***Rez 1NCs

1NC Rezolutionality Traditional

Our interpretationthe affirmative should have to defend
that action by the United States federal government is
normatively desirable the affirmative violates
Resolved means to enact by law
Words and Phrases 64

Permanent Edition
Definition of the word resolve, given by Webster is to express an opinion or
determination by resolution or vote; as it was resolved by the legislature ; It is of
similar force to the word enact, which is defined by Bouvier as meaning to
establish by law.

The United States federal government refers to the actual

government
Blacks Law Dictionary 90
6th Ed., p. 695
In the United States, government consists of the executive, legislative, and judicial
branches in addition to administrative agencies. In a broader sense, includes the
federal government and all its agencies and bureaus, state and county
governments, and city and township governments.

Should implies obligation to action

Merriam-Webster 2
Merriam-Webster, Incorporated, 2002, 10th Edition, http://www.merriamwebster.com/dictionary/should
Used in auxiliary function to express obligation, propriety, or expediency.

B) Violationthe aff does not defend the United States

federal government action
C) Vote Negative
1) Without Limits debate becomes impossibleT is a
jurisdictional voting issue
Shively 2kProfessor of Political Science, Texas A & M

Ruth, Political Theory and Partisan Politics, p. 181-2

The requirements thus far are primarily negative. The ambiguists must
say no tothey must reject and limitsome ideas and actions. In
what follows, we will also find that they must say yes to some things.
In particular, they must say yes to the idea of rational persuasion. This means, first,
that they must recognize the role of agreement in political contest , or the basic accord that
is necessary to discord. The mistake that the ambiguists make here is a
common one. The mistake in thinking that agreement marks the end of
contest. In most cases, however, our agreements are highly imperfect.
We agree on some matters but not on others, on generalities but not on

specifics, on principles but not on their applications, and so on. And this
kind of limited agreement is the starting condition of contest and debate. As John
Courtney Murray writes: We hold certain truths; therefore we can argue
about them. It seems to have been one of the corruptions of intelligence
by positivism to assume that argument ends when agreement is
reached. In a basic sense, the reverse is true. There can be no agreement
except on the premise, and within a context, of agreement. (Murray 1960, 10) In
other words, we cannot argue about something if we are not communicating: if
we cannot agree on the topic and terms of argument or if we have utterly different
ideas about what counts as evidence or good argument. At the very
least, we must agree about what it is that is being debated before we
can debate it. For instance, one cannot have an argument about euthanasia with
someone who thinks euthanasia is a musical group. One cannot successfully stage
a sit-in if ones target audience simply thinks everyone is resting or if
those doing the sitting have no complaints. Nor can one demonstrate resistance
to a policy if no one knows that it is a policy. In other words, contest is meaningless if there
is a lack of agreement or communication about what is being contested. Registers,
demonstrators, and debaters must have some shared ideas about the
subject and/or terms of their disagreements. The participants and the
target of a sit-in must share an understanding of the complaint at hand.
And a demonstrators audience must know what is being resisted. In
short, the contesting of an idea presumes some agreement about what that idea is and
how one might go about intelligibly contesting it. In other words, contestation rests
on some basic agreement or harmony.

2) Role of the negative: Our interpretation has a clear

vision for the function of the negative team. We must
disprove the desirability of their advocacy. If there is no
predictable limit on what the affirmative can do, the
negative is excluded from the debate. We become passive
observers of their presentation. Our interpretation is the
least exclusionary because it provides a place in the
debate for negative teams.
3) Process impact: this is the only academic forum where
we get education based on clash and competition. If we
arent able to prepare in advance for affirmatives the
round becomes a 2 hour conference presentation about
whatever books & articles they are reading, This
education o/w any content specific education because
a) you can get content specific education in any other
forum
b) Without critical thinking skills developed through clash
and competition we cant effectively act on contentspecific knowledge
English et al 7

Eric English, Stephen Llano, Gordon R. Mitchell, Catherine E. Morrison, John

Rief & Carly Woods, all former debate coaches, Debate as a Weapon of Mass
Destruction http://www.pitt.edu/~gordonm/JPubs/EnglishDAWG.pdf
It is our position, however, that rather than acting as a cultural technology
expanding American exceptionalism, switch-side debating originates from a civic
attitude that serves as a bulwark against fundamentalism of all stripes. Several
prominent voices reshaping the national dialogue on homeland security have come from
the academic debate community and draw on its animating spirit of critical
inquiry. For example, Georgetown University law professor Neal Katyal
served as lead plaintiffs counsel in Hamdan, which challenged post-9/11 enemy combat
definitions. 12 The foundation for Katyals winning argument in Hamdan
was laid some four years before, when he collaborated with former
intercollegiate debate champion Laurence Tribe on an influential Yale Law
Journal addressing a similar topic. 13 Tribe won the National Debate
Tournament in 1961 while competing as an undergraduate debater for
Harvard University. Thirty years later, Katyal represented Dartmouth
College at the same tournament and finished third. The imprint of this debate
training is evident in Tribe and Katyals contemporary public interventions, which are
characterized by meticulous research, sound argumentation, and a staunch commitment to
democratic principles. Katyals reflection on his early days of debating at
Loyola High School in Chicagos North Shore provides a vivid illustration.
I came in as a shy freshman with dreams of going to medical school.
Then Loyolas debate team opened my eyes to a different world: one of
argumentation and policy. As Katyal recounts, the most important preparation for

my career came from my experiences as a member of Loyolas debate team. 14 The

success of former debaters like Katyal, Tribe, and others in challenging the
dominant dialogue on homeland security points to the efficacy of academic debate as a
training ground for future advocates of progressive change. Moreover, a robust
understanding of the switch-side technique and the classical liberalism which
underpins it would help prevent misappropriation of the technique to bolster suspect
homeland security policies. For buried within an inner-city debaters files is a secret threat
to absolutism: the refusal to be classified as with us or against us, the embracing of
intellectual experimentation in an age of orthodoxy, and reflexivity in the face of
fundamentalism. But by now, the irony of our story should be apparent*the
more effectively academic debating practice can be focused toward
these ends, the greater the proclivity of McCarthys ideological heirs to
brand the activity as a weapon of mass destruction.

c) without clash-based education we are likely to come to

the wrong conclusions about the content b/c we dont see
both sides
4) Epistemology: All aff claims are uncertain.
Unpredictable advocacies are not subject to the type of
rigorous scrutiny and testing that is required for a claim
to be granted. If their claims are not predictable it means
they are not subject to rigorous testing and should not be
treated as true. You cannot evaluate the validity of their
aff arguments until you conclude that it is topical because
unTopical advocacies are not subject to the same amount
of scrutiny and testing. This means the aff can only claim
offense from their interpretation, not from the value of
the 1AC since the value of the 1AC has not been
established through rigorous debate.
5) Switch-side debating on the topic is uniquely
important. It allows debaters to become better advocates
and increases critical thinking
Dybvig and Iverson 99
Kristin Chisholm Dybvig, and Joel O. Iverson, Can Cutting Cards Carve into
Our Personal Lives: An Analysis of Debate Research on Personal Advocacy,
http://www.uvm.edu/~debate/dybvigiverson1000.html
Not all debate research appears to generate personal advocacy and challenge peoples'
assumptions. Debaters must switch sides, so they must inevitably debate against
various cases. While this may seem to be inconsistent with advocacy, supporting and
researching both sides of an argument actually created stronger advocates. Not only did
debaters learn both sides of an argument, so that they could defend their positions against
attack, they also learned the nuances of each position. Learning and the intricate nature of
various policy proposals helps debaters to strengthen their own stance on issues.

6) This debate is about competing interpretations. They

must have a sustainable interpretation of debate that
includes their affirmative they should lose. If their
interpretation provides no limit on affirmative action, it
doesnt matter if we have good arguments against their
aff b/c they cant provide an interpretation that would
allow their aff and protect good, predictable debates in
the future.

