Their Plan

Side Opposition would like to begin our substantive with an in-depth analysis of what their case means for the progress of the debate. Proposition value liberty highly, yet they can envisage situations under which it might be justified to remove this liberty. They are ok with putting a criminal in prison, for example. What this amounts to is the first principle that can be distilled out of Proposition’s case: the existence of a universal right to liberty, which has the capacity to be forfeited. A criminal, or a terrorist, as a citizen may act in such a way as to waive his claim to certain freedoms, and so he may be imprisoned. They place the boundary pretty much with Mill- harming others. As yet, we don’t really mind were they put it. Proposition have identified the main problem with acts like the PATRIOT ACT in a significant place: “The main concern that we have with anti-terrorist laws is that they give excessive power to the state” “The abuse of power was almost always inevitable when the states granted themselves privileges to freely undermine the rights of the people.” These two quotations are merely succinct ways of demonstrating Proposition’s big issue behind points 2 & 3- the potential it produces for state’s abuse of the powers it gives them. This points us to a second central contention of Proposition’s case: that the main problem is not an absolute condemnation of rifling through the mail of a person, but the potential rifling through the mail of an innocent person. The levity of this sentence masks the importance of the argument. As we know from our first principle, Government are happy to sanction extreme curtailments of liberty to guilty parties, so we know that they would be happy with ad hoc anti-terrorist action- a terrorist being identified, this single person having his computer seized, and jailed for the blueprints of the Houses of Parliament he was making on Photoshop and the receipts for all the gunpowder. In this instance, Prop could find no fault, as it does not represent actualisation of their main problem- THIS IS NOT ABUSE OF POWER BY THE STATE, this conforms to regular criminal law. So we understand that their real philosophy is Utilitarian after all. They dislike the PATRIOT ACT for the wider threat it poses to innocent people: it “undermines democracies” and “promotes abuse of the state”. With the essence of their case thus understood, we would now like to draw attention to an intermediate step in their logic, which they seem to have omitted. It’s perfectly possible for a group of people to decide to enforce a precautionary measure that knowingly consents to their freedoms being curtailed in the event that they come under suspicion, in the knowledge that if any other members should be suspected, they must also conform to this measure. Proposition cannot suggest that no body could rationally decide to sanction precautionary measures (it makes it easier if we imagine a state of 20 people, whose every decision is voted on), yet they seem to imply this without full analysis. The problem only comes when executive and legislative power is divided, as they are in all representative democracies. The problem only exists where the possibility of abuse of this power becomes a sufficient threat to cancel out the security value such legislation might have for those members to agree to it. This observation will be paramount to the Opposition case.