-economic value, education can yield
individual benefits by enabling a person to access information, communicate effectively,
and engage in self-reflection; and, when broadly available, it can yield collective benefits
by supporting a culture enriched by diverse perspectives, critical thinking, and
meaningful civic engagement.158 In a policy-making context, the CA requires that all five roles be accorded normative weight in light of how the benefits associated with
each role actually contribute to human wellbeing. Following from the core imperative to ensure access to a decent quality of life for all, the CA calls for policies that will

secure for all citizens – especially the disadvantaged – full access to educational
opportunities that are essential to achieving a decent quality of life in their society. In contrast,
the human capital model calls for the distribution of opportunities only to those citizens who are likely to produce market value; and it provides weak grounds, if any, for designing programs to accommodate
disabilities and meet diverse needs. As such, exclusive reliance on this model can lead to policies that amplify existing inequalities and neglect the most disadvantaged individuals. Below, I unpack these ethical

Human capital model: Education as investment In the human capital model, an

implications for CE. 4.2.2

investment is instrumentally valuable for the economic benefits it yields. Thus, education
is valuable insofar as it builds knowledge and skills that boost labor productivity,
allowing workers to earn higher wages and to produce greater market value.
Accordingly, an education program is deemed cost-effective, and hence a worthwhile
investment, when it produces knowledge and skills whose overall market value exceeds
the material costs of implementing the program.159 This approach has been useful for
spotlighting the actual and potential economic benefits produced by CE to date; it also
provides useful tools for confirming PSCE’s distinctive costeffectiveness relative to
other forms of CE. But if used as an exclusive lens, the narrow economic focus of this approach leads to several ethically troubling consequences, including (i) exclusion of highly
disadvantaged individuals; (ii) inattention to non-economic benefits and obstacles; and (iii) failure to consider individuals as full citizens and complex human persons. First, since the human capital model values
education principally as a means to produce economic ends, it can’t justify the pursuit of learning for its own sake. Where the “rate of return” on education is unequal across persons, this model suggests that the
education of disadvantaged persons is less worthy of investment, particularly if they’re less likely to develop marketable skills.160 Indeed, all incarcerated Americans face barriers to gainful employment, including
but not limited to discrimination based on criminal history; and some are unlikely ever to work due to age or physical condition. Many need extra support to overcome barriers to learning, such as physical or
cognitive disabilities. Educating the most highly disadvantaged of these adults may not be cost-effective, and in some cases may yield no tangible benefits. Accordingly, the human capital model would justify
excluding some or all of these adults from CE, particularly PSCE, based on their seemingly low potential to derive or produce tangible benefits from education. Second, since the human capital model recognizes
only economic value, it can’t account for the social, emotional, or cultural dimensions of educational access and attainment. It overlooks non-economic benefits, such as the acquisition of self-confidence, the
experience of intellectual growth, and the development of positive relationships; it also neglects non-economic obstacles to attainment, such as lack of familiarity with cultural norms, or lack of emotional resources
to persist through frustration.161 With respect to CE, we’ve seen this model translate into policy choices designed to produce cost savings without regard for social and cultural values (e.g. shifting of resources
from academic to vocational programs, and wholesale defunding of PSCE); and approaches to programming that leave intact significant inequalities of access (e.g. failures to address remediable disadvantages
stemming from social or cultural barriers).162 Third, human capital arguments for CE promote a view of incarcerated students as primarily producers of market value. Such a view may seem more constructive
than one that treats them only as social liabilities or worthless outcasts; but in fact it occludes their identities as learners, thinkers, and ultimately citizens and moral agents bearing rights and responsibilities. This
capitalistic characterization starkly contrasts with the holistic manner in which most of us consider our own identities and needs as persons, and the respectful manner in which we expect to be treated as
members of a civilized society. Further, it leaves little room to consider the requirements of political morality and human decency: our collective obligations to redress past injustices, to respect the capacities of
agency, and to address needs arising from vulnerability. 163 college programs on the ground that “the most effective way to keep people out of prison once they leave is to give them job skills that make them
marketable employees” (emphasis added). Compare: Wesleyan University Center for Prison Education, “Why College in Prison?” which notes that prison education “translates to dramatic cost-savings for the
state,” but also emphasizing that CE programs have the noneconomic benefits of “transformatively impact[ing]” incarcerated students’ worldviews, priorities, and aspirations; affording them opportunities to serve
as positive role models for their families and communities; creating a safer and more positive environment in prison; and arguing that, “[m]ost fundamentally,” PSCE “constitutes a powerful investment in the
individual lives of those upon whom society has set its lowest expectations.” See also Frey, “Critical Literature Review,” 194–195, observing the prevalence of top-down “human capital ideology” in CE discourse,
and the relative paucity of perspectives grounded in “social justice,” “humanitarianism,” and the lived experiences of incarcerated Americans. 69 In sum, while the human capital model underscores the real need
to make CE policies cost-effective and sustainable, it offers no tools for considering whether they are ethical and just. To rely solely on this model – to treat labor productivity as the metric of success – would be to

In
frame policy choices in a manner that obscures the full humanity of incarcerated persons and the multifaceted dimensions of their wellbeing. 4.2.3 Capabilities approach: Education as freedom

contrast to the human capital model, the CA takes a holistic view of wellbeing and thus
attributes value to education for a broad range of normative reasons. First, education has
intrinsic value as a capability – that is, as an opportunity to pursue learning for its own
sake. But education is also instrumental in expanding other capabilities, such as the
freedoms to engage in critical reflection, to be gainfully employed, and to partake
meaningfully in civic activities and political processes. Each of these freedoms, in turn,
holds intrinsic value while also yielding various economic and noneconomic benefits.164
As a matter of policy design and assessment, then, the CA would assign value to the full range of needs addressed by CE, including acute social and psychological needs arising from poverty and incarceration,
not just the need for gainful employment. Equally, the CA is concerned to address the full range of obstacles to educational attainment that incarcerated adults face, including personal conditions (e.g. illnesses

As for allocating resources, the CA calls

and disabilities) and external factors (e.g. physical threats, cultural barriers, and discriminatory practices).165

for the distribution of educational opportunities based on actual need rather than
potential productivity, since those who can’t work in the labor market may still derive
non-economic benefits from CE, and may indeed be unjustly deprived of many such
benefits. Likewise, far from excluding disadvantaged persons in order to cut costs, the CA calls
for intervening to boost their conversion factors for the sake of justice and decency. In
sum, instead of viewing education as solely a capitalistic investment, the CA views it as a
form of freedom that both constitutes and contributes to human flourishing. The CA
offers a context-sensitive framework for determining whether and how individuals can
benefit from education, what supports are necessary for individuals to secure a full
range of educational benefits, and what educational “success” means for students and
for programs. Costeffectiveness plays a role as one among several factors worth
considering.166 It’s worth emphasizing that the CA does not disfavor the role of
economic factors in policy analysis: it recognizes that individual and societal wellbeing
include economic dimensions, that effective policies must be fiscally sustainable as well
as just, and that resource constraints require ethical compromises – that is, tragic choices. But the CA does insist that,
while economic factors matter instrumentally to flourishing, capabilities matter intrinsically and must be the ultimate metric of normative assessment.167 4.2.4 Human rights

framework: Education as entitlement The CA finds a natural ally in the human rights
framework, which holds each government responsible for securing access to essential
freedoms based on both their intrinsic value and their instrumental roles in improving
the quality of life. Human rights discourse also mirrors the CA in elevating human flourishing over economic growth as an orienting aim, and in insisting that education should be accessible
to all persons, not withheld from those deemed less productive. Given their congruent core principles, these two frameworks complement each other as normative approaches; thus, advocates would do well to

while the human rights framework has the apparent

draw on both with an eye to the relative strengths of each.168 Indeed,

advantage of being more politically established than the CA, and hence more broadly
familiar, it’s subject to strategic drawbacks that correspond to specific strengths of the
CA. First, human rights arguments run the risk of reducing rights to legal entitlements, obscuring the fundamental moral entitlements that undergird them. If the right to access education is no more than a
legal entitlement, responsibility to fulfill it falls only to government actors that are legally bound to provide it; however, if it’s fundamentally a moral entitlement, the responsibility to fulfill it might be borne by all
parties positioned to act, including but not limited to state actors. Unlike the CA, which emphatically defines central capabilities as moral entitlements, human rights discourse often glosses over this vital
distinction.169 Second, and relatedly, the human rights framework runs the risk of reducing rights to formalistic requirements that governments can hide behind, and that have no normative bearing on private
parties – as opposed to baselines that public and private parties may build on together, as needed, to fulfill the spirit of the right. Official education policies typically state what rights are guaranteed to whom, and
what steps government actors must take to make the rights effective; but in some cases, extraordinary barriers and deficits may require that government actors go beyond their legal duties and collaborate with
private parties to ensure that all individuals fully enjoy their entitlements.170 Unlike the CA, human rights discourse has no normative basis to hold governments and others responsible for bridging such gaps. As
noted above, the human rights framework has the apparent advantage of being broadly recognized and extensively formalized due to its long political history. Compared to capabilities, therefore, human rights are
more familiar to the public and perhaps more readily translated from theory to policy. But for the purpose of reframing entitlements to education in the United States, this advantage is limited: although international
human rights principles are broadly endorsed in many Western societies, they exert weaker normative force in America, where they take a political and cultural backseat to domestic federal constitutional
principles.171 Thus, human rights arguments for expanding access to PSCE, on their own, may have limited traction with the American public. 4.2.5 Capabilities as rights: Educational opportunities as
entitlements In light of the above considerations, a promising approach for American advocates would be to characterize the capability of education as a human right – to frame adequate educational opportunities
as moral entitlements, on par with central capabilities, to be secured for all persons including incarcerated adults. This framing draws on the distinctive strengths of each framework: the discursive power of human

Characterizing the capability of education as a human right helps to

rights and the conceptual architecture of the CA.

underscore that it’s a universal entitlement that should be formally guaranteed to every
human person, without regard to one’s criminal history or potential productivity. Although this point is
also advanced by the concept of central capabilities, the familiar rhetoric of human rights can help to communicate it powerfully to a broader lay audience.172 At the same time, it’s valuable to characterize the
substance of this right as a capability, establishing that it’s not just a formal entitlement to schooling, but a moral entitlement to have genuine access to a meaningful learning experience – which may entail
accommodations for disabilities, as well as interventions to combat social, cultural, or institutional barriers. This framing highlights the need for attention to low conversion factors, and the possibility that both

By characterizing education as a capability that

public and private actors should help boost these factors for the most disadvantaged. 173

constitutes a human right, then, advocates can reorient debates surrounding PSCE in a
way that clearly prioritizes dignity and emphasizes the shared, context-specific nature of
the responsibility to secure educational opportunities for all. That said, while human
rights discourse serves the strategic purpose of conveying the entitlement’s universal
nature, the CA – with its more robust philosophical foundation and conceptual toolkit –
should serve as the overarching normative framework. 174 In sum, it’s in the service of the
CA’s overarching ethical imperatives that human rights discourse, along with human
capital arguments, should play supporting roles. Of course, many opponents of PSCE won’t be swayed by ethical arguments alone, any more
than by economic arguments alone. But by adopting the CA as a framework and explicitly invoking its principles, advocates can shine a clarifying light on the core values at stake, as well as on the troublesome
cultural and psychological roots of moralistic objections to PSCE. I engage with these moralistic objections later in this chapter. For now, I take a closer look at the objectives CE should serve from the CA’s
perspective, with an eye to clarifying why PSCE merits normative priority.
AT Off-Case
 AT: T-Secondary
Their definitions are imprecise --- they’re in the context of state laws and
state authority means it doesn’t apply to federal prison
U.S. Legal 17 --- online resource for legal terms. *17 was most recent edited version,
originally published in 2012. (“Secondary School Law and Legal Definition”, U.S. Legal.
https://definitions.uslegal.com/s/secondary-school/)//ET

According to 34 CFR 77.1 (c) [Title 34 – Education; Subtitle A -- Office of the Secretary,
Department of Education; Part 77 -- Definitions that apply to Department Regulations], the
term secondary school means “a day or residential school that provides secondary
education as determined under State law. In the absence of State law, the Secretary may
determine , with respect to that State, whether the term includes education beyond the
twelfth grade.” Example of Case law (South Dakota defining secondary school) "Secondary
school' means a day or residential school which provides secondary education as determined
under State law." [Marshall v. Rosemont, Inc., 584 F.2d 319, 321 (9th Cir. 1978)]
 Prisons - T
Curriculum is a clear distinguishing factor and the method legally used by
the BOP to designate education levels
Bronner 16 (“Federal Bureau of Prisons Education Program Assessment”,
https://www.justice.gov/archives/dag/page/file/914026/download)//Et
2) Building a Strong, Effective Curriculum and Instructional Framework The hallmark of 21st century curriculum and instructional frameworks is personalization, i.e. possessing the ability to meet each student “where he is” and take him as far as he can go at his own
pace. The important milestones are outcome and competency-based and are focused on the proficiencies that the student can demonstrate, rather than on inputs such as “seat time.” These frameworks are made possible by the intelligent use of formative data,

personalized instruction platforms, and blended learning models that allow much more efficient use of instructor time. This approach works along the entire range of competencies, from basic literacy to advanced academic and vocational content. Tasks
associated with building this framework include: Designating education services
across BOP into three well-defined levels Adult Literacy, Secondary Education, and :

Post-Secondary Education . This will allow for standardiz ati on, prioritization and acc ountability. Cr eating an “educ ati on ladder” that will us e data and indi vidualized lear ning str ategies to advance student ac ademic and j ob readi ness s kills . T he strateg y will require diag nos tic tools, i nter venti ons and s upports, as well as pr ogress monitori ng capabiliti es. Key: Dir ect Repor t F unc tional Report Bur eau of Prisons Educati on Pr ogram Ass ess ment Page | ix

more val uable credenti al. To the extent that investment i n the GED c onti nues, it must al ways be c oupled wi th voc ati onal trai ning. Expandi ng and standardizi ng ac credited, c ertificated community c ollege, uni versity and occupational tr aini ng pr ogram opportunities and facilitate s tudent conti nuati on and c ompl eti on during re- entr y. 3) Buil ding a C ompr ehensi ve Instr ucti onal M anagement System T o effecti vel y and cost-effecti vel y deli ver a c onsistent range of high quality ac ademic and voc ati onal programmi ng, the BOP education s ystem will use online and blended lear ning whenever possibl e. Charac teris tics of the s ystem include the foll owing:
Establis hing a r obust Basic Educ ati on Pr ogram (Adult Literac y) that will ens ure that students ar e high sc hool ready and SLN and English as ESL needs ar e addres sed. Placi ng mor e emphasis on high sc hool dipl oma attai nment and much less emphasis on GED attainment, as the high school di ploma is the

A s tate of the art ins tructi onal pl atfor m that provi des the res ources needed to s upport the educ ati on and job traini ng pr ogra m. This incl udes course c ontent; di agnostic , for mati ve and s ummati ve assess ments ; s tudent data, credenti al and transcript management; and teac her trai ning and coac hing. T he ability to competentl y inter operate with state, district, and educ ati on pr ovider s tudent infor mation, and other
data s ystems oper ated by states, dis tricts, pr oviders, and other feder al ag enci es. T he fl exibility to evol ve over ti me. As suc h, the s ystem will be modular s o as to all ow indi vi dual c omponent upgrades . It will be i nteroper able s o that data c an be exc hang ed, added, and it will be agnostic as to the content delivered. R eal-time i nformati on das hboards for teac hers and admi nistr ators. Sufficient q uantiti es of devic es and adeq uate bandwi dth to each devic e to s upport i nmate personalize d l ear ning on the Education Ladder. A tec hnic al and i nstr ucti onal support and acc ountability fr amewor k that enabl es s tudents to acc ess the best possibl e i nstr ucti on, enabl es staff to access effecti ve and readil y available support, and that generates actionabl e data that c an impr ove outc omes and ensur e acc ountability on an ong oing basis. 4) Budg et and Long T er m Fi nanci al Pl an as an Educ ati on Improvement Vehicle Provi ding high q uality educ ation and job tr aini ng ser vic es is dependent on s trategic inves tment. T his nec essi tates that budgets s er ve as vehicl es for
financi ng and s ustaini ng the long-ter m high quality education and j ob- traini ng pl an. BOP budget educ ation r efor ms s houl d c ontemplate the foll owing: A discrete and comprehensi ve BOP educati on budget that is aligned to the needs and pri orities of the ag enc y’s over archi ng vi sion. T his woul d i nclude budget-rel ated org aniz ati onal and human resourc e A financial management s ystem in the EO C entr al Offic e, whic h woul d i nclude fi nanci al repor ting, position co ntr ol, proc urement oversight, pr ogram auditing, and fi nanci al accountability capabiliti es over the regi onal offic es, and local i nstituti ons. T his s ystem woul d not duplic ate or circumvent the existi ng BOP budg eting procedures, but to rather gi ve the E O greater autonomy to manage their fi nancial res ourc es and ens ure ac countability of effecti ve expendi tur e of funds (si milar to major agencies in large public entiti es). Standar dization and strategic s ourcing to expand purc hasing power, us e of hardware “s ubscriptions” to r api dl y and affor dabl y expand tec hnolog y ass ets and to acc ess the newest
tec hnol ogy on a c ontinual basis , and the embr ace of s oftwar e-as- a-ser vic e to r educ e maintenanc e c osts and to efficientl y add and drop s er vices as needed. Bureau of Pris ons Education Program Ass ess ment Pag e | x Creation of a robus t Inmate Instr uctor Pr ogram (“IIP”)16 program to r ecruit and tr ain potential i nmate teac hers, teac hing c oa ches and as sistants to signi ficantl y expand the human resources needed to s upport the Blended Learni ng/Indi vidualiz ed Learni ng Pl an model. Alignment of programs and initi ati ves to take full advantag e of feder al and s tate programs while adopti ng a polic y of pursui ng all available, eligibl e resourc es to whic h BOP has legal acc ess . 5) Sec uring R esourc es and Suppor ts through Str ategic Partners hips One of the key dri vers of produc ti vity i n 21st centur y enter prises is openness to non- traditional partners hips made possibl e by the cr eation of c onsor tiums, the dr amatic expansion of foundati ons, and the simpler technologies of data exc hang e and c ollaborati on between organizations. As the BOP EO c omes to
increasingl y oper ate in the ec os ystem of open standards for both data and educ ati onal attainment, opportunities for coll abor ations will become easier to create and more power ful. However, the BOP must oper ate within the applic able standar ds of appr opri ati on, c ontracti ng, and ethics authorities. Sugges ted i nitiati ves include the following: Adopting policies and developing strategies for s eeki ng and s ec uring str ategic partners hips with appropriate educational i nsti tutions and programs, and other federal and state agencies to s ec ure additi onal r es ourc es to expand i nmate access to high-quality educ ati on, job trai ning, and employment programs both during inc arc erati on and through the reentry phas e. Buildi ng capacity of Loc al Tr ade C ouncils to s erve as vehicles for local i nsti tutions to enter into partners hips that expand student inmate acc ess to c ertificated educ ati on and j ob trai ning programs and re- entr y empl oyment opportunities . T his further supports the organiz ation and func tion of the EO. Cr eating a C onsorti um on Corr ecti ons Education
consistent with the F ederal Advisor y Committee Act consis ting of r epr es entati ves from the U.S. D epartment of J ustic e and U.S. D epartment of Educ ati on, uni versities and other res earc h i nstituti ons to s er ve as a c enter for pris on education R &D and to ass ess and eval uate exis ting progress whil e s eeki ng bes t prac tices . It will s er ve as a "National Thi nk T ank" for prison ed uc ati on and trai ning i mprovement inmate r eentr y employment nationwide. Cr eating a foundation or s eeki ng foundations to partner wi th the " Inmates Tr ust Fund.” T his c an s er ve as a vehicl e for acc essi ng funds thr ough other foundations , philanthropists, and other s ourc es, incl udi ng former prisoners who have s uccessfull y rehabilitated, in or der to s ecur e fundi ng for inmate and r e-entr y educati on oppor tunities and empl oyment s upport s er vices. C onclusi on The buil ding of the organizati onal and adminis trati ve i nfr astructure i ncludi ng the staffi ng models does not necess aril y req uire an inves tment of new dollars. Wi th s killful implementation, B OP’s Education branc h c an be r eorganiz ed
into a signific antl y more centr alized, more pr ofessional, and more accountabl e enter prise, the Education Offic e. T his can be accomplished by princi ple- driven organiz ati onal and administr ati ve c hanges. T his would i ncl ude r eprioritizi ng fundi ng from a s mall number of existi ng vac ant (budgeted) positi ons , and other modest budget adj ustments. However, the i mpl ementati on of programs acr oss the BOP would r equire some r epri oritization of the BOP budget over ti me, as the pr ograms are "slowl y phased i n" over a period of fi ve years. This would ul timatel y increas e EO’s s hare of the share of BOP’s budget from approxi matel y two perc ent to appr oxi matel y four percent, whi ch should be achi evabl e. T he proposed i ncreas e is als o highl y reas onable, as it would be offset many ti mes over by the s ubstantial l ong -ter m s avings that will be direc tl y attri butable to reduce d r ecidi vis m. 16 See Appendi x 3. Bur eau of Prisons Education Program Ass ess ment Page | xi In s ummati on, this pl an better equi ps BOP to fulfill its pri mar y missi on, visi on and cor e i deologi es,
which is c enter ed on i mplementing polici es and pr ograms that will facilitate the s ucc essful r e-entr y of i nmates to s oci ety. Thi s will be acc omplis hed whil e res pecti ng BOP's and, eq uall y importantl y, indi vi dual l ocal war dens’ r esponsibility to keep the public, the pris ons , and prison empl oyees safe, while c ompetentl y st ewar ding public funds. Bur eau of Pris ons Education Program Ass ess ment Pag e | 1 Organization, Admi nistr ation, and Staffi ng In or der to expand and i mpr ove education and occ upational trai ning opportuniti es, BOP shoul d have the capacity to devel op strateg y, deter mine polic y, and s el ect programs while maintai ning cl ear li nes of authority and res ponsi bility to ens ure that education hu man and fi nanci al res ources ar e effec ti vel y utiliz ed to i mpl ement s aid strateg y and policies . T he curr ent organiz ati onal s tructur e, even with the ver y s ound decision to move res ponsibilities for educ ation programs to the R eentr y Ser vices Di vision (R SD), is still essenti all y a status quo organiz ati onal str ucture. It lac ks both the capacity and the authority to
substanti vel y expand and i mprove programs. We are sugges ting a "revis ed path" going for ward, refl ecti ng the mos t recent BOP changes ( ess entiall y, the movement of Educ ation to RSD). This path for ward would i nvol ve the creati on of an Educ ati on Offic e within RSD that would functi on muc h li ke a s emiautonomous “school district” to pursue the expansion and improvement of educ ati on and occ upati onal tr aini ng s er vices . BRONN ER is c ogniz ant of limitati ons on your ability to do thi ngs (e.g. historical decisions, eli minati on of posi tions i n the R egional offi ces, and c hanging “policies” whic h r equire buy-in and lots of time). With that consi der ati on, the pr opos ed pl an still equi ps BOP to fulfill its primar y missi on, visi on and c ore i deol ogies, whic h is centered on i mpl ementi ng policies and programs that will facilitate the succ ess ful reentry of inmates to soci ety. T his will be ac complished while r espec ting BOP's and, equall y i mportantl y, i ndi vi dual l oc al War dens’ r es ponsibility to keep the public, the pris ons, and prison employees s afe while competentl y
stewardi ng public funds. Changing the Adminis trati ve and Organizational Str ucture. T he adminis trati ve and organiz ational rec o mmendations outlined her e s hould be BOP’s first order of busi ness. Indeed, it is nec ess ary to meeting the BOP Mission, as it is es senti al to ass uring the followi ng conditions : • the right pr ogrammi ng is i ntroduc ed, c ontinuall y evaluated, and mai ntained effecti vel y; and • the right admi nistr ation and manag ement is c onsis tentl y applied to each ins titution while addr essi ng the differ ent inmate populati ons’ needs. T hese c onditions can be ac hieved r elati vel y q uic kl y and will i mmedi atel y begin to posi ti vel y impact the Educ ati on and Occupati onal Trai ning Priority, i mpr ove the c ultur e and climate of BOP educ ati on pr ogramming and wor kforce, and advanc e the programmatic effec ti veness and efficienc y – partic ularly, the educ ation and oc cupational trai ning communi ty – in a way that aims to s upport the BOP as it s eeks to fulfill its Mission. Furthermore, it is executable withi n the existi ng B OP budg et and human r es ourc e management
authority. Bureau of Prisons Educ ati on Pr ogram Assess ment Page | 2 The C urrent Condi tions: Status Quo The obstacle curr entl y exi sts i n the BOP educ ati on strateg y i s that the existi ng Educati on Br anch does not have th e expertis e, authority, nor res ponsi bility to devel op, artic ulate, and i mpl ement a common agenc y- wide visi on, and to develop effecti ve s trategies and polici es for ac hievi ng that visi on. Mor eover, the Educati on Br anch does not have a s ufficient organizational capacity, adequate budget res ources , nor an adequate s ys tem of program manag ement and ac countability to impl ement i t. As a r esul t, educ ati on and occ upati onal tr aini ng today i n the feder al prison s ys tem is si mpl y not abl e to have as muc h an i mpact o n r educi ng reci di vis m as it other wise could. D eli veri ng quality educ ation programs today requir es c oor dinati on and c ommunic ati on wi th mor e than fi ve BOP headquarters di visions, si x r egional offic es , and 122 i nstituti ons. Each of the 122 instituti ons is larg el y handli ng education programmi ng in their own way and to their own
standard, hiring their own educ ators, utilizing an ad hoc budgetar y commitment, and operati ng without a common vision, c ommon polici es, and common fi delity of i mplementation. T his more dec entraliz ed appr oach makes i t ver y diffic ult, if not i mpossi ble, for the Educ ation Branc h C entral Offic e i n Washi ngton, D.C. (Central Office) to deter mine whether these ins titutions make educ ati on a priority as it has no authority or polic y to requir e th em to do so and no capacity to assess it. T his is an organiz ati onal and acc ountability iss ue first and foremost. Whil e the BOP has a Missi on, Vision, and Cor e Ideol ogies and Values emphasizing the i mpor tanc e of the Educ ation and Occ upational Priority, it d oes not have a cl ear, unequi voc al, and c onsistent priority toward educ ation and occ upational trai ning. It is reflec ted i n its curr ent org aniz ati on structure, whic h does not have the c apacity, i n many cases , to do the following: 1) artic ulate an educ ati onal visi on; 2) establis h rel ated pri orities ; 3) set researc h bas ed standards ; 4) develop educ ati on budget and long -ter m
financi al plans; 5) s et job des cripti ons; 6) s et hiring criteria; 7) appr ove educ ation personnel decisions; 8) c ollect and anal yze data; 9) ass embl e its own educ ati on technolog y platform; 10) exercis e fi nanci al and programmatic acc ountability; 11) authority over education proc urement; or, 12) enter into str ategic partners hips . T he exis ting BOP educ ati on str ateg y lac ks the str ucture, pers onnel , and authority to effecti vel y manage ― l et al one i mprove ― educ ati onal ser vic es and adapt thos e s er vic es to exis ting needs. Administr ati on and organiz ation With a staff of onl y thirteen, BOP has ins uffici ent C entral Office res ourc es. There is ver y li mited Regional Offic e s upport, as the Educ ati on Br anc h has j ust a single Regional Education Admi nistrator (REA) in each of its si x r egions and a staggering s cope of responsibiliti es. T he R EAs have no support staff and they do not deport direc tl y to the existi ng BOP Education Offic e. This is a major c onstrai nt when one c onsiders that the Educ ati on Program is expec ted to ser ve 122 i nsti tuti ons housi ng over 160,000
inmates ( feder al i nmates in BOP c us tody) r el ying on 1,294 ins truc tional and 865 recreational staff. Each i nsti tution has a loc al educ ati on leader and r ecreati onal l eader, but they c urrentl y r eport to the l oc al War den. Bureau of Priso ns Educ ati on Pr ogram Ass ess ment Page | 3 Pr ogrammatic s trateg y and alignment T her e are many educ ation and other rel ated pr ogr ams that seem to be i n s earc h of a strateg y and not part of a comprehensi ve plan to ac hieve clear and l audabl e educ ati on g oals . T he maj or examples incl ude: There exis ts no basic education s kills pr ogram s ystem- wi de to buil d the c apacity of inmates who are be abl e to take the GED and/or get a high school dipl oma. Without c oupli ng s kills tr aini ng to the GED and/or high s chool di ploma, the credenti al is s hown by res earch to be far l ess val uable to achi evi ng the Educati on and Oc cupational Trai ning Priority. Acc ess to occupational pr ograms is inexplicabl y c onditi oned on inmates ear ning a GED /high sc hool dipl oma. Whil e this is desirable, there are occupational tr aini ng pr ograms that
shoul d be acc essi ble to the non-GED/high sc hool di ploma c andidate. Li kewis e, there ar e s ound str ategies granti ng access to occ upational pr ograms that c an have the effec t of s timul ating participati on in GED pr eparation. F urther more, ther e is no hig h sc hool dipl oma pr ogram. Rather, the less valuable GED pr ogram c onsumes the primar y foc us in ti me, inc enti ves, and res ources . As we poi nt out i n the Sec tion on Curricul um and Instruc tion i n the Educ ation Program Ass ess ment R eport, mor e emphasis must be plac ed on buildi ng a high sc hool dipl oma program. There ar e not enoug h Speci al Learning N eeds teachers and predictabl y no s ystem- wide approac h to educating inmates wi th ver y low ac hievement and/or disabilities . English as a Sec ond Lang uage (ESL) and English Language Learners (ELL) pr ograms are li mited. Adul t C onti nuing Educ ation ( ACE) progr ams are li mited and often not cer tificated. Occ upational pr ograms are li mited and var y by i nstituti on in number and q uality. T hey are often li mited by staff, s pace, fundi ng and polic y
constrai nts . Al so, the oc cupational pr ograms are not nec ess arily aligned to j obs and the job mar kets wher e the rel eased i nmates will return. Budget Education and occ upational trai ning is not a priority from the standpoi nt of financ es. Acc ordi ng to the D eloitte C urrent State Ass es sment report, onl y 2% of the BOP budg et is dedi cated to educ ati on and fi nanci al planni ng, and oversight is extremel y li mited. Educ ation and occ upational trai ning, funding, and pr ogramming decisions are made at the prison level, often bas ed on l ocal ins titutional needs and c apacity (i.e. i nstructor types). T hey ar e not driven by i nmate needs or national job mar ket realiti es. As a r es ult, i ndi vi dual i nsti tuti ons var y i n their ability to meet i nmates’ basic l ear ning and re-entr y needs . T he exis ting Educ ati on Office neither knows the educ ati on budget nor pr opos es one. While the educ ati on leaders hip may propose indi vidual fundi ng for specific pr opos als, suc h as Advanc ed Oc cupational E ducation ( AOE), they s eemi ngl y have no c ontrol over the G1 budget and littl e i nput in setting
budget pri orities or monitori ng education expendi tur es. Educ ati on budgets c ome from the i nstituti ons and are pass ed on by the R EAs. With the exc eption of the li mited AOE pr ogram, the C entral Office adminis trati on has little revi ew or approval authority nor any capacity to monitor pr ogra m expendi tur es and ass ess effecti veness . Assess ment and Revi ew There is no s ystematic proc ess or mec hanis m for evaluati ng pr ograms for quality, effecti venes s, and the ability to meet inmates’ needs and the BOP educ ati on goals. Although ther e is a Program Revi ew Di visi on, this di visi on ser ves the entire BOP and focuses on c ompliance with reg ulati ons and polic y rather than program performanc e. As s uc h, progr am effecti veness , educ ator ins truc tor q uality, and alignment with c ommon educ ati on standards is largel y ignored. Without the proper revi ew mec hanis m i n plac e, BOP educ ati on leaders l ac k the infor mation to make infor med decisi ons about the effecti venes s or even the rel evanc e of the pr ograms. T he lac k of the authority and c apacity Bureau of
Prisons Educ ati on Progr am As ses s ment Page | 4 to ass ess and hold acc ountable is matc hed and further affected by its lac k of us abl e data. As a res ult, with the excepti on of GED pr ogrammi ng, there is an abs enc e of standardiz ation of the types and quality of pr ograms varies acr oss i nstituti ons. Staffi ng Whil e instituti ons ar e funded by an "equi ty for mul a," wi th the number of educ ati on positi ons deter mined by i nmate population – not partici pation – educ ati on positi ons and pers onnel c an be absor bed and contr olled i n ways that detract from the educ ati on ser vic es, by the loc al prison admi nistrations wi thout j ustific ati on. In additi on, teachers may be assigned to non-education tas ks . T hus, the l ocal education budgets are i n fac t discretionar y spendi ng budgets for pris on War dens. In the c ompetiti on for loc al i nstituti on pri orities and r esourc es, the educ ati on and tr aini ng pr ograms are not prioriti es and often l os e. H uman capital T he job qualific ations manag ed under the U.S. Office of Pers onnel Management (OPM) ar e not s uffici entl y alig ned with j ob
des cripti ons to meet the Mission, Visi on and C ore Ideologies and Val ues of BOP. T he BOP education l eadershi p has not es tablished well-defined job q ualific ati ons , and often does not r equire c onti nuing educ ati on and trai ning. Thus , the human res ourc e needs of the specific pr ograms and the s kill level of staff does not always meet the l arger needs of the i nmate popul ation. A glaring example of this is speci al educ ation and behavi oral s upport ser vic es; the OPM Special Lear ning N eeds teac her is not r eq uired to have certi ficati on or experience with teac hing adults or high school students with low ac hi evement and/or disabilities. F urther, ther e are few speci al educ ation teac hers at the ins titutional level, and ther e is onl y a si ngle School Ps yc hol ogist to ass ess inmates’ s peci al needs. Supports T her e is no r eal mec hanis m or authority for coordi nating prison-bas ed social-emoti onal r esourc es with educ ati on pr ogram pers onnel. T his i ncl udes therapists , ps yc hol ogists, and health c are wor kers. While they ar e in short suppl y, their staff is also often defici ent in
the s kills ets needed to c arry out the ser vic es. For exampl e, ther e is onl y one educ ati onal ps yc hol ogist i n the entir e s ystem. T his l eaves the educ ati on program r eliant on ther apeutic ps ychologists , who have other pri mar y tas ks and are not eq uipped to di agnose inmates for l ear ni ng dis abilities and social emotional pr obl ems. BOP is c urrentl y purs uing a Speci al Learni ng Needs pilot to assist with the development of proc edures to addr ess thes e defici encies . Bur eau of Pris ons Education Program Ass ess ment Page | 5 R ec ommendati ons: Path For ward Creating an Effecti ve Organiz ati onal and Ad mi nistr ati ve Struc tur e Improvi ng educ ational outcomes r equires differ entiation, prioritiz ati on, and optimi zati on. R es ourc e alloc ati on, organiz ati onal s truc tur e, and hiring prac tices across pr ograms s houl d s upport thos e priorities . T he Education Offic e (EO) s hould have experts in curricul um and i nstr ucti on, i nstructional tec hnolog y, and ass ess ment and eval uation that mus t play centr al rol es i n desig ning (not si mpl y adminis teri ng) the programs impl emented in the
instituti ons . T he rol e of EO staff would not be advi sor y bec aus e the R egional offices and i nstituti ons do not possess ( and do not need to poss ess) the c apacity to exec ute program design functi ons or to themsel ves cr eate the consis tenc y and standardiz ati on that is r equired for meaningful outc omes . Pr oper l y designed, thes e EO positi ons s houl d be highl y competiti ve with the potenti al to attr act highl y talented indi viduals in the fiel d. If BOP is to acc omplis h s ys temic refor ms, the R egional offic es and i nstituti ons must als o have the s truc tur e, s upport, aut hority, and i ncenti ves to get ther e. T he c har t on the foll owing pag e s hows the new organization s tructur e in detail. N ote that the hard li nes s how “ direc t” reporti ng rel ati ons hi ps. “Direct” reporting signi fies that the s ubordi nate is hired, fir ed, and evaluated by the superior. In the pr opos ed organiz ational model, we ess entiall y r ec ommend that the EO will be overs een by a new l eader wi th differ ent qualifications (s ee Appendi x 6); namel y, the C hi ef Educ ati on Adminis trator, who woul d lead the EO organization
and be a dir ect r eport to the RSD Director. R egional Education Admi nistrators , bas ed out of and r eporti ng to the BOP Centr al Offic e, but assigned to the si x r egional offices , woul d direc tl y report to the C hief Educ ation Admi nistr ator (CEA) and woul d be res ponsi ble for enforcing Quality Ass uranc e (QA) standards and provi ding s upport at the i nsti tuti ons. Gi ven that the decisi on h as been made to all ow the regions and ins titutions al most c omplete autonomy from the BOP C entral Offic e, the REA must functi on ins tead as an enterprisi ng res ourc e manager to hel p the institutions to achi eve the goals mandated by polic y c oming from the new EO. This requir es a s omewhat different pers onality and s killset, as well as i ncenti ves for the R egional Directors to let the REAs be independentl y great at their j obs . Prioritization and differ enti ati on ar e even more important at the institution l evel. T he domains that c urrentl y fall under a Super vis or of Educ ati on ( SOE) are s o varied that such a super visor must either be exc eptionall y c ompetent across areas with a well-
qualified support staff or other wis e ris k mediocr e outc omes . At the instituti on l evel, the SOE ti tle could be c hang ed to Loc al Educ ation Administr ator (LEA) to better r eflect the position’s r esponsibiliti es and func tional and dir ect r eporti ng structures. T he LEAs would be a “ direct” report “relations hip to the appr opriate R EA. F urther, our approach would all ow LEA’s to focus on high-i mpact outc omes. Some education programs that do not c arr y high- val ue credentials – for exampl e, well nes s and par enting, should be tr ans ferr ed to the Super vis or of R ecreati on. To undersc ore this, the average i ns titution offers forty- four “Health and Wellness Programs.” F or Oc cupational Trai ning — a s upposedl y s trategic priority ― the aver age number of offerings is much s mall er. Bur eau of Prisons Education Program Ass ess ment Page | 6 C hief Educati on Adminis trator C ons orti u m on C orrec tions Educ ati on Education Programs Br anc h C hief Educ ati on Oper ations Br anc h C hief Infor mation M anagement Branch Chi ef Educati on Accountability and Support Branc h C hief
Reentr y Ser vices Di vision Asst. Director Regional Education Admi nistr ators (6) R es earc h Anal ys t Accountability Specialist Regional Education Impr ovement T eams (pil ot) (3 per each team) Local Educ ati on A dminis trators Student Infor mation M anag ement Online Instr ucti on Management Data Anal yst Ins truc tional Tec hnol og y Specialis t Special Popul ations Secti on Chi ef C urricul um & Instr ucti on Secti on Chi ef C ar eer & T ec hnic al Educ ati on Secti on Chi ef Inmate Ins truc tor Program Speci alist Grant Acq uisition & M anagement Speci alist Fi nanc e & Budget Specialis t H uman R es ourc es Speci alist Speci al Educ ation Speci alist Social Wor ker Sc hool Ps yc hologist C urricul um & Instr ucti on Specialist ESL Specialist Recr eation Program Manag er Voc ati onal Specialis t Empl oyment Wor kforc e Specialis t Pos tSec ondar y Education Speci alist Key: Dir ect R eport Func tional R eport T hes e r ec ommendati ons req uire an appropriate acc ountability fr amewor k to be desig ned by the C hief Educ ation Admi nistr ator’s staff (partic ularl y the D eputy C hief Education Admi nistrator
for Acc ountability) that pr ovides polic y direc ti ves and acc ountability me as ures whic h further the new Educ ati on and Oc cupational Trai ning Priority for ever yone i n the ins titutions – from i nstr uctors, their s upport s taff, supervi sors, and War den. The LEAs will directl y r eport to the R EAs on all educ ation and occ upational trai ning at the i nsti tution. Ever y level needs to be acc ountable for the outc omes that r eflec t c entral polic y goals, and al ong with that accountability mus t c ome any required supports — both polic y or r esourc e-bas ed — fr om the levels above them. T he curr ent Pr ofessi onal Wor k Pl an used for the R EAs and the LEAs at all levels should i ncl ude c omprehensi ve plans for delivering educ ati onal s er vic es, whic h woul d i nclude meas urable educational outc omes, for exampl e, the number of program compl etions or r eentr y j ob plac ements. T he R eentr y Ser vices Di vision Educ ati on Office Command and contr ol of the functi onal effecti veness of the Educ ati on and Oc cupational Trai ning Priority must be centr alized at the new EO effec tuated through the
Regional Educ ati onal Admi nistrators . Polici es, program designs , budget and resource all oc ation, human capital, and acc ountability for the Educ ati on and Oc cupational Trai ning Priority will be s et and manag ed by the EO. Executing the Educ ation and Occ upational Trai ning Priority bas ed on new EO polic y will remain the res ponsi bility of the warden at the prison site. The Warden will assume Bur eau of Pris ons Education Progra m Ass ess ment Pag e | 7 authority over the day- to- day education or job trai ning acti viti es i n the event of an emergenc y or an unexpected event whic h threatens the s afety or wellbeing of the BOP empl oyees, c ontrac tors , or inmates. Organizational Str ucture and Obj ecti ves: C ommand and C ontrol The EO will have: Ability to set budget priorities and approve programs for the new Educ ati on an d Occupati onal Tr aini ng Priority. Ability to set, with appr oval of BOP Exec uti ve Staff, BOP standards and polic y on matters pertai ning to the new Educ ation and Occ upational Trai ning Priority. Fi nal authority over the s el ecti on,
ter minati on, and evaluation of education pers onnel. Ability to s ecur e quantitati ve and qualitati ve data from all BOP i nstituti ons and ens ur e tr ans parenc y. Ability to cr eate the template for the new Profes sional Wor k Plans ( PWP) to be used thr oug hout the BOP for the new Education and Occ upati onal Tr aini ng Pri ority. o C EA establis hes the PWP for the warden. o Deputy Chi ef Educ ati on Adminis trator for Acc ountability establis hes the PWPs for the R EAs. o R EAs establis h the PWP’s for the LEA’s. Ability to dir ect quality revi ew onsite ass ess ments by the r elevant R EA at a gi ven i nstituti on to deter mine the effec ti veness of the strengthened and expanded PWP s, as well as c ompliance with the Education Offic e polici es and to develop C orrec ti ve Ac tion Plans (C AP) to ens ure c ompliance and i mpr ove effecti venes s. Authority to hol d acc ountable for the Educ ati onal and Occ upati onal Tr aini ng Pri ority c ompli ance and effecti veness : o the REA ( by the D eputy CEA of Acc ountability); o the Warden (by the CEA); and o the LEA ( by the R EA). Regional
Offic es T he EO will have si x R egional Educ ati on Adminis trators who will s erve as an extension of EO. Eac h will provi de s upport an d oversight to eac h R egional Dir ector and the ins titutions withi n the gi ven r egion, and will c arr y out the followi ng func tions: enforc e policies and standards for the new Educ ation and Occ upational Trai ning Priority and ens ure acc ountability i n the BOP; regul arl y eval uate data and polic y c ompli ance and engag e the ins titutions i n making them more effecti ve in achi eving the new Education and Occ upati onal Tr aini ng Pri ority; evaluate LEAs and pr ovide gui danc e and support; periodicall y ( once ever y two years) c onduct on-site prison QR s and devel op CAPs; provi de tec hnic al s upport to suc ces sfull y impl ement programs; s er ve as regional res ourc e and support centers to coordi nate and ass ure q uality of the recruitment and tr aini ng of educ ati onal pers onnel; and, assis t in the es tablis hment of str ategic partners hips with uni versities , i ndustri es, and other units of gover nment. Loc al instituti ons Loc al instituti on
educ ati on pr ograms are standar dized, but tailored to the l oc al inmate population, and will incl ude the followi ng featur es: LEA and support staff (teac her coac hes and instructional leaders) will provi de the dir ect educ ati on Bure au of Prisons Educ ati on Pr ogram Ass ess ment Page | 8 s ervi ces to the ins titutions. IT Support team unit existi ng in the Office of the Chi ef Infor mati on Officer will s upport the EO to mai ntain the ins tructi onal management platform. Education Ser vic es Areas will i nclude C ompr ehensi ve Ac ademic and Soci al/Emoti onal Support (CASES, defi ned below); High Sc hool Support, and Advanced Adult Education. Eac h s er vic e area will have a s tandar dized appr oac h devel oped by the EO and impl emented throughout the BOP. Standardiz ati on of teacher qualific ati ons , eval uation, ac countability, and incenti ves thr oug hout the s ystem devel oped by the E O D eputy C EA for H uman Res ources C ontract i nstr uctors and educ ati on and tr aining progr ams. Inmate Instructor Pr ogram (IIP), an ini tiati ve to expand the teac hing wor kforce
by tr aini ng c apabl e and willi ng inmates to provi de s upport to c ertifi ed teachers i n meeti ng the new Educ ati on and Occupational Trai ning Priority. “ Extension” educ ation and job tr aini ng ser vic es with ar ea c olleg es , private traini ng programs, unions , and empl oyers ( where feasi bl e). Educational r es ourc es and librar y ser vic es. Staffing the Organiz ati onal Str ucture A) Educ ati on Office The C EA would overs ee f our Branc h C hiefs and r elated and support staff, eac h with specific ar eas of res ponsibilities: 1) Br anch Chi ef – Educ ation Programs R esponsibl e for education and occ upational trai ning programs . T he pr ograms woul d be di vi ded into thr ee Edu cation Ser vic e Groups : C ompr ehensi ve Academic and Soci al/Emoti onal Support (CASES) U nit, Hig h School Support U nit, and Advanced Adult Educ ati on U nit. D uti es i nclude: s electing c urriculum and instruc tional models and onli ne cours es and materials; i denti fying and sel ecti ng the appr opri ate accredited and c ertific ated pr ograms (c ommunity coll eges, uni versities and private occ upati onal trai ning
programs); and sel ecti ng and establis hing appropriate trai ning programs for teachers and support staff. 2) Br anc h C hief– Informati on Management Res ponsibl e for development and maintenanc e of the EO data management s ystem designed to provi de educ ation staff wi th the student inmate i nformati on and the instructional r es ource support needed deli ver effecti ve educ ation ser vic es. Als o r esponsibl e for i nput i n devel opi ng the tec hnolog y s ystem within BOP's technol og y i nfras truc tur e that c an s upport a Blended Learni ng ins truc tional environment and offer mor e online courses and tr aini ng. D uti es i nclude: data management, i ncl udi ng the manag ement of the Student Informati on System; and the anal ysis and diss eminati on of data. 3) Br anc h C hief – Acc ountability and Support Res ponsi ble for monitoring, ass ess ment, evaluati on, and enforc ement of educ ati onal programs and initi ati ves at the loc al instituti on level through the si x R EA's each supported by School S upport T eam. Exercises dir ect contr ol over the R EAs in performi ng these
functi ons . 4) Br anc h C hi ef – Educ ati on Oper ati ons Oversees human r es ourc es and budg et and oper ati on manag ement. R esponsibl e for educ ati onal s taff Bur eau of Pris ons Education Program Ass ess ment Pag e | 9 r ecruitment, retention, pr omotion and profes sional development of teac hers, admi nistr ators and educ ati onal s upport pers onnel. D evelops the position q ualific ati ons, j ob descriptions, and professi onal growth and development pr ograms. Manag es the Inmate Instr uctor Pr ogram (IIP) and Educ ati on Interns hip Pr ograms. Res ponsi ble for pr eparing and managing the BOB educ ation budg et to ens ure that the budg et as prioritiz ed and i mpl emented is aligned wi th the strategic educ ati on pl an and s upports i ts programs . Financial manag ement i ncl udes financial r eporti ng, positi on c ontrol, educati on rel ated pr oc urement, progr am monitor ing and financial acc ountability. Woul d als o include res ponsi bility for facilitati ng the es tablishment of " Str ategic Partners hips" withi n BOP’s s pecific l egal authoriti es, to opti miz e educ ation, job tr aini ng reentr y
empl oyment opportunities and s upports. B) R egional Offices The R egional offices will be charac teriz ed by the followi ng compon ents: Each BOP R egion will have an assigned REA, i tinerant to the fiel d and r eporti ng to BOP Centr al Offic e Educ ation Offi ce. T he R EAs will directl y repor t to the D eputy Adminis trator for the Acc ountability U nit who will coll aborate with the Regional Direc tor. A Quality R evi ew T eam will support eac h R EA wi th their r esponsibiliti es for monitoring and supporti ng c orrecti on facility educ ati on pr ograms. T he Regional Offic es will now es senti all y bec ome an extension of the EO, with r es ponsibility for c onnecti ng all i nstituti ons ar ound the new Education and Occ upati onal Tr aini ng Priority in a cons tructi ve and supporti ve way to pr ovide not onl y tec hnic al s upport but to ensur e c ompliance with the RSD -EO educ ati on polic y and standar ds and financial mandates. C) Local Instituti ons Education organiz ati on at the i nstituti on level will be charac teriz ed by the followi ng: Each pris on will have a Loc al Educ ati on Adminis trator
(LEA). The l ocal Super vis or of R ecreati on will conti nue to report to the LEA Eac h LEA will have thr ee direct r eport l eaders, who will both teac h and l ead an educ ation s er vic e c ategor y. The c ategori es are C ASES U nit, Hig h School Support U nit, and Advanced Adult Education Support U nit. Teac hing and i nstr ucti onal s upport s taff r atios to i ndi vi dual i nstituti on pris on popul ati on will be 1:10. Loc al Educ ati on and Trai ning Staffi ng Models Insti tuti ons i n the will be s taffed ac cor ding to the models g uided by the EO and described bel ow • C ertifi ed Teac hers o J ob des cripti ons will be r ewritten ( by the EO) to requir e that full ti me teac hers be c ertifi ed. T hes e j ob descri ptions will appl y to new hires but not retr oacti vel y to existi ng empl oyees. o Teac hers will report to the LEAs and will be teachers firs t (pri mar y res ponsi bility) and C orrec tional Offic ers s ec ond (s ec ondar y responsibility). • Contr act ins tructi on o Accredited pr ograms s elected by the EO that offer recogni zed c ertific ati ons will be exempt fr om the teac h er qualification r equirements. o C ontract and
retired teachers will be hir ed to fill critic al need ar eas in accor danc e with EO guid elines. • Inmate Instr uctor Pr ogram (IIP) o A c ompr ehensi ve IIP will be establis hed to pr ovide s uppl emental i nstructors and t eachi ng Bur eau of Prisons Educ ati on Pr ogram Ass ess ment Page | 10 coaches . o IIP c andi dates will partici pate in assis tant teac her trai ning program to s ec ure a BOP " provisi onal" teac her certific ati on. o IIP teac hers will rec ei ve ti me off for their s entenc e. o IIP teacher positions will be cl assifi ed as a " wor k assignment" above a Grade- 4 c ompens ation and be eligibl e for additi onal c ompe ns ation tied to years i n s er vice. Positi ons for which Deputy Administr ator, Offic e of H uman Res ources woul d establis h the job q ualific ati ons and j ob descriptions and seek appr oval from BOP Human R esourc es. C hief Education Offic er. Senior Admi nistr ators. Regional Educ ation Admi nistr ator. Loc al Education Admi nistr ator . Teac her- Academic. T eac her- SPED . R ecr eation/ Wellness . Sc hool Ps yc hologist. Admi nistr ati ve Support Speci alists.
Educ ation T ec hnol ogy Networ k Specialist. Contr actual teac hing positions. Appendi x 1 c ontai ns a broad, high-level s tatement of the qualific ati ons (functi onal s kills, c apabilities , experienc e and c ompetenci es) for the key indi vi duals i n the followi ng above-listed posi tions: a) C hief Educ ati on Officer , b) Regional E ducation Admi nistr ator, c) Local Educ ati on Adminis trator and d) T eachers. Di vidi ng Educ ati on Pr ograms i nto T hree U nits, Educa tion s er vic es throughout BOP woul d be di vi ded into thr ee units to hel p pr omote standardiz ati on, foc us, and ac countability thr oughout the organiz ati on. C ombi ned, they c an comprise an " educ ati on ladder" that will us e data and indi vidualized l ear ning s trategies to advance student i nmate indi vidual ac ademic and job r eadiness s kills C ompr ehensi ve Ac ademic and Soci al/Emoti onal Support (CASES) Unit T his unit would focus on pr ovidi ng students “ Basic Skills” needed to accel erate learni ng in literac y, r eadi ng/languag e arts, English Lang uage Learni ng, and s ocial /emoti onal needs with i ntensi ve evi denc e-bas ed
inter ventions through blended l ear ning. For exampl e, all of thes e s upports may be needed for s tudents in secondar y i nstr ucti on or i n j ob trai ning. Students learni ng English may need this s uppor t for pos tsecondar y educ ati on. Students wi th ver y low ac hievement (below 5th grade) may be s uppor ted onl y through i nter venti ons in addition to j ob tr aini ng requiring a l ow-level of s kill. High Sc hool Support Unit This unit would focus on pathways for students to ear n a recogniz ed high sc hool di ploma or GED through a bl ended learni ng competenc y- based high s chool c urricul um program. Both woul d i nclude adult wor k s kills development such as ACT "Wor kKeys." Advanc ed Adul t Education Support Uni t T his unit would foc us on supporti ng inmate c ontinui ng education both ac ademic (c olleg e and uni versity) and oc cupational tr aini ng. T his incl udes acc ess to s peci fic job s kills tr aini ng pr ograms that r esul t in cer tification fr om s tate accr edited public or pri vate school or state recogniz ed ass ociations and agenci es. It would support ac ces s Bureau of Prisons
Educ ation Program As ses sment Page | 11 to adul t work s kills devel opment, suc h as certi ficated fi nanci al and tec hnol og y tr aini ng pr ograms. Inmat es wi thout high sc hool di plomas/ GEDs woul d have acc ess to c ertain programs that did not preclude them, and c ould simultaneousl y pursue GED whil e partici pating i n a nationall y r ec ogniz ed certi ficated occ upati onal trai ning programs. T he basic s kills (under C ASES) and the Hig h School/GED programs , woul d be rigidly standardiz ed. T he ar eas of post-secondar y educati on, occ upati onal trai ning, and education enhanc ements would invite the Local Education Admi nistrators , their Wardens, and their Local Tr ade C ouncils (LTCs) to s elec t pr ograms and strategi es reflec ting l ocal capacity, geographic l oc ation, and the opportunities for local partners hips . Loc al i nstituti ons woul d develop specific programs , primarily in the area of occupational tr aini ng and, per haps, even r e-entr y s er vic es that would be s ubmitted to the EO for approval and funding through the AOE pr ogram. R elations hip between BOP EO, REAs,
LEA’s and Wardens R EA R eporti ng R elati onshi p with the EO and Regional Direc tor T he R EAs have functi onal reporting to the R egional Director on all matters pertai ning to the exec uti on of their wor k, how that wor k c onforms to the regi onal req uirements of the gi ven r egion. T he REAs have direct reporti ng to the D eputy Adminis trator for Acc ountability on all matters pertai ning to the wor k they perfor m i n purs uit of the Education and Occ upati onal Tr aini ng Pri ority. T he R EAs Budg et Support T eam has functi onal r eporting to the Deputy Admi nistr ator of the Offic e of R es ourc e M anagement on all matters pertaini ng to the budgetar y programmi ng, fisc al acc ountability, and confor manc e to BOP-EO fi nanci al polic y of the wor k they perform in pursuit of the Educ ation and Occ u pational Trai ning Priority. REA and LEA R eporti ng Rel ati ons hip wi th the Warden T her e s houl d be a command and contr ol str uctur e dri ven by the EO that extends to the instituti onal level, i.e. the LEAs. However, the Wardens mus t execute on the plans and policies dir ected by the EO in
an oper ati onal i nstituti on-l evel environment. Wardens mus t c ontinue to gover n, thus effec ti vel y managing that envir onment. In or der to impl ement and mai ntain this new r elationshi p: T he LEAs have func tional r eporti ng to R EAs on all matters pertaini ng to the quality of the wor k and confor manc e to EO polic y of the wor k they perfor m i n pursuit of the Education and Occ upati onal Tr aini ng Pri ority. T he LEAs woul d c ontinue to have direc t reporting to their respecti ve Wardens on all matters pertai ning to the exec ution of their wor k and how that wor k c onforms to the local r equirements of the given ins titution. T he number of pers onnel , c ompl ement of pers onnel, pers onnel duties , and general budget for the i mpl ementati on of the new Education and Occ upati onal Tr aini ng Priority at each ins titution woul d be deter mined in the first instanc e by the Warden with the ap proval of the EO or designee. The j ob duti es, the sel ecti on of the REA and LEA, their s al ar y and bonus (if applic abl e), and their eval uation could be i nitiated either by the C hi ef Educ ati on
Admi nistrator or Warden. H owever, that decisi on would need final c onsent from the Assis tant Director of R SD. T here will be at leas t one annual meeti ng where the C hi ef Educ ati on Administr ator, or their designees , the i nstituti on Warden, the R egional Educ ati on Adminis trator and the Local Educ ati on Adminis trator will meet to disc uss and evaluate past practic es and design and propose new practic es and design. A written annual report for eac h i nstituti on will als o be requir ed. T her e will be q uarterl y meetings between the Bur eau of Prisons Education Program Ass ess ment Page | 12 Regi onal Educ ation Administr ator and the War den and, as appropriate, the Loc al Educ ation Administr ator. T he Cons ortium o n C orrec tions Educ ati on The EO will need to develop a bur eau- wide educ ati on str ategy, which will then i nform what educati on pr ogramming BOP provi des , the governance str ucture to s uppor t it, and the budget pri orities to financ e it. It es senti all y needs its own R es earc h and D evelopment (R&D) ar m to provi de input i n the development and
refinement of polici es and proc edur es and to assess s trategies and pr ograms and financial prioriti es. The c urrent Educ ati on Br anch does not have ass ess ment and evaluati on capability of its own, and is reli ant on the present structure that has the BOP Program R evi ew Di visi on (PRD) pr ovidi ng pr ogram ass ess ment and eval uation. The PRD has mul tipl e ass ess ment res ponsi bilities across the BOP and lac ks educ ation experi enc e and expertise and the c apacity to provi de the type of educ ation progr am anal ysis that can l ook beyond complianc e into the area of effec ti veness and q uality. Cr eation of a C orrec tions Educ ati on Cons ortium would give the Educ ation Office the capacity to improve education s er vices by provi ding it with acces s to quality res earc h, specific pr ogram anal ysis and access to the " Best Prac tices ." T he Cons o rtium woul d identify what matters mos t for i nmate suc ces s and what it takes to achi eve it. T he C ons ortium would be an indepen dent federation of res earc hers and experts from nati onal organi zati ons and uni versiti es, all with an
inter est in i mprovi ng c orrecti onal educ ati on. T he BOP EO its elf would be r epr esented by its top education and admi nistr ati ve staff who would take a s abbatical from the fiel d to bring their knowl edg e and experienc e withi n the loc al i nstituti ons to the C onsorti um. T he U.S. Depar tment of Educ ati on (USDOE) woul d also be r epr es ented and share in the l eadershi p, as the U SDOE has had a l ongstandi ng inter est i n prison educ ati on refor m that has further g al vaniz ed during the c urrent admi nistr ation. Unli ke the PRD, whic h c onducts revi ews of all pr ograms ac ross BOP, not excl usi vel y educ ation programs , the C ons orti um woul d foc us excl usi vel y on pris on educati on and j ob trai ning programs . U nli ke the PRD, the Cons ortium's r esearc h and anal ysis dir ectl y addr ess es program q uality, i nstr ucti onal quality, a nd alignment wi th communi ty and industrial standar ds. The cr eation of the cons ortium i s intended to gi ve the BOP educ ation l eadershi p acc ess to conti nual high q uality R&D that c oul d gui de decisi on- making. The C onsorti um is the critical R &D ass et EO
needs, to ens ure the effec ti veness of its s trategies and pr ograms. The r ec ons tituted Tr ade Advisor y Commissi ons (TAC) ar e the vehicl es for entering into strategic partners hips to expand high q uality occ upati onal tr aini ng and re- entr y empl oyment opportunities . In order to establish this cons ortium, the Federal Advi sor y Committee Act (F AC A) mus t be foll owed. 17 Expanding responsibiliti es and makeup of the l oc al Trade Advis or y C ouncils (T AC) Existi ng TAC should be expanded s o that each ins titution is r equired to create a T AC. C urrentl y, the TAC is r equired when an occ upati onal educ ati on pr ogram is not offered by an outside accr edited educ ati on i nsti tution or not cer tified/accr edited by an outsi de verifying or accrediti ng agenc y. T he curr ent T AC is a group of l ocal indus tr y experts who c an advis e on l ocal occ upational pr ogram c ontent, nec ess ar y equi pment specific pr ograms, and loc al reg ulati ons. T he expanded T AC woul d have br oad i ndustr y 17 See 5 U SC §§ 2- 14; Titl e 41 CFR, Parts 101- 6 and 102-3. Bur eau of Prisons Education Program
Ass ess ment Page | 13 and trai ning i nsti tution (public and private) membershi p, consis tent wi th BOP’s legal r equirements It would focus not onl y on the quality of the occ upati onal trai ning programs but als o i n the s electi on of other relevant trai ning programs and the recr uitment of trai ning instituti on partners. The T AC's woul d also pl ay a program revi ew r ole i n exami ning the r elevance and quality of loc al occ upati onal traini ng program. The missi on of the T AC woul d be as follows : Provi de the local Warden and Loc al Educ ati onal Admi nistr ator with advic e on occ upati onal tr aini ng and pos t prison empl oyment str ategies. H elp i dentify and sel ect r elevant occ upational trai ning programs . Perform identification, sel ecti on and recruitment of public and pri vate occupati onal tr aini ng ins titutions offering trai ning programs in i ndus tries accessi ble to for mer i nmates . Set standar ds and revi ewing programs and ins truc tion to ensur e quality. Identify and recr uit potential empl oyers and wor king with R eentr y Affairs Coordi nators, and potentiall y Probation

Curriculum and Instruction Bureau of Prisons Education

Offic ers, to help secur e c ontinuing educ ati onal and j ob tr aini ng opportuni ties and empl oyment. o Seeking out and sec uring l ong-term str ategic partners hips to enhanc e educ ati on and job trai ning and r esearc h-entr y empl oyment opportuniti es. Bureau of Pris ons Educ ation Program Ass ess ment Page | 1 4

Office The proposed Education Office (“EO”), focused on successful re–entry and
elaborated below, has been built to create intersecting pathways for students to succeed
regardless of where in their educational progress they enter the system; it will meet them
where they are and take them as far as they can correctional go. As the U.S. Department of Education has indicated, “

education programs are intended to break the cycle of catch-andrelease by providing

inmates with more opportunities to develop the skills required to succeed in their
workplaces and communities.”18 Overall Organizational Structure Implementing an effective education and occupational training

system focused on long–term success for ex– offenders will require a paradigm and cultural shift to align the education system with 21st Century teaching and learning and develop an unrelenting focus on outcomes rather than inputs. The outcomes of greatest
interest are the ability of inmates to obtain more remunerative work in the legitimate economy than they could prior to incarceration, and to remain unincarcerated. The current BOP program structure is unable to answer this question, let alone to influence it. The

This proposed
current educational organization may be viewed as a rickety ladder, where the inmate moves irregularly from one rung to another with the top rung occupational training. Each rung is seen as a stand-alone program.

model is not a linear system but one that facilitates participation by inmates in multiple
programs at any academic entry level . There is a synergy between improving literacy levels and advancing in an occupation because literacy enhancement could be embedded in occupational
training, for example, learning applied m m m m

The BOP’s ladder approach creates unnecessary barriers for both m

those who struggle with literacy attainment as well as those who are ready to pursue
some of the more difficult, but in demand, job training programs that require more
advanced math, science, and writing skills. O m O m m
m m m m m

m The proposed
Education Program Office comprises three divisions: High School Options Division
Post-secondary Education Opportunities Division Academic, and Social/Emotional
Interventions Division m mm W m M

M Under this proposal, literacy, m m

language, job readiness, counseling, and social and emotional supports are available to
inmates regardless of the pursued programming. For example, all students need learning
skills, study skills, computer skills and, often, additional courses in math, reading and
writing, and other job-related education m mm O m m
m m m m m
m m m m m W
m m m W m
m m m G m G
m G m
m m— m — m
m m m O
m m m O
 AT: Abolition CP
Alternative systems will fill in that produce net more violence
Seidman 11 --- Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Constitutional Law. (Louis Michael
Seidman, “Hyper-Incarceration and Strategies of Disruption: Is There a Way Out?”,
http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/osjcl/Articles/Volume9_1/Seidman.pdf)//ET
Understanding the problems with ameliorative approaches naturally leads us to ask
whether we can do better. Suppose we forsake the goal of modest piecemeal reform and
aim instead at radical transformation. Strategies of this sort rest on the supposed fragile
and vulnerable character of the ideology that justifies the system. On this view, it may seem that
this system is impregnable, but that is only an illusion. The careful and relentless exposure of the hypocrisy, brutality, and injustice
at the base of the system can bring it down. These strategies are closely allied to important strands of the critical legal studies
movement. Some people allied with the movement (“crits”) believed that the internal contradictions of liberalism could be exploited
to such an extent that the system could be revealed for what it is—an empty shell that supports power and privilege only so long as
we allow it to do so.54 Projects
along these lines would, for example, explore the contradictions in
mainstream accounts of blameworthiness. Moral condemnation, on this view, amounts to no
more than an ideological cover for the exercise of power by some people over others.55
It does not follow, though, that the economic model can simply replace the moral model.
It, too, rests on unchallenged assumptions about what, precisely, counts as a “cost” and a “benefit”—about who is benefited and on
whom the costs are imposed.56 Once we clear away the ideological detritus, we are left with a simple question: Do we really want to
live in a decent society? Critical Legal Studies has many strands and many of its adherents had complicated positions. Still, at least
in their optimistic moods, many crits thought that, with
the freedom provided by deconstruction of
constraining structures of thought, people would make the right decision.57 I must confess to
more than a little attraction to this way of thinking. A fair amount of my own work has been influenced by it. As a serious strategy for
producing change, though, it leaves much to be desired. One problem with focusing on micro-processes is that they
may be more deeply embedded than some crits supposed. It is true that as a logical or intellectual
matter the justificatory standards that shield the criminal justice system from criticism are quite vulnerable. No one has provided a
good answer to the arguments deconstructing free will on the one hand and instrumental rationality on the other, at least as they
apply to our practices of criminal punishment. It is nonetheless simply a mistake to suppose that these structures of thought will
They reflect ways of living and perceiving, rather than
collapse once they are shown to be incoherent.
merely intellectual arguments. It will not do to try to dismantle them so as to damage the
system they protect; they are impervious to attack precisely because they protect that system. Nor is it
obvious that if the structures were somehow dismantled, their collapse would produce a
more humane system . The structures serve functions that would have to be served by
something else if they disappeared. On the one hand, belief in personal responsibility and the possibility of moral
choice is, itself, a determinant of behavior. Without it, there might well be more crime. On the other hand, cost-

benefit analysis is a check on wanton and purposeless brutality. Without it, there might well be more
punishment. As Meir Dan-Cohen pointed out years ago, we would be well served if we could maintain “acoustic separation”
between the mainstream and target communities.58 We could then inculcate personal responsibility in the target community,
thereby reducing crime, while convincing the mainstream community that members of the target community have very constricted
choices, thereby reducing punishment. We could convince the target community that it is instrumentally rational to obey the law
because of the strong possibility of punishment, while convincing the mainstream community of the instrumental rationality of
reducing punishment levels. But nobody has a clue how to maintain such separation or, indeed, how to induce either set of beliefs in
the first place. In any event, advocates of radical transformation want to dismantle these false categories altogether, rather than
maintaining them for separate communities. Moreover, even if a frontal assault on justificatory rationales were a more promising
Ameliorative strategies have their
strategy, we would still need to give it some specific programmatic content.
limits and problems, but at least they consist of real proposals that are being, or might
actually be, implemented. What kind of program does radical deconstruction entail? It is
not only naïve but also inexcusably solipsistic to suppose that writing law review articles
is such a program. Perhaps localized subversion holds out greater promise,59 but there
is a remaining vagueness about what this subversion would consist of. In any event, as
invigorating and liberating as these individual acts of defiance may be, the chance of
their sparking a global change seems quite remote. A program of large-scale
organization of target communities and building bridges based on racial solidarity
between those communities and mainstream African Americans seems more promising.
But there is no need to rehearse yet again the difficulties of mobilizing dispirited and
isolated minority communities, the powerful reasons middle class African Americans
have for distancing themselves from those communities, or the panicked opposition
among the privileged that such organization produces. Moreover, even in this context,
the problem of programmatic content remains. If organizers offer no practical programs
at all, they appear unreasonable and utopian. If they offer such programs, they fall back
into the amelioration trap. In any event, as a comfortable, wealthy, white academic, I am afraid that I am not about to
start knocking on doors in the inner city. As a personal matter, I nonetheless remain committed to the practice of dismantling
justificatory categories, but people like me need to give up on the absurd claim that doing so promises immediate social
transformation.
The categories deserve attack because they are false and constricting. The
people who argue for them deserve censure because they should know better and
because their arguments provide a cover for an unjust status quo. Acts of rebellion,
whether in law reviews or as localized subversion, are good in themselves. But no one
should suppose that these acts will ultimately solve our problems. And, in the meantime,
the waste and suffering from hyper-incarceration goes on unabated.

Plan frees white supremacists

MDJ 1/20 (Marietta Daily Journal, January 20, 2015, Angie’s world: ‘Prison abolition’ good for killers, but the rest of
us? Not so much’, http://www.mdjonline.com/view/full_story/26389319/article-Angie-s-world---Prison-abolition--good-for-
killers--but-the-rest-of-us--Not-so-much?instance=home_editorial)

On Tuesday, the Georgia Supreme Court upheld the murder convictions and life sentences of those responsible for three especially
heinous crimes: Edward Wallace had earlier been found guilty of robbing and fatally shooting Kyle
Moore, 17, as he waited for a MARTA bus, pumping numerous bullets into him after he was already on the ground. Moore was a
star football player at Washington High School in Atlanta and was being recruited by Harvard, Brown, and other colleges. The day
after the shooting Wallace brazenly returned to the murder scene and signed a “signature page” next to a photo of the deceased
that had been erected at the site by Moore’s family. Wallace and his girlfriend then went to a local tattoo shop and had “Unknown
killer” tattooed on his arms. Police who later searched Wallace’s home also found rap lyrics he had written that said
he
targeted blacks, and if one would not act, “I lay ’em flat. Then I put eight holes in his back.” Also Tuesday, the court upheld
the conviction of Lester Casey Griffin of Effingham County for the murder of his girlfriend’s 2-year-old son. An
autopsy on the child found 118 distinct external and internal injuries inflicted on the toddler during the two hours before his death.
And also on Tuesday, the court upheld the conviction of Quanitta Yvette Turner, 22, for smothering her 5-week-old baby to death to
stop her from crying. Turner also admitted to having earlier hit the baby at least eight times with a TV remote control to try and quiet
her. Meanwhile, Sunday night, on the campus of Kennesaw State University, the African-American Student Union hosted reheated
’60s radical Angela Davis, who these days is a self-described “prison abolitionist.” Her SRO talk to 700-plus people
touched on a variety of race and gender-driven topics, but for more on her efforts to see prisons closed, we turn to her comments
last spring to hard-left news site “Democracy Now!” (That’s rich, isn’t it: A woman who espoused an ideology, Communism, and
linked arms with blood-stained dictators trying to undermine and discredit democracy, now is pro-democracy. Better late than
never!) Said Davis in that interview: “Those of us who identify as prison abolitionists, as opposed to prison reformers, make the
point that oftentimes reforms create situations where mass incarceration becomes even more entrenched; and so, therefore, we
have to think about what in the long run will produce decarceration, fewer people behind bars, and hopefully, eventually, in the
future, the possibility of imagining a landscape without prisons, where other means are used to
address issues of harm, where social problems, such as illiteracy and poverty, do not lead vast numbers of people along
a trajectory that leads to prison.” In Angela Davis’ world, the Edward Wallaces, the Lester Griffins,
the Quanitta Turners and other murderers, rapists, child molesters, etc., would not have
to worry about being punished. After all, it wasn’t really their fault they did what they did.
Rather, it was their presumed “illiteracy and poverty,” although Wallace was “literate” enough to write rap
lyrics and read tattoos and Ms. Turner had pulled herself up from poverty at least far enough to own a TV — and a remote control.
In “Angela Davis World,” the Wallaces and Griffins and Turners would be free to leave prison. As for the rest of us, we’d
just have to be more careful. And as for former Communist Davis, she pocketed a cool 20 grand via taxpayers and
student activity fees for her hour or so on the KSU stage. Being a capitalist seems to agree with her. It’s highly unlikely
that Wallace, Griffin or Turner have ever heard of Angela Davis, or vice versa, but we’re willing
to go out on a limb and predict those three would be happy to know that Davis has been
fighting on their behalf — and using your tax dollars and a platform provided by KSU in order to do so. Read more: The
Marietta Daily Journal - Angie s world Prison abolition good for killers but the rest of us Not so much

Abolition fails

Nick Herbert 8 – Member of Parliament (MP) for Arundel and South Downs.(“The abolitionists'
criminal
conspiracy”;7/27;https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2008/jul/27/prisonsandprobation.
youthjustice)//pk

The false premise of abolitionism is that prisons make recidivists. We need to get real
and ensure rehabilitation works The case for penal abolition rests on a series of tenuous
assertions. Let's set aside the obvious, if uncomfortable, fact that part of the purpose of prison is to punish. It's said that short-
term prison sentences don't work, because recidivism rates are shockingly high and
there is little time for any restorative programmes to work. But since the evidence is that longer sentences
have lower recidivism rates, and provide the opportunity to rehabilitate offenders, this might be an argument to lengthen sentences, not abolish them
altogether. After all, another purpose of prison is to incapacitate offenders. Of
course, overcrowded prisons that are
awash with drugs, and a system which gives short-term prisoners no supervision or
support on release, is almost calculated to fail. But this could equally be an argument – the
one which the modern Conservative party is making – for a complete transformation of prison regimes and a
system of support for offenders when they are released from jail. It's a logical non
sequitur on a grand scale to argue that because short-term prison sentences currently
aren't working, we should therefore stop using them at all. Abolitionists say that short-term prison sentences
have a poorer recidivism rate than community sentences. In fact, both have a lamentable record – and one that has deteriorated in the last ten years.
But the difference is hardly surprising, since the worst recidivists are bound to end up in jail. According to Home Office figures (pdf), only 12% of those
sentenced to prison have no previous convictions. Over half have five or more previous convictions, and over a third have ten or more. Those who say
Serial offenders who end up
that prison should be reserved for serious or serial offenders tend to ignore the fact that it already is.
with custodial sentences have usually run through the gamut of weak community
sentences already. If we want to avoid magistrates having little choice but to send them
down, the logical thing to do is to make community sentences far more effective. Yet the
perverse reaction of the abolitionists is to recommend that the very community disposals
that have, by definition, already failed are used again. Over a third of unpaid work
requirements are not completed. Drug rehabilitation requirements have an even worse
record – fewer than half are completed. If a fraction of the energy and resources that are
being devoted to the cause of penal abolition were directed to thinking seriously about
how better to design non-custodial punishments, short-term prison sentences would be
less necessary. What do the abolitionists really want? If it's the end of all custody,
including for the most serious and dangerous offenders, then we can dismiss their
demands as truly silly. If it's the abolition of short-term custodial sentences, then the
effect on the overall prison population will be minimal. Justice ministry tables show (pdf) that over 87% of the
current prison population are serving sentences of over 12 months. Abolishing prison for those serving, say, six months or less would mean watering
down 60,000 sentences – but it would reduce the prison population by less than 7,000. The more effective and sustainable way to reduce the prison
population in the long term is to reduce re-offending, as the Conservative party's radical "rehabilitation revolution" proposes. It would be
nice to live in a society where there were no prisons, just as it would be nice if there
were no hospitals because there was no illness . But until someone steps forward with a ten-year plan to Make Crime
History, jails are here to stay. The challenge is to create prisons with a purpose – not to hold lazy conferences making futile calls for their abolition.

Abolition is a gradual process, that will transform criminal law and people’s
livelihoods

Allegra M. McLeod 15, Associate Professor at Georgetown University Law Center, 2015,
“Prison Abolition and Grounded Justice”, UCLA Law Review, 62 UCLA L. Rev. 1156 (2015),
http://www.uclalawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/McLeod_6.2015.pdf
If prison abolition is conceptualized as an immediate and indiscriminate¶ opening of
prison doors—that is, the imminent physical elimination of all structures¶ of incarceration—rejection of abolition is
perhaps warranted. But abolition¶ may be understood instead as a gradual project of
decarceration, in which radically¶ different legal and institutional regulatory forms
supplant criminal law enforcement.¶ These institutional alternatives include meaningful
justice reinvestment to¶ strengthen the social arm of the state and improve human
welfare; decriminalizing¶ less serious infractions ; improved design of spaces and
products to reduce opportunities for¶ offending; urban redevelopment and “greening”
projects ; proliferating¶ restorative forms of redress; and creating both safe harbors for individuals at
risk¶ of or fleeing violence and alternative livelihoods for persons otherwise subject to¶
criminal law enforcement. When abolition is conceptualized in these terms—as¶ a
transformative goal of gradual decarceration and positive regulatory substitution¶
wherein penal regulation is recognized as morally unsustainable—then inattention¶ to
abolition in criminal law scholarship and reformist discourses comes into¶ focus as a
more troubling absence.16 Further, the rejection of abolition as a horizon¶ for reform mistakenly
assumes that reformist critiques concern only the occasional,¶ peripheral excesses of
imprisonment and prison-backed policing rather¶ than more fundamentally impugning
the core operations of criminal law enforcement,¶ and therefore requiring a departure from prison-backed
criminal¶ regulation to other regulatory frameworks.
 AT: Judge discretion CP

Federal guidelines means judge discretion doesn’t matter

Matthew Van Meter, FEB 25, 2016, "One Judge Makes the Case for Judgment," Atlantic,
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/02/one-judge-makes-the-case-for-
judgment/463380//)MBA HBJ
Judge John Coughenour is a rebel. It’s not because—or not only because—he rides a Harley or spends his free time in prisons. It’s that the Reagan-appointed U.S. District Court judge has rebelled against federal sentencing guidelines ever since they were

Coughenour had never earned national attention for his nonconformist ideas
established in the mid-1980s. But

about sentencing and punishment—until, that is, al-Qaeda trainee Ahmed Ressam
appeared in his courtroom in the spring of 2001. Over the course of the next 11 years,
Coughenour would sit down to sentence Ressam to prison on three separate occasions,
all for the same crime—two times to huge uproar and one time to clarify the sentence
once and for all. In 1999, 32-year-old Ahmed Ressam had planned to detonate a massive car bomb at Los Angeles International Airport on New Year’s Eve. Had he succeeded, it would likely have been the deadliest bombing in U.S.

As the judge
history. Fortunately, Ressam was caught a thousand miles from his goal. He was tried and convicted in federal court. The jury returned its guilty verdict in April 2001—and that’s when the fight over Ressam’s fate really began.

presiding over Ressam’s trial, Coughenour’s job was to determine the would-be
terrorist’s punishment. His sentencing should have been a straightforward computation,
based on the U.S. Sentencing Commission’s Guidelines Manual. A jury found Ressam
guilty. By law, his sentence should have been 65 years to life. When the trial ended, however, Ressam’s sentencing was postponed. Ressam
had struck a deal with federal agents to cooperate in terror investigations. In fact, when the 9/11 attacks occurred a few months later, Ressam was the best-connected al-Qaeda acolyte willing to work with the U.S. government. He helped identify terrorists from
security-camera footage and even assisted with the aftermath of the “shoe-bomber” in December 2001. But by 2005, Ressam had stopped working with agents. (Coughenour says Ressam became embittered by years of solitary confinement.) He even recanted
some of his prior testimony. Since Ressam was no longer cooperating, he was put back up for sentencing. In recognition of Ressam’s assistance to the United States, the government asked for 35 years—30 less than the original minimum penalty. It was a good
deal by any measure, especially so soon after 9/11, when terrorism prosecutions were not known for leniency. Coughenour, thou gh, was swayed by Ressam’s years of cooperation—which, the judge maintains, put Ressam’s life in danger. It’s a dilemma Judge
Stefan Underhill recently described in The New York Times: “Which man was I sentencing?” he asked, referring to a repentant gang member. “The murderer or the remorseful cooperator?” Coughenour was similarly moved by Ressam’s condition. Since his arrest,
Ressam had been held in solitary confinement, and it had changed him. Coughenour says that, at his trial, Ressam had “had a pleasant demeanor about him.” But in the fours years since then, while cooperating with the government, Ressam had become “thinner,
and drawn, and haggard.” And Coughenour knew that every year Ressam spent in prison was almost certainly another year in solitary confinement—a fairly standard measure for terrorists as well as for those cooperating with law enforcement. The judge felt for the
hapless Algerian and thought it would be in the interest of justice to lay off a bit on the penalty’s harshness. After all, C oughenour reasoned, Ressam never did set off the bomb. Ressam’s lawyers had asked for 12 and a half years. Coughenour split the difference

“I thought—wrongly it turned out—that

with the government’s request for 35 and went with 22 years. That was the first time Coughenour sentenced Ressam. Coughenour says now,

the sentencing was pretty straightforward.” Immediately afterward, a furor erupted in the
national media and among those who question Coughenour’s overall approach to
punishment . Fox News’ Michelle Malkin dubbed Coughenour the “terrorists’ little helper,” arguing that he represented everything that was wrong with judge-centered sentencing. Critics slammed Coughenour, saying his sympathy for the
defendant had trumped national safety. After 22 years, they reasoned, Ressam would be middle-aged when he got out, fully capable of staging another attack. But Coughenour sees part of his role as protecting the accused from a sometimes-bloodthirsty media,

especially when it comes to sentencing. Coughenour was appointed during President Ronald Reagan’s first year in office, a few years before the federal sentencing guidelines were
created. The new system was meant to counteract the wild inconsistencies in the
sentences handed down in different courts . Instead of going simply by intuition, federal judges would now refer
to a handbook that established a sentencing range . And any discretion on the part of
judges was intended to be restricted to the limits of that range . But what some saw as a reasonable step toward greater justice, Coughenour

saw as inhumane and robotic. What’s the point of a judge if he is discouraged from offering his judgment? Once on the fringe, Coughenour’s argument against sentencing guidelines is now gaining traction. At the heart of the debate is an undecided question: Which
is scarier—a world where a person’s actions are treated as part of a mathematical equation blind to context, or a world where political appointees decide people’s fates based on gut feelings? Coughenour’s position is clear. He believes that the standardization of
sentences has resulted in less justice, not more, and that the way the nation sentences criminals today has created greater inequality, not less. Underhill agrees. “The tragedy of mass inc arceration,” he writes, “has recently focused much attention on the need to

reform … the federal-sentencing guidelines , which often direct judges to impose excessive sentences. ”

Underhill also thinks prisoners deserve a “second-look review”—“a mechanism for judges to re-evaluate the sentences they’ve imposed.” For his part, Coughenour would dismantle standardized criminal sentencing entirely. “But,” he adds meaningfully, “you’ve got to
trust the person making the decision.” LATEST FROM POLITICS Donald Trump Eats First Ressam’s 22-year sentence in 2005 was overturned on procedural grounds. And when the case came up again in 2008, the government sought a life sentence. But
Coughenour saw no reason for his decision to change; he again imposed a 22-year sentence. Coughenour cited Ressam’s favorable psychiatric report and noted with sympathy that Ressam “spent many years in solitary confinement in a country far from his family
and loved ones.” The judge also pointed out that other terrorists, including John Walker Lindh, an American, had been sentenc ed to 20 years or less. “In the time since Mr. Ressam’s first sentencing,” Coughenour concluded, “I have come to feel even more confident

The Ninth Circuit disagreed. In a scathing 72-

that the sentence I originally imposed was the correct one.” That was the second time Coughenour sentenced Ressam.

page opinion, a panel of judges concluded that Coughenour had “abused his discretion”
by flouting the guidelines . And so, on October 24, 2012, almost 11 years since Ressam first appeared before Coughenour (and nearly 13 years since his arrest), the judge was ready to give Ressam his third and
final sentence. He looked at all the lawyers and journalists packed into his Seattle courtroom. Would he go along with the government’s request for a life sentence? Or would he again thumb his nose at the system?
 AT: Spending DA

Turn – plan reduces long term prison spending by lowering recidivism

costs

Bidwell 13 [Allie Bidwell, Staff Writer, 8-22-2013, "Report: Prison Education Programs Could
Save Money," US News & World Report,
https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/08/22/report-prison-education-programs-could-
save-money]
Each year, about 700,000 people leave federal and state prisons and about half of them return to prison within three years,
education programs can help lower the costs
according to the Department of Justice. The report suggests that
associated with returning to jail. Educational programs cost about $1,400 to $1,744 per inmate each
year, according to the report, and can save prisons between $8,700 and $9,700 per inmate, the costs
associated with incarcerating them again. Put another way, each dollar spent on funding prison education
programs reduces incarceration costs by $4 to $5 during the first three years after an individual is released,
the period when those leaving prison are most likely to return.
 AT: Executive Orders

Executive orders make republicans angry

Grasgreen 15 [Allie Grasgreen, staff writer, 7-31-2015, "Kids Before Cons Act aims to fight
Pell Grants for prisoners ," POLITICO, http://www.politico.com/story/2015/07/pell-grants-
prisioners-obama-administration-120850]
The Obama administration moved Friday to make state and federal prisoners eligible for
Pell Grants — reversing a two-decade-old policy that was a signature of the “tough on
crime” era — and quickly shot back at lawmakers who called it federal overreach. The
plan, first confirmed by POLITICO earlier last week, already has several critics in Congress: A House bill
introduced Thursday, the Kids Before Cons Act, would bar the Education Department from its plan to pilot the idea. And Rep. John
Kline (R-Minn.), who chairs the House education committee, accused President Barack Obama of acting through
“executive fiat” and “without regard for the law.” “The administration absolutely does not have the authority
to do this without approval from Congress,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), chairman of the Senate education committee,
which is working to reauthorize the very law Obama is bypassing. Yet that law — the
Higher Education Act — is also
where the department found the authority to proceed with its pilot program. It allows
for limited “experimental
sites” with federal financial aid waivers. (The department has several other experiments underway.) “ We
absolutely have the legal authority to do this , and anyone who comes and says we don’t is flat-out wrong,”
Education Secretary Arne Duncan said during a visit to Goucher College’s Prison Education Partnership at the Maryland
Correctional Institution, where he and Attorney General Loretta Lynch officially announced the program. “Quite frankly, us moving
forward might encourage Congress to step up and have a meaningful conversation about who we want to continue to lock up,”
Duncan said. The site, dubbed the Second Chance Pell Pilot, will measure the effects of restoring access to Pell Grants for
prisoners, including whether it leads to jobs. It’s not clear how much the project will cost, how many colleges will participate or how
many prisoners would benefit. Republican Rep. Chris Collins, who dropped the bill to head the department off before the
also “actively looking into” blocking the experiment through the
program gets underway, is
appropriations process, an aide said. But Rep. Chris Van Hollen, ranking member of the House budget committee who
also appeared at the prison on Friday, said he’s “confident” the president would veto an appropriations bill squashing the program.
“We will fight any effort to try to end this important initiative,” Van Hollen said. In all, the federal government doles out about $150
billion each year in higher education grants and loans, and America has the highest incarceration rate in the world, with 1.5 million
prisoners, about 600,000 of whom are in state or federal facilities. “For the money we currently spend on prison, we could provide
universal pre-K for every 3- and 4-year-old in America or double the salary of every high school teacher in the country,” Duncan said
in a prepared statement. “America is a nation of second chances. Giving people who have made mistakes in their lives a chance to
get back on track and become contributing members of society is fundamental to who we are — it can also be a cost-saver for
taxpayers.” From 1972-95, before Congress issued the ban, inmates received $34.6 million a year in Pell Grants. Without grants,
scholarships or private money to pay for courses or colleges willing to waive all fees and send their staff to teach behind bars,
earning degrees in prison is nearly impossible. But proponents tout the long-term payoff: According to a 2013 Rand Corp. study paid
for by the Justice Department, every dollar invested in prison education programs saves $4 to $5 on incarceration costs down the
road. That study also found that prisoners who participate in education programs are 43 percent less likely than nonparticipants to
return to prison within three years, and 13 percent more likely to have jobs upon their release. Congressional Democrats make the
same argument. Rep. Donna Edwards of Maryland, who sponsored a bill that would lift the ban, and House education committee
ranking member Bobby Scott of Virginia, a co-sponsor of the bill, also spoke at the prison. The Goucher program offers regular
courses to inmates at that facility and the Maryland Correctional Institution for Women. Goucher enrolls close to 200 prisoners. “We
have to do the work of changing the hearts and minds of people in Congress,” Edwards said. Her Democratic colleague Rep. Elijah
Cummings of Maryland, another of the bill’s 44 co-sponsors, was optimistic that more members of the GOP are getting on board
with criminal justice reform. He mentioned Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) — “no flaming liberal.” “I think we are headed in the
right direction, and I think this program fits right into that” movement, Cummings said. Administration officials haven’t discussed
whether the ban should be lifted, Duncan said. But prohibiting the aid “didn’t make sense,” he said. Current law allows adults in
local, municipal and county correctional facilities to get grants to pay for college, so long as they meet other eligibility requirements.
No prisoners can get student loans, however, and the proposed federal experimental site does not affect eligibility for any other form
of financial aid. Interested colleges must apply by Sept. 1 to participate during the 2016-17 academic year. When weighing
applicants, Education Department officials “will consider evidence that demonstrates a strong record on student outcomes” and how
well the colleges have administered student aid programs. Collins’ Kids Before Cons Act would also establish a study on whether
students enrolled at charter or private schools as a result of participation in a voucher program are less likely to end up in prison
than children in traditional public schools with similar geographic and parental income characteristics. The idea: Reduce
imprisonment on the front end, rather than spending money on the back end. “The
Obama administration’s plan to
put the cost of a free college education for criminals on the backs of the taxpayers is
consistent with their policy of rewarding lawbreakers while penalizing hardworking
Americans,” said Collins (R-N.Y.). Last year, Republicans helped tank a proposal by New York Gov.
Andrew Cuomo to spend tax dollars on college courses for prisoners, even though the $1 million
idea paled in comparison to annual state spending on prisons — $2.8 billion.
Neg Updates
Politics/Midterms Links
 Plan Unpopular (Policymakers)

Funding for prison education is the Third Rail in American politics – plan
causes backlash

Stern ‘14
(Kaia, Kaia Stern is Director of the Prison Studies Project and Lecturer in
the Department of Sociology at Harvard Uni-versity. Her work focuses on
transformative justice, human rights, and education in prison., Saint Louis
University Public Law Review, “Prison Education And Our Will To Punish,”
pg lexis//um-ef)
In the face of what seem like clear-cut, common-sense facts about the cost-effectiveness
and public safety benefits of prison education, why do programs continue to face
continual threats to their funding? Why does the public have [*455] such a hard time
embracing the idea of prison education as a source of personal trans-formation? The
idea that people who end up in prison deserve whatever happens to them there is still
hugely pervasive in American culture . n78 This continuing "spirit of punishment,"
combined with the increasing cost of health care, a deteriorating economy, and steadily
worsening public schools, has decreased the public's tolerance for programs which
benefit people who have been convicted of a crime. It has become a kind of political
third rail in American politics to advocate not only for educational programs, but also for
programmatic funding which benefits people in prison . It is not hard to hear the spirit of
punishment flourishing in the rhetoric: the evil criminal who cannot be redeemed, the
"other" who is diverting funds for prison education away from the law abiding, tax-
paying citi-zens.