Oceans Cards
Debates about ocean policy have the unique chance of
sparking the advocacy necessary to save the oceans
Greely 2008 (Teresa [University of South Florida]; Ocean literacy and
reasoning about ocean issues: The influence of content, experience and
morality; Graduate Theses and Dissertations;
http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/271; kdf)

Ocean issues with conceptual ties to science and a global society

have captured the attention, imagination, and concern of an
international audience. Global climate change, natural disasters, over
fishing, marine pollution, freshwater shortages, groundwater contamination,
economic trade and commerce, marine mammal stranding, and decreased
biodiversity are just a few of the ocean issues highlighted in our
media and conversations. The ocean shapes our weather, links us to
other nations, and is crucial to our national security. From the lifegiving rain that nourishes crops and our bodies, to life-saving medicines; from
the fish that come from the ocean, to the goods that are transported on the
seas surface--- the ocean plays a role in our lives in some way everyday
(NOAA, 1998). The American public values the ocean and considers
protecting it to be a fundamental responsibility, but its
understanding of why we need the ocean is superficial (Belden,
Russonello & Stewart, 1999). However, a broad disconnect exists
between what scientist know and the public understands about the
ocean. The ocean , more than any other single ecosystem , has social
and personal relevance to all persons . In the 21st century we will look
increasingly to the ocean to meet our everyday needs and future
sustainability. Thus, there is a critical need to advance ocean literacy
within our nation, especially among youth and young adults . It has
been estimated that less than 2% of all American adults are
environmentally literate (NEETF, 2005). Results from a series of ocean
and coastal literacy surveys (AAAS, 2004; Belden, et al., 1999; Steel, Smith,
Opsommer, Curiel & Warner-Steel, 2005) of American adults reveal similar
findings. Surveys demonstrated that in the 1990s the public valued the
ocean and expressed emotional and recreational connections, however,
awareness about ocean health was low. A decade later Americans had an
increased sense of urgency about ocean issues and were willing to support
actions to protect the oceans even when the tradeoffs of higher prices at the
supermarket, fewer recreational choices, and increased government spending
were presented (AAAS, 2004). While most Americans surveyed agree that
humans are impacting the health of the ocean more than one-third felt that
they cannot make a difference. In contrast, a survey of youth reveals strong
feelings about environmental issues and the confidence that they can make a
difference (AZA, 2003). Collectively, these studies reveal that the public is not
well equipped with knowledge about ocean issues. This implies that the
public needs access to better ocean information delivered in the most

effective manner. The component lacking for both adults and youth is a
baseline of ocean knowledge--- literacy about the oceans to balance the
emotive factors exhibited through care, concern and connection with the
ocean. The interdependence between humans and the ocean is at the heart
of ocean literacy. Cudaback (2006) believes that given the declining quality of
the marine environment (Pew Ocean Commission, 2003), ocean educators
have the responsibility to teach not only the science of the ocean, but also
the interdependence with humans. Ocean literacy is especially significant, as
we implement a first-ever national ocean policy to halt the steady decline of
our nations ocean and coasts via the Ocean Blueprint for the 21st Century
(U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy, 2004). The need for ocean education and
literacy that goes beyond emotive factors is critical and relevant towards
preparing our students, teachers, and citizens to regularly contribute to
ocean decisions and socioscientific issues that impact their health and well
being on Earth. The biggest barriers to increasing commitment to ocean
protection are Americans lack of awareness of the condition of the oceans
and of their own role in damaging the oceans, (Belden, et al., 1999). The
challenge for ocean educators is to explicitly state the connections
between the ocean and daily decisions and actions of people. People
enjoy the beauty of the ocean and the bounty of its waters, but may
not understand that their everyday actions such as boating,
construction, improper waste disposal, or ignoring protected areas, can
impact the ocean and its resources. More than one-half of the US
population lives within 200 miles of the ocean. Long-term planning for
growth, development and use of coastal areas is key to the continued
productivity of the ocean (NOAA, 1998). Because the ocean is
inextricably interconnected to students lives it provides a
significant context for socioscientific issues that foster decision
making, human interactions, and environmental stewardship. Ocean
literacy encompasses the tenets of scientific literacy which is defined by
national standards, as the ability to make informed decisions regarding
scientific issues of particular social importance (AAAS, 1993; NRC, 1996,
2000). As such, scientific literacy encompasses both cognitive (e.g.
knowledge skills) and affective (e.g., emotions, values, morals, culture)
processes. Science standards were designed to guide our nation toward a
scientifically literate society and provide criteria to judge progress toward a
national vision of science literacy (NRC, 1996). Although standards for
science teaching andliteracy are established, the fundamental and
critical role of the ocean is not emphasized.

High school students should seize every opportunity to

discuss ocean policy- its the only way to stave off
extinction
Greely 2008 (Teresa [University of South Florida]; Ocean literacy and
reasoning about ocean issues: The influence of content, experience and
morality; Graduate Theses and Dissertations;
http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/271; kdf)

This research emerged from a wave of recent interest in promoting ocean

literacy on a national level (AAAS, 2004; COSEE, 2005; National Geographic
Society, 2006; Pew Ocean Commission, 2003; Schroedinger et al., 2006; US

Commission on Ocean Policy, 2004). I constructed an operational meaning of

the term ocean literacy. Currently, K-12 students and our citizenry at
large are under-prepared to contribute individual or societal
decisions about our oceans, due to limited ocean knowledge from
which to make socioscientific decisions. Any conversation about
scientific literacy for our citizenry that does not include ocean
literacy as a pivotal focus will fall short of literacy goals for all
students by neglecting the planets largest environment. The ocean
environment is bountiful with opportunities to engage in ocean-related
socioscientific issues (OSSI) meaningful to the life experiences of most
citizens. By providing ocean content, learning experiences, and socioscientific
case studies students and citizens can contribute to the social, economic, and
cultural development of an ocean literate society permeated with global
implications. The ocean sustains life on Earth and everyone is
responsible for caring for the ocean. Individual and collective actions
are needed to effectively manage ocean resources for all (National
Geographic Society, 2006). I examined the influence of an informal learning
experience to advance ocean literacy and reasoning about ocean
socioscientific issues. Specifically, my research described what
understanding youth currently hold about the ocean (content), how
they 31 feel toward the ocean environment (environmental attitudes),
and how these feelings and understanding are organized when
reasoning about ocean issues (environmental morality). It is hoped that
this baseline study will provide standardized measures where possible that
can be replicated by other researchers. As others conduct similar ocean
literacy empirical research, a set of studies that build on each other will be
established. This investigation adopts the following position on ocean literacy.
An ocean literate person is an individual equipped to use ocean knowledge,
to engage in oral or written discussion about the oceans (e.g., support a
position), to understand the changes made to the ocean through human
activity, and to apply ocean knowledge through actions as citizen, steward or
consumer. In as much as educational research supports ones
knowledge as a significant component of scientific literacy and
reasoning, the significance as relates to ocean literacy is not known.
On a theoretical level it is reasonable to propose that acquisition of content
knowledge and social considerations will contribute to ocean literacy and
reasoning about ocean socioscientific issues. I propose that the
development of ocean literacy may advance functional scientific
literacy through an integrated knowledge base, practice doing and
reasoning about science, and opportunities for social action. Ocean
socioscientific issues (OSSI) may have relevance to a broader audience of
learners than current socioscientific issues reported in the literature. Finally,
ocean literacy may advance science literacy by lessening the gap
between public knowledge and the frontiers of scientific inquiry.
While there is a paucity of educational research regarding ocean literacy and
reasoning, my findings contribute more generally to the pedagogy of
classroom practice 32 and curriculum. Specifically, my research identified
current ocean content that advances ocean literacy based on the formal and
informal ocean learning experiences examined. In addition, a preliminary
metric to evaluate conceptual understanding was developed. Classroom

practice and curriculum will be further enriched with the addition of

developmentally appropriate ocean socioscientific issues via case studies
implemented during my study. Ultimately, ocean literacy research
provides (a) ocean science content and experiences as part of a 21st
century integrated science curriculum, and (b) opportunities to
engage in ocean socioscientific issues (OSSI) meaningful to the life
experiences of most citizens.

2NC AT C/I Germane

Infinitely regressivejustifies anything that talks about
energy, restrictions, financial incentives which makes the
topic bidirectional. Also means discussions of adv areas
can be the sole focus
Just discussing the topic is insufficientan actual
advocacy is an important point of stasis that actually
allows us to discuss the issues
Panetta 10
(Panetta, Edward M., PhD and debate director at the University of Georgia,
published 2010Controversies in Debate Pedagogy: Working Paper,
Navigating Opportunity: Policy Debate in the 21st Century, Wake Forest
National Debate Conference)
For adherents to the traditional mode of debate, when one retreats from
grounding stasis in the annual proposition, there are two predicted intellectual justifications
that surface. First, there is the claim that the existence of a resolution (without
substantive content) and time limits is enough of a point of departure to allow for a
debate. For traditionalists, this move seems to reduce the existing stasis to the point
that it has no real meaning. How does the resolution mold the argument choices of students
when one team refuses to acknowledge the argumentative foundation embedded in the
sentence? What educational benefit is associated with the articulation of a two-hour and
forty-five minute limit for a debate and decision where there is not an agreed point of
departure for the initiation of the debate? Second, advocates of moving away from a
resolution-based point of stasis contend that valuable arguments do take place. Yes, but
that argumentation does not meet some of the core assumptions of a
debate for someone who believes that treatment of a stated proposition
is a defining element of debate. Participants in a debate need to have some type of
loosely shared agreement to focus the clash of arguments in a round of debate. Adherence
to this approach does not necessarily call for the rejection of innovative approaches,
including the use of individual narratives as a form of support or the
metaphorical endorsement of the proposition. This perspective on
contest debate does, however, require participants to make an effort to
relate a rhetorical strategy to the national topic.

