Resolved: This house would hold authors responsible for offending readers

I never assented to all of these structural rules when I agreed to the debate, and to accept them given the blatant stacking of the deck with the given definitions would be nonsense. I could run a K that truthfully asserts that we have no right to incentivize suppression of free speech, but I prefer to debate the case more closely to the original intentions of both myself and my opponent. Here are my better definitions: This House: The USFG. Offending: Cause to feel upset, annoyed, or resentful (from Google’s dictionary) Additionally, I’d like to add: Hold responsible: Punish. I will defend these definitions as superior. The USFG is a better representative of "this house" because publishers, and especially the Big Five, no longer have comprehensive control over what is published. As of 2014, on Amazon’s best-seller list, the Big Five account for only 16% of e-books on the best-seller list, while self-published books account for 31% of all e-book sales (1). This is not to mention the plethora of opinion blogs, biased news sites like Breitbart, and YouTube news commentators (like Philip DeFranco), which altogether show that publishing cannot be controlled anymore by the Big Five, and their efforts would not have a lasting impact on the market anyway, given their recent sharp decline. The USFG at this point is the only entity with enough broad reaching power to enact such censorship. My definition of "offending" is superior simply because Pro’s is ludicrously narrow, specifically the second half, "racist rhetoric and/or publicity". Let’s consider one of the most famously offensive works of recent times--Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses. This is a book that many Muslims found offensive, so much so that Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa against the author. Islam is not a race, it is a religion, and there is not even agreement about whether the work even actually insults Islam (2). Yet, the offense is clearly there, and it had a clear, significant impact on Rushdie (who had to be guarded) and the Iranian people. Some people are offended by violent movies. Those are not racist. Some people are offended by insults to their religion. Those are not racist. Some are offended by others calling their favorite movie terrible. That is not racist. As I have demonstrated that offense clearly exists in non-racial contexts, my definition is superior. My definition of "hold responsible" should be used because punishment is necessary to stop "offensive" writers from publishing their idea, and holding responsible implies an action being taken specifically against the writers themselves. Opening arguments The implied advocacy of a resolution that argues for "hold[ing] authors responsible" is censorship. Punishment (holding responsible) for offending requires actions that make offense on behalf of said author less likely in the future, if it is to be effective punishment (if it is ineffective, there is no reason to dole this punishment out). By artificially altering the discourse that may be undertaken by the American people, censorship results. A censor is, "an official who examines books, plays, news reports, motion pictures,radio and television programs, letters, cablegrams, etc., for the purpose of suppressing parts deemed objectionable on moral, political, military, or other grounds" (3), and censorship is simply the undertaking of those actions (4). Suppressing the ability of authors to spread their ideas directly results in suppression of their ideas. That the resolution advocates for censorship is proven. Censorship results in net harms to society To negate the resolution, I need only to show that its implied advocacy both necessarily follows from the resolution, and that the impact of that advocacy is of net harm. I previously demonstrated that censorship does necessarily follow from "holding authors responsible", so it is now time to show that this principle is on balance harmful. I don’t think this will be challenging, but I will go in-depth nevertheless. Premises P1: The USFG is imperfect P2: The USFG decides what authors must have their speech restricted C1: The USFG will imperfectly restrict speech--that is, it will allow at least some harmful authors to keep speaking and prevent some benign authors from speaking. P3: If a benign author is unjustly prevented from speaking, his human rights have been infringed upon. C2: USFG censorship infringes upon human rights. Explanation P1: This is self-evident. Humanity is imperfect, and a body made up of imperfect beings cannot be perfect. I will defend this more in-depth next round if need be. P2: As I showed earlier, only the USFG can implement effective censorship measures. C1: Logically follows. The criteria that the USFG uses to censor works will not be equivalent to that which maximizes good and minimizes harm due to its imperfection. The FCC notes that the current legal criteria for banning speech on radio waves is, "An average person, applying contemporary community standards, must find that the material, as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest. The material must depict or describe, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by applicable law. The material, taken as a whole, must lack serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value" (5). Yet, these criteria are subjective--"community standards", "average" person, "prurient", "patently offensive", "lack serious . . . value". George Carlin’s 7 Dirty Wordssegment was banned from the airwaves on this basis. Yet, I personally do not find the work sexually explicit, I think it contains serious value as political commentary, and I, a relatively average person, do not find it offensive. P3: Freedom of speech is constitutionally protected, and is recognized as a universal human right by the UN (6). C2: Logically follows--Benign speakers necessarily have their speech restricted by censorship. Impact Analysis Finally, we must weigh this infringement of human rights against any potential benefits of censorship. Essentially, Con’s position upholds a moral principle that human rights may be violated if there is a determination by the USFG that possession of such rights would indirectly lead to social unrest or other harms. This is a dangerous position to take, one that undermines the entire basis of Western thought. If the government is given the power to judge speech, the power must necessarily be taken away from the people. The people already have the right to not buy a book if they find it offensive, or may buy it if they do not. In this way, the people determine what is offensive--what is not offensive to the majority of the populace will on balance be more successful and will see its ideas spread more than something that is offensive. The government judging speech takes away this choice, and with it, there is affirmation that the will of the government is superior to the will of the people. With this principle affirmed, freedom is extinguished. Because the government as an institution is distinct from the people, speech that will be allowed is speech that supports the aims of the government, not the people. It is easy enough to grant the USFG power; it is far harder to take it away. Perhaps anti-government speech is offensive to hard-working politicians; the USFG shall have the power to restrict it. Giving the government power to restrict offensive speech is giving them power to restrict all speech. Imagine if the Civil Rights movement were restricted even further than it already was on the grounds that the rise of African Americans in protest was "offensive" to the "superior" race. To grant the USFG power to censor also blatantly violates the 1st Amendment. We may further see the harms of censorship within authoritarian governments--namely, that every government established it to consolidate power. I may confidently assert that restriction of free speech by the USFG except in times where the very existence of the nation is in jeopardy leads to autocracy, because its defiance of the Constitution leaves this republic with no legal or popular restraints, and the tendency of extralegal governments is to accumulate power, not spread it. The USSR, China, Japan (before the post WWII era), South American juntas, the revolutionary Iranian government, and so on. Only countries restricted by the law and respecting human rights become democratic--Greece, the US, England, and so forth. Censorship violates both counts Censorship itself also does little to stamp out dissidence, because it is imperfect. Even in today's advanced world, people constantly find ways around China's Great Firewall (7). People who are determined to access information will find ways to access it. If Pro would like to attempt to show that the Chinese are less in support of dissenting ideas now than they were 50 years ago, I would love to see that. Or perhaps he would love to talk about how withholding Mein Kampf from German audiences has stopped Neo-Nazism, which still has several thousand followers (8, 9). In fact, censorship has an effect of making ideas "in vogue". Consider the ridiculous notion that vaccines cause autism. Alternative news outlets literally cite its censorship as making it credible (10).Human rights are necessary to continuation of free society, and censorship denies those rights. The resolution is negated.Sources: 1. http://tinyurl.com...2. http://tinyurl.com...3. http://www.dictionary.com...4. http://www.dictionary.com...5. https://www.fcc.gov...6. http://www.un.org...7. http://surveillance.rsf.org...8. http://tinyurl.com...9. https://www.verfassungsschutz.de...10. http://tinyurl.com...