And, the plan will be labelled as “soft on crime”

Gershon ‘15
(Livia, “Bringing Education To Prisoners,” pg online @
https://daily.jstor.org/bringing-education-prisoners/
The debate over the value of correctional education has been going on for a long time. In a
two-part paper, Thom Gehring and William R. Muth look at efforts for better education for prisoners between 1840 and 1940.
Gehring and Muth start the first half of their paper with Alexander Maconochie, who oversaw British penal colonies on islands off the
Australian coast from 1837 to 1844. Maconochie curbed the use of flogging and chains, which had been common before, and
pioneered a system that let well-behaved convicts earn increasing freedoms. Maconochie founded a library and a system of adult
schools staffed by educated convicts, as well as Protestant and Catholic churches. Maconochie’s experiment was cut short,
however, after free Australian colonists took umbrage at his policies—in particular, a day of outdoor picnicking and entertainment for
the prisoners held to celebrate Queen Victoria’s birthday. A few years later, in the U.S., Zebulon Brockway learned of Maconochie’s
ideas. At the time, it was common for whole prisons full of convicts to be held in constant solitary confinement—a system that drove
many prisoners insane. Brockway began applying Maconochie’s reforms at the Detroit House of Correction in the 1860s, creating
academic, vocational, and social education programs. Brockway was a well-connected leader in the U.S. prison management world,
and he helped make correctional education an accepted, mainstream idea in the country. Gehring and Muth take up the second part
of their story with Thomas Mott Osborn, who became warden of Sing Sing Prison in New York in 1915. Osborn inherited a prison
that still punished prisoners with flogging and kept them locked in their cells whenever they weren’t at work. Quickly, he made some
radical changes, establishing a democratic system to allow the prisoners to govern themselves. There was also a system of inmate
courts, which Osborn said functioned as “a sort of large class in Social Ethics.” In the first year of his wardenship, injuries due to
violence dropped 60 percent, while prisoner morale rose dramatically. Like Maconochie, Osborne ran into intense opposition from
corrections managers who saw him as “going soft” on criminals, Gehring and Muth write. He was indicted on fake charges, and,
despite being found innocent, he lost the support of prison managers. He had to curtail his experiment. The final reformer that
Gehring and Muth point to was Austin MacCormick, who wrote what Gehring and Muth call “the definitive volume on correctional
education,” helping to define the field for the modern era. Yet, more than 80 years later, reformers seeking to expand
education for prisoners continue to be dismissed as foolhardy and soft on crime.

And, that carries MASSIVE political risk

Gudrais ‘13
(Elizabeth, “The Prison Problem,” pg online @
http://harvardmagazine.com/2013/03/the-prison-problem //um-ef)
American inmates
Liem, a practicing forensic psychologist in the Netherlands who first came to Boston in 2009, was struck by the way
are “treated as subhuman.” That they wear jumpsuits and are referred to by number instead of name; that sex offenders are made
to register publicly; that felons in some states lose their voting rights for life—all contribute to a “sense of otherness,” she says. “This idea that once you
made a mistake and forever you have to pay for it is striking.” She suggests that instead it is possible to have compassion for both the victim and the
perpetrator. For his part, Braga says he understands public opposition to services for convicted criminals, especially for violent offenders. But, he says,
“if we’re trying to reduce overall levels of victimization, it seems like you’d want to do something that makes it less likely that people are going to
continue committing crimes.” Western estimates that the cost of providing job placement, transitional housing, and drug treatment for all released
He has been disappointed
prisoners who need it would be $7 billion—one-tenth of current state and federal spending on corrections.
that the Obama administration has not taken a stronger stand on prison reform. “We’re
still in an era where being soft on crime carries political risk,” he notes, but he has fresh hopes for the
president’s second term.

And, prison education programs are HIGHLY contentious – cause fights

Phelps ’13
(Michelle, “Rehabilitation in the Punitive Era: The Gap between Rhetoric
and Reality in U.S. Prison Programs,” pg online @
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3762476/ //um-ef)
The second part of the “why” question is what happened in the 1990s. The decline in participation rates for academic programs looks like a direct consequence of the de-
investment in educational staff and suggests that academic programs became a less important a priority to policy-makers and/or prison bureaucrats and administrators.
However, it is not clear what caused this devaluation of prison academic programs and whether it was a conscious policy decision to switch to reentry programs or a result of
other economic and practical factors. In tough economic or politically contentious times, educational staff may be seen as more expendable (or less unionized and politically

Educators may in particular compete with professional staff

powerful) than correctional officers and professional staff.

members, who may have become increasingly important in managing special-need

populations, such as the mentally infirm, chronically ill, elderly, and female inmates (Blomberg & Lucken 2000). It is also true that the politics of
education for inmates, especially higher education, are deeply contentious , making it hard for policy-
makers to support expanded access to education for incarcerated individuals (Page 2004).
Risk of being seen as soft on crime

Phelps ’13
(Michelle, Ph.D. candidate in Sociology and Social Policy at Princeton
University. Her interests are in the sociology of punishment, particularly
the punitive turn in the U.S. and the relationship between mass
incarceration and probation sentences. Ms. Phelps is a recipient of the
National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship and the Jacob
K. Javits Department of Education Graduate Fellowship.“Rehabilitation in
the Punitive Era: The Gap between Rhetoric and Reality in U.S. Prison
Programs,” pg online @
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3762476/ //um-ef)
One consequence of the decline in support for welfare policies and trust in experts or
professionals was a shift in the balance of power among the public, criminal justice
professionals, and legislators (Garland 2001). Instead of experts setting criminal justice policies and professionals implementing
decisions for individual cases, this new mode of governance focused on populist and racially-coded “law and order” rhetoric (Scheingold 1984; Beckett
1997; Simon 2007). This new rhetoric was matched with increased legislation around criminal justice policies (such as sentencing guidelines,
mandatory minimum sentences, and repeat offender laws) that transferred decision-making power away from administrators, judges, and parole
boards and towards legislators and voters (Zimring et al. 2003; Pratt 2007). With politicians in greater control of
correctional policy and increasingly worried about appearing “soft on crime,” it became
harder to continue funding prison programs (Jacobson 2005).

Creates partisan fights

Levy 11, (Stephen, Washington Times 6/15.11 “Radical Muslims recruit criminals in U.S.
prisons” http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/jun/15/radical-muslims-recruit-criminals-
in-us-prisons/)//eliben
Kevin Smith, former attorney general for California’s Central District, said radical clerics who
convert inmates to their
cause have passed along a distorted form of Islam he called “Prislam.” The experts
disagreed about whether radicalized convicts can communicate with terrorists outside
prison, potentially increasing the danger of coordinated attacks. Bert Useem, a sociology professor at Purdue University, said
prison authorities had become more effective at limiting communication in and out of their facilities. Mr. Dunleavy disagreed and
said, “Despite appearances, prison walls are porous.” The hearing sparked debate of the
topic of Islamic radicalization between Republicans and Democrats, with many
Democrats stating that hearing was too narrowly focused. “Limiting this committee’s
oversight of radicalization to one religion ignores threats posed by violent extremists of
all stripes, and there are other threats to be concerned about,” said Rep. Bennie G. Thompson,
Mississippi Democrat and ranking member. Laura Richardson, California Democrat, said the committee
was unjustly singling out Muslims in its investigation of radicalization.
It’s controversial – Obama proposal proves – Republicans don’t want to
reward criminality
- This card is about postsecondary prison programs – can be spun to link to both the plan
and the counterplan

Schwartzapfel 15 [Beth Schwartzapfel, staff writer, winner of the June 2014 Sidney Award,
the 2016 James Aronson Award, and the 2016 John Jay College/H.F. Guggenheim Prize for
Excellence in Criminal Justice Reporting7-30-2015, "Obama Is Reinstating Pell Grants for
Prisoners," Marshall Project, https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/07/30/obama-is-
reinstating-pell-grants-for-prisoners#.5Y2IKX8WG] //adres
“The reality is that it’sgoing to become a political issue rather than a fiscal issue,” Heller said.The
politics can be searing. In February of last year, Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York announced a plan to make
associate- and bachelor-degree programs available in 10 state prisons. “Giving men and women in
prison the opportunity to earn a college degree costs our state less and benefits our society more,” he said. Almost
immediately, Republicans in Albany pounced, launching a “Hell No to Attica University” petition; three of New
York’s Representatives in Washington introduced the Kids Before Cons Act, which would have prohibited federal money from
funding college programs in prison. “ The whole notion of rewarding bad behavior is completely
backwards ,” said State Senator George Maziarz. “It is simply beyond belief to give criminals a competitive edge in the job
market over law-abiding New Yorkers who forgo college because of the high cost.” Just six weeks after his announcement, Cuomo
retreated, acknowledging the program was too politically controversial .Under the Obama administration
initiative, the Education Department will put out a call for proposals from colleges and universities seeking funding to provide
correctional education; though it would be up to Congress to fully reinstate the program, the Higher Education Act gives the
president the authority to create pilot programs. Secretary Duncan hinted at the coming announcement during an unrelated speech
Monday at the University of Maryland–Baltimore County. Education Department officials, speaking on background, confirmed the
plan and say Duncan will release more details Friday — including how many pilot sites the program will fund. Reaction from
hard-liners in Congress was swift. Rep. Chris Collins, a New York Republican, on Wednesday introduced a bill “to
prohibit the awarding of Federal Pell Grants to incarcerated individuals, and for other purposes.” (Collins was also a co-sponsor of
last year’s “Kids Before Cons” Act.) In May, Maryland House Democrat Donna Edwards introduced the Restoring Education and
Learning (REAL) Act. A spokesman for Edwards says the Congresswoman hopes Obama’s action might provide some momentum
for the bill — but its co-sponsors are all Democrats and currently has no sponsor in the
Senate.
 Plan Unpopular (Public)

And, its universally UNPOPULAR with the public

Phelps ’13
(Michelle, Ph.D. candidate in Sociology and Social Policy at Princeton
University. Her interests are in the sociology of punishment, particularly
the punitive turn in the U.S. and the relationship between mass
incarceration and probation sentences. Ms. Phelps is a recipient of the
National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship and the Jacob
K. Javits Department of Education Graduate Fellowship.“Rehabilitation in
the Punitive Era: The Gap between Rhetoric and Reality in U.S. Prison
Programs,” pg online @
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3762476/ //um-ef)
It is also interesting to note that this shift in emphasis from education to reentry programs is
aligned with broader changes in the conception of criminals. Whereas academic programs strive
to give inmates the tools they need to overcome histories of social disadvantage, reentry related
counseling programs provide techniques for inmates to manage themselves (e.g. anger
management training) and to advocate for their own advancement (e.g. job application training).
This focus on internal management and practical tools for reentry is consistent with the recent
shift back towards the rational actor model of crime (Lynch 2008) and the neo-liberal emphasis
on personal responsibility in contemporary politics (Wacquant 2009). As intensive general
education and counseling programs were perhaps seen as the best response to deficient
neighborhood and family conditions in the rehabilitative era, short and direct reentry related
programs that change inmates’ cognitive-behavioral patterns and give them instructions on how
to find employment after release may be the new ideal-type response for the punitive era. It
should be noted that this shift was by no means pre-determined, since education programs
could have also been re-framed in the rational actor model as a way to increase ex-felons’
earning potential and therefore make crime a less attractive alternative. However, as discussed
above, this perspective is notoriously hard to sell to the public given the extreme hostility
towards government funding of prison education programs.

And, your “rehabilitation popular” cards don’t apply – the public doesn’t
associate prison education with rehabilitation

Phelps ’13
(Michelle, Ph.D. candidate in Sociology and Social Policy at Princeton
University. Her interests are in the sociology of punishment, particularly
the punitive turn in the U.S. and the relationship between mass
incarceration and probation sentences. Ms. Phelps is a recipient of the
National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship and the Jacob
K. Javits Department of Education Graduate Fellowship.“Rehabilitation in
the Punitive Era: The Gap between Rhetoric and Reality in U.S. Prison
Programs,” pg online @
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3762476/ //um-ef)
Turning to broader conclusions, these results have important implications for punishment
theories that focus on the meanings of rehabilitation and punitiveness. First, while there was
remarkably continuity in programs between 1979 and 1990, when the rhetoric would have
suggested profound changes, the composition and meaning of prison programs did change
quite dramatically in the 1990s. This shows that although punishment may always be “braided”
or “variegated,” it can still shift in form as political and administrative realities change
(Hutchinson 2006). Second, the results provide another example of the historically-contingent
meaning of rehabilitation and suggest that in the contemporary era, rehabilitation is increasingly
being redefined as practical “how-to” classes and general counseling programs for inmates
rather than personal transformation through education.

Providing prisoners with education remains unpopular

WNYC 14 (WNYC – non-profit, noncommercial, public radio station located in New York City -
“Should We Give Prisoners a College Education?” – 4/11/14 - http://www.wnyc.org/story/reform-
and-reeducation-corrections-system/)/TK
On Monday in Austin, President Barack Obama reflected on Lyndon B. Johnson's legacy 50 years
after the passage of the Civil Rights Act. He spoke too about the policies his own
administration has overseen, and the civil rights victories of recent years.¶ But one thing
President Obama has not been able to tackle is corrections system. The number of people
incarcerated in the United States has quadrupled since 1980. Today, Americans make up 5 percent of
the world population but the U.S. has 25 percent of the world's prisoners, with more than 2 million people locked up. ¶ Nearly
half of all ex-prisoners return to prison within three years for committing new crimes. How
can we do a better job of “correcting” and reeducating prisoners to break the cycle of recidivism? One answer could be college.
Research suggests that inmates who participated in prison college programs are 43
percent less likely to return to a life of crime. But the idea of giving prisoners a college
education remains unpopular.
 Plan Popular

And, prison education no longer associated with “soft on crime” labels

Jones ‘11
(“Prison Education,” pg online @ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-
jones/prison-education_b_423065.html //um-ef)
The national unemployment rate for black males without a high school education just crept past
24 percent and climbing. People coming out of prison with a criminal record and no high school
education are virtually unemployable. If you’ve got people locked up for months and years on
end, literally a captive population, the opportunity to engage in intense educational and
vocational training is just too good a chance to miss. The possibility of linking completion of high
school or a GED and college programs to early release seems to be a no-brainer. Nor does it
hold the political liabilities of being soft on crime that once so dominated the political debate. In
the closing days of the last Bush administration, the Republicans came up with the first efforts at
improving job training for reentry populations.

And, the plan is popular – shift in public and political opinion on prison
rehab

Phelps ’13
(Michelle, Ph.D. candidate in Sociology and Social Policy at Princeton
University. Her interests are in the sociology of punishment, particularly
the punitive turn in the U.S. and the relationship between mass
incarceration and probation sentences. Ms. Phelps is a recipient of the
National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship and the Jacob
K. Javits Department of Education Graduate Fellowship.“Rehabilitation in
the Punitive Era: The Gap between Rhetoric and Reality in U.S. Prison
Programs,” pg online @
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3762476/ //um-ef)
Finally, while much of the punishment literature in recent years has focused on the return of
chain gangs, tough policies for youth, removing televisions from prison cells, and similarly
punitive measures, there has also been a resurgence of support in recent years for rehabilitative
programs, particularly for felons returning to their communities after imprisonment and
individuals convicted of non-violent drug crimes, and alternatives to the traditional court and
prison systems, including drug courts and alternative to incarceration programs (Berman et al.
2005). This suggests that while certain aspects of the criminal justice system (particularly the
number of people incarcerated) have become more punitive, other aspects may not have
followed the same trajectory. According to Cullen (2005), rehabilitation has been “saved,” while
Simon (2008) more cautiously notes that it is “back on the table,” particularly in the context of
reentry services (10). Lynch (2008) argues that there have increasingly been signs of a return to
a more nuanced and compassionate perspective on crime in the media and wider public and
Jacobson (2005) and Steen and Bandy (2007) show that some states are using recent budget
crises as an opportunity to downsize their correctional populations and increase program
opportunities. These perspectives suggest that prison programs, particularly those related to
reentry services, may have actually become more politically palatable in recent years and that
we may see contemporary increases in prison programming.

Prison reform bipartisan – unites all camps of conservatives and liberals

Mark 7/27 [Michelle Mark, news reporter at Business Insider. She graduated from Columbia
University's Graduate School of Journalism in 2015, and has previously worked at the Canadian
Press and International Business Times. 7-27-2017, "One of the reddest states in the US is
leading the charge toward criminal-justice reform thanks to an unlikely political alliance,"
Business Insider, http://www.businessinsider.com/texas-criminal-justice-reform-conservatives-
liberals-bipartisan-alliance-2017-7]
Until 2005, criminal-justice reform had been nearly impossible to pass in Texas, as was the case in many conservative states.
Reformers were derided as "soft on crime" while even popular bills ran into vetoes from Republicans like Gov.
Rick Perry, budget crises, and tough-on-crime district attorneys, many of whom view securing harsh sentences as a metric of
success. But with Texas's prisons bursting at the seams, legislators were faced with a choice: reduce incarceration with reforms or
funnel billions into new prisons. At the same time, a new movement emerged among conservatives, led by
Marc Levin, the director of the Right on Crime campaign created by the right-leaning Texas Public Policy Foundation. Levin, an
Austin-based attorney and public-policy expert, and other conservatives like him understood
ideas such as
addressing substance abuse with treatment rather than incarceration, and promoting
parole, probation, and reentry programs, as inherent to conservative ideology, not
antithetical to it. Meanwhile, fiscal conservatives in the state had grown appalled by the taxpayer
burden of funding and maintaining new prisons, while libertarians were cynical of the broad
government power required to funnel vast numbers of Texans through prisons each year. Social conservatives
like Prison Fellowship, an evangelical Christian organization founded by Chuck Colson, a former Watergate-era felon,
approached reform after witnessing through their prison-ministry programs how rarely
inmates were given opportunities for redemption. "You really had a point where the only thing that was
standing against reform from the conservative perspective ... would just be the muscle memory of being 'tough on crime' for
decades," Derek Cohen, the deputy director of Right on Crime, told Business Insider. What propelled reform forward, however, was
that those groups were able to join with liberals long clamoring for change in the Republican-
controlled state. The movement formed the Texas Smart On Crime Coalition to push their agenda in the statehouse and, while the
coalition is bipartisan, that doesn't mean they agree on everything.

Congress opposes Trump’s crime stance

- Can be spun to say that Trump can’t take credit for the plan
Mark 7/27 [Michelle Mark, news reporter at Business Insider. She graduated from Columbia
University's Graduate School of Journalism in 2015, and has previously worked at the Canadian
Press and International Business Times. 7-27-2017, "One of the reddest states in the US is
leading the charge toward criminal-justice reform thanks to an unlikely political alliance,"
Business Insider, http://www.businessinsider.com/texas-criminal-justice-reform-conservatives-
liberals-bipartisan-alliance-2017-7]
Texas' smart-on-crime crusade has come to be viewed as a model for conservative states
like Louisiana, Georgia, and Kentucky, which all recently passed major reform packages. Those efforts come even as
President Donald Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions have embraced a tough-on-
crime agenda that has alarmed progressives and conservatives alike. In May, Sessions directed
US attorneys to seek the harshest charges and sentences against defendants and, last week, he rolled back Obama-era reforms to
the policing practice known as civil-asset forfeiture — a way for the federal government to seize the assets of citizens suspected of
criminal activity, even if they are not formally charged with a crime. In many ways,the Trump administration is alone
on criminal justice. Multiple Democrats and Republicans decried the civil forfeiture changes as unconstitutional and the
sentencing directive as regressive. The vast majority of conservatives and liberals agree that
incarceration in the US has spun out of control. The country has, by far, the largest incarcerated population in
the world at 2.3 million people. Cohen, of Right on Crime, says he is "very optimistic" that federal reform could still
happen soon. Last year, Congress came close to passing bipartisan reforms to mandatory minimum sentencing laws. Many
reformers criticize the laws, which require prison terms of certain lengths for certain crimes, as cruel and counterproductive. The
effort stalled as Trump turned to tough-on-crime rhetoric in the election, scaring many Republicans into thinking they'd be painted as
soft. It's not hard to see a rare bipartisan effort gaining momentum, particularly given the criminal-
justice system's ties to the opioid crisis, which has seen an unprecedented spike in heroin and prescription painkiller abuse in recent
years. Lawmakersand the public alike have begun to recognize that the country cannot
punish its way out of drug epidemics, Cohen said, adding that there has been "a very marked shift" toward seeing
illicit drug use as an offense fueled by addiction, rather than a moral failing. texas inmates prison program Associated Press/Pat
Sullivan

Prison education popular with Republicans

Pyke 15 [Alan Pyke, 8-2-2015, Deputy Economic Policy Editor, covering poverty, criminal-
justice profiteering, police violence, & robber barons. "Why The Obama Administration Wants
To Pay For Prisoners To Go To School," ThinkProgress, https://thinkprogress.org/why-the-
obama-administration-wants-to-pay-for-prisoners-to-go-to-school-
8bff020e80eb?gi=843897f606fa] //adres
A couple of conservative lawmakers have already introduced splashy legislation aimed not just at maintaining the prohibition on Pell
behind bars, but even seeking to prevent Duncan and Obama from using their existing powers to test out pilot program ideas. But
the lawmakers present Friday were confident that most of their Republican colleagues support the
principle underlying the prison Pell Grant system and are persuaded by the budget
math. “We have a policy that everybody knows will reduce crime and save money,” said Rep.
Bobby Scott (D-VA). “The alternative view is that there is a better message. Although it increases expenditures, costs money, and
increases crime, it is a better message. And so we have a choice: reduce crime and save money, or we can increase crime and
waste money.” Many pointed out that this isn’t and never has been a partisan matter. “We hope to be able to
do something evidence-based that will help Congress to reverse what they did 20 years ago. And to be clear, that was reversed by
Democrats and Republicans,” Duncan said. “I just hope we’re smarter and wiser. And I keep coming back to 700,000 people coming
out of our prisons back into our communities and streets every single year. What do we want them to look like?”

Even if it gets pushback, the financial benefits ensure congressional

support
- This card is about the DOE not DOJ but could still be useful for the aff

Fain 15 [Paul Fain, news editor for Inside Higher Ed, 5-20-2015, "Prisoners might get access
to Pell grants for first time in two decades," PBS NewsHour,
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/prisoners-might-get-access-pell-grants-first-time-two-
decades/] //adres
While the Education Department is certain to get some pushback if it goes forward with the
experimental sites program, several experts said the timing is right. Currently, 40 percent of
the 700,000 men and women who are released from prison each year will be incarcerated again
in three years. Most states face serious budget challenges, with Medicaid and pension
obligations squeezing out other priorities. So there is more urgency to find a way to keep
released prisoners from returning for another expensive stint behind bars. Some
Republican state lawmakers support prison education programs, experts said, because they like
the clear return on investment. “It is financially wise,” said John Dowdell, coeditor of The Journal
of Correctional Education. “It’s time to get over the emotional bias and do what the data says.”

Prison reform and education in prisons is bipart

Robinson and English 16 (Gerard Robinson - resident fellow at the American Enterprise
Institute (AEI), where he works on education policy issues including choice in public and private
schools, regulatory development and implementation of K-12 laws, the role of for-profit
institutions in education, prison education and reentry, rural education, and the role of
community colleges and Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) in adult
advancement; Elizabeth English - AEI resident fellow Gerard Robinson and AEI education
policy studies research assistant – “Can incarceration reform be a bipartisan issue?” – 4/25/16 -
http://www.aei.org/publication/can-incarceration-reform-be-a-bipartisan-issue/)/TK
In recent years, many inside the Beltway have taken to the idea that incarceration
reform is a bipartisan policy
issue. In presidential debates, in speeches, and even in Congress, politicians and thought leaders have
emphasized the need to reform our broken prison system, citing the nation’s roughly 2.2
million prison population and shameful 67.8% three-year recidivism rate. In February, presidential
hopeful Bernie Sanders said, “Here’s my promise, at the end of my first term as president we will not have more people in jail than
any other country.” In 2014, Newt Gingrich and Van Jones wrote, “Our overreliance on prisons has failed America…It is past time for
both political parties to come together and fix a bad system of their own making.” ¶ These ideas are not just talk. In 2015 alone,
several states and Congress dropped bills focused on sentencing reforms, repealing mandatory
minimums, and eliminating questions about applicants’ criminal records on job applications. These measures were supported by
Democrats and Republicans alike. Given the local nature of incarceration reform, entire communities can get behind these ideas.¶
But reforming the nation’s incarceration system is about more than front-end reforms. It’s just as much about ensuring that the
incarcerated are able to return to society as productive and healthy pieces of the American social fabric . Prison education
and reentry programs are playing a large role on this side of the equation , with policy
entrepreneurs across the country testing approaches to reduce recidivism and increase opportunity for the formerly incarcerated.¶
Incarceration reform isn’t just about the front end; it’s just as much about what happens once prisoners are released from the prison
cell.¶ On
the right, these programs are viewed through the framing of free enterprise and
personal initiative. To empower the incarcerated, they need to believe that change is
possible in the first place. Many programs held up by those on the right are helping incarcerated men and women with
just that. The mindset here is that while government is charged with sentencing and punishing those who have committed crimes,
the private sector and social entrepreneurs have big roles to play in the solution. ¶ On
the left, prison education and
reentry programs are viewed as a matter of social equity and justice. Those on the left often feel
that government should provide block grants and a framework for how and what these programs look should like to ensure that all
prisoners are able to benefit. Programs that cannot help everyone are often viewed as less appealing, though we applaud the
government programs that work for those who take full advantage of them. ¶ We know that, if done well, prison
education and reentry programs can produce incredible results for those who go through
them. Covering everything from in-prison education services to post-release job opportunities and technical training, prison
education and reentry programs have demonstrated an ability to reduce recidivism rates dramatically. For example, a 2013 RAND
report showed that inmates who participated in a correctional education program were 43% less likely to return to prison than those
who did not. These programs can increase opportunity, save taxpayer dollars, and help ensure that those released from prison don’t
go back.
Bipartisan support for education funding in prisons and reducing
overcrowding
Jealous and Paige 11 (Benjamin Todd Jealous and Rod Paige – CNN – “Prison spending
bleeds education system” – 4/7/11 -
http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/04/07/jealous.prison.reform/index.html)/TK

(CNN) -- There is a bipartisan tide of lawmakers who are trying to fix our nation's out-of-
control corrections system, and make funding for education the priority .¶ California Gov.
Jerry Brown signed a bill to transfer thousands of nonviolent offenders from state
prisons to county jails, an admirable effort to reduce prison overcrowding and make
treatment programs more effective. In Virginia, Gov. Robert McDonnell is working to
close eight prison facilities and use that money to support higher education.¶ And Gov. Arnold
Schwarzenegger asked in his 2010 State of the State address: "What does it say about any state that focuses more on prison
uniforms than on caps and gowns?"¶ A new report by the NAACP, "Misplaced Priorities: Over Incarcerate, Under Educate" details
As prison populations have
the social and economic impact of runaway prison spending over the past 30 years.
grown, prison spending has squeezed out spending on education.
Other DA Stuff
Spending DA
 Spending Links (Interest Rates)
Their link turns take a long time for economic benefits, which are minimal,
to be reaped – the initial spending required is massive
Bidwell 13 (Allie Bidwell is an education reporter for U.S. News & World Report. “Report:
Prison Education Programs Could Save Money” US News; August 22, 2013;
https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/08/22/report-prison-education-programs-could-
save-money - LK)
Prison inmates who receive general education or vocational training are far less likely to
return to prison and significantly more likely to find employment after their release, according to a new report from a
nonprofit global policy think tank.¶ Researchers at the RAND Corporation found through an analysis of past studies, released on
Thursday, that inmates
who participate in correctional education programs have a 43 percent
lower chance of returning to prison than those who do not. Additionally, if prisoners participated in
academic or vocational education programs, their chances of employment after release
were 13 percent higher than their peers.¶ "Our findings suggest that we no longer need to debate whether
correctional education works," said lead researcher Lois Davis, in a statement. ¶ Each year, about 700,000 people leave federal and
state prisons and about half of them return to prison within three years, according to the Department of Justice. The report suggests
that education programs can help lower the costs associated with returning to jail. ¶ Educational programs cost
about $1,400 to $1,744 per inmate each year, according to the report , and can save
prisons between $8,700 and $9,700 per inmate, the costs associated with incarcerating them again.
Put another way, each dollar spent on funding prison education programs reduces incarceration
costs by $4 to $5 during the first three years after an individual is released , the period when those leaving prison
are most likely to return.

The aff takes stagnant funds and pumps them into the economy via prison
education, especially GED reforms, Congress cut the funding now – the aff
requires many sources of funding
Clarke 14 (Matthew Clarke is a very qualified staff writer for Prison Legal News; “Prison
Education Programs Threatened” Prison Legal News; May 19, 2014;
https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2014/may/19/prison-education-programs-threatened/ -
LK)
Corrections officials across the country fear that two recent developments will drastically limit educational opportunities for prisoners
– a scenario that research indicates could lead to higher recidivism rates.¶ First, Congress failed to renew federal
funding in 2011, 2012 and 2013 for a grant program that helps finance higher education courses
for prisoners. The grants, known as Specter funds – named after correctional education advocate and late-
U.S. Senator Arlen Specter – provided money to state prison systems that helped underwrite a
portion of the cost of post-secondary programs for prisoners.¶ The second development
concerns significant changes in the GED program that allows people to earn the
equivalent of a high school diploma. Starting on January 1, 2014, the test was realigned
to match Common Core State Standards, and the old pencil-and-paper exams were eliminated in favor of a
computer-based test. Most prisons and jails that offer GED classes will be affected by the

change. ¶ ¶ Prison Education Research¶ ¶ The elimination of Specter funds compounds the woes of
prison education programs that are already suffering from cuts imposed by states facing
budget shortfalls. A study conducted by the non-profit RAND Corporation on behalf of the federal Bureau of Justice
Assistance found that states reduced funding for prison education programs by an average of
6% between fiscal years 2009 and 2012. The study reported that states with large prison populations
cut prison education funding by 10%, on average, while states with medium-sized
populations slashed education budgets by an average of 20%.¶ The February 2014 RAND report,
“How Effective is Correctional Education, and Where Do We Go from Here?,” found that academic courses were hardest hit by the
state funding cuts.¶ “There has been a dramatic contraction of the prison education system,
particularly those programs focused on academic instruction versus vocational training ,”
said Lois Davis, a RAND senior policy researcher and the study’s lead author. “There are now
fewer teachers, fewer course offerings and fewer students enrolled in academic
education programs,” she remarked in a statement released along with the report.¶ Further, the study found that on
average, every dollar spent on prison education programs results in a savings of four to five dollars in the
cost of re-incarcerating prisoners within the three years following their release, due to lower recidivism rates.¶ “We need to
weigh the short-term need to reduce budgets with the long-term consequence of
trimming programs that help keep people from returning to prison after they have paid
their debt to society,” Davis said.¶ The RAND report integrated a 2013 meta-analysis of more than 30 years of previous
research which concluded that “inmates who participated in correctional education programs had 43% lower odds of returning to
prison than inmates who did not.” The positive impact of prison-based education programs on recidivism rates has long been
known. [See: PLN, March 2012, p.10].¶ “These findings reinforce the need to become smarter on crime by expanding proven
strategies for keeping our communities safe, and ensuring that those who have paid their debts to society have the chance to
become productive citizens,” U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said when the meta-analysis findings were released in August
2013.¶ “Correctional education programs provide incarcerated individuals with the skills and knowledge essential to their futures,”
added U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. “Investing in these education programs helps released prisoners get back on their
feet Рand stay on their feet Рwhen they return to communities across the country.Ӧ Further, the RAND report determined the odds
of an offender finding employment after release from prison was 13% higher for those who participated in academic or vocational
programs compared to those who did not. Prisoners
who received vocational training were 28% more
likely to obtain post-release employment.¶ Despite the numerous studies that have linked
increased educational opportunities to lower recidivism rates, state officials are
skeptical about future federal funding for post-secondary prison education programs – which
was largely gutted after such programs were barred from receiving federal Pell grants
under President Clinton in 1994. [See: PLN, Jan. 1998, p.4; Dec. 1994, p.7]. As a result of the loss of Pell grants, college programs
for prisoners dropped from approximately 350 nationwide to around a dozen, according to The New York Times. ¶ ¶ Loss of Specter
Funds¶ ¶ The discontinuation of federal Specter funds starting in 2011 has prison education
officials nationwide scrambling to find alternative funding sources. ¶ “I’m not a pessimistic person,
but I don’t see this one coming back any time soon,” said Stephen Steurer, executive director of the National Correctional Education
Association (NCEA), in reference to the end of Specter funds. “We’re cutting our own throats,” he added.¶ Specter funds had been
provided through the Grants to States for Workplace and Community Transition Training for Incarcerated Individuals, 20 U.S.C. §
1151.¶ For example, Minnesota’s prison system received around $150,000 per year in
Specter funds; the money was used to partner with state colleges and universities, which provided teachers and class
materials. When the funding was cut in 2011, the partnership did not dissolve because the state
prison system had a surplus from previous years, but that was only temporary. Minnesota prison officials
have admitted they don’t know where they will secure new funding, but vowed to
continue looking.¶ “It’s an important program, and we’re going to do what we can to try and keep it continuing,” insisted
George Kimball, the prison system’s director for adult education.¶ Other state corrections officials have found themselves in a similar
position; about a third of the nation’s prisons offer post-secondary education programs of some type.¶ West Virginia will be cutting
classes by half or worse, according to Fran Warsing, superintendent of the state’s Office of Institutional Education Programs.¶
“There’s no money,” complained Warsing. “They did away with Pell grants, and now they’ve done away with this.”¶ In Florida,
Specter funds were used to support a number of prison vocational programs, including web design courses at the Lawtey
Correctional Institution and Hernando Correctional Institution; a culinary arts program at the Madison Correctional Institution; and a
landscape irrigation course at the Suwannee Correctional Institution.¶ NCEA
President Don Kiffin, who is in
charge of education at a prison in Oklahoma, said his institution was down to its last
semester of funding after losing $7,000 to $10,000 in annual Specter funds.¶ “A lot of people
coming to me that want to go to school [are] wondering why I can’t give them money to go,” Kiffin stated. “I have to
pick, choose and refuse.”¶ “You can basically kiss the post-secondary programs goodbye,” remarked NCEA director
Steurer, referring to the Maryland prison system where he worked before retiring. ¶ Steurer said short-sighted politicians don’t look at
the long-term benefits of prisoner education, such as lower prison populations due to reduced recidivism or having more former
prisoners become productive, tax-paying citizens.¶ Legislation introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives, H.R. 803, known as
the SKILLS Act, repeals the statute that authorizes Specter funds and replaces it with a different federal funding initiative for prison
education programs. H.R. 803 passed in the House in March 2013; a companion bill in the Senate, S.B. 1911, was introduced in
January 2014 and has been referred to a committee.¶ ¶ Changes in GED Testing¶ ¶ Meanwhile, the RAND study predicted that
recent changes to GED testing will pose another threat to prison education programs. The report warned that the realignment of the
test to Common Core State Standards and the switch to a computer-based exam could have a negative impact on prisoners trying
to earn their GEDs.¶ “These two changes have important implications for correctional administrators and educators in terms of
preparing for and implementing the new test,” RAND stated. “Educators will need to be prepared to teach the [new standards] and
prepare students for a more rigorous GED test that will require students to demonstrate high-level thinking skills and exhibit deeper
levels of knowledge in four subject areas.Ӧ The report said the switch to a computer-based test will make the exam even more
difficult for prisoners in programs that generally have limited technology resources. It “will require educators to prepare students to
have a level of computer literacy and skills necessary to successfully navigate the test,” which in turn has “implications when it
comes to agency budgets and professional development needs of educators and present[s] a number of logistical concerns when it
comes to preparing to implement computer-based testing.Ӧ According to RAND, 31 states plan to use the
new, more
difficult GED exams. A survey of correctional education directors in those states found that 52% believe the new
tests will have a negative impact on the number of prisoners who earn GEDs. Further, 68%
indicated that as a result, they anticipate a decline in the number of prisoners participating in GED programs. ¶ The RAND report also
found that 42% of state prison education officials believe it will take more time for prisoners to prepare for the redesigned tests, and
45% said they expect fewer prisoners will be adequately prepared. ¶ Facilities that do not currently have computers to provide the
new tests can request a waiver to continue using paper exams on a temporary basis. According to the GED Testing Service,
“Prisons not able to offer computer-based testing will continue to offer the 2002 Series GED Test on paper for a limited approved
amount of time.Ӧ Over 75% of the states responding to the RAND survey reported that the increased cost of implementing
computer-based GED testing was a concern. The new GED exams will cost around $120 each, which,
according to USA Today, is a significant increase from the $70 average cost for paper
tests. In some jurisdictions the increase may be passed along to students in whole or part, though GED testing costs are
sometimes subsidized by public agencies.¶ As noted in the RAND report, the new GED exam comes on the heels of a growing trend
by states to slash funding for prisoner education. In Oregon, for example, Department of Corrections spokesman Betty Bernt said
the state cut roughly $100,000 from the department’s Adult Basic Skills Development program in the four years between 2009 and
2013. The budget cuts led to a nearly 13% drop in the number of prisoners participating in the program.¶ Due to the cost increase of
the new GED exam, some correctional facilities are switching to an alternative, less expensive high school equivalency test known
as HiSET.¶ ¶ A Case Study: Prison Education in New York¶ ¶ In New York, a senior official with the administration of Governor
Andrew Cuomo told reporters at a March 31, 2014 briefing that non-profit organizations and foundations had expressed interest in
financing the governor’s plan to expand college classes at 10 state prisons.¶ The announcement signaled the revival of a program
that Cuomo unveiled in February 2014, which was quickly scuttled after New York state lawmakers voiced fierce opposition to using
taxpayer dollars to fund college courses for prisoners.¶ Cuomo first detailed the proposal in a speech to the New York State Black,
Puerto Rican, Hispanic and Asian Legislative Caucus. The governor said New York spends about $60,000 per prisoner – what he
called “more money than it takes to send a person to Harvard for a year” – and that paying for one year of college education for the
same prisoner would cost about $5,000.¶ “We’re imprisoning, we’re isolating, but we’re not rehabilitating the way we should,”
Governor Cuomo said at the time.¶ The plan drew immediate praise from the Caucus. “A higher level of education will support these
men and women in moving forward with their lives, as opposed to returning to criminal activity and prison,” stated Caucus chairman
and state Assemblyman Karim Camara.¶ The deal-breaker for lawmakers, however, was the plan to use taxpayer money to fund the
initiative. Republican state Assemblyman Joe Borelli said the issue was not the proposal itself but rather that the plan favored one
group of people – prisoners – over another.¶ “The problem with the program is not the idea of rehabilitation for convicted felons,”
said Borelli. “The
problem is the fundamental inequity of the proposal.... How can we provide
a free education for people who have made the wrong choices in life, while we let the
people who made good choices struggle?Ӧ Borelli noted that college students in New York typically incur an
average of $25,537 in student loans.¶ Governor Cuomo had touted the plan as a way to reduce future prison spending. State data
shows that New York’s recidivism rate is approximately 40%. By comparison, since 1999 the rate of re-incarceration dropped to only
4% for prisoners who participated in an existing post-secondary education program sponsored by Bard College at six medium- and
maximum-security New York state prisons. As of 2013, more than 250 prisoners have obtained degrees through the Bard Prison
Initiative.¶ “I understand the sentiment” against using public funds to pay for colleges classes for prisoners, the governor conceded
at a news conference to mark the passage of the new state budget. “I don’t agree with it, but I understand it, and I understand the
appearance of it.Ӧ Currently, higher education programs are offered at 22 New York state
prisons; most are funded with private money. For example, the Prison-to-College
Pipeline, a project of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, began offering classes at the Otisville Correctional Facility in
2011. Other college programs are provided through Bard and Cornell University. ¶ Governor Cuomo’s proposed
initiative would have expanded existing programs so more prisoners could participate in
college courses and earn associate’s and bachelor’s degrees.
 Aff Answers

The plan reduces incarceration costs and saves money in total

By Allie Bidwell 13 - (“Report: Prison Education Programs Could Save Money”;Aug
22;https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/08/22/report-prison-education-programs-could-
save-money)//pkMORE
Prison inmates who receive general education or vocational training are far less likely to
return to prison and significantly more likely to find employment after their release,
according to a new report from a nonprofit global policy think tank. Researchers at the
RAND Corporation found through an analysis of past studies, released on Thursday, that
inmates who participate in correctional education programs have a 43 percent lower
chance of returning to prison than those who do not. Additionally, if prisoners
participated in academic or vocational education programs, their chances of employment
after release were 13 percent higher than their peers. "Our findings suggest that we no
longer need to debate whether correctional education works," said lead researcher Lois
Davis, in a statement. Each year, about 700,000 people leave federal and state prisons
and about half of them return to prison within three years, according to the Department of Justice. The
report suggests that education programs can help lower the costs associated with
returning to jail. Educational programs cost about $1,400 to $1,744 per inmate each year,
according to the report, and can save prisons between $8,700 and $9,700 per inmate , the
costs associated with incarcerating them again. Put another way, each dollar spent on
funding prison education programs reduces incarceration costs by $4 to $5 during the
first three years after an individual is released, the period when those leaving prison are
most likely to return. "These findings reinforce the need to become smarter on crime by
expanding proven strategies for keeping our communities safe, and ensuring that those
who have paid their debts to society have the chance to become productive citizens," said
Attorney General Eric Holder in a statement. " As it stands, too many individuals and communities are
harmed, rather than helped, by a criminal justice system that does not serve the
American people as well as it should. This important research is part of our broader
effort to change that."
Radicalization Advantage CP
Top Shelf
 1NC
Text: The United States federal government should create segregated
prison wings for jailed Muslim extremists.

It solves
Gardner 15 (9/7/15, Journalist, specialising in crime. “Jailed Muslim extremists should be
segregated in their own prison wings, say experts” http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/jailed-
muslim-extremists-should-segregated-6389740//SG)

Jailed Muslim extremists should be segregated in their own prison wings, say experts .
This would prevent fanatics spreading their hate to moderate inmates, the Quilliam Foundation think tank
says. They believe segregation is needed to prevent non-jihadi inmates among Britain’s growing

Muslim prisoner population from becoming radicalised. The group, which battles extremism, wants a trial run at top-
security Whitemoor jail, Cambs, where 51 per cent of prisoners are Muslim, before the units are introduced elsewhere. Quilliam political officer Jonathan Russell said: “It is
essential to prevent radicalisation of other inmates.” The call comes as new figures show there are 12,328 Muslims in jail compared with just 3,681 in 1997 - a 234% increase.
Mr Russell, speaking after the launch of a report on counter-extremism a decade after the 7/7 attacks in London, warned: “Our prisons are ripe to become recruiting grounds for

There is a history of prisons

extremists. "De-radicalisation and rehabilitation are essential to stop prisons becoming net exporters of terrorism. “

segregating groups, such as sex offenders. “In practice, this would mean having separate wings for
Muslims’ convicted of terrorism or extremist offences. “The Prison Estate has a duty of care for the physical and intellectual
well being of all their inmates. “It is essential to prevent the radicalisation of inmates - both Muslim and

non-Muslim - inside jail. “A pilot scheme would be a positive and Whitemoor is a strong possibility.” He also called for prison Imams to clamp down on
radicals. He added: “They need to explain the difference between the religion of Islam and the ideology of political extremists.” Quilliam believes 'a perfect storm' of factors are
making prisons vulnerable to extremism. These include stretched resources and under-staffing at jails - and British born Jihadists returning from abroad. At least 700 are

We need to do
believed to have left the UK to fight in Syria, Iraq and other countries Mr Russell added: “The prison population in general is at risk. “

preventive work inside the prison with the general population and work to change the
ideas of radicals.”
 2NC Solvency
Study on the Dutch system proves effectiveness
Government of Netherlands 15 (3/7/15, “Segregated detention of terrorists works”
https://www.government.nl/latest/news/2015/07/03/segregated-detention-of-terrorists-
works//SG)

The concentration of radical detainees in dedicated Terrorist Units is proving effective . That
is the conclusion of various investigations into the functioning of these units. The policy being pursued links up with international developments, and the units have built up

substantial expertise over the years. The State Secretary for Security and Justice, Klaas Dijkhoff, today informed the Dutch House of Representatives [Tweede
Kamer] that the policy was therefore going to be continued. A new assessment tool is being developed which will allow the authorities to determine, from case to case, what will be most effective for each

intention is to prevent detainees leaving the Terrorist Units even more

detainee. Dijkhoff's

radicalised than they went in. There are two special Terrorist Units in the Netherlands at present: one at the prison in
Vught and one at De Schie (Rotterdam). Detainees are accommodated in these units if they are suspected of a terrorism-linked crime, have been convicted of such a crime or had been disseminating terrorist

The aim of the two units is to prevent the spread of radical ideology in Dutch prisons.
ideology.

Recent research has confirmed that the concentration of this type of detainee is
effective, as it helps restrict the spread of dangerous ideology . State Secretary Dijkhoff will therefore continue to detain those
suspected or convicted of terrorism-linked crimes in a special unit. In the course of recent years, the knowhow and expertise necessary to work

with this special group of detainees has been built up within these units. Research has
also shown that the detainees in the Terrorist Units vary widely. There is a wide range of
crimes involved, and there are big differences in the detainees' behaviour, beliefs, missionary zeal, intelligence, psychological state, their criminal record, tendency to violence and their
charisma. That is the reason the assessment tool is being developed, so that the degree of radicalisation can be appraised more accurately. The tool will also make it possible to better estimate the dissemination
and security risks of each individual. That means that during his or her stay in the unit the detainee can take part in a more personalised programme aimed at a safe return to society. A first version of the

assessment tool is expected to be ready by the autumn. Dijkhoff: " By segregating radicalised detainees we can prevent
dangerous ideology spreading, and we shall continue to do that . But within this group I want to vary the approach so that
we can be even more effective. It is not our intention to allow extremists to become even more extreme because of their stay in prison."

Solves – studies prove

Chester 16 (10/6/16, Nick, “Can Extremist-Only Prison Units Prevent Radicalization?”
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/exkvyw/can-extremist-only-prisons-prevent-radicalisation-
behind-bars//SG)
I spoke to Chris Menton, a professor of criminal justicewho has studied the effects of
prison facilities centered on specific crimes, to find out if giving extremists their own
wing would likely help or hinder rehabilitative efforts. He pointed out that housing perpetrators of
similar offenses together can be useful for facilitating courses aimed at altering their
behavior and patterns of thinking. This suggests that segregating radicals could be a viable strategy, providing that the main emphasis is
placed on changing their perspectives rather than merely isolating them. Menton did, however, question whether or not methods that are used in facilities reserved exclusively

A
for crimes like sex offenses and domestic abuse could be applied to hardened radicals. "With zealots," he said, "it's hard to say if the mental capsule can be cracked."

terrorist-only prison wing aimed at enabling rehabilitative courses for extremists has
already been set up in Nigeria's Kuje Prison. A study of its effectiveness concluded that
it appears to be successful , although it hasn't been running long enough to draw any concrete conclusions. There have been
reports of participants in the courses crying and proclaiming that they have been
wasting their lives—but whether or not this was just a means of ingratiating themselves with the prison staff remains to be seen.
Aff Answers
 AT Radical only prisons
Empirics prove it fails. Creates an attraction for special treatment and
causes radicals to go underground
Raston 16 (4/4/16, Dina Temple-Raston is NPR's counter-terrorism correspondent and has
been reporting from all over the world for the network's news magazines since 2007. She
recently completed a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University where she studied the
intersection of Big Data and intelligence. “Critics: Belgian Plan To Deradicalize Prisons Will
Create More Terrorists ” http://www.wbur.org/npr/472929194/belgium-s-plan-to-deradicalize-
prisons-will-create-more-terrorists-critics-say//SG)
say such a move would not create the specter of prisons
The plan would segregate inmates deemed to be radical. Critics

just for Muslims, but also could end up radicalizing inmates even more. Transcript RENEE MONTAGNE,
HOST: And just days before suicide bombers detonated their explosives in Brussels, Belgium's Ministry of Justice released a plan to wipe out radicalization in its prisons. The
most controversial proposal would segregate prisoners believed to have embraced an extreme form of Islam. Critics predict that will end up creating more terrorists. NPR's Dina
Temple-Raston reports from Brussels. DINA TEMPLE-RASTON, BYLINE: That's the sound of the front gate at Forest Prison. And if you were trying to trace in Ibrahim el
Bakraoui's journey towards radicalization, you'd probably start right where I'm standing right now, 50 feet from the front door of Forest. Ibrahim el Bakraoui blew himself up at
the Brussels Airport on March 22. And Luc Vervaet, an advocate for prison reform in Belgium, says he's worried that the prison system itself is making detainees more violent.
LUC VERVAET: If you come in like a little petty thief, you can get out of the prison someone who of is capable to attack a money transport with a bazooka. TEMPLE-RASTON:
Ibrahim el Bakraoui only served a fraction of a nine-year sentence for bank robbery. And when he was released, he wasn't reformed. He was radicalized - so radicalized that
Turkish authorities found him on the border with Syria allegedly trying to join ISIS. Belgium is trying to fix that. About a week before the attacks, the Justice Ministry released a
plan to address issues like chronic overcrowding and poor guard training. The most controversial aspect of the proposal involves segregating inmates believed to have
radicalized from the general population of the prison. VERVAET: For me this is what I call a Guantanimization (ph) of the conceptions, yeah? TEMPLE-RASTON:

Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba is essentially a Muslim detention facility filled with
prisoners the U.S. accuses of terrorism. Prison activist Vervaet worries the Belgian
solution will end up doing the same. VERVAET: They're creating a little prison inside the prison. TEMPLE-RASTON: This has
been done before. In the 1980s , British authorities separated inmates from the IRA, or Irish Republican Army, from the rest of the prison
it backfired . PHILIPPE MASSAY: They found that was not a good idea because there
population. But according to Philippe Massay, a Belgian criminologist,

was an - a sort of attraction for general population for those people who are in specific
area. TEMPLE-RASTON: In other words, what was supposed to be a punishment for the IRA ended up becoming quite the opposite. Prisoners wanted
to be moved into the segregated wing. The Belgian plan suggests putting some of its Muslim
prisoners into something similar. But in this case, the authorities would provide counseling to de-radicalize them. Most analysts agree that
singling out Muslim prisoners will only reinforce the radical narrative and further convince them that the West is at war with Islam. In addition to being a criminologist, Philippe
Massay is also a guard at Lantin Prison, just outside of Liege. And he's seen one of his prisoners trying to radicalize another. MASSAY: He met him when they walk outside.
And he give him advice; he give him food. And they are always together. The prisoner was the target. He's changing. TEMPLE-RASTON: Massay says the changes were

subtle. So he's worried if segregation happens, prisoners who radicalize will go underground
because they know if they show signs of change they could be moved . Massay says he isn't completely
against the new segregation plan, but he worries that making these kinds of decision so soon after the Brussels attacks may not be a good idea.

This is really a terrible idea

Jublin 15 (6/30/15, Journalist for Vice News, “France’s Prison Controller Thinks Grouping
Radical Inmates Together Is a Terrible Idea” https://news.vice.com/article/frances-prison-
controller-thinks-grouping-radical-inmates-together-is-a-terrible-idea//SG)
Ina report published Tuesday, France's independent prison authority criticized a French government initiative to isolate radical
Islamist inmates in order to prevent recruitment among prisoners. Prisons Controller Adeline Hazan called
the initiative "potentially dangerous." " There is a risk of exacerbation and a snowball
effect ," she said. " We risk creating time bombs ." The initiative was piloted in October 2014 in the Fresnes jail, where 20 inmates
who are considered to be radical Islamists were isolated from other detainees in separate living units. Speaking to VICE News last
November, Justice Ministry spokesman Pierre Rancé described the experiment as being "part of a bigger review within the ministry to assess what the best possible solution is
for managing inmates that have been charged with terrorism." Related: A French Jail Is Trying to Halt Radicalization by Isolating 'Radical Muslim' Prisoners Together On
January 21, just weeks after the terror attacks that left 17 people dead in and around Paris, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls announced plans to extend the scheme to four

other prisons by the end of 2015. Speaking to VICE News on Tuesday, Hazan remarked that there was no "miracle solution to the
complex issue of radicalization" within prisons, and that "leaping to the conclusion that [radicalized]
inmates should be kept in isolation was premature." She highlighted the danger of grouping
together prisoners who "exhibit widely disparate levels of radicalization," warning that
those with less extreme views risked being influenced by more radical inmates. "When I visited the
prison in Fresnes," she recalled, "I noticed that they had placed a young man who left for Syria on a whim [in a cell] with a completely radicalized leader." The prisons controller

the evaluation system currently in

— who described her job as making sure that the fundamental rights of prisoners are respected — criticized

place in French jails to detect and monitor radicalized inmates, arguing that is was outdated and
unsuited to current radicalization trends. She called for increased resources for prison intelligence services. Hazan also expressed
concern over insufficient government control of the initiative, and warned of potential rights violations. "As well as being potentially dangerous, the isolation of detainees in

separate living units is not backed by any applicable legislation," she noted. Overcrowding in France's prisons is an important
factor in prison radicalization, Hazan added.
Sentencing Reform CP
Overcrowd Adv CP (all education da’s = nb)
 1NC Shell
the United States federal government should
1) Collect and use data to inform a rational, humane and cost-effective
use of prison
2) Review and reform the criminal justice process as a whole from
arrest to release and invest in crime prevention and reduction
Imprisonment comes at the end of a long chain of decisions involving
legislators and policymakers, the police, prosecutors and courts
3) Divert minor cases out of the criminal justice system International
standards and norms recommend that resorting to prosecution and
incarceration be employed only where this is proportionate to the
offence committed and there are no other appropriate options
4) Improve access to justice and case management during pre-trial
detention
5) Develop and implement constructive non-custodial measures and
sentences
6) Consider alternative retributive arrangements for parents with
dependent children
7) Identify mental illness and drug addiction and divert those affected to
appropriate medical or other care
8) Reduce prison sentence lengths and ensure consistent sentencing
practice
9) Develop opportunities for parole a d other forms of early release and
assist prisoners on release to prevent their return to prison
solves overcrowding
PRI 12 ( Penal Reform International (PRI) is an international non-governmental organisation
working on penal and criminal justice reform worldwide., February 2012, Ten-Point Plan to
Reduce Prison Overcrowding, https://www.penalreform.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/10-pt-
plan-overcrowding.pdf)
Introduction The following plan focuses on ways of reducing overcrowding in prisons around the
world. Overcrowding or congestion, as it is called in some countries, is the biggest single
problem facing prison systems with consequences that can at worst be lifethreatening
and at best prevent prisons from fulfilling their proper function. There is no universally
agreed definition of what constitutes overcrowding but data shows that in some 117 countries
the number of prisoners exceeds the number of spaces available. Sixteen prison systems hold
more than double their capacity and in a further 32 countries there are occupancy rates of
between 150 and 200%. Measured this way the highest rate of overcrowding in the Americas is
335% (Haiti), in Africa 307% (Benin), in Asia 259% (Iran), in Oceania 215% (French Polynesia),
and in Europe 158% (Serbia). But overcrowding is not limited to countries whose overall prison
population exceeds capacity. Particular prisons or sections of prisons can be overcrowded even
if the prison system as a whole is not. Moreover, in the absence of precise international
standards, it is up to individual countries themselves to determine – and sometimes revise —
the capacity of particular prisons. The data is therefore likely to understate the extent of the
problem. The plan builds on the relevant international instruments including the UN
Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, the UN Standard Minimum
Rules for Non-custodial Measures (Tokyo Rules) and the UN Rules for the Treatment of
Women Prisoners and Non-custodial Measures for Women Offenders (Bangkok Rules).
Penal Reform International (PRI) believes that a prison system that meets international
standards is essential for the proper administration of criminal justice. Particular attention
should be given to vulnerable groups who are often additionally adversely affected by the
negative effects of overcrowding. Women prisoners and children deprived of their liberty are a
small percentage of a country’s total prison population meaning that their specific needs tend to
remain unacknowledged and unmet, which is exacerbated in overcrowded and overstretched
prison systems. In some countries chronic overcrowding is relieved only by the use of periodic
amnesties and pardons which, while producing shortterm relief, do not provide a sustainable
solution and can erode public confidence. In others, costly prison-building programmes are
undertaken to meet a growing demand for prison places, which is sometimes stimulated further
by private companies who make profits from prison construction and administration. Given the
disadvantages of these approaches, PRI is publishing this plan to assist policymakers and
practitioners who wish to tackle overcrowding in a systematic and affordable way. The results
should help to ensure that imprisonment is only used when proportionate to the offence
committed and where there are no other appropriate options, and that the conditions of
detention can meet the standards expected by the international community. PRI, February 2012
www.penalreform.org www.penalreform.org 2 Ten-Point Plan to Reduce Prison Overcrowding 1.
Collect and use data to inform a rational, humane and cost-effective use of prison
Reducing overcrowding requires an understanding of the extent of the problem and the
reasons for which it has come about in a particular prison system. A census of the prison
population can identify who is in prison and why, and point to priorities for relieving congestion.
Timely and accurate information can also enable a more rational debate about the most
effective use of prison and assist advocacy on behalf of policies which meet international
standards. Information-gathering and analysis should be part of a regular routine and the public
should be kept informed about measures which work best to reduce crime. 2. Review and
reform the criminal justice process as a whole from arrest to release and invest in crime
prevention and reduction Imprisonment comes at the end of a long chain of decisions
involving legislators and policymakers, the police, prosecutors and courts. The extent to
which prison is used reflects a range of factors including levels of inequality and investment in
social policy as well as levels of crime. Reducing prison numbers is not simply a question of
establishing measures which can act as direct alternatives to pre-trial detention or sentences,
although these are important. It involves the development and use of a wide range of methods
to prevent crime through social and situational measures and of ways to resolve harms and
disputes without recourse to criminal law, for example by using informal and restorative justice
approaches. 3. Divert minor cases out of the criminal justice system International
standards and norms recommend that resorting to prosecution and incarceration be
employed only where this is proportionate to the offence committed and there are no
other appropriate options. To ensure that prisons play their proper role, including the role of
rehabilitation, it is important that minor offences be processed in different ways. Many countries
have systems of diversion, such as police warnings or cautions, restorative justice or mediation
options, referral to mental health or drug treatment or prosecutorial fines. Others have centuries-
old informal processes of traditional justice which can provide accessible and informal justice.
As long as basic human rights are observed, such processes can have an important role to
play. 4. Improve access to justice and case management during pre-trial detention
Countries with the highest levels of overcrowding also have prison populations with the
highest proportions of pre-trial detainees. In 40 countries more than half of prisoners are
held on remand. Efforts to address the problem of lengthy pre-trial detention include: •
increasing legal aid and assistance and supplementing this by making use of paralegals to
provide advice to defendants; • enforcing time limits in criminal proceedings; • offering bail and
other alternatives to pre-trial detention; • holding ‘camp courts’ inside prisons; and • reforming
criminal procedure so that cases are reviewed regularly and brought to a conclusion more
speedily. Penal Reform International 3 5. Develop and implement constructive non-
custodial measures and sentences Too many criminal justice systems, whether
noncustodial responses exist in law or not, still use imprisonment as their default
sanction. This can be because of: mistaken beliefs that society’s and the victim’s interests are
best served by a custodial sentence; excessive influence of the police and prosecutors over the
criminal justice system; and poor training for judges or their fear of being considered corrupt or
‘soft’ on crime. Sometimes there is either no organisation available to supervise community
sentences or a shortage of resources for implementation of responses to crime which permit the
offender to remain in and provide compensation to the community. A range of community-based
sentences should be available to courts including discharges, fines and community service and
measures should be taken to assist offenders to comply with these. Non-custodial sentencing
can be particularly effective for women offenders who are usually apprehended for non-violent
crimes and whose crimes are often closely related to their economic and social disadvantage in
society. 6. Make special arrangements for children and young offenders Children differ from
adults in their physical and psychological development, and their emotional and educational
needs. These differences constitute the basis for the lesser culpability of children in conflict with
the law and require different responses to be available. The experience of imprisonment can
often strengthen rather than weaken a child’s delinquency. The UN has said that children under
12 should not be liable to prosecution. For those under 18, traditional objectives of criminal
justice, such as repression and retribution, must give way to education and restorative
measures. The best interests of the child should be a primary consideration in making
decisions, and this can be done while still paying attention to effective public safety. Custodial
remand and sentences should be used as a last resort, for the shortest time, and used only in
exceptional cases. Small, open facilities with minimal security measures should be developed
for children serving such sentences. 7. Consider alternative arrangements for parents with
dependent children, particularly mothers with babies It is increasingly understood that
the best interests of the child should also be taken into consideration in deciding
whether or not to detain a parent. Sentencing courts should have enough information to
enable them to balance society’s and the child’s interests, and for them to consider (and have
available to them) community-based options. The recently adopted Bangkok Rules emphasise
that, when sentencing or deciding on pre-trial measures for a pregnant woman or a child’s sole
or primary caretaker, non-custodial measures should be preferred where possible and
appropriate, with custodial sentences being considered when the offence is serious or violent. 8.
Identify mental illness and drug addiction and divert those affected to appropriate
medical or other care Many people enter prisons when they should have been diverted
into mental health or social care from police stations or courts because they suffer from
mental illness or learning disabilities. Prisons are ill-equipped to meet their needs and
overcrowding can have a particularly adverse effect. Despite this it is still the case that in some
countries prisons, rather than hospitals, are even used to house people with mental health
issues as a matter of policy. Many people in prison around the world have alcohol or drug
addiction problems. Specialist facilities to treat such dependence as an alternative to
imprisonment, whether or not the offence was related to addiction, can reduce prison
overcrowding and improve outcomes in the prevention of re-offending. www.penalreform.org 4
9. Reduce sentence lengths and ensure consistent sentencing practice Prison sentences
should be kept as short as possible, consistent with justice being done. In some
countries legislators restrict judges’ flexibility by setting mandatory or minimum
sentences higher than is required by the state’s need to respond appropriately and
proportionately to particular offences. In others, administrations fail to monitor and respond
to sentencing practices that do not meet the requirement of predictability and consistency.
Appropriate guidance is needed to inform judges’ independent decision-making. 10. Develop
opportunities for parole or other forms of early release and assist prisoners on release to
prevent their return to prison Parole systems and earned remission provide an incentive
for prisoners to behave well in prison and to be rewarded by early release after a
programme of rehabilitation. Sentences which are served partly in custody and partly in the
community under supervision can also reduce pressure on prison places, although it is
important that decisions to release prisoners, particularly those convicted of serious crimes, are
not made or seen to be made simply to free up prison space. Open prisons, halfway houses,
hostels and other supervised accommodation can provide an effective placement for offenders
approaching and after release and should form part of the reintegration support provided in
order to prevent them from returning to swell prison numbers
Decrim CP
Top Shelf
 1NC – CP
The United States federal government should:
 use prison space mainly for serious offenders,
 strengthen probation and alternative sentencing options,
 relieve local jail crowding, and

Solves DOJ overstretch.

Babington ’16 (Charles; 2/4/2016; written about politics and policy for The Washington Post and The Associated Press;
“States Cut Prison Costs; Can Federal Government Do the Same?” http://magazine.pewtrusts.org/en/archive/winter-2016/states-
cut-prison-costs-can-federal-government-do-the-same; Date Accessed: 7/27/2017; DS)

Like dozens of other states, Georgia faced a quandary five years ago. The prison population was
soaring, costs were climbing, and taxpayers—who were seeing no reductions in recidivism
rates—were asking what they were getting for their money. For decades, Georgia had handled crime like many
other states, especially those with conservative electorates. “Lock ’em up” was the motto, and new
prison construction was the means. By 2011, the number of inmates in the state had doubled from two
decades earlier and the annual price tag for prisons had grown to $1 billion. Governor Nathan Deal (R)
wanted change, even if it carried the political risk of being seen as soft on crime. After enlisting support from state legislative and
judicial leaders five years ago, he turned to The Pew Charitable Trusts’ public safety performance project, which has now worked in
more than half of the 50 states and developed a record of finding smarter, data-driven ways to keep communities safe while earning
In less than two years, Pew had
a better return on taxpayers’ investments in prisons and corrections programs.
helped guide policymakers through comprehensive revisions of criminal and juvenile justice
laws that reduced prison populations and changed the policy discourse among state leaders.
During the 2014 gubernatorial campaign, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution noted a significant drop in
imprisonment rates, especially among minorities. “The change reflects a new philosophy on
sentencing in Georgia, which led the nation in criminal punishment as recently as 2009 but is
now bent on saving money and changing lives,” the newspaper reported. Deal emphasized this new
approach throughout the campaign and won re-election on a platform once unthinkable in
conservative states: expanding the types of reforms that were already sending fewer Georgians
to prison and shortening many inmates’ sentences, while also expanding programs to help nonviolent offenders
turn to productive lives. In hindsight, the governor’s positions may not have been so politically fraught after all. Increasingly, the
leaders of many states are searching for more efficient and effective ways of protecting the public and reducing what has been one
of the fastest-growing costs to taxpayers. These leaders are reacting to the fact that the U.S. prison population has soared over the
past three decades, rising more than 700 percent, thanks largely to state laws and policies that put more offenders behind bars and
costs had risen, too, with states
kept them there longer. By 2008, 1 in 100 adults in the U.S. was imprisoned. And
spending more than $50 billion annually on corrections. But despite more people being locked up, there was
little long-term impact on public safety. Studies attribute as much as 25 percent of the drop in crime since the early 1990s to
increased incarceration. But in 2011, Pew published State of Recidivism: The Revolving Door of America’s Prisons, a report
showing that recidivism rates had remained virtually unchanged for decades despite the new laws and the jump in prison spending.
Working with the Association of State Correctional Administrators, Pew’s
researchers showed that more than 40
percent of the inmates released in 2004 were back behind bars by 2007. That, the report concluded, “is
an unhappy reality, not just for offenders, but for the safety of American communities.” While other organizations now work on the
issue, a decade ago Pew was among the first, conducting the extensive research that has yielded troves of new data about
sentencing, incarceration, parole and probation, recidivism, and other key subjects. “The issue wasn’t on anybody’s radar a decade
ago,” says Adam Gelb, director of Pew’s public safety performance project. “It wasn’t discussed much at all, and many elected
officials believed Americans just had an unquenchable thirst for punishment.” Today’s political climate, Gelb says, “is
unrecognizable” in comparison, “and almost unimaginable if you look back just eight years.” So are the trends in the states, when
compared with the get-tough-on-crime era. A Pew analysis of Justice Department data shows that between 2009 and 2014, there
 The
was no causal link between higher incarceration rates and lower crime. In fact, 30 states have managed to reduce both.
intensive technical assistance provided to Georgia and other states is part of the Justice
Reinvestment Initiative, a collaboration between Pew and the U.S. Department of Justice’s
Bureau of Justice Assistance, in which Pew works with the Council of State Governments
Justice Center, the Crime and Justice Institute, and other partners. When states seek help, Pew and its
partners start by garnering bipartisan support from leaders of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches. They obtain letters
from the governor, Senate president, House speaker, and chief justice acknowledging the problems and specifically asking for
assistance. Pew then gets to work, analyzing the state’s data to uncover the main causes of prison population growth; strategies to
slow or reverse it; shortcomings in parole and probation services; and viable ways to reduce costs while combating recidivism.
Because the circumstances in each state are different, there is no magic solution that fits them all. An early test came in Texas, long
known for tough corrections policies. Between 1979 and 2000, Texas built 137 prisons. By the mid-2000s, state officials were
growing increasingly concerned about the rising corrections costs and began to seek alternatives. Helped by the Council of
State Governments Justice Center and Pew, Texas began by identifying the nonviolent
offenders who presented little danger to the public and could go into alternative programs. After
launching reforms in 2007, state leaders soon were saving hundreds of millions of dollars annually by
diverting money to substance abuse and mental health programs, halfway houses for
released offenders, and short-term facilities to hold people who violated parole or probation
rules. Since then, more than half the states have passed laws to improve public safety, provide
alternatives to prison, and save money. Many divert some of the resulting savings to parole and
probation programs designed to help former inmates succeed in society and avoid returning to
prison. “Pew has been absolutely critical to the success in the states,” says Patrick J. Nolan, a leading national advocate of
corrections reforms. “Its data is the gold standard.” Nolan holds a unique place among criminal justice experts: A former Republican
leader in the California State Assembly, he spent more than two years in federal prison on a racketeering charge stemming from a
government sting operation—which gave him, he says, special insight into how society deals with offenders, punishment, and public
Pew has helped leaders realize that there are tested, proven ways
safety. In state after state, Nolan says,
to handle criminal justice more efficiently, effectively, and humanely. Too often in legislative debates,
he says, information is a matter “of conjecture and opinion. It’s like a barroom discussion: ‘Says who?’” By working in a bipartisan
way across the political spectrum, Nolan says, Pew presents well-researched reports that replace opinions with facts. Seeing the
success in other states, Georgia officials decided in 2011 that they could wait no longer to address a prison population that had
more than doubled since 1990, to nearly 56,000. The state was spending more than $1 billion a year on corrections, with more
growth projected. And Georgians were beginning to question what they were getting for the investment. The rate at which former
inmates returned to prison for committing a new felony within three years of their release had remained steady—at nearly 30
percent—for a decade. So state leaders created the Georgia Council on Criminal Justice Reform, which turned to Pew for research
and technical assistance. The analysis produced some telling findings to guide legislators and the governor: Well
over half of
Georgia’s new inmates were drug and property offenders, and courts had few viable sentencing
alternatives to prison. In addition, parole and probation agencies lacked the resources to
adequately supervise inmates who were released. With help from Pew, the Council on Criminal
Justice Reform made several major recommendations: Use prison space mainly for serious
offenders. Strengthen probation and alternative sentencing options. Relieve local jail
crowding. And find better ways to measure public safety and criminal justice
performance. The Georgia Legislature unanimously endorsed the package. “Pew and other stakeholders provided invaluable
support and input throughout this effort,” says Gov. Deal. “Their work resulted in bipartisan legislation that is
paying dividends.” He signed the legislation in May 2012. Georgia officials said the law would eliminate the need for any new
prison beds in the first five years, saving at least $264 million. In the first year, the state funneled more than $45
million in savings from prison construction into efforts to reduce new crimes by former inmates,
particularly those with drug and alcohol problems. Services include housing, job training,
substance abuse treatment, mentoring—even help finding a job for someone else in the
supervised person’s household, “because stability in that home helps everyone in that home,” says Michael Nail,
commissioner of the new Georgia Department of Community Supervision. Following the success of the criminal justice effort,
Georgia leaders used the same data-driven approach in partnership with Pew to develop and enact sweeping juvenile justice
reforms in 2013. By
reducing the number of less-serious offenders sent to secure facilities and
investing in effective, community-based alternatives to incarceration, the legislation was
projected to avert the need for two new juvenile corrections facilities. In the nine months after
implementation, the number of youth held in secure facilities fell by 14 percent, fueled by a 62 percent drop
in counties that received funding to steer lower-level offenders toward alternatives. While still working with states, Pew has begun to
focus on the federal prison system, where the inmate population has climbed from about 24,000 in 1980 to more than 215,000 in
2013, at a cost of $6.7 billion a year—about one-fourth of the Justice Department’s spending. A
Pew report released in
August shows that 95,000 federal prisoners are serving time for drug-related offenses, up from
5,000 in 1980. Part of the growth came from changes in drug crime patterns and law enforcement practices, but the analysis
also found that federal sentencing laws enacted during the 1980s and 1990s have required more drug offenders to go to prison—
and stay there much longer—than three decades ago. A follow-up report in November found that the average length of time federal
inmates served more than doubled from 1988 to 2012, from 17.9 months to 37.5 months—at a correspondingly high increase in
costs: The analysis determined that keeping inmates those additional 19.6 months costs taxpayers an additional $2.7 billion
annually. “There’s a lot the federal government can do” to lower its prison population and costs
without endangering public safety, says Representative Bobby Scott (D-VA), co-sponsor of a major reform bill pending
in Congress. He’s urging lawmakers to reduce mandatory minimum sentences and devote more
resources to drug courts, rehabilitation programs, police training, and pretrial diversion
programs. Scott’s bipartisan House bill draws heavily from the states’ successes, which
proponents say could apply at the federal level. Among other things, the legislation would allow
federal inmates, and former inmates under supervision, to earn credits by completing certain
evidence-based programs. It would provide new authority to impose swift and certain
sanctions on those who violate their supervision rules. Pew’s Gelb agrees that the federal system could
reduce recidivism by strengthening its probation and post-prison supervision programs. The
Senate is also weighing reform legislation, with Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, telling
reporters, “I’ve learned from what some states have done, changes could be made and money could be saved and not hurt society
with people that do harm coming from behind bars.” “States
as diverse as Connecticut, South Carolina,
Georgia, and Texas are showing that it’s possible to cut crime and imprisonment at the same
time,” Gelb says. “These state successes have fueled the momentum in Congress and given it the
best opportunity in years to protect public safety, hold offenders accountable, and contain the
spiraling cost of the federal prison system.” At both the state and federal levels, “I think we’re just beginning,”
says Nolan, the national corrections reform advocate. He hopes more states will adopt data-driven policies in the areas of juvenile
justice, mental health care, community supervision of offenders, and the handling of elderly inmates. And, he adds “there’s plenty of
work ... to come.”
Extensions
 2NC – Solves
Solves – their author.
Pye ’15 (Jason, “Congress must address out of control spending at the Federal Bureau of Prisons,” pg online @
http://www.freedomworks.org/content/congress-must-address-out-control-spending-federal-bureau-prisons //um-ef)

Separately, in a detailed December 2013 report, theGovernment Accountability Office explained that the
Bureau of Prisons' budget requests often lacked transparency and justification. Previously, in a
February 2012 report, the Government Accountability Office dinged the Bureau of Prisons for not fully
utilizing existing options available to allow eligible offenders, such as those who have
demonstrated good behavior, to leave prison early and serve out the remainder of their
sentences in drug treatment programs, halfway houses, or home detention. Though the use of these
options may have only a limited impact, it would relieve the Bureau of Prisons of, at least, some of its
capacity problems.
 Decrim Unpopular
Decriminalization is unpopular
Staley 7-5-17 (Samuel R. Staley, Ph.D. is a senior research fellow at Reason Foundation and managing director of the
DeVoe L. Moore Center at Florida State University in Tallahassee where he teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in urban
planning, regulation, and urban economics. Prior to joining Florida State, Staley was director of urban growth and land-use policy for
Reason Foundation where he helped establish its urban policy program in 1997. Staley is the author of several books, most recently
¶

co-authoring Mobility First: A New Vision for Transportation in a Globally Competitive 21st Century (Rowman & Littlefield, 2008). He
is also co-author, with Ted Balaker, of The Road More Traveled: Why The Congestion Crisis Matters More Than You Think, and
What We Can Do About It (Rowman and Littlefield, September, 2006). taley's previous book, Smarter Growth: Market-based
Strategies for Land-use Planning in the 21st Century (Greenwood Press, 2001), was called the "most thorough challenge yet to
regional land-use plans" by Planning magazine. In addition to these books, he is the author of Drug Policy and the Decline of
¶

American Cities (Transaction Publishers, 1992) and Planning Rules and Urban Economic Performance: The Case of Hong Kong
(Chinese University Press, 1994). His more than 100 professional articles, studies, and reports have appeared in publications such
¶

as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Investor’s Business Daily, Journal of the
American Planning Association, Planning magazine, Reason magazine, National Review and many others. Staley's approach to
¶

urban development, transportation and public policy blends more than 20 years of experience as an economic development
consultant, academic researcher, urban policy analyst, and community leader. Staley is a former chair for his local planning board in
¶

his hometown of Bellbrook, Ohio. He is also a former member of its Board of Zoning Appeals and Property Review Commission,
vice chair of his local park district’s open space master plan committee, and chair of its Charter Review Commission. Staley
¶

received his B.A. in Economics and Public Policy from Colby College, M.S. in Social and Applied Economics from Wright State
University, and Ph.D. in Public Administration, with concentrations in urban planning and public finance from Ohio State University.
Drug Policy and the Decline of the American City; published by Routledge; pps. 229-230; accessed at
https://books.google.com/books?id=3j4rDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA229&lpg=PA229&dq=drug+decriminalization+unpopular&source=bl&ots
=th-xrayV_R&sig=btcJD0tlRX8elgFWU39K94-
s4_M&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwim4LHx8arVAhXqy4MKHfDUDLoQ6AEISTAF#v=onepage&q=drug%20decriminalization%20un
popular&f=false - LK)

The decriminalization alternative remains unpopular among most leading scholars and
policymakers. Drug Czar William Bennett publicly called the idea “stupid” and suggested that
many of its advocates are racist.“5 Others, such as Congresswoman Patricia Schroader (D-
Colorado), oppose decriminalization because they fear the United States will become a
“nation of addicts?“ Others, basing their recommendations on more scholarly
assessments of the drug problem, oppose legalization because they feel the increase in
the number of addicts would not justify the benefits of legalized use. ¶ Like the arguments for
decriminalization, general themes are detectable in their opposition. Prohibition proponents argue that the
decriminalizers ignore the public health consequences of increased drug use, that
legalization will feed the criminal element, and, perhaps most important, society cannot
appear to condone or encourage drug use. Each of these propositions will be evaluated through the remainder
of this section. Again, these themes represent a conglomeration of individual opinions.
Prisons Post-Secondary CP
Net Benefits
 Ptix Net Benefit

Politics is a net benefit to the post-secondary education cp

Stern ‘14
(Kaia, Kaia Stern is Director of the Prison Studies Project and Lecturer in
the Department of Sociology at Harvard Uni-versity. Her work focuses on
transformative justice, human rights, and education in prison., Saint Louis
University Public Law Review, “Prison Education And Our Will To Punish,”
pg lexis//um-ef)
Although political winds shift rapidly, recent bipartisan support for several bills and
proposed allocations imply that federal legislators may have begun to embrace the
reality that 1990s-style prison expansion without preparation for "re-entry" is simply
unsustainable. In the last ten years, a combination of forces - most notably budget crises
in almost every state, high recidivism rates, and a rapidly growing prison system that
releases over 700,000 people annually n80 - have created new opportunities for the
importance of postsecondary prison educa-tion programs to be reasserted in public
policy and practice.
Prisons – For Profit CP
Top Shelf
 1NC CP Shell
The United States federal government should:
- Devolve and allow federal private programs to increase education
programs
- Increase accountability through performance based contracts with
monetary incentievs to lower recidivism
- Use Australia and Pennsylvania’s for profit prisons as a model for
implementation

The counterplan overcomes current flaws in the for profit prisons industry
– it models after successful tests and creates incentives to reduce
recidivism

Brooke 17 (Lauren-Brooke "L.B." Eisen, Brennan Center for Justice: NYU School of Law,
“Private Prisons Are Poised for a Comeback Under Trump. Here’s How to Reform Them.”
1/13/17 Lauren-Brooke Eisen is Senior Counsel in the Brennan Center’s Justice Program,
https://www.brennancenter.org/blog/private-prisons-are-poised-comeback-under-trump-heres-
how-reform-them) GG

As suggested by the Brennan Center for Justice, a good first step would be to reorient
incentives through performance-based contracting . States and the federal government
should ensure contracts with private prisons contain incentives that focus on reducing
recidivism and improving outcomes for the 2.3 million people incarcerated. This would be a
marked changed from today’s incentive structures that focus on rewarding private prison
operators for building more bed capacity. Private prison contracts in other parts of the
world can serve as a model . Two new private prison contracts in Australia incentivize a
reduction in recidivism rates through bonuses paid to the companies. The GEO Group will
operate Victoria’s Ravenhall Prison (due to open this year), and the firm will be compensated on
the basis of the rate of re-offending among its released prisoners. Specifically, the company has
been promised a $2 million bonus payment annually if the rate of reoffending among inmates
released from the facility is 12 percent lower than at other governmentally run prisons. And
Sodexo, an international prison industry titan, recently signed a contract with Western
Australia’s Department of Corrective Services to run a 256-bed women’s prison; it will receive a
bonus of $11,000 for every inmate who remains out of prison two years after release.
Pennsylvania is experimenting with a similar idea. In 2013, Republican Gov. Tom Corbett’s
administration announced it would cancel all Department of Corrections contracts with
private community corrections companies (also known as halfway houses) and rebid them,
with incentives for good performance built into the contracts. At the time, individuals who
transitioned from prison to the community through the state’s community corrections centers
were more likely to return to prison than those who were “paroled directly to the streets.” Under
the new contracts, providers are evaluated and paid according to their success at reducing the
recidivism of those who have just been released from prison. The new contracts provide that
if the overall recidivism rate of individuals in their facilities falls below a certain level, the
state will reward the providers by paying one percent more per prisoner. The state can
cancel a contract if the recidivism rate increases over two consecutive years.
Pennsylvania’s approach worked. The recidivism rate for individuals released from
private community corrections centers in the state fell 11.3 percent in just the first year
after these new contracts. Private contractors were able to reduce recidivism by providing
programs that are proven to work such as cognitive behavioral therapy, substance abuse
counseling, educational classes, and job training. Other innovative practices exist that use
private funding to try to reduce recidivism rates for inmates exiting mostly
governmentally run jails and prisons. Recently, New York and Massachusetts explored
performance based contracts aimed at improving outcomes of those who cycle in and out of the
justice system. Under a pay-for-success or social impact bond program, private firms fund
what is usually a brand new social justice or public interest program and only get paid
back if the project meets certain benchmarks.