They force the negative into the role of passive observer.

Either, we are pigeon-holed into ethically indefensible
positions or are forced to cede the debate to the
affirmative.
-Aff sets the neg up with reciprocal ground
-If the aff takes more ground than the neg, competitive equity suffers
-Removing fairness from a debate round denies the negatives right to be
heard and respected
-After months of research, prep, and critical thinking, the affirmative silences
the negatives right to be prepared in a debate

-Opponents only respect each other if they can engage on equal ground and
reach sound decisions- this has a direct impact on the rules of the game we
play
Galloway, 7 professor of communication at Samford University (Ryan, DINNER
AND CONVERSATION AT THE ARGUMENTATIVE TABLE: RECONCEPTUALIZING
DEBATE AS AN ARGUMENTATIVE DIALOGUE, Contemporary Argumentation
and Debate, Vol. 28 (2007), ebsco)
Debate as a dialogue sets an argumentative table, where all parties receive a relatively fair
opportunity to voice their position. Anything that fails to allow participants to
have their position articulated denies one side of the argumentative
table a fair hearing. The affirmative side is set by the topic and fairness requirements.
While affirmative teams have recently resisted affirming the topic, in
fact, the topic selection process is rigorous, taking the relative ground of
each topic as its central point of departure. Setting the affirmative reciprocally
sets the negative. The negative crafts approaches to the topic consistent with affirmative
demands. The negative crafts disadvantages, counter-plans, and critical
arguments premised on the arguments that the topic allows for the
affirmative team. According to fairness norms, each side sits at a relatively balanced
argumentative table. When one side takes more than its share , competitive equity suffers.
However, it also undermines the respect due to the other involved in the dialogue. When
one side excludes the other, it fundamentally denies the personhood of the other participant
(Ehninger, 1970, p. 110). A pedagogy of debate as dialogue takes this respect as a
fundamental component. A desire to be fair is a fundamental condition of a dialogue that
takes the form of a demand for equality of voice. Far from being a banal request for links
to a disadvantage, fairness is a demand for respect, a demand to be heard, a demand that a
voice backed by literally months upon months of preparation, research, and critical
thinking not be silenced. Affirmative cases that suspend basic fairness norms operate to
exclude particular negative strategies. Unprepared, one side comes to the argumentative
table unable to meaningfully participate in a dialogue. They are unable to understand what
went on and are left to the whims of time and power (Farrell, 1985, p. 114).
Hugh Duncan furthers this line of reasoning: Opponents not only tolerate but
honor and respect each other because in doing so they enhance their own chances of
thinking better and reaching sound decisions. Opposition is necessary because it
sharpens thought in action. We assume that argument, discussion, and
talk, among free an informed people who subordinate decisions of any
kind, because it is only through such discussion that we reach agreement which binds
us to a common causeIf we are to be equalrelationships among equals must find
expression in many formal and informal institutions (Duncan, 1993, p. 196-197).
Debate compensates for the exigencies of the world by offering a framework that maintains
equality for the sake of the conversation (Farrell, 1985, p. 114). For example, an
affirmative case on the 2007-2008 college topic might defend neither state nor
international action in the Middle East, and yet claim to be germane to the topic in
some way. The case essentially denies the arguments that state action is oppressive or that
actions in the international arena are philosophically or pragmatically suspect . Instead of
allowing for the dialogue to be modified by the interchange of the affirmative case and the
negative response, the affirmative subverts any meaningful role to the negative team,
preventing them from offering effective counter-word and undermining the value of a
meaningful exchange of speech acts. Germaneness and other substitutes for topical action
do not accrue the dialogical benefits of topical advocacy.

2NC ClashLong
Clashno predictable point of stasis makes clash
impossiblethis outweighs even if they win 100% of their
impact turns
1) Process educationdebate produces the only unique
form of educationthe ability to contest knowledge
claims directly and argue in a structured way. Any other
form turns debate into a 2 hour lecture series which we
can get back at home
<<<English>>>
2) Dogmafailure to engage in rigorous scrutiny of the
plan causes dogmatism-- Effective deliberation is crucial
to the activation of personal agency ---this activation of
agency is vital to preventing mass violence and genocide
and overcoming politically debilitating self-obsession
Roberts-Miller 3

Patricia Roberts-Miller 3 is Associate Professor of Rhetoric at the University of

Texas "Fighting Without Hatred:Hannah Ar endt ' s Agonistic Rhetoric" JAC
22.2 2003
Totalitarianism and the Competitive Space of Agonism Arendt is probably most
famous for her analysis of totalitarianism (especially her The Origins of
Totalitarianism andEichmann in Jerusalem), but the recent attention
has been on her criticism of mass culture (The Human Condition).
Arendt's main criticism of the current human condition is that the common
world of deliberate and joint action is fragmented into solipsistic and unreflective behavior .
In an especially lovely passage, she says that in mass society people are all
imprisoned in the subjectivity of their own singular experience , which does not cease to be
singular if the same experience is multiplied innumerable times. The end of the
common world has come when it is seen only under one aspect and is
permitted to present itself in only one perspective. (Human 58) What
Arendt so beautifully describes is that isolation and individualism are not
corollaries, and may even be antithetical because obsession with one's own self and the
particularities of one's life prevents one from engaging in conscious, deliberate, collective
action. Individuality, unlike isolation, depends upon a collective with whom one argues
in order to direct the common life. Self-obsession, even (especially?) when coupled with
isolation from one' s community is far from apolitical; it has political consequences.
Perhaps a better way to put it is that it is political precisely because it aspires to be
apolitical . This fragmented world in which many people live
simultaneously and even similarly but not exactly together is what
Arendt calls the "social." Arendt does not mean that group behavior is
impossible in the realm of the social, but that social behavior consists
"in some way of isolated individuals, incapable of solidarity or mutuality, who
abdicate their human capacities and responsibilities to a projected 'they' or 'it,' with
disastrous consequences, both for other people and eventually for themselves" (Pitkin 79).

One can behave, butnot act. For someone like Arendt, a Germanassimilated Jew, one of the most frightening aspects of the Holocaust was the ease with
which a people who had not been extraordinarily anti-Semitic could be put to work
industriously and efficiently on the genocide of the Jews. And what was striking about the
perpetrators of the genocide, ranging from minor functionaries who facilitated the murder
transports up to major figures on trial at Nuremberg, was their constant and apparently
sincere insistence that they were not responsible. For Arendt, this was not a
peculiarity of the German people, but of the current human and heavily
bureaucratic condition of twentieth-century culture: we do not
consciously choose to engage in life's activities; we drift into them, or
we do them out of a desire to conform. Even while we do them, we do
not acknowledge an active, willed choice to do them; instead, we attribute
our behavior to necessity, and we perceive ourselves as determineddetermined by
circumstance, by accident, by what "they" tell us to do. We do
something from within the anonymity of a mob that we would never do
as an individual; we do things for which we will not take responsibility.
Yet, whether or not people acknowledge responsibility for the
consequences of their actions, those consequences exist. Refusing to accept
responsibility can even make those consequences worse, in that the people who enact the
actions in question, because they do not admit their own agency, cannot be persuaded to
stop those actions. They are simply doing their jobs. In a totalitarian system, however,
everyone is simply doing his or her job; there never seems to be anyone who can explain,
defend, and change the policies . Thus, it is, as Arendt says, rule by nobody.It is
illustrative to contrast Arendt's attitude toward discourse to Habermas'.
While both are critical of modern bureaucratic and totalitarian
systems, Arendt's solution is the playful and competitive space of agonism ; it is not
the rational-critical public sphere. The "actual content of political life" is "the joy
and the gratification that arise out of being in company with our peers, out of acting
together and appearing in public, out of inserting ourselves into the world by word and
deed, thus acquiring and sustaining our personal identity and beginning something entirely
new" ("Truth" 263). According to Seyla Benhabib, Arendt's public realm
emphasizes the assumption of competition, and it "represents that space of
appearances in which moral and political greatness, heroism, and
preeminence are revealed, displayed, shared with others. This is a
competitive space in which one competes for recognition, precedence, and acclaim" (78).
These qualities are displayed, but not entirely for purposes of acclamation; they are not
displays of one's self, but of ideas and arguments , of one's thought. When Arendt
discusses Socrates' thinking in public, she emphasizes his performance:
"He performed in the marketplace the way the flute-player performed at
a banquet. It is sheer performance, sheer activity"; nevertheless, it was
thinking: "What he actually did was to make public, in discourse, the
thinking process" {Lectures 37). Pitkin summarizes this point: "Arendt
says that the heroism associated with politics is not the mythical
machismo6 of ancient Greece but something more like the existential
leap into action and public exposure" (175-76). Just as it is not
machismo, although it does have considerable ego involved, so it is not
instrumental rationality; Arendt's discussion of the kinds of discourse
involved in public action include myths, stories, and personal narratives.
Furthermore, the competition is not ruthless; it does not imply a
willingness to triumph at all costs. Instead , it involves something like having

