Philsopher ValueViews book

March 2, 2018 | Author: Anonymous | Category: Social Science, Political Science, Government
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Philsopher ValueViews book

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ACTIVISM GOOD.................................................................................................................................18 SOCIAL ACTIVISM WORKS .......................................................................................................................................... 18 MANY EXAMPLES PROVE SOCIAL ACTIVISM IS SUCCESSFUL ..................................................................................... 19

ACTIVISM BAD ....................................................................................................................................20 ACTIVISM FAILS THE BUDDHIST CRITIQUE ................................................................................................................. 20 EVEN IF ACTIVISM IS SUCCESSFUL, IT ULTIMATELY fAILS .......................................................................................... 21

ALTRUISM GOOD ................................................................................................................................22 ALTRUISM IS A PARAMOUNT VALUE ......................................................................................................................... 22 ALTRUISM SHOULD BE SUPPORTED AS THE HIGHEST VALUE ................................................................................... 23

ALTRUISM BAD ...................................................................................................................................24 UPHOLDING ALTRUISM HURTS SOCIETY ................................................................................................................... 24 ALTRUISM IS NOT MOST IMPORTANT ....................................................................................................................... 25

ANARCHISM GOOD.............................................................................................................................26 ANARCHISM IS JUSTIFIED ........................................................................................................................................... 26 ANARCHISM IS A SUPERIOR VALUE ........................................................................................................................... 27

ANARCHISM BAD................................................................................................................................28 ANARCHISM REPRESENTS THE HERD MENTALITY, NOT FREEDOM ........................................................................... 28 ANARCHISM INCORRECT VISION FOR FUTURE SOCIETY ............................................................................................ 29

ANIHILATING NIHILISM .......................................................................................................................30 THE ORIGINS OF NIHILISM ......................................................................................................................................... 30 EARLY INFLUENCES .................................................................................................................................................... 30 NIETZSCHE.................................................................................................................................................................. 31 THE DEATH OF GOD ................................................................................................................................................... 32 WHAT IS THE ALTERNATIVE? ..................................................................................................................................... 33 THE ALLEGED 20TH CENTURY VALIDATION OF NIHILISM ........................................................................................... 33 ANSWERING NIHILISM ............................................................................................................................................... 34 OTHER PROBLEMS: NIETZSCHE S NATURALISTIC FALLACY ........................................................................................ 36 THE NECESSITY OF VALUES ........................................................................................................................................ 37 TOWARDS A MORE OPTIMISTIC VIEW OF HUMANITY .............................................................................................. 38 BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................................................................................... 39 NIHILISM IS PHILOSOPHICALLY FLAWED AND FOUNDATIONLESS ............................................................................. 40 NIHILISM FAILS BECAUSE IT CANNOT RESOLVE ANY CONFLICTS ............................................................................... 40 VALUE JUDGMENTS ARE INEVITABLE ........................................................................................................................ 41 NIHILISM’S IMMORALITY THREATENS TO DESTROY HUMANITY ............................................................................... 42 NIHILISM DESTROYS FREEDOM ................................................................................................................................. 43 RELATIVISM IS INCORRECT ........................................................................................................................................ 44

ANIMAL RIGHTS GOOD .......................................................................................................................45 ANIMALS HAVE INHERENT RIGHTS ............................................................................................................................ 45 SPECIESISM IS MORALLY EQUIVALENT TO RACISM OR SEXISM ................................................................................ 46

ANIMAL RIGHTS BAD ..........................................................................................................................47 ANIMAL RIGHTS IS AN INVALID PROPOSITION .......................................................................................................... 47 ANIMALS SHOULD NOT BE ATTRIBUTED RIGHTS ....................................................................................................... 48

ANIMAL RIGHTS RESPONSES ...............................................................................................................49 INTERACTION WITH HUMANS BENEFITS ANIMALS ................................................................................................... 55 USE OF ANIMALS IN SCIENTIFIC TESTING IN NECESSARY .......................................................................................... 56 ANIMALS DON’T POSSES “RIGHTS” IN THE SENSE THAT HUMANS DO ..................................................................... 57 ANIMAL TESTING IMMENSLY BENEFITS HUMANS ..................................................................................................... 58

AUTONOMY GOOD .............................................................................................................................59 AUTONOMY GOOD .............................................................................................................................59 AUTONOMY IS A PARAMOUNT VALUE ...................................................................................................................... 59 WITHOUT AUTONOMY, OTHER THINGS CANNOT EXIST ........................................................................................... 60 AUTONOMY IS A SIGNIFICANT VALUE ....................................................................................................................... 61 1

AUTONOMY BAD ................................................................................................................................62 CRITIQUES OF AUTONOMY ARE INVALID .................................................................................................................. 62 AUTONOMY IS NOT ABSOLUTE.................................................................................................................................. 63 PATERNALISM IS NOT ALWAYS UNDESIRABLE .......................................................................................................... 64 AUTONOMY IS NOT A PARAMOUNT VALUE .............................................................................................................. 65 AUTONOMY LACKS ANY PRACTICAL APPLICATION .................................................................................................... 66

BIOCENTRISM GOOD ..........................................................................................................................67 MUST HAVE BIOCENTRISM FOR JUSTICE ................................................................................................................... 67 BIOCENTRISM DOES NOT IGNORE HUMANS ............................................................................................................. 68 MUST REJECT ANTHROPOCENTRIC NOTIONS FOR SURVIVAL ................................................................................... 68 BIOCENTRISM IS A DESIRABLE PERSPECTIVE ............................................................................................................. 69 BIOCENTRISM IS A VALID PERSPECTIVE ..................................................................................................................... 70

BIOCENTRISM BAD .............................................................................................................................71 BIOCENTRISM IS AN INVALID PERSPECTIVE ............................................................................................................... 71 BIOCENTRISM IS AN UNDESIRABLE FRAMEWORK ..................................................................................................... 72 BIOCENTRISM IS ANTHROPOCENTRIC ....................................................................................................................... 73 BIOCENTRIC NOTIONS JUSTIFY NAZI-STYLE ATROCITIES ........................................................................................... 73 BIOCENTRISM IS SELF-CONTRADICTORY ................................................................................................................... 74 BIOCENTRISM STOPS TRUE ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION .................................................................................... 74

BIOLOGY BAD .....................................................................................................................................75 LIFE GAINS MEANING ONLY THROUGH EXPERIENCE NOT BIOLOGY ......................................................................... 75 THERE IS NO ABSOLUTE RIGHT TO LIFE ..................................................................................................................... 76 BIOLOGICAL DEFINITIONS OF LIFE ARE INACCURATE ................................................................................................ 76 BRAIN ACTIVITY IS ACCEPTED AS DEFINITION OF EXISTENCE OF LIFE ....................................................................... 77 LIFE IS NOT THE ULTIMATE VALUE............................................................................................................................. 77 LIFE CONSISTS OF MORE THAN PHYSICAL EXISTENCE ............................................................................................... 78 ACTUAL BEGINNING OF A HUMAN LIFE CANNOT BE DETERMINED .......................................................................... 78

BIOTECHNOLOGY GOOD .....................................................................................................................79 BIOTECHNOLOGY IS NECESSARY FOR THE ENVIRONMENT AND FOOD ..................................................................... 79 BIOTECHNOLOGY CAN IMPROVE HUMANS AND STOP DISEASE ............................................................................... 80

BIOTECHNOLOGY BAD ........................................................................................................................81 BIOTECHNOLOGY IS OUT OF CONTROL ..................................................................................................................... 81 BIOTECHNOLOGY IS AN IMMORAL RISK .................................................................................................................... 82

BUDDHISM GOOD ..............................................................................................................................83 BUDDHISM SOLVES SOCIETY'S PROBLEMS ................................................................................................................ 83 OBJECTIONS TO BUDDHISM ARE WRONG ................................................................................................................. 84

BUDDHISM BAD .................................................................................................................................85 BUDDHISM HAS INTERNAL CONTRADICTIONS .......................................................................................................... 85 BUDDHISM HAS MANY PROBLEMS............................................................................................................................ 86 BUDDHISM HAS NO GROUNDING FOR HUMAN RIGHTS ........................................................................................... 87 BUDDHISM DOESN’T USE RIGHTS LANGUAGE, EMBRACES DUTIES .......................................................................... 88

CAPITALISM GOOD .............................................................................................................................89 CAPITALISM HAS CREATED INDUSTRIAL PROGRESS .................................................................................................. 89 CAPITALISM HAS CREATED EQUALITY ....................................................................................................................... 89 CAPITALISM DECREASES TYRANNY OF THE MAJORITY .............................................................................................. 90 CAPITALISM IS FUNDAMENTALLY A MORAL SYSTEM ................................................................................................ 90 DISCRIMINATION IS NOT CAUSED BY CAPITALISM .................................................................................................... 91 CAPITALISM INCREASES POLITICAL FREEDOM ........................................................................................................... 91 CAPITALISM INCREASES WORLD PEACE .................................................................................................................... 92 CAPITALISM IS MOST EFFICIENT ECONOMIC SYSTEM ............................................................................................... 92 CAPITALISM DOES NOT CREATE POLITICAL INEQUALITY ........................................................................................... 93

CAPITALISM BAD ................................................................................................................................94 CAPITALISM CREATES WASTE AND DESTRUCTION .................................................................................................... 94 CAPITALISM IS OPPRESSIVE TO WOMEN ................................................................................................................... 94 2

CAPITALISM IS DETRIMENTAL TO A HEALTHY ECONOMY ......................................................................................... 95 CAPITALISM RESULTS IN DISCRIMINATION................................................................................................................ 95 CAPITALISM CREATES VIOLENCE ............................................................................................................................... 96 CAPITALISM RESULTS IN A BREAKDOWN OF SOCIETY ............................................................................................... 97 CAPITALISM EXPLOITS THE WORKING CLASSES ......................................................................................................... 97

CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE GOOD.......................................................................................................98 CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE IS THE BEST MORAL GUIDELINE .................................................................................... 98 CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE IS RATIONAL AND CONSISTENT ..................................................................................... 99

CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE BAD........................................................................................................ 100 CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE IS AN INAPPROPRIATE FRAMEWORK .......................................................................... 100 THE CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE CANNOT MEDIATE MORAL DISPUTES .................................................................. 101 OPPORTUNITY FOR CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE IS NECESSARY IN DEMOCRACY ............................................................... 102 CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE IS A MECHANISM TO CHANGE SOCIAL INJUSTICES ................................................................ 103 CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE IS JUSTIFIED IN AMERICAN DEMOCRACY ............................................................................... 104 CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE DOES NOT CREATE WIDESPREAD ANARCHY .......................................................................... 105 CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE IS JUSTIFIED AS A MEANS OF LAST RESORT ........................................................................... 105 THE PURPOSE OF CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE IS TO CREATE JUSTICE................................................................................ 106 THREAT OF VIOLENCE CREATES A CIVIL SOCIETY ..................................................................................................... 106 THERE IS NO ALTERNATIVE TO WARFARE IN THE INTERNATIONAL ARENA ............................................................ 106

CAUSALITY GOOD ............................................................................................................................. 107 CAUSALITY IS NECESSARY TO MAKE GOOD POLICY ................................................................................................. 107 CAUSALITY IS NEEDED FOR EDUCATION .................................................................................................................. 107 CAUSALITY IS A GOOD VALUE .................................................................................................................................. 108 CAUSALITY IS DIFFICULT TO DETERMINE ................................................................................................................. 108

COMMUNITARIANISM GOOD ........................................................................................................... 109 COMMUNITY PROVIDES THE BEST UNDERSTANDING OF HUMAN NATURE ........................................................... 109 COMMUNITARIANISM LIBERATES THE INDIVIDUAL ................................................................................................ 110 COMMUNITARIANISM DOES NOT LEAD TO TYRANNY ............................................................................................ 110 COMMUNITARIANISM PROVIDES THE BEST MODEL OF SOCIETY ........................................................................... 111 COMMUNITARIANISM PRESERVES INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS AND DEMOCRACY ........................................................... 112 COMMUNITARIANISM AND MORALITY GO HAND IN HAND ................................................................................... 113

COMMUNITARIANISM BAD .............................................................................................................. 114 COMMUNITARIANISM IS A VAGUE AND MISLEADING IDEOLOGY .......................................................................... 114 COMMUNITARIANISM DISRESPECTS INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS ...................................................................................... 115 COMMUNITARIAN IDEAS ARE PHILOSOPHICALLY UNSOUND ................................................................................. 116 COMMUNITARIANISM DESTROYS FREEDOM .......................................................................................................... 117 COMMUN1TARIANISM IS BAD FOR SOCIETY ........................................................................................................... 118

COMMUNITY GOOD ......................................................................................................................... 119 COMMUNITY SHOULD BE THE PARAMOUNT VALUE............................................................................................... 119 COMMUNITIES ARE MORE BENEFICIAL THAN NON-COMMUNITIES ....................................................................... 120

COST-BENEFIT ANALYSIS BAD............................................................................................................ 121 COST-BENEFIT ANALYSIS IGNORES MORAL ISSUES IN DECISION MAKING .............................................................. 121 OST-BENEFIT CRITERIA MUST DEFEND MORALITY OF EFFICIENCY .......................................................................... 122

COURT AS A VEHICLE OF SOCIAL PROGRESS RESPONSES .................................................................... 123 THE COURT LACKS THE ABILITY TO ENFORCE ITS DECISIONS .................................................................................. 129 COURT ACTIVISM BACKLASHES................................................................................................................................ 130 THE COURTS ARE LIMITED BY THE CONSTITUTION ................................................................................................. 131 COURTS CAN’T ACCOMPLISH SOCIAL CHANGE ....................................................................................................... 132

CULTURAL RELATIVISM GOOD .......................................................................................................... 133 CULTURAL RELATIVISM IS A VALID VALUE ............................................................................................................... 133 CULTURAL RELATIVISM IS NOT AN UNDESIRABLE VALUE ....................................................................................... 134

CULTURAL RELATIVISM BAD ............................................................................................................. 135 CULTURAL RELATIVISM IS PHILOSOPHICALLY INVALID ............................................................................................ 135 3

CULTURAL RELATIVISM IS AN UNDESIRABLE VALUE ............................................................................................... 136

CULTURAL RELATIVISM RESPONSES .................................................................................................. 137 CULTURAL RELATIVISM IS INHERENTLY CONTRADICTORY ...................................................................................... 143 CULTURAL RELATIVISM IS BAD FOR ACADAMEIA .................................................................................................... 144 RELETAVISM CEMENTS NEGATIVE BEHAVIOR ......................................................................................................... 145 CULTURAL RELATAVISM PREVENTS DISCOVERY OF THE TRUTH ............................................................................. 146

DEMOCRACY GOOD .......................................................................................................................... 147 DEMOCRACY LEADS TO PEACE ................................................................................................................................ 147 DEMOCRACY IS THE BEST FORM OF GOVERNMENT ............................................................................................... 149 THE WORLD IS BECOMING MORE DEMOCRATIC ..................................................................................................... 150 RIGHT TO VOTE INHERENT IN DEMOCRACY SECURES ALL OTHER RIGHTS .............................................................. 150 DEMOCRACY IS INTEGRALLY LINKED TO HUMAN RIGHTS ....................................................................................... 151 ONLY DEMOCRACY SAFEGUARDS FREEDOM ........................................................................................................... 151 DEMOCRACY ALLOWS FOR CHANGE AND REFORM ................................................................................................ 152 DEMOCRACY IS MORE THAN THE CONCEPT OF MAJORITY RULE ............................................................................ 152

DEMOCRACY BAD ............................................................................................................................. 153 DEMOCRACY IS AN OPPRESSIVE FORM OF GOVERNMENT ..................................................................................... 153 DEMOCRACY DENIES JUSTICE TO ETHNIC AND RACIAL MINORITIES ....................................................................... 153 REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY IS INHERENTLY FLAWED ........................................................................................ 154 DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENTS ARE INHERENTLY FLAWED ...................................................................................... 155

DEMOCRACY RESPONSES .................................................................................................................. 156 THE PROBLEM OF MAJORITY RULE .......................................................................................................................... 162 DEMOCRACY DESTROYS EXPERT DECISION MAKING .............................................................................................. 163 DEMOCRACY IN THE MODERN WORLD IS INFEASABLE ........................................................................................... 165

THE DENIAL OF DEATH ...................................................................................................................... 166 BIBLIOGRAPHY ......................................................................................................................................................... 170 DENIAL OF DEATH HAS SERIOUS CONSEQUENCES .................................................................................................. 171 INDIVIDUALS MUST ACCEPT MORTALITY TO CONQUER FEAR OF DEATH ............................................................... 172 SCIENCE CAN SOLVE IMPACTS OF DEATH AND FEAR OF DEATH ............................................................................. 173 SCIENCE SHOWS ETERNAL LIFE IS POSSIBLE ............................................................................................................ 174

DEONTOLOGY VERSUS UTILITARIANISM: NEW WAYS AROUND OLD DEBATES .................................... 175 BIBLIOGRAPHY ......................................................................................................................................................... 180 RESPECT FOR HUMAN DIGNITY MUST CHECK UTILITARIANISM .............................................................................. 181 UTILITARIAN WEIGHING OF CONSEQUENCES IS A FLAWED MORAL CALCULUS ..................................................... 182 UTILITARIANISM BEST ASSURES RESPECT FOR HUMAN DIGNITY ............................................................................ 183 THE MEANS/ENDS DISTINCTION OF DEONTOLOGY IS FLAWED .............................................................................. 184

DIRECT DEMOCRACY GOOD .............................................................................................................. 185 PEOPLE WANT DIRECT DEMOCRACY MORE THAN REPRESENTATIVE ..................................................................... 185 DIRECT DEMOCRACY IS PREFERABLE TO REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY ............................................................... 186

DIRECT DEMOCRACY BAD ................................................................................................................. 187 REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY IS BEST ................................................................................................................... 187 DIRECT DEMOCRACY HAS SERIOUS FLAWS ............................................................................................................. 188

DUTY TO FUTURE GENERATIONS GOOD ............................................................................................ 189 WE HAVE AN ETHICAL DUTY TO FUTURE GENERATIONS ........................................................................................ 189 FUTURE GENERATIONS HAVE MORAL STANDING ................................................................................................... 190

DUTY TO FUTURE GENERATIONS BAD ............................................................................................... 191 ATTEMPTING TO BENEFIT FUTURE GENERATIONS DESTROYS THEM ...................................................................... 191 FUTURE GENERATIONS LACK INDEPENDENT MORAL STANDING ............................................................................ 192

ECOCENTRISM GOOD........................................................................................................................ 193 ECOCENTRISM IS A DESIRABLE PERSPECTIVE .......................................................................................................... 193 ECOCENTRISM IS A VALID PERSPECTIVE .................................................................................................................. 194

ECOCENTRISM BAD........................................................................................................................... 195 ECOCENTRISM IS FUNDAMENTALLY FLAWED ......................................................................................................... 195 4

ECOCENTRISM IS EXCESSIVELY NAIVE ..................................................................................................................... 196

ECOFEMINISM GOOD ....................................................................................................................... 197 ECOFEMINISM IS A DESIRABLE OUTLOOK ............................................................................................................... 197 ECOFEMINISM IS NECESSARY FOR SURVIVAL .......................................................................................................... 198

ECOFEMINISM BAD........................................................................................................................... 199 ECOFEMINISM IS SEXIST .......................................................................................................................................... 199 ECOFEMINISM UNDERMINES FREEDOM ................................................................................................................. 200

ECOFEMINISM RESPONSES ............................................................................................................... 201 ECOFEMINISM DOMESTICATES THE EARTH ............................................................................................................ 207 ECOFEMINISM OPPRESSES WOMYN ....................................................................................................................... 208 ECOFEMINISM CREATES NEGATIVE GENDER BINARIES ........................................................................................... 209 THE MATERNAL ARCHTYPE USED IN ECOFEMINISM IS BAD FOR THE ENVIRONMENT AND WOMYN .................... 210 THE MATERNAL ARCHTYPE USED IN ECOFEMINISM IS BAD FOR THE ENVIRONMENT AND WOMYN .................... 210

ECONOMIC COMPETITIVENESS GOOD ............................................................................................... 211 ECONOMIC COMPETITIVENESS IS A GOOD VALUE .................................................................................................. 211 CRITICS OF COMPETITIVENESS ARE WRONG ........................................................................................................... 212

ECONOMIC COMPETITIVENESS BAD .................................................................................................. 213 ECONOMIC COMPETITIVENESS IS A BAD VALUE ..................................................................................................... 213 COMPETITIVENESS ADVOCATES ARE WRONG ......................................................................................................... 214

ECONOMIC GROWTH GOOD ............................................................................................................. 215 ECONOMIC GROWTH IS A DESIRABLE VALUE .......................................................................................................... 215 ECONOMIC GROWTH IS NOT HARMFUL TO THE ENVIRONMENT ........................................................................... 216

ECONOMIC GROWTH BAD ................................................................................................................ 217 GROWTH IS AN UNDESIRABLE VALUE ..................................................................................................................... 217 GROWTH IS AN INVALID VALUE ............................................................................................................................... 218

ECONOMIC JUSTICE GOOD ................................................................................................................ 219 ECONOMIC JUSTICE BASED ON FAIRNESS AND OTHER POPULAR VALUES ............................................................. 219 LACK OF ECONOMIC JUSTICE EXISTS IN MODERN SOCIETY ..................................................................................... 220

ECONOMIC JUSTICE BAD ................................................................................................................... 221 ECONOMIC JUSTICE IS UNDESIRABLE: WEALTH INEQUALITY IS NOT A PROBLEM .................................................. 221 NO NEED FOR EFFORTS TO ESTABLISH ECONOMIC JUSTICE ................................................................................... 222

EFFICIENCY GOOD............................................................................................................................. 223 EFFICIENCY IS A GOOD VALUE ................................................................................................................................. 223 EFFICIENCY HAS IMPORTANT BENEFITS .................................................................................................................. 224

EFFICIENCY BAD................................................................................................................................ 225 EFFICIENCY IS A HARMFUL VALUE ........................................................................................................................... 225 EFFICIENCY IS A BAD STANDARD FOR JUDGMENT .................................................................................................. 226

ENVIRONMENT GOOD ...................................................................................................................... 227 THE ENVIRONMENT IS MOST IMPORTANT .............................................................................................................. 227 NATURE MUST BE VALUED ...................................................................................................................................... 228

ENVIRONMENT BAD ......................................................................................................................... 229 PRO-ENVIRONMENT VIEWS LACK STRONG SUPPORT ............................................................................................. 229 ENVIRONMENTAL ETHIC IS UNWARRANTED ........................................................................................................... 231

EQUALITY GOOD............................................................................................................................... 232 EQUALITY IS NECESSARY FOR DEMOCRACY............................................................................................................. 232 GOVERNMENT MUST ENSURE EQUALITY FOR ALL CITIZENS ................................................................................... 233 ALL PEOPLE ARE EQUAL ........................................................................................................................................... 233 FAIRNESS IS AN ESSENTIAL PART OF EQUALITY ....................................................................................................... 234 AFRICAN-AMERICANS EXPERIENCE DISCRIMINATION ............................................................................................. 235 WOMEN ARE DISCRIMINATED AGAINST ................................................................................................................. 235

EQUALITY RESPONSES ...................................................................................................................... 236 EQUALITY THROUGH TAXATION IS UNJUST ............................................................................................................. 242 5

PROGRESSIVE IS FAIR, EQUAL IS NOT ...................................................................................................................... 243 AFFIRMATIVE ACTION IS GOOD ............................................................................................................................... 244 EQUALITY PREVENTS REIGHTING HISTORICAL WRONGS ......................................................................................... 245

EXTREME UTILITARIANISM GOOD ..................................................................................................... 246 ACT/EXTREME UTILITARIANISM IS THE MOST RATIONAL MORAL SYSTEM ............................................................. 246 ACT/EXTREME UTILITY SUPERIOR TO RULE/RESTRICTED UTILITARIANISM ............................................................. 247

EXTREME UTILITARIANISM BAD ........................................................................................................ 248 ACT UTILITARIANISM IS AN INSUFFICIENT MORAL SYSTEM .................................................................................... 248 RULE/RESTRICTED UTILITARIANISM BEST TO ENSURE MORALITY .......................................................................... 249

FAUX TEXT, FAUX COMMITMENT: ARGUING AGAINST THE SOCIAL CONTRACT................................... 250 INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................................................ 250 TYPES OF CONTRACTS .............................................................................................................................................. 250 HOBBES: LAW AS SOVEREIGN COMMAND .............................................................................................................. 250 LOCKE: LAW AS REASONABLE MEDIATOR ............................................................................................................... 251 ROUSSEAU: LAW AS COLLECTIVE IDENTITY ............................................................................................................. 251 ANSWERS TO THE SOCIAL CONTRACT ..................................................................................................................... 252 THERE WAS NO CONSENT ........................................................................................................................................ 253 RESIDENCE DOES NOT IMPLY CONSENT .................................................................................................................. 254 REAPING BENEFITS DOES NOT IMPLY CONSENT ..................................................................................................... 254 THE SOCIAL CONTRACT AND THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF MINORITY RIGHTS ................................................................ 255 CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................................................................... 256 BIBLIOGRAPHY ......................................................................................................................................................... 257 SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORY IS GENERALLY FLAWED ............................................................................................... 258 SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORY HURTS MINORITY RIGHTS ........................................................................................... 259 SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORY FAILS WOMEN............................................................................................................. 260 SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORY RESULTS IN INEQUALITY ............................................................................................. 261 CONSENT PRINCIPLE OF THE SOCIAL CONTRACT IS FLAWED .................................................................................. 262 CITIZENSHIP CANNOT BE THE BASIS OF OBEDIENCE TO THE STATE ........................................................................ 262 RECEIPT OF BENEFITS IS NOT AN ADEQUATE BASIS FOR OBEDIENCE ..................................................................... 263 SPECIFIC ANSWERS TO HOBBES ............................................................................................................................... 264 SPECIFIC ANSWERS TO RAWLS ................................................................................................................................ 264

FEDERALISM GOOD .......................................................................................................................... 265 FEDERAL INTRUSION HURTS FEDERALISM ............................................................................................................... 265 STATES SHOULD HAVE MOST RESPONSIBILITY ........................................................................................................ 266

FEDERALISM BAD ............................................................................................................................. 267 STATES ARE THE WORST SOLUTION ........................................................................................................................ 267 Federalism Is A Bad Value ........................................................................................................................................ 268

FEMINISM AND ESSENTIALISM.......................................................................................................... 269 THE CRITIQUE OF ESSENTIALISM DOES NOT DEVALUE FEMINISM.......................................................................... 269 FEMINISM IS SOCIALLY DESIRABLE .......................................................................................................................... 270 FEMINISM IS EXCESSIVELY ESSENTIALIST ................................................................................................................ 271 FEMINISM IS THEORETICALLY INCOHERENT ............................................................................................................ 272

FREEDOM GOOD .............................................................................................................................. 273 HUMAN BEINGS HAVE FREEDOM TO MAKE CHOICES ............................................................................................. 273 AN IDEAL STATE PROVIDES FREEDOM TO ALL CITIZENS .......................................................................................... 274 FREEDOM IS AN ESSENTIAL PART OF DEMOCRACY ................................................................................................. 274 FREEDOM IS ESSENTIAL FOR MORALITY .................................................................................................................. 275 LIBERTY IS A PREFERRED VALUE OVER EQUALITY .................................................................................................... 275 FREEDOM IS ESSENTIAL FOR ANY POLITICAL SYSTEM ............................................................................................. 275 FREEDOM SHOULD NOT BE SACRIFICED TO EQUALITY ........................................................................................... 275

FREEDOM BAD ................................................................................................................................. 276 THERE MUST BE LIMITS ON FREEDOM .................................................................................................................... 276 TRUE FREEDOM DOES NOT EXIST ............................................................................................................................ 277 FREEDOM LEADS TO HELPLESSNESS AND DESPAIR ................................................................................................. 277 6

CITIZENS DISREGARD DUTIES UNDER ABSOLUTE FREEDOM ................................................................................... 277 FREEDOM PRODUCES UNSATISFACTORY RESULTS FOR INDIVIDUALS .................................................................... 278 ADVANCED SOCIETIES DESTROY LIBERTY ................................................................................................................ 278

FREE SPEECH GOOD .......................................................................................................................... 280 RIGHT OF FREE SPEECH IS THE HEART OF DEMOCRACY .......................................................................................... 280 THERE IS NO JUSTIFICATION FOR CENSORSHIP IN A FREE SOCIETY ........................................................................ 281 FREEDOM OF SPEECH ALSO MEANS DUTY TO LISTEN ............................................................................................. 281 FIRST AMENDMENT MUST BE ABSOLUTE IN A FREE SOCIETY ................................................................................. 282 FREE SPEECH IS A VALUED AMERICAN LIBERTY ....................................................................................................... 282

FREE SPEECH BAD ............................................................................................................................. 283 FREE SPEECH RIGHTS ARE NOT ABSOLUTE IN THE WORKPLACE ............................................................................. 283 FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHTS HAVE BEEN ABRIDGED IN PAST .................................................................................. 283 FIRST AMENDMENT PROVIDES NO PROTECTION DURING WARTIME ................................................................. 285 FREEDOM OF SPEECH IS NOT AN UNQUALIFIED RIGHT .......................................................................................... 286 GOVERNMENT MANIPULATION OF PRESS NEGATES NOTION OF FREE SPEECH ..................................................... 286 PROBLEM OF FREE SPEECH IS LACK OF ACCESS TO DISSIDENT VIEWS .................................................................... 286

“GENOCIDE” RHETORIC GOOD .......................................................................................................... 287 WE SHOULD USE “GENOCIDE” RHETORIC TO DESCRIBE ETHNIC CLEANSING ......................................................... 287 KOSOVO IS A GOOD EXAMPLE OF WHY WE SHOULD USE GENOCIDE RHETORIC ................................................... 288

“GENOCIDE” RHETORIC BAD ............................................................................................................. 289 “GENOCIDE” Rhetoric IS USED TO JUSTIFY BAD INTERVENTIONS ........................................................................... 289 USING GENOCIDE RHETORIC OFTEN CAUSES HUGE PROBLEMS ............................................................................. 290

GROWTH RESPONSES ....................................................................................................................... 291 ECONOMIC GROWTH/DEVELOPMEDNT IS HARMFUL TO CULTURE ........................................................................ 297 ECONOMIC GROWTH/DEVELOPMENTCEMENTS PATRIARCHY ............................................................................... 298 DEVELOPMENT IS DEPENDENT ON TECHNOLOGY ................................................................................................... 299 ECONOMIC GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT ARE EUROCENTRIC .............................................................................. 300

HAPPINESS GOOD............................................................................................................................. 301 HAPPINESS IS THE GOAL OF ALL ACTS ..................................................................................................................... 301 A HAPPY PERSON CANNOT SIMULTANEOUSLY BE MISERABLE ............................................................................... 301 HAPPINESS CANNOT EXIST WITHOUT PLEASURE .................................................................................................... 303 HAPPINESS IS DEPENDENT ON ACTION ................................................................................................................... 303 HAPPINESS IS AN END STATE VALUE ....................................................................................................................... 305 ONE CANNOT BE HAPPY IN SOLITUDE ..................................................................................................................... 305 THERE MUST BE VIRTUE IN HAPPINESS ................................................................................................................... 306 MORALITY IS ESSENTIAL IN HAPPINESS ................................................................................................................... 307

HOLISM GOOD ................................................................................................................................. 308 HOLISM IS A JUSTIFIED VALUE ................................................................................................................................. 308 HOLISM IS NECESSARY FOR PLANETARY SURVIVAL ................................................................................................. 309

HOLISM BAD .................................................................................................................................... 310 HOLISM IS INEFFECTIVE ........................................................................................................................................... 310 THE ALTERNATIVE TO HOLISM, REDUCTIONISM, IS NOT BAD ................................................................................. 311

HUMAN RIGHTS RESPONSES ............................................................................................................. 312 HUMAN RIGHTS RISK INSTABILITY ........................................................................................................................... 318 HUMAN RIGHTS RELY ON THE STATE ...................................................................................................................... 319 HUMAN RIGHTS NEGLECT CULTURAL DIVERSITY .................................................................................................... 320 HUMAN RIGHTS DON’T WORK ................................................................................................................................ 321

INDIVIDUALISM GOOD ..................................................................................................................... 322 INDIVIDUALISM IS NECESSARY TO REALIZE DEMOCRATIC IDEALS .......................................................................... 322 INDIVIDUALISM IS DEMONSTRATED IN PRIVATE PROPERTY RIGHTS ...................................................................... 322 INDIVIDUALISM IS A VALUED AMERICAN TRADITION ............................................................................................. 324 INDIVIDUALISM ENCOMPASSES VALUES CENTRAL TO CAPITALISM ....................................................................... 324 INDIVIDUALISM EXHIBITS QUALITIES OF AUTONOMY............................................................................................. 324 7

INDIVIDUALISM PROVIDES FOR RATIONALITY IN HUMAN PLANNING .................................................................... 324 INDIVIDUALISM IS THE SUPERIOR ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY ........................................................................................ 325 INDIVIDUALISM IS NECESSARY FOR PERSONAL FREEDOM AND HAPPINESS ........................................................... 325 INDIVIDUALISM IS BEST FOR SOCIETY ..................................................................................................................... 327

INDIVIDUALISM BAD ........................................................................................................................ 328 INDIVIDUALISM IS PHILOSOPHICALLY UNJUSTIFIED ................................................................................................ 328 INDIVIDUALISM IS RESPONSIBLE FOR HUMAN CONFLICT ....................................................................................... 328 INDIVIDUALISM WILL DESTROY SOCIETY ................................................................................................................. 329 INDIVIDUALISM HARMS LIBERTY ............................................................................................................................. 329 INDIVIDUALISM HAS NEVER BEEN REALIZED IN THE U.S. ........................................................................................ 330 INDIVIDUALISM HAS NOT HELPED WOMEN ............................................................................................................ 330 INDIVIDUALISM RESULTS IN DISCRIMINATION ........................................................................................................ 331 TRADITION OF INDIVIDUALISM PREVENTS EQUALITY ............................................................................................. 332 INDIVIDUALISM IS A MYTH IN A CAPITALIST ECONOMY ......................................................................................... 332

INDIVIDUALISM RESPONSES ............................................................................................................. 333 THE ONCE REVOLUTIONARY PHILOSOPHY .............................................................................................................. 333 THE NOW REACTIONARY PHILOSOPHY .................................................................................................................... 334 NOZICK ..................................................................................................................................................................... 334 RAND ........................................................................................................................................................................ 335 ANTI-INDIVIDUALIST SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT ......................................................................................................... 338 MARXISM ................................................................................................................................................................. 338 FEMINISM ................................................................................................................................................................ 338 CONTEMPORARY LIBERALISM ................................................................................................................................. 339 ENVIRONMENTALISM .............................................................................................................................................. 339 APOCALYPTIC CRITICS .............................................................................................................................................. 340 AN AGE OF DISASTER ............................................................................................................................................... 341 CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................................................................... 341 BIBLIOGRAPHY ......................................................................................................................................................... 343 INDIVIDUALISM IS HISTORICALLY OBSOLETE ........................................................................................................... 344 INDIVIDUALISM AND CAPITALISM ARE UNFAIR....................................................................................................... 344 INDIVIDUALISM IS ETHICALLY FLAWED ................................................................................................................... 345 COMPETITION SHOULD BE REJECTED ...................................................................................................................... 345 INDIVIDUALIST IDEOLOGY OPPRESSES WOMEN ..................................................................................................... 346 THE CONCEPT OF PROPERTY RIGHTS IS FLAWED .................................................................................................... 347

ANSWERS TO ROBERT NOZICK .......................................................................................................... 348 ANSWERS TO AYN RAND................................................................................................................... 349 INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILTY GOOD ................................................................................................... 350 PEOPLE SHOULD ACCEPT PERSONAL RESPONSIBILTY FOR THEIR OWN ACTIONS ................................................... 350 LACK OF PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY CAUSES PROBLEMS ....................................................................................... 351

INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY BAD ..................................................................................................... 352 "PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY" DECREASES SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY ........................................................................ 352 WE HAVE RESPONSIBILITY NOT JUST FOR OUR ACTIONS, BUT OUR NATIONS ....................................................... 353

INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS GOOD ............................................................................................................... 354 INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS SHOULD BE SUPERIOR TO COMMUNITY ................................................................................. 354 CONFLICTS ARE LIKELY WITHIN COMMUNITIES ...................................................................................................... 355 SOCIETY VIEWS LEISURE AS MOST IMPORTANT ...................................................................................................... 356

INTERNATIONAL LAW GOOD............................................................................................................. 357 INTERNATIONAL LAW IS A DESIRABLE VALUE ......................................................................................................... 357 INTERNATIONAL LAW IS A VALID VALUE ................................................................................................................. 358

INTERNATIONAL LAW BAD................................................................................................................ 359 INTERNATIONAL LAW IS AN INVALID VALUE ........................................................................................................... 359 INTERNATIONAL LAW IS AN UNSUCCESSFUL VALUE ............................................................................................... 360

INTERNATIONAL LAW RESPONSES .................................................................................................... 361 INTERNATIONAL LAW DEPENDS ON STATES ........................................................................................................... 367 8

INTERNATIONAL LAWS ARE FORMED BY POWER PLAYERS ..................................................................................... 368 INTERNATIONAL LAW DESTROY’S STATE SOVEREIGNTY ......................................................................................... 369 INTERNATIONAL LAW ALLOWS THE MOST POWER ACTORS TO DICTATE TERMS AND CONDITIONS ..................... 370

INTERSECTIONALITY GOOD ............................................................................................................... 371 INTERSECTIONAL UNDERSTANDING SHOWS WOMEN ARE UNIQUELY OPPRESSED ............................................... 371 UNDERSTANDING INTERSECTIONALITY HELPS COMBAT BOTH RACISM AND SEXISM ............................................ 372

INTERSECTIONALITY BAD .................................................................................................................. 373 INTERSECTIONAL ANALYSIS MISGUIDED AND MISLEADING .................................................................................... 373 INTERSECTIONAL THOUGHT REPRODUCES INEQUITY AND DOMINANCE ............................................................... 374

JUDICIAL ACTIVISM GOOD ................................................................................................................ 375 Courts Should Be Activist ......................................................................................................................................... 375 Critics Of Judicial Activism Are Wrong ..................................................................................................................... 376

JUDICIAL ACTIVISM BAD ................................................................................................................... 377 Judicial Activism Is Detrimental ............................................................................................................................... 377 Judicial Activism Risks Collapse Of The Constitution ............................................................................................... 378

JUSTICE GOOD .................................................................................................................................. 379 SHARED CONCEPTION OF JUSTICE IS ESSENTIAL FOR A GOOD SOCIETY ................................................................. 379 THEORY OF JUSTICE IS ROOTED IN EQUALITY .......................................................................................................... 379 JUSTICE PROVIDES A MECHANISM TO DISTRIBUTE GOODS OF SOCIETY ................................................................ 381 JUSTICE IS A UNIVERSAL VALUE ............................................................................................................................... 381 RESPECT FOR OTHERS ESSENTIAL FOR JUSTICE ....................................................................................................... 382 MORALITY IS NECESSARY DIMENSION OF JUSTICE .................................................................................................. 382 AUTHORITY OF LAW IS DERIVED FROM JUSTICE ..................................................................................................... 382

JUSTICE BAD ..................................................................................................................................... 383 SOCIAL JUSTICE BASED ON CULTURAL RELATIVISM IS FLAWED .............................................................................. 383 UTILITARIAN JUSTICE IS UNDESIRABLE .................................................................................................................... 383 THEORY OF DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE DOES NOT WORK ............................................................................................. 385 UTILITARIAN CONCEPTIONS OF JUSTICE DENY BASIC RIGHTS ................................................................................. 386 RAWLSIAN DEFINITIONS OF MORALITY AND JUSTICE ARE WRONG ........................................................................ 387 WESTERN JUSTICE IS PROBLEMATIC ........................................................................................................................ 388 BUDDHISM PROVES JUSTICE IS FLAWED: KARMA IS SUPERIOR .............................................................................. 389 JUSTICE, ESPECIALLY RETRIBUTIVE, IS A WESTERN VALUE ...................................................................................... 390 WESTERN LOGIC SAYS HUMANS MUST PROVIDE JUSTICE ...................................................................................... 391 THERE IS A BASIS FOR RIGHTS IN BUDDHISM .......................................................................................................... 392

KNOWLEDGE GOOD .......................................................................................................................... 393 KNOWLEDGE IS THE STRONGEST TYPE OF POWER ................................................................................................. 393 KNOWLEDGE PROVIDES PROTECTION FROM POWER ............................................................................................. 393 HUMAN EXPERIENCE PRODUCES KNOWLEDGE ...................................................................................................... 394 POWER IS NOT INHERENTLY GOOD OR BAD ........................................................................................................... 394 THERE IS NO LIMIT TO KNOWLEDGE ....................................................................................................................... 395 POWER IS CONTROLLED BY GROUPS ....................................................................................................................... 395

LEISURE GOOD ................................................................................................................................. 396 LEISURE INCREASES SOCIETY’S PRODUCTIVITY........................................................................................................ 396 SOCIETY’S VALUE INCREASES THROUGH LEISURE ................................................................................................... 397

LEISURE BAD .................................................................................................................................... 398 LEISURE IS NOT VALUED IN SOCIETY........................................................................................................................ 398

LIBERALISM GOOD............................................................................................................................ 399 LIBERALISM IS GENERALLY DESIRABLE .................................................................................................................... 399 CRITIQUES OF LIBERALISM ARE INVALID ................................................................................................................. 400

LIBERALISM BAD............................................................................................................................... 401 LIBERALISM IS AN INADEQUATE VALUE .................................................................................................................. 401 LIBERALISM IS AN UNDESIRABLE VALUE.................................................................................................................. 402 9

LIBERTARIANISM GOOD.................................................................................................................... 403 LIBERTARIANISM IS THEORETICALLY SOUND ........................................................................................................... 403 LIBERTARIANISM IS DESIRABLE ................................................................................................................................ 404

LIBERTARIANISM BAD....................................................................................................................... 405 LIBERTARIANISM IS THEORETICALLY BANKRUPT ..................................................................................................... 405 LIBERTARIANISM IGNORES REAL PROBLEMS ........................................................................................................... 406

LIBERTARIANISM RESPONSES............................................................................................................ 407 LIBERTARIANISMS ECONOMIC POLICIES DESTROY AUTONOMY ............................................................................. 413 LIBERTARIANISM UNDERMINES LIBERAL IDEALS AND INSTITUTIONS ..................................................................... 414 LIBERTARISNISM LIMITS FREEDOM ......................................................................................................................... 415 LIBERTARIANISM PRODUCES RAMPANT CAPITALISM ............................................................................................. 416

LIFE GOOD ........................................................................................................................................ 417 LIFE IS THE HIGHEST VALUE ..................................................................................................................................... 417 OTHER VALUES DO NOT TRUMP LIFE ...................................................................................................................... 418 THE RIGHT TO LIFE IS INALIENABLE ......................................................................................................................... 419

LIFE BAD ........................................................................................................................................... 420 THE RIGHT TO LIFE IS NOT PARAMOUNT................................................................................................................. 420 HUMAN LIFE IS NOT THE GREATEST VALUE............................................................................................................. 421

LIFESTYLE VS SOCIAL ANARCHISM ..................................................................................................... 422 BIBLIOGRAPHY ......................................................................................................................................................... 427 LIFESTYLE ANARCHISM LEADS TO BAD INDIVIDUALISM AND FASCISM .................................................................. 428 LIFESTYLE ANARCHISM FAILS ................................................................................................................................... 429 LIFESTYLE ANARCHISM IS AN IMPERATIVE .............................................................................................................. 430 CRITICS OF LIFESTYLE ANARCHISM ARE MISGUIDED AND DANGEROUS ................................................................. 431

LITERATURE AS A SOURCE OF VALUES ............................................................................................... 432 BIBLIOGRAPHY ......................................................................................................................................................... 436 LITERATURE CAN SERVE AS PHILOSOPHY IN DEBATE .............................................................................................. 438 INDIVIDUAL IDENTITY IS A STRONG BASIS FOR VALUES .......................................................................................... 439 INDIVIDUALITY IS SUPERIOR TO A COMMUNITY FOCUS ......................................................................................... 440 COMMUNITY IS A BETTER VALUE THAN INDIVIDUALISM ........................................................................................ 441

LOCAL GOOD .................................................................................................................................... 442 LOCAL SELF RELIANCE IS GENERALLY DESIRABLE .................................................................................................... 442 LOCAL SELF RELIANCE IS ECOLOGICALLY SOUND .................................................................................................... 443

LOCAL BAD ....................................................................................................................................... 444 GLOBALIST FOCUS IS BETTER THAN LOCALIST ......................................................................................................... 444 LOCALISM CAN BE OPPRESSIVE ............................................................................................................................... 445 LOCALISM CAN BE OPPRESSIVE ............................................................................................................................... 445

MARXISM AND POSTMODERNISM .................................................................................................... 446 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................................................. 450 MARXISM IS “GOOD MODERNISM:” IT STRESSES DEMOCRACY AND COOPERATION ............................................. 451 POSTMODERNISM STOPS PROGRESSIVE SOCIAL CHANGE ...................................................................................... 452 POSTMODERNISM IS GENERALLY DESIRABLE .......................................................................................................... 453 MARXIST MODERNITY IS TOTALITARIAN ................................................................................................................. 454

MISANTHROPY AND EARTH FIRST! .................................................................................................... 456 The reasons this argument keeps coming up in academic journals, movement publications and elsewhere are twofold. For one thing, the issues at hand are of profound importance. There can be no jobs, no fun and no life on a dead planet. On a base level, most everybody realizes that. The other reason is that there are good arguments to be made for both sides. I don't pretend to have a monopoly on the truth here: just an eye for a great subject for debate research. BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................................................. 459 BIBLIOGRAPHY ......................................................................................................................................................... 460 EARTH FIRST! IS NOT MISANTHROPIC ..................................................................................................................... 461 CRITICS OF EARTH FIRST! ARE WRONG ................................................................................................................... 462 EARTH FIST! HAS EXHIBITED HORRIBLE MISANTHROPY .......................................................................................... 463 10

MISANTHROPY IS WRONG ....................................................................................................................................... 464

MODERNIZATION GOOD ................................................................................................................... 465 MODERNIZATION NEEDED BY DEVELOPING COUNTRIES ........................................................................................ 465 MODERNIZATION HELPS ALLEVIATE POVERTY ........................................................................................................ 466

MODERNIZATION BAD ...................................................................................................................... 467 MODERNIZATION DESTROYS TRADITIONAL CULTURES ........................................................................................... 467 MODERNIZATION ON BALANCE CAUSES MORE PROBLEMS THAN IT SOLVES......................................................... 468

MULTICULTURALISM GOOD .............................................................................................................. 469 MULTICULTURALISM PROTECTS MINORITY GROUPS .............................................................................................. 469 MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION INCREASES EQUALITY OF ALL STUDENTS ................................................................ 471 MULTICULTURALISM SEEKS TO REPRESENT EXPERIENCES OF ALL PEOPLE ............................................................. 471

MULTICULTURALISM BAD ................................................................................................................. 473 MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION DOES NOT WORK .................................................................................................... 473 RACISM INCREASES TENSION BETWEEN BLACKS AND WHITES ............................................................................... 473 LACK OF EQUALITY IS NOT INHERENTLY IMMORAL................................................................................................. 474 MULTICULTURALISM DESTROYS CULTURES ............................................................................................................ 474 LEGAL EQUALITY DOES NOT GUARANTEE ACTUAL EQUALITY...................................................................................... 474

NATIONALISM GOOD ........................................................................................................................ 475 NATIONALISM IS KEY TO THE FUTURE ..................................................................................................................... 475 NATIONALISM IS LINKED WITH TRUE DEMOCRACY ................................................................................................ 476

NATIONALISM BAD ........................................................................................................................... 477 NATIONALISM IS AN AMORPHOUS CONCEPT ......................................................................................................... 477 NATIONALISM IS A DANGEROUS, FANATICAL WAVE............................................................................................... 478

NATIVE AMERICAN SOVEREIGNTY ..................................................................................................... 479 BIBLIOGRAPHY ......................................................................................................................................................... 484 RESPECTING TRIBAL SOVEREIGNTY IS THE ONLY MORAL COURSE OF ACTION ....................................................... 485 TRIBAL SOVEREIGNTY IS JUSTIFIED .......................................................................................................................... 486 TRIBAL SOVEREIGNTY VIOLATES AMERICAN PRINCIPLES ........................................................................................ 487 TRIBAL SOVEREIGNTY DISCOURAGES ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT ......................................................................... 488

NATURAL CAPITALISM GOOD............................................................................................................ 489 NATURAL CAPITALISM IS DESIREABLE ..................................................................................................................... 489 NATURAL CAPITALISM CAN ADDRESS CURRENT PROBLEMS................................................................................... 490

NATURAL CAPITALISM BAD............................................................................................................... 491 PROBLEMS INHERENT IN CAPITALISM, NATURAL OR NOT ...................................................................................... 491 NATURAL CAPITALISM ADVOCATES ARE MISLEADING ............................................................................................ 492

NEGATIVE UTILITARIANISM GOOD .................................................................................................... 493 NEGATIVE UTILITARIANISM IS SUPERIOR TO POSITIVE UTILITARIANISM ................................................................ 493 NEGATIVE UTILITARIANISM IS GENERALLY DESIRABLE ............................................................................................ 494

NEGATIVE UTILITARIANISM BAD ....................................................................................................... 495 NEGATIVE UTILITARIANISM JUSTIFIES MISGUIDED AND EVIL PRACTICES ............................................................... 495 POSITIVE UTILITARIANISM SAVES MORE LIVES THAN NEGATIVE UTILITARIANISM ................................................ 496

NONVIOLENCE RESPONSES ............................................................................................................... 497 VIOLENT RESISTANCE IS KEY TO OVERCOMING STATE CONTROL AND DOMINATION ............................................ 503 VIOLENCE IN ORDER TO PREVENT GENOCIDE IS LEGITIMATE ................................................................................. 504 NONVIOLENT RESISTANCE FAILS ............................................................................................................................. 506

NOT IN THEORY OR PRACTICE: ANSWERING MARXISM AND SOCIALISM ............................................ 507 NOT IN THEORY OR PRACTICE: ANSWERING MARXISM AND SOCIALISM ............................................ 507 INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................................................ 507 UTOPIAN SOCIALISM ............................................................................................................................................... 507 RELIGIOUS COMMUNITARIANISM ........................................................................................................................... 508 THE LABOR THEORY OF VALUE ................................................................................................................................ 511 REVOLUTIONS .......................................................................................................................................................... 511 11

INITIAL SUCCESS ....................................................................................................................................................... 512 THE FALL .................................................................................................................................................................. 512 POST-STALINIST FRAGMENTATION.......................................................................................................................... 513 ETHICAL PROBLEMS WITH SOCIALISM..................................................................................................................... 513 ENDS JUSTIFY MEANS .............................................................................................................................................. 514 THE ECONOMIC PROBLEMS ..................................................................................................................................... 515 ECONOMIC CALCULATION ....................................................................................................................................... 515 SOCIALISM, WOMEN AND THE ENVIRONMENT ...................................................................................................... 515 BIBLIOGRAPHY ......................................................................................................................................................... 517 DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM IS FUNDAMENTALLY FLAWED ..................................................................................... 518 MARXIST AND SOCIALIST THEORIES OF LABOR ARE FLAWED ................................................................................. 519 CAPITALISM IS GENERALLY BENEFICIAL ................................................................................................................... 520 SOCIALISM IS DOOMED BY ITS INABILITY TO ASSESS VALUE ................................................................................... 521 SOCIALISM WOULD FAIL MISERABLY ....................................................................................................................... 522 MARXISM AND SOCIALISM FAIL TO LIBERATE WOMEN .......................................................................................... 522 MARXISM DESTROYS THE ENVIRONMENT .............................................................................................................. 523

OBJECTIVITY BAD.............................................................................................................................. 524 OBJECTIVITY DOES NOT EXIST IN HUMAN INQUIRY ................................................................................................ 524 THERE IS NO JUSTIFICATION FOR IMMORAL ACTION .............................................................................................. 524 A VALUE SYSTEM BASED ON OBJECTIVITY IS UNDESIRABLE .................................................................................... 525 PRACTICE CANNOT BE SEPARATED FROM VALUES ................................................................................................. 525

ORIGINAL INTENT RESPONSES........................................................................................................... 526 BORK'S ORIGINALISM IS HORRIBLE .......................................................................................................................... 532 IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO KNOW WHAT THE ORIGINAL INTENT WAS ............................................................................ 533 ORIGINAL INTENT PREVENTS IMPLEMENTATION .................................................................................................... 534 ORIGINALISM PREVENTS OTHER METHODS OF CONSTITUIONAL INTERPRATATION .............................................. 535

PACIFISM GOOD ............................................................................................................................... 536 PACIFISM SHOULD BE SUPPORTED AS THE HIGHEST VALUE ................................................................................... 536 PACIFISM IS SUPERIOR TO VIOLENCE ...................................................................................................................... 537

PACIFISM BAD .................................................................................................................................. 538 PACIFISM DOES NOT WORK ..................................................................................................................................... 538 HISTORY HAS PROVEN PACIFISM FAILS AND IS COUNTERPRODUCTIVE .................................................................. 539

PARTICIPATORY ECONOMICS GOOD ................................................................................................. 540 PARTICIPATORY ECONOMICS PROMOTES FREEDOM .............................................................................................. 540 PARTICIPATORY ECONOMICS BEST ECONOMIC MODEL.......................................................................................... 541

PARTICIPATORY ECONOMICS BAD..................................................................................................... 542 PARTICIPATORY ECONOMICS BAD FOR FREEDOM .................................................................................................. 542 PARTIPATORY ECONOMICS UNFEASIBLE ................................................................................................................. 543

PARTICIPATORY ECONOMICS ............................................................................................................ 544 BIBLIOGRAPHY ......................................................................................................................................................... 549 PARTICIPATORY ECONOMICS IS FEASIBLE AND WOULD WORK WELL .................................................................... 550 PARTICIPATORY ECONOMICS IMPROVES OTHER STRUCTURES IN SOCIETY ............................................................ 551 PARTICIPATORY ECONOMICS IS UNWORKABLE ...................................................................................................... 552 PARTICIPATORY ECONOMICS WOULD UNDERMINE LIBERTY .................................................................................. 553

PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY ............................................................................................................... 554 BIBLIOGRAPHY ......................................................................................................................................................... 558 SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY IS SUPERIOR TO PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY .................................................................... 559 INDIVIDUALS ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR USES OF US POWER ...................................................................................... 560 PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY IS BETTER THAN SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY .................................................................... 561 USES OF US POWER ARE BENEVOLENT ................................................................................................................... 562

PHILOSOPHY GOOD .......................................................................................................................... 563 PHILOSOPHY HELPS EVERYONE, EVEN NON-PHILOSOPHERS .................................................................................. 563 PHILOSOPHY LEADS TO HUMAN FREEDOM............................................................................................................. 564

PHILOSOPHY BAD ............................................................................................................................. 565 12

PHILOSOPHY IS NOT HELPFUL .................................................................................................................................. 565 PHILOSOPHY IMPEDES INTELLECTUAL PROGRESS ................................................................................................... 566

PLURALISM GOOD ............................................................................................................................ 567 PLURALISM MORE REALISTIC AND LOGICAL THAN ALTERNATIVES ......................................................................... 567 PLURALISM BRINGS STABILITY AND A MORE DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY ..................................................................... 568

PLURALISM BAD ............................................................................................................................... 569 PLURALIST ANALYSIS OF THE WORLD OBSCURES REAL TRUTHS ............................................................................. 569 PLURALIST OUTLOOK STOPS SOCIAL HARMONY, LEADS TO DISCRIMINATION ....................................................... 570

POSTMODERNISM GOOD.................................................................................................................. 571 POSTMODERNISM IS A DESIRABLE VALUE............................................................................................................... 571 POSTMODERNISM STOPS DOMINATION ................................................................................................................. 572

POSTMODERNISM BAD..................................................................................................................... 573 POSTMODERNISM ENTRENCHES THE VERY CAPITALIST SYSTEM IT CRITIQUES ...................................................... 573 SHOULDN'T TRY TO MOVE OUT OF MODERNISM ................................................................................................... 574

PRAGMATISM GOOD ........................................................................................................................ 575 PRAGMATISM AS ESPOUSED BY RORTY IS GOOD .................................................................................................... 575 CRITICS OF RORTY ARE MISTAKEN ........................................................................................................................... 576

PRAGMATISM BAD ........................................................................................................................... 577 RORTY’S PRAGMATISM IS UNDESIREABLE ............................................................................................................... 577 RORTY’S PRAGMATISM LEADS TO INEQUALITY ....................................................................................................... 578

PRAGMATISM RESPONSES ................................................................................................................ 579 PRAGMATISM HARMS WOMEN .............................................................................................................................. 585 PRAGMATISM IS INNEFICIENT ................................................................................................................................. 586 PRAGMATISM FAILS TO ACHIEVE ANYTHING .......................................................................................................... 587 TRADITIONAL PHILOSOPHICAL QUESTIONS HAVE VALUE ....................................................................................... 588

PRAXIS GOOD ................................................................................................................................... 589 WE NEED PRAXIS TO OVERCOME OPPRESSION ....................................................................................................... 589 VALUES WITHOUT FRAMEWORK FOR ACHIEVING THEM ARE USELESS .................................................................. 590

PRAXIS BAD ...................................................................................................................................... 591 PRAXIS HURTS HUMAN CULTURE AND SPIRITUAL LIBERATION .............................................................................. 591 CRITICAL ANALYSIS KEY TO ANY FUTURE CHANGE .................................................................................................. 592 THEORETICAL CRITICISM IS NECESSARY FOR THE RIGHT MINDSET ......................................................................... 592

PRIVACY GOOD ................................................................................................................................ 593 RIGHT TO PRIVACY IS COVERED BY LAW ..................................................................................................................... 593 ORIGINAL DOCTRINE OF RIGHT TO PRIVACY IS STILL RELEVANT .................................................................................. 593 VIOLATION OF PRIVACY RIGHTS THREATENS FREEDOM .............................................................................................. 593

FIRST AMENDMENT SHOULD NOT ALWAYS SUPERSEDE PRIVACY RIGHTS ............................................................. 595 INDIVIDUALS SHOULD CONTROL THEIR OWN RIGHTS TO PRIVACY ........................................................................ 595

PRIVACY BAD ................................................................................................................................... 596 RIGHT TO PRIVACY CAN SUPERSEDE FIRST AMENDMENT CLAIMS ......................................................................... 596 PRIVACY UNDERMINES INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM ....................................................................................................... 596 PRIVACY DAMAGES SOCIETY ................................................................................................................................... 597 RIGHT TO PRIVACY SHOULD NOT INFRINGE ON OTHER RIGHTS ............................................................................. 597

PROGRESS GOOD.............................................................................................................................. 599 PROGRESS IS A GOOD VALUE .................................................................................................................................. 599 PROGRESS IS NOT ENVIRONMENTALLY INSENSITIVE .............................................................................................. 600 PROGRESS HAS GOOD CONSEQUENCES .................................................................................................................. 601

PROGRESS BAD................................................................................................................................. 602 PROGRESS IS A DESTRUCTIVE VALUE--ESPECIALLY TO THE ENVIRONMENT ........................................................... 602 PROGRESS IS HARMFUL SOCIALLY ........................................................................................................................... 603

PROPERTY RIGHTS GOOD.................................................................................................................. 604 PROPERTY RIGHTS ARE BENEFICIAL ......................................................................................................................... 604 13

PROPERTY RIGHTS ARE A DESIRABLE VALUE ........................................................................................................... 605

PROPERTY RIGHTS BAD..................................................................................................................... 606 PROPERTY RIGHTS LACK JUSTIFICATION AND SUPPORT ......................................................................................... 606 PROPERTY RIGHTS ARE AN UNDESIRABLE VALUE ................................................................................................... 607

RATIONALITY GOOD ......................................................................................................................... 608 RATIONALITY IS THE PARAMOUNT VALUE .............................................................................................................. 608 NO OBSTACLES EXIST TO BEING RATIONAL ............................................................................................................. 609

RATIONALITY BAD ............................................................................................................................ 610 TOO MANY OBSTACLES PREVENT RATIONALITY FROM OCCURRING ...................................................................... 610 RATIONALITY EQUALS UNHAPPINESS ...................................................................................................................... 611

RATIONAL CHOICE THEORY ............................................................................................................... 612 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................................................. 617 RATIONAL CHOICE IS A SUPERIOR PARADIGM FOR POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS ......................................................... 618 RATIONAL SELF-INTEREST OUGHT TO GUIDE DECISIONMAKING ............................................................................ 619 RATIONAL CHOICE THEORY IS FLAWED ................................................................................................................... 620 RATIONAL CHOICE THEORY IS DESTRUCTIVE ........................................................................................................... 621

REALISM GOOD ................................................................................................................................ 622 REALISM IS A WELL SUPPORTED PARADIGM ........................................................................................................... 622 REALISM IS A DESIRABLE FRAMEWORK ................................................................................................................... 623

REALISM BAD ................................................................................................................................... 624 REALISM IS A FAILED FRAMEWORK ......................................................................................................................... 624 REALISM IS AN UNDESIRABLE FRAMEWORK ........................................................................................................... 625

REPUBLICANISM GOOD .................................................................................................................... 626 REPUBLICANISM/ELITE DEMOCRACY BEST FOR SOCIETY ........................................................................................ 626 REPUBLICANISM IS BEST: POPULAR DEMOCRACY IMPOSSIBLE AND INEFFECTUAL ................................................ 627

REPUBLICANISM BAD ....................................................................................................................... 628 REPUBLICANISM/ELITE DEMOCRACY IS TOTALITARIAN .......................................................................................... 628 REPUBLICAN DEMOCRACY/SAYING THE WISE SHOULD RULE IS INCORRECT .......................................................... 629

REVOLUTION GOOD.......................................................................................................................... 630 RIGHT TO REVOLT IS ESSENTIAL TO A DEMOCRACY ................................................................................................ 630 REVOLUTIONS ARE NECESSARY TO LIBERATE SOCIETY............................................................................................ 631 REVOLUTION IS JUSTIFIED TO OVERTHROW THE STATUS QUO .............................................................................. 631

REVOLUTION BAD............................................................................................................................. 632 VIOLENCE IS NECESSARY FOR SUCCESSFUL REVOLUTION ....................................................................................... 632 REVOLUTIONS IMPEDE PROGRESS IN A SOCIETY .................................................................................................... 632

RIGHTS GOOD .................................................................................................................................. 633 SOCIETY MUST PROTECT RIGHTS ............................................................................................................................. 633 RIGHTS ARE LEGITIMATE AND BENEFICIAL .............................................................................................................. 634 RIGHTS ARE PARAMOUNT ....................................................................................................................................... 634

RIGHTS BAD ..................................................................................................................................... 636 RIGHTS ARE HARMFUL AND ILLEGITIMATE ............................................................................................................. 636 RIGHTS ARE NOT ABSOLUTE .................................................................................................................................... 637 GRANTING RIGHTS JUST UNDERMINES OTHER RIGHTS .......................................................................................... 638

SECURITY GOOD ............................................................................................................................... 639 SECURITY SHOULD BE THE PARAMOUNT VALUE ..................................................................................................... 639 SECURITY IS DESIRABLE ............................................................................................................................................ 640

SECURITY BAD .................................................................................................................................. 641 MANY THINGS ARE NEEDED FOR SECURITY TO EXIST ............................................................................................. 641 SECURITY IS IMPOSSIBLE .......................................................................................................................................... 642

SELF-DETERMINATION GOOD............................................................................................................ 643 SELF-DETERMINATION IS ESSENTIAL FOR RIGHTS ................................................................................................... 643 SELF-DETERMINATION IS MORALLY CORRECT ......................................................................................................... 643 SELF-DETERMINATION DOES NOT EQUAL HORRIFIC SECESSIONISM ...................................................................... 644 14

SELF-DETERMINATION BAD............................................................................................................... 645 BETTER VALUE ALTERNATIVES TO SELF-DETERMINATION EXIST............................................................................. 645 SELF-DETERMINATION DESTROYS DEMOCRACY ..................................................................................................... 646

SOCIALISM GOOD ............................................................................................................................. 647 SOCIALISM WILL SAVE HUMANITY FROM DESTRUCTION OF CAPITALISM .............................................................. 647 SOCIALISM IS BENEFICIAL TO WOMEN .................................................................................................................... 647 TRUE COMMUNISM WILL CREATE EGALITARIAN SOCIETY ...................................................................................... 648 END OF COLD WAR IS AN OPPORTUNITY FOR SOCIALISM ...................................................................................... 649 SOCIALISM PROTECTS PRIVATE PROPERTY .............................................................................................................. 649

SOCIALISM BAD ................................................................................................................................ 650 COMMUNIST REGIMES DENY PRINCIPLES OF DEMOCRACY .................................................................................... 650 SOCIALISM IS DYING THROUGHOUT THE WORLD ................................................................................................... 650 SOCIALIST STATISM DESTROYS ECONOMIES ........................................................................................................... 651 MARXIST PHILOSOPHY HAS RESULTED IN SOCIAL FAILURE ..................................................................................... 651 SOCIALISM DOES NOT IMPROVE ECONOMIC CONDITIONS .................................................................................... 652 MARXISM IS OPPRESSIVE TO AFRICAN-AMERICANS ............................................................................................... 652

STATISM RESPONSES ........................................................................................................................ 653 THE STATE IS CRITICAL TO PROTECTING INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS ................................................................................. 659 STATES CREATE A BETTER WORLD BY PREVENTING VIOLENCE ............................................................................... 660 THE STATE BEST PROVIDES NECESSITIES FOR LIVING .............................................................................................. 661 THE STATE BEST RUNS THE ECONOMY .................................................................................................................... 662 SUFFERING CAUSES NEW AWARENESS ................................................................................................................... 663 SUFFERING SHOWS US THE MEANING OF LIFE ....................................................................................................... 663 THE WAY WE ACCEPT SUFFERING IS KEY ................................................................................................................. 664

SUFFERING BAD................................................................................................................................ 665 ALLOWING SUFFERING IS IMMORAL AND UNJUST ................................................................................................. 665 SUFFERING DOES NOT CAUSE TRANSFORMATION.................................................................................................. 667

SUSTAINABILITY GOOD ..................................................................................................................... 668 SUSTAINABILITY IS A DESIRABLE VALUE SYSTEM ..................................................................................................... 668 SUSTAINABILITY IS A VALID VALUE SYSTEM ............................................................................................................ 669

SUSTAINABILITY BAD ........................................................................................................................ 670 SUSTAINABILITY IS AN UNDESIRABLE VALUE ........................................................................................................... 670

TAX RELIEF GOOD ............................................................................................................................. 671 TAX RELIEF IS NECESSARY ........................................................................................................................................ 671 ECOLOGICAL TAXES RELIEVE TAX BURDEN, HELP ENVIRONMENT .......................................................................... 672

TAX RELIEF BAD ................................................................................................................................ 673 TAX RELIEF IS NOT WARRANTED ............................................................................................................................. 673 ECOLOGICAL TAXES ARE NOT JUSTIFIED .................................................................................................................. 674

TECHNOCENTRISM BAD .................................................................................................................... 675 TECHNOCENTRISM IS SHALLOW AND UNSUSTAINABLE .......................................................................................... 675 TECHNOCENTRISM IS AN UNDESIRABLE APPROACH TO NATURE ........................................................................... 676

TECHNOLOGY GOOD......................................................................................................................... 677 TECHNOLOGY HAS RAISED OUR STANDARD OF LIVING .......................................................................................... 677 WOMEN MUST PARTICIPATE IN TECHNOLOGY ....................................................................................................... 677 BENEFITS OF TECHNOLOGY OUTWEIGH RISKS ........................................................................................................ 679 TECHNOLOGY SHAPES OUR CULTURE ..................................................................................................................... 679 TECHNOLOGY’S PRESENCE PERMEATES SOCIETY .................................................................................................... 680 TECHNOLOGY CAN IMPROVE SOCIETIES WORLDWIDE ........................................................................................... 681

TECHNOLOGY BAD ............................................................................................................................ 682 TECHNOLOGICAL AND SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS MANIPULATE SOCIETY .................................................................... 682 VALUE AND MORALITY OF TECHNOLOGY MUST BE ADDRESSED ............................................................................ 683 NOT ALL TECHNOLOGY IMPROVES THE QUALITY OF LIFE ....................................................................................... 684 15

INCREASED TECHNOLOGY DOES NOT INCREASE KNOWLEDGE ............................................................................... 684 TECHNOLOGY HAS DESTROYED THE ENVIRONMENT .............................................................................................. 685 TECHNOLOGY OF ADVANCED SOCIETIES DESTROYS THE INDIVIDUAL .................................................................... 685

TECHNOLOGY GOOD......................................................................................................................... 686 TECHNOLOGY IS THE PROTECTOR OF HUMANITY ................................................................................................... 686 TECHNOLOGY PROTECTS THE JOB MARKET ............................................................................................................ 687 TECHNOLOGY IS KEY TO COMMUNICATION ............................................................................................................ 688 TECHNOLOGY IS NOT INCOMPATIBLE WITH ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH ................................................................ 689 TECHNOLOGY BETTERS HUMAN EXISTENCE ............................................................................................................ 690

TECHNOLOGY BAD ............................................................................................................................ 691 TECHNOLOGY DESTROYS SOCIETY ........................................................................................................................... 691 TECHNOLOGY DEVALUES HUMAN LIFE ................................................................................................................... 692 TECHNOLOGY EMPIRICALLY HARMS HUMANITY ..................................................................................................... 692

TECHNOLOGY RESPONSES................................................................................................................. 693 TECHNOLOGY DEHUMINIZES ................................................................................................................................... 698 TECHNOLOGY IS A TOOL OF DOMINATION ............................................................................................................. 700 TECHNOLOGY DEHUMINZES .................................................................................................................................... 701 TECHNOLOGY IS DETRIMENTAL TO THE ENVIRONMENT ........................................................................................ 702

TELEOLOGICAL VISION GOOD............................................................................................................ 703 TELEOLOGICAL VISION SUPERIOR TO DEONTOLOGICAL ......................................................................................... 703 TELEOLOGY BEST FOR ENVIRONMENTAL UNDERSTANDING ................................................................................... 704

TELEOLOGICAL VISION BAD ............................................................................................................... 705 TELEOLOGY IS INFERIOR: INTENT, NOT OUTCOME, IS KEY TO MORALITY ............................................................... 705 MORAL LAWS MUST BE UNIVERSAL AND NON-TELEOLOGICAL .............................................................................. 706

THIRD PARTIES GOOD ....................................................................................................................... 707 THIRD PARTIES HELP DEMOCRACY .......................................................................................................................... 707 THIRD PARTIES ARE EFFECTIVE ................................................................................................................................ 708

THIRD PARTIES BAD .......................................................................................................................... 709 THIRD PARTIES ARE INEFFECTIVE............................................................................................................................. 709 MANY BARRIERS TO THIRD PARTY SUCCESS ............................................................................................................ 710

TRADITION GOOD............................................................................................................................. 711 TRADITION IS A GOOD VALUE .................................................................................................................................. 711 TRADITION IS NECESSARY FOR CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN CULTURE ................................................................. 711 LACK OF TRADITION WOULD BE HARMFUL ............................................................................................................. 713

TRADITION BAD................................................................................................................................ 714 TRADITION IS A BAD VALUE ..................................................................................................................................... 714 TRADITION FOR ITS OWN SAKE IS WRONG ............................................................................................................. 715

TRASHING AND PROPERTY DESTRUCTION ......................................................................................... 716 BIBLIOGRAPHY ......................................................................................................................................................... 720 ANTI-PROPERTY VIOLENCE IS GOOD ....................................................................................................................... 721 PROPERTY ITSELF IS HARMFUL, THUS DESTRUCTION OF IT IS JUST ........................................................................ 722 VIOLENCE IS COUNTER-PRODUCTIVE ...................................................................................................................... 723 TRASHING IS MISGUIDED ......................................................................................................................................... 724

TRUTH GOOD ................................................................................................................................... 725 TRUTH IS INTRINSICALLY AND INSTRUMENTALLY DESIRABLE ................................................................................. 725 FALSEHOOD IS INTRINSICALLY AND INSTRUMENTALLY UNDESIRABLE ................................................................... 726

TRUTH BAD ...................................................................................................................................... 727 TRUTH IS AN INADEQUATE VALUE........................................................................................................................... 727 TRUTH IS AN UNDESIRABLE VALUE .......................................................................................................................... 728

UTILITARIANISM GOOD .................................................................................................................... 729 UTILITARIANISM IS THE BEST FRAMEWORK ............................................................................................................ 729 UTILITARIANISM RESOLVES DISPUTES BETWEEN MORAL CLAIMS .......................................................................... 730 UTILITARIANISM IS BETTER THAN ALTERNATIVES ................................................................................................... 731 16

UTILITARIANISM BAD ....................................................................................................................... 732 UTILITARIANISM USES FAULTY VALUES ................................................................................................................... 732 UTILITARIANISM IS A FAULTY FRAMEWORK ............................................................................................................ 733 UTILITARIANISM CANNOT FIND MORALITY ............................................................................................................. 734 UTILITARIANISM SUFFERS FROM SERIOUS THEORETICAL PROBLEMS .................................................................... 735

UTOPIA GOOD .................................................................................................................................. 736 UTOPIANISM PROMOTES BENEFICIAL SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION......................................................................... 736 UTOPIANISM IS GENERALLY DESIRABLE .................................................................................................................. 737

UTOPIA BAD ..................................................................................................................................... 738 UTOPIANISM IS UNDESIRABLE ................................................................................................................................. 738 UTOPIANISM DESTROYS FREEDOM ......................................................................................................................... 739

UTOPIAN THINKING GOOD ............................................................................................................... 740 UTOPIAN THINKING IS GOOD FOR SOCIETY............................................................................................................. 740 UTOPIANISM IS KEY TO THE SURVIVAL OF OUR SPECIES ......................................................................................... 741

UTOPIANISM BAD............................................................................................................................. 742 UTOPIANISM CAN NEVER BE ACHIEVED .................................................................................................................. 742 A UTOPIAN FANTASYLAND WOULD DESTROY THE HUMAN RACE .......................................................................... 743

VIOLENCE GOOD............................................................................................................................... 744 VIOLENCE IS NEEDED TO STOP STATE OPPRESSION ................................................................................................ 744 VIOLENCE HELPS THOSE WHO ARE OPPRESSED ...................................................................................................... 745 VIOLENCE IS JUSTIFIED IN APPROPRIATE CIRCUMSTANCES .................................................................................... 746

VIOLENCE BAD.................................................................................................................................. 747 VIOLENCE IS WRONG ............................................................................................................................................... 747 VIOLENCE IS HARMFUL ............................................................................................................................................ 748 VIOLENCE DOES NOT TRANSFORM SOCIETY FOR THE BETTER ................................................................................ 749 NON-VIOLENCE IS SUPERIOR TO VIOLENCE ............................................................................................................. 750

WESTERN RIGHTS GOOD ................................................................................................................... 751 BUDDHIST and WESTERN RIGHTS ARE COMPATIBLE .............................................................................................. 751

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Activism Good SOCIAL ACTIVISM WORKS 1. EMPIRICALLY, ACTIVISM SUCCEEDS WHERE THE SYSTEM FAILS Brian Tokar, teacher at the Institute for Social Ecology and Goddard College in Vermont, Z MAGAZINE, February 1995, p. 12. While the battle for James Bay may not be over, Parizeau's announcement was clearly a victory for grassroots environmentalists and native solidarity activists. While mainstream environmental groups suffer the bruises of interminable defensive battles and compromise away their rapidly diminishing integrity for the sake of watereddown legislative "victories," the James Bay campaign demonstrates that grassroots movements can win where working entirely within the system cannot. 2. SYSTEMIC STRATEGIES ARE INFERIOR TO GRASSROOTS ACTIVISM Brian Tokar, teacher at the Institute for Social Ecology and Goddard College in Vermont, Z MAGAZINE, February 1995, p. 12. National environmental groups like the Audubon Society, the Sierra Club and NRDC did play a role around the James Bay issue, but they generally took a back seat to the initiatives of local community activists. Not that they didn't try to take control of the issue. On many occasions, the national groups sought to capture the initiative around James Bay, with promises of more funds and higher visibility for local campaigns. On a few occasions, they did play an important supporting role: Audubon was the first organization to publicize the issue nationwide, and NRDC used its influence to get a well-publicized hearing for Cree Grand Chief Matthew Coon-Come before the New York State legislature. But while grassroots campaigns made James Bay a highly visible issue in communities throughout the region, the mainstream groups were most notable for their incessant turf battles, broken promises, and continued exploitation of the issue to fuel their own direct mail fundraising appeals. 3. ACTIVIST EFFORTS HAVE BEEN SUCCESSFUL THROUGH DIVERSE TACTICS Steve Chase, activist, Z MAGAZINE, March 95, p. 32. Citizen action in America would have a far less successful record if activists had limited themselves to voting, lobbying, law suits, and the arts of political persuasion. Most of the reforms we hold dear -- from collective bargaining, the forty-hour work week, bans on child labor, voting rights, social security, desegregation, antidiscrimination legislation, to ending the U.S. invasion of Vietnam -- were made possible through boycotts, strikes, sitins, marches, and civil disobedience. These tactics have also been key to the success of environmental groups -- from the anti-nuke alliances of the 1970s and 1980s, Earth First's more recent Redwood Summer campaign, and numerous local environmental justice groups. 4. MANY EXAMPLES OF GRASSROOTS ACTIVISM SUCCEEDING Brian Tokar, teacher at the Institute for Social Ecology and Goddard College in Vermont, Z MAGAZINE, February 1995, p. 12. James Bay is not the only issue where grassroots campaigns of public education, community organizing and direct action have succeeded where the behind-the-scenes lobbying campaigns of the large mainstream groups have accomplished little, while draining the movement's scarce financial resources and activists' morale. The 1980s and early 1990s saw a massive effort to promote incineration as the solution to a growing solid waste crisis in communities across the U.S. A new generation of incinerators were vigorously promoted as sources of renewable energy as well as cost-effective waste disposal, claims which rapidly lost credibility against findings of poor economic performance and uncontrollable emissions of dioxins and other toxic substances. According to Peter Montague of the Environmental Research Foundation, community groups defeated 280 proposed incinerators between 1985 and 1994, some 80 percent of all those proposed. Environmental justice activists, local Green groups, public health advocates, and many others contributed to what may be the most decentralized, least publicized, and probably the most successful multiracial popular movement in the U.S. today.

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MANY EXAMPLES PROVE SOCIAL ACTIVISM IS SUCCESSFUL 1. ANTI-NUCLEAR MOVEMENT PROVES ACTIVISM’S SUCCESS Brian Tokar, teacher at the Institute for Social Ecology and Goddard College in Vermont, Z MAGAZINE, February 1995, p. 12. Local groups from New York State to California have resisted the federal government's plans to site regional dumps for low level nuclear waste in communities across the country. While these facilities are promoted as repositories for medical waste and radioactive tools, activists have discovered that their main purpose would be to bury the highly radioactive reactor vessels from the scores of nuclear power plants that will face decommissioning in the next several decades. Efforts to prevent the siting of these nuclear dumps have drawn on the methods of the grassroots anti-nuclear power movement of the 1970s and early 1980s that succeeded in reducing the number of nuclear power plants in the U.S. from a planned 300 to 1,000, based on the industry estimates of the mid-1970s, to just over 100. Despite tens of billions of dollars a year in federal subsidies, the nuclear power industry has been unable to license a single new plant since the Three Mile Island accident of 1979. 2. FOREST PROTECTION SHOWCASES THE SUCCESS OF ACTIVISM Brian Tokar, teacher at the Institute for Social Ecology and Goddard College in Vermont, Z MAGAZINE, February 1995, p. 12. Grassroots groups throughout the country have also protected countless acres of National Forest land from logging over the past several years. Small groups of wilderness advocates, field ecologists and activist lawyers have contested logging permits, exposed corporate abuses, and rallied public support for preserving some of the last intact forest land in North America. Meanwhile, efforts to enforce better forest policies through legislation have rarely succeeded on the national level, and Clinton's Forest Service appointees have proved to be as beholden to the timber industry as their predecessors, despite their apparent command of ecological science and environmentalist rhetoric. Several Forest Service and Interior Department employees who were emboldened to speak out for reform by Secretary Bruce Babbitt's early supportive public statements have been summarily fired or simply removed from policy-making positions. It has been up to small, underfunded groups of activists to do the basic work of regulatory enforcement that they once believed the Clinton administration would acknowledge its legal responsibility for. 3. LOBBYING ISN’T THE ANSWER, GRASSROOTS ACTIVISM IS Brian Tokar, teacher at the Institute for Social Ecology and Goddard College in Vermont, Z MAGAZINE, February 1995, p. 12. Many of the environmental laws we now take for granted once represented the system's defensive responses to political and legal pressure for more stringent protections. This echoes the pattern of most of the progressive legislation implemented over the past 50 years. Environmental laws have offered a predictable regulatory framework for abuses that were vehemently opposed by growing numbers of people. However, for the current crop of environmental professionals and lobbyists, legislation is an end in itself. They have become practitioners of what Robert Gottlieb, author of the most politically astute history of U.S. environmentalism (Forcing the Spring: The Transformation of the American Environmental Movement, Island Press, 1993), terms "a kind of interest group politics tied to the maintenance of the environmental policy system." Though Gottlieb tends to underestimate many of the gains of what he terms the alternative environmental movements of the 1980s and 1990s, he carefully documents how mainstream environmentalism came to be redefined "less as a movement and more directly as an adjunct to the policy process." This brand of back-room politics has made it easier for significant numbers of people to be mobilized in reactionary campaigns against further regulation to protect public health and the integrity of ecosystems. In a period when state and corporate bureaucracies exercise unprecedented control over the lives of millions of people, right wing demagogues have been able to depict environmental regulations as excessive constraints on individual freedom, handed down by faceless government bureaucracies. Voters are mobilized by cynical campaigns against "government," while expressions of anxiety over increasing corporate control are dismissed as futile gestures against the inevitable. This trend is unwittingly supported by environmental managers who are more comfortable wielding the instruments of state power -- or the mere illusion of power -- than aiding in the development of participatory means for popular mobilization.

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Activism Bad ACTIVISM FAILS THE BUDDHIST CRITIQUE 1. BUDDHIST ACTIVISM PROVIDES A WAY AROUND ACTIVISM'S PROBLEMS Peter D. Hershock, East-West Center Asian Studies Development Program, JOURNAL OF BUDDHIST ETHICS, Volume 6, 1999, p. 152. While many Buddhists are rightly committed to working in the public sphere for the resolution of suffering, there are very real incompatibilities between the axiomatic concepts and strategic biases of (the dominant strands of) both current human rights discourse and social activism and such core Buddhist practices as seeing all things as interdependent, impermanent, empty, and karmically configured. Indeed, the almost startling successes of social activism have been ironic, hinging on its strategic and conceptual indebtedness to core values shared with the technological and ideological forces that have sponsored its own necessity. The above-mentioned Buddhist practices provide a way around the critical blind spot instituted by the marriage of Western rationalism, a technological bias toward control, and the axiomatic status of individual human being, displaying the limits of social activism's institutional approach to change and opening concrete possibilities for a dramatically Buddhist approach to changing the way societies change. 2. WESTERN BIASES RENDER ACTIVISM'S PROBLEMS INVISIBLE Peter D. Hershock, East-West Center Asian Studies Development Program, JOURNAL OF BUDDHIST ETHICS, Volume 6, 1999, p. 152. In a liberal democratic context, such a thesis verges on political and philosophical heresy, and if we are hard pressed to take it seriously, it is only because the positive and progressive nature of the changes wrought by social activism are so manifestly self-evident. Unfortunately, if our prevailing standards of reason and critical inquiry are not entirely neutral, the manifestly positive and progressive nature of social activism's history might be the result of a critical blind-spot. In that case, the ironic nature of social activist success would be effectively invisible. 3. BUDDHIST ACTIVISM CHALLENGES BIASES, SOLVES PROBLEMS Peter D. Hershock, East-West Center Asian Studies Development Program, JOURNAL OF BUDDHIST ETHICS, Volume 6, 1999, p. 152. As a way around any such critical lacunae, I will be appealing to such core Buddhist practices as seeing all things as impermanent, as karmically configured, and as empty or interdependent. These practices and the theories adduced in their support mark a radical inversion of the critical and logical priorities constitutive of the philosophical, religious, and political traditions that have governed our dominant conceptions of freedom and civil society. By systematically challenging our bias for subordinating values to facts, relationships to the related, uniqueness to universality, and contribution to control, Buddhist practice makes possible a meaningful assessment and revision of social activist strategy. Importantly, it also opens the possibility of critically evaluating the phenomenon of "engaged Buddhism" and its ostensibly corrective relationship with the root conditions of suffering. 4. ACTIVISM PRESERVES BAD VALUE OF SELFISHNESS Peter D. Hershock, East-West Center Asian Studies Development Program, JOURNAL OF BUDDHIST ETHICS, Volume 6, 1999, p. 152. For the social activist, independence and freedom are inconceivable without secure boundaries between who we 'are' and who and what we 'are-not'. The rhetoric of Western liberalism is that we must be free to resist subordinating, institutional definition -- free, that is, to assert or claim boundaries that are finally self-willed, even idiosyncratic. Freedom, so construed, depends on limited responsibility, limited demands on our time and attention. As the Platonic analogy above suggests, regulation is essential to identity precisely because we are essentially rational beings -- beings who measure and who can be measured; who divide the world into near and far, private and public; who thrive on distinctions of every sort, in fact. Securing the integrity of the individual members of a given class of people in a given society is at bottom a process of legal rationalization -- the creation of an anonymously ordered and yet autonomy-supporting domain. The aims of social activism may be ostensibly 'selfless', but in practice social activism directs us toward the increasing regulation and generic preservation of selfishness.

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EVEN IF ACTIVISM IS SUCCESSFUL, IT ULTIMATELY fAILS 1. EVEN SUCCESSFUL ACTIVISM BLINDS US TO TRUE PROBLEMS Peter D. Hershock, East-West Center Asian Studies Development Program, JOURNAL OF BUDDHIST ETHICS, Volume 6, 1999, p. 155. Formally established tolerance of dissent and internal critique has become a mark of distinction among contemporary societies. Indeed, with economic globalization and the rhetoric of democracy acting in practically unassailable concert, the imperative to establish and maintain the conditions under which political protest and social activism are possible has become the keystone challenge to developing nations throughout Africa, Asia, and Central and South America. It is not my intention here to question the legitimacy of this challenge. The possibility of dissent is crucial to realizing a truly responsive society capable of correcting its own errors of judgement and organizational practice, and institutional changes of the sort brought about by political protest and social activism have undeniably been instrumental in this process. What I want to question are the prevalent strategies for bringing about such corrections and the axiological presuppositions on which they pivot. Although it may be true that "nothing succeeds like success," it is also true that nothing more readily blinds us to inherent flaws in the means and meaning of our successes than 'success' itself. Critical inattention to the strategic axioms underlying the successful engineering of political and social change might, in other words, finally render our best-intended efforts self-defeating. 2. ACTIVISM REPRODUCES THE CONDITIONS IT TRIES TO SOLVE Peter D. Hershock, East-West Center Asian Studies Development Program, JOURNAL OF BUDDHIST ETHICS, Volume 6, 1999, p. 156. My thesis, then, is a disquieting one: social activism's successes have hinged on its strategic and conceptual indebtedness to core values shared with the technological and ideological forces that have sponsored its own necessity. That is, the same conditions that have made successful social activism possible have also made it necessary. With potentially tragic irony, social activist practices -- and theory -- have been effectively reproducing rather than truly reducing the conditions of institutionalized disadvantage and dependence. 3. ACTIVISM INEFFECTIVELY FIGHTS FIRE WITH FIRE Peter D. Hershock, East-West Center Asian Studies Development Program, JOURNAL OF BUDDHIST ETHICS, Volume 6, 1999, p. 156. Until now, social activists have been able to effectively contest institutionalized disadvantage and dependence at the institutional level, securing basic civil and human rights by using many of the same values and technologies employed in first establishing and then maintaining structural inequity. To the extent that it has been noted, the shared genealogy of social activist solutions and the problems they address has been subsumed under the rubric of a pragmatically justified separation of means and ends. If the present critique has any merit, our thankfulness for the apparent gains made by social activists in promoting basic human dignities must not be allowed to distract us from appreciating the rapidity with which we are approaching a point of no return beyond which fighting fire with fire will no longer be an option. 5. SOCIAL ACTIVISM IS A SELF-PERPETUATING PROBLEM Peter D. Hershock, East-West Center Asian Studies Development Program, JOURNAL OF BUDDHIST ETHICS, Volume 6, 1999, p. 156. With no intended disregard of the passion many activists bring to their work, social activism has aimed at globally reengineering our political, economic and societal environments in much the same way that our dominant technological lineage has been committed to re-making our world -- progressively "humanizing" and "rationalizing" the abundantly capricious natural circumstances into which we human beings have found ourselves "thrown." This shared strategic genealogy is particularly disturbing, suggesting that -- like all technologies oriented toward control -social activism is liable to rendering itself indispensable. If the history of social activism is inseparable from the rise and spread of influential technologies and subject to similar accelerating and retarding conditions, so is its future.

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Altruism Good ALTRUISM IS A PARAMOUNT VALUE 1. ALTRUISM IS KEY TO THE SURVIVAL OF HUMANKIND Therese Brosse, Head of the Cardiological Clinic of the Faculty of Medicine of Paris University, EXPLORATIONS IN ALTRUISTIC LOVE AND BEHAVIOR, 1950, p. 119. Whatever the socially baleful effects of the lack of altruism may have been in the past, mankind has never before faced the terrifying threat which hatred has produced today. Formerly, the antagonism between men could exhaust itself in innumerable but always more or less limited destructive actions. Today our material civilization has reached a point where, if mankind is to survive at all, an altruistic attitude extending itself over the whole world is essential. In order to met the requirements of the world’s problems and the needs of the present stage of evolution, the feelings of man have to become more and more universal, and integrated in a self consciousness which recognizes itself as being at one with all others. 2. ALTRUISM IS MORALLY DESIRABLE Lawrence A. Blum, University of Massachusetts, Boston, FRIENDSHIP, ALTRUISM, AND MORALITY, 1980, p. 153. One target of Kant’s thoughts here is a certain kind of Romanticism, glorifying in dramatic and intense feeling for its own sake. It should be clear that such a conception has little to do with my view, in which the point is for one to have sympathy, compassion, or concern when appropriate or desirable, not whether one is showy or dramatic about the emotion. Emotion for the sake of emotion is alien to my view. Rather it is because altruistic emotions are forms of (appropriate) responsiveness to others weal and woe that they claimed to be morally desirable. 3. EVEN IF CONCERNED WITH SELFISHNESS, THE BENEFIT OF ALTRUISM OUTWEIGHS Nancy Eisenberg, Author, Arizona State University, ALTRUISTIC EMOTION, COGNITION, AND BEHAVIOR, 1986, p 210 According to the definition of altruism guiding our model, a behavior is altruistic if motivated by: (1) sympathy; (2)self-evaluative emotions (or anticipation of these emotions)associated with specific internalized moral values and (3) cognitions concerning the values, norms, responsibilities, and duties unaccompanied by discernible selfevaluative emotions; or (4) cognitions and accompanying affect (e.g., of discomfort due to inconsistencies in one’s self image) related to self-evaluation vis a vis one’s moral self-image (Blasi, 1983). One could argue that some of these motivations (especially 2 and 4) are not altruistic because they involve regulation of one’s own negative affect; however, such motives are consistent with most definitions of altruism because there is no expectation of external reward for nay of these motivations, and any negative affect is internally generated.

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ALTRUISM SHOULD BE SUPPORTED AS THE HIGHEST VALUE 1. ALTRUISM IS NECESSARY FOR COLLECTIVE ACTION Gerald Marwell, Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin, COOPERATION AND HELPING BEHAVIOR, 1982, p 212 At first glance, the importance of altruism for collective action seems obvious, almost necessary. If the logic arising from assumptions of implacably self-interested behavior produces free riding, then the answer to the problem is likely to be behavior that is not self-interested, or altruism. People are seen to cooperate, and to join collective action, because of their desire to help others. 2. LACK OF ALTRUISM IS THE SOURCE OF SOCIAL TENSIONS Therese Brosse, head of the cardiological clinic of the Faculty of Medicine of Paris University, EXPLORATIONS IN ALTRUISTIC LOVE AND BEHAVIOR, 1950, p. 143. Lack of altruism is a source of social tensions which impede the development of altruism, whatever the groups concerned may be (ideological or national). Again, this antisocial attitude appears to be very closely connected for many individuals with the lack of creative training and opportunities for creative self-expression. 3. ALTRUISTIC EMOTIONS ARE STILL GOOD, EVEN WITHOUT TANGIBLE RESULTS Lawrence a. Blum, University of Massachusetts, Boston, FRIENDSHIP, ALTRUISM, AND MORALITY, 1980, p 156. Objecting to the morality of altruistic emotions on the grounds that it encourages us top~ our energies into our emotional responses rather than into genuinely helpful activities falsifies that view in another way. For no matter how much of our own life we actively fashion, thus choosing where to put our energies, inevitably we are faced with many situations in which others are suffering or in difficulty, and in which we are not in a position to help. This will be so no matter how much we choose actively to pursue projects built around beneficent ends and actuated by altruistic motives. And so it is not a matter of coldly turning away from the former situations to seek out the latter. The point is, if my argument is correct, that it is good to respond with sympathy and concern, even when one cannot help, and doing so can convey a good to the person involved even if he is not thereby helped. 4. EVEN IS ALTRUISTIC EMOTIONS ARE WEAK, THEY SHOULD STILL BE PURSUED Lawrence A. Blum University of Massachusetts, Boston, FRIENDSHIP, ALTRUISM AND MORAUTY, 1980, p. 4. Altruistic emotions are distinct from personal feelings, such as liking and affection. The former are grounded in the weal and woe of others, whereas the latter are grounded in personal (but not necessarily moral)characteristics and features of the other person. Altruistic emotions towards someone can occur in the absence of personal feelings towards him; and vice versa. That altruistic emotions can sometimes be weak, transitory and capricious does not mean that we should shun emotional motivation in favor of duty and rational principle. For altruistic emotions are themselves capable of the strength and reliability which the Kantian demands of moral motivation.

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Altruism Bad UPHOLDING ALTRUISM HURTS SOCIETY 1. ALTRUISM IN NOT WORTH THE COST Morris Silver, Professor of Economics, City College of the City University of New York, AFFLUENCE, ALTRUISM, AND ATROPHY, THE DECLINE OF WELFARE STATES, 1980, p.159. Given the difficulty of comprehending how societies operate and of equal importance, the negligible influence that one individual can exert on social policy, it is predictable that even the most altruistic person would likely conclude that the cost to him or her of becoming more informed exceeded the expected return in social improvement. 2. ALTRUISM WITHOUT FREEDOM WOULD LOSE ITS MEANING J.B. Rhine, Professor of Psychology and Director of the Parapsychology Laboratory at Duke University, EXPLORATIONS IN ALTRUISTIC LOVE AND BEHAVIOR, 1950, p. 173. More specific to the research on altruism, and yet basic too for all mankind, is the question: How free is the individual to love, to cultivate affection, to learn to appreciate others? Now in an entirely physical system such a question of course does not arise; but with the psychocentric view of man, with thought and brain as two relatively different kinds of interacting systems within the individual’s universe, one of these can be to some extent free in its differential functioning from the lawfulness of the other. Freedom could not exist without two or more systems of profoundly different order and character; freedom always means freedom of thing from another. The nature and degree of this freedom seems crucial to the understanding and cultivation of fraternal relations among men. Without some measure of volitional freedom, all other types of freedom have but limited meaning. Altruism without freedom of choice would lose much if not all of its value. 3. MUST HAVE CREATIVITY TO HAVE ALTRUISM Therese Brosse, head of the cardiological clinic of the Faculty of Medicine of Paris University, EXPLORATIONS IN ALTRUISTIC LOVE AND BEHAVIOR, 1950, p. 119. We cannot indeed promote a universally altruistic attitude unless we strive to develop creativity at the same time. Altruism and creativity have a close relationship in their mutual expansion, which we shall examine when we come to deal with the functional unity that presides over the specific problem of human biology. Besides, if civilization is to be perfect at any given period, it must build up constitutions and institutions that will fill the highest ideal of contemporary consciousness. Those human beings who already experience this universal love in themselves facilitate by this very fact the decrease of exploitation and misunderstanding. But the better they are trained to develop an efficient creativity, the better they will help to build this new civilization. 4. SELF CONCERN PREVENTS ALTRUISM Jacueline R. Macaulay, Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin, and Leonard Berkowitz, Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin, ALTRUISM AND HELPING BEHAVIOR, 1970, p6 Berkowitz suggests that selfconcern dampens altruism and his paper in this volume presents evidence to support this hypothesis. To the extent that we are self-concerned, we are not likely to recognize the consequences of our behavior for others, and perhaps are concerned with equity considerations at the expense of others’ needs, etc. The research Berkowitz describes indicates that variation in the individual’s internal state - m the degree of self-preoccupation - is at least a partial determinant of whether cues for prosocial behavior will e effective. 5. OVERT ALTRUISTIC ACTS ARE NOT ENOUGH, YOU MUST ALSO HAVE EMOTION Lawrence A. Blum, University of Massachusetts, Boston, FRIENDSHIP, ALTRUISM, AND MORALITY, 1970, p. 143. So the emotion which prompts the act of beneficence has significance beyond its merely producing or being the motive for that act. For the beneficence which is appropriate to the situation will require more than an overt act,, externally described; it will also require certain emotions accompanying the act, or, rather, emotions as integral parts of the action as a whole.

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ALTRUISM IS NOT MOST IMPORTANT 1. MUST HAVE ENERGY FOR ALTRUISM J.B RHINE, Professor of Psychology and Director of the Parapsychology Laboratory at Duke University, EXPLORATIONS IN ALTRUISTIC LOVE AND BEHAVIOR, 1950, p. 173. Whatever altruism is, this feeling and acting toward another as if he were identified with one’s self we all agree that it is an attracting and restraining force in human life; it exerts power over the work people do in their overt actions. So far as we know too, energy is necessarily expended in the process of directing energy. We are therefore dealing with something energetic, in the accepted sense of the word, in the chain of processes producing altruistic conduct. No matter how far back we go in searching of the starting point, since the result is energetic, the guiding element may be inferred to be energetic too. Love, to be effective, must have some kind of energy. 2. SOCIETY’S PUSH TOWARDS ALTRUISTIC ACTS JEOPARDIZES THE WEALTH OF SOCIETY Morris Silver, Professor of Economics, City College of the City University of New York, AFFLUENCE, ALTRUISM, AND ATROPHY, THE DECLINE OF WELFARE STATES, 1980, p. 159. Altruism, or the “taste” for helping others, is one of the higher needs described by the psychologist Abraham H. Maslow. An examination of the implications of modern consumer- choice theory, together with the review of a substantial body of behavioral evidence, suggests that affluence markedly increases the altruistic desire. Several considerations, including that of inefficiencies associated with the private provision of a public good, cause affluent societies to substitute amelioration by the state for private wealth transfers. Adolph Wagner’s law predicting a rising share of government expenditures seems to hold for altruism. Unfortunately, there is good reason to believe that the persistent and massive nature of the effort to eliminate social problems and improve people’s lives ultimately jeopardizes the health of society. 3. GROUPING TOGETHER IS MORE FAVORABLE THAN ALTRUISM Laurent Dechesne, Professor of Liege University, Emeritus, and Member of the Royal Academy of Belgium, EXPLORATIONS IN ALTRUISTIC LOVE AND BEHAVIOR, 1950, p.229. Social life brings together mainly those persons who are similar, who have common aspirations and emotions and hold the same points of view. They are placed in a mutual position of sympathy, a term which also expresses the affectionate feeling that is inherent in it. Therefore grouping together, life in common, seem to be favorable to the expansion of altruism. The truth of the above statement can be verified in different social groups: villages, cities, nations, and associations of all kinds. It occurs in the same way among workers in the same shop. They are bound by solitary feelings of mutual aid which cannot be found among isolated workingmen. This is the reason that factory wok, which brings the workers together physically, fosters the development of a feeling of fraternity among them and the setting up of unions for the defense of their common interests. 4. MUST HAVE EMPATHY FOR ALTRUISM Jacueline R. Macaulay, Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin, and Leonard Berkowitz, Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin, ALTRUISM AND HELPING BEHAVIOR, 1970, p 2 For Aronfreed, altruism is a dispositional component (not a specific form) of behavior which is controlled by anticipation of its consequences for another individual. He regards empathy as essential for altruism. Unless the actor responds empathetically to social cues conveying another’s experience (or to cognitive representation of another’s experience), the behavior cannot be called altruistic. External outcomes to the actor are irrelevant, according to this definition. Behavior controlled by expectation of increased self-esteem is also said to be nonaltruistic. The actor must experience empathic or vicarious pleasure, or relief of distress, as a result of behaving in a way that has consequences for another.

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Anarchism Good ANARCHISM IS JUSTIFIED 1. ANARCHISM PROMOTES EQUALITY AND RESPECT FOR ALL BEINGS Peter Kropotkin, Anarchist Philosopher, KROPOTKIN'S REVOLUTIONARY PAMPHLETS, 1970, p. 99. By proclaiming ourselves anarchists, we proclaim before-hand that we disavow any way of treating others in which we should not like them to treat us; that we will no longer tolerate the inequality that has allowed some among us to use their strength, their cunning or their ability after a fashion in which it would annoy us to have such qualities used against ourselves. Equality in all things, the synonym of equity, this is anarchism in very deed. It is not only against the abstract trinity of law, religion, and authority that we declare war. By becoming anarchists we declare war against all this wave of deceit, cunning, exploitation, depravity, vice --in a word, inequality--which they have poured into all our hearts. We declare war against their way of acting, against their way of thinking. The governed, the deceived, the exploited, the prostitute, wound above all else our sense of equality. It is in the name of equality that we are determined to have no more prostituted, exploited, deceived and governed men and women. 2. EQUALITY IS THE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE OF ANARCHISM Peter Kropotkin, Anarchist Philosopher, KROPOTKIN'S REVOLUTIONARY PAMPHLETS, 1970, p. 98. Besides this principle of treating others as one wishes to be treated oneself, what is it but the very same principle as equality, the fundamental principle of anarchism? And how can any one manage to believe himself an anarchist unless he practices it? We do not wish to be ruled. And by this very fact, do we not declare that we ourselves wish to rule nobody? We do not wish to be deceived, we wish always to be told nothing but the truth. And by this very fact, do we not declare that we ourselves do not wish to deceive anybody, that we promise to always tell the truth, nothing but the truth, the whole truth? We do not wish to have the fruits of our labor stolen from us. And by that very fact, do we not declare that we respect the fruits of others' labor? By what right indeed can we demand that we should be treated in one fashion, reserving it to ourselves to treat others in a fashion entirely different? Our sense of equality revolts at such an idea. 3. ANARCHISTS REJECT POPULAR PHILOSOPHIES FOR TRUE MORALITY Peter Kropotkin, Anarchist Philosopher, KROPOTKIN'S REVOLUTIONARY PAMPHLETS, 1970, p. 83. Such was the way in which the youth of Russia reasoned when they broke with old-world prejudices, and unfurled this banner of nihilist or rather of anarchist philosophy: to bend the knee to no authority whatsoever, however respected; to accept no principle so long as it is unestablished by reason. Need we add, that after pitching into the waste-paper basket the teachings of their fathers, and burning all systems of morality, the nihilist youth developed in their midst a nucleus of moral customs, infinitely superior to anything that their fathers had practiced under the control of the "Gospel," of the "Conscience," of the "Categorical Imperative," or of the "Recognized Advantage" of the utilitarian. 4. FALSE MORALITY COMES FROM THE STATE, TRUE MORALITY IS INNATE Peter Kropotkin, Anarchist Philosopher, KROPOTKIN'S REVOLUTIONARY PAMPHLETS, 1970, p. 98. Even if we wished to get rid of it we could not. It would be easier for a man to accustom himself to walk on fours than to get rid of the moral sentiment. It is anterior in animal evolution to the upright posture of man. The moral sense is a natural faculty in us like the sense of smell or of touch. As for law and religion, which also have preached this principle, they have simply filched it to cloak their own wares, their injunctions for the benefit of the conqueror, the exploiter, the priest. Without this principle of solidarity, the justice of which is so generally recognized, how could they have laid hold on men's minds? Each of them covered themselves with it as with a garment; like authority which made good its position by posing as the protector of the weak against the strong. By flinging overboard law, religion and authority, mankind can regain possession of the moral principle which has been taken from them. Regain that they may criticize it, and purge it from the adulterations wherewith priest, judge and ruler have poisoned it and are poisoning it yet.

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ANARCHISM IS A SUPERIOR VALUE 1. AFFIRMING THE STATE AFFIRMS ENDLESS WAR AND SLAVERY Michael Bakunin, Anarchist Philosopher, MARXISM, FREEDOM AND THE STATE, 1990, p. 29. But whoever says State, necessarily says a particular limited State, doubtless comprising, if it is very large, many different peoples and countries, but excluding still more. For unless he is dreaming of the Universal State as did Napoleon and the Emperor Charles the Fifth, or as the Papacy dreamed of the Universal Church, Marx, in spite of all the international ambition which devours him to-day, will have, when the hour of the realization of his dreams has sounded for him--if it ever does sound--he will have to content himself with governing a single State and not several States at once. Consequently, who ever says State says, a State, and whoever says a State affirms by that the existence of several States, and whoever says several States, immediately says: competition, jealousy, truceless and endless war. The simplest logic as well as all history bear witness to it. Any State, under pain of perishing and seeing itself devoured by neighbouring States, must tend towards complete power, and, having become powerful, it must embark on a career of conquest, so that it shall not be itself conquered; for two powers similar and at the same time foreign to each other could not co-exist without trying to destroy each other. Whoever says conquest, says conquered peoples, enslaved and in bondage, under whatever form or name it may be. 2. THE STATE WILL ALWAYS DENY HUMANITY ITSELF Michael Bakunin, Anarchist Philosopher, MARXISM, FREEDOM AND THE STATE, 1990, p. 29. It is in the nature of the State to break the solidarity of the human race and, as it were, to deny humanity. The State cannot preserve itself as such in its integrity and in all its strength except it sets itself up as supreme and absolute be-all and end-all, at least for its own citizens, or to speak more frankly, for its own subjects, not being able to impose itself as such on the citizens of other States unconquered by it. From that there inevitably results a break with human, considered as universal, morality and with universal reason, by the birth of State morality and reasons of State. The principle of political or State morality is very simple. The State, being the supreme objective, everything that is favourable to the development of its power is good; all that is contrary to it, even if it were the most humane thing in the world, is bad. This morality is called Patriotism. 3. ANARCHISM PROVIDES REAL JUSTICE, POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC FREEDOM Peter Kropotkin, Anarchist Philosopher, KROPOTKIN'S REVOLUTIONARY PAMPHLETS, 1970, p. 52-3 Anarchists recognize the justice of both the just-mentioned tendencies towards economic and political freedom, and see in them two different manifestations of the very same need of equality which constitutes the very essence of all struggles mentioned by history. Therefore, in common with all socialists, the anarchist says to the political reformer: "No substantial reform in the sense of political equality and no limitation of the powers of government can be made as long as society is divided into two hostile camps, and the laborer remains, economically speaking, a slave to his employer." But to the state socialist we say also: "You cannot modify the existing conditions of property without deeply modifying at the same time the political organization. You must limit the powers of government and renounce parliamentary rule. To each new economic phase of life corresponds a new political phase. absolute monarchy corresponded to the system of serfdom. Representative government corresponds to capital rule. Both, however, are class-rule. But in a society where the distinction between capitalist and laborer has disappeared, there is no need of such a government; it would be an anachronism, a nuisance. Free workers would require a free organization, and this cannot have any other basis than free agreement and free cooperation, without sacrificing the autonomy of the individual to the all-pervading interference of the State. The no-capitalist system implies the nogovernment system."