Federal Private Prisons work and are net better for education practices
Moore 99 (Adrian T. Moore, Director of Economic Studies at the Reason Public Policy
Institute, “PRIVATE PRISONS: Quality Corrections at a Lower Cost” Policy Study No. 240) GG

For-profit and nonprofit private organizations play a major role in providing services to
correctional agencies. Most correctional institutions use some form of privatization in
such areas as medical services, mental-health services, substance-abuse counseling,
educational programs , food services, and management of prison industries.14 The use of
private services by correctional agencies is most extensive outside institution walls. This
reflects the fact that more than 80 percent of convicted offenders in most states are in
community supervision, either on parole or on probation. Private involvement in community
corrections (low-security work-release or halfway-house facilities) is a long-standing tradition
in most states. In addition, state governments have traditionally let contracts for services such
as counseling on abuse of alcohol and other drugs; assessment and treatment of sexual
offenders; and job training and placement. Private involvement in providing services to
inmates during detention and after release has brought a new wave of innovation . Florida
legislators found the private prisons in their state to be miles ahead of the state prisons
in providing effective rehabilitation, education , and other services.15 Private firms are
developing efficient and effective post-release programs aimed at reintegrating inmates
into the community and reducing recidivism rates.16 Providing these kinds of services
does cost money. Inmates will receive these services only if the services are included in the
terms of the contract. However, given that a contract with a private firm to house inmates
saves money, more funds may be available to pay for specialized services that can
reduce recidivism rates , find effective treatment and incarceration facilities for young
offenders. Many states are turning to private providers for help. At the end of 1995, nearly
40,000 adjudicated juveniles were housed in over 2,000 privately operated facilities, including
training centers, ranches, shelters, halfway houses, and group homes.* This amounts to more
than one-third of all adjudicated youths. The goal of contracts with private firms is to change
dramatically the thinking and behavior of troubled youths, preparing them to become self-
sufficient. This involves teaching students not just educational and vocational skills, but
also behavior-management skills. The cornerstone of most programs is education —with
state-accredited education programs that offer a high-school diploma or GED and allow
students to earn credits that are transferable to regular schools. Program success is
usually measured in terms of reduced recidivism and completion of school. The best private
juvenile programs report recidivism rates about one-third of the national average for juvenile
offenders—and for about 20 percent less than it costs the state to run similar programs.
 For Profit CP – Trump Uniqueness
Trump makes for profit expansion inevitable – it’s just a question of reform
Brooke 17 (Lauren-Brooke "L.B." Eisen, Brennan Center for Justice: NYU School of Law,
“Private Prisons Are Poised for a Comeback Under Trump. Here’s How to Reform Them.”
1/13/17 Lauren-Brooke Eisen is Senior Counsel in the Brennan Center’s Justice Program,
https://www.brennancenter.org/blog/private-prisons-are-poised-comeback-under-trump-heres-
how-reform-them) GG
Just a few months ago, things were looking very bleak for the private prison industry. In mid-
August, the Justice Department’s inspector general issued a report finding that privately operated federal prisons are more dangerous than those
managed by the federal Bureau of Prisons and need more oversight. Within a week, the Justice Department announced it would phase out private
prisons to house federal inmates. Later that month, the Department of Homeland Security announced it would evaluate whether detention operations
conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement should move in the same direction. Not surprisingly, shares of the nation’s private prison
companies tanked. But Trump’s win has turned the prospects for private prisons around almost
immediately . Trump’s racially charged law-and-order rhetoric, and his promise to deport or incarcerate millions of immigrants — with the help
of a like-minded attorney general, Jeff Sessions — have breathed new life into the industry. Trump’s victory was “nothing
short of a game changer for the beleaguered private prison contractor industry,” said CNBC.
Stock prices for the nation’s two largest private prison corporations rose dramatically; since Election day, CoreCivic (formerly known as Corrections
For-profit
Corporation of America) shares were up by over 70 percent and GEO Group shares have climbed more than 50 percent.
corrections are a $5 billion industry. In 2015, CoreCivic and GEO earned a combined $2.6 billion. CoreCivic is the fifth largest
prison manager behind California, the US Bureau of Prisons, Texas, and Florida. A little more than 126,000 (8 percent) of the nation’s inmates are
housed in private prisons, and over 70 percent of US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement detainees are held in private detention centers .
The
companies have been aggressive about expanding their market share, and they maintain
a significant Washington, DC, presence. As the Washington Post recently reported, they’ve spent $35 million on lobbying
since 1989. Private prisons have received their fair share of criticism over the past few
decades. Today, states and the federal government continue to draw up irresponsible
contracts with private prison firms that give them far too much leeway. This has led to a
lack of accountability and transparency, a lack of programming in many prisons, and no way to ascertain recidivism rates.
But whether or not the Obama administration was right to phase out its reliance on private contracts (state prisons are hardly without their own
problems), the
likelihood is that the Trump administration will increase the private prison
industry’s share of the corrections business. That means we should think hard about
ways that private prison firms might innovate — including how they might devise new
strategies to reduce recidivism . By improving the contracts with private prisons and
changing the incentives, we can make private prisons more accountable and hopefully
more effective in curbing the endless cycle of arrests and incarceration that plague our
criminal justice system. As I’ve discovered researching for my upcoming book, Inside Private Prisons, the private prison industry is
relatively young and didn’t explode until the early 1990s. The overcrowding of state prison systems in the early 1980s provided an opening for
incarceration entrepreneurs. At that time, lawmakers were faced with reducing the number of people behind bars or building additional, expensive
facilities. But taxpayers were unwilling to foot the bill, and legislators believed they would be voted out of office if they appeared soft on crime. As
correctional agencies raced to comply with court orders to reduce overcrowding, a group of astute businessmen pored over inmate projection reports
and analyzed a new growth industry. Private prisons were born out of “the unlikely meeting of pinstripes and prison stripes,” Barron’s noted in 1985.

The system fails now – it relies on perverse incentives that maintain

recidivism – reform is key
Brooke 17 (Lauren-Brooke "L.B." Eisen, Brennan Center for Justice: NYU School of Law,
“Private Prisons Are Poised for a Comeback Under Trump. Here’s How to Reform Them.”
1/13/17 Lauren-Brooke Eisen is Senior Counsel in the Brennan Center’s Justice Program,
https://www.brennancenter.org/blog/private-prisons-are-poised-comeback-under-trump-heres-
how-reform-them) GG

Some argue private prisons are so driven by their bottom line that they cut costs in
areas like staffing and healthcare , which decreases the quality of life for inmates . Others take
moral issue with the idea that a corporation is profiting off of the nation’s predilection for incarceration as a one-size-fits-all answer to crime, and
rewarded for the sheer number of inmates they can warehouse, rather than for developing successful rehabilitation programs and producing positive
reentry outcomes. But others — not just industry shills — support the industry, argu ing that it can
circumvent government procurement laws and step in when government-run corrections
agencies find themselves with too many inmates for their own jails and prisons. There are dozens of organizations
in the US devoted to eliminating any sort of profit motive when it comes to corrections, and it’s not hard to understand why. In one of the more
infamous cases involving a private prison company, in 2010, an Associated Press video revealed prison guards at Idaho’s largest prison, the CoreCivic
operated Idaho State Correctional Institution, failing to halt an attack on a prisoner whose head was stomped several times, leaving the inmate
corrections is a tough
permanently disabled. The prison was so violent that prisoners used to call the facility "Gladiator School." But
business, whether government run or in the hands of a private company. Many government operated
jails and prisons struggle with controlling abusive guards and rampant sexual assault
perpetrated by both inmates and correctional employees. According to one Justice Department study, almost 10 percent of former state prisoners
reported one or more incidents of sexual victimization during their most recent period of incarceration. Suicides are all too common behind bars. Nearly
one out of three deaths in jail are attributed to suicide. For example, New York City’s notorious Riker’s Island Jail Complex, wedged between the Bronx
and Queens next to the LaGuardia Airport, garnered headlines for its violent treatment of its prisoners. In fact, conditions at the jail complex are so

dangerous that Riker’s Island is considered one of the most dangerous correctional facilities to work at. Leaders of the private-
prison industry haven’t innovated much through the decades because they haven’t had
t o. The “War on Drugs” in the 1980s and 1990s maintained or expanded the need for mass incarceration. Private prison operators were uniquely
positioned to benefit from mandatory minimum sentencing, “three-strikes” laws, and a reduction in the number of inmates eligible for release on parole.
The perverse incentive structure in private prison contracts encourages states to keep
private prisons full, or very close. Often, private prison corporations benefit from contracts that are
written so favorably to them that they receive money for empty prison beds. A good number of
private prison contracts include occupancy requirements mandating that governments keep the facilities between 80 and 100 percent full. If the state
fails to supply enough prisoners, it
must pay a fine to the private prison for each prison bed that goes
unoccupied. For example, Arizona agreed to pay CoreCivic at a guaranteed 90 percent occupancy rate for a thousand-bed, medium-security
prison in Eloy. In short, even if the state of Arizona runs out of inmates, CoreCivic is guaranteed
revenue. And if states are paying for prison beds no matter what, there is little motivation to rethink its sentencing laws. Another criticism centers
on the fact that private prisons earn more revenue when inmates serve more of their sentence, an incentive for private prison officials to give inmates
more infractions, to forestall their release.

Holding private prisons to high accountability is key to reform – they’re

inevitable under trump so only steering them in a positive direction can
solve
Brooke 17 (Lauren-Brooke "L.B." Eisen, Brennan Center for Justice: NYU School of Law,
“Private Prisons Are Poised for a Comeback Under Trump. Here’s How to Reform Them.”
1/13/17 Lauren-Brooke Eisen is Senior Counsel in the Brennan Center’s Justice Program,
https://www.brennancenter.org/blog/private-prisons-are-poised-comeback-under-trump-heres-
how-reform-them) GG

In August 2012, New York City announced the first U.S. social impact bond aimed at reducing the rate of reincarceration among juvenile inmates
released from Rikers. Goldman Sachs backed the program in New York through a $9.6 million loan to MDRC, a leading social policy organization.
Bloomberg Philanthropies then provided a $7.2 million grant to MDRC to guarantee a portion of the loan, reducing the lender’s risk. The financial
structure of these bonds was complex, but the lower the program’s recidivism rate, the greater the interest paid. If the program cut participant
recidivism by more than 10 percent, Goldman would earn up to $2.1 million. In August 2015, the Vera Institute of Justice
evaluated the program and determined it “did not lead to reductions in recidivism and
therefore did not meet the program’s pre-defined threshold of success.” That was disappointing, but many considered
the experiment a success, given that it cost taxpayers nothing and had allowed government officials to try something new. A similar
experiment is underway in Massachusetts. In 2014, then-Gov. Deval Patrick's administration signed a pay-for-success contract with Roca, a nonprofit
located outside of Boston, Massachusetts. Roca received an investment of $27 million from private foundations and the Goldman Sachs Social Impact
Fund. The money pays for support services, skills training, and job placement, and the program will cost the state nothing unless it succeeds;
Is it fair to ask the
significant recidivism reductions will produce bonuses for investors. In my book, I pose the following question:
private sector to meet very high levels of performance in an area where the state has so
badly failed? After all, recidivism rates in the US are high — more than half of prisoners
released are reincarcerated within three years — and most of these individuals are housed in public correctional
facilities. My answer, based on research, is: yes, it is fair to hold private prisons to a higher standard .

Private prison firms are making billions of dollars off the corrections industry, providing them with the resources to innovate and
experiment in a way that government correctional agencies simply don’t. Restructuring contracts around the nation’s
public policy goals would ensure that private operators provide more educational
programming and job training — and that they prepare their inmates for successful reentry to the community. Like it or
not, all signs indicate the private prison industry is here to stay under Trump . Asked about his
views on prison reform by Chris Matthews on the campaign trail, Trump replied, “I do think we can do a lot of privatizations, and private prisons it
seems do work a lot better.” His
administration would do well to adopt some of the innovative ways
state officials have reined in the worst excesses of privatization. Building the proper
incentives into contracts has the power to move the for-profit prison industry away from
focusing on cost-cutting and filling beds toward a world where public and private
incentives align. With more than three decades of experience under their belt, it is time for private prisons to up
their game — and aim to produce better outcomes than their public counterparts.
 For Profit CP – Net Better
Federal private prisons are good and their data is flawed
Volokh 16 (Sasha Volokh, Washington Post, “Don’t end federal private prisons” 8/19/16,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2016/08/19/dont-end-federal-
private-prisons/?utm_term=.47d526b95364) GG
Yesterday, the DOJ announced that it would gradually end its use of private prisons. You can read the memo by Deputy AG Sally Yates here. She writes: “I am directing that, as
each contract [with a private prison corporation] reaches the end of its term, the Bureau [of Prisons] should either decline to renew that contract or substantially reduce its scope

in a manner consistent with the law and the overall decline of the Bureau’s inmate population.” Why? The Yates memo says: “Private prisons . . . compare poorly
to our own Bureau facilities. They simply do not provide the same level of correctional services, programs, and resources; they do not save substantially on costs; and as noted
in a recent report by the Department’s Office of Inspector General, they do not maintain the same level of safety and security. The rehabilitative services that the Bureau
provides, such as educational programs and job training, have proved difficult to replicate and outsource — and these services are essential to reducing recidivism and

seems to be exaggerating what empirical studies

improving public safety.” This is unfortunate, for two reasons. First, Yates

tell us about private vs. public prison comparisons. They do save money (though how much is a matter of
dispute). And they don’t clearly provide worse quality; in fact , the best empirical studies don’t

give a strong edge to either sector. The best we can say about public vs. private prison comparisons is a
cautious “We don’t really know, but the quality differences are probably pretty minor and
don’t strongly cut in either direction.” The Inspector General’s report doesn’t give us strong reason to question that result. Second,
even if all the bad things people say about private prisons were true, why not pursue a
“Mend it, don’t end it” strategy ? there’s a new trend in corrections to develop good performance measures and make payments contingent on
those performance measures. If the private sector hasn’t performed spectacularly on quality dimensions to date, it’s because good correctional quality hasn’t been strongly
incentivized so far. But the advent of performance-based contracting has the potential to open up new vistas of quality improvements — and the federal system, if it abandons

how many people does this affect? The Bureau of

contracting, may miss out on these quality improvements. * * * First,

Justice Statistics report on Prisoners in 2014 reports (Table 9) that 19% of federal prisoners were held in
private facilities — about 40,000 in 2013 and in 2014. But that includes about 14,000 in nonsecure facilities
and home confinement. The Yates memo says that in 2013 the number of private prison inmates was 30,000, or 15% of federal prisoners, and notes in a footnote that this
doesn’t include federal halfway houses (and that halfway houses aren’t the focus of the memo). The IG report says federal private prisoners were 22,660 in 2015, or 12% of the
total. Probably these numbers are all consistent, and the different is due to different years and slightly different definitions of who’s covered. So this memo affects probably

Compare that to the state prison system. Private prisons represent

about roughly 25,000 people today.

much less of the state systems — about 7% — but the state systems are much bigger. Overall, there were about 90,000 private state prisoners in
2014. (The 7% is of course an aggregate: it’s 0% in almost 20 states that don’t use privatization at all, over 25% in just three states (MT, NM, OK), and something in between (a
median of about 10%) in others.) And these people are unaffected by the Yates memo, though maybe some states might be moved to follow the federal government’s lead.
Also, this doesn’t include immigrant detainees in ICE facilities — I haven’t looked into those numbers closely, but it looks like those total numbers are comparable to the federal

Bureau of Prisons numbers. * * * Now, let’s look at what empirical studies can tell us about cost and
quality. For a discussion at greater length, please see my Emory Law Journal article on Prison Accountability and Performance Measures, or this earlier post of mine
(which this post quotes from liberally). Costs are hard to compare between the public and private sectors ,

because the two sectors do their accounting differently. One obvious difference is that private prison
firms have to pay all their own payroll, benefits, legal expenses, etc., while a lot of those costs in the public
sector are borne by different agencies, not the Department of Corrections or Bureau of Prisons. Naive cost comparisons will typically be worthless, so one will need to do a
sophisticated study that spells out all its accounting assumptions. Perhaps the best example of competing, side-by-side cost studies comes from the evaluation of the federal
facility in Taft, California, operated by The GEO Group. A Bureau of Prisons cost study by Julianne Nelson compared the costs of Taft in fiscal years 1999 through 2002 to those
of three federal public facilities: Elkton, Forrest City, and Yazoo City. The Taft costs ranged from $33.21 to $38.62; the costs of the three public facilities ranged from $34.84 to
$40.71. Taft was cheaper than all comparison facilities and in all years, by up to $2.42 (about 6.6%)—except in fiscal year 2001, when the Taft facility was more expensive than
the public Elkton facility by $0.25 (about 0.7%). Sloppily averaging over all years and all comparison institutions, the savings was about 2.8%. A National Institute of Justice
study by Douglas McDonald and Kenneth Carlson found much higher cost savings. They calculated Taft costs ranging from $33.25 to $38.37, and public facility costs ranging
from $39.46 to $46.38. Private-sector savings ranged from 9.0% to 18.4%. Again averaging over all years and all comparison institutions, the savings was about 15.0%: the two
cost studies differ in their estimates of private-sector savings by a factor of about five. Why such a difference? First, the Nelson study (but not the McDonald and Carlson study)
adjusted expenditures to iron out Taft’s economies of scale from handling about 300 more inmates each year than the public facilities. Second, the studies differed in what they

Now, on to quality. Here, too, naive

included in overhead costs, with the Nelson study allocating a far higher overhead rate. * * *

comparisons aren’t much good, because how much quality one should expect depends
on many factors like the demographic composition of a particular prison — which is something that the
IG report didn’t control for. Most damningly, many studies don’t rely on actual performance measures, relying

instead on facility audits that are largely process-based. Some supposed performance measures don’t necessarily
indicate good performance, especially when the prisons are compared based on a “laundry list” of available data items (for instance, staff satisfaction) whose relevance to good

One of its evaluation categories is rates of

performance hasn’t been theoretically established. Let’s consider the IG report itself.

assaults, both inmate-on-inmate and inmate-on-staff. That seems fine — I think we can all agree that
 But the report also says that “the contract prisons
assaults are bad — provided the measurement methods are comparable.

confiscated eight times as many contraband cell phones annually on average as the BOP
institutions.” That’s not the actual number of contraband cell phones — it’s the number
confiscated, because of course we don’t know the actual number. Well, I know a great way to get that number
down: just stop looking hard for contraband phones. This is an inappropriate measure because it could indicate that there are a lot of phones or that enforcement is very
vigorous; you can’t use it as a basis for comparison between prisons unless you know, for instance, that the level of enforcement is similar. And yet, the IG report uses that as a
basis to criticize private prisons. Similarly, the IG report found that the private prisons “fail[ed] to initiate discipline in over 50 percent of incidents”. But whether you should initiate
discipline in any given case is a matter of judgment, and I’m sure that, in another context, people would think that a bright-line insistence on initiating discipline 100% of the time

As an example of the problems with current quality metrics, consider the

is inflexible and overly punitive.

performance evaluations of the private federal Taft facility. As with the cost studies discussed above, we have two
competing studies, the National Institute of Justice one by McDonald and Carlson and a Bureau of Prisons study by Scott Camp and Dawn Daggett — the companion paper to

Julianne Nelson’s cost paper. The Bureau of Prisons has evaluated public prisons by the Key Indicators/Strategic Support System since 1989.
Taft, alas, didn’t use that system, but instead used the system designed in the contract for
awarding performance-related bonuses. Therefore, McDonald and Carlson could only
compare Taft’s performance with that of the public comparison prisons on a limited
number of dimensions, and many of these dimensions—like accreditation of the facility,
staffing levels, or frequency of seeing a doctor—aren’t even outcomes. Taft had lower
assault rates than the average of its comparison institutions, though they were within the range of observed
assault rates. No inmates or staff were killed. There were two escapes, which was higher than at public prisons. Drug use was also
higher at Taft, as was the frequency of submitting grievances. On this very limited analysis, Taft seems neither clearly

better nor clearly worse than its public counterparts. The Camp and Daggett study, on
the other hand, created performance measures from inmate misconduct data, and
concluded not only that Taft “had higher counts than expected for most forms of
misconduct, including all types of misconduct considered together,” but also that Taft “had the largest
deviation of observed from expected values for most of the time period examined.” Camp and Daggett’s performance assessment was thus more pessimistic than McDonald

and Carlson’s. According to Gerald Gaes, the strongest studies include one from Tennessee, which shows
essentially no difference, one from Washington, which shows somewhat positive results,
and three more recent studies of federal prisons by himself and coauthors, which found public prisons
to be equivalent to private prisons on some measures, higher on others, and lower on yet others. Bottom line: I think Yates is exaggerating what

we know about the cost and quality of public vs. private prisons, and perhaps giving undue weight to the negative
findings of the IG report, even though that report didn’t control for inmate demographics, didn’t fully use valid performance measures, and so on. But here’s what’s

possibly even more important: prisons have begun experimenting with performance
measures and performance-based contracting. The UK has been a pioneer in this
movement , but it’s been used to a limited extent in the U.S. too. A small amount of the contract payment in the Taft case was performance-based. Also, there was a
prison-privatization bill in Florida that never became law; it was defeated for general anti-privatization reasons, but if it had passed, it would have implemented some

It might seem surprising, but private prisons have almost never been
performance-based contracting.

evaluated on their performance and compensated on that basis. Pro-privatization people

have often favored prison privatization on the grounds that the market (unlike, usually, government)
has the advantage of greater flexibility to experiment and also has greater scope for
incentives to work . Maybe that’s usually true, but in the case of prisons, both of these elements have usually been false: private prisons
have had limited scope for experimentation (the contracts have often reproduced the entire public-sector rulebook in excruciating
detail) and have also had limited incentives (contract payments have rarely incorporated performance-based elements). In light of that, maybe it’s

even surprising that private prisons have done as well as they have in the comparative
studies . Be that as it may, the advent of performance-based contracting could open up possibilities for substantial quality improvements. This could work in the public
sector too (bonus payments for public prison wardens?), but the private sector is probably better situated to take advantage of monetary incentives. So if the

federal government stops contracting with private prison firms now, it may miss out on
these potential quality improvements. Not only that: if the federal government continued
contracting with private prison firms, it could itself take the lead in implementing
performance-based contracting and thus be a driver in these quality gains . This means that even if all
the bad things about private prisons are true, the best strategy may be instead “Mend it, don’t end it.”

Private prisons work – they save money while still maintaining similar
quality
Moore 99 (Adrian T. Moore, Director of Economic Studies at the Reason Public Policy
Institute, “PRIVATE PRISONS: Quality Corrections at a Lower Cost” Policy Study No. 240) GG
Why are U.S. federal agencies and state and local governments turning to the private sector for
correctional services? Because tougher crime policies and budget constraints have
combined to create a problem, if not a crisis, in the nation’s prisons and jails.
Governments are incarcerating more criminals, but they have recently become unwilling
to spend sufficient tax dollars for new prisons to house them. The prison system is
increasingly characterized by overcrowding, lawsuits, and court orders. With taxpayers
clearly demanding that criminals be put in prison and kept in longer, there seems to be no
choice but to increase the capacity of the prison system. But with popular pressure to
cut government spending, funding the increase will be difficult. Legislators face a lot of
pressure to hold the line on corrections spending, and fewer than half of all referendums to
approve bond financing of new prisons are being approved by voters. This has led federal,
state, and local officials to consider how the private sector can become involved in
corrections to lower costs while maintaining or even improving the quality of services
and help cope with the growing number of prisoners without busting the budget. This
study surveys the evidence on what private prisons have to offer and the evidence on how they
have performed. Extent of Private Prisons: Contracting with private prisons is widely practiced¾
there are over 120 private facilities in 27 states, and around 120,000 inmates in their keeping.
Private firms operate several maximum security facilities and dozens of medium security ones.
Cost Savings: Private prisons save money - 10 to 15 percent average savings on
operations costs, based on fourteen independent cost comparison studies. Other evidence of
cost savings is examined as well. Cost savings are achieved through innovation and
efficient management practices. Quality Services: Private prisons provide at least the
same quality services that government prisons do - based on six independent quality
comparison studies, rates of American Correctional Association accreditation, recidivism
comparison studies, contract terminations, and prisoner and correctional officer lawsuits. The
evidence is overwhelming that the private sector delivers quality correctional services at
lower cost to the benefit of taxpayers. Moreover, public official’s experiences with
contracting for correctional services, through contract terms, legislation, and best practices,
has resolved many of the thorny questions that come up when privatizing corrections is
suggested. This study examines the answers to such questions as: Can private correctional
officers use deadly force?, Can they manage riots?, How can we be sure private prisons do not
violate prisoners’ rights?, Do private correctional officers receive lower-quality training than
government correctional officers?, Have private prisons been “skimming the cream”—taking
only low-security and lessexpensive inmates?, and many others.
Numerous studies prove private prisons are comparatively superior in
education
Moore 99 (Adrian T. Moore, Director of Economic Studies at the Reason Public Policy
Institute, “PRIVATE PRISONS: Quality Corrections at a Lower Cost” Policy Study No. 240) GG

A number of studies have examined the quality of private correctional services in the United
States, Australia, and the United Kingdom,56 comparing such measures as inmate and staff safety,

escapes, health care, education and work programs , and counseling and rehabilitation programs. The
research reveals a pattern of high-quality services in private facilities: One U.S. study by Dr. Charles
Logan, of the University of Connecticut, is notable for its depth and detail, examining 333 quality variables in comparing a private facility to state-run
and federal facilities. He found that the
private facility performed better than the government facilities
across all but one of eight dimensions.57 The LSU study discussed earlier also looked at quality variables, and it found that
both of the privately run facilities performed better than the government facility in terms of safety of inmates, safety of correctional officers, number of
incidents, use of discipline, and education programs, all the while using fewer personnel. The government facility had fewer escapes, less substance
abuse, and more rehabilitation, social, and recreational services. The Urban Institute compared government and private adult prisons in Kentucky and
government and private juvenile facilities in Massachusetts. Using surveys of staff and inmates, as well as state
data, they compared dozens of variables between the facilities , including health care,
escapes, violence, counseling, and education programs . For most variables, the private
facilities in both states scored better than the government facilities, especially with
regard to programs , escapes, and violence.59 Arizona commissioned a study comparing its first
privately operated prison to the rest of its prison system. That study found that the performance of
the private prisons was superior in public safety issues (measured by frequency of escapes, major disturbances,
and injury to visitors), protecting staff and inmates (measured by personal injury or death from arson, assault, battery, or homicide), and compliance
with professional standards (measured by DOC audits, litigation initiated by prisoners or staff, inmate grievances, and in-service training for staff).60
In the United Kingdom, at least seven examinations of the quality of private prison
operations have been conducted: three inspections by the Chief Inspector of Prisons, three
independent research projects, and one independent government inquiry.61 Overall, the studies find that the private
prisons outperform the government prisons. Prisoners in the private prisons enjoy more
associative freedom, better staff-inmate relations, more and better work training, better
meals, and more convenient visiting schedules. There are also fewer escapes and less
violence in the private prisons. Assaults between inmates is the only measure where the private facilities have fallen short, and their performance
in that area has been converging on that of government prisons. The Director General of Her Majesty’s Prison Services has asserted that the private
prisons are the “most progressive in the country at controlling bullying, health care, and suicide prevention.” He strongly urges the government prisons
concludes that the
to emulate these progressive practices, and he has issued training circulars describing them to all wardens. He
private prisons create a “healthy competition” that is improving the quality of the entire
prison system.62

Numerous reasons they work better than federal prisons – their studies are
wrong
Owen et al. 16 (Steve Owen, Pablo Paez, Mike Murphy, New York Times, “Benefits of
Private Prisons, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/13/opinion/benefits-of-private-prisons.html)
GG
Recent lauding of a Justice Department move to curtail the use of private prisons —
including by The Times — has failed to note both the flaws in the Office of the Inspector
General report upon which this decision was predicated, and data laid out in the report that
paints a clearly positive picture of private prisons. Private prisons are on a par with public
prisons, safety and quality-wise . In its report, the inspector general's office compared
private prisons occupied by demographicallv homogeneous, often gang-affiliated
inmates destined to be deported immediately after completion of their sentences to public
prisons containing demographicallv mixed populations of Americans less involved in gangs. The
inspector general's office admits in the report that demographic factors play a significant
role. Therefore conclusions that are drawn as to relative safety may be severely flawed.
The report indicates that private prisons are better at finding, seizing and recording
contraband than their public counterparts . Furthermore, it shows that inmates in private
prisons are less likely to use drugs, and less likely to be subject to or involved in sexual
misconduct. It also shows that fewer inmate deaths occur in private prisons. Private
prisons achieve all this at a cost of over S3,ooo less per inmate , per year, according to the
report. The reality is that private companies collaborate with government to meet its most
pressing needs in safe, humane, sensible ways that provide value for taxpayers every day.
Aff Answers – For Private CP
 2AC - Private CP – Net Worse
Federal rehabilitation fails now, but private prisons are net worse –
education and training is antithetical to any for-profit company because
they would lose inmates they make money off
Ferkel 16 (Greta Ferkel, M.M.Ed., Executive Dean of Adler University’s Global Campus,
“Private Prisons and the End of Rehabilitation” 6/13/16, http://www.adler.edu/blog/private-
prisons-and-the-end-of-rehabilitation) GG
Each year, nearly 700,000 people are released from prison in the United States. Within three years, 40
percent of them will go right back. According to a 2014 study by RAND Corporation, educated offenders have much lower
recidivism rates than those who are released but received no education while incarcerated. These findings suggest that a

major factor in our criminal justice system’s failure to rehabilitate is a basic lack of
education. A review of the InMateAid website reveals that only 28 out of the 50 states have any kind of
education program listed, meaning 44 percent offer nothing—a number that correlates closely to the overall recidivism rate. More
generally, states consistently prioritize funding for incarceration far beyond what they offer
for K–12 education. Annually, on average, states spend $15,000 to $60,000 maintaining a prisoner, but only $7,000 to $18,000 on
educating a student. The Pew Charitable Trusts reports that federal spending for prisons rose seven-fold over the
last three decades, from less than $1 billion (adjusted for inflation) in 1980 to nearly $7 billion in 2013. It’s hard not to look
at this dramatic increase and not make a connection to the privatized industrial prison
complex, which has also rapidly grown over the past 30 years. Privately owned prisons
make their money based on the number of occupied beds, meaning states pay a certain
amount for each prisoner. Often, in their contracts with state governments, privately owned prisons stipulate
the state guarantee a certain rate of occupancy, sometimes as high as 90 percent. Keeping this in mind, it’s
alarming that inmates assigned to private prisons on average serve 4 to 7 percent more
time than those assigned to public prisons. A major driver of this increase is the heightened incidents of prison conduct
violations. Inmates in private prisons incur twice as many infractions—and subsequent
sentence increases—than those in public prisons. And yet the value proposition of a private
prison is cost savings to the state, meaning a lower amount spent per prisoner on an annual basis. Given that
sentences are longer in private prisons, the only way to reduce costs is to spend less on
prisoners. There’s no magic, no smart innovations in the way private prisons accomplish this; they simply cut
services. Education and training programs are often among the first to go. Beyond cost savings,
providing education to prisoners goes directly against the interests of private prisons .
Studies have shown education programs reduce recidivism by 40 percent. No business
designed to maximize profit would intentionally provide a service or product that
ensures 40 percent of its customers never return . This conflict of interest highlights a
clear need for reform of the criminal justice system and a distinct opportunity for institutions of higher education.
We are positioned to have a tremendously positive impact. This is an opportunity to leverage the maturation of online education and strong
cybersecurity measures, as a cost-effective, efficient means to provide instruction and support services, including tutoring, writing labs, and career
services virtually. This is higher education’s moment. With our capacity for focused research and innovation, we can develop increasingly effective
means to educate and rehabilitate incarcerated people. It
is, in fact, the moral responsibility of educational leaders
and institutions to create opportunities for the most vulnerable among us and the advancement of
social justice. We should seek to partner with policymakers, prison leaders, private providers and communities to create a system that will make
education available to those incarcerated.
 2AC – Private CP – DOC Better
Comparative analysis proves DOC education programs do better than
private prisons
Greene 99 (Judith Greene Senior Soros Justice Fellow Center on Crime, Communities &
Culture Open Society Institute, “Comparing Private and Public Prison Services and Programs in
Minnesota: Findings from Prisoner Interviews” Current Issues in Criminal Justice – Vol. II, No. 2
Sydney University School of Law) GG

General education classes (adult basic education; General Education Diploma (GED)
preparation; English as a second language) are offered in both the private and public
facilities , and most prisoners who participate take classes five days a week. At PCF the
academic program is divided into four levels (GED I – reading foundations; GED II – adult
literacy; GED III – pre-GED literacy skills; and GED IV – GED preparation). Students are
placed in course work according scores on the standardized Test of Adult Basic
Education (TABE). Classes are offered five days a week in three hour periods over a morning,
afternoon, and evening schedule, but students are normally enrolled in just one three-hour class
per day. At the DOC facilities, academic course work and placement is organized in a
similar fashion, but for most students, full-time enrollment is required. Interview data confirm
that the duration of daily classroom attendance was higher in the DOC system. At PCF most
prisoners who had been enrolled in the general education program said that they took only one
three-hour class per day – while more of those in DOC classes reported participation in a full-
day educational program. DOC’s academic teachers are state-certified, and the Minnesota
Department of Children, Families and Learning conducts regular compliance reviews of
educational services, requiring corrective action plans for special education needs. The
state official that administers Minnesota’s Adult Basic Education program reports that since the
PCF program operates entirely independently, the rules and requirements are set entirely by
CCA managers. Data obtained from CCA’s company-wide computerized education information
system (“Roll Call”) showed that of a total of six academic education teachers at PCF during the
July-September 1998 quarter, just half had an academic certificate. The lower educational
program standards at PCF may be reflected in one important outcome measure. Data
obtained from the Minnesota Department of Children, Families and Learning show that
the rate of GEDs earned by prisoners at PCF is lower than at DOC medium-security
facilities. From October 1, 1997 through September 30, 1998, the rate of GEDs earned at PCF
was 55 per thousand inmates, compared to an average of 74 per thousand for inmates housed
at the three DOC facilities. A similar contrast between the two systems pertains with
vocational education classes. These are offered in both systems, and most prisoners who
are enrolled take classes five days a week. The daily class schedule for vocational
classes at PCF is divided into two, 3-hour periods, morning and afternoon – with students
normally enrolled in just one class period per day. Vocational classes at PCF are offered in four
vocational specialties: Horticulture, Custodial Maintenance, Computer Information Processing,
and Basic Electrical/Mechanical Maintenance. At the DOC facilities, vocational students are
normally in attendance full time, six hours per day. Course offerings at Lino Lakes include
Culinary Arts, Building Care Services, and Horticulture. A “distance learning” program is also
available at Lino Lakes. Distance Learning is an independent study vocational program
delivered through Century College which offers pre-requisite and introductory courses in
the following areas: Accounting, Carpentry and Cabinet Making, Stationary Engineering,
Horticulture, Plant Maintenance, Refrigeration and Air Conditioning, and Electrical
Maintenance and Wiring.9 At Moose Lake the course offerings are Building Care, Barber
Training, and Horticulture – and a distance learning program is also available. Faribault offers
the most extensive on-site vocational program, with an A+ Certification Program, Building Care,
Cabinet Making, Small Business Management, Engineering Drafting, Horticulture, and
Upholstery. In interviews at PCF, prisoners who reported taking vocational instruction said they
took just one three-hour class per day – while a significant proportion (four of six participants) in
the DOC system reported that they were enrolled in a full-time program of vocational
training. Prisoners in the public system were significantly more likely to report that
valuable vocational skills training was accessible to them . Fifty-three percent agreed
that it is easy to get into a good vocational program in the DOC facilities, compared to
only 23 percent at PCF who gave this response. And significantly more DOC prisoners
(again, 53 percent compared to 24 percent) agreed that prisoners have the opportunity
while in prison to prepare themselves for new employment opportunities upon release.
The more favorable assessment of vocational programs given by prisoners in the DOC
system may stem from important differences in how these programs are administered
within the public and private facilities. Vocational training in DOC facilities is provided
through contracts with technical colleges within the Minnesota State Colleges and University
system, and all instructors are licensed by the state. The course credits earned by students are
therefore transferable within the state technical college system, and since vocational training
certificates are awarded through these schools, vocational students who complete DOC training
will enter the labor force when they are released on an even footing with those whose training is
received on MNSCU campuses across the state. In contrast, vocational course work furnished
by CCA is operated completely outside of the MNSCU system.10 According to “Roll Call” data,
the four vocational instructors at PCF are not licensed by the state. Students who complete
vocational training receive institutional certificates. Overall, prisoners in the DOC facilities
were more likely (50 percent, compared to 38 percent at PCF) to report that participation in
educational classes had proved very helpful to them , personally. And they gave
significantly higher overall ratings to the educational programs available in their facilities
– an average of 4.29 on a scale of 1 to 5, compared with an average of only 3.16 for PCF
prisoners. Some PCF prisoners complained that quality education was a low priority at
PCF: “They don’t spend money on education programs in this prisons.” “We need
accredited programs – they should give us programs that really count, with ‘real world’
certificates.” But comments from prisoners in both systems were indicative of a widely-held
desire for a broader array of education and skill-training programs to prepare them for “real jobs”
once they return to their home communities. A prisoner at PCF asked for more advanced
instruction: “Many people here are very smart, and need a higher level of education
programs than what’s offered here.” Prisoners in the DOC system wanted a broader selection
of course offerings: “Give us more education and vocational programs – don’t cut back!” “We
need more varieties of job training that will help us make a living when we get out.” And
reflecting a common perception of labor-market demands in Minnesota, the most frequently
voiced plea from prisoners in both systems was for more -- and more advanced -- computer
skills classes.
 2AC – Private CP – Private Bad - Accountability
For profit prisons lead to less accountability as well as corporate influence
in politics.
Cohen 15 (Michael Cohen, The Washington Post, “How for-profit prisons have become the biggest lobby no one is talking
about” Michael Cohen is a freelance writer from Staten Island, N.Y.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/04/28/how-for-profit-prisons-have-
become-the-biggest-lobby-no-one-is-talking-about/) GG
Several industries have become notorious for the millions they spend on influencing
legislation and getting friendly candidates into office: Big Oil, Big Pharma and the gun lobby among them. But one has managed
to quickly build influence with comparatively little scrutiny: Private prisons. The two largest for-profit prison
companies in the United States – GEO and Corrections Corporation of America – and their associates

have funneled more than $10 million to candidates since 1989 and have spent nearly $25
million on lobbying efforts . Meanwhile, these private companies have seen their revenue and
market share soar. They now rake in a combined $3.3 billion in annual revenue and the
private federal prison population more than doubled between 2000 and 2010, according
to a report by the Justice Policy Institute. Private companies house nearly half of the
nation’s immigrant detainees, compared to about 25 percent a decade ago, a Huffington
Post report found. In total, there are now about 130 private prisons in the country with
about 157,000 beds. Marco Rubio is one of the best examples of the private prison
industry’s growing political influence, a connection that deserves far more attention now that he’s officially launched a
presidential bid. The U.S. senator has a history of close ties to the nation’s second-largest for-
profit prison company, GEO Group, stretching back to his days as speaker of the Florida
House of Representatives. While Rubio was leading the House, GEO was awarded a state government contract for a $110 million
prison soon after Rubio hired an economic consultant who had been a trustee for a GEO real estate trust. Over his career, Rubio has received nearly
$40,000 in campaign donations from GEO, making him the Senate’s top career recipient of contributions from the company. (Rubio’s office did not
Justice Policy Institute identified the private-prison industry’s
respond to requests for comment.) The
three-pronged approach to increase profits through political influence: lobbying, direct
campaign contributions, and building relationships and networks. On its website, CCA
states that the company doesn’t lobby on policies that affect “the basis for or duration of
an individual’s incarceration or detention.” Still, several reports have documented
instances when private-prison companies have indirectly supported policies that put
more Americans and immigrants behind bars – such as California’s three-strikes rule
and Arizona’s highly controversial anti-illegal immigration law – by donating to
politicians who support them , attending meetings with officials who back them, and lobbying for funding for Immigration and
Customs Enforcement. Showing just how important these policies are to the private prison industry, both GEO Group and Corrections Corporation of
America have warned shareholders that changes in these policies would hurt their bottom lines. In its 2014 annual report, CCA wrote: The demand for
our facilities and services could be adversely affected by the relaxation of enforcement efforts, leniency in conviction or parole standards and
sentencing practices or through the decriminalization of certain activities that are currently proscribed by our criminal laws. For instance, any changes
with respect to drugs and controlled substances or illegal immigration could affect the number of persons arrested, convicted, and sentenced, thereby
potentially reducing demand for correctional facilities to house them. … Legislation has been proposed in numerous jurisdictions that could lower
minimum sentences for some non-violent crimes and make more inmates eligible for early release based on good behavior. This outlook runs counter
to what should be a rehabilitative mission of the nation’s criminal justice system. Instead, private prison contracts often require the government to keep
the correctional facilities and immigration detention centers full, forcing communities to continuously funnel people into the prison system, even if actual
crime rates are falling. Nearly two-thirds of private prison contracts mandate that state and local
governments maintain a certain occupancy rate – usually 90 percent – or require
taxpayers to pay for empty beds. In Arizona, three private prisons are operating with a
100 percent occupancy guarantee, according to Mother Jones. There’s even a lockup quota at the federal level: The
Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s detention budget includes a mandate from Congress that at least 34,000 immigrants remain detained on a
daily basis, a quota that has steadily grown each year, even as the undocumented immigrant population in the United States has leveled off. Private
prisons have profited handsomely from that policy, owning nine of the 10 largest ICE detention centers, according to a report released this month by
Grassroots Leadership. With the growing influence of the prison lobby, the nation is, in effect, commoditizing human bodies for an industry in militant
pursuit of profit. For instance, privatization created the atmosphere that made the “Kids For Cash” scandal possible, in which two Pennsylvania judges
received $2.6 million in kickbacks from for-profit juvenile detention centers for sending more kids to the facilities and with unusually long sentences.
The influence of private prisons creates a system that trades money for human freedom,
often at the expense of the nation’s most vulnerable populations : children, immigrants and the poor.
The biggest beneficiaries of private prisons’ political donations have been Republican
politicians in Florida, Tennessee, and border states with high populations of
undocumented immigrants. The Republic Party of Florida PAC has received nearly $2.5 million from GEO and CCA since 1989. In
2010, GEO and its affiliates pumped $33,500 into political action committees benefiting Florida Republicans, including the Marco Rubio for U.S. Senate
PAC. Since 2009, GEO Group’s co-founder and chief executive, George Zoley, has personally donated $6,480 to Rubio.
 2AC – Private CP – Private Bad - Quality
They lead to poor quality jobs which kill prison quality
AFSCME 99 (The Evidence is Clear: Crime Shouldn’t Pay, 1999
http://www.afscme.org/news/publications/privatization/the-evidence- is-clear- crime-shouldnt-
pay/the-record- for-profit- prisons-threaten- public-safety) GG
Corrections is an inherently dangerous profession. The best way to deal with the
dangers inside the walls of a prison is to have an experienced corrections staff that is
properly trained and paid decent wages and benefits. High turnover, poor training, and
understaffing are a recipe for disaster in corrections , yet these characteristics are
common in for-profit prisons . According to a national study by the National Council on Crime
and Delinquency, for-profit prisons have lower staffing, lower salaries and a higher rate of
assaults on staff and inmates than public facilities.77 According to The Corrections
Yearbook, 1998, the average turnover rate for correctional officers in for-profit prisons
was 41.2 percent, compared to 14.9 percent in publicly run prisons.78 (Again, the for-profit
prison turnover rates were self-reported while public-sector turnover is from public records.) In
1999, the Tennessee Department of Corrections released a report on system wide turnover
rates among corrections officers from Jan. 1, 1998 to Dec. 1, 1998. According to the report,
the average turnover rate in the publicly run facilities was 34 percent while the average in
private facilities was 92 percent.79 When there is a high level of employee turnover, the
health and safety of staff, inmates and the public suffers from staff inexperience. High
employee turnover also leads to a poorly trained staff because of the need to
expeditiously fill empty positions. The danger of having improperly trained employees in
a corrections setting came to light when a prison guard was killed at a Wackenhut-run
facility in Santa Rosa, N.M. It was discovered that the guard was not certified to work in an
armed post as a corrections officer. Five other guards working at the prison were also
not certified.80 In another case in Youngstown, Ohio, “CCA guards said the company did not
train its employees to use firearms because state certification cost up to $3,000 a person.”81
According to The Corrections Yearbook, 1998, the average number of pre-service training hours
for corrections officers in a for-profit prison was 189 hours, compared to 232 hours in a state-run
facility.82 The low wages and benefits paid by for-profit corrections firms can attract
workers who would not be qualified to work in a public correctional setting . For instance,
published reports revealed that Cornell Corrections knowingly hired convicted felons to work as
guards inside Santa Fe County’s juvenile jail. The felons were discovered during an
investigation into the rape and molestation of a female inmate by a Cornell employee.83 In
addition, Cornell Corrections hired a warden for the Sante Fe County Detention Center who was
fired as head of the state prison in Roswell, N.M. The warden had been accused of
“conspiring to misappropriate public funds for private gain” while employed by the state.84
In another example, one of the for-profit jail guards seen manhandling a Missouri prisoner in the
Brazoria County, Texas, videotape was once convicted and sentenced for beating a state prison
inmate.85 Consider that, in 1999, during the week of Thanksgiving, CCA, the biggest for-profit
operator, had three different escapees on the run, including two murderers. One of the
escapees was convicted murderer Kyle Bell, who was convicted in North Dakota of killing an 11-
year-old girl that he also molested. Bell’s escape illustrated how the dangers inside a for-profit
prison can quickly threaten innocent citizens. Bell escaped in New Mexico from CCA’s transport
company, TransCor America, but had been spotted as far away as Wisconsin. Bell escaped
because the for-profit prison employees were sleeping on the job.86
 2AC – Private CP – CP Unpopular

Trump will expand private prisons now but they’re unpopular in Congress –
they’re inefficient, dangerous and overcrowded
Surowiecki 16 [James Surowiecki, staff writer at The New Yorker since 2000, and writes The
Financial Page. 12-5-2016, "A Trump Bonanza for Private Prisons," New Yorker,
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/12/05/trump-sets-private-prisons-free]
Going into Election Day, few industries seemed in worse shape than America’s private
prisons. Prison populations, which had been rising for decades, were falling. In 2014, Corrections Corporation of America, the
biggest private-prison company in the U.S., lost its contract to run Idaho’s largest prison, after lawsuits relating to understaffing and
violence that had earned the place the nickname Gladiator School. There were press exposés of shocking conditions in the industry
and signs of a policy shift toward it. In April, Hillary Clinton said, “We should end private prisons.” In August, the Justice
Department said that private federal prisons were less safe and less secure than government-run ones. The same month, the
department announced that it would phase out the use of private prisons at the federal level.
Although most of the private-prison industry operates on the state level (immigrant-detention centers
are its other big business), the news sent C.C.A.’s stock down by thirty-five per cent. Donald Trump’s victory

changed all that: within days, C.C.A.’s stock had jumped forty-seven per cent. His faith
in privatization is no secret, and prison companies aren’t the only ones rubbing their
hands . The stock price of for-profit schools has also rocketed. Still, the outlook for private prisons is particularly rosy, because
many Trump policies work to their benefit. The Justice Department’s plan to phase out private prisons will likely be scrapped, and a
growing bipartisan movement for prison and sentencing reform is about to run up
against a President who campaigned as a defender of “law and order.” Above all, Trump’s hard-
line position on immigration seems certain to fill detention centers, one of the biggest money spinners for private-prison operators.
The boom in private prisons in the past two decades was part of a broader privatization trend, fuelled by a belief in the superior
private
efficiency of the private sector. But privatizing prisons makes little economic or political sense. Some studies find
prisons to be less cost-effective than government ones, some more, and further studies suggest that any
savings are likely the result of cutting corners. In a study of prisons in nine states, Chris Petrella, a lecturer at Bates College, found
that private
ones avoid taking sick and elderly inmates, since health care is a huge
expense for prisons. They employ a younger, less well trained, and less well paid workforce and have higher inmate-
to-guard ratios, all of which saves money but also makes prisons more dangerous . When you consider
that the government still spends money monitoring private prisons, and that it’s stuck running the parts of the system that private
companies thought were money losers, the case that private prisons save money looks shaky.

They aren’t more efficient than public prisons – their authors don’t disclose
real data
Mumford et al. 16 (Megan Mumford, Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, and Ryan Nunn, The
Hamilton Project, “THE ECONOMICS OF PRIVATE PRISONS” 2016
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-
content/uploads/2016/10/es_20161021_private_prisons_economics.pdf) GG
Private prison companies aim to achieve the goals of the correctional system at lower
cost and with higher quality. Advocates of private prisons argue that the competitive
marketplace and absence of bureaucratic constraints allow private entities to develop
efficient prison operation practices. Research on whether private prisons improve efficiency
is limited, but does not contain strong evidence that private prisons are more efficient
than their public counterparts . In order to compare the cost of both public and private
prisons, it is important to include capital costs of the prison facility and monitoring costs for the
state agency that oversees the contract with the prison. In addition, one must account for
differences in required security levels and inmate needs, which affect the expense of
running a prison. Private companies are not required to release many details of their
operations, including details on the cost of the services they provide, which limits the ability to
make comparisons. The Government Accountability Office has concluded multiple times that
the data are not sufficient to definitively claim that either type of prison is more cost-
effective. One particular challenge in comparing costs is the difference in inmate
characteristics across prisons. The state of Arizona found that their minimum-security public
and private prisons cost virtually the same amount per prisoner after adjusting for the medical
costs incurred by public prisons whose inmates were in poorer health. By contrast, a separate
Temple University study widely cited by private prison companies found savings of
approximately 14 percent for Arizona minimum-security private prisons after valuing the
depreciation of the older public facilities more heavily and including underfunded pensions for
the public correctional officers. However, an internal investigation found that the authors of
this paper failed to disclose their funding sources —the three major private prison
companies—and the university disassociated itself with the report. 6 Mississippi is a good
state in which to evaluate public and private prisons because the state oversees both
public and private facilities that house medium-security inmates and (unlike most states) it
collects information on the operating and capital costs of its private prisons. Private prisons
cost the state an average of $46.50 per prisoner per day in 2012, while the state’s
comparable public facilities ranged from $35.11 to $40.47. Similarly, a study of prisons in
Tennessee and Louisiana also controlled for the security levels and size of public and private
facilities, finding that Louisiana’s private prisons were initially cheaper but the costs had risen to
equal or more than public facilities and Tennessee’s private prisons cost savings came more in
the form of forcing public facilities to lower costs. Finally, a metaanalysis of studies using
available cost data found that private and public prisons were similarly costly. Although
many of the arguments in favor of private prisons focus on operational innovation , in
practice the primary mechanism for cost saving in private prisons is lower salaries for
correctional officers (about 65 to 70 percent of prison operating costs go to staff salaries).
Private correctional officers are generally not members of a union and in 2015 they
received salaries that were about $7,000 lower than the average public officer’s salary. In
addition to paying less per officer, private prisons also tend to hire fewer officers; private
prisons report an average of one officer per 6.9 inmates compared to one officer per 4.9
inmates in public facilities. In principle, this difference could be associated with operational
innovations that reduce cost without compromising quality. However, the two largest
companies have each been involved in recent understaffing scandals ; the Occupational
Safety and Health Administration ruled against a private prison firm for severe understaffing and
inadequate training in Mississippi in 2014 and a federal judge penalized another firm for
misreporting its staffing levels in Idaho in 2013. The FBI even launched a criminal investigation
into a private prison in Idaho in 2014 because the facility’s correctional officers compensated for
understaffing by negotiating with prison gang leaders to maintain order through the threat of
gang violence, earning it the nickname “Gladiator School.” A combination of lower pay, with
OSHA’s findings of understaffing and inadequate training, may also help explain high
turnover rates among private correctional officers; a 2008 Texas report found that the
annual correctional officer turnover rate at the state’s seven private prisons was 90 percent, as
compared to 24 percent for state-run facilities. While private prisons may not consistently
provide correctional services at a lower cost, it is important to consider whether they provide
higher quality services at a given cost. There is a wide degree of variation on this front,
particularly due to the differences across private prison companies and locations.
Existing studies that attempt to quantify differences in quality across prison types are
inconclusive . While some state-specific studies assessing quality measures such as
escapes, suicides, assaults, and educational and vocational programming have not found
major differences, others found that private facilities performed slightly better. The Department
of Justice investigation into federal private prisons found substantial quality issues, including
more safety and security issues.
DOJ/DHS Resources CP
Top Shelf
 1NC – CP

The United States federal government should substantially increase all

necessary funding and resources allocated to the Department of Homeland
Security and Department of Justice, with the exception of the Bureau of
Prisons, necessary to combat domestic terrorism, organized crime, and
criminal cyber operations.

Solves the advantage and avoids politics.

RANS ‘7/24 (Ripon Advanced News Service; 7/24/2017; French news organization; “House approves first-ever Department
of Homeland Security reauthorization bill,” https://riponadvance.com/featured/house-approves-first-ever-department-homeland-
security-reauthorization-bill/; Date Accessed: 7/27/2017; DS)

The House approved the first reauthorization of the Department of Homeland Security
(DHS) in 15 years last week with support from U.S. Reps. Michael McCaul (R-TX), Dan Donovan (R-NY) and Bob Goodlatte (R-
VA). The Department of Homeland Security Authorization Act, H.R. 2825, reauthorizes DHS and component agencies like
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and the Secret Service for the
first time since the department was created in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. “Our adversaries are determined to attack
us and disrupt our way of life,” McCaul, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said. “ To
stay ahead of
America’s threats, we need a national security apparatus that can best adapt to new
challenges as they arise. The threats we face have evolved in the past 15 years, and we must not only keep up with the
evolution of the threats, we need to stay in front of them.” McCaul added that House passage of H.R. 2825 on a vote of
386-41 was “a major bipartisan accomplishment and example of what Congress can
achieve when we put the safety and security of our country ahead of politics.” Goodlatte, the
chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, noted on the House floor that “[a]uthorizing all of the Cabinet Departments is important,
but it is crucial that Congress reauthorize the Department of Homeland Security.” “This bill is the product of collaboration between
several committees,” Goodlatte said. “And the Judiciary Committee greatly contributed as this bill authorizes three component
agencies within the jurisdiction of the House Judiciary Committee – United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE),
United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), and the United States Secret Service.” Goodlatte added that he
supported the
bill because it marks an important step in ensuring that ICE and USCIS can
continue to perform effectively. However, he also urged Congress to ensure that the
agencies have the resources necessary to enforce the nation’s immigration laws. The DHS
reauthorization bill also included legislation previously introduced by Donovan, the Promoting Resilience in Preparing for Attacks
and Responding to Emergencies (PREPARE) Act. The measure would streamline DHS programs and
authorize grants to support first responder training, disaster preparedness and
response, and cyber security and counter-terror defenses. “Our nation is reminded each day of the
increased and evolving threat environment we face,” Donovan said. “Whether it’s multiple terror attacks in
Europe, global cyber threats, drugs being smuggled through our borders or the risk of a
powerful storm reaching our coast — it’s clear that we must continue to enhance our
preparedness capabilities. This bill takes necessary steps to reauthorize the DHS and
puts in place reforms to ensure that DHS is better able to secure our homeland.”
2NC Extensions
 2NC – Solves Everything

Solves organized crime, terror, and cyberattacks – best networks – FBI

effectiveness is empirically disproven.
Weigner ’17 (Mackenzie; 4/18/2017; writer for the Cipher Brief; “DHS Head Warns Terror, Organized Crime Ties
Tightening,” https://www.thecipherbrief.com/article/exclusive/north-america/dhs-head-warns-terror-organized-crime-ties-tightening-
1091; Date Accessed: 7/27/2017; DS)

“Make no mistake, we are in fact a nation under attack,” Kelly said, calling the threats against the U.S. “relentless.” At the top
of the list of concerns are transnational criminal organizations, terrorism, and
cyberattacks, according to Kelly. On terrorism, the DHS Secretary said that the “threat to our
nation, our American way of life, has not diminished” and has “metastasized and
decentralized.” The risk facing the U.S. is “in a way that is worse than we experienced 16 years ago on 9/11.” Kelly noted
the FBI has opened terrorism investigations in all 50 states, and since 2013, there have
been 37 ISIS-linked plots to attack the U.S. He also cited the threat from homegrown
terrorism, stating that in the past 12 months there have been 36 cases opened in 18
states. “These are the cases we know about. Homegrown terrorism is notoriously difficult to predict, detect, and certainly almost
impossible to control,” he said, adding that the Internet is key in feeding it.” The problem of returning foreign fighters from ISIS also
demands a tougher approach from the U.S., according to the Secretary. The visa waiver program demands a “very hard” look given
that many of the home countries of these fighters are part of it. “Not eliminating it and not doing anything excessive, but look very
hard at that program and say, ‘What do we need to do?’” he said. Kelly said he is concerned with the connection between criminal
and terrorist networks, particularly with money laundering and allowing drugs to pass through territory controlled by groups, such as
Boko Haram, which provides the terrorists an “incredibly lucrative way to raise money.” “They're not doing it in huge amounts yet, I
don't believe,” he said. “But to me, it would be a next step. So the nexus between criminal networks and terrorist networks is real,
and, I would predict, will get more sophisticated.” Kelly also noted the threat from so-called special interest aliens, who he said “are
from parts of the world where terrorism is prevalent or nations that are hostile to the United States.” These people pay transnational
criminal organizations (TCOs) “huge sums of money to transport them from, for example, the Middle East or Asia through South and
Central America and then to the United States,” he noted. According to Kelly, the “critical point” is that
these people are not vetted by the U.S. and “slip into our country unnoticed.” Trump has
advocated for what he calls “extreme vetting,” and a review of U.S. vetting procedures is currently underway. Kelly said
Tuesday that the country needs to improve its vetting processes and its overseas
procedures. “We'll use all the tools we have available — social media, new technology,
biometrics, more investigators, and top-notch intelligence,” he said. Trump’s executive order
banning travelers from six majority-Muslim countries and refugees was blocked by a federal judge, but the vetting review he called
for within it is proceeding. Kelly also said that, “like terrorists, TCOs [transnational criminal organizations] inflict unthinkable brutality
and regularly behead their victims. They intimidate, kidnap, and torture those who try to bring law and order.” “Their sophisticated
networks move anything and everything across our borders, including human beings. And we
have set out to stop that
movement to the greatest degree that we can,” he told the crowd. Kelly also addressed the
cybersecurity challenges facing the U.S. from nation-state actors, global criminal
organizations, and individual cyber terrorists. “Cyber threats present a tremendous
danger to our American way of life. The consequences of these digital threats are no less
significant than threats from the physical world. And so every day we prepare to fight
what many people can't even imagine,” he said.
 2NC – Solves Cyber
Most expertise – funding ensures deterrence and full protection.
Chalfant ‘7/26 (Morgan; 5/23/2017; writer for The Hill; “Trump budget seeks $3B for Homeland Security cyber unit,”
http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/334773-trump-budget-seeks-15-billion-for-homeland-security-cyber-unit; Date Accessed:
7/27/2017; DS)

President Trump’s budget request seeks increases in cybersecurity personnel across

several departments and over $3 billion in funding for a Department of Homeland
Security (DHS) unit in charge of safeguarding the country’s cyber infrastructure. Specifically,
the fiscal 2018 budget proposal would allot $3.27 billion for DHS’s National Protection
and Programs Directorate (NPPD), which is responsible for protecting U.S. physical and
cyber infrastructure from threats. The proposed budget is an increase over fiscal 2017 spending levels. Under
Trump’s proposal, the unit would receive $971.3 million for cybersecurity efforts in 2018. The
budget document, released by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Tuesday morning, also proposes
increases in law enforcement and cyber personnel at the DHS, the FBI and the
Department of Defense (DOD) with the aim of protecting federal networks and combatting
cyber crime. “The Budget supports the President’s focus on cybersecurity to ensure strong programs
and technology to defend the Federal networks that serve the American people, and
continues efforts to share information, standards, and best practices with critical
infrastructure and American businesses to keep them secure,” the OMB document states. “The
Budget also includes an increase in law enforcement and cybersecurity personnel
across DHS, DOD, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to execute these efforts and
counter cybercrime,” it states. Meanwhile, the budget proposes significant budget reductions to
domestic programs and other agencies, including deep cuts to Medicaid and anti-poverty
efforts, while boosting defense spending. While presidential budgets are rarely passed, the document
nevertheless lays out fiscal priorities for the new administration. The DHS is responsible for protecting critical
infrastructure and federal networks from cyber intrusions and spearheads a number of
cyber information-sharing initiatives with the private sector. Lawmakers in Congress have pushed for
legislation that would reorganize the DHS’s cyber efforts. Under legislation offered by Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) last year, the
NPPD would be replaced with a new operational agency to handle cyber issues.
 2NC – Funding Key
Funding solves – overcomes status quo overstretch and makes operations
effective.
Thomas ’17 (Steff; 2/22/2017; writer for Federal News Radio; “Justice Department anticipates budget challenges in 2017,”
https://federalnewsradio.com/in-depth-with-justice-department/2017/02/justice-department-officials-discuss-challenges-potential-
solutions/; Date Accessed: 7/27/2017; DS)

The Justice Department Office of Inspector General (OIG) has a lot on its plate in 2017 to
ensure money and time are used wisely to combat fraud, waste, drugs and threats to
national and cyber security. Some of the biggest challenges the department will face in upcoming months are keeping
track of appropriated funds to federal, state and local law enforcement, managing overcrowded prison systems
and safeguarding national and cyber security, said DoJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz on In Depth with
the Justice Department. Agency efforts to thwart cyber and physical attacks were once primarily
focused on individuals overseas, but law enforcement and intelligence officials now
grapple with how to handle a rise in threats from U.S. nationals and permanent residents.
“The challenge for law enforcement and the intelligence community in particular is on understanding where those attacks may come
from and what’s causing the issues to arise,” Horowitz told Eric White on the Federal Drive with Tom Temin. “It’s also a challenge to
do that in a manner that is obviously consistent with our constitutional safeguards and protections.” This issue has been part of the
public debate since Sept. 11, 2001 and was brought back into the spotlight more recently with the Trump administration’s travel ban.
A solution to the rising problem has not been offered, but strengthening the connections
between the departments and the employees within the agency could be a useful tactic.
“The Justice department actually has a significant role to play in that regard from both
the standpoint of its grant-making arms that support state and local authorities and
community policing relationships, but also through federal law enforcement that partner
extensively with state and local law enforcement,” Horowitz said. The OIG office has an obligation to ensure
law enforcement agencies are reforming their policies and procedures to be consistent with their constitutional statutory obligations
the Justice
— including how federal grant and appropriated money is spent. In its fiscal 2017 budget request,
Department requested $29 billion to support federal law enforcement priorities and the
criminal justice system of its state, local and tribal law enforcement partners. The agency will
allocate at least $1.1 billion to be appropriated to the smaller Justice areas supporting partnerships between federal and local law
enforcement, including the Drug Enforcement Administration, Bureau of Prisons, Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the request said. If
approved, a large portion of that money will
go into a general fund labeled the Drug Control Funds and Obligations. “Eight agencies
here within the Department of Justice receive drug control funding and they all have
unique priorities that they work with,” Kelly McFadden, director of the DoJ financial statement and audit office, told
the Federal Drive with Tom Temin. The role of the OIG when it comes to state and local funding from this pool is to perform an
attestation of the data reported by the agencies tapping into this fund. The requests are processed and approved through the Office
of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP). Each year the OIG conducts a review of that submitted data to ensure it matches the
numbers in the department’s management system, McFadden said. “We don’t weigh in on whether or ONDCP’s priorities are good
or bad or whether the performance matrix shows that DoJ is succeeding,” McFadden said. “This review is really only looking at the
A portion of that money is also used to run programs within the
accuracy of the data.”
overcrowded prison systems. Horowitz said that while the percentage of overcrowding
has decreased in the last few years, it still remains a problem. The percentage of funds
used in this regard has increased in the last 20 years from somewhere in the teens to
almost 25 percent, Horowitz said. “The share of the department’s budget that the BOP and prisons take up continues to
remain flat or even grow a little bit,” Horowitz said. “That money, as we’ve talked about in the past, makes it a challenge for the
leadership of the department to manage other programs because every
dollar that goes to a prison means one
less dollar for FBI agents, ATF agents, DEA agents, federal prosecutors, civil rights
prosecutors, civil division and everyone else in the Justice Department.” McFadden said OIG
also conducts audits on general funds within the department — but not in the same way
as the general fund. For the drug control fund pool, the office takes two months annually to put together an accounting
report to showcase the accuracy of the data reported by the ONDCP. In its 2016 Annual Accounting of Drug Control Funds and
Related Performance review, the OIG reported approximately $7.8 billion of drug control obligations and 23 related performance
measures within the DoJ.
 CP Unpopular
Increasing DHS spending is unpopular
Ford 17 (Matt Ford - associate editor at The Atlantic, where he covers criminal justice and the
courts – “Matt Ford is an associate editor at The Atlantic, where he covers criminal justice and
the courts.” – 5/23/17 - https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/05/trump-budget-
justice-department/527871/)/TK
The spending plan for the 2018 fiscal year, which was released on Tuesday, outlines $27.7 billion in funding for the department,
about 4 percent less than what Congress previously allocated. The overall budget isn’t likely to become law —not
without significant revisions from the Republican-led Congress, at least.¶ Legislators in both parties previously panned Trump’s
initial draft, released in March, and GOP leaders said they’d write their own version. Tuesday’s release didn’t change their course:
Texas Senator John Cornyn, a top Republican lawmaker, declared the administration’s proposal
“ dead on arrival ” on Tuesday.¶ But the document still serves as a map of the Trump
administration’s vision for the federal bureaucracy. It envisions substantial boosts to
the D efense and H omeland S ecurity departments, reflecting Trump’s focus on national
security and international terrorism. Federal agencies and departments further from the administration’s core
interests would receive significant cuts: The Environmental Protection Agency, for example, would see its budget reduced by one-
third.
Surveillance CP
Top Shelf
 1NC – CP
The Department of Justice should substantially increase surveillance and
intelligence collection targeted at anti-radicalization in federal prisons.

Solves the surveillance advantage – low costs because infrastructure

exists.
Atherton ’17 (Eugene; 1/31/2017; writer for PoliceOne; “6 strategies for preventing radicalization in US jails and prisons,”
https://www.policeone.com/preparing-americas-cops-for-terrorism/articles/285343006-6-strategies-for-preventing-radicalization-in-
US-jails-and-prisons/; Date Accessed: 7/27/2017; DS)

Prisoner intelligence systems must provide accurate, current, quality information that
identifies inmates who have high potential to radicalize towards violent behavior. During the
JIS incident, I personally witnessed a facility overwhelmed with violent gang activity. The gang activity was to the
extent that staff seemed to have little time or resources to tend to less obvious social
developments. This included the radicalization that was occurring in the prison chapel
with the support of the chaplain who was providing literature that embraced violence as
imperative in the terrorist struggle. The days are gone in which staff could walk the yard and speak to each inmate
by name and be familiar with who they are. The overall numbers of inmates has grown dramatically,
and they are frequently transferred among facilities. Because of this, all prisons need to
have intelligence systems. The historical information may not be very telling. However, information produced
by staff observing on the front lines and interacting with inmates may be extremely
valuable toward recognizing potential problems before they arise and skillfully
intervening before harm is done. Such information reported and analyzed through carefully
designed software systems can give staff the advantage as inmates contemplate
radicalization or consider deradicalization and disengagement from their group. Very often
the information is available, but the challenge that corrections agencies have is how to get it packaged, maintain its quality and
The Colorado Department of Corrections and the
integrity and swiftly move it to those who should know.
Florida Department of Corrections are outstanding examples of sophisticated incident
reporting systems. These systems begin with the officer managing inmates on the shift where a critical incident occurs.
The circumstances are documented and submitted to a digital report which is submitted
to a higher level of processing. There, it gets considered as impacting multiple areas of concern. After analysis, the
information is further elevated where all is prioritized and high level supervision can
formulate action plans. Some portions of the Florida system perform data analysis automatically. In both systems
leadership can identify an issue by a general label and then drill down through layers of
data that provide information that is extremely important. Such analysis can help prevent
escapes, inmate violence and can provide information that resolves problems before
radicalization appears. In the last decade, camera systems have become more affordable
and an integral part of the prison and jail operation. More advanced technology offers
software that includes facial identification of inmates under view of the camera. The cameras
have become the eyes and ears of staff confined to duty stations. Cameras can often detect movement and
inmate behavior that indicates a pattern of inmate social behavior that would identify
potential for radicalization.
 2NC – Solves
Monitoring communication solves.
GCTF ’16 (Global Counterterrorism Foundation; 2016; organization attempting to combat terrorism and extremism; “Prison
Management Recommendations To Counter And Address Prison Radicalization,” https://toolkit.thegctf.org/document-sets/prison-
management-recommendations-counter-and-address-prison-radicalization; Date Accessed: 7/27/2017; DS)

Recommendation 13 – Monitor all forms of commsunication in order to detect any violent

extremist radicalization, activities or plans. Correctional officials should seek to monitor and
control communications, including telephone calls, mail (electronic and postal) and in-
person, to the extent permitted by law. This may help in the identification of violent
extremist radicalization, activities or plans. Prison officials should ensure that inmates do not
have unmonitored access to communication devices, including cell phones and
computers. Communications between inmates should also be monitored, to the extent
permitted by law. It is important that officials determine the appropriate controls on communication that are commensurate
with the classification of the inmate. Moreover, the controls should be objective and transparent. The overarching point that officials
need to consider when determining how to monitor communications is to achieve the appropriate balance between security
concerns and an inmate’s need to maintain ties to family and the community as well as responsibly address potential issues
surrounding attorney confidentiality.

Intel gathering solves.

GCTF ’16 (Global Counterterrorism Foundation; 2016; organization attempting to combat terrorism and extremism; “Prison
Management Recommendations To Counter And Address Prison Radicalization,” https://toolkit.thegctf.org/document-sets/prison-
management-recommendations-counter-and-address-prison-radicalization; Date Accessed: 7/27/2017; DS)

Recommendation 12 – Utilize all legal sources for gathering information on what is happening
within prisons as a way to identify potential violent extremist radicalization in prison.
Intelligence is a critical factor in prison management. The effective management of
offenders requires the collaborative sharing of intelligence throughout their incarceration
(pre-trial, post conviction and pre-release). The ability to collect, evaluate, collate, analyze and
disseminate information related to offenders is critical to not only the safe operation of
prison facilities but also the prevention of radicalization to violent extremism. Prison
intelligence systems aid in security, assist in intake, assessment and classification, and inform
interventions and rehabilitative measures. Accurate intelligence information also assists
prison management to make sound strategic decisions about prisoner placement and
allocation of personnel resources and funding in the prisons to address security issues
including the prevention of radicalization of members of the larger prison population. As
with most elements of prison operations, how officials gather and utilize intelligence depends on a number of factors including their
legal frameworks, cultures, and resources. Prison
systems should have a central information gathering
unit, which provides prison management with accurate and timely information about
radicalization activities and improve prison security protocols. This is best accomplished
by observing, documenting, and addressing the behavior of offenders. Regular written
reports on each inmate is one approach to support consistent and individualized
attention. It is essential to make sure that intelligence is being utilized, analyzed, and
shared since intelligence and operations need to be fully integrated. One way to make sure that
intelligence is properly used is to maintain an intelligence database. Officials should consider how to engage relevant parties within
An essential aspect to getting information from
the prison environment in gathering and reporting information.
inmates is to have an approachable staff and known reporting mechanisms, including
protecting prison informants. Inter-agency, inter-governmental and international sharing
of information is central. Prison authorities need to work closely with law enforcement,
prosecutors and other security agencies tasked with tackling extremism in order to avoid
working at cross purposes. Correctional officers should be aware of how information will be utilized. Officials
should consider appropriate protocols and procedures to put in place in order to share
information internally and externally. In order to facilitate the sharing of information
between all public safety sectors such protocols should be reciprocal. If outside agencies are
involved in collecting intelligence from within the prison system, such efforts should be coordinated with prison officials to avoid
disruption to the proper management of the prison or ongoing interventions. Correctional facilities are valuable sources of
intelligence relevant to criminal justice and national security so there needs to be both in and out flows of intelligence information.
Aff Answers
 CP = SQ
CP is the status quo
McCarter 11, (Mickey, 6/16/11 “Experts Warn Of Conditions Contributing To Muslim
Radicalization In US Prisons”
http://www.hstoday.us/index.php?id=483&cHash=081010&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=18115)
First, US prisons have become safer generally. Prison homicides have fallen by 90 percent
in the past 30 years, for example. Second, corrections officers generally are aware of the
threat of radicalization among US prisoners. Third, surveillance in prisons has increased
greatly in the past 20 years through the use of cameras and other means.
 Prison Surveillance Racist

Surveillance is a form of racist, social control

Browne ‘15
(Simone, Dark Matters On The Surveillance Of Blackness, pg google
books//um-ef)
In Fighting Words: Black Women and the Search for Justice, while referring not specifically to prison surveillance or plantation slavery but to the postslavery,
segregated southern United States, Patricia Hill Collins writes that while racial segregation was aimed at black people as a group or class and sought to erase individuality by

making black people seemingly interchangeable, surveillance “highlights individuality by making the individual
hypervisible and on display .” 111 As part of the practice of “racial etiquette” in the segregated South,
surveillance, Collins tells us, was a way of ensuring that “Blacks would stay in their
designated, subordinate places in white-controlled public and private spheres.” 112 Collins situates
the bodies and lives of black women who labored as domestic workers and the white-controlled private homes in which they were employed as the “testing

ground for surveillance as a form of control” that was enacted by way of “techniques of
surveillance,” including close scrutiny, sexual harassment, assault, violence, or the threat
thereof. For the white women who employed them, Collins argues, this arrangement was predicated on the illusion that “the Black women workers whom they invited into
their private homes felt like ‘one of the family,’ even though they actually had second-class citizenship in the family.” 113 Yet within these labor

conditions of hypervisibility, black domestic workers needed to assume a certain

invisibility where, as bell hooks observes, “reduced to the machinery of bodily physical
labor, black people learned to appear before whites as though they were zombies,
cultivating the habit of casting the gaze downward so as not to appear uppity.” 114 Seemingly
“invisible to most white people, except as a pair of hands offering a drink on a silver tray,” this signifying act was performed by many domestic laborers so that they would be
assumed to be readily manageable and nonthreating. 115 Coupled with this system of scrutinizing black women’s domestic labor in private white homes was the controlling
image of “the mammy,” one of “several interrelated, socially constructed controlling images of Black women, each reflecting the dominant group’s interest in maintaining Black
women’s subordination.” 116 The mammy as a representational practice relies on the circulation of stereotyped images and ideologies of black womanhood that seek to position
black women as “the faithful, obedient domestic servant.” 117 The mammy is depicted as caring for the family in which she is employed, often to the sacrifice of her own. This
social control mechanism was “created to justify the economic exploitation of house slaves and sustained to explain Black women’s long-standing restriction to domestic
service,” representing, as Collins puts it, “the normative yardstick used to evaluate all Black women’s behavior.” 118 In so being, the mammy served as a symbol of “the
dominant group’s perceptions of the ideal Black female relationship to elite White male power.” 119 She is content, deferential, forgiving, nurturing, and loyal to the family that
she cares for, operating with some authority, however marginal, while still knowing “her ‘place’ as obedient servant.” 120 Such exaggerated representational strategies work to
rationalize the economic exploitation and sexual subjugation of black domestic workers and of those who labor in low-paying conditions in the service sector. This mammy
image circulates throughout dominant culture, from films such as Gone with the Wind (1939) to The Help (2011), to what Patricia A. Turner calls “contemptible collectibles,”
those distorted depictions of blackness that often take the shape of figurines, postcards, kitchen utensils, and lawn ornaments. Simply put, “Mammy is the public face that
Whites expect Black women to assume for them.” 121 Of course, many black women who labored in white households forged loving and nurturing relations with their own
families, despite the harsh working conditions of white supremacy. 122
 Surveillance Fails
Surveillance in prisons fails
Khosrokhava 15 (Farhad Khosrokhava - Researcher at the Centre d'Analyse et
d'Intervention Sociologiques (CADIS) – “Prisons and radicalization in France” – 3/19/15 -
https://www.opendemocracy.net/farhad-khosrokhavar/prisons-and-radicalization-in-france)/TK
Short term prisons are in a dire situation: overpopulated and understaffed, in most cells of some 9
square meters there are two and sometimes three prisoners, one prison guard supervising some 100 inmates (in the long term
Surveillance is at best sketchy if the
prisons, ‘Maisons centrales’, one guard is in charge of around 30 inmates).
prisoner does not show external signs of Fundamentalism like the long beard, a
proselytizing attitude, an aggressive behavior towards the guards, and disrespect
towards the official Muslim minister.¶ Radicalized inmates have learned to avoid those
pitfalls: they do not even go to the collective Friday prayers where they exist, they do not
make any ostentatious attempt at proselytizing and usually tone down their antagonism
towards the guards in order not to attract their attention.

Surveillance fails
NYPD ‘7
(NYPD, 2007, “Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat”,
http://www.nypdshield.org/public/SiteFiles/documents/NYPD_Report-
Radicalization_in_the_West.pdf, SS)
Al-Qaeda has provided the inspiration for homegrown radicalization and terrorism; direct
command and control by al-Qaeda has been the exception, rather than the rule among the case studies reviewed in this study. The four stages of the radicalization process,
each with its distinct set of indicators and signatures, are clearly evident in each of the nearly one dozen terrorist-related case studies reviewed in this report. o In spite of the
differences in both circumstances and environment in each of the cases, there is a remarkable consistency in the behaviors and trajectory of each of the plots across all the
stages. o This consistency provides a tool for predictability. The trans-national phenomenon of radicalization in the West is largely a function of the people and the environment

Much different from the Israeli Palestinian equation, the transformation of a

they live in.

Western-based individual to a terrorist is not triggered by oppression, suffering, revenge,

or desperation. Rather, it is a phenomenon that occurs because the individual is looking
for an identity and a cause and unfortunately, often finds them in the extremist Islam. There is no useful profile to assist
law enforcement or intelligence to predict who will follow this trajectory of radicalization.
Rather, the individuals who take this course begin as “unremarkable” from various
walks of life.
States CP
Solvency
 States Solve
States can offer prison education - increasing funding is key
Breitenbach 16 (Sarah Breitenbach - writes about the business of government for Stateline
– “College Returns to Prison; Hope Is Fewer Prisoners Will” – 7/15/16 -
http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2016/07/15/college-returns-
to-prison-hope-is-fewer-prisoners-will)/TK
Most states offer prisoners vocational training, GED preparation or basic education
courses. But traditional higher education has eluded many inmates since a 1994 federal law made them ineligible for the
popular Pell Grants.¶ Post-recession decreases in state funding for prison education — a 6 percent
drop on average from 2009 to 2012 — also has hurt states’ ability to educate the 78 percent of inmates
who lack any post-secondary education.
 States Solve Better
States solve better – the majority of prisoners are not in federal prisons
Galvin 7/26/17 (Gaby Galvin – staff writer at US News – “Underfunded, Overcrowded State
Prisons Struggle With Reform” – 7/26/17 - https://www.usnews.com/news/best-
states/articles/2017-07-26/understaffed-and-overcrowded-state-prisons-crippled-by-budget-
constraints-bad-leadership)/TK
The state prison population spiked between the 1970s and 1990s as the federal government chased the "war on drugs." ¶
Vaughn holds almost half of Delaware’s 5,539 prisoners. Despite the overall small prison population
compared with other states, Delaware’s incarceration rate was 15 percent higher than the national average in 2015, imprisoning 441
per every 100,000 people, according to the National Institute of Corrections. The state’s crime rates aren’t lower, either: Delaware
places 40th in U.S. News' Best States for public safety rankings.¶ The vast majority of U.S. prisoners are
incarcerated in state and local facilities : Fewer than 200,000 of the 1.5 million total inmates
were in federal prisons at the end of 2015, according to Bureau of Justice Statistics data. That's
a more than 2 percent decrease from the previous year and the smallest prison population since 2005. Another 730,000 people
were in local jails at the end of 2015, bringing the total incarcerated population to about 2.2 million.

States incarcerate the most inmates in the US

Mitchell, Policy Analyst, and Leachman, Director of State Fiscal Research,
’14 [Michael [State Policy Fellow for the Washington State Budget & Policy Center] and Michael
[policy analyst for nine years at the Oregon Center for Public Policy (OCPP), community
organizer in Chicago] 10/28/14, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 'Changing Priorities:
State Criminal Justice Reforms And Investments In Education | Center On Budget And Policy
Priorities'. Accessed July 7 2015. http://www.cbpp.org/research/changing-priorities-state-
criminal-justice-reforms-and-investments-in-education.
State corrections systems incarcerate the vast majority of prisoners in the United States.
State prisons account for 87 percent of the total prisoner population, with the remaining
13 percent under federal jurisdiction.[2] When one considers the broader population of
incarcerated people -- that is, including inmates in local jails either awaiting sentence or
serving a term of less than one year -- state prisons account for just under 60 percent of all
people behind bars at any given point in time.[3]

State and local reform solves better than the aff does
Guo ’15 [Jeff, Reporter, 2/23/15, 'John Legend Is Right: Prisons Are Disproportionately Black.
The Worst States Are Some Of The Whitest.'. Washington Post. Accessed July 7 2015.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2015/02/23/john-legend-is-right-prisons-are-
disproportionately-black-the-worst-states-are-some-of-the-whitest/.
The American prison system is largely the domain of the states. At any given time, far
more people are in state prison or local jails than in federal prison. According to the 2010
Census, only about 11 percent of people behind bars were in federal lockup. (This includes
people in detention awaiting trial.) At the federal level, only about 7 percent of convicted
prisoners were guilty of a violent crime, while over half are there on drug charges. At the state
level, the proportions are reversed. Just over half of people are locked up for violent crimes,
while 19 percent are there for property crimes — theft, fraud, etc. — and 16 percent for drug
crimes. (These numbers are from a Bureau of Justice Statistics report, which goes on to break
down the populations by race.) To put it in perspective, that is still about 46 percent of state
prisoners who are behind bars for non-violent crimes. With many states struggling with
overcrowding in their prisons, governors across the country are looking for ways to lower their
incarceration rates, starting with the large populations of non-violent offenders.

State and local prisons make up over 80% of the prison population
Wagner, is an attorney and the Executive Director of the Prison Policy Initiative, 28 May 2014
(Peter, “Tracking State Prison Growth in 50 States”, pg 1,
http://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/overtime.html)
Most (57%) people incarcerated in the United States have been convicted of violating
state law and are imprisoned in a state prison. Another 30% are confined in local jails —
which are outside the scope of this briefing — generally either for minor violations of state
law or because they are waiting to be tried for charges of violating state law . Federal-
level policy directly accounts for only the 10% of people behind bars in the U.S.; they
have either been convicted of violating a federal law or are being detained by the immigration
authorities and are awaiting potential deportation to another country. In the aggregate, these
state-level policy choices have been the largest driver of our unprecedented national experiment
with mass incarceration, but not every state has contributed equally or consistently to this
phenomenon. In the U.S., each state is responsible for making its own policy choices about
which people to lock up and how for long. We can’t end our nation’s experiment with mass
incarceration without grappling with the wide variety of state-level criminal justice
policies, practices and trends.
Case Answers
DOJ Advantage
 UQ – Squo Solves Ops
New DHS regs solve cyber.
Chalfant ‘7/26 (Morgan; 7/26/2017; writer for The Hill; “House panel advances DHS cyber reorganization bill,”
http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/343901-house-panel-advances-dhs-cyber-reorganization-bill; Date Accessed: 7/27/2017; DS)

A key House panel has advanced legislation that would satisfy a years-long push to
reorganize the Department of Homeland Security’s main cybersecurity wing. The bill, introduced
by Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas) with bipartisan support, passed the committee at a markup
Wednesday morning. The legislation would replace the National Protection and Programs Directorate (NPPD), which currently
handles cyber and physical infrastructure protection at DHS, with a new, operational agency called the Cybersecurity and
Infrastructure Security Agency. The
agency would have three divisions focused on cybersecurity,
infrastructure security and emergency communications. McCaul said the legislation would
allow DHS to better carry out its cyber mission and protect federal and civilian networks.
“This realignment of NPPD’s structure will allow it to become more streamlined and
effective in carrying out existing authorities while achieving the department’s goal of
creating a stand-alone operational organization focusing on and elevating the vital
cybersecurity and infrastructure security missions,” McCaul said. The committee passed similar legislation
last Congress, but it never received a vote by the full House. McCaul has been engaging with DHS under the new Trump
The bill will now advance to the full House for a
administration on the legislation since earlier this year.
vote, with no members of the committee expressing opposition to the legislation and no
amendments offered. Ranking member Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) signaled support for the legislation, saying, “It’s
something that actually, quite frankly, we should have done some time ago — but we’re there.” “Enactment of this
measure, which includes considerable input from DHS, will ensure that the department is
organized in a manner to effectively carry out both its cyber and infrastructure missions,”
Thompson said Wednesday. “It appears that all the stakeholders have lined up in agreement and we move forward.”
 UQ – Squo Solves Overstretch
Private prisons solve overstretch – they’ll just shift capacity.
Zapotosky ’17 (Matt; 3/24/2017; reporter for the Washington Post; “Federal prisons have fewer inmates. But the Justice
Dept. says it still needs private prisons to hold them,” https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/03/24/federal-
prisons-have-fewer-inmates-but-the-justice-dept-says-it-still-needs-private-prisons-to-hold-them/?utm_term=.78193c700e00; Date
Accessed: 7/27/2017; DS)

prisons were a sort-of necessary evil — less

In the eyes of President Obama’s Justice Department, private
safe and effective than facilities run by the government, but needed because of the
volume of inmates in the federal system. When Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates ordered them to be phased
out in favor of government-run facilities last year, she said she was able to do so only because the inmate population had declined,
thanks to sentencing reform and other measures to keep people from serving long prison terms. Attorney General Jeff Sessions
sees things differently. As one of his first major acts leading the Justice Department, Sessions reversed Yates’s directive,
proclaiming that not
using private prisons “impaired the Bureau’s ability to meet the future
needs of the correctional system.” But even Sessions’s Justice Department has noted the federal inmate population
is falling. In a recent White House budget proposal, officials even pointed to the 14 percent drop since 2013 as a reason the Justice
Department could nix construction of a planned government-run prison and save more than $1 billion in the process. So why, then,
would they need to keep using private prisons? David C. Fathi, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison
Project, said the budget proposal indicated either that “the embrace of private prisons was a purely ideological decision
Department officials expected they’d now increase the
unconnected to any actual need,” or Justice
inmate population — and rely on private prisons to help find the bed space. “The fact
that they are simultaneously acknowledging that the federal prison population is falling
and saying that they need private prisons to accommodate future needs seems to me
can only be explained by a plan to radically increase the federal prison population,” Fathi
said. “Otherwise, those two things are just irreconcilable.” The Bureau of Prisons declined to comment for this story. Justice
Department officials, who would speak only on the condition of anonymity because budget discussions are ongoing, said they
viewed the private prison directive as separate from whether they should press ahead with construction of a new government-run
prison. Because the Bureau of Prisons was down roughly 29,000 inmates from 2013 and 2014, there was no longer a need to build
a new high-security facility — a move that would save more than $1 billion. The Justice Department still plans to put into use a
Justice Department leaders felt that they
different high-security facility, which will cost about $80 million. But
still needed private prisons because the facilities give the Bureau of Prisons “more
flexibility in the future if they need bed space,” an official said. The private prisons house mostly low-security
illegal immigrants serving sentences for convictions on federal offenses, which is different than the population of the facility that was
nixed.

