Morality should not be a deciding factor in American politics.

Thank you as well, CON; you've been wonderful so far. Contention I Con claims that I am only proving a shift what we considered to be moral; if you believe this to be true, I'd also like to point you back to a statement that she overlooks in contention I: "This would mean that our entire legal system is essentially based off of what we believe to be moral, whether or not it is 'objectively' moral." My point here is that, we change our views from time to time, making moral consistency in the United States quite impossible. And, truly, if my opponent wants to look to objective morality, there's no actual standard for determining what is objectively moral; we have to go with our perceptions, which is essentially moral relativism; thus, our system of morality is entirely inconsistent, and, as my opponent admitted (and she drops this admission), "morality can be highly subjective and influenced by an ever transient culture." Also, when I say looking to what the people want, I think I need to make a clarification: We don't go door to door and ask voters if they think a policy is morally right or morally wrong; we have elections to best determine what the people want. And, remember that the "wants" of the people aren't the only things to consider; of course, we also have to remember the pragmatics. She's trying to put me to this bizarre absolute that the majority should make laws 100% of the time, and will always be effective; I don't recall having to prove any such thing. She gives this off-the-wall example of 90% of people trying to take money from 10% of people; this might be what the majority wants, but first of all, the majority itself doesn't determine policy; second of all, again, for majority rule to be justified, we have to ensure that minority rights are protected; in this case, the 10%'s right to property can't be infringed on by a majority of people; I'll cover the majority rule vs minority rights more a bit further down. On the selfishness aspect of the contention, she says that one's desire to maintain life and property aren't enough to legally warrant protection; however, she ignores the fact that essentially EVERYBODY (give or take a few suicidal people and possession-free monks) values their life and property; because everyone values these things, including government officials, it's in everyone's self interest for these laws to be enacted; we may offer a moral justification, but, fundamentally, these laws are set up only for self-interest: another example is the law against speeding; we don't have this law because it's immoral to speed; rather, it's for safety reasons, as we want to prevent wrecks, thereby preventing loss or injury of human life, which means that we ourselves are protected in the process. To answer her question, it all goes back to self-interest; give or take a bit of random altruism, rights are given perhaps because we benefit from those rights; often, the notion of equality is brought up; but, keep in mind this is still in self-interest, because, obviously, if we were in that position, we would want equality for ourselves; and, in the case of gay rights, for example, some people are supporters out of pure apathy, since it doesn't affect them at all; so, rights are usually regarded as legitimate if they benefit self-interest. Thus, regardless of morality, rights will exist and will be protected. Contention II I'll concede that entire point, but even then, it works for Pro: of course we had political, strategic, and economic aims; that's really my point here; I'm not justifying these goals, but we tried to hide them under the guise of morality; while we were going in for political, strategic, and economic reasons, we tried to justify it as a moral response to terrorism; but, if we had not attempted a moral justification of our many military conflicts, that is to say, if 'morality' wasn't part of our political strategy, the world could have easily seen our true intentions from the beginning; in a nutshell, morality is often used in politics as a cover for ulterior motives; and, even if 'moral' goals are achieved, it's often unintended. She also drops the WWII example; how it was pragmatism, not morality, that had us selling goods to the allies; morality didn't have us enter the war to save the Jews from the Holocaust; the attack on Pearl Harbor brought us in; my opponent even brings up the idea of Isolationism, which was a policy we enacted because we thought it was in our own (you guessed it) self-interest. As far as morality and political mistakes: okay, I'll agree that political mistakes happen with or without morality, but the second bit of reasoning is actually the reverse of how it ought to be; 'morality' happens to cause a myriad of political blunders (as shown above), and eliminating morality from politics obviously won't prevent all mistakes, but it will certainly prevent some. As far as pragmatism, I like how Con tries to say that "pragmatism is a moral system", yet "pragmatism implies that there is no right or wrong"; certainly these two statements are quite contradictory. However, the benefits of all need to be considered; I'm not saying pragmatics can cater to the needs to every single person; it probably can't; but enforcing a single narrow system of morality is definitely not going to do that; it doesn't account for every person's wants because of its rigidity - pragmatism on the other hand, is a flexible policy. As far as her stealing example, just understand that being caught and punished for violating property rights outweighs the pragmatic benefit of stealing to begin with. On the application of pragmatism: we apply it to both; the government needs to enact practical laws and policies, and individuals have to way the pros and cons of every decision before making it (such as the benefits of stealing vs the penalty for doing so). Con says "One must use morality in determining which route it the most righteous." Firstly, if individuals are determining morality, then obviously there's no objective moral standard to use to determine 'righteousness', so it's self-defeating; secondly, righteousness isn't the basis for law, as I've pointed out earlier; we have to look at the pragmatics to determine what policies are both needed and beneficial; it all stems from self-interest. In a sense, 'righteousness', this idea of morality, is subjective, as Con admits; if we enact a morally sound policy, that's merely a coincidence. Contention III As far as majority v minority, we can look here: http://www.democracyweb.org... While majority rules, minority has rights like free speech, petition, assembly, elections, etc. The minority has the right to become the majority, and this checks the current majority to prevent tyranny; these are the minority rights I'm discussing: there's no contradiction here. As far as the 'right to murder'; again, we have laws against that out of our self-interest. Also, note the circular reasoning: Why is the tyranny of majority wrong? Because it's immoral. Essentially, my opponent is saying, the tyranny of majority is wrong because it's wrong; 'because it IS.' She just explains here that laws exist to uphold morality; still, I've proven how they exist out of our own self-interest, not out of a sense of righteousness. One last contradiction: she started off asserting some objective morality, but now talks about change, and progress, still giving us no objective moral standard. Thus, her first premise is flawed, because self-interest determines rights. Her second premise is irrelevant; not upholding rights is unacceptable because it potentially harms our self-interest (if we aren't the victim); if some believe that it's also immoral, that's merely coincidental, since morality isn't our motivation for rights protection. I agree with premise three, obviously. Thus, your actual conclusion: Morality should not be a dec