Promoting world wide democratic principles should be a higher priority than promoting sovereignty.

RD 2 order. Con's 1: First of all, what keeps the peace in the case of a democratic state is the social contract. While the government has a monopoly on violence it only possesses that monopoly because the people gave it power to do so. Sovereign non-democratic states can't keep peace for 2 reasons: 1. If the state is unjust, then most of the time there is internal conflict, like civil wars and genocide. 2. If the state is unjust, then it keeps the peace through fear mongering. That clearly violates a number of fundamental human rights. Con's 2: In my still unrefuted resolutional analysis, I state that I am not required to advocate only one concept. The resolution specifically limits the debate to prioritization. While I acknowledge the importance of sovereignty, I am arguing that the promotion of democratic ideals is *more* important to a healthy, just state. On Sovereignty As Prerequisite: Sovereignty might have been a prerequisite of a democratic state when no governments existed (and I say this loosely, insofar as some guy had to "take charge" and suggest democratic rule), but if my opponent wants to examine the pragmatics of the issue, then he can't claim that sovereignty is prerequisite. Extend my arguments about framer's intent and the current state of the world. This resolution is meant to specifically address nations that do not operate under the notion of a democracy, but that know democratic ideals exist. This is where the two concepts come into direct conflict. Sovereigns are choosing not to allow citizens to participate in the political process. At the point where my opponent doesn't refute this, he admits that sovereignty can easily lead to a despotic state. Hence, you will always prefer a priority of democratic ideals, as they don't have a long history of continuous and severe rights abuses, and my opponent concedes this point. On Human Rights: Just because my opponent states that democracy and sovereignty aren't in conflict doesn't mean that all sovereign states are democratic states. This is the ground of the debate, and I responded to this analysis in RD 2. The debate is not about whether states employing democratic ideals rampantly abuse human rights. They generally don't, although no state is perfect. However, in a situation in which democratic ideals or sovereignty must be prioritized, such as in the rebuilding of a given state in turmoil, I am arguing that democratic ideals, political self-actualization, should be preferred, as sovereignty can only be just if it is possessed by the citizens. My opponent mishandles this point numerous times. Some brief voting issues: 1. Extend Locke & the UN Declaration of Rights analysis I provide coming out of RD 1. My opponent admits not only to the validity of these sources, but to the fact that international law and norms requires us to hold democratic ideals and human rights paramount to claims of sovereignty by a nation. 2. Democratic ideals and sovereignty do come into conflict at the moment where we can observe a sovereign nation that does not allow democratic ideals to flourish within its borders. That is a hefty chunk of nations in the world, hence the resolution. 3. Though my opponent argues that sovereignty is a prerequisite of democracy, this is untrue if we are examining this resolution in terms of pragmatism, which is what he wants to do. If we really want to analyze the origins of democracy, we'd probably find that, in an overwhelming number of cases, such ideals and philosophy was born from oppressive sovereignty. So, in that sense, sure, a "sovereign" regime was needed to make people realize that self-governance was a better option. However, at this point, democratic ideals are well articulated. Since we exist in a world in which democratic ideals are well articulated *and* sovereign states that oppress people exist, prioritizing democratic ideals gives us maximum human rights.