Reforms solve BOP resource overstretch and community integration.

DoJ ’16 (Department of Justice; 10/30/2016; Office of the Attorney General; “Justice Department Announces Reforms at
Bureau of Prisons to Reduce Recidivism and Promote Inmate Rehabilitation,” https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-
announces-reforms-bureau-prisons-reduce-recidivism-and-promote-inmate; Date Accessed: 7/27/2017; DS)

Today,
the Department of Justice announced a series of reforms at the Federal Bureau of
Prisons (BOP) designed to reduce recidivism and increase the likelihood of inmates’ safe
and successful return to the community. These efforts include building a semi-autonomous school district within
the federal prison system, reforming federal halfway houses, covering the cost of obtaining state-issued photo IDs for federal
inmates prior to their release from custody and providing additional services for female inmates. “Helping incarcerated individuals
prepare for life after prison is not just sound public policy; it is a moral imperative,” said Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch. “These
critical reforms will help give federal inmates the tools and assistance they need to
successfully return home as productive, law-abiding members of society. By putting returning
citizens in a position to make the most of their second chance, we can create stronger communities, safer neighborhoods and
brighter futures for all.” “The sweeping changes that we are announcing today chart a new course
for the Bureau of Prisons that will help make our prisons more effective, our communities safer
and our families stronger," said Deputy Attorney General Sally Q. Yates. “One of the best ways to prevent crime
is by reducing recidivism, and one of the best ways to reduce recidivism is by equipping
inmates with the tools they need to successfully reenter society." Last year, with the department’s
support, BOP retained outside consultants to review the agency’s operations and
recommend changes designed to reduce the likelihood of inmates re-offending after their
release from prison. As part of today’s announcement, the department is launching a new website, www.justice.gov/prison-
reform, that compiles current and ongoing reforms at BOP, and includes the final reports from the outside consultants.
 No Internal Link
The numbers don’t add up – prison funding doesn’t amount to what’s
needed for fighting crime
Thomas 17 (Steff Thomas – Federal News Radio – “Justice Department anticipates budget
challenges in 2017” – 2/22/17 - https://federalnewsradio.com/in-depth-with-justice-
department/2017/02/justice-department-officials-discuss-challenges-potential-solutions/)/TK
In its fiscal 2017 budget request, the Justice Department requested $29 billion to support
federal law enforcement priorities and the criminal justice system of its state, local and tribal law enforcement
partners. The agency will allocate at least $1.1 billion to be appropriated to the smaller Justice areas
supporting partnerships between federal and local law enforcement, including the Drug Enforcement Administration, Bureau of
Prisons, Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the request said.
Radicalization Adv
 No Internal Link/Alt Cause - ISIS
No internal link – very few ISIS recruits come from the US compared to
every other country – those are all alt causes
Shaw 15 (Jessica Marmor Shaw – Senior editor at Market Watch – “The countries where ISIS
finds support, in two charts” – 11/18/15 - http://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-countries-
where-isis-finds-support-in-two-charts-2015-11-18)/TK
Islamic State’s coordinated assault in Paris last week has brought even more attention to the terror group’s frighteningly rapid global
A study out of
growth, and where around the world it has found traction — not just in terms of territory gained, but in support.¶
the Brookings Institution used Twitter to shine some light on this, comparing the
countries where tweets from ISIS supporters originate. The study dealt with a sample size of 20,000 and
found that Saudi Arabia is the top location claimed by Twitter users supporting ISIS in 2015. Syria follows, Iraq rounds off the top
three and the U.S. takes fourth place.¶ The
number of foreigners joining the conflict in Syria and Iraq
has continued to rise in 2015, though this data doesn’t track these fighters to Islamic State, specifically. Nonetheless,
the data paints a rough picture of where around the world ISIS is finding success in
recruitment.¶ The number of fighters joining from Saudi Arabia is between 2,000-2,500,
the largest total number, according to the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence.
Per capita, that represents 107 fighters per million people. On a per capita basis, Jordan tops the list,
with an estimated 315 fighters per million people.¶ Belgium has the highest number of fighters per capita of any Western nation.
Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a Belgian-born senior Islamic State operative, is suspected to be the key mastermind behind the Paris
attacks. French police late Wednesday were working to establish if he was among the dead following a dramatic assault on the
terrorists’ hideout earlier in the day, according to the WSJ.¶ France is the biggest source of fighters in
Europe, contributing 1,200, or 18 per capita. Government figures have put the number of fighters closer to 1,600. ¶
The U.S. is very low on this list — only about 100 fighters have come from the U.S. ¶ An
estimated 1,700 fighters have come from Russia, most of whom are thought to be from
Chechnya and Dagestan, according to Russia’s Federal Security Service. Islamic State has said it brought down a
Russian passenger plane in Egypt’s Sinai region in late October with an improvised explosive device, killing all 224 passengers on
board.

It’s massively non-UQ by 3 years, but the amount of people coming from
the US is still tiny – social media is also an alt cause
Campbell 15 (Alexia Fernandez Campbell - former staff writer at The Atlantic, where she
covers immigration and business. She was previously a reporter at the South Florida Sun-
Sentinel and the Spanish-language newspaper of The Palm Beach Post – “Why ISIS Recruiting
in America Reached Historic Levels” - 12/6/15 - https://www.theatlantic.com/author/alexia-
fernandez-campbell/)/TK
Islamic State recruitment and mobilization in the United States is reaching
“unprecedented” and “historic” levels, according to experts on violent extremism. It’s still not as big a
problem here as it is in Europe , but ISIS is now reaching Americans at a faster pace than than al-Qaida ever did.¶
As of October, law enforcement authorities knew of 250 Americans who had traveled or
tried to travel to Syria or Iraq to join ISIS fighters. And there are about 900 active investigations against ISIS
sympathizers in all 50 states.¶ “Americans who join ISIS—or those who flirt with the idea—come from all ethnic and socioeconomic
backgrounds.Ӧ These alarming statistics were unveiled today by analysts at the George Washington University Program on
Extremism. The center spent the past six months monitoring ISIS supporters on social media and researching FBI court files. They
found that Americans
who join ISIS—or those who flirt with the idea—come from all ethnic and
socioeconomic backgrounds. People arrested this year in connection to the terrorist group include an African-
American woman from Mississippi State University and a white man from suburban Cincinnati who recently converted to Islam. ¶
Most of them were “groomed” by ISIS supporters through social-media networks such as
Twitter and Instagram, according to the report. And many embraced the group's radical interpretation of Islam as a way to
find belonging and a sense of personal identity.¶ Since March 2014, prosecutors have charged 71 people
with ISIS-related activities in the United States. Charges include attempting to support a known terrorist
organization to plotting deadly attacks on U.S. soil. Most of the arrests—56—took place this year. That is the largest number of
terrorism-related arrests in one year since September 2001.

5 countries outweigh US recruits and are alt causes

Bremmer 17 (Ian Bremmer - foreign affairs columnist and editor-at-large at TIME. He is the
president of Eurasia Group, a political-risk consultancy, and a Global Research Professor at
New York University – “The Top 5 Countries Where ISIS Gets Its Foreign Recruits” – 4/13/17 -
http://time.com/4739488/isis-iraq-syria-tunisia-saudi-arabia-russia/)/TK
Despite escalating losses in Iraq and Syria, the ability of ISIS to continue to carry out (or inspire) attacks far beyond those countries
should not be overlooked. This spring alone, the group has claimed bombings or assaults in Sweden, Egypt and the U.K. ¶ As
defeated fighters return home from the front lines, here are the top five countries of origin for ISIS foreign
fighters — as ranked by a 2016 study for the National Bureau of Economic Research —
and why each has reason to worry:¶ Tunisia¶ Of the six countries caught up in the Arab Spring, democracy has taken hold only
in Tunisia. And it looks to have staying power: six years on from the ousting of autocratic President Zine el Abidine Ben Ali, 86% of
Tunisians say democracy is the best system of government, up from 70% at the time of the revolution. More importantly, enthusiasm
for democracy comes at a time when just 15% of Tunisians believe the economy is doing well and 90% say corruption is prevalent.¶
6,000 Tunisians have left
Unfortunately, Tunisia’s newfound enthusiasm for democracy is not shared by all. Roughly
home to join the ranks of ISIS, the highest per capita rate in the world. The ISIS admirers who stayed behind are just
as worrying; it was a Tunisian inspired by ISIS social media who was responsible for the 2015 beach shooting that left 38 dead
(most of whom were foreign tourists), the deadliest terrorist attack in the history of modern Tunisia. Democratic growing pains,
ongoing economic struggles, and the return of defeated jihadists will continue to give ISIS openings into the country. ¶ Play Video¶
Saudi Arabia¶ The Saudi kingdom, an active promoter and sponsor of Wahhabism, the fundamentalist strain of Islam that
serves as the backbone of modern Islamic extremism, is the second largest source of foreign fighters for ISIS — roughly
2,500 have joined. It’s also a terrorist target itself. In July 2016, it suffered a triple suicide-bombing attack across three cities;
in May 2015, an ISIS bombing killed 21 people.¶ The kingdom came into being when tribal leader Abdulaziz al-Saud conquered the
land we now know as Saudi Arabia in 1932 and struck a deal with clerics to solidify his rule; al-Saud and his descendants (today’s
royal family) manage the security, politics and foreign affairs of the country, and the clerics have charge of religious matters. The
marriage remains troubled, because the royal family is more open to dealing with the West than its clerical counterparts. That’s why
ISIS considers modern Saudi Arabia a perversion of Islamic statehood. And that isn’t going to change. ¶ Russia¶ The ISIS corps
stem from well beyond the Middle East. Russia is no stranger to terrorism either; more than 3,500 people have died in 800+ attacks
in the country since 1970. The latest took place just last week when a bomb exploded in the St. Petersburg subway, killing 14
people. No group has yet claimed responsibility, but Russian state media has suggested links to ISIS or other international terror
franchises. The assailant has been identified by Russian authorities as Akbarzhon Dzhalilov, a 22-year-old Russian national born in
Kyrgyzstan.¶ Russia’s history with terrorism centers mainly on the Northern Caucasus regions of Chechnya, Dagestan, and
Ingushetia, predominantly Muslim regions that have sought independence from Moscow, often through violent means, on and off for
nearly 300 years. The collapse of the USSR in 1991 breathed new life into the region’s independence movements and led to two
particularly bloody wars in Chechnya that claimed thousands of lives. In 2002, Chechen militants took 912 people hostage in the
Dubrovka Theater in Moscow; 130 of those hostages ended up being killed. In 2004, Chechen rebels stormed a school in Beslan
and took more than 1,200 hostage; more than 330 people were killed, including 186 children.¶ Foreign religious extremists like ISIS
have made headway into recruiting from the North Caucasus, including from the migrant communities in major cities to which
Dzhalilov may have belonged. Russian President Vladimir Putin himself estimates thatbetween 5,000 and 7,000
people from Russia and other former Soviet republics have traveled to Syria to take up
arms with ISIS and other militants. For Russia, the fight against Islamic terrorism is oftentimes a fight with itself.¶
Turkey¶ Turkey has its own fraught relationship with an ethnic minority agitating for independence. The Kurds are an ethnic
group that number between 20 million and 40 million who straddle the borders of Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Iran and Armenia. Denied their
own state when the borders of modern Turkey were established following World War I, they are now the world’s largest stateless
ethnic group. Kurdish fighters have spent decades fighting the Turkish government to carve out an independent state for
themselves, and some have resorted to terrorism; over the past three decades, more than 40,000 people have been killed in
clashes between Turks and Kurds.¶ Complicating matters is that Kurds in Syria are one of the most effective forces fighting both
Assad and ISIS. Their success could create an independent Kurdish state inside Syria, which might encourage a larger share of
Turkish Kurds to take arms with the same goal. So one of the greatest terrorist threats against Turkey is also a threat to ISIS.¶ At the
same time, roughly 2,100 Turks have traveled to Iraq and Syria to join ISIS. Since 2015, more than
400 people have been killed in terrorist attacks throughout the country. In other words, Turkey’s terrorism problem is only becoming
Jordan¶ Rounding out the list of top sources for ISIS foreign fighters is
more complicated.¶
Jordan, which has seen nearly 2,000 people join ISIS over the past few years. Like Turkey, which is
hosting 2.9 million Syrian refugees, Jordan is also taking in more than its fair share of the region's displaced people — the 655,000
Syrians it’s putting up represent 8.5% of its total population of approximately 7.5 million.Relative to the rest of the Middle East,
terrorist attacks in Jordan are quite rare, a fact which has earned it the unofficial title of “Kingdom of Peace.” That peace was broken
in December 2016 when ISIS terrorists attacked the popular tourist destination Karak Castle, killing 10 people in the process and
injuring another 34. It was the first civilian-targeted terrorist attack in Jordan in more than a decade. For a group as PR-savvy as
ISIS, being regarded as a safe place is an invitation for bloodshed.

85 countries are alt causes

Akbar 15 (Jay Akbar – Mail Online – “Tentacles of terror: Chilling map shows the 31,000
mercenary 'gun for hire' jihadis from 86 countries who left their homes to join ISIS... and a third
may return to carry out Paris-style attacks” – 12/16/15 - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-
3350779/Tentacles-terror-Chilling-map-shows-31-000-mercenary-guns-hire-jihadis-86-
countries-left-homes-join-ISIS-return-carry-Paris-style-attacks.html)/TK
The number of foreign fighters who have joined ISIS and other extremist groups on the battlefield has
doubled to more than 30,000 in the last 18 months, a new report has revealed.¶ It found fanatics
from all corners of the globe including western Europe, Asia and Russia and parts of
north Africa are heading to Iraq and Syria in greater numbers than ever before.¶ The well
trained, battle hardened returnees are capable of orchestrating deadly lone wolf attacks such as the one that devastated Paris
attacks, respected terror analysts told MailOnline.¶ New figures show 31,000 fighters from 86 countries
have travelled to join ISIS in the Middle East - up from just 12,000 last year, according to the anti terror think tank
Soufan Group, which advises governments on terror.
 No Internal Link/Alt Cause – Al Qaeda
Europe is an alt cause
Peña 16 (Richard Perez Peña - covers breaking news for the national desk – “‘In-Betweeners’
Are Part of a Rich Recruiting Pool for Jihadists” – 9/22/16 -
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/23/us/isis-al-qaeda-recruits-anwar-al-
awlaki.html?mcubz=0)/TK
Farhad Khosrokhavar, a sociologist at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris and the author of
Muslims in Europe more often than those in America felt “frontally rejected”
“Radicalization,” said
by the larger society. He said he had often seen in his research individuals who felt neither French nor Arab.¶ “In
France, they are blamed for not being French enough, and when they go to their parents’
country of origin, they are blamed for not being Arab enough,” Mr. Khosrokhavar said. “That
double denial can push them to adhere to a radical version of Islam, as a kind of lifeline: Since I am
neither French nor Arab, neither American nor Afghan, I am Muslim and to hell with you all,” he added. ¶ These roots of radicalization
do not make immigrants in general a danger. In the United States, immigrants have a lower rate of crime and violence than other
Americans. Converts to Islam are disproportionately represented among Americans and Europeans drawn to extremism, and other
ideologies also motivate mass violence — as in the case of Dylann Roof, who was 21 when he fatally shot nine black people last
year at a church in Charleston, S.C., in the name of white supremacy. ¶ “The actual content of the ideology is secondary,” said Mr.
Meloy, the psychologist. “What’s important is the identification and fixation.”¶ But the Islamist terrorist groups target the particular
anxieties of Western Muslims from immigrant backgrounds, posing recruitment as a religious loyalty test. They call on supporters to
reject the nations where they live and embrace instead a devotion to the ummah, the global community of Muslims. The West is at
war with Islam, they say, and you must strike out to defend your fellow Muslims. ¶ That message has been delivered with particular
power by Mr. Awlaki, often reinforcing the newer propaganda efforts of the Islamic State. As an imam who counseled immigrants at
three American mosques, and as a Yemeni-American who had lived in both countries and in Britain, Mr.
Awlaki
understood the worries of Muslims in the West. When he joined Al Qaeda, he did his best
to open a gulf between them and their non-Muslim neighbors.
 No Internal Link/Alt Cause – Al Qaeda and ISIS
ISIS and Al Qaeda are both recruiting from the Middle East, South Asia, and
other areas – those are alt causes
Tharoor 14 (Ishaan Tharoor - Foreign Affairs Writer — Washington, D.C. – “Why al-Qaeda is
opening a new wing in South Asia” – 9/3/14 -
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/09/03/why-al-qaeda-is-opening-a-
new-wing-in-south-asia/?utm_term=.3b53ff0efe98)/TK
In a video message released by al-Qaeda's
media arm, terrorist leader Ayman al-Zawahiri announced the
creation of a new branch of the organization in South Asia. Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent would
"raise the flag of jihad" through Muslim lands it now deems "occupied" by nonbelievers. In the 55-minute video, Zawahiri designated
Umar Asim, a militant with ties to the Pakistani Taliban, as the new al-Qaeda branch's head.¶ Al-Qaeda
has wings in
North Africa (al-Qaeda in the Maghreb), Yemen (al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula) and a network of
affiliated militias from Somalia to Syria to the rugged tribal areas of Pakistan.¶ Al-Qaeda's
desire for operational expansion eastward makes sense: There are roughly as many
Muslims in South Asia as there are in the Arab world; there are more Muslims outside the
Middle East than inside it. The history of the Mughal Empire allows al-Qaeda ideologues to invoke a narrative of lost
Muslim preeminence, waiting for redemption, even though some Mughal emperors would have abhorred the terrorist organization's
brand of Islam.¶ In the video, Zawahiri said the new branch will rally Muslims in "Burma, Bangladesh, Assam, Gujarat, Ahmedabad,
and Kashmir." The last four places mentioned are references to India: Assam is a vast forested state in the northeast; Gujarat, a
western state, has a substantial Muslim minority and was the site of sectarian riots in 2002 in which hundreds of Muslims were
killed; Ahmedabad is the largest city in Gujarat; and the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir, on the border with Pakistan and
China, has long attracted foreign jihadists.¶ Al-Qaeda's narrative of Islamist revival in the region is hardly new. South Asia is home
to a whole spectrum of Islamist organizations, including militant groups that have links to wider terrorist networks. After the attacks
of Sept 11, 2001, Pakistan was an operational staging ground for al-Qaeda, where Osama bin Laden found sanctuary before his
death in 2011.¶ Recent developments perhaps explain Zawahiri's opportunism. Tensions between Bengali Muslims and indigenous
tribals in Assam have flared into riots and violence, with tens of thousands still displaced. Some argue that the Muslims there are
illegal migrants from Bangladesh, though many have been living on the Indian side of the border for generations.¶ Nearby in western
Burma, Muslims from the beleaguered Rohingya minority group — who are treated as stateless interlopers by the Burmese
government — face consistent discrimination and harassment. In Kashmir, a separatist movement blows hot and cold, while the
local population lives under a form of martial law.¶ But it's hard to see how al-Qaeda can capitalize in South Asia if it hasn't already.
For all the tensions and enmities that exist in this diverse, overcrowded region, it's a part of the world steeped in traditions of
pluralism and tolerance. Al-Qaeda's puritanical zeal, incubated in places such as Saudi Arabia, is wholly alien to the Indian
subcontinent. And South Asian governments, particularly in India and Bangladesh, have stepped up cooperation on issues of
counterterrorism.¶ What probably drives the formation of this new al-Qaeda branch is a threat
far closer to home. In the past year, al-Qaeda has lost ground to the Islamic State, an al-
Qaeda splinter group that has surpassed it in both ruthless, jihadist savagery as well as strategic gains. The Islamic State
commands real territory in Iraq and Syria and boasts a recruitment network and money-making operation that has thrust it into the
forefront of world attention.¶ It also
has been making inroads in South Asia. There are reports of
Indian Muslims journeying to Syria to join the Islamic State. Recruitment videos in Urdu, Tamil and a
number of other languages native to South Asia have proliferated.¶ In Pakistan and Afghanistan, the Islamic
State has been distributing pamphlets in Pashto and Dari. Some hard-core Taliban
factions have offered allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-styled "caliph" of the
Islamic State. Fighters from both countries have joined the Syrian conflict.¶ So al-Qaeda,
which even went so far as repudiating the Islamic State in July, is desperately playing catchup. It'll find its advances
most unwelcome.
 No Radicalization
Multiple reasons why radicalization doesn’t occur in prisons and status
quo solves
Useem 11 (Professor Bert Useem – professor of sociology at the Purdue University –
“Hearing On The Threat of Muslim-American Radicalization in U.S. Prisons” – 6/15/11 -
https://homeland.house.gov/files/Testimony%20Useem.pdf)/TK
First, over the last 30 years, U.S. prisons have been able to restore order and improve¶
inmate safety. For example, prison riots, once common in U.S. corrections, have nearly¶ disappeared. The rate
of prison homicides has fallen by 90%. A byproduct of this restoration of¶ order is that the appeal of
radicalization is reduced . There are clear norms for appropriate¶ behavior which, while always
challenging to enforce, are consequential. Prisons are successful,¶ not failed, states. Far less than in
the past is the prison environment one of “anything goes.”¶ Second, corrections officials
are aware of the threat of inmate radicalization.¶ Correctional leadership (at both the agency and
prison-level) has consciously and successfully¶ infused the mission of observing signs of inmate
radicalization into organizational practices.¶ Rather than being sitting ducks, waiting for their facilities to be
penetrated by radicalizing¶ groups, correctional leaders have fashioned, staffed, and energized the

effort to defeat¶ radicalization.¶ Third, the level of effective surveillance in prisons has
improved greatly over the last two¶ decades. Security threat groups are tracked by staff
dedicated to that task; closed-circuit¶ television cameras are omnipresent; corrections
personnel coordinate and share information with¶ external law enforcement agencies.
One Islamic inmate, for example, told us: “ No way you’re¶ going to have radical groups
in this prison for more than five minutes, without them [ correctional¶ staff] knowing it .”
While Al Qaeda has proclaimed that they seek to recruit prison inmates to¶ their cause,
the obstacles to doing so are, thankfully, very great. This point has been missed by¶ those who predict that
prisons will pour out domestic terrorists.¶ Fourth, inmates cannot communicate freely with potentially

radicalizing groups on the¶ outside. The internet is unavailable, and mail is inspected and
censored. There is some¶ smuggling of cell phones, but correctional leaders are aware of and working to counter this¶ threat.
The one exception is lawyer-prisoner correspondence which, under federal law, can be¶ opened in the presence of the prisoner.
This exception is given not to protect the free flow of¶ ideas behind bars, but rather to avoid disadvantaging prisoners in asserting
their legal rights.¶ Fifth,
the educational backgrounds of male inmates help explain the finding
of low levels¶ of jihad radicalization in prisons. Education leads people to be concerned, even fervently¶
concerned, with the issues of the day and events in distant lands, such as Iraq. Not surprisingly, ¶ a large body of evidence has
shown that terrorists come from disproportionately high-education,¶ non-disadvantaged backgrounds. In contrast, US prisoners have
disproportionately low levels of¶ education and come from poor communities. In our interviews, inmates expressed low interest ¶ in
public affairs, including and most strikingly, the war in Iraq.1¶ Sixth, a
surprising finding coming out of our
inmate interviews was solidarity among¶ inmates against jihadist radicalization . Inmates
are distinctively hyper-concerned with their selfinterest,¶ as often reflected in the
offenses that led to their imprisonment. Still, in their own¶ limited way, inmates expressed
loyalty to the country, at least to the extent that they are opposed¶ to efforts to damage
the country. One inmate told us, “even though we’re criminals, we see¶ ourselves as
Americans. Couldn’t turn against this country.”¶ Finally, on a less certain note, there have
been significant improvements in the screening¶ and supervision of clergy and
religious volunteers . One force for change was the April 2004¶ report by Office of the Inspector General concerning the
provision of Islamic religious services¶ to inmates in the Federal Bureau of Prisons. The Report made 16 recommendations for
change.¶ Many state correctional agencies took these recommendations very seriously and improved in ¶ those areas as they saw
appropriate. The changes have included: requiring Imams to work ¶ ¶ closely with security staff to identify any potential security
threats; not allowing volunteer¶ Imams in facilities without supervision and background checks; close screening of prayer books. ¶
The uncertainty is the uniformity of these improved strategies nationwide. I know of no¶ systematic work documenting the progress
of these initiatives across all fifty state correctional¶ agencies.¶

Prisons don’t cause radicalization – best studies.

Useem ’12 (Bert; 2012; PhD from Brandeis University in 2012, professor at the College of Liberal Arts at Purdue University;
“u.s. prisons and the myth of Islamic terrorism,” http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1536504212446458; Date Accessed:
7/27/2017; DS)

Many pundits, politicians, and law enforcement officials consider prisons to be breeding grounds for
terrorism. A plausible argument for the causal connection between prison and terrorism is not difficult to construct. Prisons, by
design, are “bad” places to live. Their day-to-day operations are authoritarian, and their amenities and comforts are few. In this age
of mass incarceration, prisons are often over-crowded. Resentment inevitably builds as prisoners come to hate “us”—
unincarcerated citizens, law enforcement, and the government. They may act on that hatred, the story goes, by participating in mass
political violence. In the past, collective prison violence was expressed through internal rebellions, such as the famous riots that
occurred at Attica in 1971 and in New Mexico in 1980. Today, prisoners’ thirst for rebellion is more likely to be channeled into
Islamic terrorism—or so many believe. But do prisons actually breed terrorism in the U.S.? prison radicalization It’s
not
enough to show that some domestic Islamic terrorists have been prisoners. Serving time
is no longer an uncommon experience, especially among those who are likely to become involved in Islamic domestic
terrorism. By random chance alone, some terrorists will have prison records—just as some
terrorists will have played dodge ball, or performed in a high school band. A more
precise question is whether U.S. domestic terrorists come disproportionately from
prisons. To explore this, we need to know the demographics of both the current and former prison populations. The
average state prisoner serves 2.5 years in prison, and 44 percent of state prisoners are
released in a given year. At the end of 2001, 1.3 million adults were serving time, and
there were an additional 4.3 million former prisoners living in this country. In other
words, one out of every 37 adults—or 2.7 percent of the total U.S. population—has been
imprisoned at some point. Population subgroups, such as racial minority men—from which prison-radicalized Islamic
terrorists are disproportionately drawn—have even higher rates of current or past imprisonment. In 2001, 5 percent of all
adult males, 17 percent of adult black males, and 8 percent of Hispanic males were
current or former prisoners. If prisons in fact breed Islamic terrorism, one would expect
to see large numbers of prison-radicalized terrorists. Even if being imprisoned has a
negligible impact on the rise of Islamic terrorism in this country, sheer chance alone
would mean that a certain number of Islamic terrorists would have served time in prison.
But if we take a closer look at the numbers, we see that the threat has been exaggerated. doing the numbers
Using open sources, criminologist Mark Hamm assembled an exhaustive data set
documenting cases of prison-based terrorism against Western targets. He identified 46
cases of prison-radicalized terrorists over a 41-year period, including both Islamic and
other types of terrorists. For each case, he collected data on year of attack, religious
conversion, ethnicity, age, and the nature of plot. Let’s take Hamm’s data-set, but
exclude those who were radicalized in a prison outside the United States (for example, “shoe-
bomber” Richard Reid, who was incarcerated in Britain); those who operated before 9/11 (Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver, for one);
individuals who were involved in political extremism that is unrelated to Islamic terrorism (such as members of the Aryan Circle); and
those were incarcerated in a U.S. detention center because of alleged terrorist activities (such as Said Ali al-Shihri, who was
This
captured at the Pakistan-Afghanistan border and held as an “enemy combatant” in Guantanamo Bay from 2002 to 2007).
leaves us with 14 individuals who appear to have been influenced by Islamic radicalism
in U.S. prisons during the post 9/11 period. Eleven of these individuals are African-Americans, one is
Caucasian, one is Hispanic/African-American, and one is African-Haitian. Sociologist Charles Kurzman, also working with open
source data, found that a
total of 161 Muslim-Americans committed acts of terrorism-related
violence, or were prosecuted for terrorism-related offenses from 9/11 through the end of
2010. Of these 161 men, if 14 were radicalized (as my reassessment of Hamm’s data suggests) one might
conclude that about 9 percent of American Islamic terrorists in the post-9/11 period could
have been radicalized in prison. But given the current size of the prison population, this
number is not very different from the proportion of ex-prisoner terrorists by chance
alone. The assembly line of prison radicalization seems, then, to be moving very slowly—if it is moving at all. But even the notion
that 9 percent of the U.S. Islamic terrorists were radicalized in prison may be too high. While prison may play some role in leading
individuals to commit terrorist acts, the “breeding ground” rhetoric is overstated, as the following cases illustrate.

This advantage is false.

Useem ’12 (Bert; 2012; PhD from Brandeis University in 2012, professor at the College of Liberal Arts at Purdue University;
“u.s. prisons and the myth of Islamic terrorism,” http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1536504212446458; Date Accessed:
7/27/2017; DS)

He recruited half a dozen inmates into JIS, including Levar Washington. In November 2004, Washington was paroled. At James’s
instruction, Washington recruited Gregory Patterson and Hammad Samana (neither of whom had criminal records) from a local
mosque, and together the three drew up attack plans. To fund these attacks, they robbed a dozen gas stations. A cell phone
dropped during one of the holdups guided local police to the apartment where Washington and Patterson Prisons have become far
more orderly and secure. Signs
of possible radicalization are therefore far more visible to
authorities in advance. Nick Anderson Editorial Cartoon used with the permission of Nick Anderson, the Washington Post
Writers Group and the Cartoonist Group. All rights reserved. SPRING 2012 contexts 39 lived, where they found a computer with
documents detailing the full conspiracy. Federal prosecutions followed, including charges against James, who was still in state
prison. All four defendants pled guilty to seditious conspiracy and were sentenced to lengthy federal prison terms. Prison can be an
incubator of terrorists’ ideas, this plot tells us. The plan to attack was hatched in prison, participants were recruited among inmates,
and it was orchestrated from prison. Still, it
is difficult, if not impossible, to determine whether James’s
prison experience contributed to his radicalization. James wrote a foundational statement justifying JIS and
explaining its purpose—typed, single-spaced and partially handwritten in English and Arabic, and 100 pages long. If negative
prison conditions and the humiliating nature of the experience moved James toward
radicalization, it reasonable to expect that he would have said as much in his manifesto,
but he did not. If James had not been behind bars, would he have steered clear of radicalization? There is no clear answer to
this question. It is true that he was able to attract a small following in prison—which suggests that U.S. prisons may provide an
environment that enables radicalization. Still, this may be an isolated case, as a Congressional Research Service report on
domestic terrorism suggests. The report identified 43 attacks and plots after 9/11. Of these attacks
and plots, only the JIS plot, it claims, indicates that participants were “radicalized in
prison.” In other words, of all the plots and attacks conducted by so-called “home-grown”
terrorists, it remains the exception. the “breeding ground” myth Individuals who become
involved in Islamic terrorism, who have also served in prison, tend to have led troubled
lives— and prison is typically only one component of that trouble. Some plotters may be driven by
material gain, or their terrorist designs predated their prison terms. They also tend to display
exceptional levels of incompetence. From outside the prison context, would-be terrorist Faisal Shahzad, who
parked his explosives-packed car near Times Square on May 1, 2010, placing hundreds at risk in New York City, is a case in point;
the firecrackers he tried to use as a detonator were faulty. Much the same could be said of the JIS plot, which was “broken” by
There are far fewer
criminal investigators when one of the conspirators left his cell phone at the scene of a robbery.
Islamist terrorists than one might expect. And contrary to conventional wisdom, as psychologist Steven Pinker
has pointed out, the death rate attributed to terrorism in the U.S. is decreasing. There are peaks
associated with well-known incidents, such as 9/11 (2,996 deaths), Oklahoma City in 1995 (165 deaths), and Columbine in 1999 (16
deaths). But apart from these, terrorism is on the wane. The same is true of rates of death from terrorism in Western
Europe and the world as a whole—when the civil wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are excluded. Considered in relation to broader
patterns of terrorism, prison-based terrorism is a minor threat indeed. It is plausible that the growth of the
U.S. prison population over the last three decades has generated an enormous group of people who are potential domestic
terrorists. Many of these men have used violence, they have time on their hands to think, plot, and conspire; and many are angry
and hostile. But plausibility is not evidence. When sociologist Obie Clayton and I conducted interviews with prisoners
and prison officials in 10 states and one jail system, we found that most prisoners are loyal to the country, and do not want to
They tend to be motivated by personal profit and gain rather
threaten it or place themselves at risk.
than commitments to broader goals. Another factor working against radicalization is that
prisoners’ mail is censored and their telephone calls are monitored. They do not have
access to the Internet, and they are supervised, sometimes quite closely. Over the last three
decades, prisons have become far more orderly and secure—it is no longer the case that “anything goes.” Signs of possible
radicalization are therefore far more visible to authorities in advance. The claim that
American prisons spawn terrorism is false—or, at the very least, overstated. U.S. prisons
are not systematically generating a large-scale terrorist threat. Of course we cannot be
certain that prisons will never become breeding grounds for radicalization. But the fact is
that few U.S. prisoners have been radicalized behind bars, and fewer still have engaged
in terrorist acts.
 ISIS Impact D
ISIS is losing now – they’re coming to an end
Hildebrand 5-23-17 (Joe Hildebrand is editor-at-large at News.com.au and has been a
journalist for 20 years. He is also co-host of the Channel Ten morning show Studio 10. Before
joining News.com.au he was opinion editor at The Daily Telegraph and a columnist for The
Daily Telegraph and the Herald Sun. Joe started in journalism editing the Melbourne University
magazine Farrago and then at Australian Associated Press, as well as various other
publications, TV and radio shows. “Terror attacks prove we are winning war against IS”
News.com; May 23, 2017; http://www.news.com.au/world/europe/terror-attacks-prove-we-are-
winning-war-against-is/news-story/af7eaadcf42e84947cda9e6325e1af5f - LK)
And yet buried under the horror and carnage at Manchester Arena there is a kernel of truth that may in time bring some comfort to
the broken families — although God knows it will never be enough.¶ And that is this: ISIS
is waging a terror war in
the West because it is losing the real war in the Middle East. They are targeting children in Manchester
because they are too weak to fight real soldiers in their much-vaunted homeland. They are attacking us in more and
more cowardly and desperate ways because we are beating them .¶ ISIS has gone from
an expanding terrorist army that shocked an unprepared enemy into retreat, to an
increasingly ragtag and besieged outfit that is losing territory. It lost around a quarter of
its territory in Syria and Iraq last year alone. The population under its control has
plummeted from 10 million to six million unfortunate souls.¶ Even as you read this, Islamic State
is making its final doomed stand in the major Iraqi stronghold of Mosul. On the very same day as
the as-yet unknown terrorist carried out the latest UK attack, the city was being liberated and the UN envoy for
Iraq declared that ISIS’s defeat was imminent and the days of the caliphate “numbered”. An
Iraqi general says Islamic State is “drawing its last dying breath” .¶
 Al Qaeda Impact D
Al Qaeda poses zero risk – this card absolutely devastates their DA
Watts 15 [ Clint- is a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. “Al Qaeda Loses
Touch”, Foreign Affairs, 2/4/15, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/middle-east/2015-02-
04/al-qaeda-loses-touch] Schuler 25
- Lack of leadership
- Loss of affiliate groups
- Lack of communication ability
- Ideology is unpopular
- They fled to Syria
- Loss of Iraqi fighters
If al Qaeda were a corporation today, it would be roughly equivalent to Microsoft: A big
name but an aging brand, one now strikingly out of touch with the 18–35-year-old-
demographic . The group made its way back into the headlines this past January, after its
affiliate—al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP—took credit for a deadly attack on the
Paris offices of the French magazine Charlie Hebdo. But the claim of responsibility came a
week after the fact, and lacked the sort of insider accounts or video footage that typically
accompany such announcements, leading some to conclude that al Qaeda may not have known
about the attackers’ intentions. Put simply, al Qaeda’s traditionally preeminent position in
the jihadi hierarchy, long on the wane, is slipping still further. U.S. officials, for their part,
are increasingly focused on the Islamic State, or ISIS, which continues to deliver a steady flow
of battlefield victories and brutal beheadings. Yet al Qaeda has a clear path back to contention:
a dramatic follow-up to the Hebdo attack. And with the group’s need for a win so great,
Washington would be mistaken to count it out. CONTROL KEY Al Qaeda’s latest chapter
began with the death of Osama bin Laden in May 2011. Shortly thereafter, Ayman al-
Zawahiri, bin Laden’s successor as al Qaeda’s global leader, found himself facing
numerous constraints. Aggressive U.S.-led counterterrorism efforts, buoyed by a deadly
drone campaign, forced top al Qaeda commanders into hiding, limiting Zawahiri’s ability
to communicate with al Qaeda’s affiliates. Based in Pakistan rather than in Iraq, Zawahiri
and his senior commanders lost touch with many fighters in Iraq. And with bin Laden
dead, resources became tighter. Al Qaeda’s affiliates, which were now receiving less
guidance and fewer resources from al Qaeda central, took on a new level of
independence. Some four years later, al Qaeda is essentially a collection of relatively small,
though still capable, affiliates. AQAP, under the leadership of Nasir Wuhayshi, remained loyal to
Zawahiri after bin Laden’s death. But with Zawahiri and al Qaeda’s senior leadership under
siege from the drones in Pakistan, AQAP effectively became al Qaeda central. AQAP came
close to executing three plots against Western targets, in 2009, 2010, and 2011. And it became
the first affiliate to build its own insurgent force, Ansar al Sharia, which aimed to establish an
Islamist emirate in Yemen. In Zawahiri’s absence, other affiliates began to look to AQAP for
guidance. Among them was al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb or AQIM, which was making a
separate push for an Islamic emirate in northern Africa. By the spring of 2012, AQAP had sent
the group’s leaders two instructional letters, one in May and another in August, covering both
tactics and strategy. AQAP further cemented its role by essentially creating its own affiliate, al
Shabaab, in Somalia. Zawahiri confirmed al Shabaab’s membership in al Qaeda in February
2012, but evidence suggests that the group had little interaction with al Qaeda central. Omar
Hammami, an American member of the group, noted in his biography that al Shabaab’s al
Qaeda contacts came from Yemen rather than Pakistan. And even a senior al Shabaab leader,
Sheikh Ali Muhamud Raage, seemed confused, at one time publicly stating that the group was
joining AQAP. Al Qaeda central, meanwhile, has continued to struggle. In Pakistan, the
U.S. drone program has kept Zawahiri tied down and led to an exodus of his senior
deputies to Egypt, Libya, and Syria in search of refuge and new opportunities. Despite the
overthrow of a democratically elected Muslim Brotherhood regime in Egypt—a confirmation of al
Qaeda’s narrative—the group has failed to gain traction there. Its so-called Nasr cell, which
has allegedly plotted various attacks in the country, was disrupted in 2013, and its operatives
in the Sinai have suffered losses at the hands of the Egyptian military and an attrition of
followers to ISIS. Today, the Syrian conflict represents al Qaeda’s greatest challenge. And
here, too, al Qaeda’s performance has been lackluster. Zawahiri dispatched top veterans
to Syria, forming the so-called Khorasan unit under the flag of their affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra.
But those operatives have become embroiled in a deadly turf war with ISIS, which has
used suicide bombers to target senior al Qaeda commanders. Even with ISIS under fresh
pressure from an aggressive U.S. air campaign, al Qaeda has been unable to win a position at
the top of the opposition to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. TERROR DISRUPTED Had bin
Laden and Zawahiri been holed up in remote tribal lands in 1994 rather than in 2004, they never
would have been able to sustain their global network of affiliates or inspire far-flung supporters.
But after 9/11, the expansion of the Internet provided bin Laden and his deputies the means
to transmit their ideology, disseminate propaganda, communicate with subordinates, and
guide new recruits from the remotest of locations. Al Qaeda’s password-protected forums
became a global dissemination platform linking like-minded jihadis from all over the world. Abu
Musab al-Zarqawi, a commander of al Qaeda’s Iraq affiliate, took jihadi Internet use in a
new direction. The group’s online outreach activities tell their own story: Content shifted from
still-motion shots of a finger-waving bin Laden to videos of violent assaults and bombings
targeting U.S. soldiers. YouTube became the first two-way engagement platform for all jihadi
supporters to chime in and promote the battlefield heroics of Zarqawi and company—not
necessarily al Qaeda central. But it was Al-Awlaki, based in Yemen, who brought al Qaeda its
greatest online success. The American cleric’s online preaching, one-to-one communication
with Western jihadis, combined with the dissemination of the English jihadi magazine Inspire
provided al Qaeda with new recruits in the West. But Awlaki’s death in 2011, along with that of
his online provocateur, American Samir Khan, dealt a major blow to al Qaeda’s Internet
footprint. Subsequent issues of Inspire have been less frequent, of lower quality, and largely
overshadowed by the new media prowess of ISIS. Bin Laden’s death, coupled with the
expansion of social media, opened the floodgates. Until 2011, respect for bin Laden and al
Qaeda’s use of controlled forums kept al Qaeda’s message synchronized and its supporters in
line. Not so under Zawahiri, and amidst the rise of social media platforms such as Facebook,
Twitter, and YouTube. Suddenly, any jihadi supporter regardless of ideological credentials
could lead jihadi discussions, challenge al Qaeda’s direction, or lead his or her peers to
support one campaign over another. Online, the meaning of global jihad shifted from an
emphasis on violence as a means of pursuing an Islamic state (an approach advocated by al
Qaeda) to statehood as a means of pursuing violence (one championed by ISIS). Omar
Hammami, an American foreign fighter who defected from al Shabaab, signaled this shift best
when he was on the run from the group’s leader. “Terrorism is a staple so long as shari’ah is
followed. Post-aq = broadbased jihad,” he tweeted in January 2013. It increasingly appears
that young jihadis have moved on from al Qaeda, more inspired by the violence of the
Syrian conflict than the Islamist cause. In Syria, al Qaeda has applied its favored approach
of behind-the-scenes capacity maneuvering, working primarily through senior envoys embedded
with Jabhat al Nusra. ISIS, by contrast, has taken to the Internet with some of the most brutal
jihadi content to date. In a break with tradition, Zawahiri began issuing his guidance and
directives openly to bypass disobedient subordinates in September 2013, but it has largely
failed to keep pace with ISIS in building a younger following.

Al Qaeda’s done – lack of recruitment, resource scarcity, and ISIS

Malik et al 15 (Shiv Mailk, investigative journalist and the co-author of Jilted Generation: How
Britain Has Bankrupted Its Youth, Ali Younes, writer and news editor based in Washington, DC,
Spencer Ackerman, national security editor for Guardian US and winner of the 2012 National
Magazine Award for Digital Reporting, Mustafa Khalili, multimedia editor for news at the
Guardian, 6/10/15, the Guardian, “ Al-Qaida ‘cut off and ripped apart by Isis ,”
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/10/isis-onslaught-has-broken-al-qaida-its-spiritual-
leaders-admit, JHR)
Two of al-Qaida’s most important spiritual leaders have told the Guardian that the terror group is
no longer a functioning organisation after being ripped apart by Isis. In a wide-ranging interview, Abu Qatada, a
Jordanian preacher who was based in London before being deported in 2013, and Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, regarded as the most influential jihadi scholar alive, say the al-

Qaida leader,Ayman al-Zawahiri, is cut off from his commanders and keeping the group afloat
through little more than appeals to loyalty. Senior insiders in Jordan add that al-Qaida around the Middle East
has been drained of recruits and money after losing territory and prestige to its former
subordinate division. The ongoing war between al-Qaida and Isis has left the US struggling to catch up with the tectonic shifts within the global jihadi
movement, intelligence insiders told the Guardian. Maqdisi, who Zawahiri counts as a close friend, is frank about the 63-year-old Egyptian’s situation. “ He

operates solely based on the allegiance . There is no organisational structure. There is only communication channels and loyalty,”
Maqdisi said. Qatada, who was born Omar Mahmoud Othman and has been described by the British government as a “truly dangerous individual”, also says Zawahiri is
“isolated” and admits that Isis have been winning the propaganda and ground war against al-Qaida. Qatada was deported from the UK to Jordan to face terror charges after a
court battle lasting nearly 10 years with a series of British home secretaries. Last summer he was released from custody after being acquitted of all charges. Since his release,
he has become an increasingly vocal critic of Isis. He told the Guardian its members were extremists and a “cancer” growing within the jihadi movement following their assault
“[Isis] don’t respect anyone,” he said. Isis was al-Qaida’s branch in the heart of the Middle East until the group was
on al-Qaida over the last two years.

jihadists in Syria which

excommunicated from the network in 2014 after disobeying commands from Zawahiri and starting an internecine war with fellow

left thousands dead on both sides. Today that fight continues and has expanded across Eurasia
and the Mediterranean. Since declaring the establishment of its so-called Islamic State a year ago, Isis has gone on to build a global network of affiliates
and branches that now stretches from Afghanistan to west Africa and competes with al-Qaida in its scale. Isis leaders, who

described al-Qaida as a “drowned entity” in issue six of their official English-language publication, Dabiq, have declared that they will not
tolerate any other jihadi group in territory where they are operating. They have readily delivered on that statement. Last week, Isis fighters in Afghanistan werereported to have
al-Qaida in Libya vowed retaliation after blaming Isis for the
beheaded 10 members of the Taliban, and on Wednesday

death of one of its leaders. But the US has been slow to grasp the implications of al-Qaida’s decline and possible collapse despite extensive study of Isis,
according to intelligence community insiders. “There’s such a cadre of people so closely tied to the al-Qaida brand within the IC [intelligence community] that I think they don’t
see what else is going on outside the organisation,” said Derek Harvey, a former intelligence analyst who predicted how resilient the Iraq insurgency would be. Over the past

, a group of junior and mid-level analysts have concluded that Isis advances have pushed
year

al-Qaida to the margins of global jihad . A former senior intelligence official who did not want to speak on the record said they had been
tracking the split between the two groups with great attention. Against them is what Harvey described as “the overwhelming majority of senior intelligence officials looking at this”
who he said considered the enmity between Isis and al-Qaida as little more than “a squabble within”.

Al Qaeda is shattered and remains cannot recover – its leadership is gone,

it lacks resources, and recruitment is low
Burke 13 [ Jason - he south Asia correspondent of the Guardian, based in Delhi. Over 15
years as a foreign correspondent, he has covered stories across the region, as well as in the
Middle East. “Al-Qaida's membership declining and leadership damaged, but threat remains”,
The Guardian, 8/5/13, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/05/al-qaida-anniversary-
attacks-reduced]

Al-Qaida's leadership is a shattered remnant, reduced to begging funds and munitions

from local allies and with its most capable members heading to Syria , according to
recent briefings from Pakistan's intelligence services. But western analysts say the group
retains the ability to regenerate quickly and dangerously and its ideology remains a potent threat
around the world, as the closure of US embassies across the Middle East this week shows.
With fewer than 100 leaders, fighters and trainers and few experienced operators, the
ability of the group's Pakistan-based "general command" under Ayman al-Zawahiri, the
Egyptian-born militant who replaced Osama bin Laden after he was killed by US special forces
in 2011, to launch overseas attacks is limited, Pakistani officials have said. As demands
mount elsewhere in the Islamic world, policymakers and specialists have to decide the focus of
counter-terrorist efforts. But there is still little consensus on which elements of the al-Qaida
phenomenon pose the greatest threat. In July, it was reported that the CIA would be shifting
resources from Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Middle East and Africa. The current capabilities
of the core leadership element of al-Qaida, founded in the Pakistani frontier city of Peshawar 25
years ago on 11 August and still based in the country, is a particularly controversial topic. US
intelligence services and many of their counterparts overseas, including British
agencies, broadly concur with the Pakistani view that the al-Qaida "senior leadership" or
"general command" in the troubled south Asian state has been significantly damaged by
the elimination of the majority of its senior operatives and by lower levels of support in
the Muslim world. However, some argue that it remains a significant threat, particularly with
most US and international forces due to leave Afghanistan within 18 months. Daveed
Gartenstein-Ross of the Foundation for Defence of Democracies, a Washington thinktank, said:
"Al-Qaida central has been degraded, but what does that mean? Their ability to regenerate is
probably greater than most analysts believe." Advertisement A recent report published by
Canadian intelligence services referred to al-Qaida's "hardcore" having "a deeper bench" of
leaders and operatives. This, among other factors, suggested that "Al-Qaida Core is extremely
likely to exist in 2017 much as it existed – despite predictions and assessments to the contrary –
in 2007," the report said. The approaching withdrawal from Afghanistan has intensified the
debate. The departure of most international troops could, some fear, provide a propaganda
victory which would reinvigorate extremists both internationally and locally. Another concern is
heightened lawlessness in Afghanistan which would help militant groups there and in Pakistan.
"The … withdrawal of US forces and Isaf [International Security Assistance Force] troops from
Afghanistan by 2014 further suggests that core al-Qaida may well regain the breathing space
and cross-border physical sanctuary needed to ensure its continued existence," the Canadian
report says. Some analysts point out that together these factors partially replicate the
circumstances in which al-Qaida emerged. "It is back to the future – you can't help but see
parallels," said one Middle Eastern diplomat who was stationed in the region in the early 1990s.
'All won their battles' Al-Qaida was founded by veterans of the war against the Soviets in
Afghanistan. The victory over the massive conventional forces of the USSR was a key factor in
the formulation of the group's radical new global approach, which sought to target the US – the
so-called "far enemy" – to weaken regimes in the Middle East – the "near enemy" – and
overcome the parochialism and infighting that plagued Islamist extremists at the time. The
chaos in Afghanistan that followed the Soviet withdrawal and its destabilising effect on Pakistan
helped al-Qaida to thrive through the following decade. Bin Laden (pictured right) left Pakistan
for Saudi Arabia in 1991, though many militants remained, and then went to Sudan. He arrived
in Afghanistan in 1996 at the invitation of local warlords. He then became close to Mullah
Mohammed Omar, the leader of the Taliban, and was sheltered by the hardline movement until
the war after the 9/11 attacks in 2001 that led to the end of its rule. Maleeha Lodhi, a former
Pakistani ambassador in Washington and analyst, said: "The effect on militants [of the US
withdrawal] depends on how the war [in Afghanistan] ends. There is a danger that the
extremists see this as yet another defeat for another superpower and that would embolden
them." Lodhi said a political settlement in Afghanistan would make such a narrative difficult to
sustain. However, progress in negotiations between the Taliban, the US and the Afghan
government has been slow. Afghanistan also faces new presidential elections late next spring
and violence is rising. The coming international withdrawal is already having an impact even on
long-running conflicts where there has never been any al-Qaida involvement. In the parts of the
disputed Himalayan former princedom of Kashmir, where insurgency has pitted local and
Pakistani-based militant groups against security forces for more than two decades, the
"success" of the Taliban is seen by some as an argument for resuming a strategy of violent
resistance that has largely been abandoned in recent years. In the town of Sopore, a hotbed of
insurgent violence in northern Indian-administered Kashmir, young men spoke to the Guardian
in between bouts of throwing rocks at local police during a morning's rioting last month. Events
in Afghanistan, they said, had inspired them. "The US forces have pulled out because they
could not beat the Taliban. This is an example for us. If we fight back we too can achieve
something," said Shakeel Ahmed, a 24-year-old pharmaceutical representative. Muzaffar
Ahmed Wani, a 50-year-old schoolmaster in the southern village of Tral whose teenage son is
fighting with the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen group, said events in Afghanistan would "definitely have an
impact". In Peshawar itself, few doubt that the withdrawal will encourage local fighters. "My
father's father fought the British, my father fought the Soviets, my brother fought the Americans.
All have won their battles even with small guns and stones against tanks and helicopters. This
shows that when you fight in the way of God you will always win, whatever is against you," said
Mohammed Rasheed, who works in a restaurant near the city's main bus station. But it is less
clear that events in Afghanistan will have the same effect further afield. Internet forums and
propaganda websites are dominated by news from Syria or other Middle Eastern countries. Al-
Qaida "general command" has also lost its most effective propagandists : Bin Laden
himself and Abu Yahya al-Libi, a younger militant who was killed last year. Al-Zawahiri, the
current leader, lacks the charisma of either. A key factor determining the evolution of the
remnant of al-Qaida's core in Pakistan in coming years will be its local allies, analysts agree. If
either the Afghan Taliban or the rough coalition of groups known as the Pakistani Taliban (TTP)
are definitively defeated, significantly degraded or conclude an agreement to lay down their
weapons, al-Qaida could find itself without the haven that has given a modicum of precarious
security over the last decade. Allies such as the Haqqani network, another organisation based
on the Afghan-Pakistani frontier, could also withdraw support, though this is considered unlikely
in the short term. "In some scenarios al-Qaida could be badly squeezed," said Ejaz Haider,
a security analyst in Islamabad. Tenacious ideology For many years, the local outfits were
junior partners to the prestigious international group. This is no longer the case, according to
Pakistani officials. "We see [al-Qaida] more and more dependent on local networks who
have funds and weapons and recruits, but with less and less to offer them. The overall
picture is very fragmented," said one senior officer based in the western Punjab
province. One indication is the flow of recruits. Intelligence services are picking up signs that
the TTP or even other "international" groups with a presence on the frontier are being preferred
by volunteers. In one recent case, a young Pakistani who was studying in the UK returned to his
homeland and sought out the TTP despite attempts by al-Qaida to recruit him. In another case
volunteers chose the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which has long been based in the tribal
areas. One key development is what analysts call the "Pakistanisation" of al-Qaida in the
country. Senior al-Qaida leaders established a local branch to develop operations and links in
Pakistan several years ago and have recently ramped up propaganda directed at south Asian
Muslims. "You are seeing a lot of material related not just to fighting in Afghanistan but focusing
on Bangladesh, India and Burma that we have not really seen previously," said Aaron Zelin, a
researcher at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. But now analysts see a growing
influence of locals inside the formerly almost exclusively international "al-Qaida hardcore".
Recently, a Pakistani cleric has taken on the role of ideologue and spokesman for al-Qaida. The
reported movement of al-Qaida operatives to Syria, if confirmed, could be evidence of a
possible split, as those unhappy with the increasingly local character and focus of what was
once the centre of an international network focus on waging "global jihad" elsewhere.
Modeling Adv
 1NC
Their solvency advocates for this advantage are literally all from Fox News
and definitely not credible: Christian Colson is on the board of directors of
Prison Fellowship, the nation’s largest outreach to prisoners, former
prisoners and their families – proving inherent bias
Prison education programs are spreading throughout Africa – their ev
doesn’t assume this
Erbentraut 15 (Joseph Erbentraut is a senior reporter at HuffPost and is based in Chicago.
Erbentraut covers promising innovations and challenges in the areas of food and water. “What
The U.S. Can Learn From Prison Reform Efforts Throughout The World” Huffington Post; April
10, 2015; http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/10/prison-reform-international-
examples_n_6995132.html - LK)
New educational offerings are coming to inmates in South Africa’s Western Cape. Last fall, a non-
profit initiative called Brothers for All launched its first coding center in Langa, a poor township in Cape
Town. The program has been such a success , according to Brothers for All co-founder and social entrepreneur
Robyn Scott, that they have recently gotten permission to bring their program into dozens of
prisons in the area. They will be starting this month with correctional centers in Helderstroom and Worcester. ¶ Scott sees
coding as a clear path for the inmates to follow in order to escape the cycle of unemployment, poverty and crime, given the tech
industry’s high demand for developers. She also sees it as essential that fellow ex-offenders, such as her cofounder Sihle
Tshabalala, play a role in instruction because only they truly understand the struggles the students have dealt with. The program is
an outgrowth of the Group of Hope in-prison rehabilitation program, of which Tshabalala and Mzi Duda, another Brothers for All
cofounder, were previously a part.¶ Scott’s coding program relies on free software and initially catered to ex-offenders, single
mothers, school dropouts and at-risk youth. It began with 20 students and now serves 170, six of whom have been offered
The program is supported
scholarships to an elite program. Others have already built websites for local businesses.
by proceeds from recycled paper beads that staff and students alike create and transform into jewelry that’s sold both
locally and internationally.¶ “ There’s a huge appetite for this ,” Scott told HuffPost. “We’re working
towards a position where people see us not as catering to the needy, but as a route to
extraordinary talent. Everyone in America is crying out for the lack of developers and
those developers are waiting in townships in Africa. We want to be seen as discovering
and nurturing outstanding, world-class talent.”

It’s not reverse causal – the world has modeled the US, but the US
reforming has no effect on them, it’s too engrained – this is specific to
every one of their countries
Dreisinger 15 (Baz Dreisinger is an associate professor at John Jay College of Criminal
Justice. She is the founder of the Prison-to-College Pipeline program and the author of the
forthcoming Incarceration Nations: A Journey to Justice in Prisons Around the World. “Prison:
America’s Most Vile Export?” September 30, 2015;
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/09/us-world-prisons-supermax-
incarceration/408067/ - LK)

These similarities are not coincidental. They’re the result of a deadly game of global
copycatting whose origins lie in the United States. Prison is not only one of America’s
most catastrophic national experiments—it’s also among the country’s most vile
exports.¶ The most glaring example of this dynamic involves the supermax model I explored in Brazil .
America invented this model. In 1787, the Quakers experimented with solitary cells at the Walnut Street Jail in
Philadelphia; in 1829, Eastern State Penitentiary was opened nearby as an all-solitary facility, modeled after monasteries (those
incarcerated covered their heads with monk-like hoods and were given Bibles to read). In 1983, a Marion, Illinois, prison became
America’s first to adopt a 23-hour-a-day cell-isolation policy in its designated “control unit.” As the U.S. prison population soared and
tough-on-crime rhetoric intensified over the next two decades, other states followed suit. California built Pelican Bay, where as of
last year over 200 incarcerated men have been in solitary for over a decade; Colorado’s so-called Alcatraz of the Rockies, ADX
Florence, is home to a man who has spent 32 years in solitary, mostly under a “no human contact” order that at times bars him from
interacting even with prison officials. By 1999, there were 57 supermaxes in 34 U.S. states.¶ European thinkers envisioned a
punishment that was neater, more contained, and more rational. The U.S. actualized these ideas. ¶ Today, iterations of
the supermax exist in at least nine countries, from Australia to Mexico. In Brazil, where the
550,000-strong prison population is among the fastest-growing in the world, they come at a tremendous cost to taxpayers: I was told
by the superintendent that the annual price per prisoner at Catanduvas is a whopping $120,000 a year, compared to an average of
$36 per prisoner per year in Brazil’s impoverished state system, where the incarcerated are often left to feed and clothe
themselves.¶ In New Zealand , planning documents for Auckland Prison reveal that its
supermax unit was modeled after Marion; South Africa’s two supermax facilities, opened after the end of
apartheid, were a product of then-cabinet minister Sipo Mzimela’s advisors’ study tours of both FDX Florence and Marion. The
American Correctional Association has even published a guide to opening and running
supermaxes, “Supermax Prisons: Beyond the Rock.”¶ Generally speaking, supermaxes represent the turn
from progressive, rehabilitation-oriented movements of the early 20th century to the
punitive approach that the United States—and, quite often following America’s lead,
many countries—have taken since the 1970s. Yet according to a 2006 Urban Institute report, there is
little evidence that supermaxes are successful at reducing crime, prison violence, or
recidivism rates. The report called for more research about the fiscal and human costs of
what has become a brutal regime around the world.¶ It’s a regime that the United States
has been exporting in various incarnations since its birth. During the 18th century, European
thinkers began circulating ideas about criminals paying dues in time and isolation, as
opposed to the physical punishment that had been the norm until then; they envisioned a punishment that was neater, more
contained, and more rational—more in line with the so-called Age of Reason than beheadings or banishment.
The U.S.—
freshly independent and eager to prove itself more progressive than its former
colonizer—actualized these ideas, erecting two landmark prisons in the mid-19th century:
Philadelphia’s Eastern, grounded in solitary confinement, and New York’s Auburn, whose contrasting model involved slave-like hard
labor.¶ America’s prison prototypes fast went international, as 19th-century European scholars and leaders made prison tours a vital
stop on visits across the pond. Fredrick William IV of Prussia came, followed by rulers of Saxony, Russia, and the Netherlands, and
commissioners from France, Austria, Holland, Denmark, and Sweden. Alexis de Tocqueville and Charles Dickens were the most
vocal tourists at U.S. prisons, broadcasting the horror of what they saw there. John Daughtry, Jamaica’s general inspector of prisons
between 1841 and 1861, modeled Tower Street after Eastern: “No sounds but of the hammer, the axe or the saw,” he wrote in an
1844 report.¶ In this way, prisons weaved their way into the fabric of other cultures throughout Europe and, via its colonies, around
the world, to countries like Spain, Colombia, China, Japan, and India. Early-20th-century prison-building across the African continent
The very look of the prisons was
represented colonial efforts to reinforce hierarchies in the most literal of ways.
telling: Here were orderly, Western-looking edifices seeking to impose discipline on
those “unruly” natives.¶ ¶ Nowadays, prison privatization is another U.S. “innovation” that
has spread across the world, particularly to Australia, which holds the world’s largest
proportion of prisoners in private facilities—about 19 percent of its 33,000 or so prisoners—and boasts a
wholly private immigrant-detention system. From Thailand—where I spent time in women’s prisons overseen by an NGO headed by
the princess of Thailand herself—to Brazil and even progressive Norway, where I met a young incarcerated man serving 16 years
for heroin use, experts recited the same chorus: U.S.-style draconian drug policies, mandatory penalties, and “one size fits all”
punishments are packing prisons in their countries, too. The end result is that between 2008 and 2011, the prison population grew in
78 percent of the countries included in the World Prison Population List compiled by the International Centre for Prison Studies. As
of 2013, some 10.2 million people worldwide were behind bars, many convicted of nothing, waiting years to be tried and lacking
access to legal assistance.¶ At the heart of all this is a severely tragic irony. Mounting evidence
suggests that the United States may finally begin to undo its plague of prisons.
Everyone from Bill and Hillary Clinton to the conservative Right On Crime movement is
lashing out against America’s costly incarceration addiction; President Barack Obama’s
condemnatory speech on prison reform and visit to a federal prison in July were
watershed moments.¶ But while America may be starting to slay its demons, it has
created a monster with tentacles entrenched in communities across the globe. Mass
criminalization of minorities and the poor, supermaxes and solitary, the prison-industrial
complex—these are now not only global realities, they’re growing global realities, an
American nightmare from which the world is not waking.

Literally every impact scenario is answered

Garcia-Rojas 16 (Claudia Garcia-Rojas is co-director of The Chicago Taskforce on Violence
Against Girls & Young Women, and a doctoral candidate in the Department of African-American
Studies at Northwestern University. She is editor and co-author of the groundbreaking guide
"Reporting on Rape & Sexual Violence: A Toolkit to Better Media Coverage." Truthout;
“Incarceration Nations: On the Dangers of Exporting US Prison Systems” August 15, 2016;
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/37226-incarceration-nations-on-the-dangers-of-exporting-us-
prison-systems - LK)
While issues of mass incarceration have become part of the United States' national discourse, we discuss less how the exportation
of the US prison system has impacted countries abroad. It is for this reason that Baz Dreisinger, a professor of
English at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, sets out to understand prisons globally.
In Incarceration Nations: A Journey to Justice in Prisons Around the World, Dreisinger exposes us to the varied
forms of criminal punishment and restorative justice measures enacted in nine
countries.¶ During her travels, Dreisinger meets with prisoners and local community members leading prison-based arts
programs in Jamaica and participates in restorative justice initiatives in Rwanda and South Africa. She also leads
her own workshops on creative writing, literature and drama in Uganda and Thailand, partly in an effort to avoid assuming
a voyeuristic role all-too-often taken up by Western journalists documenting violence abroad. The classes that
Dreisinger leads draw from the justice work that she conducts as the co-founder and
director of the Prison-to-College Pipeline (P2CP), a college re-entry program that enables
formerly incarcerated people to pursue a higher education.¶ Though Dreisinger makes a
persuasive case for reconsidering prison systems, there is much that she glosses over. For instance,
after detailing the cruel treatment of prisoners and their inhumane living conditions, she
remains "hopeful that progress in prison reform might continue. " One reform that she seems to
advocate for is the privatization of prisons.¶ During her time in Australia, a place where "the prison population has
doubled in a decade," Dreisinger visits a couple of private prisons that mirror beachy rehabilitative centers and writer retreats. These
prisons are run by two multinational British security companies, "justice services" giants Serco and G4S, which supply technologies
like military weapons to detention centers, prisons and schools. Though Dreisinger offers this information, she posits that "perhaps
there's such a thing as privatization with a conscience, implemented morally and progressively in the name of true corrections."
The underlying point is that treating "people in prison more humanely costs less, and
that private prisons are more accountable than government-run prisons." Dreisinger's argument
is incongruous with the fact that private corporations are in the game to make a profit from prisons, and lobby heavily to keep
incarceration numbers high in order to rake in profits
 No African War

No African War
Burbach and Fettweis, 14 – [David T. Burbach, Associate Professor of National Security
Affairs at the Naval War College, B.A. in Government from Pomona College, and earned a
Ph.D. in Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Christopher Fettweis,
Associate Professor in International Relations at Tulane University, 2014, The Coming Stability?
The Decline of Warfare in Africa and Implications for International Security,
http://www.contemporarysecuritypolicy.org/assets/CSP-35-
3%20Burbach%20and%20Fettweis.pdf]

Anarchy has not come to Africa – at least not in the expanding, all-encompassing way
meant by the pessimists of a decade or two ago. The continent is far from uniformly peaceful, and current
outbreaks of violence are reminders of the need for more progress. On the whole, however, Africa is less war-torn than
at any time in the past, which runs contrary to widespread perceptions that exist even
among foreign policy experts. Kaplan remains unchanged, claiming recently that his most important predictions have
actually been borne out.95 However, the evidence suggests that despite neo-Malthusians fears, by
most measures life on the continent is improving. War is becoming less of a threat to the
life of the average African than emerging middleincome threats like traffic accidents or
diabetes. Nor have realist fears of predatory wars and wholesale remaking of the map of Africa come to pass. That is not meant
to dismiss the suffering of residents of the Central African Republic, South Sudan or northern Nigeria, nor to suggest that all is well.
Thereare hundreds of millions of Africans who do not face as great a threat of armed
conflict as they once did, however. It is important to see Africa as more than 50 distinct countries, some – and by historical
standards, relatively few – of which are beset by warfare, even if they continue to face other, even greater challenges. Nothing
guarantees that these trends will continue. Indeed, several require active maintenance. If the outside world stops
responding to African hotspots, at least with diplomatic resources and avoiding support
to plunder-financed armed groups, conflict becomes more likely. Intense American –Chinese
competition could encourage internal conflict or spur vicious circles of tension between neighbours. The United Nations,
former colonizers and AFRICOM have all been useful in helping to bring stability to the
continent, but their long-term interest is hardly assured. A global recession or a wave of protectionism
could dash optimism about economic growth. But for now, for the first time in quite some time, there is reason for

optimism about the decline of warfare in Africa . What the United States and other outsiders should not do,
however, is continue to look at Africa though a lens that overemphasizes conflict and a few crisis-afflicted nations. Additional
American support for African peacekeeping capability is welcome, but an increase in American investment in African economies
would do even more good for more people. Policymakers should emphasize to the business community how much is now going
right in Africa. The Obama Administration has taken useful steps in that direction, but at other times shows signs of the ‘Africa-as-
Anarchy’ mindset. Programmes to help African governments build capacity outside the military-security sphere could be expanded,
such as police and judicial systems, or the infrastructure and service delivery needs of large cities in which a growing share of
Peace does not necessarily bring freedom, justice, or
Africans live. Africa faces many problems.
prosperity. But today a far greater percentage of people on the continent live without
serious risk of dying due to warfare than pessimists expected. On the contrary, ‘end of war’ optimists
may prove to be right about Africa too, if on a slower time scale than most of the world. Perhaps a rising generation of leaders and
citizens are being influenced by both global norms and expectations of greater opportunities. Africa is surely the hardest test of the
global trend away from international conflict. If conflict can no longer find a home there, will it be welcome anywhere?

No African war --- empirics, too expensive, not effective

Hendrix and Salehyan 11 (Dr. Cullen Hendrix is Assistant Professor at the University of North
Texas, Research Associate at the Centre for the Study of Civil War at the International Peace Research
Institute, Oslo, and Associate at the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law. Dr.
Idean Salehyan is Assistant Professor at the University of North Texas and Associate at the John
Goodwin Tower Center for Political Studies at Southern Methodist University, the International Peace
Research Institute, Oslo, and the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law. “The
Brewing Storm? Climate Change, Rainfall, and Social Conflict in Africa,” February 2011, pg. online @
http://ccaps.strausscenter.org/system/research_items/pdfs/43/original.pdf?1299598361)

Traditionally, the study of conflict has been dominated by a focus on international and
civil war, where at least one of the combatants is a government. Yet , interstate war has
been extremely rare in Africa . (One notable exception is the Ethiopia-Eritrea conflict in
the late 1990s.) And while civil wars and insurgencies have occurred more often than
warfare between states, they are still relatively uncommon given the high cost of
mobilizing, financing, and equipping rebel armies. Moreover, civil wars are predicated on
people’s belief that the central government is the most appropriate target of action. If
conflict is about competition over scarce water and land, then attacking the
government is only useful if the government effectively controls those resources or
has the power to redistribute them within society— preconditions that are not met in
many African states. Often, it is easier to take resources from a neighboring community
than to challenge the state and its armed forces. And if a constituency is politically
important, then peaceful opposition activities are often sufficient to secure the group’s
goals . Given the above, it seems far from clear that competition over dwindling
resources and scarce arable land will lead directly to interstate war or rebellion in
Africa. More likely, one would expect that environmental stress will provoke economic
downturns and food insecurity, which in turn will spark episodic demonstrations,
riots, labor unrest, and communal conflicts—and such conflicts may target not only
governments but non-state actors too, such as tribal groups, private citizens, and
corporations. If not addressed, these conflicts can contribute to long-term state
fragility.

No great power competition over Africa --- it’s structurally impossible

Kluth 11 (Michael Kluth is an associate professor in The Department of Society and Globalization at
Roskilde University in Denmark, 2/19/11, “North-South Rivalry and Offshore Balancing in Sub-Saharan
Africa,” pg. online @ http://rc41.ipsa.org/public/Sao_Paulo_2011/paper-1694.pdf)
The overarching question guiding this study is: how can we explain the lacking onshore presence of the four great powers USA,
Russia, China and India in Sub-Sahara Africa using offensive neorealism. The onshore absence of the above countries is a
theoretical puzzle since offensive neorealism predicts power maximization behaviour and it’s an empirical puzzle since Sub-Sahara
Africa with its profusion of failed and fragile states and absence of militarily strong local players seems ripe for great power
expansion. Three propositions were put forth. 1. The
US, as regional hegemon, has a status quo bias and thus
little appetite for SubSaharan Africa since there are no aspiring hegemons . It maintains a low key
presence in the hard security domain and refrains from onshore power expansion. 2. The European Union is the
only great power regularly commencing onshore military missions and it upholds superiority over the contending suitors in its power
projection capability vis-à-vis the region. 3. China,
Russia and India lack the capability to challenge Europe by
instigating onshore operations in Sub-Saharan Africa. They seek to maximize their presence through
contributions to UN missions and cautious deployments of naval assets. In parallel they challenge the EU by acquiring conventional
power projection assets. The US largely conforms to proposition 1 by staying aloof vis-à-vis power expansion games in Sub-Sahara
Africa. This is particularly evident in the decision to locate AFRICOM outside the continent. In compliance with proposition 2, the EU
has maintained European security dominance through a coordinated and collaborative upgrading of power projection assets which
are pooled in European Battle Groups and through bilateral accords between the major member states. It augments its position
through permanent military presence and regular offshore and onshore deployments. In accordance with proposition 3, China,
India and Russia lack the means to challenge the Europeans in the Sub-Saharan theatre. They have no
permanent bases in the vicinity. Their amphibious forces are short of vessels suitable for long range
deployments. India and China are unable to provide air cover for ground operations in quantities
required to match both the most advanced local air forces and the air combat assets the Europeans are capable of fielding.
Russia has a capable air craft carrier suited for this purpose, but given the state of its remaining surface fleet it would be
vulnerable . The same applies to Russia’s 35.000 man strong air borne forces which could be deployed by means of its vast air
transport fleet. The transport planes would, however, be vulnerable en-route and the troops lack air cover once on the ground.
Moreover most of the planes would be unable to make a safe return due to the shortage of aerial refuelling aircrafts.
Solvency
 Recidivism Inevitable – 1NC

738 studies disprove the aff’s recidivism internal link (indicts entry services
and quasi methods)
David Muhlhausen December 10th 2016 (Research Fellow in Empirical Policy Analysis at The
Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis, Studies Cast Doubt on Effectiveness of
Prisoner Reentry Programs, http://www.heritage.org/crime-and-justice/report/studies-cast-doubt-
effectiveness-prisoner-reentry-programs ) SS
Prisoner Reentry Experimental Evaluations There is considerable debate over the effectiveness of corrections and reentry programs. Some have concluded that several types
of programs are effective,[11] while others have cast doubt on the ability of these programs to reduce recidivism.[12] Prisoner reentry programs operated by secular or faith-
based organizations offer a wide range of services that potentially could address recidivism. However, there are not enough scientifically rigorous evaluations of secular or faith-
based prisoner reentry programs to conclude that these programs are effective. This review of the prisoner reentry literature is thus limited to evaluations that use random
assignment. A search of the evaluation literature identified nine experimental evaluations and one evaluation that used experimental and quasi-experimental methods.[13] Their

results are summarized below. Reintegration of Ex-Offenders (RExO) Program . Begun as a combined initiative of the U.S.
Departments of Labor and Justice and other federal agencies in 2005, the RExO program provides grants to local organizations to administer employment-focused prisoner

The Department of Labor just released the two-year results of the RExO
reentry programs.

Random Assignment Evaluation.[14] The large-scale multisite experimental evaluation

assessed the impact of federal grants on reducing recidivism of former prisoners.
Specifically, the evaluation assessed the effectiveness of federal grants to 24 local employment-based reentry programs, many of which were operated by faith-
based organizations. Former prisoners who were at least 18 years of age, were previously incarcerated for a minimum of 120 days, were not convicted of sex-related offenses,
and did not have a violent crime as their most recent offense were eligible for participation. Of the 4,655 eligible individuals, 60 percent were randomly assigned to the program
group, while the remaining 40 percent were randomly allocated to the control group.[15] Policymakers should take special note of the scientific rigor of this multisite experimental
evaluation. First, the experimental design of the RExO evaluation is important because random assignment is the only way to determine with a high degree of certainty the
effectiveness of the grant-funded reentry programs. Second, basing the evaluation on multiple sites allows policymakers to assess the national effectiveness of the reentry
grants. The RExO grantees mainly provided three types of services: mentoring, employment services, and case management and supportive services.[16] Program group
members were more likely to obtain employment-focused services, including vocational and job-readiness training, than their counterparts in the control group. Additionally, they
were more likely to receive mentoring services.[17] The authors of the evaluation conclude that “the RExO program had a substantial impact on the number and types of
services study participants received during the two-year follow-up period.”[18] How Did RExO Affect Employment and Earnings? The services provided by the RExO grantees
had a small effect on the employment and earnings of participants.[19] One year after random assignment, 71.3 percent of the program group worked at all, compared with 67.9
percent of the control group—a small but statistically significant beneficial impact. However, during the following year, the rates of participation in work failed to be statistically
different between the program and control groups, indicating that the initial small benefit disappeared. For total days employed over the two-year period, the program group
averaged 286.7 days, while the control group averaged 274.3 days—a statistically indistinguishable difference of 12.4 days. On average the program group earned a statistically

. Did RExO Reduce Recidivism? Based on

significant $883 more in income than the control group over the two-year period

administrative data, the services provided by the RExO grantees failed to improve the
recidivism, convictions, and reincarceration rates of participants.[20] Over the two-year
follow-up period, 42.0 percent of the program group and 43.2 percent of control groups
were arrested—a statistically indistinguishable difference of 1.2 percent. Further, the
services provided by the RExO grantees failed to affect convictions for new crimes,
including violent, property, and drug crimes. Members of the program group were no
more or less likely to be admitted to prison for new crimes or parole/probation violations.
Members of both groups were incarcerated for an average of 76 days during the two-year
period. The evaluation authors conclude that the criminal justice results based on administrative data provide “no evidence whatsoever of any impacts of RExO.”[21]
CEO Prisoner Reentry Program. The Center for Employment Opportunities (CEO) Prisoner Reentry Program is an employment-based program that immediately places recently
released prisoners in transitional jobs, usually with New York City or New York government agencies.[22] The transitional jobs approach uses employer subsidies to encourage
the hiring of former prisoners. The work performed consisted mainly of maintenance, repair, and janitorial activities. While working their transitional jobs, participants receive

A large-scale experimental evaluation with a sample size

assistance in finding permanent, unsubsidized employment.

of 977 former prisoners found that CEO Prisoner Reentry Program participants had a
mixed impact on employment and recidivism.[23] According to the evaluation, “CEO
substantially increased employment early in the follow-up period, but the impact faded
over time as program group members left the transitional jobs. CEO had no positive
impact on unsubsidized employment for the full sample.”[24] The initial impact on employment was driven by the
transitional jobs subsidies. During the course of the two-year evaluation, 59.6 percent of intervention participants found unsubsidized employment, compared with 62.8 percent
of the control group—a statistically indistinguishable difference of 2.7 percent.[25] Over the three-year follow-up period, the rate of ever being employed in a subsidized or
unsubsidized job was 83.8 percent for the intervention group and 70.4 percent for the control groups—a highly statistically significant difference of 13.4 percent.[26] However,
63.7 percent of the intervention group reported ever working in an unsubsidized job, compared with 69.0 percent for the control group—a difference of –5.3 percent that was not
statistically significant at the traditionally accepted level. Thus, the program appears to be ineffective at moving participants into unsubsidized employment. Compared with the
control group, the intervention group did not have statistically different arrest rates two years and three years after release from prison.[27] After two years, the intervention
group had an arrest rate of 37.7 percent, compared with the 41.8 percent arrest rate for the control group—a statistically indistinguishable difference of 4.1 percent.[28] Over
three years, the arrest rate for the intervention group was 48.1 percent and for the control group was 52.8 percent—a statistically insignificant difference of 4.7 percent.[29]
However, CEO had more success at lowering conviction rates. After two years, the intervention group had a conviction rate of 30.5 percent, compared with the 38.3 percent
conviction rate for the control group—a statistically significant difference of 7.7 percent.[30] This difference in convictions is explained by the fact that the intervention group was
less likely to be convicted of misdemeanors. For felony convictions, there was no difference between the groups. For the three-year conviction rate, the difference between the
intervention and control groups was not statistically different at the traditionally accepted level.[31] For the two-year and three-year follow-ups, the intervention group was less
likely to be incarcerated in jail or prison. For the two-year follow-up, the intervention group had a reincarceration (returning to jail or prison) rate of 49.5 percent, compared with
the 55.4 percent reincarceration rate for the control group—a statistically significant difference of 5.9 percent.[32] For the three-year follow-up, the intervention group had a
reincarceration rate of 58.1 percent, and the control group had a reincarceration rate of 65.0 percent.[33] The difference of 6.9 percent was statistically significant. This result
appears to be driven by the intervention group being statistically less likely to land in jail. The difference in the prison reincarceration rates between the intervention and control
groups was not statistically different. At the end of the three-year follow-up, 25.4 percent of the intervention and 30.0 percent of the control groups were incarcerated in jail or
prison—a statistically insignificant difference of 4.6 percent. The goal of the CEO reentry programs was to provide immediate employment and income to former inmates after

Limiting the
their release. However, only 41 percent of study participants were enrolled in the evaluation within three months of their release from prison.[34]

data to this subsample of former prisoners with less than three months between release
and random assignment, the analysis found recidivism results similar to the full sample.
There were no statistically significant differences at the traditionally accepted level on
ever being arrested during the two-year and three-year follow-up periods.[35] However, members of the
intervention group were less likely to be convicted of a crime during both follow-up periods. The beneficial effect appears to be driven by lower rates of misdemeanor
convictions, rather than felony convictions. Further, intervention group members of this subsample were less likely to be incarcerated during the follow-up periods, mainly due to
lower jail admissions, not to differences in prison admissions. Transitional Jobs Reentry Demonstration. The Transitional Jobs Reentry Demonstration (TJRD), a large-scale
experimental evaluation, tested the effectiveness of providing temporary paid jobs, support services, and job placement assistance to prisoners returning to the community.[36]
The Joyce Foundation used a competitive process to select and fund employment-focused prisoner reentry programs in four Midwest cities: Chicago, Detroit, Milwaukee, and
St. Paul. The experimental evaluation randomly assigned 1,813 former prisoners to the TJRD intervention group and the control group.[37] Members of the control group
received basic job search and referral services without subsidized employment. The TJRD targeted men who were at least 18 years of age and who had been released from
state prison within 90 days before participating in the demonstration.[38] The release within 90 days requirement was based on the findings of the CEO Prisoner Reentry
Program. On average, members of the intervention and control groups were enrolled in the evaluation 44 days after their release from state prison.[39] While there were some
limitations on participation at certain sites, men with all types of criminal histories were generally allowed to participate. The TJRD jobs programs in the four sites offered
temporary, minimum-wage employment that provided 30 hours to 40 hours of paid work each week.[40] These temporary jobs were subsidized by TJRD—meaning that the
employers were given subsidies to hire former inmates. Rather than focusing on developing occupation-related skills, TJRD programs aimed to detect and deal with behavior
and performance issues that arose at work sites.[41] In addition, participants were provided assistance with finding permanent employment. At the Milwaukee and St. Paul sites,
TJRD participants were awarded retention bonus payments totaling up to $1,500 for staying in their subsidized, transitional jobs. However, the effect of the retention bonuses
was not tested experimentally, so these results are not reliable.[42] Members of the intervention group who were placed in transitional jobs spent an average of 11 weeks in the
subsidized jobs.[43] Did TJRD Increase Employment and Earnings of Participants, Compared with the Control Group? In the short term, the answer is yes. For the first year
after random assignment, measured quarterly, the intervention group had higher rates of overall employment that were statistically significant, compared with the overall
employment rates of the control group.[44] In the second year, the quarterly differences in overall employment were not statistically significant at traditionally accepted levels of
statistical significance. Thus, the initial impact appears to be driven by offering subsidized employment to the intervention group. During the first three quarters after random
assignment, the intervention group had statistically higher subsidized employment rates than the control group, but the differences became statistically indistinguishable in
quarters four through eight. Over the course of two years, 94.3 percent of the intervention group reported being employed at least once, compared with 65.3 percent of the
control group—a statistically significant difference of 29.0 percent.[45] However, only 41.0 percent of the intervention group and 40.4 percent of the control group members ever
obtained unsubsidized employment two years after random assignment. This minuscule difference of 0.6 percent was statistically insignificant. In fact, the participation rate of
the control group in unsubsidized jobs over two years was 65.0 percent, compared with 60.4 percent for the intervention group—a statistically significant difference of 4.6
percent. As for earnings obtained from unsubsidized jobs, the difference between the intervention and control groups was statistically insignificant. The author concluded:
“[T]here is little evidence that the transitional jobs programs, as implemented, led to better unsubsidized employment outcomes over a two-year period. These results are

Did TJRD
consistent with the findings of other evaluations of transitional jobs programs.”[46] Despite These Underwhelming Employment and Earnings Findings,

Affect Recidivism? Overall, the authors concluded, “For the full sample, the TJRD
transitional jobs programs did not significantly affect key measures of recidivism in Year
2 or over the two-year follow-up period as a whole.”[47] Over the course of two years, the
arrest rates for the intervention and control group were 55.2 percent and 51.8 percent,
respectively—a statistically insignificant difference of 3.4 percent.[48] TJRD also failed to
affect convictions, prison admissions for new crimes, parole/probation violations, and
total days spent in prison after random assignment. Interestingly, when the recidivism
rates are analyzed by site, intervention group members in Detroit were more likely to be
admitted to prison, especially for technical violations, than their counterparts.[49] The
admission-to-prison rate for the Detroit intervention group was 17.8 percent, compared with 9.9 percent for the control group—a statistically significant harmful difference of 7.9
percent. When prison admissions were limited to new crimes, the difference between the groups was statistically indistinguishable. However, the prison admission rates for
parole/probation violations were 10.3 percent for the intervention group and 4.2 percent for the control group—a statistically significant harmful difference of 6.1 percent. Further,
members of the intervention group averaged 24.9 more days in prison after random assignment, compared with their counterparts. The findings for the other sites failed to reach
traditional levels of statistical significance. Minnesota Comprehensive Offender Reentry Plan. The Minnesota Comprehensive Offender Reentry Plan (MCORP), a reentry
program for inmates released to Hennepin, Ramsey, Dodge, Fillmore, and Olmstead Counties, began in 2008.[50] For the small-scale experimental evaluation, inmates were
randomly assigned to intervention and control groups at least 60 days prior to their scheduled release date. To be eligible to participate, in addition to the county requirement,
inmates needed to have at least six months of community supervision remaining on their sentences and not be required to register as a sex offender. From January to
September 2008, 269 eligible inmates were randomly assigned to the intervention and control groups.[51] MCORP attempted to increase the level of services to inmates while
they were institutionalized and released to the community.[52] With about half of the caseload of agents supervising members of the control group, “MCORP agents focused on
helping offenders access services related to employment, vocational training, education, housing, chemical health, mentoring, faith-based programming, and income
support.”[53] The evaluation found that the intervention group was more likely to obtain employment, housing, social support, mentoring, educational services, and income

Did the Beneficial

support.[54] They were no more likely to receive faith-based services and vocational training than members of the control group.