such a passion for ideas and politics that one is willing to take risks. One tries to articulate
the best argument, propose the best policy, design the best laws, make the best response .
This is a risk in that one might lose; advancing an argument means that one must be open
to the criticisms others will make of it. The situation is agonistic not because the
participants manufacture or seek conflict, but because conflict is a necessary consequence
of difference . This attitude is reminiscent of Kenneth Burke, who did not try
to find a language free of domination but who instead theorized a way
that the very tendency toward hierarchy in language might be used
against itself (for more on this argument, see Kastely). Similarly, Arendt
does not propose a public realm of neutral, rational beings who escape
differences to live in the discourse of universals; she envisions one of
different people who argue with passion, vehemence, and integrity.
Continued Eichmann perfectly exemplified what Arendt famously called
the "banality of evil" but that might be better thought of as the
bureaucratization of evil (or, as a friend once aptly put it, the evil of
banality). That is, he was able to engage in mass murder because he was able not to
think about it, especially not from the perspective of the victims, and he was able to
exempt himself from personal responsibility by telling himself (and anyone else
who would listen) that he was just following orders. It was the bureaucratic system
that enabled him to do both. He was not exactly passive; he was, on the
contrary, very aggressive in trying to do his duty. He behaved with the
"ruthless, competitive exploitation" and "inauthen-tic, self-disparaging
conformism" that characterizes those who people totalitarian systems (Pitkin 87).
Arendt's theorizing of totalitarianism has been justly noted as one of her
strongest contributions to philosophy. She saw that a situation like Nazi
Germany is different from the conventional understanding of a tyranny.
Pitkin writes, Totalitarianism cannot be understood, like earlier forms of
domination, as the ruthless exploitation of some people by others,
whether the motive be selfish calculation, irrational passion, or devotion
to some cause. Understanding totalitarianism's essential nature requires solving the
central mystery of the holocaustthe objectively useless and indeed dysfunctional,
fanatical pursuit of a purely ideological policy , a pointless process to which the people
enacting it have fallen captive. (87)

3) Epistemology This rejection of structured clash makes

debate into an echo chamber. This impoverishes their
arguments even if it is rightrobs the value of any
knowledge they produce
Talisse 5Professor of Philosophy @Vandy
Robert, Philosophy & Social Criticism, Deliberativist responses to activist
challenges, 31(4) p. 429-431
The argument thus far might appear to turn exclusively upon different
conceptions of what reasonableness entails. The deliberativist view I
have sketched holds that reasonableness involves some degree of what we may
call epistemic modesty. On this view, the reasonable citizen seeks to have her beliefs
reect the best available reasons, and so she enters into public discourse as a way of testing
her views against the objections and questions of those who disagree;
hence she implicitly holds that her present view is open to reasonable
critique and that others who hold opposing views may be able to offer

justifications for their views that are at least as strong as her reasons for
her own. Thus any mode of politics that presumes that discourse is extraneous to
questions of justice and justication is unreasonable. The activist sees no reason to
accept this. Reasonableness for the activist consists in the ability to act
on reasons that upon due reflection seem adequate to underwrite
action; discussion with those who disagree need not be involved.
According to the activist, there are certain cases in which he does in fact
know the truth about what justice requires and in which there is no room
for reasoned objection. Under such conditions, the deliberativists
demand for discussion can only obstruct justice; it is therefore irrational.
It may seem that we have reached an impasse. However, there is a
further line of criticism that the activist must face. To the activists view
that at least in certain situations he may reasonably decline to engage
with persons he disagrees with (107), the deliberative democrat can
raise the phenomenon that Cass Sunstein has called group polarization
(Sunstein, 2003; 2001a: ch. 3; 2001b: ch. 1). To explain: consider that
political activists cannot eschew deliberation altogether; they often
engage in rallies, demonstrations, teach-ins, workshops, and other
activities in which they are called to make public the case for their
views. Activists also must engage in deliberation among themselves
when deciding strategy. Political movements must be organized, hence
those involved must decide upon targets, methods, and tactics; they
must also decide upon the content of their pamphlets and the precise
messages they most wish to convey to the press. Often the audience in
both of these deliberative contexts will be a self-selected and
sympathetic group of like-minded activists. Group polarization is a welldocumented phenomenon that has been found all over the world and in many diverse
tasks; it means that members of a deliberating group predictably move towards a more
extreme point in the direction indicated by the members predeliberation tendencies
(Sunstein, 2003: 812). Importantly, in groups that engage in repeated
discussions over time, the polarization is even more pronounced (2003:
86 Hence discussion in a small but devoted activist enclave that meets
regularly to strategize and protest should produce a situation in which
individuals hold positions more extreme than those of any individual
member before the series of deliberations began (ibid.) 17 The fact of
group polarization is relevant to our discussion because the activist has
proposed that he may reasonably decline to engage in discussion with
those with whom he disagrees in cases in which the requirements of
justice are so clear that he can be confident that he has the truth. Group
polarization suggests that deliberatively confronting those with whom we disagree is
essential even when we have the truth. For even if we have the truth, if we do not
engage opposing views, but instead deliberate only with those with whom we agree , our
view will shift progressively to a more extreme point, and thus we lose the truth . In order
to avoid polarization, deliberation must take place within heterogeneous
argument pools (Sunstein, 2003: 93). This of course does not mean that there
should be no groups devoted to the achievement of some common political goal; it rather
suggests that engagement with those with whom one disagrees is essential to the proper
pursuit of justice. Insofar as the activist denies this, he is unreasonable.

Takes out their offenseall aff claims are uncertain unless

they can be rigorously scrutinized which is only possible
in a world of deliberative norms and clashmeans you
cant evaluate any of their impact turns unless theyre
based off their interpretation, not the 1AC. Also means
you should vote on presumptionno testable offensive
reason to vote aff

AT Deliberative Norms Exclusion

The deliberative debate model best represents the
interests of the marginalized without the framework of
debate, hierarchical dominance and exclusion are more
likely
Tonn 5Prof of Communication @ Maryland

Mari Boor, Taking Conversation, Dialogue, and Therapy Public, Rhetoric &
Public Affairs 8.3 (2005) 405-430, muse
This widespread recognition that access to public deliberative processes and the ballot is a
baseline of any genuine democracy points to the most curious irony of the conversation
movement: portions of its constituency. Numbering among the most fervid
dialogic loyalists have been some feminists and multiculturalists who
represent groups historically denied both the right to speak in public and
the ballot. Oddly, some feminists who championed the slogan "The
Personal Is Political" to emphasize ways relational power can oppress
tend to ignore similar dangers lurking in the appropriation of
conversation and dialogue in public deliberation. Yet the conversational
model's emphasis on empowerment through intimacy can duplicate the
power networks that traditionally excluded females and nonwhites and
gave rise to numerous, sometimes necessarily uncivil, demands for
democratic inclusion. Formalized participation structures in deliberative processes
obviously cannot ensure the elimination of relational power blocs, but, as Freeman
pointed out, the absence of formal rules leaves relational power unchecked and
potentially capricious. Moreover, the privileging of the self, personal
experiences, and individual perspectives of reality intrinsic in the
conversational paradigm mirrors justifications once used by dominant groups who
used their own lives, beliefs, and interests as templates for hegemonic social
premises to oppress women, the lower class, and people of color. Paradigms infused
with the therapeutic language of emotional healing and coping likewise
flirt with the type of psychological diagnoses once ascribed to
disaffected women. But as Betty Friedan's landmark 1963 The Feminist
Mystique argued, the cure for female alienation was neither tranquilizers
nor attitude adjustments fostered through psychotherapy but, rather,
unrestricted opportunities.102 [End Page 423] The price exacted by promoting
approaches to complex public issuesmodels that cast conventional deliberative
processes, including the marshaling of evidence beyond individual
subjectivity, as "elitist" or "monologic"can be steep. Consider comments of an
aide to President George W. Bush made before reports concluding Iraq
harbored no weapons of mass destruction, the primary justification for a
U.S.-led war costing thousands of lives. Investigative reporters and other
persons sleuthing for hard facts, he claimed, operate "in what we call
the reality-based community." Such people "believe that solutions
emerge from [the] judicious study of discernible reality." Then baldly
flexing the muscle afforded by increasingly popular socialconstructionist and poststructuralist models for conflict resolution, he
added: "That's not the way the world really works anymore . . . We're an
empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while

you're studying that realityjudiciously, as you willwe'll act again,

creating other new realities."103 The recent fascination with public
conversation and dialogue most likely is a product of frustration with the
tone of much public, political discourse. Such concerns are neither new
nor completely without merit. Yet, as Burke insightfully pointed out
nearly six decades ago, "A perennial embarrassment in liberal
apologetics has arisen from its 'surgical' proclivity: its attempt to outlaw
a malfunction by outlawing the function." The attempt to eliminate flaws in a
process by eliminating the entire process, he writes, "is like trying to eliminate heart
disease by eliminating hearts."104 Because public argument and deliberative processes
are the "heart" of true democracy, supplanting those models with social and
therapeutic conversation and dialogue jeopardizes the very pulse and lifeblood
of democracy itself.

