vigilantism is justified when the government fails to enforce the law

I don't know if you want me to refute your "Opening arguments" since LD goes AC, 1NR, 1AR, 2NR, 2AR. Would you mind if I just presented my case and then let you present yours (officially) in the next speech? I don't care if it means copy/pasting, I just wanna follow the rules. Apparently my case I was going to use at State has been deleted, so I guess I'll be running an Ed-Style case. "Resolved: Vigilantism is justified when the government has failed to enforce the law" I affirm. I offer the following definitions: Vigilantism: the act of a citizen who takes the law into his or her own hands by aprehending and punishing suspected criminals Justified: to prove or show to be just, right or reasonable Government: the organization, machinery, or agency through which a political unit that exercises authority and performs functions and which is ussually clasified by the distribution of power within it Enforce: to carry out effectively The Law: a systemic collection of principles based on the predictable consequences of an act, condition, etc. Crime: an unlawful activity that breaks social norms and results in the harm of another actor in society Observation 1: The resolution states that vigilantism is justified ONLY when the government has failed to enforce the law. This means that we are discussing vigilantism in the exact case of law enforcement. Furthermore, the resolution poses the clause "the law" which means that we are only debating on law as a whole, not any specific instance or law. Observation 2: Because the negative represents the status quo, it is the negative's burden to prove that the affirmation of the resolution will result in decreasing the welfare of the society, therefore the affirmative simply needs to prove that the chance of vigilantism's justification increasing society is beyond that of 50%. I propose the following framework to measure the round fairly. The value is social welfare. This is anything and everything that is overall benificial to the society and its citizens. This includes, but is not limited to, human rights, social productivity, balance of power and human dignity. The criterion is popular soveregnty. This is the set of values that society has generally accepted. Also, the belief that the legitimacy of the state is created by the will or consent of its people who are the source of all political power. The value and criterion collaborate because every society wants social welfare. We must accept this V/C because anything that the negative can possibly propose falls under social welfare, thus acheiveing less than we could. Contention 1: "Vigilantism's means are just, therefore we must justify its ends" Vigilantism as at its core was created to prevent crime, which is aimed to improve the welfare of the society. This also upholds to popular sovereignty as clarified by social contract theory. John Locke and Tomas Hobbes explain that the lowest form of living that humans can reach is a "state of nature". Hobbes expands on this in "Leviathan": ". .. during the time when men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war as is of every man against every man. .. " In this state any person has the natural right to do anything to preserve his or her own liberty and safety, and life is ". .. solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. " John Locke considers progression from this "state of nature" in his "Second Treatise on Civil Government". "The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it. .. ", and that law is reason. Locke believes that reason teaches that ". .. no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possesions"; and that transgressions of this may be punished. He also describes how societies are formed which is by the people uniting to form a government in order to protect themselves from this anarchic "state of nature". Since crime is an unlawful activity that harms another citizen, it is an attack against the welfare and sovereignty of the society to commit a crime. By contrast, an act that prevents crime is inherently good as it upholds to all of these values. At this point, we can see two uniqe impacts: 1) Affirming upholds to popular soveriegnty and the most values improving the society through the ability to prevent crime, 2) Negating leads citizens toward an anarchic state of nature fraught with crime due to its lack of civil protection Contention 2: "Vigilantism is a governmental fail-safe" As we can determine from the evidence presented in my first contention, this state of nature is bad. So obviously, we want to achieve the highest level of civilized society as possible because it allows for the greatest safety and comfortability of its citizens as opposed to the lowest. When interpreting the resolution as we have, we can see that the status quo is in a state of nature because law is not being enforced effectively or even at all. In this resolutional situation, people are at war with everyone to protect themselves and their property, because there is nothing there to protect them. If we affirm, then vigilante's are allowed to protect citizens and citizens are allowed to protect themselves. From this we see another set of impacts: 1) Affirming places a group of civil protectors in place to preven random acts of vilence and crime otherwise committed, 2) Negating leaves all citizens in a state of nature, 3) Affirming better protects its citizens, even if a vigilante acts out of proportion. It is for these reasons I encourage an affirmative ballot.