Impacts Have an Effect on Recidivism? The follow-up period for study participants
averaged 16 months after release. A survival analysis that assessed the impact of
MCORP on length of time until study participants recidivated found that MCORPS
reduced recidivism.[55] Specifically, Controlling for the effects of the pre-release
predictors, MCORP lowered the hazard ratio by 37% for rearrest, 43% for reconviction,
and 57% for new offense reincarceration. That is, MCORP offenders reoffended less often
and more slowly than the offenders in the control group; as a result, they survived longer
in the community without a new offense. [56] However, MCORP failed to have any effect
on technical violation revocation rates. By standards of recidivism research, the 16-
month follow-up period is too short to make judgements about the long-term
effectiveness of the program. Minnesota High-Risk Revocation Reduction (HRRR)
Program. The goal of the HRRR program was to reduce the recidivism of high-risk
offenders in Minnesota.[57] For the small-scale experiment, 239 adult male release violators who spent two to six months in two state prisons were
randomly assigned to intervention and control groups.[58] The prisoners were previously released from a state prison, but were reincarcerated for violating the conditions of their
supervised release. The control group received normal case management services, while the intervention group was given access to “supplemental case planning, housing,
employment, mentoring, cognitive-behavioral programming, and transportation assistance services.”[59] Specifically, the intervention group was offered 75 days of transitional
housing, 16 weeks of subsidized employment, weekly life skills counseling, weekly mentoring sessions, and three public transportation passes.[60] HRRR was funded by a
federal demonstration grant authorized by the Second Chance Act.[61] Recidivism rates were assessed one year to two years after release. Based on one-to-two years of post-
release data, a survival analysis found statistically significant impacts on revocations and reconvictions, but HRRR had no effect on rearrest and reincarceration.[62] Specifically,
“HRRR participation significantly reduced the risk of a new supervised release revocation by 28% and the risk of a reconviction by nearly 42%.”[63] Even though HRRR
participants were less likely to be returned to prison for technical violations (revocations) and convicted of new crimes, they were still no more or less likely to be arrested for

A small-scale random
new crimes or returned to prison after being convicted of a new crime. Southern California Employment-Focused Reentry Program.

assignment evaluation of a nationally recognized employment-focused prisoner reentry

program operating in Southern California was found to have no statistically measurable
effect on recidivism.[64] The program uses the STRIVE employment model, which is
provided by more than 25 community-based organizations throughout the nation. The
reentry program, which provided vocational and employment readiness training as well
as placement services, failed to increase employment and reduce recidivism. A total of 217 former
inmates were randomly assigned to intervention and control groups. Participants were eligible for participation as long as they had no convictions for arson or sexual offenses
and could pass a drug test. Twelve months after random assignment, 29.8 percent of the intervention group and 27.1 percent of the control group were employed full time.[65]
The part-time employment rates of the intervention and control groups were 12.5 percent and 9.4 percent, respectively. The differences between the full-time and part-time
employment rates were not statistically different, suggesting that the vocational services provided were ineffective. The self-reported arrest rates at the 12-month follow-up were

Similarly, the
45.2 percent for the intervention group and 49.4 percent for the intervention and control group—a statistically insignificant difference.[66]

difference between the incarceration rate at the one-year follow-up period—47.1 percent
for the intervention group and 48.2 percent for the control group—was statistically
insignificant. Based on official records, 66.3 percent and 69.2 percent of the intervention
and control groups were arrested during the two-year follow-up period. The difference
was statistically insignificant. The authors infer that there “is little support among
experimental studies that offering employment programs to formerly incarcerated
offenders reduces their risk of recidivism.”[67] Milwaukee Safe Street Prisoner Release Initiative (PRI). Operated by the Wisconsin
Department of Corrections, PRI provided “reach in” services, including drug abuse counseling, anti-gang counseling, and employment preparation, to inmates six months prior

the U.S.
to their release, along with after-release employment-focused services.[68] Through the Comprehensive Anti-Gang Initiative created in 2006,

Department of Justice provided grant funding to Milwaukee to operate PRI.[69] After

release, PRI offered subsidized employment for six months and assistance in finding
unsubsidized employment. Improving the employment opportunities of the released
inmates was the principal instrument for reducing recidivism.[70] To assess effectiveness, a small-scale
experimental evaluation of 236 high-risk offenders with histories of violence and gang involvement who were scheduled to be released in Milwaukee was performed.[71] During
2009, 106 inmates and 130 inmates were randomly assigned to the intervention and control groups, respectively. While in prison, members of the intervention group were
offered vocational skills assessments, vocational training, soft-skills training, restorative justice counseling, Community Corrections Employment Program (CCEP), alcohol and
drug treatment, remedial education, and Breaking Barriers, a life skills and behavioral/cognitive change program.[72] After release, the intervention group was eligible for
substance-abuse treatment and continued CCEP services, which included subsidized employment and job search assistance. When assessing the PRI’s impact on quarterly
employment outcomes, the evaluators limited the analysis to nonrecidivists (those individuals who were not sent back to prison).[73] In each of the four quarters of the one-year
follow-up, members of the treatment group had higher rates of employment, measured by working at least one hour per quarter, than the employment rates of the control
group.[74] These findings are statistically significant. According to the authors, the intervention group was about 20 percentage points more likely than the control group to be
employed for at least an hour during each quarter.[75] As for earnings per quarter, members of the intervention group earned $334 more in the first quarter and $470 more in
the second quarter than the earnings of the control group.[76] These differences were statistically significant; however, this initial beneficial effect disappeared during the third

. Did PRI
and fourth quarters. The fading of the beneficial effect on earnings is likely due to the employment subsidies lasting only six months after release

Reduce Recidivism? A survival analysis found that the probability of individuals in the
intervention group being arrested, compared with the control group, was about 39
percent lower on a month-to-month basis.[77] This decrease in the probability of being
arrested was statistically significant. However, the difference in the average number of
arrests during the one-year follow-up was not statistically different between the
intervention and control groups. In fact, 28 percent of both groups were arrested for
serious (violence and weapons-related) crimes. When new arrests are analyzed during the six-month, nine-month, and 12-month
follow-up periods, members of the intervention group had statistically significant lower arrest rates.[78] As for imprisonment one year after release, the difference in
reincarceration rates was not statistically significant.[79] Given that the follow-up period for this evaluation is only one year, policymakers should exercise caution when
interpreting these results. Short-term impacts, especially with prisoner reentry programs, tend to disappear with longer follow-up periods. Hopefully, the authors of this
evaluation will update their research as more data become available. Multimodal Community-Based Reentry Program. A small-scale experimental evaluation with a sample size
of 511 assessed the effectiveness of a multimodal, community-based prisoner reentry program that focused on substance-abuse treatment for offenders with substance
dependencies.[80] Based upon the “best practices literature,” the substance-abuse treatment employed a cognitive-behavioral therapeutic model that assumes substance abuse
is a learned behavior that can be unlearned and/or replaced.[81] In addition, drug testing was also implemented to hold program participants accountable. A total of 263 former
prisoners were assigned to the intervention group, while 248 former prisoners were assigned to the control group. Control group members received regular community
supervision.[82] Prisoners with high assaultive risk classifications, sex-offense histories, arson histories, pending new felony charges, or physical or mental conditions were
barred from eligibility.[83] The first phase of the program (30 days to 45 days after release) entailed a residency in a secure transitional facility that focused on finding housing
and employment, enrolling in job-readiness and life-skills training, and initiating outpatient substance-abuse treatment.[84] The second phase started when former prisoners
were allowed to move into approved home residences. Continued participation in substance-abuse treatment and testing were required for one year post-release. Participants in
the experimental evaluation were followed for two years.[85] The following outcomes were assessed: relapse (testing positive for drug use); rearrest for new felony; and
reincarceration for technical violation or conviction for a new crime. For the relapse outcome of testing positive for drug use at least one time, the program had no effect on the
percentage of subjects testing positive.[86] However, the program did affect the percentage of drug tests in which study participants were found to be using illegal substances.
Members of the intervention and control groups tested positive for drug use in 26 percent and 21 percent of their respective tests—a difference that was statistically
significant.[87] A survival analysis found that the mean survival time until relapse was 286 days for the intervention group and 338 days for the control group—a statistically
significant difference.[88] Thus, the intervention group had higher rates of testing positive for drug use and survived shorter periods of time until testing positive for drug use,

Washington State Work

meaning that the program had a harmful impact. Otherwise, the program has no effect on rearrest and reincarceration rates.[89]

Release. During the early 1990s, a small-scale evaluation in Seattle randomly assigned
218 eligible prisoners to serve out their sentences or enter work-release facilities.[90]
Participants in the intervention group were required to be involved in gainful employment
or job training while participating in the program. These work-release participants were
obligated to remain in their work-release facilities unless they were engaged in approved
work and other activities. One year after random assignment, work-release participants
had a rearrest rate of 22 percent compared with the recidivism rate of 30 percent of the
non–work release participants.[91] However, this difference of 8 percent was statistically
insignificant, meaning that the difference cannot be attributed to participation in the
work-release program.[92] The program had no impact on any incarcerations (jail or prison) for new crimes, but the intervention group was statistically
less likely to be jailed. Further, a cost-effectiveness analysis demonstrated “basically no differences in costs between work releases and inmates completing their full terms in
prison.”[93] Project Greenlight. Project Greenlight, a short-term, prison-based reentry program in New York City, applied cognitive-behavioral skills training to prisoners eight
weeks before their release.[94] The program mainly endeavored to increase “post-release outcomes by (1) incorporating an intensive multimodal treatment regimen during
incarceration and (2) providing links to families, community-based service providers, and parole officers after release (although there was no actual community follow-up).”[95]

The cognitive-behavioral skills training approach used by Project Greenlight is labeled as

a “What Works” or “evidence-based” model based on the results of previous
research.[96] A small-scale evaluation found that Project Greenlight “did not reduce
recidivism and may actually have increased it.”[97] The evaluation used a mixed design
that combined a quasi-experiment design for the first five months of assigning inmates
to the program with random assignment design during the last six months.[98] Project Greenlight
participants were compared with a group of inmates that did not receive any pre-release transition services and with a group that received alternative transition services.
Compared with the inmate group that received the alternative transition services, Project Greenlight participants had a 41 percent higher chance of arrest after one year.[99]
Project Greenlight participants did not have statistically different arrest rates compared with inmates receiving no services. While the impact of Project Greenlight appears to be
harmful, policymakers should exercise caution when interpreting the findings due to the mixed methodology that degrades the validity of the findings. Model Programs Are Often
Difficult to Replicate While the evaluations of CEO, MCORP, and PRI found varying degrees of success, these impacts either did not last longer than short-term assessments or
were not assessed over longer follow-up periods. Further, inconsistent effects of the employment-focused CEO could not be replicated in the TJRD evaluation. Many advocates
of social programs have adopted the language of the evidence-based policy movement. Under the evidence-based policy movement, programs found to be effective using
rigorous scientific methods are deemed “effective” or “evidence-based” and held up as “model” programs to be replicated.[100] The assumption is that the same successful
impacts found at a particular setting can be replicated in other settings or on the national scale. This faulty reasoning is based upon the “single-instance fallacy.”[101] This
fallacy occurs when a person believes that a small-scale social program that appears to work in one instance will yield the same results when replicated elsewhere.
Compounding the effects of this fallacy, we often do not truly know why an apparently effective program worked in the first place. So how can we replicate it? The social
programs, including prisoner reentry programs, that have been deemed “effective” and serve as “model” programs have often been implemented under optimal conditions by
highly trained professionals operating under ideal conditions. In addition, the conditions under which these programs operate are carefully monitored to ensure that the
participants receive the intended level of treatment. In the real world, program conditions are almost always less than optimal. Merely replicating an “evidence-based” program
does not necessarily mean that it will produce the same results.[102] In addition, the federal government has a poor track record of replicating successful programs on a national
scale.[103] TJRD could not replicate the positive results from CEO. Further, the approaches used by MCORP and PRI need to be replicated in different settings to adequately
determine the merits of these approaches. Finding What Works The experimental evaluations discussed in this review offer mixed, at best, evidence of success. This conclusion

A previous scholarly review of random assignment

is particularly relevant for employment-based reentry programs.

evaluations of employment-focused prisoner reentry programs concluded that these

programs do not reduce recidivism.[104] Developing a better understanding of how former prisoners desist from crime has important
ramifications for advocates of prisoner reentry programs and victims of crime. The results of scientifically rigorous evaluations, especially the RExO evaluation, raise serious
doubts about the overall effectiveness of federal involvement in subsidizing state and local prisoner reentry programs and congressional attempts to pass versions of the

One assumption made by supporters of prisoner reentry

Second Chance Reauthorization Act (S. 1513 and H.R. 3406).

programs is that helping released prisoners find employment reduces recidivism rates.
In fact, both reauthorization efforts devote federal resources to funding transitional jobs
programs that subsidize the employment of former prisoners. The causal assumption
underlying this approach is that an employed ex-con will be less likely to commit crime.
In essence, workplace attachment is thought to encourage “desistance” from crime.
(Desistance is what criminologists call the process of criminals giving up on criminal behavior.) As criminologists Torbjørn Skardhamar of Statistics Norway and Jukka
Savolainen of the University of Nebraska at Omaha point out, the critical question concerns the timing of employment transitions in relation to desistance from crime.[105] There
are two hypotheses on the relationship between employment and desistance. The turning point hypothesis postulates that desistance occurs after released prisoners find
employment, while the maturation perspective presumes that desistance from crime occurs before the acquisition of legitimate employment. If the maturation perspective is a
more accurate explanation, then helping released prisoners find employment before they are ready to give up criminal behavior may be unproductive. Criminologist Ray
Paternoster and his colleagues are positing a similar theory that the process of changing an offender’s identity from a criminal to a law-abiding citizen is a complex process that
needs to precede finding legitimate employment.[106] For instance, former prisoners need to realize that criminal offending is more costly than beneficial. Once this realization
occurs, the individual can adopt a more pro-social identity that eschews “quick and easy money,” such as theft and drug dealing, for more conventional employment.[107] Some

Based on a sample of 783 recidivist males from Norway, Skardhamar and

evidence supports this theory.

Savolainen found that most of the offenders turned away from criminal behavior before
finding legitimate employment and that becoming employed was not linked to reduced
criminal behavior—adding support for the maturation hypothesis. Giving up on the criminal lifestyle precedes
finding and maintaining employment. If the perspective of Paternoster and his colleagues is a more accurate explanation of the process of giving up on crime, helping released
prisoners find employment before they are psychologically ready to give up criminal behavior may be unproductive. This means that prisoner reentry efforts that rely mainly on
job training and subsidized jobs are not likely to succeed beyond a few small-scale examples. The results of the RExO evaluation certainly undercut the assumption that
federally funded employment-based reentry programs can be effective. Prisoner reentry programs that adopt a multifaceted approach, such as MCORP, may have more
realistic chances of success. Nevertheless, more experimental evaluations, especially large-scale multisite evaluations, are needed to shed light on what works and what does
not.
!!!Title 1 Updates!!!
Title I
 AT Comparability
Requiring comparability fails to close achievement gaps
Dynarski and Kainz 16 (Mark Dynarski, Nonresident Senior Fellow - Economic Studies,
Center on Children and Families , and Kirsten Kainz, Research Associate Professor, School of
Education, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill , Brookings, “Requiring school districts to
spend comparable amounts on Title I schools is pushing on a string”, 7/8/16, Evidence Speaks
Reports, Vol 1, 21) GG
Of all the rules that the U.S. Department of Education will have to formulate for the Every Student Succeeds Act, the proposed regulations to monitor
that states and districts spend comparable amounts for schools eligible and not eligible to use Title I funds are attracting the most attention. Currently,
districts can show comparability based on the number of teachers per student. The Department has proposed that teacher salaries be used to assess
comparability. We used data from various sources to explore how comparable teacher salaries are for schools that are eligible and not eligible to use
Title I funds. We found nationally that higher school poverty rates and Title I status are not associated
with lower spending on teachers when the analysis controls for the districts and states in
which schools are located. In addition, detailed data for teachers in Wisconsin indicates that in districts that have Title I and non-Title
I schools, years of teaching experience and highest degree earned are about the same in both kinds of schools. The comparability

debate is a distraction from the more important issue of how Title I can best close gaps .
As we wrote previously in this series, Title I spends most of its resources on programs and services that

don’t do much to help students. A more fruitful discussion would focus on how states
and districts can spend their money effectively , by using evidence to identify programs
that work on which Title I funds should be spent. The U.S. Department of Education (ED) is preparing regulations to
implement the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA, Public Law 114-95). Large and complex pieces of legislation require agencies to write regulations
about how the law is to be implemented, and ESSA is no exception. Of all the regulations that ED will have to formulate for ESSA, the
proposed regulations to monitor that states and districts spend comparable amounts for
schools eligible and not eligible to use Title I funds are attracting the most attention.
“Comparability” may sound wonk-ish, but it is at the heart of what Title I is trying to accomplish, which is to provide funds to

help close achievement gaps between advantaged and disadvantaged students. If states and districts reduce
state and local funds for schools receiving Title I funds, those schools will not have
more resources to close gaps. In pushing for its version of comparability, ED finds itself in a debate with Congress. In hearings,
Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN), one of the primary authors of the law, admonished the Secretary of Education for drafting regulations that did not
stay within the words of the law.[i] But what the Secretary proposed makes so much sense that readers may wonder why it had to be proposed at all.
The Secretary proposed that when districts assessed comparability of spending, they include actual
spending on teachers. Wait…they didn’t already? No—longstanding Federal regulations allow
districts to assess comparability using the number of teachers (and other staff such as guidance
counselors and aides) per student, rather than how much is actually spent on teachers. A district need only show that
its high-poverty schools have about the same number of full-time equivalent teachers as
its low-poverty schools, relative to enrollments in the schools. But a district might be spending
much less in its high-poverty schools if teachers in those schools were less experienced
and had fewer graduate credits. Teacher salaries are typically determined by contracts that specify salaries by
years of teaching experience and postgraduate credits. A teacher with 20 years of experience and a master’s degree
might make twice as much or more than a teacher just starting out. These differences can translate into large
differences between schools, as a simple example shows. If a low-poverty elementary school has 400 students and 20 teachers,
and 80 percent are experienced and receive $70,000 in salary, and 20 percent are new and receive $35,000 in salary, the school spends $3,150 per
student for teachers. If, in contrast, a high-poverty school has 80 percent new teachers and 20 percent experienced teachers, the school spends
$2,100 per student for teachers. In this example, the high-poverty school is spending $460,000 less a year on its teachers than the low-poverty school.
That’s a big spending difference for a key education resource. Research consistently has found that
more experienced teachers contribute more to student learning, at least when comparing novice teachers
with those with a few years on the job.[ii] The heated and ongoing disagreement between the Obama administration and Congress on the proposed
regulations on comparability of funding assumes that the scenario in our example is rampant and requires regulation to fix. But, in fact, how
common is it for schools to spend differently on teachers based on the income levels of
the families of the students they serve? If teacher spending is different, a comparability
requirement based on it will require districts to act. If teacher spending is not different,
requiring it to be comparable is pushing on a string . Not much happens. We linked several data
sources to explore this issue. The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) recently released data from the 2013-
2014 school year that includes how much public schools spent on their teachers and
specifically how much schools spent on teachers from local and state sources. That
excludes funds that might come from Title 1, Race to the Top, or other Federal sources. We linked OCR
data with the National Center for Education Statistics Common Core of Data (CCD), which includes school enrollment, numbers of students
participating in the free or reduced price lunch program, and whether a school was eligible for Title I and the kind of program it operated (schoolwide or
targeted). For teacher experience and postgraduate credits, we linked OCR and CCD data with data from the Wisconsin Department of Public
Instruction that includes years of teacher experience and highest degree attained for every teacher in the state (such detailed information on teachers
is not available in the federal data).
 AT “Worse Teachers”
Poverty and Title I eligibility doesn’t correlate with teaching quality
Dynarski and Kainz 16 (Mark Dynarski, Nonresident Senior Fellow - Economic Studies,
Center on Children and Families , and Kirsten Kainz, Research Associate Professor, School of
Education, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill , Brookings, “Requiring school districts to
spend comparable amounts on Title I schools is pushing on a string”, 7/8/16, Evidence Speaks
Reports, Vol 1, 21) GG
What about the conventional wisdom that teachers with more experience are more likely
to be in low-poverty schools? We turned to the Wisconsin data, which includes years of
teaching experience and highest degree, whereas federal data does not. We continue to use
the OCR teacher spending data because Wisconsin does not separate Federal funds from state
and local funds in reporting teacher salaries. Within Wisconsin, we identified 86 districts that
had elementary schools that were and were not eligible for Title I. Having eligible and
ineligible schools enables us to model what the comparability provision requires, which
is that districts show they spend comparably at Title I schools and non-Title I schools.
Some districts have no eligible schools and others have only eligible schools. Both kinds of
districts drop out of this calculation. We calculated average differences between eligible and
ineligible schools on three items: teacher spending per student, years of teacher
experience, and highest degree earned. Conventional wisdom would have all three being
lower in Title I schools. It’s not what we see . Teacher spending shows a difference of $54
favoring Title I schools . Years of teaching experience are very close , a difference of a
third of a year. And highest degree earned is nearly identical. Based on these averages,
Wisconsin districts have nearly identical distributions of teachers in elementary schools that are
eligible and not eligible for Title I. We do not have data for all states enabling us to do this
same comparison of teacher salaries, experience, and education, and maybe Wisconsin is
unusually equitable among states. The point is that the prevailing view that teacher
experience is lower in high-poverty schools is not borne out here . Perhaps new teachers
are more likely to start teaching in high-poverty districts. But within those districts, the
Wisconsin data suggest they are equally likely to teach in Title I schools or non-Title I
schools. Spending differences in Wisconsin varied considerably between districts. The
standard deviation of the spending difference is $838. A similar calculation for New Jersey
yielded a larger standard deviation of $1,223. That means teacher spending in Title I and non-
Title I schools differed substantially in some districts (and in both directions). Understanding the
basis for these differences will be useful if policymakers are debating whether to require
comparability of teacher spending. From a political perspective, the debate about how districts
demonstrate comparability is part of a power struggle between two branches of government.
From our empirical perspective, the debate is much ado about nothing—the typical district
already spends about the same on teachers in schools that are and are not eligible for
Title I. The Wisconsin data also indicate that teacher experience is about the same. ESSA
creates a legal requirement that districts show comparability, and so they have to. But the
debate about how to show it is a distraction from the more important issue of how Title I can
best close gaps. As we wrote previously in this series, Title I has not shown it is effective in
closing gaps. It spends most of its resources on programs and services that don’t do
much to help students.[vi] A more fruitful discussion would focus on how states and districts
can spend their money effectively, by using evidence to identify programs that work on which
Title I funds should be spent.

Poverty rates are irrelevant to teacher spending per school

Dynarski and Kainz 16 (Mark Dynarski, Nonresident Senior Fellow - Economic Studies,
Center on Children and Families , and Kirsten Kainz, Research Associate Professor, School of
Education, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill , Brookings, “Requiring school districts to
spend comparable amounts on Title I schools is pushing on a string”, 7/8/16, Evidence Speaks
Reports, Vol 1, 21) GG
We focus on elementary schools, where most Title I dollars are spent. Nationally, our data show that
the average elementary school has 472 students, 27 teachers, and 265 students in the free and reduced price lunch program. The average
elementary school spends $3,295 on teachers per student. We first estimated a simple
correlation between teacher spending per student and school poverty rates for all the elementary
schools in our data. We used the percent of students enrolled in the free-lunch program as a proxy for a school’s poverty rate, a common if not entirely
satisfactory procedure.[iii] We
found a negative correlation: teacher spending was lower when
schools had higher poverty rates. An increase in the school poverty rate of ten percentage points reduced teacher spending per
student by about $100. This correlation is consistent with conventional wisdom but it ignores a

key aspect of the data: schools are in districts and districts are in states . From a statistical
perspective, states, districts, and schools form ‘levels,’ and it is within those levels that people
are taxed for schools and decisions are made about how to distribute funds among schools. Correlations should be
estimated accounting for these levels if the findings are to be relevant to practical policy
and management issues. When we account for levels, the correlation is reversed . An
increase in the poverty rate of ten percentage points increased teacher spending per
student by about $30 , and the correlation was not statistically significant at conventional levels.[iv] Teacher spending is about the same
regardless of school poverty. This reversal is a symptom of what is known as Simpson’s paradox, or, in
some settings, the ‘ecological fallacy.’ Think of it this way—if we had only two states, say, New Jersey and Mississippi, we would notice that New
Jersey has a low poverty rate (it’s 38 percent) and spends a lot on its teachers per student ($5,206). Mississippi has a higher poverty rate (78 percent)
and does not spend a lot on its teachers per student ($2,400). It would appear that poverty is negatively correlated with teacher spending. From this
information, what can we infer about the relationship between poverty and teacher spending within each state? The answer is—nothing. Both
states might have exactly equal spending on teachers regardless of school-level poverty.
In fact, when we estimated correlations within the two states, that’s what we found—both
states had a statistically insignificant correlation between teacher spending at individual
schools and the poverty rate of those schools’ student populations. The figure depicts what we found. Overall, the blue line shows
a negative relationship between poverty and spending when states are the unit of analysis. The orange lines depict what is happening within states—
they are slightly positively sloped. (In fact, the lines we estimated have different slopes depending on the state, which is too much detail to show in a
figure.) We also could substitute districts for states and schools for districts in the figure—low-spending and high-spending districts could dominate a
correlation that ignored schools being within districts (districts would be the blue line), while the correlation within districts could be in the other direction
We did the same calculations substituting whether schools were
(schools would be the orange line).[v]
eligible for Title I in place of the poverty rate. Because eligibility for Title 1 is a function of
a school’s poverty rate, not surprisingly we found the same patterns. Accounting for levels in the data,
schools that were eligible for Title I had about the same spending on teachers
regardless of their poverty rates (the estimate was positive and insignificant). Simpson’s paradox is a
caution to researchers that relationships observed at aggregated levels are not
necessarily true at disaggregated levels. When we add levels to the analysis, what is
observed for the nation as a whole or when comparing states—poverty is associated
with lower spending on teachers—is not observed within states and districts.
 Education Fails Economy
The educational system is unproductive and can’t solve economic issues –
there’s a plateau in progress despite increasing spending in education, and
there’s a lack of incentive for quality teaching professions
Rothwell 16 (Jonathan Rothwell, Senior Economist, Gallup. Brookings, “The declining
productivity of education” 12/23/16 https://www.brookings.edu/blog/social-mobility-
memos/2016/12/23/the-declining-productivity-of-education/) GG

US economic development has stalled . We’ve recently learned that only about half of people born around 1980 earn more
today than their parents did at a similar age. The nation’s deteriorating education sector is one important factor, culpable for both weak economic
growth and rising income inequality. Intergenerational gains in learning have slowed, alongside gains in income, as I’ve argued in a recent report for
Gallup and the U.S. Council on Competitiveness. Like
any other sphere of economic activity, the productivity
of the education sector depends on the relationship between how much it generates in
value—learning, in this case—relative to its costs. Unfortunately, productivity is way down.
EDUCATION COSTS HAVE SOARED… College tuition, net of subsidies, is 11.1 times higher in 2015 than in 1980, dramatically higher than the 2.5
increase in overall personal consumption over the period. For private education, from pre-K through secondary, prices are 8.5 times higher now than in
1980. For public schools, the rise is lower—4.7 from 1980 to 2013—but still far above general inflation. …BUT LEARNING HAS STAGNATED For
the nation’s 17-year-olds, there have been no gains in literacy since the National Assessment of
Educational Progress began in 1971. Performance is somewhat better on math, but there has still been
no progress since 1990 . The long-term stagnation cannot be attributed to racial or ethnic
differences in the U.S. population. Literacy scores for white students peaked in 1975; in math,
scores peaked in the early 1990s. EDUCATION PRODUCTIVITY GROWTH FOR U.S. EDUCATION HAS BEEN
PARTICULARLY WEAK International literacy and numeracy data from the OECD’s assessment of
adult skills confirms this troubling picture. The numeracy and literacy skills of those born since 1980 are no more
developed than for those born between 1968 and 1977. For the average OECD country, by contrast, people born between 1978 and 1987 score
significantly better than all previous generations. Comparing the oldest—those born from 1947 to 1957—to youngest
cohorts—those born from 1988 to 1996, the U.S. gains are especially weak . The United States ranks
dead last among 26 countries tested on math gains, and second to last on literacy gains across these generations.
The countries which have made the largest math gains include South Korea, Slovenia,
France, Poland, Finland, and the Netherlands. This weak performance is even more
disturbing given that the U.S. spends more on education, on a per student basis, than almost any
other country. So what’s going wrong? THE SOURCES OF EDUCATIONAL FAILURE For higher education, a major factor
driving up costs has been a growth in the number of highly-paid non-teaching
professionals. In 1988, for every 100 full-time equivalent students, there were on average 23 college employees. By 2012, that number had
increased to 31 employees, with a shift toward the highest paying non-teaching occupations. Managers and professionals now
outnumber faculty, who comprise just a third of the higher education workforce. To a large
extent, rising costs have been absorbed by increased student borrowing, subsidized by the federal government, and supplemented through grant aid.
Unfortunately, as my report shows, federal loans have increasingly gone to the worst-performing colleges, from the perspective of default rates, which
is consistent with Brookings research showing the rising prevalence of for-profit colleges as aid recipients. In
primary and secondary
public education, where price increases have been less dramatic, there has been a
decline in bureaucratic efficiency. The number of students for every district-level administrator fell from 519 in 1980 to 365 in
2012. Principals and assistant principals managed 382 students in 1980 but only 294 in 2012. An even bigger problem perhaps

is that teaching itself has become increasingly unattractive . Salaries for teachers start
low, relative to the education they require, and never get particularly competitive. School systems also
impose frustrating daily constraints upon teachers, often in the form of mandatory
administrative exams, required by school districts, states, and federal bureaucracies. This burden,
combined with weak pay, has deterred many top students from entering teaching, and
driven many others out. THE HIGH PRICE OF INEFFICIENT EDUCATION Declining education productivity
disproportionately harms the poor. The rising costs of education cannot be fully offset by
redistributive mechanisms. And unlike their affluent peers, low-income parents lack the resources to
overcome weak quality by home-schooling their children or hiring private tutors. Over the last 30 to 40 years, the
United States has invested heavily in education , with little to show for it. The result is a society
with more inequality and less economic growth ; a high price.

Teachers fall short

Grossman 16 (Grossman, P., & Loeb, S. (2016). “Improving the teacher workforce.” In M.
Hansen & J. Valant (Eds.), Memos to the President on the Future of U.S. Education Policy.
Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.) GG
Teachers are among our most valuable school resources for improving student learning.
They are the adults who interact most with students, and we rely on teachers to deliver
curriculum and instruction. The research evidence is clear that teache rs have long-term
effects on students’ later well-being, including on their academic achievement, how far
they go in school, and their wages once working . One large study, for example, found that
students assigned to particularly effective teachers in a single year were more likely to attend
college (1.25 percent), earned higher salaries ($25,000 in cumulative lifetime income), and were
less likely to have children as teenagers (1.25 percent). THE SITUATION In order for students
to benefit from good teachers, school systems must recruit, prepare, improve, and retain
excellent teachers and distribute these excellent teachers equitably across schools and
communities. We currently face challenges across these areas . These challenges are
exacerbated for teachers of math, science, special education, and English as a second
language, and for teachers in high-poverty schools and other schools serving high-needs
students. One study, for example, found that schools received more than three times as
many applications for elementary school teaching jobs than for secondary school
positions, and more than two times as many applications for secondary history teaching
jobs as for math, science, or special education jobs. Moreover, a report from the U.S.
Department of Education found that teacher turnover rates are much higher in high-poverty
schools (22 percent) than low-poverty schools (13 percent). Over the past 15 years, federal
policy has addressed issues of teacher quality through the Highly Qualified Teacher
provisions of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and by incentivizing states to develop teacher
evaluation systems. The Highly Qualified Teacher Provision of NCLB required states to staff
their classrooms with teachers who hold a bachelor’s degree, have full state certification or
licensure, and prove that they know each subject they teach in order for the state to receive Title
I funds. This provision likely had little effect on existing teachers, though it did create a
minimum standard for entering teachers. States determined their own certification requirements,
so this standard varied across states. The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) eliminated this
provision and reduced the incentives for states and districts to develop teacher evaluation
systems that could be used to support teacher and program improvement. In contrast to
NCLB, ESSA only requires that states report differences in teachers’ professional
qualifications between high-poverty and low-poverty schools and the strategies they will
use to ensure that low-income and minority students are not more likely to have ineffective, out-
of-field, or inexperienced teachers. The elimination of the threat of reduced funding might
reduce states’ efforts to recruit teachers in more difficult-to-staff schools.
!!!Aff Updates – General!!!
Federalism DA Updates
Aff Answers
 Cooperative Federalism
Regulations like the aff follow the model of cooperative federalism- most
beneficial
Bader 14- J.D. St. Louis Law school (Christopher, “A DYNAMIC DEFENSE OF
COOPERATIVE FEDERALISM,” Whittier Law Review, lexis)
C. Cooperative Federalism: Well-Tempered Polyphony Cooperative federalism illuminates important considerations for future refinements of federalism
theory. First, on the spectrum sovereignty allocation, it strikes an efficient balance between diversity and certainty. Second, the most recent work in
cooperative federalism disparages the battle over regulatory sovereignty altogether. It advocates instead for more meaningful, more effective methods
of asserting state preferences through negotiation both pre-and post-enactment. n126This conceptual paradigm shift is probably cooperative
federalism's most important contribution to future federalism debate. In the prototypical case of cooperative federalism, the
federal
government will enact a broad legislative scheme that enunciates regulatory floors,
ceilings, and their animating purposes. n127 Congress could also condition federal grants
on the states' cooperation with federal desires, with the same practical effect as direct regulation. n128 With that
enactment as a touchstone, states then craft complementary [*186] regulations and enforcement
strategies that adapt the broad purposes of the statute to their specific circumstances.
n129 In this way, cooperative models place measured emphasis on uniformity and finality. Those
values take hold only at the abstract level of overarching purpose and in setting the outermost boundaries of state action. This framework comports
with complexities of contemporary national government, in which Congress can become bogged down if it is forced to render detailed implementation
plans for each regulation it enacts. n130Cooperative models give Congress an important and manageable piece of the governmental process in
announcing first-order norms that will guide individual states and localities. Environmental and healthcare legislation embody these cooperative
principles. In healthcare, fundamental programs like Medicaid have grown so large that state-federal cooperation is absolutely necessary to keep them
in working order. n131 In the Medicaid context, states, using federal funds, enforce broad federal requirements through state-level healthcare
programs. n132 The Supreme Court has cautioned that the judiciary should "respect state discretion in implementing cooperative federalism regulatory
programs" in the healthcare arena. n133 Similarly, states enjoy discretion in the environmental context, where they have the power to implement
federal plans or adopt more stringent standards than the federally [*187] mandated baselines. n134 Moreover, here the EPA acts as a check on
wayward states that attempt to under-enforce federal guidelines. n135 Even if limited to enacting animating principles, Congress can preserve its
status as a powerful "one-stop shop" for interest groups. n136 This feature is particularly relevant where states attempt to enact tyrannical regulations.
Ideally, this would never occur in the first place, because Congress would normally enunciate non-discriminatory first principles. But if such legislation
made its way onto the books, Congress's potent preemption power could quickly set aright any state
infringement of individual rights. n137 Congress could also use the spending power to
achieve the same ends. n138 Dialogue and plurality reign in the enforcement stage. Local
and state agencies can craft different strategies to implement Congress's expansive
mandate. Where two states or even two intrastate localities have differing needs, each can develop its own enforcement plan. Abbe Gluck argues
the point effectively, noting that federal oversight can "jump-start state experimentation" at the
enforcement level, which may be a more efficient mode of experimentation than state
regulatory autonomy. n139 Cooperative federalism thereby achieves the most useful aspect of plurality, namely, solving local problems.
Other states and localities can take heed of these diverse plans, promoting dialogue among communities regarding which plans have been successful
and which have failed. Optimization, the ultimate end of dialogue, thus remains intact. Dialogue
is further promoted under
newer theories of cooperative federalism, including "balanced" federalism n140 and "uncooperative"
federalism. n141 This recent work stresses the futility of pursuing state regulatory autonomy so
precious to dynamic theories. n142 It alternatively endorses meaningful state
participation in the adoption [*188] and enforcement of federal regulatory schemes.
States thereby gain ex ante and ex post opportunities to influence federal law . n143 Having
multiple bites at the federal apple is far more effective than merely having the option to lodge disagreement with federal law by enacting contrary (and
preempted) state law. One final note on dialogue. Whereas dynamic federalism requires state participation to function, n144 but does not explicitly
mandate that states participate, cooperative federalism both requires and forces states to participate. In cooperative models, states
must
engage both federal and local authorities in interpreting and implementing federal
regulatory schemes. Without their participation, the system would not function.
Furthermore, the lingering threat of preemption or withholding federal money might
encourage states to participate. n145 Even in the spending power context, the states' very choice to implement or opt out of the
federal scheme includes important state and local deliberation on the utility of cooperation. n146 Such choice also underscores the power of
uncooperative federalism because it empowers states to be "less eager, less effective, or even rebellious implementers of federal law." n147 Thus,
states cannot eschew their obligation to take part in the dialectical cooperative structure.
Cooperative federalism is the best model
Bader 14- J.D. St. Louis Law school (Christopher, “A DYNAMIC DEFENSE OF
COOPERATIVE FEDERALISM,” Whittier Law Review, lexis)
B. Cooperative Federalism Modern U.S. governance is characterized in many areas by concurrent regulation. n36 Scholars have embraced this
approach and struggled valiantly to justify it in the face of the Court's historical dual-federalist loyalties. n37 Regardless of their success, cooperation is
the contemporary norm in federal-state interaction. n38 Regulatory arenas [*169] such as the environment, the economy, foreign affairs, and criminal
Cooperation is
law have adopted this model. n39 Theoretically, cooperative federalism relies on intergovernmental cooperation. n40
facially appealing - instead of fighting and line-drawing, the Court and regulators can
instead seek to work together to solve problems that have become ever more complex. n41
Critics have pointed out that the idea of "cooperation" here is decidedly one-sided. n42 They argue that in practice, states
have autonomy only to the extent the federal government allows it. n43 Congress may set
goals for states to achieve or regulatory floors and ceilings which states may not cross.
n44 Within those parameters, states are free to craft complementary legislation.
n45Similarly, Congress can also condition federal grants to states on compliance with
federal goals. n46 In this way, [*170] states are less like equal partners in the governmental venture and more like federal enforcers. n47 As I
will argue in detail below, this criticism is both true and irrelevant. It is true in cases where preemption prescribes that even detailed
federal statutes override state regulatory freedom. It is irrelevant because states still enjoy impressive influence as
enforcers of federal norms. But even if one argues that state enforcement powers are not a meaningful alternative to regulatory
autonomy, dual or dynamic federalism gives states even less autonomy than cooperative federalism. n48Cooperative federalism is
successful because it balances the two major aspects of federalism theory on which I
focus: regulatory overlap and alternatives thereto. Cooperation's balance between these two aspects is the key to
my normative analysis below. Under this general umbrella, many commentators have developed more specific theories of cooperation (or a lack
thereof). Alice Kaswan proposes applying cooperative federalism to climate-change legislation. n49 In particular, she emphasizes the need for federal
regulators to work with states to develop implementation plans, primarily because the federal government cannot achieve its goals working alone. n50
Erin Ryan calls for a system of "balanced federalism," in which courts reviewing state-federal bargains accord more deference to a result where greater
political and classic-bargaining safeguards exist. n51 This system, she posits, will help [*171] mediate the tension, the "tug of war," between the core
normative values of federalism. n52 Finally, Heather Gerken suggests a new perspective on the power of dissent in cooperative federalism,
specifically, the formidable power of the states as servants to exert influence on federal regulatory regimes. n53

State power alone is bad

Bader 14- J.D. St. Louis Law school (Christopher, “A DYNAMIC DEFENSE OF
COOPERATIVE FEDERALISM,” Whittier Law Review, lexis)
This is a valid concern. If the federal political framework does not give states pride of place in some meaningful way, their contributions might never
overcome powerful private interests. But the very nature of the cooperative federalism models I've described above accommodates the possibility that
states may assert, or attempt to assert, their interests and still lose. Nothing
about a cooperative model of federalism
requires that states be able to successfully assert their interests. That is the price that
comes with the territory. To somehow require that states always get what they want is
not a theory of federalism at all; it simply turns our two-sovereign structure on its head
and makes the states the puppeteers of the national government. States certainly deserve a voice, but
federalism is about the state and federal governments, not merely the states. We
shouldn't treat the states like spoiled children. Moreover, we don't need to. Contemporary
cooperative theories realize that states are consistently stronger than any private interest group in the governmental process. This is because they
have a voice not only in the promulgation of a rule, but have an incredible amount of discretion in implementing the rule once made. Koch notes a
similar understanding in the E.U. system: "The E.U. is compelled to "privilege" the member states in the regulatory process. The member states are
direct and active participants both within the E.U. government and at implementation stages." n179 Without formally "privileging" each of the states in
the Union, the system effectively does so by assigning them increased participation at other levels of governance beyond mere adoption of laws.

Cooperative federalism is the best of both worlds

Dibadj 6- law professor at the Universiyt of San Francisco (Reza, "From Incongruity to
Cooperative Federalism,” University of San Francisco Law Review, Hein Online)
Ideally, we would like the best of both worlds: some kind of federal intervention to force States to address their
inconsistencies, with- out deploying the homogenizing tendencies of the vast federal apparatus. The goal will be to find a middle ground between
"'preemptive federalism' that relies primarily or exclusively on federal courts or administrative agencies to develop unitary and pinpointed federal
The notion of
policies . . . (and) 'dual federalism' that leaves the states as autonomous actors separated from the federal government."117
cooperative federalism, drawn from new research in the theory of economic regulation,
provides at least a promising beginning to addressing the conundrum.' '8 The federal
government could create a framework and objective that States would implement and
possibly supplement. Philip Weiser, a leading commentator on cooperative federalism in the regulatory arena, provides a compelling
description of the idea: In Contrast to dual federalism, cooperative federalism envisions a sharing of regulatory
authority between the federal government and the states that allows states to regulate
within a framework de- lineated by federal law. Significantly, these programs neither leave state authority unconstrained
within its domain, as would a dual federalism program, nor displace such authority entirely with a unitary federal program, as would a preemptive
federalism. By crafting a middle ground solution between the extremes of dual federalism and preemptive federalism, Congress continues to out- strip
existing constitutional rhetoric, which envisions a separation that does not exist in practice. 119 While discussions of cooperative federalism have yet to
occur in securities regulation, the reasons behind its emergence in economic regulation offer a striking parallel to the current problems in corporate and
securities law: Under the cooperative federalism model, certain choices are re- moved from the
state level to ensure that the State does not com- promise—for whatever reason—on
issues of national importance. Thus cooperative federalism schemes define the terms of
competition between the states so that they do not deviate from basic federal policy
goals, underinvest in goods and services that would benefit neighboring states, or engage in a "race to the bottom." 120 Cooperative federalism has
been used in a variety of regulatory contexts: environmental law, telecommunications, and social services, to name a few.121 In their usual
incarnation, cooperative federalism programs "set forth some uniform federal standards —as
embodied in the statute, federal agency regulations, or both—but leave state agencies with discretion to implement the federal law, supplement it with
The bottom line is simple if
more stringent standards, and, in some cases, receive an exemption from federal requirements." 122
one returns to first principles: set a minimum floor, and allow regulatory competition
above it.

Substantial benefits from cooperative federalism

Nash 14 - contributor (Jonathan, “Keeping cooperation in cooperative federalism,” The Hill,
http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/energy-environment/207683-keeping-cooperation-in-
cooperative-federalism)
Some regulatory regimes are "cooperative federalism" regimes, under which the federal
and state governments work together to achieve federal regulatory goals. Cooperative
federalism regimes offer two substantial benefits: They improve federal-state relations by
empowering states to act under federal law, and they allow society to reap the benefit of
state innovation instead of having one federal law preempt the field. In short, cooperative
federalism regimes are invaluable when they work well. Yet, in a part of the opinion that hasn't garnered much
attention, the Supreme Court's April decision in Environmental Protection Agency v. EME Homer City Generation sheds light on a design flaw in the
statute that most prominently features cooperative federalism — the Clean Air Act. The Clean Air Act may be structured, counterintuitively and
unhelpfully, to discourage state participation.
 Overreach Now
Non unique- DeVos taking a hardline stance on education
Green 7/17- national education reporter @ the NYT (Erica, "DeVos’s Hard Line on New
Education Law Surprises States," New York Times,
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/07/us/politics/devos-federal-education-law-states.html)
Education Secretary Betsy De Vos, who made a career of promoting local control of
education, has signaled a surprisingly hard-line approach to carrying out an expansive
new federal education law, issuing critical feedback that has rattled state school chiefs
and conservative education experts alike. President Barack Obama signed the Every Student Succeeds Act in
2015 as the less intrusive successor to the No Child Left Behind law, which was maligned by many in both political parties as
punitive and prescriptive. But in
the Education Department's feedback to states about their plans to
put the new law into effect, it applied strict interpretations of statutes, required extensive
detail and even deemed some state education goals lackluster.

Federal involvement in education empirically proven

Hornbeck 17- teacher and part-time professor, MA American Gov, PhD student (Dustin,
“Federal Role in Education Has a Long History”, The Conversation,
https://www.higheredjobs.com/Articles/articleDisplay.cfm?ID=1285)
Federal Role in Education As for the federal government's role, education is not specifically addressed in the Constitution, but a historical
precedent of central government involvement does exist. In 1787, the Continental Congress, the central
government of the United States between 1776 and 1787, passed the Northwest Ordinance, which became the governing document for Ohio, Illinois,
Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, and part of Minnesota. The ordinance included a provision encouraging the creation of schools as a key component of
"good government and the happiness of mankind." Just two years earlier, the Land Ordinance of 1785 required land to be reserved in townships for the
building of schools. The role of the federal government in general grew much larger after the Great Depression and World War II, but this growth
largely excluded K-12 education until the 1960s. In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson included education policy in his vision of a "Great Society."
Elementary and Secondary Education Act In 1965, President Johnson signed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) into law. This
law decidedly changed the role of the federal government in the world of K-12 education.
ESEA doubled the amount of federal expenditures for K-12 education, worked to change
the relationship between states and the central government in the education arena, called
for equal treatment of students no matter where they reside, and attempted to improve
reading and math competency for children in poverty. ESEA was passed with the intention of
bridging a clear gap between children in poverty and those from privilege. Title I of the ESEA, which is still referenced
frequently in K-12 education policy, is a major provision of the bill, which distributed
federal funding to districts with low-income families. ESEA Today ESEA is still the law of the
United States today. However, the law has required periodic reauthorization, which has led to
significant changes since 1965. One of the most well-known reauthorizations was President George W. Bush's No Child Left Behind
(NCLB) Act of 2001. NCLB called for 100 percent proficiency in math and reading scores nationwide by 2014,
and expanded the role of standardized testing to measure student achievement. Under President Barack
Obama, Race to the Top was established, requiring states to compete for federal grants
through a point system, which rewarded certain educational policies and achievements. This
resulted in nationwide changes in the way teachers are evaluated, and placed even more emphasis on test results.

UQ goes our way- Trump wants big government

Appelbaum 16 - senior editor at The Atlantic, where he oversees the Politics section (Yoni,
« Trump Wants to Make Government Huge Again,” The Atlantic,
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/03/trump-government-ethnocentrism/473538/)
But on issue after issue, Trump vows to use government as a tool to improve the lot of
his supporters, and address their anxieties. He’d interfere in free markets, imposing tariffs to punish
companies that move factories offshore, and countries with abusive trade practices. He’s
pledged to preserve Social Security. He’s proposed, at various times, registering
Muslims and banning them from entering the country. There’s a common theme dividing the government
initiatives Trump supports from the ones he opposes. He’s speaking to his core supporters: working-class whites who identify not by ethnicity, but
simply as American. And he’s promising to defend their interests. He’ll
protect their jobs from spotted owls and
immigrants and offshoring; he’ll keep them safe by keeping terrorists abroad, and troops
at home; he’ll buffer them against shifting economic fortunes with robust social-
insurance programs. It seems unlikely that Trump has read the political-science tract, Us Against Them: The Ethnocentric Foundations of
American Opinion, but his campaign sometimes seems devoted to proving its authors correct. They used extensive polling data to argue that white,
ethnocentric voters vigorously oppose means-tested programs they believe directly transfer wealth to racial minorities—food stamps, welfare, TANF.
On the other hand, those same voters are also more likely to support universal social-insurance programs like Social Security and Medicare. These are
Trump’s voters. Some once were Democrats, but left the party for Nixon in 1972, or for Reagan in 1980—in search of a leader who would put the
interests of the white working classes first. For decades, both their legitimate grievances and their racial resentments found outlet in the Republican
program of smaller government. But it’s always been, at best, an alliance of convenience, and not just on obvious flashpoints like immigration.
Libertarians and business conservatives share little of their affection for robust social-insurance programs, and none of their hostility to free trade. Now,
Trump promises to unite the two halves of their agenda—attacking government
programs that threaten the interests of the white working class, as conservative Republicans have long
promised, but also vigorously expanding those that favor them , as liberal Democrats have advocated. Even in the
remarkably crowded Republican field that began this race, there was no candidate with a program remotely like his. His rivals kept trying to stop him by
proving that he’s not a true conservative, just
a big-government liberal in disguise. Their attacks, though, only
strengthened Trump’s hand: His supporters didn’t want a true conservative—they wanted a champion. And they appear
delighted that someone is promising to use government to address their resentments,
and serve their interests. There’s been some dispute as to how many of Trump’s supporters are really interested in his policy
proposals, and how many are actually just giving vent to racial resentments. This misses the point. Call his core supporters ethnocentric, in the
anodyne language of political science. Label them nationalists. Tag some as racists. By whatever name, Trump’s backers—whites without college
degrees, concentrated in areas with deep-seated economic problems—see Trump’s policies as giving expression to their resentments. He’s not
winning because of one or the other; he’s winning because they’re one and the same. His rivals still struggle to comprehend this. In a February
presidential debate, Ted Cruz accused Trump of equating a lack of support for government-run health care to letting people die in the streets. Trump
was unapologetic. “We are going to take those people and those people are going to be serviced by doctors and hospitals,” he insisted. “We’re going to
make great deals on it, but we’re not going to let them die in the streets.” Cruz was incredulous. “Who’s going to pay for it?” he demanded. It’s been a
Trump brushed it off. He’s not promoting
standard conservative attack on Obamacare: The country can’t afford it.
socialism; he’s advocating social insurance. He’s a man of action. He’ll make deals. And
he’ll take care of his voters. For three decades, the Republican Party has promised white working-class voters that it will trim
bureaucracy, pare back government, and allow markets to flourish—and that broad prosperity will follow. It has told them that government is a root
cause of all that ails them. Grover Norquist famously vowed to “reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”
Other GOP leaders have tapped the resentments of struggling white workers, blaming government for putting the interests of racial minorities ahead of
Along comes Trump,
their jobs and communities. Big government is the problem; less government is the solution. And now?
promising to make America great again by having government do big things again. By
putting it to work in the defense of the white working class. He’s defying party orthodoxy.
He’s not a true conservative. And here’s the rub. It’s possible that this is what a plurality of Republican primary voters wanted all
along.

Trump will abuse his power

Timmons 7/4 – White House correspondent for QZ, former journalist for the NYT and baking
editor at BusinessWeek (Heather, “The office of the US president has too much power, and
Congress is finally moving to limit it,” Quartz, https://qz.com/1020499/the-office-of-the-us-
president-has-too-much-power-and-congress-is-finally-moving-to-limit-it/)
But since Donald Trump’s inauguration this January, those questions have morphed into
more serious concerns. As Trump’s increasingly bizarre public conduct raises questions about his temperament and decision-making,
and he continues to disregard his own policy experts in favor of advisors with no
diplomatic experience, members of both houses of Congress are slowly moving to curb the powers of the office through new legislation.
At the same time, state governments are pushing back on some of the president’s demands. Historical norms, not laws, govern
much of what we think of as appropriate presidential conduct, making it especially hard
to rein in a US president. There is no law stopping a president from ordering the end of
an FBI investigation, for example, or hiring his daughter in the White House, or keeping his
private businesses while in office. Creating new laws is a glacial process, one that can move too slowly to limit abuses as they
happen. America’s first president George Washington set the stage for a voluntary two-term limits, for example, which all other presidents after him
followed until Franklin D. Roosevelt, who blithely ran and was elected for four terms. In reaction, Congress passed the 22nd amendment, which bans
presidents from being elected more than twice—two years after Roosevelt died in office. “What
presidents want is power—the
power to do what they want to do,” Theodore R. Bromund, a senior research fellow with the Heritage Foundation wrote this May.
The right-wing think tank has been hugely supportive of Trump, staffed up his White House, and essentially wrote his budget, but even Bromund
argues Trump needs limits. “If you take that too far, there’s a word for it: tyranny,” he wrote.
 Travel Ban
Trump crushes federalism- the travel ban is only the beginning
Mehrotra 3/9- correspondent and journalist at Bloomberg (Kartikay, « Trump Accused of
‘Whack-a-Mole’ Tactic With New Travel Ban,” Bloomberg,
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-09/washington-state-new-york-seeking-to-
block-new-trump-travel-ban)
“Defending the Constitution cannot be a game of whack-a-mole," the office of Washington Attorney
General Bob Ferguson tweeted Thursday. Hours later, he urged the same Seattle judge who blocked the Jan. 27 executive order to
make it clear that earlier ruling also bars the Trump administration from enforcing its
revised travel ban. As with the president’s first travel ban that sparked dozens of lawsuits, Democratic state attorneys general are leading
the charge to block Trump’s renewed push to make good on his campaign promise to curb immigration in the name of national security. Seattle Judge
Hawaii was first to the courthouse this time, challenging the revised immigration restrictions as religious discrimination against Muslims. New York
Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and his Massachusetts counterpart Maura Healey both announced plans to join Ferguson’s fight in Seattle federal
court. Justice Department spokeswoman Nicole Navas declined to comment on the legal challenges. Taking on another Trump cornerstone, the city of
San Francisco is escalating its attack on a presidential edict to withhold funding from sanctuary cities.
The common issue is whether Trump’s executive orders violate the Constitution -- in the travel
ban cases, plaintiffs will try to prove Muslims are being singled out, while sanctuary cities contend the president has

cast aside fundamental tenets of federalism . At the ground level, the outcome will determine who will be allowed to
come to or remain in the U.S., and who might be left in limbo.

Trump’s abuse of power is inevitable and will be worse than Obama’s–

travel ban proves
Will 5/10- writer at the WP, former contributor at NBC and MSNBC, author of several books,
Pulitzer Prize winner, PhD from Princeton (George, “Trump’s violations of federalism would
make Obama jealous,” Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trumps-
violations-of-federalism-would-make-obama-jealous/2017/05/10/7cf6b5d6-34dd-11e7-b4ee-
434b6d506b37_story.html?utm_term=.c3588e195f5d)
Southey, a pacifist, wrote his antiwar poem long after the 1704 battle for which the Duke of Marlborough was awarded Blenheim Palace, where his great-great-great-great-

We, however, do not need to wait 94 years to doubt whether the Trump
great-great-grandson Winston Churchill would be born.

administration’s action against “sanctuary cities” is much ado about not much. Four months have
sufficed to reveal ’twas a constitutionally dubious gesture. The executive order was perpetrated in a helter-skelter, harum-scarum, slapdash manner five days after the

The order says that sanctuary cities have

inauguration, before the administration was humming like a well-tuned Lamborghini.

caused “immeasurable harm” to “the very fabric of our republic,” a thunderous judgment offered without
evidence of the shredded fabric or even a definition of “sanctuary city.” They are cities that limit the cooperation of local law-enforcement personnel with federal
immigration enforcement efforts. There are defensible reasons for some non-cooperation: e.g., preserving cooperative relations between local police and immigrant
communities, which facilitates crime-fighting. But many such cities anoint themselves sanctuaries as an act of self-congratulatory virtue-signaling and to pander to immigrant

The executive order is either a superfluous nullity or it is constitutional vandalism. It says cities “that fail to
communities.

comply with applicable federal law” shall “not receive federal funds, except as mandated by law.” A U.S.
district judge in Northern California has held that the executive order is “toothless” if it pertains to merely a few
federal grants, and even they do not unambiguously state in their texts that funding is conditional on active cooperation with federal immigration enforcement. If, however, the
order extends to other federal grants, it violates the separation of powers: The spending power is vested in Congress, so presidents cannot unilaterally insert new conditions on
funding. Several senior White House officials, operating in pre-Lamborghini mode, denounced this judge’s decision as another excess by the much-reversed U.S. Court of
Appeals for the 9th Circuit. Actually, although this court might hear an appeal of the judge’s decision, it had nothing to do with the decision. It is federal law that a state “may not
prohibit, or in any way restrict, any government entity or official from sending to, or receiving from, the Immigration and Naturalization Service information regarding the
citizenship or immigration status, lawful or unlawful, of any individual.” This does not, however, prevent any government entity from voluntarily withholding information.

the Supreme Court has held that the 10th Amendment (“The powers not delegated to the United States by the
Furthermore,

means that the federal government

Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people”)

may not “ commandeer ” state and local officials to enforce federal laws. The function of
the anti-commandeering doctrine is, in the words of Justice Antonin Scalia, the “preservation of the states as
independent and autonomous political entities.” Last Sunday, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) signed legislation setting criminal and
civil penalties for state and local officials who refuse to comply with federal immigration laws and detention requests. As policy, this may or may not be wise; as an exercise of
the state’s police power, it is not constitutionally problematic. But regarding the federal executive order , professor Ilya
Somin of George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School says: “Trump’s order is exactly the kind of high-
handed federal coercion of states and undermining of separation of powers that
outraged conservatives under [President Barack] Obama. In fact, Obama did not go as far as
Trump seems to do here . Obama never claimed sweeping authority to impose new
conditions on federal grants beyond those specifically imposed by
 No Link
Federalism is resilient and not zero sum
Rodriguez 14- professor of Law at Yale (Christina, “Negotiating Conflict Through Federalism:
Institutional and Popular Perspectives,” Yale Law Journal,
http://www.yalelawjournal.org/essay/negotiating-conflict-through-federalism-institutional-and-
popular-perspectives)
Though pursuit of their interests by each player may often lead to conflict, particularly over which institutions should control any given policy domain, I
argue that the value of the system common to all of its participants is the framework it
creates for the ongoing negotiation of disagreements large and small—a value that requires regular
attention by all participants to the integrity of federalism’s institutions. It is in this sense that I think federalism constitutes a
framework for national integration, in the spirit of this Feature. It creates a multiplicity of institutions
with lawmaking power through which to develop national consensus, while establishing
a system of government that allows for meaningful expressions of disagreement when
consensus fractures or proves elusive—a value that transcends perspective. In what follows, I attempt to establish these conclusions by considering
how the negotiations required by federalism have structured our national debates over a
number of pressing social welfare issues, including immigration, marriage equality, drug policy, education and
health care reform, and law enforcement. I focus on how these debates play out in what I call the discretionary
spaces of federalism, which consist of the policy conversations and bureaucratic negotiations that actors within the system must have to
figure out how to interact with one another both vertically and horizontally. Indeed, within existing legal constraints,
state and local actors will have considerable room to maneuver, and the federal government considerable
discretion to refrain from taking preemptive action. 2 I highlight questions of administration and enforcement, because it is in these domains that the
system’s actors construct one another’s powers and interests on an ongoing basis, based on the value they seek to derive from the system. In these
discretionary spaces, “winners” must sometimes emerge from discrete conflicts, whether through judicial
resolution or political concession, and the parameters set by courts and Congress obviously define the terrain of negotiation. But the
intergovernmental relationships and overlapping political communities the system
creates are neither locked in zero-sum competition nor bound by fixed rules of
engagement, precisely what makes federalism productive regardless of perspective.
 AT Populism Impact
Individual challenges to populism increases the risk of conflict or soft
secession
Willick 6/23- staff Writer, covering domestic politics, policy and social issues (Jason,
“California’s Soft Secession,” The American Interest, https://www.the-american-
interest.com/2017/06/23/californias-soft-secession/)
This new order could have a major symbolic impact—for example, by making it difficult
or impossible for University of California sports teams to compete against the University
of Texas. And could lead to retaliatory measures by the targeted red states: They could, for
example, up the ante not only by enacting reciprocal travel bans but also by refusing to cooperate with California’s
government in criminal investigations, declining to share tax data, or prohibiting
companies from selling products to California’s state government. How long before a
coalition of liberal states begins to collectively and systematically impose sanctions on
conservative ones, or vice versa? To state the obvious: This has nothing to do with the legitimate democratic debate over the
merits of the policies California is trying to sanction in the first place. Maybe some of these policies are reasonable compromises between LGBT rights
and religious liberty; maybe others are unacceptable forms of discrimination. These are debates that need to be resolved by the courts, by federal civil
rights agencies, and by the voters in those states. California’s brazen offensive dangerously short-circuits this process. If
we accept this
precedent—if blue states begin to sanction red states and red states return the favor—
then it’s easy to see how the culture war’s tendency to escalate could produce a full-
blown constitutional crisis, or worse. We need to stop this before it sets us on a road
from which there’s no turning back.

Federalism breeds populism

Kamena 1- doctorate candidate (Theodore Henry, “Populism and federalism: the interplay of
direct democracy and federal
institutions in Australia, Canada, Switzerland and the United States,” University of Calgary,
PDF)
A communal approach to liberty is consistent with populism . Rather than individual interests, there is
the "common sense of the common people," which might be interpreted as "community
standards." Direct democracy allows the community to state those standards with a clear voice. Federalism comes into play
by protecting the diversity and autonomy of those communities. Together, populism and federalism can
protect liberty, but a liberty that individuals receive through their community ties.
Neg Updates
 AT Travel Ban
Federalism solves the travel ban- checks Trump’s power
Michaelson 2/9- legal affairs columnist, JD Yale, PhD Hebrew University (Jay, « Ninth
Circuit Rejects Trumpism and Affirms the Rule of Law in Immigration Ban Case,” Daily Beast,
http://www.thedailybeast.com/ninth-circuit-rejects-trumpism-and-affirms-the-rule-of-law-in-
immigration-ban-case)
In a system of laws,
And that, itself, is a powerful rejoinder to a president who every day finds new lows of mudslinging rhetoric.
power derives not from bluster, nor from bullying, but from the rule of law and the
constitution. The court doesn’t need to couch its order in braggadocio or insult. It relies on reason instead: calm legal reasoning, calm legal
rhetoric. Indeed, the very reasonableness of the court’s opinion—which, no doubt, President Trump will immediately assail as stupid, political,
dangerous, or “sad”—should cheer the heart of everyone, liberal and conservative alike, who has been understandably shaken in recent weeks .
Reading the court order, one is reminded that we are not living in some fascist dystopia.
The rule of law has not gone away. The separation of powers still works, with the courts
as guardians of civil rights and civil liberties. Indeed, even federalism —which liberals have assailed in
recent months, in their attacks on the electoral college and the Senate— now provides a check on executive power. As,
for conservatives, it did in the Obama era as well.
framework supplement
 deliberation good
De-limiting the topic decimates dialogue – research asymmetry creates a
procedural hierarchy which makes dialogical communication impossible –
that shuts out ideological flux and reinstates the logic of mastery
Hanghoj 8. Thorkild Hanghøj, Copenhagen, 2008 Since this PhD project began in 2004, the
present author has been affiliated with DREAM (Danish Research Centre on Education and
Advanced Media Materials), which is located at the Institute of Literature, Media and Cultural
Studies at the University of Southern Denmark. Research visits have taken place at the Centre
for Learning, Knowledge, and Interactive Technologies (L-KIT), the Institute of Education at the
University of Bristol and the institute formerly known as Learning Lab Denmark at the School of
Education, University of Aarhus, where I currently work as an assistant professor.
http://static.sdu.dk/mediafiles/Files/Information_til/Studerende_ved_SDU/Din_uddannelse/phd_
hum/afhandlinger/2009/ThorkilHanghoej.pdf
Debate games are often based on pre-designed scenarios that include descriptions of issues to be debated, educational goals, game goals,
roles, rules, time frames etc. In this way, debate games differ from textbooks and everyday classroom instruction as debate scenarios allow

teachers and students to actively imagine, interact and communicate within a domain-specific
game space. However, instead of mystifying debate games as a “magic circle” (Huizinga, 1950), I will try to overcome the epistemological dichotomy between “gaming” and “teaching” that tends to
dominate discussions of educational games. In short, educational gaming is a form of teaching. As mentioned, education and games represent two different
semiotic domains that both embody the three faces of knowledge: assertions, modes of representation and social forms of organisation (Gee, 2003; Barth, 2002; cf. chapter 2). In order to understand the interplay

all forms of
between these different domains and their interrelated knowledge forms, I will draw attention to a central assumption in Bakhtin’s dialogical philosophy. According to Bakhtin,

communication and culture are subject to centripetal and centrifugal forces (Bakhtin, 1981). A centripetal
force is the drive to impose one version of the truth, while a centrifugal force involves a range of
possible truths and interpretations. This means that any form of expression involves a duality of centripetal and centrifugal forces: “Every concrete utterance of a speaking
subject serves as a point where centrifugal as well as centripetal forces are brought to bear” (Bakhtin, 1981: 272). If we take teaching as an example, it is always affected by centripetal and centrifugal forces in the
on-going negotiation of “truths” between teachers and students. In the words of Bakhtin: “Truth is not born nor is it to be found inside the head of an individual person, it is born between people collectively

the dialogical space of debate games also embodies

searching for truth, in the process of their dialogic interaction” (Bakhtin, 1984a: 110). Similarly,

centrifugal and centripetal forces. Thus, the election scenario of The Power Game involves
centripetal elements that are mainly determined by the rules and outcomes of the game, i.e. the election is
based on a limited time frame and a fixed voting procedure. Similarly, the open-ended goals, roles and resources represent centrifugal

elements and create virtually endless possibilities for researching, preparing, presenting, debating and evaluating a variety of key
political issues. Consequently, the actual process of enacting a game scenario involves a complex negotiation between these centrifugal/centripetal forces that are inextricably linked with the teachers and
students’ game activities. In this way, the enactment of The Power Game is a form of teaching that combines different pedagogical practices (i.e. group work, web quests, student presentations) and learning
resources (i.e. websites, handouts, spoken language) within the interpretive frame of the election scenario. Obviously, tensions may arise if there is too much divergence between educational goals and game

goals. This means that game facilitation requires a balance between focusing too narrowly on the rules or “facts” of a
game (centripetal orientation)and a focusing too broadly on the contingent possibilities and interpretations of the
game scenario (centrifugal orientation). For Bakhtin, the duality of centripetal/centrifugal forces often manifests itself as a
dynamic between “monological” and “dialogical” forms of discourse. Bakhtin illustrates this point with the
monological discourse of the Socrates/Plato dialogues in which the teacher never learns anything
new from the students, despite Socrates’ ideological claims to the contrary (Bakhtin, 1984a). Thus, discourse
becomes monologised when “someone who knows and possesses the truth instructs someone
who is ignorant of it and in error”, where “a thought is either affirmed or repudiated” by the
authority of the teacher (Bakhtin, 1984a: 81). In contrast to this, dialogical pedagogy fosters inclusive learning environments that are able to expand upon students’ existing knowledge
and collaborative construction of “truths” (Dysthe, 1996). At this point, I should clarify that Bakhtin’s term “dialogic” is both a descriptive term (all utterances are

per definition dialogic as they address other utterances as parts of a chain of communication) and a normative term as dialogue is an
ideal to be worked for against the forces of “monologism” (Lillis, 2003: 197-8). In this project, I am mainly interested in describing the dialogical
space of debate games. At the same time, I agree with Wegerif that “one of the goals of education, perhaps the most important goal,

should be dialogue as an end in itself” (Wegerif, 2006: 61).

Deliberation from within is vital to a reorganization of one’s visceral
reactions to difference – only the creation of anticipatory deliberation
reorganizes the filter of the psyche which is vital to resolving the mapping
and expulsion of difference as such
Goodin 3. Robert, Reflective Democracy, p. 209-225
By imagining ourselves in the place of others democratic deliberation within enables us ,‘ ’

to bring their interests to bear on democratic decision‐making it is . Democratically desirable though that always is,

absolutely essential when the others are in no position to speak for themselves in the
ordinary course of democratic deliberations One group about whom that is true is the .

‘socially excluded’ such people lack any effective political

, as discussed in Chapter 10. Both as a cause and a consequence of their social exclusion,

voice . There are other interests that stand even more dramatically outside the ordinary political processes, though. Future generations are one. They are ontologically precluded from participating directly in current political decisions. People wh o are not

The same is as true of non‐human interests They

yet here cannot take part, here and now, in decisions that will affect them once they get here. , in different ways, . too

are almost as necessarily incapable of taking any direct role in democratic deliberations
among humans Neither nature nor future generations can be incorporated into
.

democratic deliberations in the ordinary way Democratic , simply by being given a vote and left to speak for themselves. ‘

deliberation within once again provides a mechanism for including those most
’

dramatically hard‐to‐include interests within our democratic deliberations Even if those .

interests cannot speak for themselves present people can imaginatively project ,

themselves into the position of others , be they in future times or different species.1 [cont.] There may be a strong principled defence for respecting interests via respecting the people whose

Autonomy and dignity are values, as objective and as compelling as any others
interests they are. . But

The more heavily we weight those values against

dignity and autonomy cannot credibly be said to be the only things with objective value in the universe.

others the more we would be willing to

, the more we would want to rely on traditional mechanisms (p.214) of respecting interests via respecting people whose interests they are, and

tolerate imperfections in that as a system for securing full protection for all other
potential values and interests we should be sensitive . But it would be implausible to accord those values absolute priority over all others. And unless we do,

to imperfections in way of protecting other values and interests and we (of future generations and nature, for example),

should be prepared to switch to some other better mechanism for securing full
protection Following that familiar formula would
of all potential interests if those imperfections are sufficiently great and the alternatives sufficiently promising. [cont.]

seem to suggest that we ought literally to enfranchise nature’ ‘enfranchise the future’ and ‘ in order to secure equal political consideration for their

To many that will look almost like a reductio ad absurdum Ballots for whales?
interests. .‘ Or babies not yet

Absurd’, they will scoff Whales do not talk

conceived? They do not mark ballot papers They
. : not to us, anyway. .

do not have interests or anyway, they do not communicate them to us clearly enough for
—

us ever to know whether someone entrusted with representing them is discharging that fiduciary responsibility well or badly. And as for people who have not yet even been conceived, they obviously can't vote or complain until they

Or so cynics might say

are among us. the central issue is . From the point of view of a democratic theory committed to the equal consideration of interests, though,

precisely that of whether we can surmise the interests of others not whether (and therefore should try to) ,

others can enunciate their own interests for themselves . And on that key issue, things are not so straightforward as our cynic might suppose. Christopher
Stone's telling comment is that it is a lot easier for my lawn to communicate to me that it would be in its interests to be watered than it is for ‘the United States’ to communicate to the Attorney General that it is in its interests for Al Capone to be prosecuted.12 Like the

those entrusted with protecting nature's interests can often enough surmise those
Attorney General,

interests tolerably well and act upon them politically with some confidence .

Representation of the interests of nature will indeed be required We or future generations by others who are entrusted with their care .

cannot literally enfranchise nature and let them tend their interests for future generations or

themselves, politically A direct democracy of the birds and bees and boulders is simply
.

not on the cards . But that is for much the same reason that a direct democracy involving all generations (Burke's living and dead and not yet born) is not on the cards, or that (p.216) direct democratic representation of the interests of

the barriers to directly enfranchising those subjects are ones of

infants and mental incompetents is not on the cards.13 In all those cases

practicality, not desirability It is not as if those interests are less deserving of .

consideration It is merely that their carriers cannot

. speak for themselves in , for one reason or another,
pressing those interests politically . What is absurd is to suggest that they can—to suggest that we could read votes off the babbling of infants or of streams, either. But the absurdity of that

Thus, enfranchising nature and the future is

suggestion does not translate into any absurdity in the idea that their interests ought to be represented, by others as necessary.

indeed the ideal which we should hold firmly in view We should do so in full knowledge .

that it is an ideal in the strongest sense of the term It is infeasible, taken literally But it is . .

none the less desirable And that recognition should lead us to start
for its being infeasible in any literal sense. , in turn,

looking for mechanisms by which we might approximate that ideal —less literally, less directly— . At root, what I want to query is the

It might be empirically realistic and

image of democracy as necessarily entailing each person representing his or her own interests, and those exclusively. more , as well as being morally

politically preferable to think instead of democracy as a process in which we all come to

,

internalize the interests of each other Incorporating the interests of others and indeed of the larger world around us.18

within our own might not be such a bad thing at least in so far as the alternative is that ,

those interests would otherwise simply be ignored That would seem to constitute the .

best hope for the protection of both the natural environment

, practically, and future generations of humans. Much though those interests may

The best hope for the

deserve to be enfranchised in their own right, that is simply impracticable. People, and people alone, can exercise the vote; the living, and the living alone, can exercise the vote.19

interests of nature is that their interests will come to be internalized by sufficient

mute and the as‐yet unborn

numbers of present people That is not to say that

with sufficient leverage in the political system for those interests to secure the protection that they deserve.20

present people will necessarily internalize those interests completely or represent them
perfectly Still less is it to say that the legitimate interests of nature
. or the future (the interests which ideally should be politically

are necessarily limited to the overlap that they have with the interests of
represented on their behalf, in the present)

even their greatest sympathizers Slippage is inevitable But politically it is also . .

unavoidable There is simply no other way in which the interests of nature

. can mute or unborn persons

find political representation except through being politically incorporated within the interests of sympathetic people in the present who are capable of bringing political pressure to bear on their behalf.

Participatory democracy does many things most importantly it serves to break , when it works well. Perhaps ,

down concentrations of power . The simple fact that political power is extended widely and exercised
vigorously in such a system means that , in a participatory democracy, elites cannot insulate themselves
from the consequences of their actions .22 At the very least, it means that they cannot reliably get their own
way without being called to question . People have to justify themselves to others in a participatory setting. Two things follow from that, one at the systemic level, the other at the individual level.
Both have potentially important consequences for the incorporation of mute interests, such as those of nature and the future, in the political process. The way in which participatory democracy makes the political system more responsive to such interests is this.

The more others there are who have to be given an explanation the more likely it is that ,

there will be someone among them who internalizes interests of those not among them (of
nature or the future or anything else). The larger and more diverse the electorate, the more likely there is to be some natur e‐lover who is going to ask, ‘What about the effects of all this on nature?’ or there will be someone asking, ‘What about the effects of all this on

then a
future generations?’ If in a participatory democracy advocates must answer all comers, and if in a participatory democracy there is more likely to be someone coming at problems from the perspective of nature or future generations,

participatory democracy would indeed be more likely to incorporate those interests That .

first system‐level point mechanism works purely through the analytics of participatory
democracy and the law of large numbers . The analytics of participatory democracy are such that, at least in the idealized limiting case, every proposal has to be j ustified to everyone: a

The law of large numbers serves to guarantee that

unanimity (or virtual unanimity) rule prevails. virtually , at least among very large electorates,

every point of view is likely to be represented . This second, individual‐level argument for thinking that participatory democracy might serve environmental or future generational

Among advocates of discursive democracy it is a familiar proposition that having

interests goes like this. ,

to defend our positions publicly makes us suppress narrowly self‐interested reasons for
action and highlight public‐spirited reasons in their place.23 We must do so, at least in our public explanations, if we want to give reasons to which we expect anyone besides ourselves to assent.2 4 The further fact to note—and what distinguishes this

there will always be a certain amount of anticipatory

second individual‐level mechanism from the first system‐level one—is that

internalization in such settings Knowing that they will have to be defended in the public .

forum one will ask oneself How would I justify this to X? even before X even asks for an
, ,‘ ’,

explanation . To a certain extent, that sort of anticipatory internalization is nothing more than good
political strategy such
. Certainly that is so where the ‘X’ in question is someone (or rather a representative of some interest) likely to be presen t in the forum in which the action will have to be defended. But
anticipatory internalization might occur even for interests that would not, and maybe
even could not, actually ask for an explanation .

