Resolved: Just governments ought to ensure food security for its citizens

ColeTrain, it's my pleasure.Allow me to take you back in time for a moment. We are in Germany. The day is March 12th, 1938. You have just heard the announcement that Hitler has officially joined Austria with Germany. There is much celebrating, for it is the dawn of a new era! There are promises of riches, superiority, and power- a utopia to be created by the Nazi party. But little do you, or anyone know what horrors will be committed in order to attain this end. Now we travel back to the present day. We can look back on the atrocious holocaust and World War Two and see that none of those actions and evils were justified because of their “ultimate goal.” As we turn our eyes from the pains of the past and begin to look towards the future, we find ourselves confronted with a resolution, a decision of much less import than the holocaust, but a decision all the same. Resolved: a just government ought to ensure food security for all of it’s citizens. Before proceeding, allow me to present several definitions. Food Security, as defined by the Beehive Forensics Institute at the University of Utah, “is one’s access and/or ability to meet their daily caloric needs” Now that we have defined certain terms, we can see that the resolution leaves us with one primary point of debate, which I will shortly contest. That is, what makes a government “just?” In order to properly address this however, I will provide a definition of justice. Justice, as defined by Immanuel Kant is based on Deontological Ethics. This approach states that the rightness or wrongness (and thereby the justice) of an action is based on the character of the action itself, and has nothing to do with the consequences. Given that the justice of an action is based on the character of the action itself, it is now left us to find some way to judge said action, free of societal biases. This merely requires two steps. First, we must determine if there are smaller actions which are needed to achieve the end result in question. And secondly, we must project those actions into a state of nature. With these two steps in mind, allow me to dissect the resolution. The resolution simply states that a government which is just should, in some undetermined way, guarantee that it’s citizens have access to enough food to meet their needs. Notice that the way a to achieve this state is not mentioned, so we can determine that the only action here provided is the giving of this access to food to those who do not have that access. As this is the only action provided in the resolution, it is the only action we need to project into a state of nature to find if the resolution is just. A state of nature is a state in which individuals act with nothing other than their certain inalienable rights. Let us imagine three individuals in this state, one who will represent the government; another, the citizens who need additional food; and the last will represent those who have an excess of food. Since governments derive their power from the consent of the governed, and the governed cannot give a government power which they themselves do not have, we will treat our government character as an average citizen. One day, the government (we will call him person A) notices that person B (The man in need of food) is, in fact, in need of food! Person A immediately looks about for help for person B. He sees Person C (the man with plenty) enjoying an abundant feast. Now I pose the question at debate. Does person A have any way to provide B with food while complying with all inalienable rights? Were A to remove some food from C by force, he would be violating his right to property. A could have C work a little harder, and then convince C to give some of what he had to B, but that decision rests with C, because A cannot violate his right to liberty. Indeed, after A has tried every possible idea, he can only hope that C will be generous to B. After we have looked at every alternative, we can determine that person B has no inalienable right to food security. That being said, we can assume that person A has no right to provide or ensure food security in any way. In a state of nature, any action to provide food security to another person, without donating your own property, is immoral and thereby unjust. Bringing that conclusion and applying it to the resolution directly.(1) Given that justice comes from the character of an action,(2) that said character can only be attained by viewing the action in a state of nature,(3) and it being seen that the action required in the resolution is not moral in that state,(4) it can be reasonably assumed that a Just government ought not to ensure food security for its citizens. This being the case, I respectfully solicit the vote of the judge. Sources: William L. Shirer (1984). Twentieth Century Journey, Volume 2, The Nightmare Years: 1930–1940. Boston: Little, Brown & Company. ISBN0-316-78703-5. Stewart, D. (n.d.). BFI Food Security LD Brief. Retrieved March 12, 2014, from The Beehive Forensics Institute at the University of Utah Mastin, L. (n.d.). Deontology. Retrieved March 12, 2015, from http://www.philosophybasics.com... Deontological ethics. (2014, November 9). Retrieved March 12, 2015, from http://www.britannica.com... Jefferson, T. (n.d.). The Declaration of Independence. Retrieved March 16, 2015, from http://www.archives.gov...