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Anarchism Bad ANARCHISM REPRESENTS THE HERD MENTALITY, NOT FREEDOM 1. ANARCHISM CAUSES 'MORAL TYRANNY,' WORSE THAN POLITICAL Paul Edwards, Editor In Chief, THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY, 1967, p. 114-5. The problem of reconciling social harmony with complete individual freedom is a recurrent one in anarchist thought. It has been argued that an authoritarian society produces antisocial reactions, which would vanish in freedom. It has also been suggested, by Godwin and Kropotkin particularly, that public opinion will suffice to deter those who abuse their liberty. However, George Orwell has pointed out that the reliance on public opinion as a force replacing overt coercion might lead to a moral tyranny which, having no codified bounds, could in the end prove more oppressive than any system of laws. 2. ANARCHIST NOTIONS OF FREEDOM ARE WRONG Friedrich Nietzsche, Philosopher, BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL, 1989, p. 88. How much trouble the poets and orators of all peoples have taken--not excepting a few prose writers today in whose ear there dwells an inexorable conscience--'for the sake of some foolishness,' as utilitarian dolts say, feeling smart--'submitting abjectly to capricious laws,' as anarchists say, feeling 'free,' even 'free-spirited.' But the curious fact is that all there is or has been on earth of freedom, subtlety, boldness, dance, and masterly sureness, whether in thought itself or in government, or in rhetoric and persuasion, in the arts just as in ethics, has developed only owing to the 'tyranny of such capricious laws'. 3. ANARCHISM REFLECTS THE HERD MENTALITY Lewis Call, Professor of History at Cal-Poly SLO, NIETZSCHE AS CRITIC AND CAPTIVE OF ENLIGHTENMENT, 1995, p. np. A consideration of Nietzsche's views on anarchists will make clear the difficulties involved in placing him within the tradition of anarchism. He writes in Twilight of the Idols: "when the anarchist, as the mouthpiece of the declining strata of society, demands with a fine indignation what is 'right,' 'justice,' and 'equal rights,' he is merely under the pressure of his own uncultured state, which cannot comprehend the real reason for his suffering--what he is poor in: life." Nietzsche goes on to associate the anarchist with the Christian, and to decry both as "decadents." Clearly, these are some of the strongest criticisms available to Nietzsche. That which was Christian, decadent and poor in life was inevitably what he attacked most enthusiastically. Goyard-Fabre suggests that "the reactive passion of the anarchists makes them, like the socialists, men of resentment." Anarchists sought revenge on society; this was precisely what Nietzsche hated in the herd man. Bergmann suggests that Nietzsche saw direct evidence of this anarchistic quest for revenge as he witnessed the particular kind of anarchism that was becoming prevalent in Europe during the 1880s, a brand of anarchism that was heralded by Prince Kropotkin and that became inarticulate in its love affair with dynamite. The anarchist, like the liberal, the socialist and the nationalist, remains for Nietzsche an example of the political herd man, unable to transcend the political tradition of the Enlightenment.

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ANARCHISM INCORRECT VISION FOR FUTURE SOCIETY 1. RISE OF THE STATE NEED NOT VIOLATE ANYONE'S RIGHTS Robert Nozick, Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University, ANARCHY, STATE AND UTOPIA, 1974, p. xi. Since I begin with a strong formulation of individual rights, I treat seriously the anarchist claim that in the course of maintaining its monopoly on the use of force and protecting everyone within a territory, the state must violate individuals' rights and hence is intrinsically immoral. Against this claim, I argue that a state would arise from anarchy (as represented by Locke's state of nature) even though no one intended this or tried to bring this about, by a process which need not violate anyone's rights. 2. ANARCHY WOULD LEAD TO ENDLESS FEUDS, RETALIATION AND VIOLENCE Robert Nozick, Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University, ANARCHY, STATE AND UTOPIA, 1974, p. 11. In a state of nature, the understood natural law may not provide for every contingency in a proper fashion and men who judge in their own case will always give themselves the benefit of the doubt and assume that they are in the right. They will overestimate the amount of harm or damage they have suffered, and passions will lead them to attempt to punish others more than proportionately and to enact excessive compensation. Thus private and personal enforcement of one's rights (including those rights which are violated when one is needlessly punished) leads to feuds, to an endless series of acts of retaliation and enactions of compensation. 3. ANARCHIST ARGUMENT ABOUT STATE VIOLATING RIGHTS IS FLAWED Robert Nozick, Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University, ANARCHY, STATE AND UTOPIA, 1974, p. 52. Hence, so the argument continues, when the state threatens another with punishment if he does not contribute to the protection of another, it violates (and its officials violate) his rights. In threatening him with something that would be a violation of his rights if done by a private citizen, they violate moral constraints. To get to something recognizable as a state we must show 1) how an ultraminimal state arises out of the system of private protective associations; and 2) how the ultraminimal state is transformed into the minimal state, how it gives rise to that "redistribution" for the general provision of protective services that constitutes it as the minimal state. To show that the minimal state is morally legitimate, to show that it is not immoral in itself, we must show also that these transitions in 1) and 2) are each morally legitimate. In the rest of Part I of this work, we show how each of these transitions occur and is morally permissible. We argue that the first transition, from a system of private-protective agencies to an ultraminimal state, will occur by an invisible-hand process in a morally permissible way that violates no one's rights. 4. WE ARE MORALLY OBLIGATED TO PRODUCE A MINIMAL STATE Robert Nozick, Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University, ANARCHY, STATE AND UTOPIA, 1974, p. 52-3. Secondly, we argue that the transition from an ultraminimal state to a minimal state morally must occur. It would be morally impermissible for persons to maintain the monopoly in the ultraminimal state without providing protective services for all, even if this requires "redistribution". The operators of the ultraminimal state are required to produce the minimal state. 5. MINIMAL STATE PROVIDES RIGHTS AS WELL AS INDIVIDUAL DIGNITY Robert Nozick, Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University, ANARCHY, STATE AND UTOPIA, 1974, p. 333-4. The minimal state treats us as inviolate individuals, who may not be used in certain ways by others as means or tools or instruments or resources; it treats us as persons having individual rights with the dignity this constitutes. Treating us with respect by respecting our rights, it allows us, individually or with whom we choose, to choose our life and realize our ends and our conceptions of ourselves, insofar as we can, aided by the voluntary cooperation of other individuals possessing the same dignity. How dare any state or group of individuals do more. Or less.

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ANIHILATING NIHILISM “Life itself is essential assimilation, injury, violation of the foreign and the weaker, suppression, hardness, the forcing of One’s OWfl forms upon something else, ingestion and --at least in its mildest form--exploitation.” (Nietzsche, BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL, 1978, P. 201). The nihilism critique has been a popular position in the last year. Its intended purpose is to call into question the assumptions made in value debate. These assumptions include the idea that one must actually propose and defend a “value” in order to contextualize one’s case. As an answer to resolutions which themselves require value analysis, nihilism serves as a critique of the entire resolution. As a philosophy, nihilism seems relatively new; Nietzsche died at the end of the 19th Century, and since then, young people have often been interested in his works. His unashamed attack on conventional morality strikes many people as progressive. Others see it as the ultimate blasphemy. This notenety and popularity has made it difficult for either side to really be objective about nihilism, since it is difficult to be dispassionate about the philosophy. Many people see the use of the nihilism critique in debate as inappropriate, since it seems to be a critique of advocacy itself, rather than a critique of specific types of advocacy. As with the normativity critique in policy debate, many people see nihilism as an indictment of the debate process itself, and see no alternative to having some level of advocacy--after all, if we do not advocate things, what do we do when we debate? But those advocating the critique respond that there is an alternative; the alternative offered by Nietzsche was a post-value, or post-moral approach to the issues of life, an approach which need not be based on the supposedly eternal truths which had guided humanity until they were no longer capable of being defended. The nihilism position, for example, would say that an affirmative advocating individual rights should simply say why those rights are desirable for the people who receive them, rather than making a plea to some transcendent principle called “freedom.” Likewise with other topics: It is not only unnecessary to advocate a value, debaters of nihilism say; it is also destructive and inauthentic. Nietzsche writes: “Man, a complex, lying, artificial, and inscrutable animal, weird-looking to the other animals not so much because of his power but rather because of his guile and shrewdness, has invented the clear conscience, so that he might have the sensation, for once, that his psyche is a simple thing. All of morality is a continuous courageous forgery, without which an enjoyment of the sight of man’s soul would be impossible” (BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL, 1978, p. 230). In this section we will explore the basic history and ideas of nihilism, then concern ourselves with how to answer this intriguing and disturbing critique of values. THE ORIGINS OF NIHILISM Western philosophy has always had a fascination with Eastern thought. Western thinkers have envied Buddhism’s surrender of control and acknowledgment of silence and nothingness, all concepts which European and American thought cannot grasp because such concepts seem to have no technological or economic value. In the West, such philosophy is usually imported through the “counter-culture,” and Eastern culture makes its way into music or literature before it is taken seriously as a method of thinking. In many ways, nihilism is the Western attempt to do the Eastern shuffle (turn, pivot, step outside of yourself) while holding to the philosophical conventions of Western Enlightenment and rationality. EARLY INFLUENCES Nihilism advertises itself as something new, but the idea of the will to power and the attack on absolutes is as old as Buddhism, as well as the ideas found among the ancient Greek Sophists, contemporaries of Socrates, who argued against the view that there is no absolute truth, that, in the words on Anaximander, “Man is the measure of all things.” Three hundred years ago, in the era of Romanticism, criticism of rationality gained an air of literary and philosophical respectability. Romanticist poets Byron and Shelley believed in something closer to humanity than 30

science, which put humans on the level of animals; reason was only one way of comprehending the world that only centuries before had been seen as a beautiful, terrible, mystical dream; religion which, although it captured the essence of Mans divinity, also separated men from men, and substituted earthly power for divine grace; or progress, which the somewhat Romantic Rousseau had declared to be an illusion, a sign of self-reproducing sickness, which creates the very problems it is employed to solve. Philosophically, Romanticism was concerned with the contradictory nature of The Natural Man, the divine, yet earthly creature in the dangerous and terrible universe. Mysticism was accepted as a legitimate method of comprehension. Significantly, the individual was seen as the starting point, the basis of our own experience and understanding. But oddly, Romantics pitted the individual against nature, a dark and impersonal force resembling the mother-god of old. In the 19th Century, many German thinkers revolted against that country’s “official” philosopher, Hegel, and his belief that existence is a big, mighty, spiritual “System.” Among these was Arthur Schopenhaur, who would make a major impression on the young Nietzsche and who developed an analysis of the will, The World as Will and Idea. that was more comprehensive than Nietzsche’s. Like Nietzsche, Schopenhauer hated women; feared them, really. Schopenhauer was not a “happy” philosopher by any means, with his negative view of the world as the product of malignant human wills and a rough environment. Outside of Germany, Danish philosophical wonder Soren Kierkegaard would change philosophy and introduce existentialism into the phenomenology of everyday life, never having to leave 19th Century Copenhagen. Spurned early in life by the woman of his dreams, Kierkegaard became a reclusive, prolific hermit, writing incredible criticisms of institutional theology, attacking the churches of his time as hypocritical and apostatic, and passionately rejecting Hegelian, or indeed any, rationalism. The cold and impersonal world which had come upon humanity at the advent of Newton, Bacon, and eventually Kant and Hegel, was long removed from the spirit which demanded faith and mutual love and submission from its adherents. Kierkegaard wrote of Abraham nearly sacrificing Isaac at the Lord’s request, reflecting on the kind of radical faith, radical suspension of disbelief, which Kierkegaard believed must have defined Abraham at that moment. In essence, Kierkegaard asks, are we no longer capable of that kind of leap of faith? Rather than basing the personal gesture of belief solely on reason, Kierkegaard rebels, and declares: “I believe because it is absurd.” -

Absurdity, the nonsense of the undefined portion of human experience which reason and science cannot grasp, would, because of Kierkegaard, become the slogan of existentialism, which, as an ethical theory, was never more than nihilism with a few morals added. But Kierkegaard’s influence on nihilistic thinking would come from his belief that reason, constructed and systemic knowledge, is oppressive to one’s person. The personal encounter, for Kierkegaard, was “primal” and irreducible to logic. Likewise, Kierkegaard would influence nihilism with his belief that morality cannot truly be systematized. For him, this was because the encounter with God is absolute and transcends all intellectual grasp. Although nihilism theoretically rejects the existence of God, or the ability to found a morality upon God, the idea that systematizing morality actually renders it harmful and oppressive would become a keystone of nihilist thinking. NIETZSCHE One of the least understood of all the philosophers, Nietzsche was fond of scandalizing his contemporaries by asserting the futility and hypocrisy of morality. In order to understand the basis of this argument, it is important to spend a moment on how Nietzsche viewed the world philosophically. To begin with, Nietzsche believed humans were essentially prideful and power-seeking beings. In fact, Nietzsche apparently believed this was true of all living beings, in that they struggle for not only their own preservation, but also to increase their vitality of being. Humans, however, possess traits which distinguish us from “lesser beings,” namely our intellect and creative ability. But whereas most philosophers, influenced by the Enlightenment, believed these traits to be desirable and a blessing, Nietzsche saw them as problematic, at least in a world where truth31

construction occurred as it did. This is because, according to Nietzsche, we use this intellect and this creative ability to invent myths which cover up our more essential traits of power and exploitation. There was a time, says Nietzsche, referring to the Classical period, when humans knew the difference between “good” and “bad” not as moral terms, but as terms which reflected the celebration of life and power. Strong and powerful, f~ that time, meant “good,” while “bad” was a term designating the weak and unmoored. Nietzsche did not offer a great deal of proof for this claim, but it made at least some sense when considering the difference in conventional moral leanings before and after the advent of Christianity. As he put it himself: “Now the first argument that comes ready to my hand is that the real homestead of the concept “good” is sought and located in the wrong place: the judgment “good” did not originate among those to whom goodness was shown. Much rather has it been the good themselves, that is, the aristocratic, the powerful, the high-stationed, the highminded, who have felt that they themselves were good, and that their actions were good, that is to say of the first order, in contradistinction to all the low, the low-minded, the vulgar, and the plebeian”(”The Genealogy of Morals” in THE PHILOSOPHY OF NIETZSCHE, 1954, p. 634). Christianity, said Nietzsche, was, like socialism and other “collectivist” moralities, a denial of our genuine powerseeking being. The “morality” of Christianity, like utilitarianism, was actually “anti-power” since it sought to punish and demonize those who knew how to get what they wanted out of life. Christian morality was also a strategy, performed consciously or unconsciously, to actually increase the power of the weak, in a subversive way, by making people ashamed of power and glory. Oppressed peoples, Nietzsche pointed out, always invent a moral code to “punish,” albeit ineffectively, their oppressors. All the talk of moral absolutes was part of the lie, Nietzsche contended. The problem with such absolutes is that they place limits on things which should be unlimited; there was no reason for humans not to be excessive, Nietzsche reasoned, since that is in fact what we are all about. In place of the glorification of beauty and excitement, the “ascetic” lifestyle eschewed any kind of glory in existence itself. To further explain this notion that arguments which hold that humans should be “humble,” or ashamed of their “baser” qualities, were really hypocritical lies, Nietzsche sought to divide people’s (and cultures’) natures into either Appolonian or Dionyssian types. The former comes from Appolo, who was essentially a god of order, logic and sobriety. The latter comes from Dionyssius, the well-known Greek god of ecstasy, of wine and parties, of loss of control, of living life sensually for absolute primal pleasure; even the hedonists wouldn’t go that far. But Nietzsche would. He longed for humans to embrace naked joy and ecstasy rather than stone-cold rationality. THE DEATH OF GOD “Today, eveiy sort of dogmatism occupies a dismayed and discouraged position--if, indeed, it has maintained any position at all. For there are scoffers who maintain that dogmatism has collapsed, even worse, that it is laboring to draw its last breath. Seriously speaking, there are good grounds for hoping that all philosophic dogmatizing, however solemn, however final and ultimate it has pretended to be, may after all have been merely a noble child’s-play and mere beginning. And perhaps the time is veiy near when we shall again and again comprehend how flimsy the cornerstone has been upon which the dogmatists have hitherto built their sublime and absolute philosophical edifices.” Nietzsche, BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL (1978, p. XI) The Nietzschean phrase (from Thus Spoke Zarathustra) “God is Dead” is often quoted and is the material for many jokes. It is also viewed, understandably, as a blasphemy against believers everywhere. But rather than dwelling on the mere phrase, it is important to understand the larger meaning of what Nietzche meant. After Zarathustra says “God is dead,” he continues, “We have killed Him.” What does this mean? Simply, it means that modern thinking, the systemic and rationalistic paradigms which attempt to bring humanity closer to “scientific” truth, has rendered God “obsolete” as an explanation for the world. Additionally, the believers themselves killed God, Nietzsche claims, because of the hypocrisy of hierarchal religions. 32

Rather than simply interpreting the phrase to mean that a single, all-powerful deity called “God” has died, it is more philosophically useful to interpret the statement as an obituary for absolutes in general, and absolute notions of morality in particular. Morality is “dead” because traditional morals can no longer guide humans in a complex world. In Human. All Too Human, he puts it this way: “The man who wants to gain wisdom profits greatly from having thought for a time that man is basically evil and degenerate: this idea is wrong, like its opposite, but for whole periods of time it was predominant and its roots have sunk deep into us and into our world. To understand ourselves we must understand it; but to climb higher, we must then climb over and beyond it. We recognize that there are no sins in the metaphysical sense; but, in the same sense, neither are there any virtues; we recognize that this entire realm of moral ideas is in a continual state of fluctuation, that there are higher and deeper concepts of good and evil, moral and immoral. A man who desires no more from things than to understand them easily makes peace with his soul and will err (or sin, as the world calls it) at the most out of ignorance, but hardly out of desire.”(1984, p. 53) There are many things being said here, but the most important point is that morality itself is a “weak” perspective that fails to recognize the complexity of human beings. That humans have become this complicated is seen as a vice by the world of morals. Nietzsche, however, recogmzes it as a piece of good news. WHAT IS THE ALTERNATIVE? The “good news” is that humans are ready to stop thinking in terms of absolutes. They are ready to move beyond the traditional conceptions of morality and certitude and recognize the most vital attributes of being human: glorification of power, beauty and ecstasy. But in order for this to happen, humans must give up the search for values. Values separate human beings from one another in an unnatural way, ironically, they also join humans together in an inappropriate way, a way which puts everyone in the same categories instead of recognizing the natural differences which exist, and ought to exist, among us; divisions between nobility and peasantry, between master and slave. From this vision, the idea of nihilism as a “method” began to take shape. The idea is that there are no absolutes, and those philosophical methods which DO assume absolutes (nearly all philosophies, in fact) need to be revealed as being a denial of the ability of humans to figure things out for themselves, not to look behind the real things of this world to find some mystical force, a unifying force, which is unworldly. Again, this need not be religious absolutism; even “atheistic” philosophies like Marxism are absolutist, spiritual, as nihilism sees them, because they assume the existence of transcendent truths. Marxism, for example, assumes a transcendent historical dialectic which shapes history, assumes that humans are subordinate to those larger historical forces. Nihilism sees such metaphysics as a subordination of humans to inhuman principles, and calls for the rejection of such approaches in favor of an authenticity of being grounded in real nature; power, ecstasy, etc. The alternative to absolute values, then? Absolute authenticity. Nietzsche admitted that he was neither the “New Man” of whom he wrote, nor even a leader in the post-absolutist society to come. But he saw himself as heralding the entrance of a new age. He had one foot in the old world, he thought, and one foot in the new. He challenged philosophers to come up with an ethical philosophy based on the truth of who we are: power-seeking, exploitive beings. Nihilism fancies itself a liberator of authentic human knowledge from value-laden knowledge. By recognizing the dishonest nature of value advocacy, nihilism hopes to recover the truth of that which is valued. THE ALLEGED 20TH CENTURY VALIDATION OF NIHILISM Early 20th Century European history seemed to validate much of what Nietzsche was saying. The sudden explosion of technology and industrialization appeared to draw humans away from the core morality characteristic of earlier ages. Two world wars, both involving acts of tremendous aggression and brutality, the latter of the two including the systematic attempt at genocide against certain races, suggested to many people in Europe that we were living in a time in which humanity had been severed from all ties to decency. 33

The theory of cultural relativism, originally nothing more than a useful tool for anthropologists to be more objective when studying different peoples, has also been used to lend a great deal of weight to the contention that there are no absolute values. Cultural relativism holds that each society deteruxines what things are moral and immoral. If indigenous peoples in Canada and Alaska allow their female offspring to die of exposure, for example, we should not condemn them for murder, since to condemn murder is to make a judgment based within our perspective, and which does not account for the perspectives of other cultures. Moral philosopher James Rachels has distinguished six characteristics of cultural relativism, all of which are compatible with a nihilistic view of morals: “1. Different societies have different moral codes. 2. There is no objective standard that can be used to judge one societal code better than another. 3. The moral code of our own society has no special status; it is merely one among many. 4. There is no ‘universal truth’ in ethics--that is, there are no moral truths that hold for all peoples at all times. 5. The moral code of a society determines what is right within that society; that is, if the moral code of a society says that a certain action is right, then that action is right, at least within that society. 6. It is mere arrogance for us to try to judge the conduct of other peoples. We should adopt an attitude of tolerance towards the practices of other cultures. Although it may seem that these six propositions go naturally together, they are independent of one another, in the sense that some of them might be true even if others are false” (Rachels, 1986, pp. 14-5). Interestingly, inspired by nihilism, we could substitute the word “people” for “societies,” and “personal” for “culture.” We would end up with absolute relativism, which many see as the current state of Western society. Such radical relativism would say that different people have different moral codes; that there is no objective standard, that “my” own code of morals has no special status, and so on. In fact, we would be justified in doing this, since it seems completely arbitrary to assume that a society has more authority than any one individual, once we have rejected the notion of moral absolutes. Western Culture has seemingly “lost” its morality. The nihilists think they were right all along. ANSWERING NIHILISM To really refute nihilism requires first an understanding of what nihilism is NOT. It is not the base statement that no truths exist, although the questioning of such truths is critical to its method; nor is it the popular cultural conception of nihilism which calls for people to reject life in general. So many philosophers have assumed this about nihilism that it is safe to say that the philosophy is seldom engaged so much as it is misinterpreted and dismissed. Instead, like all philosophical systems, nihilism must be answered “on its own terms.” This may be more difficult in the case of nihilism because it proports to be a critique of all systems. But that produces a paradox which is the real secret of answering nihilism: It is a system which says no systems are valid, and it fails to apply that truth to itself, knowing that if it did apply such a test, it would then be unable to sustain itself as a critique of other philosophical systems. A philosophy must be able to do certain things. To begin with, it must be consistent with itself. But nihilism cannot be self-consistent, as Chow argues in the evidence in this section, because at some point it must commit to a point of reference within valuing itself. Take, for instance, the metaphysical assumption that Nietzsche makes when he says that all human beings, and indeed all creatures, are driven by the will to power. If any other philosophical system made such a claim, Nietzsche and other niliiists would probably say that the claim was merely an invented truth; indeed, nihilism does not so much say “there is no truth” as it says “all truth is constructed in some way as to obscure the motives that originally existed for creating that truth.”

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If this is true, then it appears nihilism rests on the very type of assumption that its conclusions would call for us to reject: that there is a covering law, a comprehensive truth, about humanity. Where is the “proof’ that all beings desire power? If it is to be found in science, well, then, nihilism also questions the truthfulness of scientific law. Scientists, after all, are also motivated by things other than the simple search for truth, so their views are as suspect as those of any moralist. Thus, nihiists must be forced to conclude that th~re is no provable motive for the creation of truth. But if there is no provable motive, then there is no way to prove that the search for truth, whether in morality and values or in any other area, is dubious. Nihilism cannot both reject all metaphysics and also embrace the metaphysical notion of the will to power. Another thing a philosophy must be able to do, at least if it is to be a guide for action in real life, is to resolve competing claims. A philosophy is a kind of criteria that justifies choosing one thing over another when the two are in conflict. Utilitarianism, for example, would say that, given two possible courses of action, an ethical person would choose that action that is likely to result in the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Marxism would say that one should choose the action that has the most potential to empower and liberate oppressed classes and groups. But nihilism can give no such guidance, and in fact believes that such guidance is futile anyway. What sort of things does this open the door to? For one thing, it suggests that the only real way to resolve things is to resort to force. Might makes right. As Chow and others will argue in their evidence, this line of reasoning is worse than having no philosophy at all, because the moment force is allowed to resolve claims, we have lost our reasoning ability. Nihiists might reply that, in reality, such claims are resolved through force anyway, so why should we pretend otherwise? But there are two problems with this. First, we don’t really always resolve things through force; for every example of brute competition in the world we can also spot an example of mutual cooperation, the kind of respect that nihiists say is not at all genuine. Once nihilism begins making judgments like that, it becomes its own metaphysical and unproven system. Or to put it in strict logical terms: 1. We should reject all value claims. 2. The claim that we should reject all value claims is itself a value claim. 3. Therefore, we should reject the claim that we should reject all value claims. The second problem with discounting any rational way to solve problems is that it makes the very endeavor of problem-solving meaningless, and this meaninglessness cuts against nihilism as much as it does any other philosophy. It is here where the contradiction Chow speaks of is found. Nihilism claims that individuals are fundamentally autonomous and should exalt their own power. But the moment it allows force to resolve claims, autonomy is no longer possible; power relations are a zero-sum game. The reductio ad absurdum of this thinking is obvious: 1. If nihilism is true, then individuals decide which philosophy is correct by resorting to force. 2. Nihilism is a philosophy. 3. It is possible that opponents of nihilism may be more powerful than nihilism’s supporters. 4. It is therefore possible that nihiists will be defeated in a protracted war of force. 5. It is therefore possible that nihilism will be proven incorrect by force. 6. But if this is possible, then nihilism is both true and potentially untrue. What makes nihilism’s failure to resolve competing claims especially ironic is that nihilism advertises itself to be “the last philosophy” which renders any further systemic philosophy irrelevant and unnecessary. Considering that claim, nihilism should at least be able to resolve simple competing claims. Instead, nihilism defers the question, both claiming its own correctness and claiming no determination of correctness is possible.

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OTHER PROBLEMS: NIETZSCHE S NATURALISTIC FALLACY PhilosQphy normally makes a distinction between normative claims (those which say a certain state of affairs SHOULD BE) and descriptive claims (those which say a certain state of affairs IS in reality). However, across various philosophical systems, it becomes clear that there is considerable confusion between those two claims and their functions, and there is considerable overlap as well. This is especially true when we confront nihilism’s view of the barbarism of power relations. A reasonable philosophy, or indeed any reasonable observation of the world, would look at the way humans treat one another and wonder, first, if such a thing were desirable, and then, if it were not desirable, how it might be changed for the better. Nihilism cannot do this with respect to power relations because Nietzsche and his followers have assumed a descriptive claim in order to prove a normative claim. The descriptive claim is that all humans strive towards power and exploit one another to that end. The normative claim, however, is essentially the same thing: Humans should openly exploit and embrace their power relations. True, the normative claim also includes a call for authenticity, along the lines of: “Well, if that is what we really do, we shouldn’t lie to ourselves about it.” But this call for authenticity does not yield the conclusion that it is desirable for humanity to return to a state of affairs where power relations were blatant and expected, where masters had slaves and where only the strong survived. One could just as easily claim the complete opposite: That we should be honest with ourselves about how we exploit one another (which nihilism claims we should be) and that FURTHER, we should seek that honesty in order to change ourselves. Nihiists cannot refute that possible opposite conclusion, because to do so, nihilists would have to claim that such a progression would be impossible (an unprovable claim and one which, moreover, smacks of a thoroughly metaphysical fatalism, which no self-respecting nihilist would want), or that such a change would be undesirable (a claim which rests on certain value hierarchies, the entirety of which nihilism claims are unnecessary and undesirable). The contradictions go on and on... What makes nihilism especially dangerous where brutality is concerned is that it actually seems to either blatantly justify barbarism, as explained above, or at the very least, it gives no coherent argument AGAINST the use of barbarism, and in fact makes several claims open to further analysis which must finally conclude that there is no reason we should not treat each other as violently as possible, each person trying to further his or her own ends. What this comes down to is that nihilism says we should reject all faith-based, assumedly true assumptions, and this does two things: 1. It turns upon nihilism in order to prove its absurdity, as explained above; and 2. It justifies the holding of any belief, provided that individuals can defend their beliefs through force. This second implication may very well be a description of how humans behave; it is certainly not grounds for the prescription to behave in such a manner. It is certainly true that humans are often ruthless, unfair to one another, and mean-spirited. But humans can also be quite charitable, loving and forgiving towards one another. There is no justification for either supposing the former traits are ‘more natural’ than the latter, or for discouraging attempts to subvert the former in favor of the latter. Here is where the optimistic, Enlightenment view of humanity must be defended against nihilistic pessimism. Enlightenment thinking sees humans as always self-transcendent, always seeking, many times successfully, to shed traits which they deem to be negative. There is nothing philosophically brilliant about denying the possibility of humans to become better people. There is nothing “novel’ about discouraging attempts to better ourselves. Nor is such pessimism justified in the face of history. After all, we no longer enslave people based on their race; we have decided this is beneath our collective dignity. We no longer allow husbands to beat their wives. We no longer do many things we have collectively decided were brutal and dehumanizing. True, we still allow a great deal of injustice to occur. But we recognize it as injustice, in most cases, and we do our best. One of Nietzsche’s successors, Michel Foucault, has written a series of books calling human progress into question. Foucault argued that those things which we think are progressive in areas such as morality, science, medicine, 36

criminology and the like are actually nothing more than new and improved versions of domination. One example of this is Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, a book dedicated to the notion that we are just as brutal towards criminals as we were five hundred years ago; in fact, Foucault argues, we may be more dominating now than we were then. Hundreds of years ago, we tortured prisoners’ bodies. Now, he argues, we manipulate their minds in order to rehabilitate them. Such mental manipulation, he suggests, is far more dominating and dehumanizing than treating criminals as criminals and not attempting to change them. THE NECESSITY OF VALUES For Leo Strauss, who in this section argues against relativism and for the explicit acknowledgment of values, nihilism is more than simply philosophically unsound; it is also dangerous. Strauss is one of many conservative philosophers who believe that values MUST be seen as universal to prevent humans from stumbling towards self-destruction. Strauss discounts the relativist claim that, since everyone has differing conceptions of values, there are no absolute ones. He makes three important arguments in this regard. First, he argues that even though there is widespread disagreement about what things are good and what things are bad, there is still a universal notion of what it means to value things in the first place. He points out that all societies have transcendent values which they see as sacred; these values might differ in certain ways, but the concept of transcendent values is itself universal. For Strauss, this is one reason to reject relativism. His second major argument is a familiar one: There are, in fact, widely held and common values across all cultures. Two of these are the sanction against murder and the sanction against incest. While it might be pointed out that the sanction against murder is not universal, since certain cultures commit infanticide and others favor the death penalty, these exceptions only prove the general nile: Infanticide was permitted because the survival of the entire tribe was often at stake in areas, such as Alaska, where resources are seasonally limited. In the case of the death penalty, it might be pointed out that, whatever the morality of the practice, its intent at least is to send a message regarding the absolute sanctity of life, the absolute prohibition against murder. The existence of common values across cultural differences cuts against the notion that there is no absolute morality. Finally, Strauss argues that these differing conceptions of morality only prove the need to find and hold on to an objective standard of value. The fact that we have not yet been able to find the universality of morality should be an incentive, he argues, not a discouragement, to finding the universals. Strauss believes that societies which allow themselves to move away from common standards of morality are invariably brutal and lack the solidarity necessary for civilization’s survival. Conservatives believe this is true from their observations about contemporary society. Every day we seem to read or hear of incidents which make us fear for who we are: incoherent murders, committed for the sake of a few dollars or a pair of shoes, or motivated by racism or homophobia. We hear about political leaders lying (and getting away with it) and gradually cease to wonder why so many of our children lie as well. This, Strauss suggests, is the outcome of the abandonment of morals. Nietzsche thought we would be better people once we abandoned the archaic notions of morality that governed humanity for so many centuries. Strauss suggested otherwise, and contemporary society may vindicate Strauss far more than Nietzsche. In addition, Strauss makes an even more provocative argument about value judgements: they are inevitable. We cannot avoid them. This is certainly true in the case of nihilism, since to say that values are “bad” is obviously a value judgment. Strauss believes it is true in all cases. Scientists studying phenomena bring their own senses of importance and unimportance into their studies; political scientists and sociologists have notions of good and bad which they may try to hide, but ultimately such deception is unsuccessful. Transc~ident moral principles do exist, he says, and what is more, we search for them in everything we do, whether consciously or not: “All political action aims at either preservation or change. When desiring to preserve, we wish to prevent a change to the worse; when desiring to change, we wish to bring about something better. All political action is then guided by some thought of better or worse. But thought of better or worse implies thought of the good. The awareness of the good which guides all our actions has the character of opinion: it is no longer questioned but, on reflection, it 37

proves to be questionable. The very fact that we can question it directs us towards such a thought of the good as is no longer questionable--towards a thought which is no longer opinion but knowledge. All political action has then in itself a directedness towards knowledge of the good: of the good life, or of the good society. For the good society is the complete political good” (Strauss, POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY, 1975, p. 3). In fact, Strauss argues, trying to hide these value judgments simply makes the values reappear elsewhere, and often in distorted, potentially desctructive forms. At some point we must accept a few things that we cannot necessarily prove. The failure to do this will not make us healthy nihilists; instead, it will make us pathetic skeptics who are unable to function as human beings, period. TOWARDS A MORE OPTIMISTIC VIEW OF HUMANITY In a nutshell, the problem with nihilism is that humanity is not as Nietzsche says it is. True, sometimes we lie to ourselves and to others. Sometimes we cover our brutality up, disguising it as virtue. But we do not ALWAYS do these things, and if we can know the difference between doing them and not doing them, then the possibility exists that we can do them considerably less than we do now. Nietzsche believed some people were born to lead (masters) and others to follow (slaves). He referred to moral codes which advocate equality and cooperation as “slave moralities,” systems invented by the weak in order to impress the powerful into surrendering some of their power. He wrote: “Slave-morality is essentially a utility-morality. Here is the cornerstone for the origin of that famous Antithesis “good vs. evil.” Power and dangerousness, a certain frightfulness, subtlety and strength which do not permit of despisal, are felt to belong to evil. Hence according to slave morality, the “evil” man inspires fear; according to master morality, the “good” man does and wants to, whereas the “bad” man is felt to be despicable” (BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL, p. 206). Are we all either masters and slaves? Hardly. The progress of civilization has shown that different people are “masters” at different things. We have learned that powerful people can lose their power, sometimes involuntarily, sometimes in acts of unbelievable self-sacrifice. The democracy and egalitarianism that Nietzche derided has resulted in a complex society where people once thought to be “weak” and “useless,” such as women, minorities, and the physically challenged, can excell at things that make them valuable both to themselves and to others. There may very well be a “will to power,” but it is better to locate the nexis of that power within society itself, rather than individuals struggling against each other. The atomistic dog-eat-dog world of Nietzsche is as metaphysical, unjustified, and wishful than any metaphysical system he ridiculed. It is curious why nihiists believe that the moral demand of self-restraint is a sign of weakness. From another, more historically aware perspective, it can be argued that such a desire for peace and cooperation is a recognition of our potentially destructive strength, a recognition far more realistic and more grounded in experience than the nihilists realize. Even if, as Nietzsche believed, power is something desirable, niihiists must at some point admit that we will all be much more powerful if we do not destroy ourselves through petty (and not so petty) struggles over resources, prestige and pride.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Ansell-Parson, Keith. AN INTRODUCTION TO NIETZSCHE AS POLITICAL THINKER (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). Devme, Philip E. RELATIVISM, NIHILISM, AND GOD (Notre Dame, md.: University of Norre Dame Press, 1989). Crosby, Donald A. THE SPECTER OF THE ABSURD: SOURCES AND CRITICISMS OF MODERN NIHILISM (Albany: SUNY Press, 1988). Stack, George J. KIERKEGAARD’S EXISTENTIAL ETHICS (Birmingham: University of Alabama Press, 1977). Rosen, Stanley. NIHILISM: A PHILOSOPHICAL ESSAY (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1969). Gillespie, Michael Allen. NIHILISM BEFORE NIETZSCHE (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995). Connolly, William E. THE AUGUSTINIAN IMPERATIVE: A REFLECTION ON THE POLITICS OF MORALITY (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1993). Krell, David Farrell. INFECTUOUS NIETZSCHE (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996). Haar, Michael. NIETZSCHE AND METAPHYSICS (Albany: SUNY Press, 1996). Lampert, Lawrence. LEO STRAUSS AND NIETZSCHE (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). Warren, Mark E. NIETZSCHE AND POLITICAL THOUGHT (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1988). Diethe, Carol. NIETZSCHE’S WOMEN: BEYOND THE WHIP (Berlin, NY: W. deGruyter, 1996). Moser, Shia. ABSOLUTISM AND RELATIVISM IN ETHICS (Springfield, Ill.: Thomas, 1968). Ladd, John. ETHICAL RELATIVISM (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1973). Harman, Gilbert. MORAL RELATIVISM AND MORAL OBJECTIVITY (Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1996). Melchert, Norman. WHO’S TO SAY?: A DIALOGUE ON RELATIVISM (Indianapolis: Hacket, 1994).

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NIHILISM IS PHILOSOPHICALLY FLAWED AND FOUNDATIONLESS 1. NIETZSCHE’S WILL TO POWER IS INFINITELY REGRESSIVE Stanley Rosen, Professor of Philosophy at Boston University, THE MASK OF ENLIGHTENMENT: NIETZSCHE’S ZARATHUSTRA, 1995, pp. 56-7. The will to power is in fact an infinite regression of points of force. This is what Nietzsche means when he refers to the will as an exotic concept. No apparent cohesions, or what one might call fields of force, have a unifying identity. Hence personal identity is an illusion. 2. NIETZCHEAN CONCEPT OF GOODNESS IS INTERNALLY CONTRADICTORY Stanley Rosen, Professor of Philosophy at Boston University, THE MASK OF ENLIGHTENMENT: NIETZSCHE’S ZARATHUSTRA, 1995, p. 248. Nietzsche’s perception of nobility suffers from two internal flaws that render it unstable. On the one hand, he combines a classical elegance and Heiterkeit, or serene distance, with the sensibility of late-modern skepticism. On the other hand, his perception of human existence is decisively colored by the ideology of nineteenth century materialism, which is incapable of encompassing the concept of nobility, even when it attempts to apply that concept to itself. 3. NIHILISTS CANNOT MAINTAIN THEIR POSITIONS CONSISTENTLY Daniel C.K. Chow, Associate Professor, The Ohio State University College of Law, TULANE LAW REVIEW, December, 1990, p. 224 Nihilism is a difficult position to maintain consistently because it leads to an extreme skepticism and the total rejection of reason, law, and ethics as a means of settling disputes. Indeed, as I argue, even the most avid nihiists, such as Joseph Singer and Cary Peller, must eventually retreat from nihilism and act contrary to the radical consequences of their position. NIHILISM FAILS BECAUSE IT CANNOT RESOLVE ANY CONFLICTS 1. NIHILISM FAILS TO GIVE ANY SOLUTION TO DIFFERING OPINIONS Daniel C. K. Chow, Associate Professor, The Ohio State University College of Law, TULANE LAW REVIEW, December, 1990, p. 290. The nihilists start with the fundamental contradiction. The price of living with others is some compromise of individual autonomy since conflict among individuals is inevitable. At the same time, we cannot do without others since they are necessary to our self-fulfillment. Although others threaten our individual autonomy with “annihilation,” they are nevertheless a necessary part of our lives. The result of living with others, then, is the need to protect our autonomy from violation by others in certain cases. It is impossible~ not to use coercion in our daily lives with others. The fundamental contradiction is precisely that we coerce others in order to maintain our individual autonomy. 2. NIHILIST INDIVIDUAL STRUGGLE CREATES A PHILOSOPHICAL CONTRADICTION Daniel C.K. Chow, Associate Professor, The Ohio State University College of Law, TULANE LAW REVIEW, December, 1990, p. 291. Either extreme position compromises the nihilists’ fundamental contradiction. A position that permits tyranny allows arbitrary violation of individual autonomy and is a rejection of the individual. A position that espouses absolute individual autonomy means that we cannot live with others and thus satisfy our longing for others. Absolute individual autonomy implies an incredible solipsism and a rejection of others. Under either extreme position, tyranny or absolute individual autonomy, we cannot maintain our own individual autonomy, and at the same time engage in satisfying relationships with others.

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VALUE JUDGMENTS ARE INEVITABLE 1. VALUE JUDGMENTS ARE INEVITABLE Leo Strauss, political philosopher. POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY, 1975, pp. 16-7. It is impossible to study any social phenomena, i.e., all important social phenomena, without making value judgments. A man who sees no reason for not despising people whose horizon is limited to their consumption of food and their digestion may be a tolerable econometrist; he cannot say anything relevant about the character of a human society. A man who refuses to distinguish between great statesmen, mediocrities, and insane impostors may be a good bibliographer; he cannot say anything relevant about politics and political histoiy. A man who cannot distinguish between a profound religious thought and a languishing superstition may be a good statistician; he cannot say anything relevant about the sociology of religion. Generally speaking, it is impossible to understand thought or action or work without evaluating It. 2. TRYING TO REMOVE VALUE ANALYSIS SIMPLY HIDES IT ELSEWHERE Leo Strauss, political philosopher. POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY, 1975, p. 17. The value judgments which are forbidden to enter through the front door of political science, sociology, or economics enter these disciplines through the back door; they come from that annex of present-day social science which is called psychopathology. Social scientists see themselves compelled to speak of unbalanced, neurotic, maladjusted people. But these value judgments are distinguished from those used by the great historians, not by greater clarity or certainty, but merely by their poverty: a slick operator is as well adjusted as--he may be better adjusted than--a good man or a good citizen. Finally, we must not overlook the invisible value judgments which are concealed from undiscerning eyes but nevertheless most powerfully present in allegedly pure descriptive concepts. 3. WE MUST, AT TIMES, BELIEVE UNJUSTIFIABLE IDEAS Daniel C.K. Chow, Associate Professor, The Ohio State University College of Law, TULANE LAW REVIEW, December, 1990, p. 295. Like all other philosophy and like traditional legal theory itself, nihilism must at some point assert beliefs that cannot be rationally and conclusively defended against a skeptical challenge. A life without any belief does not seem possible even for the most radical skeptic. The nihilist must at some point retreat from his extreme skepticism and admit that we must hold some beliefs although we can never justify them. 4. WE MUST CREATE VALUES WE CAN’T OBJECTIVELY PROVE Simone DeBeauvoir, French philosopher. THE ETHICS OF AMBIGUITY, 1972, p. 57. The nihilist is right in thinking that the world possesses no justification and that he himself is nothing~. But he forgets that it is up to him to justify the world and to make himself exist validly. Instead of integrating death into life, he sees in it the only truth of the life which appears to him as a disguised death. However, there is life, and the nihilist knows that he is alive. That’s where his failure lies. He rejects existence without managing to eliminate it. He denies any meaning to transcendence, and yet he transcends himself.

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NIHILISM’S IMMORALITY THREATENS TO DESTROY HUMANITY 1. WE SHOULD REJECT ANY PHILOSOPHY WHICH ALLOWS REPUGNANT MORALS Daniel C.K. Chow, Associate Professor, The Ohio State University College of Law, TULANE LAW REVIEW, December, 1990, P. 286 My argument is that, as a philosophy for a society, nihilism would permit others to hold any moral position because it becomes impossible to argue for or against any moral position if we do not start with some assumptions. Some individual or groups may then espouse atrocious moral views. This is permitted in a nihilist world. My argument is that we do not wish to adopt any philosophy or position, such as nihilism, that would even permit such a view, whether such a view ultimately becomes adopted or not. 2. NIHILISM THREATENS HUMANITY THROUGH CIVILIZED BARBARISM Nimrod Aloni, Professor of Philosophy at Columbia, BEYOND NIHILISM, 1991, p. 98. There is one aspect of ethical nihilism, however, that is characteristically modem and that constitutes a major threat to contemporary humanity: the rise of the ‘civilized barbarian,” namw-minded scholar, or of the “inverse cripple” and “fragment of humanity” as Nietzsche calls this new type of man. Following the identification of knowledge with scientific knowledge, the increasing tendency to define practical problems as technical issues, and the specialization of knowledge and higher education, we have been witnessing the departmentalization and fragmentation of man himself. 3. NIHILISM SEEKS TO MAKE MURDEROUS AND DESTRUCTIVE ACTS MORE EFFICIENT Nirnrod Aloni, Professor of Philosophy at Columbia, BEYOND NIHILISM, 1991, p. 100. At the same time, individuals and institutions which identify the expert with his expertise, would tend to consider his existence primarily in terms of its utility; they would do, on their part, all they can to utilize the expert’s knowledge and skills and to provide him with the best materials and facilities for the purpose of advancing their own interests and goals. Thus, this particular combination of interests promotes the development of a situation in which highly learned professional persons--who may regard moral, social and political issues as outside their scope--willingly contribute their highly developed skills to the execution of projects and operations whose desirability, or they ends they serve, have been examined carelessly at best. Or eves worse, this may result--as many social and political events in the twentieth century have demonstrated--in efficient utilization of these skills to cany out some of the cruelest, most murderous, destructive, and dehumanizing acts in the history of mankind.

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NIHILISM DESTROYS FREEDOM 1. NIHILISM JUSTIFIES UNRESTRAINED FORCE, CONTROL AND DOMINATION Daniel C.K. Chow, Associate Professor, The Ohio State University College of Law, TULANE LAW REVIEW, December, 1990, P. 284-5 Opponents of nihilism often attempt to rebut nihilism by charging that it permits the use of force as the final arbiter of human affairs and that nihilism leads to the conclusion that “might makes right.” If there is no rational way to prove that any actions are right or wrong, then ethics and morals will no longer constrain the dark side of human nature. Individuals will engage in an unbridled quest for wealth and power and the powerful will indulge their lust for control and domination. Since power is concentrated in the government, the government will feel free to exercise this power without any limitations whatsoever. Individual autonomy is left completely unprotected from the tyranny of the powerful. 2. IMPOSSIBILITY OF MORALITY LEADS TO THE JUSTIFICATION OF TYRANNY Daniel C.K. Chow, Associate Professor, The Ohio State University College of Law, TULANE LAW REVIEW, December, 1990, p. 285 Yet, the bite of the argument that nihilism permits tyranny is not based simply on the credibility of some empirical assertions about psychological and sociological attitudes. We do not wish to adopt any theory that permits certainmoral positions that are repugnant to our intuitive moral sensibilities, whether there are now some persons who are ready to adopt such positions. If we take nihilism seriously, then it does permit persons to hold repugnant moral positions. Since nihilism asserts that it makes no metaphysical assumptions whatsoever as starting points, then it is impossible to reject any moral position. If we do not start with some assumptions that lead us logically or otherwise to prefer some moral beliefs over others, then it is not possible to argue that any moral belief, no, matter how atrocious, is wrong and cannot be held. 3. NIHILISM MAKES TYRANNY A MORAL ALTERNATIVE Daniel C.K. Chow, Associate Professor, The Ohio State University College of Law, TULANE LAW REVIEW, December, 1990, p. 285-6 In a world without any initial moral assumptions, tyranny becomes an available moral alternative. It becomes possible, for example, for an individual or a group to undertake the view that there is no need to provide a moral, legal, or any form of justification for any acts, including acts imposingsevere deprivations on others through force or coercion. While others may not agree with such a view, under nihilism, they cannot claim that such a view is wrong or should be rejected since there are no shared moral assumptions that provide the starting points for any discussion or arguments. We can only conclude that some positions are wrong if we share some initial metaphysical assumptions about what is right or wrong. If, as the nihilists argue, they have no starting assumptions that are shared, the nihilists are freeto reject some positions for themselves, but they cannot compel others to reject any moral position, no matter how abominable. The nihilists can attempt only to persuade groups to abandon certain views, but if such groups refuse to do so,the nihilists cannot force them to do so. Moreover, the nihiists also cannot assert that these groups are morally wrong.

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RELATIVISM IS INCORRECT 1. RELATIVISM IS PHILOSOPHICALLY FLAWED Leo Strauss, political philosopher. POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY, 1975, pp. 146-7. The historicist thesis is then exposed to a very obvious difficulty which cannot be solved but only evaded or obscured by considerations of a more subtle character. Historicism asserts that all human thoughts or beliefs are historical, and hence deservedly destined to perish; but historicism is itself a human thought; hence historicism can be of only temporary validity, or it cannot simply be tine. To assert the historicist thesis means to doubt it and thus to transcend it. 2. RELATIVISM IS SELF-CONTRADICTORY Leo Strauss, political philosopher. POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY, 1975, p. 147. Historicism thrives on the fact that it inconsistently exempts itself from its own verdict about all human thought. The historicist thesis is self-contradictory or absurd. We cannot see the historical character of “all” thought--that is, of all thought with the exception of the historicist insight and its implications--without transcending history, without grasping something trans-historical. 3. RELATIVISM CANNOT JUSTIFY ITS OWN ASSUMPTIONS Leo Strauss, political philosopher. NATURAL RIGHT AND HISTORY, 1968, p. 97. For our present purpose it is sufficient to give an analysis of the standard argument used by conventionalism. That argument is to the effect that there cannot be natural right because “the just things” differ from society to society. This argument has shown an amazing vitality throughout the ages, a vitality which seems to contrast with its intrinsic worth. As usually presented, this argument consists of a simple enumeration of the different notions of justice that prevail or prevailed in different nations or at different times within the same nation. As we have indicated before, the mere fact of variety or mutability of “the just things” or of the notions of justice does not warrant the rejection of natural right except if one makes certain assumptions, and these assumptions are in most cases not even stated. 4. DIFFERENT MORALITY ONLY PROVES THE NEED FOR AN OBJECTIVE STANDARD Leo Strauss, political philosopher. POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY, 1975, p. 132. Above all, knowledge of the indefinitely large variety of notions of right and wrong is so far from being incompatable with the idea of natural right that it is the essential condition of the emergence of that idea: realization of the variety of notions of right is the incentive for the quest for natural right.

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Animal Rights Good ANIMALS HAVE INHERENT RIGHTS 1. ANIMALS ARE SUBJECTS-OF-A-LIFE THAT DEMANDS RESPECT Gaxy L. Francione, Professor of Law and Nicholas B. Katzenbach Scholar of Law and Philosophy at Rutgers University School of Law and co-director of the Rutgers University Animal Rights Law Center, RUTGERS LAW REVIEW, Winter, 1996, PP. 418-419. The basic moral right to respectful treatment is universal: all relevantly similar individuals have it, and they have it equally. Further, the right to respectful treatment is no stronger in the case of moral agents than in the case of moral patients. Both agents and patients have inherent value (based on the subject-of-a-life criterion) and both possess it equally. The right to respectful treatment prohibits treating those affected as mere “receptacles” of intrinsic values, as advocated by the utilitarians. From the right to respectful treatment, another right can be derived: the prima facie right of the moral agent or patient not to be harmed. The harm principle can be derived from the respect principle in that all those who satisfy the subject-of-a-life criterion will have an experiential welfare that can be harmed or benefited, and will be regarded as having equal inherent value. As a prima facie matter, harming the interests of a subject-of-a-life shows disrespect for the inherent value of that moral agent or patient. 2. ANIMALS AND HUMANS SHARE MORAL PREREQUISITES FOR RIGHTS Henry Cohen, book review editor, FEDERAL LAWYER, November/December, 1996, p. 46. But let’s back up a bit. Why should we deem animals to have moral rights? Simply, for exactly the same reason we deem people to have rights: because each has inherent value, for himself or herself, and not, like property, value merely as a means to others’ ends. All but the most primitive species of animals are, like people, sentient creatures who feel pain the same as we do, and who possess beliefs, desires, memories, perceptions, and intentions in ways similar to us. If we have rights on the basis of attributes like these, then animals too should be deemed to have rights rights that may not be sacrificed or violated merely for human benefit.

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3. ANIMALS AND HUMANS HAVE EQUAL INHERENT VALUE Gary L. Francione, Professor of Law and Nicholas B. Katzenbach Scholar of Law and Philosophy at Rutgers University School of Law and co-director of the Rutgers University Animal Rights Law Center, RUTGERS LAW REVIEW, Winter, 1996, p. 419. The reason for Regan’s abolitionist position should be apparent in light of the foregoing analysis. Regan believes that humans and nonhumans are subjects- of-a-life that have equal inherent value. The respect principle requires that no innocent individual be harmed unless it can be justified without assuming that the fundamental interests of human or nonhuman rightholders can be treated in an mstmmental way. The use of animals for food, sport, entertainment, or research all involve treating animals merely as means to ends and this constitutes a violation of the respect principle. Moreover, ani mal exploiters have no liberty to use animals because the liberty principle allows for harming innocent individuals only when their equal inherent value has been respected. By definition, this is not the case when animals are treated solely as means to ends.

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SPECIESISM IS MORALLY EQUIVALENT TO RACISM OR SEXISM 1. DENYING RIGHTS TO ANIMALS IS SPECIESISM LOGICALLY EQUIVALENT TO RACISM Gaiy L. Francione, Professor of Law and Nicholas B. Katzenbach Scholar of Law and Philosophy at Rutgers University School of Law and co-director of the Rutgers University Animal Rights Law Center, RUTGERS LAW REVIEW, Winter, 1996, pp. 411-412. In Animal Liberation, Singer argues that in assessing the consequences of human actions--including those actions affecting animals--it is necessary to take the interests of animals seriously. Any adverse effects on animal interests must be weighed as part of the consequences of human actions. Humans fail to do this, Singer argues, because of a species bias, or speciesism, that has resulted in the systematic devaluation of animal interests. Singer claims that speciesism is no more morally defensible than racism, sexism or other forms of discrimination that arbitrarily exclude humans from the scope of moral concern. When people seek to justify the horrific way in which animals are treated, they invariably point to supposed animal “defects,” such as the inability of animals to use human language or to reason as intricately as humans. But there are severely retarded humans who cannot speak or reason (or, at least, can do so no better than many nonhumans), and most of us would be appalled at the thought of using such humans in experiments, or for food or clothing. Singer maintains that the only way to justify our present level of animal exploitation is to maintain that species differences alone justify that exploitation. That is no different, Singer argues, from saying that differences in race alone or sex alone justify differential treatment. -

2. EXPLOITATION OF ANIMALS IS DIRECTLY LINKED TO EXPLOITATION OF HUMANS Adam M. Roberts, lobbyist and researcher for animal protection issues, HOUSTON JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW, Winter, 1996, pp. 595-596. Famed attorney and nemesis of social inequality, William M. Kunstler, provides an eloquent forward to this volume which should make all who are concerned with a positive legal revolution for the welfare of animals saddened not only by his death, but by the fact that it was not until late in his life that Kunstler realized the importance of legal protection for animals. He made the intellectual and emotional leap into the recognition that animal rights is an issue to be taken seriously by asserting that “our exploitation of animals has a direct link to our exploitation of our perennial human victims: African- Americans, poor whites, J..atinos, women.., to name a few disempowered groups.” More importantly, Kunstler admits that beyond the animal-human relationship, animals are individuals with interests. He accurately surmises that “(j)ustice for nonhumans requires that we recognize that all sentient beings have inherent worth that does not depend on our humanocentric and patriarchal valuation of that worth.” 3. ANIMAL EXPLOITATION HAS THE SAME MORAL STRUCTURE AS HUMAN SLAVERY Gary L. Francione, Professor of Law and Nicholas B. Katzenbach Scholar of Law and Philosophy at Rutgers University School of Law and co-director of the Rutgers University Animal Rights Law Center, RUTGERS LAW REVIEW, Winter, 1996, p. 444. Although there were supposedly laws that protected slaves from particular types of treatment, such as “excessive” beatings or “unnecessary” punishment, the law usually assumed that the master was the best judge of how slave property ought to be used and that the master would act in a self-interested way with respect to that property. Indeed, Virginia had a law that a master who killed a slave as part of disciplining the slave could not have been said to have acted with malice (a prerequisite for a murder conviction) because of a presumption that the master would not intentionally destroy the master’s own property. Whether slaves should have rights is an entirely different question from what rights slaves ought to have. To say that slavery should be abolished is nothing more or less than to maintain that slaves should be removed from the class of legal entities known as things and placed instead in the class of legal entities known as persons. To do so would mean that people who were formerly regarded as things that could not have nonbasic rights can now have these rights; however, it does not specify the content of such rights. Society may agree that slavery should be abolished, but may disagree that former slaves should be given nonbasic rights such as a right to a certain level of material wealth. For these reasons, we cannot really talk about animals’ rights, as long as animals are regarded as property.

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Animal Rights Bad ANIMAL RIGHTS IS AN INVALID PROPOSITION 1. ANIMAL RIGHTS IMPLY A DANGEROUSLY AUTHORITARIAN STATE David R. Schmahmann and Lan J. Polacheck, associates in Nutter, McClerman and Fish, BOSTON COLLEGE ENVIRONMENTAL AFFAIRS LAW REVIEW, Summer, 1995, p. 760. The question which must arise in the context of any proposal that the government endow rights on animals is how such a notion can be reconciled with the very definition of “rights” in a constitutional democracy. Any real acceptance of the notion must mean reposing in the government a wholly new and undefined set of powers, presumably to be exercised on behalf of an entirely new and vague constituency. The notion contemplates the creation of a vast, unprecedented, intrusive, and uncircumscribable jurisprudence in which the government erects barriers to human conduct on the strength, not of competing human interests--be they economic, esthetic, or humanitarian--or the delegation of power to it by individuals, but of assumptions about the interests of animals assessed by the government apart from human interests or experience. Not only may this be impossible, but in the contemplated nonspeciesist world, where there would be no hierarchy within the animal kingdom just as there would be no hierarchy between humans and animals, the “rights” of individual animals would exist in competition with the rights of individual humans. Thus, no rat could be harmed, chicken cooked, or rabbit dissected without government permission or the prospect of government scrutiny. If some government agency were given the power to act in the interest of animals, the result would be the creation of a vast, intrusive structure which would erect barriers to human conduct on the strength, not of competing human interests, but of assessments of the interests of animals conducted without reference to human interests or experience. 2. DARWINISM SUPPORTS HUMANITY’S RIGHT TO USE ANIMALS Jeff Bucholtz, nqa, THE WASHINGTON POST, June 16, 1990, p. A21. Or if McCarthy is uncomfortable with Immanuel Kant’s conception of morals and ethics, he could try Darwin’s. McCarthy agreed with Singer’s equation of speciesism, the belief in the primacy of one’s own species, with racism and sexism. But according to Darwin, the primary motivation of all life is the perpetuation of one’s species. Whether one species is “better” than another in abstract moral terms is irrelevant. The natural predilection toward speciesism is not evil, but the supreme law of nature. 3. HUMAN INTERESTS MUST BE THE TOP PRIORITY David R. Schmahmann and Lori J. Polacheck, associates in Nutter, McClennan and Fish, BOSTON COLLEGE ENVIRONMENTAL AFFAIRS LAW REVIEW, Summer, 1995, p. 761. The only measure--true north, the touchstone--must be human interests. These interests could be aesthetic or humanitarian and could seek to weigh all the factors the range of human dialog about animals includes. But it is human interest, whether it be in the environment, the need to show compassion, or the need to. advance science, that must be weighed, not any supposed interest in an anthropomorphized rat or a Disneyfled rabbit. When overpopulation of deer threaten a water supply the deer must be culled, and without due process for the deer. When rabbits ruin vital crops the rabbits must be exterminated. When human medical advances require vivisection, vivisection may continue without unnecessary harm but with such harm as may be necessary for its purpose. We do not see how a legal system in which human rights are enshrined could approach these matters differently. Our moral and legal systems cannot accommodate a theory that purports to detach decisions as to how we should treat animals from an anthropocentric reference point and have these decisions revolve around some other concept, such as that of “civil rights” for beings that cannot articulate their own interests and about whose true sapience, awareness, knowledge of death, and value of life we know so little.

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ANIMALS SHOULD NOT BE ATTRIBUTED RIGHTS 1. ATTRIBUTING RIGHTS TO ANIMALS IS A DANGEROUS DOCTRINE David R. Schmahmann and Lori J. Polacheck, associates in Nutter, McClennan and Fish, BOSTON COLLEGE ENVIRONMENTAL AFFAIRS LAW REVIEW, Summer, 1995, P. 752. It would be both implausible and dangerous to give or attribute legal rights to animals because such extension of legal rights would have serious, detrimental impacts on human rights and freedoms. This Article is not, however, aimed at those who urge that we interact with animal life in ways that are humane, esthetic, and environmentally sound. Nor is this Article aimed at those who worry that society’s present ways of producing food and conducting research may be wasteful and disruptive of nature’s balance. Instead, this Article is aimed at those who believe that every individual animal, in itself, possesses certain rights which, when violated, give rise to claims that may be pursued legally at the animal’s “behest” and for relief running to the animal’s “benefit.” 2. ANIMALS LACK THE BASIC PREREQUISITES FOR HAVING RIGHTS Julian Simon, population biologist, THE ULTIMATE RESOURCE 2, 1996, pp. 457-458. The idea of rights is one that a group defines for itself, and/or fights for. True rights cannot be assigned by others. When rights are assigned, the system is dictatorship, and the rights continue to exist just so long as the dictator bestows them. Self-defined rights, on the other hand, involve such matters as laws, a constitution, courts, and the like. The notion of self-defined rights obviously is nonsensical for species other than humans, and calls into question the idea of rights for them. 3. ABILITY TO SUFFER IS NOT ENOUGH TO EXTEND RIGHTS David R Schmabmann and Lori J. Polacheck, associates in Nutter, McClennan and Fish, BOSTON COLLEGE ENVIRONMENTAL AFFAIRS LAW REVIEW, Summer, 1995, p. 752. You can’t find an animal rights book, video, pamphlet, or rock concert in which someone doesn’t mention the Great Sentence, written by Jeremy Bentham in 1789. Arguing in favor of such rights Bentham wrote “The question is not can they reason? nor, can they talk? but, can they suffer?” The logic of the animal rights movement places suffering at the iconographic center of a skewed value system. Whether or not animals suffer, however, only begins the analysis. As interesting as it is to dwell on the relative capacities for suffering of various species and the possibility that some animals may suffer less under human control than when left alone, the ability to suffer cannot, standing alone, be the sole tool with which access to legal rights and remedies is analyzed. 4. ANIMALS LACK MORAL MORAL CLAIMS TO RIGHTS Jeff Bucholtz, nqa, THE WASHINGTON POST, June 16, 1990, p. A21. In his fawning, one-sided tribute to animal-rights activist Peter Singer, Colman McCarthy maintained that “the ethical case for butchery and torture of animals can’t be made because none exists.” He’s wrong. For starters, there is the Kantian argument that we have a moral obligation to behave “ethically” only to those beings also possessed of the capacity of moral judgment. Under this ethical scheme, a being’s “rights” are derived from its ability to perceive the moral value of those rights and to reciprocate them. Since animals are incapable of this, they have no moral claim to “rights.” 5.HUMANITY MUST BE KEPT DISTINCT TO PROTECT HUMANS David R. Schmahmann and Lori J. Polacheck, associates in Nutter, McClennan and Fish, BOSTON COLLEGE ENVIRONMENTAL AFFAIRS LAW REVIEW, Summer, 1995, p. 752-753. Before Singer wrote Animal Liberation, one philosopher wrote: If it is once observed that there is no difference in principle between the case of dogs, cats, or horses, or stags, foxes, and hares, and that of tsetse-flies or tapeworms or the bacteria in our own blood-stream, the conclusion likely to be drawn is that there is so much wrong that we cannot help doing to the brute creation that it is best not to trouble ourselves about it any more at all. The ultimate sufferers are likely to be our fellow men, because the final conclusion is likely to be, not that we ought to treat the brutes like human beings, but that there is no good reason why we should not treat human beings like brutes.

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Animal Rights Responses Though animal rights activists vary across a wide spectrum of ideologies involving animals, this essay will attempt to consolidate their position and provide arguments to defeat that position in the course of a debate round. For the purposes of this essay, we will define animal rights as living without human interference. That is, animals have as many rights as human beings do. Peter Singer once explained that the question we should ask about other beings is not whether or not they can think, but whether or not they can feel. Since animals can feel pain, they deserve the same rights as any other creature who can feel pain. We must therefore not subject animals to any behavior or treatment that we would consider unethical if done to a human being. Undoubtedly, this mindset is not widely accepted in the United States and the world today. As one author discussing animals today noted, “I will pay you the honor of skipping a recital of the horrors of their lives and deaths. Though I have no reason to believe that you have at the forefront of your minds what is being done to animals at this moment in production facilities (I hesitate to call them farms any longer), in abattoirs, in trawlers, in laboratories, all over the world, I will take it that you concede me the rhetorical power to evoke these horrors and bring them home to you with adequate force, and leave it at that, reminding you only that the horrors I here omit are nevertheless at the center of this lecture.”1 I, too, will skip a lengthy discussion of the abuse that animal rights activists see in the world around them, and instead focus on the answers to their arguments. INTERACTION WITH HUMANS BENEFITS ANIMALS Animal rights activists would have us believe that animals are only harmed by humans. The philosophy they advocate would have human beings leave animals alone, to their own activities and desires. However, in many instances, not only does human interaction with animals not cause those animals harm, but helps them as well. This involves largely the mentality of a caretaker. Author Mike Appleby alludes to that role in his book, What Should We Do About Animal Welfare? He returns to the Biblical story of Noah and the ark, where Noah gathered two each of every kind of animal to preserve their species when the great flood came. Appleby states, “The humans, then, were looking after all the other, non-human species of animal. Humans are animals, of course, but humans are also different from other species.”2 Appleby notes the preservation aspect of human interaction with animals. In the book Ethics, Animals, and Science, author Kevin Dolan outlines several other ways in which human interaction benefits animals. The first area that interaction with humans benefits animals is in terms of domestication. Domestication stretches back into prehistory. Some suspect that it may have even been initiated by animals, who were looking for comfort from the cold and found a caveperson’s fire. Scientists have even argued that animals like the dog and cat are predisposed to domesticity because of delayed adulthood. 3 There are several benefits that animals receive as a result of domesticity. The first is protection in a world that previously offered them none. Whether they are in the coop, the paddock, or the home; animals are safer in a domestic setting than they are in the wild. This protection includes the ability to not worry about predators, and to have a shelter from wind, rain, or sun. Extremes of weather can actually kill, and that is a problem that domesticated animals do not encounter. Domesticated animals receive a regular supply of food and water that they do not have to hunt or find. Food itself has been developed for particular animals, increasing their nutrition and energy levels.4 Governments have laws that protect domesticated animals from mistreatment, and this protects the animals’ welfare. The breeding that happens selectively has also improved upon the animals. They have in some instances grown larger, stronger, better adapted to a specific purpose, or more intelligent.5 All of these benefits would not be enjoyed by animals if they had not been domesticated. A second area where interaction with humans benefits animals is regarding veterinary medicine. The benefits that stem from veterinary medicine do not stop with those animals that are possessed by humans, but rather have been extended to animals in wildlife hospitals and sanctuaries. An abundance of medicines and vaccines have been produced, and animals like cattle, pigs, and sheep are all healthier than they were without veterinary advances. Similarly, more of the young that these animals have survive thanks to veterinary medicine. Anti-parasitic drugs and 49

antibiotic drugs in particular have been helpful and prevented the deaths of many animals. 6 Animals lead longer, healthier lives thanks to veterinary medicine. A third area where interaction with humans has benefited animals is in terms of transport. As Dolan puts it, “As the human race has spread over the globe it has taken its animals with it. Various benefits have accrued to these animals from the new terrain and climates in which they found themselves. Animals themselves, independent of nomads, have hitched rides with human travellers.”7 Dolan offers the example of the rat that has depended upon humanity to survive and move. A fourth area where interaction with humans has benefited animals is in the area of conservation. It is true that this aspect of human help is a more recent historical development, however, it is still valuable. Past views of animals in the wild revolved around either hunting or game. The newer and more enlightened, less anthropocentric view is that species should be protected regardless of their association with human beings. Rare species are especially being protected in an effort to avoid extinction. Human involvement in breeding animals has also led to more diverse species and a greater chance of survival. 8 Many will undoubtedly point out that human beings are the largest cause of animal species being rare or extinct. This does not deny, however, that conservation efforts help animals and are a result of their interaction with human beings. With all of these benefits being given to animals due to interaction with humans, it is clear that animals should not just be left alone and given the same treatment that fellow humans would be given. Instead, the validity of these benefits should be noted and the animals rights position rejected. THERE ARE RELEVANT DIFFERENCES BETWEEN HUMANS AND ANIMALS Animals rights advocates make arguments that animals should be treated in the same way that human beings are treated. They do not maintain that animals are the same as humans, rather, they argue that the differences between the two are irrelevant. As one author notes, “If we can find no morally relevant differences between humans and animals that serves as the most powerful tool in the investigation of the moral status of animals.” 9 In examining the two categories of humanity and animals, there are significant and relevant moral differences. The first difference is the dominion of humanity. This argument goes back to the Bible, where it is understood that humanity is the caretaker of animals. However, it is also made without theology by examining how humanity is at the top of the evolutionary pyramid. Humans rank at the top due to intelligence, which is the ability to control, vanquish, or dominate. Power is also in the hands of humanity.10 While these characteristics can be used either positively or negatively, they do set humans apart from the rest of the animal kingdom. The second difference is the most important: reason, language, and moral concern. Bernard E. Rollin explains these make up, “the most serious and important criterion of demarcation that has historically served to delineate the scope of moral concern. At least since Plato and Aristotle, and even in the Catholic tradition, the notion of the soul providing the basis for excluding animals from moral concern has been given philosophical content by equating the soul with the rational faculty of the ability to reason. Men are rational, or at least have the capacity for rational thought, while animals do not, and for this reason, the scope of morality does not extend beyond men.” 11 Gendered language aside, this quotation reflects the way that philosophers have historically viewed the divide between humanity and animals. Therefore, this establishes that human beings alone are moral agents. A theory dating all the way back to the Sophists explains why being a moral agent should be equated with being a moral object. This view states that, “only creatures capable of acting morally, i.e., rational creatures, are themselves deserving of moral concern. Moral laws and principles are the product of convention, or of social contract, and only rational beings are capable of participating in a social contract or, indeed, in any agreement at all.” 12 The social contract, in that sense, is a guarantee that rational individuals treat others in the way they will be treated in return. This difference is enforced by Immanuel Kant’s theory of reason. Kant believed that, “only rational beings can count as moral agents and, even more important for our purposes, that the scope of moral concern extends only to rational beings.” 13 Other differences exist. Animals lack moral agency and some animals have a different grade of quality of life. 14 50

Some will certainly point out that modern experimentation and research has revealed high critical thinking abilities in certain animals, like apes and dolphins. However, such instances are not enough to justify considering animals the same as human beings. Given their morally relevant differences, it is justified to treat animals differently than one would treat human beings. USE OF ANIMALS IN SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH IS NECESSARY One of the most heated areas of the debate about the treatment of animals is regarding the use of animals for scientific research. However, many groups and organizations still defend the use of animals for such purposes. Animal testing does not involve useless cruelty. Instead, it is a valuable way to make advances in the field of medicine and improve the quality of life for people around the world. It also may be instrumental in saving lives in the long run. The Research Defence Society found that in 1991, 32.4 million animals were used in research in the United Kingdom. That is approximately 0.05 animals per person used for scientific research in their population of 60 million. The Research Defence Society also correctly pointed out that hip replacement was perfected and practiced on dogs, goats, and sheep.15 The International Council of Laboratory Sciences is also attempting to raise awareness worldwide about well-conducted and well-controlled experiments using animals. They know that these sorts of tests and experiments are necessary for cancer research and drug trials.16 In order to continue to move forward and cure diseases that are effecting people around the world, animal testing must continue. It is a necessary tool in the battle to ultimately end pain and suffering. There are also organizations to ensure that laboratory animals are not treated cruelly for no reason. The Universities Federation for Animal Welfare seeks to improve the welfare of experimental animals by working with researchers. They have published a handbook on treating animals well, and are focused on the future. Perhaps someday alternatives will exist, but in the meantime, the Universities Federation for Animal Welfare is making sure that those animals used in experimentation are treated well.17 Even activist groups like the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Vivisection admit the need for some animal experimentation.18 The scientists who conduct experiments on animals are not all evil people looking for chances to be cruel. Instead, they are advancing their research and abiding by legal standards. The law even demands the use of animals for testing possibly hazardous substances in some areas. 19 Alternative forms of research are not yet at the point where the same results can be achieved without testing on animals. That is, “The most telling argument in favor of at least sometimes using the whole living animals is that, in biology unlike in mathematics, the sum total of the parts do not equal the whole. Even the greatest amount of research in depth on the effects of a hazardous substance on hepatic tissue cannot vive you the complete and real picture of what reactions might occur between the same substance and a liver functioning in a living organism and acted upon by the various metabolic cycles.” 20 There can be no denying the benefits that have resulted from animal experimentation. As Kevin Dolan puts it, “There is no hesitation in using the plural since the benefits accruing over the centuries from animal experimentation have been numerous.” 21 The benefits of animal experimentation must be examined in order to consider if it is a cause worth harming animals for. Scientists are not out to deliberately harm animals for no reason, but rather to advance humanity and life as a whole. A historical view reveals exactly how much progress has resulted from such experimentation. In around 300 BCE, Arasistratus used animals in Alexandria to study nerves and anatomy. Aristotle also used animals and justified publishing a book on veterinary surgery. Galen, a Greek physician in Rome, used apes and pigs and increased the knowledge of medicine enormously, publishing 500 medical treatises. Harvey in the 1500’s made progress using animals by describing the circulation of the blood in animals. A century later, research using animals established a basis to measure blood pressure. Vaccinations by Pasteur and Jenner came from work on animals. Charles Darwin testified that animal research should not be banned and viewed refraining from using animals in research a greater evil because of the knowledge that could be gained. In this century, more and more useful discoveries have resulted from animal testing. Antibodies, vitamin description and insulin were all understood in greater detail thanks to 51

animal testing. In the 1930’s, animal testing resulted in the mechanism of the nervous system being fully explored and the development of modern surgery. In the 1940’s, the understanding of embryonic development and antibiotics increased. The 1960’s saw advances on methods of treatment of mental illness using animals. Tested drugs in the 1970’s were only allowed thanks to animals. In the 1980’s, advances were made in immune reactions, viral diseases, and other medical problems. The 1990’s saw research on the brain and the causes of inherited diseases. Humankind would not have knowledge of the body so extensive or even the vaccine for polio without animal experimentation. The knowledge is also spread to assist animals in veterinary medicine. This benefit is continuing, “The valuable contribution to the well-being of animals and humans alike continues. A single injection that will protect against the dominant form of meningitis could soon be available thanks to genetically engineered vaccnes.”22 These advances would not have been possible without animal experimentation. Lives have been saved and strengthened thanks to the medical field, and that is only with animals as a research tool. Animals rights as a theory that denies that option, therefore, and must be rejected in order to advance all of humanity and the animal kingdom though medical achievement. ARGUMENTS AGAINST ANIMAL RESEARCH ARE FLAWED Carl Cohen outlines three fallacious arguments that are made against the use of animals in medical research and scientific experimentation. He then answers each of them, showing that the most commonly made arguments against animal testing are false. The first argument against animal research is that, “although animals have been used by medical science in the past, they need no longer be used, because recent technological developments make it possible to replace them; the critical experiments in which animal subjects previously were used may now go forward, it is said, without using live animals. If animals can be replaced in medical experimentation without harm to humans, the argument runs, they should be.”23 As we alluded to above, the premise of this argument is false. That is, animals cannot be replaced adequately in testing. In most medical research, a substitution cannot suffice. The safety and efficacy of a drug or treatment must be asses via its impact on a whole and living organism. This is reinforced by the recent discovery that human beings have far less genes than once thought. This mans that responses to stimuli in humans cannot be traced to a single gene. Scientists who need to know how an organism will react will be misled if they examine only pieced of an organism out of its organic context. Zoologist Stephen Jay noted, “Organisms must be explained as organisms, and not as summation.”24 The second argument against animal research is attacking the usefulness of animals in medicine. “Their use, liberationists commonly contend, has no scientific reliability at all. It is ‘junk science.’ Animal experiments are worse than unnecessary because they mislead investigators and actually hinder scientific advance.” 25 Animals have proven effective, however, at examining multiple levels of medical advances. They are used to determine toxicity, dosage, and side effects. As Cohen explains, “The animals used to test for efficacy are chosen because (in view of their known anatomical similarities to humans, and in light of extensive previous experience with animals of that species) they are believed to be good models for the human organism. Of course, no model is perfect. But better by far to work with an imperfect model first than to use no model at all.” 26 The final argument against animal research is, “that even if animal research does yield results helpful in treating human disease, it ought to be abandoned because the advances it produces encourages the large-sale misdirection of medical resources.”27 This argument encourages a move toward prevention and away from treatment. As Cohen notes, “This argument deserves little respect. It is the desperate resort of animal liberationists who see no way to deny that animals do in fact greatly serve the interests of the human sick.”28 Prevention and treatment can be studied using animals, and neither has to take precedence in the world of medical research. Given the fallacious nature of the arguments made against animal testing, it is clear that animal liberation should be rejected to enable medical advances using animal testing. ANIMALS DO NOT POSSESS ‘RIGHTS’ IN THE SENSE THAT HUMANS DO 52

Animal behavior is different than human behavior at multiple levels, which is one reason why it interests humanity. 29 This behavior, however, does not mean that animals possess “rights” in the sense that humans do. Author Carol Cohen outlines why rights are not intrinsic to animals. If his arguments hold weight, then a large portion of the rational for treating animals like humans would be eliminated. Cohen explains these arguments in terms of obligations that moral beings have to each other. Cohen outlines seven reasons why animals do not have the same rights that human do. First, he notes that obligations come from commitments that are freely entered into by moral agents. Animals do not have the ability to act in such a capacity. Second, he explains that obligations come from the possession of authority. Third, obligations come from a consequence of special relations. Shepherds are obligated to this dogs, but humans are not obligated to all of animals. Fourth, faithful service can engender obligations; but most of the animal kingdom does not play the role of a faithful servant to humanity. Fifth, family connection can cause obligation. Sixth, duties of care freely taken are obligations. This can be given, but not demanded as a right. Seventh, spontaneous kindness can leave an obligation to return the gift, but such a return cannot be demanded. 30 In that sense, while there can be claims that human beings are obligated to take care of animals, there is no basis to assign animals the right to demand such care. The notion of rights being different in consideration of humans and animals means that animal rights should be rejected. SOCIETY CANNOT PAY THE COST OF ADOPTING ANIMAL RIGHTS Let us momentarily put ourselves in the position of animal rights advocates. These would be individuals who agree with Tom Regan that, “On the rights view we cannot justify harming a single rat merely by aggregating ‘the many human and humane benefits’ that flow from doing it...Not even a single rat is to be treated as if that animal’s value were reducible to his possible utility relative to the interests of others.” 31 However, if the world were to confirm to this view, the costs would be astronomical. I do not use the world cost in an economic sense, but rather in terms of looking at the overall benefits and harms of taking an action. As Cohen notes, “If Regan were correct in this, we are forbidden by morality from doing the experiments that alone might yield the vaccines, drugs, and other compounds and therapies that humans desperately need...very many humans will suffer terribly; many humans will die who might otherwise live happy lives if (as on your view) the rights of rats trump human interests.”32 These humans would be able to give back economically, philosophically, and morally to society in a way that would be lost if their lives were ended. Animal rights denies society the benefits of some members of the human race who could be saved with animal testing. Cohen addresses the seriousness of the claim that animals have rights, saying, “The supposition of animal rights entails very much more than that. The animal rights movement, as we have seen, explicitly aims for the total abolition of the use of animals in science and the total dissolution of commercial animal agriculture. These objectives are the logical consequences of believing that animals have rights.” 33 In light of the horrible consequences of assigning animals rights, it is clear that the best alternative is to not assign such rights and reject animal rights as a philosophy. SUMMARY Though the defense of animal rights is actually a diverse category of viewpoints, we have explored the position that animals deserve as many rights as humans and should be free from meddling. However, this position is seriously flawed. Initially, interaction with humans actually benefits animals in various ways. There are also relevant differences between humans and animals that must be taken into consideration. The use of animals in scientific research is necessary, and is leading to breakthroughs and forward progress. Arguments being made against the use of animals for research are flawed. Animals do not possess “rights” in the sense that humans do, and therefore merit different treatment. Our present society cannot afford the costs of adopting the mentality of animal rights, as too many problems would ensue. Answering arguments about animal rights is sure to be difficult and sensitive. It is tough to be on the side of an argument that emotionally may not appeal to an audience. However, given the logical ends of animal rights as a 53

philosophy, the arguments about costs and benefits lead to a rejection of such sentiment. In this argument, it is best to concede that whenever possible, all accommodations should be made to treat animals well and kindly. You are not responsible for defending cruelty to animals or abuse- rather, you are responsible for defending that humans and animals are different. If such a difference can be proven, then there is ample justification for treating the two classes of beings differently. _____________________________ 1 Coetzee, J.M. The Lives of Animals. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999, pg. 19. 2 Appleby, Mike. What Should We Do About Animal Welfare? Oxford: Blackwell Science Ltd., 1999, pg. 2. 3 Dolan, Kevin. Ethics, Animals, and Science. Oxford: Blackwell Science Ltd., 1999, pg. 144. 4 Ibid, pg. 144-145. 5 Ibid, pg. 145. 6 Ibid, pg. 146. 7 Ibid, pg. 146-147. 8 Ibid, pg. 147. 9 Rollin, Bernard E. Animal Rights and Human Morality. New York: Prometheus Books, 1981, pg. 7. 10 Ibid, pg. 8. 11 Ibid, pg. 10. 12 Ibid, pg. 11. 13 Ibid, pg. 15. 14 Orlans, F. Barbara. In the Name of Science: Issues in Responsible Animal Experimentation. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993, pg. 32. 15 Dolan, Kevin. Ethics, Animals, and Science. Oxford: Blackwell Science Ltd., 1999, pg. 170-171. 16 Ibid, pg. 171. 17 Ibid, pg. 171. 18 Ibid, pg. 172. 19 Ibid, pg. 179. 20 Ibid, pg. 189. 21 Ibid, pg. 214. 22 Ibid, pg. 215-216. 23 Cohen, Carl. The Animal Rights Debate. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers Inc., 2001, pg. 70-71. 24 Ibid, pg. 71. 25 Ibid, pg. 72. 26 Ibid, pg. 74. 27 Ibid, pg. 80. 28 Ibid, pg. 81. 29 Dolan, Kevin. Ethics, Animals, and Science. Oxford: Blackwell Science Ltd., 1999, pg. 266. 30 Cohen, Carl. The Animal Rights Debate. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers Inc., 2001, pg. 28-29. 31 Ibid, pg. 23. 32 Ibid, pg. 23. 33 Ibid, pg. 24.

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INTERACTION WITH HUMANS BENEFITS ANIMALS 1. DOMESTICATION IS BENEFICIAL FOR ANIMALS BECAUSE IT HAS BROUGHT THEM PROTECTION’S NOT AFFORDED IN THE WILD Dolan, Kevin. Professor of Pastoral Theology. Ethics, Animals, and Science. Oxford: Blackwell Science Ltd., 1999, pg. 144-145. There is no doubt that humans have reaped great benefits from bringing animals into their homes but equally the advantages to the domesticated animal has been numerous; indeed, one could say without fear of contradictions, tremendous. The coop, the paddock and most of all the herdsman brought a form of protection to animals completely lacking in the wild. The constant fear of predators endured in the wild by their prey have been alleviated by domestication; a little-mentioned privilege of the laboratory mouse. Without a doubt, the greater survival potential accorded by their domestic status has benefited billions of animals though the ages and extends to numerous species. Even the provision of a humble shelter for our animal associates has been a welcome protection from cold, rain, wind and sun for beasts which would otherwise be exposed to great extremes of weather and might easily perish from such hardship. The alleviation of thirst has also been a great boon to the kept animal in many parts of the world. 2. BECAUSE OF THEIR IMPORTANCE HUMANS PROTECT ANIMALS AS WELL AS ENHANCE THEIR QUALITY OF LIFE Dolan, Kevin. Professor of Pastoral Theology. Ethics, Animals, and Science. Oxford: Blackwell Science Ltd., 1999, pg. 145. Because of the great economic importance of domestic animals to any nation, legislatures have shown an interest in their protection. Laws have been enacted to ensure the welfare of these animals. There have been numerous such statues used in the UK; for example the Agriculture (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1968 and its accompanying Codes of Recommendation, leading on to the more legally binding “The Welfare Livestock Regulations 1994.” By Selective breeding, conducted for their own gain, humans have produced improved models of the wild animal: larger or faster, more intelligent, more productive, or more adapted to a particular purpose. It can hardly be argues that this is always a disadvantage to the animals themselves. It could be claimed that it enhances this quality of their life. It certainly increases their worth, which should bring increased care for an asset of value. 3. INTERACTIONS WITH BETWEEN ANIMALS AND HUMANS HAS LED TO THE BREAKTHROUGH OF VETERANARY MEDICINE, WHICH IS THE MOST BENEFICAL THING TO COME OUT OF THE RELATIONSHIP. Dolan, Kevin. Professor of Pastoral Theology. Ethics, Animals, and Science. Oxford: Blackwell Science Ltd., 1999, pg. 146. The development of veterinary medicine is surely the most apparent benefit to animals from their contact from humans and the advantages have not been confined to those animals possessed by humans. The ministering services of veterinary surgeons and the therapeutic drugs developed in research are frequently made available to animals, particularly in wildlife hospitals and sanctuaries. It is with respect to pets and domestic animals that research has produced an abundance of medicines and vaccines. On the farm, cattle, pigs and sheep are healthier and many more of their young survive to maturity, Not long ago a hill farmer could lose more than half his young lamb and sheep through various diseases. Now there is a good range of effective and safe vaccines and medicines to prevent such losses. Anti-parasitic drugs are now available and antibiotic drugs are widely used for many infectious diseases of animals. It has been estimated that new treatments preventing dehydration have saved each year about 1000,000 calves in Britain alone. Most antibiotics used as veterinary medicines, such as penicillin, were developed for humans but it is difficult to imagine how a small animal or farm veterinary proactive could manage without them. The list of vaccines for animals which have been developed by research is indeed impressive. These vaccines have been the result of both animal experimentation and in vitro procedures, such as that which produced a distemper vaccine by the use of tissue culture. It is estimated that 100 million animals have been saved by anthrax and cattle plague vaccines.

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USE OF ANIMALS IN SCIENTIFIC TESTING IN NECESSARY 1. THE ALTERNATIVES ARE INADEUQATE Dolan, Kevin. Professor of Pastoral Theology. Ethics, Animals, and Science. Oxford: Blackwell Science Ltd., 1999, pg. 189. In the exposition on alternatives in practice and the pursuit of the three R’s, so well outlined in a recent pamphlet (UFAW 1998), specific difficulties will be dealt with in detail. Here it is merely a matter of looking in general at the possible deficiencies of alternatives to animal use in research. In spite of the laudable progress in the development and the use of alternatives, there are factors that mitigate against a complete abandonment of the use of animals in research. The reliability of results of research is paramount if they are to be accepted into medical practice or are to be regarded as guarantees of the safety in use of various suspect substances. It is essential therefore that the reliability of any suggested alternative will need to be compared with accepted animal tests, involving of course the use of animals. 2. THE VALUE OF ALTERNATIVES IS RELATIVE Dolan, Kevin. Professor of Pastoral Theology. Ethics, Animals, and Science. Oxford: Blackwell Science Ltd., 1999, pg. 189. Unfortunately, once the use of alternatives becomes widespread and diverse, their relative value is liable to become a matter of opinion, as will also, their relative merit in comparison with animal experimentation. Pressure groups would be quick to force acceptance of non-animal tests without taking valid scientific arguments into account. For instance, I witnessed on television a spokesman for Greenpeace admit, but rather late in the day, the scientific inadequacy of their arguments in the Brent Spar Rig controversy in 1996. The most telling argument in favor of at least sometimes using the whole living animal is that, in biology unlike in mathematics, the sum total of the parts do not equal the whole. Even the greatest amount of research in depth on the effects of a hazardous substance on hepatic tissue cannot give you the complete and real picture of what reaction might occur between the same substance and a liver functioning in a living organism and acted upon by various metabolic cycles. 3. CAN TEST OF ANIMALS AND STILL BE ETHICAL Dolan, Kevin. Professor of Pastoral Theology. Ethics, Animals, and Science. Oxford: Blackwell Science Ltd., 1999, pg. 188. An emphasis on the importance of finding alternatives to animals in research springs naturally from a utilitarian approach to the question. The essential hedonism of utilitarianism obviously views pain as evil and thus calls for the reduction of suffering to a minimum and that includes the suffering of animals. Consequently, the meticulous weighing up of the relative worth of alternatives is not a form of casuistry to be rejected by a common-sense approach. Such attention to details of possible alleviation of animal suffering is fully in line with the ideal of ‘the greatest happiness of the greatest number’. The ideal implies allowing for a relative priority of desirability, The endproduct of an application of this ethic is: first, a minimum use of animals and a minimum level of suffering of those used and second, a greater good accompanied by the realization that worthwhile benefits accrue to animals and humans from animal experimentation.

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ANIMALS DON’T POSSES “RIGHTS” IN THE SENSE THAT HUMANS DO 1. ANIMALS DON’T HAVE CONCIOUSNESS LIKE HUMANS DO Dolan, Kevin. Professor of Pastoral Theology. Ethics, Animals, and Science. Oxford: Blackwell Science Ltd., 1999, pg. 152. Consciousness is that summation or totality of sensations and a correlation of these sensations by the organism involved in them. It is, therefore, something more than mere neural activity; rather, it is a full interpretation of neural activity; rather, it is a full interpretation of neural activity. In the past, consciousness has, by some, been attributed solely to humans. This denial of the existence of consciousness outside the human species supported the opinions such as Descartes who thought that animal did not suffer. A belief of this kind did, of course, remove the need for any concern for animal suffering in circumstances such as their use in research. The literature on the use of animals in research contains abundant material on the arguments about animal consciousness because consciousness was not only associated with feeling but was regarded by some as the specific quality which rendered an individual a person, that is, one having rights. 2. LACK OF A CONSCIOUSNESS IN ANIMALS JUSTIFIES THEIR LACK OF RIGHTS Dolan, Kevin. Professor of Pastoral Theology. Ethics, Animals, and Science. Oxford: Blackwell Science Ltd., 1999, pg. 152. Ernard Rolling deals with this matter in great detail, often re-fighting old academic battles. He, rightly, realized that the existence of absence of consciousness in a creature is crucial to whether that creature can suffer or not. In short, concern for animal welfare turns on the presence of consciousness in animals. Though crudely put, the old adage, ‘Where there’s no sense there’s no feeling’, has a certain validity, and its consequences have ethical relevancy (Rolling 1989). Some biologists and psychologists, particularly behaviorists, called into question the existence of consciousness, regarding it as an unscientific concept. There is no doubt that vital activity can occur without consciousness. Physiological experiments and pathological lesions prove that in our own and in other organisms the mechanism of the nervous system is sufficient, without the intervention of consciousness, to produce muscular movements of a highly co-ordinate and apparently intentional character. The acceptance, however, of some unconscious activity does not directly obviate the supposition of the presence of consciousness. 3. AWARNESS IS KET TO THE BESTOWAL OF RIGHTS Dolan, Kevin. Professor of Pastoral Theology. Ethics, Animals, and Science. Oxford: Blackwell Science Ltd., 1999, pg. 151. The presence of awareness is fundamental to concern about the supposed suffering and pain of other creatures. Moral concern for others is cogent only on the presumption that other have subjective experiences, that we can more or less know them, that their subjective states matter to them more or less as ours matter to us, and that our actions have major effects on what matters to them and on what they subjectively experience. If we genuinely did not believe that others felt pain, pleasure, fear, joy, etc., there would be little point to moral locutions or moral exhortation. Morality supposes that the objects of our moral concern have feelings.

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ANIMAL TESTING IMMENSLY BENEFITS HUMANS 1. HUMANS HAVE BEEN BENEFITING FROM ANIMAL TESTING SINCE ANCIENT TIMES Dolan, Kevin. Professor of Pastoral Theology. Ethics, Animals, and Science. Oxford: Blackwell Science Ltd., 1999, pg. 215. Medical skill and the living sciences progressed through the use of animals in research probably before the time of Arasistratus (c. 300 BCE). In Alexandria he used animals in his study of nerves and anatomy, he explored and named the trachea as well as developing the catheter. About the same times in Athens, Aristotle, the founder of biology, was extending his knowledge by a hands-on use of animals. The use of animals in research had advanced far enough to justify the publication of a book on veterinary surgery in AD 64 (Oascoe et al. 1968). Galen (AD 129-200), the great Greek physician in Rome, through his studies using apes and pigs, was able to increase the knowledge of medicine enormously, published 500 medical treatises. 2. THE BENEFITS OF ANIMAL TESTING HAVE ONLY INCREASED WITH TIME Dolan, Kevin. Professor of Pastoral Theology. Ethics, Animals, and Science. Oxford: Blackwell Science Ltd., 1999, pg. 215-216. As time passed, each century increased our knowledge in the living sciences by the use of animal in research. The effective use of animals produced the advances by the use of animals in research. The effective use of animals produced the advances by Harveu (1578-1657) in hematology. He first described the circulation of the blood in animals De Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus ( On the Motion of the Heart and Blood). The title indicates how he achieved the great progress in medical science. He stated categorically the need to use animals in research. It is said that he used more than 40 species of animals in his experiments. By the next century, similar research using animals established a basis for measuring blood pressure. In the nineteenth century, the use of experimental animals brought us vaccination through the work of such scientists as Pasteur and Jenner. Charles Darwin, who deplored some forms of animal experimentation, testified to the Royal Commission (1875) that he thought that a ban on animal experimentation would be ‘a great evil’. The implications of this remark was that he appreciated the many advantages which had accrued from the use of animals in research. He regarded refraining from animal experimentation as a greater evil than ignoring and tolerating suffering that cold be alleviated by research using animals. 3. ANY MORATORIUM ON ANIMAL TESTING WOULD HAVE HAD DISATOURS IMPLICATIONS IN THE PAST AND COULD HAVE CATASTROPHIC RESULTS IN THE FUTURE. Dolan, Kevin. Professor of Pastoral Theology. Ethics, Animals, and Science. Oxford: Blackwell Science Ltd., 1999, pg. 216. All these benefits have, of course, where possible, been spread to animal and adopted by veterinary medicine. In fact, some research establishments are solely concerned with the therapeutic needs of animals. This is not the place to produce long lists of achievements. Suffice it to point out that had there been a mandatory moratorium on the use of animals in research at any time in the past, there could have been dire consequences for the progress of medicine and the living sciences. Such a moratorium in 1910, for example, could have depraved humankind, in the years immediately following, of extensive knowledge regarding vitamins. In the same vein, such a moratorium in 1950 could have deprived that particular generation of the polio vaccine. The valuable contribution to the well-being of animals and humans alone continues. A single injection that will protect against the dominant form of meningitis could soon be available thanks to genetically engineered vaccines (IAT 1997).

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Autonomy Good AUTONOMY IS A PARAMOUNT VALUE 1. AUTONOMY SHOULD BE THE PARAMOUNT VALUE Richard Lindley, Professor at Bradford University, AUTONOMY, 1986, p. 13. Imagine now a society where ‘humane’ human fanning was practice. The society is governed by a cannibalistic aristocracy of scientists. They have developed sophisticated techniques of brain control, so that they are able to produce a population of compliant slaves. Throughout their lives, during which they are well-fed, and offered many amusements, the slaves’ main pleasure comes from serving their masters, and indeed they have very pleasurable lives. When the time comes for them to be killed for the table, they experience little fear, and are glad that the main purpose of their life is soon to be realized. Perhaps the best way to express what is wrong is to say that this is a society where no respect is shown for people’s autonomy. Happily the one context in which the policies of such a society are likely to be proposed is in a satirical work of fiction such as Jonathan Swift’s classic work of the Irish problem. This is because it is widely accepted that autonomy is an essential characteristic of humanity, and it is wrong to treat autonomous beings simply as means to ends. We exist as ends in ourselves. 2. AUTONOMY IS AN EXTREMELY IMPORTANT VALUE Richard Lindley, Professor at Bradford University, AUTONOMY, 1986, p.74. Act utilitarians in the tradition of Bentham would regard autonomy as merely of instrumental value. According to them its value consists simply in being an effective means to the promotion of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. If there are any conflicts between the claims of autonomy and those of pleasure-and-the-avoidance-of-pain, a Benthantite would have to sacrifice the claims of autonomy. A Benthamite has no serious principled objection to life in Huxley’s Brave New World nor to permanent existence on Robert Nozick’s ‘experience machine’. As long as the machine really could provide an exciting range of experiences, which on balance were pleasant (and not boring), a Benthamite would have to say that it would be best for most, if not all of us, to plug into this machine for life. The thought experiment of the experience machine is set up by Nozick as a reductio ad absurdum of Bentharnite utilitarianism. The fact that few people would choose a life on the experience machine shows that we value things for there own sake, other than pleasant mental states. In particular autonomy is viewed as intrinsically valuable. 3. AUTONOMY SHOULD BE VALUED OVER FREEDOM AND LIBERTY Robert Young, Professor at Princeton University, PERSONAL AUTONOMY: BEYOND NEGATIVE AND POSITIVE LIBERTY, 1986, p. 1. The autonomous person (like the autonomous state) must not be subject to external interference or control but must, rather, freely direct and govern the course of his (or her) own life. The autonomous person’s capacities, beliefs and values will be identifiable as integral to him and be the source from which his actions spring. Since such a conception of human thought and action require more than just the absence of constraints and instead extends to the charting of a way of life for oneself and thus has a comprehensive dimension, it is more appropriate to frame the discussion in terms of autonomy than of freedom or liberty. 4. THE IMPORTANCE OF AUTONOMY IS SEEN IN EVERYDAY LIFE Robert Young, Professor at Princeton University, PERSONAL AUTONOMY: BEYOND NEGATIVE AND POSITIVE LIBERTY, 1986, pp. 2-3. Finally, in everyday life we acknowledge the importance of autonomy in that we lament its lack among those who are oppressed or who are severely mentally or physically ill, in wanting our children to develop in ways that permit them to exercise it and in the fact that our own self-images fluctuate according to the degree to which we can realistically think of ourselves as being autonomous.

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WITHOUT AUTONOMY, OTHER THINGS CANNOT EXIST 1. AUTONOMY IS NECESSARY FOR HAPPINESS Richard Lindley, Professor at Bradford University, AUTONOMY, 1986, p. 186. Liberal democratic societies pride themselves on their respect for negative liberties such as freedom of expression, freedom of the press, and freedom of political association. Whilst I believe these freedoms are very important, they axe not intrinsic values. Their main worth consists in being necessary conditions for the development, maintenance and exercise of autonomy. The Kantian view, central to liberal democracy, that it is wrong to treat an individual simply as a means to an end, derives its appeal from the fact that people have the capacity for autonomy. Mill defended the liberty principle because be believed that autonomy is constitutive of happiness itself. 2. AUTONOMY ALLOWS FOR RESPECT Richard Lindley, Professor at Bradford University, AUTONOMY, 1986, p. 74. One of the most attractive features of the Kantian treatment of autonomy, which it shares with Mill’s, is the enormous weight given to respect for autonomy. Autonomy is so precious that we are asked by Kant to act in such a way that we always treat ourselves and each other never simply as means, but also as ends in ourselves. Using people for even laudable goals is strictly forbidden. 3. PERSONAL AUTONOMY CAN DEVELOP POLITICAL AUTONOMY Diana T. Meyers, Professor at Cornell University, SELF, SOCIETY, AND PERSONAL CHOICE, 1989, p. 10. Advocates of democracy sometimes argue that the conception of political autonomy as justice between nations is secondary to a domestic conception. According to this view, no nation state that is not legitimate is autonomous, and legitimacy can only be derived from the consent of the citizens. Since these individuals can only grant their consent through fair elections, political autonomy requires that mechanisms for popular sovereignty be instituted. On this view, then, political autonomy presupposes recognition of and respect for democratic rights of participationthe right to vote in contested elections, the right to run for public office, the rights to freedom of assembly and speech, and so forth. Here political autonomy touches upon personal autonomy. Insofar as these political rights secure means of expressing one’s views and means of pursuing one’s goals, they can be seen as supports for personal autonomy. 4. ONE CAN BE AUTONOMOUS IN A COMMUNITY Richard Schmitt, Professor of Philosophy at Brown University, BEYOND SEPARATENESS, 1995, p. 10 Although everyone acknowledges that problem, few philosophers are moved by it (Bernstein, 1983; Friedman, 1986; Wolf, 1989). Most philosophers believe that one can claim autonomy for oneself even if much of one’s thinking is directly affected by one’s social context and situation. Of course, our character and outlook are formed by the influences and the training we receive as children from parents and teachers. Of course, we do not think in isolation from others. Of course, we learn from others, consult them on difficult issues, and ask them for advice. But we are nevertheless capable of thinking and choosing for ourselves. Socialization does not prevent us from being autonomous. 5. AUTONOMY CAN EXIST IN A SOCIETY Richard Schmitt, Professor of Philosophy at Brown University, BEYOND SEPARATENESS, 1995, p. 11. All of these philosophers lay down fairly stringent conditions for achieving autonomy in the face of the complex social influences that shape each of us. But in a variety of ways all of them echo Feinburg’s verdict that “we may all be, in some respects, irrevocably the ‘products of our culture’ but that is no reason why the self that is such a product cannot be free to govern itself as it is.” We are shaped by childhood socialization, but while we are being so shaped we are also developing an autonomous self. Growing up is not a totally passive process and thus while we grow into adults we accept a good deal from others but we are also busy making ourselves into certain kinds of persons. Most philosophers seem confident that however powerful socialization is, it is not all-powerful.

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AUTONOMY IS A SIGNIFICANT VALUE 1. AUTONOMY IS GROUNDED IN OUR INTUIT WE SENSE OF PERSONHOOD Richard H. Fallon, Jr., Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, STANFORD LAW REVIEW, April, 1994, p. 878. When used in another sense, however, autonomy reflects what is morally troubling about paternalism. Employed as an ascriptive concept, autonomy represents the purported metaphysical foundation of people’s capacity and also their right to make and act on their own decisions, even if those decisions are ill-considered or substantively unwise. We all experience ourselves as agents, not objects, and a moral intuition of dignity and entitlement accompanies our sense of agency. 2. ALL PERSONS HAVE AN EQUAL RIGHT TO PERSONAL AUTONOMY Stephen Gardbaum, Associate Professor at Northwestern University School of Law, STANFORD LAW REVIEW, January, 1996, p. 413. According to comprehensive liberalism based on the ideal of autonomy, by contrast, what must be equally respected is each individual’s capacity for choice regarding conceptions of the good and (at least presumptively) the choices that result from it. On the interpretation offered here, for the government to treat its citizens with equal respect requires that it treat each citizen’s interest in autonomy as equal, and that it respect and enhance the capacity of each citizen to choose her own ends and not have them determined or unduly influenced by others. 3. AUTONOMY IS A FOUNDATIONAL VALUE--BOTH MORALLY AND POLITICALLY Christina E. Wells, Associate Professor University of Missouri School of Law, HARVARD CIVIL RIGHTS-CIVIL LIBERTIES LAW REVIEW, Winter, 1997, p. 165-166. In the Kantian ethic, “every rational being exists as an end in himself.” Thus, Kant equates autonomy and personhood. Scholars interpret autonomy, in this sense, as less a right than a capacity of persons to “make and act on their own decisions.” Significantly, our innate autonomy (or freedom or dignity) does not leave us entirely free to act to satisfy our desires. Rather, each individual’s autonomy implies an obligation to respect the freedom of others and imposes responsibility when we fail to do so. Kantian autonomy is considered to be a foundation for moral precepts--in other words, what we ought to do given the innate dignity of all persons. Nevertheless, autonomy is not a concept limited to the moral realm. Instead, Kant’s notion of autonomy has a significant place in his political theory, defining not only the role of the State but also the legal rights and obligations of citizens toward each other. According to Kant, the ultimate justification of the State is to protect the autonomy of its citizens.. -

4. WE HAVE AN ACTIVE DUTY TO PROTECT EVERYONE’S GENUINE AUTONOMY Stephen Gardbaum, Associate Professor at Northwestern University School of Law, STANFORD LAW REVIEW, January, 1996, pp. 413-414. In other words, contrary to the very essence of political liberalism, the principle of equal respect should not be understood as a purely political value: one whose scope is limited to the political sphere. Taking it seriously means that each individual’s autonomy regarding ways of life must be protected generally. This does not imply the obviously implausible claim that each individual is required to treat every other with the same respect in all matters, or to take everyone else’s interests and concerns equally into account in determining how to act. It means rather that the government has a duty to protect the autonomy of each citizen in determining her way of life, as exemplified by Wisconsin v. Yoder.

5. AUTONOMY IS A SIGNIFICANT VALUE Richard H. Fallon, Jr., Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, STANFORD LAW REVIEW, April, 1994, p. 902-903. Autonomy is an ideal with distinctive importance in modern life. In the cacophony of pluralist culture, the “idea has entered very deep” that every person possesses her own originality, and that it is of “crucial moral importance” for each to lead a life that is distinctively self-made. Autonomy both expresses this idea and promotes its realization.