Absent a beneficial dialogue their 1AC will never be adopted by anyone

Underwood 2K. Summarizing Carl Hovland, Professor of Communication at Yale
University, Ph.D., (Michael, “Psychology of Communication”,
www.cultsock.ndirect.co.uk/MUHome/cshtml/psy/hovland3.html)
Whether or not you should include arguments for and against your case depends very much on your audience. If you know that they
already agree with you, a one-sided argument is quite acceptable. If they are opposed to your point of view, then
a one-sided message will actually be less effective , being dismissed as biased . Even if
your audience don’t know much about the subject, but do know that there are
counterarguments (even if they don’t know what they are) will lead them to reject your views as
biased . Hovland’s investigations into mass propaganda used to change soldiers’ attitudes also suggests that the intelligence of the receivers is an important factor, a
two-sided argument tending to be more persuasive with a more intelligent audience.=

Advocating for a side that you believe is wrong allows for you to
understand and defeat it better which solves their offense comparatively
better
Haskell 90. History professor at Rice University, May, Thomas, History and Theory, 29.2,
“Objectivity is Not Neutrality: Rhetoric vs. Practice in Peter Novick’s That Noble Dream”, p. 129-
157
Detachment functions in this manner not by draining us of passion, but by helping to
channel our intellectual passions in such a way as to insure collision with rival
perspectives. In that collision, if anywhere, our thinking transcends both the idiosyncratic and
the conventional. Detachment both socializes and deparochializes the work of intellect; it is the quality that fits an individual to participate
fruitfully in what is essentially a communal enterprise. Objectivity is so much a product of social arrangements that individuals and particular opinions
social arrangements that foster objectivity have no basis for
scarcely deserve to be called objective, yet the
existence apart from individual striving for detachment. Only insofar as the members of
the community are disposed to set aside the perspective that comes most spontaneously to
them, and strive to see things in a detached light, is there any likelihood that they will
engage with one another mentally and provoke one another through mutual criticism to
the most complete, least idiosyncratic, view that humans are capable of. When the ascetic
effort at detachment fails, as it often does, we "talk past one another," producing nothing but discordant
soliloquies, each fancying itself the voice of reason. The kind of thinking I would call objective leads only a fugitive existence outside of communities
that enjoy a high degree of independence from the state and other external powers, and which are dedicated internally not only to detachment, but also
to intense mutual criticism and to the protection of dissenting positions against the perpetual threat of majority tyranny. Some hypothetical examples
Consider an extreme case: the person who,
may clarify what I mean by objective thinking and show how remote it is from neutrality.
although capable of detachment, suspends his or her own perceptions of the world not in the
expectation of gaining a broader perspective, but only in order to learn how opponents think so
as to demolish their arguments more effectively - who is, in* short, a polemicist, deeply and fixedly committed as
a lifelong project to a particular political or cultural or moral program. Anyone choosing such a life obviously risks being thought boorish or provincial,
but insofar as such a person successfully enters into the thinking of his or her rivals and produces arguments potentially compelling not only to those
There is nothing
who already share the same views, but to outsiders as well, I see no reason to withhold the laurel of objectivity. 10
objective about hurling imprecations at apostates or catechizing the faithful, but as long as the
polemicist truly engages the thinking of the enemy he or she is being as objective as
anyone. In contrast, the person too enamored of his or her own interpretation of things
seriously and sympathetically to entertain alternatives, even for the sake of learning how
best to defeat them, fails my test of objectivity, no matter how serene and even tempered.
The most common failure of objectivity is preaching to the converted, proceeding in a manner that complacently presupposes the pieties of one's own
coterie and makes no effort to appreciate or appeal to the perspectives of outsiders. In contrast, the most commonly observed fulfillment of the ideal of
objectivity in the historical profession is simply the powerful argument-the text that reveals by its every twist and turn its respectful appreciation of the
alternatives it rejects. Such a text attains power precisely because its author has managed to suspend momentarily his or her own perceptions so as to
anticipate and take account of objections and alternative constructions -not those of some straw man, but those that truly issue from the rival's position,
understood as sensitively and stated as eloquently as the rival him- or herself could desire. Nothing
is rhetorically more
powerful than this, and nothing, not even capitulation to the rival, could acknowledge
any more vividly the force and respectability of the rival's perspective. To mount a telling attack
on a position, one must first inhabit it. Those so habituated to their customary intellectual
abode that they cannot even explore others can never be persuasive to anyone but fellow
habitues. That is why powerful arguments are often more faithful to the complexity and
fragility of historical interpretation - more faithful even to the irreducible plurality of
human perspectives, when that is, in fact, the case -than texts that abjure position-taking
altogether and ostentatiously wallow in displays of "reflexivity" and "undecidability." The
powerful argument is the highest fruit of the kind of thinking I would call objective, and in it
neutrality plays no part. Authentic objectivity has simply nothing to do with the television newscaster's mechanical gesture of allocating
the same number of seconds to both sides of a question, or editorially splitting the difference between them, irrespective of their perceived merits

The impact is small school engagement

Rowland 84. Robert C., Debate Coach – Baylor University, “Topic Selection in Debate”,
American Forensics in Perspective, Ed. Parson, p. 53-54
The first major problem identified by the work group as relating to topic selection is the decline in participation in the National Debate Tournament (NDT) policy debate. As Boman notes: There is a growing
dissatisfaction with academic debate that utilizes a policy proposition. Programs which are oriented toward debating the national policy debate proposition, so-called “NDT” programs, are diminishing in scope and

size.4 This decline in policy debate is tied, many in the work group believe, to excessively broad topics. The most obvious characteristic of
some recent policy debate topics is extreme breath. A resolution calling for regulation of land use literally and figuratively covers a lot of ground. Naitonal debate topics have not always been so broad. Before the

The move from narrow to broad topics has had, according to some, the effect
late 1960s the topic often specified a particular policy change.5

of limiting the number of students who participate in policy debate. First, the breadth of the topics has all
but destroyed novice debate. Paul Gaske argues that because the stock issues of policy debate are clearly defined, it is superior to value debate as a means of introducing
students to the debate process.6 Despite this advantage of policy debate, Gaske belives that NDT debate is not the best vehicle for teaching beginners. The problem is that broad policy topics

terrify novice debaters, especially those who lack high school debate experience. They are unable to cope with the breadth of the topic
and experience “negophobia,”7 the fear of debating negative. As a consequence, the educational advantages associated with teaching novices through policy
debate are lost: “Yet all of these benefits fly out the window as rookies in their formative stage quickly experience humiliation at being caugh without evidence or substantive awareness of the issues that confront
them at a tournament.”8 The ultimate result is that fewer novices participate in NDT, thus lessening the educational value of the activity and limiting the number of debaters or eventually participate in more

advanced divisions of policy debate. In addition to noting the effect on novices, participants argued thatbroad topics also discourage experienced debaters
from continued participation in policy debate. Here, the claim is that it takes so much times and effort to be
competitive on a broad topic that students who are concerned with doing more than just debate are forced out of the activity.9
Gaske notes, that “broad topics discourage participation because of insufficient time to do requisite research.”10 The final effect may be that entire

programs either cease functioning or shift to value debate as a way to avoid unreasonable research burdens. Boman supports this point: “It is this

expanding necessity of evidence, and thereby research, which has created a competitive imbalance between institutions that participate in academic
debate.”11 In this view, it is the competitive imbalance resulting from the use of broad topics that has led some small schools
to cancel their programs .
set col supplement
 link – natives aff
Increasing the accessibility of Native education only re-affirms the logic
and myths of colonization – that re-sutures violent narratives of Manifest
Manners while depoliticizing resistance movements – the alternative is a
native humanistic tease that rejects the imposition of meaning onto
indigeneity entirely
Athanasiu 16. Eva Marie, Thesis in the Faculty of Information, University of Toronto,
Survivance Stories: Indigenous Resistance and Cultural Labour in Canada, 2016 //saenl
Manifest manners erase Indigenous presence and experience.
3.6 DEMYSTIFYING MANIFEST MANNERS
These “treacherous and elusive” (Vizenor, 1994, p. 8) practices and ways of thinking reduce
histories of colonial violence to oneor two-line false narratives of polite engagements in
nation-building. “[H]ow ironic”, writes Vizenor (1994), “that the most secure simulations are unreal
sensations […]” (p. 8). Vizenor derives simulations from two sources. The first is Jean Baudrillard (1994), who wrote about
tactics of deception ; in the sphere of manifest manners, these are deployed under the pretense of
truth, justice, and good governance . The second is manifest destiny, a belief that structures the
superiority of non-Indigenous settlers above Indigenous peoples. This belief, argues Vizenor
(1994), “ would cause the death of millions of tribal people from massacres, diseases, and

the loneliness of reservations ” (p. 4). Non-Indigenous cultural work supported agendas of
annihilation . Quoting from American literary scholar Larzer Ziff’s Writing in the New Nation, Vizenor (1994) observes how “[…] masters of
manifest manners in the nineteenth century, and earlier […] used words to replace rather than to
represent Indian reality” (p. 8). For example, the word Indian: “[…] a navigational miscalculation, an
unintended maritime invention, but the irony becomes a political simulation 33 of the
thousands of distinct Native cultures […and] strengthened the notion of Natives as an
absence ” (Vizenor, 2012, p. 31-32). Through literature, film, photography, and memories
institutionalized in archives, cultural production perpetuates absence : “[…] the
surveillance of the social science and the invention of the other concealed the genius of natural

the shimmer of survivance stories ” (Vizenor, 1999, p. 168). Manifest

reason, the ironies of tribal imagination, and

manners replaced “[d]ynamic Native cultures, the crucial economic experiences of

continental trade routes, the diplomatic savoir faire of the fur trade, and the mastery of trickster stories and
other creative narratives that anticipated postmodern literary discourse […]” (Vizenor, 2012, p. 26).
In Section 3.7, I elaborate on the violence and potential healing of education, but it is important to
discuss the role of academic predecessors who built the institutions in which I learn and
from which I benefit. Gramsci’s theory of cultural hegemony (2003) includes a network of political
and civil activities designed to coerce populations under their rule . Gramsci points out how
systems of education reproduce state-sanctioned cultural narratives ,
portraying this work as serving a “positive educative function”; thus
the oppressor can position itself as a benevolent educator (p. 258). Vizenor (2012)
universities support and produce manifest manners : “[…] the mundane drivel of
addresses how

untold numbers of scientific studies, structuralist models, dubious empirical documents,

federal reports […] thousands of doctoral dissertations dominated the interpretations and
considerations of Native cultures. This putative archive has engendered simulations,
perverted Native epistemologies, and generated a historical absence of Natives ” (pp. 26-27).
Vizenor addresses the archival function of education systems , and brings our attention
to projects of absence . Emma LaRocque (2015) emphasizes how imperative it is to counter archives of absence: “[…] as long
as all the racist and dehumanizing archival, historical and literary portrayals continue to
circulate in our library and publication systems ”, writes LaRocque, “ we are put in a situation of
having to continually address this materially, especially as each new generation of
students enter our classrooms […] we are not in a position to ‘resist no longer’ ” (p. 20).
LaRocque, Jason Edward Lewis, and Smith explain that imagining the outcome of struggle requires presence. “Our absence from the
future imaginaries of the settler culture should worry 34 us,” writes Lewis (2014); “ Absence implies non-existence, or, at the very
least, non-importance. A people that are absent in the future need not be consulted in the
present about how that future comes about. A culture that is assumed not to be important one hundred
years from now can be discounted now, for what are the consequences?” (p. 58). Imagining the outcome of struggle is
particularly important when reflecting on the vision of the colonial project. Smith (2012) identifies imagination as a crucial element: “Colonialism
was, in part, an image of imperialism, a particular realization of the imperial imagination. It
was also, in part, an image of the future nation it would become” (p. 43). During the nineteenth century, non-
Indigenous simulations of Indigenous peoples blossomed in the cultural imagination of
North America; these tactics of deception (Vizenor, 2009) persist . For example, Canada’s origin story
continues to grow from a dubious cultural narrative, the white settler colony myth (Abele and Stasiulis, 1989, p.
269). The myth re-presents national development with a story of social and economic progress, built from white male settler labour; first in the fur and
lumber trades, and eventually through industrialized systems of production, including farming and manufacturing. These efforts culminated in a period
between the late 1860s and the First World War, which Abele and Stasiulis (1989) note is often referred to as a “key formative period of Canadian
development […] the ‘age of classical monopoly capitalism’” (pp. 243-244). Digging deeper into this portrayal of Canada’s growth, Abele and Stasiulis
(1989) remind readers how the narrative excludes the experiences and contributions of Indigenous workers, as well as other non-Indigenous or non-
Anglophone immigrants, including women and children. “Few workers match this image in any society, and certainly in Canada at any period” (p. 169).
Even more troubling, is the
erasure of Indigenous survivance stories: Seeing Canada as a white
settler colony denies, first, the significance of the very long period of Native occupation,
before Europeans arrived. It does not provide, either an accurate description of the early contact period (which lasted at least three hundred years).
Few of the first Europeans were settlers. They came with the commercial objective of harnessing Native labour power for profit, and there was a long
period of struggle over the terms of this commercial relationship […] Native labour and Native resistance were crucial for early class and state
formation. (p. 268) 35 The white settler colony myth drags a harmful and persistent Canadian history, in which Indigenous experiences and histories
are presented as optional and other, rather than as legitimate, challenging, and productive. The myth is also an economic narrative, minimizing
contributions of Indigenous workers in building the Canadian nation-state. Thus, Canada’s
economic growth is detached from the work of Indigenous peoples, who are portrayed as hindering
economic development. The age of classical monopoly capitalism—a period presented in non-Indigenous histories as one of immense political and
economic growth—coincides with legislation produced to suppress and regulate the actions and identities of Indigenous peoples: the Indian Act of
The Indian Act
1876. A consolidation of earlier documents, the Act culminated in the codification of Preconfederation methods.
prescribed the naming and identification of Indigenous peoples and the governance of
Indigenous communities; later amendments controlled education , relocation, cultural
practices , and many other facets of gathering , contributing , and proclaiming
Indigenous ways of being. McCallum (2014) addresses concerted efforts in her own discipline to create Indigenous absence, in

particular ignoring Indigenous labour histories: “Until

recently, imperialism and Canadian nation building have
been understood as two distinct projects, often distinguished by the world wars” (p. 10). History developed as a discipline
from a nationalist imperative; “[…] the idea that Canadian history should fashion, foster, and defend the

Canadian nation and the identity of Canadians is foundational to its existence as a profession” (p. 236).
This process, circling around the imaginary nation-state, “[…] subtly and unsubtly presents […] Canadian history, as not the project of Aboriginal
people and non-white people more generally” (p. 236). The history McCallum critiques is a project of absence; “it is always easier for historians to find
proof of absence than of presence when it comes to Native people,” she writes, “and especially when it comes to Native women.” Calling other
professional historians to action, she declares “[w]e must be careful not use absence as a method and a foundation of our work” (2014, p. 10).
McCallum introduces absence, not only as a facet of historical narratives, but also as a practice . The antidote is to
build memory from presence . 36 Myth, rooted in the work of Roland Barthes (1991) is a type of speech, constructed and imposed
onto a cultural text in order to manipulate its perceived meaning. Destructive transformation is a critical aspect of
the process; myth is “ depoliticized speech ” (p. 142; italics added for emphasis). Barthes’ declaration suggests the
first sign is ultimately political, bearing purpose and persuasion. Myths are especially deceptive in their
trickery. For example, reflecting on the UN Declaration for the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Arthur Manuel
(2015) explains how the document emerged from concerted efforts to denounce […] the innocent-sounding doctrine of
discovery, which was the tool—the legal fiction— Europeans used to claim our lands for themselves […] The Americas were first portrayed as
terra nullius on European maps. But in almost all cases, Europeans were met, at times within minutes of their arrival, by Indigenous peoples […] the
doctrine of discovery remained because it was a legal fig leaf they could use to cover
naked thievery. (p. 3) Manuel’s use of legal fiction, fig leaf, and naked thievery highlight how the use of story facilitated and normalized
violence. In his guest editorial for the Canadian Journal of Native Education, Taiaiake Alfred (2011) writes about the myths produced by colonial nation-
states, and the antidotes available to Indigenous peoples. Describing contemporary colonialism with words and phrases such as deceptive, cloaks,
double-speak, and politics of distraction, Alfred argues that education can dismantle stories supporting the continued dispossession of Indigenous
peoples (p. 7). Alfred and Manuel show how myth loses its complicated history, becomes difficult to
decode, and achieves disturbing and “blissful clarity” (Barthes, 1991, p. 143). This
accomplishment diffuses potential interrogation, debate, and change : “[…] In passing from history to
nature, myth acts economically: it abolishes the complexity of human acts […]” (Barthes, 1991, p. 143),
reducing power structures to a simplified progression of normalcy. Barthes unearths the challenging crux of decoding any myth, namely the blithe
assuredness in its presentation; the way a myth slips easily into bodies of shared knowledge through apparent naturalization. Myth
does not
simply point to or suggest – it is; exists, enmeshed in the original sign without betraying
any sense of its intrusion : “…its function is to distort, not to make disappear” (Barthes, 37 1991, p. 120). Myth
semblances of grotesque masquerade loom heavy.
commits fully to the invisible transformation of the sign; still,

Through “ native humanistic tease ” (Vizenor, 2009, p. 85), Indigenous cultural workers can
subvert narratives such as the white settler colony myth (Abele and Stasiulis, 1989). Starting from Indigenous

historicity, workers can rebuild stories that are meaningful and functional, rejecting “the
notions and misnomers that are read as the authentic and sustained representations of
Native American Indians” (Vizenor, 1994, pp. 5-6). For example, Vizenor’s (2012) use of the term “[…] postindian
reduces the significance of the word indian by a simple prefix that indicates ‘after in
time,’ or after the invention of the indian and the simulation of Natives” (pp. 31-32).
 link – generic
Native schooling is inherently colonial – it leverages the false image of the
Indian over the realities of existence which normalizes control
Athanasiu 16. Eva Marie, Thesis in the Faculty of Information, University of Toronto,
Survivance Stories: Indigenous Resistance and Cultural Labour in Canada, 2016 //saenl

Oppressors use education to legitimize power and violence; normalizing their place
through a system of banking education , they “attempt to deny individuals the ability to
see themselves in the world”, and to see the world as transforming. They also “attempt to
destroy in the oppressed their quality as ‘considerers’ of the world” (Freire, 2000, p. 129).
Considering suggests reflecting and engaging; the capacity to continually act and reflect
is a critical component of Freire’s theory of humanization: “Human activity is praxis; it is transformation
of the world […it] is theory and practice; it is reflection and action” (2000, p. 125). Oppressors are incapable
of fully realizing these dynamic and productive systems. Denying these iterative processes—
theory and practice, reflection and action, continuation and transformation—is the praxis of domination , in which
oppressors deny peoples “ the right to say their own words and think their own
thoughts” (Freire, 2000, p. 126). Banking education creates a system of “[…] immobilizing and fixating forces”, which “fail to acknowledge men
and women as historical beings […]” (Freire, 2000, p. 84). Freire’s theory enmeshes Gramsci’s cultural hegemony (2003) and Barthes’ myth (1991);
Gramsci details how the educative function of the state essentially maintains and fulfills the desire for control, while Barthes exposes the role of myth in
creating seamless propaganda. Maskegon-Iskwew (2005) underscores the harm by citing Freire, explaining how a colonizer-colonized culture creates
“exclusionary conditions 39 […and] systematically submerges issues of race beneath a colourless version of liberal democracy… aggressively limiting
cultural specific dialogue” (p. 196). Two examples illustrate recent incidences of banking education. Artists Jackson2Bears and Renee Nejo share
memories of colonial
grade-school education. 2Bears is a scholar and multimedia artist; he contributed to the
Ghost Dance exhibition, and his work will be studied in Chapter 5—Analysis. Nejo is a video game designer whose work is featured in
kimiwan ‘zine, a publication focused on Indigenous culture; her work will also be studied in Chapter 5, along with other selections from kimiwan ‘zine. In
This is
his personal essay My Post-Indian Technological Autobiography, 2Bears (2014) recalls an experience that continues to haunt his work:
‘Indian week’ […] our classroom is vulgarly decorated with [….] a virtual dog’s breakfast of ‘Indian’
paraphernalia: teepees, totem poles, headdresses […] Being the only ‘Indian’ in my class […] I will
lead the group through a series of demeaning actions to the tune of Mother Goose’s ‘Ten
Little Indians’. (p. 13-14) In this quotation, 2Bears illustrates how educational institutions participate in
colonial violence . In Indigenous arts and culture zine kimiwan, Renee Nejo (2014) remembers the absence of Indigenous stories in the
classroom: When I was young, and we were starting to learn about Manifest Destiny in school, I couldn’t wait. This was a subject that I actually knew a
little about outside of school. It was part of who I am. I felt like my little heart had a lot to offer to the conversation, but when it came time to read in
class, that’s all we really did. There
was no discussion, no real interaction […] [t]his is what set the tone for me with
the banality of her educational experience, in which
regard to my identity: ‘nobody cares’. (p. 27) Nejo identifies
the institution denied its own humanity by excluding the history of the state that enabled
its existence. Freire deciphers manipulations by oppressors, much like Barthes’ theory of myths. Previous examples provided in the thesis,
selected from writing by Vizenor, Manuel, Abele and Stasiulis, and Alfred, show how storytelling can support and smooth the presentation of power;
shifting and twisting to maintain stability. Keira Ladner (2014) offers a useful comparison: “In
the past the government of
Canada employed the brute force of the state and legislatively destroyed 40 and
obliterated Indigenous sovereignty and Indigenous structures of governance” (p. 230). Similar to
Aguirre and Coulthard’s illustration of crisis-based modes of governance in Chapter 2—Literature Review, Ladner shows how conciliatory
policies loom large today; “acting as though its genocidal dreams have been realized […the]
state refuses to acknowledge or deal with any of the remnants of these structures […]” (p.
230). Educational institutions were deemed one of the most effective structures in which to
absent Indigenous peoples. In 19th century Canada, the Department of Indian Affairs (DIA) and Christian missionary churches
jointly organized non-Indigenous education of Indigenous children. The Indian Act granted the DIA control over the
education system, including the power to open and operate schools, and mandate attendance for
Indigenous children. McCallum (2014) emphasizes how “[e]ducation, in schools devised and controlled by non-Native people, had

always been a factor of the civilizing mission in Canada.” Continuing, she explains that, “[a] main goal of
federally controlled Indian education has been to reorient Native children away from
community , family, and culture towards the state and Canadian status quo citizenship” (p. 28). The
system was thus destructive, designed with the intent to pull community apart. The Canadian nation-state manipulated education
as an extensive vehicle of control, producing a system of myths reinforcing a colonizer-colonized set of hierarchies, denying Indigenous histories, and
The state designed and implemented school systems to service the aims
the hope for continuation.
of a white settler colony made in the image of its British imperial predecessors. Forced into residential schools,
children were, to borrow from the writing of Paulo Freire (2000), “’integrate[d]’ into the structure of
oppression” (p. 74). Freire also delves into “the myth of the industriousness of the oppressors and the laziness and dishonesty of the
oppressed, as well as myths of the natural inferiority of the latter and the superiority of the former” (p. 139); these myths were also at play in the
production of residential schools, integrating Freire’s banking education with “a paternalistic social action apparatus” (p. 74). False but powerful support
systems, these myths were reinforced through violence, including the physical, emotional and sexual abuse of students; the implementation of curricula
uninformed by the histories, spiritualties, or cultures of students and their families; restrictions on Indigenous proclamations, including bans on
speaking languages from home, forcing religious 41 conversion, and breaking family networks through the mandated removal of children from their
families to attend non-Indigenous schools. Detailing the dark intersections between institutional education and organized labour, McCallum (2014)
reveals that, “[…] Indian residential schools were fully dependent upon the manual labour of
Indian students ” and details “the clear function that Indian affairs played not only in the
training, but also in the recruitment , contracting , disciplining , and regulation of Native
labour ” (p. 236). McCallum points out how manual labour in residential schools had a gendered
educative function tied closely to the civilizing violence of colonialism: “Manual labour education was
strictly divided along gender lines, reflecting broader ideologies in Canadian society in which
‘suitable tasks’ were supposedly innate according to gender” (pp. 28- 29). As he writes, “outdoor work was
reserved for men, whereas women were confined to the indoor domestic sphere” (p. 236). The state used education and child

labour to build and reinforce the new colonial nation . Indigenous children were educated
in the mechanisms of low-wage and gendered labour, and attempts were made to
assimilate them by denying Indigenous histories and ways of being. The Truth and Reconciliation
Commission Final Report (2015) remembers how Indigenous families tried to change a system of violence. In a section called Resistance: ‘I am the
parents and students did resist
father of this child’, Justice Murray Sinclair retells these histories: Collectively and individually,

the residential school attack on Aboriginal families and communities. On occasion, they won
small victories : a child might be discharged; a day school might be built. However, as long
as Aboriginal people were excluded from positions of control over their children’s
education , the root causes of the conflict remained unresolved . (121) Children escaped
from schools—one of the most common ways to evade the system— supported other children, and created safe spaces in
the school; barricading a room to prevent staff from entering, for example (2015, p. 121). Some
attempted to burn their schools down. Parents kept children at home, often risking jail time and forsaking one of the only
formal education opportunities available, even if they wanted otherwise (p. 119). 42 Freire (2000) challenges banking education with problem-posing
education, which “[…] involves a constant unveiling of reality […] strives for the emergence of consciousness and critical intervention in reality” and
“takes the people’s historicity as their starting point” (pp. 81 and 84). Problem-posing
education is relevant in this thesis, because it
“affirms men and women as being in the process of becoming—as unfinished,

uncompleted beings in and with a likewise unfinished reality”, valuing individual

contributions to collective action (p. 84). Extending outward “[…] people develop the power to perceive critically the way

they exist in the world […] come to see the world not as a static reality, but as a reality in process , in
transformation ” (p. 83). Further in this thesis, in Chapter 5—Analysis, I will show how one of the participants considers Indigenous creation
stories precisely as a way to view the world as a constantly transforming entity, and to understand the roles of individuals within larger systems.
Freire’s theory of problem-posing education parallels Vizenor’s theory of survivance, and Simpson’s theory of resurgence, in which the continuation
and transformation of Indigenous cultures is a meaningful and necessary way of thinking.
 alt – shadow of the indian
Instead, we affirm the absence and shadow behind which the false image of
the Indian lies – that generates new forms of scholarship that inform
resistance – anything else is inauthentic banality which feeds the hand of
the colonizer
Howse 10. Erica, Degree of Master of Arts (Art History) at Concordia University, Postindians
and Reservation X: Individualism and Community Sovereignty in Contemporary North American
First Nations Arts Discourse, Library of Canada, Published Heritage Branch, April 2010 //saenl
PART V : Postindian Warriors of Survivance Vizenor's perspective has been accessed for this thesis mainly through two lengthy texts: Manifest
Manners (1994) and Postindian Conversations (1999), a transcribed interview conducted by Robert A. Lee.40 In 1928-29 René Magritte painted Ceci
n'est pas une pipe [Figure 5] as part of his series The Treachery of Images; in 1976 Andy Warhol created his American Indian Series and included
several silkscreen portraits of Russell Means (Lakota), Means having achieved the kind of celebrity Warhol considered as leader of the American
Indian Movement during the 1973 occupation of Wounded Knee. And in 1994 Vizenor put Warhol's portrait of Means on the cover of his text Manifest
Manners [Figure 6] and wrote of the image, "This portrait is not an Indian."41 Vizenor declares this image a sign, and as such a
signifier ofsomething known, nameable and therefore static. In the case of Magritte's Ceci ? 'est pas une pipe the point was that the pipe was only an
image, and not the thing itself, to make the viewer explicitly aware of the difference and the implied power of images. Through Baudrillard the
conclusion drawn is that there
is only an absence behind such a sign; ironically, however, the contradiction
between the statement and the image raises possibilities through the very
pronouncement: While Vizenor is a renowned fiction writer I do not have the space here to delve into that aspect. Postindian Conversations
does discuss some of his better known works at great length. 41 Gerald Vizenor, Manifest Manners, 1 8. 30 Russell Means ... is not a portrait of an
Indian. The portrait of an Indian, the silkscreen acrylic image of the American Indian by Andy Warhol, is denied by the assertion, 'This is not an Indian.'
The portraiture is the absence; the assertion is an ambiguous discourse on simulations and the sources oftribal identities.42 The ambiguity of the
phrase is important. When Vizenor writes that 'This is not an indiana he means also that behind the image is a postindian:
"Postindian simulations are the absence not the presence of the real, and neither
simulations of survivance nor dominance resemble the pleasurable vagueness of
consciousness."43 The use of the words presence and absence is significant. A presence is impossible in an image; the image is a re-
presentation, but Vizenor does offer in its stead the trace of the shadow and shadow survivance ,
which are that 'pleasurable vagueness of consciousness.' He writes: The theories of structuralism, the myths of the universal and
unexpected harmonies, and objective dissociations of natural tribal reason are dubious
tropes to power in the literature of dominance. The simulations of manifest manners, causal
evidence, objectivism, and transitive action have no referent, no sense of postindian play in

language and experience , no shadows in silence, and no coherence of natural reason . The
tribal referent is in the shadows of heard stories; shadows are their own referent, and
shadows are the silence and simulations of survivance .44 As I understand Vizenor in these passages, he is
arguing for Appiah's space-clearing gesture, the shadow of the real in a simulation of survivance.
Survivance is another neologism of Vizenor's which means "a native sense of presence, the motion of sovereignty and
the will to resist dominance. Survivance is not just survival but also resistance , not heroic or
tragic, but the tease of tradition, and sense of survivance outwits Vizenor, Manifest Manners, 52-53. Vizenor, Manifest Manners, 98. 31 dominance and
victimry." Since
all representations are simulations, and can never hope to re-present the
real , a better simulation would be one which seeks to simulate the shadow , that space
where identity is found, where survivance lives , but which can never be identified . Vizenor
coined the term 'postindian' because Indian is an invention which signifies nothing more than the colonial construction; it is "an

occidental misnomer."46 He writes that "the Indian is a simulation , the absence of natives ; the
indian transposes the real, and the simulation of the real has no referent, memory, or native stories. The
postindian must waver over the aesthetic ruins of indian simulations."47 This critique of the term indian 48 uses Baudrillard's
theories of simulation towards its deconstruction. A simulation is a representation of the
real without connections to the real, the hyperreal in Baudrillard's terms: "Simulation is no longer that of a territory,
a referential being, or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal. The territory no longer
precedes the map, nor does it survive it - [there is now the] precession of simulacra - that engenders the
territory."49 There is no longer anything behind the signifier, there is no referent, and the word connotes only an
absence behind the hyperreal. Baudrillard describes the era ofsimulation as inaugurated by a liquidation of all referentials - worse: with
their artificial resurrection in the systems of signs, a material more malleable than
meaning, in that it lends itself to all systems of equivalences, to all binary oppositions, to all
combinatory algebra. It is no longer a question of imitation, nor duplication, nor even parody. It is
a question of substituting the signs of the real for the real, that is to say of an operation of deterring every real
process via its operational double, a programmatic, metastable, perfectly descriptive machine that offers
all the signs of the real and shortcircuits all its vicissitudes.50 Clearly Vizenor, through Baudrillard, objects to
the closed-definition oîindian created by colonialism, the displacement of natives by a sign of colonial invention, and further, Vizenor argues, that the
"Indian is the absence, natives the presence, and an absence because the name is
discoverable, and a historical simulation of distinct native cultures."51 The word 'discoverable' is
important here as it relates to a search for a static meaning or truth about indians . The artificial

referentials suggested by simulations ofthe real are manipulable by those who create and
determine their meanings. The colonial era coincided with the rise of science and faith in
empiricism to make comfortable the unknown , providing a rationale for the colonial
mindset that sought not only to discover but to conquer and acquire . While for Vizenor the indian is
known, the postindian, in contrast, is "long past the colonial invention ofthe indian ... we are the

postindians. That says more about who we are not; which is significant in identity politics, and nothing about

who we are or might become as postindian." Appiah argues that there is some similarity betwixt those 'post's, and I suggest that

the similarity is shared by Vizenor's postindian. The 'spaceclearing gesture' is achieved here by re-placing
the colonial
construction indian and thus creating the opportunity for postindians to re-present
themselves , and I think implied here is that there will not be a re-definition , at least in a modern or colonial sense but
instead an evasion of definition . The argument is against definition, opposed to a
scientific 50 Ibid, 2. The double, and doubling, is an idea I hope to return to, as it keeps reappearing, though it seems with different motivations
in different contexts. 51 Gerald Vizenor, Postindian Conversations (Lincoln & London: University ofNebraska Press, 1999), 84. 33 discovery
and a necessarily static identification of indians. Change and also, importantly, contradiction are possibilities. Postindian
contains within it both the indian and the postindian. I previously interpreted Vizenor's argument as one which advocated against people and
behaviours that served to support colonial stereotypes of indian. It seems to me now, however, that Vizenor's ideas are more complicated than that.
Seeing, unseeing. Single
Lee writes at the end of his review essay, "The Only Good Indian is a Postindian?" (2000) as follows:
vision, double vision. Vizenor has throughout negotiated a discursive style in kind with the massive contradance which he believes has
been the story of Native America since Columbus first registered his 'gentle' Arawak/Guanahani in 1492. His own writings, accordingly, and one can
concede sometimes elusively, have indeed not hesitated to mix
metaphors, tease boundaries, assume contrary voices, or avail
themselves of an authorial - a literary crossblood - irony both gentle and fierce, general and local.
Controversy was rarely so adept.5 Lee's own writing is almost as sensitive and elusive as Vizenor's; Lee nonetheless suggests that Vizenor argues
both sides in order to make the shadows advance. Vizenor may judge or support contradictory
positions but in doing so
highlights the inaccessibility of truth and/or the impossibility of judgement. Lee writes of Vizenor's
"Shadow Survivance" chapter from Manifest Manners that "If, indeed, the call is for a new 'ghost dance literature,' a new 'shadow literature ofliberation',
the essay offers no less in and of itself; a call to remedy and, at the same time, the very embodiment ofremedy."54 When asked by Neal Bowers in an
interview if Vizenor saw himself as "an Indian voice, as a mediator, [or] a balancer" Vizenor replied: "I did for a time, but I don't think so now. I think I'm
an upsetter. ... In organizations I was an upsetter, an institutional 53 Robert A. Lee, "The Only Good Indian is a Postindian?" Loosening the Seams:
Interpretations ofGerald Vizenor (Bowling Green Ohio: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 2000), 277. 54 Ibid, 274. 34 upsetter but at the
same time seeking a balance." I am prompted to think of Vizenor's use of the
trickster as a strategy, if you will, though not the
strategic essentialism of Spivak, to counter essentializing notions of the Indian. Vizenor has spoken
about the trickster at many times and in a variety of ways. In chapter one of Narrative Chance: Postmodern Discourse On Native American Indian
The trickster, then is a
Literatures (1993) he elaborates in a way which embodies the trickster as much as defines that character's role.
comic and communal sign, a discourse in a narrative with no hope or tragic promises. The trickster is neither the "whole
truth" nor an isolated hypotragic transvaluation of primitivism. [page] The trickster is as aggressive as
those who imagine the narrative, but the trickster bears no evil or malice in narrative voices. Malice and evil would silence the
comic holotropes; there would be no concordance in the discourse. Neither the narrator, the characters, nor the audience would share the narrative
event. . . . The trickster as a semiotic sign is imagined in narrative voices, a
communal rein to the unconscious, which is
comic liberation; however, the trickster is outside comic structure, "making
it" comic rather than inside comedy, "being
it." The trickster is agonistic imagination and aggressive liberation, a "doing" in narrative points of
view and outside the imposed structures .56 But, can Vizenor's trickster and therefore also postindian be understood as
merely a postmodern manner of essentialism? Manifest Manners argues that the contemporary symptoms of manifest destiny are manifest manners:
"the course of dominance, the racialist notions and misnomers sustained in archives and
lexicons as 'authentic' representations of Indian cultures. Manifest manners court the destinies
of monotheism, cultural determinism, objectivism, and the structural conceits of savagism and
civilization."57 If plurality proposes that, while endless, groups of Others might yet be catalogued,
defined and represented , and the Neal Bowers, "An Interview with Gerald Vizenor," MELUS, 8.1 (Spring, 1981): 45. Vizenor,
Gerald, ed. "A Postmodern Introduction." Narrative Chance: Postmodern Discourse on Native American Indian Literatures. Norman & London:

University of Oklahoma Press, 1993, 3-16. 57 Vizenor, Manners, vii. 35 postindian position suggests that any and all
definitions be interrupted , or upset in Vizenor's terms, has Vizenor re-essentialized the postindian as interruption and contradiction
via the trickster? If this is indeed a strategy the denial of identity becomes the means to insist on self-determination. Baudrillard also writes of
simulation that "Something
has disappeared: the sovereign difference, between one and the other, that
constituted the charm of abstraction." I would like to make something of Baudrillard's use of the word 'sovereign.' Although in
translation, Baudrillard's early arguments in his text Simulacra and Simulation provide a heavy critique of anthropology and science in general, leading
me to believe that his choice of 'sovereign' to illustrate the difference between a signifier that references the real and a simulation that has no referent
describes the loss of connection between a referent and sign and therefore hints at the loss of power a referent experiences to influence the use of a
simulation (now not a signifier) and its re-inscription over time. The simulation is conflated with the referent and is more powerful through its
dissemination while the referent is relegated to an absence without a voice, to a lack of real representation, perhaps inevitably considering the power of
signs. Simulation's denial by Vizenor is the battle cry ofthe word warrior. Speaking of ethnology as a science whose fact-finding mission supersedes all
else Baudrillard asserts that " In order for ethnology to live, its object must die; by dying, the object
takes its revenge for being 'discovered' and with its death defies the science that wants
to grasp it ."59 When Baudrillard writes "dying" is that what he means? This supports the idea that at some point the simulation was a signifier -
is it just inevitable 58 Baudrillard, Simulacra, 2.
 alt – survivance
The alternative is a politics of survivance – only generating new narratives
that reject colonial tropes can reclaim indigeneity
Athanasiu 16. Eva Marie, Thesis in the Faculty of Information, University of Toronto,
Survivance Stories: Indigenous Resistance and Cultural Labour in Canada, 2016 //saenl
3.5 SURVIVING AND RESISTING: ACTS OF SURVIVANCE Gerald Vizenor’s (1994) theory of survivance
embodies
the active process of resistance , representing both continuation and transformation ;
suffix –ance indicates an active state, but 31 also a larger condition of existence. Vizenor primarily considers survivance in the
playground of literary production , where Indigenous authors are “postindian warriors
[who] encounter their enemies with the same courage in literature as their ancestors
once evinced on horses […] they create their stories with a new sense of survivance ” (p. 4).
Pulling out a reiterating narrative , Vizenor connects contemporary cultural workers with
their ancestors. He explains to his readers that decoding history is a necessary undercurrent in
acts of literary survivance, situating Indigenous literary production as part of a resistance
continuum. Journeying through literary networks, Vizenor (2009) alludes to the close connection between survivance
and ways of speaking, suggesting it “could be the fourth person or voice in Native stories”;
survivance privileges multiple ways of knowing and rejects the “monotheism” that represents singular, non-
Indigenous ways epistemologies (p. 103). The fourth voice embodies challenging and alternative
narratives that can counter dominant and oppressive stories. For Vizenor, survivance is “[…] presence over
absence” and “the continuation of stories, not a mere reaction” (p. 85). Creating presence is the root of survivance. Storytelling
is an immense survivance act, because the tumbling and knitting up of stories provides an opportunity to create shared spaces
where writers can eschew static narratives, more closely reflecting both the changes and anchors in the lives of the Indigenous
communities to which they belong. Survivance involves both action and reflection, but “[t]he theory is earned by interpretations” (p.
89). Interpretations form through literary production, in which theory and practice function cohesively: representing survivance, and
being survivance. An
intellectual force, survivance lives in the productive tension between
theory and practice. Discussing the theory and practice of Indigenous futurisms, Grace Dillon (2014) embodies the
process of survivance in the following quotation: “[…] dreaming ahead into our possible futures, and to the multiple senses of
futurism that remain interwoven, tied, and ultimately freed by the embedding of our pasts and presents as well” (p. 6). Dillon
illustrates how dreaming
into being involves collecting, knitting up, and unravelling:
interwoven, tied, and ultimately freed. The following story illustrates how survivance grows in Indigenous networks
of information communication. In February of 1964, the first radio program produced by Indigenous workers, concerning Indigenous
current events and culture, Indian Magazine, was broadcast in Canada. 32 The event created a new iteration of information
communication networks, like the “signals of survival” studied by Cheryl L’Hirondelle (2014), in Chapter 2—Literature Review. Host
Brian Maracle called Indian Magazine, “the first major effort to let Native people tell their own story to the
Canadian public” (CBC Digital Archives, 1984). One of Indian Magazine’s early projects involved documenting and
proclaiming stories of Indigenous activism; in 1965, the program reported on a protest of more than four hundred
Indigenous members of the Kenora, Ontario community, who marched on the town hall and made appeals to
the municipal government. In subsequent years, Indigenous communities across Canada organized
similar actions. Indian Magazine—later renamed Our Native Land—became a national program in 1968, and continued to
document Indigenous perspectives on resistance. By its final episode in 1985, each individual involved with the program contributed
to a media archive documenting and declaring Indigenous presence.
 at: identity
Personal expression fails – it’s co-opted into the lifeless capitalist
commodification of native identity – much like the Inuit in Canada, their
scholarship is only rendered important insofar as it can be exploited to
perpetuate colonization itself
Howse 10. Erica, Degree of Master of Arts (Art History) at Concordia University, Postindians
and Reservation X: Individualism and Community Sovereignty in Contemporary North American
First Nations Arts Discourse, Library of Canada, Published Heritage Branch, April 2010 //saenl
Philip Deloria (Dakota Sioux) considers the specific social and political contexts that have affected notions of Indian identity. In
his chapter "Counterculture Indians and the New Age" from Playing Indian (1998), Deloria applies arguments related to Fuss's 30 Lucy Tutsweetuk &
Simeonie Kunnuk, "Lucy Tasseor Tutsweetuk, vol. 13, no. 4 (Winter 1998): 22. 31 Gerald McMaster and Lee-Ann Martin, Indigena (Hull, QC,
Vancouver & Toronto: Canadian Museum ofCivilization, Douglas & Mclntyre, 1992), 20. 23 and Spivak's feminist and postcolonial critiques to the
Native context in the United States. He comments that even
while appropriation has run rampant in the era of the New
Age, Indian identity has remained powerful and authentic but on bases more social and political than culturally essential in
the traditional sense. Indianness retained a certain degree of power, however, and that power suggests that markers of Indian difference necessarily
remained in place. Ironically, the social realities that New Age devotees tended to avoid helped fuel the sense of Indian-white difference that made
Indianness meaningful. Indians lived poverty-stricken lives on faraway reservations. Their poverty and geographical and
social distance marked them as different - and thereby authentic. Incorporative multiculturalism, on the other hand, has
tended to focus on distinctive cultural contributions - food, music, language - and to attenuate cultural differences within a larger human whole. The
asymmetrical relations of power that both undergird and undermine the system linger, however, in
the uneasy collective unconscious. Mexican food, for example, is a more palatable ethnic gift than Mexican agricultural stoop
labor, although in its concrete expression of social inequality and physical distance, it is the latter that defines whatever authenticity one might find in
tortillas and frijoles.32 But
what dangers are inherent in this approach? Is equating the political
and social essence of a marginalized people, their authenticity, with the oppressive realities of
marginalization problematic? How to resist the pull to essentialize , in the traditional way, social
and political realities remains a difficulty. What is at stake seems to be the separation of
culture from social and political realities . The example of stoop labour perhaps provides a key - it is the connection to the
land that both precedes and denies any colonial claim. Is it necessarily the low paid hard manual labour that
makes the differences, or might it be that it represents a unique engagement with the land?
While identity has been and remains distinct, the intangible and unknowable is here accessible through the land, can be represented by the land.
What seems key, and is present in the Philip Deloria, "Counterculture Indians and the New Age," Playing Indian (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1998), 177. 24 constructivist perspective that Fuss challenges, is that social and political contexts, including

land rights, must yet be seen as changing and changeable , as well as linked to cultural

expression . Further, the very notion of essentialism has not been sufficiently challenged or imagined in
ways that account for contemporary acknowledgments of social and political realities. As these theorists posit, communities are fluid ,
temporal , and permeable ; any definition based solely on cultural signposts risks
making a community seem static , ahistorical , and closed, not to mention discoverable and
appropriable , at least in an individualistic society that overvalues personal exploration and
undervalues tradition, particularly those of Others.33 Deloria argues that colonizers, and later white activists from all causes,
appropriated Aboriginal symbols, among others, as a means to create an identity distinct
from their original countries. I have suggested that whenever white Americans have confronted
crises of identity, some of them have inevitably turned to Indians. What might it mean to be not-
British? The revolutionaries found a compelling array of ideas in Indianness. What did it
mean to be American? What did it mean to be modern? To be authentic? 34 That
Canadians can adopt the Inukshuk as an Olympic symbol [Figure 3] dilutes , in Deloria's terms, the
 weight that symbol carries in its generative social and political contexts. Symbols of rebellion
also often became representative of general critiques of society from a variety of perspectives and thus
undermined their original political power . [Whites] devalued words like Indian and nigger and deemphasized the social
realities that came with those words. Such attempts to create political solidarity worked to the benefit of
whites, but they could have negative political consequences for Indians and African
Americans. After all, those social realities underpinned civil rights protests. And if whites claimed and The idea of communities as fluid, temporal
and permeable is central to McMaster's proposition Reservation X, discussed in Part V. 34Ibid, 156. 25 then diluted the very words that described
This naming and subsequent
those social worlds, they could offer in return only a power more linguistic that actual.35
appropriation lends significant weight to the interrogation of labels - if Othering is some
form of projecting onto groups that which is lacking or problematic in one's own, the re-
appropriation of that label once given shows a desire to confront that which is denied
through the act of naming . This leads to Vizenor's questioning of the word Indian as well as his coining the term postindian
as an act of resistance, additionally giving credence to Baudrillard's assertion that referents
lose their 'sovereign difference' in a world of simulations . The notion of change can be also related to
hybridity. It is not just that culture changes through time, but that groups understood as distinct begin to mix. Can Spivak's subaltern be understood to
apply to hybrid groups? Can this be viewed as a location of and respect for hybrid groups in addition to unknown or unrecognized groups, which are
hybridity is termed
certainly too numerous to encapsulate or understand within the principle of plurality. Vizenor's conception of
'crossblood;' he explains the purpose of the term as he responds to Lee's inquiries in Postindian Conversations. He says we must resist any
easy reference to crossbloods, as if that combined word and metaphor were a recognizable entity. The cross and the blood are
unnamable. The tease of a crossblood presence in native histories is over the simulation
of a seam, a double seam , as you suggest, of established poses, appearances, interpretations, and loose
assertions of identity .36 In many ways this understanding of, this respectful 'hands off approach, to identity is a step forward. But what
Spivak allows for is a strategic use of identity where Vizenor seems to deny it, because of its harmful side effects. What of the implications this Ibid,
164-65. Vizenor, Postindian, 82. 26 resistance to identity might have on sovereignty as related to territorial demands? Vizenor elaborates in Manifest
Manners, The notions of crossbloodism, determinism, and racialism, maintain the
sentiments of weakness , that crossbloods are a descent from pure racial simulations. . . . The manifest manners of
nationalism as sources of tribal identities are both means of association and resistance;
some tribes are simulated as national cultural emblems, and certain individuals are honored by the nation and the tribe as

real representations. Vizenor is suggesting that identities , as problematically conceptualized in modernist discourse, are
always fabrications and are always harmful because some thus become more highly
valued than others . As an example recall the Inukshuk and the Vancouver Olympic logo: certainly
the Inuit have become a highly 'valued' indigenous group in Canada, proven by this choice to 'use' them
to represent Canada, in no small part because of their perceived authenticity when compared to other

groups. But have communities, or even the idea of community, been lost because of an emphasis on
hybridity, plurality, specificity and individuality? Has resistance to modernity inadvertently resulted in the
loss of something real and valuable, a kind of meaning? Or is this debate merely a distraction from the very real and vibrant Aboriginal
communities and cultural practices which continue, not to mention the fact that the Native population in Canada now surpasses 1 .3 million people?
McMaster dealt most recently with the issue of hybridity in the exhibition Remix, which opened at the National Museum ofthe American Indian in New
York. A quote on the pamphlet reads: These artists all share various degrees of Native ancestry, yet they see other sides to their humanity, as well,
including humor, the impact of borders and boundaries, death and dying, commodity fetishism, history and memory, the relationship between words
The gathering of, these individuals
and images, and the possibility of 37 Vizenor, Manifest Manners, 59. 27 transformation.

signifies a new articulation of identity that we've come to call " post-Indian ." Nationality,
ethnicity, and cultural tradition are simply starting points. Beyond lie the discoveries of contemporary artists
exploring self-knowledge and self-definition . For this brief moment, a community comes
together. I like the temporality suggested in that last line, it indicates that communities are subject to time, as, indeed,
they have always been. Where hybridity suggests a mixing of communities, our efforts to define
community and hybridity are tasks, themselves exceptional, i.e. ahistorical. McMaster's use of the term
post-Indian, here hyphenated and with a capital I, but in quotes, makes a link with Vizenor's arguments, while at the same time suggesting
limits on them. KC Adams' (Scottish and Cree) Cyborg Hybrid Series (1998-2010) speaks specifically to the experience of having mixed Aboriginal and
European heritage in Canada today. Evoked in these photographs, and particularly in "Former Land Owner " Cyborg Hybrid Adam (2005) [Figure 4],
are stereotypes, colonial photography, technology, representation, identity, tradition, postmodernity, individuality and community. My first impression is,
really, one of whiteness, which contrasts with the subjects' brown skin. These photos rely predominantly on whiteness as a visual element, a reference
to the European ancestry of each portrait's subject, and colonialism's overwhelming oppression historically; but also, in the context of cyborgs, robotics
and technology, to sterility. The reference to Macintosh and their preference for white is surely no mistake. The complicated nature of Adams' project
The juxtaposition of stereotypical signifiers, beaded in white across their chests, which here
becomes apparent.
must be meant to signify the opposite, i.e. the inherent undefineability of individuals,
coupled with the 38 McMaster, REMIX, p. ? 28 impression of sterility, suggests the lifelessness of science
and classification . The artist writes ofthe project on her website: Cyborg Hybrids is a digitally altered photo series that attempts to
challenge our views towards mixed race classifications by using humorous text and imagery from two cultures. The subjects are Euro-Aboriginal artists
who are forward thinkers and plugged in with technology. They follow the doctrine of Donna Haraway's "Cyborg Manifesto," which states that a cyborg
is a creature in a technological, post-gender world, free of traditional western stereotypes towards race and gender. 9 Is Adams' here advocating or
critiquing the kind of sterility in a post-everything world? The term post-gender here evokes Vizenor's postindian. In a world of
in a world without
technological sterility are we without stereotypes, without the italicized or capitalized indiani More provocatively,

some form of recognized community, are we necessarily sterile , in some senses this
might suggest 'white-washed' of our histories, the negative but also, and more
importantly, the positive? Or is KC Adams suggesting that the desire to whitewash our histories is impossible, through the faces,
through the traces left on the shirts of oppression and as well the traditional jewellery the subjects of the portraits wear, thus supporting a Reservation
X perspective which embraces hybridity? Is identity and community important only as long as there are those who would use it against an-Other? In a
post-identity world hybridity is arguably irrelevant - but is it? Does hybridity draw attention to the issues post-identity politics have sought to deny,
thereby reaffirming the importance of identity? Or has just the opposite occurred, have
post-identity politics confirmed that
identity was and is a non-issue, a contrived creation ofthe colonial imagination?
***Trump Takeouts
Competitiveness
 1NC—Trump x Competitiveness
Trump destroys US competitiveness—he has zero coherent economic
strategy
Pritzker 6/9—Secretary of Commerce under President Obama and is current chairman of
PSP Capital Partners (Penny, 6/9/17, “The Cost To America's Competitiveness,”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2017/06/09/the-cost-to-americas-
competitiveness/#558bb5ed52b6, Accessed 7/27/17, HWilson)
To be fair, some of the economic indicators we have seen during the initial months of the Trump Administration have seemed
encouraging. Buoyed by talk of tax reform and less regulation, many business leaders are bullish. The stock market has set record
highs and the tech-heavy Nasdaq has made material gains. Investor confidence has been up, and there is hope for higher profits.
Yet, markets are starting to recognize that legislative progress may be slower to come
than the initial rhetoric has suggested.
I, too, believe we need smart tax reform that incentivizes investment, rationalizes what individuals pay, and promotes opportunity
while not exploding our debt. And I agree that our nation’s infrastructure is a critical priority that is badly in need of investment.
policies being advanced by the current administration will
However, I am deeply concerned that some
undermine our nation’s economic growth and long-term competitiveness .

According to one study, if the travel ban on six predominantly Muslim countries ever goes into effect, it could
cost our economy $35- $71 billion every year. “Extreme vetting” of foreign visitors could deter
many of the more than one million foreign students who study in the U.S. and who support more than
370,000 American jobs and pump more than $30 billion into our economy every year.
Likewise, one analysis found that Trump administration policies could scare away perhaps four million
foreign tourists this year alone, costing our economy more than $7 billion in lost
revenue .

On immigration, the Department of Homeland Security has reportedly estimated that building
a wall along the border with Mexico could cost nearly $22 billion . Deporting millions of
undocumented immigrants, one study found, could cost the federal government nearly $900
billion in lost revenue over a decade, devastate sectors like agriculture and construction, and
reduce Gross Domestic Product by $4.7 trillion. All of which could also disrupt trade with Mexico, which
supports nearly five million American jobs.

The administration’s obsession with reversing bilateral trade deficits—which are actually poor
measures of whether a trade agreement is working—means we’re missing opportunities to open new
markets to American workers and businesses. They are right to continue the Obama Administration's focus on
trade enforcement, but that cannot be a substitute for opening new markets for American goods and services.

There are also tangible costs of failing to address the threat of climate change. One study
from a non-partisan group of American business leaders estimated that rising seas could lead to more than
$500 billion in property losses alone in the U.S. this century.

The bottom line is that these Trump Administration policies could potentially cost our nation trillions
of dollars – and American jobs – costs that will far exceed any perceived benefits . We
risk shooting ourselves in the foot by undermining our competitive advantages as an
open and innovative economy, which are a source our economic strength and global
leadership. I also fear a loss that is harder to quantify but equally profound, the lost opportunity to build greater ties of
friendship and share our values with people from all over the world, which is something we should be doing more of, not less.

We ought to remember the net benefits of welcoming immigrants and refugees. Nearly half of Fortune 500 companies—engines of
job creation—were started by immigrants or their children. For many cities, immigrants
and refugees have been
an economic boon because they include hard-working entrepreneurs who start their
own businesses.
Even as we need to meet the defining economic challenge of our time—developing a robust
strategy to arm American workers with the skills necessary to adapt to technology and globalization and create a stronger social
safety net—we need to remember the enormous benefits of trade. With 95% of the world’s consumers
living beyond our borders—and U.S. exports supporting more than 11 million American jobs—we need more trade, not
less, with trade policies that give U.S. workers and businesses more access to foreign
markets and a more level playing field.
Nor should we forfeit the enormous dividends that will come from investing in clean
energy. In the United States, the solar and wind industries are now creating jobs 12 times faster than the rest of the economy. In
the world’s emerging markets, between now and 2030, the Paris Agreement on climate change is expected to create
nearly $23 trillion in investment opportunities in clean energy, which is why walking away from this
important agreement represents both a diplomatic and economic mistake.

the current course will have

As a business person who has built dozens of companies that employ thousands, I believe
American workers and businesses paying a price for years to come . The opportunities and jobs of
our globalized world are within our grasp – but only if we’re guided by a long-term economic strategy that allows us to seize them.
 2NC—Trump x Competitiveness
Multiple Trump policies wreck competitiveness—

a. trade strategy
Donnan 17—World Trade Editor at Financial Times (Shawn, 1/10/17, “Trump strategy
threatens US competitiveness, says trade tsar,” https://www.ft.com/content/1c4dcd34-d6f8-
11e6-944b-e7eb37a6aa8e, Accessed 7/27/17, HWilson)

Donald Trump’s threat to force companies to locate factories in the US risks undermining
American competitiveness in the long term while his plans to rip up a vast Pacific Rim trade
pact would hand China a strategic victory , the outgoing US trade tsar has warned.
Mike Froman, architect of President Barack Obama’s ill-fated push for the Trans-Pacific Partnership with Japan and 10 other
economies, told the Financial Times that Mr Trump’s vow to abandon the deal risked driving more US
allies into China’s embrace . The move would also amount to the US forgoing its place as
a Pacific power , he said.

Mr Froman also said too many people

were underestimating the risks of the president-elect’s
threats to impose tariffs on US and other companies that produce goods overseas for the US
market.

Mr Trump has in recent weeks dialled up a social media push to bring factories back to the US,
singling out carmakers such as Ford, General Motors and Toyota and threatening them with a border tax unless they shift
production from Mexico.

While efforts to bolster the US manufacturing base were to be applauded, Mr Froman said the strategy posed long-
term risks.
To help US exporters and preserve US jobs, successive administrations in Washington have
fought efforts by countries such as Brazil, China and India to force companies to locate
factories in their own markets.
By choosing to emulate those tactics rather than fight them, Mr Trump risked triggering an avalanche of
similar requirements by other countries, Mr Froman said, and unwittingly causing the erection of new barriers for
US exporters that would hurt rather than help them in the long term.

“When 95 per cent of consumers, 80 per cent of purchasing power and the fastest-growing markets for our products are outside the
United States there is a risk that if other countries followed suit we'd actually see an outflow of manufacturing from the US,” Mr
Froman said.

The warning by the top US trade official echoes comments last year by General Electric’s Jeff Immelt, who said companies needed
to prepare for a new era of “localisation” with globalisation under assault from nationalists and populists like Mr Trump in a growing
number of countries.

It also highlights the radical shift in US trade policy that is set to take place with Mr Trump
planning to hand its control to a band of protectionists who have made reducing US
trade deficits with countries like China and Mexico their main goal.
Republicans in Congress such as House Speaker Paul Ryan have said they would oppose any move by Mr Trump to impose new
tariffs, though lawyers say as president he would have plenty of scope to act unilaterally under US law.

Instead, Mr Ryan and others have pitched an alternative that would see corporate tax reform include a new tax on imports.
The proposal is already being fought vigorously by retailers and other US companies that rely on imports. But Mr Froman said such
a tax would be likely to face a challenge at the World Trade Organisation and also take US companies out of global supply chains
that are now vital to competing internationally.

“If
it discriminates against imports, it will raise international trade concerns and, of
course, have a significant impact on any consumer or any business that relies on
imports as inputs,” he said.
Mr Froman said the incoming president’s decision to abandon the TPP, which the Obama administration signed early last year but
was never ratified by Congress amounted to a major strategic mistake. The TPP was sold by Mr Obama and other backers as a
major effort to get ahead of China in building alliances in the Asia-Pacific and writing the rules of commerce in the region.

“We heard a lot about the importance of being tough on China during this recent campaign. I agree. It’s important to be tough with
There
China on trade,” Mr Froman was due to add in a speech on Tuesday. “But here, I have to admit to being a little perplexed.
simply is no way to reconcile a get-tough-on-China policy with withdrawing from TPP . . . It
would be a strategic miscalculation of enormous proportions.”

Mr Froman said concerns expressed during last year’s US presidential campaign and elsewhere around the world about the
negative impact of globalisation on parts of the economy needed to be addressed.

“That’s a very important conversation to have. But the answer is not found in trade policy alone. The answer is in domestic
economic policy [and] how you help individuals in communities who are adversely affected by change — whether that change
comes from technology or migration or globalisation — succeed,” he told the FT.

“The answer is not to withdraw from trade, to close our borders, to ignore the benefits of lowering barriers and raising standards and
to raise tariffs here in the United States which will very much hurt the people who can least afford to bear the cost.”

b. budget
Andes 17—fellow with the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Initiative on Innovation and
Placemaking, former research analyst at the Information Technology and Innovation
Foundation, Masters in Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University (Scott, 3/17/17, “Trump’s
“America First” budget will leave the economy running behind,”
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2017/03/17/trumps-america-first-budget-will-leave-the-
economy-running-behind/, Accessed 7/27/17, HWilson)
As released Thursday, President Trump’s “America First” budget blueprint would actually
put U.S. manufacturers and the national economy well behind their global peers .

The proposed cuts to the nation’s economic development and scientific infrastructure
would erode critical programs that help regions succeed in the global economy. These
range from technical assistance for small manufacturers, to incentives for regional firms
to solve shared technical problems, to research funding for innovations that will define
tomorrow’s global economy.
In fact, many of the proposed program cuts would undercut the very goals on which
President Trump campaigned. For example, while the president promised to reduce the trade
deficit, the $5.8 billion cut from the National Institutes of Health’s budget surely won’t
help decrease our $55.8 billion trade deficit in pharmaceutical products. NIH funds more
than 300,000 researchers across the country and represents the nation’s feedstock of
pharmaceutical research . The budget also eliminates the Overseas Private Investment
Corporation and the U.S. Trade Development Agency, which help U.S. companies access
foreign markets.
The president also campaigned to bring back American manufacturing jobs—yet the
budget calls for the elimination of programs such as the Manufacturing Extension
Program (MEP), which has proven highly successful at increasing productivity for small-
and medium-sized manufacturers. For every one dollar of federal investment, MEP
generates almost $18 dollars in sales growth for manufacturers. Similarly, the budget
calls for eliminating the Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing Program, which
helped Tesla develop its electric car (the company now employs 17,000 workers).

At the heart of President Trump’s budget are three major misconceptions about how
economic competitiveness really works .

First, somewhat ironically for a Republican, the president thinks the bully pulpit and
mandates from Washington can trump the economics of a global economy. The
administration’s manufacturing strategy is to publicly shame companies that move abroad and
develop trade barriers (tariff and non-tariff) to reduce U.S. firms’ exposure to the global
economy. Yet, the graveyard of U.S. economic populism is filled with politicians who thought
they could slow global competition with a megaphone.

The only sure way for U.S. manufacturers to survive is to become more competitive —
creating better products for cheaper—than their global rivals. Initiatives like the Economic
Development Administration have helped regional economies become more competitive
by providing matching grants in targeted industry clusters where these regions have an
international edge. Despite this, the president’s budget calls for the elimination of EDA.

The Trump method of reshoring manufacturing jobs is also far more expensive than building the
competitiveness of the sector. When the president negotiated Carrier away from leaving Indiana
for Mexico, it saved 800 jobs at the cost of $2 million per job. In contrast, analysis of MEP
shows that the program creates one job in the manufacturing sector for roughly $1,900. This
makes sense. Trying to overpower global economic forces has always been a tall (and
expensive) order. Hardly the stuff of a budget conservative.
The second problem is that his administration believes that less government, limited
regulation, and a low statutory corporate tax rate is sufficient to grow a globally
competitive economy. This philosophy fundamentally misunderstands how countries
compete in the modern economy: What really differentiates successful high-value
economies is their ability to innovate . In the technologies that define U.S.
competitiveness —robotics, data analytics, drug development, energy storage—the
interplay between public sector research and development and private sector innovation
is essential . For example, 80 percent of the most transformative new drugs over the last 25
years have resulted from collaboration between industry and universities. NIH funds an
astounding 45 percent of all health care research (from all funding sources) in U.S.
universities. Thus, the proposed funding cuts would decimate the nation’s ability to
compete in new drug discoveries . Similarly, the cuts to the Department of Energy’s
Office of Science would hamstring the country’s ability to lead the world in new
generation energy products .

Finally, the president refuses to learn from our national competitors —like an NCAA
basketball coach who doesn’t look at rival’s tapes leading into March Madness. The programs
the president plans on cutting have analogues in most advanced countries. Germany’s
Fraunhofer Institutes, Australia’s Enterprise Connect, Canada’s Industrial Research
Assistance Program, Japan’s Kohsetsushi Centers, and the U.K.’s Manufacturing
Advisory Service all offer similar programming to the MEP and maintain healthy support
across the political spectrum because they make these countries stronger. Instead of
cutting programs that our rivals consider successful, we should put them on steroids .

The proposal to eliminate the NIH’s Fogarty International Center is a perfect example of
the administration’s anti-competitive, insular nature. Fogarty fosters partnerships with health
researchers and institutions abroad in order to improve scientific discovery at home. If we as a
country aren’t engaged in learning from the successes of other countries, we will fail to
remain competitive .

Trump’s budget, like much of his rhetoric, is fundamentally backward-looking . It attempts to

support a 21st century economy with 20th century tools and ideas.

c. immigration order
Gershgorn 17—Artificial Intelligence Reporter at Quartz, citing Nest founder Tony Fadell
(Dave, 2/1/17, “Nest founder Tony Fadell: Trump’s immigration order will “damage American
competitiveness”,” https://qz.com/899778/nest-founder-tony-fadell-trumps-immigration-order-
will-damage-american-competitiveness/, Accessed 7/27/17, HWilson)
While many in Silicon Valley are wringing their hands (or sending press releases and internal memos) about US
president Donald Trump’s executive order on immigration, some of the industry’s biggest names are also
starting to take action.

Nest founder Tony Fadell, who was also a leader on Apple’s first iPod team, this week personally matched donations to the
American Civil Liberties Union, joining high-profile contributors as varied as investor Chris Sacca and musician Sia.

Quartz reached out to Fadell to get his thoughts on the ACLU, immigration, and the social responsibility of Silicon Valley.

Why take it on yourself to match donations?

I thought the ban was fundamentally wrong, and it hit home both personally and professionally. I’m the product
of immigrants who came to America from Lebanon, Poland and Russia. I also have many, many friends and colleagues who are
first-generation immigrants. The fact is that immigrants , including many from Muslim countries, have
helped to build countless tech companies in the United States. I joined with Chris Sacca and other
matchers to try to inspire others to act. A spontaneous match campaign supporting the ACLU and its work against the ban seemed
like a great way to make an impact quickly.

What impact does limiting immigration have on the tech community , in Silicon Valley and
throughout the country?
It sends a terrible message and, if not overturned, will ultimately damage not only American technology
competitiveness but American competitiveness overall .

We already have a severe qualified tech worker talent problem in America. In addition, the immigration
process for them was already broken before this. The ban makes all of this worse.
international students comprised
A 2013 report by the National Foundation for American Policy found that
between 50% and 70% of full-time graduate students in a wide variety of STEM areas,
including electrical engineering, computer science, industrial engineering, economics, chemical engineering, materials engineering,
and mechanical engineering. Yet,it is already increasingly difficult to keep them working here after
school. We are basically educating our foreign students with all our resources and best minds only to tell them they are not
welcome based on their religion or place of origin and then see them return to their own countries to build businesses that compete
with U.S. companies.
We need to align our university admission policies with our immigration
policies to encourage more amazing people to come to the United States—and not just to Silicon Valley—to
be educated and then employed here.
In addition, the H-1B program does not address the true needs of the tech community, much less the wider business community in
all sectors, which increasingly rely on knowledge workers. Creating an “extreme vetting” process and reducing the H-1B program
further will exacerbate the problem.

On the human level, the

ban will rip apart families who can no longer freely visit the United States, and we need to recognize that
it will cast unwarranted suspicion over every immigrant, all of which will
have negative ripple effects in their
companies and performance.
Do technology companies bear the responsibility of acting against injustices they see in their governments?

No one sector bears greater responsibility than another when it comes to identifying injustice. We need all of our business leaders to
have the courage to stand up for their principles and call out something as wrong when they see it.

d. fuel economy rollback

Romm, Ph.D., 17—Senior Fellow at American Progress, Ph.D. from MIT (Joe, 3/15/17,
“Trump fuel economy rollback will kill jobs and cost each car buyer $1,650,”
https://thinkprogress.org/trump-fuel-economy-rollback-would-kill-jobs-and-cost-each-car-buyer-
1-650-aa2da0479b7d, Accessed 7/27/17, HWilson)
President Donald Trump is reopening the Obama administration’s federal carbon pollution
standards for new cars.
Trump is traveling to Detroit on Wednesday to announce an executive order with the
ultimate goal of rolling back the tough standards that apply to model years 2022–2025. This
won’t be a quick process: A year-long review of the standards would be followed by a new
rule-making — and then lengthy legal challenges .

Trump’s misguided move to appease the ever-myopic U.S. auto industry would undo
efficiency gains that will provide consumers $98 billion in total net benefits , primarily from
reduced fuel use. Individual car buyers would lose “a net savings of $1,650” (even after
accounting for the higher vehicle cost) as the EPA concluded in its final January “Determination
on the Appropriateness” of the standards.
The savings from the new standards are so significant that the EPA calculates “consumers who
finance their vehicle with a 5-year loan would see payback within the first year.”
Rolling back the standards would also boost U.S. oil consumption by 1.2 billion gallons
and increase U.S. carbon pollution by 540 billion tons over the lifetime of the model-year
2022–2025 cars. And the full benefit is far more than that, since the EPA didn’t look at the
impact on cars built after 2025 that would also be subject to the weaker standards.
White House spokesman Sean Spicer said on Monday that Trump’s visit to Detroit will focus on
“highlighting the need to eliminate burdens from regulations that needlessly hinder meaningful
job growth.”

But the fact is the fuel efficiency standards are job creators and economy boosters .

Indeed, allowing U.S. car companies to keep building inefficient cars will undermine the
industry’s competitiveness as the rest of the world enacts much more stringent
standards that promote super-efficient cars — and as countries from Germany to India
consider banning gas-powered cars outright by 2030.
Obama, whose bailout of the industry saved countless jobs, enacted standards that will speed
the industry towards the inevitable transition to super-efficient and electric cars. Ultimately,
carbon pollution standards are job creators because, like most future-oriented clean air
regulations, they spur investment and innovation , as many studies have shown.

e. Trump is stripping domestic bases of innovation

Grunwald 6/23—senior staff writer for POLITICO Magazine (Michael, 6/23/17, “The anti-
innovation presidency,” http://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/06/23/the-anti-innovation-
president-000464, Accessed 7/27/17, HWilson)
“Innovation” is one of those Washington priorities, like “security” or “the children,” that politicians
in both parties tend to describe as investments rather than spending. Even as budget wars have
raged on Capitol Hill, there’s been a fairly broad consensus that funding research and
development is vital to American competitiveness . The Beltway seems to churn out an
inexhaustible supply of bipartisan reports proclaiming that bigger government
investments in science and technology today will pay economic dividends for taxpayers
down the road.
This week has been “tech week” at the White House, and President Trump has jumped onto the
rhetorical bandwagon, hailing the glories of innovation. “My administration is embracing a new
spirit of innovation that will make life better for all Americans,” he told a group of technology
leaders gathered in the Oval Office on Monday; he doubled down Thursday, promising another
group of new-economy executives that his government would “help unleash technological
breakthroughs that will transform our lives.”

But Trump’s 2018 budget goes the opposite direction: It proposes the deepest cuts in
innovation investments that any administration has ever proposed.
Not only does the Trump budget slash climate science and clean energy research
beloved by Trump’s critics, it whacks advanced manufacturing programs and fossil
energy research catering to Trump’s supporters, as well as basic science and medical
research beloved by almost everyone. It’s a powerful rejection of the innovation-
industrial complex , and even though Congress is likely to ignore most of it, a similarly
powerful reflection of Trump’s political war on Washington elites.
Overall, Trump’s budget cuts research and development spending by about 5 percent
from current levels, but that figure includes hefty increases for late-stage weapons development
at the Pentagon. It would roll back non-defense R&D by an unprecedented 19 percent, taking
the axe to the popular as well as the obscure. The National Institutes of Health would absorb a
21.5 percent hit, including major cuts in research on aging, cancer, infectious disease, mental
health, and drug abuse; NIH grant programs would have their stingiest award rates since 1970.
There would be even harsher cuts for the Agricultural Research Service, the National Institute of
Standards and Technology, NASA’s education funding, NOAA’s ocean research, and EPA’s
science office.
The Trump blueprint would also eliminate the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality,
which oversees studies of which medical treatments actually work; the U.S. Geological Survey’s
monitoring programs for volcanoes, earthquakes and the climate; and a popular Manufacturing
Extension Partnership that provided technical assistance for more than 25,000 companies last
year. And it would wipe out ARPA-E, the most futuristic agency in Washington, a cutting-edge
incubator for energy research modeled on the high-tech Pentagon unit that pioneered GPS and
the Internet.
Trump aides believe some federal investments in R&D have been duplicative or ineffective,
while others ought to be handled by the private sector. And they’re still proposing $150 billion in
R&D funding, which is considerably more than zero. But their main argument for spending less
on innovation is simply that America can’t afford to spend more. Trump’s Office of Management
and Budget director, Mick Mulvaney, is an ardent limited-government conservative, and the
budget he crafted for Trump reflects his belief that Washington spends way too much of your
money. Trump made it clear his top budget priorities are strengthening the military and securing
the border, while somehow reducing deficits without raising taxes or cutting Medicare or Social
Security for the elderly. Mulvaney had to shrink something—really, just about everything else—
to try to check all those boxes.
“We wanted more for defense and the border, so we had to offset those increases somewhere,”
one senior budget official explained. “We’re still making a big commitment to R&D. It’s just less
than other administrations might make.”
In fact, even within Trump’s top government priorities, like the military and the border,
innovation is getting a haircut. The American Association for the Advancement of Science
calculated that Trump’s budget would squeeze the Pentagon’s science and technology
spending by 5 percent, including an 18 percent cut for its “manufacturing innovation
institutes.” The Department of Homeland Security’s science and technology budget
would shrink by 20 percent, limiting research into cybersecurity, bioweapons defense,
and border technologies.
There’s a political logic to Trump’s innovation policy heresies. Two thirds of R&D spending goes
to blue states, and most of it tends to cluster in large cities and college towns rather than farm
country or the Rust Belt, one reason these issues have more resonance for cosmopolitan
technocrats than for Trump voters. President Obama talked about them incessantly, clamoring
for aggressive investments in innovation to help America “win the future,” but Trump has
attacked just about everything Obama was for, from health care reform to the Paris climate
agreement. On the campaign trail, he never emphasized winning the future, just winning, and he
never proposed any new innovation policies of note.
Trump did create a White House Office of American Innovation led by his son-in-law, Jared
Kushner, and at his meeting with tech leaders he vowed that the office would help upgrade the
federal government’s balky technology. But he did not suggest that it would help promote
innovation in the private sector; he suggested that was the private sector’s job. In fact, one of
the office’s main tasks will be shrinking and reorganizing the government, reflecting the belief of
Mulvaney and other movement conservatives in the administration that the best thing
government can do to spur innovation is to get out of the way of innovative businesses. In fact,
during last year’s crisis over the Zika virus, as public health experts were racing to study its link
to birth defects, Mulvaney asked a provocative question on Facebook: “Do we really need
government-funded research at all?”

Historically, though, the U.S. government has played a vital role in seeding and
developing technological advances ranging from supercomputing to hydraulic fracking,
advanced prosthetics to lactose-free milk, LED lighting to MRI testing. The Trump budget
represents an abrupt departure from this tradition, at a time when federal expenditures
on R&D have already drooped to their lowest level as a share of the economy since the
Russians launched Sputnik. This has innovation experts scratching their heads, since
Trump’s entire budget depends on yet another departure from budget tradition, a blithe
assumption of 3 percent annual growth. Mark Muro, policy director at the Brookings Institution’s
metropolitan studies program, says that with America’s workforce shrinking, the clearest
pathways to that kind of robust growth would be more immigration and more innovation—and
Trump has made it clear he doesn’t want more immigration. But he doesn’t seem to think Uncle
Sam can help make innovation happen, either.
“There’s no conception in this budget of any positive role for government,” Muro says.
“It’s totally out of step with everything we know about the innovation economy. I guess
you could say that’s an innovation.”
Democracy
 1NC—Trump x Democracy
Trump has taken myriad actions to undermine US democracy
Klaas 17—fellow in comparative politics at the London School of Economics (Brian, 3/10/17,
“How President Trump has already hurt American democracy — in just 50 days,”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/democracy-post/wp/2017/03/10/how-president-trump-
has-already-hurt-american-democracy-in-just-50-days/?utm_term=.c14bca8ee3b3, Accessed
7/27/17, HWilson)
Trump has governed in a
Today, March 10, is President Trump’s 50th day in office. Since his inauguration on Jan. 20,
way that poses a unique threat to the integrity of American democracy.

it’s a sober
Democracy is bigger than partisanship. Therefore, this is not a critique of Trump’s policy proposals. Rather,
assessment of American democracy at a pivotal moment — and a call for Americans of all political
stripes to press all politicians to agree, at minimum, on preserving the bedrock principles that make the United States a democracy.

The call is urgent. In just 50 days, Trump’s presidency has already threatened American democracy
in six fundamental ways:

1. Trump has attacked the integrity of voting , the foundation of all democratic systems .
Without any evidence, Trump has repeatedly claimed that millions of people voted illegally in
2016. This claim is not true . Every serious study that has assessed voter fraud, including studies
conducted by Republican presidents, has concluded that the scale of the problem is negligible.

Trump called for a major investigation into voter fraud — now

Nonetheless, on his sixth day in office,
largely forgotten by many Americans. Unfortunately, his assertion has not been forgotten by a large swath of Trump’s base. Tens
of millions likely now believe Trump’s claim — which will certainly prove an important “alternative
fact” when, in the future, attempts are inevitably made to make it harder for certain
Americans to vote.

2. After attacking the integrity of his own election, Trump has also undermined the credibility of his own
office . Democracy will not function if Americans cannot be sure that the president’s
claims are at least grounded in evidence-based reality . And yet, in just 50 days, Trump
has made at least 194 false or misleading claims — an average of about four daily. (March 1 was the only
day without one, so far.)

Recently, Trump’s early morning tweet-storm alleging that former president Barack Obama personally ordered a wiretap of Trump
Tower has not been backed up by a shred of evidence. Key Republican senators and representatives have expressed their
bafflement at the accusation. Yet there have been no consequences for the president baselessly accusing his predecessor of
criminal action. Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) went so far as to chide reporters for asking questions about the wiretap claim, saying, “I
think a lot of the things he says, I think you guys sometimes take literally.” How can democracy function when
people can’t take the president literally ?

3. Trump’s administration has repeatedly flouted ethics guidelines without

consequence . When Trump failed to discipline Kellyanne Conway for brazenly giving a
“commercial” for Ivanka Trump’s jewelry and clothing line, the Office of Government Ethics had to send
an extraordinary letter reminding Trump that ethics rules apply to the executive branch. Trump has also failed to
meaningfully separate himself from his business interests. Most recently, Trump received 38
lucrative trademarks from China, not just a likely violation of the Constitution’s
emoluments clause but also a benefit that will call into question whether Trump’s foreign
policy will pursue what is best for the American people or what is best for his profits.
That conflict of interest is precisely why democracies set ethics guidelines — and why it
threatens democracy to violate them.

4. Trump has attacked the independent judiciary . When U.S. District Judge James Robart defied
Trump’s travel ban, Trump called him a “ so-called judge ” and insinuated that he would lay blame for a
terrorist attack squarely at the feet of the judiciary. Presidents routinely object to individual court
decisions, but it threatens democracy to go one step further and demonize any judge
that dares cross the president. After all, the judiciary is charged with upholding the law and the Constitution — not
blindly affirming the president’s worldview.

5. Crucially, Trump has accelerated a long-term trend , prodding tens of millions of

Americans to further lose faith in basic institutions of American government. Any experts in
federal agencies are now the “deep state.” Trump’s team has begun suggesting that the nonpartisan, independent Congressional
Budget Office — a trusted authority for Democrats and Republicans since 1974 — is simply a group of hacks. There is virtually no
authority trusted by both Democrats and Republicans anymore. Instead, the opposing sides are all too inclined to view government
as captured by evil partisans rather than disagreeing patriots. Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) made this view explicit, recently calling for a
“purge” of leftists from government in an astonishingly totalitarian tweet. Public trust is part of the lifeblood of
democracy , and it is draining faster than ever .

6. Finally, Trump has attacked a cornerstone of every democracy : the free press . He has called
legitimate media organizations “fake news” no fewer than 22 times on Twitter in the first 50 days — and many more times in
speeches. Worse, Trump called the press the “enemy of the American People ,” language that echoes
Mao and Stalin rather than Ronald Reagan or John F. Kennedy.

Trump only views the press as a legitimate player in American democracy insofar as it is
willing to affirm his narrative . To Trump, negative polls are fake. Unfortunately, his attacks are working. A recent
Quinnipiac poll showed that 81 percent of Republicans agree that the media is “the enemy of the American people.” Eighty-six
percent of Republicans trust Trump to tell the truth rather than the media (up from 78 percent just two weeks earlier). Throughout
history, the blurring of the line between fact and fiction has been a critical precursor to the breakdown of democracy and the
creeping advance of authoritarianism.

Whether these six attacks are a deliberate long-term strategy to erode American
democracy, or simply a political ploy to poison the electorate’s view against any anyone that is willing to defy the president,
remains to be seen. Certainly, Trump is not fully to blame; he is capitalizing on long-term divisions
and a long-term erosion of American institutions. But he has accelerated those trends .
The Constitution and checks and balances are not magical guardians. Documents don’t save democracy — people do. American
democratic institutions are only as strong as those who fight for them in times of duress. This is one of those times, and this is just
the beginning. It will be a long fight. To win it, Democrats and Republicans must set aside policy divides and unite in the defense of
democracy.
 2NC—Trump x Democracy
He’s wrecked democracy both at home and abroad
Klaas 17—fellow in comparative politics at the London School of Economics (Brian, 4/28/17,
“The five ways President Trump has already damaged democracy at home and abroad,”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/democracy-post/wp/2017/04/28/the-five-ways-president-
trump-has-already-damaged-democracy-at-home-and-abroad/?utm_term=.0a9ecae7c5a0,
Accessed 7/27/17, HWilson)
In just 100 days, President Trump has damaged American democracy while
simultaneously accelerating democracy’s global decline .

No, Trump is not a dictator or a fascist, as some wrongly claimed. But he certainly has
authoritarian tendencies and a baffling admiration for despots . He has a penchant for
attacking democratic institutions and appears willing to sacrifice them in a heartbeat on the
altar of his ego. And he has spouted several dangerous lies that a sizable portion of his political
base unfortunately believes to be true. As a result, he has already managed to do major
damage to democracy at home and abroad in five important ways .

First , he has undercut the integrity of U.S. elections. Trump falsely claimed that millions
of people voted illegally last year. That’s not true. Every serious study into voter fraud has
concluded that it is a minuscule problem. North Carolina conducted a vote audit for 2016, and
found one case of in-person voter impersonation — out of millions of ballots cast. And yet tens
of millions of Americans now wrongly believe that millions voted illegally. That is a serious
challenge to public faith in the bedrock of American democracy.

Trump also actively solicited and took advantage of Russian meddling in U.S. elections .
He invited Russia to hack and publish Hillary Clinton’s emails. He mentioned WikiLeaks 164
times in the final month of the campaign (Trump’s CIA director subsequently labeled WikiLeaks
as a “hostile intelligence service“). The hacking of the Democratic National Committee was a
brazen cyberattack on U.S. democracy and yet Trump has consistently been an apologist
who plays down the hack rather than working to ensure it never happens again. (By the way,
there is still an active FBI investigation into whether he or his campaign colluded with Russia in
that attack).

Second , he has attacked democratic institutions such as the free press and the
independent judiciary . He has repeatedly dismissed credible, corroborated, truthful reporting
as “fake news.” But Trump has also maligned judges in highly personal and reckless ways
simply because they ruled against his administration. His White house claimed that some
judges (who were simply doing their job) provided a “gift to the criminal gang and cartel element
in our country.” He has called others “so-called judges” and claimed that it would be the fault of
the courts if a terrorist attacked occurred during his presidency. This incendiary language is
unacceptable and erodes public trust in checks and balances that are at the core of the
U.S. democratic system .
Third , he has brazenly violated basic standards of transparency and government
ethics . Democracy requires transparency . If citizens are not informed about the
workings of their government, they cannot hold it accountable.
Just take his continuing refusal to release his tax returns — something that has been done by
every presidential candidate since the 1970s. At first he used the extraordinarily flimsy excuse
of an audit, but now he has even abandoned that fig leaf. Until Trump issues his tax returns, we
don’t know whether he is governing for American interests or his bank account.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration has announced that it won’t release White House visitor
logs — so nobody can see who is coming and going to meet the president. Is there an endless
stream of lobbyists? Or perhaps some high-profile foreign agents, like the ones he previously
hired for his campaign? We have no clue, because Trump reversed an Obama-era policy to tell
the American people who is coming to the taxpayer-funded White House.

This lack of transparency also bleeds into ethics violations and conflicts of interest that
have gone unpunished — from using taxpayer dollars to promote Trump businesses to
currying favor with foreign leaders apparently to receive lucrative trademarks abroad.

Fourth , Trump has hurt democracy abroad by leaving pro-democracy reformers out in
the cold . When protesters took to the streets in Belarus and Russia demanding
democratic reforms, Trump said nothing . That was a strategic mistake. These were
protests in favor of democracy and against regimes that oppose the United States, so it
should have been a no-brainer. Instead, Trump stayed silent as protesters were beaten in
the streets. It was a missed opportunity and a gift to the forces that seek to undermine
democratic reform abroad .
Fifth , Trump has endorsed and applauded dictators and despots , giving awful rulers a
free pass to destroy democracy and violate human rights . He uncritically embraced
President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi of Egypt, a military dictator who routinely tortures dissidents. He
called to congratulate President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey on winning a rigged
referendum that dismantled democracy in a NATO member state. Those signals have
certainly not been lost on authoritarian rulers around the world who recognize that Trump does
not care about democracy or human rights abroad. As a result, a decade of decline for
democracy around the world will almost certainly accelerate .

Donald Trump is a unique threat to democracy in a way that we haven’t experienced before.
Initial fears may have been overblown, but it’s clear that he already is slowly but
meaningfully eroding democracy at home and abroad . We must be vigilant. There are
1,361 days left.

Damage will be deep and long-lasting

Klaas 17—fellow in comparative politics at the London School of Economics (Brian, 5/15/17,
“Can American democracy survive Donald Trump?,”
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2017/05/15/can-american-democracy-survive-trump-
column/101687476/, Accessed 7/27/17, HWilson)
In 2014, Turkey’s authoritarian president fired four prosecutors who were leading an investigation into an alleged corruption scandal
involving the president himself. The interference was blatant. The intent was clear. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan wanted the
corruption scandal to disappear. It was technically within his authority, but there was widespread outcry that the rule of law was
under attack. In response, Erdogan claimed he was the victim of a widespread conspiracy by his political rivals. Then, he
threatened his opponents.
And he got away with it.
It's hard not to see parallels with President Trump’s decision to fire former FBI Director James
Comey. In ousting the man leading the FBI investigation into Trump team ties and possible collusion with Russia, Trump
behaved like a strongman . The only open question is whether the democratic institutions of the United States will fight
back in a way they were unable to in Turkey.

There is reason to be hopeful. American democracy has robust institutions and the framers designed resilient checks and balances.
The Constitution provides an ingenious model that has survived every threat for 230 years. Any would-be despot or demagogue
faces long odds against it.

Yet Trump is deeply damaging American democracy as he tests its limits. That damage
will last well beyond his time in office and will be extremely difficult to repair . As with sand
castles, it’s far easier to destroy democracy than to build it . Trump’s abuses of power and
his administration’s assault on the truth are the latest waves of attack.
If lying were an Olympic sport, the White House would have won gold, silver and bronze this week. They tried to convince the
American people that Trump acted for noble reasons, unrelated to the Russia investigation. Vice President Pence, Sarah Huckabee
Sanders, and of course the Usain Bolt of “Alternative Facts” herself, Kellyanne Conway, all deceived the American people. They
aimed to show that there was no conflict of interest, no authoritarian effort to undermine an active and ongoing investigation into the
Trump team.

They failed, because it was a lie. And the person who “unmasked” the lie was none other than Trump. In saying he was thinking
about "this Russia thing" when he removed Comey, Trump fired the smoking gun while we all watched on national television. It was
like the lawyer giving his closing arguments only to have the defendant stand up and say “Actually, I did it. And when you’re a star,
they let you do it.”

A day later, Trump took to Twitter for an early morning meltdown. Two authoritarian outbursts stood out.

First, Trump floated the idea of no longer holding press briefings. That would be a tremendous attack on the principle of open and
transparent government that is at the heart of democracy. Consent of the governed is impossible if the White House won’t tell them
what they are doing. That has already happened with the obscuring of White House visitor logs, but the end of press briefings would
be catastrophically opaque. Second, Trump openly threatened the FBI director he had just fired. This amounts to witness
intimidation, as Comey is likely to be called on to testify during the ongoing investigations.

We must accept a deeply shocking and unfortunate truth: the

president of the United States is a man who
not only admires despots, but mimics them. He aspires to their strength. He loathes constraints
placed upon him by democratic institutions like the press (“enemy of the people”);
Congress (“obstructionists!”); and the courts (“so-called" judges that he blamed for any future terror attack).
Those constraints deter his worst authoritarian impulses. That’s why they are under constant attack from Trump’s White House.

Now, more democracies are

In the past, democracies used to die with a bang — a coup d’état, a war or a revolution.
dying slow deaths. In places like Hungary or the Philippines, they wither, as a power-hungry president gets away with one
authoritarian abuse after another. Opposition gets bullied into submission. The goalposts of what is deemed acceptable within the
over time, democracy
democracy shift. Previously unthinkable transgressions become routine (sound familiar?). And
hollows out to just a shell of its former self — as it did in Erdogan’s Turkey.
The response to Comey’s firing is a crucial moment for American democracy. If Trump gets away with it free from serious
consequences, as Erdogan did, then it will encourage further authoritarian abuses. Just as worrisome, it will also chill future
opposition to Trump, as he successfully sends the message that anyone who challenges him will be fired. Rule of law will weaken.
The beacon of American democracy will dim even further.
 2NC—Trump x Democracy Promotion
Democracy promotion won’t be credible or successful under Trump
Gvosdev, Ph.D., 17—Senior Fellow of Strategic Studies at The Nixon Center, Professor of
National Security Studies and Captain Jerome E. Levy Chair in Economic Geography and
National Security @ the Naval War College (Nicholas, 2/21/17, “Democracy Promotion and a
Trump Administration,” http://www.fpri.org/article/2017/02/19086/, Accessed 7/27/17, HWilson)

What happens to the democracy promotion enterprise in a Trump administration? The

President’s comments that under his watch the United States will not be seeking to
impose its system or values on other countries suggests that the spread and
strengthening of democratic systems around the world will not be a top priority and in
fact may fall off the list of national security interests of the United States entirely. Some of
the early selections for key national security positions–drawing from the business and military
communities–also create the impression that the new team will prioritize stability and
security over encouraging democratic change and support for civil and political rights.

Even before the 2016 election, however, it was clear that the democracy promotion efforts
of the United States were running out of steam . The promise of an Arab Spring has given
way to a new winter of authoritarianism . There has been significant backsliding in other
parts of the world, even in parts of Central Europe (such as in Poland and Hungary ). As
a now very prescient discussion at the Carnegie Council last fall pointed out, there are
significant stress points throughout all of the advanced industrial democracies of the
world. What is clear is that the optimism of the immediate post-Cold War period–that
democratic liberalism was inexorably on the march and that its achievements could not be
reversed–needs to be replaced by a new realism about the limits and sustainability of
the democracy promotion enterprise .

He makes promoting democratic values impossible

Wilkinson 17—executive editor of the Week, politics and U.S. domestic policy writer for
Bloomberg View (Francis, 3/3/17, “Trump Could Undermine Democracy Outside the U.S.,”
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-03-03/trump-could-undermine-democracy-
outside-the-u-s, Accessed 7/27/17, HWilson)
President Donald Trump's
approach to democracy, conflicted at best, is settling into a familiar
groove. Attacks on the news media, the scapegoating of vulnerable minorities and
periodic assaults on the concept of truth, as well as on specific facts, have become
hallmarks of his administration.
At the same time, democracy has gotten a few licks in as well. Trump obediently retreated from his Muslim ban
at the direction of the courts, and his White House has been leaky, a boon to the free flow of information.
But it
remains unclear whether the Republican Congress and other key U.S. institutions
have the resiliency and will to repel Trump's attacks, including the continuing
stonewalling on we-don't-know-what-exactly regarding Russia. (Trump's sudden aura of competence
after his speech to Congress was undermined a day later by a well-timed leak on how Attorney General Jeff Sessions appeared to
mislead the Senate under oath about his Russia contacts.)

The effect of Trump on societies with weaker democratic institutions is also unknown.
But the very existence of a would-be authoritarian thrashing around the American
government, forever threatening to break free of institutional constraints, sends a jarring
message around the world .
The New York Times published a story on Wednesday about "anti-Soros" forces in Europe being emboldened by Trump's election.
Substitute the word "democracy" for the name of the financier and open-society enthusiast George Soros, and the story still holds.

In Soros's native Hungary, the Trumpian prime minister, Viktor Orban, has for years been undermining democratic norms and
institutions, badgering opponents and bludgeoning the independence of the news media. He is using this hour of authoritarian
ascendance to step up his attacks on groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch as "foreign agents financed
by foreign money."

Last week in Hungary, an Amnesty spokesman told EUObserver, "The government accused Amnesty of producing fake reports and
of inciting migrants to break laws."

"Fake" reports and law-breaking immigrants. There's something vaguely familiar about those themes, isn't there? In a speech earlier
this week, Orban said Hungary's economic success depends on the nation's "ethnic homogeneity."

Hungary's tide of "illiberal democracy" long preceded Trump's election. Orban's most recent reign
atop Hungarian politics -- he's been there before -- began in 2010. "What we've seen is a weakening of
democratic institutions around that part of the world for maybe a decade now ," said Jan
Surotchak, Europe director of the International Republican Institute, a Washington-based NGO that promotes democracy worldwide.

Kenneth Wollack, president of the National Democratic Institute, a kind of Washington doppelganger of Surotchak's IRI, has been in
the business of promoting democracy worldwide for more than three decades. 1 He isn't convinced that this U.S. president
represents a democratic departure. "I think it's way too early for people to be making judgments," Wollack said in a telephone
interview.

Wollack points out that concerns about President George W. Bush's commitment to global democracy movements -- as a candidate
Bush had disparaged "nation-building" -- were quickly rendered moot after Bush launched full-scale wars under the banner of
democracy.

Trump's evolution could similarly surprise. Democracy promotion, Wollack said, is now deeply woven into the fabric of international
relations, especially for the U.S. "Every U.S. embassy around the world has democracy as part of its agenda," he said.

Incubating and sustaining democratic institutions is a tough task , however. Democracy

doesn't always take. And it doesn't always thrive even when it does take. Hungary is one
of many examples of democratic backsliding. Certainly the regime of Russia's Vladimir Putin qualifies.
Nowhere is democracy so firmly rooted as in the U.S., which has been a wellspring for democratic impulses around the world.
Perhaps the confidence of Wollack and others is well-founded. But Trump represents a concussive break from
a democratic pattern that has not only flourished in the U.S. but reverberated , to the benefit of
Americans and others, around the world .

questions about the

U.S. commitment to foreign engagement can vary with the demands and resources of the era. But
U.S.'s commitment to its own democracy are something strange and new . Democrats
around the world can't help but take note that the pillar of democracy has gone wobbly .
Aspiring dictators have no doubt noticed, too.
Human Rights
 1NC—Trump x HR
Trump ensures international human rights law follow-through is impossible
and US commitment isn’t credible
Wuerth 16—Helen Strong Curry Professor of International Law at Vanderbilt Law School
(Ingrid, 11/14/16, “A Global Downturn in Human Rights: Implications for International Law,”
https://www.lawfareblog.com/international-law-age-trump-post-human-rights-agenda, Accessed
7/21/17, HWilson)

The Trump presidency will have a significant impact on international law , including a potential
withdrawal from or re-negotiation of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and the Iran nuclear deal. Although those two
examples would pit the United States against much of the rest of the world, in other respects Trump’s election is consistent with
ongoing global changes. To take a well-known example, Trump’s opposition to NAFTA appears to align with world-wide populism
and hostility to trade agreements, as illustrated by Brexit.

Trump’s election is also consistent with other trends in international law. As I argued before the election, we are in the
midst of a world-wide decline in international human rights and a related rise in power by China and
Russia over the content of international law, a theme discussed last week by Anne Peters here. Liberal intervention on behalf of
human rights—opposed by China and Russia—would almost certainly have received a boost from a Hillary Clinton administration.
Although it is difficult to predict what direction the new administration will take, it is likely that the U.S. will expend
little energy on promoting the international legal protection of human rights (putting aside
here international humanitarian law, the law of armed conflict, and other related areas of international law).

We are, in other words, probably already in the “ post-human rights era ” of international law,
meaning that the enforcement and expansion of human rights through binding
international law will decline . Fortunately, thanks in part to the historic successes of the human rights movement,
there are many other ways to advance the cause of human rights, including regional human rights institutions, soft international
Promoting civil
norms (such as the historic Helsinki Accords), and domestic or transnational political reform and activism.
liberties and human rights at home and abroad should be an important objective in the
coming years, all the more so with Trump as President, but perhaps not through the
enforcement of binding international law .
 2NC—Trump x HR
Trump presidency makes HR leadership impossible
Brannen 17—national security reporter and a nonresident senior fellow at the Brent
Scowcroft Center on International Security at the Atlantic Council (Kate, 4/7/17, “UNDER
TRUMP, U.S. IS NO LONGER A CHAMPION OF HUMAN RIGHTS,”
http://www.newsweek.com/under-trump-us-no-longer-champion-human-rights-579028,
Accessed 7/21/17, HWilson)
“Human rights are at a nadir in Egypt,” wrote Human Rights Watch on the eve of President Donald Trump’s Monday meeting with
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi at the White House.

But el-Sissi’s strongman rule, which began with a coup in 2013, is a cause for admiration not concern for the new American
president, and their visit together is meant to “reboot” the U.S.-Egypt relationship.

Trump’s welcoming of el-Sissi with open arms follows last week’s news that the State
Department planned to support the sale of F-16 fighter jets to Bahrain without requiring
the country to improve its human rights record as the Obama administration had done.