Abandoning deliberative debate results in the tyranny of

structurelessness which inevitably annihilates of the
marginalized other
Tonn 5Prof of Communication @ Maryland
Mari Boor, Taking Conversation, Dialogue, and Therapy Public, Rhetoric &
Public Affairs 8.3 (2005) 405-430, muse
In certain ways, Schudson's initial reluctance to dismiss public
conversation echoes my own early reservations, given the ideals of
egalitarianism, empowerment, and mutual respect conversational
advocates champion. Still, in the spirit of the dialectic ostensibly
underlying dialogic premises, this essay argues that various negative
consequences can result from transporting conversational and therapeutic paradigms into
public problem solving. In what follows, I extend Schudson's critique of a
conversational model for democracy in two ways: First, whereas
Schudson primarily offers a theoretical analysis, I interrogate public
conversation as a praxis in a variety of venues, illustrating how public
"conversation" and "dialogue" have been coopted to silence rather [End Page 407] than
empower marginalized or dissenting voices. In practice, public conversation
easily can emulate what feminist political scientist Jo Freeman termed
"the tyranny of structurelessness" in her classic 1970 critique of
consciousness-raising groups in the women's liberation movement,15 as
well as the key traits Irving L. Janis ascribes to "groupthink."16Thus,
contrary to its promotion as a means to neutralize hierarchy and exclusion in the public
sphere, public conversation can and has accomplished the reverse. When such moves
are rendered transparent, public conversation and dialogue, I contend,
risk increasing rather than diminishing political cynicism and alienation.
Second, whereas Schudson focuses largely on ways a conversational
model for democracy may mute an individual's voice in crafting a
resolution on a given question at a given time, I draw upon insights of
Dana L. Cloud and othersto consider ways in which a therapeutic,
conversational approach to public problems can stymie productive,
collective action in two respects.17 First, because conversation has no clearly
defined goal, a public conversation may engender inertia as participants become mired in
repeated airings of personal experiences without a mechanism to lend such
expressions direction and closure. As Freeman aptly notes, although
"[u]nstructured groups may be very effective in getting [people] to talk

about their lives[,] they aren't very good for getting things done. Unless
their mode of operation changes, groups flounder at the point where people tire of 'just
talking.'"18 Second, because the therapeutic bent of much public
conversation locates social ills and remedies within individuals or
dynamics of interpersonal relationships, public conversations and
dialogues risk becoming substitutes for policy formation necessary to
correct structural dimensions of social problems. In mimicking the
emphasis on the individual in therapy, Cloud warns, the therapeutic
rhetoric of "healing, consolation, and adaptation or adjustment" tends to
"encourage citizens to perceive political issues, conflicts, and inequities
as personal failures subject to personal amelioration."19

AT Fairness Bad/Racist (Delgado)

This misses the pointour argument is that they destroy
the possibility of deliberation from achieving anything
productive, meaning that debate collapses. It isnt as
simple as preserving some hegemonic order, rather there
has to be a point of stasis to expect a reasonable
dialogue.
Small Schools D/ANo topic debate would allow for a
greater disparity in wealth to be realized in debate
because it would come down to who can actually research
the multitude of different affirmatives. This heavily
favors large schools with lots of coaches and makes it so
small schools cant compete. A smaller topic allows for
fewer number of affs so teams do not get overwhelmed by
the literature base. This internal link turns all of their
offense.
The fact that there are unequal social relations does not
mean that there should not be a topicthe fact that that
standard is applied unfairly should not be a reason to
vote affirmative
Farber and Sherry 97Prof of of Law @U Minn, Prof of
Civil Rights @ U Minn
Daniel, and Suzanna, Beyond All Reason: The Radical Assault on Truth in
American Law, p. 67-68, questia
Radical multiculturalists might try to escape the implications of their
critique by modifying it. The trouble seems to come primarily from the assertion that
standards of merit are the offspring of racism and sexism. Suppose the radicals were
to move to the more moderate position that the standards are merely
arbitrary (This thesis is one reading of Foucault's work, although the
legal theorists we are focusing on tend not to adopt it.) This modification
might allow them to make an argument that avoids the charges of antiSemitism and racism: Jews and Asians have merely had the good luck to
profit from these arbitrary rules. So far, so good. The trouble is that this
theory also eliminates any basis for criticizing how the standards apply
to blacks and other minorities, who are by the same token merely
suffering from bad luck. The arbitrary rules could just as easily have
favored them rather than the Jews and Asians; things just didn't happen
to turn out that way. Radical multiculturalism doesn't supply any basis
for criticizing such a situation. To see why, let's assume for a moment that standards
of merit are arbitrary. Success often includes an element of luck, and by positing arbitrary
standards the radicals would suggest that group success is entirely luck. In that case,
however, merit standards are fair and objective: whoever draws the right cards wins, and

everyone has had an equal chance to draw. Unlike chess, no one can control his own
opportunity to win, but neither can he decrease another's chances. The
random rules may be inefficient, but they are not unfair. The radicals cannot escape this
dilemma by arguing that some groups don't have an equal chance to win . If someone is
holding one group back, we would call that discrimination. But radical multiculturalists
don't want to allege mere discriminationand anyway, we have rules (and
enforcement mechanisms) against that kind of discrimination. No radical
reformulation of the legal system is necessary if discrimination is the
main obstacle to success. The problem is that it is hard to condemn an
outcome as inequitable if it is merely the arbitrary result of a game that
isn't rigged. Suppose that some grouplet us say, gentilescomplains
that current standards are providing disproportionate success to Jews,
thereby depriving their own group of wealth or power. What responses
are available to this complaint if the standards are random or arbitrary?
One responsethe one most congenial to those who believe that such
concepts as justice can have no objective meaningis that no standard is
better or worse than any other. If so, the disproportionate success rate is not an argument
against current standards. Of course, there is also no argument in favor of keeping current
standards, and force becomes the only arbiter. Unless they can appeal to some
standard of justice, all the radicals can do is to say that they personally
don't like a particular outcome. But since the dominant society
apparently does like the outcomeand by definition has more power
than its opponentsthis is a losing argument.

You should toss this argument as non-falsifiable. This

insulates them from any criticism on the grounds its
grounded in racism
Farber and Sherry 97Prof of of Law @U Minn, Prof of
Civil Rights @ U Minn
Daniel, and Suzanna, Beyond All Reason: The Radical Assault on Truth in
American Law, p. 127, questia
The first defense mechanism derives from the internal logic of multiculturalism, which can
defeat challenges by depriving critics of any ground from which to mount a challenge. We
saw in chapter 4 that concerns about storytelling can be rebuffed this way. Defenders of storytelling need only
point out that the challengers necessarily assume the very concepts of objectivity and truth
that the storytellers are attacking. The critique of truth is peculiarly immune from attack
after all, by what standard could one judge a critique of truth itself to he "false"?
Multiculturalist tenets repel by discrediting in advance any evidence against them . Consider an
effort to use empirical information, such as survey results, to rebuff a radical multiculturalist claim. Such a stratagem is subject to a

The basic concepts used in surveys, such as random sampling and

statistical tests of significance, reek of objectification. In deciding whether to trust the
results of the survey, we must rely on the competence of the surveyors which is a
merit determination, and so inherently suspect. Given the rejection of the
concept of objectivity, it's impossible to retain the idea of an unbiased survey question.
whole string of objections.

The
interaction between the surveyors and the interviewees, like any other social interaction, is drenched in sexism and racism, which
are guaranteed to warp the results. Interviewees may have acquired so much of the dominant mindset that they don't recognize
their own oppression.