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Autonomy Bad CRITIQUES OF AUTONOMY ARE INVALID 1. METAPHYSICAL QUESTIONS OF FREE WILL DO NOT DEJUSTIFY AUTONOMY Richard H. Fallon, Jr., Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, STANFORD LAW REVIEW, April, 1994, P. 892-893. To view the will as an uncaused cause, unaffected by taste and character, would give a random aspect to human action that undermines the very notions of desert and moral responsibility that free will is invoked to support. Although ascriptive autonomy can be defended in Kantian terms, its essential elements require no suppositions about metaphysical freedom of the will. Even if the truth of causal determinism were somehow established, our lives would remain to be led, and our “reactive attitudes” to the quality of will displayed by others their contempt, indifference, or sympathy, for example -would be unlikely to change significantly. In particular, we would almost certainly go on resenting strangers who insist they know our own best interests better than we do; we would feel the same entitlement to go about our lives without being frustrated by others claims of superior knowledge or insight. The deeply entrenched status of reactive attitudes such as resentment of paternalism, coupled with the fact that we cannot help but experience ourselves as bearers of free will and as self-validating sources of rights, seems to me sufficient to establish ascriptive autonomy as a fundamental moral and political value that ought to matter to First Amendment theory. -

2. UBIQUITY OF CONSTRAINT IS NOT A REPUDIATION OF AUTONOMY Morris Lipson, J.D. candidate, YALE LAW JOURNAL, June, 1995, p. 2249. For it is almost certainly a mistake to identify autonomy with negative liberty, if negative liberty itself is thought of as freedom from all constraints. The problem for autonomy, rather, arises when constraints are imposed on an agent’s choices or actions by someone or something other than the agent. Thus, the more plausible view (to which I will refer as individualism) is that an autonomous agent is one who possesses negative liberty in the sense that he is free from any externally imposed constraints. As Robert Paul Wolff has put it, the autonomous person may be bound by a variety of constraints, as long as “he alone is the judge of those constraints.” That is, a person need not, at every turn, be “free” to choose or act precisely as he is inclined at that moment. A constrained choice or act can be an autonomous one, as long as, and insofar as, the source of the constraints is the person himself. 3. DIFFICULTY OF DEFINITION DOES NOT DEJUSTIFY AUTONOMY Richard H. Fallon, Jr., Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, STANFORD LAW REVIEW, April, 1994, p. 893. Given the vagueness of the moral attitudes in which ascriptive autonomy is grounded, I doubt that a clear and determinate conception is even possible. Nonetheless, ascriptive autonomy captures something too important to be ignored: our experience of ourselves as moral agents with both the capacity and the right to make decisions for ourselves, even when those decisions are insufficiently informed, self-aware, and self-critical to count as autonomous under any very stringent standards of descriptive autonomy. If ascriptive autonomy deserves recognition on this basis, it properly includes elements of both negative and positive liberty. Conceived as the presupposition of much of our thought about rights and responsibility, ascriptive autonomy implies an entitlement to personal sovereignty in some sphere of self-regarding action. Ascriptive autonomy also mandates at least the political rights identified by the naffowest, positive libertarian conceptions: equal rights to participate in democratic self-government. 4. AUTONOMY DOES NOT PRESUME ATOMISM OR IGNORE SOCIALIZATION Stephen Gardbaum, Associate Professor at Northwestern University School of Law, STANFORD LAW REVIEW, January, 1996, p. 394. Valuing autonomy neither presupposes the existence of atomistic individuals preformed, self-sufficient actors who interact only instrumentally with society nor ingenuously overlooks or denies the powerful effects of socialization. Indeed, a commitment to the value of autonomy may itself be best understood as a response to the profound reality of the “social construction of individuality.” Only if individuals were “so” socially constituted that exercising partauthorship of their lives is an impossibility would the normative claim and the state’s efforts to promote it fail to make sense. -

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AUTONOMY IS NOT ABSOLUTE 1. AUTONOMY IS NOT THE MOST IMPORTANT VALUE Stephen Gardbaum, Associate Professor at Northwestern University School of Law, STANFORD LAW REVIEW, January, 1996, P. 417. Autonomy is not, however, the only thing of value. This observation suggests an approach to solving the traditional “problems” or “paradoxes” of using autonomy to make bad choices (for example, to choose evil or to enslave oneself to another person or to drugs) and exercising one’s autonomy in a way that denies autonomy to another person or group. It is not necessary to attempt to dissolve the problem of evil choices semantically by denying that such choices are “really” autonomous or that they are autonomous but lack value. More straightforwardly, choosing slavery or drugs, for example, may conflict with (and be trumped by) other essential liberal values such as human dignity or equality. The same holds for the denial of autonomy to other groups. Such other values are also constituent parts of an overall liberal account of a valuable human life and a good political society. 2. ABSOLUTIST VIEWS OF AUTONOMY ARE UNSUSTAINABLE Richard H. Fallon, Jr., Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, STANFORD LAW REVIEW, April, 1994, p. 900-901. The view of what it means to be a person that underlies ascriptive autonomy resists translation into the metric of interests, for it insists that a sovereign prerogative, possibly with metaphysical foundations, trumps all interests that might weigh against respect for individual choice. As I have argued, however, the metaphysical pretensions of ascriptive autonomy may be impossible to sustain. In addition, virtually no one consistently maintains that respect for ascriptive autonomy precludes some version of “soft” paternalism, which permits at least temporary, coercive intervention to ensure that a person’s decision to act in a self-destructive way is informed and rational. Once these concessions are made, the only practical alternative to reductionism would be renunciation of ascriptive autonomy altogether. But this, also for reasons suggested earlier, would seem to me a clear mistake. We cannot help experiencing our selves as free or resenting interference with our exercise of agency. Moreover, our moral intuition of agency as a ground of sovereign independence ought to be supported, not deprecated, as an antidote to hyperrational conceptions of descriptive autonomy. 3. AUTONOMY IS ONLY INSTRUMENTAL TO THE GOOD LIFE Stephen Gardbaum, Associate Professor at Northwestern University School of Law, STANFORD LAW REVIEW, January, 1996, p. 397. This latter point leads us back to our unanswered question: What measure of first-order neutrality does comprehensive liberalism require of the state? Must a state that seeks to promote second-order autonomy be completely indifferent to the particular ways of life that its citizens choose freely? If not, what considerations counsel partiality? We value autonomy because it expresses the attractive ideal that each of us should be partauthor of his own life. Autonomy is valuable in particular cases when individuals exercise it to be part-authors of worthwhile lives; other things being equal, authoring a worthless life does not add to, and indeed affirmatively detracts from, the moral value of that life. 4. NOT ALL CONCEPTIONS OF AUTONOMY ARE IMPORTANT Martin A. Kotler, Associate Professor of Law at Widener University School of Law, TULANE LAW REVIEW, December, 1992, p. 360. First, one must attempt to identify exactly what rights or values are being protected when a court seeks to advance “autonomy.” Confusion arises in this context because, contrary to common belief, autonomy is not a unified concept. In fact, there are multiple components of “autonomy,” not all of which will be considered essential or core values at any given time. It would appear that what can be described as the two primary components of autonomy actually define two competing conceptions of autonomy. The first is ownership of one’s own body, and the second is ownership of private property. For a long period of time, promotion of autonomy was seen chiefly as protection of real property rights. Gradually, however, that conception has given way to our current view of autonomy as the protection of one’s bodily integrity.

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PATERNALISM IS NOT ALWAYS UNDESIRABLE 1. PATERNALISM OFTEN ENHANCES SOME FORMS OF AUTONOMY Richard H. Fallon, Jr., Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, STANFORD LAW REVIEW, April, 1994, P. 877-878. When autonomy is used as a descriptive concept, two facts stand out. First, autonomy is a matter of degree. People who are able to deliberate with critical insight and self-awareness and to choose from abundant options are highly autonomous. Others who unthinkingly do whatever others expect of them, or who lack self-restraint, or whose most basic choices are dictated by economic necessity may not be veiy autonomous at all. Second, paternalism can sometimes be defended as a means of preserving or promoting autonomy. For example, if cigarette advertising creates misleading images that mampulatively lure people into addiction, regulation might help to promote descriptive autonomy. In the long run, people who would become addicted to smoking if tempted by image-based advertising, but otherwise would not, will be more autonomous if image-based advertising is prohibited. Whether their gain in autonomy outweighs any loss to the autonomy of others, through the restriction of speech and reduced access to ideas and information, is at least partly an empirical question. -

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2. DEFERENCE TO TRADITION OR AUTHORITY CAN BE ACCEPTABLE Stephen Gardbaum, Associate Professor at Northwestern University School of Law, STANFORD LAW REVIEW, January, 1996, p. 395. When a person acts on the basis of tradition or authority, the reason for acting is the determination of the tradition or authority that this is how the person should act. By contrast, when a person chooses to act in the way that a tradition or authority has determined, that person exercises independent judgment, and the reason for acting is either the merit of the action or of following tradition or authority, as that person perceives it. Thus, there is an important difference between choosing a traditional or authorized way of life and adopting a way of life on the basis of tradition or authority. This is the difference, for example, between the highly-educated woman who chooses to live the “traditional” life of wife and mother and the woman who does so because she so inhabits this tradition that she effectively has no alternative. It is also the difference between the person who chooses to live the religious life and the one who does so because it is God’s~ will, or between the Muslim woman who chooses to wear a veil and the one who wears one because her tradition mandates it. 3. PATERNALISM CAN ACTUALLY MAXIMIZE RATHER THAN MINIMIZE AUTONOMY Richard H. Fallon, Jr., Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, STANFORD LAW REVIEW, April, 1994, p. 890. In common with other conceptions of descriptive autonomy, the conception that I have outlined is relative, or a matter of degree, and it depicts autonomy as capable of being either promoted or stifled. Indeed, as I noted above, acceptance of descriptive autonomy as a moral, political, or constitutional value is arguably consistent with a good deal of paternalism, defined as action or legislation that protects people against consequences of decisions that they themselves would not voluntarily make. To recur to an earlier example, if cigarette advertising creates false images concerning the effects of smoking and thereby manipulates its audiences, or if it draws people into addiction that reduces their capacity to act in accord with their higher-order goals, restrictive legislation might well promote, rather than diminish, descriptive autonomy.

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AUTONOMY IS NOT A PARAMOUNT VALUE 1. AUTONOMY LEADS TO COERCION Alan S. Rosenbaum, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Cleveland State University, COERCION AND AUTONOMY, 1986, pp. 107-108. The presence of autonomy means that a victim-participant has lost some degree of autonomy over himself in the situation because of the coursers-participant’s exercise of control over the victim in that limited respect. Through an exercise of coercive control, the coursers range of autonomy is now increased, extending over the coercee’s previously held autonomous sphere and at the expense of the victim. As we shall see later in this chapter ~ in the last chapter), once someone has lost some degree of autonomy to someone else, then, unless it is reclaimed, no further coercive control of the victim in that regard is possible, since he has no social autonomy to lose. Hence, the controllee becomes in this limited way a mere instrument of the controller as the controller continues to exercise control over the controllee. Without autonomy there could be no coercion. The deep-rooted sense even a child feels for the integrity and the vitality of his or her own social autonomy lends a concept of coercion its normative character. 2. AUTONOMY IS NOT AN IMPORTANT VALUE Alan S. Rosenbaum, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Cleveland State University, COERCION AND AUTONOMY, 1986, p. 114. Autonomy, again, is not something intrinsically valuable, for it has hierarchical value in Oppenheim’s scheme: it is a type of power relation over one’s own actions with respect to others, and it may include both freedom and unfreedom (i.e., punishability and prevention) relations but never (by definition) control relations. When at least two agents are spoken of as being mutually independent, they lack power over each others actions. 3. FREEDOM SHOULD BE VALUED ABOVE AUTONOMY Alfred P.. Mele, author, AUTONOMOUS AGENTS, 1995, pp. 140-141. It is sometimes held that moral responsibility for an action requires the freedom to have done otherwise; and the same requirement has been placed on the autonomous performance of an action (or on having acted freely). However, even the weaker claim that being a morally responsible and autonomous agent requires the freedom to act otherwise than one acts on at least one occasion is false. 4. COMMUNITY SHOULD BE VALUED ABOVE AUTONOMY Diana T. Meyers, Professor at Cornell University, SELF, SOCIETY, AND PERSONAL CHOICE,, 1989 p. 20. Personal autonomy is vulnerable to socialization at three points: self-discovery, self-definition, and self direction. To achieve personal autonomy, one must know what one is like, one must be able to establish one’s own standards and to modify one’s qualities to meet them, and one must express one’s personality in action. Without self-discovery and self-definition can also be influenced socially. Introspection may find a thoroughly conditioned self. Likewise, a decision to change may reflect socially instilled values and preferences. In sum, self-administered checks on the autonomy of the individual may themselves be products of socialization, and any review of these reviews may be socially tainted, as well.

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AUTONOMY LACKS ANY PRACTICAL APPLICATION 1. IT’S IMPOSSIBLE FOR AUTONOMY TO EXIST BECAUSE OF PEOPLE’S INDIVIDUAL GOALS Richard Lindley, Professor at Bradford University, AUTONOMY, 1986, p. 77 Although this strategy offers a plausible solution to the temporal problem, the interpersonal problem is more intractable for the Kantian view. If people’s autonomous goals never conflicted, then it would be possible always to respect fully people’s autonomy. People would share common goals if, as Kant suggests they should be, they were always motivated by strictly neutral principles; but in fact people’s goals sometimes do conflict, and in these cases the prescription of the Kantian view may be not just ethically questionable, but literally impossible to execute. 2. MUST HAVE SELF-RULE OR SELF-GOVERNMENT FOR AUTONOMY TO HAPPEN Alfred P.. Mele, author, AUTONOMOUS AGENTS, 1995, p. 5 The root notion of autonomy, again is self-rule or self-government, and autonomy as an actual condition of agents centrally involves self-rule. Not surprisingly, spelling out just what autonomy amounts to has proved difficult-both in the case of individuals, which is my concern, and in the case of groups. Part of the problem is that theorists have had quite different theoretical uses for a notion of individual autonomy. When an account of a concept is developed for a particular theoretical purpose, it can easily fail to suit other purposes. 3. AUTONOMY CAN EXIST ONLY IF REASONING DOES Alfred R. Mele, author, AUTONOMOUS AGENTS, 1995, pp. 137-138. Personal autonomy, if it exists, is a property of persons. If all or many normal human beings are autonomous to some (varying) extent, then autonomy (often, at least) is a property of relatively complicated persons-people with values, principles, beliefs, desires, emotions, intentions, and plans; people capable of reasoning effectively both about, and on the basis of, such things; and people who can judge, plan, and act on the basis of their reasoning. 4. COMMUNITY PREVENTS AUTONOMY Diana T. Meyers, Professor at Cornell University, SELF, SOCIETY, AND PERSONAL CHOICE,, 1989, p. 26. Autonomous people are in control of their own lives inasmuch as they do what they really want to do (part I). But, if people are products of their environments, it seems fatuous to maintain that the agency of individuals has any special importance, for personal choice dissolves into social influence. Moreover, it seems vacuous to maintain that their is a significant distinction between what a person wants and what a person really wants, for people have no desires apart from those that socialization has molded, if not implanted in them. The chief task of a theory of autonomy, then, is to reclaim the distinction between real and apparent desires. 5. COMMUNITY DOES NOT ALLOW AUTONOMY TO EXIST Diana T. Meyers, Professor at Cornell University, SELF, SOCIETY, AND PERSONAL CHOICE,, 1989, p. 41. Moreover, innovative ways of life are sometimes born of this process. While it is an interesting philosophical puzzle whether these phenomena are possible because people are capable of defying socialization or because socialization is not all-pervasive, it is a mistake to think that we cannot make important philosophical progress in regard to the problem of personal autonomy without solving this conundrum. We have already seen that attempts to solve the problem of personal autonomy by devising a mode of socialization-transcendence have failed.

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Biocentrism Good MUST HAVE BIOCENTRISM FOR JUSTICE 1. MUST REJECT SPECIESISM OR LOSE CHANCE FOR ANY PEACE AND JUSTICE Michael Fox, DVM, PhD, Vice President of the US Humane Society, Board of Directors member for the Center for Respect for Life and the Environment, author of over forty books, VOICES ON THE THRESHOLD OF TOMORROW, 1993, edited by Georg and Linda Feurstein, page 349. Half a century ago Mahatma Gandhi said that “the greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way in which its animals are treated.” The spiritual insight of St. Francis of Assissi made him call all creatures our brothers and sisters, and he called for a true democracy that embraced all of creation in respect and reverence. But today animals are treated as mere commodities by a consumer society that is today consuming the world. As Albert Schweitzer advised, without a reverence for all life, we will never enjoy world peace. The fate of the animals will be ours also. Compassion is a boundless ethic, and if we exclude animals or certain species from this circle of ethical concern and responsibility, we are guilty of a chauvinism that animal rightists rightly term “speciesism.” Politically, it is nothing less than biological fascism. 2. WE MUST HAVE A NEW EFHIC THAT RESPECTS ALL SPECIES Peter Singer, PhD and philosopher, professor at the Center for Human Bioethics at Monash University, VOICES ON THE THRESHOLD OF TOMORROW, 1993, edited by Georg and Linda Feurstein. We need to develop a wider ethic that goes beyond the bound of our own species. This is a large step forward, one that can only be compared in its scope with the step that was taken, over the last two hundred years, to abolish slavery and include all human beings within the bounds of equality. Yet it is possible. Free and secular thinking about ethics is still relatively new. I hope that the next millennium will begin by extending equal consideration of interests to all sentient beings. 3. FOR SOCIAL ETHICS, WE MUST RESPECT THE ECOLOGICAL MORAL IMPERATIVE David Foreman, co-founder of Earth First!, DEFENDING THE EARTH: A DIALOGUE BETWEEN MURRAY BOOKCHIN AND DAVE FOREMAN, 1991, page 116. I believe that the intrinsic value of living things demands direct moral consideration in how we organize our societies. I reject anthropocentrism completely and argue that besides our social commitments we also need to honor direct moral duties to the larger ecological community to which we belong. We have a moral obligation to preserve wilderness and biodiversity, to develop a respectful and symbiotic relationship with that portion of the biosphere that we do inhabit, and to cause no unnecessary harm to non-human life. Furthermore, I believe that these moral obligations frequently supersede the self-interests of humanity. Human well-being is vitally important to me, but it is not the ultimate ethical value. I agree with Aldo Leopold that ultimately “a thing is right when it tends to enhance the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. For social ethics to be ecologically grounded they must become consistent with this larger ecological moral imperative. That is why I am for Earth first. 4. ECOCENTRISM PLACES EVERYTHING IN NATURE IN ITS PROPER PLACE Robin Eckersley, Ecological writer, ENVIRONMENTALISM AND POLITICAL THEORY, 1992, p. 28. In terms of fundamental priorities, an ecocentric approach regards the question of our proper place in the rest of nature as logically prior to the question of what are the most appropriate social and political arrangements for human communities.

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BIOCENTRISM DOES NOT IGNORE HUMANS 1. BIOCENTRIC ACTIVISTS TACKLE MANY PROGRESSIVE ISSUES Kirkpatrick Sale, author, Secretary of the E.F. Schumacher Society, THE NATION, June 5, 1995, p. 785. These neoLuddites are more numerous today than one might assume, techno-pessimists without the power and access of the techno-optimists but still with a not-insignificant voice, shelves of books and documents and reports, and increasing numbers of followers -- maybe a quarter of the adult population, according to a Newsweek survey. They are to be found on the radical and direct-action side of environmentalism, particularly in the American West; they are on the dissenting edges of academic economics and ecology departments, generally of the no-growth school; they are everywhere in Indian Country throughout the Americas, representing a traditional biocentrism against the anthropocentric norm; they are activists fighting against nuclear power, irradiated food, clearcutting, animal experiments, toxic waste and the killing of whales, among the many aspects of the high-tech onslaught. They may also number -- certainly they speak for -- some of those whose experience with modem technology has in one way or another awakened them from what Lewis Mumford called ‘the myth of the machine.” 2. BIOCENTRIC VIEW RESPECTS VIEWS OF THE OPPRESSED, DEFENDS NATIVE PEOPLES David Orton, Ecologist and Forest manager, CANADIAN DIMENSION, May 1994, page 31. Putting Earth first means ecosystem rights before human rights. When considering human rights, give native/indigenous rights first consideration, but not at the expense of the ecosystem. From such a perspective, I cannot support the pulpwood logging of La Verendrye Park in Quebec, or similar situations, even endorsed by some native people. Social justice is only possible in a context of ecological justice. We have to move from a shallow, human-centered ecology, to a deeper, all-species centered ecology. MUST REJECT ANTHROPOCENTRIC NOTIONS FOR SURVIVAL 1. ANIMAL EXTINCTION IS SYMPTOMATIC OF OUR DESTRUCTIVENESS Michael Fox, DVM, PhD, Vice President of the US Humane Society, Board of Directors member for the Center for Respect for Life and the Environment, author of over forty books, VOICES ON THE THRESHOLD OF TOMORROW, 1993, edited by Georg and Linda Feurstein, page 349. Indeed, modern society is responsible for nothing less than a holocaust of the animal kingdom. Animal suffering and extinction is symptomatic of a destructive relationship with the rest of creation that may well terminate in our own extinction and is linked today with the disintegration of the atmosphere and the increasingly dysfunctional condition of both the Earth and industrial civilization. 2. OUR SURVIVAL AND WELL-BEING FOR GENERATIONS DEPEND ON BIOCENTRISM Michael Fox, DVM, PhD, Vice President of the US Humane Society, Board of Directors member for the Center for Respect for Life and the Environment, author of over forty books, VOICES ON THE THRESHOLD OF TOMORROW, 1993, edited by Georg and Linda Feurstein, page 350. Our own well-being, and of generations to come, depends on everyone recognizing that animals have interests, feelings, and a will to live, and are worthy of our respect and concern. As we destroy their habitats, so we destroy “our” environment and life-support-systems; as we crush their spirits to serve our own ends, so we demean our own. Human well-being, animal well-being, and the well-being of the natural world are one and the same. We are all one. When we take care of Earth’s creatures and creation, the Earth will take care of us. Our arrogance, nonsubsistence needs, and scientific powers should not lead us to think otherwise, since we have neither the wisdom nor the technology to create an alternative life-support system at Nature’s expense. As history will show, in the process of trying to do so, we destroy our own humanity, which cannot be fulfilled at the expense of the rest of Earth’s creation.

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BIOCENTRISM IS A DESIRABLE PERSPECTIVE 1. BIOCENTRISM IS THE BEST HOPE FOR A WORLD IN CONFLICT Joseph R. Des Jardins, Philosophy Professor at the College of Saint Benedict and St. John’s University, ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS: AN INTRODUCTION TO ENVIRONMENTAL PHILOSOPHY, 1997, p. 130. Kenneth Goodpaster’s focus on life itself as sufficient for moral considerabiity is biocentric. An early version of a biocentric ethics is Albert Schweitzer’s “reverence for life” principle. Schweitzer wrote extensively about religion, music, ethics, history, and philosophy. He also, of course, devoted much of his life to bringing medical care to remote and isolated communities in Africa. His ethics, captured in the phrase “reverence for life,” is an extremely interesting precumor of contemporary biocentric ethics. Schweitzer’s was an active and full life committed to caring and concern for others. Yet he was also a prolific writer, devoting many volumes to diagnosing the ethical ills of modem society and seeking a cure for them. Reverence for life was the attitude that he believed offered hope to a world beset with conflict. 2. BIOCENTRISM PROPERLY BALANCES HUMAN AND NATURAL INTERESTS Susan Emmenegger, Associate Thomas Re & Partners, and Axel Tschentscher, Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter at Hamburg University, GEORGETOWN INTERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL LAW REVIEW, Summer, 1994, p. 589. Biocentrism is a two-way street. It allows for competing interests in both directions, opening the door for nature’s interests in many spheres traditionally reserved to human concerns. In the context of environmental damages, biocentrism waffants a change in perspective with regard to damage assessment. Traditionally, environmental damages have been calculated on an anthropocentric basis, i.e., on the basis of the infringement on the physical or mental integrity of humans or on their status as property holders. As shown previously, what nature would perceive as in~eparable damage to one of its ecosystems does not necessarily translate into a cognizable human concern. Recognizing nature’s independent existence calls for a non-anthropocentric damage assessment, i.e., a damage assessment which acknowledges that nature can suffer original harm and will allow for redress when such harm occurs. -

3. BIOCENTRISM IS NOT MISANTHROPIC David Suzuki, geneticist and analyst of social and environmental issues, THE TORONTO STAR, April 29, 1995, p. B6. Critics often accuse deep ecologists of being misanthropes, caring more for other species than our own fellow human beings. I’ve heard it said derisively: “They want to protect trees and the spotted owl and don’t care if people are thrown out of work.” To such criticism, the American poet Gary Snyder responds: “A properly radical environmentalist position is in no way anti-human. We grasp the pain of the human condition in its full complexity, and add the awareness of how desperately endangered certain key species and habitats have become... The critical argument now within environmental circles is between those who operate from a human-centred, resourcemanagement mentality and those whose values reflect an awareness of the integrity of the whole of nature. The latter position, that of deep ecology, is politically livelier, more courageous, more convivial, riskier and more scientific.” 4. BIOCENTRISM IS THE BEST METHOD TO ADDRESS ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERNS Susan Emmenegger, Associate Thomas Re & Partners, and Axel Tschentscher, Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter at Hamburg University, GEORGETOWN INTERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL LAW REVIEW, Summer, 1994, p. 579. Here again the criterion is which of the approaches is most likely to be adopted by the humans who initiated the acknowledging of an intrinsic value of nature. The context and language of third stage environmental instruments makes biocentrism the most appropriate approach. Protecting “every form of life,” trying to achieve the “survival” of natural entities, and conserving nature insofar as it construes “wildlife” and gives a “natural habitat” indicates that living nature is the subject of intrinsic value. This view is best represented by biocentrism. Therefore, biocentrisni is the relevant paradigm to rely on as a background rationale for the development of international environmental law. -

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BIOCENTRISM IS A VALID PERSPECTIVE 1. INTERNATIONAL LAW VALIDATES BIOCENTRISM Susan Ernmenegger, Associate Thomas Re & Partners, and Axel Tschentscher, Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter at Hamburg University, GEORGETOWN INTERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL LAW REVIEW, Summer, 1994, p. 590. Our main thesis is that international environmental instruments show a step by step development towards acknowledging natures rights in a biocentric perspective. This thesis is supported by an analysis of international environmental instruments and their classification according to whose interest is protected. This leads to three stages of development. In the first stage, immediate human self-interest is the primary reason for the protection of the environment. In the second stage, this immediate interest enlarges to encompass the interests of future generations and thereby recognizes the intergenerational dimension of the protection of nature. Finally, third stage instruments transcend the anthropocentric approaches of the past by acknowledging an intrinsic value of nature. -

2. BIOCENTRIC ETHICS ARE EMPIRICALLY VIABLE Kirkpatrick Sale, ecologist, THE NATION, June 5, 1995, p. 785. For more than three centuries now the Amish have withdrawn to islands mostly impervious to the industrial culture, and very successfully, too, as their lush fields, busy villages, neat farmsteads, fertile groves and gardens, and general lack of crime, poverty, anomie and alienation attest. In Indian country, too, where (despite the casino lure) the traditional customs and lifeways have remained more or less intact for centuries, a majority have always chosen to turn their backs on the industrial world and most of its attendant technologies, and they have been joined by a younger generation reasserting and in some cases revivifying those ancient tribal cultures. There could hardly be two systems more antithetical to the industrial--they are, for example, stable, communal, spiritual, participatory, oral, slow, cooperative, decentralized, anirnistic and biocentric--but the fact that such tribal societies have survived for so many eons, not just in North America but on every other continent as well, suggests that there is a cohesion and strength to them that is certainly more durable and likely more harmonious than anything industrialism has so far achieved. 3. EXTREME CARICATURES OF BIOCENTRISM ARE JUST STRAWMAN ARGUMENTS Rocky Barker, staff, IDAHO FALLS POST REGISTER, December 3, 1995, p. A9. Moreover, Chase set up a straw man of biocentrism, the idea that all living things have equal value and rights with man, and implied that environmentalists and Park Service employees believed it religiously. The only people I know who believe a slime mold and man have equal rights are fanatical animal rights activists and they have been minor players in the environmental debates of the last 25 years. Despite the environmental classic” tag that Playing God” gets, its cartoon characterization of environmentalists beliefs led them as a group to shun Chase.

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Biocentrism Bad BIOCENTRISM IS AN INVALID PERSPECTIVE 1. BIOCENTRISM IS RIDDLED WITH DEEP THEORETICAL FLAWS Terry L. Anderson, staff, THE DETROIT NEWS, November 15, 1995, p. np. The main contribution of this book is that it exposes the lack of any scientific basis for biocentrism and ecosystem management According to biocentrism, man’s activities (logging, for example) are not a part of the ecosystem, which would be in balance were it not for these activities. But there are two problems with this approach. First, nature is not an equilibrium system. The forests of the Pacific Northwest never have been in balance; they always have been dynamic and always will be even after man joins the dinosaurs. Second, ecosystem management is not scientific because it generates no testable propositions. For example, if spotted owls go extinct, what are the consequences? Biocentrism and ecosystem management make no predictions. They only say such extinction would be bad if it came as a result of man’s influence. 2. BIOCENTRISM IS IMPRACTICAL AND UNREALISTIC Timothy Patrick Brady, editor, BOSTON COLLEGE ENVIRONMENTAL AFFAIRS LAW REVIEW, Spring, 1990, p. 621. Frost discusses two types of environmentalism: biocentrism, and duty-based. Biocentrism believes that humans are “indistinguishable in kind from the other inhabitants of the earth.” Because this philosophy fails to take account of people’s “dual nature-Itheiri thinking and nonthinking selves,” Frost rejects it as “impractical and unrealistic.” ...

3. BIOCENTRISM PRESENTS A FALSE VENEER OF SCIENTIFIC MERIT Terry L. Anderson, staff, THE DETROIT NEWS, November 15, 1995, p. np. Chase’s argument is that ultimately it is value judgments, not scientific analysis, that drive environmental policies. The news that the emperor has no clothes will be unbelievable for those environmentalists who have based their movement on the supposed science of ecosystem management. By embracing biocentrism and ecosystem management, Chase says environmentalists have “confused science with philosophy, facts with values, and truth with mythology.” Compelling evidence to support his conclusion comes from the fight over ancient forests in the Pacific Northwest. Initially, environmentalists claimed (without evidence) that these forests should not be harvested because they are home to an endangered species, the northern spotted owl. Though growing scientific data indicate that viable owl populations do exist, the bird remains on the endangered species list. Million of acres remain off limits to timber management at tremendous economic and social costs. But these costs and the evidence that the owl is not endangered do not matter to the environmentalists fighting over the forests. By arguing that an interconnected natural system will be destroyed if logging is allowed to continue, they have hidden their desire to stop logging under a veil of false science. 4. BIOCENTRISM IS INTERNALLY CONTRADICTORY Joel B. Eisen, Assistant Professor of Law and Director, Robert R. Merhige, Jr. Center of Environmental Law, University of Richmond School of Law, WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY JOURNAL OF URBAN AND CONTEMPORARY LAW, Summer, 1995, p. 10. To coexist in harmony with nature, we might establish a “biocentric democracy,” in which humans and nonhuman species have coextensive rights. This is an alternative to anthropocentrism proposed by some “Deep Ecologists,” who insist that the rights of humankind must extend to all species. To propose this is to recognize one of its many inherent contradictions: humans would still make any determination of biological egalitarianism, which would be suspect on that ground alone.

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BIOCENTRISM IS AN UNDESIRABLE FRAMEWORK 1. ALL BIOCENTRIC PHILOSOPHIES COLLAPSE INTO ANTHROPOCENTRISM Bob Pepperman Taylor, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Vermont, OUR LIMITS TRANSGRESSED: ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICAL THOUGHT IN AMERICA, 1992, p. 127. The rejection of the progressive conservation tradition by contemporary radical environmental philosophers has created the need to find new moral ground for respecting, protecting, and valuing the nonhuman natural environment. The results of the search for a convincing biocentric or ecocentric theory, however, have been disappointing. At some point, all of these theories end up appealing to human interests by connecting our interests to the ecological community of which we are a part, thus undermining the strict biocentrism of the project. At some point, the biocentrism that is to be defended either loses its radical force or is inconsistently applied by the theorist, as a result of its obviously and unacceptably misanthropic implications and conclusions. 2. BIOCENTRISM ALIENATES HUMANS FROM THE REST OF NATURE Joseph R. Des Jardins, Philosophy Professor at the College of Saint Benedict and St. John’s University, ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS: AN INTRODUCTION TO ENVIRONMENTAL PHILOSOPHY, 1997, p. 141. Even Taylor’s careful defense of biocentric ethics faces serious challenges. The next chapters review several that have implications for environmental philosophies. First, the emphasis on noninterference as a major normative principle suggests a view of humans that is questionable at best. To say that we ought not “interfere with” nature implies that humans are somehoe outside of, or distinct from, nature: humans are separate from nature, and thus we should leave natural processes alone. Thus, the claim is that environmental change or even environmental destruction is allowable (good?) if it results from natural processes. Change or destruction is wrong if it results from human interference. But surely humans are as much a part of natural processes as any other organism. Thus, the fact that change is brought about by humans should not, in itself, have any ethical implications. -

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2. BIOCENTRISM BLURS THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN HUMANITY AND NATURE Bob Pepperman Taylor, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Vermont, OUR LIMITS TRANSGRESSED: ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICAL THOUGHT IN AMERICA, 1992, pp. 124-125. First, although Taylor does not depict the earth as a “superorganism,” his biocentric perspective has significant similarities to moral theories built on such a claim most notably, it too obscures the moral issues at stake in the human relationship with the environment by appealing to generally shared interests. As we will see, the ethical principles Taylor defends in the last to components of his theory presume that environmental ethics must concentrate on the clarification and mediation of conflicts between humans and the natural world. The biocentric outlook, in contrast, threatens to make such conflicts increasingly difficult to identify. After all, if we are an integral and equal member of the community of life, on what grounds are we to criticize our “natural” species behavior within that community? Just as with Rolston’s and Callicott’s theories, Taylor’s biocentric world view may actually undermine the original purpose of the theory: defining ethical boundaries for human behavior, through the recognition of the inherent moral worth of other organisms. The danger of the biocenti-ic perspective is that it blurs the distinction between ourselves and other living things so crucial for locating such boundaries. -

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BIOCENTRISM IS ANTHROPOCENTRIC 1. BIOCENTRISM IS JUST AS BAD AS ANTHROPOCENTRISM Murray Bookchin, director emeritus of the Institute for Social Ecology, WHICH WAY FOR THE ECOLOGY MOVEMENT?, 1994, page 3. The “biocentrism” ideology of deep ecology and ecomysticism pivots on an ideological trick: a strict assertion of biocentric “rights,” as though no body of ethical ideas could be translated that formulated both extremes. Yet these extremes can indeed be translated in an ethics of complementarilty, in which human beings--themselves products of natural evolution, with naturally as well as culturally endowed capacities that no other life-form possesses--can play an actively creative role in evolution to the benefit of life generally. Biocentrists willfully ignore such notions--that is, when they do not willfully degrade them into a crude anthropocentrism that they can so easily oppose. 2. FOCUS ON ANTHROPOCENTRISM PARALYZES SOCIAL CHANGE Murray Bookchin, director emeritus of the Institute for Social Ecology, WHICH WAY FOR THE ECOLOGY MOVEMENT?, 1994, page 4. In deep ecology’s derogation of the social, the alienation of humans from the natural world (read: wilderness) was originally caused by human subjectivity. It is not capitalism, you see, that produced alienation from “Nature,” but alienation from “Nature,” that produced capitalism. Was this alienation effected by Christianity, as Lynn White, Jr. would have us believe? Or by egotism, as various psychoanalysts claim? Or was it in fact the same “Paleolithic spirituality’ for which deep ecologists yearn, that in fact unavoidably divided the hunter from the hunted, the natural world from the social, and animals from the human beings who manipulated them in animistic religious beliefs? In any case it is our attitudes and psychological makeup or “mindscapes” that we must explore in this most therapeutic of eras--even at the expense of addressing a “crowded agenda” of social problems that so patently yield ecological problems. BIOCENTRIC NOTIONS JUSTIFY NAZI-STYLE ATROCITIES 1. “BIOCENTRIC EGALITARIANISM” JUSTIFIES TOTALITARIANISM & DEATH OF MILLIONS Murray Bookchin, director emeritus of the Institute for Social Ecology, WHICH WAY FOR THE ECOLOGY MOVEMENT?, 1994, page 10-11. The premises of ecomysticism may lead in many directions, but a goal of social freedom seems to be rarely expressed in the literature. Indeed, deep ecology and ecomysticism generally would be reactionary and alienating if the logic of their precepts were actually carried out in practice. The logic of a seemingly benign deep ecology demand for “biocentric egalitarianism” involves the surrender of human freedom to “Nature’s” imperatives. If sociobiology predetermines a great deal of “human nature” in what E.O. Wilson calls “the morality of the gene,” deep ecology, in turn, seems to place social life into subordination--and a very real subordination--to the “hunger politics” of “voluntary simplicity” and outright asceticism. The logic of permitting “Nature” to “take its course” (as David Foreman once put it) is to render human beings no different in their “intrinsic worth” from other animals and hence subject to “natural laws” like unrelenting swings in population numbers. The tendency of deep ecology ideologists to stop halfway in thinking out the implications of their premises is matched only by their failure to “deeply” confront real social problems and their impact on the natural world. 2. BIOCENTRIC “EQUAL INTRINSIC WORTH” THEORIES LEAD TO NAZI-STYLE ATROCITIES Murray Bookchin, director emeritus of the Institute for Social Ecology, WHICH WAY FOR THE ECOLOGY MOVEMENT?, 1994, page 39. Whether biocentrism’s equation of the “intrinsic worth” of humans and lemmings will pave the ideological way to a future Aushwitz has yet to be seen. But the “moral” grounds for letting millions of people starve to death has been established with a vengeance, and it is arrogantly being advanced in the name of “ecology.”

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BIOCENTRISM IS SELF-CONTRADICTORY 1. “EQUAL INTRINSIC WORTH” THEORY IS FLAWED AND SELF-CONTRADICTORY Murray Bookchin, director emeritus of the Institute for Social Ecology, WHICH WAY FOR THE ECOLOGY MOVEMENT?, 1994, page 46-7. Among neo-Malthusians, hardly any attempt is made to think out premises, indeed, to ask what follows from a given statement. If all life forms have the same “intrinsic worth” as deep ecologists contend, can we impact to malarial mosquitoes or tsetse flies the same “right” to exist that we accord to whale and grizzly bears? Can a bacterium that could threaten to exterminate chimpanzees be left to do so because it too has “intrinsic worth” and, perhaps, because human beings who can control a lethal disease of chimps should not “interfere” with the mystical workings of “Gaia”? Who is to decide what constitutes “valid” interference by human beings in nature and what is invalid? To what extent can conscious, rational, and moral human intervention in nature be regarded as ‘unnatural,” especially if one considers the vast evolution of life toward greater subjectivity and ultimately human intellecturality? To what extent can humanity itself be viewed simply as a single species, when social life is riddled by hierarchy and domination, gender biases, class exploitation and ethnic discrimination? 2. BIOCENTRISM IS SELF-CONTRADICTORY: THE ABORTION ISSUE PROVES Murray Bookchin, director emeritus of the Institute for Social Ecology, WHICH WAY FOR THE ECOLOGY MOVEMENT?, 1994, page 11. Yet abortion rights patently affect rates of population growth, which ecomystics of all kinds have also made into a major issue, and as such they are required fully to support women’s rights to abortion. Thus, neoMalthusian attempts to reduce social facts to biological facts divide into pro-choice demands for reproductive and antiabortionist claims to the rights of the unborn. The abortion issue, in fact, points up the absurd tangle of contradictions--partly in theory, partly in practice--which biocentrism produces and the extent to which it remains a thoroughly unthought-out, one-sided, and irrational outlook. BIOCENTRISM STOPS TRUE ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION 1. BIOCENTRISM WEAKENS REAL ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION EFFORTS Keith Schneider, former national environmental correspondent for The New York Times, executive director of the Michigan Land Use Institute, THE NEW YORK TIMES, November 19, 1995, Section 7; Page 34. The environmentalists, on the other hand, were influenced by a corrosive biocentrism, an almost religious conviction that all living things have equal value and that old-growth forests, in particular, deserved to be protected at any cost. When the two sides clashed, the result was a loss of balance that hurt small communities, dramatically weakened the environmental movement and further fueled an already rampant cynicism about the American political system’s ability to solve complex problems. 2. BIOCENTRISM BECOMES A SUBSTITUTE FOR REAL SOCIAL CRITIQUE AND ACTION Murray Bookchin, director emeritus of the Institute for Social Ecology, WHICH WAY FOR THE ECOLOGY MOVEMENT?, 1994, page 41-2. The shadowy side of suprahuman “naturalism” suggests the perilous ground on which many ecomystics, ecotheistics, and deep ecologists are walking and the dangers of de-sensitizing an already “minimalized” public, to use Christopher Lasch’s term. As the late Edward Abbey’s denunciations of Latin “genetic inferiority” and even “Hebraic superstitions” suggest, the mystical Malthusians themselves are not immune to the dangerous brew. The brew becomes themselves are not immune to the dangerous brew. The brew becomes highly explosive when it is mixed with a mysticism that supplants humanity’s potentiality to be a rational voice of nature with an all-presiding “Gaia,” an ecotheism that denies human beings their unique place in nature. Reverence for nature is no guarantee of reverence for the world of line generally, and reverence for nonhuman life is no guarantee that human life will receive the respect it deserves. This is especially true when reverence is rooted in deification--and when a supine reverence become a substitute for social critique and social action.

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Biology Bad LIFE GAINS MEANING ONLY THROUGH EXPERIENCE NOT BIOLOGY 1. A FERTILIZED EGG IS NOT A PERSON. Stephen C. Hicks, Professor of Law, Suffolk University School of Law, FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW, WINTER, 1992, p.820. Our genetic endowment obviously differentiates us as a species and thus defines the fertilized egg and embryo as human, but it does not, without more, distinguish between the human being and human cells. Each cell is genetically complete, yet it is not the equivalent of a person. 2. SOCIAL EXISTENCE SHAPES OUR VALUE SYSTEMS Mao Tse-Tung, Former Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, ON NEW DEMOCRACY, 1954, p.4. Marx says, “It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but on the contrary, their social existence determines their consciousness.” He also says: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.” This is the scientific definition that for the first time in human history correctly solved the problem of the relation between consciousness and existence. 3. GENES ONLY CONSTITUTE MEMBERSHIP IN A SPECIES NOT A PERSON. Stephen C. Hicks, Professor of Law, Suffolk University School of Law, FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW, WINTER, 1992, p. 820. It cannot be our genes that constitute our humanness except as a species. But the simple virtue of humanness is insufficient to establish our right to life as a species or as particular individuals of the species. We should treat all species and all living things equally or identify what it is about humans that is different. Thus, it has been suggested so far that neither genetic endowment, potentiality, nor continuity from fertilization constitute individuality, still less personhood. 4. LIFE DOES NOT EXIST OUTSIDE OF LIVING Stephen C. Hicks, Professor of Law, Suffolk University School of Law, FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW, WINTER, 1992, p. 821-2. Search as we may for life, we only find living. We may translate life into consciousness or the soul, but these definitions will not sustain the fertilized egg’s right to life. If there is a right to life it means a right to go on living; this means either the right to become a person, which is the potentiality argument, or that living is what rights are for, in which case we need to know what it is that is living. 5. LIFE GAINS MEANING ONLY THROUGH EXPERIENCE Stephen C. Hicks, Professor of Law, Suffolk University School of Law, FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW, WINTER, 1992, p.824. Life, therefore is a universal that we do not experience. We experience the particularities of living. As such an abstraction, “life” serves to organize for us a certain conceptual landscape. It has meaning in this enterprise, for it refers to the unity of concepts, such as living beings, living a life, consciousness, the mystery of why there exists a world, without actually referring to any one thing with specificity.

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THERE IS NO ABSOLUTE RIGHT TO LIFE 1. THE RIGHT TO LIFE IS NOT ABSOLUTE Stephen C. Hicks, Professor of Law, Suffolk University School of Law, FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW, WINTER, 1992, p. 812. Finally, even if there is such a right to life of the human species because of nature or God, when the species claims that right over itself in particular cases some other values will be necessary to determine the accommodation of hard choices, such as survival amid limited resources. In our actual lives the human species’ right to life is not exceptionless. To talk of life, therefore, in this sense is an abstraction. We need to know what life might refer to other than the species’ instinct for self preservation even at the price of killing other members of the species. 2. DECISIONS SHOULD BE MADE BASED ON QUALITY OF LIFE Mary Catherine Bateson, NQA, OMNI, April 1992, p. 8. It is one thing to support the decision to go on living, even with pain and discomfort and dependency, as long as that choice can knowingly be taken. Those are the costs we must find ways to meet. But the proportion of medical costs devoted to futile and expensive interventions on those already dying or no longer conscious is inappropriate. Crossgenerational tension occurs not only within individual families, but in society at large, which supports heroic medical interventions for the very old at the expense of investments in the future: prenatal care, education, expanded industrial capacity, and jobs. Generations compete for resources, social security moves toward crisis, and many of the elderly feel betrayed by children unwilling to take on their care. The covenant between young and old, which is under threat today, must be premised on sustained quality of life for both generations, and a due acceptance of death that includes the expectation of full information, discussion, and planning. 3. THERE IS NO RIGHT TO LIFE Stephen C. Hicks, Professor of Law, Suffolk University School of Law, FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW, WINTER, 1992, p. 811-12. Life in this general sense or in the sense of the species as a whole cannot be the subject of rights. Rights attach to existent members of the species. Taken literally, the idea that life itself has a right is nonsense. 4. DEATH SHOULD BECOME A CHOICE Mary Catherine Bateson, NQA, OMNI, April 1992, p. 8. Just as we foresee a society in which every birth is chosen and brings forth a wanted child, so we can foresee a society in which death comes in chosen ways and seasons, freeing energies for living. If you look around at clear skin and straight teeth, at parents who have not had to face the death of children, at energetic elders working and playing to average ages never before known, you recognize that what we call health and regard as natural is in fact an artifact of culture, an extension of human choice based on increasing knowledge. This is the human pattern, and the time has come to decide how to bring death within that pattern along with the amelioration and extension of life. BIOLOGICAL DEFINITIONS OF LIFE ARE INACCURATE 1. A COMATOSE STATE IS NOT SYNONYMOUS WITH BEING BRAIN-DEAD Jim Holt, Writer, THE NEW REPUBLIC, February 21, 1994, p. 26. Being in a coma, even an irreversible one, turns out to be not the same thing as being brain-dead by the Harvard criteria, comatose patients typically have “slow” brain waves, not flat ones. Moreover, unless there is substantial damage elsewhere in the body, they are always able to breathe spontaneously, without the use of ventilators. When the plug was pulled on Karen Quinlan, for instance, she surprised everyone by wheezing along on her own for more than a decade. 2. BIOLOGICAL DEFINITION OF LIFE DENIES PERSONHOOD Thomas A. Shannon, Professor of Religion and Social Ethics at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, COMMONWEAL, December 1993, p. 13. What in human dignity is protected by maintaining the biological processes when there is no reasonable basis for expecting any change in the person’s medical status? To maintain biological processes for their own sake gives priority to the impersonal rather than the personal, is death-denying rather than death accepting. 76

BRAIN ACTIVITY IS ACCEPTED AS DEFINITION OF EXISTENCE OF LIFE 1. SOCIETY ACCEPTS BRAIN ACTIVITY AS DEFINITION OF LIFE Jim Holt, Writer, THE NEW REPUBLIC, February 21, 1994, p. 26. Once the brain stem stops functioning, traditional heart-lung death invariably follows within a week or so, even with the most aggressive support of life-sustaining gadgetry. Thus it is not possible for someone to be both whole-brain dead and at the same time in a persistent coma. The whole-brain standard was endorsed in 1984 by the President’s Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine, and has since become statute law in more than thirty states. 2. IRREVERSIBLE COMA DEFINES DEATH Jim Holt., Writer, THE NEW REPUBLIC, February 21, 1994, p. 26. The 1968 Harvard Medical School Ad Hoc Committee to Examine the Definition of Brain Death defined it as a state entailing a total unawareness of external stimuli, no spontaneous breathing and a flat brain wave. “Our primary purpose,” said the committee’s report, “is to define irreversible coma as a new criterion of death.” 3. A PERSON CEASES TO EXIST WHEN THE BRAIN STEM DIES Jim Holt, Writer, THE NEW REPUBLIC, February 21, 1994, p. 27. It is certainly possible that, even with the cessation of higher-brain function, some rudimentary cognitive capacity remains as long as the brain stem and other systems deeper in the brain are working. And even if consciousness does turn out to reside exclusively in the cerebral cortex, some opponents of the higher-brain death standard refuse to concede that personal identity can be defined purely in terms of consciousness. One such, the British philosopher David Lamb, maintains that uncertainty over which mental processes are constitutive of personhood “can only be avoided by accepting the proposal that the point where loss of personhood is certain is when the brain as a whole, and hence the organism as a whole no longer functions.” And that moment, he adds, is “when the brain stem dies.” LIFE IS NOT THE ULTIMATE VALUE 1. LIFE IS NOT ULTIMATE VALUE Thomas A. Shannon, Professor of Religion and Social Ethics at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, COMMONWEAL, December 1993, p. 12. For while human life is sacred and valuable, it is created and finite and to suggest it has an ultimacy because of its sacredness is to commit idolatry. Such a point has ethical significance in evaluation medical therapies and technologies. For while life is valuable, it is neither the ultimate value nor the only value relevant to the issue at hand. Nor does life’s being a basic value give it a privileged position among other values. Even though life is not a means to other ends, it is not of ultimate value. 2. WE CANNOT DETERMINE THE VALUE OF LIFE Stephen C. Hicks, Professor of Law, Suffolk University School of Law, FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW, WINTER, 1992. 824. In the sense “life” may be said to exist as such, we do not have life; life lives us. Therefore, we cannot determine or discover the value of life. We may simply recognize that we have value for it.

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LIFE CONSISTS OF MORE THAN PHYSICAL EXISTENCE 1. PRESENCE OF SOUL SHOULD NOT MARK LIFE Stephen C. Hicks, Professor of Law, Suffolk University School of Law, FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW, WINTER, 1992.826. But it seems odd that the presence or absence of the soul should mark life. It is unexpectedly materialistic of religious thinkers to identify the soul with the fertilization of the egg because it marks the beginning of human life, rather than to identify the soul with some more spiritual quality, such as the embryo’s perception, sensation, quickening, or even reason. 2. A BODY DOES NOT DEFINE A PERSON Stephen Levine, Writer, UTNE READER. September/October 1991, p. 68. Perhaps the first recognition in the process of acknowledging, opening, and letting go that I call “conscious dying” is when we begin to see that we are not the body. We see that we have a body but it is not who we are. One fellow remarked that he could see that the was “creation constantly in the act of becoming.” He saw the perfect unfolding of each moment and that there was nothing he had to do about it, that all his doing to become something or someone just “dulled the wonder of it all.” ACTUAL BEGINNING OF A HUMAN LIFE CANNOT BE DETERMINED 1. DETERMINING THE BEGINNING OF LIFE IS ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE Stephen C. Hicks, Professor of Law, Suffolk University School of Law, FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW, WINTER, 1992, p. 812. Therefore, any right to life argument cannot be based on the premise that development is stageless. Rather it must be that conception, instead of other stages—such as implantation, responsiveness to stimuli, quickening, ability to survive outside the womb, or neocortical functioning—is the meaningful stage, because conception defines the occurrence of individual life. But not only does this meaningfulness beg the very value it set Out to assert—that there is an individual to be valued as of conception, rather than life in the abstract—but the idea that this is a simple, easy, and fundamental line to draw is quite mistaken. 2. DETERMINING THE BEGINNING OF LIFE IS ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE Stephen C. Hicks, Professor of Law, Suffolk University School of Law, FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW, WINTER, 1992, p. 812. However, we are left with the unfortunate fact that because there is no accepted scientific, religious, philosophical, or common sense stage for the beginning of personhood, the balancing of interests whether interests axe even sufficiently valid to be balanced, are subject to the whims of political power.

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Biotechnology Good BIOTECHNOLOGY IS NECESSARY FOR THE ENVIRONMENT AND FOOD 1. TECH PROVIDES BOUNTIFUL FOOD FOR POOR COUNTRIES James Walsh, Journalist, TIME, January 11, 1999, p. 86. That race has produced some truly remarkable things. In one lab researchers are developing food plants fortified with a scrap of DNA that codes for a natural pesticide, eliminating the need to spray clouds of toxin over acres of crops. At another they're developing beans and grains with much higher levels of protein--no small thing for parts of the world where beef and other meats are scarce. At still others they're making potatoes with more starch and less water, coffee beans that grow caffeine-free right on the vine, tomatoes with more solid flesh and less pulp, and strawberries with less natural sugar. Better still, possibly, such Uber-plants, passing their clever new traits on to succeeding generations, could yield more bountiful harvests on marginal land in poor, overpopulated countries. 2. BIOTECH WILL PROVIDE A CLEANER ENVIRONMENT Edward T. Shonsey, President and CEO of Novartis Seeds, VITAL SPEECHES, March 15, 1999, p. 342. Our environment will be profoundly changed as a result of bio-engineered water utilization by crops, waste reduction in livestock and humans - and reduced groundwater contamination because of biotechnology's ability to create plants which need less fertilizer and chemicals. 3. BIOTECH INCREASES VALUE OF AGRICULTURE BY FACTOR OF FOUR Edward T. Shonsey, President and CEO of Novartis Seeds, VITAL SPEECHES, March 15, 1999, p. 342. We will create better products, that meet specific needs and will do it faster than ever before. And if we deliver products which make farming more efficient and profitable, then we will have no trouble recovering some of our investment. But where the REAL impact of biotech begins to show up is when we look beyond the farm gate. Here's how I look at it - using wheat as an example. In and of itself, the worldwide value of wheat production is roughly $100-billion dollars. BUT - when you start to look at what comes after harvest - the potential to produce specific types of wheat to meet the needs of the feed industry, the starch industry, the milling industry and the malting industry you increase the value of the crop several fold. And the value of the crop continues to escalate after it leaves the farm and, say, the feed industry sells its products to the livestock industry which, in turn, sells its products to the grocer for use in your back yard bar-b-que. And while the example I've used is wheat, you can run the same sort of numbers with any crop you can name. Hence value creation is multiplied by a factor of 4X. 4. BIOTECH WILL FEED CHILDREN, PROVIDE BETTER WORLD Edward T. Shonsey, President and CEO of Novartis Seeds, VITAL SPEECHES, March 15, 1999, p. 342. And personally a world where I can balance my corporate responsibility for strong fiscal management with my personal belief that agriculture represents one of the best ways possible to do something good for all mankind. Biotech? Bust? No way. Boom? Certainly. If ... If we continue to keep our eye on the distant, long-term goal: making this a better world in which to live. A world where no one goes hungry because the farmers in their country can't produce enough food for them to eat. A world where children grow up healthy because they receive their immunizations in their breakfast food. A world where precious natural resources are preserved because we - you and I working together - create new alternative sources of fuel and fiber. That's the ultimate destination in the evolution of biotechnology. A better world in which to live. 5. PROBLEMS WITH BIOTECHNOLOGY ARE OVERBLOWN James Walsh, Journalist, TIME, January 11, 1999, p. 86. Europe's reticence mixes some good arguments with some ill-informed rhetoric. Does a modified form of wheat grown in France by the Swiss-owned giant Novartis contain a resistance to antibiotics, posing a risk of imparting that resistance to consumers? The company insists the buzz is nonsense, yet a French citizens conference last year solemnly accepted the rumor as fact. Do genetically altered crops "outbreed" with wild relatives and other plants?, but so do hybrid farm crops produced by classical breeding since time immemorial. The prospect of unwittingly breeding "superweeds" and "superpests" is a justified concern, demanding caution. Yet studies to date suggest herbicide-resistant genes die out in the wild. 79

BIOTECHNOLOGY CAN IMPROVE HUMANS AND STOP DISEASE 1. TECH CAN LEAD TO A FUTURE WITHOUT DISEASE Gregg Easterbrook, Author, THE NEW REPUBLIC, March 1, 1999 p. 20. If researchers can convert stem cells into regular cells like blood or heart muscle and then put them back into the body, then physicians might cure Parkinson's, diabetes, leukemia, heart congestion, and many other maladies, replacing failing cells with brand-new tissue. Costly afflictive procedures such as bone-marrow transplants might become easier and cheaper with the arrival of stem-cell-based "universal donor" tissue that does not provoke the immune-rejection response. The need for donor organs for heart or liver transplants might fade, as new body parts are cultured artificially. Ultimately, mastery of the stem cell might lead to practical, affordable ways to eliminate many genetic diseases through DNA engineering, while extending the human life span. Our near descendants might live in a world in which such killers as cystic fibrosis and sickle-cell anemia are one-in-a-million conditions, while additional decades of life are the norm. 2. GENETIC RESEARCH CAN REVOLUTIONIZE MEDICINE Gregg Easterbrook, Author, THE NEW REPUBLIC, March 1, 1999 p. 20. Harold Varmus, head of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), recently declared, "This research has the potential to revolutionize the practice of medicine." Notes John Fletcher, a bioethicist at the University of Virginia, "Soon every parent whose child has diabetes or any cell-failure disease is going to be riveted to this research, because it's the answer." Ron McKay, a stem-cell researcher at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, says, "We are now at the center of biology itself." Simply put, the control of human stem cells may open the door to the greatest medical discovery since antibiotics. 3. BIOTECH WILL IMPROVE ALL ASPECTS OF LIFE Edward T. Shonsey, President and CEO of Novartis Seeds, VITAL SPEECHES, March 15, 1999, p. 342. And when it comes to biotechnology, I don't think you should count on there ever being an end to the evolution - at least not in the lifetimes of any of us in this room for many reasons including cost which will define the competition between such things as chemical synthesis and enzymatic engineering. What I care more about than "getting to the end of the trail," is the fact that we will never look at the world the same again because of this thing we call biotechnology. This web of enabling technologies which - I am firmly convinced - WILL change our health, our diets, our jobs and how we solve the complexities of life, itself. 4. BIOTECH WILL IMPROVE NUTRITION AND HEALTH Edward T. Shonsey, President and CEO of Novartis Seeds, VITAL SPEECHES, March 15, 1999, p. 342. For instance, the opportunities presented by biotechnology and bioinfomatics are limitless and far-reaching. They will affect every - EVERY - aspect of your, and my life. Our nutrition and health will be affected by biotech vaccines and antibody production. 5. BIOTECH WILL PROVIDE MIRACLE CURES FOR DISEASES Edward T. Shonsey, President and CEO of Novartis Seeds, VITAL SPEECHES, March 15, 1999, p. 342. In medicine, cholesterol, cancer, heart disease, HIV and genetic diseases will become the beneficiaries of our greater understanding of biotechnology. These benefits rest not only in innovation and miracle cures but also in testing, evaluation and manufacture of these cures. 6. NO REASON TO REJECT GENETIC ENGINEERING OF HUMANS Gregg Easterbrook, Author, THE NEW REPUBLIC, March 1, 1999 p. 20. Though no gene engineering has been attempted on humans, there appear to be no special technical barriers against doing so. Silver, the Princeton biologist, argues that our generation will be looked back on as "the point in history when human beings gained the power to seize control of their own evolutionary destiny." Control over evolution might turn out well or badly, but there's no reason to reject it out of hand, since evolution has left humanity disease-prone, short-lived, and fragile. Why shouldn't we try to change that?

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Biotechnology Bad BIOTECHNOLOGY IS OUT OF CONTROL 1. PEOPLE VIEW GENETICS AS AN OUT-OF-CONTROL JUGGERNAUT James Walsh, Journalist, TIME, January 11, 1999, p. 86. Yet the Continental food fight that continues to pitch up scare headlines in Europe may herald what genetic engineering can expect to encounter as it moves more broadly into pharmaceuticals and medical procedures. It's not just a matter of consumers' smelling something very fishy in the idea of tomatoes given an antifreeze-producing gene from the winter flounder. More broadly, society--at least European society--is beginning to view genetic science as a market-impelled juggernaut out of control and wearing moral blinders. 2. COMMERCIAL BENEFITS OUTPACE RATIONAL THINKING ON GENETICS James Walsh, Journalist, TIME, January 11, 1999, p. 86. The notion of science as a Faustian enterprise is deeply embedded in the popular psyche, even in the relatively optimistic U.S. Technologies that tinker with the fundamentals of life can inspire anxieties enough; when increasingly wedded to the profits of Big Business, the exercise can begin to look downright alarming. Author Jeremy Rifkin, America's most persistent critic of bioengineering, wonders what is in store for a world in which evolution is treated as a plaything and life as an "invention." A case in point: the announcement in November by Advanced Cell Technology of Worcester, Mass., that it had hybridized human DNA with a cow egg. Says David Magnus, director of graduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania's Bioethics Center: "It's an example of an issue that requires deep, careful thought. Instead, there was a race to get it done as fast as possible, because there were commercial benefits." 3. BIOTECH RISKS CATASTROPHIC CONSEQUENCES Kirkpatrick Sale, Contributing Editor, THE NATION, March 8, 1999, p.14. Jerry Mander, a California technology activist, has taken a long hard look at the biotech industry and the "bugs" it is creating daily. He concludes, "If I were a betting man, I would take the long odds and put my money down that within the next few decades a bug will get loose, will survive, and will cause one hell of a lot of unexpected, possibly catastrophic problems." It may not come from Monsanto's laboratories, of course. This is a colossal and growing business, with thousands of universities and companies, and hundreds of thousands of employees, fiddling with life. But it may: Monsanto scientists around the world are altering genes this way and that to make cotton plants that grow with colors built in; food additives designed to manage diabetes; super-firm potatoes that are easier to fry; artificial enzymes that increase nutrients in animal feed; and new forms of sugar beets, wheat, rape, tomatoes, rice and a hundred other creations not found in nature. 4.SCIENTISTS CANNOT SELF-REGULATE James Walsh, Journalist, TIME, January 11, 1999, p. 86. While society is torn between benefits and risks, commercial scientists have done a bad job of regulating themselves, in Magnus' view. "Testing with breast-cancer genes was offered far too early," he says. "It wasn't even clear what the tests meant." He adds, "We could literally have had women getting double mastectomies because of a positive result on a genetic test, where in fact the test does not mean that they are at increased risk." 5. BIOTECH FIRMS MISLEAD THE PUBLIC James Walsh, Journalist, TIME, January 11, 1999, p. 86. At the same time, biotech firms like Novartis, America's Monsanto and Britain's Zeneca are somewhat disingenuous when they imply that nothing could go wrong with their products. Science has moved at such a dizzying pace that neither politics nor the law, let alone research into unforeseen consequences, can keep up with it. Britain's preeminent champion of organic farming, Prince Charles, weighed in on the debate in mid-1998 with a newspaper commentary arguing that transferring genes between utterly unrelated species--fish to tomatoes, for instance-"takes us into realms that belong to God, and to God alone."

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BIOTECHNOLOGY IS AN IMMORAL RISK 1. BIOTECH CONSTITUTES A POTENTIALLY LETHAL PLAYING GOD Kirkpatrick Sale, Contributing Editor, THE NATION, March 8, 1999, p.14. And the one overriding fact that Monsanto is in the business of playing God. Even if technological intrusion into and manipulation of the environment had not left a lengthy and frightening record of unintended disasters in the past century or so, there would be no reason to have any faith that Monsanto was so wise and foresightful that it could predict with any certainty what the consequences of its genetic intrusions would be--and that they would always be benign. Thomas Midgely Jr. didn't mean to destroy the ozone layer when he introduced chlorofluorocarbons for refrigerators and spray cans half a century ago; the champions of nuclear energy didn't mean to create a deadly hazard with a life of 100,000 years that no one knows how to control. And now we are talking about life--the alteration of the basic genetic makeup of plants and animals. A mistake here might have unimaginably horrible consequences for the species of the earth, including the human. 2. GENETICS IS THE PROVINCE OF GOD AND NATURE, NOT HUMANS Kirkpatrick Sale, Contributing Editor, THE NATION, March 8, 1999, p.14. After enough such protests, Monsanto began to catch on to the idea that messing around with the genes of life, altering seeds and foods and drinks and drags, is something that just simply scares a lot of people--reasonable people. It began to understand that using the powers of technology to interfere in life, heretofore generally thought of as the province of Nature, or God, and manipulate it at the basic genetic level so as to change its character, raises deep-seated doubts and worries. 3. MANY ARE IN REVOLT OVER THE "TEST TUBE FUTURE" Kirkpatrick Sale, Contributing Editor, THE NATION, March 8, 1999, p.14. The Whole Foods Market of Austin, Texas, for example, an eighty-nine-market operation that requires suppliers to guarantee than none of the products they sell to it have gene-altered ingredients. And the Foundation on Economic Trends, in Washington, DC, whose spokesman Jeremy Rifkin has warned against "the wholesale reseeding of the Earth's biosphere with a laboratory-conceived Second Genesis" [see Rifkin, "The Biotech Century," April 13, 1998]. And a variety of consumer and environmental groups that last fall mounted a loud campaign against the Agriculture Department's attempt to allow genetically altered food to be labeled organic and eventually forced it to back down. And, according to the New York Times this past July, most of the consumers of Europe, who are "in open revolt over the prospect of a future in which nature has somehow been altered by people holding test tubes." 4. PRACTICES OF BIOTECH FIRMS ARE UNSUSTAINABLE Kirkpatrick Sale, Contributing Editor, THE NATION, March 8, 1999, p.14. Monsanto is trying very hard to reassure such people, but of course it doesn't like to address certain unpleasantries that these critics level. Such as the fact that Roundup is, after all, a poison so lethal that it kills almost all herbaceous plants and is toxic ("very low" but measurable) for humans if touched or ingested; that its active ingredient remains in the soil for three months or more; and that the long-term effect of its widespread use is unknown--a University of California study calls it the third most common cause of pesticide illness among farm workers. It seems strange to call "sustainable" the vast destruction of plants to make way for a monoculture crop like this, but the company plans to carry this anti-biodiversity scheme to nearly 300 million acres around the world when the product reaches its full "growth potential."

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Buddhism Good BUDDHISM SOLVES SOCIETY'S PROBLEMS 1. BUDDHISM AFFIRMS PEACE AND INTERCONNECTEDNESS OF BEINGS Kenneth Kraft, Professor of Religion at Lehigh University, JOURNAL OF BUDDHIST ETHICS, Volume 2, 1995, p. 153. As traditional Buddhist understandings of nonviolence are filtered through new cultural settings and historical circumstances, fresh interpretations emerge. First, there is a renewed affirmation of the fundamental interconnectedness between individual peace and social or political peace. From this standpoint there can be no such thing as an "inner peace" that is separate from the world. Real inner peace is the fruit of deep awareness, and deep awareness includes a profound sensitivity to the suffering (lack of peace) of other beings. 2. BUDDHISM HELPS ADDRESS MYRIAD OF SOCIAL ILLS Kenneth Kraft, Professor of Religion at Lehigh University, JOURNAL OF BUDDHIST ETHICS, Volume 2, 1995, p. 154. Any "inner peace" that does not generate some kind of response to the pain of the world is therefore considered a false inner peace. Some Western Buddhists would even go one step further, contending that unless one is working "outwardly" for peace, one will not be able to experience real inner peace. Once interconnectedness is affirmed, it also follows that inner/outer peace is not separate from a cluster of related issues: justice, economic fairness, human rights, racial and gender equality, protection of the environment, and so on. Accordingly, most Western Buddhists are convinced that one can meaningfully work for peace by campaigning against the death penalty, serving in an AIDS hospice, promoting animal rights, conserving water in an intentional community, publicizing the effects of nuclear waste, or practicing a few minutes of silence before a family meal. 3. ANY STEP TOWARDS ENDING SUFFERING IS KEY TO BUDDHISM Kenneth Kraft, Professor of Religion at Lehigh University, JOURNAL OF BUDDHIST ETHICS, Volume 2, 1995, p. 166. In a similar spirit, many believe that any step toward alleviating suffering in the world has a real effect, and the cumulative outcome of such actions will eventually prove to be of utmost significance. "I know this sounds grandiose," writes Gorin, "but I do really see the work here as a drop of water in the wave of history that is rolling inexorably towards liberation." Shifting metaphors in a later passage, he adds, "Our work may take lifetimes, but with each grain of sand, we are building a new world." 4. BUDDHISM DEALS WITH ALL MANNER OF SOCIAL ISSUES Kenneth Kraft, Professor of Religion at Lehigh University, JOURNAL OF BUDDHIST ETHICS, Volume 2, 1995, p. 166. Interconnectedness -- as doctrine and as experience -- is a source of comfort and inspiration for most Buddhist activists. If all things are related to each other, then work on behalf of one worthy cause often supports work on behalf of other worthy causes. Joe Gorin kept asking himself where he could contribute most effectively; eventually he concluded that "each struggle for justice is a part of every other one, so it makes little difference where I go after my time in Guatemala is over." In practical terms, saving rainforests may not help to save whales, but saving rainforests may indeed help to protect indigenous peoples. The task for globally oriented activists is to identify the meaningful connections.

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OBJECTIONS TO BUDDHISM ARE WRONG 1. BUDDHISM IS NOT NIHILISM Peter D. Hershock, East-West Center Asian Studies Development Program, JOURNAL OF BUDDHIST ETHICS, Volume 6, 1999, p. 152. It is a common misconception that the Buddhist practice of seeing all things as empty involves a nihilistic detachment from our circumstances. In fact, it entails carefully freeing things from the univocal assertion of their existence in keeping with our own, often quite prejudiced, importances. Practicing emptiness makes it possible for the horizonless and always reciprocal relevance of all things to freely manifest. 2. BUDDHIST NOTION OF "EMPTINESS" STRENGTHENS RELATIONSHIPS Peter D. Hershock, East-West Center Asian Studies Development Program, JOURNAL OF BUDDHIST ETHICS, Volume 6, 1999, p. 152. As an attribute, the emptiness of all things consists of their unique ways of arising only as patterns of interdependence or mutual contribution, having neither fixed and defining essences nor hard boundaries segregating them from one another. Because such 'essences' and 'boundaries' arise as functions of projected horizons for relevance, relinquishing these horizons through the practice of emptiness is to relinquish our own fixed positions, our own segregated identities and limiting perspectives. The liberation of things from the imposition of identities based on our own fixed categories is thus inseparable from our own liberation from both the arrogant illusion of autonomy and the tragic alienation of anonymity. Finally, Buddhist emptiness does not mean vacuity, but an infinite depth of meaningful interrelationship. Fully practiced, it occasions horizonless, responsive, and dramatic community -- the elision of any conceptual, perceptual, or emotional blockages we have to appreciating the uniqueness, value, and contributory depth of all things. As epitomized in the attainment of upaaya (unlimited skillin-means) by those bodhisattvas (enlightening beings) who have realized non-reliance and the art of responding without any fixed perspective, fully appreciating the emptiness of all things is associated with horizonless virtuosity in improvising meaningful resolutions to trouble. Contrary to the biases of our technological lineage and legalistic activism, this is not accomplished by controlling circumstances, but through contributory appreciation; not by means of leveraging power in order to get what is wanted, but by dedicating unlimited attention-energy to realizing dramatic partnership with all things. The bodhisattva does not heal through accumulating and wielding power, but through daanapaaramitaa or the perfection of offering. 3. BUDDHISM ISN'T OTHERWORLDLY: MORE VITAL TODAY THAN EVER Kenneth Kraft, Professor of Religion at Lehigh University, JOURNAL OF BUDDHIST ETHICS, Volume 2, 1995, p. 152. Buddhism in the late twentieth century is affected by many of the same forces influencing other religious traditions today. Increasingly, Buddhists in Asia and the West are responding to contemporary issues in ways that may seem unprecedented but are grounded in Buddhism's past. Although Buddhism is typically depicted as otherworldly, its present-day vitality can best be seen in various forms of engagement -- social, political, and environmental.

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Buddhism Bad BUDDHISM HAS INTERNAL CONTRADICTIONS 1. TAKING BUDDHIST WRITINGS LITERALLY IS PROBLEMATIC Stephen Batchelor, author of Buddhism without Beliefs, WHAT IS ENLIGHTENMENT?, Issue 14, 1998, p. 18. It means that if you read through the Buddhist sutras, of which there are so many that it’s unlikely anybody’s read them all, you’ll find all manner of passages which appear, actually, to be at odds with many other passages. And I think it’s particularly striking how Western interpreters of Buddhism have latched on to that last passage you’ve just quoted. It’s endlessly reiterated and yet, as I said, it only occurs once in all of the canon. It’s a passage that I think is attractive precisely because it lends credence to a kind of mystical absolutist interpretation of Buddhist doctrine that is actually not so widely found elsewhere in the texts. If one reads through the Majjhima Nikaya, for example, you won’t find that sort of language very widespread. I’m not saying you can’t find passages elsewhere that use that kind of language, but even leaving aside contemporary views on Buddhism, there have been commentators as far back as two thousand years ago who shed doubt on the legitimacy of such passages and saw them as inspirational rather than literal. In other words, for many people that kind of language inspires them to reach beyond themselves. It inspires them to believe in the possibility of something quite other than the sort of experience they feel trapped and stuck in at the present. But that those inspirational injunctions of the Buddha are meant to be taken literally, I personally find problematic. 2. MYTHS ABOUT THE BUDDHA HIMSELF ABOUND Dr. Robert Morey, Research and Education Foundation, BUDDHISM UNMASKED, 1998, www.cultbusters.com/buddhism.html, accessed May 11, 1999. Buddhism is supposedly built upon the teachings and example of a Hindu guru who was called the "Buddha," i.e. Enlightened One. The problem we face is that this guru did not write down any of his teachings. Neither did any of his early disciples. A few manuscripts appear four to five hundred years after his death! But most of the manuscripts do not appear until nearly 1,000 years after his death. This gives plenty of time for legends and myths to arise which falsify the life and teachings of the guru. 3. RELIABILITY OF BUDDHIST TRUTH IS SPECIOUS Dr. Robert Morey, Research and Education Foundation, BUDDHISM UNMASKED, 1998, www.cultbusters.com/buddhism.html, accessed May 11, 1999. This problem is further complicated by the development of two contradictory literary traditions: Pali and Sanskrit. These divergent literary traditions produced hundreds of Buddhist sects which disagree with each other on many major points. Because of the lack of primary source materials for the history of Buddhism, modern scholars seriously doubt the reliability of the traditional legends about the Buddha. As a matter of fact, if he were alive today he would not recognize the religion that bears his name! Since Buddhists themselves disagree on the "facts" of the life and teachings of their guru, there is more than adequate reason to cast doubt on the entire history of the "Buddha." 4. BUDDHISM IS BEREFT WITH CONTRADICTIONS Dr. Robert Morey, Research and Education Foundation, BUDDHISM UNMASKED, 1998, www.cultbusters.com/buddhism.html, accessed May 11, 1999. There are only a few facts about this Hindu guru that are agreed upon by most scholars. He was born around 563 BC in what is now called Nepal. His name is not known for certain. The ones that history preserved are spelled differently. One variation is Siddhartha Gautama. Although this name is doubted by many scholars, we will use it for lack of a better alternative. It is universally agreed that Siddhartha did not intend to start a new religion. He was born a Hindu. He lived as a Hindu. And he died a Hindu in 483 B.C. The myths and legends which gradually built up around him over the centuries are no safe guide to what he really believed or practiced. As Buddhism evolved over the centuries, many different authors from varying cultures set forth their own ideas in the name of the Buddha. As a result, Buddhism developed inherent contradictions. When this was realized, Buddhism embraced these contradictions as a badge of honor. Thus the making of self-contradictory statements has become one of the pronounced features of Zen and other esoteric forms of Buddhism. 85

BUDDHISM HAS MANY PROBLEMS 1. SELFISHNESS IS A SERIOUS PROBLEM WITH BUDDHISM Dr. Robert Morey, Research and Education Foundation, BUDDHISM UNMASKED, 1998, www.cultbusters.com/buddhism.html, accessed May 11, 1999. Then a new idea came into his mind. His real problem was that he had DESIRES. When his desires were not met, he became dissatisfied. Thus the way to avoid frustration and the suffering it caused, is to arrive at the place where he had no desires for anything, good or evil. For example, he should have no desire to see his wife or child or to help the poor and needy. Desire qua desire must be eradicated. With these insights (sic), Siddhartha was proclaimed a "Buddha," i.e. an Enlightened One. Did this mean he went back to his family and fulfilled his moral obligation to his wife and child? No, his wife and child remained abandoned. Siddhartha's so-called "enlightenment" was intensely self-centered and inherently selfish. This is still one of the main problems of Buddhism. 2. DALAI LAMA SUPPORTS NUCLEAR WEAPONS AND VIOLENT CULTS Christopher Hitchens, columnist for Vanity Fair, “HIS MATERIAL HIGHNESS,” July 13, 1998, http://www.salon1999.com/news/1998/07/13news.html, accessed May 10, 1999 The greatest triumph that modern PR can offer is the transcendent success of having your words and actions judged by your reputation, rather than the other way about. The "spiritual leader" of Tibet has enjoyed this unassailable status for some time now, becoming a byword and synonym for saintly and ethereal values. Why this doesn't put people on their guard I'll never know. But here are some other facts about the serene leader that, dwarfed as they are by his endorsement of nuclear weapons, are still worth knowing and still generally unknown. Shoko Asahara, leader of the Supreme Truth cult in Japan and spreader of sarin nerve gas on the Tokyo subway, donated 45 million rupees, or about 170 million yen (about $1.2 million), to the Dalai Lama and was rewarded for his efforts by several high-level meetings with the divine one. 3. BUDDHISM CAN BE CRUEL AND HEARTLESS Christopher Hitchens, columnist for Vanity Fair, “HIS MATERIAL HIGHNESS,” July 13, 1998, http://www.salon1999.com/news/1998/07/13news.html, accessed May 10, 1999 I have talked to a few Dorge Shugden adherents, who seem sincere enough and who certainly seem frightened enough, but I can't go along with their insistence on the "irony" of all this. Buddhism can be as hysterical and sanguinary as any other system that relies on faith and tribe. Lon Nol's Cambodian army was Buddhist at least in name. Solomon Bandaranaike, first elected leader of independent Sri Lanka, was assassinated by a Buddhist militant. It was Buddhist-led pogroms against the Tamils that opened the long and disastrous communal war that ruins Sri Lanka to this day. The gorgeously named SLORC, the military fascism that runs Burma, does so nominally as a Buddhist junta. I have even heard it whispered that in old Tibet, that pristine and contemplative land, the lamas were the allies of feudalism and unsmilingly inflicted medieval punishments such as blinding and flogging unto death. 5. BUDDHIST BELIEFS ARE DANGEROUS NONSENSE Christopher Hitchens, columnist for Vanity Fair, “HIS MATERIAL HIGHNESS,” July 13, 1998, http://www.salon1999.com/news/1998/07/13news.html, accessed May 10, 1999 Yet the entire Western mass media is uncritically at the service of a mere mortal who, at the very least, proclaims the utter nonsense of reincarnation and who affirms the sinister if not indeed crazy belief that death is but a stage in a grand cycle of what appears to be futility and subjection. What need, then, to worry about nuclear weaponry, or sectarian frenzy, or the sale of indulgences to men of the stamp of Steven Seagal? "Harmony" will doubtless kick in. During his visit to Beijing, our sentimental Baptist hypocrite of a president turned to his dictator host, recommended that he meet with the Dalai Lama and assured him that the two of them would get on well. That might easily turn out to be the case. Both are very much creatures of the material world.

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BUDDHISM HAS NO GROUNDING FOR HUMAN RIGHTS 1. NO REFERENCE TO RIGHTS OR DIGNITY IN FOUR NOBLE TRUTHSDamien Keown, Lecturer in Indian Religion, University of London, JOURNAL OF BUDDHIST ETHICS, VOL. 2, 1995 , p.12.It is by no means apparent, however, how human dignity is to be grounded in Buddhist doctrine. The very words "human dignity" sound as alien in a Buddhist context as talk of rights. One looks in vain to the The Four Noble Truths for any explicit reference to human dignity, and doctrines such as no-self and impermanence may even be thought to undermine it. If human dignity is the basis of human rights Buddhism would seem to be in some difficulty when it comes to providing a justification for them. 2. INADA WRONG ABOUT BUDDHIST NATURE OR HUMAN RIGHTS Damien Keown, Lecturer in Indian Religion, University of London, JOURNAL OF BUDDHIST ETHICS, VOL. 2, 1995 , p.13-4. Few would disagree with the proposition that human rights are grounded in human nature. Towards the end of the extract, however, Inada seems to move away from his initial suggestion that human nature is the "ultimate source" of human rights towards the view that the ultimate ground is the "dynamic relational nature of persons in contact with each other." In other words, it is in the interrelatedness of persons rather than in the persons themselves that the justification for human rights is to be found. This is confirmed a little later: “Consequently, the Buddhist concern is focused on the experiential process of each individual, a process technically know as relational origination (paticca-samuppaada). It is the great doctrine of Buddhism, perhaps the greatest doctrine expounded by the historical Buddha. It means that, in any life-process, the arising of an experiential event is a total, relational affair.” How is the link between dependent-origination and human rights to be forged? 3. INADA WRONG THAT BUDDHISM JUSTIFIES LEGAL RIGHTSDamien Keown, Lecturer in Indian Religion, University of London, JOURNAL OF BUDDHIST ETHICS, VOL. 2, 1995 , p.13. In simple language, the argument seems to be as follows. Human beings, like everything else, are part of the relational process described in the doctrine of dependent-origination; since no-one exists independently we should look out for one another; looking out for one another means respecting each other's rights; examples of the rights we should respect are security, liberty and life. Although I have described this as an "argument" it is little more than a series of assertions. Working backwards, it is difficult to know what sense to give the concluding sentence: "These rights are actually extensions of human qualities such as security, liberty and life." It is unclear what is meant by "human qualities" here. In what sense is security a "human quality" (perhaps a "need")? Why is life described as a "quality" of a human being? Even granted that these things are "human qualities," what does it mean to say that rights are extensions of "human qualities"? In the first extract quoted above, Inada suggests that "the Buddhist sees the concept of human rights as a legal extension of human nature." What is left unexplained, however, is how human nature (or "human qualities") become legal rights. Do all "human qualities" extend into rights or only some? If so, which and why? Finally, if "human qualities" are what give rise to rights, why invoke the doctrine of dependentorigination? 4. INADA WRONG ABOUT BUDDHIST GROUNDING OF RIGHTS Damien Keown, Lecturer in Indian Religion, University of London, JOURNAL OF BUDDHIST ETHICS, VOL. 2, 1995 , p.14-5. The derivation of human rights from the doctrine of dependent-origination is a conjuring trick. From the premise that we live in "a mutually constituted existential realm" (we all live together) it has "thereby become a fact" that there will be "mutual respect of fellow beings." In the twinkling of an eye, values have appeared from facts like a rabbit out of a hat. However, the fact that human beings live in relationship with one another is not a moral argument about “how they ought to behave”. By itself it offers no reason why a person should not routinely abuse the rights of others. Inada's suggestion that human rights can be grounded in the doctrine of dependent-origination turns out to be little more than a recommendation that people should be nice to one another on the ground that we are "all in this together."

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BUDDHISM DOESN’T USE RIGHTS LANGUAGE, EMBRACES DUTIES 1. BUDDHIST LANGUAGE HAS NO WORD FOR “RIGHTS” Damien Keown, Lecturer in Indian Religion, University of London, JOURNAL OF BUDDHIST ETHICS, VOL. 2, 1995 , p.8. We took our cue for the discussion of rights in the West from etymology, and perhaps we can glean something further from this source. Above it was noted that the English word "right" is derived from the Latin “rectus” meaning straight. Both "right" and “rectus” themselves, however, have a more remote ancestor in the Sanskrit “rju” (straight or upright). The equivalent form in Pali is “uju” (or “ujju”) meaning "straight, direct; straightforward, honest, upright." It would therefore appear that both the objective sense ("straight") and the metaphorical moral sense ("rectitude") of the word "right" referred to earlier occur in Buddhist as well as Western languages. Despite a common Indo-European etymology, however, there is no word in Sanskrit or Pali which conveys the idea of a "right" or "rights," understood as a subjective entitlement. 2. BUDDHISM EXPRESSES OBLIGATIONS IN LANGUAGE OF DUTIES, NOT RIGHTSDamien Keown, Lecturer in Indian Religion, University of London, JOURNAL OF BUDDHIST ETHICS, VOL. 2, 1995 , p.10.We must qualify this conclusion, however, by noting that the requirements of Dharma are expressed in the form of duties rather than rights. In other words, Dharma states what is due in the form "A husband should support his wife" as opposed to "Wives have a right to be maintained by their husbands." Until rights as personal entitlements are recognized as a discrete but integral part of what is due under Dharma, the modern concept of rights cannot be said to be present. 3. BUDDHISM IS SIMILAR TO ROMAN CULTURE: RIGHTS NO, DUTIES YES Damien Keown, Lecturer in Indian Religion, University of London, JOURNAL OF BUDDHIST ETHICS, VOL. 2, 1995 , p.10. In this respect, however, Buddhism is far from unique, and a similar comment could be made about many other cultures and civilizations. Finnis points out with respect to Roman law: “[I]t is salutary to bear in mind that the modern emphasis on the powers of the right-holder, and the consequent systematic bifurcation between "right" ... and "duty", is something that sophisticated lawyers were able to do without for the whole life of classical Roman law. 4. RIGHTS ONLY IN EMBRYONIC FORM IN BUDDHISM Damien Keown, Lecturer in Indian Religion, University of London, JOURNAL OF BUDDHIST ETHICS, VOL. 2, 1995 , p.10. In sum it might be said that in classical Buddhism the notion of rights is present in embryonic form although not yet born into history. Whether anything like the Western concept of rights has, or would, appear in the course of the historical evolution of Buddhism is a question for specialists in the various Buddhist cultures to ponder. In many respects the omens for this development were never good. Buddhism originated in a caste society, and the Asian societies where it has flourished have for the most part been hierarchically structured.

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Capitalism Good CAPITALISM HAS CREATED INDUSTRIAL PROGRESS 1. CAPITALISM LIBERATED PRODUCTION CAPACITIES Samuel McCracken, Assistant to the President of Boston University, CAPITALISM AND EQUALITY IN AMERICA, 1987, p. 26. Statistics make it abundantly clear that in the approximately two centuries since capitalism began to operate it has enriched mankind almost beyond belief by liberating and thereby vastly increasing its productive capacities. Moreover, even the most casual march through the Sears catalog shows that by the turn of the century the production of capitalism was increasingly made available to an extremely wide range of people at a decreasing price in terms of their labor: that is, that increases in productivity were and have been shared with the producer. 2. CAPITALISM HAS STIMULATED INDUSTRIAL PROGRESS Howard Zinn, Professor Emeritus, Spelman College, DECLARATIONS OF INDEPENDENCE, 1990, p. 168. It is true that the profit motive, in the history of capitalist development, has stimulated great industrial progress. Karl Marx, even while he looked forward to the disappearance of capitalism, acknowledged that it had brought the greatest increase in the productive forces of society, that it was a “progressive” stage in history. And it produced many useful, worthwhile things. 3. CAPITALISM IS NECESSARY FOR EFFICIENCY AND PRODUCTIVITY Ronald M. Glassman, NQA, DEMOCRACY AND EQUALITY THEORIES AND PROGRAMS FOR THE MODERN WORLD, 1989, p. 198. Let me make it clear that the capitalist financial segment is a crucial portion of the capitalist-industrial economy. Without it, a deadening, bureaucratic, non-entrepreneurial economic system with lowered efficiency and less productivity results. CAPITALISM HAS CREATED EQUALITY 1. AMERICAN INDUSTRIAL CAPITALISM HAS CREATED HIGH EQUALITY Peter L. Berger, Professor at Boston University, CAPITALISM AND EQUALITY IN AMERICA, 1987, p. 5. The fact remains that the working-class American enjoys access to the good things of life in a measure unparalleled in human history, anywhere or anytime, and this fact in itself has egalitarian implications. Put simply, industrial capitalism in American (and in other advanced societies of the capitalist type) has vastly raised the standard of living of virtually everyone in the society. For many, this fact in itself is tantamount to saying that American society is one of high equality and that it is the incredibly productive economy of American capitalism to which this achievement must be credited. 2. CAPITALISM HAS INCREASED OPPORTUNITIES FOR MINORITIES Milton Friedman, Economist, THE CAPITALIST READER, 1977, p. 158-9. The maintenance of the general rules of private property and of capitalism have been a major source of opportunity for Negroes and have permitted them to make greater progress than they otherwise could have made. To take a more general example, the preserves of discrimination in any society are the areas that are most monopolistic in character, whereas discrimination against groups of particular color or religion is least in those areas where there is the greatest freedom of competition. 3. CAPITALISM BRINGS ABOUT EGALITARIAN EFFECTS Peter L. Berger, Professor at Boston University, CAPITALISM AND EQUALITY IN AMERICA, 1987, p. 5-6. Capitalism as such does not make for equality in terms of the distribution of wealth and income; what makes for greater [sic] equality is progress in economic growth caused by industrialization in its more mature phases; but capitalism, far beyond any competing system, has the productive capacity for sustained economic growth of vast scope; to that [sic] extent, at any rate, capitalism brings about egalitarian effects. 89

CAPITALISM DECREASES TYRANNY OF THE MAJORITY 1. COMMERCIAL ACTIVITIES PREVENT TYRANNY BY THE MMORITY Michael Novak, Director of Social and Political Studies, American Enterprise Institute, LEGITIMACY, GOVERNMENTS, AND MARKETS, 1990, p. 208. Madison understood that the way you defeat a tyrannical majority and protect minority rights is to break up majorities by multiplying commercial interests. This systematic action makes it very hard to form a majority in the first place. The more commercial interests there are, the more people are in competition with one another in different ways. 2. CAPITALISM HAS RESULTED IN IMPROVEMENTS FOR THE WORKING CLASS Bertrand de Jouvenel, NQA, THE CAPITALIST READER, 1977, p. 132. And there is every reason to remember how miserable the majority of the people still were as recently as a hundred or a hundred and fifty years ago. But we must not, long after the event, allow a distortion of the facts, even if committed out of humanitarian zeal, to affect our view of what we owe to a system which for the first time in history made people feel that this misery might be avoidable. The very claims and ambitions of the working classes were and are the result of the enormous improvements of their position which capitalism brought about. 3. FREE MARKET SYSTEM IS CONDUCIVE TO EQUALIZING OPPORTUNITIES FOR ALL Delba Winthrop, Lecturer in Extension at Harvard University, CAPITALISM AND EQUALITY IN AMERICA, 1987, p. 2934. At the same time, however, assuming that investment capital can be found, the system of free enterprise provides unique opportunities for the disadvantaged to compete with the majority on its own (materialistic) terms even as the competitors do their own thing. There are now banks and advertising agencies owned by and serving women, prospering businessmen and professionals catering to minorities equitably and effectively, and health food stores and head shops run by patrons of healthful and less than healthful lives. Other economic orders may have tolerated different groups as what they were, but surely none has been more conducive to their social as well as economic equality than free enterprise. CAPITALISM IS FUNDAMENTALLY A MORAL SYSTEM 1. THE MARKET SYSTEM IS THE MORALLY PROPER SYSTEM FOR HUMANS Tibor R. Machan, Philosophy Professor at Auburn University, LEGITIMACY, GOVERNMENTS, AND MARKETS, 1990, p. 177. It [a market-based economic system] is the economic corollary of a just political system. Contrary to perceived opinion in contemporary political philosophy—as well as in much of popular culture, as represented by media opinion—the market economy is indeed the morally proper economic arrangement for human beings. As such, this is the system all persons ought to support and maintain in their community whenever a choice faces them relating to politics. 2. COMMERCIAL ACTIVITIES TEACH OTHER-ORIENTED BEHAVIOR Michael Novak, Director of Social and Political Studies, American Enterprise Institute, LEGITIMACY, GOVERNMENTS, AND MARKETS, 1990, p. 207. Commercial activities make people other-centered. They involve people in the needs of others. They do not inspire projections of what one thinks [sic] others should need, but in listening closely to what others do [sic] need, as they express themselves. Amazingly, markets teach other-oriented behavior not for altruistic reasons but for quite effective ones. You can make the most beautiful Ethel in the world, but if other people do not want it, it is useless to you; it is a loss. 3. CRITICS OF CAPITALISM ON MORAL GROUNDS DO NOT UNDERSTAND CAPITALISM Ludwig von Mises, NQA, THE CAPITALIST READER, 1977, p. 154. All those rejecting capitalism on moral grounds as an unfair system are deluded by their failure to comprehend what capital is, how it comes into existence and how it is maintained, and what the benefits are which are derived from its employment in production process. 90

DISCRIMINATION IS NOT CAUSED BY CAPITALISM 1. THERE IS NO LINK BETWEEN DISCRIMINATION AND CAPITALISM Delba Winthrop, Lecturer in Extension at Harvard University, CAPITALISM AND EQUALITY IN AMERICA, 1987, p. 281. Even in the more nebulous case of leniency for white-collar crime, the softer treatment accorded these criminals is arguably not a consequence of the advantage they might have by virtue of their wealth, but rather of regard for their status, and of a sense that for some people disgrace is punishment enough. Given the incomes of clergymen as compared to businessmen, it is clear that capitalism is not responsible for our deference to particular occupations. Discrimination, be it against a race or for a profession, is distinct from and perhaps more deeply rooted than attachment to an economic order. 2. THERE CAN BE CAUSES OTHER THAN CAPITALISM FOR INEQUALITY Peter L. Berger, Professor at Boston University, CAPITALISM AND EQUALITY IN AMERICA, 1987, p. 3. Put differently, if one concludes that America either is or is not, comparatively speaking, an egalitarian society, is it capitalism that should be either praised or blamed for this fact? Clearly there is no certain way of knowing. There are many other factors to be taken into account—industrialism as such (regardless of its organization in capitalist or non-capitalist forms), political democracy, and a miscellany of geographical, demographic, social and cultural factors—such as the continental size of American society, the waves of mass immigration, the frontier tradition or the puritan heritage. 3. THERE IS NO EVIDENCE THAT RACISM IS CAUSED BY CAPITALISM Delba Winthrop, Lecturer in Extension at Harvard University, CAPITALISM AND EQUALITY IN AMERICA, 1987, p. 281. Furthermore, it is unclear that many or even most of the acknowledged inequalities under capitalism have much to do with capitalism itself. The most dramatic progress toward equality under the law in America has occurred in the last few decades, and it has been achieved by protection of the procedural rights of the indigent. As is generally known, but less openly acknowledged, the indigent criminals or suspects in question are predominantly black and Hispanic, and much of their harsh treatment is due not to their poverty or social class, but to racial prejudice. To show that racial prejudice in the United States is a consequence of capitalism would be difficult indeed. CAPITALISM INCREASES POLITICAL FREEDOM 1. FREE MARKETS RESULT IN POLITICAL FREEDOM Milton Friedman, Economist, THE CAPITALIST READER, 1977, p. 239. Historical evidence speaks with a single voice on the relation between political freedom and a free market. I know of no example in time or place of a society that has been marked by a large measure of political freedom, and that has not also used something comparable to a free market to organize the bulk of economic activity. 2. CAPITALISM PROMOTES POLITICAL FREEDOM Milton Friedman, Economist, THE CAPITALIST READER, 1977, p. 239. Viewed as a means to the end of political freedom, economic arrangements are important because of their effect on the concentration or dispersion of power. The kind of economic organization that provides economic freedom directly, namely, competitive capitalism, also promotes political freedom because it separates economic power from political power and in this way enables the one to offset the other. 3. FREE MARKETS PRESERVE POLITICAL FREEDOM Milton Friedman, Economist, THE CAPITALIST READER, 1977, p. 439. Another example of the role of the market preserving political freedom was revealed in our experience with McCarthyism. Entirely aside from the substantive issues involved, the merits of the charges made, what protection did individuals, and in particular government employees have against irresponsible accusations and probings into matters that it went against their conscience to reveal? Their appeal to the Fifth Amendment would have been hollow mockery without an alternative to government employment.

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CAPITALISM INCREASES WORLD PEACE 1. CAPITALISM PROVIDED LONGEST PERIOD OF PEACE IN HISTORY Ayn Rand, Author, THE CAPITALIST READER, 1977, p. 171. Let those who are actually concerned with peace observe that capitalism gave mankind the longest period of peace in history [sic]—a period during which there were no wars involving the entire civilized world—from the end of the Napoleonic wars in 1815 to the outbreak of World War I in 1914. 2. COMMERCIAL ACTIVITIES ENCOURAGE PEACE NOT WAR Michael Novak, Director of Social and Political Studies, American Enterprise Institute, LEGITIMACY, GOVERNMENTS, AND MARKETS, 1990, p. 206. Markets teach people to prefer peace rather than war, which destroys everything anyone has tried to build. Commercial activities teach people to seek bargaining rather than absolutes. They undermine the martial spirit and induce a pacific temper. 3. CAPITALISM IS FUNDAMENTALLY OPPOSED TO WAR Ayn Rand, Author, THE CAPITALIST READER, 1977, p. 171. Laissez-faire capitalism is the only social system based on the recognition of individual rights and, therefore, the only system that bans force from social relationships. By the nature of its basic principles and interests, it is the only system fundamentally opposed to war. 4. ONLY DEMOCRATIC CAPITALISM WILL SAVE HUMANITY Jean-François Revel, Author, DEMOCRACY AGAINST ITSELF, 1993, p. 258. Twentieth-century history is clear on two points: only capitalism engenders economic development; only democracy can correct the worst political abuses and errors. This is why humanity faces a stark choice: democratic capitalism or extinction. 5. ECONOMIC INCENTIVES OF CAPITALISM PREVENT WAR Ayn Rand, Author, THE CAPITALIST READER, 1977, p. 171. Men who are free to produce, have no incentive to loot; they have nothing to gain from war and a great deal to lose. Ideologically, the principle of individual rights does not permit a man to seek his own livelihood at the point of a gun, inside or outside his country. Economically, wars cost money; in a free economy, where wealth is privately owned, the costs of war come out of the income of private citizens—there is no overblown public treasury to hide the fact— and a citizen cannot hope to recoup his own financial losses (such as taxes or business dislocations or property destruction) by winning the war. Thus his own economic interests are on the side of peace. CAPITALISM IS MOST EFFICIENT ECONOMIC SYSTEM 1. CAPITALISM IS THE ONLY SYSTEM THAT WORKS Jean-François Revel, Author, DEMOCRACY AGAINST ITSELF, 1993, p. 258-9. Liberal democratic capitalism is not the best system: it is the only one [that works]. The parrots who keep telling us about its imperfections are right, it is imperfect. But the only prohibitive vice for a system, is not for it to be without vices, but to be without qualities. And what we know about all the tested alternatives to liberal democratic capitalism is that they are without qualities.

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CAPITALISM DOES NOT CREATE POLITICAL INEQUALITY 1. CAPITALISM DOES NOT CREATE POLITICAL INEQUALITY Delba Winthrop, Lecturer in Extension at Harvard University, CAPITALISM AND EQUALITY TN AMERICA, 1987, p. 285. For it seems that not so much capitalism or even economic inequality, but lack of assured wealth and leisure are the economic obstacles to political participation. There may also be cultural barriers to full and equal participation that will not be overcome by any institutional reform alone. And some people may just have a natural disinclination to political activity that will never be overcome under any free regime. Capitalism may well be accompanied by unequal political participation, but it does not follow either that capitalism causes that inequality or that abolishing capitalism will bring more equal participation.

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Capitalism Bad CAPITALISM CREATES WASTE AND DESTRUCTION 1. CAPITALISM CREATES OVERPRODUCTION WHICH DESTROYS SOCIETY Emile Burns, NQA, AN INTRODUCTION TO MARXISM, 1966, p. 35. The features of capitalist crises were only too familiar in the years between the two wars: there is overproduction, therefore new production declines and workers are unemployed; their unemployment means further decline in the market demand, so more factories slow down production; new factories are not put up, and some are even destroyed; wheat and other products are destroyed, though the unemployed and their families suffer hunger and illness. It is a madman’s world; but at last the stocks are used up or destroyed, production begins to increase, trade develops, there is more employment—and there is steady recovery for a year or two, leading to an apparently boundless expansion of production; until suddenly once more there is over-production and crisis, and the whole process begins again. 2. CAPITALISM CREATES A “BIOLOGICAL” NEED TO CONSUME Herbert Marcuse, Social Philosopher, AN ESSAY ON LIBERATION, 1969, p. 11. The so-called consumer economy and the politics of corporate capitalism have created a second nature of man which ties him libidinally and aggressively to the commodity form. The need for possessing, consuming, handling, and constantly renewing the gadgets, devices, instruments, engines, offered to and imposed upon the people, for using these wares even at the danger of one’s own destruction, has become a “biological” need in the sense just defined. The second nature of man thus militates against any change that would disrupt and perhaps even abolish this dependence of man on a market ever more densely filled with merchandise—abolish his existence as a consumer consuming himself in buying and selling. 3. OVERPRODUCTION OF CAPITALISM IS DESTROYING SOCIETY MANIFESTO OF THE 9Th CONGRESS OF THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNIST CURRENT, 2nd Quarter, 1992, p. 4. If capitalism is plunging into an insoluble economic crisis which is the basis for its convulsions today, if it condemns masses of human beings to misery and starvation while at the same time it cannot find outlets for its production and is closing factories, leaving fields fallow, and laying off workers, this is because capitalism produces, not to satisfy need, but to sell at a profit. The markets are saturated today, not because society’s needs are saturated but because it does not have the wherewithal to buy the goods that have been produced, and capitalism cannot provide this wherewithal without ceasing to exist: a capitalism that gave consumers the money to buy what it produced, in other words gave away its produce, would no longer be capitalism. And the credit which has been so much abused for years will not change anything: by generalizing debt, it has only made the contradictions more explosive. CAPITALISM IS OPPRESSIVE TO WOMEN 1. CAPITALISM CREATED OPPRESSION OF WOMEN Marilyn French, Feminist Philosopher, BEYOND POWER, 1985, p. 455-6. The oppression of women arose with the concept of private property. Mainly because women could reproduce, they like animals, were defined as property. Because capitalism is founded on the idea of private property, the oppression of women is inherent within it and necessary for its perpetuation. Sexism is functional for capitalism because it allows employers to get two workers for the price of one: the man is paid wages, his wife performs the services necessary for him to live even though he spends most of his hours at work, but she is not paid.

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CAPITALISM IS DETRIMENTAL TO A HEALTHY ECONOMY 1. ECONOMIC DETERIORATION IS AT THE CENTER OF CAPITALISM Paul M. Sweezy, NQA, FOUR LECTURES ON MARXISM, 1981, p. 43. Marx wrote that “the real barrier of capitalist production is capital itself.” I have been arguing in effect that monopoly capital makes that barrier even bigger and more formidable. So much so that stagnation—a combination of sluggish growth, rising unemployment, and a chronically low level of utilization of productive capacity—has become the normal condition of capitalist economies. CAPITALISM RESULTS IN DISCRIMINATION 1. CAPITALISM HAS LED TO OPPRESSION Cornel West, Professor of Religion, Princeton University, PROPHESY DELIVERANCE: AN AFRO-AMERICAN REVOLUTIONARY CHRISTIANITY, 1982, p. 132. The boomtown character of American industrialization—urban centers which appeared virtually overnight— set the context for the flowering of nativism, jingoism, anti-Semitism, sexism, and, above all, racism. Ironically, this ideology of Americanism became a beacon to oppressed social classes and ethnic groups around the world. 2. CAPITALISM CONTRIBUTES TO INEQUALITY IN THE UNITED STATES Peter L. Berger, Professor at Boston University, CAPITALISM AND EQUALITY IN AMERICA, 1987, p. 2. From its beginnings, America has been a symbol of equality for vast numbers of people, both admired and despised for this by both Americans and outside observers. Today, for many (again, both inside and outside its borders), America has become a precisely opposite symbol—supposedly a society with crass inequalities, oppressive and exploitative, a bastion of privilege and hierarchy. And for most of those who see America in this light, American capitalism is at the very least one of the important factors that have made for inequality. 3. CAPITALISM OPPRESSES AFRICAN AMERICANS Cornel West, Professor of Religion, Princeton University, PROPHESY DELIVERANCE: AN AFRO-AMERICAN REVOLUTIONARY CHRISTIANITY, 1982, p. 105. Exploitative, profit-oriented capitalism is a way of ordering life fundamentally alien to human value in general and to black humanity in particular. Racism and capitalism have set the stage for despoliation of natural had human resources all around the world. Yet those who seriously challenge these systems are often effectively silenced. We view racism as criminality and yet we are called criminals. We view racism as a human aberration, yet we are called freaks. The roots of our crisis are in social, economic, and political power systems that prevent us from managing the reality of our everyday lives.

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CAPITALISM CREATES VIOLENCE 1. CAPITALISM PRODUCES VIOLENCE Herbert Marcuse, Social Philosopher, AN ESSAY ON LIBERATION, 1969, p. 12-13. Self-determination, the autonomy of the individual, asserts itself in the right to race his automobile, to handle his power tools, to buy a gun, to communicate to mass audiences his opinion, no matter how ignorant, how aggressive, it may be. Organized capitalism has sublimated and turned to socially productive use frustration and primary aggressiveness on an unprecedented scale—unprecedented not in terms of the quantity of violence but rather in terms of its capacity to produce long-range contentment and satisfaction, to reproduce the “voluntary servitude”. 2. POST-MODERN CAPITALISTIC CULTURE IS HARMFUL Cornel West, Professor of Religion, Princeton University, RACE MATTERS, p. 5 Post-modem culture is more and more a market culture dominated by gangster mentalities and self-destructive wantonness. This culture engulfs all of us—yet its impact on the disadvantaged is devastating, resulting in extreme violence in everyday life. Sexual violence against women and homicidal assaults by young black men on one another are only the most obvious signs of this empty quest for pleasure, property, and power. 3. CAPITALISM DEMANDS AN IMPERIALIST FOREIGN POLICY Emile Burns, NQA, AN INTRODUCTION TO MARXISM, 1966, p. 39. In popular usage, imperialism is a policy of expansion, the conquest of less developed countries to form an Empire. In so far as the policy is seen to be more than an abstract desire to see the country’s flag floating over as much territory as possible, it is recognized that there is some economic reason for the policy of expansion. It is sometimes said, for example, that the reason is the need for markets, or for raw materials and food, or for land where an overcrowded home population could find an outlet.

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CAPITALISM RESULTS IN A BREAKDOWN OF SOCIETY 1. EXCESSES OF U.S. CAPITALISM ARE CAUSING A MASSIVE SOCIAL BREAKDOWN Cornel West, Professor of Religion at Princeton University, THE ETHICAL DIMENSIONS OF MARXIST THOUGHT, 1991, p. xi. America is in the midst of a massive social breakdown. Never before in U.S. history has national decline and cultural decay so thoroughly shaken people’s confidence in their capacity to respond to present-day problems. America remains the premier military power in the world, yet has a waning influence on the global scene. 2. ALIENATION OCCURS AS MARKET FORCES CREATE HELPLESSNESS Paul Craig Roberts and Matthew A. Stephenson, NQA, MARX’S THEORY OF EXCHANGE, ALIENATION, AND CRISIS, 1973, p. 72. Alienation is said to occur when men are mutually independent and engage in market exchange, and when men are subject to the market—something over which they have no control—as to an alien force. The lengthy discussion of the nature of commodities and the commodity mode of production in Capital is prefigured in the 1844 Manuscripts, in which Marx says that he has “considered the act of estranging practical human activity, labor, in two of its aspects. (1) The relation of the worker to the product of labor an alien object exercising power over him.. . [sic] (2)The relation of labor to the act of production within the labor process.” 3. FREEDOM CREATED BY CAPITALISM HAS RESULTED IN POWERLESSNESS Erich Fromm, Social Philosopher ESCAPE FROM FREEDOM, 1941, p. 107-8. In one word, capitalism not only freed man from traditional bonds, but it also contributed tremendously to the increasing of positive freedom, to the growth of an active, critical, responsible self. However, while this was one effect capitalism had on the process of growing freedom, at the same time it made the individual more alone and isolated and imbued him with a feeling of insignificance and powerlessness. CAPITALISM EXPLOITS THE WORKING CLASSES 1. CAPITALISM PERPETUATES EXPLOITATION OF WORKING CLASSES Herbert Marcuse, Social Philosopher, AN ESSAY ON LIBERATION, 1969, p. 16-7. In the advanced capitalist countries, the radicalization of the working classes is counteracted by a socially engineered arrest of consciousness, and by the development and satisfaction of needs which perpetuate the servitude of the exploited. A vested interest in the existing system is thus fostered in the instinctual structure of the exploited and the rupture with the continuum of repression—a necessary precondition of liberation—does not occur. It follows that the radical change which is to transform the existing society into a free society must reach into a dimension of the human existence hardly considered in Marxian theory—the “biological” dimension in which the vital, imperative needs and satisfactions of man assert themselves. 2. CAPITALISM MAKES WORK THE BASIC FUNCTION OF HUMANS Paul Craig Roberts and Matthew A. Stephenson, NQA, MARX’S THEORY OF EXCHANGE, ALIENATION, AND CRISIS, 1973, p.2. For Marx, man’s human function is work. Man realizes himself in labor. In economies organized for production for direct use, the relations between men are convivial rather than commercial, and society has control over the allocation and employment of labor. This follows from producing use-values for direct consumption by the community rather than “commodities” which find their way into consumption indirectly by being sold in a market. 3. CAPITALISM MAKES WORKERS A COMMODITY Paul M. Sweezy, NQA, FOUR LECTURES ON MARXISM, 1981, p. 26. A commodity is something—a good or a service—produced for sale, not for use. All societies since the most primitive have been characterized by some commodity production, but only under capitalism has it become the dominant type of production; and only under capitalism has labor power, the capacity of the worker to perform useful labor, become a commodity, not exceptionally but in general.

