Resolved: Individuals have a moral obligation to assist people in need.

Now onto my case. I will begin by stating my value premise, value criterion, and going into detail about my contentions and burden. I will end by attacking the affirmative case. I negate. Because I support legal duty, I must negate the resolution, Resolved: Individuals have a moral obligation to assist people in need. In order to clarify the round, I offer the following definitions. I define an individual as a distinct, indivisible entity; a single thing, being, instance, or item. To assist is to give support or aid to; help. A need is a requirement, necessary duty, or obligation. Morality is conformity to the rules of right conduct; moral or virtuous conduct. And finally, a moral obligation is an obligation arising out of considerations of right and wrong. I value morality because it is the ultimate good implied by the resolution which questions the weight of an individual's need and another's obligation to assist that individual. The negative side seeks to achieve ultimate morality by means of the value criterion which is human agency. Human agency is defined as each person's ability to determine and take responsibility for his or her actions and their outcomes. Human agency will lead us to supreme morality, and not a need for moral obligation to assist those in need. Thus, the answer to the underlying question of today's resolution is that it is simply impossible for us as a society to have a moral obligation to assist those in need. The negation of the resolution is most probable because of three contentions. First, moral obligation does not exist is society. Secondly, we do not have the capability to assist everybody who is in need. And thirdly, affirming the resolution destroys agency. Contention 1: Moral obligation does not exist in society. As we have an inalienable right to free will, we simply cannot be forced to do something which we feel goes against our will. Free will allows us as humans to progress along the path to moral enlightenment. This is because humans are consistently obtaining new and more reliable information upon which we may make better moral decisions. As moral obligation and free will are mutually exclusive, we cannot exercise our will to be free while having a moral obligation restricting us. What is it then that stops moral obligations from becoming out of hand and forcing us, against our will, to kill, rape, pillage, or any other act which causes disturbances in society? In addition, moral obligations require passion which does not and shall not exist in society on a level as is required to affirm the resolution. In order to actually weigh over this contention and sub-point, passion must exist in every single individual in the society. But it is near impossible to get two people to understand each other's positions on an identical level; thus, we cannot have a moral obligation of any kind because of the lack of passion. As we have no examples of eternal obligation brought upon us by morality, we must see the flaw in the resolution and negate it altogether. Contention 2: We do not have the capability to assist everybody who is in need. Allow the negative side to explain this claim with a situation. Let's imagine for a moment that we are near a body of water deep enough for a large man to swim in. Let's imagine now that there is a baby in the middle who is in need of assistance. It would be good for me to swim to the baby and rescue him to prevent harm and death. We can agree that it is the good thing. But we must acknowledge that not everybody can commit this action as not everybody can swim. Now we can apply this to any given situation brought upon by the resolution of the debate. John Keke writes: "The Responsibility-Principle is obviously a basic ethical principle for without it we could not hold people morally or legally accountable. Without the principle the systems of ethics and law, as we presently understand them, would have to be fundamentally revised. " As my card currently stands, we can drop the affirmation of the resolution at the current moment because the resolution is not always true as it is required to be affirmed. But the negative side seeks to eliminate any possibility of an affirmation. With this said, we can look to the conception of morality known as Deontology. Deontology is the conception of morality which has a strict set of rules explaining that if an action is immoral in one case, it is then immoral in all cases. The negative side is completely backed up by this conception in that there are situations when helping an individual in need results in death, injury, etc. While we do not always have the capability of assisting those in need, we, by definition, have the ability to fulfill our legal duties. This is true because legal duties require the possibility of fulfillment by any and all under the social contract. Contention 3: Affirming the resolution destroys agency. Liam Murphy writes: "The general idea behind the "alienation objection" is that impartial morality makes various demands on our motivations that are incompatible with the motivations necessary for fully valuable personal projects and relationships. One influential claim is that if we can only have projects and relationships when morality "gives" them to us (by saying that they are morally permissible, or that they would bring about the best outcome), then we will not be able to see our 35projects and relationships as having intrinsic value, and as a result will not be able to have genuine projects and relationships at all. " Our key points of agency are those relationships and programs which require legal duty in order to operate and better society as a whole. This links into my second contention because if something requires legal duty in order to function, then mutual exclusion is obvious with moral obligation. If one is being forced by moral obligation in order to create the maximum utility by Utilitarianism, then they are further alienated from morality in that it is not their own moral choice. Morality is grown in an environment of self choosing the moral worth of an action. Therefore, if we are forced to do something, our moral worth is not gained, but it is rather depleted. Now onto the affirmative case. Now let's talk about the framework of the affirmative constructive. The very framework which the affirmative side wishes to persuade us to believe is barely framework in its essence. This is all because the structure is mass quantities of testimonies and cards, but the affirmative does not explain why I should care on the various statements he quotes. This is important because the negative side thoroughly explains the evidence and what the actual impact of said evidence is. The affirmative simply throws these cards at us with no explanation of why these support the actual affirmative case. Now a quick question to the affirmative side. I would like to see the response that the affirmative gives in rebuttal. Are there times when we are not capable of assisting those in need? Is there any single time or several times when why are not able to assist those in need? Now let's look at the first contention of the affirmative constructive. The affirmative, in his first contention, claims and says that the ethics of hospitality not only requires that we are receptive to individuals in need, but also that we engage in them . He then proceeds to a testimony. The problem with the first contention is the obvious fact that he fails to analyze the actual contention. He doesn't explain why this makes the resolution true. It is false analyzation when the claim is made that because there is an authority and theory which agree with the claim, it is ultimately true. There is actually no analyzation in the contention itself. We can barely call this a contention in that it only has a claim and quote. There is no evidence. There is no warrant at all. And above all, there is no impact on why this is important to judging the round. He then makes the giant mistake of not explaining what the actual quote means to us. To judge the round, you must realize that the analyzation included in this contention is little to none if it exists at all. Onto the second contention. We must weigh over the negative contention over the second of the affirmative because there is no warrant. The framework of this contention is almost identical to the first, but it gives the slight explanation of what the actual quote being used says in his own words. Yet, he does not explain why we should take this into consideration against the faults which exist in the resolution. By this, the negative proves to explain that the contention consists of logical clauses and quotes, but almost no implications on why the directly impacts the resolution in itself. Finally, the third contention. This argument explains that we welcome obligation when it has to do with assistance, but it does not explain why we welcome obligation. And it does not explain if we welcome moral obligation as we apparently do with obligation. For the third time in my attacks against the affirmative, I will point out that this contention is composed majority of a quote by an "authority". But even after his so called analyses of the argument, we have no idea how this in fact relates to the resolution. Now let's look at how his case should be judged as a whole across the flow. None of his contentions explain how he achieved the value premise by means of his value criterion. Also, he doesn't explain how we can measure whether he achieved the premise or not. Now look at his whole case by appearance. Notice how the quotes are of darker color and underlined. Almost all of the affirmative constructive is composed of these quotes and almost no analyses. For these reason I urge a negative ballot as the burden requires.