The USFG should have the power to limit citizens freedom of protest if it weakens our military power

========== Rebuttal to: "first extend across my value criterion which is dropped by my opponent. the fact that us military power leads to peace thus leading to a utilitarianism world" ========== My opponent made no such argument in round 1. He made no mention of peace, he simply made mention of protection. He clearly mentioned that he meant protecting the lives of US citizens: "Thus because of this weaken military state the US government has lost it power to protect it's citizens." and "So in order to protect the rights of the citizens the government has the to take away these freedoms to protect it's ctizens" Show that. However, the peace argument is made later on in his R2, so I'll wait until I get there to rebut it. However, I didn't drop any argument, and if you still claim I do, please post where you referred to this "fact that us military power leads to peace thus leading to a utilitarianism world" before round 2. ========== Re-responding to Contention 1 ========== Let's look at the resolution, one more time. The USFG should have the power to limit citizens freedom of protest if it weakens our military power See the IF? That means that we are debating on the assumption that protests in fact DO weaken our military power. It is a given premise, it is not supposed to be debated. Whether it's true or not, I have to accept the fact that protest hurts US military power, at least in the cases we're talking about. In the rest of this round, I will be showing primarily how taking the rights from the US public will weaken military power EVEN MORE than protests do. ========== Defending the Pirate ========== First, my opponent accepts that people do join the military to protect people's rights, so at this point, there is in fact harm done to the military, through lower morale and less recruits, when people's rights are taken. However, he claims that another force at work - the elimination of protests against the war - would help the military more than it was hurt by the rights being taken away thing. He also admits that the morale would still be low with his plan: "thus even if they have lower moral they will still have the ability to win easier." I will now argue that taking the rights of protest from people would not get more people to join the military. ~~~~~~~~~ The Uncle Sam Syndrome ~~~~~~~~~ My opponent points out that propaganda is primarily what makes people's opinions. He speculates that there would be more pro-war propaganda if protests were forcefully stopped and less anti-war propaganda. I will argue on both accounts. "More pro-war propaganda": Since freedom of the press still exists in my opponent's plan, and people don't like having their rights taken from them, and news companies generally like to get things people care about out into the open, they would be likely to show more anti-war stories and less pro-war stories. Also, a lot of the Pro-war propaganda is based on how free we are, and how we're gonna give everyone else their freedom, and this would become bitterly ironic and would end up hurting the Pro-war cause due to the extremely visible hypocrisy. "Less anti-war propaganda": Protests are a minor form of propaganda. Having our rights taken from us, we would speak out more against the war than we would have with protests. First, people who want to protest would have nowhere to vent their opinions, so they would talk about it a lot more on the phone, in person, and on the internet. Second, people would assume negative things about the war just from the fact that the government had to limit the right to protest. Third, people would be upset about their loss of rights, and would talk about it in person, on the phone, and on the internet. Fourth, people would be upset at their loss of rights, and would talk about the war negatively as much as possible just to spite the US government for acting so heavy-handedly. Not to mention the negative morale of the Military, since their ideal "protecting the land of the free" image will fade. They'll feel more and more like tools and less and less like the noble freedom fighters they are. I believe that is enough support for the Pirate, at least for this round. Also, they won't like fighting for a heavy-handed government. Soldiers with high morale get the job done a lot more effectively. ========== Responding about the first Boar ========== Keep in mind that the boar was just there to show that the reasoning my opponent gave for Contention 2 was faulty and usually not applicable. To quote his C2: "So in order to protect the rights of the citizens the government has the to take away these freedoms to protect it's ctizens" The boar was only meant to show that this thinking was flawed, since wars are generally not fought to protect US citizens. Since my opponent has moved on from that, the Entangled Tusked Boar is now rotting somewhere on the side of the road, mangled and no longer useful. The rest of the response to my opponent's boar response will be under the new boar. ========== The Rejuvenated Zombie Boar ========== Alright, I accept where my opponent has taken this. So wars aren't fought primarily to protect US citizens, but they're fought to improve people's lives, which is definitely what the majority of wars are fought for. Well, at least in this debate. Lowering our military power lowers our ability to do just that - improve people's lives. Since the Pirate shows that taking our rights will in fact lower military power even further, it will make us less able to improve people's lives the way we do. Thus, in the interest of improving these people's lives, the government should not take our right to protest wars. That's in addition to the other reasons - the fact that our society places a lot of value in rights, the fact that it would be hypocritical to take away your own people's rights while fighting for the rights of others [and hypocrisy causes a lot of problems in foreign relations, in media [did I mention propaganda?], etc.], destroying the entire county's self image [we're the 'land of the free, remember?], etc. ========== US military hegemony leads to peace ========== Great. Peace is good. And my opponent's plan has been shown to reduce US military power. ========== Us military has the power to stop low level conflicts and cause peace ========== Stopping conflicts is fine too. I really am enjoying all this extra firepower. ========== American hegemony is necessary to promote the continued integration of the global economy ========== Certainly a noble cause, and it's definitely a good thing based on utilitarianism. One more reason not to take our right to protest away, I guess.