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Categorical Imperative Good CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE IS THE BEST MORAL GUIDELINE 1. CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE IS AN ABSOLUTE GUIDELINE Immanuel Kant, Philosopher, in AN INTRODUCTION TO ETHICS, ed. by Robert Dewey, 1977, p. 183. Finally, there is an imperative which commands a certain conduct immediately, without having as its condition any other purpose to be attained by it. This imperative is categorical It concerns not the matter of the action, or its intended result, but its form and the principle of which it is itself a result; and what is essentially good in it consists in the mental disposition let the consequence be what it may. 2. CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE IS THE BEST FRAMEWORK Immanuel Kant, Philosopher, in AN INTRODUCTION TO ETHICS, ed. by Robert Dewey, 1977, p. 183. When I conceive a hypothetical imperative, in general I do not know before-hand what it will contain until I am given the condition. But when I conceive a categorical imperative, I know at once what it contains. For as the imperative contains besides the law only necessity that the maxims shall conform to this law, while the law contains no conditions restricting it, there remains nothing but the general statement that the maxi of the action should conform to a universal law, and it is this conformity alone that the imperative properly represents as necessary. There is therefore but one categorical imperative, namely this: Act only on that maxim whereby thous canst at the same time will that it should be a universal law. 3. MORAL DECISIONS MUST BE UNIVERSAUZABLE James Moreland and Norman Geisler, Profs. of Philosophy, Biola Univ. and Liberty Univ., THE LIFE AND DEATH DEBATE, 1990, p. x. A judgment is moral only if it is universalizable; that is, if it applies equally to all relevant similar situations. The main point of this criterion is to express the conviction that moral judgments must be impartially applied to moral situations by taking into account all of the morally relevant features of the situation. If someone claimed that one act is right and a second act is wrong, but that person was unable to cite a relevant distinction between the two acts, then the judgment would seem arbitrary and without adequate foundation. This criterion points to an important aspect of morality: moral judgments are no arbitrary expressions of personal preference. They are rationally justifiable claims which, if true, are binding on all cases that fit the relevant criteria upon which the claim is based. 4. CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE DETERMINES NATURAL LAW Immanuel Kant, Philosopher, in AN INTRODUCTION TO ETHICS, ed. by Robert Dewey, 1977, p. 183-4. Since the universality of the law according the which effects are produced constitutes what is properly called nature in the most general sense (as to form) that is, the existence of things so far as it is determined by general laws - the imperative of duty may be expressed thus: Act as if the maxim of thy action were to become by thy will a universal law of nature. 5. CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE REFLECTS INDIVIDUAL MORALITY Ray Billington, Prof. of Ethics, Bristol Polytechnic, LIVING PHILOSOPHY, 1988, p. 112. Kantian ethics allows each individual to be his own moral authority, and it was this emphasis which was taken up by the existentialists two centuries later (see Chapter Seven). Man is looked upon as an autonomous creature, capable of expressing this quality through a continuous process of rational judgments. Kant thus lifts the moral decisionmaking process above that of the gratification solely of personal desire (I’m going to do this because I feel like it) or the pursuit of pleasure. His own life style, which was a living expression of his philosophy - not always the case with philosophers - may express a rigidness and rigour which are not fashionable today, but at least under some lights, present a more commendable, even desirable, image of the human species than is to be found in excessive libertarianism (in the popular sense of the word: Kant was a libertarian in the philosophical sense).

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CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE IS RATIONAL AND CONSISTENT 1. CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE ALLOWS REASON TO ANALYZE MORALITY T.C. Williams, Prof. of Philosophy, Oxford, THE CONCEPT OF THE CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE, 1968, p. 10. Kant’s argument is, therefore, that to act on categorical imperative is to act in such a way that reason of itself, and not inclination, determines the action. It is action, therefore, which is done on a principle that is valid for all rational beings; and thus, on a principle that is capable of being an objective law for all rational beings. That is to say, it is action which, in Kant’s own words, is in conformity with ‘the universality of a law as such.’ Thus, immediately following the above passage, Kant goes on to formulate the principle of morality - the principle of the categorical imperative: There is therefore only a single categorical imperative and it is this: ‘Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should be a universal law.’ 2. GOOD WILL IS THE ONLY UNQUALIFIED GOOD Immanuel Kant, Philosopher, in AN INTRODUCTION TO ETHICS, ed. by Robert Dewey, 1977, p. 174. Nothing can possible be conceived in the world, or even out of it, which can be called good without qualification, except a good will. Intelligence, wit, judgment, and other talents of the mind, however they may be named, or courage, resolution, perseverance, as qualities of temperament, are undoubtedly good and desirable in many respects; but these gifts of nature may also become extremely bad and mischievous if the will which is to make use of them, and which, therefore, constitutes what is called character, is not good. It is the same with the gifts of fortune. Power, riches, honor, even health, and the general well-being and contentment with one’s condition which is called happiness, inspire pride, and often presumption, if there is not a good will to correct the influence of these on the mind, and with this also to rectify the whole principle of acting, and adapt to its end. The sight of a being who is not adorned with a single feature of a pure and good will, enjoying unbroken prosperity, can never give pleasure to an impartial rational spectator. Thus a good will appears to constitute the indispensable condition even of being worthy of happiness. 3. GOOD WILL IS INTRINSICALLY GOOD Immanuel Kant, Philosopher, in AN INTRODUCTION TO ETHICS, ed. by Robert Dewey, 1977, p. 174-5. A good will is good not because of what it performs or effects, not by its aptness for the attainment of some proposed end, but simply by virtue of the volition- that is, it is good in itself, and considered by itself is to be esteemed much higher than all that can be brought about by it in favor of any inclination, nay, even of the sum-total of all inclination. Even if it should happen that, owing to special disfavor of fortune, or the niggardly provision of a step-motherly nature, this will should wholly lack power to accomplish its purpose, if with its greatest efforts it should yet achieve nothing, and there should remain only the good will (not, to be sure, a mere wish, but the summoning of all means in our power), then, like a jewel, it would shine by its own light, as a thing which has its whole value in itself. 4. THE CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE ALLOWS HUMANS TO BE ENDS, NOT MEANS Eric Rakowski, Prof. of Law at Berkeley, COLUMBIA LAW REVIEW, 1993, p. 1071. That people should be treated as ends in themselves, not merely as means to an agent’s objective, is commonplace of much contemporary moral reasoning. As an abstract principal, Kant’s injunction seems unexceptionable. Not only does it appeal to deontologists, who place respect for people’s rights above the achievement of worthy goals defined without regard to people’s moral claims. Kant’s maxim could likewise be endorsed (although in fact it is rarely invoked explicitly) by consequentialist thinkers who see the principle of maximizing the world’s good as that which equally deserving individuals would fairly choose if asked to agree on moral standards.

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Categorical Imperative Bad CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE IS AN INAPPROPRIATE FRAMEWORK 1. CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE IS INAPPLICABLE TO REAL ETHICAL PROBLEMS Onora O’Neill, Prof. of Philosophy, U. of Essex, ACTING ON PRINCIPLE, 1975, p. 59. The complex classification of duties and moral statutes of acts in chapter 4 shows that the Categorical Imperative must have great powers of discrimination if it is really to provide a method for solving all those ethical problems for which Kant thinks it is appropriate. To most recent commentators, and to many earlier ones, it has seemed quite clear that the Categorical Imperative cannot be used to solve ethical problems. Mill wrote of Kant: But when be begins to deduce from this precept any of the actual duties of morality, he fails, almost grotesquely, to show that there would be any contradiction, any logical (not to say physical) impossibility in the adoption of all rations beings of the most outrageously immoral rules of conduct 2. KANT’S FRAMEWORK IS INCOHERENT Onora O’Neill, Prof. of Philosophy at U. of Essex, A COMPANION TO ETHICS, ed. by Peter Singer, 1991, p. 180. This objection is that Kant’s basic framework is incoherent His account of human knowledge leads to a conception of human beings as parts of nature, whose desires, inclinations and actions are susceptible of ordinary causal explanation. Yet, his account of human freedom demands that we view human agents as capable of selfdetermination, and specifically of determination in accordance with the principals of duty. Kant is apparently driven to a dual view of man; we are both phenomenal (natural, causally determined) beings and noumenal (non-natural, self-determining) beings. Many of Kant’s critics have held that this dual-aspect view of human beings is ultimately incoherent 3. MORAL RULES ARE NOT UNIVERSALIZABLE G.C. Field, Prof. of Philosophy at the U. of Bristol, in AN INTRODUCTION TO ETHICS, ed. by Robert Dewey, 1977, p. 196. It is argued, for instance, that none of these so-called moral rules can really be universalized in practice. The rule, ‘Thou shalt not lie,” for instance, leads to the conclusion that if a man pursued by murderers could be saved by a timely lie, it would nonetheless be wrong for us to tell this lie, and that it would be our duty to help the murderers to commit the crime by telling them which way their victim had gone. Kant, indeed, seems ready to accept this conclusion. But almost everyone would feel that a conclusion like this violates our strongest moral feelings, and that a view which really led to this conclusion would have to be abandoned. 4. THE CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE IGNORES THE VALUE OF NATURE Tom Regan, Prof. at North Carolina State University, THE MONIST, April, 1992, p. 173. While Kant’s theory is not anthropocentric, its implications vis-à-vis the question of intrinsic value of the natural world coincide with those of an anthropocentric outlook. It is no doubt logically proper for Kantians to contemplate the possibility that E.T. and others of his kind are rational autonomous agents and, if so, that they exist as ends-in-themselves. But whatever may be true of extraterrestrials, the Kantian case is closed regarding trees and rocks, streams and meadows, bison and beaver. They do not exist as ends-in-themselves. 5. THE CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE TEST CANNOT BE APPLIED REALISTICALLY Geoffrey Thomas, Prof. of Philosophy, Birkbeck College, AN INTRODUCTION TO ETHICS, 1993, p. 76. Another line of criticism is that there is no action which the CI test can rule out. We need only invoke an arbitrary specificity in order to let any action through the test. For instance, if my maxim is to take cheap wine to a bottle party and to drink superior wine brought by others, the maxim cannot be consistently universalized. Nobody would bring along the superior wine for the bringers of cheap wine to drink. But then, the idea is, I need only redescribe my action arbitrarily in order for its maxim to pass the CI test. E.g., ‘I am a 48-year-old guest who will take cheap and drink superior wine if I know in advance that not all guests will do the same.’ Now that maxim could be consistently universalized, for the simple reason that not all guests at a bottle party are 48 years old.

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THE CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE CANNOT MEDIATE MORAL DISPUTES 1. KANT CANNOT RESOLVE MORAL DILEMMAS Onora O’Neill, Prof. of Philosophy at U. of Essex, A COMPANION TO ETHICS, ed. by Peter Singer, 1991, p. 182-3. This criticism points out that Kant’s ethics identifies a set of principals which may come into conflict. The demands of fidelity and of helpfulness, for example, may clash. This criticism is true of Kant’s ethics, as for any ethic of principals. Since ‘trade-offs’ between differing obligations are not part of the theory, there is not routine procedure for dealing with conflicts. On the other hand, since the theory is only a set of side constraints on action, the central demand is to find some action that falls within all constraints. Only when no action can be found does the problem of multiple grounds of obligation arise. Kant has nothing very illuminating to say about these cases; the charge made by advocates of virtue ethics (e.g. Bernard Williams, Martha Nussbaum), that be does not say enough about the regret that may be appropriate when some moral commitment has an unavoidably to be violated or neglected, is apposite. 2. CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE CANNOT RESOLVE CLASHING DUTIES G.C. Field, Prof. of Philosophy at the U. of Bristol, in AN INTRODUCTION TO ETHICS, ed. by Robert Dewey, 1977, p. 197. The same question, really, comes from a different point of view when we find two principals of action, both apparently right, clashing with each other. We have the rule forbidding the telling of lies. And we have another rule bidding us preserve innocent human life by every means m our power. Both these would be recognized as wholly laudable principals of action. But, as we have seen, in the case of the man escaping from murderers they come into conflict If we ask how we are to decide between them, all we can say is that it depends on the circumstances of the particular case. But with that we have already abandoned Kant’s principal. We recognize that it is impossible to have any general rule, absolutely universal and admitting of no exceptions. We cannot lay down beforehand a general formula which can be applied ready-made to each particular case. We have to examine each particular case on its merits, because we can never be sure beforehand that its special circumstances are not of importance. 3. CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE CANNOT GUIDE POSITIVE ACTIONS Ray Billington, Prof. of Ethics, Bristol Polytechnic, LIVING PHILOSOPHY, 1988, p. 112. The main weakness of Kant’s theory, apart from any that may have been already discussed in passing, is that its emphasis lies primarily in telling us what we ought not, rather than what we ought, to do. As Maclntyre writes ‘Morality (as presented by the categorical imperative) sets limits to the ways in which and the means by which we conduct our lives; it does not give them direction.’ It tells us that we should not cheat at cards, crib in exams, or kick a man when he’s down; it is considerably less helpful in telling us what kind of behavior is desirable, what ends we should have in mind, what behavior we should wish to see universalized. We can hardly take Kant’s own lifestyle to guide us on this matter: apart from the obvious fact that one aspect of this, his celibacy, would bring about the extinction of the human race, this would be to deny the central truth of Kant’s teaching that, because each of us is an autonomous, rational human being, we must apply the categorical imperative to our own lives, not simply try to imitate the way another person has done this. 4. CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE DOES NOT PROVIDE POSITIVE GUIDANCE Geoffrey Thomas, Prof. of Philosophy, Birkbeck College, AN INTRODUCTION TO ETHICS, 1993, p. 88. Urmsons complaint aside, the doctrine of the Categorical Imperative is often criticized as providing merely a negative test. It rules out a line of action if the relevant maxim cannot be consistently universalize. But it provides no positive guidance.

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Civil Disobedience Good OPPORTUNITY FOR CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE IS NECESSARY IN DEMOCRACY 1. CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE IS JUSTIFIED TO BRING ABOUT DEMOCRATIC VALUES Elliot M. Zashin, NQA, CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE AND DEMOCRACY, 1972, p. 127. But order is not indivisible, and obviously, total obedience to law is not necessary to the maintenance of sufficient order and social peace for the large majority of people to live tolerably secure lives. In a democratic society which espouses other values besides order, a monolithic sense of undeviating obedience to law would hinder the realization of these other values, such as equality and the various “freedoms to.” As Thomas Jefferson suggested, we do not really want a nation of men who unquestioningly and docilely do exactly what their governors tell them. While civil disobedience may [sic] “encourage” an unthinking disrespect for law because of the public’s lack of sophistication or self-control, it may also encourage a deeper realization of the values which law must embody in a democracy if it is to maintain a durable legitimacy in the minds of the large majority of its citizens. 2. CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE IS A MA1TER OF POLITICAL NECESSITY Steven M. Bauer and Peter 1. Eckerstrom, Professors of Law, Stanford University, STANFORD LAW REVIEW, May 1987, p. 1173. Although courts have been unreceptive to political necessity arguments [as they might apply to cases of civil disobedience], they have failed to acknowledge an important point: The necessity defense is a social policy that sanctions certain justifiable, but illegal acts. When applied to civil disobedience, it has broad implications for the persuasiveness and integrity of civil disobedience, role of the judiciary, the power of individuals in our society, and the place of protection in our democracy. 3. POSSIBILITY OF CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE MUST EXIST IN A DEMOCRACY Elliot M. Zashin, NQA, CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE AND DEMOCRACY, 1972, p. 308. To argue, as I have done, that civil disobedience is well within the corpus of liberal-democratic thought and is an extension of democratic political techniques is not necessarily to suggest that civil disobedience must be epidemic in a healthy liberal democracy; indeed, that might be a sign of political illness. But it is to suggest that civil disobedience must be endemic, latent but always a possibility.

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CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE IS A MECHANISM TO CHANGE SOCIAL INJUSTICES 1. CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE HAS BEEN AN INSTRUMENT OF POSITIVE SOCIAL CHANGE Elliot M. Zashin, NQA, CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE AND DEMOCRACY, 1972, p. 3. Perhaps the prevalence of protection during the heyday of the civil rights movement contributed nearly as much to the emergence of more radical movements as did the war, the virtual lack of progress in alleviating black poverty, and the slow pace of change in more traditional areas of civil rights activity, e.g., school desegregation, effective use of the franchise, and opportunities in white collar jobs and the professions. Perhaps the movements in which civil disobedience was an important weapon provided the impetus for more radical movements, mobilizing people who were then further radicalized by the course of events and by their experience in protest activity. 2. CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE ALERTS THE MAJORITY TO INJUSTICES Steven M. Bauer and Peter 1. Eckerstrom, Professors of Law, Stanford University, STANFORD LAW REVIEW, May 1987, p. 1175-6. Historically, civil disobedience has been important to this country’s political development, alerting the majority to injustices and unwise policies. Beginning with the Boston Tea Party and continuing through the antislavery, abortion, women’s rights, civil rights, antiwar, and antinuclear movements, civil disobedience has been a familiar sight on the American political landscape. 3. CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE IS AN OPTION FOR DISADVANTAGED MINORITIES Elliot M. Zashin, NQA, CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE AND DEMOCRACY, 1972, p.2. Moreover, radical dissenters and reformers have generally been isolated in America because the system has provided the majority of its citizens with considerable affluence. The groups which have had the greatest need for change generally have been relatively small minorities. Civil disobedience seemed to be a resolution of the conflicting tugs of private conviction and political obligation, a solution to the problem minority protestors faced when conventional channels afforded them no relief.

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CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE IS JUSTIFIED IN AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 1. CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE CAN BE JUSTIFIED WITH SPIRIT OF AMERICAN LAWS Hannah Arendt, Philosopher, CRISIS OF THE REPUBLIC, 1969, p. 83. However, what is basically at stake here is not whether, and to what extent, civil disobedience can be justified by the First Amendment, but, rather, with what concept [sic] of law it is compatible. I shall argue in what follows that although the phenomenon of civil disobedience is today a world-wide phenomenon and even though it has attracted the interest of jurisprudence and political science only recently in the United States, it still is primarily American in origin and substance; that no other country, and no other language, has even a word for it, and that the American republic is the only government having at least a chance to cope with it—not, perhaps, in accordance with the statutes, but in accordance with the spirit [sic] of its laws. 2. THERE IS A FRAMEWORK WITHIN DEMOCRACY TO JUSTIFY CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE Elliot M. Zashin, NQA, CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE AND DEMOCRACY, 1972, p. 72-3. There are several useful propositions to be culled from the work of these three theorists: (1) a social contract theory of the state does not preclude legitimate disobedience to political authority—that is, not all acts of disobedience are inconsistent with the idea of a government established voluntarily by a body of men to protect their liberties; (2) the consent of the individual is the source of the obligation to obey constituted political authority; (3) when governors commit acts which subvert the ends for which government was established, popular resistance is justified; and (4) popular willingness to resist can serve to keep governors responsive and less likely to infringe on the people’s liberties. These are the basic components for constructing a full-blown justification of civil disobedience within the liberal-democratic polity. 3. CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE IS AN ESTABLISHED PART OF AMERICAN POLITICS Bruce Ledewitz, Professor of Law, Duquesne University School of Law, HOFSTRA LAW REVIEW, Fall, 1990, p. 67-8. Though not understood as protected by the First Amendment, civil disobedience nevertheless has become an established part of American political life. Certainly since the 1960’s, but even before then, many groups seeking political reform have used civil disobedience either as a tactic to bring their message to the attention of the public or as an expression of non-cooperation with policies they oppose.

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CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE DOES NOT CREATE WIDESPREAD ANARCHY 1. CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE DOES NOT LEAD TO ANARCHY Howard Zinn, Professor Emeritus, Spelman College, DECLARATIONS OF INDEPENDENCE, 1990, p. 109-10. Did the mass demonstrations of the black movement in the American South, in the early sixties, lead to anarchy? True, they disrupted the order of racial segregation. They created scenes of disorder in hundreds of towns and cities in the country. But the result of all that tumult was not general lawlessness. Rather the result was a healthy reconstitution of the social order toward greater justice and a healthy new understanding among Americans about the need for racial equality. 2. CIVIL DISOBEDIENTS DO NOT BELIEVE ANARCHY WILL RESULT IN SOCIAL REFORM Steven M. Bauer and Peter 1. Eckerstrom, Professors of Law, Stanford University, STANFORD LAW REVIEW, May 1987, p. 1190. As a social reformer with a vision of a public good who displays a respect for the influence of law on a community, the civil disobedient has a stake in the eventual enforceability of law more to his liking. The fundamental legitimacy of political society does not offend him; it motivates his. Anarchy and social chaos, he feels, offer no possibility of social reform. 3. CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE DOES NOT CREATE WIDESPREAD DISRESPECT FOR LAW Elliot M. Zashin, NQA, CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE AND DEMOCRACY, 1972, p. 127. For the most part, these objections [to civil disobedience] assume that law and order is a basic requisite for any society, particularly a complex one. Civil disobedience, so the argument goes, cannot be justified because it threatens those conditions upon which the realization of any [sic] societal values and ideals rest, even though it may be motivated by commitment to the highest ideals of society. But although public disturbances have occurred occasionally when civil disobedience has been used, there does not seem to be any clear and cogent evidence that civil disobedience has actually encouraged widespread or significant disrespect for the law. CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE IS JUSTIFIED AS A MEANS OF LAST RESORT 1. CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE IS AN ACTION OF LAST RESORT Elliot M. Zashin, NQA, CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE AND DEMOCRACY, 1972, p. 129. By limiting civil disobedience to a last resort, its practitioners attempt to minimize the disorder which civil disobedience may produce. They do not want [sic] to risk weakening the structure of order and respect for the law unless there are strong reasons for doing so. Thus, they generally are willing to postpone civil disobedience until conventional methods are exhausted. 2. CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE IS JUSTIFIED WHEN OTHER CHANNELS OF DEMOCRACY FAIL Steven M. Bauer and Peter J. Eckerstrom, Professors of Law, Stanford University, STANFORD LAW REVIEW, May 1987, p. 1184. Civil disobedience as a form of public expression possesses its greatest utility and legitimacy when orthodox channels of democratic participation have failed. Only then is it needed; only then is it morally acceptable. 3. CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE IS JUSTIFIED WHEN TRADITIONAL POLITICAL REMEDIES FAIL Elliot M. Zashin, NQA, CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE AND DEMOCRACY, 1972, p. 223. If one responds that the minority has a right to attempt to influence the majority and that conventional political methods often do not provide the minority with a real opportunity to do that, then one has essentially moved to the argument that institutional channels are not really available to certain groups of protestors. This argument seems a more solid grounding for the justification of civil disobedience and nonviolent direct action.

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THE PURPOSE OF CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE IS TO CREATE JUSTICE 1. TEST FOR CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE IS JUSTICE, NOT LAW Howard Zinn, Professor Emeritus, Spelman College, DECLARATIONS OF INDEPENDENCE, 1990, p. 128. The principles I am suggesting for civil disobedience is not that we must tolerate all disobedience to law, but that we refuse an absolute obedience [sic] to the law. The ultimate test is not law, but justice. This troubles many people, because it gives them a heavy responsibility, to weigh social acts by their moral consequences. 2. CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE IS ROOTED IN THE BELIEF OF ACHIEVING IDEAL JUSTICE Elliot M. Zashin, NQA, CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE AND DEMOCRACY, 1972, p. 127-8. Many members of the public may not be able to recognize that civil disobedience places a higher value on the ideal justice; instead, they may see only that it shows disrespect for the law. Proponents of civil disobedience cannot ignore the very real dilemmas that pubic lack of understanding about the nature of civil disobedience creates, but the fact that the public does not immediately grasp their intent is not a conclusive argument against civil disobedience. For civil disobedience, by its very nature, is directed toward making practitioners, adversaries, and bystanders, more aware of and sensitive to transcendent ideals and present injustices. Civil disobedients try to communicate that they place a higher value on an ideal justice and that ultimately their acts may lead to greater respect for law by bringing law and justice closer together. 3. CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE IS JUSTIFIED TO REMEDY INJUSTICE Henry David Thoreau, American Moral Philosopher, WALDEN AND OTHER WRITINGS OF HENRY DAVID THOREAU, 1965, p. 664. If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go: perchance it will wear smooth,—certainly the machine will wear out. If the injustice has a spring, or a pulley, or a rope, or a crank, exclusively for itself, then perhaps you may consider whether the remedy will not be worse than the evil; but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn. THREAT OF VIOLENCE CREATES A CIVIL SOCIETY 1. THREAT OF VIOLENCE GUARANTEES NONVIOLENT SOCIETY Alvin Toffler, Author, POWERSHIFT, 1990, p. 15. No one doubts that violence—embodied in the mugger’s switchblade or a nuclear missile—can yield awesome results. The shadow of violence or force, embedded in the law, stands behind every act of government, and in the end every government relies on soldiers and police to enforce [sic] its will. This ever-present and necessary threat of official violence in society helps keep the system operating, making ordinary business contracts enforceable, reducing crime, providing machinery for the peaceful settlement of disputes. In this paradoxical sense, it is the veiled threat of violence that helps make daily life nonviolent. THERE IS NO ALTERNATIVE TO WARFARE IN THE INTERNATIONAL ARENA 1. THERE IS NO ALTERNATIVE TO WARFARE IN THE INTERNATIONAL ARENA Hannah Arendt, Social Philosopher, CRISES OF THE REPUBLIC, 1972, p. 107. The chief reason warfare is still with us is neither a secret death wish of the human species, nor an irrepressible instinct of aggression, nor, finally and more plausibly, the serious economic and social dangers inherent in disarmament, but the simple fact that no substitute for this final arbiter in international affairs has yet appeared on the political scene. Was not Hobbes right when he said: “Covenants without swords, are but words?”

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Causality Good CAUSALITY IS NECESSARY TO MAKE GOOD POLICY 1. CAUSALITY IS NECESSARY TO DETERMINE GOOD POLICY Jerald Hage and Barbara Foley Meeker, Professors at the University of Maryland, SOCIAL CAUSALITY, 1988, p. 1 Why should we be concerned with the problem of causality? One answer, we suggest, is that success of social intervention policies and the consequent credibility of social science depends on our knowing what the mechanisms are by which one variable changes another variable. We cannot make changes without understanding the reasons for a change having one effect rather than another, and the conditions under which the change we want may occur. We have, therefore, practical as well as theoretical interest in the “why” of social life. 2. CAUSALITY IS KEY TO MAKING POLICIES Jerald Hage and Barbara Foley Meeker, Professors at the University of Maryland, SOCIAL CAUSALITY, 1988, p. 2 A good causal theory will produce interesting empirical research hypotheses and statistical analyses and also social intervention policies. A poor (or nonexistent) causal theory will make empirical research and statistical analysis difficult to interpret, and lead to (at best) ad hoc and accidentally effective social intervention policies. 3. CAUSALITY IS NECESSARY FOR EFFICIENT POLICIES Jerald Hage and Barbara Foley Meeker, Professors at the University of Maryland, SOCIAL CAUSALITY, 1988, p. 33 Another reason why causality is so important is the need to develop better and more effective social intervention strategies that focus on social processes. This will lead to more credibility for the social sciences as well as to more effective social policies. CAUSALITY IS NEEDED FOR EDUCATION 1. RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT IS ENHANCED WHEN WE LOOK AT CAUSALITY. Jerald Hage and Barbara Foley Meeker, Professors at the University of Maryland, SOCIAL CAUSALITY, 1988, p. 33 Social causes are frequently ignored in the development of social theory. As we have seen, there is some confusion in the philosophy of science about the concept. Causes occur in time prior to their effects and represent some mechanism or process which produces a change. These occur in a complex network of causal links. Types of causal link include direct, indirect, spurious and conditional, and may also include reciprocal and feedback processes, Typically in sociology we focus on state variables such as sex, age, income, centrality, size or complexity and do not explicate the causal mechanisms which relate the independent and dependent variable. The concept of social causality provides a useful service by calling attention to this neglected aspect of theory. Both theory development and empirical research will be enriched by considering questions of causality. 2. CAUSALITY IS NECESSARY FOR SCIENTIFIC THINKING Georg Henrik von Wright, Professor at Colombia University, CAUSALITY AND DETERMINISM, 1974, p. 1. I shall be talking here about one concept of causation only--but one which I think is of sufficient importance to merit this singular attention. Its importance, as I see it, has many dimensions. First, this concept of causation is important because of the role it actually seems to play in scientific thinking and practice, particularly in the experimental and natural sciences. Secondly, it is important because of the even greater role it has played in philosophy as an ideal or model concept. It has set a model to philosophers of what a scientific “causal explanation” ideally looks like. And it has lent support to an idea according to which the entire course of the world, or of nature, is subject to a rigid determinism under inexorable causal laws.

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CAUSALITY IS A GOOD VALUE 1. CAUSALITY IS USEFUL IN PREDICTING OUTCOMES. D.M. Armstrong and Norman Malcom, Authors, CONSCIOUSNESS AND CAUSALITY, 1984, p. 138 The word ‘disposition’ here is a philosopher’s technical term. By ‘disposition’ is meant such properties of material objects such as brittleness, solubility, and elasticity. This rubber band is elastic. If a force is suitably applied it will stretch, and will continue to stretch as long as the force is readily applied. Remove the force, however, and it will return to its original length. It is important to realize that what we have here is are casual conditions. They tell us that if the band were acted upon in certain ways, then certain effects will result. Pulling on the band is a cause. It has the effect of stretching the band. The removal of the pulling agent is a further cause, which has the effect that the band returns to its original shape. 2. CAUSALITY MUST BE DETERMINED BEFORE ANYTHING ELSE. Jerald Hage and Barbara Foley Meeker, Professors at the University of Maryland, SOCIAL CAUSALITY, 1988, p. 13 One of the few features of causality that is generally agreed upon is that a causal process goes in one direction only, and that the action of the cause comes first in time. (Recall that theology, the idea that a cause is the end state toward which an event is heading, is not acceptable scientifically.) If we know the sequence in which events occur, we must take into account in establishing what causes what; the one that occurs second can never be the cause of the one that occurred first. CAUSALITY IS DIFFICULT TO DETERMINE 1. THE EFFECT OF SOMETHING DOES NOT ALWAYS HAVE TO HAVE A CAUSE. Myles Brand, Professor at the University of Illinois, THE NATURE OF CAUSATION, 1976, p. 68 Hume’s “official” view on this subject may perhaps be summarized as follows: To be is to be perceived. No connection is ever perceived between a cause and its effect. Therefore there is none. An “object” of kind A is called the cause of one of kind B if, in our experience, objects of kind A have always been followed each of an object of kind B. But such following of one object upon a certain other is not “necessary.” 2. THERE IS NOT ALWAYS A CAUSE TO AN EFFECT. Myles Brand, Professor at the University of Illinois, THE NATURE OF CAUSATION, 1976, p. 69-70 As to the first, if a man were so situated as always to have heard two clocks striking the hours, one which always struck immediately before the other, he would according to Hume’s definition of cause have to say that the strokes of the first cause the strokes of the second; whereas in fact they do not. 3. THERE IS NO REAL WAY TO DETERMINE CAUSALITY. Myles Brand, Professor at the University of Illinois, THE NATURE OF CAUSATION, 1976, p. 72-73 Hume attempts to meet this difficulty by saying that even then we had millions of experiments “to convince us of this principle, that like objects placed in like circumstances, will always produce like effects,” and that this principle then “bestows an evidence and firmness on any opinion, to which it can be applied.” By itself, however, this principle would support equally the generalizing of any sequence observed-of one which is accidental as well as of one which turns out to be casual.

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Communitarianism Good COMMUNITY PROVIDES THE BEST UNDERSTANDING OF HUMAN NATURE 1. SOCIETY IS THE HIGHEST GOOD IN ALL INSTANCES OF HUMAN HISTORY Peter 1. Steinberger, Political Scientist at Reed College. LOGIC AND POLITICS, 1988, pp. 190-1 Briefly, according to these premises political society is, by definition, the realm of human interaction which governs all others; it is “sovereign,” it reserves to itself, so to speak, the right to regulate the remaining varieties of human interaction and, in principle, its reach can be as extensive as practicality allows. Wherever humans live together there is likely to be some such ultimate practice, in terms of which particular forms of social life are, according to the fashion, either actively regulated or generously allowed to operate without overt interference, and where the decision actively to regulate or not is itself subject to review and revision. This practice--however formulated and instituted—is the practice of politics conceived in the broadest possible terms and, as such, is the defining characteristic of political society. It follows, then, that all of our ways of living together are, at least in theory, subject to the claims and judgments of politics. 2. MUST VIEW COMMUNITY AND INDIVIDUAL AS A CONCEPTUAL WHOLE Peter 1. Steinberger, Political Scientist at Reed College. LOGIC AND POLITICS, 1988, p. 147 Thus, the rules and patterns of society and the individuality of the individual must come to fruition together. It is only in virtue of the other that each can, in Hegel’s term, attain its “actuality.” To approach them in their discreteness is to treat them abstractly, to miss the sense in which society and individual are in fact concrete elements of a concrete whole. 3. COMMUNITY IS RESPONSIBLE FOR INDIVIDUALS’ POWER TO REASON Peter J. Steinberger, Political Scientist at Reed College. LOGIC AND POLITICS, 1988, pp. 157-8 It seems that the “essence” which unites the laws and the individual can only be reason itself. Rationality is the basis of selfhood, of human freedom and subjectivity in the full sense, and the proper basis also of society’s institutions and practices. Thus, the link between law and subject, between community and individual, is more substantial than, say, bonds of either faith or trust; for these latter typically involve choices and judgments which are somehow incapable of being proven, which defy rational demonstration and which, as a result, could well turn out to be insupportable (whereby the bond itself would shatter). 4. INDIVIDUAL IDENTITY IS ALWAYS A RESULT OF THE COMMUNITY John Rawls, Philosopher at Harvard. POLITICAL LIBERALISM, 1993, p. 269 Now everyone recognizes that the institutional form of society affects its members and determines in large part the kind of persons they want to be as well as the land of persons they are. The social structure also limits people’s ambitions and hopes in different ways; for they will with reason view themselves in part according to their position in it and take account of the means and opportunities they can realistically expect. So an economic regime, say, is not only an institutional scheme for satisfying existing desires and aspirations but a way of fashioning desires and aspirations in the future. More generally, the basic structure shapes the way the social system produces and reproduces over tune a certain form of culture shared by persons with certain conceptions of their good.

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COMMUNITARIANISM LIBERATES THE INDIVIDUAL 1. COMMUNITY IDENTITY IS NECESSARY FOR FREEDOM John Rawls, Philosopher at Harvard. POLITICAL LIBERALISM, 1993, p. 77 It is in their public recognition and informed application of the principles of justice in their political life, and as their effective sense of justice directs, that citizens achieve full autonomy. Thus, full autonomy is realized by citizens when they act from principles of justice that specify the fair terms of cooperation they would give to themselves when fairly represented as free and equal persons. 2. FREEDOM AND OPPORTUNITY REQUIRE A SENSE OF COMMUNITY Peter J. Steinberger, Political Scientist at Reed College. LOGIC AND POLITICS, 1988, p. 147 According to Hegel, then, the individuality of the individual is related to or composed of his capacity for freedom and reason. Fully exercising this capacity is, in turn, related to and dependent upon the institution of property, hence also on the institution of punishment (since, speaking conceptually, property requires crime which requires punishment). Thus, satisfying the requirements of individuality is shown to be contingent upon the successful establishment of certain rules and patterns of a social or legal nature. 3. SOCIETY IS THE BASIS FOR INDIVIDUAL SELF-WORTH John Rawls, Philosopher at Harvard. POLITICAL LIBERALISM, 1993, p. 203 A second reason political society is a good for citizens is that it secures for them the good of justice and the social bases of their mutual self-respect Thus, in securing the equal basic rights and liberties, fair equality of opportunity, and the like, political society guarantees the essentials of persons’ public recognition as free and equal citizens. In securing these things political society secures their fundamental needs. COMMUNITARIANISM DOES NOT LEAD TO TYRANNY 1. COMMUNITY IDENTITY IS ACCESSIBLE IN NON-STATE MEANS John Rawls, Philosopher at Harvard. POLITICAL LIBERALISM, 1993, p. 146 Justice as fairness assumes, as other liberal political philosophies do also, that the values of community are not only essential but realizable, first in the various associations that carry on their life within the framework of the basic structure, and second in those associations that extend across the boundaries of political societies, such as churches and scientific societies. 2. LIMITATIONS ON COMMUNITY POWER DO NOT INVALIDATE THE PRIMACY OF IT Peter J. Steinberger, Political Scientist at Reed College. LOGIC AND POLITICS, 1988, p. 191 Thus, the relationship of political society to the rest of social life as one of regulation, either intrusive or permissive, is by definition necessary and unavoidable. Of course, it may be that some aspects of social life are difficult or even impossible to control reliably. This only asserts a practical limitation, however; it in no way denies the fact that the purpose of political society is to determine, either through active interference or benign neglect, the ways in which we live together. 3. COMMUNITARIANISM GUARANTEES THE RATIONALITY OF LAWS Peter J. Steinberger, Political Scientist at Reed College. LOGIC AND POLITICS, 1988, p. 201 Finally, political society must in some sense be sovereign. As the ultimate manifestation of right, and the final determinant of our ways of living together, political society is by definition that source of rules and patterns above which there is no other. But this means that the claims of political society need to be legitimized explicitly in such terms. That is, its authority over the countless other institutions of social life--familial, economic, cultural, and the like--must be justified on the basis of some concept of sovereignty, so that its peculiar position in society can be clarified and defended.

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COMMUNITARIANISM PROVIDES THE BEST MODEL OF SOCIETY 1. A WELL ORDERED SOCIETY REQUIRES UNITY John Rawls, Philosopher at Harvard. POLITICAL LIBERALISM, 1993, pp. 31-2 Moreover, in a well-ordered society supported by an overlapping consensus, citizens’ (more general) political values and commitments, as part of their noninstitutional or moral identity, are roughly the same. 2. COMMUNITARIAN PARTICIPATION IS NECESSARY TO PREVENT TYRANNY John Rawls, Philosopher at Harvard. POLITICAL LIBERALISM, 1993, p. 205 The idea is that without a widespread participation in democratic politics by a vigorous and informed citizen body, and certainly with a general retreat into private life, even the most well-designed political institutions will fall into the bands of those who seek to dominate and impose their will through the state apparatus either for the sake of power and military glory, or for reasons of class and economic interest, not to mention expansionist religious fervor and nationalist fanaticism. The safety of democratic liberties requires the active participation of citizens who possess the political virtues needed to maintain a constitutional regime. 3. COMMUNITARIANISM IS NECESSARY TO PREVENT SELFISH BEHAVIOR Peter 1. Steinberger, Political Scientist at Reed College. LOGIC AND POLITICS, 1988, p. 200 It must be emphasized that civil society is not to be understood as a regression, a step back from the sublime unity of the family. Rather, in civil society the individual comes to see even more clearly than before the degree to which his freedom and individuality depend upon rational self-awareness. Specifically, he comes to see that in pursuing selfish ends, he finds himself necessarily enmeshed in a system of complete interdependence wherein the livelihood, well-being, and legal status of one man is interwoven with the livelihood, well-being and legal rights of all. 4. COMMUNITY IS NECESSARY TO REALIZE JUSTICE John Rawls, Philosopher at Harvard. POLITICAL LIBERALISM, 1993, p. 146 Of course, in the well-ordered society of justice as fairness citizens share a common aim, and one that has high priority: namely, the aim of insuring that political and social institutions are just, and of giving justice to persons generally, as what citizens need for themselves and want for one another. It is not true then, that in a liberal view citizens have no fundamental common aims. 5. COMMUNITY MUST PROVIDE FOR CITIZENS’ NEEDS IN ORDER TO BE DEMOCRATIC John Rawls, Philosopher at Harvard. POLITICAL LIBERALISM, 1993, pp. 156-7 As I have said, the most reasonable political conception of justice for a democratic regime will be, broadly speaking, liberal. This means that it protects the familiar basic rights and assigns them a special priority; it also includes measures to insure that all citizens have sufficient material means to make effective use of those basic rights. Faced with the fact of reasonable pluralism, a liberal view removes from the political agenda the most divisive issues, serious contention about which must undermine the bases of social cooperation.

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COMMUNITARIANISM PRESERVES INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS AND DEMOCRACY 1. COMMUNITARIANISM ONLY WAY TO PROTECT RIGHTS AND DEMOCRACY Amitai Etzioni, Professor of Government at George Washington University, Founder and Chairman of the Communitarian Network, THE SPIRIT OF COMMUNITY, 1993, p.253. Neither human existence nor individual liberty can be sustained for long outside the interdependent and overlapping communities to which all of us belong. Nor can any community long survive unless its members dedicate some of their attention, energy, and resources to shared projects. The exclusive pursuit of private interest erodes the network of social environments on which we all depend, and is destructive to our shared experiment in democratic self-government. For these reasons, we hold that the rights of individuals cannot long be preserved without a communitarian perspective. 2. PRESERVATION OF INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY REQUIRES A COMMUNITARIAN PERSPECTIVE Amitai Etzioni, Professor of Government at George Washington University, Founder and Chairman of the Communitarian Network, THE SPIRIT OF COMMUNITY, 1993, p. 253. A communitarian perspective recognizes that the preservation of individual liberty depends on the active maintenance of the institutions of civil society where citizens learn respect for others as well as self-respect; where we acquire a lively sense of our personal and civic responsibilities, along with an appreciation of our own rights and the rights of others; where we develop the skills of self-government as well as the habit of governing ourselves, and learn to serve others--not just self. 3. COMMUNITARIANISM DOES NOT USE COERCION TO ACHIEVE ITS ENDS Amitai Etzioni, Professor of Government at George Washington University, Founder and Chairman of the Communitarian Network, THE SPIRIT OF COMMUNITY, 1993, p.253-254. America's diverse communities of memory and mutual aid are rich resources of moral voices--voices that ought to be heeded in a society that increasingly threatens to become normless, self-centered, and driven by greed, special interests, and an unabashed quest for power. Moral voices achieve their effect mainly through education and persuasion, rather than through coercion. Originating in communities, and sometimes embodied in law, they exhort, admonish, and appeal to what Lincoln called the better angels of our nature. They speak to our capacity for reasoned judgment and virtuous action. It is precisely because this important moral realm, which is neither one of random individual choice nor of government control, has been much neglected that we see an urgent need for a communitarian social movement to accord these voices their essential place. 4. COMMUNITARIANISM SEEKS A BALANCE BETWEEN RIGHTS AND OBLIGATIONS Amitai Etzioni, Professor of Government at George Washington University, Founder and Chairman of the Communitarian Network, THE SPIRIT OF COMMUNITY, 1993, p. 254. The basic communitarian quest for balances between individuals and groups, rights and responsibilities, and among the institutions of state, market, and civil society is a constant, ongoing enterprise. Because this quest takes place within history and within varying social contexts, however, the evaluation of what is a proper moral stance will vary according to circumstances of time and place. If we were in China today, we would argue vigorously for more individual rights; in contemporary America, we emphasize individual and social responsibilities.

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COMMUNITARIANISM AND MORALITY GO HAND IN HAND 1. COMMUNITY DEFENDS MORAL STANDARDS OF ALL ITS MEMBERS Amitai Etzioni, Professor of Government at George Washington University, Founder and Chairman of the Communitarian Network, THE SPIRIT OF COMMUNITY, 1993, p. 255. A responsive community is one whose moral standards reflect the basic human needs of all its members. To the extent that these needs compete with one another, the community's standards reflect the relative priority accorded by members to some needs over others. Although individuals differ in their needs, human nature is not totally malleable. Although individuals are deeply influenced by their communities, they have a capacity for independent judgment. The persistence of humane and democratic culture, as well as individual dissent, in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union demonstrate the limits of social indoctrination. 2. COMMUNITY DEFENDS VALUES OF MORALITY AND JUSTICE Amitai Etzioni, Professor of Government at George Washington University, Founder and Chairman of the Communitarian Network, THE SPIRIT OF COMMUNITY, 1993, p. 255-256. For a community to be truly responsive--not only to an elite group, a minority or even the majority, but to all its members and all their basic human needs--it will have to develop moral values which meet the following criteria: they must be nondiscriminatory and applied equally to all members; they must be generalizable, justified in terms that are accessible and understandable: e.g., instead of claims based upon individual or group desires, citizens would draw on a common definition of justice; and, they must incorporate the full range of legitimate needs and values rather than focusing on any one category, be it individualism, autonomy, interpersonal caring, or social justice. 4. MUST LOOK TO COMMUNITY FIRST FOR MORAL VOICES Amitai Etzioni, Professor of Government at George Washington University, Founder and Chairman of the Communitarian Network, THE SPIRIT OF COMMUNITY, 1993, p. 256. History has taught that it is a grave mistake to look to a charismatic leader to define and provide a moral voice for the polity. Nor can political institutions effectively embody moral voices unless they are sustained and criticized by an active citizenry concerned about the moral direction of the community. To rebuild America's moral foundations, to bring our regard for individuals and their rights into a better relationship with our sense of personal and collective responsibility, we must therefore begin with the institutions of civil society. 5. COMMUNITARIAN MORALS NEEDED FOR COMPLETE CONCEPT OF RIGHTS Amitai Etzioni, Professor of Government at George Washington University, Founder and Chairman of the Communitarian Network, THE SPIRIT OF COMMUNITY, 1993, p. 256. The language of rights is morally incomplete. To say that "I have a right to do X" is not to conclude that "X is the right thing for me to do." One may, for example, have a First Amendment right to address others in a morally inappropriate manner. Say one tells a Jew that "Hitler should have finished you all" or a black, "nigger go back to Africa," or worse. Rights give reasons to others not to coercively interfere with the speaker in the performance of protected acts; however, they do not in themselves give me a sufficient reason to perform these acts. There is a gap between rights and rightness that cannot be closed without a richer moral vocabulary -- one that invokes principles of decency, duty, responsibility, and the common good, among others. 6. COMMUNITARIANISM PROMOTES RECIPROCAL SOCIAL JUSTICE Amitai Etzioni, Professor of Government at George Washington University, Founder and Chairman of the Communitarian Network, THE SPIRIT OF COMMUNITY, 1993, p. 256. At the heart of the communitarian understanding of social justice is the idea of reciprocity: each member of the community owes something to all the rest, and the community owes something to each of its members. Justice requires responsible individuals in a responsive community.

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Communitarianism Bad COMMUNITARIANISM IS A VAGUE AND MISLEADING IDEOLOGY 1. AT LEAST THREE TYPES OF COMMUNITARIANISM EXIST: THEY ARE ALL EVIL J. Budziszewski, Professor of Government University of Texas at Austin, FIRST THINGS, March 1995, p. 22. Another way to explore the difficulty with "communitarianism" is to point out that there are at least three communitarianisms, each of which poses problems of its own. The demonic variety makes the community itself the source of value; the accountable variety submits the community to values of which it is not the source, but which can be identified by all; and the narrative variety submits it to values of which it is not the source, but which cannot be identified by all. 2. COMMUNITARIAN IDEAS SHIFT Pat Lorj, Representative of the New Democratic Party in the Canadian Parliament, Chair of the Government Caucus Committee on Employment and the Economy, "Communitarianism: A Legislator's Perspective," CANADIAN PARLIAMENTARY REVIEW, February 16, 1996, p. np, Accessed 5/14/98, http://parl30.parl.gc.ca/infoparl/articles/lorje_e.htm. In the excitement of embracing a "new movement", we must not forget a basic truth embodied in E.B. White's Charlotte's Web. Parents will recognize this cautionary tale of a curious and deep friendship between Wilbur, the very innocent pig, and Charlotte, the very wise spider. One line speaks to me and my ilk: "Wilbur ran again to the top of the manure pile, full of energy and hope." My re-election to a once honourable profession makes me keenly aware of the need to mix idealism and practicality as we trumpet the New Jerusalem. We need whisker-sharp antennae to know how far, and how fast to implement our ideas. If we are too far ahead of people, we lose. If we are too far behind, we atrophy. So, like Wilbur, politicians constantly run to the top of the manure pile, full of energy and hope. Indeed, many communitarian ideas certainly fill me with energy and hope that the partisan debate can be transformed to a discourse on effective improvements. Nevertheless, I have been around the political game long enough to be wary of the shifting nature of the pile where I stand. 3. COMMUNITARIANISM SEEKS TO OBSCURE FURTHER PROBLEMS OF NATURAL LAW J. Budziszewski, Professor of Government University of Texas Austin, FIRST THINGS, March 1995, p. 22. Now so far, the worst one could say about accountable communitarianism is that it hasn't taken its premises to their logical conclusion. It needs to declare what are the external and overriding criteria, based on shared human experience, that its qualified defense of communities requires; it needs something like natural law. But here we find ourselves in an extraordinary predicament. Natural law is far from unproblematic itself, and communitarianism is often regarded as a maneuver for getting around its mysteries rather than entering into them. 4. DEMOCRATIC POLITY IS NOT REALLY A "COMMUNITY" BUT LOTS OF COMMUNITIES J. Budziszewski, Professor of Government University of Texas Austin, FIRST THINGS, March 1995, p. 22. Now the polity is not a community in the simple sense, but a community of communities; not a hearth, but a vestibule. That means that many stories contend. Two things follow. First, any "communitarianism" feasible for the polity as a whole could be reached only by strategic mutual accommodation; second, it could be reached only among those communities whose stories were sufficiently related for them to find some common ground. For instance Catholics, Orthodox, evangelical Protestants, and religious Jews might be able to reach such an accommodation. One could say in this case that they had agreed about the precepts of the natural law. The problem is that secular humanists have their own "communitarianism"- a counter-accommodation, involving different groups, with different stories, sharing a different common ground-and these two communitarianisms are utterly at odds.

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COMMUNITARIANISM DISRESPECTS INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS 1. COMMUNITARIANISM IGNORES NECESSARY INDIVIDUALISM Tibor R. Machan, Professor of Philosophy at Auburn University, Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, RES PUBLICA, Vol. 1, No. 1, 1995, p. 3. Should we embrace a new version of collectivism, for example, communitarianism, in order to recover us from the consequences of subjectivism? I don't believe that is necessary. Individualism has not had a full hearing. There are forms of it distinct from the version the classical liberal tradition inherited. The type of individualism I have in mind focuses on individual human beings. This humanist, ethical or classical individualism recognizes that there is in nature a class of human individuals. And their human nature has a lot to teach us about social life and personal ethics. It seems there are indeed good reasons to classify hum an beings as a distinct class of entities in nature. There is, however, also good reason to regard their individuality as one of their essential, central characteristics. 2. COMMUNITARIANISM IS COLLECTIVIST AND DOESN'T RESPECT THE INDIVIDUAL Tibor R. Machan, Professor of Philosophy at Auburn University, Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, RES PUBLICA, Vol. 1, No. 1, 1995,p. 3. All of this is especially important now, in the light of the recent economic and cultural demise of the planned economic systems of Eastern Europe. That their system has collapsed does not necessarily mean that one that embraces freedom is going to be successfully sold to them. There is competition here -- Western social democrats, or democratic socialists, are only too willing to rework their system, call it communitarianism, and sell it to the victims of Stalinist socialism. Unless individualism can be shown to be a sound position, it will not be successful in capturing the minds and hearts of those who have found its opposite, collectivism, practically impossible. One can always claim, after all, that collectivism has not failed but was merely misunderstood, misplayed, and it will now have to be tried again, the right way. In short, classical individualism satisfies the concerns expressed by many antiindividualist with the amoralism of the radical individualist based liberal social order. But this view retains a principled adherence to the ultimate value of individual sovereignty based on the moral nature (that is, the requirement of self governance) of human individuals in the bulk of their lives. 3. NAZISM IS A RESULT OF COMMUNITARIANISM J. Budziszewski, Professor of Government University of Texas Austin, FIRST THINGS, March 1995, p. 22. First, demonic communitarianism, the discredited ideology of the Volk or People, epitomized by Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels. It was an idolatry, which like all idolatries eventually demanded sacrifices of blood. By treating the community itself as the source of value and the criterion of truth, the Nazis opened vaults of wickedness so vast that they have hardly yet been fathomed. Yet the problem was not chiefly that the Nazis were monsters. It was that their theory of value makes monsters of all who live it to its logical conclusion, be they angry German socialists or merely clever American relativists. Christians have a special responsibility to guard against the demonic sort of communitarianism, not only because the Church was so slow to condemn it the last time it reared its head, but also because on that occasion it drew strength from a specifically Christian heresy: the heresy of Jewish blood-guilt. 4. COMMUNITARIANISM FOR THE PRIVILEGED LEADS TO CYNICISM AND INACTION Pat Lorj, Representative of the New Democratic Party in the Canadian Parliament, "Communitarianism: A Legislator's Perspective," CANADIAN PARLIAMENTARY REVIEW, February 16, 1996, p. np, Accessed 5/14/98, http://parl30.parl.gc.ca/infoparl/articles/lorje_e.htm. My only caveat to the lure of communitarianism is one expected from an unapologetic social democrat: this movement, to succeed at all, must not rely simply upon attitudinal change. Economic change is equally important. Otherwise communitarianism will be seen as mere middle-class moralizing, and pompous rhetoric from those who already have their oar for the lifeboat. Enlightened self-interest is a tacky excuse for a social movement. Governments today come in two forms - maintenance, or change. The former simply props up the status quo of the privileged. This leads to bitterness, cynicism, and disdain for the political process.

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COMMUNITARIAN IDEAS ARE PHILOSOPHICALLY UNSOUND 1. THE COMMUNITARIAN THESIS IS A FALLACY Alisa Came, Philosopher at Georgetown. NOUS, June 1994, p. 192 It simply does not follow from the social constitution thesis that we will as individuals view society and the good of others to be intrinsically valuable, let alone as a fundamental good; to infer from the claim that the individual is socially-constituted to the claim that his good consists in participating in and sustaining the community is, again, to commit a genetic fallacy--this time to infer from a claim about the origin of an agent’s values and motivations to a claim about the nature (or content) of those motivations and values. 2. HUMAN EXPERIENCE INVALIDATES THE PRIORITY OF THE COMMUNITY Robert Kane, Psychological Philosopher. PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES, Vol. 75, 1994, pp. 47-8 These conflicts create tensions that are reflected in appropriate regions of the brain by movement further from thermodynamic equilibrium which increases the sensitivity to micro-indeterminacies at the neuron level and magnifies these indeterminacies throughout the complex macro-process which, taken as a whole, is the effort of will. The agents experience these soul-searching moments as moments of inner struggle and uncertainty about what to do that are reflected in the indeterminacy of their neural processes. One now adds that when a person does decide in such situations, and the indeterminate effort becomes determinate choice, the person makes one set of reasons or motives prevail over the others then and there by deciding. 3. COMMUNITARIAN VIEW IGNORES OUR ABILITY TO CHANGE OURSELVES Alisa Came, Philosopher at Georgetown. NOUS, June 1994, pp. 194-5 At times, communitarians talk as if we cannot reject our roles and attachments: not only don’t we choose them (we “find” ourselves with them), but there is no “me” apart from them who can reject them (for they constitute me). Moreover, if this is the communitarian view, it is not a view the communitarian can coherently hold. For in our (western, democratic) society, though we may understand ourselves in significant part in terms of our roles, attachments, and community-sanctioned ends, we do not understand ourselves as forever stuck with the roles we inhabit, the attachments we have, or the ends affirmed by our communities. We understand ourselves as capable of distancing ourselves from them, if never entirely, and never all at once, at least sufficiently to take a critical look at them, question them, try to revise them, or even on occasion abandon them altogether.

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COMMUNITARIANISM DESTROYS FREEDOM 1. PLACING COMMUNITY PRIOR TO INDIVIDUALS FEEDS TYRANNY Alisa Came, Philosopher at Georgetown. NOUS, June 1994, pp. 201-2 But we must ask how easily justice can be rendered useless in a society like ours in which our understanding of roles is very unsettled, and there is fundamental and often violent disagreement about the good. We must ask how well the family can serve as a model for a society in which many citizens are not bound to each other through ties of fraternity and benevolence. And we must ask just which “family values” we are to revitalize. When we stand in review of our tradition, what we see is a long history in which many forms of repression, discrimination, and abuse have been exercised against racial and cultural minorities, women, religious groups, and homosexuals. 2. COMMUNITARIANISM DECREASES EVERYONE’S RIGHTS Katha Pollitt, Columnist. THE NATION, July 25, 1994, p. 118 What is communitarianism, finally, but Republicanism for Democrats--Reaganism with a human face? It’s the perfect philosophy for our emerging one-party state: Travail, Famille, Patrie, plus campaign finance reform and paid parental leave. More volunteerism, less government activism; more “arbitration,” less access to legal redress; more police, less Bill of Rights. (Indeed, its affection for the expansion of police powers--curfews, checkpoints, ‘drug free zones” and such--is one of its salient features.) Although communitarians claim they represent a third way, neither left nor tight, look what they blame for America’s ills: not corporate capitalism, poverty, bigotry and inequality but “radical individualism.” 3. TYING FREEDOM TO COMMUNITY RESULTS IN A LOSS OF DEMOCRACY John Rawls, Philosopher at Harvard. POLITICAL LIBERALISM, 1993, p. 30 We can imagine a society (history offers many examples) in which basic rights and recognized claims depend on religious affiliation and social class. Such a society has a different political conception of the person. It lacks a conception of equal citizenship, for this conception goes with that of a democratic society of free and equal citizens. 4. COMMUNITARIAN7ISM PLACES WOMEN IN SUBSERVIENCE TO PATRIARCHY Katha Pollitt, Columnist. THE NATION, July 25, 1994, p. 118 Note (communitarianism) nostalgia for traditionally differentiated sex roles, its romanticized view of marriage and striking lack of interest in that institution’s darker side (domestic violence, for instance), its absurd habit of blaming family breakdown on women’s frivolous quest for self-development

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COMMUN1TARIANISM IS BAD FOR SOCIETY 1. COMMUNITY VIEW IS DAMAGING TO A WELL-ORDERED SOCIETY John Rawls, Philosopher at Harvard. POLITICAL LIBERALISM, 1993, pp. 42-3 While a well-ordered democratic society is not an association, it is not a community either, if we mean by a community a society governed by a shared comprehensive religious, philosophical or moral doctrine. This fact is crucial for a well-ordered society’s idea of public reason. To think of a democracy as a community (so defined) overlooks the limited scope of its public reason founded on a political conception of justice. 2. COMMUNITY DESTROYS PLURALISM AND TOLERANCE Amy Guttman, Social Philosopher. NOUS, June 1994, p. 202 The common good of the Puritans of seventeenth century Salem commanded them to hunt witches; the common good of the Moral Majority of the twentieth century commands them not to tolerate homosexuals. The communitarian critics want us to live in Salem, but not to believe in witches. 3. COMMUNITARIANISM IS ELITIST AND INEFFECTIVE Katha Pollitt, Columnist. THE NATION, July 25, 1994, p. 118 (Communitarianism is) essentially a marketing device, a way for a dozen or so politically minded academics to magnify their public presence by marching under a common barrier. Poets do this all the time (cf. the New Formalism, the New Narrative, etc.), so why not policy types? This would explain why, for all their claims to be tough-minded, bold and challenging, they take no group stand on divisive issues that people actually care about-abortion and gay rights, for example. It would explain, too, why the whole thing seems to be all chiefs and no Indians. Have you ever met a rank-and-file communitarian? 4. COMMUNITARIANISM IS A PHILOSOPHY OF BLAME Katha Pollitt, Columnist. THE NATION, July 25, 1994, p. 118 Just as communitarianism allows its followers individually to see themselves as virtuous, it encourages them collectively to see what’s wrong with contemporary America as the fault of other people. It isn’t ones own divorce that causes social breakdown; it’s everyone else’s divorces. The communitarians like to speak of balancing rights with responsibilities, which sounds good, but somehow the objects of this tradeoff tend to be others: the young (curfews, national service), the poor (checkpoints in drug-ridden communities, work requirements for welfare), women (family values--and what about that silence on abortion?).

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Community Good COMMUNITY SHOULD BE THE PARAMOUNT VALUE 1. COMMUNITY IS THE PARAMOUNT VALUE Carl J. Friedrich, author, THE CONCEPT OF COMMUNITY IN THE HISTORY OF POLITICAL AND LEGAL PHILOSOPHY, 1959, p. 3. Community has been a central concept of political and legal philosophy since its beginning. It has often served as a frame of reference even when not explored as such. From the well-known opening sentence of Aristotle’s Politics to the French constitution of 1958, community has served to designate the human group with which politics and law are concerned and to which all the characteristic phenomena of political life, power, authority, law, and the rest must be referred. Aristotle’s cautious teleological definition of the community (koinonia) as “aiming at some good” is later elaborated somewhat to suggest that it is a group of men having some values (customs, beliefs, interests) in common. 2. COMMUNITIES PROVIDE FOR PEACE Robert 1. Roth, Professor and Dean at Fordham University, PERSON AND COMMUNITY, 1975, p. 28. Secondly, one gets the persistent impression that for Hare peace is merely an absence of war or a cessation of hostility. But surely a truce or an armistice (cf. Richard M. Nixon’s “generation of peace” promise) does not secure a perpetual peace. Suppose that there were neither rationalists nor fanatics populating the political domain and that all men adopted the moral point of view. Would there then be peace? Perchance there would, but certainly it would not be guaranteed. Accordingly, Hare’s concern centering on the externals of how to “make the peace” or “keep the peace” rather than on how to “be at peace” or “live in peace” obscures the moral fundamental pursuit of peace which aims, not simply at removing certain logical difficulties preventing a condition of tranquil public order, but at restoring a personal sense of moral concord within the perimeter of community, a community of transcendental dimension. Doubtless, given the present world situation, we would all settle for the former, but if I am not mistaken, only the latter provides a lasting peace. 3. COMMUNITY IS THE HIGHEST GOAL OF SOCIETY Claes G. Ryn, author, DEMOCRACY AND THE ETHICAL LIFE, 1978, p. 82. Social life may be viewed as promoting a wide array of activities and corresponding values. These can be classed as ethical, intellectual, aesthetic, and economic, with politics defined as cutting across these lines. By a civilized society I mean one where these pursuits have attained a high level. Since the worth of everything must ultimately be judged by its contribution to the final purpose of life, civilization first and foremost signifies ethical attainment. The intellectual, aesthetic, and economic life of a society may be said to be truly civilized to the degree that these activities serve the ethical goal. While their respective values of truth, beauty, and economy (efficiency) have their own organizing principle or intrinsic standard of perfection, they fulfill their highest role only as they advance the purpose of the ethical 4. COMMUNITY SHOULD BE THE PARAMOUNT VALUE OF MANKIND Bernard Susser, author, EXISTENCE AND UTOPIA, 1981, p. 58. That man is a social animal is surely one of great truisms of the Western intellectual tradition. One noted scholar ties together all the elements of Aristotle’s celebrated doctrine comprehensively: “He (man) needs this community not only for self-preservation, security and perfection of his physical existence but above all because only in it is a good education and control of life by law and justice possible.” In Aristotle’s own phrase, humans live socially for the sake of “noble actions and not mere companionship.” Community is the indispensable background for the human telos--it provides the ‘paraphernalia’, the order and leisure requisite for the good life. As such, society and the state are ‘natural’ phenomena, that is, they emerge from the very character of humanity.

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COMMUNITIES ARE MORE BENEFICIAL THAN NON-COMMUNITIES 1. COMMUNITY GIVES PEOPLE A HOPE FOR THE FUTURE Robert J. Roth, Professor and Dean at Fordham University, PERSON AND COMMUNITY, 1975, p. 58. In my account, the person has been construed as one who, in self-discovery--as he dwells in a community which, in turn, dwells in him--and with the collaboration of that community, reveals the truth about who he is. Such disclosure occurs through re-collecting: a process of gathering into coherence so that he knows he has a history and senses he has a future. In effect, he rebuilds for himself a past, and owns that past. No longer does it haunt him. On the contrary, it reassures him and stimulates his quest for new discovery. The Unconscious is an in-folding of imagery deriving from both the external world and his own inferiority. Residing within him yet wholly other to him, this Unconscious is a radical negation of all he explicitly is. Yet when deciphered it reveals itself as continuous with his awareness; and by this continuity, each person builds for himself a cosmology of inner and outer worlds as themselves a unity of harmonizing rhythms. 2. COMMUNITIES INCREASE EDUCATION Robert 3. Roth, Professor and Dean at Fordham University, PERSON AND COMMUNITY, 1975, p. 97. Dewey believed also that we are born without an appreciation of the value of social awareness. Hence the child as early as possible should experience the value of social living. That is what the lived experience of cooperative activity formed such an essential and indeed exciting part of his educational theory and practice. For Dewey, education must fulfill the vital role of giving the young the experience of living in community. 3. COMMUNITY SUPERSEDES INDIVIDUAL ADVANTAGES Claes 0. Ryn, author, DEMOCRACY AND THE ETHICAL LIFE, 1978, p. 85-86. In the context of community, the common good is not merely a code word for successful compromise between clashing self-interests. It refers to the element in human interaction which transcends private advantage. Such is the nature of living together at a level of some ethical nobility supported by general cultural elevation. This type of life, although personally satisfying to the individuals comprising it, does not need to be defended by arguments of selfinterest. It is its own justification. Whatever contributes to it can be supported, not because it happens to serve the interests of this or that individual or group, but because it fulfills intrinsically valuable existence. It is the societal end for which the civilized man knows that he is intended. In community, men have been brought together at a common center of values. In Aristotelian terminology that center is happiness or true friendship, in Christian terminology, love. 4. EGO AND COMMUNITY CAN LIVE HAND AND HAND Claes G. Ryn, author, DEMOCRACY AND THE ETHICAL LIFE, 1978, p. 86. It should be added that while community is the ethical goal of society, it is not to be understood as one which can be completely attained. That would presuppose the disappearance of selfish motives from the face of the earth. To the extent that it is realized, community will have to exist with egoism. Drawing on our previous discussion on the relationship between morality and self-interest, we can say that the pursuit of private disadvantage can never become morality. To a certain extent, however, it can be bent to fit the purposes of the moral life by the ethical forces of community in the surrounding society, which subject selfishness to a degree of control.

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Cost-Benefit Analysis Bad COST-BENEFIT ANALYSIS IGNORES MORAL ISSUES IN DECISION MAKING 1. COST-BENEFIT ANALYSIS IGNORES MORAL COMPLEXITY IN DECISION MAKING John Martin Gillroy, Professor of Political Science, Trinity College, POLICY SCIENCES, Vol. 25, 1992, p. 96. If the individual is assumed by the policy-maker to have the ability to think morally, one might want to expand the concept of imperatives past the full use of the hypothetical variety and describe the individual making decision independently of the influence of his desires, on the basis of intellectually-approved principles, arrived at through reflection. If one is able to reason practically, and know when desire ought to play a role in decision-making and when it ought not, then we have a more complex mental model that has a distinct ethical component. However, this dualistic mind, with both ethical and non-ethical properties, is beyond the scope of the market model and costbenefit methods, which prescribe policy only for the one-dimensional man. 2. COST-BENEFIT METHODS IN POLICY MAKING RESULTS IN MORAL POVERTY John Martin Gilroy, Professor of Political Science, Trinity College, POLICY SCIENCES, Vol. 25, 1992, p. 98. The reality of the situation is that the policy-maker faced with a complex society, and without the possibility of getting at the distinction between true and manifest preferences (without a moral standard) will make assumptions about preferences to make his job easier. If he is convinced that the market provides a ‘moral high ground’ for the justification of policy, he will adopt a cost-benefit analysis relying on the assumptions that preferences, choice and the Potential Pareto Improvement are all related. In effect, he will ignore the myriad of problems and the moral poverty of this assumption and proceed to set up a cyclical argument as a justification for the application of costbenefit evaluation. 3. COST-BENEFIT METHODS IN POLICY MAKING INHIBIT ETHICAL CHOICES John Martin Gillroy, Professor of Political Science, Trinity College, POLICY SCIENCES, 1992, p. 100. Efficiency is an economic precept, not a moral principle, and therefore is not competition for, but must be justified in terms of, moral principles like autonomy, equality or benevolence. Considering the complexity and conflict present in the environment within which political choices are made, it is necessary to justify and evaluate these decisions in a way that does not presuppose that efficiency is the primary principle. Public policy must address the ethical questions of obligation, equality, cooperation and distribution as prior to considerations of efficiency. If autonomy is important as an independent moral ground for judging the ends of public policy, then it must be defined and justified for its context outside the market, for cost-benefit methods will reduce autonomy to a rational argument for efficiency based on assumed consent and personal preference. 4. COST-BENEFIT METHODS DO NOT MAKE MORAL DISTINCTIONS IN POLICY MAKING John Martin Gillroy, Professor of Political Science, Trinity College, POLICY SCIENCES, 1992, p. 99. Cost-benefit evaluation therefore has no independent moral justification distinct from its rational claims as a formal model of economic analysis with a foundation in efficiency and the Potential Pareto Improvement and is based on the primitive concepts of consent and preference within markets. It is therefore wrong to think of autonomy as a more fundamental normative basis for cost-benefit analysis or as a moral reason to justify the movement of market assumptions into the making of public policy decisions. There is no distinction between the ‘moral high ground’ and the ‘moral low ground’ of the rational efficiency justification.

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OST-BENEFIT CRITERIA MUST DEFEND MORALITY OF EFFICIENCY 1. COST-BENEFIT PROPONENTS MUST DEFEND THE MORALITY OF EFFICIENCY John Martin Gillroy, Professor of Political Science, Trinity College, POLICY SCIENCES, 1992, p. 83. In order for market decision and evaluation criteria to transfer into the realm of political decision-making, its justification can no longer be based solely on efficiency as an economic standard, but an argument must be made that efficiency has moral weight, as a more universal and necessary ethical standard or principle. It is the claim, therefore, of those who would recommend cost-benefit methods, for policy-making, that this moral weight exists at a more primitive level than the rational argument for efficiency. 2. COST-BENEFIT METHODS ARE BASED ON ECONOMIC CONSIDERATIONS ONLY John Martin Gillroy, Professor of Political Science, Trinity College, POLICY SCIENCES, 1992, p. 100. To say that costs and benefits, in welfare terms, are all that morally count in making a public decision, is to say that any ethical variable that is not directly translatable into a monetary equivalent is of consequentially less importance to the outcome. To treat individuals strictly as consumers (rather than citizens, for example) limits the evaluation system to questions of consumption, when the real moral concern might demand that the case be considered from the angle of obligation or protection. 3. COST-BENEFIT ANALYSIS CRITERIA ASSUMES EFFICIENCY IS THE HIGHEST VALUE John Martin Gillroy, Professor of Political Science, Trinity College, POLICY SCIENCES, 1992, p. 83. Those who would propose that the assumptions of the competitive market are adequate to the decision process in public policy, and who recommend cost-benefit methodology as the test of a policy’s adequacy, must also assume that efficiency has a deeper moral validity than merely its ‘rational’ economic nature in order for it to hold sway outside of the pure market context.

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Court as a Vehicle of Social Progress Responses The Supreme Court of the United States interprets the Constitution and decides if legislation is or is not valid under that interpretation. The document itself, written well over a century ago, is not static. It is the changing and evolving nature of interpretation that has led many to see the Court as a vehicle of social progress. As Franklyn S. Haiman noted of the modern Court, “Happily, until now, a solid majority of the Supreme Court has not heeded the call of the Robert Borks, Antonin Scalias, and Clarence Thomases to accept an ‘originalist’ approach to the U.S. Constitution that would freeze its provisions into an eighteenth-century mold or tether its amendments to the environment that existed at the time of their adoption.”1 This attitude, combined with landmark Supreme Court decisions, has led many to believe that the Court is the place to turn to for a vehicle of social progress. However, such a strategy for social change is only one of a vast array of options. The following brief will make arguments as to why the Court is not the bastion of social progress that many herald it to be and should not be used by social movements in attempts to advance their causes. THE COURT IS RESTRAINED BY CONSTITUTIONAL LIMITS Author Matthew J. Franck explains that the Supreme Court is theoretically constrained in their decisions by what material is included in the Constitution. This, he notes, is why there is a difference between political prudence and juris prudence. He makes a case against the Supreme Court, arguing that the term “statesmanship” should not be applied to justices on the Court. He defines statesmanship in the tradition of Morton J. Frisch and Richard G. Stevens as, “one who does as much good as he can get away with,” further clarified with, “removing the greatest amount of evil while disturbing the least amount of prejudice.” 2 This limitation of the Constitution means that the Court is not in the best position to advance social progress. Franck explains, “Already it should appear that statesmanship, by this definition, seems a task far more radical (in the original sense of that word) than judges reasonably be asked to perform....If the ‘excellent statesman...can and...will, if he must,’ take radical steps to save the regime-patient, it makes the most sense for someone other than even our highest jurists to do the cutting.”3 While it is important for the balance of powers that the Court’s power be limited to interpreting and ruling on constitutional matters, this does make it less powerful as a tool of social progress. Despite arguments about the Court’s increasing power over the last century, there are few if any who would argue that the Court does not still face limitations on its actions. Most would agree with Alexander Hamilton, who said that the Court, “has no direction either of the strength or of the wealth of the society, and can take no active resolution whatever.”24 The limited role of the Court was planned by the founders of this country. Franck notes the limitations on the Court, stating, “But we have never yet heard of the judiciary taking the nation to war or concluding a peace; of a judicial attempt at resolving the dilemma of the budget deficit...In short, the most ambitious practitioners and partisans of judicial power still appear to subscribe to some limits on that power, stemming less from limited ambition than from institutional realities, and those limits seem to be marked out largely by the difference between the realm of action and the realm of judgment.”5 Given this explanation of the limited powers of the Court, it is clear that social progress would be best fulfilled by an actor or actors with less limitations. The ability to create law (as opposed to interpret law) would best suit progress and advances. Thus, the legislature or the president could enact such changes that the Court could not. The Court is left perpetually in the position of waiting for an event or law that it can interpret. It has no authority to act without a challenge being placed before it first. Such a waiting game is too costly in a world where social advances could move at a quicker pace. Therefore, given the Court’s limitations; unless a social movement can phrase their demand as an explicitly constitutional issue that is currently being denied, the Court will be of no help. Even if the demand is articulated in that way, the Court has less power than other institutions to address it. THE COURT IS NOT RESPONSIBLE TO THE PEOPLE

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The Court was specifically established to be outside the influence of the population as a whole. Justices are not elected and serve life-terms. However, this makes the idea of accountability elusive when it comes to the Supreme Court’s decision-making. The idea of accountability is largely based on the principles established by James Madison. This is key, as, “in the main, however, the Madisonian prescription has been directed to ways and means of government controlling itself- public government.”6 With no accountability to the people, the Supreme Court’s decisions lack not only validity, but oftentimes credibility. The best decisions would reflect the will of the people, as such decisions are most likely to be enforced and carried out. However, because there is no connection between the justices and the population as a whole, the Court can make unpopular decisions that do not reflect public attitudes on the Constitution and suffer no consequences for doing so. Such decisions, however, are difficult to enforce and may set social movements back. There are several levels at which the Supreme Court is not accountable to the people. First, the justices are appointed instead of elected. If a politician made a bad decision, she/he would not be re-elected (ideally). In that sense, the person is accountable because they must earn the votes for the next election. At a second level, the justices serve life-terms. These individuals cannot be removed from the Court for all practical purposes. Such permanency can cause justices to feel free to make decisions that the population would not support simply because they can. The most effective way to enact social change would be to win over the population. Given that the Court has little ties to the population and can actually fly in the face of public opinion, social movements would be better served to find alternative agents who are more connected to the population. THE COURT IS COMPROMISED BY POLITICAL REALITIES Ideally, the Court would make its decisions based solely on the Constitution itself. However, interpreting the Constitution leads individuals to come to very different conclusions. A person who abides by the doctrine of original intent, for instance, might form one opinion on a case; whereas a person who is a strict constructionist will reach another. Both people claim to be basing their opinions on the Constitution, yet reach differing conclusions. It matters, therefore, who makes up the Court in terms of what decisions get made. This process has been tainted by politics, which is supposed to not effect the judicial branch of the government. The selection of justices for the Supreme Court involves calculated political decisions. For instance, President Clinton nominated moderate judges Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer. As one author notes, “For all the sound judicial qualities of Justices Ginsburg and Breyer, it is clear that the President's selections were determined to a considerable degree by the desire to avoid a confirmation battle with Senate Republicans and conservatives.” 7 Since the selection of justices is effected by politics, therefore, the decisions that the Court makes are tainted. Social movements can therefore not expect decisions based solely on the Constitution. They must rather anticipate decisions that reflect the political atmosphere that existed when the justices were selected. This changing nature of the Court’s decisions makes it impossible to predict how the Court will rule without considering who is on the bench at that particular time. Given this unpredictability, social movements would be better served to find an actor that is consistent and does not fall prey to the political maneuvering of confirmation. THE COURT EXPRESSES BIAS BASED ON SEX It is important to consider the Court’s history in its treatment of social movements seeking advances. While there are undoubtedly numerous cases that advance social movements, the Court retains a bias based on sex. While the Court continues to apply strict scrutiny to cases involving race, they deny that very standard to cases based on sex or gender. First, it is important to note why strict scrutiny matters. Laws are rarely upheld under the strict scrutiny standard. The standard is applied to laws involving discrimination and suspect categories. As one author explains, “Under this standard of review...a court presumes a law to be unconstitutional, and, to undermine that assumption, the government must demonstrate that its legislation is the least restrictive means available to achieve a compelling state interest.”8 This standard is used in cases involving race, and as a result, has allowed major advances in the social movement aimed at eradicating discrimination based on race. 124

However, the Court has refused to apply this standard to cases involving sex or gender. In the case of Craig v. Boren, the Court showed the double standard it would continue to use on discrimination cases. In this case, Oklahoma passed a law that forbade the purchasing of alcohol by men until they were 21. Under the law, women were still allowed to buy low alcohol-content beer at the age of 18. Curtis Craig, a twenty-year old male who wanted to purchase beer joined with Carolyn Whitener, a beer vendor; to challenge this law. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court. Craig and Whitener argued that laws discriminating based on sex should be subject to strict scrutiny the way that cases involving laws discriminating on race were. They then argued that there was no compelling state interest in establishing differing legal drinking ages for men and women. 9 The Court did not apply strict scrutiny, and still today cases involving gender or sex discrimination are not examined using the test of strict scrutiny. This clearly shows that the Court does not look at this form of discrimination as equally serious to discrimination based on race. It would therefore be difficult for those pushing for advances in sex and gender equality to use the Court as a vehicle of change. THE NEED FOR MAJORITY TEMPERS COURT DECISIONS In order for a Court’s decision to be valid, a majority of the justices must agree. While this technically requires only a five person majority, decisions that show more consensus are often important if the issue is particularly controversial. In that sense, much of the work of the Court and the individual justices comes in creating a majority and reaching that consensus. This need for a majority, however, actually tempers the Court’s decisions. It makes the decisions more tame and middle of the road so that more justices can agree to the Court’s ruling and create a majority. A perfect example comes in the area of the proposed application of strict scrutiny to cases involving gender or sex. Justice Brennan, for instance, had made clear in the years leading up to Craig v. Boren that he felt strict scrutiny was merited in these cases. His opinion in Frontiero v. Richardson (1973) indicated that sex should be considered a suspect class, thus meriting strict scrutiny. Yet, in writing the opinion for the Craig case, Brennan abandoned this standard and adopted a midlevel approach to discrimination cases involving sex. The reason? Brennan, “acted strategically. He thought an opinion advancing strict scrutiny would have been unacceptable to a majority of his colleagues and that they would have pushed for a rational basis standard.”10 Unfortunately, Brennan’s concession is not an isolated case. As Epstein and Knight note, “Justices must act strategically if they wish to see the laws reflect, as closely as possible, their preferred positions.” 11 With justices focused on reaching a majority, decisions become more cautious and less likely to raise a stir. Caution, however, tends to fall with the established authorities and the status quo. Social movements are often calling for radical changes to the current state of affairs. This radical change is hampered by the need to temper opinions to reach majority. In that sense, social movements are harmed by the Court’s moderation. The Court cannot provide social advances that are hoped for because doing so would often be too controversial and not command a majority. DUE TO CHANGING INTERPRETATIONS, THE COURT IS NOT DEPENDABLE The Court’s changing membership over time means that interpretation of the Constitution varies over time with each new membership. Take, for example, interpretations of the 14th amendment. This amendment was first used to uphold the doctrine of “separate but equal.” The Court at the time felt that, “The Constitution does not require forced social equality of the races; if the civil and political rights of the races are equal, that is sufficient. Therefore, separate railroad cars for whites and colored are within the law if the accommodations are equal. The ‘separate but equal’ doctrine held firm for nearly sixty years.” 12 Later, the Court would use the 14th amendment in the case Brown v. Board of Education to apply to the states, and limit state power to run their own school systems. That decision explicitly ruled against “separate but equal.” While some degree of evolution is to be expected from the Court, this quality does minimize the effectiveness of the body as a vehicle for social change. Movements and advocates cannot predict the interpretation that the Court will advance. With such a moving target, it is next to impossible for groups to petition the Court in a manner that utilizes precedent to the fullest degree. More stable options, such as legislatures, should be utilized. In those 125

instances, legislatures can just pass a new law instead of changing the interpretation of a phrase or amendment. Such a straight-forward approach lets social movements know what to fight for and how to advocate for change. While it is not necessary to argue that the Court should not use evolving interpretations, it is key to note that this characteristic may hamper social movements in arguing before the Court. THE COURT HAS HISTORICALLY SQUASHED SOCIAL PROGRESS It is of course possible to point to instances where the Court advanced social progress. The case of Brown v. Board of Education, for instance, which ended the “separate but equal“ doctrine, certainly advanced the movement for racial equality in the United States. However, there are many instances in which the Court has hampered or squashed such progress. These historical examples give cause for distrust of the Court if a group is seeking social progress. Initially, the Court has often upheld atrocities due to either political pressure or lack of conviction. Author Arthur Selwyn Miller notes, “Some of those actions may have been extra-legal, and surely some were extra constitutional, but nonetheless they were accomplished- and with the acquiescence, silent or express, of the judiciary. Judges either upheld exercises of extraordinary powers; or they refused to rule upon them, often calling them ‘political questions’ not suited for courts; or the matters never got to court. Use of military forces in foreign adventures and to subdue the Indian tribes, suppression of the rebellion in the Civil War, savage repression of the ‘Wobblies’ and other labor groups- all of these actions and more either got judicial approval or were ignored by the judges.” 13 These examples provide instances of where the Court held social movements back. Second, in the area of expression, the Court has also hampered social movements. In the case of Gitlow v. New York, although the Court applied the 1st amendment to the states, Gitlow’s conviction was upheld because he was deemed a threat for espousing socialism. Similarly, in Abrams v. United States, a man writing socialist propaganda had his conviction upheld. The infamous Schenk v. United States, where a man was calling for people to avoid the draft, showed that anyone considered to be a “clear and present danger” could be stopped from expressing his or herself. In all of these instances, criticism of the government was effectively halted by the Court’s decisions. Their commitment to limiting expression makes it difficult for social movements to recruit members or to advance their cause. It is hard to draw attention to a problem if your discourse is not allowed. These cases and examples show that the Court in the United States has often stood for the opposite of social advances and progress. As such, it cannot be trusted as a vehicle for positive change, and must be rejected in favor of other avenues. This argument is strengthened by analysis about the Court today and in the past several decades. The examples about the Court squashing social movements have not stopped as time has continued. One author notes that the Court is moving even further away from advancing social movements. He notes, “Professor Aviam Soifer has shown that the Supreme Court's commitment is diminishing- not in so many words, of course, but by a subtle alteration in interpretive technique. Now the Justices inquire into the motive or intent of government officers, looking behind action that appears to discriminate to determine whether those responsible intended to do so.”14 It is far more difficult to prove an intent to discriminate as opposed to discriminatory results. Miller continues by explaining that the, “Justices have established themselves as a commission to read the minds of legislators and administrators- not, this time, for the ‘reasonableness’ of their actions, but, rather, for what they intended.” 15 This move by the Court has increased the difficulty of advancing social justice. “This is accomplished by placing the burden of proof upon those who contest the action to show discriminatory intent or motive. Since the mind-set of those who take such actions is seldom, if ever, written out, it is next to impossible to prove an intention to discriminate.” 16 In that sense, even the present and modern Court is establishing obstacles to social progress instead of helping it along. In light of such action, social movements must abandon the Court and seek alternative means of getting their agenda passed. THE COURT LACKS ACCESS TO IMPORTANT RESOURCES

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As Alexander Hamilton himself noted, “The judiciary...has no influence over the sword of the purse...and can take no active resolution whatever. It may truly be said to have neither force nor will, but merely judgment; and must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm even for the efficacy of its judgments.” 17 Montesquieu outlined the value of checks and balances and limited power. After his discussion of these functions of government, he said, “Of the three powers above mentioned, the judiciary is next to nothing.”18 These quotations reveal several resources that the Court lacks. Without such resources, even if the Court did reach a decision with the potential to advance social progress, they would not be able to follow through on such progress. First, the Court lacks money. Policies cannot be implemented if they are not funded. The Court could therefore make a decision requiring the federal or state governments to take an action to end discrimination. If doing so was expensive, the governments could just refuse to put up the money. The Court has no access to funding, and therefore the discrimination would continue. With no ability to fund the decisions that it makes, the Court is left at the mercy of other institutions that may or may not be able to afford or willing to afford the enforcement of the decision. Second, the Court lacks enforcement and power. This is perhaps the biggest resource that the Court lacks. Their decisions are all based on the voluntary actions of the government and the population. The Court’s decision that racial segregation in schools was unconstitutional had to be enforced by the president calling in the National Guard. There is no mandate that comes with a Supreme Court decision. The Court lacks any ability to enforce its decisions. If the president had decided, for instance, that segregation should continue, he could have not called in the Guard and the schools would have remained separated based on race. The fact that most previous decisions have been enforced is not a reason to depend on the Court, it is rather a reason to recognize the possibility that enforcement could not occur with every decision. Leaving social progress up to the will of the federal or state government’s ability and desire to enforce a Court decision is not solid enough to base a strategy for social progress upon. Access to the Court is also not free, and the resources are not provided by the Court. Lawyers must often be hired, and time invested into arguing before the Court is taken away from other activities that social movements would be engaged in. In that sense, the Court also lacks the resources to assist individuals who solicit their opinion or assistance. INTERNATIONAL STANDARDS ARE PREFERABLE The Court has thus far had limited interaction with international law and standards. Jeremy Rabkin notes, “This much is certain: international commitments have much more credibility than might have been thought possible only a few decades ago. The U.S. Supreme Court, it is true, has tended to take a rather cold and dismissive view of arguments grounded on international law.”19 The increased reliance on international standards in bodies except the Court has important implications for social progress. First, international law and standards provide alternatives to the Court as an actor. Social movements can call upon international actors and bodies to take action. This allows them to escape the problems of the Court that we have been outlining. As the world becomes smaller thanks to quicker travel and telecommunications, the world will also become more dependant upon international organizations and standards for guidance. It would therefore be wise for social movements to begin voicing their arguments and concerns in the language of international law to be best prepared for the future. Second, the Court’s attitudes toward international law and standards show its stubbornness and inability to adapt. International standards allow for the global community to rally around a cause and commit to advancing social justice. The Court’s refusal to recognize this powerful tool in moving social progress forward shows that it is not the superior actor for social groups and movements to turn to. International standards also provide a wider array of voices and opinions to assist the movement forward. The more people that are participating, the more diverse the array of opinions that will be able to compete and create the best standards. This focus on international standards also allows for not only a maximization of resources and people to participate, but also a maximization of those who will be effected by progress. The best way to help the most people is to look beyond a single country. Groups like 127

the United Nations and the European Union show that while internationalism is not perfect, it can work. Social progress would best occur through working with international standards. SUMMARY There are many reasons why the Supreme Court should not be relied upon as a means of creating social progress. Initially, the Court is restrained by Constitutional limits, limiting the issues it can address in advancing social justice. The Court is also not responsible to the people of the United States, minimizing accountability in decision making. The Court can be compromised by political realities, making its decisions less than favorable for social movements. This is further explained by the fact that the need for a majority in a Supreme Court decision tempers the verdicts. The ever-changing nature of the Court’s interpretations of the Constitution makes it anything but dependable. Social progress has been historically squashed by the Court, making it anything but a vehicle for social change and advances. The Court lacks access to important resources that could best enable social movements, including money and enforcement power. International standards not only provide an alternative to the Court, but are preferable. With so many problems found in the Court, it is clear that it is not the best way to achieve social progress and advances. ______________________________ 1 Parker, Richard A. Free Speech on Trial: Communication Perspectives on Landmark Supreme Court Decisions. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 2003, pg. 7. 2 Franck, Matthew J. Against the Imperial Judiciary: The Supreme Court vs. the Sovereignty of the People. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1996, pg. 21. 3 Ibid, pg. 22. 4 Ibid, pg. 23. 5 Ibid, pg. 23. 6 Miller, Arthur Selwyn. Toward Increased Judicial Activism: The Political Role of the Supreme Court. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1982, pg. 164. 7 McKeever, Robert J. Raw Judicial Power? The Supreme Court and American Society. Oxford: Manchester University Press, 1995, pg. 281. 8 Epstein, Lee and Jack Knight. The Choices Justices Make. Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Inc., 1998, pg. 2. 9 Ibid, pg. 3. 10 Ibid, pg. 56. 11 Ibid, pg. 57. 12 Carter, John Denton. The Warren Court and the Constitution: A Critical View of Judicial Activism. Gretna: Pelican Publishing Company, 1973, pg. 56. 13 Miller, Arthur Selwyn. Toward Increased Judicial Activism: The Political Role of the Supreme Court. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1982, pg. 164-165. 14 Ibid, pg. 91. 15 Ibid, pg. 91. 16 Ibid, pg. 91. 17 Carter, John Denton. The Warren Court and the Constitution: A Critical View of Judicial Activism. Gretna: Pelican Publishing Company, 1973, pg. 155. 18 Ibid, pg. 155. 19 Wilson, Bradford P. and Ken Masugi. The Supreme Court and American Constitutionalism. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1998, pg. 256-257.

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THE COURT LACKS THE ABILITY TO ENFORCE ITS DECISIONS 1. COURTS REQUIRE THE SUPPORT OF OTHER POLITICAL ACTORS IN ORDER TO EFFECTIVLY MEANINGFUL SOCIAL CHANGE. Rosenburg, Gerald N., Assistant Professor of Political Science at University of Chicago, 1991. The Hollow Hope: Can Courts Bring About Social Change. pg. 336-337. Courts will also be ineffective in producing change, given any serious resistance because of their lack of implementation powers (Constraining III). The structural constraints of the Constrained Court view, built into the American judicial system, make courts virtually powerless to produce change. They must depend on the actions of others for their decisions to be implemented. With civil rights, little changed until the federal government became involved. With women’s rights, we still lack a serious government effort, and stereotypes that constrain women’s opportunities remain powerful. Similarly, the uneven availability of access to legal abortion demonstrates the point. Where there is local hostility to change, court orders will be ignored. Community pressure, violence or threats of violence, and lack of market response all serve to curtail actions to implement court decisions. This finding, too, appears applicable across all fields.

2. THE COURTS LACK THE POWER TO ENFORCE THEIR DECISIONS THUS CAN”T ACCOMPLISH SIGNINFICANT SOCIAL REFORM Rosenburg, Gerald N., Assistant Professor of Political Science at University of Chicago, 1991. The Hollow Hope: Can Courts Bring About Social Change. pg. 15-16. For courts, or any other institution, to effectively produce significant social reform, they must have the ability to develop appropriate policies and the power to implement them. This, in turn, requires a host of tools that courts, according to proponents of the Constrained Court view, lack. In particular, successful implementation requires enforcement powers. Court decisions, requiring people to act, are not self-executing. But as Hamilton pointed out two centuries ago in The Federalist Papers (1787-88), courts lack such powers. Indeed, it is for this reason more than any other that Hamilton emphasized the courts’ character as the least dangerous branch. Assuaging fears that the federal courts would be a political threat, Hamilton argued in Federalist 78 that the judiciary “has no influence over either the sword or the purse; no direction either of the strength or of the wealth of the society; and can take no active resolution whatever. It may truly be said to have neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment; and must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm even for the efficacy of its judgments” (The Federalist Papers 1961, 465). Unlike Congress and the executive branch, Hamilton argued, the federal courts were utterly dependent on the support of the other branches and elite actors. In other words, for Court orders to be carried out, political elites, electoral accountable, must support them and act to implement them. Proponents of the Constrained Court view point to historical recognition of this structural “fact” of American political life by early Chief Justices John Jay and John Marshall, both of whom were acutely aware of the Court’s limits. President Jackson recognized these limits, too, when he reputedly remarked about a decision with which he did not agree, “John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it.” More recently, the unwillingness of state authorities to follow court orders, and the need to send federal troops to Little Rock, Arkansas, to carry them out, makes the same point. Without elite support (the federal government in this case), the Court’s orders would have been frustrated. While it is clear that courts can stymie change (Paul 1960), though ultimately not prevent it (Dahl 1957; Nagel 1965; Rosenburg 1985). The Constitution, in the eyes of the Constrained Court view, appears to leave the courts few tools to insure that their decisions are carried out.

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COURT ACTIVISM BACKLASHES 1. ACTIVISM BY THE COURT DESTROYS ANY HOPE FOR BRINGING ABOUT PROGRESSIVE SOCIAL CHANGE Nowlin, Jack Wade, Assistant Professor of Law at University of Mississippi, 2001. “The Constitutional Illegitimacy of Expansive Judicial Power: A Populist Structural Interpretive Analysis.” Kentucky Law Journal . 1989. pg. 465-466. The reemergence of expansive judicial power in the post-war Roe era (in even more radical form) prompted another wave of criticism- this time, predictably, from the political right. Indeed, the Warren Court’s judicial activism helped to divide the New Deal coalition in the 1960s, driving many populists, communitarians, and social conservatives into the Republican Party. It also inspired Richard Nixon to advocate what he called “strict construction” of the Constitution. And Ronald Reagan to endorse “originalist” interpretive methods, both intended as means to curb judicial discretion and limit judicial policy-making. Finally, the Republican Party of the 1990s, following the lead of Nixon and Reagan, remained steadfastly opposed to the most expansive conceptions of judicial power and committed to the nomination of proponents of judicial restraint to the federal judiciary. Numerous neo-conservative communitarians and left-wing populist intellectuals also oppose the judicial usurpation of politics. All of these observations suggest a continuing, long-standing, and vibrant strain in the American political tradition of principled opposition to more expansive forms of judicial power. Of course, these strong counter-traditions undercut substantially any claim that sweeping judicial power has now achieved consensus-based popular support. 2. JUDICIAL MINAMILISM IS KEY Nowlin, Jack Wade, Assistant Professor of Law at University of Mississippi, 2001. “The Constitutional Illegitimacy of Expansive Judicial Power: A Populist Structural Interpretive Analysis.” Kentucky Law Journal . 1989. pg. 394-395. Contemporary debates about judicial power center around two broad rival visions of the proper role for courts in the American constitutional design. What may be termed the judicial minimalist vision envisages proper exercise of judicial review as one that is firmly grounded in traditional legal materials, that minimizes the political discretion of judges, that strives to be apolitical, that shows considerable deference to the judgment of democratic political actors, and that results in a set of fairly "thin" and consensus-based, judicially-enforceable constitutional norms. Some of the most obvious exemplars of this view of the judicial role among American judges would include Oliver Wendell Holmes, Learned Hand, Benjamin Cardozo, Felix Frankfurter, John Marshall Harlan III, and William Rehnquist. A broad definition of minimalism would also include originalist judges, such as Robert Bork and Antonin Scalia, who justify judicial originalism primarily as a means of limiting judicial discretion and preserving the contours of the constitutional design. Under this judicial minimalist vision, greater discretionary political authority is exercised by voters and their elected representatives in accordance with the constitutional norms of representation, separation of powers, bicameralism, presentment, and federalism. Less discretionary power, comparatively speaking, is exercised by unelected federal judges, given the strict limits this view places on more aggressive forms of judicial review. This conception of the constitutional design might then also be fairly called a "populist," "democratic," "republican," or "federalist" understanding.

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THE COURTS ARE LIMITED BY THE CONSTITUTION 1. THE CONSTITUTION LIMITS WHAT COURTS CAN “DO” Nowlin, Jack Wade, Assistant Professor of Law at University of Mississippi, 2001. “The Constitutional Illegitimacy of Expansive Judicial Power: A Populist Structural Interpretive Analysis.” Kentucky Law Journal . 1989. pg. 397-398. In fact, one cannot really answer the question of what judges should "do" about the Bill of Rights and Fourteenth Amendment until one has answered a much more fundamental, structural-interpretive question: What is the proper role of courts within the American constitutional design, including the legitimate scope and constitutional limits of the judicial power? This approach to the question of the proper judicial function would ask, in essence, whether the design of the Constitution can fairly be read as granting "expansive" power to the Supreme Court or, by contrast, power of some more limited degree. Therefore, this question of the limits of judicial power, rightly understood, is a question of both constitutional structure and constitutional interpretation. It thus requires a structural interpretation of the American constitutional design, an attempt to discern constitutional meaning as it relates to the distribution of power among the institutions of government, which in turn requires careful consideration of the Constitution's various structural strategies for protecting the rights of individuals. Indeed, the question of the proper judicial role is also, as a question of constitutional interpretation, one logically antecedent to specific, second order questions such as judicial interpretation of the Bill of Rights or Fourteenth Amendment. Indeed, one simply cannot decide, at least properly so, how the Supreme Court should interpret the Bill of Rights until after one has considered the questions of the proper role of the judiciary in the American constitutional design, of what the Court is properly "to do" within the framework of government, and of the proper scope and constitutional limits of the judicial power. A court can scarcely premise an exercise of the judicial power on a particular conception of the judicial role without first determining if that conception of the judicial role is itself justified as a matter of structural constitutional interpretation. Moreover, this question is not purely or even largely a matter of prudence or political philosophy, as so often has been assumed, for the obvious reason that the Court may not exercise governmental power that exceeds the scope of the limited powers granted to it by the Constitution. Therefore, the difficulties of structural constitutional interpretation must be confronted and engaged rather than avoided or circumvented, and one's moral-political judgments about the judicial role must be placed in an interpretive context. As will be described, any plausible interpretation of the constitutional design must be firmly grounded in a "fit" analysis of traditional legal materials, and therefore a moral-political analysis must take a subordinate role to a legal-historical one. 2. WHEN THE COURT GOES OUTSIDE ITS CONSTITUTIONAL LIMITS THAT DELEGITMIZES THE CONSTITUTION AND THE RIGHTS IT PROTECTS Nowlin, Jack Wade, Assistant Professor of Law at University of Mississippi, 2001. “The Constitutional Illegitimacy of Expansive Judicial Power: A Populist Structural Interpretive Analysis.” Kentucky Law Journal . 1989. pg. 467. Clearly, this radical and somewhat haphazard expansion in judicial power constitutes a veritable revolution in the American governmental practice, altering fundamentally the role of courts, the nature of our design for government, the Constitution's basic plan for the structural protections of rights, and the popular, republican, and federal character of the American constitutional design. Moreover, while there is good reason to suppose that routine use of judicial review and judicial enforcement of the Bill of Rights and Fourteenth Amendment have today achieved some sort of "populist" support, it is also obvious that the most expansive conceptions of the judicial role, including the use of aggressive, politically-driven, highly discretionary judicial "veto" power, remain very controversialrendering the charge of illegitimate judicial "usurpation of power" a regular term of political discourse. In particular, then, there is good reason to suppose that the most controversial aspects of this expansion have seriously undermined the Constitution's original strategy of protecting rights by establishing democratic institutions, diffusing political power, and encouraging civic virtue among citizens. As discussed, the exercise of such a sweeping judicial power tends to erode fundamental constitutional norms and, for these reasons, the exercise of such a power by the courts continues to be contested as an illegitimate encroachment upon the constitutional authority of legislatures. In sum, the constitutional legitimacy of expansive judicial power remains seriously in question.

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COURTS CAN’T ACCOMPLISH SOCIAL CHANGE 1. THE COURT SYSTEM CAN’T PRODUCE SOCIAL CHANGE Rosenburg, Gerald N., Assistant Professor of Political Science at University of Chicago, 1991. The Hollow Hope: Can Courts Bring About Social Change. pg. 93. The courts were ineffective in producing significant social reform in civil rights in the first decade after Brown for three key reasons captured in the constraints of the Constrained Court view. First, political leadership at the national, state, and local levels was arrayed against civil rights, making implementation of judicial decisions virtually impossible. Second, the culture of the South was segregationist, leaving the courts with few public supporters. In response, and after several tries at ordering change, the courts backed on and bided their time, waiting for the political and social climate to change. Third, the American court system itself was designed to lack implementation powers, to move slowly, and to be strongly tied to local concerns. The presence of these constrains made the success of litigation for significant social reform virtually impossible. The fact that little success was achieved should have surprised no one. 2. ON BALANCE, THE COURT DOES NOT AND CANNOT PRODUCE SIGNIFICANT SOCIAL REFORM Rosenburg, Gerald N., Assistant Professor of Political Science at University of Chicago, 1991. The Hollow Hope: Can Courts Bring About Social Change. pg. 21. To sum up, the Constrained Court view holds that litigants asking courts for significant social reform are faced with powerful constraints. First, they must convince courts that the rights they are asserting are required by constitutional or statutory language. Given the limited nature of constitutional rights, the constraints of legal culture, and the general caution of the judiciary, this is no easy task. Second, courts are wary of stepping too far out of the political mainstream. Deferential to the federal government and potentially limited by congressional action, courts may be unwilling to take the heat generated by politically unpopular rulings. Third, if these two constraints are overcome and cases are decided favorably, litigants are faced with the task of implementing the decisions. Lacking powerful tools to force implementation, court decisions are often rendered useless given much opposition. Even if litigators seeking significant social reform win major victories in court, in implementation they often turn out to be worth very little. Borrowing the words of Justice Jackson from another context, the Constrained Court view holds that court litigation to produce significant social reform may amount to little more than “a teasing illusion like a munificent bequest in a pauper’s will” (Edwards v. California 1941, 186). 3. BROWN DIDN’T EFFECT CIVIL RIGHTS LEGISLATION Rosenburg, Gerald N., Assistant Professor of Political Science at University of Chicago, 1991. The Hollow Hope: Can Courts Bring About Social Change. pg. 120-121. In Congress, there is little evidence that Brown played any appreciable role. The seemingly endless congressional debates, with some four million words uttered in the Senate alone (Whalen 1985, 193) hardly touched on the case. References to Brown can be found on only a few dozen out of many thousands of pages of Senate debate. While much of the focus of the debate was on the constitutionality of the proposed legislation, and on the Fourteenth Amendment, the concern was not with how Brown made such a bill possible. Even in the debates over the fund cutoff provisions, Brown was seldom mentioned (Berman 1966: Orfield 1969, 33-45: Whalen 1985: Graham 1990, 8282). This is particularly surprising since, as Condition IV suggests, it would have been very easy for pressured and uncertain members of Congress to shied their actions behind the constitutional mandate announced by the Court, That they did not credit the Court with affecting their decisions prevents the debates from providing evidence for the indirect-effects thesis. Thus, there does not appear to be evidence for the influence of Brown on legislative action.

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Cultural Relativism Good CULTURAL RELATIVISM IS A VALID VALUE 1. STANDARDS AND VALUES ARE RELATIVE TO THEIR CULTURES Tracy E. Higgins, Associate Professor of Law Fordham University, HARVARD WOMEN’S LAW JOURNAL, Spring, 1996, P. 92. The debate over the universality of human rights is almost as old as the movement toward universal human rights standards in international law. Following World War II, as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was being drafted, the Executive Board of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) warned that the Declaration would be “a statement of rights conceived only in terms of the values prevalent in the countries of Western Europe and America.” The Board added that “standards and values are relative to the culture from which they derive” and thus “what is held to be a human right in one society may be regarded as anti-social by another people.” -

2. CULTURAL RELATIVISM IS OF HIGH VALUE IN THEORY AND SUBSTANCE Katherine M. Culliton, Fulbright Grantee, Washington College of Law Valedictorian, OAS Grantee Inter-American Institute for Human Rights, CASE WESTERN RESERVE JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW, Spring/Summer, 1994, p. 193 Cultural relativism has high value, in both theory and substance, when used as a tool to overcome imperialism and ensure that international policymakers listen to, respect, and include the decisions and values of people from lesspowerful nations. It can also be used as a tool to enlighten Western or Northern peoples to the benefits of other cultures. -

3. RELATIVISM IS SKEPTICAL ABOUT THE EXISTENCE OF UNIVERSAL NORMS Tracy E. Higgins, Associate Professor of Law Fordham University, HARVARD WOMEN’S LAW JOURNAL, Spring, 1996, p. 96. Generally speaking, however, cultural relativists are committed to one or both of the following premises: that knowledge and truth are culturally contingent, creating a barrier to cross-cultural understanding; and that all cultures are equally valid. Combined with the empirical observation of cultural diversity worldwide, these two premises lead to the conclusion that human rights norms do not transcend cultural location and cannot be readily translated across cultures. The two premises of cultural relativism deprive human hghts advocates of both a transcendent justification for human rights standards (i.e., notwithstanding disagreement, human rights exist as a product of the human condition) and a hope for consensus (by bridging the barriers of cultural difference). Cultural relativism raises the possibility that the category “human” is no longer sufficient to enable cross-cultural assessment of human practices or the actions of states. -

4. RELATIVISM SIMPLY SHIFTS THE FRAMEWORK OF MORAL EVALUATION Allan F. Hanson, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Kansas, TIKKUN, November 21, 1995, p. 63. D’Souza’s argument that relativist-inspired antiracism has impeded progress toward racial equality is not simply inflammatory and insulting to African Americans; it is intellectually untenable. It does not hold water even if one accepts his notions about relativism. In his view, a relativist would argue that evaluations of cultural institutions should be made only from within. But it does not follow that the outcome of all such internal judgments will be favorable. It is commonplace for communities, applying their own standards, to debate the morality or effectiveness of certain customs and institutions and ultimately to reject them.