These decisions are just the latest in a series of moves that has everyone from human
rights advocates to Republican senators worried . Last week, the U.S. Ambassador to the
U.N. Nikki Haley called the U.N. Human Rights Council “so corrupt ” without offering any
evidence.
The Trump administration didn’t attend recent hearings of the Inter-American Commission on
Human Rights, saying the topics being discussed were related to matters currently in litigation, a claim that advocates said
wasn’t credible. Meanwhile, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson chose not to personally unveil the State
Department’s annual report on human rights across the globe, as his predecessors have typically
done.

In February, Politico reported that the Trump administration was considering pulling the United
States out of the U.N. Human Rights Council, partly because it sees the body as overly
critical of Israel.
During his Senate confirmation hearing Tillerson’s responses, especially on Saudi Arabia and the
Philippines, also raised red flags.
Then there’s Trump’s personal admiration for strongmen in addition to el-Sissi, like
Putin and Duterte .
Are all of the signals alarming? Not quite. In its statement on the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the State
Department included a continued commitment to human rights standards, stating: “The promotion of human rights and fundamental
freedoms, as embodied in the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man and the Inter-American Democratic Charter, is
a cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy.”

Haley slammed Russia and China when they opposed a Security Council resolution to impose sanctions for Syria’s use of chemical
weapons. At his confirmation hearing, Tillerson did make statements like: “Our moral light must not go out if we are to remain an
agent of freedom for mankind. Supporting human rights in our foreign policy is a key component of clarifying to a watching world
what America stands for.”

And the U.S. hasn’t left the U.N. Human Rights Council, at least not yet.

Trump officials have clearly given verbal support to international human rights, but is that commitment anything more than lip
service? If words spoke louder than actions, Trump’s record might be viewed more favorably.
For those keeping score, the
list of things the Trump administration has done in its first few months in
office to threaten human rights at home and abroad is a long one . Check out Columbia Law
School’s Trump Human Rights tracker for more.

are we to make of the Trump administration’s attitude toward

Taking all of this into account, what
international human rights ? Is all of this concern exaggerated or is it time to panic? To find out, I asked some
of the top human rights lawyers , experts and advocates in the field today. Here’s what they
had to say:

Kenneth Roth , executive director of Human Rights Watch

So far we’ve
seen no principled commitment to promoting human rights . We’ve heard broad
pledges of support, but they have been applied only for traditional adversaries or when
ignoring a problem would be too damaging even for the Trump administration’s credibility.

Most of the time, when any competing interest has been at stake, human rights have been jettisoned .

David Kaye,
U.N. special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to
freedom of opinion and expression

I don’t know if the sky is falling, but in specific areas, I believe there is the potential for real regression in the
U.S. commitment to rights and to the institutions that support the victims of abuse
worldwide.

Of course, theadministration is seeking to intimidate the press (so far unsuccessfully, by and large) and is taking
specific steps to undermine access to information , as we see with the limited press availabilities at State and
the imminent arrival of a Fox journalist as spokesperson.

Nikki Haley’s swipe at the Human Rights Council shows a total lack of awareness of the range of things that happen in that forum,
even if it could genuinely use some reform. And then at the state level, we see draconian proposals to undermine the right to
protest. Does this mean the sky is falling?

I don’t know, but it certainly reflects and implements a posture of disdain for the rules that
govern democratic societies .

Pablo De
Greiff, U.N. special rapporteur on the promotion of truth, justice, reparation and
guarantees of non-recurrence
the fact
In some ways, it’s too early to tell what the final position of the Trump administration will be regarding human rights. But
that the executive branch of a country, which thinks of itself as a stalwart supporter of human rights, is so
ambiguous about rights is in itself a cause for concern .
It is worth remembering too that U.S. self perception has not always matched reality as the treatment of prisoners in Abu Ghraib, the
human rights
detentions without charges at Guantanamo, and the torture of detainees in the rendition program revealed. Still,
and the international architecture that sustains them does deserve much better , even at the
rhetorical level.

As with so much else lately,

human rights are spoken of in transactional terms. Rights and justice,
however, are not akin to goods to be traded . As expressions of values, they are supposed to provide the
framework within which fair transactions between countries, peoples, individuals, can take place.

Juan E. Mendez, former U.N. special rapporteur on torture (2010-2016)

Of course, every day we will have something else to add to this list. The accusations
by the Ambassador to the
U.N. against the Human Rights Council, instead of attempting to correct obvious deficiencies, are meant to
weaken or destroy the U.N.’s human rights machinery of treaty bodies and special procedures, and
leave them at the mercy of member states with appalling human rights records , such as
Saudi Arabia, which the U.S. government refuses to criticize.

These developments are about human rights concerns as integral to U.S. foreign policy . But for such
a policy to be effective—or even to any good in the world—it cannot be disassociated from the
U.S. government’s own practices that violate human rights , because promotion and
defense of human rights abroad demands, first and foremost, consistency and credibility .

In that regard, the [draft] Executive Orders allowing for more detainees to be brought to
Guantanamo and to allow the CIA to operate black sites abroad are worrisome.
More specifically regarding torture, I see as positive features that Trump’s own Cabinet members have said that waterboarding and
other techniques do not work and are counterproductive. Hopefully, Trump’s own words to the contrary will be yet another example
of irresponsible bluster. Also, Congress has now outlawed any form of torture or ill treatment.

And finally, even if torture were to be brought back covertly or clandestinely, I am confident that the public will know it instantly and
will react with formidable challenges to it. Reaction by the courts and by civil society to the immigration bans show that such
backward steps towards illegal and immoral actions will not stand.

Sarah Knuckey,
director of the Human Rights Clinic, and the faculty co-director of the
Human Rights Institute at Columbia Law School

The Trump administration’s actions demonstrate disdain for human rights across the civil,
political, social and economic rights spectrum. In just two months, Trump ’s administration has
already taken numerous actions that violate , undermine , or seriously risk harming
human rights around the world .

His administration undermined women’s rights by reinstating the “global gag” rule, which
blocks funding for international NGOs providing abortion services overseas. His administration undermined
indigenous rights and risked the right to water by advancing the construction of the
Dakota Access and Keystone pipelines.
Privacy rights were harmed when he took action to exclude non-US citizens from agency privacy policies. The Muslim Bans
violated the right to non-discrimination.
A wide range of other actions–related to transgender students, voter ID laws, migrants
without documentation, transparency requirements for mining companies, as well as
arms sales to Bahrain, undoing efforts to fight climate change, inviting an anti-LGBT hate
group to the U.N., failing to show up at the Inter-American Commission on Human
Rights—all harm the protection and advancement of human rights .

Giannini , co-director of Harvard Law School’s Human Rights Program and its
Tyler
International Human Rights Clinic

Human rights and advocating for their protection is all the more important right now when the U.S. government will not
be a leader on this front .
Human rights groups know very well what it is like to work without a government that is
friendly to human rights. That is too often the norm and usually at the heart of their work.
It should not be a time to panic, but instead a time when human rights work is going to be even more relevant and needed.

Silk , director of Orville H. Schell Jr. Center for International Human Rights at Yale
James
Law School

It would be dangerously negligent not to see this as an uncertain time for human rights
and not to be especially vigilant. The Administration has not only shown no commitment to
international law , international human rights or international cooperation , but its acts and
rhetoric have shown a determination to neglect and even to affirmatively damage the most
vulnerable , whether racial minorities, people of diverse religious beliefs, children, the disabled, or refugees.
 2NC—Other Countries
Tons of other countries are an alt cause
Wuerth 16—Helen Strong Curry Professor of International Law at Vanderbilt Law School
(Ingrid, 6/27/16, “A Global Downturn in Human Rights: Implications for International Law,”
https://www.lawfareblog.com/global-downturn-human-rights-implications-international-law,
Accessed 7/21/17, HWilson)

There is a downturn in civil and political rights in many of the world’s largest and most
geopolitically significant countries , especially Russia, China, and Turkey, but also other
countries such as Venezuela. These developments have broad potential consequences
for international law . In particular, they have implications for: the success of regional human
rights treaties and courts; the “right to democracy”; the meaning of sovereignty; and the overall effectiveness
of international law.
Beginning with China, the government has centralized military, political, and party power around President Xi Jinping.
Authorities have launched a nationwide crackdown on the legal community detaining of
lawyers and law associates on charges ranging from “picking quarrels and provoking
trouble” to “inciting subversion of state power.” Arbitrary arrest, reprisals, detention and
torture are becoming more common, especially for human rights activists, NGOs,
journalists, religious leaders, and former political prisoners and their family members.
Authorities maintain control of print, broadcast, and electronic media and regularly used
them to propagate government views and CCP ideology . For example, the Education Minister
Yuan Guiren has banned universities from teaching materials that “promote Western values”
or “attack and slander against the Party.” Restrictions on online communications have
grown. President Xi has demanded “ ideological conformity ” and in doing so has made
China more repressive than at any time since Tiananmen. One observer summarizes the
recent changes as not merely a fluctuation or cyclical change but instead “ fundamental shift in ideological
and organizational direction that is beginning to influence both China’s reform agenda and its foreign relations.”
The picture is similar in
Turkey and Russia. In all three countries, power is being centralized around a
strong leader and there is decrease in any outlets for dissenting views critical of the
government. Turkey is in a “ slide toward authoritarianism ” under the leadership of Recep
Tayyip Erdogan, and has used anti-terrorism laws to target journalists and academics. Security and military
operations against Kurds in southern Turkey have intensified, as have threats against
pro-Kurdish politicians and activities. Human rights in Turkey have become a flashpoint
for tension between European leaders and Turkey, especially in the wake of an E.U. – Turkey deal on Syrian
migrants, which initially appeared to show that European leaders were willing to overlook

Turkish human rights violations in return for Turkey’s assistance with migration issues.
In Russia, too, President Putin has centralized his own power and repressed dissenting
speech from activists, journalists, NGOs and others. One observer has described the
“ illusion of democracy ” in Russia as: “Television channels air newscasts with fancy graphics but follow
scripts approved by the Kremlin. Elections are held, but candidates out of favor with the Kremlin
are often knocked off the ballot. Courts conduct trials, but the state almost never loses. Parliament meets but
only to rubber-stamp Kremlin legislation.”
I consider four implications of these developments for international law.

First, the
slide toward authoritarianism in Turkey and Russia calls into question the success of
the European Convention and Court of Human Rights for countries that lack close
cultural and economic ties as well as a shared overall foreign policy agenda. The point is not so
much about specific conflicts between the Court and these two countries – although there are certainly those. Turkey and Russia
usually top of the list of violators of European Convention. And in December 2015, Russia passed legislation allowing the
Constitutional Court to disregard ECHR judgments if they are inconsistent with the Russian Constitution. To be sure, the United
Kingdom has also had its share of conflicts with the ECHR. And although different in effect than the Russian law, the German
Constitutional Court has maintained the power to review some aspects of ECHR decisions for their consistency with German
constitutional law. The point is more that preventing states from sliding into authoritarianism – and thereby ensuring “greater unity”
and “peace” within Europe -- was precisely what the more ambitious understanding of Europe and European human rights
institutions were about. Whatever the benefits of broader inclusion, eventually they begin to eat away at the core aims of the project.
Note that Britain’s vote to leave the European Union has no immediate impact on its membership in the Council of Europe and the
ECHR. They have 47 member states. The European Union has 28. However, questions of European integration are certainly on the
table right now as a result of the Brexit vote.

Second, developments in all three countries are also part of a broader downturn in
democracy around the world. The decline in democracy undercuts – at least as descriptive matter -

- the purported “ human right to democracy” in international law . The latest democratic casualty is
Venezuela, where the government is cracking down on hungry looters and has been curtailing civil rights generally. The Democratic
Charter of the Organization of American States was adopted in 2001, and it calls for the suspension of countries in which the
democratic order is interrupted. The OAS has been slow to respond to events in Venezuela, however. Latin American diplomats are
concerned the forceful action against Venezuela would not restore democracy. But they also are hesitant to interfere in the internal
affairs of other states out of a concern for their sovereignty. That brings me to to third effect on international law.

Third, the general shift away from democracy and civil liberties also undercuts other
doctrinal developments in international law. The project of internationalizing human
rights has become a project about transforming the very idea of “sovereignty,” which
Professor Louis Henkin famously called “That ‘S’ Word.” The claim that sovereignty has been transformed into a doctrine (mostly)
about responsibility towards individuals and their well-being has become something like an article of faith in the human rights
and China have not accepted that view – and the positions of Russia
movement. But Russia
and China look less and less like a temporary bump on the road toward global human
rights and more and more like long-term world-views that are arguably shared by a growing
number of countries , perhaps increasingly even the OAS. The doctrinal implications for international
law are substantial . I am working on a longer article on this topic, so stay tuned.
Fourth, the crackdown on dissenting viewpoints complicates efforts to enforce
international law . The Russian annexation of Crimea is a good example, as is freedom of
navigation in the South China Sea. Without opening up the debate about the Kosovo precedent or about territorial
claims in the South China Sea, the point here is that when domestic debate about those issues is shut
down, the position of Western governments is less clear to citizens living in Russia and China. As a
result, it becomes more costly and more difficult to remedy violations of international law. Despite Western sanctions in response to
the annexation of Crimea, for example, Russians have an overwhelmingly positive view of President Putin, especially his ability to
handle foreign policy. They also have an increasingly unfavorable view of the West. Indeed, as the European Parliament reports,
sanctions are seen by Russians as evidence that Western countries want to “weaken and humiliate” Russia. Ideally, sanctions result
in domestic political pressures on a government to change its policies, but a state controlled media makes this very difficult.

The global downturn in democracy and human rights may unfortunately be more than a
cyclical development. If so, the effects are likely to be felt across international law .
Warming
 1NC—Trump x Warming
Aff gets circumvented and overwhelmed by Trump
Roberts 11/14/16 (David, and Brad Plumber, “Most people are wildly underestimating what
Trump’s win will mean for the environment,”http://www.vox.com/science-and-
health/2016/11/14/13582562/trump-gop-climate-environmental-policy)//cmr
Unified Republican control of the federal government over the next two years augurs a sea change in US
environmental policy like nothing since the late 1960s and ’70s, when America’s landmark environmental laws were first passed.

If Donald Trump and the GOP actually follow through on what they’ve promised, this time around will be a lurch in the opposite direction. Federal climate policy will all but
disappear participation in international environmental or climate treaties will end;
;

pollution regulations will be reversed, frozen or not enforced ; clean energy research, in place,

development, and deployment assistance will decline; protections for sensitive areas
and ecosystems will be lifted; federal leasing of fossil fuels will expand and accelerate;
new Supreme Court appointees will crack down on EPA discretion.

these moves will be easy for Trump and Republicans

Some of to pull off in Congress . Others will be harder: Senate Democrats and

there’s no escaping the fact that the GOP is in a

environmental groups in court will fight them tooth and nail, as they did during the Reagan and Bush years. But

strong position to demolish and reshape the regime of environmental protection that has
been built up over the past 50 years.
Never mind Trump — the GOP Congress has a radical environmental agenda ready to go

Donald Trump’s promise to dismantle President Obama’s climate regulations have gotten plenty of attention. But it is only the tip of the iceberg, a fraction of what Republicans in Congress have been pushing for over the years.

Obama has amassed a considerable record on green policy. His agencies have implemented a range of new standards and regulations on everything f rom appliances to cars to power plants, and he has stimulated the growth of several clean energy industries with
loans and grants.

The GOP wants to undo all that. But it wants much more as well.

Few people understand just how radical the GOP environmental agenda is , but it’s not a secret. While Obama has

been in office, Republicans in Congress have floated myriad budget bills that reveal their legislative priorities. Many of those bills were blocked by the Senate or White House, so they rarely got attention.

House Republican
You can see a partial list of past proposed cutting EPA funding by fully one-third bills here. In 2013, they . GOP

churned out bill after bill to cut research funding for renewable energy by 50 percent,
committees

block rules on coal pollution, block rules on oil spills, block rules on pesticide spraying,
accelerate oil and gas drilling permits on public land , prohibit funding for creation or expansion of wildlife refuges, cut funding for the Advanced Technology
Vehicle Manufacturing Loan Program, and ... well, there are 61 items on the list.

The Senate GOP floated a bill to cut the EPA’s budget

isn’t far behind: In 2015, they by 9 percent and block rules on
everything from ground-level ozone pollution to climate change. There may be a few more moderate GOP senators who think global
warming is a problem, like Susan Collins (R-ME). But they do not dominate the caucus: Fossil-fuel enthusiasts like Mitch McConnell and James Inhofe do.

There’s no indication Trump will buck his party on these issues His ignorance on policy
that .

is near total and he’s shown no desire or willingness to learn anything about it. So in practice,

environmental policy under Trump is likely to be run by the GOP apparatus Republican —

leaders in Congress and the industry-friendly figures he appoints to his administration .

He’s already tapped climate denier Myron Ebell to lead the EPA and is considering transition at

Sarah Palin ( yes , really ) to head the Department of the Interior.

There’s little reason to think that Trump’s environmental and climate policy will be some unpredictable, idiosyncratic anomal y like Trump himself. It will likely be standard, mainstream GOP policy, which is far more radical than anything he campaigned on.

The biggest thing slowing the GOP right now is the Senate filibuster

It won’t be easy for the Trump administration to roll back many of the EPA’s existing regulations on its own. As Jody Freeman, an Obama administration veteran, explains in detail here, rewriting existing regulations through th e executive branch is an arduous
process, one that’s almost certain to get bogged down in court by green groups skilled at litigation. Similar lawsuits ultimately stymied George W. Bush in the 2000s, and he only managed to rescind a fraction of Bill Clinton’s environmental rules.

So the biggest question is whether Republicans in Congress can revamp the laws that underpin and guide the EPA. And here, the only thing stopping them is the Senate.

There will be 47 Democrats in the Senate in 2017. If 41 of them can stick together, they can filibuster Republican environmental legislation. (Ending a filibuster requires a cloture vote by a supermajority of 60 senators.)
Will Republican leaders let that happen? Or will they get rid of the filibuster? They would need only 50 votes to do so. Jonathan Chait thinks the filibuster is toast. Jonathan Bernstein thinks there’s a chance it could survive, since there are some old-school
institutionalists on the right, like Jeff Flake and John McCain, who prefer to keep it.

If the filibuster survives, Republicans will be significantly constrained in what they can do, though they still have options. They could, for instance, try to slip environmental measures that affect the federal budget into budget reconciliation bills — those only need 51
votes to pass. (Paul Ryan suggested that strategy in a presser in January.)

Here are 11 top environmental priorities for Trump and a GOP Congress

1) Kill Obama’s C lean P ower P lan

The GOP is united in its hatred nearly of Obama’s signature climate policy, the Clean Power Plan. There’s only one Republican senator left, Susan Collins of Maine, who has ever defended it.

Killing CPP will be a top priority

or degrading the .

In 2007’s Massachusetts v. EPA, the Supreme Court ruled that greenhouse gases could, if judged dangerous to human health or welfare, be considered pollutants subject to the Clean Air Act. Shortly thereafter, EPA’s scientists judged them dangerous to both.

That means EPA must, by law, act to reduce greenhouse gases. The Obama administration followed through on this by enacting fu el economy standards for cars and light trucks (see below). It also set up the Clean Power Plan, which would reduce carbon dioxide
emissions from existing power plants.

The simplest way for the GOP to destroy the CPP would be to take away the EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gases at all. It’s a simple bill: “The Clean Air Act shall not apply to greenhouse gases.” The CPP would be nuked, and no president could ever again
try to do what Obama did. (The House passed just such a bill in 2011.)

Trump would resort to executive branch

If Senate Democrats can filibuster this measure — and this is likely to be a central fight — then the administration have to other

strategies to weaken the rule. It could refuse to defend it in court. It could deny EPA the
funds necessary to enforce it. It could start another round of rulemaking to substantially
weaken it lawsuits would drag on for years and years
. Those moves would inevitably prompt lawsuits, but those .

One way or another, the CPP is in the crosshairs.

2) Withdraw from Paris the climate agreement

Back in 2015, the world’s countries got together in Paris and agreed to a landmark climate deal. Every country would voluntarily pledge to restrain its greenhouse gas emissions and meet regularly at the United Nations to ratchet up ambitions over time — all in the
hopes of keeping global warming below the “dangerous” level of 2°C.

Now Trump plans to pull the United States out of the deal . His advisers are debating precisely how to do this, but there’s little
stopping them. Trump can refuse to follow through on Obama’s pledge of cutting emissions 26 percent below 2005 levels by 2025. He can refuse to attend UN
meetings , or refuse to chip in promised funds to help poor countries decarbonize .
The real question is how other countries will react. For now, the Chinese government is warning Trump not to blow up the deal and insisting that China will lead global efforts to curtail emissions in America’s absence. Still, there’s a real risk that other countries could
lose interest in climate policy if the world’s wealthiest superpower bows out. David Victor, an expert on global climate policy at University of California, San Diego, explains how here.

Even under Paris, the world was struggling to stay below the 2°C global warming mark and had little margin for error. Now, with Trump’s recalcitrance, that goal has likely drifted out of reach.

3) Dismantle US environmental rules around coal power

Coal has always been the dirtiest, most carbon-intensive of fuels. Over the past eight years, Obama’s EPA has slowly ratcheted up environmental
restrictions on air and water pollution from coal plants and mining activities.

Trump plans to ratchet them back down . Here’s his website: “We will end the war on coal, and rescind the coal mining lease moratorium ... and conduct a top-down review of all anti-coal
regulations issued by the Obama Administration.”

Trump his administration has also vowed to scale back an EPA

’s vow to “end the war on coal” will start by killing the Clean Power Plan. But

rule to limit ground-level ozone pollution, as well as an Interior Department rule to protect streams from coal-mining waste. As Freeman explains, it will be hard for Trump to rescind
regulations that are already finalized without Congress, but he can certainly bog down implementation.

the federal government has leased land to coal

As for coal mining: About 40 percent of US coal supply comes from public land. For years, that

companies for below market value, with no competitive bidding It amounts to a huge almost .

subsidy to coal companies . In January, the Obama implemented a moratorium on new coal
administration n immediate

leases Trump would end that moratorium

, as the program was examined to make sure it was fair to taxpayers and ecologically sensitive. .

The consultancy group Wood Mackenzie has a long list of other ideas Trump might pursue to aid the coal industry. Note that many of these steps would have limited impact: Coal plants have already made costly investments to curb mercury pollution, so scaling
back that Obama rule wouldn’t do much. And Trump won’t save the coal industry from its biggest threat: the flood of cheap shale gas from fracking. There’s also little chance that mining jobs will make a major comeback, since automation has been the biggest driver
of job losses there.

Coal production, consumption, and employment are all headed down, and likely to keep heading down regardless of what Trump does.

Still, Trump’s moves will , at the margins, make coal the industry more profitable . Note that Peabody Coal, the world’s largest coal company, saw its share price soar after Trump’s

election.
4) Weaken fuel economy standards for cars and light trucks

The Clean Power Plan isn’t Obama’s only big climate policy. Ever since 2010, the Obama administration has been ratcheting up fuel economy standards for new cars and light trucks in an effort to cut carbon emissions and reduce US oil dependence. These CAFE
standards are set to rise from their current 35 miles per gallon to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025.

But those numbers aren’t set in stone. The CAFE rules come up for a scheduled review in 2018 . Automakers are now lobbying for Trump to relax the standards,

Trump has plenty of leeway to weaken

purportedly because sales of fuel-efficient vehicles have been sluggish due to low gasoline prices. While hasn’t commented on this, he

these rules .

The one twist here is that due to a longstanding quirk of the Clean Air Act, California can threaten to create its own stricter vehicle standards if it's not happy with what the federal government is doing (and other states can join in). Automakers l oathe the idea of
multiple sets of vehicle standards around the country, which may prevent Trump from weakening the rules too much.

Republicans in Congress have been talking about getting rid of fuel economy
Meanwhile, some

standards altogether — through legislation. “You can make a good intellectual case to repeal CAFE and let the market handle it,” said Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) at a House Energy Committee hearing in September. “If Mr.
Trump is president … we’ll be back.”

5) Open up new public lands to oil and gas drilling

America has about 279 million acres of public land and waters with potential oil and gas. The government allows companies to drill on a little under half that acreage. But both Congress and the Obama administration have put the rest off limits over the years, often
to protect fragile ecosystems or endangered species.

Trump has promised to open it all up . He often touts a study looking at the impact of allowing drilling on all federal lands currently off limits. Some of that T rump could do through executive
actions, like lifting the Obama-era restrictions around oil drilling in Alaska or the Arctic Ocean or even parts of the Atlantic Coast. Opening up other regions, like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, would require Congress.

Even if Trump does this, it’s still unclear how much drilling would actually occur. Oil prices are fairly low right now, which could make it risky for companies to drill in the most challenging areas, like Alaska’s Arctic seas (where Shell tried and failed to find oil). And a
few states, like Florida, might put up a fight along their coasts.

It also doesn’t sound like Trump is going to be particularly finicky about oil spill protections, given that he’s pledged to “streamline the permitting process for all energy projects.” In case you’re curious, this is a good look at what an ecological nightmare an oil spill in
the frozen Arctic would be.

6) Scale back federal support for wind and solar power

Greens like to tell themselves that renewable energy is already cheap enough to stand on its own, without policy supports, but for a variety of reasons, that isn’t really true. Wind and solar in the US have long relied on federal tax credits — the investment tax credit
(ITC) for solar and the production tax credit (PTC) for wind.

The PTC has lapsed and been extended many times. This is what that inconsistency does to growth in wind power:

Both credits were widely expected to lapse last year, but in a somewhat miraculous last-minute deal in December, they were extended for five years, over which time they will slowly phase out.

This would have served as a kind of bridge for renewables, carrying them to the point when the Clean Power Plan kicks in. Now the CPP is likely toast. And the big question is whether Republicans in Congress might scale back the solar and wind credits.

oil baron
There’s some reason to think they are safe for now. In Politico, an unnamed “major Trump financial contributor who said he is a member of the transition team” assures us that the ITC and PTC “will remain in place.” Then again, Harold

Hamm, a key Trump energy adviser and rumored contender for energy secretary,
recently said of solar and wind, “None of it should be subsidized, none of it. If it makes it
in the market, fine.” So who knows?

Trump has
Meanwhile, also talked about zeroing out all federal research and development for clean
energy, which would include work the Department of Energy is doing on solar, wind, nuclear power, efficiency, electric cars, batteries, and more, including the cutting-edge research being done at ARPA-E.

In the past, House Republicans have shown an eagerness to scale back this research (though not, oddly enough, R&D

this could throttle the next generation of low-carbon tech

for fossil fuels). A move like nology.

7) Dramatically limit the EPA’s ability to regulate in the future

environmental policy progress in the US over the last 40 years has come through
Most of the

“green drift,” i.e., through agencies like the EPA adapting and expanding America’s
foundational green laws to address new problems
— the Clean Air and Clean Water acts, the Endangered Species Act, the National Environmental Policy Act — .

This occurs because those laws were written to be incredibly open-ended . They were designed to be flexible, to apply to
whatever new threats agency scientists uncovered. The Clean Air Act tells the EPA to update its rules over time to reflect the best available science about the health impacts of pollution; the EPA does just that.

conservatives
This process has always driven think the flexibility encourages executive overreach
crazy. In part, they ; in part,

they just hate environmental regulations.

REINS Act
They have a way to put a stop to green drift. It’s called the (Regulations From the Executive in Need of Scrutiny). It would mandate that every
“economically significant” federal regulation be affirmatively
— any rule that has an annual impact of $100 million or more —
approved by the House and Senate and be signed by the president. If a regulation is not
voted on within 70 days it dies legislative working of being sent to Congress, it is “tabled.” That is, .

This law would radically constrain EPA’s ability to issue new environmental regulations
as situations and science evolved (to say nothing of what it would do to other federal agencies). It would be a fundamental change in the administrative state and a radical increase in Congress’s
power relative to the president.

It would slow progress on all fronts , but on environmental policy, where there is such unified Republican antipathy, it would almost certainly result in a total freeze — no new substantial

regulations as long as Republicans control any of the three branches of government.

The GOP House passed REINS several times during the Obama years, only to see it stripped out or blocked in the Senate. With a GOP Senate and Trump as president, there’s a very real chance it could become law.

8) Reverse the White House’s climate guidance to federal agencies

In August, the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) issued a somewhat obscure but extremely important guidance to other federal agencies. All agencies, when considering any new pr oject, have to do a National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)
review to assess the project’s environmental impacts. CEQ’s guidance instructs agencies to consider direct and indirect climate impacts as part of those NEPA reviews.

And it clarifies that agencies should not ignore climate impacts merely because a single project might be a small fraction of global emissions — a position many agencies had been taking. The guidance says, effectively, that climate should matter in every federal
decision. (More on the details of the guidance here.)

It has its inconsistencies, and did not carry the force of law, but the guidance was an important signal, the kind of background nudge that shifts the direction of the ship of state.

Trump has not specifically said he will rescind the guidance, but if he puts a clever industry lobbyist in charge of CEQ, it’s tough to see how it will survive. If it is rescinded, federal agencies are likely to go back to ignoring climate impacts.

9) Make the Supreme Court more hostile to environmental regulation

Conservatives, states, and businesses have sued against virtually every environmental regulation in the past 40 years. Very often, those suits have failed. Since the Supreme Court’s Chevron decision in 1984, the Court has given executive branch agencies wide
latitude in how they write and implement rules to carry out congressional intent.

But that’s changing. The conservatives on the Court have been seeking to rein in executive agencies
lately , especially after Obama, who built a progressive policy legacy almost entirely out of executive actions.

Trump will get to select at least one, and possibly up to four, Supreme Court justices , who are

For every justice he picks, the Court as a whole is likely to become more hostile
likely to be to Scalia’s right.

to executive action, meaning that lawsuits against environmental reg ulation s are likely
to find a much more amenable venue in coming years.

10) Pack the executive branch with industry-friendly appointments

One thing that’s become very clear over the past few decades: When it comes to the
federal government, personnel is policy The people who staff and head executive .

branch agencies make daily decisions Those agency decisions

a stream of , the vast majority of which never rise to the level of public attention.

pile up over time They can lead to steady, effective government or to incompetence and
.

corruption .

Bush
George W. stocked his government with industry executives, lobbyists, and cronies.
legendarily

Under his Interior Department, officials used to trade favors to the oil and gas industry
for hookers and blow. No seriously Reports on the agency submitted to Congress
( , .)

“portray a dysfunctional organization that has been riddled with conflicts of interest,
unprofessional behavior and a free-for-all atmosphere for much of the Bush
administration’s watch.”
Under Bush’s EPA administrator Johnson “suppress[ed] staff recommendations
, meanwhile, Stephen

on pesticides, mercury, lead paint, smog, and global warming.” In Bush’s White House Council on Environmental Quality, James

Connaughton denied global warming and defended the air quality in Lower Manhattan just after

Cooney
9/11. Philip was busted doctoring scientific reports on climate change and left the
, also at CEQ,

administration to lobby for Exxon. FEMA had Michael Brown. The list could go on.
 crude collusion between industry and government
The kind of that characterized the Bush administration looks,
from all indications, to be Trump’s model.
His pick to lead his EPA transition is Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Myron

mostly famous for his sheer persistence in denying climate change (he’s been at it since 2000). He recently said that “Congress
should prohibit any funding for the Paris Climate Treaty, the Green Climate Fund, and the underlying UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.”

There are several more industry lobbyists on Trump’s energy and environment team ; see Robin

Bravender at ClimateWire for more.

11) A flurry of anti-EPA budget bills that will emerge every year, without end

The above list is by no means exhaustive . Trump has also indicated that he would like to repeal the EPA’s Waters of the United States rule, which would limit the number of rivers,

The oil and gas industry is already eager to kill Obama-era rules to
streams, and lakes that fall under the Clean Water Act.

plug leaks of methane, from pipelines and wells a potent greenhouse gas, .

Republicans have a whole flurry of anti-EPA bills they’re eager to push forward,
Meanwhile, in the House,

and they will try to attach these “riders” to must-pass budget and spending bills at every
turn.
In 2015, there were riders to prevent the fed from updating its flood-map plans to eral government

incorporate climate change forecasts. Riders to block the EPA from even researching the
environmental impacts of fracking. Riders to block the Department Riders to halt upgrades to wastewater management systems.

of Energy’s efforts to improve climate change modeling and forecasts. Riders to hinder citizens from suing the federal
government if it falls down on the job of enforcing the Clean Water Act. You can check out the full smorgasbord here.

Resistance will be fierce , but it lacks leverage

Climate and environmental groups will not simply sit back and watch this happen. “If Donald Trump thinks he can launch a big polluter assault on our air, waters, wildlife and lands,” said Rhea Suh, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, in a statement,
“we’ll build a wall of opposition to stop him.”

In politics, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. An assault on environmental laws and regulations will spark fierce, organized resistance, just as it did during the Bush years. Many of the internal squabbles within the climate community — carbon tax or
cap and trade? research or deployment? — will rapidly come to seem quaint. The stakes will be higher, the sides clearer.

But there’s no getting around it: The victories will be fewer. Even during the Bush years, the environmental community had more to work with, including an occasionally Democratic Senate and a few old-fashioned Republicans who cared about local pollution. (Oh,
and the filibuster.)

Now it has none of those. The GOP controls the House , the Senate , the presidency , the Supreme Court , soon , and

enough, lower courts. If Republicans kill the filibuster, they will be virtually unrestrained
at the federal level The 2018 Senate map is
, limited only by their ability to overcome infighting and internal disagreement (which, admittedly, is no small thing).

incredibly favorable to Republicans, and right now they look poised to strengthen their
majority in the midterm s.

The GOP also dominates at the state level, controlling 68 out of 99 state legislative chambers (both chambers in 33 states) and 32 governors’ mansions.

What’s more, the GOP has become much more radicalized since the Bush years , and the country much more partisan. “Negative

There is virtually no
partisanship” — hatred of the other side — is increasingly the prime motive force in US politics, with less and less willingness on either side to compromise or even negotiate.

Republican support left for environmental or climate policy, other than to dismantle it.

While there is always some chance Trump could lunge off in an unexpected direction (he is Trump, after all), the overwhelming likelihood is that GOP operatives
and industry lobbyists will control energy and environmental policy for the next four years. What lies ahead now is triage, a long

string of terrible choices, desperate battles, and wrenching losses, the consequences of which could reverberate for millenni a.
 2NC—Trump x Warming
He’ll abandon funding obligations which independently ensures defections
and no modeling
Victor 11/11/16 – Professor at University of Cal San Diego (David, chairman of the
Global Agenda Council on Governance for Sustainability at the World Economic Forum, co-
chair of the Brookings Initiative on Energy & Climate, “What a Trump Win Means For the Global
Climate Fight,”
http://e360.yale.edu/feature/what_donald_trump_win_means_for_global_climate_fight/3053/)//c
mr

The most harmful impacts of the Trump presidency on climate coop eration will come in two other
funding . In Paris, nations reconfirmed a pledge to provide $100 billion in new
ways. First is
money to help developing countries engage with climate policy, with a large fraction
earmarked for the least developed countries that are the most exposed to the harms of
unchecked warming. Nobody really knows what counts as new money, but as a sign of good faith, the developed
nations put up $10 billion to get started — one-third from the U.S., and one-third from
China. America has not yet paid all of its commitment, and it seems clear that Trump will
not . For the developing countries, this will be a sign that America is unreliable and that
the benefits of staying engaged in climate negotiations are fleeting . While these countries are
generally not large greenhouse gas emitters, having their support is essential to making formal decisions —
including adoption of the Paris agreement.

Abandonment of review process splinters global action

Victor 11/11/16 – Professor at University of Cal San Diego (David, chairman of the
Global Agenda Council on Governance for Sustainability at the World Economic Forum, co-
chair of the Brookings Initiative on Energy & Climate, “What a Trump Win Means For the Global
Climate Fight,”
http://e360.yale.edu/feature/what_donald_trump_win_means_for_global_climate_fight/3053/)//c
mr

The other big harm that Trump will cause almost immediately to the Paris process will
come when the U.S. no longer lead s in the long, difficult process of putting the accord
into effect . The Paris agreement is what’s known as “pledge and review.” Countries make pledges to cut emissions and

adopt various policies, and then every few years those efforts are reviewed. Success hinges on review , and until
Tuesday it was assumed that the U.S. would help show the world how good review
systems actually work. Indeed, the U.S., along with China, had already done that in volunteering itself for peer review of
its fossil fuel subsidy reform policies.

Without leadership, the review process will probably follow narrow and bureaucratic UN
rules, which are the only rules countries can agree upon right now, so formal review will
be impotent .
The ability to get countries to cut emissions will suffer as the fragile coalition that
created Paris splinters and as the process loses its biggest champion for turning the
promise of the Paris agreement into a functioning diplomatic machinery. My guess is that this
won’t kill the Paris process, but it will severely weaken it.

Trump revokes the CPP, stacks federal agencies with oil executives, and
restores fossil fuel production
Lavelle 11/9/16 (Marianne, energy editor for National Geographic Digital Media, has spent
more than two decades covering environment, business, climate and policy in Washington,
D.C., “In Trump, U.S. Puts a Climate Denier in Its Highest Office and All Climate Change Action
in Limbo,” https://insideclimatenews.org/news/09112016/trump-us-president-climate-change-
denier)//cmr

Trump has signaled plans to populate his cabinet with oil industry executives and allies ,
to eliminate the EPA, and to cut all federal spending on the United Nations climate
process. Trump has claimed that he will save $100 billion over eight years, which appears to
be based on a plan to end federal funding for solar and wind energy, efficiency, batteries,
clean cars and climate science, wrote Joe Romm, a former Energy Department official and
founder of the Center for American Progress' Climate Progress blog.

Basically, Trump has promised an America-first, drill-baby-drill energy policy . He has

promised unfettered production of coal, oil and natural gas and to "bring the coal
industry back 100 percent."
Trump said he will rescind any regulations that unduly burden energy development,
including the C lean P ower P lan, which, if it survives legal challenges, was to have been the
cornerstone of Obama's climate action legacy and the main policy for realizing the nation's Paris
goals. He also said he would abolish the Waters of the U.S. rule, which the fracking industry in
North Dakota has opposed. Trump said he would urge TransCanada to renew its permit
application for the Keystone XL pipeline. Within his first 100 days , Trump said he would lift
moratoriums on fossil fuel production in federal areas, which could clear the way to new
coal leasing in the West as well as coastal oil drilling, not only in the Arctic but also the
Atlantic and potentially, the Pacific.
"Western Energy Alliance is overjoyed that we will not be experiencing a third term of the
Obama Administration," the industry group said in a statement this morning. "President-elect
Trump understands that overregulation is killing American opportunity, and his plans to spur
development of domestic shale oil and natural gas will create hundreds of thousands of blue-
collar jobs while delivering widespread prosperity and low energy prices for consumers."
Jeff Holmstead, a lawyer who represents coal-burning utilities and who spent four years as an
assistant administrator in the EPA under President George W. Bush, said that if the courts don't
kill the Clean Power Plan, Trump will have a number of other options. "I think it's certain the
C lean P ower P lan will be revoked," he said this morning. "The only question is how."
***NEG Updates – Civic Education
AT ADV Judicial Independence
 1NC—Judicial Independence Now
Trump not threatening judicial independence
Sherman 17—AP writer (Mark, 2/9/17, “Roberts, judiciary's leader, silent on Trump criticism,”
https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2017-02-09/judges-response-to-trump-criticism-
silence, Accessed 7/27/17, HWilson)
President Donald Trump's unusually personal criticismof federal judges has drawn rebukes from
many quarters, including from Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch, but not much from the judges
themselves.
Roberts has
The leader of the federal judiciary, Chief Justice John Roberts, has himself been a target of Trump's attacks. But
refused to comment on Trump's remarks, including recent criticism of judges who are dealing with the
president's executive order on immigration.

And that's not likely to change, even if the tweeter in chief keeps up his attacks on
judges. Bolstered by lifetime tenure, independent judges should not respond to criticism, no matter how
harsh or that its source is the president, said a former judge, a law school dean and a constitutional
law professor.
Judges "should basically give the tweets the attention they deserve, which means they should be ignored. This is basically a childish
tantrum from someone who didn't get his way. And the judiciary should go about its business and decide cases, including cases
involving him," said Vanderbilt University law professor Suzanna Sherry.

Trump's style may be different and his language more coarse, but the comments themselves are not
the "threat to judicial independence that some commentators have made them out to be ,"
said University of Pennsylvania law school dean Theodore Ruger .

Former U.S. District Judge Paul Cassell said judges

would find themselves in unfamiliar territory "if
they start critiquing the Twitter feed of the president."
 2NC—Judicial Independence Now

Trump won’t overthrow it

Memoli 17—writer for the LA Times (Michael, 2/7/17, “White House: Trump doesn't question
judicial independence,” http://www.latimes.com/politics/washington/la-na-essential-washington-
updates-white-house-trump-doesn-t-question-1486497973-htmlstory.html, Accessed 7/27/17,
HWilson)
The White House again insisted Tuesday that the
courts ultimately will find that President Trump's
travel ban is constitutional, making its case hours before a hearing that could determine whether the administration can
resume enforcement of the directive.

Press Secretary Sean Spicer

defended what he said was the president's "immediate and decisive
action" to suspend travel from seven mostly Muslim nations "to make sure that this country and our people are
protected."

"That's what he's talking about, is making sure that we don't have any regret ... that we haven't done something to protect people,"
Spicer said, citing existing law that grants a president broad authority to suspend immigration in the event of a potential threat.

Spicer reminded reporters at his daily briefing that the three-judge panel on the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals would not issue a
decision on whether the president's executive order conflicts with other constitutional protections, but rather whether to strike down a
lower court ruling temporarily suspending the enforcement of it.

Spicer noted that administration had been successful in a similar effort in a Boston case.

"There, once we were able to explain our position, the court lifted the order and held that the president’s executive order could take
effect," he said. "We look forward to a final decision on the merits of this soon."

Spicer also denied that Trump was seeking to undermine judicial independence when
the president tweeted over the weekend about the legal proceedings. Trump referred at one point
to the "so-called judge" who had granted the restraining order at issue in today's 9th Circuit hearing.

" There's no question the president respects the judicial branch and its ruling ," Spicer said.
But, "I don't think there's any other way that you can interpret that, that the president has the discretion to do what's necessary to
keep this country safe."
 AT: China Modelling BS
China not modelling—

China’s top judge has rejected judicial independence

Hornby 17—writer for Financial Times (Lucy, 1/17/17, “China’s top judge denounces judicial
independence ,” https://www.ft.com/content/60dddd46-dc74-11e6-9d7c-be108f1c1dce,
Accessed 7/27/17, HWilson)

China’s top judge has fired a warning shot at judicial reformers by formally
acknowledging that China’s court system is not independent of the Communist Party
and rejecting attempts to make it so.

Zhou Qiang, Supreme People’s Court president, denounced the idea of judicial
independence over the weekend, an about-face that jeopardises far-ranging efforts to create
impartial legal institutions in China.

“ Bareyour swords towards false western ideals like judicial independence ,” Mr Zhou told
a gathering of higher court officials. Only two months before, he had said that party committees should not
interfere in the judicial process.

China’s constitution says the people’s courts have the right to adjudicate, but the Chinese Communist party is formally above the
constitution under the country’s Leninist system of governance established in the 1950s.

”Thisstatement is the most enormous ideological setback for decades of halting, uneven
progress toward the creation of a professional, impartial judiciary,” said Jerome Cohen, an 86-year
old American lawyer who has spent most of his career promoting legal exchanges between the US and China. “It has already
provoked some of China’s most admirable legal scholars to speak out in defiance, and I fear not only for their academic careers but
also for their personal safety.”

Mr Zhou’s declaration is seen by some analysts as a response to the recently concluded

investigation of the Supreme People’s Court by China’s anti-corruption watchdog, which
Chinese president Xi Jinping has used as his primary tool for bringing fellow party members,
bureaucrats and the military to heel.

Supported by Xi, who’s implementing crackdown at home

Bloomberg 17—(Bloomberg News, 1/19/17, “China’s Xi, Preaching Openness Abroad,
Clamps Down at Home,” https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-19/china-s-xi-
preaching-openness-abroad-expands-clampdown-at-home, Accessed 7/27/17, HWilson)
As Chinese President Xi Jinping preached “openness” and “economic liberalization” to global elites in
Davos this week, his government was warning against “false Western ideas” at home.

Xi’s speech at the World Economic Forum came days after the country’s top judge ordered the
courts to “boldly whip out the sword” against judicial independence and constitutional
democracy. The ruling Communist Party, meanwhile, issued a directive ordering five
ministries to put political loyalty first when selecting senior officials and it decided to revise
textbooks to bolster “patriotic education.”

The moves show Xi’s efforts to avoid a dual challenge that Chinese leaders have long described as “anxiety
within, trouble without.” Not only does the president face a potentially more confrontational U.S. under Donald Trump,
including the threat of a damaging trade war, he’s seeking to minimize domestic risks ahead of a twice-
a-decade party leadership reshuffle in the last quarter of the year.
“The contrast between Xi acting flexible abroad and being iron-fisted at home is a reflection of a sense of anxiety or even crisis,"
said Zhang Lifan, a Beijing-based historian who previously was a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. “He
needs to buy more time and win more room for himself. He needs more foreign investment and less hostility. The party at
this moment cannot really afford external conflicts.”
Even as Xi used his Davos speech to preach greater economic ties with the U.S. and other trading partners, China is showing a
harder line on Japan and other long-time rivals. Earlier this month the Ministry of Education ordered textbooks at all levels to extend
by six years the “Chinese War Against Japanese Aggression,” emphasizing that hostilities stretched back to 1931, rather than 1937
previously.

Japan, along with South Korea and Taiwan, scrambled jets this month after Chinese military excursions near their territory. Beijing’s
sole aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, completed its first-ever circuit of Taiwan, which China considers a province, after three weeks of
live-fire drills that took it into the disputed South China Sea.

Such displays help build a sense of national unity ahead of the party congress. The event will provide Xi his best chance to remake
his top echelons and influence his succession after 2022, when his tenure would be expected to end.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said in an article posted on the ministry’s website Thursday that the country’s diplomacy would
be guided this year by “strategic composure and a proactive approach in a changing and chaotic world” to “cultivate a steady and
favorable external environment for the 19th Party Congress.”

At home, the country’s top judge enlisted the courts to battle any attempts to subvert state power, split the country or endanger
national security. Supreme People’s Court President Zhou Qiang warned senior judges at a Jan. 14 gathering in Beijing “absolutely
not to fall into the trap of false Western ideas” such as judicial independence, separation of powers and constitutionalism.

‘More Threatening’

Zhou stressed the importance of political ideology in judicial officials’ job appraisals. He
called for a legal interpretation for cases about the reputation of historic figures
venerated by the party. Jerome Cohen, a New York University professor who specializes in Chinese
law, said Zhou’s speech was “ much more threatening” to judicial officials than previous
orders to toe the party line.
 AT: CCP Collapse
No regime collapse or instability – this answers all their warrants
Chen 15 (Dingding, Assistant Professor, Government and Public Administration – University
of Macau, Non-Resident Fellow – Global Public Policy Institute, “Sorry, America: China Is NOT
Going to Collapse”, 3/10, http://nationalinterest.org/feature/sorry-america-china-not-going-
collapse-12389?page=3)
Shambaugh
In a recent piece published in the Wall Street Journal, The Coming Chinese Crackup, China scholar and George Washington University professor David

boldly predicts that the Communist Party of China (CCP)’s endgame has begun. Although, in the past, such brave
predictions of the CCP’s collapse have been proven wrong , the fact that such a prediction has come from Shambaugh, a leading
China expert, makes it all the more interesting. In a report from China’s Foreign Affairs University, Shambaugh was named the second most influential China expert in the
United States. As such, Chinese scholars and officials will take his opinions seriously.

Shambaugh listed five indicators that point to China’s coming collapse. However, a closer analysis of these
Professor

reveals that Shambaugh’s conclusion is based on incorrect facts and flawed

five points

interpretations of China’s recent socioeconomic and political developments.

First, he asserts that wealthy Chinese are fleeing China. Actually, this is only half true. While a large number of
wealthy Chinese have migrated to countries like Canada, most of them still do business in China, meaning that they are still have a

positive outlook on China’s future. In any case, a good number of these wealthy people move their assets out of
China to avoid corruption charges, which has nothing to do with China’s future development.
Moreover, in recent years an increasing number of overseas students have chosen to come back to
China because they have confidence in China’s future.

The second indicator is increasing politicalrepression and CCP insecurity . Actually, not much has changed in this area, compared to
the Hu Jintao presidency. The party insecurity thesis is an old argument and one can say that the CCP has always been insecure, especially since 1989. So what is so special
about the present that signals the Party’s endgame? Indeed, one can argue that the Party’s endgame is soon, no matter what it does. If the Party opens up, then civil society will
rise up and overthrow the regime; if the Party continues to be repressive, it will breed insecurity, which will cause its collapse.

Third, Shambaugh argues that Chinese officials come across as wooden and bored. But many
Chinese officials were always like that, so there is nothing new in this observation. It is definitely

not something that can support Shambaugh’s “China collapsing” argument.

Fourth, Shambaugh points out there is massive corruption in China. Shambaugh is right about the seriousness of the
corruption issue in China. But he neglects to mention that the anti-corruption campaign has been very

successful so far, and the main reason for this is because it has the public's support . Corrupt officials know this too, which is
why they are unable to fight back.

Shambaugh’s final argument is that the Chinese economy is slowing. Arguably, this fifth factor is the only new point in
Shambaugh’s argument, as the previous four factors have been features of China’s political culture for quite some time. As such, this argument deserves serious consideration.

Shambaugh seems to believe that a slowing economy will lead to widespread grievances, which in turn will lead to civil unrest. This will lead to the collapse of the regime.
Arguably, this is what fueled the Arab Spring and may be applied to China today.

However, there are several problems with this argument.

First, China’s economic slowdown is not an economic meltdown . It is true that compared to China’s past sensational growth
rate, a six to seven percent growth rate is a slowdown. But which other major economy can grow at this rate? China’s economic growth must be

viewed in a relative sense .

Second, would a slowdown, or even a massive financial meltdown lead to widespread disruption in Chinese society? The answer actually depends on how the effects of the
slowdown are distributed throughout society. As Confucius pointed out long ago, Chinese people tend to get riled up more about inequality than scarcity(患均不患寡), which is

just as true today. Most ordinary Chinese hate a high level of inequality, especially if such inequality is a result of corruption rather than legitimate hard work. While a
severe crisis would lead to a massive loss of jobs and lower incomes, if the U.S. economy
survived the 2008 global financial crisis, there is no reason to believe the Chinese economy cannot
overcome a similar one.
even if a severe economic crisis hits China and causes greater social grievances, why does this mean that social
Third,

unrest will automatically lead to an uprising against the regime? In other words, this claim is premised on the belief
that the Chinese government’s legitimacy relies solely on economic performance.

Unfortunately this assumption , though widely held among scholars, is no longer true . Economic growth is certainly important for
most Chinese people, but education, the environment, corruption, and legal justice matter just as much as
growth . As long as the Chinese government seriously tackles problems in those areas, support for the
CCP will remain high . This explains why the Xi administration has initiated bold reforms in all these areas.
even if there is political unrest will it necessarily topple the regime? This depends on the balance
Finally,

of power between the government and the dissenters. Where is the political opposition in China today? Does the political opposition enjoy the
widespread support of ordinary Chinese people? Is there any leader who might want to play the role of
Gorbachev? None of these factors exist in China.

in order to make the argument that an economic slowdown would lead to regime change, one
In sum,

would have to make the argument that all of the above factors would come into play. Yet, Shambaugh’s
argument does not demonstrate this. Indeed, a slowing economy is actually bringing several benefits to
China. A slower but stable growth rate would mean less pollution, fewer land-grabbing incidents, less
corruption, less energy consumption, and lower socioeconomic expectations, all of which lead to reduced
social tensions in China, decreasing the possibility of a regime collapse.
Implicit in Shambaugh's argument is the claim that China and the CCP will collapse unless they adopt Western-style liberal democracy. But he never attempts to answer a
simple question: is Western-style liberal democracy what most ordinary Chinese people want?

As Orville Schell and John Delury point out, wealth and power are the two things that most Chinese people have pursued throughout the last century. Today, with China’s rising
power and influence, international respect can be added to this duo.

Do the Chinese also desire liberty, democracy, human rights, and so on? Of course they do. My own research, which will be presented in a forthcoming article based on survey
data, shows that even among the most liberal Chinese, the desire for liberty and democracy quickly weakens as long as the Chinese government does a good job of tackling
corruption, environmental pollution, and inequality. Democracy is seen as a means, rather than as an end.

Chinese culture still favors authoritarianism even as people also

Research done by late professor Shi Tianjian also shows that

desire democracy. Through this context, we can understand that Xi Jinping has become so popular among the Chinese
masses because of his bold reform measures, which range from soccer-reform to overhauling state-owned enterprises. Even in the area of
political reform, Xi is proceeding steadily as consultative democratic mechanisms will soon be implemented at various governmental levels. Thus, it is no exaggeration to say

that Xi has been the most creative leader in the last three decades. If anything, the level of support for the CCP is higher now than
it was in the last decade. Ignoring this reality seriously misreads Chinese politics today.
Then, why do so many Western analysts not see this reality? What do Shambaugh’s article and similar writings reflect about the mentality of some Western thinkers and
analysts?

Perhaps implicit in such arguments is the collective worry or fear that China will continue to become stronger, more prosperous, and more assertive in international affairs. The
West has not prepared for a possibility where it is no longer the dominant force in the world. After the Cold War, many Western democracies have adopted the triumphal “End of
History” thesis.

However, now that a strong and authoritarian China has emerged, one not compliant with the standard “liberal democracy model” advocated by the West, it is seen as a threat.
The “China threat” narrative is understandable, as people tend to fear something they do not understand or that looks different. And China today is a great “other,” but because

A strong China causes cognitive dissonance among many

it is strong, it is more threatening than a weak “other.”

Western analysts because according to their theories, an authoritarian China should be weak. This
explains the selective reading by Western scholars of China’s political reality.
Therefore, Shambaugh’s argument is seriously flawed due to its problematic logic. However, this does not mean
that there is no merit at all in his piece.

For one, Shambaugh rightly reminds us that China’s political system can be quite unstable despite the appearance of stability on the surface and efforts at reform. China’s
political system does need to be more open, more inclusive, and more democratic; and it will someday. The ultimate outcome of Xi’s ongoing reforms remains to be seen.

all existing indicators point to the development of a stronger and more effective
Nonetheless,

system of governance within China. Instead of a quick collapse, a mighty, confident, assertive, and authoritarian China will
be around for quite a while. As such, discussion about China should take this reality into account, rather than imagining the victory of the West’s vision for
China, however uncomfortable this may be.

No alternative, Party adaptation, new reforms, and public popularity—

empirically proven
Heath 15 – Timothy Heath, Senior Defense and International Analyst – RAND Corporation,
3/13/’15, “No, China’s Not About to Collapse”, http://thediplomat.com/2015/03/no-chinas-not-
about-to-collapse/
The CCP’s liabilities are well known. These include an antiquated political identity, cumbersome
ideology, and widespread disenchantment with Marxism among the public (and among more
than a few party members). CCP-led government has failed to provide adequate services, ensure rule of law, and has long tolerated
corruption, malfeasance, and widening inequality. Many of these vulnerabilities have persisted for years, and some have worsened
over time. The party’s advantages are less often discussed , but these bear reviewing if one is to evaluate
the viability of CCP rule. One of the most overlooked, but important, assets is a lack of any
credible alternative. The party’s repressive politics prevent the formation of potential
candidates, so the alternative to CCP rule for now is anarchy. For a country still traumatized by its
historic experience with national breakdown, this grants the party no small advantage. To truly imperil its authority,
the CCP would need to behave in so damaging a manner as to make the certainty of
political chaos and economic collapse preferable to the continuation of CCP rule. A party that
attempted to return to extreme Mao-era policies such as the catastrophic Great Leap Forward could perhaps meet that threshold.
about the current administration policy
But despite the numerous superficial comparisons in Western media, little
agenda resembles classic Maoism.. The second major political advantage lies in
improvements to the party’s effectiveness in recent years. In a major paradigm shift, the CCP redefined itself as
a “governing party” whose primary responsibility rests in addressing the myriad economic, political, cultural, ecological, and social
welfare demands of the people. Ithas carried out ideological and political reforms to improve its
competence and effectiveness accordingly. The Xi administration has refined, but upheld, the focus on
increasing the nation’s standard of living and realizing national revitalization, objectives embodied in the vision of the
“Chinese dream.” Although the party has rightly come in for criticism for moving slowly and inadequately on these issues, the
policy agenda nevertheless appears to resonate with the majority of Chinese citizens. Independent
polls consistently show that the party has in recent years enjoyed surprisingly strong public
support. When weighing the party’s political liabilities against its assets, therefore, the evidence suggests that the
CCP faces little danger of imminent collapse . Improvements to its cohesion, competence, and
responsiveness, combined with a policy agenda that resonates with most Chinese and the lack of a compelling alternative outweigh
The party’s overall political stability throughout the 2000s, despite
the persistent political liabilities.
massive political unrest generated by breakneck economic growth, underscores this point.
The Insecure CCP If the party does indeed a measure of political support and security, why does it behave in so insecure a
manner? This is perhaps the most puzzling aspect of CCP behavior today and a major driver of speculation about the possibilities of
political exhaustion and collapse. There is no question that China is experiencing tumult of a degree
unusual even for a country habituated to pervasive discontent. Amid the unrelenting anti-corruption drive, officials throughout the
country appear to be operating in an atmosphere of pervasive fear and distrust. The intensifying political crackdown against critics,
liberal thinkers, and supposedly pernicious, malignant Western influences evoke the paranoid witch-hunts of the Mao era. The
oppressive atmosphere and political insecurity (not to mention choking pollution and problems such as toxic water and food) have
motivated an astonishing number of China’s elite to seek a way out of the country. While it
is tempting to read such
behavior as symptomatic of a desperate regime fending off the inevitable, there are reasons to
doubt such an interpretation. For one, signs of systemic breakdown are hard to find . There
is little evidence of the open political warfare that has typified previous periods of political weakness and
disarray. For now, at least, the central leadership appears united behind Xi’s policy agenda. The economy
continues to grow, with PRC officials anticipating an annual rate at a slowing, but still healthy, 7 percent. Government
policy and operations continue without the kinds of abnormal interruptions or breakdowns that one
would expect of a nation in serious crisis. A more plausible reading is that China’s leadership is determined to do
whatever it takes to achieve national development and establish the conditions for long-term rule. The CCP
aims to do this primarily by undertaking political reforms to improve the effectiveness and competence
of government administration and by overseeing the sustained growth that can enable a steady increase in the
standard of living. These objectives are so important to the party’s long-term survival that the Xi administration has shown a
willingness to crush whomever gets in the way, regardless of political party affiliation. The severity of the myriad challenges
impeding the realization of these policy objectives deserves emphasis. The old export- and investment-driven model of growth that
powered China’s rise for three decades has exhausted itself. Rebalancing the economy to accommodate a greater role for
consumer-driven growth remains a politically contentious process that has historically proven extremely difficult and destabilizing for
any country. China also continues to face persistent problems of pollution, injustice, corruption, adverse demographics, and other
difficulties. Party leaders increasingly recognize that progress on any single issue depends on progress on all issues. A more stable
model of economic growth depends on a greater reliance on markets, law-abiding government, and the spending power of educated
consumers who will expect more of government. Improvements to the quality of government services, meanwhile, depend in part on
access to resources that can only come from sustained growth. Nor can China’s leaders focus exclusively on domestic policy to
address these issues. Deep integration with the global economy means domestic growth and stability depends in part on the
safeguarding of distant developmental interests and a restructuring of the Asia-Pacific region’s political economy. The
centralization of power and focus on structural, top-down reforms that have defined the
policy agenda of the Xi administration reflect a realistic recognition of the complexity and magnitude of the
problems confronting the nation. The Central Leading Group for the Deepening of Comprehensive Reform, National
Security Commission, and similar central leading groups design and oversee the systemic policies
needed to maintain long-term growth and improve the government’s operations. Many officials and powerful
interests stand to lose from these reforms. The anti-corruption campaign, political crackdown on potential critics,
and destruction of the careers of thousands of party officials reflects a ruthlessly pragmatic
calculation that the sacrifice many party members is a worthwhile price to pay for the greater gains of
long term political stability that would come from successful reform. Perhaps it is not coincidental that
predictions of the party’s impending collapse have traditionally surged at major inflection points
in the history of the PRC. The last major wave of pessimism occurred at the turn of the
century, when China also faced economic slowdown, political demoralization, widespread unrest, and bitter factional infighting.
The symptoms may have been correctly perceived, but the prognosis proved faulty . The

party’s adaptation and resilience surprised observers and disproved the gloomy
predictions. China has similarly reached a key inflection point, one in which the policy challenges possibly surpass those of the
turn of the century.
Multiple tools to buffer collapse – proves no lashout
Kellogg 16 [Thomas Kellogg is director of the East Asia Program at the Open Society
Foundations. He is also a lecturer-in-law at Columbia Law School, The Diplomat, The
Communist Party of China's Recipe for Success, August 12, 2016,
http://thediplomat.com/2016/08/the-communist-party-of-chinas-recipe-for-success/] Note:
Discussing work by Dickson, a political scientist at George Washington University and a
longtime China-watcher
Where is China going? Is
the Party’s grip on power stable, or does the string of troubling news stories –
about a slowing economy, a sustained and brutal crackdown on dissidents, and a never-
ending stream of corruption cases – suggest that the central leadership might be facing
a more fundamental challenge in the months and years to come?
These are the questions that Bruce J. Dickson seeks to answer in his important new book, The Dictator’s Dilemma: The Chinese
Communist Party’s Strategy for Survival. Dickson, a political scientist at George Washington University and a longtime China-
watcher, argues that reports of the Party’s imminent demise are greatly exaggerated. In his view, the Party has done a decent job of
navigating the difficulties of tremendous economic and social change, and it has the right mix of tools at its disposal to deal with the
challenges that it faces in the years to come. Those who think that a prolonged economic downturn will end to the Communist Party
of China (CPC)’s almost 70 years in power are likely to be disappointed, Dickson warns.

At the heart of Dickson’s book are two public opinion polls, carried out in collaboration with Beijing University’s Research Center for
Contemporary China, in 2010 and 2014. In those surveys, citizens from cities across China generally expressed qualified support for
the CPC, along with optimism that shortcomings in the government’s performance would be addressed. To be sure, the survey
highlighted some real problems: many citizens were critical of local officials even as they praised the central government in Beijing,
for example. But overall, the Party came out reasonably well. Indeed, in some ways, Beijing did better than Washington does in
surveys of the American public’s views of its political leaders. “All things considered, the status quo seems not so bad to many
Chinese,” Dickson writes.

Why is the Party doing so well in public opinion polls? Dickson believes that the key to the
Party’s success is its
mastery of a mix of core tools that bolster its hold on power. Those tools include
repression , limited political reforms that foster some level of public participation, astute
stewardship of the economy , heavy investments in public goods for China’s growing
middle class, and a nationalist message that resonates with a broad swath of the
Chinese public.
Dickson is at his best in explaining the
relationship between economic performance and the
Communist Party’s political position. For a long time, many observers, both inside and outside China, have
argued that the Party owes its political standing to years of double-digit economic growth.
Indeed, at times, Beijing has governed as though its own political life depends on a strong economy: it invests billions of yuan in
seemingly unnecessary infrastructure projects. It evaluates local officials in part on the basis of their annual GDP growth numbers.
As the economy has slowed, some local governments have eased up on the enforcement of environmental and labor laws that they
fear might act as a drag on private sector activity.

So an economic downturn, especially an extended one, means political trouble for the
CPC, right? Not necessarily , Dickson argues. His surveys, conducted as economic growth was
already slowing, show that the Chinese public does not really react to changes in China’s
overall growth rate. Instead, perhaps unsurprisingly, people respond to changes in their own particular situation. As Dickson
puts it, “slower economic growth is not a threat to (the Party’s) popular support so long as
incomes continue to rise.” In other words, if the Party can continue to deliver real benefits to average
Chinese – either in the form of rising incomes, or in the form of increased access to public
goods such as education and health care, or both – then it can at least partially insulate
itself from the political risks of prolonged economic malaise.
 the Party benefits from very real public support and that there
Dickson is right to remind us both that
are ways that it can weather any future economic storms. That said, I found myself disagreeing with
some of the other arguments he puts forward in his book.

No collapse---resilience, meritocracy, and legitimacy check---and they’ll

adapt, not lash out, if threatened
Eric X. Li 13 is a Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute. He is also a venture capitalist in
Shanghai who serves on the board of directors of China Europe International Business School
(CEIBS) and is vice chairman of its publishing arm CEIBS Publishing Group. “The Life of the
Party,” Foreign Affairs, Jan/Feb, 92.1, EBSCO
In November 2012, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) held its 18th National Congress, setting in motion a once-in-a-decade
transfer of power to a new generation of leaders. As expected, Xi Jinping took over as general secretary and will become
the president of the People's Republic this March. The turnover was a smooth and well-orchestrated demonstration
by a confidently rising superpower. That didn't stop international media and even some Chinese intellectuals, however,
from portraying it as a moment of crisis. In an issue that was published before the beginning of the congress, for
example, The Economist quoted unnamed scholars at a recent conference as saying that China is "unstable at the grass roots,
dejected at the middle strata and out of control at the top." To be sure, months before the handover, the scandal surrounding Bo
Xilai, the former party boss of the Chongqing municipality, had shattered the CCP'S long-held facade of unity, which had
underwritten domestic political stability since the Tiananmen Square upheavals in 1989. To make matters worse, the Chinese
economy, which had sustained double-digit GDP growth for two decades, slowed, decelerating for seven straight quarters. China's
economic model of rapid industrialization, labor-intensive manufacturing, large-scale government investments in infrastructure, and
export growth seemed to have nearly run its course. Some in China and the West have
gone so far as to predict
the demise of the one-party state, which they allege cannot survive if leading politicians stop delivering economic
miracles. Such pessimism, however, is misplaced. There is no doubt that daunting challenges await Xi.
But those who suggest that the CCP will not be able to deal with them fundamentally
misread China's politics and the resilience of its governing institutions. Beijing will be
able to meet the country's ills with dynamism and resilience , thanks to the CCP'S
adaptability , system of meritocracy , and legitimacy with the Chinese people. In the next
decade, China will continue to rise, not fade. The country's leaders will consolidate the one-party
model and, in the process, challenge the West's conventional wisdom about political development and
the inevitable march toward electoral democracy. In the capital of the Middle Kingdom, the world might
witness the birth of a post-democratic future. ON-THE-JOB LEARNING The assertion that one-party rule is

inherently incapable of self-correction does not reflect the historical record . During its
63 years in power, the CCP has shown extraordinary adaptability. Since its founding in 1949, the
People's Republic has pursued a broad range of economic policies. First, the CCP initiated radical land collectivization in the early
1950s. This was followed by the policies of the Great Leap Forward in the late 1950s and the Cultural Revolution in the late 1960s to
mid-1970s. After them came the quasi-privatization of farmland in the early 1960s, Deng Xiaoping's market reforms in the late
1970s, and Jiang Zemin's opening up of the CCP'S membership to private businesspeople in the 1990s. The underlying
goal has always been economic health, and when a policy did not work -- for example, the
disastrous Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution -- China was able to find something that did : for
example, Deng's reforms, which catapulted the Chinese economy into the position of second largest in the world. On the
institutional front as well, the CCP has not shied away from reform. One example is the
introduction in the 1980s and 1990s of term limits for most political positions (and even of age limits, of 68-70, for the
party's most senior leadership). Before this, political leaders had been able to use their positions to accumulate power and
perpetuate their rules. Mao Zedong was a case in point. He had ended the civil wars that had plagued China and repelled foreign
invasions to become the father of modern China. Yet his prolonged rule led to disastrous mistakes, such as the Cultural Revolution.
Now, it is nearly impossible for the few at the top to consolidate long-term power. Upward mobility within the party has also
increased. In terms of foreign policy, China has also changed course many times to achieve national greatness. It moved from a
close alliance with Moscow in the 1950s to a virtual alliance with the United States in the 1970s and 1980s as it sought to contain
the Soviet Union. Today, its pursuit of a more independent foreign policy has once more put it at odds with the United States. But in
its ongoing quest for greatness, China is seeking to defy recent historical precedents and rise peacefully, avoiding the militarism that
plagued Germany and Japan in the first half of the last century. As China undergoes its ten-year transition, calls at home and
abroad for another round of political reform have increased. One radical camp in China and abroad is urging the party to allow
multiparty elections or at least accept formal intraparty factions. In this view, only full-scale adversarial politics can ensure that China
gets the leadership it needs. However sincere, these demands all miss a basic fact:the CCP has arguably been one of
the most self-reforming political organizations in recent world history. There is no doubt that
Chinas new leaders face a different world than Hu Jintao did when he took over in 2002, but chances are good that Xi's CCP
will be able to adapt to and meet whatever new challenges the rapidly changing domestic
and international environments pose. In part, that is because the CCP is heavily meritocratic and
promotes those with proven experience and capabilities.

Party adaptation solves

Lee 15 (Bob, Director of the Editorial Department, Asst. to the Editor-in-Chief, and Chief Writer
– China Daily, Asia-Pacific, “What Is China’s Way?”, 2/16, http://thediplomat.com/2015/02/what-
is-chinas-way/)
Certainly China faces some big problems: CCP unity vs. factional divergences, economic miracles vs. widening
wealth gap, social harmony vs. disruptive unrest. Former Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao once complained that ruling the Party was
like sitting atop a volcano. More recently, dangerous cracks have begun to appear in the uppermost echelon of China’s political
apparatus as President Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption drive has become ever tougher. So far, 180,000 cadres have been “disciplined,”
yet that is just the tip of an iceberg of rampant corruption that has made the CCP’s legitimacy more vulnerable. Cynicism is at an all-
time high and morale in officialdom never been lower. Wealth is being transferred offshore, along with spouses and children – a
desperate move by culpable party and government officials to avoid the clutches of anti-graft investigators.

Yet I firmly believe these shortcomings will not by themselves ring the death knell of the CCP
nor trigger the collapse of the country’s so-called ‘’socialist system with Chinese characteristics.’’ My reasons
are as follows.

By exploiting the advantages of capitalism to the utmost degree, China has for three consecutive decades had the fastest
growing economy in the world. Its GDP is now that of Germany, Italy and France combined, and China is forecast to
soon overtake the U. S. as the biggest economy in the world. Meanwhile, the renminbi has established itself as one
of the three most widely used currencies for global payments.
How was China able to achieve these jaw-dropping outcomes? In 2004, Joshua Cooper Ramo, a research fellow at Kissinger
Associates, coined the term “Beijing Consensus” (also known as the “China Model”), to which he attributed China’s double-digit
GDP growth over more than 30 years. By offering an alternative to the Washington Consensus, the China Model has now
firmly established itself in the mainstream political lexicon, epitomizing phenomenal economic growth and
increasing diplomatic assertiveness on the world stage.

the Beijing Consensus was committed to

Over the years, while the Washington Consensus indulged in complacency,
innovation and constant experimentation . If the highest virtue of the executive is efficiency, the
CCP has truly done a good job, particularly in the economy and people’s livelihoods. Meanwhile, the White
House, supposedly the most powerful government entity in the world, has found itself pushed by the domestic political opposition to
the edge of a “fiscal cliff,” with government operations embarrassingly hanging by a thread.

Some pundits maintain, with some justification, that there is no way any other country can copy the Chinese way of “socialism with
Chinese characteristics,” unless they can build a mighty and highly mobilizing political party like the CCP. With 80 million members
from all sectors of society, the CCP has effectively complete control of all political resources of China. It’s
unimaginable that any other country could create a political party of such magnitude and widespread influence.

One-party rule certainly has its merits, particularly in the sphere of administrative efficiency, and American-style democracy its flaws,
particularly when the opposition chooses to abuse its right of dissent to disrupt implementation of government programs.
A case in point is Singapore. With a stiff case of benign dictatorship or so-called “guided democracy,” the city-state has become the
envy of others in the region for its efficiency. In contrast, the Philippines – once dubbed “Asia’s showcase of democracy” – is now
lagging far behind its Asian peers as the Manila government is frequently paralyzed by petty politics, just like Capitol Hill in recent
times.

China’s late paramount leader Deng Xiaoping was perhaps the first to define China’s unique development path. On July 18, 1981,
he told a visiting Hong Kong media delegation, “I think there are more than 100 kinds of socialism in the world; there is no
restriction. China will build socialism with Chinese characteristics.”

Indeed, there is no single perfect solution to all of society’s ills. The only true path to success is to adopt whichever
best suits a given environment. American political economist Francis Fukuyama once convincingly argued that the
worldwide spread of liberal democracies and free market capitalism of the West and its lifestyle marked the end of humanity’s
sociocultural evolution and would become the final form of human government. Yet he recently declared America was “in decay,”
noting “steady deterioration in the overall quality of American government,” and that the power balance had become a vetocracy – a
virtual paralysis of effective governance.

In contrast, Xi seems confident about the Chinese way of governance, at least for the time being. He often
cites the folksy Chinese metaphor, “You know if the shoe fits only after you put it on yourself.” In other words – whether a certain
path of development is right for a country will ultimately depend on its people’s expectations. Needless to say, this differs among
countries.

Part of Xi’s
strategy is to renovate the Party so that it convincingly serves the Chinese people’s
wellbeing – not just by its words but by deeds – thereby bolstering its legitimacy . The CCP acquired
legitimacy as the ruling party by toppling the “three big mountains” – imperialism, feudalism and
bureaucrat-capitalism – and promising a brand-new society. Today, however, more than six decades after the founding of
the PRC, the political dividends of revolution are long gone. The party’s legitimacy now rests on delivering on its promise of the
“Chinese dream.” Xi is likely to take more steps to advance economic democratization and broaden the
base of beneficiaries to defuse simmering tensions, rather than using an iron fist to clamp down on large-scale social
unrest as did former security czar Zhou Yong-kang.
***NEG Updates – Prisons
CP—Advantage
 CP—Radicalization
Text: The United States federal government should implement strong
corrections management, comprehensive disciplinary policy, cognitive
restructuring programs, religious services, prisoner intelligence systems,
and staff and inmate anti-radicaization training programs in federal prisons
in the United States.

The counterplan’s comprehensive approach is key to prevent radicalization

Atherton 17—President and Head Consultant of Correctional Consulting Services Group
(Eugene, 1/31/17, “6 strategies for preventing radicalization in US jails and prisons,”
https://www.policeone.com/preparing-americas-cops-for-terrorism/articles/285343006-6-
strategies-for-preventing-radicalization-in-US-jails-and-prisons/, Accessed 7/27/17, HWilson)

The following are six strategies to mitigate against the radicalization of inmates.

1. STRONG CORRECTIONS MANAGEMENT

Research shows that bad things happen in ineffectively managed prisons . The Jam'iyyat Ul-
Islam Is-Saheeh, or JIS, case in a U.S. prison is often used as an example of a prison environment
where a terrorist cell was allowed to develop and find its way into the surrounding
communities. Fortunately, it was detected and neutralized by law enforcement before an
attack was successful.
At the time of the incident, I visited the facility for security assessment training. There is no question it was one of the most violent
and tense correctional environments I experienced in my career. It was the perfect storm to breed radicalism towards terrorist acts.
While these conditions are a major concern among European nations, they must also be a concern in U.S. jails and prisons.

Again, effectively managed prisons are the best strategy to mitigate inmate tendency to
radicalize .
2. COMPREHENSIVE POLICY

This section assumes compliance with policy is the standard practice in a corrections facility. Disciplinary policy is very
important in managing inmates who wish to radicalize others towards terrorist behavior.
It is further enhanced by the myriad of advantages in being an American Correctional
Association standards compliant system. Florida Department of Corrections, as an example, has a policy that
prohibits inmates from proselytizing.

Most corrections agencies have policies that manage inmates’ ability to form in groups
and to use prison resources for activities associated with membership in a group. In very
good religious service programs in corrections, policy includes selection criteria for staff
and standard curriculum for training and certification. Good policy prohibits inmates
from possessing literature that proposes violence and hatred, which often are seen as
important to the character of a terrorist inmate. Ineffective prison management typically
does not have or enforce such policies.

3. PROGRAMS WITH COGNITIVE RESTRUCTURING

Prison environments that are program-rich provide hope for inmates. This hope makes
the decision to radicalize towards violence less attractive . At minimum, a multitude of programs act
against the old adage that the idle hands are the devil’s workshop. However, the greatest potential for all
classification of inmates lies in the program known as cognitive restructuring .

Cognitive restructuring is based upon the notion that if someone changes the way they
think, it will change the way they behave . Two popular programs implemented in the U.S. are 7 Habits on the
Inside and Thinking for a Change. Having been an instructor for the 7 Habits on the Inside program, I have witnessed changes in
inmate participant behavior and attitude that have been profound and extremely effective in every aspect of their lives.

For an inmate involved in such programs, I expect there is very little chance of being
radicalized towards terrorist conduct .
4. EFFECTIVE RELIGIOUS SERVICES

In Mark Hamm’s survey of United State Prison systems, he focuses on the role of the
religious service provider as central to knowing and influencing an inmate’s tendency
towards radicalization. I recognize the value of an effective coordinator of the religious
services in the correctional populations. Some are priceless and have very positive
influence on those inmates wishing to pursue a spiritual path. I have also experienced those that are of
little value or a potential negative influence, as was the chaplain in the JIS case.

Hamm’s survey findings suggest we need more religious service providers for all faiths in
correctional systems. I don’t disagree. However, the emphasis ignores the potential good that
could be done by helping all other staff with regular inmate contact to exhibit similar
interpersonal skills.

5. PRISONER INTELLIGENCE SYSTEMS AND SURVEILLANCE

Prisoner intelligence systems must provide accurate , current , quality information that
identifies inmates who have high potential to radicalize towards violent behavior.
During the JIS incident, I personally witnessed a facility overwhelmed with violent gang activity. The gang activity was to the extent
that staff seemed to have little time or resources to tend to less obvious social developments. This included the radicalization that
was occurring in the prison chapel with the support of the chaplain who was providing literature that embraced violence as
imperative in the terrorist struggle.

The days are gone in which staff could walk the yard and speak to each inmate by name and be familiar with who they are. The
overall numbers of inmates has grown dramatically, and they are frequently transferred among facilities.

Because of this, all

prisons need to have intelligence systems. The historical information may
not be very telling. However, information produced by staff observing on the front lines and
interacting with inmates may be extremely valuable toward recognizing potential
problems before they arise and skillfully intervening before harm is done. Such
information reported and analyzed through carefully designed software systems can
give staff the advantage as inmates contemplate radicalization or consider
deradicalization and disengagement from their group.
Very often the information is available, but the
challenge that corrections agencies have is how to get it
packaged, maintain its quality and integrity and swiftly move it to those who should
know.
The Colorado Department of Corrections and the Florida Department of Corrections are
outstanding examples of sophisticated incident reporting systems. These systems begin with the
officer managing inmates on the shift where a critical incident occurs. The circumstances are documented and submitted to a digital
report which is submitted to a higher level of processing. There, it gets considered as impacting multiple areas of concern.

After analysis, the information is further elevated where all is prioritized and high level supervision can formulate action plans. Some
portions of the Florida system perform data analysis automatically. In both systems leadership can identify an issue by a general
label and then drill down through layers of data that provide information that is extremely important. Such analysis can help prevent
escapes, inmate violence and can provide information that resolves problems before radicalization appears.

In the last decade, camera systems have become more affordable and an integral part of the
prison and jail operation. More advanced technology offers software that includes facial identification of inmates under
view of the camera. The cameras have become the eyes and ears of staff confined to duty stations. Cameras can often
detect movement and inmate behavior that indicates a pattern of inmate social behavior
that would identify potential for radicalization .

6. STAFF AND INMATE TRAINING

Training for staff and inmates in order to prevent and dissolve radicalization toward
terrorist inmate behavior can take many forms . It can emphasize effective relationships
between inmates and staff as would be an outcome of 7 Habits on the Inside for graduates of the course. The results
can build trust and confidence in relationships which serves as pathways to solving issues surrounding radicalization.

Training can emphasize behavior observation and intervention by staff. Under a great deal of
public concern over terrorist gangs on the streets and in prisons, European nations have taken the initiative in preparing front line
staff to be effective in responding to radicalization. Both the United Kingdom and the Netherlands have produced training programs
This training prepares staff to recognize the behavior as a
for frontline staff on the streets and in prisons.
sign of radicalization and to effectively intervene to resolve the problem.
In every correctional system there are hot button issues that negatively impact
relationships among staff and inmates. Some examples are attitudes concerning gender with respect to staff and
inmates. Another is when, for example, a white, male, Christian officer supervises an inmate who worships Islam. He/she may
believe that all worshipers of Islam hate and would do violence to non-believers. Training could replace dangerous
mythology with accurate , factual information . Another example could be when that same officer supervises
an inmate who worships as a Native American. When mated with a policy emphasis on religious
tolerance, the effect can dramatically improve relationships between inmate and staff. It
is the relationship between front line staff and inmates that counts the most, and
effective training can give them the tools to be successful.
There are three things to remember as a leader in your corrections organization.

First, there is no one magic formula or strategy for success. Each corrections agency must have a plan to successfully manage
radicalization of inmates. The plan toward success must implement numerous strategies.

Second, leadership in corrections is most often challenged with achieving a balance between competing influences. On the one
hand, it is everyone’s job to achieve safety and control toward a humane environment. Sometimes that pursuit requires the
imposition of rules and sanctions. There are times where many are unhappy with the rules. On the other hand, it is important to
There is
allow inmates to participate in activities that promote personal growth towards an effective, non-criminal life experience.
clear evidence that many religious conversions support character development among
inmates that leads to productive, non-criminal behavior in the prison populations.
It is balance that achieves success. Implementation of multiple strategies and achieving
a balance on critical issues is the hallmark of an effectively managed prison environment . Such
an accomplishment is the most important force in managing inmate radicalization in prison.
 CP—Organized Crime
***write text to fund DOJ anti-crime efforts

Increasing funding and support of federal enforcement mechanisms is key

to ensure effectiveness
AEI 17—American Enterprise Institute, a nonpartisan public policy research institute with a
community of scholars (AEI, 6/26/17, “What should the US do about transnational organized
crime in the Americas?,” https://www.aei.org/press/what-should-the-us-do-about-transnational-
organized-crime-in-the-americas/, Accessed 7/27/17, HWilson)
Senator Marco Rubio headlines an event at 3:45pm today at AEI on the occasion of the release of a new report by AEI’s Working
Group on Transnational Organized Crime. Led by AEI scholar Roger Noriega, who previously served as Assistant Secretary of State
the report details
for Western Hemisphere Affairs and as US ambassador to the Organization of American States,
transnational organized crime’s nefarious activities in the Americas including the active
collaboration of corrupt officials with criminal groups to facilitate human and drug
trafficking, which generate billions of dollars in illicit revenue and make the US dollar and
US banks tools of this deadly trade.
Among the report’s key findings and recommendations:

Key enforcement mechanisms and policy options available to the US government to

counter transnational organized crime remain underused and under-resourced . The US
government should reevaluate the allocation of resources and aggressively use
enforcement mechanisms at its disposal (such as sanctions and criminal prosecution) to degrade
networks, and promote regional security and development cooperation.
***NEG Updates – Right to Education
 2NC—Trump x HR Promo
Trump makes HR promo ineffective—he’s promoting HR violations
Keating 17—staff writer at Slate focusing on international affairs (Joshua, 5/4/17, “Trump and
Tillerson’s Shortsighted Contempt for Human Rights,”
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/05/04/the_trump_administration_s_misleading_cas
e_against_supporting_human_rights.html, Accessed 7/27/17, HWilson)

It’s been obvious for some time now that the promotion of human rights and democracy
would not be a priority for Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and his boss, Donald Trump.
Tillerson clashed during his confirmation hearing with Sen. Marco Rubio over his refusal
to criticize the governments of Russia, Saudi Arabia, and the Philippines for human
rights abuses and after taking office. The Trump administration’s proposed budget cuts
would gut democracy promotion programs . Mother Jones reported this week that a
National Security Council position once known as the “special assistant to the president
for multilateral affairs and human rights” has been renamed the “special assistant for
international organizations and alliances.”

The administration has resumed arms sales to Bahrain and Saudi Arabia that were on
hold under the Obama administration due to human rights concerns . Trump has gone out
of his way to praise dictators like Vladimir Putin , Xi Jinping, and Abdel Fattah al-Sisi as
strong and effective leaders. He called to congratulate Turkish President Recep Tayyip
Erdogan for his victory in a referendum that was widely viewed as a dictatorial power
grab and was accompanied by thousands of arrests of government opponents on dubious
charges. He’s invited Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte, complicit in thousands of
extrajudicial killings, to the White House.
In a speech to State Department employees Wednesday, Tillerson more or less made the
administration’s position official, the AP reports:
“In some circumstances, if you condition our national security efforts on someone adopting our
values, we probably can’t achieve our national security goals,” Tillerson said. “It really creates
obstacles to our ability to advance our national security interests, our economic interests.”
Still, he insisted the U.S. won’t abandon core values. In some instances, Tillerson said, the U.S.
should and will require other nations to adopt “certain actions as to how they treat people” if they
want to cooperate with the U.S. In other instances, he said the U.S. would continue advocating
for its values without using them as leverage

If Tillerson isn’t going to raise the topic of human rights in conversations with foreign
governments , wants to eliminate the offices devoted to human rights , and can’t even be
bothered to attend the release of the department’s annual human rights report , it
prompts the question of when or where exactly this advocacy for our core values is
going to take place.
Trump officials have an irritating habit of talking as if they’re the first administration willing to
work with bad guys in the name of national security. (Jared Kushner ought to ask his beloved
mentor Henry Kissinger about that.) Yes, the Obama administration sometimes pressured allies
on human rights issues more than those allies preferred. But Obama also made his willingness
to meet with hostile dictators a central issue in his 2008 campaign. The signature foreign policy
initiatives of his presidency were the “reset” with Russia, the Iran nuclear deal, and the
normalization of diplomatic relations with Cuba. None of those is a country with a particularly
sterling human rights record.
There’s also a case to be made for talking about human rights, even if you don’t care at all
about human rights. As Isaac Stone Fish argued in Slate ahead of Trump’s meeting with Xi, the
Chinese government—like many governments—cares about its self-image and bristles at high-
profile international criticism. Why shouldn’t human rights be used as leverage? Or at the very
least, why say in advance that you will not use it? As the president is fond of pointing out, it’s not
a particularly smart negotiating tactic to tell the other side in advance that certain issues are off
the table.
Some might argue that U.S. human rights advocacy is simply hypocritical, given the long,
checkered history of American foreign policy, from the carpet bombing of the Vietnam War to
the coup that installed Augusto Pinochet to the scenes of torture at Abu Ghraib, not to mention a
shameful legacy of racism and discrimination at home. The president seems to hold his view,
telling Bill O’Reilly in February in defense of his praise of Putin, “There are a lot of killers. You
think our country's so innocent?"
As Tom Malinowski, the former assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights, and
labor, recently wrote for the Atlantic, no one would argue that the U.S. has a perfect record, but
“these wrongs provoked debate in part because they so clearly contradicted American ideals,
and because Americans took their self-image seriously.”
And while the record of success for U.S. democracy promotion may be mixed, it can bear fruit.
Look at the role sanctions and South Africa’s international isolation played in ending apartheid.
One reason that military coups are far less frequent than they were during the Cold War—and
that when they do happen, they tend to be followed quickly by new elections—is that the U.S.
and Soviet Union are no longer willing to back any friendly strongman that takes power.

