Sept/Oct LD Resolution

For signposting purposes, I will begin by stating my constructive speech and moving on to deconstruct my opponent’s arguments. I negate the resolution, “Resolved: The United States ought to extend to non-citizens accused of terrorism the same constitutional due process protections it grants to citizens. ” The important term of this debate is, Terrorism, from the UN General Assembly Resolution: Criminal acts intended or calculated to provoke a state of terror in the general public, a group of persons or particular persons for political purposes. The value for this debate is the pursuit of natural rights. This phrase refers to the natural rights of those in a particular country, in this case, as the resolution suggests, the citizens of theUnited States. Natural rights, in their most basic form, consist of the right to life, liberty, and property. When a person or a group of people attempts to infringe upon those most basic rights, it is the duty and essential purpose of the government to protect their citizens. If it has failed to effectively perform this role, then the government has not fulfilled its function. Furthermore, the pursuit of natural rights is the most important concept in this debate because if a person is stripped of these intrinsic rights he is denied an essential quality of life, and perhaps life itself. Consequently, the value criterion for this debate is national security. National security supports natural rights by countering its obstacles. As previously stated, a person’s quality of life is obsolete without these. Because it is not in the power of any one individual to protect himself against a threat of such caliber as a terroristic threat, it is necessary for the government to assume its duty of national security in the interest of its citizens and of itself; for no government can exist without its people. Contention 1: The Lockean Prerogative Though John Locke did not support government intervention, he did believe that if it had a role to play in society, it was to protect the natural rights of its citizens. Therefore in times of “sudden and extreme occurrences,” government or executives have the right to exercise powers that may not be accounted for within the confines of the law in order to protect the public. While mere security may not be a valid end to place next to those of justice, individual rights, etc. , the pursuit of natural rights is, because without it, human interests are obsolete. “Rather,” as states the Cram Analysis (undated), “security and order are needed in an instrumental sense to enable individuals to pursue autonomous life plans or to safeguard natural rights. ” Those who challenge the Lockean Prerogative, do so because as always, when granting any sort of prerogative to a governing body, it is necessary to yield some rights, the social contract as an example. This leads me to my second contention. Contention 2: The forfeiture of rights as justified by the social contract. The social contract theory according to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is, “the view that a person’s moral obligations are dependent upon a contract or agreement among them to form the society in which they live. ” Locke’s social contract, in particular, expresses the idea that because we cannot live in the state of nature, we must enter into a tacit civil agreement that governs our actions. Essentially, all our rights are held intact, however, once we have committed an injustice, some of those rights are necessarily taken away. That is, if I commit a murder, I am subject to be held by the law and tried for my crime, thus have I forfeited the right to autonomy. In the scenario of Locke’s Prerogative, it is not the citizens who concede some of their rights for the common good, but the terrorist, because it is the terrorist who has committed the crime and thus they necessarily forfeit their rights. Because they have forfeited these rights, the government of the people against whom these crimes have been committed, has not only the right to apportion them their due, but the obligation to do so in a way that will ensure the protection of their citizens, as shown in the Lockean Prerogative. While due process requirements tolerate some guilty citizens getting off to help ensure that no innocent citizen is deprived of life, liberty, property, etc. , it is no required to do so for foreigners because of the basic and foremost need to preserve the life, liberty, and property of citizens. It is important to remember that government’s most fundamental purpose is to protect its citizens. If it does not take the measures necessary to ensure this, it has failed. I will now move on to deconstruct my opponent’s case. The affirmative case can essentially be summed up in observation 1, this is what I will quote and clash with; you may cross-apply this rebuttal with the rest of his arguments. Also, I may note for the sake of clarity, my opponent’s second, third, and fourth observations I can essentially agree with. Rebuttal and Value Clash My opponent’s case revolves around the idea that the statutes under which a given government was created should be maintained at any cost, whether or not those statutes are unjust, or compromise the safety of its own citizens. “For the US to maintain a legitimate government, they must uphold the bill of rights along with the rest of the constitution if it infringes on the constitution it is acting in an illegitimate way and acting against their own laws making the government itself illegitimate. ” There are several problems with this analysis. Firstly, the statutes upon which a country was built have the ability to be wrong, unjust, and not what should or ought to be done. The affirmative enters the debate with a value of governmental legitimacy, and consequently the assumption that acting outside of the statutes to which he refers creates an illegitimate government. It is wrong to assume that government cannot act outside of these boundaries, for if such a boundary exists that is unjust, it would indeed be wrong not to break it. Therefore, government does have such a right, and upon exercising it, retains legitimacy. Secondly, the affirmative offers no real justification for why his value would affirm the resolution. He tries to prove that if we negate, the U. S. is an illegitimate state, but if this is true then what he is really proving is that we must, not that we ought. Simply put, my opponent’s value is not fitting to the resolution at all. Ought, according to Merriam-Webster Dictionary is defined as “obligation. ” What my opponent has only so far proved is that affirming the resolution is what the U. S. must do in order to exist. My opponent seems to be circumventing the resolution’s purpose. What my opponent must prove to affirm the resolution is that the “United States ‘ought’ to extend to non-citizens accused of terrorism the same constitutional due process protections it grants to citizens. ” My case has clearly negated this resolution, in defining the fundamental purpose of government, to protect the natural rights of their citizens. A view of government is where my opponent and I fundamentally disagree. In the affirmative world, government seems to be an unyielding power that, once it has in place a set of arbitrary rules and laws, cannot step out of them. In the negative world, however, government has a singular role: to protect the natural rights of its citizens. If it does not achieve that goal, it is useless, and in affirming this resolution, that individual autonomy of citizens is threatened.