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CULTURAL RELATIVISM IS NOT AN UNDESIRABLE VALUE 1. CULTURAL RELATIVISM IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR RACISM Allan F. Hanson, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Kansas, TIKKUN, November 21, 1995, p. 63. D’Souza’s most preposterous argument is that relativism is responsible for contemporary racism, in both its Black and white varieties. The white racist reasons from a relativist set of assumptions, says D’Souza: Every culture is equally valuable and entitled to respect, including “white culture.” Therefore, white people have as much reason to cherish their culture as anyone else. A thing of unique value, white culture merits protection against inroads from other cultures. Immigration, integration in neighborhoods and schools, and multiculturalism should be resolutely opposed as alien threats to white cultural distinctiveness. Replace the word “white” with “Black” in the foregoing sentences, and you have D’Souza’s rendition of Black racism and the promotion of racial separation found in some versions of Afrocentrism and the teachings of the Black Muslims. The claim that these forms of racism draw their inspiration from cultural relativism is outlandish. Racism in all its forms encourages an essentialist focus, valorization of one’s own culture above all others. Nothing could be more opposed to cultural relativism, which encourages an open, expansive approach to all cultures. 2. THE FEMINIST CRITIQUE OF CULTURAL RELATIVISM EXCLUDES WOMEN Tracy E. Higgins, Associate Professor of Law Fordham University, HARVARD WOMEN’S LAW JOURNAL, Spring, 1996, p. 101. In addition to criticism from cultural relativists, this cross-cultural approach to women’s oppression has not been immune from criticism within the feminist community. Such cross-cultural analysis depends upon very broad assumptions about women’s lives and experiences and therefore raises important empirical questions regarding the extent to which women’s oppression is similarly constituted across cultures. It also raises issues about the formulation of those empirical questions themselves. An essentialist approach generally begins with the experiences of white, middle-class, educated, heterosexual women. Such an approach tends to attribute commonly shared forms of oppression to gender and specific forms of oppression to other sources such as race, class, or sexual orientation. Consequently, an essentialist approach risks becoming a least common denominator approach, allowing relatively privileged women’s experiences to define the feminist agenda. This tendency, in turn, creates division among women. In short, when feminists aspire to account for women’s oppression through claims of cross-cultural commonality, they construct the feminist subject through exclusions, narrowing her down to her essence. And, as Judith Butler has observed, “those excluded domains return to haunt the ‘integrity’ and ‘unity’ of the feminist ‘we’.” -

3. THE CRITIQUES OF CULTURAL RELATIVISM ARE MISGUIDED Micaela deLeonardo, anthropologist, THE NATION, April 8, 1996, p. 25. The attack on cultural relativism, then, is of a piece with the entire New Rightist program: the hypocritical attempt to rewrite the American morality play, to lay claim to virtue through focusing on the mote in Others, eyes while ignoring the beam in one’s own. Certainly, moral principles are important. But claiming that “cultural relativism tells us there are no ultimate moral principles” is a canard. All that most of the practitioners of my benighted discipline have ever advocated is the attempt, from the bedrock of one’s own enculturation, to empathize with the moral logics of others. 4. RELATIVISM OPENS OUR EYES TO DEEP, HIDDEN ASSUMPTIONS Tracy E. Higgins, Associate Professor of Law Fordham University, HARVARD WOMEN’S LAW JOURNAL, Spring, 1996, p. 108. Joan Williams has explained the advantage of abandoning universalist arguments as follows: A steadfast refusal to appeal in any context to objective moral certainties has, in my view, more than epistemological significance. It offers us a chance to step back and examine the structure of our form of life, to assess the hidden costs of our ideals. How the ideal of universal brotherhood is inevitably hemmed in by the arbitrary lines that people draw to define, and ultimately to limit, the scope of their moral responsibility. -

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Cultural Relativism Bad CULTURAL RELATIVISM IS PHILOSOPHICALLY INVALID 1 DISCRIMINATION AND OPPRESSION REQUIRE A RESPONSE REGARDLESS OF CULTURE Sandra D. Lane and Robert A. Rubenstein, Center for Bioethics, THE HASTINGS CENTER REPORT, May, 1996, P. 31. Although most anthropologists at the time appeared to consent to this cultural relativism, some rejected it. Julian Steward, a leading anthropologist of this period, wrote in the American Anthropologist, “Either we tolerate everything, and keep hands off, or we fight intolerance and conquest... As human beings, we unanimously opposed the brutal treatment of Jews in Hider Germany, but what stand shall be taken on the thousands of other kinds of racial and cultural discrimination, unfair practices, and inconsiderate attitudes found throughout the world? 2. CROSS-CULTURAL VALUE DISCUSSION IS POSSIBLE AND PLAUSIBLE Loretta M. Kopelman, anthropologist, SECOND Oyou PINION, October, 1994, p. 54. We need not rank values similarly with people in another culture, or our own, to have coherent discussions about their consistency, consequences, or factual presuppositions. That is, even if some moral or ethical (I use these terms interchangeably) judgments express unique cultural norms, they may still be morally evaluated by another culture on the basis of their logical consistency and their coherence with stable and cross-culturally accepted empirical information. In addition, we seem to share some moral values, goals, and judgments such as those about the evils of unnecessary suffering and lost opportunities, the need for food and shelter, the duty to help children, and the goods of promoting public health and personal wellbeing. 3. CULTURAL DIFFERENCE DOES NOT ABSOLVE MORAL RESPONSIBILITY Michael Agar, professor of linguistic anthropology at the University of Maryland, LANGUAGE SHOCK: UNDERSTANDING THE CULTURE OF CONVERSATION, Quill Press, 1994, p.58 If differences are just to be accepted, just to be investigated as an alternative reality, does that mean, for instance, that we have to accept the behavior of a Hitler as just another possible way of doing things? Is anything anyone wants to do okay, as long as it participates in an alternate system? Of course not. Linguistic and cultural relativism are methodological assumptions. They don’t mean a person abandons all moral standards. They do mean that a person confronted with a difference investigates and understands its role in an alternative system, whatever he or she may think of it in moral terms. 4. FEMALE CIRCUMCISION PROVES CROSS-CULTURAL MORAL JUDGEMENT POSSIBLE Loretta M. Kopelman, anthropologist, SECOND OPINION, October, 1994, p. 54. First, the fact that a culture’s moral and religious views are often intertwined with beliefs that are open to rational and empirical evaluation can be a basis of cross-cultural examination and intercultural moral criticism. Defenders of female circumcision/genital mutilation do not claim that this practice is a moral or religious requirement and end the discussion; they are willing to give and defend reasons for their views. For example, advocates of female circumcision/genital mutilation claim that it benefits women’s health and well-being. Such claims are open to crosscultural examination because information is available to determine whether the practice promotes health or causes morbidity or mortality. Beliefs that the practice enhances fertility and promotes health, that women cannot have orgasms, and that allowing the baby’s head to touch the clitoris during delivery causes death to the baby are incompatible with stable medical data. Thus an opening is allowed for genuine cross-cultural discussion or criticism of the practice.

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CULTURAL RELATIVISM IS AN UNDESIRABLE VALUE 1. CULTURAL RELATIVISM JEOPARDIZES THE BASIC RIGHTS OF WOMEN Tracy E. Higgins, Associate Professor of Law Fordham University, HARVARD WOMEN’S LAW JOURNAL, Spring, 1996, P. 91. On the one hand, feminists note that culture and religion are often cited as justifications for denying women a range of basic rights, including the right to travel, rights in marriage and divorce, the right to own property, even the right to be protected by the criminal law on an equal basis with men. Women have much to lose, therefore, in any movement away from a universal standard of human rights in favor of deference to culture. -

2. RELATIVISM MASKS GENUINE OPPRESSION Elizabeth Powers, nqa, COMMENTARY, January, 1997, p. 23. Today, of course, this relativism-in-the-service-of-a-new-absolutism has contaminated far more than the upper reaches of academia and the fringes of the Modem Language Association. All introductory college courses, be they in literature, sociology, anthropology, religion, etc., have become shot through with the insights of deconstruction, and an afternoon of watching Oprah is enough to demonstrate how they have filtered down into the general culture. The goal of this new orientation is, ostensibly, radical human freedom and equality, without ties to oppressive institutions of any kind, especially not to the patriarchy, that shibboleth of social reconstructionists. But what deconstruction has really done is to banish, as nothing more than a set of arbitrary conventions, the moral promptings that lead people to notice oppression in the first place, and along with them the ability to distinguish true oppression from false. 3. CULTURAL RELATIVISM IS CAUSING THE BREAKDOWN OF AMERICAN SOCIETY Dinesh DSouza, John M. Olin Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, COMMENTARY, November, 1995, p. 47. But the solution to an old problem has become the source of a new one. Cultural relativism now prevents liberals from recognizing a civilizational breakdown that is national in scope but whose effects are disproportionately felt by poor blacks. This breakdown is characterized by extremely high crime rates, the normalization of illegitimacy, an excessive reliance on government provision, and a contempt for the virtues of civility, discipline, and deferred gratification. If these trends persist and metastasize, then the American Century, which really began in 1945, will prematurely come to an end. 4. RELATIVISM BREAKS DOWN IN THE FACE OF CULTURAL AMBIGUITIES Loretta M. Kopelman, anthropologist, SECOND OPINION, October, 1994, p. 54. A related problem is that there can be passionate disagreement, ambivalence, or rapid changes within a culture or group over what is approved or disapproved. According to ethical relativism, where there is significant disagreement within a culture there is no way to determine what is right or wrong. But what disagreement is significant? As we saw, some people in these cultures, often those with higher education, strongly disapprove of female circumcision/genital mutilation and work to stop it. Are they in the same culture as their friends and relatives who approve of these rituals? It seems more accurate to say that people may belong to various groups that overlap and have many variations. This description, however, makes it difficult for ethical relativism to be regarded as a helpful theory for determining what is right or wrong. To say that something is right when it has cultural approval is useless if we cannot identify the relevant culture. Moreover, even where people agree about the rightness of certain practices, such as these rituals, they can sometimes be inconsistent. For example, in reviewing reasons given within cultures where female circumcision/genital mutilation is practiced, we saw that there was some inconsistency concerning whether women needed this surgery to control their sexual appetites, to make them more beautiful, or to prevent morbidity or mortality. Ethical relativists thus have extraordinary problems offering a useful account of what counts as a culture and establishes cultural approval or disapproval.

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Cultural Relativism Responses Cultural relativism deals with the core of what anthropologists, sociologists, and political scientists are supposed to do in their work. As Richard A. Barrett explains, “[The] task is to achieve understanding: to discover the meaning that these practices have for individual participants and to determine the part that they play within the context of the culture as a whole. This in no way implies, of course, that they endorse the customs they describe.” 1 He then offers a more specific definition of cultural relativism, explaining, “Cultural relativism is the belief that any particular set of customs, values, and moral precepts are relative to a specific cultural tradition, and that they can only be understood and evaluated within that particular milieu.” 2 He further notes that adopting a perspective of cultural relativism is an attempt to avoid ethnocentrism or the appearance of it. Those who advocate for the acceptance of cultural relativism often have noble motives. For example, as John H. Bodley explains, combating ethnocentrism is an attempt to stop the destruction of tribal people and cultures. He says “Anthropologists have been quick to stress the presumed deficiencies of tribal cultures as a justification for externally imposed change or a rejection of proposals that tribals be granted political autonomy.” 3 Culture undoubtedly plays a role in the formation of individuals’ personalities and senses of self-being. Therefore, when cultures are destroyed, parts of the individuals who made up those cultures are also lost. In the interest of preserving cultures, therefore, many advocate a viewpoint that does not make normative judgment about differing cultures, but rather only observes and describes them. That viewpoint is cultural relativism. CULTURAL RELATIVISM ALLOWS FOR PAIN AND SUFFERING The single biggest argument against cultural relativism is that it allows us to accept behavior and traditions that cause pain and suffering. Richard A. Barrett notes that, “Anthropologists frequently encounter societies in which attitudes, values, and standards of appropriate conduct differ radically from those of the anthropologist's own society.”4 It is natural at some level for an individual coming across customs and behaviors different from their own to not want to judge. To condemn these behaviors might compromise the documentation or participation in a culture. However, if we agree that there are no universal rights or wrongs, then we can be led to accept practices that cause pain and suffering. Barrett offers several examples of rituals in other cultures that cause pain. He explains that in Western Guinea, there is a tribe called the Dani. There, the custom is that every time a man dies, a finger is cut from the hand of the close female relatives of that man. This is a standard portion of the mourning rituals of the Dani, and it is normal to see a woman in old age with only one or two fingers left on each hand. Another practice that Barrett describes is when Dodoth tribesman of Uganda pry out the lower teeth of young girls because it is thought to make them more attractive. The process is painful, however. One anthropologist described the process after watching it in the following way: When the family spontaneously decided to extract the lower teeth of all the little girls in the dwelling (except the baby, whose milk teeth had already been extracted), the operation was performed in Rengen’s court. Her son Akral sat in her day house with one of his weeping little half-sisters between his knees. Her twenty-three-year-old son Akikar, mild and impassive, placed a stick as a bit in the girl’s mouth, and while Akral held the girl tightly, Akikar expertly hooked out the lower teeth with an awl. They were second teeth, deeply rooted, and as they came, cracked loudly, and the smell of blood filled the air. The little girl screamed that she was dying, and vomited red foam....her sister, begging and crying, her hands pressed over her mouth, was captured by Rengen, who firmly handed her over the heads of all the seated people to Akral, who gripped her with his knees. The weeping girl began to scream: “Akikar, help me!” Akikar dispassionately pried open her jaw and forced the bit into her mouth. He worked carefully, the extraction took a moment, but she struggled so much he nearly pierced her palate with the awl. She moaned hysterically when it was over and her teeth lay on the ground.5

These incidents certainly cause pain to the young girls who are having their teeth removed. Forcing these procedures on little girls is wrong, and they have no choice in the matter. Since a culturally relativistic viewpoint would mean we could not condemn this practice, rather only accept it as different, cultural relativism must be rejected. 137

Mistakenly, many believe that rejection of cultural relativism would mean that that world cultures could no longer be studied and observed. However, there is a difference between witnessing these events and condemning them and witnessing these events and saying they are a part of culture that should be accepted. With the increasing globalization of a human rights standard, the ability to point to forced pain and torture as wrong should also become more accepted. The examples discussed by anthropologists in Barrett’s book are not the only ways to explore the problem of cultural relativism. Many other events taking place around the world also prove the necessity of condemning human rights violations regardless of whether or not such actions are labeled as a part of a society’s culture. One modern and continuing action that merits the rejection of cultural relativism is the practice of honor killings. Honor killings are taking place in many Middle Eastern and several African countries. The practice involves a woman who is killed by a male relative or friend due to sexual indiscretion. In these societies, sex outside of marriage is considered a crime punishable by death. When a woman participates in such sexual activity, she is thought to bring shame and dishonor to her family. The way to restore the family’s honor is to kill the woman. These honor killings are abhorrent on several levels. First, the penalty of death for sex is far too extreme. Second, oftentimes no sexual misconduct has even occurred. All it takes is rumor or belief that a woman has had sex outside of marriage. With only this suggestion of impropriety, shame has been created and must be erased with a killing. Third, women are often killed even when they are the victims of rape. In these instances, when the woman did not even voluntarily participate in the sexual act, she is killed to restore her family’s name. While in most countries honor killings are not legal, governments turn a blind eye to the killings because of their role in the culture. Cultural relativism would have us believe that we can not condemn these practices or attempt to stop them because they have validity as a part of a certain culture. That attitude, however, condemns women worldwide to undeserved pain and death. Another modern example would be female genital mutilation, a practice found in several African countries. This practice was so shocking that the American government even sanctioned countries who encouraged or allowed the practice. It should first be noted that many Americans have wrongly associated female genital mutilation with female circumcision, the latter being a medical procedure that is relatively painless and clean. However, female genital mutilation involves the removal of a woman’s clitoris, and is often conducted against her will. The procedure is often done in unclean and unsafe locations, causing infection and death for those who are operated on. Similarly, the procedure, when done incorrectly, can cause greater physical damage and can cause a woman to lose all feeling in the pubic area. Again, female genital mutilation is wrong and imposes pain and suffering on an unwilling part of the population. To defend it as a cultural practice that is therefore acceptable is to allow the atrocities to continue. Once all behaviors associated with a culture are deemed legitimate, intervention and condemnation are never acceptable. Should the Holocaust be accepted as a part of German culture? Must racism and sexism be accepted and defended as American culture? Certainly, the answer is no. But with no clear cut definitions of what is or is not a cultural act, cultural relativism condemns us to never speaking out or acting out against such actions and atrocities. It is impossible to define what behaviors, beliefs, or values are intrinsic to any particular culture. In fact, it is impossible to clearly point out where one culture ends and another begins. In the interest of the global population, it is necessary to accept that some behaviors are wrong regardless of their cultural context in order to prevent pain and suffering that is not needed. The way to allow such judgment is to reject cultural relativism.

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CULTURAL RELATIVISM CAUSES US TO SYMPATHIZE Cultural relativism is a self-confessed attempt to avoid ethnocentrism. While the avoidance of cultural superiority without foundation is certainly a noble cause, ethnocentrism carries that objective too far. Adoption of a mindset of cultural relativism can cause the observer to actually lose perspective in an attempt to identify with those being observed. That is known as subjective understanding, or the attempt to understand societies from the inside. This would be when, “anthropologists attempt to assimilate the outlook of their informants to such a degree that they can begin to perceive the world as it appears to them. Anthropologists mentally place themselves in their informants’ circumstances, comprehending their logic and value orientations, and in the light of these, assessing their behavioral choices.”6 This association with different cultures can produce a sympathy with the culture that is being observed. In that sense, the behavior of these societies can not only become accepted, but modeled. The sympathy with the culture being observed can lead to a defense of that culture’s actions and a complete inability to criticize any of the actions that are witnessed. Additionally, the close sympathy and association with a culture can destroy the anthropologist’s or political scientist’s ability to accurately describe a situation. Without value-laden terms or comparisons to other cultures, the process of describing a culture becomes not only more difficult, but also less constructive. The most vivid descriptions may necessitate value judgments and the ability to say if actions being taken are wrong or right. For instance, take the example of the Dodoth tribe that removed the teeth of the women. If a person was attempting to use cultural relativism, they would use perhaps more cautious language in an attempt to avoid value judgments. This might cause them to minimize the pain felt by the girls so that they didn’t appear to be biased against the Dodoth. Similarly, they may unwittingly attempt to construct a defense of the tribesman’s actions so that they do not appear to be putting that particular culture down. Instead, accurate descriptions of the behavior of the Dodoth can and should involve value judgments, allowing the person describing the events to use all of their skills and all of their responses to the behavior in their work. In that way, the person will not sympathize unnaturally with the people they are observing, but will instead be free to write their responses with a description of the events. Therefore, those who observe other cultures should be free to describe them as they see fit, without worrying about offense or a need to sympathize. In that way we will receive not only the most accurate information, but information that relies on all that the person experienced and observed. CULTURAL RELATIVISM IS INHERENTLY CONTRADICTORY Author Henry McDonald explains that there are two understandings of cultural relativism, and that these two understandings contradict one another. First, cultural relativism refers to the fact that cultures vary immensely in their values and ways of life. There is therefore no limit that humans can impose on the range of cultural variability. The second way in which cultural relativism is used is to mean that all cultures are equal in status. This is the point that there is no form or variety of culture that is legitimately superior to another. Thus, no culture should be viewed as superior to another. An example that McDonald gives is that in examining the economies of two cultures, one that uses a barter system and one which uses paper currency, neither would be said to be “better” than the other. He continues, noting that the workings of the system could only be judged within the particular context of that culture and its accompanying demands and conditions. If we should evaluate the culture as a whole, that would be illegitimate, as we should regard all cultures and social practices as equal in status.7 With these two understandings of cultural relativism in place, McDonald goes on to explain the contradiction. He says, “These two ways of understanding the term cultural relativism may seem consistent with one another, but in fact there is a very important sense in which they are not. For to insist that all cultural forms and practices (for example, the economic systems of different cultures) be regarded as equal in status is to assume implicitly that there exists a standpoint from which such forms and practices may be regarded as equal in status; it is to view the economic systems of the cultures as serving ultimately the same basic function or purpose- say, the distribution of wealth in the society- but in different ways.”8 139

McDonald sums up the problems with this contradiction, explaining, “When we view different cultural forms and practices as equal in status, we are really objectifying the meanings of those forms and practices- that is, we are posting such meaning not in the particular forms and practices we are confronted with, but in some ethereal element that is common to all such forms and practices.” 9 The contradiction inherent in cultural relativism makes it a philosophical position that should not be accepted. The contradiction not only undermines the usefulness of cultural relativism as a means of describing and observing culture, but minimizes the intellectual value of the position. CULTURAL RELATIVISM PREVENTS MEANINGFUL COMPARISONS A strict adoption of cultural relativism destroys the ability to make meaningful comparisons in analyzing different societies and cultures. While it is certainly valuable to learn about individual cultures and societies, even more meaning and knowledge can be accrued in comparing those cultures to others around the world and over time. This position is explained in the book The Normative Basis of Culture. There, it is asked, “But if there exists neither an empirical substratum nor a set of universal concepts from which we might try to understand foreign culturesthat is, there is neither an absolute nor a fixed basis common to all cultures- and we must instead try to grasp the norms and values of each culture on its own terms, are we not landed in the most sterile relativism? Are we not presented with a vast panorama of cultures each of which is possessed of its own separate values and logic, and none of which is necessarily related to the others?”10 Here, it is pointed out that without some form of comparison, it is next to impossible to learn from other cultures. Comparison and analysis is needed in order to gain knowledge from our worldwide observations. Rejecting cultural relativism, therefore, allows us to learn more by creating a connection between cultures. The explanation of this argument is complex, but worthwhile. First, we need to note the goal in this rejection of absolute cultural relativism, that is, “For according to the normative concept of culture I am suggesting, although there may be nothing that all cultures have in common, it is nonetheless a necessary presupposition for the study of comparative culture that they be related.”11 The reasons for this necessary relation are several. Initially, understanding is better gained and a foothold better gained in a culture that has a connection to one’s own. McDonald uses the example to illustrate the impossibility of gaining a foothold in the world of cultural relativism. He says that it is like trying to gain a foothold on a surface that was perfectly smooth and without friction. He adds, “Or, to change metaphors, our cultural eyeglasses would not allow us to see the foreign culture, and there would be no objects on the horizon to which we could conceptually anchor ourselves.” 12 He likens this to a hypothetical situation in which we would attempt to understand the “society” of a school of fish. The fish’s behavior would be described merely in human terms, and there would be no way to know if those terms were even remotely accurate. He clarifies, noting, “A culture with which we have absolutely nothing in common would not, in other words, be human in the sense in which we are accustomed to using the term. Indeed, it is because we have no means of understanding the way of life of a school of fish that we say they lack consciousness or internationality; such contentions are ways of expressing our concepts of human and animal.” 13 Therefore, McDonald concludes that we must see a connections between all cultures (a rejection of cultural relativism) in order to have meaningful scholarship and understanding. He explains, “A culture that we did term human would necessarily have something in common with our own, something we could connect or link up with.” 14 McDonald argues that specifically, the link between all human cultures is history. Regardless of whether or not history becomes the agreed upon connection, we can see that the need for such a connection exists. Viewing all cultures as connected in some way allows a better understanding of those individuals who participate in other cultures. It means that we see those individuals as similar to us in enough ways that we seek to learn more about them in comparative research. Cultural relativism, therefore, by forcing us to look at each culture individually and in its own perspective, denies this powerful tool of comparison. In that sense, it robs us of knowledge and information that should be gathered as we investigate not only other cultures, but our own as well. 140

CULTURAL RELATIVISM HAS NEGATIVE IMPLICATIONS FOR SCHOLARS The acceptance of cultural relativism as an approach to academics and scholarship can have negative effects on said fields. First, the premise behind cultural relativism, when carried to the extreme, destroys cultural studies. This is articulated clearly by Fred Inglis, who explains that behind cultural relativism is the belief that an experience can only be deemed valid or legitimate by the person in that experience. This is the belief that is behind cultural relativism; that individuals should not judge another culture’s practices or beliefs because they don’t live in the same context and therefore cannot understand the motivation or meanings of these practices and values. Inglis argues that when cultural relativism is associated with the view that experience is inaccessibly personal, “it becomes perfectly obscure. Only women can write about women, blacks about blacks, you about you.” 15 This viewpoint would devastate much political science and anthropology. Individuals would be forced to only write about and examine their own culture, destroying any ability for them to learn from the personal experiences of members of different cultures. Instead of saying that only women can understand the particular context for their culture and therefore no one else can write about it, individuals should be encouraged to attempt to understand that alternative context and viewpoint. Second, it leads to the justification of abhorrent practices. We already briefly discussed a related point in our arguments regarding the allowance of pain and suffering. However, the argument goes further when we point out the dangers this holds specifically for scholars. Inglis explains, “Functionalism concludes that societies generate practices which serve the function of system-maintenance. Faced by a mysterious or (it may be) horrible social practice, the ethnographer or historian will explain it by reason of its society-supporting function.”16 Functionalism, however, is a natural by-product of cultural relativism. If values cannot be imposed on the customs of a particular culture, another lens must be adopted in viewing them. In order to not give them value, they can merely be described as how they function in that particular society. Resorting to a discussion of how they serve the society they exist within legitimizes practices because it assigns them an integral role in a particular culture. For instance, if one explained honor killings as serving a role in a particular culture, then they can almost be justified by systemmaintenance. This is problematic because it compromises the integrity of scholastic research by unwittingly making all observation a way of entrenching the very problematic practices around the world that the researcher is there to document. It makes science and philosophy the tools of the culture being examined. Third, cultural relativism ignores the already-existing cultural interaction. One author notes, “It is pretty well impossible in the modern world to find a culture which could possibly live in a self-enclosed way; certainly, it is theoretically difficult to define what it would look like, let alone whether it would want to stay self-enclosed, given a choice.”17 If cultures are already interacting and changing one another, it seems ridiculous to suggest that cultures be considered strictly by their own context and without comparison of value with others. Finally, cultural relativism can breed nihilism. The attitude by cultural relativists that causes this problem is that all values should be rejected simply because of their ability to be shown as merely locally grounded and constantly changing. “The relativist gives this as the reason for moving to nihilism. Because the old advertising slogan for a conservative newspaper ‘Times change: values don’t’ is so evidently wrong, the conclusion is drawn that since present values will indeed have severally changed in another hundred years, there can be no good reason for giving them our allegiance now.”18 By accepting that we can never have an accurate prediction on the values that are to come, many abandon values altogether.

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TRUE CULTURAL RELATIVISM IS IMPOSSIBLE Those who advocate cultural relativism would suggest that we abandon any attempts to judge cultures against one another or impose values on a culture. However, it is impossible to observe another culture without comparing it to one’s own. It is impossible for an observer to be truly neutral and unassuming. Instead, the lens we view the world through has been effected by our own culture and upbringing, making it impossible to not color the way we view other cultures. It would be impossible to convince me that honor killings are justified. Similarly, it might be impossible to convince a person who grew up around honor killings that they are unjust. The cultures and settings in which we were raised effect the way we see the world. It is not possible to leave all of that upbringing behind simply because one is going to observe another culture. Instead, what would likely happen is that an observer would think they were leaving their prejudices behind while they actually only sought to hide them. In such an instance, an individual would unknowingly be judging another culture by their own cultural standpoint. It is better then, to recognize such inherent biases that we cannot get rid of. By acknowledging such bias, a reader or an observer can understand the position of the person reporting the information. They can take into account their biases and prejudices, and temper their understanding based not only on what is described but the culture of the person doing the describing. If this is not understood, we will be condemned to observers who think they are neutral but are actually only reaffirming their cultural biases and dispositions with every observation they make. It is not wise to reach for an unfathomable goal in observing cultures around the world. Instead, we should admit the limitations of our investigations of the world around us and continue to try and make meaningful comparisons between our culture and other cultures. By doing so, we would not only produce the most effective observations and descriptions of other cultures, but be more intellectually honest with ourselves in creating those observations and descriptions. SUMMARY Cultural relativism as a philosophy has noble intentions, that is, to prevent ethnocentrism and cultural genocide. However, in practice there are a myriad of problems of adopting this viewpoint. Initially and most importantly, cultural relativism allows for pain and suffering by refusing to condemn any behaviors or customs. These customs are allowed to continue because cultural relativism causes us to sympathize with those committing the acts of pain or suffering. The philosophy is inherently contradictory and prevents us from making meaningful comparisons among cultures. The implications of attempting to adopt the viewpoint of cultural relativism is negative for scholars, and the actual adoption of this viewpoint is impossible. Therefore, cultural relativism should be rejected on the basis of both a lack of practical and philosophical value and utility. ______________________________ 1 Barrett, Richard A. Culture and Conduct: An Excursion in Anthropology. Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1991, pg. 6. 2 Ibid, pg. 7. 3 Bodley, John H. Victims of Progress. Mountain View: Mayfield Publishing Company, 1990, pg. 11. 4 Barrett, Richard A. Culture and Conduct: An Excursion in Anthropology. Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1991, pg. 5. 5 Ibid, pg. 6. 6 Ibid, pg. 8. 7 McDonald, Henry. The Normative Basis of Culture. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1986, pg. 131. 8 Ibid, pg. 131. 9 Ibid, pg. 132. 10 Ibid, pg. 216. 11 Ibid, pg. 217. 12 Ibid, pg. 217. 13 Ibid, pg. 217. 14 Ibid, pg. 217. 15 Inglis, Fred. Cultural Studies. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 1993, pg. 205. 16 Ibid, pg. 133. 17 Ibid, pg. 134. 18 Ibid, pg. 12.

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CULTURAL RELATIVISM IS INHERENTLY CONTRADICTORY 1. CULTURAL RELATAVISM LOGICALLY COLLAPSES IN ON ITSELF Joseph Wagner, “The Revolt Against Reason: Mistaken Assumptions In Post-Positivist Relativism,” Critical Thinking: Focus on Social and Cultural Inquiry, ed. Wendy Oxman-Michelli and Mark Weinstein, May 2, 2000, Accessed January 22, 2001, http://hascall.colgate.edu/jwagner/DownloadFiles/Revolt.doc. NP. Relativism goes awry because of its tendency to confuse distinct categories and issues. In this case it confuses an epistemic issue with a normative one. Normatively, post-positivist relativism tells us that the universalism and objectivity of science and ethics seem insensitive to non-Western cultures or even subordinate subcultures, groups, and classes within Western societies. It reminds us that 'knowledge is power,' and that power is frightful. It commends relativism to those excluded groups and recommends that each group recapture the 'fleeting images' and 'subjective memories' that constitute its group meanings and form the basis for social and political solidarity. Each community is encouraged to articulate values implicit in such archeology (Giroux 1991). Perhaps these are commendable prescriptions, especially if we believe there is value in solidarity and in capturing meanings that make life in a community worthwhile. But by themselves these are inadequate prescriptions for liberation or emancipation from domination. 2. PRESCRIPTIONS OF RELATIVISM ARE PRACTICALLY AND LOGICALLY SELF-DEFETING Joseph Wagner, “The Revolt Against Reason: Mistaken Assumptions In Post-Positivist Relativism,” Critical Thinking: Focus on Social and Cultural Inquiry, ed. Wendy Oxman-Michelli and Mark Weinstein, May 2, 2000, Accessed January 22, 2001, http://hascall.colgate.edu/jwagner/DownloadFiles/Revolt.doc. NP. If subordinate groups find objectivity hostile, then they deny a common ground that is prior to or takes precedence over the parochial differences in beliefs and values. If they can only appeal to that which is unique in their group, if they can appeal to values that move only them, then they fail. They fail to appeal to the values of the dominant group; they fail to make any claim upon the dominant group; and thereby concede to a struggle that is simply a matter of power. Unfortunately, the dominant group, by definition has power. Thus the normative prescriptions of relativism are practically as well as logically self-defeating. Alternatively, objective principles of justice and mutual respect make moral and political claims which ought to be honored by all persons, nations, and cultures. These are universal claims, the only sorts of claims which assert obligation on those who are dominant as well as those who are subordinate. Only universal claims of justice are the kind that cannot be discharged by the rejoinder, 'those are simply your tastes and preferences, not mine,' because only universal claims are grounded on the fundamental commonality of human beings and human societies, not upon the ineradicable differences between them. Such universality resides in the common reason and common truths (empirical and moral), which make differences possible as well as shared understanding and appreciation.

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CULTURAL RELATIVISM IS BAD FOR ACADAMEIA 1. CULTURAL RELATIVISM COLLAPSES BECAUSE IT REJECTS NON-RELATIVIST CULTURES Allan Bloom, Professor in the Committee on Social Thought at University of Chicago. The Closing of the American Mind. 1987, pg. 36-37. One should conclude from the study of non-Western cultures that not only to prefer one’s own way but to believe it best, superior to all others, is primary and even natural—exactly the opposite of what is intended by requiring students to study these cultures. What we are really doing is applying a Western prejudice—which we covertly take to indicate the superiority of our culture—and deforming the evidence of those other cultures to attest to its validity. The scientific study of other cultures is almost exclusively a Western phenomenon, and in its origin was obviously connected with the search for new and better ways, or at least for validation of the hope that our own culture really is the better way, a validation for which there is no felt need in other cultures. If we are to learn from those cultures, we must wonder whether such scientific study is a good idea. Consistency would seem to require professors of openness to respect the ethnocentrism or closedness they find everywhere else. However, in attacking ethnocentrism, what they actually do is to assert unawares the superiority of their scientific understanding and the inferiority of the other cultures which do not recognize it at the same time that they reject all such claims to superiority. 2. OBJECTIVITY INCREASES KNOWLEDGE, FOSTERING A MORE IMPARTIAL AND CLEARER ACCOUNT OF SCIENTIFIC INSTITUTIONS AND PRACTICES. Sandra Harding, Professor of Social Sciences and Comparative Education Director. Is Science Multi-Cultural? Postcolonialism, Feminisms, and Epistemologies, 1998, pg. 155. Again, the standpoint from such marginalized lives on whether and how scientific and technological changes work can lead to a more objective account than can analyses restricted to what looks reasonable from the perspective of the groups who most benefit from scientific and technological change. “The winner names the age” the historians say, acknowledging that the winners’ name for the age may not be the most accurate one from more objective standpoints. Starting from the “losers” lives can systematically expand our knowledge. This is one way of talking about how people marginalized, dominated, oppressed, or otherwise disadvantaged by a dominant culture have fewer interests in ignorance about how such a culture and its practices actually work than do those that benefit from it. Anyone who starts out thinking about science funding, or environmental destruction, or medical research from the perspective of the lives of those who bear a disproportionate share of the costs of these activities can learn to “follow the interests” of the latter to arrive at less partial and distorted accounts of science and technology institutions and practices.

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RELETAVISM CEMENTS NEGATIVE BEHAVIOR 1. FLOATING SUBJECTIVITY REINFORCES PATTERNS OF DOMINATION Kevin Cryderman, “Jane and Louisa: The Tapestry Of Critical Paradigms,” 2000, Accessed November 7, 2001, http://65.107.211.206/post/caribbean/brodber/kcry1.html. NP. Dirlik claims that the 'happy pluralism' of postcolonialism -- such as its emphasis on flux, borderlands and liminal space -- does not so much oppose elite unified narratives of nations and cultures as it does reinforce them. Dirlik also links this trend of "fluid subject positions" (98) in postmodernism to postcolonialism and Global Capitalism: "in the age of flexible production, we all live in the borderlands. Capital, deterritorialized and decentered, establishes borderlands where it can move freely, away from the control of states and societies but in collusion with states against societies" (Dirlik 87). Moreover, the problem "presented by postcolonial discourse" is "a problem of liberating discourse that divorces itself from the material conditions of life, in this case Global Capitalism as the foundational principle of contemporary society globally" (99). 2. FOCUSING ON RELATIVISM CEMENTS OPPRESSION Aihwa Ong, Professor of Anthropology at UC Berkeley. Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logic of Transnationality. 1999, pg. 13. Some scholars dwell on narratives of sacrifice, which are associated with enforced labor migrations, as well as on critiques of the immorality of development. Others, who write about displacements in “borderland” areas, emphasize subjects who struggle against adversity and violation by affirming their cultural hybridity and shifting positions in society. The unified moralism attached to subaltern subjects now also clings to diasporan ones, who are invariably assumed to be members of oppressed classes and therefore constitutionally opposed to capitalism and state power. Furthermore, because of the exclusive focus on texts, narratives, and subjectivities, we are often left wondering what are the particular local-global structural articulations that materially and symbolically shape these dynamics of victimhood and ferment. 3. CULTURAL RELATIVISM DOES VIOLENCE TO THOSE WHO LIVE ON THE BORDERLANDS Linda Alcoff, Professor of Philosophy and Women’s Studies at Syracuse, “Mestizo Identity,” The Idea of Race, ed. Robert Bernasconi and Tommy Lott, 2000, pg. 152-153. Liberation is associated with the refusal to be characterized, described, or classified, and the only true strategy of resistance can be one of negation, a kind of permanent revolution on the metaphysical front. Unfortunately, nomadic subjectivity works no better than assimilationist doctrine to interpellant mixed identity: the nomad self is bounded to no community and represents an absence of identity rather than a multiply entangled and engaged identity. This is not the situation of mixed-race peoples who have deep (even if problematic) ties to specific communities; to be a free-floating unbound variable is not the same as being multiply categorized and ostracized by specific racial communities. It strikes me that the postmodern nomadic vision fits far better the multinational CEO with fax machine and cellular phone in hand who is bound to, or by, no national agenda, tax structure, cultural boundary, or geographical border. And what this suggests is that a simplistic promotion of fluidity will not suffice.

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CULTURAL RELATAVISM PREVENTS DISCOVERY OF THE TRUTH 1. A UNIVERSAL CRITERIA PROVIDES MORE RATIONAL CRITERIA FOR JUDGING KNOWLEDGE AND RECOGNIZES THE INFLUENCE OF POLITICS Margaret Davies, Law Lecturer, and Nan Seuffert, Law Lecturer, Hastings Women’s Law Journal, Summer 2000, NP. Therefore, valuing knowledge which explicitly acknowledges location or standpoint epistemology is valuable as a strategy. We value located knowledge and the "view from below' partly because we believe that these approaches currently provide more rational criteria for judging knowledge than the spurious claims to objectivity of traditional legal knowledge. Additionally, these approaches have the elementary political and ethical values of recognition and respect for others. Such an ethic requires us - as middle-class, White feminists - to take a position of reflective ignorance in relation to others, admitting that our understanding of the world might be completely useless in another context, even while we are attempting to claim space from a mainstream discourse like law. In contrast to a universally "grounded' knowledge, therefore, knowledge valued for its strategic benefits explicitly recognizes the connection between politics and knowledge. 2. STANDPOINT EPISTEMOLOGY FACILITATES SUBSTANTIAL TRUTH CLAIMS WHILE INCORPORATING THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE OTHER Gary Chartier, Lecturer in Business Ethics, UCLA Asian Pacific American Law Journal, Spring 2001, pg. 127. The successful practice of an Asian American jurisprudence requires the recognition of truthful narratives of oppression and the condemnation of structures and behaviors that subordinate and exclude. A standpoint epistemology enables us to identify truthful narratives and unjust actions and institutions without giving up either outsider perspectives or substantial claims to truth. Employing such an epistemology means starting with the beliefs we have, and the perspectives and understandings we have acquired as the result of our (interpreted) experience. But it does not mean resting content with those beliefs, perspectives, and understandings, as if we were insulated against surprises and inoculated against truths that our background assumptions might make it difficult for us to apprehend. Thus, adopting a standpoint epistemology does not preclude openness to the Other that is the prerequisite to any serious quest for truth. 3. CULTURAL RELATIVISM HIDES THE PROCESS OF DISPOSSESSION John Beverley, Professor of Spanish and Latin American Literature and Cultural Studies at Pittsburgh, Subalternity and Representation: Arguments in Critical Theory, 1999, pg. 38-40. Moreover, in making the shift from "objectivity" to "solidarity," we cannot simply disavow representation under the pretext that we are allowing the subaltern to "speak for itself" (that is Spivak's main point in "Can the Subaltern Speak?"). And there is a way in which the (necessarily?) liberal political slant Rorty gives the idea of solidarity may also be, as the 1960s slogan has it, part of the problem rather than part of the solution, because it assumes that "conversation" is possible across power/exploitation divides that radically differentiate the participants." Solidarity based on an assumption of equality and reciprocity does not "lean that contradictions are suppressed in the name of a heuristic notion of merger or identification with the subaltern: Foucault's point about the embarrassment of "speaking for others" is pertinent here.

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Democracy Good DEMOCRACY LEADS TO PEACE 1. DEMOCRACIES ARE LESS LIKELY TO GO TO WAR WITH EACH OTHER Morton H. Halperin, Senior Associate of the Carnegie Endowment, FOREIGN POLICY, 1993, p. 105. States that are constitutional democracies are less likely to go to war with the United States or other democracies, and are more likely to support limits on weapons trade, encourage peaceful resolution of disputes, and foster free trade. 2. DEMOCRATIC COUNTRIES DO NOT WAGE WAR ON EACH OTHER Anthony Lake, Special Assistant to President Clinton for National Security Affairs, FEDERAL NEWS SERVICES, September 21, 1993. The addition of new democracies makes us more secure because democracies tend not to wage war on each other and they tend not to support terrorism. In fact, they don’t. They are more trustworthy in diplomacy and they do a better job of respecting the environment and the human rights of their people. 3. A PEACEFUL WORLD IS MORE LIKELY IF COUNTRIES ARE DEMOCRACIES Morton H. Halperin, Senior Associate of the Carnegie Endowment, FOREIGN POLICY, 1993, p. 111. When a people have established a constitutional democracy, or, as with the Soviet Union in August 1991, are moving in that direction, the United States and much of the world community will resist internal efforts to undermine democracy. It will do so in large part because it recognizes that a peaceful world is more likely if states are constitutional democracies. 4. DEMOCRACY STOPS NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION John Van Oudenaren, RAND Corporation expert in Soviet foreign policy, NUCLEAR WEAPONS IN THE CHANGING WORLD, 1992. The technical barriers to nuclear proliferation in the third world have continued to diminish in importance as the list of potential suppliers of components has expanded, as third world countries have improved their own technical base, and as private companies and individuals have flouted international safeguards. Future barriers to proliferation thus are likely to be increasingly less technical and progressively more political (i.e., based on national perceptions of the incentives and disincentives to acquire nuclear weapons), with the character of these perceptions heavily influenced by the makeup of national regimes (democratic vs. authoritarian and pro- vs. anti-Western). 5. DEMOCRACY INCREASES WORLD PEACE Morton H. Halperin, Senior Associate of the Carnegie Endowment, FOREIGN POLICY, 1993, p. 111. Peace, security, and the establishment of a true world order require that all states, including the United States, work toward that goal by seeking to preserve democracy where it is being established. We are now at a historic crossroads; the opportunity to take a giant step toward universal constitutional democracy is here and should be seized. 6. DEMOCRACY BLOCKS THE DISASTERS OF FORCED SOCIETAL REFORMS Jean-François Revel, Author, DEMOCRACY AGAINST ITSELF, 1993, p. 258. There have been natural cataclysms in history, epidemics, droughts, earthquakes, and cyclones, and they have killed millions, destroyed cities and crops, annihilated artistic and intellectual treasures, devastated the infrastructures of nations. Yet these plagues are nothing compared to those that have been caused by human action. The most destructive catastrophes are man-made, and above all statesman-made. They come from his appetite for conquest and domination, from the dead-end political systems he thinks up, his uncountable religious or ideological fanaticisms, and, especially, his obsessive need to reform societies instead of letting them change at their own pace. Democracy blocks or at least slows down, this disastrous—and wicked— human propensity. 7. DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENTS ARE MORE PEACEFUL Morton H. Halperin, Senior Associate of the Carnegie Endowment, FOREIGN POLICY, 1993, p. 111. 147

The United States should take the lead in promoting the trend toward democracy. Democratic governments are more peaceful and less given to provoking war or inciting violence.

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DEMOCRACY IS THE BEST FORM OF GOVERNMENT 1. DEMOCRACY IS SUPERIOR TO SOCIALISM WORLDWIDE Jean-François Revel, Author, DEMOCRACY AGAINST ITSELF, 1993, p.6 At any rate, whereas only ten years earlier it had been almost impossible to argue, even in the West, that Socialism was definitely and irretrievably finished, its failure now proclaimed to the whole world that the liberal democratic model was superior. Nineteen ninety-one saw even the collapse of Sweden’s social democratic model, which for a long time was thought to have retained the advantages and jettisoned the liabilities of both systems. Bankrupt, rejected by the voters, Sweden’s social democracy made way for a wave of privatizations—as did Zambia once it rid itself of Kaunda. From all sides were heard lyrical praises of democracy—which is very well—but more than this: confident proclamations that the “democratic revolution” would triumph everywhere in all countries and overcome all difficulties. 2. REALITY PROVES DEMOCRACY AND CAPITALISM ARE SUPERIOR TO COMMUNISM Jean-François Revel, Author, DEMOCRACY AGAINST ITSELF, 1993, p. 8 Communism had not fallen back yet, but it was stopped in its tracks. The Third World no longer viewed communism as a model of rapid development, particularly since it was, at last, evident to all that it was itself a form of underdevelopment. Of all the blows dealt Marxist theory by reality, democracy’s social and economic efficiency is probably the most potent. 3. DEMOCRACY IS THE ONLY FORM OF EFFICIENT GOVERNMENT Jean-François Revel, Author, DEMOCRACY AGAINST ITSELF, 1993, p. 40. Democracy does not mean the absence of government. On the contrary, it is the only form of government that is efficient, for it is the only form of government that can both serve civil society and make use of the creative resources of civil society.

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THE WORLD IS BECOMING MORE DEMOCRATIC 1. THE WORLD IS MOVING TOWARD DEMOCRACY Jean-François Revel, Author, DEMOCRACY AGAINST ITSELF, 1993, p. 6. Gorbachev himself, transformed into the benevolent mentor of the world’s oldest democracies, proclaimed at the U.N. on 7 December 1988: “The whole world is becoming democratic,” On every continent conferences met to sing praises to the new goddess, whose inexistence it was forbidden to deny: not only democracy, but universal democracy, the complete democratization of the world. 2. DEMOCRACY NOT TOTALITARIANISM IS THE “WAVE OF THE FUTURE” Charles R. Wilson, NQA, THE AMERICAN IDEA, 1942, p.9. Analysts can easily collect “evidence” which seems to demonstrate that totalitarianism is the “wave of the future”. But unless man has changed in his essential nature and the principle of historical continuity is a myth, such a judgment is more nearly a wave of intellectual bilge water. Far from being the wave of the future, totalitarianism is the contaminating seepage of the past. The true wave of the future is the revision and readjustment of democratic processes so as to preclude the possibility of a plunge into the murky waters of medievalist by rabble-rousing paranoiacs who use the maladjustments of democracy as a springboard. Fortunately, democracy, like the Constitution of the United States, is general enough in its implications to permit adjustments of various kinds without destruction of its essential fabric. 3. DICTATORSHIPS CAN TRANSFORM INTO DEMOCRACIES Vladimir Bukovsky, Former Soviet Dissident and President of Resistance International, TOTALITARIANISM AT THE CROSSROADS, 1990, p. 10. Indeed, while we do not know of a single example of a totalitarian state transforming itself into a democracy (except as a result of a foreign occupation), there have been quite a number of dictatorships even in the last ten to fifteen years which have done so. Furthermore, in most cases, the process of transformation was remarkably smooth, quick, and painless, often triggered simply by the death of a dictator (Spain, Portugal), or by a coup (Paraguay), by a failure to suppress the opposition (the Philippines), by international pressure (Chile, South Korea), or even by a dictatorship itself which did not want to maintain its rule any longer (Turkey, Argentina). RIGHT TO VOTE INHERENT IN DEMOCRACY SECURES ALL OTHER RIGHTS 1. RIGHT TO VOTE PRESERVES ALL OTHER RIGHTS Lani Guinier, Law Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, THE TYRANNY OF THE MAJORITY, 1994, p. 35. First, the fundamental nature of the right to vote stems from its role in preserving all other rights. Other rights, even the most basic, are illusory if the right to vote is undermined. The franchise gives status to the individual voter but derives its vitality from its exercise by a “politically cohesive” group of citizens who elect representatives to promote consideration of group interests in public policy.

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DEMOCRACY IS INTEGRALLY LINKED TO HUMAN RIGHTS 1. DEMOCRACY IS INTEGRALLY LINKED TO HUMAN RIGHTS A. Belden Fields and Wolf-Dieter Nan, Professors of Political Science, University of Illinois and University of Berlin, HUMAN RIGHTS QUARTERLY, 1992, p. 12. The two ideas, democracy and human rights, are necessarily connected; democracy cannot exist without human rights, and there can be no human rights without democracy. Democracy is the form; human rights are the norm or consent. Furthermore, human rights and their necessary procedural rules cannot be put into practice by a segmental approach—the society as a whole has to be structured according to the requirements of this norm and form relationship. 2. DEMOCRACY IMPROVES PROTECTION OF HUMAN RIGHTS Sakah Mahmud, University of Denver Professor, HUMAN RIGHTS QUARTERLY, 1993, p. 498. The current democratization process in Africa is a positive trend because once democratization begins, as it has in most of Africa, it would be difficult to stop the trend. The process might be delayed in the short run, but it could not be completely reversed. It is in this regard that one can expect better prospects for human rights protection in Africa. 3. ONLY DEMOCRACY INCORPORATES VALUES OF HUMAN RIGHTS A. Belden Fields and Wolf-Dieter Nan, Professors of Political Science, University of Illinois and University of Berlin, HUMAN RIGHTS QUARTERLY, 1992, p.9. Four values have been proposed as the key norm for an adequate conception of human rights: freedom, social recognition, equality, and integrity. Only one political form thus far discovered—democracy— incorporates all those norms. Human rights norms and political forms are not really distinct, separate entities; one cannot talk seriously about the one without talking about the other. If democracy is characterized by the right and ability to participate in governance on an equal footing with all participants, that is a human right as well as a definition of democracy. ONLY DEMOCRACY SAFEGUARDS FREEDOM 1. ONLY DEMOCRACY ENCOURAGES FREEDOM Eugene T. Adams, NQA, THE AMERICAN IDEA, 1942, P. 262. In the long march of civilization men have bound themselves together, or have been bound together, under various forms of government. Some of these have reduced the individual to a state of slavery. Some have tolerated freedom of the individual within limits. Democracy alone has encouraged the individual to establish and safeguard his own freedom. 2. U.S. DEMOCRACY BALANCES FREEDOM WITH AUTHORITY Albert H. Garetson, NQA, THE AMERICAN IDEA, 1942, p. 62-3. We can see clearly that there must be many changes in our democratic way of doing things. But our past record is a comfort to us. We have known how to meet great problems. Our democracy has always found the balance between freedom and authority that has met the needs of each period of crisis in our history. It has known how to defend itself from social chaos and to protect its great heritage of American freedom. 3. AMERICAN DEMOCRACY MEANS INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM Thomas H. Robinson, NQA, THE AMERICAN IDEA, 1942, P. 65. To us, democracy means freedom—individual freedom. It means freedom for each one of us to take part in making policies that concern us. It means taking part in a way that counts.

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DEMOCRACY ALLOWS FOR CHANGE AND REFORM 1. DEMOCRACY ALLOWS FOR REFORM Herbert Marcuse, Social Philosopher, AN ESSAY ON LIBERATION, 1969, p. 66. The fact that the democratic process provides for the redress of grievances and for legal and lawful change does not alter the illegality inherent in an opposition to an institutionalized democracy which halts the process of change at the stage where it would destroy the existing system. By virtue of this built-in stabilizer or “governor,” capitalist mass-democracy is perhaps to a higher degree self-perpetuating than any other form of government or society; and the more so the more it rests, not on tenor and scarcity, but on efficiency and wealth, and on the majority will of the underlying and administered population. DEMOCRACY IS MORE THAN THE CONCEPT OF MAJORITY RULE 1. DEMOCRACY IS MORE THAN MAJORITY RULE Frank Bealey, NQA, DEMOCRACY IN THE CONTEMPORARY STATE, 1988, p.4. Democracy is often wrongly defined as ‘majority rule,’ but though it may involve the majority getting their way, there is clearly much more to democracy than majoritarianism. Majorities may, and sometimes do, act in a completely undemocratic manner. Democracy might be extinguished by a majority voting for the abolition of public contestation and inclusiveness at a general election or national referendum. The Weimar Republic ended in this way. 2. LIBERTY NOT MAJORITY RULE IS CENTRAL TO U.S. CONSTITUTION James A. Dorn, Editor of Cato Journal, LEGITIMACY, GOVERNMENTS, AND MARKETS, 1990, p. 73. This fundamental right to noninterference or liberty stands at the center of the Framers’ “Constitution of liberty,” as Hayek (1960) put it, and is derived from the natural rights doctrine, which was widely accepted at the time of the framing. The basic principles inherent in the natural rights doctrine were stated in the Declaration of Independence and were used to justify the American Revolution. . . .[sic] The Constitution stands on these higher law principles, and is best viewed as a charter for limited government and individual freedom, not primarily as a blueprint for majority rule. 3. MAJORITY RULE IS NOT THE SAME AS AMERICAN DEMOCRACY Stephen L. Carter, Law Professor, Yale University, THE TYRANNY OF THE MAJORITY, 1994, p. xvi. Majority rule, loosely put, is the proposition that 51 percent of the people should be able to get whatever they want. Some consider this the same as democracy, but it is not; at least, it is not the same as American democracy. There is not a single place in the United States (and, I would bet, in the world) in which 51 percent of the people are in fact entitled to whatever they want. Instead, majorities face often considerable obstacles in transforming their preferences into policy. The most obvious obstacles are the state and federal constitutions, which limit what majorities can do and are not easy for those same majorities to change. 4. RIGHTS OF INDIVIDUALS SUPERSEDE MAJORITY RULE James A. Dorn, Editor of Cato Journal, LEGITIMACY, GOVERNMENTS, AND MARKETS, 1990, p. 71. In a rights-based approach to constitutional legitimacy, majoritarianism plays a secondary role to individual rights. Majority preferences, in other words, do not rule in all political matters, only those that do not violate higher law principles or what Sir Edward Coke referred to as “common right and reason.” Thus, in the Framer’s constitutional vision, the equal rights of individuals to life, liberty, and property were not to be the subject of majority vote. 5. DEMOCRACY IS NOT GOVERNMENT BY THE MAJORITY Anthony Arblaster, NQA, DEMOCRACY, 1987, p. 73. There are therefore sound reasons for rejecting any crude equation of democracy with the unqualified principle of majority rule. ‘The people’ cannot be equated with only a majority of them, nor can ‘government by the people’ by equated with government by the majority, let alone the representatives of the majority. Minorities are also part of the people, and, as far as possible, their interests, views and convictions must be taken into account in the processes of policy-making and decision-taking.

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Democracy Bad DEMOCRACY IS AN OPPRESSIVE FORM OF GOVERNMENT 1. VIEWS OF THE MAJORITY OVERSHADOW THOSE OF THE MINORITY Lani Guinier, Law Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, THE TYRANNY OF THE MAJORITY, 1994, p. 37. However, virtual representation theory is not appropriate if the interests of a racial minority are not necessarily fungible with those of the “actual” representatives or of their white constituents. For example, blacks, as a poor and historically oppressed group, are in greater need of government sponsored programs and solicitudes, which whites often resent and vigorously oppose. Even a mildly sympathetic white official will not dependably consider black interests if that individual must also accommodate the more dominant views of white constituents. 2. MAJORITY RULE DOES NOT ENSURE MINORITY CONFIDENCE IN THE SYSTEM Lani Guinier, Law Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, THE TYRANNY OF THE MAJORITY, 1994, p. 79. Yet, just as it would be illegitimate for an advantaged minority to exercise majority power, it is illegitimate for an advantaged majority to exercise disproportionate power. From the excluded minority’s perspective, such a system exaggerates its difficulty in winning any power and is unlikely to be stable, accountable, or reciprocal. In sum, to the extent majority rule is associated with winner-take-all voting procedures, it does not ensure minority confidence in the system’s fairness. 3. ACCESS TO POLITICAL SYSTEM DOES NOT GUARANTEE POLITICAL FAIRNESS Lani Guinier, Law Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, THE TYRANNY OF THE MAJORITY, 1994, p. 34. For a group that has been excluded [from the political process] as long as blacks, aggressive advocacy is essential to ensure that black interests are taken seriously. Technical, formal access to the political process may not be enough to guarantee even good faith representation. This is a particular problem where black voters are less likely to engage in the “extended political process” of post-election day accountability with white representatives. DEMOCRACY DENIES JUSTICE TO ETHNIC AND RACIAL MINORITIES 1. DEMOCRACY DENIES JUSTICE TO ETHNIC MINORITIES Amy Gutman, Scholar and Author, PHILOSOPHY & PUBLIC AFFAIRS, Summer 1993, p. 180. Like other political procedures, democracy is imperfect where many matters of justice are at stake, and widely recognized as such. In situations of racial, ethnic, and religious conflict within democratic societies, majoritarian procedures may deny minorities personal security, basic liberty and decent living standards. No procedures can justify the denial of these goods and others basic to human dignity. 2. RACIAL HIERARCHY WILL DESTROY DEMOCRATIC ORDER Cornel West, AFRICAN AMERICAN SCHOLAR, RACE MATTERS, 1993, p.4. Today, eighty-six percent of white suburban Americans live in neighborhoods that are less than 1 percent black, meaning that the prospects for the country depend largely on how its cities fare in the hands of a suburban electorate. There is no escape from our interracial interdependence, yet enforced racial hierarchy dooms us as a nation to collective paranoia and hysteria—the unmaking of any democratic order. 3. RACIAL ATMOSPHERE DETERS MINORITY CANDIDATES Lani Guinier, Law Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, THE TYRANNY OF THE MAJORITY, 1994, p. 33. The election of more black representatives proves a second important opportunity for substantive rather than rhetorical outreach. At present the electoral process is permeated by a subtle, yet pervasive, racial atmosphere that deters black candidates from running, that dismissed prematurely [sic] Jesse Jackson’s presidential aspirations (on the basis of his race) and that permits jurisdictions not to recognize members of a sizable minority as part of the governing coalition. Indeed, a recent survey indicated that the higher the office in question, the less whites are inclined to vote for a qualified black candidate.

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REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY IS INHERENTLY FLAWED 1. REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT IS INHERENTLY FLAWED Howard Zinn, Professor Emeritus, Spelman College, DECLARATIONS OF INDEPENDENCE, 1990, p. 255. Rousseau provokes us to think critically about the whole idea of representation. It is an idea that we grew up to accept without question because it was an advance over monarchy and is today much preferable to dictatorship. But it has serious problems. No representative can adequately represent another’s needs; the representative tends to become a member of a special elite; he has privileges that weaken his sense of concern over his constituents’ grievances. 2. REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT IS ALWAYS APPROXIMATE AND IMPERFECT Anthony Arblaster, NQA, DEMOCRACY, 1987, p. 85. Even if the practice of representation was more thoroughly democratic than it is, and every precaution was taken to guard against what Walt Whitman memorably termed ‘the never-ending audacity of elected persons’, there are still problems from a democratic point of view, inherent in the very principle of representation. Given the uniqueness of each individual, and given the gradations and shadings of opinion found even among those who are in broad agreement on a particular issue, representation, even of one person by another, let along of a group by a single person. must always be approximate and imperfect. 3. REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENTS DO NOT PROTECT MINORITY RIGHTS Howard Zinn, Professor Emeritus, Spelman College, DECLARATIONS OF INDEPENDENCE, 1990, p. 253-4. Representative government does not solve the problem of race. It does not solve the problem of class. The very principle [sic] of representation is flawed, as Jean Jacques Rousseau, living in prerevolutionary France in the mideighteenth century, pointed out. His book The Social Contract was a confusing, contradictory, difficult search for a more direct democracy, in which a majority could not vote a minority into slavery or poverty. 4. SYSTEM OF REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY DILUTES DIRECT DEMOCRACY Stephen L. Carter, Law Professor, Yale University, THE TYRANNY OF THE MAJORITY, 1994, p. xvi. Just as important to understanding the interaction between democracy and majority rule is the fact that the great majority of the people never has the opportunity to vote directly on the great majority of the issues. The divisive issues—abortion, school prayer, taxes—are never on the ballot. Instead, we all vote for representatives who will then cast votes in our name. Not only does this system dilute direct democracy— sometimes the system openly frustrates it. 5. REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY HAS BEEN AN OBSTACLE TO HUMAN RIGHTS Howard Zinn, Professor Emeritus, Spelman College, DECLARATIONS OF INDEPENDENCE, 1990, p. 186. The black movement, like the labor movement, the women’s movement, and the antiwar movement, has taught us a simple truth: The official channels, the formal procedures of representative government have been sometimes useful, but never sufficient, and have often been obstacles, to the achievement of crucial human rights. What has worked in history has been direct action [sic] by people engaged together, sacrificing, risking together, in a worthwhile cause. 6. CONCEPT OF GROUP REPRESENTATION IN GOVERNMENT IS IMPERFECT Lani Guinier, Law Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, THE TYRANNY OF THE MAJORITY, 1994, p. 127. The concept of representation necessarily applies to groups; groups of voters elect representatives individuals do not. Representation is more than that the individual relationship between constituent and elected representative. Because representation is primarily about political influence, not political service, bottom-up representation becomes the essential link to a genuine voice in the process of self-government. Districting is a form of group-interest representation, albeit an imperfectly realized one.

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DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENTS ARE INHERENTLY FLAWED 1. DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENTS ARE HYPOCRITICAL Howard H. Harriott, Department of Philosophy, University of South Carolina, JOURNAL OF PEACE RESEARCH, 1993, p. 219-220. Put plainly, the paradox is as follows: the ideals of democracy argue for values such as honesty, trust, and open government. The ideals of efficient and effective foreign policy in an anarchic international arena call for lying to friends and foes and a willingness to use force and deception. 2. MONEY NOT VOTES DOMINATES U.S. POLITICAL PROCESS Howard Zinn, Professor Emeritus, Spelman College, DECLARATIONS OF INDEPENDENCE, 1990, p. 254-5. [Campaign] Money buys advertising, prime time on television, a public image. The candidates then have a certain obligation to those with money who supported them. They must look [sic] good to the people who voted for them, but be [sic] good to those who financed them. Voting is mostly certainly overrated as a guarantee of democracy. 3. DEMOCRACY IS NO GUARANTEE AGAINST TOTALITARIANISM Marilyn French, Feminist Author, BEYOND POWER, 1985, p. 356. Those of us who live in democratic states may feel complacent at our good fortune. But there is little to protect any industrial society against sliding into totalitarianism. Even nonindustrial nations can become totalitarian, if they contain an elite with strong faith in control and in possession of weapons, transport, and communications systems devised by modern technology. 4. CONGRESS MEMBERS DO NOT “REPRESENT’ THE VOTERS ON MAJOR ISSUES Howard Zinn, Professor Emeritus, Spelman College, DECLARATIONS OF INDEPENDENCE, 1990, p. 256. We should also note that voting for members of Congress is meaningless for the most important issues of life and death. That is not just because it is impossible to tell at election time how your representative will vote in a future foreign policy crisis. It is also because Congress is a feeble, often nonexistent factor in decisions on war and peace, usually following helplessly along with whatever the president decides. That fact makes a shambles of “representative” government.

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Democracy Responses Webster’s dictionary defines democracy as, “government by the people.”1 While many governments and systems claim to be democracies, this type of government comes in many forms. A direct democracy is one where each individuals vote counts equally and the vote is directly responsible for the ultimate decision. Representative democracies, in contrast, have individuals use their votes to vest power in a representative who then helps make the ultimate decisions. Regardless, democracy as a system and value has long been heralded as a positive development. Author Ian Budge describes the appeal of democracy in the following way, “Democracy justifies itself as empowering citizens, making government their own rather than an external or imposed authority. So it is hard to defend restrictions on democratic citizens’ power to decide what governments should do and how they should operate.” 2 While Budge may be correct that defending restrictions on democracy is hard, the next few pages will provide arguments that counter democracy and point out the problems in a democratic system of decision making. THE PROBLEM OF MAJORITY RULE A democracy is rarely defended as requiring a unanimous decision by the population to move forward. Such decisions and unanimity would be impossible in the modern world, and so democracy is defended as a majority rule system. As Robert Dahl notes, “In this stronger sense, majority rule means that majority support ought to be not only necessary but sufficient for enacting laws. Requiring majority rule in this strong sense, however, runs into several perplexing problems for which no entirely satisfactory solutions have yet been found.”3 Several justifications are made regarding the use of majority rule. These include that majority rule maximizes self-determination, that it is a necessary consequence of reasonable requirement, that it is more likely to produce correct decisions, and that it maximizes utility. Dahl, however, makes a formidable attack on these justifications. First, assuming that in some decisions there are more than two options, a clear majority will not always exist. In these instances, a minority or plurality of voters will make the ultimate decision. A technical majority of the population will not get the alternative that they voted for. Attempting to resolve this problem led to the coining of the term cyclic voting. Cyclic voting also shows that, “control over the agenda can be used to manipulate the outcome.”4 Dahl also outlines problems concerning boundaries, both between matters decided collectively and matters not so decided; and the boundaries of the collective unit itself. He poses a question to one who would defend majority rule, saying, “Considering the boundary for collective decisions in the light of your first justification, might it not sometimes be possible to maximize self-determination by allowing individuals or groups to decide certain matters autonomously rather than submitting them to a collective decision?” 5 Dahl further argues that in a system that demands representative democracy, “conditions in the real world generally weaken the translation of majority preferences into law and administration.”6 Perhaps Dahl’s most compelling argument is that when the majority seeks to maximize utility, they maximize their own utility and happiness.7 Minority groups can potentially be devastated and destroyed in a majority rule system. Take, for example, a population that was 60% white and 40% African-American. If the entirety of the white population voted to take away the property of African-Americans; majority rule would dictate that it happen. In that sense, majority rule and democracy guarantees only what is good for the group or sub-population that has the largest numbers. Majority rule is a way to justify oppression of minority groups while still technically allowing their voice to be “heard” by continuing to allow them to vote. This type of system condemns any group that does not make up the majority of a population to having decisions made for them by groups who may or may not have their best interests in mind. THE TERM “DEMOCRACY” IS OPEN TO ABUSE In his book The Problem of Democracy, Herbert Lars Gustaf Tingsten argues that, “the implications of ‘democracy’ can be clarified only by noting the difficulties, ambiguities, and tendencies toward conflict and contradiction latent in popular usage of this term.”8 For example, in 1814, Napoleon I declared that he alone represented the French nation and population. Plebiscites had been conducted that sanctioned his rule, and Napoleon believed that he represented the will of the French 156

people in a realistic sense as well. He declared, “My policy is to govern in the manner in which the majority wishes to be governed. This, I believe, is the right way to recognize the sovereignty of the people.” 9 Modern dictators as well have argued that their ability to acquire the right to govern through an election means that they do govern in accord with the will of the people. In the spring of 1919, in a conversation between General Ludendorff, a leader of the nationalist reaction to the Weimar Republic, and Max Weber, a sociologist, this issue was debated. Ludendorff argued that the country was enjoying democracy at the time. Weber, when asked what he meant by a democracy, said, “In a democracy the people choose a leader in whom they have confidence. Subsequently, the leader says, ‘Be quiet and do as I say.’ The people and political parties can no longer interfere with what he does. Then the people may sit in judgment; if the leader has acted wrongly he is sent to the gallows!” 10 While some will argue that this system does allow for a leader to represent the will of the people, it is important to consider if such will can truly be known in that setting. As Tingsten notes, “In reality, there is no way of exacting accountability in any reasonable sense where such a state of affairs prevails.”11 When a leader must only be elected once, the accountability to the people stops at that single vote. Therefore, using the name democracy, individuals can create dictatorships. DEMOCRACY DESTROYS EXPERT DECISION MAKING James Madison eloquently and vigorously defended a representational form of government, speaking of the ills that a direct democracy would bring. Madison was concerned with factions, or smaller groups of an entire population. Madison notes, however, that factions can be the majority of a population as well. He argues that thwarting the will of factions is a desirable function of a government. This is because factions are mostly selfish and therefore opposed to the best interest of the group as a whole. Madison does concede that factions cannot be eliminated except by force. He therefore argues that a society that is free must learn to live with factions while simultaneously moderating them. This can be done by putting power in the hands of representatives instead of in the hands of the public as a whole. These representatives, according to Madison, are more likely to be, “aware of the long-term interests of the population than the population itself.” 12 The advantage to this absence of direct democracy is that citizens still get to vote on who represents them, making those individuals accountable and securing control. It also allows individuals to feel connected to the political system through this more limited form of voting. The representatives, “in turn come between the people and their wishes with their own critical political judgment, thus insulating public policy from their passions.”13 In that sense, those individuals who have the most expertise and information are left to make decisions. No one would argue that the process of governing is simple or easy. The decisions that are to be made are often complex, and have heavy consequences. In such instances, it is impractical to believe that the masses of uneducated and untrained individuals will make preferable decision to those who have been prepared for these situations. Therefore, having individuals who are educated and trained to make decisions rule is superior. A democracy prevents that situation by allowing the entire public to be the decision-making body, and should be rejected because of this problem. DEMOCRACY PRODUCES INSTABILITY Leaving the decision making in the hands of the masses also leads to instability. Madison explains that when factions make decisions, they are hasty and unwise. Similarly, the conflict among factions causes the goals of these groups to shift and be inconsistent. Thus, a primary argument made against democracy is based on the concept of balance. As Budge notes, “The system most likely to produce good decisions is one where popular participation is balanced by expert judgment....leave it to be carried out by the professionals.” 14 This argument is also advanced regarding the ever-changing will of the people. Friedrich Hayek, best known as a critic of socialism, is used as a source of criticism of democracy as well. “He suggests that majority decisions should not be trusted too readily since they tell us only what people want at a given moment, and not what it is in their interest to want if they were better informed. Majorities can be persuaded and minority opinion can become a majority one.” 15 This instability is worsened by the need for a majority to move forward. This argument is furthered when we explore the fact that in order for decisions to get made in a majority rule system, groups must spend time recruiting 157

others to their cause. As Hayek explains, “Under the existing system...every small interest group can enforce its demands, not by persuading a majority that the demands are just or equitable, but by threatening to withhold that support which the nucleus of agreed individuals will need to become a majority.” 16 Therefore, in order to provide a stable system, democracy must be rejected. DEMOCRACY IN THE MODERN WORLD IS INFEASIBLE To value any sort of political system implies that it can be put into practice. If it cannot be, there is no point in discussing that system as it would be futile. There are several points that need to be made in order to prove that direct democracy is infeasible in the modern world and therefore should be rejected. The first reason why democracy in the modern world is infeasible is that there are economic conditions required for democracy. These required economic conditions do not exist everywhere, meaning that there are areas of the world where democracy cannot exist. To claim democracy is best and then concede that it cannot exist everywhere would be to condemn parts of the world to a less-than best system. In order to avoid that scenario, we must reject democracy due to these economic conditions. Author Carl Cohen says in reference to the physical needs of communities, “The fulfillment of these material needs, and the economic system that insures it, so far as these are required for the operation of a democracy, I call its economic conditions.”17 Cohen argues that some level of economic well-being is a condition of democracy. He notes, “No community can long expect to be self-governing unless the members of that community enjoy a minimum level of material wellbeing.”18 Democracy as a system is utterly dependant upon the ability of citizens to participate in the decision making role. This means that these citizens must be physically healthy. If there are frequent medical problems or chronic malnutrition, individuals are unable to participate politically. Individuals cannot concentrate on making astute political choices if they are busy worrying about getting enough food or avoiding disease. When the focus and attention is placed on survival of self and family, a democracy cannot flourish. Economic well-being, as explained by Cohen, is always relatively well or relatively poorly satisfied. This happens on two levels, that of individual circumstance and that of the level of community circumstance. He explains, “Democracy may be feasible, if imperfect, where a small fraction of the community are impoverished; as that fraction grows, democracy in that community is less likely to suceed.”19 There are many countries around our modern world that do not have a population that lives outside of poverty. These countries would be unable to enact democracy, therefore, and a new type of governmental structure that can be effective must be sought after. Cohen sums this point up, adding, “In general, extreme poverty defeats democracy, rendering participation uninformed and superficial, even if widespread. It is the affluent who can afford to be public-spirited citizens.”20 Cohen himself realizes the implications of his argument when he discusses the material prospects of democracy succeeding. He explains, “Long-range success for democracies in political communities will require the attainment of a standard of living for the masses of the world far higher than that they presently enjoy, and it will require a considerable reduction of the gross economic inequalities that presently divide men. That such material objectives can be achieved, or that they will be achieved before economic pressures explode the present world fabric entirely, appear now to be matters of serious doubt.”21 With no real signs of this global poverty diminishing or the rich-poor gap shrinking, democracy is unrealistic and unattainable. Another reason why democracy is infeasible is that political communities have grown too large for direct democracies. Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1800, “Our country is too large to have all its affairs directed by a single government. Public servants at such a distance and from under the eye of their constituents, must, from the circumstance of distance, be unable to administer and overlook all the details necessary for the good government of the citizens, and the same circumstance, by rendering detection impossible to their constituents, will invite the public agents to corruption, plunder and waste.”22 Jefferson’s words bring up the problems with attempting to have direct democracy in a growing political community. The United States is certainly larger now (both in territory and population) than it was in 1800, when Jefferson said that it was too large to have a direct democracy. Jefferson says first that if the public servants are far away from their constituents, they will not be able to do good works for those citizens. They will have only a broad picture instead of knowing people on an individual level to attempt, and cannot do what is best for them. Additionally, with 158

so little public oversight given the great distance, the politicians are free to do what they want. Jefferson indicates that this will lead them to “corruption, plunder, and waste.” In that case, politicians are not serving the people. Yet they are so far removed from the citizenry that there is nothing the citizenry can do about these problems. John Rawls would also share Jefferson’s concerns about the feasibility of a democracy in a modern world where political communities have grown so large. He, “believes that a constitutional democratic state should be grounded in the fundamental intuitive idea of a society as a fair system of cooperation between free and equal persons who are fully cooperating members of that society over a complete life.”23 It would be impossible to expect cooperation in modern America over such a large distance. Individuals in California cannot possibly have a detailed understanding of life in South Carolina or Vermont. They are therefore not in a position to make decisions that will directly effect those individuals who live across the country. The only way to have a system that is fair and values cooperation is to have a governmental structure that makes decisions that are truly for the good of the entire population, involving a level of understanding that cannot be reached with direct democracy. Perhaps there is a place and time for discussing utopian philosophy. Yet democracy does not claim to be utopian, but rather practical. Given its infeasibility, therefore, it should be rejected. Time instead should be spent pursuing other goals and other political systems that might be more capable of being implemented and used around the world, regardless of financial situation or size. DEMOCRACY IS CORRUPT IN ITS ASSOCIATIONS Democracy seems to bring along with it the capitalist system. As Benjamin R. Barber argues, “To listen to politicians and policymakers on both sides of what was once called the Iron Curtain, democracy is but a synonym for the marketplace. This is perhaps the most dangerous, because the most compelling and widely held, myth of our time.” He continues, “Historically, it is not capitalism which produced democracy, but democracy which produced capitalism.”24 This would not be problematic except that capitalism is having negative effects worldwide. Barber explains, “It is no longer clear that postmodern capitalism serves real needs at all. In the ancient capitalist economy, products were manufactured and sold for profit to meet the demand of consumers who made their needs known through the market. In the new postmodern capitalist economy, needs are manufactured to meet the supply of producers who make their products marketable through promotion, spin, packaging, and advertising.”25 The problems that come along with this modern capitalism can be devastating. Environmental damage and pollution are considered necessary and acceptable in the quest to produce more and cheaper products. Meanwhile, land, water, and air become unsafe and lives are shortened and ended due to the environmental degradation. Similarly, labor standards have also been reduced. Individuals are working longer hours for less money in the effort to make the most profit for a company and the upper management. Often injuries and poverty result from poor working conditions and low wages. In many areas of the world, child labor is accepted and used widely. This spread of capitalism can also destroy cultures. As American products spread around the world, they often replace indigenous forms of entertainment and enjoyment. While this can sometimes be positive, the decimation of these cultures does not work to the benefit of populations outside of the United States. Barber is not alone in making the connection between democracy and capitalism. Carl Cohen notes the frequently made argument that, “economic democracy is the condition of any genuine democracy,” meaning that capitalism and a free market economy are necessary for democracy.26 Carter and Stokes write, “Parliamentary multi-party democracy is now widely accepted as the dominant expression of the democratic ideal in most parts of the world. This historical transformation has occurred alongside the ostensible ascendancy of capitalism over state socialism and the declining influence of Marxist ideas.”27 Another way that democracy is corrupting is that it causes individuals to be used as means to an end. Individuals must push others to decisions in order to reach a majority, when they are ultimately only looking out for their own good. This, according to Kant, is a violation of, “a moral conception of the person” as a, “free and equal rational being, recognized as an autonomous member of the kingdom of ends.” He argues, “Moral persons are autonomous 159

and free to choose, and are thus ends in themselves. The categorical imperative provides a rule of respect for human freedom, that is, respect for the right of all persons to determine their own ends, which is clearly expressed in the formulation known as the principle of humanity.”28 Because it requires a majority to get anything passed, a democracy encourages its citizens to view others simply as a vote. The idea becomes to gather a large enough number of supporters, instead of focusing on the good of the political community. Given the connection of democracy to capitalism and the problems capitalism causes, it is understandable why democracies fail. Democracy also brings along a desire to use others for gain, denying them their humanity. With these negative associations, democracy should be rejected. DEMOCRACY IS BASED ON CITIZENSHIP A democracy, at its base, is founded on the concept of citizenship. That is, members of a certain group (usually a country or city) get together to make decisions through a vote. Only citizens, however, get that right to vote. Therefore, a democracy dictates that membership requirements be outlined and enforced for the citizens to make decisions. While in theory this may not sound problematic, in practice it certainly is. The history of the United States provides great examples as to what happens when citizenship requirements are in place. First, only white men who owned property were allowed to vote. Over centuries, the limits of property ownership, race, and sex were eliminated. However, one must still be a citizen to vote in the United States. That means you must have lived in the country for a certain period of time, have legal residence, and have passed a citizenship test. Citizenship requirements such as banning women or African-Americans from voting are obviously problematic. However, the voting restrictions based on citizenship that exist now are problematic as well, though probably not as recognized. Citizenship requirements set up standards for legitimacy, indicating that if you are not a legal citizen, you are not entitled to make decisions about the country you live in. Often the process of gaining citizenship can be flawed or downright corrupt, and therefore innocent people are denied participation in the process of making decisions. The distinction also creates a hierarchy, whereby those who are citizens are considered more important and worthy than those who are not. This increased worth is enforced by bestowing on those individuals the right to vote. Such citizenship requirements also produce worse decisions. First, many groups who are effected by governmental policies are not represented in the decision-making process. Illegal immigrants, for instance, or those awaiting their citizenship legally, do not get to vote. Yet, legislation and policies effect their lives specifically. If a policy is to be created regarding the process of attaining citizenship, immigrants should get to voice their opinions. Similarly, health care and education policies effect these individuals as well as the rest of the public, yet they are denied an ability to vote. Additionally, the validity of votes and decisions is lessened when the entirety of the population is not allowed to participate. Democracy bases its appeal on decisions made by and for the people. However, when large portions of “the people” are left out of the entire process, the decisions are made for them. Thus, like a totalitarian government, policies are imposed as opposed to chosen by the population. This not only takes away the rationale that is offered for democracy, but undermines the legitimacy of the decisions reached by democratic governments. Finally, this citizenship process creates more in-groups and out-groups. It allows a hierarchy to be entrenched and breeds resentment. Eventually, those who are denied a voice may choose to take action in the only venue left open to them: revolution. Denied a way to protest in a vote or through the decision-making process, individuals would turn to violence and resistance in an attempt to have their voices recognized and legitimized. In such instances, stability would be destroyed and the entirety of the political system would be in jeopardy. It would be far superior to create an inclusive, equalizing society instead of allowing a political system which creates citizenship and according hierarchies. SUMMARY 160

While the argument for democracy is often persuasive, both democracy in theory and in practice has many weaknesses. The majority rule that democracies produce denies the voices and opinions of the minorities. A democracy can also easily be abused and used as justification for a more authoritarian government. A democracy puts decision-making in the hands of uneducated masses instead of power in the hands of experts who can make the best decisions for the population. Practically speaking, democracy is infeasible in its direct form in the modern world. The close association with capitalism and dehumanization merits a rejection of democracy. Finally, the necessity of citizenship in establishing democracies makes them undesirable. Thus, at multiple levels, a democratic system of government is not most beneficial. ______________________________ 1 Webster’s II New Riverside Pocket Dictionary. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1991, pg. 74. 2 Budge, Ian. budge://the.new.challenge.of.direct.democracy/. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996, pg. 1. 3 Dahl, Robert A. Democracy and its Critics. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989, pg. 135. 4 Ibid, pg. 146. 5 Ibid, pg. 147. 6 Ibid, pg. 149. 7 Ibid, pg. 151. 8 Tingsten, Herbert Lars Gustaf. The Problem of Democracy. New York: The Bedminster Press, 1965, pg. 83. 9 Ibid, pg. 83. 10 Ibid, pg. 84. 11 Ibid, pg. 86. 12 Budge, Ian. budge://the.new.challenge.of.direct.democracy/. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996, pg. 74. 13 Ibid, pg. 74. 14 Ibid, pg. 60. 15 Carter, April and Geoffrey Stokes. Liberal Democracy and its Critics. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998, pg. 25. 16 Ibid, pg. 25. 17 Cohen, Carl. Democracy. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1971, pg. 109. 18 Ibid, pg. 109. 19 Ibid, pg. 110. 20 Ibid, pg. 100. 21 Ibid, pg. 277. 22 Padover, Saul K. Thomas Jefferson on Democracy. New York: Mentor Books, 1939, pg. 30. 23 Hayden, Patrick. John Rawls: Towards a Just World Order. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2002, pg. 75. 24 Hirst, Paul and Sunil Khilnani. Reinventing Democracy. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1996, pg. 152. 25 Ibid, pg. 153. 26 Cohen, Carl. Democracy. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1971, pg. 109. 27 Carter, April and Geoffrey Stokes. Liberal Democracy and its Critics. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998, pg. 1. 28 Hayden, Patrick. John Rawls: Towards a Just World Order. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2002, pg. 142.

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THE PROBLEM OF MAJORITY RULE 1. DEMOCRACY SUBORDINATES MARGINALIZED POLITICAL OPINIONS. Slavoj Zizek. Senior Researcher at the Institute for Social Studies, Ljubljana, Slovenia. 2003. “Too Much Democracy?” www.lacan.com. Updated April 14, 2004. NP. "Democracy" is not merely the "power of, by, and for the people," it is not enough just to claim that, in democracy, the will and the interests (the two in no way automatically coincide) of the large majority determine the state decisions. Democracy - in the way this term is used today - concerns, above all, formal legalism: its minimal definition is the unconditional adherence to a certain set of formal rules which guarantee that antagonisms are fully absorbed into the agonistic game. "Democracy" means that, whatever electoral manipulation took place, every political agent will unconditionally respect the results. In this sense, the US presidential elections of 2000 were effectively "democratic": in spite of obvious electoral manipulations, and of the patent meaninglessness of the fact that a couple hundred of Florida voices will decide who will be the president, the Democratic candidate accepted his defeat. In the weeks of uncertainty after the elections, Bill Clinton made an appropriate acerbic comment: "The American people have spoken; we just don't know what they said." This comment should be taken more seriously than it was meant: even now, we don't know it - and, maybe, because there was no substantial "message" behind the result at all. This is the sense in which one should render problematic democracy: why should the Left always and unconditionally respect the formal democratic "rules of the game?” Why should it not, in some circumstances, at least, put in question the legitimacy of the outcome of a formal democratic procedure? 2. DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRACY ENTRENCHES THE SUBORDINATION OF DISEMPOWERED GROUPS Lynn Sanders, Political Science Professor. Political Theory. June 1997, pg. 349. If we assume that deliberation cannot proceed without the realization of mutual respect, and deliberation appears to be proceeding, we may even mistakenly decide that conditions of mutual respect have been achieved by deliberators. In this way, taking deliberation as a signal of democratic practice paradoxically works undemocratically, discrediting on seemingly democratic grounds the views of those who are less likely to present their arguments in ways that we recognize as characteristically deliberative. In our political culture, these citizens are likely to be those who are already underrepresented in formal political institutions and who are systematically materially disadvantaged, namely women; racial minorities, especially Blacks; and poorer people.

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DEMOCRACY DESTROYS EXPERT DECISION MAKING 1. DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRACY HINDERS COLLECTIVE POLITICAL ACTION James Gardner, Professor of Law. Tennessee Law Review Association, Winter 1996, pg. 447. Second, citizens of a deliberative democracy are likely to be uncooperative and obstructionistic. Many of the personal benefits of democracy flow, as we have seen, from the sense of self-mastery that citizens gain when they have an opportunity to participate meaningfully in the governmental processes that affect their lives. Because deliberative democracy is so heavily weighted toward protecting minorities, and because it so strongly emphasizes consensus, just about the only way for citizens to feel like they are actually influencing the process of collective decision making is to exercise a veto. Moreover, since deliberative democracy indirectly teaches minorities the legitimacy of maintaining the integrity of group or individual identity against outside pressures for change, people who believe that they are in the minority are especially likely to dig in their heels, further obstructing the possibility of collective political action. 2. DEMOCRACY SHIFTS DECISIONS FROM INDIVIDUALS TO CAPITALIST INSTITUTIONS Slavoj Zizek. Senior Researcher at the Institute for Social Studies, Ljubljana, Slovenia. “Too Much Democracy?” www.lacan.com 2003. Accessed April 14, 2004. NP. As for the US themselves, Zakaria's diagnosis is that "America is increasingly embracing a simple-minded populism that values popularity and openness as the key measures of legitimacy. /.../ The result is a deep imbalance in the American system, more democracy but less liberty." The remedy is thus to counteract this excessive "democratization of democracy" (or "deMOREcracy") by delegating more power to impartial experts insulated from the democratic fray, like the independent central banks. Such a diagnosis cannot but provoke an ironic laughter: today, in the alleged "overdemocratization," the US and the UK started a war on Iraq against the will of the majority of their own populations, not to mention the international community. And are we not all the time witnessing the imposition of key decisions concerning global economy (trade agreements, etc.) by "impartial" bodies exempted from democratic control? Is the idea that, in our post-ideological era, economy should be de-politicized and run by experts, today not a commonplace shared by all participants? Even more fundamentally, is it not ridiculous to complain about "overdemocratization" in a time when the key economic and geopolitic decisions are as a rule not an issue in elections: for at least three decades, what Zakaria demands is already a fact. What we are effectively witnessing today is a split into ideological life-style issues where fierce debates rage and choices are solicited (abortion, gay marriages, etc.), and the basic economic policy which is presented as a depoliticized domain of expert decisions - the proliferation of "overdemocracy" with the "excesses" or affirmative action, the "culture of complaint," and the demands for financial and other restitutions of victims, is ultimately the front whose back side is the silent weaving of the economic logic.

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THE TERM DEMOCRACY IS OPEN TO ABUSE

1. DEMOCRACY IS USED TO MANIPULATE AND CONTROL Slavoj Zizek. Senior Researcher at the Institute for Social Studies, Ljubljana, Slovenia. “Too Much Democracy?” www.lacan.com 2003. Accessed April 14, 2004. NP. In The Future of Freedom, Fareed Zakaria, Bush's favored columnist, locates the threat to freedom in "overdoing democracy," i.e., in the rise of "illiberal democracy at home and abroad" (the books subtitle). He draws the lesson that democracy can only "catch on" in economically developed countries: if the developing countries are "prematurely democratized," the result is a populism which ends in economic catastrophe and political despotism no wonder that today's economically most successful Third World countries (Taiwan, South Korea, Chile) embraced full democracy only after a period of authoritarian rule. The immediate lessons for Iraq is clear and unambiguous: yes, the US should bring democracy to Iraq, but not impose it immediately - there should first be a period of five or so years in which a benevolently-authoritarian US dominated regime would create proper conditions for the effective functioning of democracy... We know now what bringing democracy means: it means that the US and its "willing partners" impose themselves as the ultimate judges who decide if a country is ripe for democracy. 2. DEMOCRACY CAN BE USED TO DECREASE FREEDOM Slavoj Zizek. Senior Researcher at the Institute for Social Studies, Ljubljana, Slovenia. “Too Much Democracy?” www.lacan.com 2003. Accessed April 14, 2004. NP. Interestingly enough, there is at least one case in which formal democrats themselves (or, at least, a substantial part of them) would tolerate the suspension of democracy: what if the formally free elections are won by an antidemocratic party whose platform promises the abolition of formal democracy? (This did happen, among other places, in Algeria a couple of years ago, and the situation is similar in today's Pakistan.) In such a case, many a democrat would concede that the people was not yet "mature" enough to be allowed democracy, and that some kind of enlightened despotism whose aim will be to educate the majority into proper democrats is preferable.

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DEMOCRACY IN THE MODERN WORLD IS INFEASABLE 1. DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRACY FOSTERS TYRANNY AND IS INEFFECTIVE James Gardner, Professor of Law. Tennessee Law Review Association. Winter 1996, pg. 447. The deficiencies of deliberative democracy are even better illustrated by examining the kind of citizens it is likely to constitute. Deliberative democracy theorists seem to think that these citizens will be generous, open-minded and self- sacrificing. For the reasons set out in the previous section, I think it far more likely that deliberative democracy would constitute citizens who are ineffectual, tyrannical, obstructionist, and in general poorly suited for the kind of life demanded of citizens in a large, modern republic. First, citizens of a deliberative democracy are likely to live in a constant state of frustration because they are unable to live up to deliberative democracy's unrelenting demands of openness, good faith, and authenticity in dialogue. Every debate cut off in heated argument or terminated short of agreement is a failure, and deliberative democracy implies that the failure is one of character because it likely results from laziness and insufficient openness. 2. DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRACY IS UNTENABLE: CITIZENS WILL BE UNWILLING TO INVEST THE RESOURCES NECESSARY FOR DELIBERATION Christopher Schroeder, Professor of Law and Public Policy Studies, Law and Contemporary Problems. Summer 2002, pg. 118. In the case of individuals choosing between deliberative and private pursuits, while there is good evidence that citizens will invest some resources in participating in public affairs, that evidence comes nowhere near suggesting they will invest resources of the magnitude deliberative theory demands. The behavior necessary to satisfy the demands of deliberation stands quite outside anything that can be achieved, just as deliberative theorists concede. While conceding this reality, though, they ignore its implications. It is worth a moment to reflect on both the reality and the implications.

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The Denial Of Death What do the war rituals of indigenous peoples, the proliferation of gyms in major cities, nanotechnology and professional wrestling have in common? Some psychologists say that they represent a universal human urge to conquer death. By performing intricate ceremonies, building up our bodies, and advancing technological "fixes," some argue, we contribute to a culture that fundamentally denies the undeniable - our mortality. Okay, I made up the professional wrestling part. Though I think it is an excellent example of the theories of Ernest Becker, the Pulitzer Prize winning author, Becker died in 1974 - the year I was born, and before anyone could smell what the Rock was cookin'. THE DENIAL OF DEATH was the book that earned Becker the most hallowed of writing prizes, but it wasn't his only exploration into what drives human motivation. He was interested in human evil, and how it comes about. For those of you who don't want to read the rest of essay, here's the upshot: Becker, a noted cultural anthropologist, believed that all people want to deny their own death - to completely repress the notion that one day they will stop breathing and cease to exist. They do so in all cultures through a remarkably similar set of rituals, Becker notes. To some extent, this is psychologically necessary. We couldn't function if we were thinking, for every minute of every day, how we were going to die. But on another level, this way of looking at things creates many negative psychological consequences. For example, if certain cultures perform death-conquering rituals, it gives them the feeling of superiority over other cultures. Becker uses this argument, which I'll get into in greater detail below, to link the fear of death with the rise of religious fundamentalist movements worldwide and social conflict generally. Becker is not the only psychologist to declare the fear of death as the essence of many human mental problems. Viktor E. Frankl was another - and though their theories are very different, they share common elements and themes. Briefly, they are: that all human beings hope their lives have meaning, and that trying to create meaning occupies our minds even at times when we don't realize it; that our efforts to deny the reality of our own death are ultimately fruitless, and just give rise to insecurity, pain and ultimately, evil. I've always thought that psychological arguments got short shrift in debate. It wasn't until the rise of the policy debate critique that we even heard psychological principles used in rounds on a regular basis. However you feel about the "fiat is imaginary" argument, it at least got people to think about the impact what goes in rounds has on our minds. The arguments I'm about to discuss don't deal with psychology in the same way: that is, they don't make claims related to in-round impacts per se. They can, of course, be used in philosophical critiques, which I do advise. But they do get at some questions which are pretty fundamental in the lives of every human: we are all going to die - so what is the proper way to live life before we do, and how do we prepare for dealing with the inevitable? VIKTOR FRANKL: ANOTHER PROMINENT TAKE ON DEATH-DENIAL If you were to ask anyone who would be best to talk about what it's like to live every day in the shadow of death, most people would answer quickly: a Holocaust survivor. Who better to relate the near-death experience than someone who survived the defining horror of the twentieth century? Well, possibly someone who was a professional psychotherapist before being sent to the camps. Viktor E. Frankl, a brilliant post-Freudian psychotherapist, was rounded up with other Jews and taken to the Nazi concentration camps. There, he lost family. Under the oppressive conditions, it would have been easy to lose one's mind. But Frankl began writing secretly, keeping his manuscript from the guards. For him, with the loss of his family and the world around him crumbling, meaning could be found in his work.

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That's what Frankl ultimately decided was the most important thing for humans: a meaning for their lives. For him, it was helping others through psychotherapy. Who knows what it is for you? Probably just you yourself - but what's important, according to Frankl, is that you know what it is. The principle he cites is this: "he who has a why to live can bear almost any how." That's the thesis he advances during his classic MAN'S SEARCH FOR MEANING. Coming from someone who survived a Nazi death camp during World War II, the claim becomes all the more plausible. WHAT WE CAN CONTROL AND WHAT WE CAN'T Frankl used the insights he gathered in the death camps to found an entirely new school of psychological research, which he called logotherapy. Sometimes, his thought is called "existential psychology," and it also seems to borrow some insights from Zen Buddhism. I think this bit of Frankl's thought will give you some sense of why the reference to existentialism is valid: he says that life can throw just about anything at you, but the only thing you can determine is how you respond to it. In particular - and another argument where its source lends it massive credibility - Frankl says that suffering can be a great teacher. People who have suffered great losses possess a deep understanding of the world that others who skate through life simply never will. His is not to say that suffering is good necessarily - but we all will experience hardship in this life, albeit in varying degrees. The task, then, is to accept the inevitable, and choose to respond to it in the best and most profitable way we can. Similarly, Frankl says, every person dies. But not every person possesses a life that can be truly said to have meaning. That's up to us, and I'll discuss later what its debate applications are.

THE HERO SYSTEM AND OUR DESIRE FOR IMMORTALITY I should point out that the notion of humans desiring immortality is not new. When a woman asked Socrates "What is love?" he is said to have replied, "A desire for immortality." Ernest Becker expanded on that statement, devoting a series of books to the topic. He examines religion and ritual in ancient and modern societies, and found that most of the rituals were designed - literally or metaphorically - to conquer death. The Egyptians had well-documented elaborate practices designed to ensure they made it to the afterlife. Modern religion mirrors these practices, to a lesser extent. But even atheistic societies and cultures had this same characteristic: sometimes the rituals were games or tests, sometimes body manipulation - tattooing, piercing, and the like. It's different for every nation or tribe, and even natural. THE DENIAL OF DEATH goes into great detail about what causes this psychological process. There's one problem, though. If my culture has one ritual (or God) and your culture has another ritual (or God), we have two competing immortality systems. Some enlightened cultures realized that the truth of one system didn't discount the truth of another - but as we all know, the world isn't made up solely of enlightened cultures. That's what gives rise to religious fundamentalism, or even simple tension between two individual people. If you have an immortality system that is different from mine, one must be false. If mine is false, I have no immortality system. If I have no immortality system, my life has no meaning and I fall victim to the spectre of death. Therefore, I must conquer your immortality system. That means converting you, or killing you and all those who look, act and believe like you. This, Becker argues, is the essential motivation behind the Crusades as well as the Nazi Holocaust. His work culminates in ESCAPE FROM EVIL, where Becker argues that "man's natural and inevitable urge to deny mortality and achieve a heroic self-image are the root causes of human evil." Naturally, these ritual systems we speak of evolve. Though we are still a religious society, most of the ritual and mysticism has been drained out of everyday life. Even though Becker died in the 1970s, he recognized that there was a new universal power ideology money - on the horizon. This serves to point out that there are many ways to structure an immortality system. In the beginning, we saw mostly physical tests of strength - war rituals, etc. We see this today in high school sports, especially football. But that has evolved over the centuries, and different cultures often evolved multiple hero systems. Sometimes people 167

were valued for their physical prowess, sometime for their mental skills or eloquence, depending on what circles they ran in. I am quoting the following at length for two reasons: the first is it sums up nicely Becker's reasoning about the process of death denial. The second is I think it will help debaters recognize why so many people take debate so seriously. "And so Rank could say, 'Every conflict for the truth is in the last analysis just the same old struggle for ... immortality.' If anyone doubts this, let him try to explain in any other way the life-and-death viciousness of ideological disputes. Each person nourishes his immortality in the ideology of self-perpetuation to which he gives his allegiance; this gives the only abiding significance it can have. No wonder men go into a rage over fine points of belief: if your adversary wins the argument about truth, you die. Your immortality system has been shown to be fallible, your life becomes fallible." (Ernest Becker, ESCAPE FROM EVIL, p. 64) High school football is a hero system that symbolically promises immortality, and so is high school and college debate. Are there any social conflicts between the jocks at your school and the debaters? This is just a small manifestation of the kind of social conflicts Becker is identifying. Whenever an athlete beats up another kid, or whenever a couple of debaters make fun of how stupid the football players are, they are each exerting their respective hero systems. I hope by now it is apparent that I am not crazy when I suggest that professional wrestling fits right into this mold. You have your good guy (babyface) and your bad guy (heel), and they fight. One of them wins, and the result teaches us lessons. Wrestling is actually very similar to the morality plays prevalent in medieval England and Puritan America - the only things different are the lessons. The immortality system's basic framework has been in place for millennia. But recent developments have given us new manifestations of death-denial, which could have profound implications for society and for debate. WHAT ARE THE MANIFESTATIONS OF THE DENIAL OF DEATH? In the new era, manifestations of the denial of death are many and varied. We already mentioned the various examples of competing hero systems at work in the world. But there are some recent developments in the art of pushing mortality to the background. Most of them center around modern technology, and how its innovations promise a world without death. Some relatively benign examples include America's fitness obsession, where everyone belongs to a gym, and nutrition science. But there are other, spookier ways that people (mostly scientists) are attempting to push death away with a sharp stick. Take cryogenics, also known as cryonics, for example. If you get sick, they're looking for a way to freeze you until they can cure you. Well, actually, probably not you - probably someone very, very rich. But you get the idea. Or take the super technologists, like K. Erik Drexler and Frank Tipler. Drexler is famous as the father of nanotechnology, while Tipler is less famous, but gained a small measure of renown for THE PHYSICS OF IMMORTALITY. Drexler is arguing that nanomachines - tiny machines that can self-replicate - will ultimately being able to recreate genetic material from dead organisms, thus raising the possibility of reviving endangered species. Tipler's book is perhaps the ultimate example of death denial, though. He makes the serious case that one day, people will be able to download their consciousness - their brain, their personality, everything that makes them onto silicon-based brains, effectively preserving peoples' minds for all eternity. Now, no one wants to die - but doesn't this represent an irrational hope at best, a push toward monstrosity at worst? Haven't these people ever read Mary Shelley's FRANKENSTEIN, as we were all forced to do in high school, and again in college? 168

The point of Becker's intellectual successors in responding to this sort of thing hinges on the fact that we are biological entities with consciousness. To remove one from the other probably removes the essence of humanity. If we have to do that, it probably isn't worth immortality. HOW TO WORK AGAINST THE PROBLEM Both Frankl and Becker, despite their differing views of the fear of death, agree than an acceptance of our ultimate mortality is a necessary precondition to working against the unhealthy fear of death. Frankl takes a very Zen viewpoint - that human understanding of the issues involved is the crucial point. And if we simply realize what it is we're after - meaning - then we will be able to pursue it in a successful and psychologically healthy manner. Becker extends it a step farther, saying that people must learn to almost embrace death. He delineates between a "positive faith" and belief in the afterlife, and a nasty, exclusionist mentality that pervades the denial of death. Sad to say, Becker's last suggestion on the subject - understandable given his concerns about the rising money orthodoxy in the world - was Marxism, which he wrote "has already had an enormous influence for human survival," giving it credit for "(stopping) Hitler in Russia," and eliminating "the gratuitous and age-old miseries of the most numerous people on Earth." Needless to say, it's not likely that's going to come around again. DEBATE MANIFESTATIONS OF THE DENIAL OF DEATH The fear of death argument can be used well as a critique, or as a value objection in Lincoln Douglas Debate. While Becker's and Frankl's arguments are distinct, is possible to use them in the same critique: probably a criticism of using technological fixes to prolong life. Additionally, the Frankl argument can be used to illuminate the value of suffering. A close relative of the "crisis is good because it spawns an ethic" argument, the suffering argument can point out that avoiding every negative situation is probably not the way to go. From most sources, this might come off as a repugnant position - but coming from a Holocaust survivor, it holds a lot of sway. Either way, I strongly suggest that you read THE DENIAL OF DEATH, ESCAPE FOR EVIL and MAN'S SEARCH FOR MEANING. Besides providing an opportunity for creative argument, the books get to the bottom of that most mysterious place: the human mind.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Ernest Becker, THE BIRTH AND DEATH OF MEANING: A PERSPECTIVE IN PSYCHIATRY AND ANTHROPOLOGY, New York: The Free Press, 1962. Ernest Becker, THE REVOLUTION IN PSYCHIATRY: THE NEW UNDERSTANDING OF MAN, New York: The Free Press, 1964. Ernest Becker, BEYOND ALIENATION: A PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION FOR THE CRISIS OF DEMOCRACY, New York: George Brazillier, 1967. Ernest Becker, STRUCTURE OF EVIL: AN ESSAY ON THE UNIFICATION OF THE SCIENCE OF MAN, New York: George Brazillier, 1968. Ernest Becker, LOST SCIENCE OF MAN, New York: George Brazillier, 1971. Ernest Becker, THE BIRTH AND DEATH OF MEANING: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY PERSPECTIVE ON THE PROBLEM OF MAN, New York: The Free Press, 1971. Ernest Becker, THE DENIAL OF DEATH, New York: The Free Press, 1973. Ernest Becker, ESCAPE FROM EVIL, New York: The Free Press, 1975. Ron Evans, THE CREATIVE MYTH AND THE COSMIC HERO: TEXT AND CONTEXT IN ERNEST BECKER'S THE DENIAL OF DEATH, New York: Peter Lang, 1992. Viktor Frankl, MAN'S SEARCH FOR MEANING, New York: Washington Square Press, 1984. R. May, EXISTENTIAL PSYCHOLOGY: SECOND EDITION, New York: Random House, 1984. Michael Alan Kagan, EDUCATING HEROES: THE IMPLICATIONS OF ERNEST BECKER'S DEPTH PSYCHOLOGY OF EDUCATION FOR PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION, Durango, CO: Hollowbrook Publishing, 1994. Sam Keen, "A Conversation with Ernest Becker". PSYCHOLOGY TODAY, April 1974, p. 71-80. Sally A. Kenel, Mortal Gods: ERNEST BECKER AND FUNDAMENTAL THEOLOGY, Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1984. Jaron Lanier, "Death: the Skeleton Key of Consciousness Studies?" JOURNAL OF CONSCIOUSNESS STUDIES, Vol. 4, No. 2, 1997, p. 181. Stephen W. Martin, DECOMPOSING MODERNITY: ERNEST BECKER'S IMAGES OF HUMANITY AT THE END OF AN AGE, Lanham MD: University Press of America, 1997.

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DENIAL OF DEATH HAS SERIOUS CONSEQUENCES 1. THE CONSEQUENCES OF DENIAL OF DEATH ARE DISASTROUS Glenn Hughes, University of Washington Professor, ERNEST BECKER FOUNDATION NEWSLETTER, January 1998, p. 2. This psychological denial of death, Becker claims, is one of the most basic drives in individual behavior, and is reflected throughout human culture. Indeed, one of the main functions of culture, according to Becker, is to help us successfully avoid awareness of our mortality. That suppression of awareness plays a crucial role in keeping people functioning - if we were constantly aware of our fragility, of the nothingness we are a split second away from at all times, we'd go nuts. And how does culture perform this crucial function? By making us feel certain that we, or realities we are part of, are permanent, invulnerable, eternal. And in Becker's view, some of the personal and social consequences of this are disastrous. 2. DENIAL OF DEATH IS THE ROOT OF BIAS AND HATE Glenn Hughes, University of Washington Professor, ERNEST BECKER FOUNDATION NEWSLETTER, January 1998, p. 2. First, at the personal level, by ignoring our mortality and vulnerability we build up an unreal sense of self, and we act out of a false sense of who and what we are. Second, as members of society, we tend to identify with one or another "immortality system" (as Becker calls it). That is, we identify with a religious group, or a political group, or engage in some kind of cultural activity, or adopt a certain culturally sanctioned viewpoint, that we invest with ultimate meaning, and to which we ascribe absolute and permanent truth. This inflates us with a sense of invulnerable righteousness. And then, we have to protect ourselves against the exposure of our absolute truth being just one more mortality-denying system among others, which we can only do by insisting that all other absolute truths are false. So we attack and degrade - preferably kill - the adherents of different mortality-denying-absolute-truth systems. So the Protestants kill the Catholics; the Muslims vilify the Christians and vice versa; upholders of the American way of life denounce Communists; the Communist Khmer Rouge slaughters all the intellectuals in Cambodia; the Spanish Inquisition tortures heretics; and all good students of the Enlightenment demonize religion as the source of all evil. The list could go on and on. 3. POLITICAL AND SOCIAL CONFLICTS WILL BE DETERMINED BY DEATH DENIAL Jaron Lanier, Department of Computer Science, Columbia University, JOURNAL OF CONSCIOUSNESS STUDIES, Vol. 4, No. 2, 1997, p. 181. Is it a coincidence that religious fundamentalism is experiencing a resurgence at just the time that science is starting to touch some of the most intimate aspects of human identity? Today's social conflicts are more likely to be about technologies that challenge our definition of death, such as abortion, than about the distribution of wealth. Although the consciousness community is obscure in the larger scheme of world events, I believe we are on the front lines of a fundamental conflict. The political and social future will be largely determined by the provisional outcomes of conflicts over what are essentially popularized variants of the hard problem.

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INDIVIDUALS MUST ACCEPT MORTALITY TO CONQUER FEAR OF DEATH 1. ACCEPTANCE OF DEATH IS ONLY WAY TO SOLVE DENIAL OF DEATH Glenn Hughes, University of Washington Professor, ERNEST BECKER FOUNDATION NEWSLETTER, January 1998, p. 2. Above all, Becker says, adopting a phrase from Luther, you must be able to "...taste death with the lips of your living body [so] that you can know emotionally that you are a creature who will die." Then quoting William James (who is himself quoting the mystic Jacob Boehme), Becker further describes this "tasting" of death as a "passage into nothing, [a passage in which] a critical point must usually be passed, a corner turned within one." Thus in this process of self-realization, Becker writes, the self is "brought down to nothing." For what purpose? So that the process of what Becker calls "self-transcendence" may begin. 2. GOOD FAITH CAN COUNTERACT NEGATIVE IMMORTALITY SYSTEMS Glenn Hughes, University of Washington Professor, ERNEST BECKER FOUNDATION NEWSLETTER, January 1998, p. 2. And he describes the process of self-transcendence this way: "Man breaks through the bounds of merely cultural heroism; he destroys the character lie that had him perform as a hero in the everyday social scheme of things; and by doing so he opens himself up to infinity, to the possibility of cosmic heroism ... He links his secret inner self, his authentic talent, his deepest feelings of uniqueness ... to the very ground of creation. Out of the ruins of the broken cultural self there remains the mystery of the private, invisible, inner self which yearned for ultimate significance. ...This invisible mystery at the heart of [the] creature now attains cosmic significance by affirming its connection with the invisible mystery at the heart of creation. "This," he concludes, "is the meaning of faith." Faith is the belief that despite one's "insignificance, weakness, death, one's existence has meaning in some ultimate sense because it exists within an eternal and infinite scheme of things brought about and maintained to some kind of design by some creative force." This, then, is what we might call good faith, not a flight into some immortality system. 3. DENIAL OF DEATH IS NOT INEVITABLE Glenn Hughes, University of Washington Professor, ERNEST BECKER FOUNDATION NEWSLETTER, January 1998, p. 2. But then again: is this true for every person with a passionate commitment to a meaning that endures? Are there Buddhists or Christians, for example, whose convictions and commitments do not constitute an evasion of mortality-who on the contrary face up to and embrace their mortality? In The Denial of Death, Becker tells us that there certainly are such people. In the fifth chapter, titled "The Psychoanalyst Kierkegaard," Becker applauds Kierkegaard's portrayal of the person who does not lie about the human condition, who breaks away from the cultural network of lies that ward off the awareness of mortality, and who faces the precariousness and fragility of existence - with inevitable anxiety. Becker praises these people for their courageous "destruction of...emotional character armor." Such a courageous and frightening passage to honesty is symbolized in the literary figure of King Lear: through the terror of being stripped of all his illusions of invulnerability, he comes finally to a profound if tragic reconciliation with reality. As for actual cultural representatives, he mentions Zen Buddhists, but "in fact," he writes, it is a process undergone by "self-realized men in any epoch." Becker affirms, then, that it is possible to face up to the human situation. The denial of death is not inevitable.