Limits First
The deliberative implications of their advocacy are a prior question
pre-conditions of agreement are necessary for your decision to have
any political value

Gunderson 2kProf of Political Science @ Texas A & M

Adolf G. Political Theory and Partisan Politics p. 104-5

Indirect political engagement is perhaps the single most important element of
the strategy I am recommending here. It is also the most emblematic,
as it results from a fusion of confrontation and separa tion. But what kind of political
engagement might conceivably qualify as being both confrontational
and separated from actual political decision-making? There is only one
type, so far as I can see, and that is deliberation. Political deliberation is by
definition a form of engagement with the collectivity of which one is a member. This is
all the more true when two or more citizens deliberate together. Yet
deliberation is also a form of political action that precedes the actual taking and
implementation of decisions. It is thus simultaneously connected and disconnected,
confrontational and separate. It is, in other words, a form of indirect political
engagement. This conclusion, namely, that we ought to call upon
deliberation to counter partisanship and thus clear the way for
deliberation, looks rather circular at first glance. And, semantically at
least, it certainly is. Yet this ought not to concern us very much. Politics,
after all, is not a matter of avoiding semantic inconveniences, but of doing the right thing
and getting desirable results. In political theory, therefore, the real concern is
always whether a circular argument translates into a self-defeating
prescription. And here that is plainly not the case, for what I am
suggesting is that deliberation can diminish partisanship, which will in
turn contribute to conditions amenable to continued or extended
deliberation. That "deliberation promotes deliberation" is surely a
circular claim, but it is just as surely an accurate description of the real
world of lived politics, as observers as far back as Thucydides have
documented. It may well be that deliberation rests on certain preconditions. I am not
arguing that there is no such thing as a deliberative "first cause."
Indeed, it seems obvious to me both that deliberators require something to
deliberate about and that deliberation presumes certain institutional structures and shared
values. Clearly something must get the deliberative ball rolling and, to keep it rolling,
the cultural terrain must be free of deep chasms and sinkholes.
Nevertheless, however extensive and demanding deliberation's
preconditions might be, we ought not to lose sight of the fact that, once
begun, deliberation tends to be self-sustaining. Just as partisanship
begets partisanship, deliberation begets deliberation. If that is so, the
question of limiting partisanship and stimulating deliberation are to an
important extent the same question.

Prefer our impactsthe framework is the foundational

layer of debate
Saurette 2kPhD Johns Hopkins
Paul, INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS - IMAGE OF THOUGHT: COLLECTIVE
IDENTITY, DESIRE AND DELEUZIAN ETHOLOGY International Journal of Peace
Studies 5:1, http://www.gmu.edu/programs/icar/ijps/vol5_1/saurette.htm
The problem of concepts -- what they are, where they are located, how we
create/discover them -- has always been close to the heart of philosophy and
extends deep into the sciences and social sciences. Within IR, this
concern has generally been located in the sphere of methodology and it
remains crucial to the various behaviourist - positivist - empiricist traditionalist debates. All but the most stubborn empiricists accept that
concepts influence our thinking, the validity of studies and the utility of
certain perspectives. It is not surprising, then, that some of the most heated
debates in the history of IR (and international law) have focused on the proper place,
method and definition of certain key concepts such as sovereignty, war, human
rights, anarchy, institutions, power, and international. If all concepts are
equally created, however, some become represented and treated as
more equal than others. There are, in fact, different layers of conceptual
understanding and degrees of articulability and these render certain concepts more or less
subject to question.8 In any debate, certain understandings are shared by its participants
and certain concepts must be common for communication to occur. These concepts
become the foundational layer of the debate, rarely being raised for consideration, but
profoundly shaping the contours of the debate. There have been two traditionally
philosophical responses to this. The first, more familiar to mainstream
IR, might be seen as the empiricist and positivist response in which the
importance of this layer is minimized and its concepts represented as
'preliminary assumptions', 'term variables', or 'operative definitions' -voluntarily accepted concepts that are hypothetically and tentatively
accepted for their heuristic value. Because many empiricists and
positivists accept an understanding of language and thought as
transparent and instrumental, they generally assume that, with enough
effort, all of our fundamental assumptions and concepts can be clarified
and their consequences known -- allowing for, if not truthful
representation, then at least useful manipulation. While this has
perhaps been the prevalent view within English philosophy since the
scientific revolution, a second approach, what has been called the
continental tradition of philosophy, has consistently challenged these
premises. From this perspective, Kant's definition of the project of
philosophy as the search for the transcendental conditions of thought
and morality is the paradigmatic challenge to the English tradition of
empiricism. According to Kant (and shifting him into the language of this
essay), there exist certain natural preconditions -- transcendental fields
-- of thought that allow us to make sense of experience. And while some
of these necessary preconditions (categories and concepts) can be
traced and categorized, others, such as the constitutive and regulative
Ideas, cannot be known with the same theoretical rigor. On this view, the
concepts (Ideas) of this deep layer of shared understandings (experience) are not
transparent and available to examination. Even those we can represent cannot be
manipulated and reconfigured. Far from being heuristic devices of our own making, they

are the necessary and universal conditions of possibility for any experience and
understanding.

Policy Focus Good

Policy training is uniquely valuable for social advocacy
their engagement is defensive and doesnt solve our
advantages
Themba-Nixon 2kExec Director of the Praxis Project
Makani, Colorlines, Changing the Rules: What Public Policy Means for
Organizing Jul 31, 2000. Vol. 3, Iss. 2; pg. 12, proquest
"This is all about policy," a woman complained to me in a recent
conversation. "I'm an organizer." The flourish and passion with which
she made the distinction said everything. Policy is for wonks, sell-out
politicians, and ivory-tower eggheads. 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 valuesas 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 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. Living wage
ordinances, 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
in Writing Much of the work of framing what we stand for takes place in the shaping of
demands. By 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.
Making policy work an integral part of organizing will require a certain
amount of retrofitting. We will need to develop the capacity to translate
our information, data, and experience into stories that are designed to
affect the public conversation. Perhaps most important, we will need to
move beyond fighting problems and on to framing solutions that bring
us closer to our vision of how things should be. And then we must be
committed to making it so.

Our interpretation solves education through

participation in policy debates is essential to check
manipulation of the government by powerful private
interests
Lutz 2kProf of Political Science @ Houston

Donald S. Political Theory and Partisan Politics p. 36-7

The position argued here is that to the extent such a discussion between political
theorists and politicians does not take place we damage the prospects for marrying justice
with power. Since the hope of uniting justice with power was the reason
for creating political philosophy in the first place, political theorists need to
pursue the dialogue as part of what justifies their intellectual project. Politics is the realm
of power. More specifically it is the realm where force and violence are replaced by
debates and discussion about how to implement power. Without the meaningful
injection of considerations of justice, politics tends to become discourse by the most
powerful about how to implement their preferred regime. Although
constitutionalism tends to be disparaged by contemporary political
science, a constitution is the very place where justice and power are
married. Aristotle first taught us that a constitution must be matched to
the realities of the political systemthe character, hopes, fears, needs
and environment of the peoplewhich requires that constitutionalism
be addressed by men and women practiced in the art of the possible.2
Aristotle also taught us that a constitution (the politeia, or plan for a way
of life) should address the improvement of people toward the best life
possible, which requires that constitutionalism be addressed by political theorists who
can hold out a vision of justice and the means for advancing toward it. The conversation
between politician and political theorist stands at the center of their respective callings,
and a constitution, even though it reflects only a part of the reality of a
political system, has a special status in this central conversation.
Although the focus of this chapter is on a direct conversation between
theorist and politician, there is an important, indirect aspect of the conversation that
should not be overlookedclassroom teaching. Too often the conversation between
politician and political theorist is described in terms of a direct one between philosophers
and those holding power. Overlooked is the central need to educate as many young people
as possible. Since it is difficult to predict who will, in fact, hold power, and
because the various peoples who take seriously the marriage of justice
with power are overwhelmingly committed to a non-elitist, broad
involvement of the population, we should not overlook or minimize our importance
as teachers of the many. Political leaders drawn from a people who do not understand what
is at stake are neither inclined nor equipped to join the conversation. As we teach, we
converse with future leaders. Perhaps not everyone who teaches

political theory has had the same experience, but of the more than eight
thousand students I have taught, I know of at least forty-nine who later
held a major elective office, and at least eighty more who have become
important political activists. This comes down to about five students per
teaching year, and I could not have predicted which five it would be. The
indeterminate future of any given student is one argument against
directing our efforts at civic education toward the few, best students. A
constitutional perspective suggests not only that those in power rely
upon support and direction from a broad segment of the public, but also
that reliance upon the successful civic education of the elite is not very
effective, by itself for marrying justice with power in the long run.

