America is the Land of the Free

Overview: Pro has the BOP in this debate " it is his job to show that America is no longer a free society. All societies exist on a continuum of more or less free, no society is perfect. It is not enough for Pro to show that there have been instances where individuals have been deprived of freedom; he must show that both the scope and magnitude of the deprivation of freedom of speech warrants the broad claim that America is not a free society. I have argued that freedom exists when individual autonomy and responsibility is respected and that the supposed injustice that Pro touts does not represent a violation of autonomy. Additionally I have argued that even if Pro"s arguments represent a violation of autonomy, these violations are best viewed as "room for improvement" and pale in comparison to the actions of truly tyrannical societies. Rebuttal: First, I don"t claim that repressive countries are a "bench mark for freedom," I claim that truly tyrannical societies offer a model of what lack of freedom looks like. America looks nothing like truly repressive societies, thus we can see that the claim that America is not a free society fails. The social progress imperative puts the US in the top 25 countries for personal rights and the top 5 in terms of overall opportunity. http://www.socialprogressimperative.org... The Heritage Foundation ranks the U.S. 12th in terms of economic freedom: http://www.heritage.org... Again, I would not make the claim that the U.S. is perfect, but it is consistently ranked as a top performer when it comes to freedom. Pro doesn"t dispute my definition of freedom, though he does offer an interpretation of it. Pro claims: "one should be able exercise all the above free choices WITH the Guarantee that one"s life, property, rights, happiness and liberty will be Protected by Law" This interpretation is absurd because it requires the government to do the impossible, goes far beyond simply protecting autonomy, and is not backed up by a sound conception of freedom. It would be impossible for the law to guarantee an individual"s happiness, and doubly hard to guarantee that an individual"s happiness will not be adversely impacted by speech acts. Refer again to the examples I provided in R1- how could the government guarantee my happiness if I cruelly insult all my friends and family? Would Pro have the government force all individuals to pretend as if I weren"t being a massive jerk? It is similarly impossible to guarantee that I will see no change in my financial fortunes as a result of my speech acts. I can say any number of things that will justifiably get me fired or result in loss of financial opportunity. If I consistently throw racial slurs at my coworkers, does Pro expect the government to force my employer to retain my services? Pro"s interpretation goes far beyond protecting individual autonomy. My autonomy is infringed if my property is stolen or harmed by an act of aggression because this represents a loss of my ability to choose how to spend my time and manage the resources at my disposal. Lost income or change of financial fortune due to my speech acts is not a loss of autonomy because I am still free to manage resources at my disposal. All that has changed in the latter case is that other members of society are no longer willing to cooperate with me economically. Again, freedom is not immunity from the consequences of your actions nor the ability to do whatever you please. Pro has offered no rebuttal to the substance of my R1 case- he never refutes my argument that social coercion does not limit freedom nor that his arguments limit the freedoms of all people by forcing them into undesirable social interaction. Pro never refutes my argument that freedom exists on a political spectrum. None of the examples Pro cites resulted in imprisonment and all of individuals still have the ability to freely speak their mind. Clearly his examples do not show a loss of autonomy, as the individuals involved are still able to exercise their ability to speak freely. Pro has not come close to meeting his BOP in showing that the US is systematically and significantly unfree. Even if I concede that the examples provided are cases of injustice, Pro has still not met the BOP- there will always be special cases where the machinery of justice fails. Pro needs to show that people are systematically being deprived of freedom of speech. In fact, people are permitted to speak freely in our society. This is why the Westboro Baptists can picket the funerals of dead soldiers and neo-nazis can hold public rallies: http://www.nydailynews.com... Pro"s isolated incidents do not outweigh the systematic protection of free speech for even the most despised of opinions. I need not go into each case Pro provides to show that these are not cases of injustice. Each example is a case of private individuals responding to remarks made by other private individuals in an economic fashion, which I have already established is not a violation of freedom. Employers have a right to fire employees. Moreover, each example represents a case where there were justifiable grounds to consider the offending remarks as hindering the economic goals of the employer. A journalist who calls a certain racial group "scum" brings question to her journalistic integrity regardless of whether she is on or off the clock. Finally, no rights were violated in any of these instances. No one tried to prevent these individuals from speaking, they were not imprisoned and no action was taken to try to restrict future speech acts. In fact, the ability of the employers to influence future speech acts disappeared after the firing- if anything these people are MORE free to speak. There will always be an established public opinion on certain issues and speaking against that public opinion will always result in some form of social friction. That all opinions are not treated the same is not an argument against freedom, it is the natural result of free social interaction.