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SCIENCE CAN SOLVE IMPACTS OF DEATH AND FEAR OF DEATH 1. WE CAN SOLVE THE IMPACTS OF DEATH THROUGH SCIENCE Frank Tipler, Professor of Physics at Tulane University, THE PHYSICS OF IMMORTALITY: MODERN COSMOLOGY, GOD, AND THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD, 1995, p. 269. This exponentially increasing wealth allows life in the far future the power to resurrect us all and, furthermore, allows the Omega Point to share wealth in such a way that our share is an ever decreasing percentage of the whole, yet nevertheless our share also diverges to plus infinity. Any cosmology with progress to infinity will necessarily end in God. Further, the hope of eternal worldly progress and the hope of individual survival beyond the grave turn out to be the same. Far from being polar opposites, these two hopes require each other: one cannot have one without the other. The Omega Point is truly the God of Hope: "O death, where is thy death? O grave, where is thy victory?" (I Corinthians 15:55) 2. HUMANS FIND MORE MEANING WITH OMEGA POINT EXPLANATION Frank Tipler, Professor of Physics at Tulane University, THE PHYSICS OF IMMORTALITY: MODERN COSMOLOGY, GOD, AND THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD, 1995, p. 82. Human beings have learned how to find happiness even in the most appalling circumstances. But they would be happier knowing that one day there would be better conditions, that the universe was not in point of fact absurd, but rather full of meaning. Sisyphus would be happier knowing his toil served some purpose, and that one day he would be free to climb still higher mountains, climb all the way to God himself. 3. PEOPLE WILL FIND MORE MEANING FOR THEIR LIVES WITH OMEGA THEORY Frank Tipler, Professor of Physics at Tulane University, THE PHYSICS OF IMMORTALITY: MODERN COSMOLOGY, GOD, AND THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD, 1995, p. 82. People can find meaning in their lives even believing that they, their children and all their descendants will eventually die, never to rise again. But they would find more meaning in their lives if they believed what the Omega Point Theory claims to be the case, namely that one day they and their children will rise from the dead, never to die again. They would find more meaning in their lives if they believed that the Eternal Return is not true. And it is fact not true, as I shall show below. 4. SCIENCE CAN STOP THE FEAR OF DEATH, JUST AS RELIGION ONCE DID Frank Tipler, Professor of Physics at Tulane University, THE PHYSICS OF IMMORTALITY: MODERN COSMOLOGY, GOD, AND THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD, 1995, p. 338. The Omega Point Theory allows the key concepts of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition now to be modern physics concepts: theology is nothing but physical cosmology based on the assumption that life as a whole is immortal. A consequence of this assumption is the resurrection of everyone who has ever lived to eternal life. Physics has now absorbed theology; the divorce between science and religion, between reason and emotion, is over. I began this book with an assertion on the pointlessness of the universe by Steven Weinberg. He repeats this in his latest book, DREAMS OF A FINAL THEORY, and goes on to say " ... I do not think for a minute that science will ever provide the consolations that have been offered by religion in facing death." I disagree. Science can now offer precisely the consolations in facing death that religion once offered.

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SCIENCE SHOWS ETERNAL LIFE IS POSSIBLE 1. LIFE MEANS INFORMATION PROCESSING, AS IN A COMPUTER PROGRAM Frank Tipler, Professor of Physics at Tulane University, THE PHYSICS OF IMMORTALITY: MODERN COSMOLOGY, GOD, AND THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD, 1995, p. 124. In order to investigate whether life can continue to exist forever, I shall need to define "life" in physics language. I claim that a "living being" is any entity which codes information coded being preserved by natural selection. Thus "life" is a form of information processing, and the human mind - and the human soul - is a very complex computer program. 2. PHYSICS CAN PROVE THAT ETERNAL LIFE CAN HAPPEN Frank Tipler, Professor of Physics at Tulane University, THE PHYSICS OF IMMORTALITY: MODERN COSMOLOGY, GOD, AND THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD, 1995, p. 135. Let us now consider whether the laws of physics will permit life/information processing to continue forever. John von Neumann and others have shown that information processing (more precisely, the irreversible storage of information) is constrained by the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics. Thus the storage of a bit information requires the expenditure of a definite minimum of information of available energy, this amount being proportional to the temperature. This means it is possible to process and store an infinite amount of energy between now and the final state of the universe only if the time integral of P/T is infinite, where P is the power used in the computation, and T is the temperature. Thus the laws of thermodynamics will permit an infinite amount of information processing in the future, provided there is sufficient available energy at all future times. 3. SCIENTIFIC REDUCTIONISM ALLOWS US TO INTEGRATE RELIGION AND SCIENCE Frank Tipler, Professor of Physics at Tulane University, THE PHYSICS OF IMMORTALITY: MODERN COSMOLOGY, GOD, AND THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD, 1995, p. xiv. Our arrogance stems from the reductionist perception that ours is the ultimate science, and from our undoubted achievements over the past few centuries. What we promise, we generally deliver. Whatever one thinks of social significance of the nuclear bomb, there is no doubt that it works. Solar eclipses occur exactly when we predict they will. As one who has spent his entire life as a physicist or as a physicist manque, I not surprisingly share this arrogance. In my previous publications on religion and physics, I have attempted to conceal this arrogance (not very successfully). In this book, however, I have not bothered, mainly because such concealment in the past has prevented me from presenting the strongest case for reductionism. And reductionism is true. Furthermore, accepting reductionism allows one to integrate fully religion and science.

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Deontology Versus Utilitarianism: New Ways Around Old Debates Whenever questions of public policy arise, it seems inevitable that the same old deontology versus utilitarianism debate will rear its ugly head. A moral conflict comes up in which the question is, can you take a questionably moral action in order to ensure a greater good? The deontology side exclaims “never treat anyone as a means to an ends!” The utilitarian replies, “the greatest good for the greatest number!” Debates rarely seems to go beyond these competing refrains. But how is a judge to decide between these two slogans? Both are well grounded in philosophical traditions. How can debaters take it to the next level and find ways to successfully defend their moral framework? This essay will explore the conventional ways the deontology versus utilitarianism debate has been carried out and offer argumentative suggestions for avoiding the usual unproductive standstills, pitfalls, and traps. The most prominent founders of the deontology versus utilitarianism debate are Jeremy Bentham and Immanuel Kant, although others came before them and many have followed in their footsteps. In the 18th century, both Bentham and Kant claimed to have knowledge of the ultimate laws of morality. Bentham explains the “Principle of Utility” in his Principles of Morals and Legislation and Kant explains the “Categorical Imperative” in his Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals. Both principles attempt to define moral action. Bentham states the meaning of his principle: By the principle of utility is meant that principle which approves or disapproves of every action whatsoever, according to the tendency which it appears to have to augment or diminish the happiness of the party whose interest is in question: or, what is the same thing in other words, to promote or to oppose that happiness. I say of every action whatsoever; and therefore not, only of every action of a private individual, but of every measure of government. According to this utilitarian principle, it is justified to kill people, for example, if one aims to maximize happiness. It would be justified to bomb a city today if it would prevent the war from escalating into worse destruction. In contrast to this approach, Kant provides the categorical imperative. Kant explains his moral law when he states: “Act only according to the maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.” To apply this rule, you can ask yourself, what would the world be like if everyone acted like this? The categorical imperative is much like the Christian rule, do unto others as you would have others do unto you. If one follows the categorical imperative, one would never tell a lie. If lying became a universal law and everyone lied all the time, the world would be awful. Kant argues that it is not justified to use immoral means to accomplish a moral end, because, “whoever wills the end also wills . . . the sole means thereto which are in his power.” It is never justified to kill another person because that is treating her as a means to an end, a not a human with inherent worth and dignity. Looking only at the base formulations of these principles, it is not clear if they are in competition or mutually exclusive. It would be possible for people to will that their actions be legislated universally, and for their actions to maximize happiness. However, the categorical imperative and the principle of utility can not coexist as supreme moral laws. In many hypothetical cases, a utilitarian would take the opposite action of the deontologist. Bentham would argue that the categorical imperative is not the supreme principle of morality because utility is the only principle which objectively and clearly defines “right” and “wrong” and because accounts for true human nature. Kant would criticize the principle of utility for its emphasis on the end of “happiness” and lack of concern for the means used to attain that end. Bentham claims that the principle of utility is the only one which defines “right” and “wrong” with clarity. He contends that an action is right when it increases happiness, wrong when it decreases happiness. This is Bentham’s base claim that serves as a warrant for the rest of his arguments for utility. Bentham explains: “Is it susceptible of any direct proof? it should seem not: for that which is used to prove every thing else, cannot itself be proved: a chain of proofs must have their commencement somewhere. To give such proof is as impossible as it is needless.” He feels his moral system is superior because “when thus interpreted, the words ought, and right and wrong, and others of that stamp, have a meaning: when otherwise, they have none.” According to Bentham, at the core of all moral systems, there is the goal of bringing about “right” actions, and preventing “wrong” ones. Bentham can conceive of no other definition for these terms than that which increases or decreases happiness.

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Kant’s system of morality flatly refutes Bentham’s focus on happiness with the argument that a “good will” is a superior standard for morality. Kant explains: [That] the same [qualities become harmful] holds with gifts of fortune; power, riches, honor, even health, and that complete a well-being and contentment with one’s condition which is called happiness make for pride and often hereby even arrogance, unless there is a good will to correct their influence on the mind and herewith also to rectify the whole principle of action and make it universally conformable to its end. Just because you’re happy doesn’t mean you act in a way that is moral and good. Kant defines morally correct actions as those which come from a “good will”: “There is no possibility of thinking of anything at all in the world, or even out of it, which can be regarded as good without qualification, except a good will.” The “good will” is “good not because of what it effects or accomplishes, nor because of its fitness to attain some proposed end; it is good only thorough its willing, i.e., it is good in itself.” People with good wills would act according to the categorical imperative. They would not act so that their actions could have some good effect, like happiness, but rather their actions would be of moral value themselves. According to Kant, this is the only way to be deserving of happiness: “The sight of a being who is not graced by any touch of a pure and good will but who yet enjoys an uninterrupted prosperity can never delight a rational and impartial spectator. Thus a good will seems to constitute the indispensable condition of being even worthy of happiness.” A “good will” is the only way for humans to retain both autonomy and morality. Through the categorical imperative, humans legislate universal law using reason and according to their own autonomous wills. This allows people to feel that they have “greater intrinsic worth” and freedom. Many hypothetical situations are offered to explore the applicability of deontology and utilitarianism. Utilitarians offer the scenario of a person hiding Jews in her basement during World War II. If Nazi police came to the door and asked, “Are you hiding Jews in your basement?” The deontologist would have no choice but to reply “yes,” even if it meant she and her Jewish friends would be killed. Deontologists offer the scenario of a terrorist who threatens to bomb a city, killing millions, unless you torture your mother to death. It would not be justified to cave in to this sort of terrorist threat because it would degrade your own human dignity as well as your mothers, even though it would attain the greater good of saving the city. Plus, the terrorist’s potential actions can never be known for certain, while killing your mother is a certain evil. It is never justified to give into this sort of terrorist means/ends calculus. Depending on the hypothetical, a person may find herself a deontologist or a utilitarian. This points to a problem with absolute, rule-bound systems of morality. These moral frameworks seem to provide easy formulas for determining the correct action. However, easy formulas may simply be ways of putting off hard choices that require not only rational, but emotional and intuitive responses. Neither system of morality seems wholly adequate to address the moral dilemmas of our time. In light of this understanding, how can we make arguments to justify choices in particular debates that appeal to deontology or utilitarianism? Perhaps it is better to appeal to these moral frameworks on a case by case basis, and not attempt to justify any framework absolutely. JUSTIFYING DEONTOLOGICAL DECISIONS Professor of philosophy Thomas Nagel says, “Many people feel, without being able to say much more about it, that something has gone serious wrong when certain measures are admitted into consideration in the first place.” Some actions are simply too immoral to even be considered. One way to justify a deontological decision is to assume that a utilitarian framework is the best one to work through. This seems at first to be a strange argument. However, many philosophers claim that even if we should abide by utilitarian reasoning most of the time, utilitarian frameworks need to be checked by concern for ultimate values, such as human dignity and freedom. We can assume that our public actions should maximize good for the greatest number of people, so long as human dignity and freedom are not sacrificed in pursuit of those aims. Human dignity must serve as a “side constraint” on utilitarianism. Nagel explains that absolute protection of human dignity “operates as a limitation on utilitarian reasoning, not as a substitute for it.” How might this work in a debate? For example, in a debate over the morality of economic sanctions, one side could argue that even if we accept utilitarianism, economic sanctions are not justified because they starve the people of a foreign country who are not responsible for the actions of their leaders. The act of starving an innocent population so degrades human dignity and freedom that it cannot be justified, even if the end result is to prevent wars. It would also be possible to refute economic sanctions on utilitarian grounds by arguing that they are rarely effective. However, Nagel points out that it is important to affirm 176

the basic dignity of human beings: “Once the door is opened to calculations of utility and national interest, the usual speculations about the future of freedom, peace, and economic prosperity can be brought to bear to ease the consciences of those responsible for a certain number of charred babies.” This is why it is important to undermine the utilitarian logic that would permit the killing of innocents in the first place. Why is an absolute regard for human dignity and freedom so important? Charles Fried, a professor of law at Harvard Law School, argues that “What we may not do to each other, the things which are wrong, are precisely those forms of personal interaction which deny to our victim the status of a freely choosing, rationally valuing, specially efficacious person, the special status of moral personality.” To do bodily harm to another person or otherwise treat him or her in a way that is degrading is to treat a person as an object or an item. Kant described this as treating another person as a means to an ends. Fried argues that there is a distinction between accepting the risk that others may be harmed and doing direct harm to others. While one can accept risks for the greater good without degrading the status of other people, to directly kill or mistreat another person is unjustified. Other people are owed infinite respect. Fried argues that the value of respect for other people is absolute and different from all other values. Respect for the freedom and choice of other rational actors is a pre-requisite for the very activities of moral judgment and determination of values. Jack Donnely argues that when utilitarians fail to pay attention to the side constraint of human dignity, they disregard the unique meanings of individual lives. By saying that everyone counts equally in utilitarian calculations, the result is “no-one counting as a person.” People should count in the ways they are different from one another. Every person has a unique potential. Every person is owed infinite respect, not "respect = 1." If we make decisions by adding up the number of people we can help and subtracting the number of people we hurt, with each person counting as only one, we erase that unique potential. This may make all people equal in a numerical sense, but it ends up erasing the specificity and particular situations of individuals. The meanings of particular judgements are erased and glossed over and morality becomes math. This is a way of setting aside hard questions that require looking at particulars: how much are some people helped and others hurt? How can we treat everyone in accordance with the respect they are owed as a human being? Donnelly argues that there are certain attributes, potentialities, and holdings that are essential to the maintenance of a life worthy of a human being. These are given the special protection of natural rights; any ‘utility’ that might be served by their infringement or violation would be indefensible, literally inhuman—except in genuinely extraordinary circumstances, the possibility of which cannot be denied, but the probability of which should not be overestimated. Not only does it degrade the person who is sacrificed in the name of utilitarian calculation, it also degrades the humanity of the policymakers or moralists who take the action. Alan Gewirth, a professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago, argues for “the principle of intervening action.” His claim is that if we act in accordance with respect for human dignity, we are not necessarily responsible for other people’s destructive reactions. He offers the example of Martin Luther King, Jr. As a peaceful civil rights demonstrator, King. was not responsible for the violent protests and riots that followed his demonstrations. King should not have been held responsible for these consequences because those who started the riots were responsible. To say that King should not have demonstrated for human rights because of the potential consequences is to hold him hostage to the violent threats of others. This sort of reasoning licenses blackmail. Deontology can be argued to better assure the values utilitarianism seeks to protect. If respect for human dignity is guaranteed in all public policy and social decisions, the greater good would be better protected. Deontologists can argue that the only basis for a just society is one that recognizes the intrinsic worth of the individual. Catastrophic consequences of the sort that would justify killing innocents or grossly abridging freedom are highly unlikely. Also, because consequences can never be known for certain, they are unlikely to justify the certain harm that comes from taking direct action to abridge human dignity. Daniel Callahan, in his book The Tyranny of Survival, describes how human dignity has been abridged in the name of the saving more lives. He offers historical examples of groups that fought for human dignity at the expense of many lives, including Americans in the American Revolution and Israelis. He argues, “The lesson which many Jews believed they learned from the holocaust is that the most ineffective way to guarantee survival is to be passively willing to settle for survival. Unless one wants more than survival, and is willing to die for it, even survival will be taken away.” Focusing only on the survival of the greatest number of people without concern for what other values might be cast aside is self-defeating. 177

Survival itself will be jeopardized. Callahan offers the example of nuclear weapons. Originally developed for selfdefense, they now threaten to wipe out the planet. JUSTIFYING UTILITARIAN DECISIONS Just as you can argue there are side constraints on utilitarian reasoning, you can argue that there are side constraints on deontological reasoning. When the consequences of failing to take an action that may involve immoral means are horrendously catastrophic, it may become morally necessary. Even if we work through a deontological framework, sometimes utilitarian methods must be considered. For example, if killing one evil person would prevent a war that could kill millions, it might be justified, even though it uses the evil person as a means to an ends. The war that kills millions will undoubtedly kill us and the person we were trying to save initially. Charles Fried writes, “Even within such boundaries we can imagine extreme cases where killing an innocent person may save a whole nation. In such cases it seems fanatical to maintain the absoluteness of the judgment, to do right even if the heavens will in fact fall.” Even Fried, who tends to agree with absolutist deontological arguments, thinks that catastrophic cases require different sorts of judgments. How might this play out in a debate? One common debate is over the environment. It can be argued that the consequences of not doing anything to stop the environmental crisis are so high (species loss, global warming, resource depletion) that it is justified to curtail industrial pollution, even if that means people lose jobs. Those people are used as the means to ends of protecting the environment, but it is justified in order to prevent tragic harm. But what about the abuse to the inherent dignity of all people that occurs when they are used as means to ends? Utilitarian philosophers argue that utilitarianism best assures human dignity by counting every person’s life as equal. Utilitarianism is more democratic than deontology because it takes account of the needs of the majority of people and considers each person to have an equal claim. Ronald Dworkin, a professor of Law and Philosophy at NYU and Oxford, offers the following hypothetical to explain how utilitarianism is egalitarian: “If the community has only enough medicine to treat some of those who are sick, the argument seems to recommend that those who are sickest be treated first . . . One sick man is not to be preferred to another because he is worthier of official concern.” While it may be poetic to speak of the infinite worth of each individual, it does not help philosophers and politicians to make hard decisions in day to day struggles. This is not callous disregard for the value of the individual, it is the recognition that certain sacrifices must be made. A potent argument to justify utilitarianism is to point to the way deontological frameworks inevitably collapse into utilitarian reasoning. Richard Epstein, a professor of law at the University of Chicago, writes that we all end up “utilitarian[s] of some stripe”: A defense of the older regime of individual liberties and properties cannot rest on a simple assertion that people have rights and that other individuals are not allowed to do actions that violate those rights. One has to show why any given configuration of rights is superior to its rival conceptions, an undertaking that typically requires an appeal to consequences, less for particular cases, and more for some overall assessment of how alternative legal regimes play out in the long run. Because rights will always come into conflict (my right to freedom of expression can conflict with your right to be free from me calling you on the phone every 5 minutes to harass you) we must appeal to the consequences of different ways to balance rights. The act of balancing is utilitarian. It need not seek to maximize happiness, in Bentham’s sense. Rather, the utilitarian can seek to maximize respect for all persons, or freedom, or other values. What about the distinction between means and ends? Is there are a relevant moral distinction between direct actions and the consequences of those actions? James Rachels, a professor of philosophy at the University of Alabama, offers the following thought experiment questioning these distinctions. Imagine Mr. Jones acting in the following ways, “Jones moved his finger, Jones pulled the trigger, Jones fired the gun, Jones shot Smith, Jones killed Smith, Jones started a riot, and so on.” Which of these actions are means, and which are ends? Rachels writes, “the description of an action can be expanded or contracted so that what was a consequence of the action under the old description becomes a part of the action itself under the new description, or vice versa.” What is a direct cause and what is a consequence depends on mere semantics. Some consequences are so easy to predict that they might as well be direct causes. If the means/ends distinction has broken down, utilitarianism can be appealed to as a way to make hard choices. In cases where truly difficult choices are presented, utilitarianism seems the more intuitive response that absolute 178

deontological rules. Kai Nielsen, a professor of philosophy at the University of Calgary, discusses the hypothetical of the man in the cave. His scenario involves a group of people who are trapped in a cave with the tide quickly rising. Soon they will drown. There is only one way out through a hole, but a man is stuck there. They have dynamite, and they face the choice of blowing the man out of the hole, which will surely kill him, or allowing everyone to drown. For the purpose of this hypothetical, imagine that no other alternatives are feasible. Nielsen argues that the best decision is to use the dynamite. He explains, “This indeed overrides the principle that the innocent should never be deliberately killed, but it does not reveal a callousness toward life, for the people involved are caught in a desperate situation in which, if such extreme action is not taken, many lives will be lost and far greater misery obtain.” Killing the man trapped in the opening to the cave is not disregarding his human dignity. It is action undertaken as a last resort and with “great reluctance” that will most likely “haunt” the others for the rest of their lives. Nielsen says there is no morally relevant distinction here that makes it worse to “do” the evil of blasting the man than to “allow” the evil everyone drowning. This is a case where we must choose the lesser evil. Deontologists attempt to keep their hands clean with moral purity using the excuse that they didn’t directly cause any evil, but when they have the power to prevent evil, they are evading responsibility not to do it. Arguments like Gewirth’s principle of the intervening actor can have negative consequences. For example, if we only considered the principle of the intervening actor, we would feel no moral obligation to save a drowning child. Saul Alinksy, an activist, professor, and social organizer, applies Nielsen’s arguments to the domain of political decisionmaking. Alinksy argues, “To say that corrupt means corrupt the ends is to believe in the immaculate conception of ends and principles. The real arena is corrupt and bloody.” Politics requires hard choices, not hard principles. In real struggles for social and political change, absolutism must be abandoned and compromises must be made in order to achieve greater good for society as a whole. The means/ends distinction often becomes an excuse for staying out of political action whatsoever. Why fight the Nazis if you are not responsible for their actions? AN UNRESOLVEABLE DEBATE Which side provides a better moral framework: deontology or utilitarianism? Both sides probably offer valuable moral insights that should be considered in debates over public policy issues where the balancing of rights and interests are at stake. Respect for the inherent dignity of human beings is essential to prevent us from becoming no more than figures to be tabulated. The risk of callous over-emphasis on utilitarianism is that the very values that make life worth living: freedom, dignity, and autonomy, can be sacrificed in the pursuit of the “greatest good for the greatest number.” But utilitarians are probably right to emphasize that the distinction between means and ends is rarely clean or clear cut. Often times politicians must make hard choices that don’t accord with deontological principles. Neither side is completely correct. Neither deontology nor utilitarianism provide universal answers to every moral dilemma. The principles associated with these moral frameworks should be taken as guides, not hard and fast rules. Hard and fast rules can never fit every particular case. Morality is not mathematics: it requires a degree of intuition and emotion. It is up to those who make political decisions to use the conceptual tools provided by moral philosophy in order to come to more informed judgements. Debaters who argue for one framework or another would be well advised to modify their positions and recognize that their arguments are not absolute. Instead of hurling competing slogans back and forth, debaters should think through the ways their arguments might subsume or make irrelevant the arguments of the other side. In debates over moral frameworks, it is a good idea to examine what values are at stake and how combinations of frameworks or principles can best serve those values. By justifying a deontological decision through a utilitarian framework or vice versa, a debater can co-opt much of her opponent’s strategic ground.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Aiken, William and Hugh LaFollette, WORLD HUNGER AND MORAL OBLIGATION, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1996. Alinsky, Saul D., RULES FOR RADICALS, New York: Vintage Books, 1989. Bentham, Jeremy, DEONTOLOGY, New York: Oxford University Press, 1983. Callahan, Daniel, THE TYRANNY OF SURVIVAL, New York: Macmillan, 1973. Diehm, Christian, “Facing nature: Levinas beyond the human,” PHILOSOPHY TODAY, Spring 2000, Vol 44, p. 51(9). Donnelly, Jack, THE CONCEPT OF HUMAN RIGHTS, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1985. Dworkin, Ronald M., A MATTER OF PRINCIPLE, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985. Dworkin, Ronald M., TAKING RIGHTS SERIOUSLY, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977. Freeman, Samuel, “Utilitarianism, deontology, and the priority of right,” PHILOSOPHY & PUBLIC AFFAIRS, Fall 1994, Vol. 23, No. 4. p. 313(37). Gewirth, Alan, THE COMMUNITY OF RIGHTS, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Gewirth, Alan, HUMAN RIGHTS, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982. Haber, Joram Graf, ABSOLUTISM AND ITS CONSEQUENTIALIST CRITICS, Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1993. Hatch, Elvin, CULTURE AND MORALITY, New York: Columbia University Press, 1983. Kant, Immanuel, GROUNDWORK OF THE METAPHYSICS OF MORALS, Trans. Mary Gregor, Cambridge, U.K.; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Mill, John Stuart, COLLECTED WORKS, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1963. Rosenthal, David M. and Fadlou Shehadi, APPLIED ETHICS AND ETHICAL THEORY, Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1988. Shaw, William H., CONTEMPORARY ETHICS, Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers, 1999.

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RESPECT FOR HUMAN DIGNITY MUST CHECK UTILITARIANISM 1. ABSOLUTE RESPECT FOR HUMAN RIGHTS MUST LIMIT UTILITARIAN REASONING. Thomas Nagel, Professor of Philosophy, New York University, ABSOLUTISM AND ITS CONSEQUENTIALIST CRITICS, 1993, p. 221-222. Many people feel, without being able to say much more about it, that something has gone seriously wrong when certain measures are admitted into consideration in the first place. The fundamental mistake is made there, rather than at the point where the overall benefit of some monstrous measure is judged to outweigh its disadvantages, and it is adopted. An account of absolutism might help us to understand this. If it is not allowable to do certain things, such as killing unarmed prisoners or civilians, then no argument about what will happen if one does not do them can show that doing them would be all right. Absolutism does not, of course, require

one to ignore the consequences of one's acts. It operates as a limitation on utilitarian reasoning, not as a substitute for it. An absolutist can be expected to try to maximize good and minimize evil, so long as this does not require him to transgress an absolute prohibition like that against murder. But when such a conflict occurs, the prohibition takes complete precedence over any consideration of consequences. Some of the results of this view are clear enough. It requires us to forgo certain potentially useful military measures, such as the slaughter of hostages and prisoners or indiscriminate attempts to reduce the enemy civilian population by starvation, epidemic infectious diseases like anthrax and bubonic plague, or mass incineration. It means that we cannot deliberate on whether such measures are justified by the fact that they will avert still greater evils, for as intentional measures they cannot be justified in terms of any consequences whatever. Someone unfamiliar with the events of this century might imagine that utilitarian arguments, or arguments of national interest, would suffice to deter measures of this sort. But it has become evident that such considerations are insufficient to prevent the adoption and employment of enormous antipopulation weapons once their use is considered a serious moral possibility. The same is true of the piecemeal wiping out of rural civilian populations in airborne antiguerrilla warfare. Once the door is opened to calculations of utility and national interest, the usual speculations about the future of freedom, peace, and economic prosperity can be brought to bear to ease the consciences of those responsible for a certain number of charred babies. For this reason alone it is important to decide what is wrong with the frame of mind which allows such arguments to begin. 2. RESPECT FOR PERSONS CANNOT BE COMPROMISED Charles Fried, Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, ABSOLUTISM AND ITS CONSEQUENTIALIST CRITICS, 1993, p. 92. What we may not do to each other, the things which are wrong, are precisely those forms of personal interaction which deny to our victim the status of a freely choosing, rationally valuing, specially efficacious person, the special status of moral personality. To lie or to do intentional, grievous harm to the body of another represents a denial of the personal status of that other, a denial not necessarily implicit in allowing that harm to come about as a mere concomitant of our actions. If we use harming another as the means to our end, then we assert that another person may indeed be our means, while if we merely accept the risk that others will be harmed as we pursue our ends, and do not make that harm a part of our projects, then it is still possible to assert that those others are not reduced to the status of means in our system . . . . When we accomplish our purposes through lies, it is not so much that among the consequences of our action must be counted the fact that another person entertains a false belief-after all, that may be trivial enough-but rather that we have asserted that the mind, the rationality of another, is available to us as the track on which the train of our purposes may run. Thus, what constitutes doing wrong to another may also be regarded as a denial of the respect owed another's moral personality. And it is a principal hypothesis of mine that the absolute quality of categorical norms (what one might call their logic), the concepts of action and intention necessary to the application of those norms (the psychology of the system), and the substantive moral basis of the norms, the respect for persons, all fit together in a system. Though I have identified respect for persons as a value, the connection between that respect and the concept of right and wrong shows that this value is wholly different from all other values. All other values gather their moral force as they determine choice. By contrast, the value of personhood, far from being chosen, is the presupposition and substrate of the very concept of choice. And that is why the norms surrounding respect for person may not be compromised, why these norms are absolute in respect to the various ends we choose to pursue. 181

UTILITARIAN WEIGHING OF CONSEQUENCES IS A FLAWED MORAL CALCULUS 1. UTILITARIAN COUNTING MEANS NO ONE COUNTS Jack Donnelly, College of the Holy Cross, THE CONCEPT OF HUMAN RIGHTS, 1985, p. 55. Basic moral and political rights are not just weighting factors in utilitarian calculations that deal with an undifferentiated `happiness'. Rather, they are demands and constraints of a different order, grounded in an essentially substantive judgement of the conditions necessary for human development and flourishing. They also provide means - rights - for realising human potentials. The neutrality of utilitarianism, its efforts to assure that everyone counts `equally', results in no-one counting as a person; as Robert E. Goodin puts it, people drop out of utilitarian calculations, which are instead about disembodied preferences. In Aristotelian terms, utilitarianism errs in basing its judgements on `numerical' rather than `proportional' equality. 2. CATASTROPHIC CONSEQUENCES ARE TOO UNLIKELY TO JUSTIFY VIOLATING DIGNITY Jack Donnelly, College of the Holy Cross, THE CONCEPT OF HUMAN RIGHTS, 1985, p. 58 But suppose that the sacrifice of one innocent person would save not ten but a thousand, or a hundred thousand, or a million people. All things considered, trading one innocent life for a million, even if the victim resists most forcefully, would seem to be not merely justifiable but demanded. Exactly how do we balance rights (in the sense of `having a right'), wrongs (in the sense of `what is right') and interests? Do the numbers count? If so, why, and in what way? If not, why not? Ultimately the defender of human rights is forced back to human nature, the source of natural or human rights. For a natural rights theorist there are certain attributes, potentialities and holdings that are essential to the maintenance of a life worthy of a human being. These are given the special protection of natural rights; any `utility' that might be served by their infringement or violation would be indefensible, literally inhuman - except in genuinely extraordinary circumstances, the possibility of which cannot be denied, but the probability of which should not be overestimated. Extraordinary circumstances do force us to admit that, at some point, however rare, the force of utilitarian considerations builds up until quantity is transformed into quality. The human rights theorist, however, insists on the extreme rarity of such cases. Furthermore, exotic cases should not be permitted to obscure the fundamental difference in emphasis (and in the resulting judgements in virtually all cases) between utility and (human) rights. Nor should they be allowed to obscure the fact that on balance the flaws in rights-based theories and practices seem less severe, and without a doubt less numerous, than those of utility-based political strategies. 3. YOU AREN’T RESPONSIBLE FOR THE ACTIONS OF INTERVENING OTHERS Alan Gewirth, Professor of Philosophy at University of Chicago, HUMAN RIGHTS: ESSAYS ON JUSTIFICATION AND APPLICATION, 1982, p. 230. An example of this principle may help to show its connection with the absolutist thesis. Martin Luther King Jr. was repeatedly told that because he led demonstrations in support of civil rights, he was morally responsible for the disorders, riots, and deaths that ensued and that were shaking the American Republic to its foundations." By the principle of the intervening action, however, it was King's opponents who were responsible because their intervention operated as the sufficient conditions of the riots and injuries. King might also have replied that the Republic would not be worth saving if the price that had to be paid was the violation of the civil rights of black Americans. As for the rights of the other Americans to peace and order, reply would be that these rights cannot justifiably be secured at the price of the rights of blacks. It follows from the principle of the intervening action that it is not the son but rather the terrorists who are morally as well as causally responsible for the many deaths that do or may ensue on his refusal to torture his mother to death. The important point is not that he lets these persons die rat than kills them, or that he does not harm them but only fails to help the or that he intends their deaths only obliquely but not directly. The point is rather that it is only through the intervening lethal actions of the terror that his refusal eventuates in the many deaths. Since the moral responsibility is not the son's, it does not affect his moral duty not to torture his mother to death, so that her correlative right remains absolute.

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UTILITARIANISM BEST ASSURES RESPECT FOR HUMAN DIGNITY 1. IT IS GREATER INHUMANITY TO ALLOW HARM TO A LARGER NUMBER Kai Nielsen, Professor of Philosophy, University of Calgary, ABSOLUTISM AND ITS CONSEQUENTIALIST CRITICS, 1993, p. 170-172. Consequentialism of the kind I have been arguing for provides so persuasive "a theoretical basis for common morality that when it contradicts some moral intuition, it is natural to suspect that intuition, not theory, is corrupt."" Given the comprehensiveness, plausibility, and overall rationality of consequentialism, it is not unreasonable to override even a deeply felt moral conviction if it does not square with such a theory, though, if it made no sense or overrode the bulk of or even a great many of our considered moral convictions, that would be another matter indeed. Anticonsequentialists often point to the inhumanity of people who will sanction such killing of the innocent, but cannot the compliment be returned by speaking of the even greater inhumanity, conjoined with evasiveness, of those who will allow even more death and far greater misery and then excuse themselves on the ground that they did not intend the death and misery but merely forbore to prevent it? In such a context, such reasoning and such forbearing to prevent seems to me to constitute a moral evasion. I say it is evasive because rather than steeling himself to do what in normal circumstances would be a horrible and vile act but in this circumstance is a harsh moral necessity, he allows, when he has the power to prevent it, a situation which is still many times worse. He tries to keep his `moral purity' and avoid `dirty hands' at the price of utter moral failure and what Kierkegaard called `double-mindedness.' It is understandable that people should act in this morally evasive way but this does not make it right. 2. UTILITARIANISM IS ESSENTIAL TO EGALITARIANISM Ronald Dworkin, Professor of Law and Philosophy, NYU, TAKING RIGHTS SERIOUSLY, 1977, p. 234. The utilitarian argument, that a policy is justified if it satisfies more preferences overall, seems at first sight to be an egalitarian argument. It seems to observe strict impartiality. If the community has only enough medicine to treat some of those who are sick, the argument seems to recommend that those who are sickest be treated first. If the community can afford a swimming pool or a new theater, but not both, and more people want the pool, then it recommends that the community build the pool, unless those who want the theater can show that their preferences are so much more intense that they have more weight in spite of the numbers. One sick man is not to be preferred to another because he is worthier of official concern; the tastes of the theater audience are not to be preferred because they are more admirable. In Bentham's phrase, each man is to count as one and no man is to count as more than one. These simple examples suggest that the utilitarian argument not only respects, but embodies, the right of each citizen to be treated as the equal of any other. The chance that each individual's preferences have to succeed, in the competition for social policy, will depend upon how important his preference is to him, and how many others share it, compared to the intensity and number of competing preferences. His chance will not be affected by the esteem or contempt of either officials or fellow citizens, and he will therefore not be subservient or beholden to them. 3. CATASTROPHIC CONSEQUENCES REQUIRE SUSPENSION OF DEONTOLOGY Charles Fried, Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, ABSOLUTISM AND ITS CONSEQUENTIALIST CRITICS, 1993, p. 76. Even within such boundaries we can imagine extreme cases where killing an innocent person may save a whole nation. In such cases it seems fanatical to maintain the absoluteness of the judgment, to do right even if the heavens will in fact fall. And so the catastrophic may cause the absoluteness of right and wrong to yield, but even then it would be a non sequitur to argue (as consequentialists are fond of doing) that this proves that judgments of right and wrong are always a matter of degree, depending on the relative goods to be attained and harms to be avoided. I believe, on the contrary, that the concept of the catastrophic is a distinct concept just because it identifies the extreme situations in which the usual categories of judgment (including the category of right and wrong) no longer apply. At the other end of the spectrum, there is the concept of the trivial, the de minimis where the absolute categories do not yet apply. And the trivial also does not prove that right and wrong are really only a matter of degree. It is because of these complexities and because the term absolute is really only suggestive of a more complex structure, that I also refer to the norms of right and wrong not as absolute but as categorical.

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THE MEANS/ENDS DISTINCTION OF DEONTOLOGY IS FLAWED 1. THERE IS NO MORAL DISTINCTION BETWEEN ACTIONS AND CONSEQUENCES. James Rachels, Professor of Philosophy, University of Alabama, ABSOLUTISM AND ITS CONSEQUENTIALIST CRITICS, 1993, p. 212-213. The question here is whether the distinction between actions and consequences can bear the burden required of it. Just why is `lying' the name of an action while `saving a life' is not? Certainly, if we describe the action as lying, then under that description it is a consequence of the action, rather than a part of the action itself, that a life is saved. But we could always describe the act to begin with as an act of saving life. Then we could say that the fishermen's choice is between truth-telling and life-saving, both of which are actions and both of which cannot be done; and then this case would be a conflict-case of the sort which Geach says cannot arise. In order to avoid this, and say that this is not a genuine conflict-case, the Geachean absolutist must maintain that `saving a life', contrary to appearances, cannot be the name of an action. In maintaining this, the absolutist would be going against one of the most universally accepted tenets of modern action-theory, viz., that an action can be given many different descriptions, none of which captures the `essence' of the action any more than the others. For example, a single action might be described in any of the following ways: Jones moved his finger, Jones pulled the trigger, Jones fired the gun, Jones shot Smith, Jones killed Smith, Jones started a riot, and so on. This list illustrates what Joel Feinberg felicitously calls the 'accordian effect': the description of an action can be expanded or contracted so that what was a consequence of the action under the old description becomes a part of the action itself under the new description, or vice versa. Thus, Smith's being shot is a consequence of what Jones did under the second description listed, but not under the fourth. Clearly, the absolutist cannot accept such a view of act-descriptions, because it would vitiate the whole point of `not doing evil that good may come'-the `good to come' could simply be written into the description of the action, making it a good sort of action rather than an evil one, and thus reversing the original judgment. 2. APPEAL TO CONSEQUENCES IS INEVITABLE. Richard A. Epstein, James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor of Law, University of Chicago, BOSTON UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW, February-April, 1996, p. 2-3. Similarly, on questions of method, I believe that the deontological approach is wrong insofar as it claims that its normative conclusions can be denied only on pain of self-contradiction. Today many writers believe that the protection of individual autonomy is not a primary goal of legal rules, but that, to the contrary, any "natural" distribution of talents is determined largely by luck and hence morally arbitrary. Given this perspective, it follows that legal rules should introduce certain measures of sharing across individuals, if not by forced labor, then by systems of taxation and regulation that redistribute the fruits of individual labor. One can argue against these views, but hardly on the ground that they are self-contradictory, or even that they are morally suspect in their effort to raise the level of the least fortunate closer to the level enjoyed by those who have a greater share of natural abilities and endowments. A defense of the older regime of individual liberties and properties cannot rest on a simple assertion that people have rights and that other individuals are not allowed to do actions that violate those rights. One has to show why any given configuration of rights is superior to its rival conceptions, an undertaking that typically requires an appeal to consequences, less for particular cases, and more for some overall assessment of how alternative legal regimes play out in the long run. In a word, one has to become a utilitarian of some stripe to justify rules in terms of the consequences they bring about.

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Direct Democracy Good PEOPLE WANT DIRECT DEMOCRACY MORE THAN REPRESENTATIVE 1. PEOPLE ARE CHANGING THEIR DEFINITION OF DEMOCRACY Brian Needham, Associate Editor, THE ECONOMIST, September 11, 1993, p. 17. The difference between today's politics and the politics of the coming century is likely to be a change in what people mean by "democracy": to be precise, a radical change in the process by which the democratic idea is put into practice. The collapse of communism, everybody agrees, removes the ideological framework that has shaped the politics of the 20th century. One of the two great rival bodies of ideas has been defeated, and the other will be transformed by the consequences of its victory. This does not mean that the world is now wholly non-ideological; there will be other ideas in the name of which politicians will call upon people to follow them into the good fight. But the end of communism, and of the special sort of confrontation it produced, both reinforces the need for a change in the way democracy works and, at the same time, gets rid of a large obstacle in the path to that change. 2. VALUE OF DIRECT DEMOCRACY NOW POPULAR EVERYWHERE Brian Needham, Associate Editor, THE ECONOMIST, September 11, 1993, p. 17. In crude terms, this overdue change is a shift from "representative democracy" to "direct democracy". The basis of modern democracy is the proposition that every adult person's judgment about the conduct of public affairs is entitled to be given equal weight with every other person's. However different they are from each other -financially, intellectually, in their preference between Schubert and Sting-- all men and women have an equal right to say how they wish to be governed. The concept sprang originally from the Protestant Reformation, which declared that everybody was equal in his dealings with God. The political offspring of that religious declaration is now accepted everywhere in the world, at least in principle, except among diehard Leninists and conservative Muslims. 3. PEOPLE ARE BETTER EQUIPPED FOR DIRECT DEMOCRACY Brian Needham, Associate Editor, THE ECONOMIST, September 11, 1993, p. 17. People are better equipped for direct democracy than they used to be. The altered character of post-cold-war politics increases the need for direct democracy. And then comes the third reason for believing that change is on the way. The waning of ideology weakens the chief source of opposition to the new sort of democracy. 4. STEP TO DIRECT DEMOCRACY CAN'T BE RESISTEDBrian Needham, Associate Editor, THE ECONOMIST, September 11, 1993, p. 17. Now, in post- cold- war politics, much of this is disappearing. There are no longer heroic banners to be borne aloft in the name of ideology. In the wealthier parts of the world, at any rate, class divisions are steadily losing their meaning. In the prosaic new politics, many of the issues that have to be decided are matter- of- fact ones, requiring little excitement. In these conditions fewer people will feel the need to belong to parties, and people will more easily shift from one party, to another. This will make the parties weaker. And that will make it harder for them to oppose radical innovations- - such as the bold step forward to direct democracy. 5. REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY IS MORE UNSATISFACTORY THAN EVER Brian Needham, Associate Editor, THE ECONOMIST, September 11, 1993, p. 17. There are three reasons for thinking that this is going to change. One is the growing inadequacy of representative democracy. It has long been pointed out that to hold an election every few years is not only a highly imprecise way of expressing the voter's wishes (because on these rare election days he has to consider a large number of issues, and his chosen "representative" will in fact not represent him on several of them) but is also notably loose-wristed (because the voter has little control over his representative between elections). Now the end of the battle between communism and pluralism will make representative democracy look more unsatisfactory than ever.

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DIRECT DEMOCRACY IS PREFERABLE TO REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY 1. REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY IS INADEQUATE COMPARED TO DIRECT Brian Needham, Associate Editor, THE ECONOMIST, September 11, 1993, p. 17. In the new agenda of politics, where so much depends upon decisions of detail, the power of the lobbyist can produce striking results. It will at times be, literally, corrupting. But even when it is not as bad as that it will make representative democracy seem increasingly inadequate. The voter, already irritated at having so little control over his representatives between elections, will be even angrier when he discovers how much influence the specialinterest propagandists are now able to wield over those representatives. An interloper, it will seem, has inserted himself into the democratic process. The result is not hard to guess. The voter is liable to conclude that direct democracy, in which decisions are taken by the whole people, is better than representative democracy, because the many are harder to diddle--or to bribe--than the few. 2. REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY SHOULD GO THE WAY OF COMMUNISM Brian Needham, Associate Editor, THE ECONOMIST, September 11, 1993, p. 17. The democracies must therefore apply to themselves the argument they used to direct against the communists. As people get richer and better educated, a democrat would admonishingly tell a communist, they will no longer be willing to let a handful of men in the Politburo take all the decisions that govern a country's life. The same must now be said, with adjustment for scale, about the workings of democracy. As the old differences of wealth, education and social condition blur, it will be increasingly hard to go on persuading people that most of them are fit only to put a tick on a ballot paper every few years, and that the handful of men and women they thereby send to parliament must be left to take all the other decisions. 3. REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY IS NOT REAL DEMOCRACY Brian Needham, Associate Editor, THE ECONOMIST, September 11, 1993, p. 17. In most places where it is practised, however, democracy is in a condition of arrested development. Every adult person exercises his or her political right every few years, in elections by which the voters send their representatives to an elected assembly; but in the intervals between elections - which can mean for anything up to about seven years - it is these representatives who take all the decisions. This is not what ancient Athenians meant by democracy. 4. REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT IS GOVERNMENT FOR THE CHOSEN FEW Brian Needham, Associate Editor, THE ECONOMIST, September 11, 1993, p. 17. Some countries do it differently. The most clear-cut example is Switzerland's system of direct democracy. In Switzerland it is possible to insist, by collecting a modest number of signatures, that any law proposed by the government must be submitted to a vote of the whole people. Even better, you can also insist (by getting more signatures) that a brand-new idea for a law must be put to the people even if government and parliament are against the idea. Australia and some of the western parts of the United States also now use referendums in a fairly regular way. There have even started to be referendums in Europe outside Switzerland--the politicians in Italy, France, Denmark and Ireland have all consulted their people within the past year or so--though only on subjects of the government's choice, and when the government thinks it dare not deny the people the final word. But elsewhere democracy is still stuck at a half-way house, as it were, in which the final word is delegated to the chosen few. 5. DEMOCRACY MUST BE MODIFIED TO BE AS DIRECT AS POSSIBLE R. Buckminster Fuller, Research Professor at UC-Santa Barbara, NO MORE SECONDHAND GOD, 1963, p.16. Democracy has potential within it the satisfaction of every individual's need. But Democracy must be structurally modernized, must be mechanically implemented, to give it a one-individual-to-another speed and spontaneity of reaction commensurate with the speed and scope of broadcast news...Devise a mechanical means for nation-wide voting daily and secretly by each adult citizen of Uncle Sam's family: Then -- I assure you-- will Democracy "be saved," indeed exist, for the first time in history.

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Direct Democracy Bad REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY IS BEST 1. REPRESENTATIVE SYSTEM HAS DISTINCT ADVANTAGESDavid Held, Professor of Politics and Sociology at the Open University, MODELS OF DEMOCRACY, 1996, p. 108. A representative system, along with freedom of speech, the press and assembly, has distinct advantages: it provides the mechanism whereby central powers can be watched and controlled; it establishes a forum (parliament) to act as a watchdog of liberty and centre of reason and debate; and it harnesses, through electoral competition, leadership qualities with intellect for the maximum benefit of all. Mill argued that there was no desireable alternative to representative democracy, although he was aware of its costs. 2. REPRESENTATIVE SYSTEM EQUALS STABLE, EFFECTIVE DEMOCRACY David Held, Professor of Politics and Sociology at the Open University, MODELS OF DEMOCRACY, 1996,p. 119. The theory of representative liberal democracy fundamentally shifted the terms of reference of democratic thought: the practical limits that a sizeable citizenry imposes on democracy, which had been the focus of so much critical (anti-democratic) attention, were practically eliminated. Representative democracy could now be celebrated as both accountable and feasible government, potentially stable over great territories and time spans. 3. REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY INEXORABLY MOVES FORWARD Robert C. Byrd, Representative from West Virginia, CONGRESSIONAL RECORD, June 2, 1986, p.H1265. As we begin this new experiment in opening our debates to massive scrutiny through the eye of the camera, we can only guess at the impact this medium will have upon our proceedings in the future. But we do know that, just as public opinion is in advance of the law, it is only through an informed public opinion that our nation's laws will see best its prosperity enhanced, its treasures properly husbaned, and its future destiny be most favored. As the advance of communications is irresistible, so is the progress of representative democracy inevitable. And today, the two are one as the Senate takes this new and sure step forward -- a step that is as irreversible as it is inexorable. 4. QUALIFIED, INTELLIGENT SHOULD RULE David Held, Professor of Politics and Sociology at the Open University, MODELS OF DEMOCRACY, 1996, p. 108. Mill ultimately, however, trusted extraordinarily little in the judgment of the electorate and elected. While arguing that universal suffrage was essential, he was at pains to recommend a complex system of plural voting so that the masses, the working classes, 'the democracy' would not have the opportunity to subject the political order to what he labelled simply as 'ignorance'. Given that individuals are capable of different kinds of things and only a few have developed their full capacities, would it not be appropriate if some citizens have more sway over government than others? 5. REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY IS THE SOLUTION TO ALL PROBLEMS David Held, Professor of Politics and Sociology at the Open University, MODELS OF DEMOCRACY, 1996, p. 119. As one of the great advocates of the 'representative system' put it, 'by ingrafting representation upon democracy' a system of government is created that is capable of embracing 'all the various interests and every extent of territory and population.' Representative democracy could even be heralded, as James Mill wrote, as 'the grand discovery of modern times' in which 'the solution of all difficulties, both speculative and practical, would be found.'

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DIRECT DEMOCRACY HAS SERIOUS FLAWS 1. DIRECT DEMOCRACY IS ANTITHETICAL TO TRUE REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENTPeter Schrag, author, ATLANTIC MONTHLY, March 1998, p. 20. California was a national leader in spending on social services and education prior to the passage of Proposition 13 in 1978. Such government by initiative undermines legislative power. Direct democracy is antithetical to the ideal of representative government espoused by the founding fathers. 2. RICH LOBBYISTS CAN INFLUENCE DIRECT DEMOCRACY THE ECONOMIST, May 30, 1998, p. 26. To be put to the vote, a proposed new law this year needs the valid signatures of 433,269 voters; a proposed change to the constitution needs 693,230. Collecting that many signatures usually requires professional help. Most professional signature-collectors charge about 50 cents a go; that can add up to $250,000 or so for a law-making initiative, and $400,000 for a proposed constitutional change. And then comes the propaganda bill, for advertisements and leaflets and the rest of it. Plainly, this gives rich lobbyists their chance to influence the result. 3. SOME DIRECT DEMOCRACY INITIATIVES FAIL THE ECONOMIST, May 30, 1998, p. 26. Some initiatives stir up a passionate response, such as the one proposing to legalise marijuana for medical purposes (passed in 1996), and the one which sought to deny public services to illegal immigrants (Proposition 187, passed in 1994 and tied up in the courts ever since). The "three strikes" initiative, which brought in life imprisonment for those convicted of three felonies, tapped into people's alarm about crime. Direct democracy can come a cropper. Many initiatives, like 187, are passed only to fall foul of the law afterwards. 4. DIRECT DEMOCRACY HAS FLAWS THE ECONOMIST, May 30, 1998, p. 26. In 1994 a "citizens' commission" was set up to examine complaints against direct democracy. The system is used too much, say some; it is too complicated, and it can become a tool of special interests. In the event, the commission made only modest recommendations. It thought there should be public hearings on initiative proposals, and the state legislature should have some say.

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Duty to Future Generations Good WE HAVE AN ETHICAL DUTY TO FUTURE GENERATIONS 1. THE RIGHTS OF FUTURE GENERATIONS MUST BE GUARANTEED Federico Mayor, UNESCO, UNESCO COURIER, March, 1996, P. 36. The political, economic or financial interests that favour particular solutions must never be allowed to overshadow the interests of future generations. In cases where the foreseeable consequences of investment will extend far beyond the present, it is worth considering whether an impact study should not be made of the consequences of the various options on offer over a fifty-year period, the span of two generations. In fact there is little doubt that several of the rights of future generations are affected: the right to life and to the conservation of the human genome, the right to development and to individual and collective fulfillment, and the right to an ecologically balanced environment. These are indeed human rights, that is, universal and universally recognized values which are a legitimate cause of concern for the international community as a whole. This is a far cry from rights regarded merely as legally protected vested interests. 2. WE HOLD THE EARTH IN TRUST FOR OUR PROGENY Edith Brown Weiss, Professor Georgetown University School of Law and Board of Editors, THE AMERICAN JOURNAL INTERNATIONAL LAW, January, 1990, pp. 199-200. The purpose of human society must be to realize and protect the welfare and well-being of every generation. This requires sustaining the life-support systems of the planet, the ecological processes and the environmental conditions necessary for a healthy and decent human environment. In this partnership, no generation knows beforehand when it will be the living generation, how many members it will have, or even how many generations there will ultimately be. It is useful, then, to take the perspective of a generation that is placed somewhere along the spectrum of time, but does not know in advance where it will be located. Such a generation would want to inherit the earth in at least as good condition as it has been in for any previous generation and to have as good access to it as previous generations. This requires each generation to pass the planet on in no worse condition than it received it in and to provide equitable access to its resources and benefits. Each generation is thus both a trustee for the planet with obligations to care for it and a beneficiary with rights to use it. -

3. WE I-IAVE AN ETHICAL STAKE IN FUTURE GENERATIONS Joseph R. Des Jardins, Philosophy Professor at the College of Saint Benedict and St. John’s University, ENVIRONMENTAL EThICS: AN INTRODUCTION TO ENVIRONMENTAL PHILOSOPHY, 1997, p. 83. Reasonably strong empirical evidence suggests that people are often motivated to act out of a concern for the interests of people in the future. On the political level, decisions to protect wilderness areas, establish national and state parks, forests, and shorelines, to build museums and libraries, fund research and development in medicine, industry and national defense make sense only if we recognize that the beneficiaries of these decisions will be generations as yet unborn. On a private level, decisions to endow charitable and educational foundations, and to fund artistic, cultural, and social organizations also seem obviously motivated, at least in part, by a concern to provide people of the future with a decent and human world. On a personal level, a decision as simple as planting an oak tree, one of countless varieties of plants that mature over long periods of time, suggests that individuals are motivated by a concern for the distant future. 4. WE HAVE AN ETHICAL IMPERATIVE TO RESPECT FUTURE GENERATIONS Federico Mayor, UNESCO, UNESCO COURIER, March, 1996, p. 36. For the first time in the history of humanity, awareness of the global impact of our actions starting with the effects our population numbers have on the environment compels us to do all we can to avoid causing irreparable environmental damage and preventing future generations from exercising all or some of their rights. Because of this risk we must act before it is too late and correct trends which might otherwise lead to incalculable problems. We must observe, anticipate, and prevent. Prevention is not just an option. It is an unavoidable obligation, an ethical imperative. We must act in good time. We must look ahead and try to see the shape of our common destiny. We must never lapse into fatalism. I -

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FUTURE GENERATIONS HAVE MORAL STANDING 1. INTERNATIONAL LAW DOCUMENTS OUR DUTY TO FUTURE GENERATIONS Edith Brown Weiss, Professor Georgetown University School of Law and Board of Editors, THE AMERICAN JOURNAL INTERNATIONAL LAW, January, -

1990, pp. 200-201. The theory of intergenerational equity finds deep roots in international law. The Preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights begins, “Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.” The reference to all members of the human family has a temporal dimension, which brings all generations within its scope. The reference to equal and inalienable rights affirms the basic equality of these generations in the human family. The United Nations Charter, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, the American Declaration on the Rights and Duties of Man, the Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, the Declaration on the Rights of the Child and many other human rights documents protect the dignity of all people and the equality of their rights... These instruments reveal a fundamental belief in the dignity of all members of human society and in an equality of rights that extends in time as well as space. 2. THE HUMAN RACE IS UNITED ACROSS TIME Federico Mayor, UNESCO, UNESCO COURIER, March, 1996, p. 36. The fact remains that the rights of future generations belong to a new type in comparison with the rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. First of all because, by definition, those entitled to them do not yet exist although since Roman times the law has admitted cases in which the rights of persons yet unborn are acknowledged. We must now extend that possibility, without, however, ending up with a precise legal status for the unborn child or embryo, issues which are now under discussion in many countries. In reality, these new-style rights are only rights because today~s generations have obligations whose counterparts are the rights of future generations. In other words there is a dialectical relationship between rights and duties which should make us aware of the inherent unity of the human race, in space and over time. -

3. ~THEY WILL NEVER KNOW” IS AN INADEQUATE EVASION OF OUR DUTY Joseph R. Des Jardins, Philosophy Professor at the College of Saint Benedict and St. John’s University, ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS: AN INTRODUCTION TO ENVIRONMENTAL PHILOSOPHY, 1997, p. 85. The objection is correct in holding that, if people of the future do not know of these things, they cannot desire (or miss) them. But the motivation to preserve for the future does not rest on the content of their. desires; it rests with our judgement that a life lived with the possibility of knowing and desiring these things is fuller and more meaningful than one lived without them. We can make a parallel argument by using the example of distinguished works of art. If we failed to preserve all Renaissance paintings, for example, and all records of this art were lost to future generations, surely they could not be said to miss them. If future generations knew nothing of these paintings, they could not feel their loss. But their lives would nonetheless be impoverished by this loss. And it is our concern for this, our caring that they not live an impoverished life, that motivates us to preserve great artwork for the future. Thus, it does seem meaningful to care about future people.

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Duty to Future Generations Bad ATTEMPTING TO BENEFIT FUTURE GENERATIONS DESTROYS THEM 1. AITEMPTING TO HELP FUTURE GENERATIONS ACTUALLY DESTROYS THEM Anthony D’Amato, Board of Editors, THE AMERICAN JOURNAL INTERNATIONAL LAW, Januaxy, 1990, p. 191. Let us picture the people who will be living 100 years from now: they will be specific, identifiable persons. We can claim that we currently owe an environment-preserving obligation to those particular as-yet-unborn persons. Parfit’s paradox arises when we seek to discharge that postulated obligation. Suppose that we undertake a specific environmental act of conservation. For example, we help to pass a law requiring catalytic converters on all automobiles in our state. We will thus have succeeded in intervening in the environment making the environment slightly different from the way it would have been but for our action. Our intervention will reduce the amount of air pollution that otherwise would have taken place, and increase the utilization of energy and resources in the manufacture of catalytic converters. Yet this slight difference resulting from our intervention in the environment will affect the ecosphere in the years subsequent to our intervention. In particular, it will affect the conditions under which human procreation takes place. The particular sperm and egg cells from which any human being develops is a highly precarious fact; the slightest difference in the conditions of conception will probably result in fertilization of the egg by a different sperm. Hence, when the environment is disrupted even a slight amount, a different future person will probably be conceived.... Parfits conclusion is that every single person alive 100 years from now will be an entirely different individual from the person he or she would have been had we not intervened in the environment. This fact creates a paradox in our attempt to discharge our moral obligation to future generations. How can we owe a duty to future persons if the very act of discharging that duty wipes out the very individuals to whom we allegedly owed that duty? Our attempted environmental altruism will prevent the birth of the precise beneficiaries of our altruism. --

2. PARFIT’S PARADOX IS SCIENTIFICALLY VALID Anthony D’Amato, Board of Editors, THE AMERICAN JOURNAL INTERNATIONAL LAW, Januaiy, 1990, p. 192. People encountering Parflts thesis for the first time are properly skeptical that a minor intervention in the environment can actually result in entirely different individuals in 100 years from those who would have existed then had there been no such intervention. But the result is scientifically accurate, stemming from the discovery in recent years of chaos theory. In the 1 950s, Edward Lorenz, a meteorologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, discovered that a very slight shift in the initial data about weather conditions fed into a computer will result in drastic differences in simulated weather conditions after a number of iterations. The differences, or perturbations, grow exponentially, doubling every 4 days. Lorenz called this the “butterfly effect.” An environmental intervention as slight as a butterfly flapping its wings near a weather station will change long-term weather predictions.... Thus, applying chaos theory in support of Parfit’s thesis makes clear that any action we take will affect the environment in such a way as to change the conditions of all acts of human procreation several decades hence. Even minor acts in the present can substantially affect which particular sperm cells succeed in fertilizing human ova 60 years from now.

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FUTURE GENERATIONS LACK INDEPENDENT MORAL STANDING 1. GENERIC FUTURE GENERATIONS ARE NOT WORTHY OF MORAL DUTY Anthony D’Amato, Board of Editors, THE AMERICAN JOURNAL INTERNATIONAL LAW, January, 1990, p. 194. The point is that the winner of the lottery would not be equally content to have any other person win the lottery; similarly, you and I would not be content if a different person had been born instead of us. We may have been lucky to have been born at all, but we are not ready to relinquish that luck simply on the ground that large numbers and vanishingly small probabilities are involved. The fact that somebody will be born does not mean that the person lucky enough to be born is indifferent about who it is. Future generations cannot be indifferent about whether it is they or other persons who will enjoy the fruits of the earth. If we feel we owe an obligation to them, we, too, cannot be indifferent about the question. We cannot discharge our obligation to them if in the process of doing so we deprive them of life. 2. MORAL OBLIGATION IS AN INAPPROPRIATE APPROACH TO FUTURE GENERATIONS Daniel A. Farber, Associate Dean for Faculty and Henry J. Fletcher Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota and Paul A. Henimersbaugh, Law Clerk to Judge Paul Magnuson, United States District Court for the District of Minnesota, VANDERBILT LAW REVIEW, March, 1993, p. 294-295. This benchmark enables us to invoke some widely shared intuitions. First, whether the language of ‘moral obligation” is appropriate when considering unborn descendants is not clear. If your great-grandparents squandered the family fortune, you may feel that they acted reprehensibly, but you would have difficulty charging them with violating a personal obligation toward you or with violating a “right” that you possessed. 3. GENERATIONAL JUSTIFICATIONS CARRY NO MORAL VALIDITY Anthony D’Amato, Board of Editors, THE AMERICAN JOURNAL INTERNATIONAL LAW, January, 1990, p. 193. But my argument is that although eveiy policy decision of government and business surely affects the composition of future generations, we are nevertheless entitled to examine each and every one of those policy d~ecisions from a moral point of view. If some are immoral, we reject them for that reason alone. But some policy decisions are asserted to be morally required solely because they will benefit future generations. It is just these policy decisions that are subject to the Parfit rejoinder: If you undertake a policy decision only to benefit future generations, and that is its only “moral’ justification, it is not morally justifiable at all because it destroys the very persons you claim to protect. 4. HARSH SACRIFICES FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS ARE UNREASONABLE Daniel A. Farber, Associate Dean for Faculty and Henry J. Fletcher Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota and Paul A. Hemrnersbaugh, Law Clerk to Judge Paul Magnuson, United States District Court for the District of Minnesota, VANDERBILT LAW REVIEW, March, 1993, p. 295-296. As a practical matter, we probably cannot project benefits with even minimal confidence over long periods such as over a century. Even if we could predict some benefits with a degree of accuracy over such long periods, today’s generation likely would refuse to make severe sacrifices simply to create marginal improvements in the welfare of distant future generations. 5. FUTURE GENERATIONS ARE PROTECTED BY MARKET FORCES James V. DeLong, Senior Consultant with Sanders International and Competitive Enterprise Institute Adjunct Scholar, PROPERTY MAJTERS: HOW PROPERTY RIGHTS ARE UNDER ASSAULT AND WHY YOU SHOULD CARE, 1997, p. 38. In political discussion, it is often pointed out that future generations do not vote in present elections, which often tempts cunent politicians to ignore their interests. The point is well taken. But future generations do have powerful representatives in the present: the owner who calculates that they will make it worth his while, or worth the while of his progeny, if he preserves resources for their use. The much-maligned speculator actually compensates for a serious flaw in the workings of the political system. —

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Ecocentrism Good ECOCENTRISM IS A DESIRABLE PERSPECTIVE 1. ECOCENTRISM COMPASSIONATELY VALUES NATURAL WORTH Chris Guthrie, nqa, STANFORD ENVIRONMENTAL LAW JOURNAL, 1993, P. 213. Eckersley’s ecocentric approach is best understood by way of comparison to anthropocentrism. Whereas anthropocentrism values human beings exclusively, or at least preeminently, the ecocentric approach posits that “there is no valid basis to the belief that humans are the pinnacle of evolution and the sole locus of value and meaning in the world.” Rather, an ecocentric approach values both humans and nonhumans for their own sake. While anthropocentrism adopts an atomistic view of the world, ecocentrism views the world in holistic terms, valuing “populations, species, ecosystems, and the ecosphere as well as individual organisms.” And in contrast to anthropocentrism, ecocentrism places special emphasis on “caution” and “empathy.” This means “a greater sense of compassion for the fate of other life-forms (both human and nonhuman) and a keener appreciation of the fact that many of our activities are likely to have a range of unforeseen consequences for ourselves and other life-forms.” 2. ECOCENTRISM TRANSCENDS THE UMITS OF LIBERAL ENVIRONMENTALISM Paul Wapner, assistant professor at the School of International Service at American University, TIKKUN, May, 1996, p. 21. Inviting humans to be part of a biotic community enlarges the meaning of environmental protection, and this in itself can inspire greater political effort. Although certainly important, the liberal approach to the environment evokes little passion and rarely elicits long-term commitment, probably because it turns humankind’s relationship to nature into a technocratic problem a matter of maintaining a steady flow of inputs and absorbable outputs. While such a view presents a challenging puzzle, it displays a narrowness of vision that has little to attract most of us. Indeed, liberal environmental protection is probably best left to those who specialize in maximizing efficiency, engineering the sustainabiity of throughputs, and mastering technological innovation the technocrats, bureaucrats, and systems analysts of the world. -

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3. ECOCENTRISM DOES NOT IMPLY ENVIRONMENTAL FASCISM Ronald E. Purser, Assistant Professor of Organization Development at Loyola University of Chicago, et al, ACADEMY OF MANAGEMENT REVIEW, October, 1995, p. 1053. On the other side of the debate, critics of the ecocentric paradigm have distorted the policy implications of this view, claiming that it would lead to a type of “environmental fascism” and a coercive submission of the parts to a larger, impersonal whole. Additionally, Draconian measures would be deployed, where the EPA would become a massive bureaucratic federal environmental auditing agency with powers equal to that of the IRS. These fears and criticisms are unfounded: The ecocentric paradigm does not entail downgrading the dignity of humans or undermining the viability of economic organizations. 4. ECOCENTRISM CONNECTS FOSTERS HUMAN CONNECTION WITH NATURE Paul Wapner, assistant professor at the School of International Service at American University, TIKKUN, May, 1996, p. 21. Connection is about being in the world in a different way. It sees our lives as webs of relations constituted by mutual support, respect, and care. Connection places us in the world and allows us to experience and concomitantly reinvigorate the networks of interdependence of which we are a part. By way of analogy, one could say that if minding the house involves vacuuming rugs, watering plants, and taking out the trash, cultivating a home entails acting in ways that create the kind of warmth of intimacy that results from extending our care to each other. Ecologically, connection involves seeing the earth as an intricate weave of air, water, land, and species, and appreciating how we are braided into its very fabric. This involves understanding not only that we depend upon a well-fanctiorang natural world to support us, but also that we are literally of the earth and intertwined with its life.

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ECOCENTRISM IS A VALID PERSPECTIVE 1. ECOCENTRISM IS A MORALLY JUSTIFIED POSITION Ronald E. Purser, Assistant Professor of Organization Development at Loyola University of Chicago, et al, ACADEMY OF MANAGEMENT REVIEW, October, 1995, p. 1053. There are morally significant reasons for preserving undisturbed ecosystems besides their usefulness as a “control group for assessing ecosystem health. Ecosystems support and sustain the life of various species and biological organisms. In one sense, ecosystems are valuable for the life-support function they afford. Ecosystems exist at a level that supersedes the level of individual biological organisms. It is a category mistake to use criteria for ascribing value that is appropriate at the level of species to ecosystems. For example, an animal species may have sentience, but an ecosystem does not. An animal may have the capacity for subjective experience, but an ecosystem as a whole does not. Therefore, it is a categorical mistake to assume that ecosystems are not valuable simply because they do not exhibit the criteria of sentience or subjectivity. As Rolston pointed out, We do not look for a valuer, but rather for the ability to form value. We look for a matrix, for interconnections between centers of value (individual plants and animals, dynamic lines of speciation), for creative stimulus and open-ended potential. We look for a system able to produce and support value, and ask whether that ability is a value in itself, and also a value for those it produces and supports. According to Rolston, ecosystems have the ability to produce value; that is, they produce and support life, regardless of whether humans are on the scene to ascribe and project value judgments. Ecosystems therefore have systemic value.. 2. ECOCENTRISM CONTRIBUTES TO DEMOCRATIC, EQUITABLE GOVERNMENT Chris Gutbrie, nqa, STANFORD ENVIRONMENTAL LAW JOURNAL, 1993, p.213. Accordingly, Eckersley concludes her book by identif~ring the characteristics of a truly ecocentric polity: First, an ecocentric polity will have a democratic legislature, which will be part of a larger, multi-layered, decisionmaking body. This legislature will be less powerful than a modem nation-state and more responsive to local, regional, and international decision-making bodies. Second, the ecocentric polity will be characterized by a more equitable distribution of political power, economic power, and wealth among local communities. Third, the ecocentric polity will retain a market economy, but the legislature will regulate it closely. And finally, the ecocentric polity will be characterized by an ecocentric spirit or culture. 3. ECOCENTRISM IS NOT MISANTHROPIC Ronald E. Purser, Assistant Professor of Organization Development at Loyola University of Chicago, et al, ACADEMY OF MANAGEMENT REVIEW, October, 1995, p. 1053. However, the ecocentric perspective is not misanthropic. Rather, this perspective amounts to a fundamental ethical shift, with a concomitant recognition of constraints placed on individual systems (human beings, organizations) by virtue of the fact that such systems are members of a land community. As “plain members” and “citizens” of the land community (rather than being “conquerors,” above and apart from the environment), individual systems can no longer maintain an egocentric view of themselves. 4. ECOCENTRISM DOES NOT DEVALUE HUMANITY Bryan Norton, Professor School of Public Policy, Georgia Institute of Technology, DUKE ENVIRONMENTAL LAW AND POLICY FORUM, Fall, 1996, p. 62. Critics of the land ethic, especially Tom Regan, have argued that if we manage to protect ecosystems because they have inherent value, we will sometimes override the ngbts of individual members (human and nonhuman) of ecological communities for the good of the larger whole. Regan even compared this approach to the way that Adolph Hitler and the Nazis overrode the rights of individuals in their misguided attempt to protect the German state as the embodiment of a master race. However, if Leopold and the land ethic are interpreted within a multiscalar system, there is no conflict between individual rights and the protection of ecosystems. Human individuals actually exist within ecosystems. Damage to ecosystems is usually the cumulative damage of whole cultures and civilizations it is a responsibility at the community level of a multi-scaled, open system, not at the level of individual decisions. Correction of these communal threats need not override the interests of individuals. Individuals, in a properly functioning system, will act in ways that contribute to, rather than destroy, the values that emerge on the larger, ecosystem scale. -

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Ecocentrism Bad ECOCENTRISM IS FUNDAMENTALLY FLAWED 1. ECOCENTRISM IS A FUNDAMENTALLY BANKRUPT PHILOSOPHY Thomas N. Gladwin, Director of the Global Environment Program at the Leonard N. Stern School of Business at New York University, et. al., ACADEMY OF MANAGEMENT REVIEW, October, 1995, p. 874. In summary, ecocentrism diminishes human distinctiveness, ignores fundamental relationships bearing upon human security and therefore ecological integrity, and rests on philosophical grounds that cannot cu~ently be accepted as practical guides to human conduct. Despite its perhaps attractive ideology and admirable intent, ecocentrism, like technocentrism, is beset by internal contradictions and fails to truly integrate culture and nature. 2. ECOCENTRISM UNACCEPTABLY DENIGRATES THE SIGNIFICANCE OF HUMANITY Thomas N. Gladwin, Director of the Global Environment Program at the Leonard N. Stern School of Business at New York University, et. al., ACADEMY OF MANAGEMENT REVIEW, October, 1995, p. 874. Appraising ecocenirism versus sustainabiity. In reacting to technocentrism, ecocentrists offer a worldview that is more holistic, integrative, and less arrogantly anthropocentric. Ecocentrism, however, also fails our litmus tests of sustainable development. Inclusiveness. Ecocentrism emphasizes harmony in nature and downplays its harshness. The full range of human ecological needs in such roles as predator, prey, competitor, and symbiont is often downplayed. As a species in a biotic community, some mix of human subduing and caring is essential; as Nash stated, “some degree of domination of nature by humans is necessary to prevent the domination of humans by nature”. Ecocentrism subordinates humans to the biosphere. Although true in the physical and ecological spheres, it is an ontological fallacy to claim that the human intellect is subservient to the biosphere. Ecocentrism dispenses with human distinctiveness and, thus, with human centrality in a hierarchically evolving universe. It ultimately removes the wisdom from Homo sapiens. Ecocentrism overcomes the gross reductionism of technocentrism, but it covertly propagates a subtle reductionism by instrumentalizing everything in its holistic web of life ideology. Ecocentrism fails to embrace the capacity of human intellect and, thus, the whole of reality. 3. ECOCENTRISM FAILS TO PROPERLY UNDERSTAND HUMAN SOCIETY Bob Pepperman Taylor, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Vermont, OUR LIMITS TRANSGRESSED: ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICAL THOUGHT IN AMERICA, 1992, p. 131 Although “community” is discussed a great deal in these works, the term is very loosely employed and remains largely unexamined as a normative concept. It may be appealing, and even true in some sense, to speak, as Taylor does, of “Earth’s Community of Life” or, as Callicott does, of the earth as “one humming community,” but it is not useful as a full definition of our relationship with other living things. It simply cannot describe, for example, the extension of the moral and affective mutuality that is usually thought to be included in the notion of human community. 4. ECOCENTRISM CARICATURES THE IMPLICATIONS OF ANTHROPOCENTRISM Scott Campbell, assistant professor of urban planning and policy development at Rutgers University, JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN PLANNING ASSOCIATION, June 22, 1996, p. 296. An anthropocentric view, if distorted, can lead to an arrogant optimism about civilization’s ability to reprogram nature through technologies ranging from huge hydroelectric and nuclear plants down to genetic engineering. A rigid belief in the anthropocentric labor theory of value, Marxist or otherwise, can produce a modern-day Narcissus as a social-constructionist who sees nature as merely reflecting the beauty of the human aesthetic and the value of human labor. In this light, a tree is devoid of value until it either becomes part of a scenic area or is transformed into lumber. On the other hand, even as radical, ecocentric environmentalists claim to see “true nature” beyond the city limits, they are blind to how their own world view and their definition of nature itself are shaped by their socialization. The choice between an anthropocentric or an ecocentric world view is a false one. We are all unavoidably anthropocentric; the question is which anthropomorphic values and priorities we will apply to the natural and the social world around us.

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ECOCENTRISM IS EXCESSIVELY NAIVE 1. ECOCENTRISM IGNORES OPPRESSION OF HUMAN BEINGS Thomas N. Gladwin, Director of the Global Environment Program at the Leonard N. Stern School of Business at New York University, et al., ACADEMY OF MANAGEMENT REVIEW, October, 1995, p. 874. Connectivity. A renowned proponent of deep ecology recently expressed the opinion that pursuit of ecological sustamability would be acceptable, regardless of the state of affairs in the domains of peace and justice. This view falls considerably short of our argument that ecological sustainability is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for sustainable development. Ecological sustainability is simply unachievable under conditions of social or economic unsustainability. Ecocentrism offers little guidance concerning the horrors of expanding poverty, human-rights abuse and massive displacement that currently beset much of the developing world. It fails to adequately address issues of unemployment, income inequality, and other social pathologies that grip the industrial world. Ecocentrism does not ensure sustainable livelihoods. Equity. Ecocentrism privileges the biosphere, levels distinctions within it, and by emphasizing the whole, depreciates the importance of the suffering of individual parts (human or nonhuman). Even though most ecocentrists have offered biospheric egalitarianism as a supplement or complement, and not a substitute, for human-to-human morality, more extreme ecocentrism evokes accusations of antihumanist cosmology, misanthropy, or even fascism. Although we will not attempt to settle this debate here, it is important to note that an ethic that gives nonhomocentric guidance is still impeded by uncertainties as to the constraints and ground rules by which a moral theory must abide. In the absence of principles for adjudicating conflicts of interest between human and nonhuman nature, ecocentrism offers little policy guidance beyond that of taking all legitimate human and nonhuman interests into account in decision making. Ecocentrism may completely paralyze pragmatic action of any sort. 2.ECOCENTRISM IS NOT PLAUSIBLE HUMANS MUST INTERVENE Thomas N. Gladwin, Director of the Global Environment Program at the Leonard N. Stern School of Business at New York University, et. al., ACADEMY OF MANAGEMENT REVIEW, October, 1995, p. 874. Prudence. Ecocentrism eulogizes a primal state when matter, life, and mind were undifferentiated and whole. It is a vision of return to a pristine communion with nature in a new Golden Age. The reality today, however, is that humans already may have brought about “the end of nature” as a force independent of humanity. Human alteration of natural cycles and land use/land cover is already so vast that “any clear dichotomy between pristine ecosystems and human-altered areas that may have existed in the past has vanished”. There is no longer a primal relationship to which to return. Projections suggest that the human population will double in the next century. According to ecocentrism, a substantial decrease of the human population from current levels is required. How this can be achieved in the absence of profound social reengineering is difficult to imagine. —

3. ECOCENTRISM IS WITHOUT CONSENSUS OR SOLID FOUNDATION Ronald E. Purser, Assistant Professor of Organization Development at Loyola University of Chicago, et al, ACADEMY OF MANAGEMENT REVIEW, October, 1995, p. 1053. Competing ecological paradigms add to the confusion already existing in organizational studies coupled with the erosion of a secure sense of the future and clear notion of progress. We believe that there is no single paradigm or theory that can promise to offer unfailing solutions or clear guidance to organizations for resolving current and future ecological dilemmas. Further, we could argue that the Arcadian-ecocentric paradigm is a nostalgic dream, which, although perhaps philosophically tenable and aesthetically attractive, is simply “unrealistic” in the context of socioeconomic realities. There seems to be little consensus as to what constitutes “ecosystem sustainabiity” or “beauty,’ “integrity,” “health,” and so forth.

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Ecofeminism Good ECOFEMINISM IS A DESIRABLE OUTLOOK 1. ECOFEMINISM IS ESSENTIAL TO ANY REAL POSITIVE SOCIAL CHANGE Judith Plant, Ecofeminist Author, CIRCLES OF STRENGTH, 1993, p. xii. This is why community-building must be a feminist project, and particularly an ecofeminist one. An understanding of how and why women have been subjugated by patriarchy is absolutely fundamental to any rebuilding of human society, or we will delude ourselves and our revolutions will bring us right back to the same behavior with which we started. 2. ECOFEMINISM IS NECESSARY TO BUILD STRONG COMMUNITIES Judith Plant, Ecofeminist Author, CIRCLES OF STRENGTH, 1993, p. xii. An ecofeminist perspective enhances feminism's basic message by adding that all life is seen by the patriarchy to be on this Earth for the use and convenience of the elite. More than just equality is at stake. This culture made sick power cannot value anything that is not competitive and self-interested because such values as cooperation, sharing, and even love are at odds with the patriarchal determination to turn everything into property. 3. ECOFEMINISM IS A TOOL FOR CHALLENGING ALL UNJUST POWER RELATIONSHIPS Starhawk, Peace Activist, Psychologist, Therapist and Writer, TURTLE TALK: VOICES FOR A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE, 1992, p. 35. I think part of what has burned so many women out is that we have to keep fighting for the same issues over and over again. We win victories over abortion and then suddenly they're going away and we have to struggle again for them. But I think there is, and always has been within feminism a very radical critique of society. One wing of feminism has said "Let us gain power within the system and equalize our power." Another wing has asked, "What's the point of having equal power in a system which is destroying the Earth?" What we need to do is use feminism as a tool for challenging all the relationships of power in society. 4. ECOFEMINISM EMPOWERS RURAL WOMEN IN THE THIRD WORLD Christine J. Cuomo, Activist and Author, “Unraveling the Problems in Ecofeminism” GREEN POWER, April 1996,p. np, Accessed 5/10/98, http://user.hk.linkage.net/~greenpow/essays/ecof1.htm. In her book, Staying Alive, Vandana Shiva illustrates the instrumentality of a "feminine principle" ecofeminism in empowering rural Indian women and enabling them to sustain their livelihood by interrupting deforestation. One cannot ignore the successes of ecofeminist activism in communities that have suffered severely under Westerninitiated maldevelopment. It is important that Western scholars recognize the practical relevance of ecofeminist activism even when it relies on essentialist notions and is not based on rigorous analyses. Ecofeminist criticism should take seriously the material significance of such theory for women throughout the world by asking why certain theories are able to inspire social change and changes in the way women and others interact with their environments. 5. WESTERN PATRIARCHY IS ROBBING THE WORLD OF ITS SOUL Gloria Orenstein, Professor of Comparative Literature University of Southern California, “The Shamanic Dimensions Of An Ecofeminist Narrative,” December 1997, p. np., Eve Online, Accessed 5/10/98, http://www.envirolink.org/envlib/orgs/eve/writings/shamanic.html. While we cannot personally address, interview, or study with a mentor from Minoan Crete or Catal Huyuk, we can begin to listen to the teachings and the voices of those spiritual teachers from a wide diversity of indigenous traditions living today all over the planet. In warning us of the ecological disasters and the genocidal rape of their land and their people, these voices are also telling us that at the very heart and soul of their cultures is their connectedness, not only to the Earth, but to the spirit or soul of the earth and to the spirit of the Creator of the Universe. The death of the soul (or spirit) accompanies largely atheist and agnostic scientific cultures. Our western Enlightenment monoculture is a shocking example of the death of the soul. As we have de-souled the earth through our science and technology, we are also de-souling humanity; we are alienating ourselves from the spirits of all of non-human nature in the cosmos. 197

ECOFEMINISM IS NECESSARY FOR SURVIVAL 1. ECOFEMINISM CREATES PROFOUND RESPECT FOR ALL LIFE Gloria Orenstein, Professor of Comparative Literature University of Southern California, “The Shamanic Dimensions Of An Ecofeminist Narrative,” December 1997, p. np., Eve Online, Accessed 5/10/98, http://www.envirolink.org/envlib/orgs/eve/writings/shamanic.html. In this paper I affirm that the shamanic dimension to Ecofeminism considers the definition of life, itself, to be larger than the biological, genetic description, and that the spiritual dimension of the "seed" (as discussed by Vandana Shiva) is an expanded but inherent aspect of the fundamental constituents of life, itself. Radical feminists and ecofeminists in the international Finnrage network have critiqued the new reproductive technologies thanks to the pioneering work of Renate Klein, Jan Raymond, Gena Correa, and Robyn Rowland, among many, and have noted the multiple ways in which the cycle of reproduction centered in the female is being dismembered, how women are being turned into egg producers, egg donors, uteri, and so-called "surrogate mothers"; how the mother is being fragmented, and, indeed, how reproduction is being separated from sexuality, in general. 2. ECOFEMINIST SPIRITUALITY SAFEGUARDS THE PLANET Gloria Orenstein, Professor of Comparative Literature University of Southern California, “The Shamanic Dimensions Of An Ecofeminist Narrative,” December 1997, p. np., Eve Online, Accessed 5/10/98, http://www.envirolink.org/envlib/orgs/eve/writings/shamanic.html. As most native peoples will tell us, the reason for validating the information gleaned from prophets and visionaries is rather to enable and empower us to give adequate thanksgiving to those spirits for their beneficial interventions in our lives, for it is via our spiritual communication with the spirits that safeguards the balance and harmony of the planet. Within the Ecofeminist movement, largely through the work of scholars such as Marija Gimbutas we have begun to recover the shamanic dimension of ecofeminist spirituality within our contemporary reclamations of the ancient Goddess Religion that predated patriarchy for millennia. 3. ECOFEMINISM CREATES AN ETHIC OF CARE, COMPASSION AND RESPECT FOR NATURE Christine J. Cuomo, Activist and Author, “Unraveling the Problems in Ecofeminism” GREEN POWER, April 1996,p. np, Accessed 5/10/98, http://user.hk.linkage.net/~greenpow/essays/ecof1.htm. Warren states that ecofeminist ethics makes a central place for values of care, and elements of the care ethic are evident in much ecofeminist literature. In the introduction to Healing the Wounds editor Judith Plant writes: "Our pain for the death of the forest is simply, and most fundamentally, compassion for the senseless destruction of life. This compassion that we feel is the essence of a new paradigm which ecofeminism describes in detail. Feeling the life of the "other"--literally experiencing its existence--is becoming the new starting point for human decisionmaking."

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Ecofeminism Bad ECOFEMINISM IS SEXIST 1. ECOFEMINISM ISN'T REVOLUTIONARY, IT'S REACTIONARY AND SEXIST Janet Biehl, Institute for Social Ecology, Left Green Network, RETHINKING ECOFEMINIST POLITICS, 1991, p. 15. Despite ecofeminism's "revolutionary" potential, some feminists (who are not ecofeminists) have criticized ecofeminism and its closely associated cultural feminism for their reactionary implications. Ecofeminist images of women, these critics correctly warn, retain the patriarchal stereotypes of what men expect women to be. These stereotypes freeze women as merely caring and nurturing beings, instead of expanding the full range of women's human potentialities and abilities. To focus overwhelmingly on women's "caring nature as the source of ecologically necessary "values" easily leads to the notion that women are to remain intuitive and discourages them from expanding their human horizons and capacities. 2. ECOFEMINISTS EMBRACE GENDER STEREOTYPES Janet Biehl, Institute for Social Ecology, Left Green Network, RETHINKING ECOFEMINIST POLITICS, 1991, p. 12. In fact, psycho-biological ecofeminists believe that women, owing to their biological makeup, have an innately more "caring" and "nurturing" way of being than men, a view that roots their parenting attributes in a uniquely genetic makeup. Unlike other feminists, who tried to demolish stereotypes as insufferably constraining to women's development as human beings, such ecofeminists enthusiastically begin to embrace some of these same psychobiological stereotypes. 3. ECOFEMINIST METAPHORS ARE STEREOTYPICAL AND DEMEANING TO WOMEN Janet Biehl, Institute for Social Ecology, Left Green Network, RETHINKING ECOFEMINIST POLITICS, 1991, p. 25. The attempt by ecofeminists to formulate a new ontological ground for an ecological ethics on metaphors may be a failure from a rational viewpoint, but it may be a flaming success in another, ugly way--namely, by reinforcing gender stereotypes. If metaphors of nature cannot form the basis of an ecological ethics, metaphors of women as "nature," alas are all too likely to provide the basis for sexist notions of women. Sexist characterizations like "intuitive," "Irrational," "hysterical," and "unpredictable" have been slapped on women for centuries. At the very least, this should warn women about the reckless use of metaphors in trying to formulate an environmental ethics. 4. ECOFEMINISM DOESN'T PROMOTE EMPATHY FOR OTHER OPPRESSED PEOPLE Christine J. Cuomo, Activist and Author, “Unraveling the Problems in Ecofeminism” GREEN POWER, April 1996,p. np, Accessed 5/10/98, http://user.hk.linkage.net/~greenpow/essays/ecof1.htm. Some proponents of a care ethic recommend empathy and ego denial as the point of departure for ecofeminists. Judith Plant claims that "feeling the life of the other" should be the starting point for ecofeminist decision making.'" In her essay "Invoking the Grove," Deena Metzger writes of the importance of giving up the ego as a necessary prerequisite to living out a compassionate commitment to the equality of all things." Nevertheless, given our socialization and our present material conditions, like many other oppressed people, we must begin to feel ourselves, identify our own feelings and what is in our own best interest. This experience should be our point of departure for any ethical decision making and theory building. Identifying one's own feelings and interests may be a necessary prerequisite to empathizing with another. If so, then ego denial is contrary to the kind of empathy that allows one to appreciate the oppression of another living being.

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ECOFEMINISM UNDERMINES FREEDOM 1. ECOFEMINISM EXCLUDES IMPORTANT VALUES LIKE FREEDOM AND REASON Janet Biehl, Institute for Social Ecology, Left Green Network, RETHINKING ECOFEMINIST POLITICS, 1991, p. 26. If women are to gain an understanding of their relationship with nonhuman nature that is liberatory, it certainly cannot be done by advancing a myth of the eternal feminine. Important as caring and nurturing are, humanity, it is to be hoped, has greater potentialities than caring and nurturing alone. What of such goals as consciousness, reason, and above all freedom? 2. ECOFEMINISM SUPPORTS THE STATUS QUO, NOT ECOLOGY AND FREEDOM Janet Biehl, Institute for Social Ecology, Left Green Network, RETHINKING ECOFEMINIST POLITICS, 1991, p. 156-7. Here all thinking women stand at a crossroads. Will they mystify the domestic virtue of the oikos, emphasize their particularity, defame the most generous traditions of democracy as "male" or "patriarchal," and ultimately degrade whatever progress humanity as a whole has attained in the course of its development? Or will they pursue a more generous approach by joining with others--men no less than women--in a common project of liberation and ecological restoration? This common project can never be formulated merely in terms of domestic values, of atavistic mystical retreats to the "tribalistic" virtues of the Neolithic village, or of direct or indirect denigrations of reason, science and technology as "male" or "patriarchal." In the ecology movement, thinking women must, if only to realize their human potentialities, either join with thinking men in developing new a politics, rationality and science--not to speak of those qualities that make us humane as well as human--or they are likely to follow the ecofeminist path toward a narrow parochialism, primitivism and irrationalism that will ultimately mystify and support the status quo rather than transcend it by achieving a free ecological society. 3. ECOFEMINISM IS ANTI-DEMOCRATIC AND AUTHORITARIAN Janet Biehl, Institute for Social Ecology, Left Green Network, RETHINKING ECOFEMINIST POLITICS, 1991, p. 137. By contrast, many ecofeminists prefer consensus decision-making to that of majority-minority democracy. Ideally, consensus process seeks group unanimity. In the ideal consensus process, no decision is made by a group without unanimity. After a period of debate on an issue, according to consensus theorist Caroline Estes, "there starts to emerge a common answer to the question that moves the group to a decision." This is a prayer at best rather than a description, for sometimes a "common answer" does not start to emerge at all. Ideal consensus and consensus seeking processes are nonetheless premised on the notion that such a common answer must always emerge if a decision is to be made, not unlike the emphasis many ecofeminists place on the "oneness" of "all" in a cosmological sense. Says Estes, "it is fairly easy to arrive at a unity place where people can get behind and move forward together. Indeed, for Estes, consensus is a matter of urgency: "This integration is going to be essential for our survival." By affirming that this "integration" is going to be "essential for our survival," Estes creates a quasi-authoritarian imperative. We are left with the impression that there must be "unity"--or else! 4. ECOFEMINIST CARING IS NOT ALWAYS MORALLY GOOD Christine J. Cuomo, Activist and Author, “Unraveling the Problems in Ecofeminism” GREEN POWER, April 1996,p. np, Accessed 5/10/98, http://user.hk.linkage.net/~greenpow/essays/ecof1.htm. To talk of caring and compassion in the abstract, without naming the object of the caring and the context in which the caring occurs, is ethically uninformative. In constructing an environmental ethic, feminists must ask if caring for other particular beings or objects is a good activity to engage in when one is trying to free oneself from a subordinate social position. "Caring" cannot be evaluated unless the object and purpose of care are made clear. In fact, female caring and compassion for oppressors are cornerstones of patriarchal systems. Women have forgiven oppressors, stayed with abusive husbands and partners, and sacrificed their own desires because of their great ability to care for others. Claudia Card has argued that in the context of oppression the care ethic actually causes moral damage in some women and that, therefore, caring is not always a healthy and ethical choice for a moral agent.

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Ecofeminism Responses Ecofeminism is a philosophy that is extraordinarily complex and difficult to define. As Noel Sturgeon notes, “The ecofeminist movement I examine, and in some ways construct throughout this book, is a fractured, contested, discontinuous entity that constitutes itself as a social movement with a particular place in a tradition of U.S. radical social movments.”1 One of the founders of ecofeminism in the United States, Ynestra King, called it, “the third wave of the women's movement,” indicating it was, “this most recent manifestation of feminist activity [that] was large and vital enough to parallel the first-wave nineteenth-century women’s movement and second-wave women’s liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s.”2 Clearly ecofeminism is having an impact on those examining it. For the purposes of this essay, we must attempt to reach some sort of definition of ecofeminism. Noel Sturgeon says, “Most simply put, ecofeminism is a movement that makes connections between environmentalisms and feminisms; more precisely, it articulates the theory that the ideologies that authorize injustices based on gender, race, and class are related to the ideologies that sanction the exploitation and degradation of the environment.” 3 Perhaps the first ecofeminist “manifesto” was the Unity Statement from the Women’s Pentagon Action in 1981. In it, “the women demand an end to male violence in all its forms (warfare, poverty, educational deprivation and distortion, battering, rape, pornography, reproductive control, heterosexism, racism, nuclear power), an end to oppression, and end to warfare. In the last six paragraphs, the Unity Statement explicitly names women and ecology as forces opposed to militarism and corporatism.”4 These goals of the movement have been expanded upon, clarified, and debated since the movement’s inception. In this essay, we will focus on ecofeminism as the philosophy that points out the similarities in the abuses of women and the environment. When employed in any type of debate round it would be best to ask for sufficient clarification of what it meant by “ecofeminism” to determine which of the arguments discussed below will be most applicable and most effective. ECOFEMINISM HURTS ECOLOGY BY PORTRAYING NATURE AS AN ENEMY Though the goal of ecofeminism is partly the ethical treatment of the environment and protection of the natural world, it actually harms ecology in an important way. Author Stacy Alaimo discusses this problem by looking at the history of feminism and movements toward birth control. She explains that in the fight for reproductive freedom, nature and the natural world became volatile sites in the writings of women. She notes, “Thus, ‘nature,’ dense with contested meanings, becomes a discursive nexus for feminist attempts to establish agency, self-determination, and reproductive control.”5 However, she continues by noting that, “feminist rearticulations of nature draw on predominant categories and are no less contradictory.”6 Many feminist writers have portrayed nature as harmful. Rebecca Inman and Mary Pitts, for example, portrayed nature as being anti-essentialist and a realm of freedom. However, in other works it becomes essentialist with a vengeance as it reduces the characters in their writing to breeding bodies. Alaimo notes, “Despite some ecofeminists’ affirmations of a ‘closeness’ between woman and nature, during the period when women battled for reproductive freedom, nature was frequently portrayed as feminism’s foe- especially when such ‘closeness’ erupted into natural disasters.”7 This argument is helped by specific examples. When literature portrays nature as the cause and problem relating to women being seen only as child-bearers, it is difficult to consider that literature also a push for preserving the environment. Childbirth and being seen as a breeding body is harmful, and associating that harm with nature makes nature the enemy. Reproduction is even defined as a “natural disaster.” In Edith Summer Kelley’s Weeds, the protagonist does not feel a bond with nature since it consumed her in, “a quicksand of endless reproduction.” 8 Nature is also seen as seducing the protagonist to then only betray her with the horrors of bearing a child. Nature was seen not as an outside territory, but one that was collapsing in on and even colonizing women’s bodies. In Fielding Burke’s Call Home the Heart, “nature offers the young female protagonists an escape from domestic drudgery. But when girls become women, the nature that exists as a liberatory field outside of the domestic manifests itself within their bodies, and, paradoxically, renders them the very nucleus of the domestic realm as child bearers.” 9 201

These images clearly portray nature as the villain that women face in claiming reproductive rights. While the ecofeminist movement may not explicitly blame nature as much anymore, this association can still be damaging. Ecofeminism places a high priority on the rights of women and their ability to control their bodies. In that sense, the philosophy contradicts itself by championing women and nature, and then showing that nature may be harming women. Stuart Hall notes that, “some associations, though not given for all time, are difficult to break because the ideological terrain of this particular social formation has been so powerfully structured in that way by its previous history.”10 So long as nature is seen as holding women back, a movement that focuses on moving women forward will not be able to fully strive to protect nature. The identification of nature as the cause and also part of the problem confuses the philosophy and can lead to a natural tendency against nature as the cause of women’s servitude to child-bearing. Additionally, this identification of nature as the problem leads to other negative consequences for the ecofeminist movement. If nature is viewed as the enemy then time and attention must be put into describing that enemy and attempting to stop the actions that the enemy is taking. In this case, nature would be focused on in terms of how it could be stopped. This diverts time, energy and resources from the real problems that ecofeminism is supposed to be confronting: the abuse and discrimination facing women and the earth in our world today. By focusing on nature as the problem there is no allowance for a movement to protect and preserve nature. Similarly, women will continue to suffer because the attention is being paid to the adversarial description of nature instead of the unifying way that nature and women are in the same situation. ECOFEMINISM BRINGS ALONG ANTIFEMINISM It should come as no surprise that as the feminist movement has grown and made advances, resistance to this movement have also grown. There is a strong anti-feminist sentiment around the world that attempts to combat feminist movements at every level. Therefore, associating the protection of the environment with feminism invites this anti-feminist movement to challenge any progress. This argument should not in any way be construed to mean that if resistance exists a movement or goal should be abandoned. Instead, it is an evaluation of the most effective way to advance the environmental goals of ecofeminism. To truly understand the resistance that comes with feminism’s association with environmental goals, we must explore the state of antifeminism today. The first form of evidence of antifeminism is the treatment of women around the world. The United Nations Population Fund wrote in 2000 about women of the world, “This half does most of the world’s work, yet earns a fraction of its income. This same half is often the target of violence, is deprived of education and health care and denied a role in civic life. This half is comprised of women and girls. The discrimination they endure, solely as a consequence of their gender, is universal. It occurs in virtually every country in the home and workplace at worship and play in classrooms and courtrooms.”11 The antifeminism that we see in the world around us today is not an accident, but has rather developed purposely and with much care over the course of history. In her book The War Against Women, author Marilyn French explains the historical progression of abuse of women. She notes of our present state: “In the same vein, men-as-a-caste- elite and working-class men- continue to seek ways to defeat feminism, by rescinding or gnawing away at its victories, confining women to lower employment levels, or founding movements aimed at returning them to fully subordinate status....Men are adapting new technologies to old purposes, for example, using amniocentesis to detect a fetus’s sex to abort girls or new fertility techniques to create children they claim as their own. These actions amount to a global war against women.” 12 This evidence is all over the world. French notes, “This war is aimed at reasserting or tightening men’s control over female bodies, especially sexual and reproductive capacities, and women’s labor.” 13 The second form of evidence of antifeminism is the opposition that is levied more directly at the movement. Rhonda Hammer notes, “Indeed, this backlash has plagued the feminist movement since its inception, but as of late it has taken on a particularly dangerous guise, within the seductively poisonous ideological form of an antifeminist ‘feminism’...This agenda is being advanced by a growing assortment of collaborators, who are misrepresenting themselves- largely through the efforts of the mainstream media- as feminists or feminist proponents.”14 The media also hampers feminism and promotes antifeminism. Susan Douglas wrote, “This was what the debates about feminism got reduced to in the mass media: a catfight...So it’s worth reminding ourselves that the catfight was first 202

revived not in prime time but through a more respectable venue, the news media.”15 The media used other women to put down feminism and insult its ideology. The media seems to have been stacked against the feminist movement from the beginning. But it’s important to note that the media would not have been so antifeminist had not their message found a welcoming audience. The public embraced this antifeminist attitude, and such media roles continue today. Hammer notes, “Susan Douglas’s analysis of the media’s role in misrepresenting and diminishing the underlying philosophy and goals of the feminist movement of the 1970’s is not just a tactical relic of the past.”16 Perhaps the best example of the pervasive nature of antifeminism being used subtly is in the 1998 Time Magazine cover and article entitled, “Is Feminism Dead?” The article claimed to pictorially show the history of the feminist movement. It included pictures of Susan B. Anthony, Gloria Steinem and Ally McBeal. Hammer explains, “The Time cover story presents a completely invented reality of the so-called contemporary feminist terrain that is devoid of any references to the real multidimensional state of current feminist theory or practice.” 17 The article suggests that the need for feminism has passed, ignoring the realities of the discrimination women face still. This antifeminist sentiment, now accurately documented, must be discussed in terms of its effect on the ecofeminist movement. There are probably a substantial amount of antifeminists who are not against saving or protecting the environment. These people may be possible resources for the environmental movement, providing political capital, funding and labor. However, associating the ecological goals with feminism in any form will turn these people off from the movement. This means not only that the move towards environmentally sound policies suffers, but additionally, that the ecofeminist movement in particular suffers. In that sense, the best way to pursue goals of protecting and preserving the environment is not to invite those who oppose feminism unnecessarily to criticize or prevent progress. ECOFEMINISM DOMESTICATES THE EARTH Ecofeminism is based on the notion that there are parallels to be drawn between the way the earth is taken advantage of and abused and the way that women are taken advantage of and abused. In that sense, there is a correlation and an association between the earth and women. This entrenches and advocates the view of the earth (and nature) as female. However, the portrayal of the earth as female is actually damaging because it domesticates the earth and makes it a tool for the protection and care of humankind. Stacy Alaimo discusses this very problem that has actually been noted by many scholars studying the rhetoric of environmental advocacy groups. Alaimo uses the example of a bumper sticker that reads, “Love Your Mother,” in calling for the preservation of the planet. Catherine Roach analyzes this image, saying that “it is problematic because of our tendency to relate to our mothers as ambivalent love-objects, expected to care for all our needs, and that for this reason, instead of achieving the desired result of encouraging us toward environmental soundness, this slogan has almost the opposite effect of helping to maintain exploitative patterns toward the earth and mother.”18 The image of “mother earth” and earth as a woman is a huge problem. Carolyn Merchant warns that we should not be reinstating, “nature as the mother of humankind.” 19 Patrick D. Murphy noted in “Sex-Typing the Planet” that, “sex-typing a gender-free entity reinscribes a cultural dualism and an anthropomorphism that alienates earth by trying to render it in our image.” 20 This quotation from Murphy merits a closer examination. First, the anthropocentrism only further entrenches the notion that humanity is separate from earth. This allows us to not view ourselves as dependent and justifies actions which harm the earth. In addition, he explains that we actually try to make earth in our own image by assigning the human concept of gender to the earth. This again places the earth below humans and makes it a lower priority than human life. The way that earth is portrayed as Mother Earth is damaging. In a television special for a recent Earth Day, Mother Earth was played by Better Midler, as “a whiny, dismissible character. Poor Mother Earth is sick, victimized by humanity. This perfectly selfless mother doesn’t really mind that she herself is dying but worries abut the people who need her.”21 This portrayal of Mother Earth as the victim not only makes the environment look weak, but places women in the role of victim as well. It should also be noted that the connotations of “motherhood” do not carry into nature. Nature is not required to care for humanity, and oftentimes nature’s actions are destructive 203

toward humanity. To suggest that nature is responsible to humanity sets individuals up to feel betrayed when nature doesn’t “behave” the way they expect, justifying control of and harm to the environment. Therefore, while the association of women and the earth is supposed to point out the harms and problems that both face; in actuality this association only causes more damage. To domesticate the earth as a woman and a mother only harms the movement to protect the earth as a being. It also unnecessarily invites problems over the gendering of the earth. A stronger, more gender-neutral image of the earth is needed if the movement to end abuse of the earth and women is to be successful. Such an image would be unifying instead of divisive and pessimistic. ECOFEMINISM SUFFERS IN THE SHADOW OF THE GREEN MOVEMENT Greta Gaard notes: “[The] description of ecofeminism can be seen as one example of a larger phenomenon within the Green movement throughout its history: the perspective that ecofeminism is a subsidiary of the Green movement rather than a distinct movement of its own.” Gaard even explains how this is much like the co-optation of women by men in general, adding Janet Biehl’s words that, “Women know from long experience that when they are asked to become ‘one’ with a man, as in marriage, that ‘one’ is usually the man. Ecofeminists should be equally suspicious of this ‘ecological’ oneness.”22 Unless ecofeminism can separate itself from the Green movement and other branches of the environmental movement, it risks losing its impact and its ability to be seen as unique. There is nothing wrong with environmental groups joining forces in order to have a greater effect for their cause. However this is not the case with ecofeminism and the Green movement. Ecofeminism has been claimed as part of the Green movement by those outside of ecofeminism. As such, the general public probably does not understand what sets ecofeminism apart. The coopting of movements is also dangerous in that it allows the possibility of misrepresentation. If the Green movement or another branch of the environmental movement begins to speak on behalf of ecofeminism due to the shadow they have cast, the likelihood that the message is accurately transmitted is low. Ecofeminists are best prepared to discuss their philosophy and position. Allowing them to be taken over by the Green movement or another larger movement increases the possibility that the ecofeminist message is not heard appropriately. A reason why ecofeminism is finding it so difficult to escape this shadow of the Green movement is that ecofeminism is a purposely fragmented and diverse movement. At that level, it becomes hard to point to what is and is not ecofeminism; and that makes it difficult to recruit or sustain a movement. In discussing the origins of ecofeminism, Greta Gaard reveals how little of the philosophy of modern ecofeminism was included at the beginning of the movement in the Unity Statement. She says, “The introductory emphasis on militarism as the root cause of the problem shows this first manifestation of ecofeminism as origination from the peace movement. There is no direct mention of women’s spirituality, for example, or of the need for animal liberation; the military’s destruction of nature is framed primarily in terms of its impact on humans rather than on the environment itself. And the connections between corporations and the military- connections that would move to the center of ecofeminist analysis as it developed a broad scope historically and internationally- are left to the end of the statement.”23 The way that the movement has developed and changed has certainly allowed for flexibility, but it has also added difficulty to the task of defining what ecofeminism is. At that level, the movement is easily taken over by the Green movement, and the goals that are particular to the ecofeminist movement are not discussed. The purpose of ecofeminism cannot be achieved if it is constantly viewed as a subset of the Green movement. However, the misunderstandings about ecofeminism and its complicated and changing nature mean that it is doomed to remain in the shadow. ECOFEMINISM ENFORCES A FALSE BINARY OF SEX Ecofeminism assumes that there exists categories of humans that are “men” and “women.” This binary does not exist in reality, but is a social construction. The belief that there exist “men” and “women” denies the existence and eliminates the space for other genders and sexes. This would include transgender individuals, individuals with ambiguous genitalia or those who do not affiliate with either being male or female. In that sense, ecofeminism 204

denies self-definition and autonomy by forcing individuals into only two categories of sex when in reality many more exist. This mentality should be criticized at multiple levels. First, this mindset enforces the belief that individuals who fall outside of a binary of sex are different and do not have a sex. This justifies negative treatment of those individuals as outsiders and as different. Violence and discrimination result when this sort of classification system is used. A person who does not fit into the only two legitimate categories constructed by ecofeminism may feel like they are no longer a person since they have no place to belong. Although this is only one venue for their involvement, the mentality that they are not included in the categories as human can carry scars throughout attempts to join or assist other movements. It is also, at a basic level, psychologically damaging. Second, this hurts the ecofeminist cause. The movement is supposedly committed to making connections between violence happening to humanity and violence happening to the earth. Individuals who fall outside of the binary of gender are often the victims of violence, yet this is not targeted or discussed by ecofeminism. Instead, only those who are willing or able to self-identify as “women” are included in the type of violence that the earth also experiences. In addition to de-legitimizing the experiences of those who are not “men” or “women,” this mindset excludes people from the ecofeminist movement. A sex binary is a reason that some individuals will feel uncomfortable participating or getting involved in the movement. Ecofeminism is based on a belief that there is suffering going on currently. Yet defining sex and “women” as one half of that category only allows suffering to continue at multiple levels. This definition excludes and enforces dangerous attitudes that already exist, placing some people as more important in a hierarchy of the discrimination and abuse that takes place in the world around us. MARXIST FEMINISM While there are many different forms of feminism, all of which are complex and possibly unable to be defined, Marxist feminism offers a unique challenge to ecofeminism by identifying a different cause for the discrimination happening to both women and the earth. The tradition that developed out of Marxist feminism identifies the cause of the world’s problems as the focus on capital and production. Women are abused, therefore, because they are viewed as capital that can be used as the means to an ends for another person. Women become dispensable in this view, as does most of humanity in an attempt to profit. The reasons for the exploitation of the earth are the same. In the interest of ensuring capital, the earth is destroyed. Mining is done quickly and in non-environmentally sensitive ways. The ground is destroyed by explosions in an attempt to mine minerals and production materials. Forests and trees are cut down to produce wood to build or create energy for a company and their machines. Chemicals and waste are leaked into the ocean, ground, and air because it is cheap and the easiest way to boost profit. Militarism is in the interest of protecting a country, which really means protecting the economic interests of that country. Therefore, the devastation from nuclear waste and wars can also be attributed to the search for capital. Empires that took thousands of lives were justified in the need for capital and raw materials to produce goods. Slavery was defended as an efficient economic system and slaves were viewed as capital. Marxist feminism therefore, explains that the root cause of our problems is the quest for capital, economic gain, and production. Ecofeminism denies this possibility by claiming that there is some unique bond between the women of the world and the earth that makes them targets for exploitation and discrimination. This would deny a focus on capital and allow many forms of exploitation of the earth to continue. A focus on the drive for economic fulfillment and the willingness to sacrifice humanity to get that fulfillment must be examined as the root cause of the problems in the world around us. These two versions of feminism seem impossible to reconcile given the ways in which they define the cause of exploitation in radically different ways. SUMMARY

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Though ecofeminism consists of a diverse and varying range of philosophical viewpoints, its unifying characteristic is the connection drawn between harm to women and harm to the environment. However, there are numerous problems with this position. First, ecofeminism hurts ecology by portraying nature as the enemy. Additionally, ecofeminism brings along antifeminism, which adds obstacles to the process of protecting the environment. Ecofeminism actually harms the earth by domesticating it, thus performatively contradicting its own goals. The shadow of the Green movement has proven too difficult for ecofeminism to escape and it is suffering accordingly. Ecofeminism enforces a false binary of sex that is dependant upon exclusion. Ecofeminism’s exclusion of Marxist feminism harms the movement as a whole. _________________________________ 1 Sturgeon, Noel. Ecofeminist Natures: Race, Gender, Feminist Theory and Political Action. New York: Routledge, 1997, pg. 3. 2 Ibid, pg. 23. 3 Ibid, pg. 23. 4 Gaard, Greta. Ecological Politics: Ecofeminists and the Greens. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998, pg. 19. 5 Alaimo, Stacy. Undomesticated Ground: Recasting Nature as Feminist Space. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000, pg. 109. 6 Ibid, pg. 109. 7 Ibid, pg. 109. 8 Ibid, pg. 109. 9 Ibid, pg. 109. 10 Ibid, pg. 109. 11 Hammer, Rhonda. Antifeminism and Family Terrorism: A Critical Feminist Perspective. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2002, pg. ix. 12 French, Marilyn. The War Against Women. New York: Ballantine Books, 1992, pg. 13. 13 Ibid, pg. 13. 14 Hammer, Rhonda. Antifeminism and Family Terrorism: A Critical Feminist Perspective. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2002, pg. 5. 15 Ibid, pg. 13. 16 Ibid, pg. 13. 17 Ibid, pg. 17. 18 Alaimo, Stacy. Undomesticated Ground: Recasting Nature as Feminist Space. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000, pg. 172-173. 19 Ibid, pg. 173. 20 Ibid, pg. 173. 21 Ibid, pg. 173. 22 Gaard, Greta. Ecological Politics: Ecofeminists and the Greens. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998, pg. 148-149. 23 Ibid, pg. 19.