The Trump view of human rights abuses also goes beyond simple disregard . Trump ,
who argued during his campaign that the U.S. should kill the families of terrorists and
has said of using torture “even if it doesn't work they deserve it,” often seems to admire
the tactics used by dictators.
The administration may, dubiously, justify its outreach to Duterte as necessary for its
North Korea policy, but the White House readout of the call also noted, without commentary,
that the two presidents had “discussed the fact that the Philippine government is fighting very
hard to rid its country of drugs, a scourge that affects many countries throughout the world.”
Duterte encouraged the killing of hundreds of people by police and vigilantes in the
name of fighting drugs and is accused of having ordered killings from a private death
squad when he was a mayor. The White House doesn’t note that Trump had any
concerns about this. In fact it’s encouraging those actions , describing Duterte’s efforts
as part of a global fight that the U.S. is also involved with .
Similarly, before Trump had an abrupt change of heart about Bashar al-Assad, he
described the president as a “natural ally” in the fight against ISIS and endorsed the idea
of Assad staying in power, which the Syrian government could only have interpreted as a
green light to continue deliberately targeting civilians in the name of fighting “terrorism.”

It’s one thing to simply ignore human rights abuses, as Tillerson suggests. It’s yet
another to actively encourage them .

No political will or effectiveness to promote HR or democratic values

Sedaca 17—professor of international relations at Georgetown, chair for the global politics
and security concentration in the Master of Science in foreign service program, chair of the
board of directors of the International Justice Mission (Nicole, 4/29/17, “After 100 Days, Trump
Still Sets a Sad Example for the World,” http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/04/29/after-100-days-
trump-still-sets-a-sad-example-for-the-world/, Accessed 7/27/17, HWilson)
The “first 100 days” assessment is arbitrary and does not speak to the entirety of an
administration that will last 1,460 days, if not 2,920. It is not and cannot be a final grade. It is,
however, a useful time to take stock of the direction in which a new administration is
taking the country.
And certainly, when a president releases both a “100-day action plan to Make America Great
Again” and three press releases detailing his administration’s 100-day accomplishments, it is
fair game for foreign policy watchers to comment on the occasion as well. (It is worth noting that
the White House also released “First Month” and “First 40 Days of Action” summaries as well,
so the president’s stated opposition to the 100-day assessment is highly dubious.)
No reasonable analyst expects a president to accomplish many significant policy objectives in
the first 100 days in office — particularly objectives that require legislative approval or significant
overhauls of longstanding systems. Most often, there are only a handful of key reforms in this
short window. The Obama administration initiated a state children’s health insurance program
and an economic stimulus plan. President George W. Bush launched a significant tax cut and
the No Child Left Behind initiative. President Bill Clinton introduced sweeping budget reform and
launched an overhaul of health care, under the leadership of Hillary Clinton. President Ronald
Reagan advanced an ambitious tax and budget plan and elevated foreign relations — with
Central America, Iran, and the Soviet Union — in his early days.
Just as important as these quick policy wins was the way in which each administration signaled
how it would govern and what values it would promote. Therefore, this initial assessment should
look not only at policy accomplishments, but also at actions that created an environment for
future policymaking. Those signal-sending actions include rhetoric, engagement of partners,
budget creation, team building, and leadership by example. Looking at how an administration
chooses to begin its tenure is arguably more fruitful than just a look at completed tasks.
In an earlier piece, I questioned whether President Donald Trump would be the leader of
the free world, continuing the bipartisan American tradition of promoting democracy and
human rights around the globe . Examining signal-sending actions is the most effective
means of assessing this commitment, as most presidents do not take significant, concrete
policy actions to promote democracy or human rights in their first 100 days.

Since his inauguration, Trump has made clear that he is not committed to promoting
democracy and human rights , or America’s leadership role in these areas. This is not
breaking news to anyone in the foreign policy community, as no one expected such
leadership . It is not breaking news to those outside of the Beltway bubble, as he is not
negating any campaign promises or doing a radical about-face. But it is essential to highlight
this deviation from a bipartisan consensus that has been shared since President Jimmy
Carter held office, not because of an arbitrary 100-day marker, but rather to highlight that
Trump’s unwillingness to play this role leaves a significant gap that must be filled by
some entity in the international community for the remaining 1,360 days of his term.
Let’s look at the signals he has sent since inauguration.
Telling rhetoric. Trump’s Inauguration Day commitment not to impose “our way of life on
anyone” has translated into silence on violations of universally recognized values. He has made
no references to an American role in supporting democracy and human rights globally in his first
100 days. The White House has been remarkablely unresponsive to even the worst atrocities or
democratic violations around the world, including those in Myanmar, South Sudan, and Syria
(with notable exceptions covered below). In three months of White House press statements,
only a release about the Armenian genocide and the first lady’s honoring of International
Women of Courage indicate any reference to these issues.
Two significant exceptions to this assessment are Trump’s reaction to Syrian President Bashar
al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons against civilians and strong remarks at the U.S. Holocaust
Memorial Museum in recognition of International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Unfortunately,
each must be contextualized within the administration’s repeated silence on these issues. The
Syrian remarks were situated within an unclear muddle of comments by administration officials
about Assad’s fate, with positions ranging from avoiding confrontation with him, to allowing the
Syrian people to decide, to insisting he must go, leaving doubt that the administration was more
serious about a sustained response to mass atrocities in Syria. The Holocaust Museum remarks
came after months of silence about the significant increase in anti-Semitic attacks throughout
the United States.
Trump would be wise to remember that the strength of rhetoric comes not only from each
statement, but from the consistency of the entire narrative.
Mixed levels of engagement with other countries. A foundational component of exercising
leadership of the free world, or of promoting democracy and human rights, is highlighting the
importance of these values in America’s relationships with other nations. Naturally, the United
States will and should engage nondemocratic nations as part of its pursuit of national security
and foreign policy interests, but must do so while maintaining a clear message about the
importance of shared liberal values among democratic allies.
While Trump has met with many democratic allies, including Argentina, Canada, Denmark,
Germany, Israel, Japan, Peru, the United Kingdom, and others, as well as nondemocratic allies,
he has missed important opportunities in these meetings to highlight that the United States
values shared democratic commitments.
This was remarkably evident in the differences between Trump’s reception of German
Chancellor Angela Merkel and of Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, which illustrated
Trump’s failure to value the importance of democratic allies — even when confronted with
differences of views — and not just allies that deliver cooperation. Certainly, the United States
can and will have disagreements with democratic countries, and will have close relations and
cooperation with autocratic governments. However, the outward hostility toward the leader of a
key democratic ally and the European Union signals an indifference to the importance of the
relationship, particularly at a time when liberal values are strained in Europe and globally.
Likewise, the praise for Sisi sent a strong signal about American willingness to ally with and
publicly praise dictators, with no nuance. A person who is not afraid of offending others, Trump
certainly could have highlighted Egypt’s shortcomings on human rights or even mentioned the
Americans who have been imprisoned there. While Trump should be commended for
negotiating the release of Aya Hijazi, Trump’s failure to make clear that the United States will
oppose continued violations of human rights and illegal imprisonment of Americans is telling and
highly problematic.
A dismal budget. Trump is well within his rights, and certainly well advised, to streamline and
improve the large bureaucracy he oversees. Few will defend the current size or functioning of
the bureaucracy.
However, the president’s proposed 30-percent cut of the State Department and the U.S. Agency
for International Development is highly concerning in terms of both the magnitude and the
targeting of human rights and democracy-related functions — among many other, such as the
environment — for significant cuts. While it is impossible that the Bureau of Democracy, Human
Rights, and Labor would be eliminated, it is likely that it would take a significant cut if Trump’s
budget moved forward. The fact that the Office of Global Women’s Issues would potentially be
fully eliminated is highly problematic. Again, this is not to argue that the State Department does
not need cuts, realignment, or streamlining. Rather, it is to say that the articulation of the cuts
without an articulation of the value of many human rights or democracy programs, and the
explicit targeting of these programs, is yet another indication of the administration’s
unwillingness to promote these values abroad.
A mixed-quality team. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley are
the two appointees most responsible for the promotion of democracy and human rights, and
thus worthy of review.
Tillerson’s record is mixed at best. His steadfastness on Russia sanctions gave reason to be
hopeful about his commitment to holding the line on democracy. But his decision to skip the
rollout of his department’s annual report on the state of human rights, which would have been
an effortless way to show a commitment, gave human rights activists some cause for concern.
His decision to lift human rights conditions on an arms sale to Bahrain bodes very poorly for
how the administration will balance the ever-tense relationship between security priorities and
human rights. Tillerson’s consideration of disengaging the U.N. Human Rights Council should
be received positively, given his willingness to speak truthfully about the membership of China,
Egypt, and Saudi Arabia on such a body. However, the real test of his commitment to human
rights will not be how quickly he walks away from a highly hypocritical human rights body, but
rather if his critiques of the human rights records of members and of the council’s efficacy are
paired with American bilateral pressure on the countries in question outside of the U.N., and
with a commitment to reform the council. Critique and disengagement without honest efforts to
reform ring hollow.
Haley has been a bright light within the first 100 days, with strong statements on Russia’s
support for Syria, Chechnya, and the Human Rights Council, as well as an unprecedented U.N.
Security Council meeting focused on human rights. She has boldly bucked U.N. operating
procedures and customary practices to speak out against human rights violations. Whether she
is acting on her own or at the direction of a coordinated White House policy operation is unclear,
but her actions are very welcome. Trump’s offhand remark about replacing Haley, made at the
U.N. Security Council meeting at the White House which she shrewdly and courageously
organized, could be a sign of Trump’s inexplicable and poor sense of humor or a developing rift.
For the sake of having a principled voice in the administration, I hope it is the former.
The lack of a USAID administrator clearly hurts many of the objectives advanced by the agency,
including democracy and human rights. While USAID is sorely in need of organizational reform,
the gutting or neglect of the agency without a clear signal of support for the mission is a clear
indication of disregard for its importance.
Setting a sad example. Trump’s inaugural promise to “let [the American way of life] shine as an
example for everyone to follow” has proven hollow.
While he is conceptually correct that America’s international efforts to stand for human rights
and promote democracy have long been a powerful example for the world to follow, he has not
translated this into practice. Historically, when the United States has faltered in its own daily
exercise of democratic principles or boldly lived up to the best of this tradition, the world has
taken notice and in diverse ways, followed suit. Weaknesses in the America’s own democratic
and human rights practices are often met with cries of hypocrisy or even satisfaction that the
United States is no longer the moral leader of the world.
Trump’s willingness to critique democratic institutions — judges, Congress, laws that constrain
his power or behavior — when they do not agree with his views is highly dangerous to both
American democracy and the example that America sets for the world. His divisive rhetoric
sends a signal that all types of people do not share the same respect or rights under his
administration, a dangerous sign to authoritarian leaders seeking affirmation for their more
extreme versions of targeting groups in their own countries. The strength of U.S. democracy is
based on an appreciation that disagreements can and must be civilly discussed and adjudicated
in the public square and through democratic institutions. Trump’s seeming disagreement with
this as a core component of American democracy is highly damaging to our system and our
ability to display strength globally.
What’s next? Over its first 100 days, the Trump administration’s lack of foreign policy
commitment to democracy and human rights was highly problematic. None of this is a surprise
or a violation of campaign promises. Rather, it is a clarion call for those in both parties to ask
whether the promotion of democracy and human rights should be a foreign policy objective, and
if so, who should lead the process. Trump is making it very clear that the U.S. government will
no longer play that role.
Effectiveness is impossible under Trump
Bush, Ph.D., 17—Assistant Professor of Political Science at Temple University, Senior
Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, former Postdoctoral Fellow in the International
Security Program at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard
Kennedy School, Ph.D. from Princeton University (Sarah, 4/9/17, “What Trump’s foreign aid
cuts would mean for global democracy,” http://theconversation.com/what-trumps-foreign-aid-
cuts-would-mean-for-global-democracy-75040, Accessed 7/27/17, HWilson)
President Donald Trump’s proposed budget would slash State Department spending by
28 percent , drastically reducing U.S. foreign aid flows.

Will he prevail? Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, has said bluntly “It’s not
going to happen.” But the White House’s proposal is emblematic of an ongoing , broader
foreign policy shift .

Specifically, Trump’s actions and comments suggest a deep skepticism regarding

support for democracy abroad . Consequently, democracy assistance – a relatively small
but often pivotal type of foreign aid on which the United States Agency for International
Development (USAID) and the State Department plan to spend US$2.72 billion in 2017 –
seems likely to be hit hard .

If it is, U.S. foreign policy under Trump will look fundamentally different than it has under
previous presidents dating back at least to Ronald Reagan. What’s more, my research
suggests that the shift spells trouble for democracy around the world.

Although U.S. democracy assistance is not perfect, drastic budget cuts would sever a
lifeline to pro-democracy activists around the world .

What is democracy aid?

Democracy assistance is a type of foreign aid the U.S. government funds in nearly 100
countries with the explicit goal of supporting democracy. Whether it consists of encouraging
women to run for office in Kyrgyzstan or building the capacity of local civil society organizations
in Tunisia, this form of assistance always aims to enhance some aspect of democracy. It
supports transitions to democracy and shores up existing democratic institutions.
Democracy assistance began in the 1980s. Until that point, the U.S. government supported
overseas political parties and dissidents covertly and on an ad hoc basis. In 1983, the United
States established the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a quasi-private foundation
dedicated to supporting democracy abroad. As the Cold War ended, USAID and the State
Department also began funding democracy assistance consistently.
These institutions, which I examine in “The Taming of Democracy Assistance,” my book on the
topic, often don’t deliver money or services directly. Instead, they fund a variety of American and
international nonprofits (and a few for-profit organizations). Ideally, funding democracy
assistance via nonprofits and other nongovernmental entities helps insulate it from U.S.
government influence. Of course, that is not always so simple in practice.
Democracy assistance rarely grabs headlines. Some of its critics argue that it involves meddling
in other countries’ elections (allegedly with both a right-wing and left-wing bias), implying an
equivalence to Russia’s actions during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. My research
suggests otherwise.
Democracy assistance efforts are indeed sometimes partisan, but have grown markedly less so
since the Cold War ended. Indeed, as I explained on the Washington Post’s Monkey Cage blog,
it has become rare for these programs to promote radical political change today. In some cases,
democracy assistance has even reinforced authoritarian regimes, as was the case when
international aid offered support for a parliament in Azerbaijan that was not freely elected.
What’s at stake?
Despite these flaws, eliminating democracy assistance projects could wreak damage to
democracy three ways.
First, scholarly evidence on U.S. democracy assistance finds that it is, on average, associated
with increases in countries’ overall levels of freedom. Second, research also suggests that
democracy assistance can help countries maintain peace after civil conflict. Third, specific types
of democracy assistance – such as support for international and domestic election observers –
have proven successful at deterring electoral fraud.
A good example of how U.S. democracy assistance has successfully helped advance
democratic transitions comes from Serbia’s nonviolent student movement in 2000. There, the
brutal dictator Slobodan Milošević – guilty of war crimes associated with the conflicts in the
former Yugoslavia – was brought down by a popular movement supported with training from
U.S. nonprofits.
Cutting democracy assistance would also represent a major break in U.S. foreign policy.
The origins of American democracy promotion date back at least a century. On April 2, 1917,
President Woodrow Wilson made his famous speech telling Congress, “The world must be
made safe for democracy.” Leaders from both major U.S. political parties have sought ever
since to promote democracy overseas with the logic that it is the right thing to do as well as the
smart thing to do.
Among other things this credo stems from the belief that democracy fosters peaceful relations
between nations.
Of course, the United States counts among its allies many authoritarian states like Egypt and
Saudi Arabia. In such cases, past U.S. presidents have mixed pro-democracy rhetoric with anti-
democracy policies. Yet President Trump is abandoning even the pro-democracy rhetoric, and
activists are worried.
As one Egyptian journalist recently said about this situation, “It’s not a big space, but the rhetoric
gives us some space.”
What’s next?
If the U.S. democracy assistance project survives the Trump administration but spending
declines sharply, a recent study suggests two lessons about how it could spend the remaining
funds most effectively.
First, this kind of aid works best in countries that are already partly free. In such settings,
domestic actors are likely to be seeking international support and aid is less likely to be co-
opted by authoritarian governments.
Second, democracy assistance programs tend to be the most successful in countries where the
U.S. government can back them up with diplomacy. By this logic, it makes more sense to
support democracy assistance in Tunisia, where democratically elected leaders cooperate with
the United States on counterterrorism, than it does in Egypt, where the United States maintains
a close relationship with the military dictatorship of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.
Research on U.S. democracy assistance suggests that continuing to aid democracy abroad is
consistent with a century-long tradition in U.S. foreign policy and that it can advance democracy
worldwide. However, even with continued support, American democracy promoters face clear
challenges. These challenges include problems with the state of democracy in the United States
that have been building for several years as well as growing restrictions on civil society activity
and foreign aid around the world.
Even barring steep spending cuts, democracy assistance is likely to have a difficult next four
years.
 2NC—Trump x HR Cred
Trump ruined HR cred
Phillips 17—Beijing correspondent for the Guardian (Tom, 4/4/17, “Trump's authoritarian
instincts ruin US credibility on human rights, activists say,”
https://www.theguardian.com/law/2017/apr/04/donald-trump-xi-jinping-abdel-fattah-el-sisi-
human-rights, Accessed 7/27/17, HWilson)

Donald Trump’s embrace of authoritarian tactics – and leaders – has dealt a body blow
to activists struggling against repressive regimes across the globe , campaigners have
warned, as the US president prepares to welcome China’s strongman ruler, Xi Jinping, to his
Florida estate.

Xi, the architect of a severe political clampdown at home , will be the second
authoritarian leader Trump has hosted this week, following his controversial endorsement
of Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi at the White House on Monday.
“We agree on so many things,” the US president said of Sisi, who has been accused of jailing
opponents, suppressing protests and overseeing a deadly military crackdown that left hundreds
dead.
Xi, with whom Trump will hold two days of potentially thorny talks focused on trade and North
Korea, also faces a litany of accusations over his human rights record. In the nearly five
years since he took office, activists say China has been plunged into the harshest period of
political repression since the days after the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown.
Campaigners and political opponents have urged Trump to speak out against Xi’s crackdown –
which has targeted feminists, academics, publishers and top human rights lawyers – when the
pair meet at Mar-a-Lago on Thursday.
“It is unacceptable for President Xi to get a pass on human rights,” Republican senator Marco
Rubio said, pointing to more than 1,000 political and religious prisoners he said were
languishing in Chinese jails.
However, Nicholas Bequelin, Amnesty International’s East Asia director, said Trump’s open
contempt for the judiciary and support for policies “in absolute and complete contradiction of
human rights obligations under international law”, such as his travel ban, meant the days when
Washington could effectively lecture countries like China on human rights were over.
“When a repressive government chooses to send someone to jail … they make political
calculations about the benefits and costs of putting that person away,” he said.

“The fact that the US seems to be abandoning any kind of role in maintaining a
consistent message on human rights and protesting human rights violations affects the
calculations of these governments. They are just going to think there is no price to pay for
political repression. So it will embolden them and at the end of the line human rights defenders
in China will pay a heavier price … It is not going to be pretty.”
Bequelin said that with Trump in the White House, Beijing would feel “relief that there is no
strong moral authority coming from the US anymore ”.

Margaret Huang, the executive director of Amnesty International USA, said that despite having
been in office for less than 100 days, Trump could already boast “a significantly dismal
human rights record ”.

Trump’s silence over Xi’s sweeping crackdown and attempts to transform his own “hateful”
campaign rhetoric into policy suggested he had decided to de-emphasise human rights issues
both at home and abroad.
“Human rights around the world are under increasing threat today and without bold, principled
leadership we are heading in a very dangerous direction,” Huang added.
Recent months have seen Xi attempt to contrast himself with the erratic commander-in-chief,
stepping forwards as a champion of globalisation and the fight against climate change.
But Bequelin said he was troubled at how Trump’s apparent abdication of global leadership
meant Xi would go into this week’s talks feted as the more responsible figure.
“The optics of this meeting, frankly, is going to be that Xi Jinping is the adult in the room. But the
next question is: what kind of adult?” Bequelin said.
“He is the leader of an almost completely unaccountable political structure domestically; a
country where you have no rule of law, no elections, no religious or political freedoms, no free
press and so on. It is wishful thinking to hope that greater Chinese leadership over global affairs
would somehow turn out to be something different to what China is at home.”
Despite widespread despondency over Trump’s unwillingness to champion human rights,
victims of Xi’s crackdown are urging him to publicly challenge his guest.
Wang Qiaoling, the wife of jailed attorney Li Heping, said she hoped Trump would demand the
release of prisoners such as her husband “with no strings attached”. “If Trump knows what is
happening in China, he will take action,” she said.
Calls to publicly raise human rights issues are likely to fall on deaf ears, however. “Those are
the kind of things that I believe progress is made privately,” White House press secretary Sean
Spicer told reporters.
Last month, it emerged the US had declined to sign a letter criticising China over the alleged
torture of human rights lawyers and activists, in a break with past practice.
Ashley Townshend, a scholar at the University of Sydney’s United States Studies Centre, said it
was possible Trump would feel “some sense of camaraderie” towards China’s authoritarian
leader. “There is something in Xi that Trump will find attractive. Trump respects powerful
strongmen. He respects strength.”
Bequelin said activists fighting repressive regimes would not throw in the towel simply because
they could no longer count on the White House’s support.
“When you live near a lake and you see the lake turn red [you] are not thinking about whether
the great arc of the history of human rights is going in the right direction or not. You just want
your kids not to be poisoned,” he said.
“[But] there is no doubt about it: abandoning human rights means abandoning human rights
defenders. Abandoning people who play a positive role, and are very often the antibodies of the
societies they live in, will make for a more unstable world in the medium and the long term.”
 2NC—Democracy Promotion Bad
Democracy promotion is ineffective, causes pushback and destabilizes
regional powers
Pakhomov 16—political analyst and consultant, Russian International Affairs Council expert
(Nikolay, 8/2/16, “Promoting Democracy Overseas Is Hurting America,”
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/promoting-democracy-overseas-hurting-america-
17219?page=show, Accessed 7/27/17, HWilson)
The attempted coup in Turkey raised so many questions that experts and journalists seemed
eager to cover other events happening around the world, rather than untangle the situation in
Turkey. Still, there is one very clear result of the coup: Western countries should take caution
when executing foreign policy based on liberal idealism. The dramatic events in Turkey
reminded everybody that there is a limit in international relations for how far even the most
powerful countries can go in promoting democracy without damaging their security stance.
The debate between two camps of academicians and policymakers on whether foreign policy
should be defined by virtuous ideas or by specific national, primarily security, interests is
decades, if not centuries, old. Not long ago, after the end of the Cold War, it seemed that that
debate was over—at least on the doctrinal level. The collapse of the Soviet Union was
associated with the American foreign policy of democracy promotion and global engagement
based on the determination to protect the Western values of market economy, free elections
and human rights. Therefore, Western politicians and even scholars declared that not only was
this ideology triumphant, but that a foreign policy based on this Western ideology is the only
right choice for statesmen to take.
Doubters, trying to make the case for the importance of a foreign policy protecting narrowly
defined national interests, were unable to hold their ground on both practical and theoretical
grounds. In practice, they were struggling to name threats that a foreign policy based on the
Western ideology of free markets and democracy could not eliminate. In theory, one can argue
that after Western values withstood the ideological battle of the Cold War, and became even
more attractive, sooner or later they must become universal. This process will result in a
significant increase in the number of democratic states, and these states cannot have drastically
different national interests.
With dominance of democratic countries one could expect at least an improvement in
international security—Immanuel Kant and numerous thinkers after him have argued that a
democratic peace is possible. However, on September 11, 2001, the idea of an inevitable
decrease in international violence received a heavy blow. Policymakers in the United States
were faced with tragic proof that the international security situation was far from improving.
Later, a body of evidence started to grow, refuting the idea that an ideologically driven foreign
policy is necessarily good for international security.
Even putting aside China, with its official communism, one can see that the Middle East
contains many security dilemmas created by a foreign policy based on ideology. The failed coup
in Turkey serves as the latest example. To better understand the reasons for that, we must
remember one basic fact about this kind of foreign policy: a state developing a foreign policy
based on any type of ideology demonstrates its conviction that its ideology has global appeal.
The country’s leaders and diplomats assume this ideology as universally true, to the point that
other countries ought not to have objections against the diplomacy based on it. Furthermore,
should there be any places left in the world where this ideology is not accepted, its global
promotion will become just and necessary.
One can argue that this has been exactly the thinking behind Western foreign policy for the last
twenty-five years. At first sight, liberal ideology’s dominance in international relations should not
be problematic for the countries preaching it: ultimately, the ideas of democracy, human rights
and free markets are not evil in themselves, and have proven beneficial to Western and some
Eastern countries. However, the devil is always in the details. These liberal ideas, especially
democracy and its implementation, have caused century-long arguments even in the countries
where they were originally developed. Therefore, it should be of no surprise that attempts to
base foreign policy on liberal ideas continue to provoke new international controversies.
Debates on how to define democracy are a significant part of political science, and are far from
being over. The recent history of the Arab Spring and, now, the failed coup in Turkey brings
these disputes back to life. If “promoting freedom and democracy and protecting human rights
around the world are central to U.S. foreign policy,” the United States inevitably becomes a
participant in these arguments, which have caused a lot of bloodshed. In that case, one can
argue that the security stance of the United States may suffer, both in the region and globally.
In recent history, before Turkey, we witnessed another country with a complicated interplay of
democracy, Islamism, military power and American security interests: Egypt. However, despite
the similarities, the situation in Egypt differed from what is happening now in Turkey. The
biggest difference is the fact that, at least in Egypt, it was possible to distinguish the sides in
domestic political battles. In Turkey, on the other hand, even leading experts are unable to draw
a clear line between politics and the military, popular will and authoritarianism, democracy and
Islamism, counterterrorism and protection of human rights. This perplexity makes it difficult for
the United States and the European Union to find a balance in their relations with Turkey,
between democratic rhetoric and security interests.
In Egypt, the United States stood by its ally, Hosni Mubarak, for several decades. Although
Mubarak held the rank of air chief marshal, there was formally no military dictatorship. Elections
were held, which Mubarak consistently won. Was it a democracy? Many activists persecuted by
Mubarak regime, who at times received American support, would not agree. However, even
after the massive demonstrations against the regime started in 2011, the United States
continued to support Mubarak. Later, Washington withdrew that support and supported the
democratization process that began after Mubarak’s ouster. As a result of the democratization
started by no less than the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, the Islamist Muslim
Brotherhood gained power. In 2013, the democratically elected president representing the
Muslim Brotherhood, Mohamed Morsi, was removed by the military with public support. In 2014,
Field Marshal Abdel Fattah el-Sisi became president.
Numerous questions emerged at every stage of this process on whether these developments
were democratic. Washington has mostly preferred not to reach conclusions on the subject, and
continued its partnership with the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, with Morsi and, now,
with Sisi. Considering Egypt’s importance to regional security, it is easy to understand why the
United States de facto abstained from deciding what was democratic. This decision was simple
because, democracy or not, the situation in Egypt was always clear on the locus of public
support and the identity of the main players.
It is far less so now in Turkey. Erdoğan has blamed Fethullah Gülen, also an Islamist, for the
coup. The military is divided, and Erdoğan remains unpopular within a broad segment of the
public worried about his authoritarian tendencies and policies, which could alter the secular
character of the Turkish state. In such a situation, after years of foreign policy based on
promoting democracy, it is very hard for Washington and European capitals to make their
choice. So far, security interests have prevailed. Turkey is a NATO member and, at the very
least, crucial for the very difficult and important war against ISIS. That explains the rather muted
criticism from the West. Nonetheless, the diplomatic balance is becoming more difficult for
Western officials to sustain—especially when the Turkish authorities continue adopting new
restrictive measures against those accused of participating or supporting the coup, and the
international media becomes more critical of Erdoğan.
In such a situation, any new statement from Western officials criticizing what is happening in
Turkey, not to mention any Western moves against Ankara, gives Erdoğan a new reason to
blame the coup on foreign support and to take new measures against domestic enemies.
Should Western leaders choose to avoid criticizing Erdoğan, they risk losing at least some of
their domestic support. An ideologically loaded foreign policy does not allow the clear separation
of particular national, in this case, security interests from internal political discussions.
Today, European politicians might be in an even more difficult position than their American
counterparts. In the United States, the presidential campaign does not leave much space for
discussions on Turkey. In Europe, Erdoğan and Turkey have always had enough opponents—
even before the coup. Today, those opponents have new arguments to demand drastic
measures against Ankara. Although there are no reasons to expect that this type of campaign
will produce any kind of sanctions against Turkey, it has become obvious that EU-Turkey and
U.S.-Turkey relations have sustained significant damage. It is has also become clear that
foreign policy based on ideology limits space for Western diplomatic maneuvers.
 AT: Universal Healthcare
Either the GOP won’t ever approve universal healthcare
Plotkin 17—opinion contributor to The Hill (Mark, 3/17/17, “Republicans don't really want
healthcare for everyone,” http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/healthcare/324415-republicans-
dont-really-want-healthcare-for-everyone, Accessed 7/27/17, HWilson)
All the talk and debate about the Republican House plan to replace ObamaCare seems to leave
out one overriding and major principle: Republicans don't want to provide health insurance
coverage to everyone .
Now, they will never come out and say that. You will never see House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) behind a
podium admitting it. But you must never forget that the GOP's guiding philosophy is, "You are on your own."

According to the GOP, the government is not supposed to help or aid those who have
not lucked out in life. Nearly 9 percent of Americans — almost 30 million people — don't have any
health insurance , even after ObamaCare. But that's their fault, according to Republicans.

Remember, the
GOP has a long and ugly history when it comes to providing for the
economic well-being of U.S. citizens. Social Security, unemployment compensation,
Medicare, Medicaid — to them, these are just big-government programs that smack of socialism .

Or it’s inevitable
Shvedsky 17—writer for The Daily Good (Leo, 5/8/17, “Even Republicans Admit We’re
Headed For Universal Health Care,” https://www.good.is/articles/trump-republicans-want-
universal-health-care, Accessed 7/27/17, HWilson)
“You have better health care than we do.”
When President Trump said those words to Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull,
most in the media interpreted it as another unintentional verbal slip from the president,
hilariously coming just hours after House Republicans barely managed to pass a bill that nearly everyone thinks is terrible.

But Trump’s admission is one that is increasingly shared by Americans and even many
of the most conservative Republicans out there. Because even as they label the
Affordable Care Act a “failure,” there’s a growing sense that we’re rapidly heading
toward a form of universal health care that is far more progressive than President Obama
dared to pursue when he was president.

First, consider the numbers. A recent poll found that 40 percent of Trump supporters favor
expanding Medicare to all Americans . Who knows if they understand the semantics? But the sentiment is
clear: providing universal health care is quite popular with the voters who put Trump in
the White House, and it’s even more popular with those who voted for Hillary Clinton.
“I would predict that in less than seven years, we'll be in a single-payer system ,” acclaimed
conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer told Tucker Carlson during an appearance on his show last week. “The terms of
debate are entirely on the grounds of the liberal argument that everybody ought to have
it. Once that happens, you're going to end up with a single-payer system.”
Krauthammer’s thesis, which Carlson did not dispute, is that for all of its shortcomings, Obamacare has become the new normal in
the American psyche. And if history if any indicator, it’s just about impossible to give Americans a new social welfare entitlement
program and then take it away.

In that sense, Republicans and Democrats have something in common.

Back in 2013, former Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was asked if Obamacare was part of a gradual move toward
universal, single-payer coverage: “Yes, yes. Absolutely, yes,” he said. “What we’ve done with Obamacare is have a step in the right
direction, but we’re far from having something that’s going to work forever.”

This doesn’t mean that President Trump will be signing a breakthrough piece of health care
legislation anytime soon. But as Senate Republicans have already thrown out the House
Republican bill, it’s clear the odds of heading back into the darkness on health care are
fading quickly into the rearview mirror. And that’s not because our lawmakers have suddenly developed a
conscience on the issue. It’s because the American public is quickly deciding they won’t have it

any other way.

As the libertarian Reason explained:

“Rank-and-file Republicans may love to grumble about big government, but most of them made their peace with entitlements long
ago; if they can handle that tension, they can probably handle another one. And if
enough Republican voters
decide that this is what they want, there will be Republican politicians who are willing to
oblige them.”
CP—Democracy Promotion
 1NC—CP
The United States federal government should:
--- partner with the National Endowment for Democracy and its affiliate
organizations to institute democracy summits in Asia in concert with those
organized by Asia’s liberal leaders.
--- encourage liberalization by developing aid and trade packages for
governments that are willing to contribute to Asian democracy and security
by hosting regional democracy meetings, participating in joint security
exercises, or developing their own exchange programs.

The counterplan’s effective democracy promotion is key to regional and

global stability
Auslin, Ph.D., 17—resident scholar and the director of Japan Studies at the American
Enterprise Institute, former associate professor of history at Yale, received a Ph.D. from the
University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign (Michael, 2017, “The End of the Asian Century: War,
Stagnation, and the Risks to the World’s Most Dynamic Region,” Published by Yale University
Press, HWilson)
Betting on Democracy
How then, should we seek to redraw the map of political risk in Asia?
In asking this question, we have arrived at the end of our journey through the entirety of Asia’s
risk map. The best way to reduce risk across the board—be it economic, demographic,
security, or other —is to pursue the most idealistic goal: to encourage wider liberalization
throughout the region. That, as it turns out, is also the most difficult end to achieve.

A more democratic Indo-Pacific will be a more prosperous and stable one. No one
pretends that democracy is perfect, but it offers the best opportunities for long-term
social and economic growth . Even Japan has maintained its standards of living and
kept social stability during its long period of stagnation, due in no small part to its liberal
society . The more democracies a region has, the better the chance of peacefully
resolving disputes and creating robust mechanisms of cooperation as well. The next
generation therefore should be dedicated to nurturing a more democratic Asia , with
untiring support from the region’s current democracies, the United States , and Europe. This
may be the most idealistic suggestion of how to reduce risk, but it must be undertaken in
realistic ways .

Such a goal is made more important by the growing cooperation among authoritarian
and illiberal powers. From China’s longtime support for North Korea, to Russia’s invasion
of Ukraine and intervention in the Syrian civil war, to an informal Iran–North Korea axis,
challengers to the postWorld War II liberal international order are increasingly providing
each other moral support, and are cooperating to undermine international institutions
and norms . 68 While authoritarian nations do not have a good track record of maintaining
extended alliances, they can nonetheless be very successful at undermining regional and
global stability . This process can be short circuited only by increasing the number and
strength of liberal states supporting regional and global order.

Nurturing democracy inside a country is intimately related to forging a community of

liberal nations. It is rare for democracy to flower in a sterile garden . Long-term domestic
stability and prosperity can be encouraged by the regional spread of democratic norms,
including civil rights , rule of law , gender equality , and a free press . Just as our
strategy for reducing security risk was to develop a nascent regional security
community , a vibrant regional political environment will both encourage and be grown
by stronger and more confident democracies . Again, Europe is a model for how a stable
regional environment helps ensure democracy’s long-term viability .

Many things can be done to nurture democracy in Asia. First, the region’s leading liberal
states, Japan, India, and South Korea, along with Taiwan, should take the lead in self-
consciously promoting liberal ideas. As discussed earlier in this chapter, these “outer
triangle” countries should form an alliance of democracies and hold annual summits on civil
society and democratic governance. These should be smaller than pan-Asia gatherings and
specifically concerned with promoting democratic growth. Asia’s leading liberal states,
especially Japan and Australia, can promote grassroots gatherings and fund legislative, legal,
media, and student exchanges to build the infrastructure of democracy.

The U nited S tates can play a major role in such an endeavor . The U.S. State
Department should partner with the National Endowment for Democracy and its affiliate
organizations to institute democracy summits in Asia in concert with those organized by
Asia’s liberal leaders. European states can do the same, and the United States and European
democracies can lend their expertise to an Asian agenda that includes everything from best
electoral practices to writing liberal legal codes. Younger European democracies, such as
Poland and the Czech Republic, which have far less exposure to Asian nations, should be given
formal opportunities to share with Asia’s liberalizing states their experiences of adopting
democracy. Asia’s own newer democracies, such as South Korea and Taiwan, can and should
do the same.

At the bilateral level, Washington should encourage liberalization by developing special

aid and trade packages for governments that are willing to contribute to Asian
democracy and security by hosting regional democracy meetings, participating in joint
security exercises, or developing their own exchange programs.
K—Liberalism
 1NC

Promotion of “rights” under the guise of stopping religious violence is a

liberal fantasy that necessitates US intervention and a global war on the
other—starting with a critical analysis to break down the discursive
underpinnings of “religious violence” is the only thing that can save
humanity from nuclear war
Cavanaugh 7—Professor of Theology at DePaul University (William, Spring/Summer 2007,
“Does Religion Cause Violence?,” Harvard Divinity Bulletin VOL. 35, NOS. 2 & 3;
http://bulletin.hds.harvard.edu/articles/springsummer2007/does-religion-cause-violence,
HWilson)

EVERYONE KNOWS thatreligion has a dangerous tendency to promote violence . This story is
part of the conventional wisdom of Western societies, and it underlies many of our
institutions and policies, from limits on the public role of religion to efforts to promote
democracy in the Middle East.
In this essay, I am going to challenge that conventional wisdom, but not in the ways it is usually challenged by people who identify
themselves as religious. Such people will sometimes argue that the real motivation behind so-called religious violence is in fact
economic and political, not religious. Others will argue that people who do violence are, by definition, not religious. The Crusader is
not really a Christian, for example, because he doesn't really understand the meaning of Christianity. I don't think that either of these
arguments works. In the first place, it is impossible to separate out religious from economic and political motives in such a way that
religious motives are innocent of violence. How could one, for example, separate religion from politics in Islam, when Muslims
themselves make no such separation? In the second place, it may be the case that the Crusader has misappropriated the true
message of Christ, but one cannot therefore excuse Christianity of all responsibility. Christianity is not primarily a set of doctrines,
but a lived historical experience embodied and shaped by the empirically observable actions of Christians. So I have no intention of
excusing Christianity or Islam or any other faith system from careful analysis. Given certain conditions, Christianity, Islam, and other
faiths can and do contribute to violence.

But what is implied in the conventional wisdom that religion is prone to violence is that
Christianity, Islam, and other faiths are more inclined toward violence than ideologies
and institutions that are identified as "secular ." It is this story that I will challenge here. I will
do so in two steps. First, I will show that the division of ideologies and institutions into the categories
"religious" and "secular" is an arbitrary and incoherent division. When we examine academic
arguments that religion causes violence, we find that what does or does not count as religion is based on subjective and
indefensible assumptions. As a result certain kinds of violence are condemned, and others are
ignored . Second, I ask, "If the idea that there is something called 'religion' that is more violent
than so-called 'secular' phenomena is so incoherent, why is the idea so pervasive?" The
answer, I think, is that we in the West find it comforting and ideologically useful. The myth of

religious violence helps create a blind spot about the violence of the putatively secular
nation-state. We like to believe that the liberal state arose to make peace between
warring religious factions . Today, the Western liberal state is charged with the burden of
creating peace in the face of the cruel religious fanaticism of the Muslim world. The myth
of religious violence promotes a dichotomy between us in the secular West who are
rational and peacemaking, and them, the hordes of violent religious fanatics in the
Muslim world. Their violence is religious, and therefore irrational and divisive. Our violence ,
on the other hand, is rational, peacemaking, and necessary . Regrettably, we find
ourselves forced to bomb them into the higher rationality.
The Incoherence of the Argument

The English-speaking academic world has been inundated—especially since September 11, 2001—by books and articles
attempting to explain why religion has a peculiar tendency toward violence. They come from authors in many different fields:
sociology, political science, religious studies, history, theology. I don't have time here to analyze each argument in depth, but I will
examine a variety of examples—taken from some of the most prominent books on the subject—of what they all have in common: an
inability to find a convincing way to separate religious violence from secular violence.

Charles Kimball's book When Religion Becomes Evil begins with the following claim: "It is somewhat trite, but nevertheless sadly
true, to say that more wars have been waged, more people killed, and these days more evil perpetrated in the name of religion than
by any other institutional force in human history."1 Kimball apparently considers this claim too trite to need proving, for he makes no
attempt to reinforce it with evidence. If one were to try to prove it, one would need a concept of religion that would be at least
theoretically separable from other institutional forces over the course of history. Kimball does not identify those rival institutional
forces, but an obvious contender might be political institutions: tribes, empires, kingdoms, fiefs, states, and so on. The problem is
that religion was not considered something separable from such political institutions until the modern era, and then primarily in the
West. What sense could be made of separating out Egyptian or Roman "religion" from the Egyptian or Roman "state"? Is Aztec
"politics" to blame for their bloody human sacrifices, or is Aztec "religion" to blame? As Wilfred Cantwell Smith showed in his
landmark 1962 book, The Meaning and End of Religion, "religion" as a discrete category of human activity separable from "culture,"
"politics," and other areas of life is an invention of the modern West. In the course of a detailed historical study of the concept
"religion," Smith was compelled to conclude that in premodern Europe there was no significant concept equivalent to what we think
of as "religion," and furthermore there is no "closely equivalent concept in any culture that has not been influenced by the modern
West."2 Since Smith's book, Russell
McCutcheon, Richard King, Derek Peterson, and a host of
other scholars have demonstrated how European colonial bureaucrats invented the
concept of religion in the course of categorizing non-Western colonized cultures as
irrational and antimodern.3
Now that we do have a separate concept of "religion," though, is the concept a coherent one? Jonathan Z. Smith writes:
"Religion is solely the creation of the scholar's study . . . . Religion has no independent
existence apart from the academy ."4 Brian C. Wilson says that the inability to define religion is "almost an article of
methodological dogma" in the field of religious studies.5 Timothy Fitzgerald argues that there is no coherent concept
of religion; the term should be regarded as a form of mystification and scrapped .6 We have
one group of scholars convinced that religion causes violence, and another group of scholars which does not think that there is such
a thing as "religion," except as an intellectual construct of highly dubious value.
The former group carries on as if the latter did not exist. Kimball is one of the few who acknowledges the problem, but he dismisses
it as merely semantic. Describing how flustered his students become when he asks them to write a definition of "religion," Kimball
asserts, "Clearly these bright students know what religion is"; they just have trouble defining it. After all, Kimball assures us,
"Religion is a central feature of human life. We all see many indications of it every day, and we all know it when we see it."7 When
an academic says such a thing, you should react as you would when a used car salesman says, "Everybody knows this is a good
car." The fact is that we don't all know it when we see it. A survey of religious studies literature finds totems, witchcraft, the rights of
man, Marxism, liberalism, Japanese tea ceremonies, nationalism, sports, free market ideology, and a host of other institutions and
practices treated under the rubric "religion."8 If one tries to limit the definition of religion to belief in God or gods, then certain belief
systems that are usually called "religions" are eliminated, such as Theravada Buddhism and Confucianism. If the definition is
expanded to include such belief systems, then all sorts of practices, including many that are usually labeled "secular," fall under the
definition of religion. Many institutions and ideologies that do not explicitly refer to God or gods function in the same way as those
that do. The case for nationalism as a religion, for example, has been made repeatedly from Carlton Hayes's 1960 classic
Nationalism: A Religion to more recent works by Peter van der Veer, Talal Asad, Carolyn Marvin, and others.9 Carolyn Marvin
argues that "nationalism is the most powerful religion in the United States."10

At this point I can imagine an objection being raised that goes like this: "So the concept of religion has some fuzzy edges. So does
every concept. We might not be able to nail down, once and for all and in all cases, what a 'culture' is, or what qualifies as 'politics,'
for example, but nevertheless the concepts remain useful. All may not agree on the periphery of these concepts, but sufficient
agreement on the center of such concepts makes them practical and functional. Most people know that 'religion' includes
Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and the major 'world religions.' Whether or not Buddhism or Confucianism fits is a boundary dispute
best left up to scholars who make their living splitting hairs."

This appears to be a commonsense response, but it misses the point rather completely. In the first place, when some scholars
question whether the category of religion is useful at all, it is more than a boundary dispute. There are some who do not believe
the problem with the "religion and
there is a center. In the second place, and much more significantly,
violence" arguments is not that their working definitions of religion are too fuzzy. The problem is precisely the opposite.
Their implicit definitions of religion are unjustifiably clear about what does and does not
qualify as a religion. Certain belief systems, like Islam, are condemned, while certain
others, like nationalism, are arbitrarily ignored.

This becomes most apparent when the authors in question attempt to explain why
religion is so prone to violence. Although theories vary, we can sort them into three categories: religion is absolutist,
religion is divisive, and religion is irrational. Many authors appeal to more than one of these arguments. In the face of
evidence that so-called secular ideologies and institutions can be just as absolutist,
divisive, or irrational, these authors tend to erect an arbitrary barrier between "secular"
and "religious" ideologies and institutions, and ignore the former.
Consider the case of the preeminent historian Martin Marty. In a book on public religion, Politics, Religion, and the Common Good,
Marty argues that religion has a particular tendency to be divisive and therefore violent. When it comes to defining what "religion"
means, however, Marty lists 17 different definitions of religion, then begs off giving his own definition, since, he says, "[s]cholars will
never agree on the definition of religion." Instead, Marty gives a list of five "features" that mark a religion. He then proceeds to show
how "politics" displays all five of the same features. Religion focuses our ultimate concern, and so does politics. Religion builds
community, and so does politics. Religion appeals to myth and symbol, and politics "mimics" this appeal in devotion to the flag, war
memorials, and so on. Religion uses rites and ceremonies, such as circumcision and baptism, and "[p]olitics also depends on rites
and ceremonies," even in avowedly secular nations. Religion requires followers to behave in certain ways, and "[p]olitics and
governments also demand certain behaviors." In offering five defining features of "religion," and showing how "politics" fits all five,
he is trying to show how closely intertwined religion and politics are, but he ends up demolishing any theoretical basis for separating
the two. Nevertheless, he continues on to warn of the dangers of religion, while ignoring the violent tendencies of supposedly
"secular" politics. For example, Marty cites the many cases of Jehovah's Witnesses who were attacked, beaten, tarred, castrated,
and imprisoned in the United States in the 1940s because they believed that followers of Jesus Christ should not salute a flag. One
would think that he would draw the obvious conclusion that zealous nationalism can cause violence. Instead, Marty concludes: "it
became obvious that religion, which can pose 'us' versus 'them' . . . carries risks and can be perceived by others as dangerous.
Religion can cause all kinds of trouble in the public arena."11 For Marty, "religion" refers not to the ritual vowing of allegiance to a
flag, but only to the Jehovah's Witnesses refusal to do so.

As you can see, we need not rely only on McCutcheon, Smith, King, Fitzgerald, and the rest to show us that the religious/secular
dichotomy is incoherent. Religion-and-violence theorists inevitably undermine their own distinctions. Take, for example, sociologist
Mark Juergensmeyer's book Terror in the Mind of God, perhaps the most widely influential academic book on religion and violence.
According to Juergensmeyer, religion exacerbates the tendency to divide people into friends and enemies, good and evil, us and
them, by ratcheting divisions up to a cosmic level. "What makes religious violence particularly savage and relentless" is that it puts
worldly conflicts in a "larger than life" context of "cosmic war." Secular political conflicts—that is, "more rational" conflicts, such as
those over land—are of a fundamentally different character than those in which the stakes have been raised by religious absolutism
to cosmic proportions. Religious violence differs from secular violence in that it is symbolic, absolutist, and unrestrained by historical
time.12

However, keeping the notion of cosmic war separate from secular political war is impossible on Juergensmeyer's own terms.
Juergensmeyer undermines this distinction in the course of his own analysis. For example, what he says about cosmic war is
virtually indistinguishable from what he says about war in general:

Looking closely at the notion of war, one is confronted with the idea of dichotomous opposition on an absolute
scale. . . . War suggests an all-or-nothing struggle against an enemy whom one assumes to

be determined to destroy . No compromise is deemed possible. The very existence of the

opponent is a threat, and until the enemy is either crushed or contained, one's own
existence cannot be secure . What is striking about a martial attitude is the certainty of one's position and the
willingness to defend it, or impose it on others, to the end.
Such certitude on the part of one side may be regarded as noble by those whose sympathies lie with it and dangerous by those who
do not. But either way it is not rational.13

War provides an excuse not to compromise. In other words, " War provides a reason to be
violent . This is true even if the worldly issues at heart in the dispute do not seem to warrant such a ferocious position." The
division between mundane secular war and cosmic war vanishes as fast as it was constructed. According to Juergensmeyer, war
itself is a "worldview"; indeed, "The concept of war provides cosmology, history, and eschatology and offers the reins of political
control." "Like the rituals provided by religious traditions, warfare is a participatory drama that exemplifies—and thus explains—the
most profound aspects of life." Here, war itself is a kind of religious practice.

At times Juergensmeyer admits the difficulty of separating religious violence from mere political violence. "Much of what I have said
about religious terrorism in this book may be applied to other forms of political violence—especially those that are ideological and
ethnic in nature."14 In Juergensmeyer's earlier book, The New Cold War? Religious Nationalism Confronts the Secular State, he
writes: "Secular nationalism, like religion, embraces what one scholar calls 'a doctrine of destiny.' One can take this way of looking
at secular nationalism a step further and state flatly . . . that secular nationalism is 'a religion.' "15 These are important concessions.
If true, however, they subvert the entire basis of his argument, which is the sharp divide between religious and secular violence.

Other theorists of religion and violence make similar admissions. Kimball, for example, says in passing that " blind
religious
zealotry is similar to unfettered nationalism," and, indeed, nationalism would seem to
fit—at times—all five of Kimball's "warning signs" for when religion turns evil: absolute
truth claims, blind obedience, establishment of ideal times, ends justifying means, and
the declaration of holy war. The last one would seem to preclude secular ideologies, but as Kimball himself points out,
the United States regularly invokes a "cosmic dualism" in its war on terror .16 Political theorist
Bhikhu Parekh similarly undermines his own point in his article on religious violence. According to Parekh,

Although religion can make a valuable contribution to political life, it can also be a pernicious influence, as liberals rightly highlight. It
is often absolutist, self-righteous, arrogant, dogmatic, and impatient of compromise. It arouses powerful and sometimes irrational
impulses and can easily destabilize society, cause political havoc, and create a veritable hell on earth. . . . It often breeds
intolerance of other religions as well as of internal dissent, and has a propensity towards violence.17

Parekh does not define religion, but assumes the validity of the religious/secular distinction. Nevertheless, he admits that "several
secular ideologies, such as some varieties of Marxism, conservatism, and even liberalism have a quasi-
religious orientation and form, and conversely formally religious languages sometimes have a secular content, so
that the dividing line between a secular and a religious language is sometimes difficult to
draw."18 If this is true, where does it leave his searing indictment of the dangers peculiarly inherent to religion? Powerful
irrational impulses are popping up all over, including in liberalism itself , forcing the creation of
the category "quasi-religious" to try somehow to corral them all back under the heading of "religion." But if liberalism—
which is based on the distinction between religion and the secular—is itself a kind of
religion, then the religious/secular distinction crumbles into a heap of contradictions .
For some religion-and-violence theorists, the contradictions are resolved by openly expanding the definition of "religion" to include
ideologies and practices that are usually called "secular." In his book Why People Do Bad Things in the Name of Religion, religious
studies scholar Richard Wentz blames violence on absolutism. People create absolutes out of fear of their own limitations.
Absolutes are projections of a fictional limited self, and people react with violence when others do not accept them. Religion has a
peculiar tendency toward absolutism, says Wentz, but he casts a very wide net when considering religion. Wentz believes that
religiousness is an inescapable universal human characteristic displayed even by those who reject what is called "organized
religion." Faith in technology, secular humanism, consumerism, football fanaticism, and a host of other worldviews can be counted
as religions, too. Wentz is compelled to conclude, rather lamely, "Perhaps all of us do bad things in the name of
(or as a representative of) religion."19

Wentz should be commended for his consistency in not trying to erect an artificial division between "religious" and "secular" types of
absolutism. The price of consistency, however, is that he evacuates his own argument of explanatory force or usefulness. The word
"religion" in the title of his book—Why People Do Bad Things in the Name of Religion—ends up meaning anything people do that
gives their lives order and meaning. A more economical title for his book would have been Why People Do Bad Things. The term
"religion" is so broad that it serves no useful analytical purpose.

At this point, the religion-and-violence theorist might try to salvage the argument by saying something like this: "Surely secular
ideologies such as nationalism can get out of hand, but religion has a much greater tendency toward fanaticism because the object
of its truth claims is absolute in ways that secular claims are not. The capitalist knows that money is just a human creation, the
liberal democrat is modest about what can be known beyond human experience, the nationalist knows that a country is made of
land and mortal people, but the religious believer puts faith in a god or gods or at least a transcendent reality that lays claim to
absolute validity. It is this absolutism that makes obedience blind and causes the believer to subjugate all means to a transcendent
end."

The problem with this argument is that what counts as "absolute" is decided a priori and is immune to empirical testing. It is based
on theological descriptions of beliefs and not on observation of the believers' behavior. Of course Christian orthodoxy would make
the theological claim that God is absolute in a way that nothing else is. The problem is that humans are constantly tempted toward
idolatry, to putting what is merely relative in the place of God. It is not enough, therefore, to claim that worship of God is absolutist.
The real question is, what god is actually being worshiped?

But surely, the objection might go, nobody really thinks the flag or the nation or money or sports idols are their "gods"—that is just a
metaphor. However, the question is not simply one of belief, but of behavior. If a person claims to believe in the Christian God but
never gets off the couch on Sunday morning and spends the rest of the week in obsessive pursuit of profit in the bond market, then
what is "absolute" in that person's life in a functional sense is probably not the Christian God. Matthew 6:24 personifies Mammon as
a rival god, not in the conviction that such a divine being really exists, but from the empirical observation that people have a
tendency to treat all sorts of things as absolutes.

Suppose we apply an empirical test to the question of absolutism. "Absolute" is itself a vague term, but in the "religion and violence"
arguments it appears to indicate the tendency to take something so seriously that violence results. The most relevant empirically
testable definition of "absolute," then, would be "that for which one is willing to kill." This test has the advantage of covering
behavior, and not simply what one claims to believe. Now let us ask the following two questions: What percentage of Americans
who identify themselves as Christians would be willing to kill for their Christian faith? What percentage would be willing to kill for
their country? Whether we attempt to answer these questions by survey or by observing American Christians' behavior in wartime, it
seems clear that, at least among American Christians, the nation-state is subject to far more absolutist fervor than Christianity. For
most American Christians, even public evangelization is considered to be in poor taste, and yet most endorse organized slaughter
on behalf of the nation as sometimes necessary and often laudable. In other countries or other traditions the results of this test might
be very different. The point is that such empirical testing is of far more usefulness than general theories about the violence of
"religion."

We must conclude that there is no coherent way to isolate "religious" ideologies with a
peculiar tendency toward violence from their tamer "secular" counterparts. So-called secular
ideologies and institutions like nationalism and liberalism can be just as absolutist, divisive,
and irrational as so-called religion . People kill for all sorts of things. An adequate approach to the
problem would be resolutely empirical: under what conditions do certain beliefs and practices—jihad, the "invisible hand" of the
market, the sacrificial atonement of Christ, the
role of the United States as worldwide liberator—turn
violent? The point is not simply that "secular" violence should be given equal attention to "religious" violence. The point is that
the distinction between "secular" and "religious" violence is unhelpful, misleading, and mystifying, and should be avoided altogether.

What Is the Argument For?

I believe it is because
If the conventional wisdom that religion causes violence is so incoherent, why is it so prevalent?
we in the West find it useful. In domestic politics, it serves to silence representatives of
certain kinds of faiths in the public sphere. The story is told repeatedly that the liberal
state has learned to tame the dangerous divisiveness of contending religious beliefs by
reducing them to essentially private affairs . In foreign policy, the conventional wisdom
helps reinforce and justify Western attitudes and policies toward the non-Western world,
especially Muslims, whose primary point of difference with the West is their stubborn
refusal to tame religious passions in the public sphere. "We in the West long ago learned the sobering
lessons of religious warfare and have moved toward secularization. The liberal nation-state is essentially a

peacemaker . Now we only seek to share the blessings of peace with the Muslim world. Regrettably, because of their stubborn
it is sometimes necessary to bomb them into liberal democracy ." In other words, the
fanaticism,
myth of religious violence establishes a reassuring dichotomy between their violence—
which is absolutist, divisive, and irrational—and our violence —which is modest, unitive,
and rational.
The myth of religious violence marks the "clash of civilizations" worldview that attributes Muslims' animosity toward the West to their
inability to learn the lessons of history and remove the baneful influence of religion from politics. Mark Juergensmeyer, for
example, sets
up a "new Cold War" pitting the "resurgence of parochial identities" over
against "the secular West." "Like the old Cold War, the confrontation between these new forms
of culture-based politics and the secular state is global in its scope, binary in its
opposition, occasionally violent, and essentially a difference of ideologies." Although he tries to
avoid demonizing "religious nationalists," Juergensmeyer sees them as essentially "anti-modern." The particular ferocity of religious
nationalism comes from the "special relationship between religion and violence." The question then becomes "whether religious
nationalism can be made compatible with secular nationalism's great virtues: tolerance, respect for human rights, and freedom of
expression." Given the war between "reason and religion," however, Juergensmeyer is not optimistic; " there is ultimately
no satisfactory compromise on an ideological level between religious and secular
nationalism ."20

Despite its incoherence, the idea that religion is prone to violence thus enforces a binary
opposition between "the secular West" and a religious Other who is essentially irrational
and violent . The conflict becomes explicable in terms of the essential qualities of the two opponents, not in terms of actual
historical encounters. So, for example, Juergensmeyer attempts to explain the animosity of the religious Other toward America:

Why is America the enemy? This question is hard for observers of international politics to answer, and harder still for ordinary
Americans to fathom. Many have watched with horror as their compatriots and symbols of their country have been destroyed by
people whom they do not know, from cultures they can scarcely identify on a global atlas, and for reasons that do not seem readily
apparent.21

Nevertheless, Juergensmeyer is able to come up with four reasons "from the frames of reference" of America's enemies. First,
America often finds itself cast as a "secondary enemy." "In its role as trading partner and political ally, America has a vested interest
in shoring up the stability of regimes around the world. This has often put the United States in the unhappy position of being a
defender and promoter of secular governments regarded by their religious opponents as primary foes." Juergensmeyer cites as an
example the case of Iran, where "America was tarred by its association with the shah." The second reason often given is that
America is the main source of "modern culture," which includes cultural products that others regard as immoral. Third, corporations
that trade internationally tend to be based in the United States. Fourth and finally, the fear of globalization has led to a "paranoid
vision of American leaders' global designs."

Juergensmeyer acknowledges, "Like all stereotypes, each of these characterizations holds a certain amount of truth." The fall of the
Soviet Union has left the United States as the only military superpower, and therefore "an easy target for blame when people have
felt that their lives were going askew or were being controlled by forces they could not readily see. Yet, to dislike America is one
thing; to regard it as a cosmic enemy is quite another." The main problem, according to Juergensmeyer, is "satanization," that is,
taking a simple opponent and casting it as a superhuman enemy in a cosmic war. Osama bin Laden, for example, had inflated
America into a "mythic monster."22

The problem with Juergensmeyer's analysis is not just its sanitized account of colonial history, where the United States just happens
to find itself associated with bad people. The problem is that history is subordinated to an essentialist account of "religion" in which
the religious Others cannot seem to deal rationally with world events. They employ guilt by association. They have paranoid visions
of globalization. They stereotype, and blame easy targets, when their lives are disrupted by forces they do not understand. They
blow simple oppositions up into cosmic proportions. Understanding Muslim hostility toward America therefore does not require
careful scrutiny of America's historical dealings with the Muslim world. Rather, Juergensmeyer turns our attention to the tendency of
such "religious" actors to misunderstand such historical events, to blow them out of proportion. Understanding Iranian Shi'ite
militancy does not seem to require careful examination of U.S. support for overthrowing Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953 and for the
shah's 26-year reign of terror that was to follow. Instead, Juergensmeyer puzzles over why "religious" actors project such mundane
things as torture and coups and oil trading into factors in a cosmic war. Juergensmeyer's analysis is comforting for us in the West
because it creates a blind spot regarding our own history of violence. It calls attention to anticolonial violence, labeled "religious,"
and calls attention away from colonial violence, labeled "secular."

The argument that religion is prone to violence is a significant component in the construction of an opposition between "the West
and the rest," as Samuel Huntington puts it.23 Huntington's famous thesis about the "clash of civilizations" was first put forward by
Bernard Lewis in an article entitled "The Roots of Muslim Rage": "It should by now be clear that we are facing a mood and a
movement far transcending the level of issues and policies and the governments that pursue them. This is no less than a clash of
civilizations—the perhaps irrational but surely historic reactions of an ancient rival against our Judeo-Christian heritage, our secular
present, and the worldwide expansion of both."24 As in Juergensmeyer, actual historical issues and policies and events are
transcended by a consideration of the irrationality of the Muslim response to the West. The West is a monolithic reality representing
modernity, which necessarily includes secularity and rationality, while the Muslim world is an equally monolithic reality which is
ancient, that is, lagging behind modernity, because of its essentially religious and irrational character. This opposition of rational and
irrational, secular and religious, Western and Muslim is not simply descriptive, but helps to create the opposition that it purports to
describe. As Roxanne Euben writes in her study of Islamic fundamentalism, this opposition is part of a larger Enlightenment
narrative in which defining reason requires its irrational other:

[E]mbedded in the Enlightenment's (re-)definition and elevation of reason is the creation and subjection of an irrational counterpart:
along with the emergence of reason as both the instrument and essence of human achievement, the irrational came to be defined
primarily in opposition to what such thinkers saw as the truths of their own distinctive historical epoch. If they were the voices of
modernity, freedom, liberation, happiness, reason, nobility, and even natural passion, the irrational was all that came before:
tyranny, servility to dogma, self-abnegation, superstition, and false religion. Thus the irrational came to mean the domination of
religion in the historical period that preceded it.25

The problem with grafting Islamic fundamentalism into this narrative, according to Euben, is that it is incapable of understanding the
appeal of fundamentalism on its own terms. It dismisses rather than explains.26 It also exacerbates the enmity that it purports to
describe. As Emran Qureshi and Michael Sells put it, "Those who proclaim such a clash of civilizations, speaking for the West or for
Islam, exhibit the characteristics of fundamentalism: the assumption of a static essence, knowable immediately, of each civilization,
the ability to ignore history and tradition, and the desire to lead the ideological battle on behalf of one of the clashing civilizations."27

In other words, the opposition of "religious" violence to "secular" peaceableness can lend itself to the
justification of violence . In the book Terror and Liberalism, The New Republic contributing editor Paul Berman's
call for a "liberal war of liberation" to be "fought around the world" is based on the
contrast between liberalism and what he calls the "mad" ideology of Islamism .28 Similarly,
Andrew Sullivan, in a New York Times Magazine article entitled "This Is a Religious War," justifies war against
radical Islam on epistemological grounds . He labels it a "religious war," but not in the sense of
Islam versus Christianity and Judaism. It is, rather, radical Islam versus Western-style "individual faith
and pluralism ." The problem with the Islamic world seems to be too much public faith, a loyalty to an absolute that excludes
accommodation to other realities: "If faith is that strong, and it dictates a choice between action or
eternal damnation, then violence can easily be justified ."29

At root, the problem is epistemological . According to Sullivan, it took Western Christians

centuries of bloody "religious wars" to realize "the futility of fighting to the death over something beyond human understanding and
authoritative truth is simply not
so immune to any definitive resolution." The problem with religion is that
available to us mortals in any form that will produce consensus rather than division. Locke,
therefore, emerges as Sullivan's hero, for it was Locke who recognized the limits of human understanding of revelation and
enshrined those limits in a political theory. Locke and the founding fathers saved us from the curse of killing in the name of religion.
"What the founders and Locke were saying was that the ultimate claims of religion should simply not be
allowed to interfere with political and religious freedom." 30

In theory, we have the opposition of a cruel fanaticism with a modest and peaceloving
tolerance . However, Sullivan's epistemological modesty applies only to the command of God and not to the absolute
superiority of our political and cultural system over theirs. According to Sullivan, "We are fighting for the universal principles of our
Constitution." Universal knowledge is available to us after all, and it underwrites the "epic battle" we are currently waging against
fundamentalisms of all kinds. Sullivan is willing to gird himself with the language of a warrior and underwrite U.S. military adventures
in the Middle East in the name of his secular faith. Sullivan entitles his piece "This Is a Religious War," though the irony seems to
elude him. On the surface, the myth of religious violence establishes a dichotomy between our peaceloving secular reasonableness

Under the surface often lies an absolute

and their irrational religious fanaticism.

"religious" devotion to the American vision of a hegemonic liberalism

that underwrites the necessity of using violence to impose this vision
on the Muslim other.
Sam Harris's book about the violence of religion, The End of Faith, dramatically illustrates this double standard. Harris condemns
Harris's book is charged
the irrational religious torture of witches, but provides his own argument for torturing terrorists.
with the conviction that the secular West cannot reason with Muslims, but must deal with
them by force. In a chapter entitled "The Problem with Islam," Harris writes: "In our dialogue with the Muslim world, we are
confronted by people who hold beliefs for which there is no rational justification and which therefore cannot even be discussed, and
yet these are the very beliefs that underlie many of the demands they are likely to make upon us." This is especially a
problem if such people gain access to nuclear weapons . "There is little possibility of our
having a cold war with an Islamist regime armed with long-range nuclear weapons. . . . In
such a situation, the only thing likely to ensure our survival may be a nuclear first strike
of our own . Needless to say, this would be an unthinkable crime—as it would kill tens of
millions of innocent civilians in a single day—but it may be the only course of action available to us, given
what Islamists believe." Muslims then would likely misinterpret this act of "self-defense" as a

genocidal crusade, thus plunging the world into nuclear holocaust. " All of this is perfectly insane,
of course: I have just described a plausible scenario in which much of the world's population could be annihilated on account of
religious ideas that belong on the same shelf with Batman, the philosopher's stone, and unicorns."
In other words, if we have to slaughter millions through a nuclear first strike, it will be the fault of the Muslims and their crazy
Harris continues, we must encourage civil society in
religious beliefs. Before we get to that point,
Islamic countries, but we cannot trust them to vote it in. "It seems all but certain that some form of benign
dictatorship will generally be necessary to bridge the gap. But benignity is the key—and if it cannot emerge from within a state, it
must be imposed from without. The means of such imposition are necessarily crude:
they amount to economic isolation, military intervention (whether open or covert), or
some combination of both. While this may seem an exceedingly arrogant doctrine to espouse, it appears we have no
alternatives."31

HARRIS'S BOOK is a particularly blunt version of this type of justification for neocolonial
intervention, but he is by no means isolated . His book is enthusiastically endorsed by such academic
superstars as Alan Dershowitz, Richard Dawkins, and Peter Singer. Indeed, Harris's logic is little different in
practice from the Bush Doctrine, which says that America has access to liberal values
that are "right and true for every person, in every society," that we must use our power
to promote such values "on every continent," and that America will take preemptive
military action if necessary to promote such values .32 Today, the U.S. military is
attempting, through the massive use of violence, to liberate Iraq from religious violence. It
is an inherently contradictory effort, and its every failure will be attributed in part to the pernicious influence of religion and its
tendency toward violence. If we really wish to understand its failure, however, we will need to
question the very myth of religious violence on which such military adventures depend .
 2NC L—Democracy
Their democracy promotion discourse legitimizes liberal intervention that
empirically topples regional governments
Søndergaard 15—University of Southern Denmark, Center for American Studies, PhD
Fellow, former Visiting Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley (Rasmus; 5/23/15, “Bill
Clinton’s Democratic Enlargement and the Securitization of Democracy Promotion,”
https://www.academia.edu/12517120/Bill_Clinton_s_Democratic_Enlargement_and_the_Securit
ization_of_Democracy_Promotion, HWilson)
I argue that the presentation of democracy promotion as a vital national security interest
through the linkage between democracy and security in the discourse of Democratic Enlargement was a crucial element to
help justify this development. By addressing Democratic Enlargement in security terms the Clinton administration

securitized democracy promotion. This securitization of democracy promotion created a

discourse, which helped legitimize the use of force for humanitarian interventions . Hereby
the securitization of democracy promotion helped justify the move towards a more
militaristic foreign policy towards the end of Clinton’s presidency. As shown above the assumption that promoting
democracy abroad strengthened American national security had been lurking the halls of
American foreign policymaking since the presidency of Woodrow Wilson. In the early 1990s
researchers claimed to offer scientific proof for the Kantian notion of a democratic peace through the Democratic
Peace Thesis. Thereby researchers provided scientific validation for the security benefits of Wilsonian democracy promotion, which could be
used to give the policy of democracy promotion a stronger imperative. During the Clinton era the
Democratic Peace Thesis successfully ‘transferred’ from academics into politics, as the idea gained influence in the Clinton White House as evident in the strategy of

The Clinton administration subscribed to the ideas presented in the Democratic Peace Thesis, and used it to
Democratic Enlargement.

argue for democracy promotion in the name of international peace and American
national security . By addressing democracy in security terms the administration effectively
securitized the protection of democracy and was able to use this to legitimize the use of
force to promote and defend democratic government abroad. Promoting democracy went
from being a political choice to becoming an essential security interest . This allowed Clinton to argue that
democracy promotion was based on rationality as well as idealism. In their study of NATO, Christian Büger and Trine Villumsen make a similar argument, showing how peace

researchers and foreign policymakers securitized democracy as the Democratic Peace

Thesis was translated into policy strategies in the 1990s.71 When the strategy was translated into
military practices, they argue, it moved from an issue of policy to an objectified practice. Hereby,
democracy promotion moved from a political ideal to a top security priority, which could
legitimize the use of force .72 Through evoking the Democratic Peace Thesis the Clinton administration, similarly, postulated scientific credibility to the
security implications of promoting democracy 16 and thereby justified extraordinary means for the strategy of Democratic Enlargement. This was most

clearly evident in military interventions conducted under the paroles of protecting and
promoting democracy and averting humanitarian crisis. The military intervention in Haiti
in 1994-1995 represents an early example of the Clinton administration’s securitization of
democracy. In 1991 the Haitian army staged a coup against the democratically elected
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. After American pressure the UN Security Council adopted the
Resolution 940 on 31 July 1994, which authorized the international community to use military force to

restore Haitian democracy. To execute this UN mandate, the United States led an international coalition
in ‘Operation Uphold Hope.’ The imminent treat of a military intervention led the Haitian military
regime to back down, and Aristide was restored to power. Rallying support for the cause, the Clinton
administration argued that if democratic rule were not restored in Haiti, it would pose a threat to
the security of the region. According to Lake, continued non-democratic rule, the administration argued, would lead to gross human rights violations and
bring with it waves of refugees.73 The only way to solve Haiti’s problems, Christopher argued, was to restore democracy.74 However, Christopher’s desire to see democracy

The overthrow of democracy in Haiti, Christopher argued in 1994,

restored in Haiti did not simply stem from a concern for the wellbeing of Haitians.

posed a threat to the security of the entire region as well as international norms.75 The statements
by Lake and Christopher linked the form of Haitian government directly to the security of the entire region. Arguing that the absence of

democratic government in Haiti would threaten regional security, they made restoration
of democracy a security issue and thereby effectively securitized democracy promotion.
Writing about the motivations for intervening in Haiti in a 1996-article in Foreign Affairs, Talbott used a direct reference to the research on democratic peace to justify the
intervention: “a substantial body of empirical evidence and political science scholarship supports the premise that democracies are less likely to fight wars with each other.” 76
By evoking scholarship on democratic peace, and accepting its conclusion about the peaceful nature of democracies, the administration argued that the positive security
implications of democracy promotion had scientific validation. Following this logic, the administration presented the form of Haitian government as directly linked to international
security. In a speech at George Washington University in March 1996, Lake explained the decision to intervene to restore democracy in Haiti by arguing that to ‘preserve,

Speaking at the US
promote and defend democracy’ was one of seven points, which by them selves or in combination could justify the use of force.77

Institute of Peace a few months later Deputy Assistant to the President on National
Security Affairs, Nancy Soderberg likewise used the link between democracy and security to
justify the intervention in Haiti. Strengthening democracy was a key security interest in
the post-Cold War world, according to Soderberg, and the intervention in Haiti had represented a
successful example of democracy promotion through the use of force.78 In 1997 then Secretary
of State, Madeleine Albright, likewise justified the Haiti intervention by referring to democracy as ‘a
parent of peace’. One of the key lessons of the 20th century, Albright argued, has been that democratic states are far less likely to commit acts of aggression
than dictatorships, and therefore a democratic Haiti was a clear American security interest.79 The UN Security Council Resolution 940 to use military force to restore Haitian
democracy marked an important symbolic shift in international norms on sovereignty, 18 as it was the first UN-sanctioned intervention on the grounds of ‘denial-ofdemocracy’.
This was not lost on the Clinton administration, which hailed it as a “landmark” and presented it as a victory for its strategy of Democratic Enlargement.80 This way the
resolution and the intervention to restore democracy exemplify how the Clinton administration sought to securitize the lack of democracy in the international system. During the
1990s, however, it became increasingly clear that the UN was not able to live up to the expectations placed on it as the provider of international peace and stability in the post-
Cold War world. The diplomatic unity in the Security Council and the political will among the member states to intervene in conflict hotspots around the globe simply was not

Despite an overwhelming increase in UN peacekeeping operations from a mere 18 initiated during the
there.

between 1991 and 1995, the UN failed to agree on the

first four decades since the UN’s formation to 21 alone

international community’s response to a number of conflicts. One of these conflicts was

the Kosovo War in 1999. Russian opposition to an intervention meant that the UN Security
Council was unable to agree on a resolution to intervene in the conflict. As a result the Clinton
administration decided to circumvent the UN and instead act through NATO to stop the
conflict through a series of bombings of Serbia from 24 March to 11 June 1999. In the process the Clinton
administration had to obtain the support of Congress as well as its European allies. At first sight, this was done more by
appealing to humanitarian concerns than democracy. Still, the humanitarian concerns over ethnic violence, massive

human rights violations, internally displaced persons and refugees were presented as
partly rooted in the absence of democracy. The absence of democracy and the perils
following from the conflict were clearly framed as security issues . Failing to act and
restore a peaceful democracy, the Clinton administration argued, would cause grave security risks
to Europe and the United States in the form of terrorism, instability, refugees etc. Thereby
continued conflict and lack of democratic government in Kosovo was sought
securitized to obtain support for military action. Addressing the United States Chamber of Commerce on 14 April 1999 during
the NATO bombing of Serbia, Albright made the case that there was a direct link between American

national security and the form of government in Kosovo. “…there is nothing foreign about foreign policy anymore”, the
Secretary of State declared, “When we make innovative investments in peace, prosperity, and democracy overseas, as we now propose, we help to secure those blessings for

Albright went on to argue

our own citizens here at home. And when we fail to make the needed investments, we place our own future in jeopardy.” 81

that the conflict in Kosovo highlighted the need to integrate the Balkans into Atlantic
community of democracies. The Kosovo War was thus presented as yet another example of
how the absence of democratic government had negative implications for American
national security, and again was used to justify an intervention followed by the
promotion of democracy . A few months after the end of the successful bombing campaign against Serbia, Talbott argued that the Clinton
 had decided to used force from the proposition that “…the defense of American
administration

strategic interests requires the defense of American political values - and vice versa.”82 Paraphrasing
Woodrow Wilson, Talbott argued, that the intervention in Kosovo was a natural continuation of the United

States’ special interest in making the world safe for democracy. 20 In the post-war reconciliation process the
establishment of democratic government was presented as the guarantee against new
conflicts with clear references to the Democratic Peace Thesis.83 From the perspective of international law the Kosovo intervention differed importantly from the earlier
NATO intervention in Bosnia. Unlike the intervention in Bosnia, the Kosovo intervention was not backed by a UN

mandate and it clearly violated Serbian sovereignty, signifying a greater willingness to

violate state sovereignty at the expense of humanitarian concerns and human rights
violations . Whereas the bombing campaign against Serbia and the Bosnian Serbs during the Bosnian War had been motivated by some of the same humanitarian
concerns as the Kosovo intervention, in legalistic terms there was a clear difference. In the Bosnian case the United States along with the majority of the international
community had recognized Bosnia as an independent state and thus acted to defend this states sovereignty against Serbian forces. In Kosovo, on the other hand, NATO
intervened to protect a minority within a state against its own government. The Serbian crackdown in Kosovo did not constitute a military attack on a NATOmember state and
thus did not activate the organization’s principle of collective security. Nonetheless, the Clinton administration sought to frame the conflict as a threat to democracy and thereby

a threat to NATOs members. As the cases of Haiti and Kosovo illustrate, the Clinton administration used the securitization of
democracy to argue in favour of humanitarian interventions at the expense of state
sovereignty. Jason Edwards has argued that Clinton with his aggressive rhetoric on democracy contributed to a
significant change in American foreign policy rhetoric towards more interventions.84 Albright
exemplified this in 1999, when she argued that intervention in intra-state affairs to stop human rights abuses

had now become an accepted principle, something she believed the interventions in Bosnia and
Kosovo testified to.85 Following the logic of securitized democracy, preventing human rights violations inside a state was no longer simply a moral issue for
the United States. Internal conflicts in other states became a security issue because it was argued that non-democracies posed a

threat to international peace and American national security. Within this logic
intervention in the internal affairs of other states could be argued to be a matter of
legitimate American security interests. In Kosovo for instance NATO was not fighting the Serbian government as such, but the lack of
democracy in the country – out of the security implications this had for the United States and its European allies.86 To be clear, the Clinton administration’s use of

humanitarian intervention to promote and protect democracy was highly selective. The discourse of

securitized democracy was only employed when it fit American interests , and the Clinton
administration needed to bolster support for its decision to use force. The examples of the Clinton administration’s failure to
intervene in the face of atrocities and denial of democracy and basic rights are legion with the inaction in Rwanda and the slow and reluctant intervention in Bosnia as the most
striking. Not wanting to get dragged into an unpopular military intervention in the Balkans, the Clinton administration went a great length to downplay the atrocities committed in

when the Clinton administration did want to intervene, and

Bosnia until the pressure to ‘do something’ became too big.87 However,

needed to legitimize its policy, the securitization of democracy promotion was

employed. As mentioned, the move towards a more unilateral and militaristic foreign policy
happened at a time in history when American power was at an all time high with no major hostile competitor to balance it. At the
same time, increasing democratization, globalization, proclamations of ‘the end of history’ and American Cold-War- triumphalism

combined to create an atmosphere of record high optimism about American values and power. On top of this, the
United States was growing increasingly disappointed with the UN as it failed to fulfil the high expectations to it in the post-Cold War era. In such a scenario it

is not too difficult to understand the temptation for the United States to use its military
might to get its way. All of these factors undoubtedly contributed to Clinton’s turn towards a greater reliance on the use of force. Still, the
securitization of Democratic Enlargement was an important legitimizing factor, which is often
overlooked or not sufficiently recognized in the account of Clinton’s foreign policy. In cases like the interventions in Haiti and Kosovo,

the securitization of democracy contributed significantly to legitimize the use of force . As

illustrated by the case of Haiti the securitization of democracy did not have to be in conflict with

multilateralism. By securitizing democracy the Clinton administration sought to legitimize the use of force to defend democracy with or without the support of the
international community. Tony Smith has argued that liberal internationalism moved from a hegemonic phase under Clinton to an

imperialist phase under George W. Bush.88 According to Smith, the first was characterized by a restrained liberalism inclined to multilateralism and
reluctant to use force to advance democracy, whereas, the second favoured unilateral action and democracy promotion
through military intervention . Similarly, Georg Sørensen has argued that American liberal internationalism
from the 1980s to the 2000s moved from what he calls a liberalism of restraint towards a liberalism of
imposition . 89 To Sørensen, Clinton’s assertive multilateralism represented the highpoint of humanitarian interventions. After 9/11, he argues, Bush replaced the
humanitarian impulse for intervention with a national security impulse. Interventions were now undertaken to protect the United States from potential terror attacks. Based on my
results, I would argue that the difference was merely one of degree. Clinton’s humanitarian inventions were integrated into a logic, which held that interventions to protect human

rights and democracy were indeed directly linked to national security.Through the securitization of democracy promotion,
humanitarian interventions were very much guided by a national security impulse as well as a humanitarian one. While
insisting that his policy was based on both, at the end of the day, Clinton favoured stressing the pragmatic security interests over

idealistic humanitarian values.

 AFF AT Democracy Promotion Link
The aff’s softline engagement is effective and link turns their criticisms of
intervention
Walt 16—Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international affairs at Harvard University's
Kennedy School of Government, resident associate of the Carnegie Endowment for Peace and
a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution, Ph.D. in political science from UC Berkeley
(Stephen, 4/25/16, “Why Is America So Bad at Promoting Democracy in Other Countries?,”
http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/04/25/why-is-america-so-bad-at-promoting-democracy-in-other-
countries/, HWilson)

There’s no quick, cheap, or military-based way to bring peace to places like Afghanistan,
Yemen, and Iraq. It’s time we changed our approach , and we can start at home. If you’re a dedicated
Wilsonian, the past quarter-century must have been pretty discouraging. Convinced liberal democracy was the only viable political
formula for a globalizing world, the
last three U.S. administrations embraced Wilsonian ideals and
made democracy promotion a key element of U.S. foreign policy. For Bill Clinton, it was the “National
Security Strategy of Engagement and Enlargement.” For George W. Bush, it was the “Freedom Agenda” set forth in his second
inaugural address and echoed by top officials like Condoleezza Rice. Barack Obama has been a less fervent Wilsonian than his
predecessors, but he appointed plenty of ardent liberal internationalists to his administration, declaring, “There is no right more
fundamental than the ability to choose your leaders.” And he has openly backed democratic transitions in Egypt, Libya, Yemen, and
several other countries. Unfortunately, a soon-to-be-published collection edited by Larry Diamond and Mark Plattner suggests that
these (and other) efforts at democracy promotion have not fared well. Success
stories like the recent end to
military rule in Myanmar are balanced by the more numerous and visible failures in
Libya, Yemen, and Iraq, the obvious backsliding in Turkey, Hungary, Russia, Poland, and
elsewhere, and the democratic dysfunctions in the European Union and in the United
States itself. As Diamond points out in his own contribution to the book, nearly a quarter of the
world’s democracies have eroded or relapsed in the past 30 years. You might think a realist like me
wouldn’t give a damn about a state’s regime-type or domestic institutions and care even less about the goal of promoting
democracy. But you’d be wrong. Realists recognize that regime-type and internal arrangements
matter (indeed, Kenneth Waltz wrote a whole book comparing different democratic orders); they just believe relative
power and the need for security are usually more important and that systemic pressures
often lead dissimilar regimes to act in strikingly similar ways. Even so, there are good
reasons for realists (and others) to favor democracy while remaining mindful of the
dangers associated with democratic transitions . Stable democracies have better long-
term economic growth records (on average) and do much better in terms of protecting basic
human rights . While not immune to various follies, democracies are less likely to kill
vast numbers of their own citizens through famines or ill-planned acts of social
engineering , mostly because corrective information is more readily accessible and officials can
be held accountable . Democracies are as likely to start and fight wars as any other type of state, but there’s some

(highly contested) evidence that they tend not to fight each other . On balance, therefore, I think it
would be better for most human beings if the number of democracies in the world
increased. How should we try to bring that goal about? At the risk of stating
The question is, however:
the obvious, we
do know what doesn’t work, and we have a pretty good idea why. What doesn’t work is
military intervention (aka “foreign-imposed regime change”). The idea that the United States could
march in, depose the despot-in-chief and his henchmen, write a new constitution, hold a
few elections, and produce a stable democracy — presto! — was always delusional, but
an awful lot of smart people bought this idea despite the abundant evidence against it.
Using military force to spread democracy fails for several obvious reasons. First,
successful liberal orders depend on a lot more than a written constitution or elections:
They usually require an effective legal system, a broad commitment to pluralism, a
decent level of income and education, and widespread confidence that political groups
which lose out in a particular election have a decent chance of doing better in the future
and thus an incentive to keep working within the system. Because a lot of social
elements need to line up properly for this arrangement to work and endure, creating
reasonably effective democracies took centuries in the West, and it was often a highly
contentious — even violent — process. To believe the U.S. military could export
democracy quickly and cheaply required a degree of hubris that is still breathtaking to
recall. Second, using force to spread democracy almost always triggers violent
resistance. Nationalism and other forms of local identity remain powerful features of today’s world, and
most people dislike following orders from well-armed foreign occupiers. Moreover, groups that
have lost power, wealth, or status in the course of a democratic transition (such as
Sunnis in post-Saddam Iraq) will inevitably be tempted to take up arms in opposition, and
neighboring states whose interests are adversely affected by a transition may try to stop
or reverse it. Such developments are the last thing a struggling democracy needs, of course, because violence tends to empower
leaders who are good at it, instead of those who are skilled at building effective institutions, striking deals across factional lines,
promoting tolerance, and building more robust and productive economies. To make matters worse, foreign occupiers
rarely know enough to pick the right local people to put in charge, and even generous and well-
intentioned efforts to aid the new government tend to fuel corruption and distort local politics in unpredictable ways. Creating
democracy in a foreign country is a vast social engineering project, and expecting
outside powers to do it effectively is like asking someone to build a nuclear power plant,
without any blueprints, on an active earthquake zone. In either case, expect a rapid
meltdown. The bottom line is that there is no quick, cheap, or reliable way for outsiders to engineer a democratic transition and
especially when the country in question has little or no prior experience with it and contains deep social divisions. So if

promoting democracy is desirable, but force is not the right tool, what is? Let me suggest two

broad approaches. The first is diplomacy . When there is a genuine, significant, and committed
indigenous movement in favor of democracy — as was the case in Eastern Europe during the
“velvet revolutions” or in Myanmar today — powerful outsiders can use subtler forms of
influence to encourage gradual transitions. The United States has done this successfully
on a number of occasions (e.g., South Korea, the Philippines, etc.) by being both
persistent and patient and using nonmilitary tools such as economic sanctions. In these
cases, the pro-democracy movement had been building for many years and enjoyed broad
social support by the time it gained power. Relying on diplomacy may not be as exciting
as the “shock and awe” of a military invasion, but it’s a lot less expensive and a lot more
likely to succeed.