Rehabilitation ought to be valued above retribution in the United States criminal justice system.

First: Before any other evaluation of the resolution we must evaluate the effects on human ontology that the resolution has. Campbell: Campbell & Shapiro 99 (Michael, and Campbell, professor of International Relations at the University of Lancaster, Moral Spaces: Rethinking Ethics and World Politics, p. 97-8) google books “the relevance of ontology to all other kinds of thinking is fundamental and inescapable. For one cannot say anything about anything that is, without always already having made assumptions about the is. Any mode of thought, always already carries an ontology sequested within it. What this ontological turn does to other- regional – modes of thought is to challenge the ontology within which they operate. The implications of that review demand[s] a reappraisal as fundamental as the reappraisal ontology has demanded of philosophy.” I negate, negate is defined by Encarta World English Dictionary: as to deny the truth of something, or prove something to be false. Thus my burden as the negative is to only disprove the affirmative. The thesis of the negative case is that acting on the basis of minimizing suffering is wrong because suffering is needed in order to understand human fatality of the ontological mode of being. Long explains the way humans exist: Suffering and Transcendence Eugene Thomas Long International Journal for Philosophy of Religion Vol. 60, No. 1/3, Self and Other: Essays in Continental Philosophy of Religion (Dec., 2006), pp. 139-148 Published by: Springer Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org... “we exist in the future that is coming towards us. Our being is such that in the present we recollect the past and anticipate the future. Our transcending or becoming, however, comes up against many boundaries along the way which set limits to our transcending or becoming. Suffering stands over against our transcending, our acting the process of becoming in which we act to realize some state of affairs that we desire and through which we find meaning in existence, the experience of suffering appears to be the opposite of activity. Suffering may bring us up against our finiteness and suffering may be accommodated into our human becoming. for example, that although we would not have sought suffering we are better persons for having undergone the experience of suffering.” Thus, the way in which humans exist is through the experience of suffering in order to know the distinction between gods and humans. This allows for human becoming and transcendence to happen. Long 2 explains why suffering is needed: “suffering is necessary to a greater good or that it will be transformed or overcome in the future by a greater good. persons are called not only to condemn such evil and suffer with those who suffer, but assume responsibility for working for new possibilities for good. Human suffering on this account is at one and the same time an experience of emptiness or nullity and the giving or loving of Being, the on-going creative activity or providence of divine reality. In this giving of Being in reaction to the suffering of beings in the world” Thus suffering allows prospering over future problems; the on-going creative activity of the divine reality, which allows people to come to their fullest being This proves that suffering is a necessary part of human existence in order to find solidarity with others and confront our finiteness as human beings. The suffering of others calls us to question who we are what actions we take as human meaning that it is necessary to understand the true function of being a human. This argument functions as an apriori because it disproves the assumptions the affirmative framework is founded upon. Additionally, confronting notions of death and suffering is how individuals conceptualize good and bad and this confrontation is the only reason why life has value Strauss: Jonathan Strauss. “After Death.” Diacritics. 30.3 (2000) 90-104. “Dasein is the term to speak of individual human consciousness, and is Unique among entities in that it puts Being itself- Death, in turn, puts the whole of Dasein's own being at stake. In part, this is because death is "nonrelational," which is to say that no one else can represent me or stand in for me at my inevitable demise. dying is something that I must do for myself. I am therefore alone in the face of my death, and that mortal isolation informs me of my separation from others, makes me aware of my finitude in relation to them. The non-relational character of death, as understood in anticipation, individualizes Dasein down to itself.” Me capable of being a whole to myself, and I actually do become whole to myself through my attitude toward that death. it is that a privative limit can structure experience into subjectivity and existence into a life. One's relation to death is either authentic or inauthentic, In the latter case a person tries to forget that he is finite and must die by imagining that he is the same as the indeterminate They authentic" Anticipation turns out to be the possibility of understanding one's own most and utter most potentiality-for- Being-that is to say, the possibility of authentic existence. The ontological constitution of such existence must be made visible by setting forth the concrete structure of anticipation of death" The structure of our relation to death makes our authentic individual existence apparent to us as a whole, and it is, consequently, through anticipating death that we authentically exist as whole individuals.” Thus it is necessary to confront death in order to find meaning in life. Also, I do not advocate that we advance suffering, but let the suffering in the world flow naturally and avoid trying to minimize it so any arguments about me justifying another holocaust or promoting extinction won’t link. Further, suffering is not something with a brightline i.e we have never undergone enough suffering, it is always static because if it weren’t then we would slowly be able to lose the ability to suffer which doesn’t make sense because even people who have suffered through insane torture or crazy diseases will always have the ability to suffer more And, they are going to stand up and say they know what it is like to suffer just by watching other people suffering however this is false for two reasons A) The warrants in long assume that it is the experience of suffering that calls into question what it means to be and to find meaning in existence and B) The warrants in strauss are clear on the fact that it is the confrontation of death that only I can do for myself and it helps me realize my finitude in relation with others which would function just by watching someone confront death because that would only increase the false idea that we are in some relation to others. This has 2 impacts on the round 1.) I am proving the resolution false 2.) This turns the AC because their notions of trying to reduce suffering only harm human ontology Next, presume neg because a statement has a higher chance of being false than true for example if I have a pink pen then it is only true to say that it is pink however you can make several false statements about he pen i.e. it is blue black or orange. So let me clarify on exactly what my case implicates. My opponent is arguing through her two contentions as well as her criterion of de facto utilitarianism that we should adopt rehab over retribution because it lowers crimes rates and saves people money, all of which reduces the total amount of suffering we can experience. That's all bad for the reasons listed in Long, Long 2 and Strauss. Therefore, you reject the aff case and vote neg. Don't let her try to delink from the harms of the neg case because that would mean that you end up defaulting neg under her framework. If she isn't arguing that adopting rehab would offer some sort of benefits then there's no reason to adopt it under her framework of "cost-benefit analysis", meaning that she doesn't have any kind of offense she can extend out that fulfills her framework and you default neg anyway. So, to summarize:- She's arguing that rehab offers x and y benefits that reduce suffering and bring about all these different benefits.- I'm saying that we shouldn't be trying to reduce suffering, but rather keep things at the current level and avoid deviation, therefore you reject her cas apriori.- If she isn't arguing that rehab has those benefits, then she isn't fulfilling her framework via cost-benefit analysis, therefore has no actual offense to win the debate.