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ECOFEMINISM DOMESTICATES THE EARTH 1. ECOFEMINISM OBSCURES THE RELATIONSHIP OF WOMYN AND NATURE Janet Biehl, Social Ecologist, Rethinking Ecofeminist Politics, Boston: South End Press, 1991, pg.19. Ironically, the shift to social constructionism has somewhat diminished the original ecofeminist passion to reclaim "nature" in an organic sense - certainly when it comes to women's biology. Yet in dissolving "women and nature" into metaphors or subjective attributes, social-constructionist ecofeminists obscure both non-human nature and women's relationship to it. They leave undefined the way women, as human beings, gradually evolved out of nonhuman nature, while remaining part of nature as a whole. One wonders how many ecofeminists can claim to "speak for" a "nature" that they perceive as illusory or only through metaphors. 2. ECOFEMINIST NOTIONS OF BIOLOGICAL REPRODUCTION ARE CONFLATED WITH THE LIFE-GIVING AND LIFESUSTAINING EXISTANCE OF MOTHER EARTH. Stearney, Lynn M. Assistant Professor of Communication, University of New Hampshire. “Feminism, Eco-Feminism, and the Maternal archetype: Motherhood as a feminine universal.” Communication Quarterly, Spring 1994. NP. Within ecofeminist rhetoric, the existence of the Earth Mother and her life-giving and life-sustaining nature, is conflated with human motherhood and the biological process of reproduction. Some theorists, for example, speculate that women often experience their oneness and identification with nature through such experiences as reclaimed menstruation, pregnancy, natural childbirth, and motherhood (e.g. Razak, 1990; Salleh, 1984; Starhawk, 1989). Such experiences give women a particular authority in environmental activism, as they share the experience of birth with the earth as a fundamentally feminine parent. 3. UNGENDERED METHODS ARE KEY FOR PROTECTING THE EARTH Stearney, Lynn M. Assistant Professor of Communication, University of New Hampshire. “Feminism, Eco-Feminism, and the Maternal archetype: Motherhood as a feminine universal.” Communication Quarterly, Spring 1994. NP. In this essay, I argue that we must continue to search for a powerful but ungendered image that can function to motivate and unify the environmental movement. He mother archetype, however powerful, cannot function in this way without reinforcing the contemporary patriarchal ideal of motherhood as natural, limitless, and exploitable. My analysis proceeds in four stages. First, I will offer a discussion of motherhood as an archetype that specifically ties it to female identity and female nature. Second, I will contrast the archetypal description of motherhood with feminism’s critique of motherhood as an institution that emerged in the 1970’s. Third, I will examine the use of the maternal archetype in ecofeminist rhetoric and its dependence on an essentialist view of women as mothers. Finally, I will discuss the implications of the ecofeminist appropriation of the maternal archetype for women, and for the environmental movement. Ultimately, I argue, the maternal archetype is harmful to feminism, because in advancing the construct of “motherhood” as a feminine universal, it denies women access to other identities. The conflating of “motherhood” with the environmental movement obscures the responsibility of men, women, and children to ensure the survival of the Earth. A continued search seems warranted for a powerful but gender neutral image that motivates all of the Earth’s inhabitants to practice environmental responsibility.

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ECOFEMINISM OPPRESSES WOMYN 1. OBSCURING THE LINK BETWEEN WOMYN AND THE EONVIRONMENT HURTS WOMYN Karen Green, Professor of Philosophy, Monash University, “Environmental Ethics”, Summer 1994, pg. 127. It was at least partly in direct response to this reasoning that Wollstonecraft asserted that it is the faculty of reason which distinguishes human beings from the brutes and that the perfection of both men and women consists in the triumph of reason and virtue. Viewed in this way, the second historical argument rests on a one-sided characterization of the Christian tradition and masks the fact that, historically, feminists have had good reason to be suspicious of the valorization of nature, since it is so closely associated with the valorization of women's natural role and with a justification of their exclusion from the rights of self-determination. 2. APPEALS TO NATURE USED TO JUSTIFY SUBORDINATION OF WOMYN Karen Green, Professor of Philosophy, Monash University, “Environmental Ethics”, Summer 1994, pg. 126-127. The problem of the education of the virtuous citizen, therefore, becomes the problem of discovering a method of allowing the true God-given nature of man to unfold. This is a method that has to be discovered by reason, but it is a reason subordinated to the dictates of nature, which, Rousseau believes, can be discerned in bare outline beneath the actual character of people who have suffered from centuries of cultural corruption. When applied to women, this reasoning transforms itself into a classic justification for their subordination to their husbands within the private sphere of the household. Since it is in women's nature to bear children, and since, in bearing children, a woman is at a disadvantage and requires support, nature and reason dictate that her character and education should mould her to fulfill the role of loving mother and devoted wife. Thus, in this strand of Western philosophical thought, far from there being a connection between the subordination of nature and the subordination of women, it is the valorization of nature. which extends to the valorization of natural women, that is used to justify the subordination of women to their husbands and to decry the corrupting influence of those disordered women who neglect their natural maternal duties in favor of participation in the world of politics and the arts. 3. ECOFEMINISM DENIES WOMYN FREEDOM Luc Ferry, Professor of Philosophy, the Sorbonne, The New Ecological Order. 1995, pg.125-126. Here we can measure the distance from existentialist feminism: it is by affirming her difference from "males," by insisting instead on her specific proximity to nature, that the woman, like the proletariat in days past, incarnates the redemptive portion of humanity. The danger inherent in such a position is obvious. Simone de Beauvoir had already foreseen it and Elisabeth Badinter has analyzed it: an insistence on the "naturality" of women threatens to revive the most time-worn clichés about "feminine intuition," the vocation of motherhood and the irrationality of what could well, under such conditions, pass for the "second sex." To assert that women are more "natural" than men is to deny their freedom, thus their full and whole place within humanity.

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ECOFEMINISM CREATES NEGATIVE GENDER BINARIES 1. ECOFEMINISM ESSENTIALIZES WOMYN Karen Warren, Professor of Philosophy, Macalister, Ecological Feminism, 1994, pg. 3. In her piece, "Is Ecofeminism Feminist?," Victoria Davion offers the distinction between "ecofeminist" and "ecofeminine" positions and argues that many of the currently available positions - nearly all ones, it turns out, offered by nonphilosophers - are properly called "ecofeminine" rather than "ecofeminist." Davion rejects such positions on a number of grounds, including their essentializing tendencies to speak of one woman's voice, a woman's way of knowing, "women's knowledge" or "women's perspective," or to glorify female sex and genderidentified traits, "the feminine" or "the female" or "the feminine principle." Through conceptual clarification, Davion argues that a "truly feminist perspective cannot embrace either the feminine or the masculine uncritically, as a truly feminist perspective requires a critique of gender roles, and this critique must include masculinity and femininity" (p. 14). Those that fail to do this are understood as ecofeminine philosophies, not ecofeminist ones. 2. ECOFEMINISM UNDERMINES FEMINISM BY EMBRACING FEMININE ROLES Victoria Davion, Professor of Philosophy, University of Georgia, Ecological Feminism, Karen Warren, ed., 1994, pg. 16. If feminists fail to assert that at least some of the roles assigned to women under patriarchy are damaging, we fail to assert the very premise that makes feminism, the overthrowing of patriarchy, important. For, if sexist oppression is not damaging to women, women have no reason to resist it. If it does cause damage, we should expect to see this damage in traditionally assigned feminine roles. Thus, ecofeminist solutions which assert that feminine roles can provide an answer to the ecological crisis, without first examining how these roles presently are, or historically have been, damaging to those who play them, undermine the very conceptual significance and underpinnings of feminism that ecofeminist philosophers such as Warren and Plumwood assert. 3. ECOFEMINISM CREATES GENDER BINARIES Stearney, Lynn M. Assistant Professor of Communication, University of New Hampshire. “Feminism, Eco-Feminism, and the Maternal archetype: Motherhood as a feminine universal.” Communication Quarterly, Spring 1994. NP. Second, however, the ecofeminist appropriation of the maternal archetype obscures the social nature of mothering as a practice that feminists revealed in both their theory and in their autobiographical reflections. Ecofeminists who emphasize the notion of women’s “difference” and their greater capacity for caring, nurturing, and self0sacrifice have tended to link “relatedness” and female identity to motherhood per se. Tacitly, these renderings imply that women’s capacity for empathic relatedness to the earth is circumscribed in motherhood, and, as such is universal and biologically determined. Unfortunately, this trajectory has the effect of reinforcing-and indeed, entrenching- the traditional gender dichotomy that positions women as essentially “related” to others and men as autonomous individuals. Women’s capacity for “relatedness,” however, has evolved in a particular social, cultural, and historical context. Although the capacity for nurturing, empathy, and care have become associated with stereotypically feminine characteristics, there are multiple reasons for this association. Ecofeminists promote and essentialist view of gender differences by privileging women’s relationship to nature and their responsibility for environmental protection in this way.

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THE MATERNAL ARCHTYPE USED IN ECOFEMINISM IS BAD FOR THE ENVIRONMENT AND WOMYN 1. ECOFEMINISM NATURALIZES WOMENS’ ROLES. Stearney, Lynn M. Assistant Professor of Communication, University of New Hampshire. “Feminism, Eco-Feminism, and the Maternal archetype: Motherhood as a feminine universal.” Communication Quarterly, Spring 1994. NP. The maternal theme in ecofeminist rhetoric emphasizes and illustrates women in their “natural” roles as mothers: furthermore, this mothering role is constructed to highlight the psychological characteristics that accompany the maternal archetype as a universal feminine ideal. The intent of using the maternal archetype is to unify and motivate a “caring” environmental activism. However, the dependence on the maternal archetype in ecofeminist rhetoric may have the inadvertent result of reducing and simplifying complex political, economic, social, and technical environmental issues to the cultivation of a appropriate maternal and feminine ethic while simultaneously reducing female identity to the facts of women’s reproductive capacity. 2. THE MATERNAL ARCHTYPE USED IN ECOFEMINISM NATURALIZES WOMENS’ ROLES Stearney, Lynn M. Assistant Professor of Communication, University of New Hampshire. “Feminism, Eco-Feminism, and the Maternal archetype: Motherhood as a feminine universal.” Communication Quarterly, Spring 1994. NP. First, the deployment of the maternal archetype in ecofeminism leaves motherhood itself undertheorized and overdetermined as a “natural” role for women and a “natural” ability of those of us born with wombs. Such a perspective obscures the social construction of motherhood and dilutes women’s diverse experiences of mothering. While giving childbirth is a biological event, the sentiments that surround birth as well as those that surround mothering are socially constructed. Furthermore, this privilege of motherhood as a form of power and as an alliance with nature overlooks the fact of men’s essential role in human reproduction. The celebration of motherhood as the source of women’s attunement to nature and as a feminiace unversal also overemphasizes the place of motherhood in women’s lives, and splits off women who are not mothers into a theoretical cul-de-sac. This construction of motherhood additionally promotes an identification of women as exclusively and essentially mothers, therby diminishing other identities or other roles for women in the environmental movement, or in the world at large.. 3. THE MATERNAL ARCHETPE CAN HAVE ADVERSE CONSEQUENCES ON THE EARTH AS WELL AS FOR FEMINISM. Stearney, Lynn M. Assistant Professor of Communication, University of New Hampshire. “Feminism, Eco-Feminism, and the Maternal archetype: Motherhood as a feminine universal.” Communication Quarterly, Spring 1994. NP. Fourth, the over-emphasis in ecofeminism on the metaphorical and symbolic dimensions of mothering may ultimately have adverse consequences for the earth, as well as for feminism. As Gray (1982, pp. 102-105) points out, Mothers in patriarchal culture provide all of our sustenance, rid us of our waste products, satisfy all of our wants and needs, and function as an exploitable, limitless, self sacrificing object. A similarly exploitative approach to the environment will undoubtedly have disastrous results. Additionally, ecofeminist rhetoric which draws on the maternal archetype may inadvertently reduce the number of potential environmental activists through its gendered imagery. Although Ruddick (1989) and others have argues that “maternal thinking” is not restricted to women alone, our unconscious association is of mother as a feminine ideal. By dichotomizing and defining human characteristics by gender, ecofeminism creates a gendered, “two-world” view of environmental activism, positioning women as environmental “ mothers” but making no mention of environmental “fathers,” of even of environmental “parents.”

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Economic Competitiveness Good ECONOMIC COMPETITIVENESS IS A GOOD VALUE 1. COMPETITIVENESS CONSIDERS THE WHOLE ECONOMY Stephen Cohen, Professor and Co-director of Berkeley Economic roundtable, FOREIGN AFFAIRS, July/August 1994, p.193. The clean simplicity and apparent analytic power of the simple, one-number approach, though it fits snugly with the models and methods of traditional American economics, has given rise to efforts to define a different organizing concept--competitiveness--in order to open a broader, more open-minded and modest approach. The competitiveness approach poses a sensible question: How are we doing as an economy? No single number sums it all up, especially given the follow-up: how are we doing compared to the other guys? And why? Competitiveness is a reconsideration of a broad set of indicators, none of which tells the whole story but that together provide a highly legitimate focus. 2. COMPETITIVENESS TAKES THE ECONOMY TO A HIGHER LEVEL Daniel Burton, US Council on Competitiveness, WASHINGTON QUARTERLY, Autumn 1994, p. 17. By the early 1990s, the White House and Congress had joined the US private sector in regularly referring to competitiveness as a driving rationale for their policies. Its impact on the US private sector cannot be overestimated. International competition has forced US firms to conceive of their business in entirely new ways. It has led them to reassess their products, their customers, their markets and their rivals. It has prompted them to search out new management ideals around the world and to implement them at home. It has driven them to hone their skills against the most demanding customers worldwide. And it is the major force behind efforts to streamline production, improve quality, accelerate cycle-time, and rethink the innovation process. 3. COMPETITIVENESS STRENGTHENS PRODUCTIVITY AND GROWTH Daniel Burton, US Council on Competitiveness, WASHINGTON QUARTERLY, Autumn 1994, p. 17. Concerns about US competitiveness are also behind legislation designed to improve US education and training programs such as the Goals 2000: Educate America Act and the School-to-Work Opportunities Act. Goals 2000 explicitly state that by the year 2000, "US students will be first in the world in science and mathematics achievement." The School-to-Work Opportunities Act takes much of its inspiration from the German apprenticeship programs designed to make sure that students are ready for the demans of the workplace when they graduate from school. Will these initiatives succeed? It is too early to tell, but there is no doubt that competitiveness has played a constructive role in focusing the United States on critical domestic eduction and training problems -- problems that if addressed would strengthen US productivity performance and economic growth. 4. COMPETITIVENESS LEADS TO NEW TECHNOLOGY AND GROWTH IN MANY AREAS Daniel Burton, US Council on Competitiveness, WASHINGTON QUARTERLY, Autumn 1994, p. 17. Competitiveness has also had a significant impact on US R&D policy. Here it has prompted a series of programs to enhance US industry's ability to develop and commercialize new technology. Some of these programs, such as the information superhighway the Clinton administration is promoting, fall into the category of strengthening the nation's technology infrastructure. Others focus on providing incentives for industry to develop critical technologies with broad application, such as the Advanced Technology Program at the National Institute of Standards and Technoplogy, launched under President George Bush, and the more recent Technology Reinvestment Program at the Advanced Research Projects Agency in the Department of Defense.

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CRITICS OF COMPETITIVENESS ARE WRONG 1. PAUL KRUGMAN'S CONCLUSIONS ARE WRONG: COMPETITIVENESS HELPS Daniel Burton, US Council on Competitiveness, WASHINGTON QUARTERLY, Autumn 1994, p. 17. Krugman, however, pushes his argument too far. Although he raises some interesting points, his conclusion -- that competitiveness is a "dangerous obsession" -- is not warranted. On the contrary, competitiveness is a valuable concept that can, and has, led to constructive public policy. 2. KRUGMAN'S PRODUCTIVITY FOCUS IS WORSE THAN A COMPETITIVENESS FOCUS Stephen Cohen, professor and co-director of the Berkeley Economic Roundtable, FOREIGN AFFAIRS, July/August 1994, p.196. Krugman warns us that an obsession with competitiveness is dangerous and advises cathecting it onto productivity. A near-exclusive focus on productivity, however, has some particular dangers and problems. Competitivenesss puts productivity at the center of its concerns but not as an explanation. Instead competitiveness points out that overall productivity rates, which are very complex syntheses, are the things to explain, and that economics does not know how to do that. 3. 10 YEARS EMPIRICALLY DISPROVE KRUGMAN'S VIEWS Daniel Burton, US Council on Competitiveness, WASHINGTON QUARTERLY, Autumn 1994, p. 17. In some ways, Krugman's argument is largely semantic. He likes the word "productivity" but not the word "competitiveness." His major complaint is that competitiveness focuses on relatively unimportant issues, like trade balances, and in doing so detracts from the greatest determinant of national economic performance, namely growth in domestic productivity. He believes that this focus is the result of faulty analysis by economists who should know better and leads to bad public policy. Yet, although international trade has received a lot of attention in the competitiveness debate, so have investment, technology and human resources, which together constitute the building blocks of productivity. As for the charge that competitiveness leads to distorted public policy, and in particular protectionism, the record of the last decade does not support his claim. 4. KRUGMAN OMITS THE STATISTICS THAT PROVE HIM WRONG Stephen Cohen, professor and co-director of the Berkeley Economic Roundtable, FOREIGN AFFAIRS, July-August 1994, p.195-6. Krugman criticizes those who write about competitiveness for their tendency to "engage in what may perhaps most tactfully be described as 'careless arithmetic'." Yet Krugman's own arithmetic is, to say the least, careless. He provides a table that purports to demonstrate arithmetically that value-added production correlates not with technology but with capital intensity. But relating capital intensity to value added by sector contains a concealed correlation because the same table also ranks sectors by degree of monopoly power. And nothing generates more value added than monopoly. Furthermore, Krugman omits at least one sector: pharmaceuticals.

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Economic Competitiveness Bad ECONOMIC COMPETITIVENESS IS A BAD VALUE 1. SEEKING COMPETITIVENESS LEADS TO POOR ECONOMIC POLICY Paul Krugman, Professor of economics at MIT, FOREIGN AFFAIRS, March/April 1994, p. 41. Thinking and speaking in terms of competitiveness poses three real dangers. First, it could result in the wasteful spending of government money supposedly to enhance US competitiveness. Second, it could lead to protectionism and trade wars. Finally, and most important, it could result in bad public policy on a spectrum of issues. 2. COMPETITIVENESS COULD SPAWN WORLD TRADE WAR Paul Krugman, Professor of economics at MIT, FOREIGN AFFAIRS, March/April 1994, p. 41-2. A much more serious risk is that the obsession with competitiveness will lead to trade conflict, perhaps even to a world trade war. Most of those who have preached the doctrine of competitiveness have not been old-fashioned protectionists. They want their countries to win the global trade game, not drop out. But what if, despite its best efforts, a country does not seem to be winning, or lacks the confidence that it can? Then the competitive diagnosis inevitably suggests to close the borders is better than to risk having foreigners take away high-wage jobs and highvalue sectors. 3. SEEKING COMPETITIVENESS IS NOT BENEFICIAL, BUT DANGEROUS Paul Krugman, Professor of economics at MIT, FOREIGN AFFAIRS, March/April 1994, p. 44. Unfortunately, those economists who have hoped to appropriate the rhetoric of competitiveness for good economic policies have instead had their own credibility appropriated on behalf of bad ideas. And somebody has to point out when the emperor's intellectual wardrobe isn't all he thinks it is. So let's start telling the truth: competitiveness is a meaningless word when applied to national economies. And the obsession with competitiveness is both wrong and dangerous. 4. A GOVERNMENT COMMITTED TO COMPETIVENESS CAN'T MAKE GOOD POLICY Paul Krugman, Professor of economics at MIT, FOREIGN AFFAIRS, March/April 1994, p. 43-4. To make a harsh but not entirely unjustified analogy, a government wedded to the ideology of competitiveness is as unlikely to make good economic policy as a government committed to creationism is to make good science policy, even in areas that have no relationship to the theory of evolution.

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COMPETITIVENESS ADVOCATES ARE WRONG 1. COMPETITIVENESS ADVOCATES ARE IGNORANT OF BASIC FACTS Paul Krugman, Professor of economics at MIT, FOREIGN AFFAIRS, July/August 1994, p. 199-200. Everyone makes mistakes, although it is surprising when men who are supposed to be experts on international competition do not have even a rough idea of the size of the US trade deficit or know how to look up a standard industrial statistic. The interesting point, however, is that the mistakes made by Thurow, Prestowitz and other competitiveness advocates are not random errors; they are always biased in the same direction. That is, the advocates always err in a direction that makes international competition seem more important than it really is. 2. DOZENS OF EXAMPLES PROVE COMPETIVENESS AUTHORS SKEW THE DATA Paul Krugman, Professor of economics at MIT, FOREIGN AFFAIRS, March/April 1994, p. 38-9. In his own presentation at the Copenhagen summit, British Prime Minister John Major showed a chart indicating that European unit labor costs have risen more rapidly than those in the United States and Japan. Thus he argued that European workers have been pricing themselves out of world markets. But a few weeks later Sam Brittan of the Financial Times pointed out a strange thing about Major's calculations: the labor costs were not adjusted for exchange rates. In international competition, of course, what matters for a US firm are the costs of its overseas rivals measured in dollars, not marks or yen. So international comparison of labor costs, like the tables the Bank of England routinely publishes, always convert them into a common currency. The numbers presented by Major, however, did not make this standard adjustment. And it was a good thing for his presentation that they didn't. As Brittan pointed out, European labor costs have not risen in relative terms when the exchange rate adjustment is made. If anything, this lapse is even odder than those of Thurow or Magaziner and Recih. How could John Major, with the sophisticated statistical resources of the UK Treatury behind him, present an analysis that failed to make the most standard of adjustments? These examples of strangely careless arithmetic, chosen from among dozens of similar cases, by people who surely had both the cleverness and the resources to get it right, cry out for an explanation. The best working hypothesis is that in each case the author or speaker wanted to believe in the competitiveness hypothesis so much that he felt no urge to question it; if data were used at all, it was only to lend credibility to a predetermined belief, not to test it. 3. PRO-COMPETITVENESS ARGUMENTS ARE WRONG: THEY USE NO DATA Paul Krugman, Professor of economics at MIT, FOREIGN AFFAIRS, March/April 1994, p. 35. One of the remarkable, startling features of the vast literature on competitiveness is the repeated tendency of highly intelligent authors to engage in what may perhaps most tactfully be described as "careless arithmetic." Assertions are made that sound like quantifiable pronouncements about measurable magnitudes, but the writers do not actually present any data on these magnitudes and this fail to notice that the actual numbers contradict their assertions. 4. RESPONSES TO KRUGMAN'S ARTICLE JUST PROVE HIS POINT Paul Krugman, Professor of economics at MIT, FOREIGN AFFAIRS, July/August 1994, p. 203. My original article in FOREIGN AFFAIRS argued that a doctrine that views world trade as a competitive struggle has become widely accepted, that this view is wrong but that there is nonetheless an intense desire to believe in that doctrine. That article enraged many, especially when it asserted that the desire to believe in competitive struggle repeatedly leads highly intelligent authors into surprising lapses in their handling of concepts and data. I could not, however, have asked for a better demonstration of my point than the responses published in this issue.

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Economic Growth Good ECONOMIC GROWTH IS A DESIRABLE VALUE 1. POVERTY CAUSES A HOST OF GLOBAL CRISES James E. Beard, University of Oregon School of Law, JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL LAW AND LITIGATION, 1996, pp. 208-209. The second key principle of sustamability is that of just distribution. This principle addresses a two-part problem: first, the fact that poverty is extremely harmful, causing hardship, death, and disease for eighty percent of the worlds population; and second, the pressures on the global environment and social fabric caused by poverty. As Gro Harlem Brundtland, chairperson of the World Commission on Environment and Development, has stated: “Poverty is not only an evil in itself, but sustainable development requires meeting the basic needs of all and extending to all the opportunity to fulfill their aspirations for a better life. A world in which poverty is endemic will always be prone to ecological and other catastrophes.” William Ruckelshaus, a member of the World Commission on Environment and Development, is more blunt in his assessment. The maintenance of a livable global environment depends on the sustainable development of the entire human fumily. If 80 percent of the members of our species are poor, we can not hope to live in a world at peace; if the poor nations attempt to improve their lot by the methods we rich have pioneered, the result will eventually be world ecological damage. 2. ECONOMIC GROWTH IS NOT THE ENEMY OF ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY David I. Stern, Research Fellow with the Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies Australian National University, JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC ISSUES, March, 1997, p. 145. The concept of sustainable development first appeared in the World Conservation Strategy put forward by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature in 1980. The most important aspect of this formulation was the argument that not only the affluent, developed countries were capable of degrading the environment. Poverty, especially when combined with population growth, was seen as a potential cause of environmental degradation, but degradation would also undermine development and lead to the perpetuation of poverty. This marked a break with mainstream environmentalist thought, which viewed economic growth as the enemy of environmental quality. -

3. GROWTH IS A NECESSITY ANI) BENEFITS THE ENVIRONMENT Michael 0. Zey, sociologist and futurist, THE FUTURIST, March 13, 1997, p. 9. This brings me to one of my major points about the necessity of growth. A recurring criticism of growth be it industrial, economic, or technological centers around its negative consequences. A good example of this is the tendency of economic and industrial growth to generate pollution. However, I contend that growth invariably provides solutions to any problems it introduces. The following examples will illustrate my point. Although economic growth can initially lead to such problems as pollution and waste, studies show that, after a country achieves a certain level of prosperity, the pendulum begins to swing back toward cleaner air and water. In fact, once a nation’s per capita income rises to about $4,000 (in 1993 dollars), it produces less of some pollutants per capita. The reason for this is quite simple: Such a nation can now afford technologies such as catalytic converters and sewage systems that treat and eliminate a variety of wastes. According to Norio Yamamoto, research director of the Mitsubishi Research Institute, “We consider any kind of environmental damage to result from mismanagement of the economy.” He claims that the pollution problems of poorer regions such as eastern Europe can be tmced largely to their economic woes. Hence he concludes that, in order to ensure environmental safety, “we need a sound economy on a global basis.” -

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ECONOMIC GROWTH IS NOT HARMFUL TO THE ENVIRONMENT 1. GROWTH ENHANCES WILLINGNESS TO PROTECT THE ENVIRONMENT Christopher D. Stone, Roy P. Crocker Professor of Law, University of Southern California, CHICAGO-KENT LAW REVIEW, 1994, p. 981. The tensions between environment and development get more unruly when we enter a third level. Suppose that the project threatens a wildlife refuge that is the traditional homeland of an indigenous people, but the project is economically sound. Now, in these cases it seems fair to say that the antagonistic positions are likely to be described and advocated in different vocabularies. The pro-development position (the reasons favoring mining the National Park) is spelled out in terms of economic value and discount rates. The arguments on the other side (favoring leaving the park undisturbed) are likely to be expressed in the looser language of other, competing values, such as respect for nature and the honoring of national commitments. But conflicting values do not make differences irreconcilable. Governments routinely resolve tensions between “efficiency” and “fairness” (or equity) that are no less perplexing than those between the environment and development at their most aloof. In fact, the parallel is instructive. As Brian Barry has pointed out, just as preferences across a basket of ordinary commodities grapes and potatoes can be represented by indifference curves expressing marginal preferences as a function of endowments, so can efficiency and fairness. The less wealth we have, the more likely we are to sacrifice advances in fairness for advances in wealth; and conversely, the better we are fed and clothed, the more apt we are to sacrifice advances in wealth for advances in equity values. Consistent patterns of indifference can meet standards of rationality, even if equity and efficiency cannot be reduced to the same metric indeed, even if neither can be satisfactorily reduced to its own metric. The same appears to hold for trade-offs between wealth and facets of the environment not captured in markets, such as the existence value of dolphins. As wealth grows (as countries become more developed) so too do populations, in general and by degrees, become readier to trade marginal wealth for marginal environmental amenities. --

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2. GROWTH IS ESSENTIAL TO ENVIRONMENTAL CLEANUP Ronald Bailey, economist, THE FUTURIST, March 13, 1997, p. 17. In other words, economic growth leads to less pollution, not more. The cleanest countries on the planet are the richest countries on the planet. I submit this proposition: Anything that retards economic growth also retards ultimate environmental cleanup. When people rise above mere subsistence, they start demanding environmental amenities like clean air and water. As people get wealthier, they start cleaning up their societies. 3. ECONOMIC GROWTH IS A PRECONDITION OF ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION James E. Beard, University of Oregon School of Law, JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL LAW AND LITIGATION, 1996, p. 211. The World Commission on Environment and Development concluded that there is a direct link between economics and the environment. William Ruckelshaus, a member of the Commission, provided one of the clearest statements of the principle: The doctrine of sustainability holds that the spread of a reasonable level of prosperity and security to the less developed nations is essential to protecting ecological balance and hence essential to the continued prosperity of the wealthy nations. It follows that environmental protection and economic development are complementary rather than antagonistic processes. The Commission based its conclusion on the just distribution principle the fair distribution of resources and an adequate standard of living for all people is a necessary element of preventing ecological catastrophe. ...

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4. GROWTH SHOULD NOT BE RESTRICTED TO SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT LONDON BUSINESS SCHOOL ECONOMIC OUTLOOK, February 1, 1997, p. 18. The main lesson that Grossman and Krueger draw from their studies ‘is that efforts to contain growth may be counter-productive, even from a narrow environmental perspective.” Given the controversy that has surrounded this literature, this seems a rather a weak conclusion. Very few people have argued that the environment would be best protected by halting growth. Indeed, growth is about as blunt an instrument as one could imagine for the purpose of protecting the environment; a country could always do at least as well protecting its environment directly (by regulating emissions, protecting habitat, and so forth).

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Economic Growth Bad GROWTH IS AN UNDESIRABLE VALUE 1. THE RISK POSED BY GROWTH IS IMMENSE Robert Morris Colim, Associate Professor of Law at the University of Oregon School of Law and Robert William Collin, Visiting Associate Professor of Planning at the University of Oregon Department of Planning and Public Policy Management, JOURNAL OF ENYRIONMENTAL LAW AND LITIGATION, 1994, pp. 402-403. The stakes of delay or a wrong decision are extremely high, including the threat to survival of both human, animal, and plant species on earth. These problems are global in scale, long-term in impact, and they relate to industrialization and development-oriented policy decisions. Thus, contemporary society perceives environmental problems as more complex and related to social sciences than previously understood. “Each day, the world community engages in ever greater conflict over the environment. In the United States, we struggle with a complex environmental paradigm where job creation, energy development and growth control clash with critical concerns of biodiversity, wilderness protection and open space preservation.” 2. GROWTH TRAPS PEOPLE IN A SPIRALING RAT RACE Bill Dietrich, staff, THE SEATTLE TIMES, November 24,1992, p. Cl. More recently, economist Moses Abramovitz pondered the popular backlash against progress in the 1960s and 1970s after a period from 1948 to 1973 that saw personal American incomes rise 80 percent. Why hadn’t happiness and satisfaction similarly increased? He blealdy proposed five reasons. He said humans measure their gains in relation to others; if everyone’s income rises, no one feels richer. He said the perception of poverty never declines because nations historically set their poverty rate at one half whatever the median income is. He said people need ever-increasing stimulus to be satisfied, and that the act of achieving success is psychologically more satisfying than success itself. He said people tend to accumulate more goods at the cost of less leisure time, and thus can’t enjoy them. And he said progress has produced more social regimentation and compulsion, not less. 3. INDUSTRIAL GROWTH EXPLOITS AND DEGRADES THE ENVIRONMENT Robert Moms Cohn, Associate Professor of Law at the University of Oregon School of Law and Robert William Collin, Visiting Associate Professor of Planning at the University of Oregon Department of Planning and Public Policy Management, JOURNAL OF ENYRIONMENTAL LAW AND LITIGATION, 1994, p. 409. By contrast, the values of industrialization increases the complexity of the nature of environmental problems that we encounter. We may see how those values contributed to and complicated current environmental problems by considering the political and philosophical ideologies that governed American politics and social decisions during the age of industrial development. These values include the exploitation of natural resources in pursuit of profit with profit deemed an adequate proxy for social good. An economy based on industrialization values becomes an economy operating in opposition to nature. For example, consider how these values also ignore the creation of waste and its subsequent effects on the ecosystem.

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GROWTH IS AN INVALID VALUE 1. GROWTH EMBODIES AN ENVIRONMENTALLY DEVASTATING CONSUMERISM Robert Morris Cohn, Associate Professor of Law at the University of Oregon School of Law and Robert William Collin, Visiting Associate Professor of Planning at the University of Oregon Department of Planning and Public Policy Management, JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL LAW AND LITIGATION, 1994, P. 410. In addition, consumerism drives the economies of most industrialized nations, including the United States. This consumerism has been promoted as necessary to drive an economy based on planned obsolescence and maximum exploitation of natural resources, a cycle that promises continued depletion and waste of finite natural resources, trampling nature’s resilience underfoot. Others have further identified the relentlessly linear logic of the pastCartesian world and its exclusion of systemic thinking as part of an underlying failure of contemporary values. Whatever the source, the policies and personal practices founded upon industrial values have led to a rapid diminution of natural resources, geometric increases of pollution problems, and near-gridlock in the ability of contemporary policy makers to address these policy driven postindustrial environmental problems. With rapidly rising human populations and more pressure to consume resources for economic development, the overall damage to the planet’s ecosystems could have devastating consequences.. 2. GROWTH DOES NOT EQUAL GENUINE PROGRESS Dennis Pirages, economist, THE FUTURIST, March 13, 1997, p. 17. Economists continue to use a totally outmoded calculating method called Gross National Product. It measures nothing but throughput. GNP tells us nothing about the quality of life in a country. Crime can make a strong contribution to GNP, because we have to control it and replace the goods it destroys. Hurricanes can be a smashing contribution to GNP, because we have to rebuild. An alternative measure of progress, called the Genuine Progress Indicator, portrays a much different world, even for the United States. While per capita GNP in the United States rose steadily from 1975 to 1990, this Genuine Progress Indicator peaked in 1970 and has declined since that time. Briefly put, the GPI looks at things like prison construction and the costs of crime and the other liabilities in society, which are signs of decay, and subtracts those from Gross National Product. This makes sense to me; they indicate that in the United States the GPI has gone down since 1970. 3. GROWTH MUST BE LIMITED TO AVOID ECOLOGICAL DISASTER LONDON BUSINESS SCHOOL ECONOMIC OUTLOOK, February 1, 1997, p. 18. To avoid Doomsday, the Club of Rome report concluded, growth would have to be constrained. This conclusion remains a feature of the literature today, though the modern version of the argument adds the twist that the most important environmental damage may not be pollution but a loss of ecological resilience, that ecological harm may ultimately undermine growth prospects, and that a loss in resilience can be sudden and irreversible. Evidence of the inverted-U certainly wrecks the assumption that growth inevitably worsens pollution, but it does nothing to dispel the concern that the increasing scale of economic activity may threaten the functioning of ecosystems.

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Economic Justice Good ECONOMIC JUSTICE BASED ON FAIRNESS AND OTHER POPULAR VALUES 1. ECONOMIC JUSTICE SEEKS TO REGULATE THE ECONOMY BASED ON ETHICS C. B. Macpherson, Oxford University, THE RISE AND FALL OF ECONOMIC JUSTICE, 1985, p. 2. One obvious requirement of the concept of economic justice is that it be about economic relations, that is, relations into which people enter, in any society, in their capacities as producers or owners or exchangers of valuable goods and services. And if economic justice is to be treated as a distinct brand of justice, economic relations must be seen as having become something very distinct from social and political relations in general, that is, as something no longer automatically given by, or engulfed in, a prevailing social or political order. A second requirement, no less evident I think, is that a concept of economic justice always asserts a claim to regulate economic relations in the light of some ethical principle. Economic justice, like justice in general, is nothing if not a value-laden concept. 2. ECONOMIC JUSTICE ESTABLISHES A MORE MORALLY VIRTUOUS SOCIETY Gerald M. Mara, Associate Dean for Research in the Graduate School of Political Science at Georgetown University, THE DEEPER MEANING OF ECONOMIC LIFE, 1986, p. 174. The morally virtuous person's attitude toward material accumulation will reflect the decidedly partial or subordinate character of economic goods. The proper attitude toward material things in neither greed nor asceticism, but a certain kind of moderation as regards one's own needs and a certain kind of magnanimity and generosity toward others. Thus, governmental policies to alleviate misery are not understood simply as social engineering, but also as part of a city's overall efforts to assist in the development of a more morally virtuous character. 3. PREEMINENT CONCERN FOR THE POOR IS ESSENTIAL TO ETHICS Gerald M. Mara, Associate Dean for Research in the Graduate School of Political Science at Georgetown University, THE DEEPER MEANING OF ECONOMIC LIFE, 1986, p. 174-175. Within a challenging view of human perfection along the order of that articulated by Aristotle, a concern for the poor might well be, in this day and age, an essential component. Such an attachment to human excellence can perhaps explain and deepen Ronald Dworkin's conviction that the citizens o a truly just society should categorically reject any urge to purchase a materially stable future by ignoring the current needs of the poor as an insult to human integrity. 4. ECONOMIC JUSTICE IS BASED ON FAIRNESS, FREEDOM AND EQUALITY Peter D. McLelland, Cornell University, THE AMERICAN SEARCH FOR ECONOMIC JUSTICE, 1990 p. 295. At the core of American beliefs about the justice of their economic system is the premise that the race is reasonably fair, with fairness viewed as largely a matter of assuring the freedom and equality of the participants both at the starting line and on the course. The meaning of both terms (freedom and equality) can change as our understanding of human nature changes, and with these alterations can come new priorities and policies in the name of either freedom or equality. Admittedly many improvements in the fairness of the race--both those accomplished in the past and those yet to be addressed at present--require no overhaul of intellectual framework but simply facing up to the practical implications of old priorities. The reining in of the unfair use of undue power, the attack on discriminatory practices in the marketplace--these can be undertaken and have been undertaken because of a recognized inconsistency between certain economic behavior and longstanding notions of freedom and equality ad those notions pertain to desirable conditions for fairness in an economic race.

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LACK OF ECONOMIC JUSTICE EXISTS IN MODERN SOCIETY 1. ANYWHERE YOU LOOK ON THE ECONOMIC LADDER, RICH ARE GETTING RICHER Mark Zepezauer, Author, and Arthur Naiman, Editor, TAKE THE RICH OFF WELFARE, 1996, p. 11. Wherever you look on the economic ladder, the rich are getting richer. The wealth of the top 20 per cent has increased while the wealth of the bottom 80 per cent has decreased. Within that top 20 per cent, the top 5 per cent have gotten richer than the bottom 15 per cent. Within the top 5 per cent, the top 1 per cent have gotten richer than the bottom 4 per cent. Within that top 1 per cent, the top 1/4 per cent have gotten richer than the bottom 3/4 per cent. And so it goes, right up to the 400 wealthiest Americans. In the eight years from 1980 to 1987, their average net worth tripled. 2. FAIRNESS AND A LEVEL PLAYING DO NOT EXIST IN ECONOMICS Noam Chomsky, Professor of Linguistics at MIT, POWERS AND PROSPECTS, 1996, p. 129. Along with democracy, markets are under attack. Even putting aside massive state intervention, increasing economic concentration and market control offers endless devices to undermine and evade market discipline, a long story that there is no time to go into here; to mention only one aspect, some 40 per cent of 'world trade' is intrafirm, 50 per cent for the US and Japan. This is not 'trade' in any meaningful sense; rather, operations internal to corporations, centrally managed by a highly visible hand, with all sorts of mechanisms for undermining markets in the interest of profit and power. In reality, the quasi-mercantilist system of transnational corporate capitalism is rife with the kind of 'conspiracies' of the masters against which Adam Smith famously warned, not to speak of the traditional reliance on state power and public subsidy. A 1992 OECD study concludes that 'Oligopolistic competition and strategic interaction among firms and governments rather than the invisible hand of market forces condition today's competitive advantage and international division of labor in high-technology industries,' as in agriculture, pharmaceuticals, services and major areas of economic activity generally. The vast majority of the world's population, who are subjected to market discipline and regaled with odes to its wonders, are not supposed to hear such words; and rarely do. 3. INCREASING INEQUALITY HURTS CHILDREN & MOST VULNERABLE WORST Noam Chomsky, Professor of Linguistics at MIT, WORLD ORDERS OLD AND NEW, 1996, p. 141. The US record was particularly bad for more vulnerable sectors: The elderly, children and single-mother families (most of them in the paid labor force, the United States ranking third-highest in that category, contrary to floods of right-wing propaganda). The 1993 UNICEF study THE PROGRESS OF NATIONS found that American and British children are considerably worse off than in 1970. Among industrialized countries, the proportion of American children below the poverty line is now twice that of the next worst performer, Britain, and about four times that of most others, with a 21 per cent increase from 1970, mainly the result of cutbacks in government services, UNICEF director James Grant comments. 4. MAJORITY OF PEOPLE UNDERREPRESENTED: 80% THINK NO ECONOMIC JUSTICE EXISTS Noam Chomsky, Professor of Linguistics at MIT, POWERS AND PROSPECTS, 1996, p. 113. In the United States, 'the interests of the bottom three' are not represented, political commentator Thomas Edsall of the Washington Post pointed out a decade ago, referring to the Reagan elections. There are many consequences apart from the highly skewed voting pattern. One is that half the population thinks that both parties should be disbanded. over 80 per cent regard the economic system as 'inherently unfair' and the government 'run for the benefit of the few and the special interests, not for the people' (up from a steady 50 per cent for a similarly worded question in the pre-Reagan years)--though what people might mean by 'special interests' is another question.

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Economic Justice Bad ECONOMIC JUSTICE IS UNDESIRABLE: WEALTH INEQUALITY IS NOT A PROBLEM 1. IDEALIST NOTIONS OF WEALTH DISTRIBUTION ARE IMPRACTICAL George Polanyi, Research Officer with the Institute of Economic Affairs, and John B. Wood, Deputy Director of the Institute of Economic Affairs, AGAINST EQUALITY: READINGS ON ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL POLICY, 1983, p. 255. So how much is too much? One definition of the 'ideal' distribution is Professor Atkinson's statement that the case for more equality rests on social justice and on the 'basic principle that the distribution of wealth should be equal unless departures from equality can be justified according to what are considered relevant criteria.' The 'ideal that everyone should have equal incomes and equal property, unless a departure from this 'norm' can be specially justified, may be logical but is unhelpful in practice. As Professor Atkinson himself says: 'This statement as it stands is not particularly strong, since its force turns on the definitions of 'relevant' criteria.' 2. THESIS OF EGALITARIAN ARGUMENT IS UNPROVEN AND MISLEADING George Polanyi, Research Officer with the Institute of Economic Affairs, and John B. Wood, Deputy Director of the Institute of Economic Affairs, AGAINST EQUALITY: READINGS ON ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL POLICY, 1983, p. 259. The main conclusion thus seems to remain that the egalitarian thesis, in terms of a general condemnation of differences in wealth and incomes, is unproven and misleading. The advocacy of 'equality' and exploitation of what are unavoidable (and arguably undesirable) differences by the emphasis on virtually meaningless statistics such as 'the top 10 per cent own 70 per cent' arouses expectations which cannot be fulfilled, and which cannot be fulfilled, and which few advocates of more equality would themselves support. 3. STATISTICAL EVIDENCE IS WEAK FOR THE EGALITARIAN THESIS George Polanyi, Research Officer with the Institute of Economic Affairs, and John B. Wood, Deputy Director of the Institute of Economic Affairs, AGAINST EQUALITY: READINGS ON ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL POLICY, 1983, p. 259-60. Above all, it would seem that the statistics on which popular discussion rests are too weak for the purpose to which they are put. The Inland Revenue warns against attempting to use estate duty information to give a picture of the concentration of wealth. The warning is ignored; and very selective use is made of clearly defective data. To believe that 10 per cent of the adult population owns 70 per cent of the wealth it is necessary, it would seem, to believe such insupportable propositions as: (1) 24 million adults own nothing at all; (2) in the years 1965-1970 the number of wealth-owners fell by 1 1/2 million (from 18.6 million to 17.1 million); (3) anyone whose wealth exceeded 5600 pounds in 1970 is in the top 10 per cent, and anyone with more than 28,000 pounds is in the top 1 per cent; (4) the value of the contents and motor-car of the average British household is only 200 pounds. In short, the available statistical information was not intended, and cannot be used, to give an accurate picture of the spread of wealth in contemporary society. 4. STATISTICS USED BY EGALITARIANS ARE MISLEADING AND MEANINGLESS Peter Bauer, Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics and Business Science, Fellow at Caius College, Cambridge, AGAINST EQUALITY: READINGS ON ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL POLICY, 1983, p. 377. The uncritical reliance on statistics in egalitarian discourse and policies provides a major illustration. There is, for instance, the familiar practice of expressing the income or wealth of a very small population of a country as a percentage of the income or wealth of the whole population. The misleading, even meaningless, nature of this practice should be evident. Thus children have no incomes, or very low incomes; people normally cannot make any appreciable savings until middle age; and many married women have no cash incomes or very low cash incomes. Income differences need to be expressed on a basis which separates the different age groups, and also men from women. In technical language, the differences need to be expressed on an age or sex-standardized basis.

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NO NEED FOR EFFORTS TO ESTABLISH ECONOMIC JUSTICE 1. EVERYONE IS BETTER OFF BECAUSE OF INCOME INEQUALITY Nathan Keyfitz, Professor of Demography and Sociology at Harvard University, AGAINST EQUALITY: READINGS ON ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL POLICY, 1983, p. 315. Income variation is an important enough matter to be considered by many sciences, each from its own viewpoint. In free market economics, everyone has the incentive to make his contribution as great as possible; his effort is added to a joint process; under competition, he can appropriate to himself only the marginal contribution that he makes. Each of us is better off just because some of our neighbors are more productive than we are. If we accept the perspective of the free market, we reflect, when we see our neighbours' imposing houses, that their affluence comes from their higher productivity, and moreover that their productivity overflows and adds something to our income as well. 2. AMERICANS DO NOT WANT ECONOMIC JUSTICE Nathan Keyfitz, Professor of Demography and Sociology at Harvard University, AGAINST EQUALITY: READINGS ON ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL POLICY, 1983, p. 323-4. To decide which is the means and which is the goal is not as easy as social scientists used to think. From one viewpoint, the preference for equality becomes a preference for a society whose members are less differentiated by style of life. With more equal incomes, we would live more or less nearly in the same way. Status differences would be less visible. There would be less incentive to produce on the part of individuals if they got little higher income for producing; on the other hand, with the lessened social competition a lower average income would suffice. Jencks is right when he says that American do not at present want change in this direction. 3. ONLY A SMALL MINORITY OF PEOPLE ARE FOR ECONOMIC JUSTICE Richard A. Posner, Professor of Law at the University of Chicago, AGAINST EQUALITY: READINGS ON ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL POLICY, 1983, p. 353-4. Because 'society's' preference for massive redistribution rests ultimately on the views expressed by the small minority of educated and well-to-do people who dominate the Left in this country, it is important for Thurow to reassure the reader that there is no contradiction between wanting to maximize one's personal wealth (the usual personal-private reference) and wanting to have society changed in a way that will significantly reduce that wealth. The difference between a 'personal-private' and an 'individual-societal' preference is clear enough in principle. But I, at least, would have difficulty identifying the authentic preference of someone whose personal-private and individual-societal preferences were not merely distinct, but opposite and mutually exclusive. 4. EFFORTS AT REDISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH WOULD BE COSTLY Richard A. Posner, Professor of Law at the University of Chicago, AGAINST EQUALITY: READINGS ON ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL POLICY, 1983, p. 357. If income and wealth were correctly measured--as an economist would measure them--we could evaluate Thurow's premise that there is serious economic inequality among people who work. He has failed to establish this premise. And he considers only one type of cost associated with altering the distribution of income and wealth: the reduced incentive to work associated with heavy income taxes. He wholly ignores the costs of the redistributive measures that he proposes--the extension of the minimum wage, the expansion of public employment, and the tax on wealth. All of these are costly measures.

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Efficiency Good EFFICIENCY IS A GOOD VALUE 1. EFFICIENCY IS THE PRIMARY VALUE David Scbweickart, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University of Chicago, CAPITALISM OR WORKER CONTROL?: AN ETHICAL AND ECONOMIC APPRAISAL, 1980, p. 58. In a sense, the efficiency question is the first question for all societies. Unless a society is reasonably efficient in marshaling its resources, it cannot expect a blossoming of innovative growth. And of course liberty is a hollow concept to a starving population. As Brecht would have it, “Grub first, and then morality.” Economists are inclined to treat economic efficiency as an ethically neutral concept, but of course it is not. Economic efficiency is as much a value as liberty or equality. 2. THE LAW SHOULD BE GROUNDED IN EFFICIENCY MAXIMIZATION Charles H. Koch, Jr., Dudley W. Woodbridge Professor of Law, Marshall-Wythe School of Law, College of William and Mary, WILLIAM AND MARY LAW REVIEW, Winter, 1990, p.43 1. Although some doubt exists that the law in general evolves this way, law directly related to efficiency values surely must. Because economic liberties focus so intently on efficiency, one would expect the law regarding these liberties to be particularly sensitive to efficiency values. At the least, one would expect the law to evolve towards, not away from, efficient solutions. I believe this “natural” process has brought constitutional law regarding economic liberties to its current point of operating at an efficient level of economic liberties. 3. EFFICIENCY IS AN EXTREMELY IMPORTANT VALUE Bailey Kuklin, Professor, Brooklyn Law School, BROOKLYN LAW REVIEW, Fall, 1992, p. 835. Even for those who acknowledge the normativity of their discipline, “[what] many economists do not understand is that efficiency is one value among many and is not a meta-value that comprehends all others.” For example, Demsetz, stopping short of the claim of meta-value, asserts efficiency is “an extremely important” ethical notion. “It is difficult even to describe unambiguously any other criterion for determining what is ethical.” 4. ARGUMENTS IN FAVOR OF EFFICIENCY ARE UNIVERSALLY ACCEPTED David Scbweickart, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University of Chicago, CAPITALISM OR WORKER CONTROL?: AN ETHICAL AND ECONOMIC APPRAISAL, 1980, p.60 I have already argued that economic efficiency both in its ordinary and technical sense is not a value-neutral concept; it presupposes certain value-commitments. We need not pursue this analysis further, because there is nothing objectionable about these commitments, not so long as they are understood in the weak sense just described. We can all (surely) accept material well-being as good, leisure as good; we can agree that a society should not squander scarce resources, nor require people to perform unnecessary labor. It cannot be too controversial that in general the economic output of the productive apparatus of society should reflect the desires of its citizens.

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EFFICIENCY HAS IMPORTANT BENEFITS 1. EFFICIENCY BENEFITS EVERYONE Charles H. Koch, Jr., Dudley W. Woodbridge Professor of Law, Marshall-Wythe School of Law, College of William and Mary, WILLIAM AND MARY LAW REVIEW, Winter, 1990, p.431 In short, Epstein advocates the social value of the economist’s sense of efficiency. Efficiency makes the pie bigger and we all potentially benefit President Kennedy offered a more folksy expression of the same principle: A rising tide raises all boats. Even Marx recognized that capitalist efficiency increases wealth throughout the various classes. Thus a commitment to this sense of efficiency is a commitment to improving the position of all economic groups. 2. EFFICIENCY IS NECESSARY TO OVERCOME SCARCITY Heinz Kohler, Amherst College, WELFARE AND PLANNING: AN ANALYSIS OF CAPITALISM VERSUS SOCIALISM, 1979, p. 5 In a situation of scarcity, the material welfare of people is more restricted than people would like it to be. Because there are insufficient resources to produce enough goods, some desires for goods must remain unsatisfied. This chapter and the following three explore various ways in which people can challenge the existence of scarcity. The first of these approaches, taken up in this chapter, involves making sure that the degree of scarcity prevailing in any one year is not, as a result of less-than-full or inefficient utilization of resources, any more severe than necessary. Have another look at Figure 1.1 THE SCARCITY PROBLEM, and focus on the right band circle. It illustrates the quantity of goods that a people of a society are able to produce in a year, if they use their resources fully and efficiently. Yet they may in fact produce a smaller quantity of goods, if they do not utilize some of their resources at all or if they make inefficient use of the resources they do employ. Obviously, people who wish to conquer scarcity must, first of all, see to it that existing resources are employed fully and efficiently so that the actual production equals the potential production of goods shown by the right-band circle in Figure 1.1. 3. EFFICIENCY BOLSTERS MANY OTHER VALUES David Schweickart, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University of Chicago, CAPITALISM OR WORKER CONTROL?: AN ETHICAL AND ECONOMIC APPRAISAL, 1980, p.58 Thus embedded in a commitment to economic efficiency are numerous value judgments: that material ‘goods” are indeed good, that scarce resources ought not be wasted and implicit in this, that the future ought not be sacrificed to the present, that leisure is a good, and that it is better to labor less than more. Each of these values would have to be qualified to be non-problematic - e.g., not all material goods are good, some labor is intrinsically satisfying, etc. Nor would any of them likely be regarded as absolute, no more than the economic efficiency itself. Nonetheless, a commitment to economic efficiency is a commitment to certain values; it is by no means ethically neutral. 4. INEFFICIENCY SHOULD BE ELIMINATED IN ALL SITUATIONS Heinz Kohler, Amherst College, WELFARE AND PLANNING: AN ANALYSIS OF CAPITALISM VERSUS SOCIALISM, 1979, pp. 6-7. Just as human desires for goods can be unnecessarily frustrated by the less-than-full utilization of available resources, so they can be unnecessarily frustrated by their incorrect utilization. Such incorrect or “economically inefficient” utilization is said to be occurring whenever employed resources can be reallocated in such a way that some people become better off (in their own judgment) without other people becoming worse off (in their own judgment). Clearly, such a reallocation of employed resources would lead to an unambiguous increase in the material welfare of people. If one were interested in promoting that welfare as much as possible, one should advocate appropriate reallocations of resources in situations of economic inefficiency. And one should seek to achieve a state of economic efficiency in which it was impossible to reallocate employed resources in such a way as to make some people better off without making other people worse off because every last instance of economic inefficiency has been eliminated.

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Efficiency Bad EFFICIENCY IS A HARMFUL VALUE 1. EFFICIENCY IS A MEANINGLESS CONCEPT Gary Lawson, Associate Professor, Northwestern University School of Law, DUKE LAW JOURNAL, October, 1992, pp. 97-98. The suspicion arises that a conception of social efficiency that is simultaneously coherent, robust, and economic is simply not to be found. To the best of my knowledge, no one has provided one, and the arguments in this Article at least suggest that no one ever will. It makes sense to talk about efficiency in the context of a given individual’s plans and preferences, but the term does not translate well when one tries to apply it to groups of individuals. Perhaps the time has come for economists and law and economics scholars simply to stop talking about social efficiency altogether. 2. EFFICIENCY IS MERELY A TOOL FOR SOCIAL CONTROL Joan M. Greenbaum, Economist, IN THE NAME OF EFFICIENCY, 1979, p. 162. But the social-control aspects of efficiency do take their toll on the accumulation process within capitalism. I have seen a remarkable number of situations in which management controls conflict with worker productivity - situations in which workers cannot produce more because either their knowledge or motivation or both have been taken away. Restricting the movements of programmers and operators, for example, may give the illusion of increasing productivity, but it mainly serves to tighten control over their actions. To both programmers and operators, mobility means the opportunity to talk with others, a chance to “blow off steam,” and often a chance to learn about what goes on in the total data- processing picture. Everyone on the shop floor knows that operators are usually better operators if they get the chance to see and understand how their actions mesh with the rest of the structure. Similarly, programmers who are involved in more diversified tasks, and who have the freedom to talk with other workers, are considered “well rounded” and therefore better workers. But management policy trades this form of worker productivity for their own version, which stamps greater control. 3. EFFICIENCY PRODUCES ALIENATION AMONG INDIVIDUALS Joan M. Greenbaum, Economist, IN THE NAME OF EFFICIENCY, 1979, p. 163. What is done in the name of efficiency for capitalism can be crippling for the functioning of the individual. Work that subdivides thought and actions can, as Marx put it, “attack the individual at the very roots of his life.” These mechanisms of efficiency are not at all natural; they are a method of social control. We know from shop floor discussions in data processing as well as in other fields that the present organization of work is decidedly inefficient in human terms. Workers complain of boredom, lack of interest, and the loss of self-esteem. They argue that if they were allowed to do the job the way they think it should be done, they would feel better about themselves and about the results of their labor. 4. EFFICIENCY NEGLECTS MANY KEY VALUES Evsey D. Domar, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, CAPITALISM, SOCIALISM, AND SERFDOM, 1989, p. 135. Obviously, the social welfare functions of each country, as seen by its government, or by its “ruling circles,” to use a Russian phrase, is not composed of economic variables alone. Since these noneconomic objectives - and even some economic ones, like income distribution - never become sufficiently explicit to be assigned proper weights, we usually find ourselves in an uncomfortable position between two extremes; one the one hand, justifying much foolishness by reference to non-economic objectives, and on the other, denouncing any departure from narrow economic goals as inefficient In other words, we do not know where the influence of noneconomic factors ends and true inefficiency begins. It seems that governments or ruling circles of all countries enjoy their own political systems well enough to be willing to pay high economic prices for maintaining them.

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EFFICIENCY IS A BAD STANDARD FOR JUDGMENT 1. EFFICIENCY IS NOT AN ABSOLUTE STANDARD FROM WHICH TO JUDGE Antonio Jorge, Economist and author, COMPETITION, COOPERATION, EFFICIENCY, AND SOCIAL ORGANIZATION: INTRODUCTION TO A POLITICAL ECONOMY, 1978, p. 55-56. This is not to deny the obvious fact that some cultures have been more dedicated than others to the pursuit of economic values and more determined to mold themselves in accordance with the supposed, abstract requirements of economic efficiency. But we cannot judge by their success the value of other cultural alternatives. This is especially so because the remarkable proficiency of some cultures is mainly attributable to the role played by the increase of scientific knowledge and its technical application to production through both human and nonhuman inputs. The rationalization of production organizations and their contribution to efficiency, on the other hand, cannot be evaluated in terms of any existent, or even theoretically formulated absolute standard. It would be manifestly absurd to counter this by affirming that Western culture has patterned all of its culture and its institutions in an optimal response to the single goal of economic efficiency. If we admit this to be the case, then it must be confessed that we are just ignorant of what possible mixes of technology and human attitudes, behavior, and institutions would, in abstract and independently of particular cultural settings, absolutely maximize economic efficiency. 2. N7EO-CLASSICAL EFFICIENCY IS A FALSE OBJECTIVE William Lazomck, Harvard Economics Department, BUSINESS ORGANIZATION AND THE MYTH OF THE MARKET ECONOMY, 1991, pp. 64-65. For neoclassical economists, the most efficient economy is one that achieves the optimal allocation of scarce resources among competing ends, where efficiency and optimality are assessed in terms of the aggregated maximization of the utility of the individuals who participate in the economy. In defining the economic problem as the allocation of scarce resources, neoclassical economics ignores the analysis of how individuals, firms, and economies create more value with the same amount of human and physical resources, and thereby overcome scarcity. In short, neoclassical economics has a theory of value allocation, but it lacks a theory of value creation. 3. EFFICIENCY RESTS ON FLAWED ASSUMPTIONS Richard L. Barnes, The Leonard B. Melvin, Jr. Distinguished Lecturer in Law and Professor of Law at the University of Mississippi School of Law, KANSAS LAW REVIEW, Fall, 1993, pp. 69-70. Utilitarianism has been roundly proven to be anything but neutral and uncontroversial in philosophical discourse, or it can make a claim of neutrality on libertarian or consent grounds. With empirical study, we might find the type of consent suggested by Professors Kripke, White and Scott. Creditors and debtors choose-and all other participants choose-secured transactions, and by this choice pronounce secured transactions legitimate. The consent theory rests on its own mass of unstable assumptions. How do we determine consent? If someone is nearly powerless, how can she be said to consent to an exchange? Who gets to decide the validity of consent? All of these questions are traditional philosophical inquiries. It may be possible to answer them. No claim exists here that they are without sound responses, only that the efficiency debate offers no answers. Efficiency’s claim of correctness rests on the false assumption of value gain, which if it existed, would be unobjectionable to everyone. Without those gains, efficiency is just another struggling theory looking for neutral justification. 4. EFFICIENCY IS A CULTURALLY BOUND CONCEPT Antonio Jorge, Economist and author, COMPETITION, COOPERATION, EFFICIENCY, AND SOCIAL ORGANIZATION: INTRODUCTION TO A POLITICAL ECONOMY, 1978, p. 14. Finally, what may be called the prescriptive strand in this work consists in an effort to demonstrate that such concepts as maximal economic efficiency and productivity are culture bound. Economic optimization in the abstract is, to say the least, not a very useful concept. In any case, even to the extent that intertemporal and interspatial comparisons could be established, it can be demonstrated that there is no single institutional, organizational, or motivational path to attain optimization. The essence of productivity and efficiency can be incorporated into differing social arrangements.

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Environment Good THE ENVIRONMENT IS MOST IMPORTANT 1. ENVIRONMENTAL CRISES ARE REAL AND OUR GREATEST CONCERN Stephen Boyan and William Ophuls, Prof. Political Science at U. of Maryland and Phd in Political Science from Yale, POLITICS OF SCARCITY REVISITED, 1992, p. np. Again, in the summer of 1988, with drought baking the soil from east to west, with 100 [degree] heat in cities across the country, and with coastal beaches befouled by garbage, raw sewage, and medical wastes, Americans again bad a sense of foreboding about what we’re doing to our planet. No one, for example, seriously asserts any longer that ecological concern is a mere fad, which after a brief pirouette in the media limelight will cede its place to the newest crisis. Nor are there many who still maintain that those concerned with environmental issues are perpetrating a political hoax designed to siphon money and public support from minority interests. Whatever the excesses of some who have espoused the cause of environmentalism, the crisis is real, and it challenges our institutions and values in a most profound way -more profoundly even than some of the most ardent environmentalists are willing to admit. 2. HUMAN LOSSES DO NOT DEJUSTIFY PROTECTING THE ENVIRONMENT Gus DiZerega, Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment, ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS, Spring, 1995, p. 36. Creating strong and vibrant human communities in no way removes us from the ecological community, and its prudential and ethical implications with regard to our actions. For example, the claim that environmental protection will cost jobs is not itself a valid argument against protecting endangered species or ecosystems. Rather, it constitutes an argument that the relevant human communities ameliorate the unequal suffering occasioned from limiting activities such as whaling and old-growth logging - activities from which nearly all of us have benefited in the short run. 3. WE NEED A MORAL TRANSFORMATION THAT RESPECTS ECOLOGICAL VALUES John Bellamy Foster, Professor of Sociology at the University of Oregon, MONTHLY REVIEW, February, 1995, p. 1. Faced with the frightening reality of global ecological crisis, many are now calling for a moral revolution that would incorporate ecological values into our culture. This demand for a new ecological morality is, I believe, the essence of Green thinking. The kind of moral transformation envisaged is best captured by Aldo Leopold’s land ethic, which said, We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we begin to see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect. 4. WE MUST CHANGE OUR ETHICS TO RESPECT THE ENVIRONMENT OVER INDIVIDUALS Jeremy Rifkin and Carol Grunewald Rifkin, Authors and Environmental Activists, VOTING GREEN, 1992, p. 15. Preserving the biosphere against the forces of military and commercial exploitation will require a new way of thinking and acting in the world. We will need to transcend the narrow bounds that divide us into constituencies, classes, genders, races, and nationalities, and begin thinking and acting as a species. Addressing the new spate of global threats and challenges will require collective action by the human race, entered into jointly in every neighborhood of the biosphere. The almost exclusive attention on individual rights, which has so dominated the political thinking of the modern era, will have to be buttressed by a new emphasis on collective responsibilities if we are to have any chance of addressing the issues of biosphere security that threaten the very survival of the planet and human civilization.

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NATURE MUST BE VALUED 1. HUMANS DEPEND ON NATURE AND MUST RESPECT THE EARTH Anthony Westin, Prof. of Philosophy at SUNY- Stonybrook, TOWARD BETFER PROBLEMS, 1992, p. 104-5. “Environmental ethics,” then, urges upon us a minimum a much more mindful and longer-term attention to the way we interact with and depend upon nature. It urges attention to everything from the medicinal and nutritional uses of rain forest plants to the psychic need for open spaces and various kinds of ecological dependence of which we are not even aware. The implications are radical. We need to think of the earth in a different way: not as an infinite sink, and not as a collection of resources fortuitously provided for our use, but as a complex system with its own integrity and dynamics, far more intricate than we understand or perhaps can understand, but still the system within we live and on which we necessarily and utterly depend. 2. ITS IMPERATIVE TO RESPECT OUR ECOLOGICAL HERITAGE Gus DiZerega, Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment, ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS, Spring, 1995, p. 30. At a minimum, we need to respect those processes that have given us birth. They embody far more knowledge than humanity has acquired, for they have successfully maintained and enriched life for over three billion years. We cannot create a living cell; nevertheless, these processes have given birth to the marvelous and beautiful diversity of earthly life. As animal rights philosophers have rightly pointed out, other creatures are sentient and capable of experiencing well-being or pain. We do not have to be egalitarians to acknowledge the impressive similarities between ourselves and other beings. The common heritage that we share with all life can either raise the standing of nonhuman in our eyes or lower that of fellow humans. 3. HUMANS UNIQUE CAPACITY FOR ETHICS DEMANDS WE RESPECT NATURE Gus DiZerega, Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment, ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS, Spring, 1995, p. 32. To be sure, there are differences between humans and the rest of the natural world. However, they are much less different than the average human supremacist imagines. Aldo Leopold remarked that while we can mourn the passing of the passenger pigeon, which none of us has seen, had human beings rather than passenger pigeons passed from the scene, no passenger pigeon would have mourned us. Both those denying and arguing for human uniqueness would do well to ponder Leopold’s remark that “For one species to mourn the death of another is a new thing under the sun.” Perhaps the strongest evidence of human uniqueness is this capacity - which requires an ecocentric ethic in order to be realized! 4. ALL SPECIES DESERVE TO BE VALUED Gus DiZerega, Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment, ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS, Spring, 1995, p. 24-25. Generalizing on Hume’s observation, the greater our sense of self as a being extending over time, the greater our capacity to sympathize with beings other than ourselves. The greater our sense of individuality, the deeper our capacity to realize our connections with all life. We, and all other beings, are fellow travelers on the voyage of life. Once we acknowledge that we all live under the same rules, we can better appreciate that other beings are no more purely tools that we ourselves. 5. ALL LIFE HAS INTRINSIC VALUE William French, Prof. of Theology at Loyola University, ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS, Spring, 1995, p. 42. Devall and Sessions summarize deep ecology’s ‘basic intuition’ as rooted in its holistic view: “All organisms and entities in the ecosphere, as parts of the interrelated whole, are equal in intrinsic worth.” They continue: “There are no boundaries and everything is interrelated. But insofar as we perceive things as individual organisms or entities, the insight draws us to respect all human and nonhuman individuals in their own right as parts of the whole without feeling the need to set up hierarchies of species with humans at the top.

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Environment Bad PRO-ENVIRONMENT VIEWS LACK STRONG SUPPORT 1. PRO-ECOLOGY EVIDENCE IS PROPAGANDA GENERATED TO FUND SPECIAL INTERESTS Ronald Bailey, 1993 Warren Brookes Fellow in Environmental Journalism at the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington, THE FUTURIST, January, 1995, p. 14. Given the dismal record of the environmental doomsayers, why do so many people think the world is coming to an end? I think it’s pretty clear. People are afraid because so many interest groups have a stake in making them afraid. “Global emergencies” and “worldwide crises” keep hundreds of millions of dollars in donations flowing into the coffers of environmental organizations. As environmental writer Bill McKibben admitted in The End of Nature, “The ecological movement has always had its greatest success in convincing people that we are threatened by some looming problem.” That success is now measured at the cash register for many leading environmental groups. For example, in 1990, the 10 largest environmental organizations raised $400 million from donors. That pays for a lot of trips to international environmental conferences, furnishes some nice headquarters, and buys a lot of influence on Capitol Hill. Crises also advance the careers of certain politicians and bureaucrats, attract funds to scientists’ laboratories, and sell newspapers and TV air time. The approach of inevitable doom is now the conventional wisdom of the late twentieth century. 2. MEDIA DISTORTS REAL NEEDS OF THE ENVIRONMENT Ben Bolch and Harold Lyons, Profs. of Economics and Chemistry at Rhodes College, APOCALYPSE NOT, 1993, p. 10. We believe that in our two years of research for this book, a growing segment of the scientific community has come to agree with our assessment that the earth is in no great danger of being poisoned. Nevertheless, this side of the environmental story is not being told, because there is no money to be made in telling. Hysteria sells newspapers, enrolls members in environmental protection groups, allows beaurocrats to increase their power, and creates markets for corrective measures in a way that the Wall Street Journal calls a zero-sum game; money is taken from organizations like electric utilities and shunted toward organizations that claim to improve the environment. 3. ENVIRONMENTALIST SCIENCE IS WORSE THAN SHODDY Ben Bolch and Harold Lyons, Profs. of Economics and Chemistry at Rhodes College, APOCALYPSE NOT, 1993, p. 10. Subsequent chapters will point out several areas where the environmentalist’s case has been based on science that is sometimes hardly worthy of being called shoddy. People who would sell those causes seem to have discovered the public-relations expert and the attorney are more powerful (at least in the short run) that the scientist In the long run, however, this mode of operation is sure to cause trouble. 4. MEDIA BASED SCIENCE OVERSTATES ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS Ronald Barly, Media Analyst, ECOSCAM, 1993, pp. 20-1. Science by press release has been used to publicize lesser ‘crises’ such as the carefully choreographed Alar scare in which the Natural Resources Defense Council used a public relations firm to promote the bogus story’ of poisoned apples to CBS’s “60 Minutes.” In each case, the public was alarmed and new enduring environmental myths were added to the accumulating conventional wisdom of doom, but later scientific analysis severely weakened the original catastrophic claims. The problem of science by press release has become so bad that the National Academy of Sciences issued a report in 1992 calling on scientists to stop the “questionable research practices” of misrepresenting speculations as fact, and releasing research results, especially to the popular press, that have not been evaluated by fellow scientists and judged valid. 5. ENVIRONMENTAL DOOMSDAY THEORY IS SCIENTIFICALLY FLAWED Julian Simon, Prof. of Economics, Univ. of Maryland, SCARCITY OR ABUNDANCE, 1994, p. xv. The topics I deal with there are a small set of the conventional “green” beliefs that are massively contradicted by the scientific evidence. If these data make you question the common wisdom about how our society is doing in these particular cases, perhaps you will also review your thinking about the entire set of related issues, and recognize that across the board our human situation is getting better rather than getting worse. Perhaps you will also consider that if the issues discussed - which is in the recent past were considered insuperable problems - turned out to be non-problems after we had time to gather the facts about them, it is not unlikely that the same fate will occur to the more recently 229

publicized “green” issues - the ozone layer, the greenhouse effect, acid rain, and their kin - which we have not yet had time to understand thoroughly.

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ENVIRONMENTAL ETHIC IS UNWARRANTED 1. ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICAL SYSTEM IS UNWARRANTED Ronald Bailey, 1993 Warren Brookes Fellow in Environmental Journalism at the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington, THE FUTURIST, January, 1995, p. 14. To counteract the seduction of the apocalypse, scientists, policy makers, intellectuals, and businessmen must work to restore people’s faith in themselves and in the fact of human progress. History clearly shows that our energy and creativity will surmount whatever difficulties we encounter. Life and progress will always be a struggle and humanity will never lack for new challenges, but as the last 50 years of solid achievement show, there is nothing out there that we cannot handle. So what’s the moral of the story? Please don’t listen to the doomsters’ urgent siren calls to drastically re-organize society and radically transform the world’s economy to counter imaginary ecological apocalypses. The relevant motto is not “He who hesitates is lost,” but rather, “Look before you leap.” 2. HUMANITY CAN HAVE NO SUBSTANTIAL EFFECT ON THE ENVIRONMENT Gregg Easterbrook, Columnist, NEWSWEEK, July 24, 1989, p. 26. In the aftermath of events like the Exxon Valdez oil spill every reference to the environment is prefaced with the adjective “fragile.” Nothing could be further from the truth. The environment is damned near indestructible. It has survived ice ages, bombardments of cosmic radiation, fluctuations of the sun, reversals of the seasons caused by shifts in the planetary axis, collisions of comets and meteors bearing far more force than man’s doomsday arsenals and the lightless “nuclear winters” that followed these impacts. Though mischievous, human assaults are pinpricks compared with forces of the magnitude nature is accustomed to resisting. 3. ENVIRONMENTAL DOOMSDAY THEORIES ARE WRONG Ronald Baily, Media Analyst, ECOSCAM, 1993, pp. 23. Half a century’s woeful experience indicates, however, that crying wolf never erodes the popularity of the frightful predictions. “One clearly wrong prophesy, or even a whole string of them, rarely discredits the prophet in the eyes of those who believe in prophecy,” notes Daniel Cohen in Waiting for Apocalypse. And this is especially true of contemporary environmental predictions of doom. Nevertheless, the conventional wisdom of doom is simply wrong. Humanity is not running short of food or minerals, and in fact life for most human beings has dramatically improved over the past half-century. 4. THE ENVIRONMENTAL SITUATION IS DRAMATICALLY IMPROVING Ben Bolch and Harold Lyons, Profs. of Economics and Chemistry at Rhodes College, APOCALYPSE NOT, 1993, p. 10. No doubt this book errs on the side of presenting the case for restraining people whose stock in trade is environmental hysteria. Our basic thesis is that the world is not about to come to an end and that by nearly every measure, the people who reside in the market-oriented economies of the West enjoy a cleaner and safer environment than ever experienced in modem history. Since the 1850’s, the average life expectancy in the United States has nearly doubled, from around 40 years to around 80 years. The improvement has been so sweeping and dramatic that if we completely eliminated all mortality (every single death) before the age of 50, our life expectancy would only increase by 3.5 years. We view that fact as the most dramatic proof imaginable that the environment has not deteriorated as far as human beings are concerned.

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Equality Good EQUALITY IS NECESSARY FOR DEMOCRACY 1. DEMOCRACY CANNOT EXIST WITHOUT EQUAL PARTICIPATION OF ALL CITIZENS Delba Winthrop, Lecturer in Extension at Harvard University, CAPITALISM AND EQUALITY IN AMERICA, 1987, p. 284. Although “participatory democracy” has not always been vociferously demanded, there can be no responsible government without political participation, and no democracy without equal participation. In recent years the demand for political equality has been vociferous. 2. EQUALITY WILL RESULT IN A TRULY DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY Anthony Arblaster, NQA, DEMOCRACY, 1987, p. 81. Tocqueville’s Democracy in America is, as has been noted, essentially a study of American society, and one commentator has even suggested that it might better have been called Equality in America. If we wish to revive that tradition, or if we are interested in creating a fully democratic society, then there can be no doubt that a more than narrowly political or formal equality must be one of our goals. 3. EQUALITY IS NECESSARY FOR LEGITIMATE GOVERNMENT James A. Dorn, Editor of Cato Journal, LEGITIMACY, GOVERNMENTS, AND MARKETS, 1990, p. 71. The notion of equality is central to any discussion of the legitimacy of markets and governments. Legitimacy implies justification and justification requires a method of determining what is right or just. Moreover, in the choice of justificatory criteria, reference is inevitably made to fairness, which itself is intimately bound up with the notion of equality. Thus, the notions of equality and legitimacy are inseparable, and the various meanings of equality must be fleshed out if one is to gain a handle on the legitimacy of markets and governments.

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GOVERNMENT MUST ENSURE EQUALITY FOR ALL CITIZENS 1. GOVERNMENT HAS RESPONSIBILITY TO REDUCE INEQUALITY AND POVERTY John E. Jacob, Former President of the National Urban League, CIVIL LIBERTIES, 1988, p. 179-80. Those who believe that government can and should devise policies that reduce inequality and poverty can point to some considerable past successes. Those who believe that government cannot and should not implement such policies must defend the results of current policies that have dramatically increased inequality and poverty. Their only recourse is to say that market forces unimpeded by government interference, will create wealth and jobs. That view has only a tenuous relationship to reality. It ignores the persistence of discrimination and its effects. It embodies a fantasy of the blacks and whites lining up at the starting line as equals, when black people run the race of life carrying heavy historical and present burdens on their shoulders. 2. SOCIETY HAS A RESPONSIBILITY TO ENSURE EQUALITY Howard Zinn, Professor Emeritus, Spelman College, DECLARATIONS OF INDEPENDENCE, 1990, p. 150. We know that Jefferson and the Founding Fathers, almost all of whom were very wealthy, did not really mean for that [right to] equality to be established, certainly not between slave and master, not between rich and poor. And when, eleven years after they adopted the Declaration, they wrote a constitution, it was designed to keep the distribution of wealth pretty much as it existed at the time—which was very unequal. But that is no reason for anyone to surrender those rights, any more than the ignoring of the racial equality demanded by the Fourteenth Amendment was reasons for discarding that goal. To say that people have an equal right to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, means that if, in fact, there is inequality in those things, society has a responsibility to correct the situation and to ensure that equality. 3. SOCIAL POLICIES ARE NECESSARY TO CREATE EQUALITY John E. Jacob, Former President of the National Urban League, CIVIL LIBERTIES, 1988, p. 180. Everything we know about race and poverty in America suggests that unless the poor are given some extra help—in the form of social policies that enlarge their opportunities—they will not compete on equal terms with the affluent. The results of the current economic recovery bear that out. We are in the longest sustained economic recovery in memory, and the results are barely perceptible in poverty communities... [sic]. ALL PEOPLE ARE EQUAL 1. ALL PEOPLE ARE EQUAL IN HUMANITY Mortimer J. Adler, Chairman of the Board of Editors of the Encyclopedia Britannica, SIX GREAT IDEAS, 1981, p. 165. The equalities to which we are entitled, by virtue of being human, are circumstantial, not personal. They are equalities of condition—of status, treatment, and opportunity. How does our humanity justify our right to these equalities? The answer is that, by being human, we are all equal—equal as persons, equal in our humanity. 2. PEOPLE ARE EQUAL IN PRINCIPLE Erich Fromm, Social Philosopher, ESCAPE FROM FREEDOM, 1941, p. 264. The uniqueness of the self in no way contradicts the principle of equality. The thesis that men are born equal implies that they all share the same functional human qualities, that they share the basic fate of human beings, that they all have the same inalienable claim on freedom and happiness. It furthermore means that their relationship in one of solidarity, not one of domination-submission. 3. ALL PEOPLE ARE EQUAL IN DIGNITY Mortimer J. Adler, Chairman of the Board of Editors of the Encyclopedia Britannica, SIX GREAT IDEAS, 1981, p. 165. One individual cannot be more or less human than another, more or less of a person. The dignity we attribute to being a person rather than a thing is not subject to degrees in difference. The equality of all human beings is the equality of their dignity as persons.

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FAIRNESS IS AN ESSENTIAL PART OF EQUALITY 1. EQUALITY INCORPORATES FAIRNESS AND PROPRIETY Richard John Neuhaus, Director of the Center on Religion and Society at the Rockford Institute, CAPITALISM AND EQUALITY IN AMERICA, 1987, p. 222. Equality engages the notion both of fairness and of propriety. Fairness, in the sense of fair play, is sometime measurable, stated in enprincipled form, and subject to public contestation. Such explicit questions about equality are encountered in the political and legal arenas where, fortunately, most of us do not live our every day lives. 2. EQUALITY AS FAIRNESS DEMONSTRATES RESPECT FOR INDIVIDUALS Richard John Neuhaus, Director of the Center on Religion and Society at the Rockford Institute, CAPITALISM AND EQUALITY IN AMERICA, 1987, p. 222. The idea of equality as propriety is soft, intuitive, and largely unconscious until egregiously violated. In the forms both of fairness and of propriety, equality’s hard core is the claim to individual respect. “Attention must be paid.” Except for some of those whose job it is to theorize about equality, the question of personal dignity is the chief point at which the idea of equality engages the explicit and intense interest of Americans. 3. EQUALITY IS A MORAL CONCEPT OF FAIRNESS Richard John Neuhaus, Director of the Center on Religion and Society at the Rockford Institute, CAPITALISM AND EQUALITY IN AMERICA, 1987, p. 199 Equality as a moral concept exists in tension with, and aimed to temper, the unequal distribution social goods. Equality as a social program aims at making morality dispensable. Because Americans, with few exceptions, choose fair play over fair shares, equality remains a moral concept, which is both the weakness and the strength of the idea of equality in everyday life.

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AFRICAN-AMERICANS EXPERIENCE DISCRIMINATION 1. DISCRIMINATION OF AFRICAN-AMERICANS IS PERVASIVE Marilyn French, Feminist Philosopher, BEYOND POWER, 1985, 473. Equality continues to be the goal of many women’s and black groups, however, because of the unbridgeable gap between white and black, male and female, every gain made in the name of the latter groups is rescinded the next day and must be earned again and again. The resistance to receiving women and blacks as equals of white males is so profound, so undying, and so implanted in the culture, that the example of one woman or black doing a good just is not enough to ease the lot of the next; and assimilative acts performed under political (or moral, or social) pressure are often undone as soon as the pressure is removed. It is impossible to rely on the endurance of improvements in hiring practices, promotion, or pay, in assimilated dwelling, education, or work (for blacks), in ownership of rights over one’s body and reproduction, assimilated work, or political representation (for women). 2. DESPITE GAINS, MINORITIES STILL EXPERIENCE DISCRIMINATION Christine E. Sleeter, Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside, JOURNAL OF EDUCATION, Vol. 171, 1989, p. 61-2. To White America, the absence of mass protest, the presence of a small number of Black, Hispanic, and Asian women and men as well as White women in new positions (e.g., administrative jobs), passage of civil rights laws all suggest that inequalities of the past have been remedied. This is quite false, of course; the presence of poverty and discrimination among historically disenfranchised groups is well documented. However, mainstream White America today is well versed in the right’s rearticulation of a racial ideology, and is fairly ignorant of or indifferent to limitations to gains made by racial minority groups and women during the past 25 years. WOMEN ARE DISCRIMINATED AGAINST 1. WOMEN ARE SYSTEMATICALLY UNDERPAID IN THE U.S. Marilyn French, Feminist Philosopher, BEYOND POWER, 1985, p. 465. A presidential report published in 1981 claims that women are “systematically underpaid,” that “women’s work” pays about four thousand dollars a year less than men’s work, and that occupational segregation is more pronounced by sex than by race: 70 percent of men and 54 percent of women are concentrated in jobs done only by those of their own sex. 2. WOMEN HAVE NOT ACHIEVED EQUALITY Susan Faludi, Feminist Author, BACKLASH, 1991, p. xiv-xv. The word may be that women have been “liberated’ , but women themselves seem to feel otherwise. Repeatedly in national surveys, majorities of women say they are still far from equality. Nearly 70 percent of women polled by the New York Times in 1989 said the movement for women’s tights had only just begun. Most women in the 1990 Virginia Slims opinion poll agreed with the statement that conditions for their sex in American society had improved “a little, not a lot.” In poll after poll in the decade, overwhelming majorities of women said they needed equal pay and equal job opportunities, they needed an Equal Rights Amendment, they needed the rights to an abortion without government interference, they needed a federal law guaranteeing maternity leave, they needed decent child care services. 3. TWO-THIRDS OF ALL POOR PEOPLE ARE WOMEN Marilyn French, Feminist Philosopher, BEYOND POWER, 1985, p. 464. The poor of America are women: the poor of the world are women. In 1980, in America, the median adjusted income for men was $12,530; for women it was $4,920. In 1980 the poverty level was $8,414 for a nonfarm family of four, and nearly thirty million Americans live beneath it. Seventy percent of these are white, 30 percent black—and we may note that only 12 percent of the population is black—two-thirds of them women and children. If we limit these figures to adults, two out of very three poor adults are female. If present trends continue, by the year 2000 the poor of American will be entirely women.

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Equality Responses Typically, equality is considered to be a "reforming" idea, whereby all peoples are granted equal rights by what is usually a higher power, such as a government or group of ruling elites. Since the 17th century, the very idea of equality has been a central feature to forming new governments, especially democracies, and has proven pivotal in both the practice and theory of politics. While it is difficult to gain a uniform consensus on the true meaning of equality, it is generally recognized as the, "elimination of formal legal barriers of exclusion based on certain immutable characteristics such as race and gender." 1 This definition of equality is also referred to as the "antidiscrimination principle," which is upheld in most contemporary societies that claim some type of equality amongst their people. In the United States, our ideas of equality are central to our civic life. Our nation’s two most enshrined documents are the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, both of which use equality as their basic foundations. While documents such as the Constitution claim equality for all, only very few Americans would agree that everyone is treated fairly and equally. In fact, the 1990's brought about a new agenda of issues involving equality which continue to drive political discourse today. Claims of unequal treatment under the law continue to be expressed in the public sphere as well as in the courts. In general, "America is far from having reached a consensus over the meaning of equality and whether we have in fact achieved it."2 While equality is generally regarded as a positive value term, in many ways the very concept of equality is not only impossible to achieve, but can also have very broad and devastating consequences. This essay will discuss the ramifications that true equality is likely to have, and demonstrate many of the challenges that equality poses for contemporary societies. THE RAMIFICATIONS OF ECONOMIC EQUALITY Michael Walzer notes that equality is the promotion of a "leveled and conformist society." 3 Unfortunately, given the degree to which contemporary societies place value on diversity, autonomy and individualism; it is unlikely that we are willing to sacrifice these things for true economic equality. The notion of economic equality means that you must eliminate all inequities in wealth, material possessions and income. This is a concept so difficult to believe that it is hard to fathom that equality could ever be implemented so literally. Even Karl Marx noted that economic equality was likely to have negative ramifications: "A single worker needs less to live on than a married worker with a dependent wife and child, (so) that giving each of these an equal income will not produce and equal effect." 4 Herein lies the first major repercussion of economic equality, which recognizes that equalizing, "social resources fails to deal with any natural inequalities we may start out with."5 In many cases, equalizing all of the resources in a society fails to recognize the different values that people attach to resources, for example, "the fact that some people may care more about time for contemplation or leisure than about the goods that they are able to enjoy."6 Additionally, economic equality (whereby everyone is given equal income) will lead to certain members of a society being given a salary which is simply inadequate due to pre-existing circumstances. Anne Phillips notes: "Some people may need more than others in order to achieve a similar level of well being. The obvious and much repeated example being the person who is born with a physical disability and needs additional equipment, like a wheelchair, to reach the standards of mobility that others have taken for granted." 7 While this example is not particularly devastating, there are a host of different circumstances that make true economic equality nearly impossible and more importantly, even devastating to those who start out with pre-existing circumstances which merit more pay. Since such differences in pay would constitute inequality, equality must be rejected. Economic equality becomes even more problematic when you look at the effects that uniform wages and salaries would likely have on the marketplace and employment prospects. A great example given by Phillips is that of nurses and doctors: "We might believe, for example, that it is inequitable to pay doctors more than nurses and that any well-regulated society would value each of these equally. But we might still think that, failing the lure of a future high salary, no one would be daft enough to embark on the extra years of study necessary to qualify as a doctor." 8 This has been an age-old problem involved with the idea of economic equality in the marketplace. In a truly equal society where everyone has equal wealth and income, the race for the bottom is inevitable; as only very few people 236

are willing to pursue professional careers in medicine, law, and business when the financial payoff is non-existent. A society without doctors and academics will inherently be one that is plagued by poor health, lower life expectancies, higher infant mortality rates, and a decreased quality of life due to a lack of innovation. Societies that have strived towards economic equality have seen the devastating results first hand. To this day, nations like Russia that attempted this type of egalitarianism continue to be plagued by the residual effects of socialist rule. Quite simply, the free market and the idea of rational choosers making decisions based upon economic concerns now regulate our world. Globalization has had the effect of infiltrating even the most closed societies. Nations like China that once prided themselves upon governmental control of business and economic equality are being forced to open their markets and allow for individuals to start small businesses in order to create wealth. "We might believe it is inequitable for those lucky enough to make a success of their business to end up with a fine mansion and several cars while those who fail through no fault of their own end up in bankruptcy proceedings ... but if the mansion and cars turn out to be the only inducement that will encourage people to set up new enterprises, we may still think that [inequality] is a price worth paying." 9 In our system of free markets, it is unlikely that we are willing to forsake the creation of new ideas, innovations and business simply for the elusive goal of true economic equality. It is likely that an attempt to create equality in a nation like the United States would be economically devastating. The results of innovation benefit everyone, not just those who directly profit financially. Advances in medicine, technology, service, and health have partially resulted from economic motivations. These advances have expanded life expectancy and made the time individuals are alive more comfortable and enjoyable. These benefits are worth sacrificing equality for. Finally, we must look at the economic basis for every world economy, which is currency. Each nation relies on a form of currency, be it actual currency or goods. These units of currency always represent the same thing, regardless of whether you are living in a socialist, totalitarian, or free market economy. The currency, "expresses a relation among the batches of goods on a market, the equivalence class any of whose members would fetch that price on the market: for each such item, not enough people will pay more for it to make it possible for the seller to charge more profitability, whereas enough will pay that much for it to make that price profitable." 10 But Jan Narveson brings up an interesting query: What would happen if you were to equalize dollar-income? In a free market economy, demand curves help to determine what is going to be produced and how much of it will come to the market for how much. With equal income however, these demand curves become distorted. The only way to get around this problem would be to pay people in kind, instead of with actual money. 11 Of course, based upon the differing needs of individuals discussed earlier, this alternative is certainly an unlikely one. True economic equality would completely destroy existing demand curves, and likely lead to serious economic ramifications, whereby entire industries find that their markets have disappeared, and with them, their profits have also disappeared. While a lack of profits and markets may not sound important, the human impacts of such occurrences would be devastating. Unemployment would soar, and with this would come an inability to pay for the basic needs of a family or individual. Hunger, poverty, and poor health would follow. In addition, crime would increase as individuals looked for ways to earn any sort of income. EQUALITY FAILS TO ACCOUNT FOR HISTORICAL INEQUITIES On face, equality usually sounds like a fair and decent idea. Politicians use the word like it is going out of style, largely in part because people respond to the word in a positive way. One might think that the idea of equality would be even better received within those communities that have been historically marginalized - either by the government or by society. But in many cases, equality ignores the oppression and institutional discrimination suffered by minorities at the hands of government and society for the vast majority of our nation’s history. The most common example which adequately demonstrates that inequality is necessary to overcome past wrongs is Affirmative Action. Mary Segers defines Affirmative Action as, "the measures and programs which are sensitive to and take cognizance of factors of race, sex, or national origins in admissions, hiring, and promotion decisions." 12 And while Affirmative Action is not necessarily the same as quotas, having a truly effective Affirmative Action program must almost by its very nature have some type of quota system to ensure adequate efforts at integration. Few would argue with the fact that society ought to acquiesce passively in light of continued racial and sexual 237

discrimination, but many question whether or not the government should make special policies and programs on behalf of these groups in order to offset the effects of past wrongs and discrimination. While Affirmative Action is one of the most contentious political issues in the United States, it is also the best example of how equality is not necessarily the best way of achieving a truly equal society. Because Affirmative Action by its definition encourages employers, admissions officers and governmental hiring programs to favor some groups of people over others, it is a system of policy which inherently promotes inequality. For the purposes of this essay, the arguments for this particular type of inequality will fall into three categories: first, the appeals to the very principle of compensatory justice, second, the appeals to utility principles, and finally, the arguments highlighting the need to take often over-reaching steps to create what will one day be a truly equal society. "Compensatory or retrospective justifications of preferential treatment focus on the historical past and argue that affirmative action is necessary to compensate women and minorities for past injustices and/or for present disadvantages stemming from past injustices." 13 For example, throughout the vast majority of our nation’s history African Americans were forbidden by law from learning to read or seeking any type of formal or informal education. And while a select few were able to gain literacy, the vast majority were not able to read even up until the beginning of the 20th century. Even today, literacy rates amongst African Americans are significantly lower than amongst their Caucasian counterparts. This disparity comes in large part because of the institutional barriers that prevented their ancestors from gaining literacy and schooling. Even in the 1950's, African Americans were sent to inferior schools with poor resources and less qualified teachers. Many barriers continue to face African Americans even today. It is in this spirit that many Affirmative Action programs are based. If you support true equality, then you would be forced to treat these historically oppressed groups in the same manner that you treat their counterparts which have not been subjected to these discriminatory institutional barriers. The same story exists for women, who up until the early 20th century were not allowed to vote. Expecting women to gain an equal stature in the workplace and in government after spending most of our nation’s history as a subordinate group of people is absurd. Second, utility dictates that inequality is merited. “Utilitarian justifications of affirmative action stress the benefits to individuals and to society as a whole of having members of previously disadvantaged groups in business and the professions…Also stressed is the educational value of having women and minority students in professional schools to present their viewpoints and otherwise act as a leavening force in the training of future professionals for a pluralistic society.” 14 The entirety of society benefits when inclusiveness is valued over equality. Finally, this unequal treatment is necessary to be truly equal in the long-term. President Lyndon Johnson in a 1965 commencement speech at Howard University spoke about the genuine need for affirmative action: Freedom is not enough. You do not wipe out scars of centuries by saying, “now you’re free to go where you want and do as you desire.” You do not take a person who for years has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race, and then say “You’re free to compete” and justly believe you have been completely fair. Thus it is not enough to open the gates to opportunity. All of our citizens must have the ability to walk through those gates; and this is the next and most profound stage of the battle for civil rights….Imagine a hundred-yard dash in which one of the two runners has his legs shackled together. He ahs progressed ten yards, while the unshackled runner has gone fifty yards. At that point the judges decide that the race is unfair. How do they rectify the situation? Do they merely remove the shackles and allow the race to proceed? Then they could say that “equal opportunity” now prevailed. But one of the runners would still be forty yards ahead of the other. 15

In that sense, unequal treatment in the form of affirmative action is justified, since it rectified historical inequities. If equality was mandated, the inequities would be allowed to stand and continue, harming not only those who are treated as less than others, but also society as a whole. EQUALITY LEADS TO CONFORMITY True and literal equality may be impossible to achieve. However, even putting aside this pragmatic objection, there are reasons to reject equality. The slide towards conformity is one such reason. “Michael Walzer sees the pursuit of literal equality as promoting ‘a leveled and conformist society.’ Given the importance contemporary societies attach 238

to autonomy and diversity, we may be unwilling to sacrifice these qualities even if we accept the independent value of…equality.” 16 The only way to truly have people at an equal level involves them accepting a level of conformity, where everyone becomes similar if not the same. This is problematic and worse than inequality for several reasons. First, a multitude of opinions and perspectives are necessary to come up with the best ideas and policies. A variety of ideas check against one another, and the clash of ideas produces synthesis and superior ideas. When individuals engage in debates, they reach new conclusions that they would not have come to on their own. These debates extend beyond a personal level, however, to also be beneficial in the policy-making paradigm. When alternatives are discussed and compared, there is the best chance of picking the superior option. This will benefit the most people and allow the most progress for a society. Second, conformity allows for the abuse of power. If everyone is the same, there is no one questioning the way that events are happening. This allows for those in power to convince the masses that they are acting in their best interest. If everyone is the same and believes this, then no one checks back the power of the government. Third, conformity destroys individuality. Individuality is key because it allows you to define who you are. Without uniqueness and differences, a person cannot realize their potential. This would lead to depression and stall any forward movement and innovation for a society. Finally, conformity is boring. If everyone was the same, it would not be interesting to interact with others because they would have nothing different to offer than what you have. In that sense, conformity would destroy social institutions like the family, church, school, friendship, and workplace. These implications that come from conformity are far worse than the implications of not having equality. The process of truly making everyone equal would rob them of their individuality and stop the forward progress society has enjoyed because of innovation and differences. EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY IS IMPOSSIBLE Author John Wilson discusses the problems of trying to create equality of opportunity. He notes, “There is a sense in which all players in a game have an equal opportunity of winning: that is, the rules do not favor one more than another. But unless the game is a game of pure chance, we might also say that in fact some players have a better chance or more opportunities to win than others, if they have superior skills or talents. So we are not sure whether to say they all really have an equal opportunity or not.” 17 In that sense, Wilson articulates that not only is equality of opportunity impossible to create; but it is also impossible to determine if it exists. He continues, “Thus if, when we say ‘Every American boy has the same opportunity to be President,’ we mean simply that there are no rules which disqualify him a priori (because he is poor, or ugly, or the devotee of some minority religion), then this may be cold comfort: for in practice anyone who wants to run for the Presidency may need not only natural talents, like political ability and intelligence, but also perhaps accidental qualifications like wealth or social standing.” 18 This example points out that even when we claim that equality of opportunity exists, it is usually a mirage. Yet it would be impossible to create a world wherein every American child had a truly equal opportunity to become President. Wilson’s work illustrates two things. The first is the slippery slope of attempting to create an equality of opportunity. There is no way to create a scenario wherein every individual has equal odds at becoming any certain position. The second is that such equality would not be definable, as there is no way to tell when those odds have been reached. Thus striving for equality is an impossible task that only frustrates and destroys instead of moving towards a progressive attitude. Author Matt Cavanagh also discusses the impossibility of equal opportunity by examining what it would mean to create equal opportunity for a job. He says, “If it just means that everyone should have the opportunity to apply for any job, and should be judged on their merits, then it is a universalist principle, not a principle of distributive justice. To be a genuinely egalitarian position, it has to appeal to equality as a principle of distributive justice. (It also has to appeal to equality as a distinct principle. This is why the view that everyone should start in the same position doesn’t count as genuinely egalitarian, even though it does involve equality as a distributive principle.)” 19 Cavanagh does an excellent job articulating the impossibility of finding a way to define and measure equality of opportunity and the justifications for such equality.

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There is also a large amount of confusion regarding a right versus a chance or an opportunity. Wilson adds, “We have to suppose this in order to make sense of the notion of an equal opportunity, or of an equal chance. I may have the right to do things which I have not the power to do (stupid people have the right to go to a university), or be entitled to them, for these words refer simply to the rules of the game. But if I have not the power, then strictly speaking I don’t have the opportunity or the chance.” 20 It would not be possible to create a world where everyone has equal abilities and therefore equal chances, equal power, and equal access. To encourage equal opportunity, therefore, is to punish those who have more abilities to accomplish what others cannot. Wilson offers another example, saying, “The door of the cell may be unlocked and the warder absent, but I do not have the opportunity or chance to escape if I am crippled or paralyzed. We could say that I had the chance if at that particular time I was asleep, but in this case I still have the power to escape- it is just that I could not use the power at that moment. In one sense of ‘could’ it is false to say ‘I had the opportunity, but I couldn’t take it’; we usually mean that, no doubt for excellent reasons, I chose not to take it.” 21 These examples are great methods of showing that inequality is preferable, as one can not possibly reach equality of opportunity without holding individuals back to the lowest possible standard. FINANCIAL EQUALITY IS UNJUST The true definition of equality means that everyone contributes and receives the same amount. If this standard is applied to finances, however, the results are unjust and problematic. Take, for example, taxes. To require everyone to pay the same amount of taxes is unjust given the large variety in the amount of money individuals make. This would be problematic whether the set amount for taxes was placed at a high or low level. If the tax level was placed relatively high, those with high incomes would not have a problem paying the tax. Those with lower incomes, however, would be extremely burdened. They would have to spend a majority of their income paying taxes, and even that amount might not suffice. This would be especially devastating because it is those who have little income who most need to hold on to their money to pay for basic necessities like housing, food, and medical care. Similarly, if the tax level was set at a relatively low amount, this would also produce problems. The lower income bracket could afford taxes, but for those with higher incomes, the amount they would be paying would seem miniscule in comparison to their incomes. This would lower the amount of tax revenue that the government would receive, and drastically lower the amount that could be spent on social programs. This, again, would harm the low income parts of the population, who depend on governmental services to assist them with food, unemployment, welfare, and health care costs. Tax money is used to pay for these services, and if that revenue was lowered the government could no longer provide those opportunities to individuals whose income did not facilitate those opportunities on their own. This illustrates that what is equal and what is fair is not always the same. Redistribution of wealth and resources seems fair, as it helps the most people in a society. However, redistributing resources is not equal and would be denied in a quest for true and perfect equality. EQUALITY FACILITATES THE TYRANNY OF THE MAJORITY If everyone’s voices were to truly be measured equally, a majority vote would be taken on every issue and the majority’s plan would be enacted. This is problematic because it allows the majority to abuse and walk all over the minority in the pursuit of what benefits them. All that would be needed is a large enough portion of the population to unite in order to ruin the lives of a smaller portion of the population. White Americans could justify the negative treatment of racial minorities because the equal counting of votes would give them more power than any smaller group that attempted to challenge that dominance. This is especially problematic because it is often these smaller groups who are underrepresented and need attention drawn to their issues. They are also the most likely to be overlooked anyway, and a system of the majority would allow them to be completely ignored. An example of how this equality is denied in American politics is the electoral college. Electors from some states represent less people than other electors. In that sense, the votes of individuals from some smaller states count as more than the votes of individuals from larger states. This inequality is necessary, however, to make sure that politicians do not just focus on large urban centers of population. It is important that issues effecting multiple and smaller parts of the population get discussed. For example, while a small minority of 240

American are farmers, farm policy deserves much attention in the political realm. If such policies are ignored, all Americans could suffer due to food shortages or other problems, including a rising cost of food. If politicians had only to focus on the large and urban areas to succeed, issues like farm policy would be discussed less frequently. Therefore, though it is unequal, the electoral college serves the needs of the American public and should be maintained. SUMMARY While equality is a term that most people greet with happiness and acceptance, in reality, it has many problems. The economic implications of equality are devastating. In addition, equality does not take into consideration historical inequities. Equality also leads to conformity, which destroys variety and hinders society. Equality of opportunity is literally impossible and so should not be strived for. Financial equality is unjust, specifically in the realm of taxes. Equality facilitates the tyranny of the majority. Equality in theory sounds beneficial. But in addition to being impossible to achieve, equality would also have detrimental effects on individuals and society as a whole. It must therefore be rejected. ______________________________ 1 Douglas, Davison and Devins, Neal. Redefining Equality. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998, pg. 4. 2 Ibid, pg. 3. 3 Walzer, Michael. Spheres of Justice. New York: Basic Books, 1983, pg. xii. 4 Phillips, Anne. Which Equalities Matter? Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers, 1999, pg. 52. 5 Ibid, pg. 52. 6 Ibid, pg. 52. 7 Ibid, pg. 53. 8 Ibid, pg. 44. 9 Ibid, pg. 44. 10 Narveson, Jan. Liberty and Equality. Oxford, England: Basil Blackwell Publisher, 1985, pg. 34. 11 Ibid, pg. 34. 12 Ibid, pg. 76. 13 Ibid, pg. 75. 14 Foster, James C. and Mary C. Segers. Elusive Equality: Liberalism, Affirmative Action, and Social Change in America. Port Washington: National University Publications, 1983, pg. 78. 15 Ibid, pg. 77-78. 16 Phillips, Anne. Which Equalities Matter? Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers, 1999, pg. 45. 17 Wilson, John. Equality. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World Inc., 1966, pg. 59. 18 Ibid, pg. 59. 19 Cavanagh, Matt. Against Equality of Opportunity. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002, pg. 121. 20 Wilson, John. Equality. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World Inc., 1966, pg. 60. 21 Ibid, pg. 60.

