200th Debate: Drunk Driving Should Be Legal

Framework/Introduction I won't discuss it anymore unless my opponent has something of substance to add, but I'd appreciate if he refrained from placing sources outside of the debate. I think it's in bad taste and takes away from the spirit of what the 10,000 character limit is intended to do. Now we get to the part of the debate I typically dread. I'd say about 25% of the debates I participate in that are meant to be serious devolve into splitting hairs. It's the point of the debate where your opponent has no serious objections to your premises or how they satisfy your conclusion and decides to throw out silly objections that can be cleared up by merely elaborating on your point, correcting them or have such little impact they aren't worth dealing with. That's what my opponent is doing, engaging in one giant logical fallacy known as splitting hairs, though it is debatable as to whether that actually qualifies as a logical fallacy or not. Pre-crime/Purpose of Law In instigating this debate and in my last round of arguments, I believe I presupposed a few things. I presupposed that my opponent and voting audience would know that the reasons we have laws are based on two things. We have laws for reasons of deterrence and retribution. http://www.sagepub.com... The reason I used the example of "The Minority Report" is to show the parallels to drunk driving. The comparisons certainly work and my opponent has for the most part, merely disregarded the meat of my argument which doesn't alter it's truth or impact. Drunk driving laws do neither of these things and instead are an action meant to just punish portions of society which are statistically more likely to harm others. It would be no different than what occurred in the movie "Minority Report", where people are locked up for crimes they haven't committed yet, and may never commit. There is no evidence that drunk driving laws actually deter drunk driving in anyway. If we continue on with these laws, knowing no evidence exists that drunk driving laws deter drunk driving than we do so either unjustifiably or with some sort of justification for pre-crime laws, and my opponent has failed to show that justification. Burden of Proof My opponent does mention burden of proof in round two, when all those sorts of concerns should have been made round one. I don't want anyone to be confused as to what that means for individual arguments. It's accepted by anyone with even the most basic understanding of logic that positive statements are tougher to prove than negative statements. So if my argument is that the Easter Bunny doesn't exist and my opponent steps in with a statement that the Easter bunny does exist, than he is obligated to show me that the Easter Bunny likely exists. When I state that drunk driving laws have no deterrent affect, he states counter to that; Drunk driving laws do have a deterrent affect, than he is obligated to prove that positive statement. The truth is that there isn't many studies done on the deterrent effect of drunk driving laws. I have shown one that supports my premise that it doesn't, my opponent has pointed out some weaknesses in the study. Honestly any study or research done will have flaws. Anybody presenting research they say is perfect, should be dismissed out of hand. The ball is in my opponents court to show the deterrent effect of drunk driving laws. We shouldn't accept conventional wisdom, merely because it has been beaten into us by the media, and advocates against drunk driving. By the way, advocates against drunk driving pretty much acknowledge that the drunk driving laws have no effect. http://www.usnews.com... The smarter members of these organizations focus on creating laws to raise the drinking age, passing laws that tax alcoholic beverages more and raising awareness. Red Herring I've broke from the outline me and my opponent are using for a reason, he's threaded certain ideals through the debate, and I'd rather address them all at once instead of multiple times. My opponent has made the claim, that a few of my arguments are Red Herrings, which they are not. I think this comes from a misunderstanding of what the term means or the inability for my opponent to connect my premises to my contentions. Here are some examples: "Pro"s next argument is under "Slippery Slope". Pro actually performs a different fallacy. Red Herring, an attempt to divert attention away from the actual matter {2}. This isn"t about cops using the law to ticket for distracted driving. Many would agree that distracted driving, such like DWIs, are acceptable, but even if we found that they weren"t, all this does is show that we should restrict DWIs to DWIs. It doesn"t actually impact whether Drunk Driving itself should be illegal. This isn't a red herring at all. I'll spell my argument out in a syllogism to see it easier. P1- Drunk driving laws set a legal precedent that it is okay to use statistics to determine a person's risk factor of causing harm and punish them for it. P2- This precedent will lead to other laws being created to punish people for belonging to a group with a statistically high risk factor, though they may be an anomaly. (such as the distracted driving laws slowing coming out, that will prevent me from enjoying my Starbucks on the way to work). C1- Creating slippery slopes that could lead to substantial and unjustified losses of liberty is bad. You can see that this is in fact not a slippery slope because it supports the resolution. It supports that we should make drunk driving laws legal to erase this precedent and the slow erosion of freedom that points back to the drunk driving laws to justify "The next logical step". "Firstly, and foremostly, this is again a red herring. Whether DUI checkpoints are acceptable doesn"t change whether DUIs themselves are okay. We can keep DUI"s without having DUI checkpoints. Pro"s whole thing here is that if one part is flawed, we should destroy the entire system. No, either we remove that one part, or we fix it." This is not a red herring, and even if my opponent thinks the logic is flawed, it doesn't in fact make it a red herring. It's also easy to sit back and respond to every single flaw I point out with drunk driving laws, and merely stating that part should be undone with the system. I could list 100 flaws right now, and my opponent could point and say "Let's undo those flaws". That's lazy debating. My opponent should offer a counter-plan or defend the status quo, otherwise he has no ground to argue on. It's also not easy to overturn checkpoint laws without eradicating drunk driving laws. The reason this is the case, is because the supreme court has ruled that drunk driving checkpoints are constitutional (despite stating they're unconstitutional, during their decisions). This means any law that states DUI checkpoints, could easily be ignored due to the fact that DUI checkpoints are legal. A federal law couldn't be made, each state would have to individually create laws against such a thing, which isn't reasonable to assume they'll do. Appeal to Pity Unitomic declares that I have made an appeal to pity. That by showing the damage done to several lives, I have committed some sort of logical fallacy. However laws were meant to serve the people, and if they hurt the people, they should be repealed. If drunk driving laws do not reduce the number of drunk drivers on the road, they aren't necessary, and if an unnecessary law hurts people and destroys careers/lives, we should abolish it. While my opponent is correct in saying that people can choose to obey the law and not have their lives ruined, it misses the point. I could create a law against reading books and make the same claim, but in America, we value freedom, and if a law in no way serves the greater good, it should be abolished. Drunk driving laws do not deter, and they in fact hurt many people who are driving safely. Why should safe drivers be punished? It makes no sense, harms liberty, and has no positive effect on the greater good. Libertarianism I thank my opponent for allowing me a second consecutive round to forward my arguments and will take advantage of it, by providing an ethical framework that space prevented me from doing last round. My ethical framework is Libertarianism. In order to have a government which respects the rights and freedom of all individuals equally we need a government which has the sole purpose of doing just that. Any laws that deviate from that will unjustifiably cut into the freedom of somebody. I'll leave you with an appropriate quote to further capture this. "Libertarianism is the view that each person has the right to live his life in any way he chooses so long as he respects the equal rights of others. Libertarians defend each person"s right to life, liberty, and property " rights that people possess naturally, before governments are created. In the libertarian view, all human relationships should voluntary; the only actions that should be forbidden by law are those that involve the initiation of force against those who have themselves used force " actions like murder, rape, robbery, kidnapping, and fraud." David Boaz http://www.theadvocates.org... Drunk driving laws violate Libertarian ethics by interfering with an individuals autonomy, while also falling outside of what actions are permissible by the government.