AT State BadInevitable
The State is inevitable and should not be rejected
solving global problems like nuclear war and
environmental destruction require a recognition of state
power and an attempt to transform it
Eckersly 4--Professor and Head of Political Science in the
School of Social and Political Sciences, University of
Melbourne, Australia
Robyn, The Green State, p. 4-5
While acknowledging the basis for this antipathy toward the nation-state, and the
limitations of state-centric analyses of global ecological degradation, I
seek to draw attention to the positive role that states have played, and might increasingly
play, in global and domestic politics. Writing more than twenty years ago,
Hedley Bull (A proto-constructivist and leading writer in the English
school) outlined the states positive role in world affairs, and his arguments continue
to provide a powerful challenge to those who somehow seek to get beyond the state, as if
such a move would provide a more lasting solution to the threat of armed conflict or
nuclear war, social and economic injustice, or environmental degradation. 10 As Bull
argued, given that the state is here to stay whether we like it or not, then the call to get
beyond the state is a counsel of despair at all events if it means that we have to begin by
abolishing or subverting the state, rather than that there is a need to build
upon it. 11 In any event, rejecting the statist frame of world politics ought not
prohibit an inquiry into the emancipatory potential of the state as a crucial node in any
future network of global ecological governance. This is especially so,
given that one can expect states to persist as major sites of social and political power for
at least the foreseeable future and that any green transformations of the present political
order will, short of revolution, necessarily be state dependent. Thus, like it or
not, those concerned about ecological destruction must contend with existing institutions
and, where possible, seek to rebuild the ship while at sea. And if states are so
implicated in ecological destruction, then an inquiry into the potential for their
transformation or even their modest reform into something that is at least
more conducive to ecological sustainability would seem to be compelling.

Switch Side Debate Good

Clash of PedagogiesThe core question in the debate is
what team offers a better pedagogical vision for what
competitive policy debate should look like. Debate is a
pedagogical activity. It is an educational tool that focuses
more on teaching how to think rather than what to think
about. The most important epistemological goal of
education is the portable skills it developsnot the
content of particular truth claims
Siegel 03
Harvey Siegel Professor of Philosophy at University of Miami, He has held
visiting professorships at Berkeley, Stanford, the University of Amsterdam
and the University of Groningen Truth, Thinking, Testimony and Trust: Alvin
Goldman on Epistemology and Education
web2.uwindsor.ca/faculty/arts/philosophy/ILat25/edited_siegel.doc
(a) Given the elusiveness of truth and the difficulty of finding it,
justification-conferring critical thinking skills and abilities are central to the lives of
truth-seeking epistemic agents, and so to their education. Even when their
exercise of critical thinking fails to result in true belief (for example,
because of incomplete or misleading evidence), their doxastic situation
is preferable to that which would have resulted from the failure to think
critically. This must be granted by any epistemologist who grants, as
Goldman does, the normative character of justification in particular, and
epistemology more generally (e.g. 24; Goldman 1986, pp. 2-3, 20-26,
58, passim). (b) As already noted, we dont in general have direct
access to truth; if we want to have true beliefs, we typically have no
option but to reason evidentially. That is, we have to judge whether p is
true, and, if were rational, we do this on the basis of reasons and
evidence. This is true generally; it is especially important in the context
of education: what we want is for students to judge the truth competently, and that
means being able and disposed to reason well, evaluate evidence well, search for evidence
well, construct and evaluate arguments well, etc. That is, we want education to
foster students critical thinking. This point deserves further
development. Because we lack direct access to truth, we have no choice
but to approach truth by way of justification. The point is made by many
contemporary epistemologists. As Nicholas Rescher puts it, we have no
way of getting at the facts directly, without the epistemic detour of
securing grounds and reasons for them (Rescher 1988, p. 43). Roderick
Firth puts it as follows: To the extent that we are rational, each of us
decides at any time t whether a belief is true, in precisely the same way
that we would decide at t whether we ourselves are, or would be,
warranted at t in having that belief (Firth 1981, p. 19). As Laurence
BonJour articulates and explains the point: What makes us cognitive
beings at all is our capacity for belief, and the goal of our distinctively
cognitive endeavors is truth: we want our beliefs to correctly and
accurately depict the world. If truth were somehow immediately and

unproblematically accessible...so that one could in all cases opt simply

to believe the truth, then the concept of justification would be of little
significance and would play no independent role in cognition. But this
epistemically ideal situation is quite obviously not the one in which we
find ourselves. We have no such immediate and unproblematic access
to truth, and it is for this reason that justification comes into the picture
(BonJour 1985, p. 7). Such citations could by multiplied indefinitely.
Tellingly, as we have already seen, Goldman himself makes this point:
The usual route to true belief, of course, is to obtain some kind of
evidence that points to the true proposition and away from rivals (24).
If this point is correct, in an important sense the truth drops out as an
(epistemic) educational end: as educators, we want students to be critical thinkers, even when
(because of misleading evidence, etc.) being so directs them away from
truth. If this is right that is, if it is right that we want students to
engage in critical thinking even when doing so directs them away from
the truth critical thinking is of fundamental educational importance independently of
truth. Education is primarily concerned to foster responsible believing and
justified belief, which are only fallibly tied to truth. Thus, from the
educational point of view, it is critical thinking which is fundamental, not
truth. Now, so far as I can see, the veritist can and should grant (a), in
which case our disagreement concerns only (b). And that disagreement
too seems to me minimal, given Goldmans agreement with the claim
that our main reliable access to truth is through the portal of
evidence/justification. I hope that Goldman can acknowledge the
intrinsic (and not only the instrumental) value of critical thinking, and
moreover its centrality to an overarching view of the aims of education. I
think that he can do this without in any way compromising his
commitment to veritism, since, as he himself emphasizes, the two aims
true belief, and critical thinking are compatible. We are agreed on
this compatibility, and also on the educational value of each. My
challenge is simply to Goldmans claim that critical thinking is of value
solely in virtue of its role as a means to true belief; that is, that critical
thinking is of solely instrumental value. On the contrary, it is also
epistemically valuable independently of its instrumental tie to truth.
There are, moreover, additional reasons for regarding critical thinking, rather than truth,
as educationally fundamental. (c) We want students (and persons generally) to be
reflective about their beliefs to question their beliefs; to ask themselves: I (dont)
believe that p, but should I? and that education should help to foster this
reflectiveness. Such reflection takes our fallibility seriously. It is clear that it
can in turn be justified in veritistic terms we value it because it can
help to weed out error and increase true belief. But it enjoys an integrity
and non-instrumental value of its own. That a critical thinker is able and
disposed to revise or correct her thought or action in light of criticism
(by herself or others) is not just a mark of her ability to identify truth; it
is also an important dimension of her character. I turn to this next.

The negative offers a superior pedagogical model

The affirmative offers a vision of debate that allows the
aff to advocate any issue they think is important without
being constrained to defend topical action. In their world
debate pedagogy encourages affs to talk about any issue
they feel is important and relieves them of the obligation
to switch sides on the resolutional question. The negative
pedagogical model views debate as a pedagogical training
ground for switch side advocacy on the resolution which
makes it a better educational model
Forced switch side debate is a superior pedagogical
methodology for teaching portable life skills for advocacy
Harrigan 08
Contemporary Argumentation and Debate, Vol. 29 (2008) 37 AGAINST
DOGMATISM: A CONTINUED DEFENSE OF SWITCH SIDE DEBATE Casey
Harrigan, University of Georgia
Third, there is an important question of means. Even the best activist
intentions have little practical utility as long as they remain purely
cordoned off in the realm of theoretical abstractions. Creating programs
of action that seek to produce material change should be the goal of any
revolutionary project. Frequently, for strategies for change, the devil lies
in the details. Lacking a plausible mechanism to enact reforms, many
have criticized critical theory as being a fatally flawed enterprise
(Jones 1999). For activists, learning the skills to successfully negotiate hazardous
political terrain is crucial. They must know when and when not to
compromise, negotiate, and strike political alliances in order to be
successful. The pure number of failed movements in the past several
decades demonstrates the severity of the risk assumed by groups who
do not focus on refining their preferred means of change. For example,
some have argued that anti-nuclear and other peace movements have
been largely ineffective because of their inability to coalesce around
plans and methods for change (Martin, 1990). Given the importance of
strategies for change, SSD[switch side debate] is even more crucial. Debaters trained by
debating both sides are substantially more likely to be effective advocates than those
experienced only in arguing on behalf of their own convictions. For several reasons,
SSD instills a series of practices that are essential for a successful
activist agenda. First, SSD creates more knowledgeable advocates for
public policy issues. As part of the process of learning to argue both sides, debaters
are forced to understand the intricacies of multiple sides of the argument considered.
Debaters must not only know how to research and speak on behalf of their own personal
convictions, but also for the opposite side in order to defend against attacks of that
position. Thus, when placed in the position of being required to publicly defend an
argument, students trained via SSD are more likely to be able to present and persuasively
defend their positions. Second, learning the nuances of all sides of a position greatly
strengthens the resulting convictions of debaters, their ability to anticipate opposing
arguments, and the effectiveness of their attempts to locate the crux,

nexus and loci of arguments. As noted earlier, conviction is a result, not

a prerequisite of debate. Switching sides and experimenting with possible
arguments for and against controversial issues, in the end, makes students
more likely to ground their beliefs in a reasoned form of critical thinking that is durable
and robust in the face of knee-jerk criticisms. As a result, even though it may
appear to be inconsistent with advocacy, SSD actually created stronger
advocates that are more likely to be successful in achieving their goals (Dybvig and
Iverson, 2000).

AT Exclusion
Benefits of Debate outweigh the Disads of Exclusion
Muir 93Dept of Comms @ George Mason
Star, A Defense of the Ethics of Contemporary Debate, Philosophy & Rhetoric,
Vol. 26, No. 4 (1993), JSTOR
A third point about isolation from the real world is that switch- side
debate develops habits of the mind and instills a lifelong pat- tern of
criticai assessment. Students who have debated both sides of a topic are better voters,
Dell writes, because of "their habit of analyzing both sides before forming a
conclusion."33 O'Neill, Laycock and Scales, responding in part to
Roosevelt's indictment, iterated th basic position in 1931: Skill in the use
of facts and inferences available may be gained on either side of a question without regard
to convictions. Instruction and practice in debate should give young men
this skill. And where thse matters are properly handled, stress is not
laid on getting the speaker to think rightly in regard to the merits of
either side of thse questions - but to think accurately on both sides.34
Reasons for not taking a position counter to one's beliefs (isolation from the "real
world," sophistry) are largely outweighed by the benefit of such mental habits
throughout an individual's life. The jargon, strategies, and techniques may be alienating to
"out- siders," but they are also paradoxically integrative as well. Playing the game of
debate involves certain skills, including research and policy valuation, that
evolve along with a debater's consciousness of the complexities of moral and political
dilemmas. This concep- tual development is a basis for the formation of ideas and relational thinking necessary for effective public decision making, mak- ing even the game of
debate a significant benefit in solving real world problems.

Exclusion is inevitable and necessary for democratic

politics
Mouffe 99Prof of Politics and IR @ U of Westminster
Chantal, Race, Rhetoric, and the postcolonial, p. 171-2
It's not that I'm opposed to the idea of consensus, but what needs to be
put into question is the nature of consensus because I think that every
consensus is by nature exclusionary. There can never be a completely inclusive consensus.
I would say that the very condition of the possibility for consensus is at
the same time the condition of the impossibility of consensus without
exclusion. We can find this same idea in Derrida, but Foucault is the one
who made it very clear. It's important to realize that in order to have consensus
there must be something which is excluded. So the question is not to say that therefore
we're not going to seek consensus. That's where I would differ with Lyotard. I
think we need in politics to establish consensus on the condition that we
recognize that consensus can never be "rational." What I'm against is
the idea of "rational" consensus because when you posit that idea, it
means that you imagine a situation in which those exclusions, so to
speak, disappear, in which we are unable to realize that this consensus
which you claim to be rational is linked with exclusion. And rhetoric is
important here. But it must be understood that this is the way in which we are
going to try to reach some kind of reasonable agreement "reasonable" meaning that in

certain circumstances this is how a political community, on the basis of a certain principle
or something it values, is going to decide what is acceptable; but this process can never
coincide with "rational" consensus. It is always based on a form of exclusion.
So, to come back to Perelman, when we are going to try to establish this
form of consensusin fact, to define what the common good is, because that's
what is at stake in politicswe can't do without this dimension on the condition that
we recognize that there is no such thing as a universel auditoire or the common good and
that it's always a question of hegemony. What is going to be defined at the moment as the
common good is always a certain definition that excludes other definitions .
Nevertheless, this movement to want a definition of the common good, to
want a definition of a kind of consensus that I want to call "reasonable" in order
to differentiate it from "the rational," is necessary to democratic politics.

AT Jargon Bad
Even if the jargon is inaccessible it creates modes of
analysis that are critical to analyzing public policy and
evaluation outside debate.
Muir 93Dept of Comms @ George Mason
Star, A Defense of the Ethics of Contemporary Debate, Philosophy & Rhetoric,
Vol. 26, No. 4 (1993), JSTOR
Even the specialized jargon required to play the game success-fully has benefits in
terms of analyzing and understanding society's problems. Consider the terminology
of the "disadvantage" against the affirmative's plan: There is a "link"
between the plan and some effect, or "impact"; the link can be actions
that push us over some "threshold" to an impact, or it can be a "linear"
relationship where each increase causes an increase in the impact; the
link from the affirmative plan to the impact must be "unique," in that the
plan itself is largely responsible for the impact; the affirmative may
argue a "turnaround" to the disadvantage, claiming it as an advantage
for the plan. Such specialized jargon may separate debate talk from other types of
discourse, but the ideas represented here a re also significant and useful for analyzing the
relative desirability of public policies. There really are threshold and brink issues in
evaluating public policies. Though listening to debaters talk is somewhat
disconcerting for a lay person, familiarity with these concepts is an essential means
of connecting the research they do with the evaluation of options confronting citizens and
decision makers in political and social contexts. This familiarity is directly related
to the motivation and the ability to get involved in issues and
controversies of public importance.

Jargon good. It is essential to facilitate the growth of

knowledge through specialization and ultimately fuels
cross-disciplinary interaction.
Montgomery 4

Scott, petroleum consultant, Science, Of Towers, Walls, and Fields:

Perspectives on Language in Science, 2-27, 303(5662), EBSCO
What, then, of our second theme, the growth and consequence of
jargon? Nearly every scientist has familiarity in this area too. Consider the entomologist
faced with an issue of Physics Today or Cell, the graduate student in
oceanography doing battle with an article in Atmospheric Research.
These are not impossible or even improbable encounters, but they would likely be difficult
ones. Even within single fields, boundaries of terminology may seem to hopelessly divide
specialties and subspecialties, whose numbers grow greatly with each passing
decade. How far has this process gone? Calling oneself a "gravitational
wave physicist" or an "expert on leg anatomy of Early Cretaceous
sauropods" is not at all extraordinary. In the meantime, "biology" and
"geology" have evolved into the "life sciences" and "earth and planetary
sciences." Ours is the era of such pluralizations. They, too, are part of the language of
science. The birth of new fields, and thus new vocabularies, has been a defining aspect of
scientific progress. Specialization reveals itself as a mark of intellectual vigor , the
historical sign that in order to expand and deepen, natural science has had to

diversify and concentrate. It has had to pursue new subject matter, engage in greater
precision, work at smaller or larger levels of observational and analytical scale, take up
higher mathematics, and develop improved laboratory technologies, all
the while inventing new terms and phrases to express the new
knowledge and new practices gained. On the surface, these new vocabularies
have seemed to turn science into a glitter of disconnected realms, self-contained linguistic
galaxies spinning outward, ever apart. Yet this perception, however common, misses
something critical about the nature of each field's dilemma and, perhaps, the dilemma of
its nature. Increasing specialization, rather than causing only a spiralling dispersal has
resulted in new connections of its own, new cross-over. Growing specialization has
generated an ever-greater range of opportunities even demands for the sharing of
language. For instance, the power to examine, analyze, and manipulate
phenomena at smaller and smaller scales has brought the province of
the molecular, once reserved for chemists, into immediate relevance for
botany, zoology, medicine, meteorology, many areas of geology,
engineering, and so on. This has meant the adoption of terminologies
appropriate to such scales of observation and analysis. Commingling
has a number of sources. Integration of computer technology into nearly
every aspect of science is one. The adaptive use of other technologies
(e.g., nuclear magnetic resonance, laser optics, and neural network
applications) is another. Exploring phenomena from a multidisciplinary
vantage the human genome, for instance, or the surface of Mars
continues to be a major part of science. "Transdisciplinary research," as
often said, has brought options and opportunities to every field.
Formerly separate areas have been united: biopaleogeography,
psychoneuroimmunology, planetary geophysics, and chemical
anthropology, among many others. At every step is the increased
sharing of terminologies. Ours is indeed an era of pluralisms, but a fruitful era as
well. The language of science, in consequence, reveals patterns of divergence and
convergence both. This language, as it evolves, is headed neither toward
ultimate unity nor utter diaspora. Barriers set up by specialized jargon exist,
without doubt, as they have for some time. Yet many have become increasingly porous,
allowing flow in both directions. Such will undoubtedly continue science is today the
most active area of language creation.