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EQUALITY THROUGH TAXATION IS UNJUST 1. ECONOMIC EQUALITY IN THE FORM OF TAXATION IS UNJUST Cavanaugh, Maureen, Assistant Professor at Washington and Lee University School of Law. "Democracy, Equality, and Taxes" Winter, 2003, Alabama Law Review, 54 Ala. L. Rev. 415. pp. 419-422. The Founders invoked debate about taxes to make concrete the very question of government legitimacy. The current tax debate necessarily implicates the nature of government. Yet it often appears to focus more narrowly on specific issues (such as tax rates) that obscure the larger question: [*420] the proper allocation of our collective tax burden. n10 Complexity, related to the nature and number of issues involved, seems to inhibit debate, as well. n11 Even where discussion of our political system occurs, it is too often cursory and full of unexamined assumptions. Because our tax debate raises many important issues of distributive justice, economic efficiency, and actual tax incidence, the absence of clearly stated premises, especially regarding the nature of our political system, is problematic precisely because it obscures fundamental principles. n12 Although the promise of "equal" taxation often exceeds the reality of assurances of "equal treatment," the appeal of these messages surely suggests the importance of equality as a principle basic to American conceptions of government. n13 Popular attention and attraction to a flat tax as the appropriate mechanism for the funding of public goods in a democracy, because of its dedication to equality, is evident in the political rhetoric. n14 It is frequently assumed that "the flat tax will restore fairness to the tax law by treating everyone the same." n15 [*421] Equality and fairness are thus linked by the rhetoric of "flat taxes." However, it is not clear, in reality, whether "equality" and "fairness" are synonymous, or in fact antithetical, given that individual resources vary dramatically. If equality and fairness were coextensive in taxation, one would expect a correlation between political systems favoring equality and equality of tax burdens. Historically, as this Article will show, the opposite has been the case. Moreover, everyone may desire equity in tax treatment, but agreement on what constitutes "fair" treatment depends upon starting assumptions. Assessment of "fair" or "appropriate" tax burdens requires discussion of theories of justice coupled with empirical analysis of the actual effects of those burdens. However, when issues of equality of taxpayer treatment are raised, the discussion often flounders. n16 For any discussion of distributive justice, a common understanding of the political and legal system is necessary at the onset. It is only possible to define the terms "equality" and "fairness" within the political context and, only then, is it possible to make progress in satisfactorily answering how this relates to questions of fairness in taxation. In other words, if equality and, therefore, fairness simply required treating everyone identically, few should oppose a poll (head) tax. However, such a tax is inconsistent with most conceptions of fairness, equality, and democracy, even dissociated from its use in outright efforts of discrimination. Its problematic historical associations in America, including its use to disenfranchise African-Americans, might prompt additional hesitation. n17 Therefore, few actually argue that every taxpayer should pay a flat head tax that is exactly the same regardless of individual economic circumstances. n18 [*422] As a result, most often, a proportionate tax is proposed as more consistent with democracy--where a flat rate is paid on whatever base is chosen. n19 Indeed, opponents of progressive income taxation assert, and often its proponents even concede, that equality presupposes proportionate taxation. This conclusion is far from clear; further examination of the nature of our democratic constitution is necessary, so that we can define "equality" in taxation consistently with that political structure. n20 Whether political "equality" requires equality in taxation will be clearer upon historical examination. First, a review of objections to progressive taxation, especially those based on our political system, is necessary.

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PROGRESSIVE IS FAIR, EQUAL IS NOT 1. PROGRESSIVE TAXATION ALLOWS DEMOCRACY TO OCCUR Cavanaugh, Maureen, Assistant Professor at Washington and Lee University School of Law. "Democracy, Equality, and Taxes" Winter, 2003, Alabama Law Review, 54 Ala. L. Rev. 415. pp. 422-424. .Progressive taxation, the system by which those taxpayers earning more income are subject to a greater tax burden through increasing graduated rates, has characterized the income tax since its beginning in 1913. n21 Despite progressivity's long history and generally settled constitutional status, it has been subject to much debate--generally full of rhetoric, but often lacking careful examination of why it is incompatible with our political system. Walter Blum and Henry Kalven in their seminal 1952 article marshal a long list of arguments against progressive taxation, arguments many presume also support proportional taxation. n22 Ultimately, they conclude that the case for progressivity is "stubborn but uneasy." n23 Their examination of both the negative and positive cases for progressive taxation reveals some significant [*423] but little examined, and often contradictory, assumptions about our democratic political system. Regardless of other justifications, Blum and Kalven object to progressivity because of its conflict with democratic ideals. n24 Detailed assessment or definition of these democratic ideals is lacking. Defining democracy simply as "majority rule," Blum and Kalven note that a majority can easily vote a "distinctive burden," including higher tax rates, for the minority. n25 Because a progressive tax system necessarily imposes a high rate on a minority, Blum and Kalven conclude that it is "a politically irresponsible formula." n26 Because progressivity raises equity issues between taxpayers, it poses difficulties for majority rule. n27 Blum and Kalven further assume that democracy requires that the minority be protected from the majority; a priori, some decisions, including taxation, cannot be entrusted to any majority. n28 Since they are unable to cite any evidence of the majority imposing an undue tax burden on the minority, they concede that it is possible to overstate these political objections to progressivity. They, nevertheless, suggest that tax legislation could be so burdensome to the wealthier minority as to constitute a "taking of property without compensation." n29 Blum and Kalven reveal the bases for their political objections when they discuss progressivity as a means of wealth redistribution. n30 Democracy, defined as majority rule, necessarily rests political sovereignty with the majority (who are the poor). If democracy must also protect the minority (who are the rich), the possibility of majority decisions effecting wealth redistribution poses the actual problem--the conflict inherent in majority rule and minority protection. Yet their analysis also reflects a concern with the paradox that wealth inequality may inherently conflict with democracy. n31 Attributing progressivity's success to its proponents' failure to equate it openly with wealth redistribution, they themselves explain progressivity's [*424] appeal by the fact that it addresses a need to redress income inequality, where it exists at a level inconsistent with "economic democracy." n32 2. ECONOMIC FAIRNESS AS OPPOSED TO EQUALITY IS CONSTITUTIONALLY BASED Cavanaugh, Maureen, Assistant Professor at Washington and Lee University School of Law. "Democracy, Equality, and Taxes" Winter, 2003, Alabama Law Review, 54 Ala. L. Rev. 415. pp. 424-426. Richard Epstein bases his entire analysis on a radically different understanding of our political system, i.e., that the Constitution is the embodiment of Lockean political theory. n36 Epstein concludes from his reading of Locke (his theories of consent and private property) that the organization of the state does not result in the surrender of all rights, including natural property [*425] rights, to the sovereign. n37 For Epstein, applying Locke's theories to actual government presents the question of how to substitute for the doctrine of consent "an explicit and rigorous theory of forced exchanges between the sovereign and the individual that can account both for the monopoly of force and for the preservation of liberty and property." n38 Conceding that government requires some level of taxation to support its function (maintaining order), Epstein agrees with Locke's cursory statement about taxation, that each should contribute proportionally to those taxes that are legitimate exercises of the state's police power and sovereignty. n39 Because Epstein analogizes the individual's relationship with the state in quasi-contractual terms, all exchanges require equivalence. n40 Taxation is then only permissible where there is a "pareto-superior pattern of forced exchanges." n41

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AFFIRMATIVE ACTION IS GOOD 1. AFFIRMATIVE ACTION IS NECESSARY TO ACHIEVE DIVERSITY Bloch, Susan. Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center. "Looking Ahead: The Future Of Affirmative Action." The American University Law Review, August, 2003. 52 Am. U.L. Rev. 1507. pp. 1510-1515. Face the simple fact that there are groups in every community which are daily paying the cost of the history of American injustice. The argument against affirmative action is ... an argument in favor of leaving that cost to lie where it falls. Our fundamental sense of fairness, particularly as it is embodied in the guarantee of equal protection under the law, requires us to make an effort to see that those costs are shared equitably while we continue to work for the eradication of the consequences of discrimination. Otherwise, we must admit to ourselves that so long as the lingering effects of inequality are with us, the burden will be borne by those who are least able to pay. n22 Significantly, the Justice who now sits in Marshall's Supreme Court seat, Clarence Thomas, could not disagree more. While not addressing Marshall's question of how far our society has come in its [*1511] quest for colorblindness, Thomas believes that all racial classifications, no matter how generous their motivation, are unconstitutional. In his separate concurrence in Adarand, Thomas argued that there is a "moral and constitutional equivalence between laws designed to subjugate a race and those that distribute benefits on the basis of race in order to foster some notion of equality. Government cannot make us equal; it can only recognize, respect, and protect us as equal before the law." n23 In Thomas' view, the government cannot make distinctions on the basis of race, no matter how benign the motivation. He believes that affirmative action programs embody and foster a paternalism that is at war with the principle of equality and that can be "just as poisonous and pernicious as any other form of discrimination." n24 Thomas concluded his separate Adarand concurrence with vehemence: "Government-sponsored racial discrimination based on benign prejudice is just as noxious as discrimination inspired by malicious prejudice. In each instance, it is racial discrimination, plain and simple." n25 This was the scene when the affirmative action cases from the University of Michigan arrived, presenting the Court with its first opportunity to address the constitutionality of affirmative action programs in higher education since Bakke, as well as the first opportunity to apply the strict scrutiny test mandated by Adarand. There were in fact two different University of Michigan programs under attack: Grutter v. Bollinger challenged the law school's admissions program, n26 and Gratz v. Bollinger challenged the undergraduate school's admissions program. n27 The University [*1512] defended both programs by arguing that they were designed to achieve a diverse student body comprised of students from a wide [*1513] variety of social, ethnic, and racial backgrounds. n28 The opponents argued that this was not a compelling interest. n29 The Court, in an opinion by Justice O'Connor, made the very significant decision that the University's desire to achieve diversity in its student body was in fact a compelling governmental interest, relying heavily on the reasoning of Justice Powell's lone opinion in Bakke. n30 The Court then went on to find, in a five-tofour decision, that the law school's nuanced, holistic consideration of race was sufficiently narrowly tailored to be constitutional. n31 The Court noted that "narrow tailoring does not require exhaustion of every conceivable raceneutral alternative. Nor does it require a university to choose between maintaining a reputation for excellence and fulfilling a commitment to provide educational opportunities to members of all racial groups." n32 The Court rejected the Bush Administration's argument that the law school's desire to achieve a "critical mass" of minority students was "a disguised quota." n33 Thus, [*1514] the Court concluded that the law school program is constitutional. n34 Voting with Justice O'Connor were Justices Ginsburg, Souter, Breyer, and Stevens. n35 Dissenting were Chief Justice Rehnquist, and Justices Thomas, Kennedy, and Scalia. n36 However, in the undergraduate case, the Court decided six to three, in an opinion by Chief Justice Rehnquist, that the undergraduate system was not sufficiently narrowly tailored. n37 The Court objected to the point system, which, on a scale of between one to 150 points, gave twenty points to an applicant if he or she was a member of an underrepresented race - specifically African American, Hispanic, or Native American - and automatically admitted anyone with 100 or more points. n38 The problem with the point system, in the view of the six in the majority, was that it was not narrowly tailored - it was too formulaic and failed to make the individualized assessments the law school made. n39 The six in the majority were Chief Justice [*1515] Rehnquist, Justices Kennedy, Scalia, Thomas, O'Connor, and Breyer. n40 Dissenting were Justices Ginsburg, Souter, and Stevens. n41 In light of this result, the University has revised its undergraduate program to make it a more individualized assessment - not an easy task given that it receives more than 25,000 applications for 5,000 spots. n42

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EQUALITY PREVENTS REIGHTING HISTORICAL WRONGS 1. EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY IS IMPOSSIBLE BECAUSE OF HISTORICAL INJUSTICES AND MUST BE CORRECTED WHICH VIOLATES EQUALITY Hall, David. Professor of Law at Northeastern University School of Law. "Healing the Wounds Of Slavery: Can Present Legal Remedies Cure Past Wrongs?" Boston College Third World Law Journal, Winter, 2004. 24 B.C. Third World L.J. 1. pg. 7-9. The long delay has allowed opponents to characterize the appeal for reparations as a laughing matter or an extreme political position, as opposed to a serious social dilemma and an appropriate legal remedy. The delay even makes liberal and progressive lawyers and legal scholars have doubts about the appropriateness of this approach. n19 Though some accept the fact that racism is still with us, and that slavery was a horrible experience and a stain on America's historical landscape, they still are able to distance themselves from those wrongs because the injustice seems so long ago, and, some believe, so much has already been done to correct the problem. The problem is that so much of what has been done has had very little to do with the underlying wrong and the conditions it created. Most of the laws that were passed in the 1960s and 1970s were aimed at preventing discrimination and segregation from continuing and providing individual relief when it did happen. n20 But very little, if anything, has been done to correct the original harm or to compensate people of African descent for the original injury. This society has clothed itself in a blanket of equality and social justice rhetoric, yet when one peels away the layers one finds underneath a system of inequality that has created distinct and different societies within the midst of one nation. n21 So many of the problems that vast numbers of African Americans face today are a direct outgrowth of this [*8] history of slavery, segregation, and discrimination. Unless one wants to hold fast to a theory of racial inferiority, n22 there is no other explanation for why infant mortality rates and incarceration levels are all higher for African Americans, and the life expectancy rate is lower. n23 Whatever negative social indicator you choose, African Americans find themselves at the bottom of the list. This is not an accident. Though some have escaped these invisible chains, many have been left behind and are trapped in cycles of crime, poverty, and disillusionment. This is not just a problem for Black people; this is a challenge for the entire nation. In a society where the economic power and well-being of a group determines so much of its social, physical, and educational well-being, there must be economic solutions and remedies. This will never happen through an individualized civil rights approach to justice. We can not level these playing fields with marginal remedies that do not go to the heart of the problem. Certainly money alone will not cure these social injuries, but without a major infusion of economic resources into the social wounds that this society created through laws and customs, we will not only remain a separate nation, but we will never fulfill the true calling of this nation. Many African-American children are attending public educational institutions that are in need of enormous resources and new ideas about learning and achievement. n24 [*9] Progress will not occur through the normal incremental budgeting process at the local or state level. Any viable reparations claims must address these educational, economic, and social issues through whatever judgment is rendered or legislation enacted. Therefore, funds and resources must be targeted toward African Americans who have failed to succeed economically. The most compelling claim for reparations, centuries after the initial violation occurred, is made by those who are still locked out of this country's dream despite years of legislative initiatives. Reparation is for children in urban areas who will not be able to leap over poverty, crime, and hopelessness in a single bound. It is for families who, despite their efforts, have been unable to break the chain of generational poverty and limited dreams.

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Extreme Utilitarianism Good ACT/EXTREME UTILITARIANISM IS THE MOST RATIONAL MORAL SYSTEM 1. ACT UTILITY MAKES CONSEQUENCES MATTER MOST--MORAL RULES JUST GUIDELINES J. J. C. Smart, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Adelaide, PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY, Volume 6, 1956, p. 344. If by 'actions' we mean particular individual actions we get the sort of doctrine held by Bentham, Sidgwick and Moore. According to this doctrine, we test individual actions by their consequences, and general rules, like 'keep promises,' are mere rules of thumb which we use only to avoid the necessity of estimating the probable consequences of our actions at every step. The rightness or wrongness of keeping a promise on a particular occasion depends only on the goodness or badness of the consequences of keeping that promise on that particular occasion. Of course part of the consequences of breaking the promise, and a part to which the extreme utilitarian will normally ascribe decisive importance, will be the weakening of faith in the institution of promising. However, if the goodness of the consequences of breaking the rule is in toto greater than the goodness of the consequences of keeping it, then we must break the rule, irrespective of whether the goodness of the consequences of everybody's obeying the rule is or is not greater than the consequences of everybody's breaking it. To put it shortly, rules do not matter, save per accidens as rules of thumb and as de facto social institutions with which the utilitarian has to reckon when estimating social consequences. I shall call this doctrine 'extreme utilitarianism.' 2. ACT UTILITY APPEALS TO BEST HUMAN FEELINGS: RATIONALITY AND BENEVOLENCE J. J. C. Smart, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Adelaide, PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY, Volume 6, 1956, p. 353. Moral rules, on the extreme utilitarian view, are rules of thumb only, but they are not bad rules of thumb. But if we do come to the conclusion that we should break the rule and if we have weighed in the balance our own fallibility and liability to personal bias, what good reason remains for keeping the rule? I can understand 'it is optimific ' as a reason for action, but why should 'it is a member of a class of actions which are usually optimific' or 'it is a member of a class of actions which as a class are more optimific than any alternative general class' be a good reason? You might as well say a person ought to be picked to play for Australia just because all his brothers have been, or that the Australian team should be composed entirely of the Harvey family because this would be better than composing it entirely of any other family. The extreme utilitarian does not appeal to artificial feelings, but only to our feelings of benevolence, and what better feelings can there be to appeal to? 5. SPREADING ACT UTILITY HELPS SOLVE DANGERS TO HUMANITY J. J. C. Smart, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Adelaide, PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY, Volume 6, 1956, p. 348. Sidgwick seems to think it quite probable that an extreme utilitarian should not propagate his doctrine too widely. However, the great danger to humanity comes nowadays on the plane of public morality--not private morality. There is a greater danger to humanity from the hydrogen bomb than from an increase in the divorce rate, regrettable though that might be, and there seems no doubt that extreme utilitarianism makes for good sense in international relations. When France walked out of the United Nations because she did not wish Morocco discussed, she said that she was within her rights because Morocco and Algiers are part of her metropolitan territory and have nothing to do with the UN. The was clearly a legalistic if not superstitious argument. We should not be concerned with the so-called 'rights' of France or any other country but whether the cause of humanity would best be served by discussing Morocco in [the] UN. (I am not saying that the answer to this is 'yes.' There are good grounds for supposing that more harm than good would come by such a discussion). I myself have no hesitation in saying that on extreme utilitarian principles we ought to propagate extreme utilitarianism as widely as possible.

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ACT/EXTREME UTILITY SUPERIOR TO RULE/RESTRICTED UTILITARIANISM 1. RULES ARE NOT RATIONAL REASONS FOR BEHAVIOR J. J. C. Smart, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Adelaide, PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY, Volume 6, 1956, p. 352. I now pass on to a type of case which may be thought to be the trump card of restricted utilitarianism. Consider the rule of the road. It may be said that since all that matters is that everyone should do the same it is indifferent which rule we have, 'go on the left hand side' or 'go on the right hand side'. Hence the only reason for going on the left hand side in British countries is that this is the rule. Here the rule does seem to be a reason, in itself, for acting in a certain way. I wish to argue against this. The rule in itself is not a reason for our actions. We would be perfectly justified in going on the right hand side if (a) we knew that the rule was to go on the left hand side, and (b) we were in a country peopled by superanarchists who always on principle did the opposite of what they were told. This shows us that the rule does not give us a reason for acting so much as an indication of the probable actions of others, which helps us to find out what would be our own most rational course of action. If we are in a country not peopled by anarchists, but non-anarchist extreme Utilitarians, we expect, other things being equal, that they will keep rules laid down for them. Knowledge of this rule enables us to predict their behavior and to harmonize our own actions with theirs. The rule 'keep to the left hand side', then, is not a logical reason for action but an anthropological datum for planning actions. 2. ACT UTILITY IS A MORE RATIONAL MORALITY THAN RULE UTILITY J. J. C. Smart, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Adelaide, PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY, Volume 6, 1956, p. 353. The restricted utilitarian might say that he is talking about morality, not of such things as the rules of the road. I am not sure how far this objection, if valid, would affect my argument, but in any case I would reply that as a philosopher I conceive of ethics as the study of how it would be most rational to act. If my opponent wishes to restrict the word 'morality' to a narrower use he can have the word. The fundamental question is the question of rational action in general. Similarly, if the restricted utilitarian were to appeal to ordinary usage and say 'it might be most rational to leave Hitler to drown but it would surely not be wrong to rescue him', I should again let him have the words 'right' and 'wrong' and should stick to 'rational' and irrational'. 3. RULE UTILITY IS NOT A RATIONAL WAY TO THINK MORALLY J. J. C. Smart, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Adelaide, PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY, Volume 6, 1956, p. 348. The restricted utilitarian regards moral rules as more than rules of thumb for short-circuiting calculations of consequences. Generally, he argues, consequences are not relevant at all when we are deciding what to do in a particular case. In general, they are relevant only to deciding what rules are good reasons for acting in a certain way in particular cases. This doctrine is possibly a good account of how the modern unreflective twentieth century Englishman often thinks about morality, but surely it is a monstrous account of how it is the most rational way to think about morality.

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Extreme Utilitarianism Bad ACT UTILITARIANISM IS AN INSUFFICIENT MORAL SYSTEM 1. ACT UTILITARIANISM STOPS HUMAN COOPERATION AND AGREEMENTS Donald Regan, Professor of Law and Philosophy at the University of Michigan, UTILITARIANISM AND COOPERATION, 1980, p. 32. This is a problem in the real world, and not merely in our example. AU [act utilitarianism] is almost certainly indeterminate in most of the standard cases involving interaction effects from grass-walking to voting, and it can hardly be suggested that the act-utilitarian solution to all these problems is for everyone concerned to get together and make an agreement. Not only is there often no opportunity to make an agreement, but in some cases where there is the possibility of making an agreement, it will not be worth the trouble to make one. If the potential gains from co-ordination are not great, it is quite possible that on balance AU [ACT UTILTARIANISM] would forbid one to go to the trouble of creating an explicit agreement about how to behave, even where the opportunity for making such an agreement was at hand. 2. ACT UTILITY LEADS TO UNTRUE CONCLUSIONS ABOUT MORALITY Kurt Baier, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh, THE MORAL POINT OF VIEW: A RATIONAL BASIS OF ETHICS, 1958, p. 203-4. Deontologists and utilitarians alike make the mistake of thinking that it is one, or the only one, of our moral duties to "do the optimistic act". We do not have a duty to do good to others or to ourselves, or to others and/or to ourselves in a judicious mixture such that it produces the greatest possible amount of good in the world. We are morally required to do good only to those who are in actual need of our assistance. The view that we always ought to do the optimistic act, or whenever we have no more stringent duty to perform, would have the absurd result that we are doing wrong whenever we are relaxing, since on those occasions there will always be opportunities to produce greater good than we can by relaxing. For the relief of suffering is always a greater good than mere enjoyment. Yet it is quite plain that the worker who, after a tiring day, puts on his slippers and listens to the wireless is not doing anything he ought not to, is not neglecting any of his duties, even though it might be perfectly true that there are things he might do which produce more good in the world, even for himself, than merely relaxing by the fireside. 3. ONE CANNOT BE MORAL AND TREAT MORAL RULES AS MERE RULES OF THUMB Kurt Baier, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh, THE MORAL POINT OF VIEW: A RATIONAL BASIS OF ETHICS, 1958, p. 206-7. The formal condition is this: a man cannot be said to have adopted the moral point of view unless he is prepared to treat the moral rules as principles rather than mere rules of thumb, that is, to do things on principle rather than merely to act purposively, merely to aim at a certain end. And, furthermore, he must act on rules which are meant for everybody, and not merely for himself or some favored group. The material condition is this: the rules must be for the good of everyone alike. 4. IF ACT UTILITY EVER SUCCEEDS, IT DEPENDS ON HAPPY ACCIDENTS FOR SUCCESS Donald Regan, Professor of Law and Philosophy at the University of Michigan, UTILITARIANISM AND COOPERATION, 1980, p. 30-1. The defender of AU [act utilitarianism] may ask why the need for this assumption is supposed to trouble him. After all, if we look around we will see that agreements are generally kept. What can be the harm in making an empirical assumption that is patently true? To answer this question, we must remember the nature of our project. We are not primarily interested in whether AU gives the right directions in actual cases involving agreements. We are interested in whether AU is an adequate consequentialist theory. If agreements are useful, as the defender of AU concedes, then an adequate consequentialist theory ought not only to permit the existence of a practice of agreementkeeping, it ought to ensure it. It ought not to depend for its success on a pattern of behaviour which it must regard in effect as a happy accident.

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RULE/RESTRICTED UTILITARIANISM BEST TO ENSURE MORALITY 1. ACTIONS MUST BE TESTED BY MORAL RULES, AND RULES BY CONSEQUENCES J. J. C. Smart, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Adelaide, PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY, Volume 6, 1956, p. 344-5. A more modest form of utilitarianism has recently become fashionable. The doctrine is to be found in Toulmin's book THE PLACE OF REASON IN ETHICS, in Nowell-Smith's ETHICS (though I think Nowell-Smith has qualms), in John Austin's LECTURES ON JURISPRUDENCE, and even in J. S. Mill, if Urmson's interpretation of him is correct. Part of its charm is that it appears to resolve the dispute in moral philosophy between institutionalists and utilitarians in a way which is very neat. the above philosophers hold, or seem to hold, that moral rules are more than rules of thumb. In general the rightness of an action is not to be tested by evaluating its consequences but only by considering whether or not it falls under a certain rule. Whether the rule is to be considered an acceptable moral rule, is, however, to be decided by considering the consequences of adopting the rule. Broadly, then, actions are to be tested by rules and rules by consequences. The only cases in which we must test an individual action directly by its consequences are (a) when the action comes under two different rules, one of which enjoins it and one of which forbids it, and (b) when there is no rule whatsoever which governs the given case. I shall call this doctrine "restricted utilitarianism." 2. RULES ADVANCE THE COMMON GOOD Kurt Baier, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh, THE MORAL POINT OF VIEW: A RATIONAL BASIS OF ETHICS, 1958, p. 201. There is one obvious way in which a rule[s] may be for the good of everyone alike, namely, if it furthers the common good. When I am promoted and my salary is raised, this is to my advantage. It will also be to the advantage of my wife and my family and possibly of a few other people--it will not be to the advantage of my colleague who hoped for promotion but now is excluded. It may even be to his detriment if his reputation suffers as a result. If the coal miners obtain an increase in their wages, then this is to the advantage of the coal miners. It is for their common good. But it may not be to the advantage of everyone else. On the other hand, if production is raised and with it everyone's living standard, that is literally to everyone's advantage. The rule 'Work harder,' if it has these consequences, is literally for the common good of all. 3. IF RULES MEET THE COMMON GOOD CRITERION, EVERYONE SHOULD ABIDE BY THEM Kurt Baier, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh, THE MORAL POINT OF VIEW: A RATIONAL BASIS OF ETHICS, 1958, p. 201-2. Very few rules, if any, will be for the common good of everyone. But a rule may be in the interest of everyone alike, even though the results of the observation of the rule are not for the common good in the sense explained. Rules such as 'Thou shalt not kill,' 'Thou shalt not be cruel,' 'Thou shalt not lie,' are obviously, in some sense, for the good of everyone alike. What is this sense? It becomes clear if we look at these rules from the moral point of view, that is, an independent, impartial, objective, dispassionate, disinterested observer. Taking such a God's-eye point of view, we can see that it is in the interest of everyone alike that everyone should abide by the rule 'Thou shalt not kill.' From the moral point of view, it is clear that it is in the interest of everyone alike if everyone alike should be allowed to pursue his own interest provided this does not adversely affect someone else's interests. Killing someone in the pursuit of my interests would interfere with his.

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FAUX TEXT, FAUX COMMITMENT: ARGUING AGAINST THE SOCIAL CONTRACT INTRODUCTION Question: What do Newt Gingritch and Che Guevarra have in common? Answer: They both espouse a kind of social contract theory. Newt, of course, authored the infamous (and largely unfulfilled) “Contract with America,” capitalizing on the belief that an agreement between the government and the governed is binding and desirable. Che, in “Socialism and Man in Cuba,” explains that the people have been given a certain set of guarantees by the leaders; if the “masses” make their will known, the leaders must reflect that will, just as each citizen reflects the will by going to work every morning. Beyond that, little can be said of social contract theory that has not been said before. In this section we will concentrate more on how to answer it. TYPES OF CONTRACTS Depending on whether you are Locke, Hobbes, or Rousseau, the world that inspires your social contract might differ greatly: “The Hobbesian, the Lockean, and the Rousseauist concepts of political rule and of the law represent three main traditions in modem legal and political reasoning. The first such tradition, the law as a sovereign command, is closely associated with the asocial, self-preserving, strategic actors who fight amongst themselves for scarce resources and must be protected from each other by the authoritative will of the sovereign. In the second tradition, the law as a reasonable mediator between competing utility-maximizers, the law forms the noncompetitive basis for their competition. In other words, the law delineates the realm in which they must cooperate in order to be unburdened from the pressure to communicate and to cooperate in other-areas. Finally, the third tradition is the law as the expression of a collective identity from which the individuals derive their legal status in the political community, or, in other words, a concept of law where the formation of a political-legal community by lawmaking is the most distinguished realization of individual freedom” (Ulrich K. Preu, Professor, ZERP Universitatsallee, Bremen, Germany, Cardozo Law Review, March, 1996, p. 1179). HOBBES: LAW AS SOVEREIGN COMMAND Thomas Hobbes’ world, as everyone knows by now, is a frightening one, where humanity has been doomed to choose between the anarchistic brutality of the state of nature and the quite ordered brutality of an all-powerful government. In this world, the social contract is an absolute necessity, a prerequisite for any kind of civilization, period. To be sure, the “state of nature” is a bleak view of human and environmental nature in general. Where does Hobbes get the data to confirm that, left to our own devices, we will do whatever we have to do to advance our personal advantage? He sounds like Nietzsche. But Nietzsche didn’t have an answer either to the question: “Why are we like this? In what instances?” In fact, Hobbes was greatly displeased by the uprisings of his time. At its best, a Hobbesian philosophy can indeed justify authoritarianism, and dejustify any kind of civil disobedience. This is because Hobbes has two cards up his sleeve: Not only does he have the standard contractarian compulsion to follow the law because one had supposedly consented to it, but he also offers a scary alternative, a world with no laws at all, where humans are worse than coyotes.

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This ever-present threat not only made Hobbesian contractarianism emotively appealing, but also revealed individualist implications to answer the concerns of civil libertarians: “In Hobbes’s concept, political power consisted of a Sovereign’s capacity to keep peace, i.e., to maintain an order in which the individual’s right to self-preservation is safeguarded. Under such a system the law is the will and the command of the sovereign. This is the most radical notion of political power and of the law, since it derives all political and legal obligations from the individual’s right to self-preservation, i.e., from the individual’s radically subjective worldview.”(Preu, 1179). LOCKE: LAW AS REASONABLE MEDIATOR In contrast to Hobbes, Locke was the optimist of the group. John Locke is seen today as a founder of democratic, elitist, market-driven government. The light view of life which produces such ideologies has to do with a fundamental cornerstone of the “Liberal” imagination: That humans are fundamentally rational and that their decisions are sound, when subject to the rigors of criticism and tempered by the rule of law. This abandonment of ruthlessness, rationally chosen, is the essence of human reason and spirit: “To Locke, the law is an institutional device that connects the different perspectives of individuals by harmonizing the natural rights that they equally enjoy. The law is an embryonic form of a common understanding in that it effectuates a negative coordination among the individuals. To do that, it presupposes the idea that self-preservation and interest maximization can only be achieved if there is a sphere where individuals can trust each other, i.e., where they do not act sirategically, and where the concern for the natural rights of others constitutes a kind of new moral consociation” (Preu, 1179). Locke, then, saw the social contract as the result of free individuals seeing that their individual rights would be better protected through a tacit agreement that those rights ought to be protected against any excessive force, including the government. “But Locke’s individuals are able to engage in social relations, to trust each other, and to feel mutual sympathy. They are able to engage in social life even in the state of nature. As a consequence, Locke’s concepts of government and law reflect both the individualistic and the social dimensions of the individual’s state of nature. The competence and authority of the government are clearly reduced to the protection of the individual’s rights that precede any kind of political rule; consequently, the law can never touch upon this sphere of the individual’s natural rights. But, in contrast to Hobbes, the law is not reduced to the role of an institutional representation of every individuals quasi monadic right to self-preservation” (Preu, 1179-80). Locke was also unique in explicitly approving of revolution as a means of tearing down a comipted contract and constructing a new one. Though such an allowance would have frightened, say, Thomas Hobbes, Locke was probably unconcerned about revolutions because they would be made by the same rational people who constructed the original contract. ROUSSEAU: LAW AS COLLECTIVE IDENTITY Rousseau’s view of humanity, if not as violent as Hobbes, was much more depressing. According to JeanJacques Rousseau, at one time we were like the creatures of which John Locke speaks: rational, cooperative, innocent and trusting, creative and free. But then, someone discovered private property, and everything was ruined. With a motive (wealth, the collection of surplus property, money, resources) to behave like Hobbes’ ruthless people, most of us now do so. Enter the compensatory social contract. Rousseau allowed himself enough optimism to concede that, in a competitive world, we might somehow find consensus through a contract. “in a further twist, Rousseau developed the truly revolutionary idea that it is not the moral quality of natural rights that ultimately justifies and defines the limits of the government and the laws, but, conversely, that it is the 251

individual’s participation in the formation of the general will through which individuals impose on themselves the rules under which they are willing to live. This general will constitutes the moral quality of the individuals as members of a political community and, moreover, determines the character of their rights. In Rousseau’s Social Contract, the individuals do not exchange their natural freedom for the security of civil society; rather, they substitute civil freedom for natural freedom” (Preu, 1180). Thus, although natural freedom once existed, now that it no longer exists, civil freedom is all we have. What Rousseau sees as especially important is the general will, the result of a consensus which may be difficult to reach but is absolutely necessary to compensate for the injustices some social groups, classes, commit against others. The result is civil freedom: “Neither the sovereign power nor the law is understood as restraints or limits to the enjoyment of the natural rights of individuals; instead, they are understood as conditions that enable the individuals to acquire freedom in the first place.In other words, it is the engagement of the individuals in the formation of a common will and of a common world view that enables them to develop themselves into moral persons and to acquire true individual freedom” (Preu, 1180). ANSWERS TO THE SOCIAL CONTRACT Critical legal scholar Vine Deloria, Jr., Professor of Political Science at The University of Arizona, sees the original social contract as an ideology designed to make us believe that the things we want are ours to take. He explains, in a lengthy and well-crafted narrative, that the things we want differ greatly; that there are many possible social contracts besides the European ones we now deem essential: “Let us return to the aboriginal Garden of Eden, an ordinary meadow perhaps, and parade a number of persons through it, observing how they appropriate natureand what use they make of it. The first character is an Indian who sees the animals and plants exemplifying the cycle of life. He notes that the land is fruitful and can provide sustenance forever if it is not disturbed. So he makes his home there, careful not to disrupt nature’s balance. He has appropriated the meadow and made it his property. A farmer looks at the same meadow and sees dozens of little family farms, a church and small town with a square and stately courthouse. He marks off part of the land and begins building his farm, fencing in that portion of the meadow which he can best use and encouraging his fellows to do likewise. In no time there is a small, rural, Norman Rockwellian American village where once there was only a fruitful natural meadow. He has also created property. A land developer discovers the meadow. He sees a large city with tall buildings, good transportation facilities, and cultural and business centers with a plush financial district. When he begins to fulfill this vision, surveying blocks and encouraging large industries to settle there, he has made his appropriation. Caspar Weinberger and his Pentagon cronies drive by the meadow. They are impressed by its isolation. No one knows that the meadow exists, making it a perfect spot for an MX missile complex. They return to Congress, obtain funds to purchase the meadow, and build a massive intercontinental missile base. They have also, unfortunately, appropriated nature and created property. The meadow, or nature, cannot itself change. Each person sees the meadow in unique ways because they are different individuals with radically different views of the world. They consequently create different kinds of property which have value in different social contexts. But each value can be used as the basis of a social contract. All uses have value only within a particular social context. No particular use is better than any other because each use hasan essential relationship to a human society and is acceptable to that society. Locke, Montesquieu, Hobbes, and our constitutional fathers failed to credit human genius for the role it plays in the creation of property. The real property of the social contract is the genius of human personality, the creative realm of possibilities existing in the minds of individuals, not the product of their labors.” (GEORGIA LAW REVIEW, Summer, 1986, p. 951)

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The social contract is one of those “meat and potatoes” philosophies which seem to make perfect sense for the first five minutes you think about it. Most judges in debate rounds don’t want to think for more than five minutes, so the social contract offers a clear-cut, decent sounding way to amve at whatever value consensus the advocate wants. Hobbes is invoked when civil liberties need to be curtailed in response to terrorism. Rawis’ original position, a “personalized” social contract, simply allows the debater to ask the judge(s) to pick the kind of society they want to live in, and then proceed to make the advocate’s society sound better. At this point, those answering the social contract have a number of choices which may depend on the perceived predispositions of the critics. These approaches all answer the social contract effectively, and for divergent reasons: 1. The political approaches, or radical approaches, consist of those positions which question the attitudes and assumptions of the authors and advocates of the social contract: Feminists, for one, argue that the social contract can only govern public actions, which makes little difference for women who experience most of their oppression in the private realm. If, as one author has argued, we need a “sexual contract” (see bibliography), then this would refute the solvency of any public contract-oriented system. It also seems to defeat the underlying assumption that it is possible (even in a world of male domination) to arrive at freedom and liberty through consensus. Marxists, for another, argue that the social contract is a myth. Of course, contractarians would readily admit this, but the kind of myth Marxists have in mind is an ideological ploy to make capitalist property relations seem the result of evelyone’s consensus, a completely ridiculous notion. Anarchists give the most compelling case against the social contract: We never made it, we never came together. Those that did come together only brought their oppressive property relations together and messed up the world, a fact which Rousseau himself admits in his Second Discourse, and for which his social contract can be seen as a resigned solution to an already corrupted world. Anarchists might favor small-scale contracts for small communities, and would certainly want continuing participation in society. But, as many authors argue, America is no longer a nation of participation and consensus. These arguments are all great to advocate in front of college debaters and coaches, philosophy professors and armchair radicals, and the rare genuine activist showing up on a Saturday to make sixty bucks for the revolution. But many of us know that value debate critics are in many cases not radical at all. But what makes these arguments interesting is that they can be advocated without “sounding” radical at all; that is, their premises can serve as powerful analytical criticisms, which we shall now explore. 2. The analytical, decidedly non-political, “win the argument in front of any judge” approach consists of making the best possible observations about those things which the social contract cannot justify or solve, about certain incoherencies and leaps in reasoning made by contractarians. Of course, all arguments are in some way “political,” especially when debating about political philosophy, and it will be admitted that many of these arguments are, analytically speaking, individualisms; each takes particular care to note that, from the perspective of the single individual, some aspect of contract theory is uncompelling, fails to prove itself to its subjects. But this ideological taint is justified. After all, it is the social contract advocates themselves who want, from the subjects of a state, complete compliance with laws; not just compliance in action, but even compliance in spirit: We signed a contract. We must abide by it. THERE WAS NO CONSENT

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In fact, the very first “analytical” argument against social contract theory is that we didn’t sign a social contract. None of us did. It never happened. Again, this is admitted to by the contractarians, but they still reason from that myth to the assumption that by virtue of our membership, we abide by that invisible charter. Here a reductio ad absurdum is especially helpful in demonstrating the social contract’s incoherence. 1. Assume that consent is necessary for legitimate government (the basis of the social contract). 2. If this is true, then consent is always necessary for legitimate government. It makes no sense to say that consent is only important at the initial formation of the government; its continued existence requires at least periodic justification. 3. This means that we must vote on whether this form of government, along with all its laws and procedures, is legitimate. We probably ought to do this periodically, say, every four years. 4. Now assume that at some point a majority votes that they no longer wish to give their consent to this form of government and its vast expanse of law.

5. Therefore, the consent principle would allow us to decide not to consent, making probable the very state of nature the socinl contract was designed to answer. Since this consent can, so clearly, not be proven coherently, contractarians have other tricks. They might argue, for example, as did Socrates, that one’s residence within a community makes one subject to its laws. Or, they might point out that the benefits we willingly receive from the government are signs of our tacit acceptance. Both arguments are answered below. RESIDENCE DOES NOT IMPLY CONSENT If residence did imply consent, then Blacks would have consented to slavery, since they clearly resided in the communities in which they were slaves! Beyond that, the lack of a positive reason why residence implies consent seems to undermine the contractarian appeal to loyalty to one’s “homeland.” The controversy surrounding many Blacks’ refusal to serve in Vietnam is an excellent example of this objection. 1. Part of one’s consent to be governed includes the consent to be conscripted to military service, in order to defend the society that is the basis of the contract. 2. However, American Blacks called to serve in Vietnam would not, even in the schema of the social contract, have had a say in the development of a system which brought their ancestors here to serve against their will. 3. Thus, that part of the social contract cannot be universal. Although some kind of exemption clause might take care of such a problem, Vine Deloria’s argument, detailed below, on the impossibility of minority rights under a social contract, suggests that the exemptions might weigh the contract down considerably. REAPING BENEFITS DOES NOT IMPLY CONSENT This is more a logical than an ethical argument. It simply says that voluntarily reaping benefits does not, by itself, imply that one has agreed to adhere to a society’s rules. Society might provide a great deal of benefits to people, and those motives may range from purely charitable to politically expedient or even cynical, but none of this by itself justifies consent to law. For such consent to occur, it would be necessaiy for each benefit to be conditional upon such consent. In a way, this happens today. Students in college swear they won’t use drugs while receiving financial aid. Welfare recipients 254

might lose their aid if they are found guilty of a felony offense. But in each of these cases, it seems that something besides the reaping of the benefits determines the need to obey the law. The social contract might be a vague, added moral compulsion for such submission, but it cannot be the primary reason for it. THE SOCIAL CONTRACT AND THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF MINORITY RIGHTS “Whenever American racial minorities have raised a voice of protest against the conditions under which they have been forced to live, they have been admonished to work within the system rather than seek its abolition. Purveyors of this good counsel point to the many institutional checks and balances that have been devised to protect the rights of the minority: the division of sovereignty between the national government and the states, the tripartite anangement of the federal government itself which inhibits any one of the three branches from dominating the affairs of government, and the provisions for frequent popular elections and limited terms of office; all of which are further modified by our American propensity to seek a social consensus by offering disputing parties a reasonable compromise on any major issue. These provisions, minorities have been told, are sufficient to prevent the miscarriage of justice in almost every instance. These institutional and procedural devices, however, are designed as much to protect a lethargic majority against zealous minorities as they are to afford minorities a shield against the oppressions of the majority. Moreover, the minority that is protected is a political minority a fictional entity consisting of people who temporarily share a political opinion on a specific issue. No individual is a permanent member of a political minority except by his own choosing; and even this minority is not always protected in instances of national hysteria. We should not confuse a political minority with other non-political minorities in our society. Non-political minorities are permanent minorities which have always been outside the social contract and the protection of the Constitution: the racial and ethnic groups, the isolated cultural enclaves that diverge radically from the majority culture, small religious communities, and the largest group of all, women.” (Vine Deloria, Jr., GEORGIA LAW REVIEW, Summer, 1986, p. 917). --

To put the matter logically: 1. A “binding” social contract assumes that a consensus exists between individuals as to the legitimacy of the social order. 2. There exists no concrete consensus among various groups within society about the legitimacy of the present social order. 3. Therefore, the social contract is not binding. This is especially true in the cases of certain minorities who have been thoroughly and violently assimilated into society. The idea that Black Americans have shaped the ideals and laws of American society from the very beginning of their participation is patently absurd, and even now it is impossible to say what that particular group may have done differently in the original inception of social order. The idea that Native Americans are even part of white society is violent by its very nature. Politics aside, Deloria points out that minorities don’t even have a say in their own political status, which would surely suggest that they had not and could not consent: Individuals have no choice concerning membership us racial, ethnic and gender groups; their physical characteristics alone permanently classify them as part of the group. Individuals in religious and cultural groups, on the other hand, derive most of their values and certainly their personal identities from distinctive beliefs and practices. Surrendering this unique understanding of life is akin to spiritual and psychological obliteration because no power on earth, particularly a secular government, is considered equal in importance to the central core of beliefs that distinguishes these people from the rest of society. Non-political minorities have no significant constitutional protection, nor have they ever. Insofar as they enjoy constitutional rights and protections, their status is the result of an intense and continuing struggle for equal treatment in the courts and legislatures of the land. Their task has been to force open the definitions that describe the American social contract and extend its applicability beyond the narrow scope originally envisioned by the constitutional fathers. Thus Chief Justice Roger Taney might well have been describing 255

all of the non-political minorities when, in discussing the status of Blacks in Dred Scott v. Sandford, he noted: ‘[Tihey are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word “citizens” in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States. On the contrary, they were at that time considered as a subordinate and inferior class of beings, who had been subjugated by the dominant race, and, whether emancipated or not, yet remained subject to their authority, and had no rights or privileges but such as those who held the power and the Government might choose to grant them”’ (Deloria, 917). The problem is that any society which purports to be formed through consensus is in fact composed of what Rawls refers to in Political Liberalism as “overlapping consensus,” the perspectives of many different and, in some cases, unique and oppressed, groups. Unless the social contract can account for how there appears to be a consensus which doesn’t reflect minority opinion, it seems doomed in today’s nationalistic age. Groups which have been marginalized from public discussion and value discourse have little interest in a theory which says a group of people got together long ago and agreed that this would be best. Ultimately, the tension between identity as minority and identity as citizen is irreconcilable from a contractanan persective: “When the cases dealing with non-political minorities are compared, a common theme emerges. A minority may find its progress blocked because it is compared with another minority not recognized as having civil rights or legal status. The fact that women could be citizens without political rights, for example, made it easy for the Supreme Court to deny Dred Scott his freedom by observing that American society already had citizens with no legal standing who could exercise no rights. The exclusion of Blacks from schools becomes an excuse to prohibit other races from enjoying a public education. Try as they might, minorities cannot get a clear definition of “person’ or citizen’ from the courts. The result is that two different definitions of person emerge” (Deloria, 940). CONCLUSION Good idea, impossible to execute. This phrase has been thrown at many “utopian” philosophies. It may also apply to the social contract. In fact, the social contract may itself be infinitely more utopian than, say, Marxism. At least Marxism attempts to explain the economy, to justify why one set of laws is bad and the other desirable. Social contractarians invent the ultimate lie, admit that it’s a lie, and spend most of their time trying to show why it’s a good lie nonetheless.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Barker, Ernest. SOCIAL CONTRACT: ESSAYS BY LOCKE, HUME AND ROUSSEAU (New York: Oxford University Press, 1962). Lessnoff, Michael H. SOCIAL CONTRACT (Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan, 1986). SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORY (New York: New York University Press, 1990). THE SOCIAL CONTRACT FROM HOBBES TO RAWLS (London; New York: Routledge, 1994). Skyrms, Brian. EVOLUTION OF THE SOCIAL CONTRACT (Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996). Hampton, Jean. HOBBES AND THE SOCIAL CONTRACT TRADITION (New York : Cambridge University Press, 1986). Solomon, Robert C. A PASSION FOR JUSTICE: EMOTIONS AND THE ORIGINS OF THE SOCIAL CONTRACT(Reading, Mass. : Addison-Wesley, 1990). Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. DISCOURSE ON POLITICAL ECONOMY AND THE SOCIAL CONTRACT/translated with introduction and notes by Christopher Betts (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 1994). ________________

POLITICAL WRiTINGS (New York, Wiley, 1962).

Buchanan, James M. THE ECONOMICS AND THE ETHICS OF CONSTITUTIONAL ORDER (Ann Arbor University of Michigan Press, 1991). Pinkard, Teny P. DEMOCRATIC LIBERALISM AND SOCIAL UNION (Philadelphia : Temple University Press, 1987). Loewy, Erich H. FREEDOM AND COMMUNITY: THE ETHICS OF INTERDEPENDENCE (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993). Binmore, K. G. GAME THEORY AND THE SOCIAL CONTRACT (Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, 1994). Dodge, Guy Howard. JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU: AUTHORITARIAN LIBERTARIAN? (Lexington, Mass.: Heath, 1971). Kraus, Jody S. THE LIMITS OF HOBBESIAN CONTRACTARIANISM (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993). Davey, Joseph Dillon. THE NEW SOCIAL CONTRACT: AMERICA’S JOURNEY FROM WELFARE STATE TO POLICE STATE (Westport, Conn. : Praeger, 1995). Brennan, H. Geoffrey. THE REASON OF RULES: CONSITUTIONAL POLITICAL ECONOMY (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985).

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SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORY IS GENERALLY FLAWED 1. THE SOCIAL CONTRACT IS LOGICALLY CIRCULAR Edward A. Harris, Legal Scholar, COLUMBIA LAW REVIEW, April, 1992, P. 657. This requirement, that the individual understand the moral implications of his acts of voluntary consent, even while he is in the state of nature, has led to the stock objection that the social contract is ultimately circular in nature: If agreements cannot be made in the “natural” state of man before society has been organized by a social contract, it is impossible for a social contract to be made; if the idea of moral obligation depends on the conventions of law, men in the “natural” state will have no conception of obliging themselves by a contract. 2. IF ThE SOCIAL CONTRACT WERE TRUE, IT WOULD NOT BE MORAL Edward A. Harris, Legal Scholar, COLUMBIA LAW REVIEW, April, 1992, p. 670. Even if there were an original social contract, whereby individuals gave express consent to the creation of sovereign authority, such express consent would have no bearing on the contemporary issues of the legitimacy of political authority and the existence of political obligations of persons who were not parties to the original compact. But those cases of express consent that do occur today, for example in the naturalization process and taking an oath of office, are so limited that an express social contract between the general citizenry and the state appears to be a practical impossibility. 3. THE SOCIAL CONTRACT CANNOT SOLVE CONFLICTING INTERESTS Michel Rosenfeld, Professor of Law, Cardozo School of Law, CARDOZO LAW REVIEW, March, 1996 p. 801. Absent atomistic market competition, and upon rejection of the Smithian conception of the relationship between the pursuit of private self-interest and promotion of the public interest, contract alone cannot serve to bridge the gap between private and public interest. Accordingly, contract loses its ability to produce pure procedural (distributive) justice.

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SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORY HURTS MINORITY RIGHTS 1. ALL SOCIAL CONTRACTS ARE CULTURALLY BIASED IN SOME WAY Michel Rosenfeld, Professor of Law, Cardozo School of Law, CARDOZO LAW REVIEW, March, 1996 p. 791-2. Justice beyond law cannot achieve complete impartiality toward all strangers in the relevant class of legal subjects. Therefore, it must, at least in part, rely on a vision of the good that has intracommunal roots, thereby favoring members of the relevant intracommunal group over the remaining legal subjects. Thus, even the most basic and fundamental human rights embodied in numerous international covenants have been criticized as being somewhat parochial or culturally biased. 2. SOCIAL CONTRACTS ARE AN EXCUSE TO BLOCK MINORITY PROGRESS Vine Deloria, Jr., Professor of Political Science, The University of Arizona, GEORGIA LAW REVIEW, Summer, 1986, p. 942. Minorities that have been unable to secure amendments to clarify their rights have remained on the periphery of the social contract both in their persons and in their property, achieving a measure of status only when the public perspective has unintentionally included them. It is important to note, however, that women and Blacks were the only groups regarded as property originally, so the amendments that assist them are basically expanding the narrow view of the world held by our constitutional fathers. But the logic of social contract still does not allow a natural progression outward to embrace excluded groups. Women are now seeking another constitutional amendment to protect and stabilize the progress they have made in the past century. Again they are being told that existing constitutional law is sufficiently broad to take care of all foreseeable circumstances. 3. THE SOCIAL CONTRACT WAS DESIGNED TO BE EXCLUSIVE Vine Deloria, Jr., Professor of Political Science, The University of Arizona, GEORGIA LAW REVIEW, Summer, 1986, p. 919. I suggest that a hidden conceptual barrier exists that inhibits not only the permanent minorities but members of the majority as well. That barrier is the inadequate development of the philosophical framework that provided the foundation for our American social contract. In the form in which the men who framed the Constitution received it, the philosophy of social contract was oriented wholly toward a certain restricted class of individuals and could neither include any divergent groups nor provide any significant guidance or protection for the mass of people. Its primary virtue was to encourage a clever, established elite to benefit at the expense of others and perpetuate itself.

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SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORY FAILS WOMEN 1. SOCIAL CONTRACTS FAIL TO ADEQUATELY DEFEND WOMEN~S RIGHTS Linda R. Hirshman, Director, Women’s Legal Studies Institute, Chicago-Kent College of Law, COLUMBIA LAW REVIEW, October 1994, p. 1875. Feminism is not satisfied with that answer. The short version of the exercise of rethinking the social-contract scenario from the distaff side reveals that the view from the bottom of the original position is quite different. It reveals not the happy Lockean picture of the state of nature that Rawis embraces but the darker, Hobbesian place where, as an even earlier writer than Hobbes or Rawis expressed it, “The strong do what they have the power to do and the weak accept what they have to accept.” In that world, a place of fear, not of rights, it is not the state alone that is to be feared it is private oppression. And it is not the separation of the players into their individual selves that the weak need it is an opportunity for stable collective action against singularly stronger players. -

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2. CONTRACTS DO NOT ADDRESS THE PRIVATE OPPRESSION OF WOMEN Linda R. Hirshman, Director, Women’s Legal Studies Institute, Chicago-Kent College of Law, COLUMBIA LAW REVIEW, October 1994, p. 1875. In a world of public justice and private anarchy, women fear child sexual abuse, rape, and mugging far more than false convictions by the state of child sexual abuse, rape, and muggings. Women fear the liberty of abortion clinic mobs more than the collective action of regulating health care; they fear private sex discrimination from their bosses more than market failures caused by the enactment of the Civil Rights Act. Women seeking fair equality of opportunity fear the glass ceiling more than they fear the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission, and the tiny number of women academics in the Ivy League, most of whom are untenured, fear their male colleagues’ collective tenure votes more than they value their freedom from false charges of violating the sexual harassment laws. 3. THE SOCIAL CONTRACT CROWDS OUT ALTERNATE NOTIONS OF THE GOOD Michel Rosenfeld, Professor of Law, Cardozo School of Law, CARDOZO LAW REVIEW, March, 1996 p. 801. Upon r0flection, however, the analogy seems to hold to the extent that once the “invisible hand” premise is dropped, all the different conceptions of the good are not likely to fare equally well when subjected to the social contract device. Thus, for instance, communitarian and feminist conceptions of the good are much less compatible with the ideology of contract than are individualistic and atomistic conceptions.

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SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORY RESULTS IN INEQUALITY 1. SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORY MAKES DISSENT IMPOSSIBLE Edward A. Han-is, Legal Scholar, COLUMBIA LAW REVIEW, April, 1992, p. 678. Unable to deal with the autonomous individual who knowingly and voluntarily acts in any other way than to consent to the authority of the state, social contract theoiy redefines the terms of the principle of consent and the paradigm of contract in such a way that the very possibility for actual dissent is denied. In this way, the dilemma of choosing between individual autonomy and civil authority is resolved, but it is resolved at a cost that renders the entire project untenable. 2. SOCIAL CONTRACTS FAVOR THE PRIVILEGED PROPERTY OWNERS Vine Deloria, Jr., Professor of Political Science, The University of Arizona, GEORGIA LAW REVIEW, Summer, 1986, p. 930. The property that people have in themselves can only operate responsibly within the social contract if property and person are understood simply as the two essential perspectives of the primordial political/social world which bear the same intrinsic relationship to each other as do matter and energy in modem physical science. Without property, a person has no standing; without a person, property has no meaning. If property and person are understood as inseparable functions of each other, when one appears the other must also be present to close the logical universe in which the two ideas make sense. Social contract theory therefore does not depend upon a single definitive concept that has principles of action that illuminate and inform people of the purpose and functions of their political institutions. It never decides whether person or property is the dominant consideration for any human social organization. American constitutional law reflects this confusion and, since we obviously enjoy immense material blessings, we assume that our social contract has the proper philosophical configurations, and few people probe further into the underlying philosophical thicket. 3. SOCIAL CONTRACTS CANNOT SOLVE OPPRESSION Vine Deloria, Jr., Professor of Political Science, The University of Arizona, GEORGIA LAW REVIEW, Summer, 1986, p. 931. The problems of non-political minorities take on added significance when theyare placed within the philosophical framework of the social contract. Although racism, sexism, and ethnocentricity are dominant attitudes which seek to oppress and exclude minorities, they cannot be manifested directly in law and are not nearly as inclusive and effective as is the lack of property which makes the individual person completely defenseless and vulnerable. Indeed, the original American situation is considerably more serious. At the time of the adoption of the Constitution minorities, women and Blacks, were regarded as someone elses property. Women and Blacks had to overcome this idea before they could begin to speak of rights of equality of treatment. In the subsequent course of American history, one minority was stripped of its property and the other minorities who attempted to gain standing within the social contract were prohibited from acquiring property or deprived of their claim to property by federal and state action. 4. SOCIAL CONTRACTS CANNOT RESOLVE RACIAL AND GENDER IMBALANCES Vine Debra, Jr., Professor of Political Science, The University of Arizona, Georgia Law Review, Summer, 1986, p. 922. Self-evident truths are generally limited to the era in history in which they are accepted with minimal critical examination. So the fact that non-political minorities are not included in the concept of “man’ as defined by our organic state documents is not really debatable. But we are not concerned with the changing opinions of the social/political world as any of our generations may experience it, rather with the internal logical consistency of the philosophical system that is thought to justify the social contract form of government, the manner in which the words relate to each other.

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CONSENT PRINCIPLE OF THE SOCIAL CONTRACT IS FLAWED 1. THE SOCIAL CONTRACr VIOLATES INDIVIDUAL CONSENT Edward A. Harris, Legal Scholar, COLUMBIA LAW REVIEW, April, 1992, p. 658. The principle of consent requires that an individual make an active sign to indicate that she agrees to give up her natural right and liberty, and agrees to be subject to the authority of the state. A sufficient sign of consent must satisfy a variety of volitional, cognitive, and formal criteria. The sign must be freely and willfully made by a rational and informed individual who intends to consent; it must be of the appropriate form to be explicitly recognized as a sign of consent or from which consent may be inferred; and it must be made under appropriately public circumstances and at an appropriate nine. 2. THE SOCIAL CONTRACT CANNOT ACHIEVE EXPRESS CONSENT Edward A. Harris, Legal Scholar, COLUMBIA LAW REVIEW, April, 1992, p. 657. The sign of consent that is identified as being necessary and sufficient to enter into a contractual agreement with the state directly determines the scope of the account of political obligation that social contract theory provides. The problem posed by express consent is that the account of political obligation is severely limited to include only those few persons who actually perform such signs of consent; for example, those who take an oath of citizenship or an oath of office. As a general account of de jure authority and political obligation, the notion of express consent is entirely inadequate. 3. THE SOCIAL CONTRACT IS EITHER ELITIST OR FAILS TO PROVE CONSENT Edward A. Harris, Legal Scholar, COLUMBIA LAW REVIEW, April, 1992, p.659 The social contract theorist, then, is faced with two alternatives: Either she accepts the conclusion that political obligation is limited to those few persons performing acts of express consent, and she is forced to conclude that the power exercised by the state is primarily de facto, or she attempts to identify an act of consent that the vast majority, if not all, of the citizens of the state performs that accounts for the de jure authority of that state and the general political obligation its citizens have to obey that authority. CITIZENSHIP CANNOT BE THE BASIS OF OBEDIENCE TO THE STATE 1. SOCIAL CONTRACT OPPRESSES THOSE WHO CAN’T LEAVE Edward A. Hams, Legal Scholar, COLUMBIA LAW REVIEW, April, 1992, p.661. We may as well assert, that a man, by remainng in a vessel, freely consents to the dominion of the master; though he was carried on board while asleep, and must leap into the occean, and perish, the moment he leaves her.” Hume’s objection points to the fundaniental fallacy of holding that continued residence entails a voluntary choice to remain in that stare. Hume’s analysis is particularly compelling in the case of African-Americans residing in the Southern states during the 1940s and 1950s. The argument of tacit consent from residence would assert that, by their act of continued residence in the South, those African-Americans tacitly consented to the political authority of their states and thereby incurred political obligations to obey the Jim Crow laws their states had enacted. 2. TACIT CONSENT IS A MYTH Edward A. Harris, Legal Scholar, COLUMBIA LAW REVIEW, April, 1992, p. 662. The justifiability of continued residence as a form of tacit consent is seriously undermined by considerations of its alternatives and the criteria of consent. If the alternatives to residing in even a democratic state, which the individual can freely leave, are extremely limited, or impose unreasonable sacrifices upon that individual, then it cannot be said that her continued residence is either voluntary, or a tacit expression of her consent to the authority exercised over her.

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RECEIPT OF BENEFITS IS NOT AN ADEQUATE BASIS FOR OBEDIENCE 1. RECEIPT OF BENEFITS DOES NOT JUSTIFY THE SOCIAL CONTRACT Edward A. Harris, Legal Scholar, COLUMBIA LAW REVIEW, April, 1992, P. 665. As is the case with residence, to the extent that the benefits a person receives are unwanted or involuntarily imposed upon her, the mere receipt of benefits does not constitute a genuine form of consent and is not sufficient to give rise to either the de jure authority of the state or political obligation. 2. ACCEPTING STATE BENEFITS IS NOT CONSENT Edward A. Harris, Legal Scholar, COLUMBIA LAW REVIEW, April, 1992, p. 657. This difficulty can also be stated in terms of authority: the individual recognizes and accepts the de jure authority of the state to create and enforce laws governing the interstate highway system, while considering the remaining power of the state to be purely de facto, and even illegitimate, in nature. The crucial argument that the social contract theorist must provide here is one establishing the link between voluntarily accepting specific benefits, and thereby creating de jure authority, and the political obligation to obey all laws. 3. ACCEPTANCE OF BENEFITS FAILS THE CONSENT TEST Edward A. Harris, Legal Scholar, COLUMBIA LAW REVIEW, April, 1992, p. 669. That is, the cognitive and volitional criteria of consent must be satisfied by the individual whose tacit consent is being inferred from her acts. The individual must understand the principle of consent and voluntarily perform actions from which one can infer that she tacitly consents to an agreement to which she is a party. The notion of a “general context of consent” is intended to capture this latter idea that not only the individual but also the external observer can evaluate and assess the individual’s public acts and draw inferences from them regarding the nature and scope of her consent. Pace Hobbes, it is not the case that such a context of consent exists in the public sphere to the extent that it gives rise to a tacit social contract.

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SPECIFIC ANSWERS TO HOBBES 1. HOBBESIAN CONTRACTS ARE ARBITRARY AND FAIL TO RESOLVE CONFLICTS Michel Rosenfeld, Professor of Law, Cardozo School of Law, CARDOZO LAW REVIEW, March, 1996 p. 800. Hobbesian contractarianism satisfies the requirements of primary proceduralism yet remains morally arbitrary; Rawisian contractarianism incorporates the standpoint of Kantian morality, but proves ultimately to belong to the realm of derivative proceduralism. In Hobbesian coniractarianism, the contractual device both shapes and legitimates the contract of association, which marks the passage from the state of nature to civil society. The contractual device, moreover, performs a critical intersubjective task both by mediating between the conflicting wills of individual contractors and yielding a common will, which differs from every individual will involved, yet is nothing but the product of a voluntary compromise among all the contractors. 2. HOBBESIAN CONTRACT DOES NOT CONSIDER THE RIGHTS OF EVERY INDIVIDUAL Michel Rosenfeld, Professor of Law, Cardozo School of Law, CARDOZO LAW REVIEW, March, 1996 p. 801. Finally, in the context of atomistic competition, each contractor presumably has an equal opportunity to influence the shaping of the common will through joint and mutual contract, whereas in the absence of rough material equality among contractors, the superior bargaining power of some contractors allows them to have significantly greater influence than others on the configuration of the intersubjective will produced through contract In short, cut loose from its Smithian moorings, Hobbesian contract~rianism in the end is both morally arbitrary as well as partial toward some of the contractors. SPECIFIC ANSWERS TO RAWLS 1. RAWLSIAN CONTRACTISM IS AN ABSTRACTION OF REAL DECISIONMAKING Michel Rosenfeld, Professor of Law, Cardozo School of Law, CARDOZO LAW REVIEW, March, 1996 p. 802-3. Rawls’s abstract equality behind the veil of ignorance is objectionable to the extent that it drastically downplays difference in its search for a solid common core of identity. Genuine equality requires taking into account relevant differences as well as relevant similarities. Rawlss contractors have been deprived of the means to perceive diversity, and are thus unable to factor relevant differences into their elaboration of fair principles of justice. Differences are also essential to the proper functioning of the institution of contract, as only contractors with different needs, desires, motivations, and resources are likely to seek out one another to negotiate a contractual exchange. Ultimately, Rawls’s contractors behind the veil of ignorance are reduced. to the position of mere abstract egos. 2. RAWLSIAN CONTRACTISM ALLOWS UNFAIR FAVORITISM Michel Rosenfeld, Professor of Law, Cardozo School of Law, CARDOZO LAW REVIEW, March, 1996 p. 803. The most serious defect of the Rawlsian process of abstraction is that it ultimately makes it possible, under the guise of remaining neutral among different perspectives, for some perspectives to gain the upper hand over others. This results from the very means of abstraction that Rawls sets into motion in order to transform the totality of everyday individuals embedded in their particular sociopolitical norms, institutions, customs, and practices into a collection of pure abstract egos acting as social contractors behind a veil of ignorance.

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Federalism Good FEDERAL INTRUSION HURTS FEDERALISM 1. TOO MUCH RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE FEDS LEADS TO DEATH OF FEDERALISMStanley M. Grossman, Senior Partner at the New York Law Firm of Pomerantz Haudek Block Grossman & Gross, TESTIMONY BEFORE THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON COURTS AND INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY, COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY, June 18, 1998. Perhaps most important, the potential impact of the proposed "minimal diversity" standard on the workload of the federal judiciary is worthy of serious consideration. On May 11, 1998, Chief Justice William Rehnquist delivered a speech to the American Law Institute in which he stressed his concern regarding the potential "death" of federalism and the adverse impact on the quality of the federal courts' work based on the rising number of laws that channel cases into the federal courts: "In my annual report for last year, I criticized the Senate for moving too slowly in the filling of vacancies on the federal bench. This criticism received considerable public attention. I also criticized Congress and the president for their propensity to enact more and more legislation which brings more and more cases into the federal court system." 2. MUST RESIST CREEPING CENTRALISM Honorable Dean Brown, MLA, CHALLENGES, CHANCES AND CHOICES: THE FUTURE OF THE FEDERATION, a speech to the Samuel Griffith Society, 1996, http://www.exhibit.com.au/~griffith/sgv7dinn.htm, accessed May 24, 1999. The impact on Australia as a nation creates quite natural tensions between us in identifying ourselves within a national boundary -- and as a nation operating in competition with other regions -- and in the global marketplace. So it becomes more critical that we define now how we want to progress our institutional arrangements -- the choice between accepting regional diversity, freedom and difference in the way government is run -- as opposed to centralism. In other words -- diversity versus uniformity. This means resisting the creeping centralism of power in Canberra. 3. MUST STOP THE DECLINE OF STATE POWER Honorable Dean Brown, MLA, CHALLENGES, CHANCES AND CHOICES: THE FUTURE OF THE FEDERATION, a speech to the Samuel Griffith Society, 1996, http://www.exhibit.com.au/~griffith/sgv7dinn.htm, accessed May 24, 1999. Modern media and community expectations will require government as close as possible to the people it represents. It will require also government which is specific in its promises and outcomes. That, I believe, remains the strongest argument for States to hold their own reins - with national uniformity where appropriate. That means guarding against further erosion of the States' control over their own destinies -- and arresting some of the decline in the power of the States. 4. STATES ARE THREATENED WHEN COERCED BY THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT Honorable Dean Brown, MLA, CHALLENGES, CHANCES AND CHOICES: THE FUTURE OF THE FEDERATION, a speech to the Samuel Griffith Society, 1996, http://www.exhibit.com.au/~griffith/sgv7dinn.htm, accessed May 24, 1999. There are a number of constitutional outcomes that can be identified. First, those that restrict the broad policymaking role of the State and so affect its room to manoeuvre in areas traditionally within the State's competence, such as economic development incentives. Secondly, those that affect the State's parliamentary sovereignty. And thirdly, those that interfere in a detailed way in an area traditionally regulated and controlled by the States, such as petroleum exploration and production licensing, exploration acreage decisions and so on. State sovereignty and parliamentary sovereignty are in jeopardy when we are required, upon threat of financial penalty, to adopt a particular form of legislation by the Commonwealth. This has occurred with competition policy.

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STATES SHOULD HAVE MOST RESPONSIBILITY 1. STATES SHOULD HAVE RESPONSIBILITY FOR MOST MATTERSStanley M. Grossman, Senior Partner at the New York Law Firm of Pomerantz Haudek Block Grossman & Gross, TESTIMONY BEFORE THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON COURTS AND INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY, COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY, June 18, 1998. Matters that can be adequately handled by states should be left to them, matters that cannot be so handled should be undertaken by the federal government. But there is a much broader question involved: How much of the complex system of legal relationships in this country should be decided in Washington, and how much by state and local governments. In 1995, the Judicial Conference of the United States adopted the "Long Range Plan for the Federal Courts" in which the Conference made a strong case for limiting the scope of federal jurisdiction: "Congress should commit itself to conserving the federal courts as a distinctive forum of limited jurisdiction in our system of federalism. Civil and criminal jurisdiction should be assigned to the federal courts only to further clearly defined and justified national interests, leaving to the state courts the responsibility for adjudicating all other matters." 2. STATEHOOD IS PERFECT FOR FEDERALISM Robert J. Lagomarsino, Representative from Puerto Rico, TESTIMONY BEFORE THE COMMITTEE ON RESOURCES, U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, March 19, 1997. In the U.S. system of constitutional federalism, statehood is the most perfect form of political union. For any territory within the sovereignty of the U.S. and having a U.S. citizen population, only statehood constitutes full selfgovernment based on the principle of equality with all other citizens. Short of statehood, the less perfected but next most complete condition of political union is that of an incorporated territory to which the U.S. Constitution and political rights have been extended to the fullest degree possible for a non-state area within U.S. sovereignty. 3. FEDERAL CONSTITUTION DESIGNED TO PROHIBIT DECREASED STATE POWER Honorable Dean Brown, MLA, CHALLENGES, CHANCES AND CHOICES: THE FUTURE OF THE FEDERATION, a speech to the Samuel Griffith Society, 1996, http://www.exhibit.com.au/~griffith/sgv7dinn.htm, accessed May 24, 1999. Papers published by The Samuel Griffith Society have, over the years, highlighted the seemingly inexorable expansion of federal power over aspects of Australian life. The drafters of the Constitution - and perhaps more important, the people who adopted it - could never have envisioned this expansion. The steady erosion of responsibilities of the States has resulted from a number of factors, not the least of which has been the role of the High Court and the use - or, I should say, misuse - of the foreign affairs power. 4. STATES ARE BEST FOR COMPETITION Honorable Dean Brown, MLA, CHALLENGES, CHANCES AND CHOICES: THE FUTURE OF THE FEDERATION, a speech to the Samuel Griffith Society, 1996, http://www.exhibit.com.au/~griffith/sgv7dinn.htm, accessed May 24, 1999. The best picture I could paint of a flourishing Australia as a federation in a global marketplace, would be dominated by the States thriving as competing regions, sparring with one another, constantly pushing one another to achieve better performances - in much the same way as our sportsmen and women do. In fact, you can use the sports analogy : the strongest team is the one with the biggest number of high performers striving for "personal best" performances - but doing it for the ultimate good of the team, which is all the stronger for the internal competition.

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Federalism Bad STATES ARE THE WORST SOLUTION 1. GOOD REASONS TO BE SKEPTICAL OF STATESMichael Kinsley, Syndicated Columnist, TIME, January 16, 1995, p. 75.The fancy word is "subsidiarity." it's the principle that public functions should be performed at the lowest possible level of government -- the one closest to the citizens. The world is in a frenzy of subsidiarity at the moment. The former Soviet empire divides and subdivides into ever smaller sovereign units. In Western Europe, there is a rebellion against the "bureaucrats of Brussels," headquarters of the European Union. And here in the United States, a recurring theme of the Gingrich Ascendancy is that this or that Federal Government program should be turned over to the states. State governments, it is argued, are more efficient and better attuned to the wishes of the people. Subsidiarity is a good principle, in the abstract. What's more, in the United States it has the imprimatur of the Constitution. In our system, basic sovereignty is supposed to reside in the separate states. The Federal Government has only specifically delegated powers. Louis Brandeis famously described a state as a "laboratory ... of social and economic experiments," able to try out public policy in a way the lumbering national government cannot. But subsidiarity is not the only principle of good government, and there are good reasons for skepticism about the current fad for solving every problem of the nation (welfare, health care, environmental regulation, etc.) by dumping it on the separate states. 2. SAYING "STATES SHOULD DO IT" EVADES THE ISSUE Michael Kinsley, Syndicated Columnist, TIME, January 16, 1995, p. 75. Above all, this is an evasion. We are all citizens of the states, as well as the nation, and to say that some problem should be "handled by the states" does not make it go away. The great questions of government are what functions it should perform and how it should perform them. Should we or should we not supply health insurance to those who can't afford it? Should we or should we not require welfare mothers to work? What level of government should perform these functions is an inherently less interesting, and important, question. 3. IDEALIZING STATES IS A CHILDISH FANTASY Michael Kinsley, Syndicated Columnist, TIME, January 16, 1995, p. 75. Brandeis may have been correct that the states are better able to experiment in search of novel public-policy solutions. But most public-policy dilemmas of today do not await novel solutions. They await the simple will to make unpleasant tradeoffs between our desire for government services and our desire not to pay for them. The notion that there is some novel solution out there waiting to be discovered -- one that avoids the need for such trade-offs -is a childish fantasy. 4. STATES EVADE DEMOCRATIC DECISION MAKING Michael Kinsley, Syndicated Columnist, TIME, January 16, 1995, p. 75. Subsidiarity, then, is often just an intellectual and financial free lunch. And there are other problems as well. To function properly, government must be a monopoly. We can argue, as we do, about what taxes and regulations ought to be imposed on individual citizens, and what benefits ought to be made available. Even after that argument is settled democratically, though, subsidiarity can make the settlement hard to enforce. The citizens of every state in the union, for example, could decide to have a certain air-pollution standard for factories. But without a national standard, companies will inevitably play one state against the other, and every state will end up with a lower standard than all of them would prefer. Similarly, the individual states might all wish to guarantee universal health care for their citizens. But none could afford to be flooded with uninsured sick people from its neighboring states. If health-care reform is left to the states, all of us might end up forgoing a social benefit that most of us would choose to enjoy.

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Federalism Is A Bad Value 1. FEDERAL-STATE CONFLICT IS INHERENT IN THE SYSTEMHerman Schwartz, Staff Writer, THE NATION, October 14, 1996, p. 14.Federal-state conflict is nothing new; it was built into the Constitution. It is essentially a fight over power and money, and the allegiance of states' rights advocates shifts accordingly. For example, antebellum Southerners who protested federal interference with slavery on states, rights grounds did not hesitate to insist on vigorous federal enforcement of the fugitive slave laws. 2. FEDERALISM ADVOCATES ARE HYPOCRITES Herman Schwartz, Staff Writer, THE NATION, October 14, 1996, p. 14. Right-wing Republicans recently forgot their passion for states, rights in passing a business-supported federal law limiting product liability suits, a state law matter. Democrats have been no more faithful. As Victor Navaskys Kennedy Justice shows, the Kennedy Administration professed great concern for states, rights to justify its early hesitations about promoting civil rights. But when it came to getting Teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa, it brushed aside local authorities and went after him. 3. BARRIERS TO FEDERALISM ARE INSURMOUNTABLE John McGinnis, Staff Writer, NATIONAL REVIEW, September 1, 1998, p. 30. The principal task for Republicans today is to dissolve the new Constitution formed in the Progressive Era and the New Deal. The simplest solution would be to go back home again -- to restore federalism as a check on the Federal Government. Since our political system enshrines at least the fossil of this beautiful creation, this strategy may seem promising. It would, alas, face insurmountable obstacles. Much of the settled framework of the modern state rests on the strong national powers of the Federal Government. In The Tempting of America, Robert Bork, no friend of the liberals' transformation of the Constitution, states bluntly that to overrule the Court's expansion of federal powers would "overturn much of modern government and plunge us into chaos." 4. REANIMATING FEDERALISM IS IMPOSSIBLE John McGinnis, Staff Writer, NATIONAL REVIEW, September 1, 1998, p. 30. We could, in theory, pass a constitutional amendment that would ratify past divergences from the federalist model but block any future departures. But along with federalism itself, the fierce attachment of citizens to their states which supports federalism in practice has also dissipated in the last hundred years. The huge decrease in transportation costs and information costs in the twentieth century has created a mass culture that has substantially tempered differences among regions and wholly extirpated differences among many states. Reanimating federalism in this context would be difficult if not impossible. 5. DOESN'T MAKE SENSE FOR ANY GROUP TO RE-ESTABLISH FEDERALISM John McGinnis, Staff Writer, NATIONAL REVIEW, September 1, 1998, p. 30. It is easy to chide Republicans for these failures, and they deserve some criticism. But the most important reason for these failures is not a loss of nerve on their part. It is the successful effort by liberals over the past century to restructure the Framers' constitutional system so as to centralize power and create an inherent bias toward bigger government. We are in a prisoner's dilemma: we would all be better off with a smaller government, but it would be irrational for any group to surrender the money or regulatory advantages it gets from the state without a guarantee that all other groups will, too.

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FEMINISM AND ESSENTIALISM THE CRITIQUE OF ESSENTIALISM DOES NOT DEVALUE FEMINISM 1. ESSENTIAUSM UNITES WOMEN AND TRANSCENDS POLITICAL DiVISIONS Tracy E. Higgins, Associate Professor of Law Fordham University, HARVARD WOMEN’S LAW JOURNAL, Spring, 1996, P. 99. Despite its theoretical and political vulnerabilities, the practical appeal of essentialism, like the appeal of universalism, persists. Essentialist assumptions offer the promise of uniting women in a way that transcends or precedes politics. Ellen Rooney has suggested that essentialism reflects a “desire that what unites us (as feminists) pre-exist[sJ our desire to be joined; something that stands outside our own alliances may authorize them and empower us to speak not just as feminists but as women.” This desire may be felt even more urgently on the international level where differences among women threaten to outweigh corninonalities. -

2. FEMINISM CAN CONSISTENTLY ESCAPE ESSENTIALISM Susan H. Williams, Assistant Professor of Law at Cornell, CORNELL LAW REVIEW, March, 1990, p. 702. Drucilla offers a way out of this predicament, a way that she calls ethical feminism. She argues that we do not need an essentialist account of Woman to achieve either the critical or the reconstructive tasks of feminism. Instead, the only necessary account of Woman is an account of what is excluded from our present legal and social system. She suggests that we can show that our present social definition of women functions so as to make certain harms to them invisible, perhaps even inexpressible. The deconstructionist notion of the differend describes what is thus made culturally invisible. Therefore, women’s experiences, of harm and also of joy, are the differend. If the content of this excluded feminine experience were to become too definite, too permanent, this approach could also result in an essentialist definition of Woman. But Drudilla avoids this danger by arguing that the concept of Woman as differend, like the experience of actual women, is so full of meaning that it can give rise to multiple interpretations. In the absence of an outside referent like nature or biology, no one interpretation can claim exclusivity based on its correspondence to an absolute truth. The space for diversity the “difference’ which is central to both postmodernism and feminism is thereby assured. --

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3. ESSENTIALIST CRITIQUES UNDERCUT HOSTS OF PRACTICAL GAINS FOR WOMEN Tracy E. Higgins, Associate Professor of Law Fordham University, HARVARD WOMEN’S LAW JOURNAL, Spring, 1996, p. 103. Notwithstanding this resonance, some feminists have cautioned that radical anti-essentialism, like cultural relativism, threatens to undermine the central goal of feminist human rights advocacy: to identify and criticize systems of inequality and injustice that transcend cultural, political, and geographic boundaries.. The assumption that gender is culturally contingent not only calls into question universalist notions of gender justice but also renders problematic a feminist critique of legal institutions and legal reform outside of narrow, localized experience. To the extent that feminist anti-essentialism questions the use of cross-cultural categories, it threatens to undermine the identification of broad structures of inequality premised on gender. -

4. INTERNAL PHILOSOPHICAL SCHISMS DO NOT DEVALUE THE CONCEPT OF FEMINISM Linda S. Green, Professor of Law at the University of Wisconsin School of Law, NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW, Summer, 1993, p. 1261. The term “feminism” broadly encompasses a range of different and arguably conflicting visions. One version of feminism embraces formal gender equality or “sameness” as a framework, while another emphasizes differences between the genders. There is also a tension between a feminism that universalizes and essentializes gender experience and perspective and a feminism which recognizes and incorporates different race and class perspectives. Yet another type of feminism chooses power and power differences as the appropriate critical framework. My recognition of these differences does not mean that an abstract concept of feminism lacks usefulness as the underlying philosophy of a gender role social change movement. Indeed, the development of competing visions of feminism has provoked an examination of existing gender relations and of the real-world implications of these ideological differences.

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FEMINISM IS SOCIALLY DESIRABLE 1. NEW FEMINISM IS INCLUSIVE, PRACTICAL AND POSITIVE Mary Ann Glendon, Harvard Law Professor and head of the Vatican Delegation to the United Nations’ Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, NEW PERSPECTIVES QUARTERLY, September, 1995, p. 47. The many positive accomplishments of those years have been subsumed in a new, widely shared set of attitudes toward issues affecting women. Unlike its predecessor, the feminism now emerging is representative of the real-life needs and aspirations of a broad range of women. It wrestles with harmonizing family life and employment in a society where nearly five out of six women become mothers, where most mothers work outside the home, and where divorce and poverty are ever-present risks. Adding up the costs to women and children of the sexual revolution, the new feminism sees women and men as parmers rather than antagonists in the eternal quest for better ways to love and work. The new feminism is a house with many rooms, inclusive rather than polarizing; open-minded rather than dogmatic; capacious enough to have attracted eloquent spokespersons as different as Pope John Paul II and Irish President Mary Robinson. 2. FEMINISM UNCOVERS THE OPPRESSION HIDDEN BY SOVEREIGNTY Fernando R. Teson, Professor of Law at Arizona State University, VIRGINIA JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW ASSOCIATION, Spring, 1993, p. 657. Indeed, one of the most valuable contributions of feminist international legal theory is the attempt to disaggregate states, to pierce the sovereignty veil and inquire about real social relations, relations among individuals and between individuals and government within the state. This is also the thrust of the Kantian theory of international law. When the veil of state sovereignty is lifted, liberal feminists find that women are unfairly treated (i.e, their rights are violated) in most or all states. This injustice is compounded by the fact that it often takes place in spheres shielded from the reach of domestic and international law. 3. FEMINISM HAS CLEARLY IMPROVED LIFE FOR THE MAJORITY OF WOMEN Wendy Kaminer, attorney and feminist scholar, CURRENT, January, 1994, p. 4. Whatever revolution was fomenting posed no apparent threat to gender roles. Still, women who were not particularly sensitive to chauvinism in the counterculture or the typical fraternity planned to attend graduate or professional school and pursue careers that would have been practically unthinkable for them ten years earlier. Feminism was altering their lives as much as draft avoidance was altering the lives of their male counterparts. Today, three decades of feminism and one Year of the Woman later, a majority of American women agree that feminism has altered their lives for the better. In general, polls conducted over the past three years indicate strong majority support for feminist ideals. 4. CRITIQUES OF FEMINISM ARE MISGUIDED Juli Loescb Wiley, nqa, U.S. CATHOLIC, June, 1994, p. 6. Are feminists anti-children? Do feminists hate men? Did feminists really burn bras? These odd questions belong in the same camp. They are all sterotypical but telling queries attached to feminism. Unfortunately while they capture a bit of the flavor of feminist struggles, they sorely miss the substance. Consequently these labels tend to falsify history and deter us from accurate understandings of difficult problems and more adequate solutions. It is time for feminists to speak a resounding “No’ to questions about anti-children sentiments and to provide better explanations. Feminism has served and continues to serve nicely as a lightening rod for problems that, at their heart, do not lie entirely on feminism’s doorstep.

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FEMINISM IS EXCESSIVELY ESSENTIALIST 1. FEMINISM IS SUBSTANTIALLY GROUNDED IN ESSENTIALISM Tracy E. Higgins, Associate Professor of Law Fordham University, HARVARD WOMEN’S LAW JOURNAL, Spring, 1996, p. 100. Much feminist activism on the international level has been premised on two assumptions, both of whicb may be characterized as essentialist: first, that women share types of experiences and are oppressed in particular ways as women; and second, that these experiences are often different than those of men. These assumptions have led feminists to challenge the traditionally narrow definition of human rights and attempt to expand it to cover experiences shared by women as a group. Like universalist descriptions of human rights or human well-being, feminist essentialism has lent political coherence to the feminist movement and has provided a foundation for Western feminists’ expansion of their political vision. -

2. FEMINISM IS EXCLUSIONARY AND ENTRENCHES RACIST HIERARCHY Linda S. Green, Professor of Law at the University of Wisconsin School of Law, NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW, Summer, 1993, p. 1262. Moreover, if we take an empowerment model of feminism seriously, a movement for social change must embrace women whose life conditions raise empowerment issues. Women in poverty who have limited options with respect to education, employment, health care, security, and reproductive choice may not self-consciously call themselves feminists, but may nonetheless know that the conditions of their lives are unsatisfactory. In addition, women of color who perceive that the traditional feminist movement has been racially exclusive as well as limited primarily to the middle and upper classes may be unwilling to call themselves feminists because the use of that term may imply acceptance of certain goals defined without their participation. Thus, the term “feminist” may have progressive symbolism in some circumstances and send racial hierarchy and subordination messages in others. Perhaps we should use the term “feminist” less, or at least answer the question whether its current use is harmful or limiting. 3. FEMINIST ESSENTIALISM EXCLUDES DIVERSE GROUPS OF WOMEN Tracy E. Higgins, Associate Professor of Law Fordham University, HARVARD WOMEN’S LAW JOURNAL, Spring, 1996, p. 99. Much incisive and insightful criticism, particularly by feminists of color, has revealed that treating gender difference as the primary concern of feminism has had the effect of reinforcing gendered categories and collapsing differences among women. These critics have argued convincingly that early feminist descriptions of women’s experience focused on white, middle-class, educated, heterosexual women. Consequently, the political priorities of the women’s movement in the West (e.g., equal access to education and employment, abortion rights) have reflected the most urgent concerns of a relatively more powerful group of women. Moreover, even shared concerns, such as domestic violence and rape, have often been described and addressed based on the experiences of a relatively narrow group of women. Accused of essentialism, feminists who theorized a commonality among women were criticized for committing the dual sin of reinforcing patriarchal assumptions about women as a group and marginalizing some women along the lines of race, class, and sexual orientation. -

4. FEMINISM MARGINALIZES MAJORITY WORLD WOMEN Katherine M. Culliton, Fulbright Grantee, Washington College of Law Valedictorian, OAS Grantee Inter-American Institute for Human Rights, CASE WESTERN RESERVE JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW, Spring/Summer, 1994, p. 195. This connection between women as historical subjects and the re-presentation of Woman produced by hegemonic discourses is not a relation of direct identity, or a relation of correspondence or simple implication. It is an arbitrary relation set up by particular cultures Some feminist writings... discursively colonialize the material and historical heterogeneities of the lives of women in the third world, thereby producing/re-presenting a composite, singular ‘third world woman’--an image which appears arbitrarily constructed, but nevertheless carries with it the authorizing signature of Western humanist discourse. -

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FEMINISM IS THEORETICALLY INCOHERENT 1. RADICAL FEMINISM IS PHILOSOPHICALLY BANKRUPT Fernando R. Teson, Professor of Law at Arizona State University, VIRGINIA JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW ASSOCIATION, Spring, 1993, P. 682. Yet the basic assumptions of the radical feminist critique are untenable and must be rejected with the same energy and conviction that we reserve for the rejection of other illiberal theories and practices. Radical feminism exists at a remove from international reality because it exempts itself, by philosophical fiat, from critical examination and empirical verification. It wrongly assumes that oppression belongs to a category of thought accessible to pure philosophic speculation, and thus renders scrutiny of real human rights practices superfluous. Perhaps most ominously, radicalism “unprivileges” the imperatives of objectivity, placing the demands of intellectual integrity and responsible political dialogue on a normative par with other, more political agendas. 2. FEMINIST CRITIQUE LACKS THEORETICAL FOUNDATION Owen M. Fiss, Sterling Professor of Law at Yale and former Law Clerk to Thurgood Marshall, ARIZONA STATE LAW JOURNAL, Summer, 1994, p. 426. Taken in either its radical or cultural form, feminism is unique because it seeks to combine a theory of equality with a critique of the law. For many, this is a special source of feminism’s appeal, but not for me. In my view, feminism’s critique lacks adequate theoretical foundations and, in some respects, is at odds with its egalitarianism. The critique of the law derived from the work of Carol Gilligan founders on the simple fact that there is nothing intrinsically individualistic about justice or rights or even adversarial procedure. We can make justice as relational or as caring as we wish it to be. Groups can and have used the adversarial process and the language of rights to advance their interests. MacKinnon’s critique is more powerful and has greater sway in the academy today, in part because it responds more directly to the sense of disenchantment that is so prevalent. But it, too, is vulnerable. For one thing, MacKinnon offers no theoretical argument for her denial of the objectivity of the law, and it is difficult to see how she could make such an argument. Any argument that she might offer would itself necessarily claim to be objective and thus would be in tension with a position that denies objectivity. 3. FEMINIST CRITIQUE OF STATIST OPPRESSION IS MISGUIDED Fernando R. Teson, Professor of Law at Arizona State University, VIRGINIA JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW ASSOCIATION, Spring, 1993, p. 667. The assertion that a social arrangement is unjust or oppressive is contingent; it depends not only on the theory of justice that is presupposed, but on the facts as well. “Oppression” does not follow from the definition of “state’; it is not therefore inherent in the social organization we know as the modem state. Oppression may be defined as occurring when an individual or a group unjustly prevents others from exercising choices, and this may or may not occur in a particular case. Viewing oppressiveness as a necessary rather than contingent property of states is undoubtedly an epistemological convenience for the radical; there is no need to bother with scrutinizing the political practices of actual states. Unfortunately, the product of this sort of inquiry can be nothing more than nominalism: metaphysics in, metaphysics out.

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Freedom Good HUMAN BEINGS HAVE FREEDOM TO MAKE CHOICES 1. HUMANS HAVE THE LIBERTY TO MAKE CHOICES Moitimer J. Adler, Chairman of the Board of Editors of the Encyclopedia Britannica, SIX GREAT IDEAS, 1981, p. 141. Our natural freedom consists in freedom of the will. It is freedom of choice—the liberty of being able to choose otherwise than we did. Having such freedom, our actions are not instinctively determined or completely conditioned by the impact of external circumstances on our developments, as is the case in the behavior of other animals. 2. LIBERTY IS THE ABILITY TO EXERCISE CHOICE Thomas Sowell, Former Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institute at Stanford University, A CONFLICT OF VISIONS, 1987, p. 92. In the unconstrained vision, however, freedom is defined in include both the absence of direct, externally imposed impediments and of the circumstantial limitations which reduce the range of choice: Only when he can support himself and his family, choose his job and make a living wage can an individual and his family exercise real freedom. Otherwise he is a service to survival without the means to do what he wants. 3. PEOPLE HAVE FREEDOM TO CHOOSE WHAT THEY SHALL BE Mortimer 1. Adler, Chairman of the Board of Editors of the Encyclopedia Britannica, SIX GREAT IDEAS, 1981, p. 141. Within this innate power of free choice, each human being is able to change his own character creatively by deciding for himself what he shall do or shall become. We are free to make ourselves whatever we choose to be. 4. NOTION OF UNFREE WILL IS CONCEPTUALLY IMPOSSIBLE Bernard Berofsky, NQA, AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY, July 1992, p. 279. Among the efforts to defend the reality of freedom of will is a radical one: an unfree will, some philosophers contend, is a conceptual impossibility. If we choose or will at all, and surely we sometimes do then we choose freely. This stance or some associated doctrine has been defended by Aristotle, Descartes, Bradley, Sartre, Ginet, and most recently, Albritton.

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AN IDEAL STATE PROVIDES FREEDOM TO ALL CITIZENS 1. AN IDEAL STATE PROVIDES FREEDOM Alcott Arthur, Professor of Philosophy, Coppin State, JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY, Fall 1986, p. 16. Reasonable consideration of the values requires that they be assessed in light of the general social good. First, we may turn to the matter of liberty. We expect an ideal state to provide the widest possible opportunity for an individual to achieve his or her goals and purposes. 2. SOCIETY THAT PROVIDES FREEDOM BENEFITS ALL HUMANITY Joseph DeMarco and Samuel Richmond, Professors of Philosophy at Cleveland State University, JOURNAL OF SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY, Fall 1986, p. 8. A society is basically free when memberships in any significant social group is uncorrelated with systematic control over the lives of people in any other significant social group. In other words, membership in any significant group should not affect the chances of having control over the lives of people in other social groups. This conception of liberty is minimal, yet if all people were free in this sense, the gains for humanity would be immense. 3. LACK OF FREEDOM RESULTS IN A TOTALITARIAN REGIME Richard Gawronski, Then Exiled Polish Chairman of Regional Solidarity Advisors, VITAL SPEECHES OF THE DAY, February 1984, p. 235. The loss of political freedom is very painful—but much more menacing is the growing constraint on personal freedom, the destructive influence on personal beliefs, the lack of information, and the attempts to eliminate independent thinking. This reduction in freedoms: freedom of opportunity, freedom of expression, freedom of political opinion, and freedom of choice leads to the slavery of contemporary totalitarian regimes. FREEDOM IS AN ESSENTIAL PART OF DEMOCRACY 1. FREEDOM IS ESSENTIAL FOR DEMOCRACY Jean-François Revel, Author, DEMOCRACY AGAINST ITSELF, 1993, p. 265. There is no lasting democracy without the cultural autonomy of each person. Democracy allows free men to be born, but free men enable democracy to last. 2. ELECTED GOVERNMENT IS ONLY POSSIBLE WITH FREEDOM EXISTS Mao Tse-Tung, Former Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, ON COALITION, 1967, p. 2. Only then will it be possible to hold free and unrestricted elections throughout the land after the overthrow of the Japanese aggressors, to create a democratic national assembly and to establish a regular and unified coalition government. Unless the people have freedom, there can be no national assembly or government genuinely elected by the people. 3. FREEDOM EPITOMIZES OUR DEMOCRATIC TRADITION Phillip Smith, Professor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, JOURNAL OF SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY, Fall 1986, p. 28. Everyone loves liberty, or we think they should. It epitomizes our democratic tradition and defines the essence of our being. We are free because we are human. But more profoundly, we are human because we are free. 4. AMERICAN POLITICAL TRADITION PROVIDES TRUE FREEDOM Tibor R. Machan, NQA, INDIVIDUALS AND THEIR RIGHTS, 1989, p. 153. If the concept of freedom, in its socially relevant sense, means the condition of individuals not being aggressed against by others, then the right to freedom found in American political tradition seems vindicated. This view of the right to freedom does not rest mainly on the virtue of market processes as such but on the recognition of every individual’s equal moral nature as a self-determined and self-responsible agent, regardless of admittedly enormous circumstantial differences, self-induced or inherited.

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FREEDOM IS ESSENTIAL FOR MORALITY 1. FREEDOM IS NECESSARY FOR MORALITY Thomas R. Dye, Director of Policy Studies, Florida State University, THE POLITICAL LEGITIMACY, OF MARKETS AND GOVERNMENT, 1990, p. 17. Human freedom underlies the notion of morality. Human beings cannot choose between right and wrong if they cannot choose at all. Thus freedom is essential to a moral life. If we believe that humans ought to be free to choose between right and wrong, then we believe that coercion must be minimized. This is a traditional secular defense of the moral necessity of individual human rights. 2. LIBERTY IS ESSENTIAL FOR THE FULFILLMENT OF MORAL DIGNITY Phillip Smith, Professor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, JOURNAL OF SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY, Fall 1986, p. 28. We owe a lot to liberty, not just our happiness and contentment, but our fulfillment as intelligent creatures with moral dignity. We are animals with rights and responsibilities who, as Kant said, must be treated as ends and never merely as means. Even though liberty is undoubtedly an achievement and not a gift, something we are not born with but must continually struggle for, we are special because we exhibit this quality. It must always be honored and nurtured to its fullest extent. 3. FREEDOM ALLOWS INDIVIDUALS TO FULL MORAL OBLIGATION Tibor R. Machan, NQA, INDIVIDUALS AND THEIR RIGHTS, 1989, p. 162. The moral task of every individual is to succeed in his or her individual life. This places no priority on equal attainment in terms of prosperity, education, artistic endeavors, and so on, so fairness in such a society, contrary to widespread impression, is not the main feature of justice. Instead, it is individual liberty—the negative freedom whereby individuals may not be interfered with by other individuals. LIBERTY IS A PREFERRED VALUE OVER EQUALITY 1. US CITIZENS PREFER LIBERTY OVER EQUALITY Thomas R. Dye, Director of Policy Studies, Florida State University, THE POLITICAL LEGITIMACY, OF MARKETS AND GOVERNMENT, 1990, p. 11. A Gallup survey in 1982 not only confirms the continuing American preference for liberty but compares this preference with the attitudes of Europeans. When asked whether personal freedom or equality was more important, Americans preferred freedom over equality by a margin of 72 percent to 20 percent. Western Europeans chose freedom only by a margin of 49 percent to 35 percent over equality. FREEDOM IS ESSENTIAL FOR ANY POLITICAL SYSTEM 1. POLITICAL SYSTEM CANNOT EXIST WITH FREEDOM Hannah Arendt, Philosopher, BETWEEN PAST AND FUTURE, 1954, p. 146. Freedom, moreover, is not only one among the many problems and phenomena of the political realm properly speaking, such as justice, or power, or equality; freedom, which only seldom—in times of crisis or revolution—becomes the direct aim of political action, is actually the reason that men live together in political organization at all. Without it, political life as such would be meaningless. The raison d’être of politics is freedom, and its field of experience is action. FREEDOM SHOULD NOT BE SACRIFICED TO EQUALITY 1. FREEDOM SHOULD NOT BE SACRIFICED TO EQUALITY Ronald M. Glassman, NQA, DEMOCRACY AND EQUALITY THEORIES AND PROGRAMS FOR THE MODERN WORLD, 1989, p. 104-5. In the modern situation, therefore, any theory of equality can only be put forward with de Tocqueville’ s warning in mind: the centralized administrative state should not be strengthened or extended, its power should be limited and checked, the legal system and the legislature should be empowered, and economic development should be separated from state control In short, freedom should not be abandoned in order to create greater equality. 275

Freedom Bad THERE MUST BE LIMITS ON FREEDOM 1. SOCIETY MUST DETERMINE LIMITS ON FREEDOM Thomas Robinson, President Emeritus, Glassboro State College, VITAL SPEECHES OF THE DAY, August 1, 1985, p. 618. Is it freedom to crash rocks through store windows, to loot stores, to toss fire bombs into homes through windows? Is it freedom to insist on your right of expression, but to deny that right to others by clamor, heckling, hissing, or disturbance? If freedom is unlimited, then the concept must include the freedom to kill, to injure, to destroy, and to malign. Perhaps the greatest task of education today, if mankind is truly in the saddle, is to study and determine the proper limits of freedom. 2. FREEDOM IS NOT A LICENSE TO DO AS WE PLEASE William Simon, Former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, VITAL SPEECHES OF THE DAY, October 15, 1987, p. 9. True freedom is not mere absence of restraint; true freedom is not a license to do as we please. The success of the Constitution, the success of America and of the American dream hinge directly on our willingness to couple freedom with a sense of moral responsibility. 3. A WORLD OF UNRESTRICTED LIBERTY WOULD BE INTOLERABLE TO MOST PEOPLE Alcott Arthur, Professor of Philosophy, Coppin State, JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY, Fall 1986, p. 13. Although we may regard liberty as an essential human value, we cannot have unrestricted liberty. In a world without rules there would be many unresolvable disputes and conflicts as individuals pursue different interests. Such a world would resemble a Hobbesian state of nature, which most individuals would find intolerable.

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TRUE FREEDOM DOES NOT EXIST 1. THERE IS NO ABSOLUTE FREEDOM Bernard Berofsky, NQA, AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY, July 1992, p. 283. It is evident to all that our freedom of will is far greater than our freedom of action. Often, I am free to decide to do A and then I discover I cannot do A. It is also evident that many ordinary laments of the form “I cannot decide to do A” are not literally true in that obstacles inducing me to draw this conclusion are too weak literally to bind my will. Alternatively, we often say quite properly that we must (decide to) do A because of a commitment or a promise or a role, etc. when we are free to reject that commitment, etc. It, of course, follows from these thoughts neither that I have perfect freedom to will all nor that all willing is free willing. 2. TRUE FREEDOM REQUIRES ABSOLUTE ISOLATION Marilyn French, Feminist Philosopher, BEYOND POWER, 1985, p. 542. Freedom defined as the absence of constraint requires absolute isolation from others. Such a definition suggests that our true nature can be expressed only in an emotional desert which we leave only when we see something we want in another person. But such isolation is, for humans, a form of insanity. It does not exist. 3. TRUE FREEDOM HAS NEVER BEEN REALIZED IN HISTORY Erich Fromm, Social Philosopher, ESCAPE FROM FREEDOM, 1941, p. 269. If human freedom is established as freedom to [sic], if man can realize his self fully and uncompromisingly, the fundamental cause for his asocial drives will have disappeared and only a sick and abnormal individual will be dangerous. This freedom has never been realized in the history of mankind, yet it has been an ideal to which mankind has stuck even if it was often expressed in abstruse and irrational forms. 4. FREEDOM IS NONEXISTENCE Marilyn French, Feminist Philosopher, BEYOND POWER, 1985, p. 541. If freedom means the absence of constraints, then freedom does not exist. Nothing on this earth lacks constraints. Plants and creatures are bound by the rising and setting of the sun, by gravity or universal physical force. Human beings are constrained by the need to breathe air of certain quality, to eat and excrete, to drink rest, sleep, move, to feel sensations and emotions, to think. Because humans are social animals, they also experience constraints imposed by the group. FREEDOM LEADS TO HELPLESSNESS AND DESPAIR 1. FREEDOM RESULTS IN BONDAGE OF HELPLESSNESS Erich Fromm, Social Philosopher, ESCAPE FROM FREEDOM, 1941, p. 257. Both helplessness and doubt paralyze life, and in order to live man tries to escape from freedom, negative freedom. He is driven into new bondage. This bondage is different from the primary bonds, from which, though dominated by authorities or the social group, he was not entirely separated. CITIZENS DISREGARD DUTIES UNDER ABSOLUTE FREEDOM 1. ABSOLUTE FREEDOM LEAVES CITIZENS FREE TO IGNORE DUTIES OF CITIZENSHIP David Cam, Member of Rhode Island Legislature, COMMONWEAL, May 31, 1985, p. 328. If the rule is that I am free to do whatever I please as long as I don’t pick your pocket or break your leg, then I’m free to engage in unlimited getting and spending, free to join members of my interest group in single-mindedly pursuing our collective interests, free to ignore the needs of other citizens, and free to generally disregard all positive duties of citizenship.

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FREEDOM PRODUCES UNSATISFACTORY RESULTS FOR INDIVIDUALS 1. FREEDOM PRODUCES UNSATISFACTORY RELATIONSHIPS Erich Fromm, Social Philosopher, ESCAPE FROM FREEDOM, 1941, p. 118. Modem man’s feeling of isolation and powerlessness is increased still further by the character which all his human relationships have assumed. The concrete relationship of one individual to another has lost its direct and human character and has assumed a spirit of manipulation and instrumentality. In all social and personal relations the laws of the market are the rule. It is obvious that the relationship between competitors has to be based on mutual human indifference. Otherwise any one of them would be paralyzed in the fulfillment of his economic tasks—to fight each other and not to refrain from the actual economic destruction of each other if necessary. 2. VALUE OF LIBERTY CAN BE MANIPULATED TO PRODUCE UNDESIRABLE RESULTS Herbert Macuse, Social Philosopher, ONE DIMENSIONAL MAN, 1964, p. 7-8. Under the rule of a repressive whole, liberty can be made into a powerful instrument of domination. The range of choice open to the individual is not the decisive factor in determining the degree of human freedom, but what can be chosen and what is chosen by the individual. The criterion for free choice can never be an absolute one, but neither is it entirely relative. 3. MAN FEELS THREATENED BY ENVIRONMENT CREATED BY FREEDOM Erich Fromm, Social Philosopher, ESCAPE FROM FREEDOM, 1941, p. 123. With the monopolistic phase of capitalism as it developed increasingly in the last decades, the respective weight of both trends for human freedom seems to have changed. Those factors which tend to weaken the individual self have gained, while those strengthening the individual have relatively lost in weight. The individual’s feelings of powerlessness and aloneness has increased, his “freedom” from all traditional bonds has become more pronounced, his possibilities for individual economic achievement have narrowed down. He feels threatened by gigantic forces and the situation resembles in many ways that of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. ADVANCED SOCIETIES DESTROY LIBERTY 1. ADVANCED SOCIETIES DESTROY RIGHTS AND LIBERTIES Herbert Macuse, Social Philosopher, ONE DIMENSIONAL MAN, 1964, p. 1. The rights and liberties which were such vital factors in the origins and earlier stages of industrial society yield to a higher stage of this society: they are losing their traditional rationale and content. Freedom of thought, speech and conscience were--just as free enterprise, which they served to promote and protect--essentially critical ideas, designed to replace an obsolescent material and intellectual culture by a more productive and rational one. Once institutionalized, these rights and liberties shared the fate of the society of which they had become an integral part. the achievement cancels the premises. 2. LIBERATION IS A HIGHLY INTELLECTUAL UTOPIAN DEAL Herbert Macuse, Social Philosopher, STUDIES IN CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY, 1972, p. 219. Conflict between liberty and liberation: the latter, i.e., self-determination, should indeed reduce, and perhaps even abrogate those liberties of choice and expression which reproduce, in the individual who enjoys them, the established system. For self-determination presupposes liberation from this very system. seen in this light of this system and its very material benefits, liberation appears not only as a subversive but also highly abstract, ‘intellectual,” utopian idea. 3. ESTABLISHED SOCIETIES CANNOT BUILD VALUE OF FREEDOM Herbert Macuse, Social Philosopher, AN ESSAY ON LIBERATION, 1969, p. 6. For the world of human freedom cannot be built by the established societies, no matter how much they may streamline and rationalize their dominion. Their class structure, and the perfected controls required to sustain it, generate needs, satisfactions, and values which reproduce the servitude of the human existence. This voluntary servitude (voluntary inasmuch as it is introjected into the individuals), which justifies the benevolent masters can be broken only through a political practice which reaches the roots of containment and contentment in the 278

infrastructure of man, a political practice of methodical disengagement from and refusal of the Establishment, aiming at a radical transvaluation of values.

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Free Speech Good RIGHT OF FREE SPEECH IS THE HEART OF DEMOCRACY 1. FREE SPEECH IS THE HEART OF THE FIRST AMENDMENT John P. Ellwood, NQA, THE YALE LAW JOURNAL, December 1992, p. 769. The central importance of speech issues, or “matters of public concern,” is long-established in First Amendment doctrine. Since New York Times v. Sullivan, the Supreme Court has placed speech regarding matters of public concern squarely “at the heart of the First Amendment’s protections,” and “on the highest rung of the hierarchy of First Amendment values.” Such speech is of preeminent value because it transcends mere self-expression. 2. A FREE PRESS IS NECESSARY IN A DEMOCRACY Tony Benn, NQA, ARGUMENTS FOR DEMOCRACY, 1981, p. 102. The fate of democracy rests with the voters who can make and unmake governments and bring effective pressure to bear throughout the lifetime of each Parliament. Since public opinion, in a free society, also exercises a considerable influence over the conduct of all organizations, the factors which shape it and express it greatly affect the development of society itself. This being so, the conditions governing the supply of information to citizens and to the public at large, upon which their judgments are formed, become of central concern to all those who are determined to uphold democracy. Any tendency to censor the output of necessary information, distort the news or suppress views, must be seen as a threat to freedom. In short, democracy depends upon the establishment and maintenance of a genuinely free mass media. 3. FREE SPEECH ENSURES DEMOCRATIC SELF-GOVERNMENT Paul Harris, NQA, THE PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE OF FREEDOM OF SPEECH, 1971, p. 403. The participation of citizens in the political decisions which affect their lives is at the heart of a democratic system of government. The American revolution was a protection against the limitation of that right of self-government. The concept of self-government means that elected officials should be responsive to the will of the people, and not vice versa. Free speech is one of the primary constitutional mechanisms which ensures the continuation of this relationships between the people and their government, and for it is through public debate that the government is made aware of the criticisms and suggestions of the people. 4. FREE SPEECH IS ESSENCE OF “SELF-GOVERNMENT’ John P. Ellwood, NQA, THE YALE LAW JOURNAL, December 1992, p. 769. Freedom of expression concerning public questions “assure[s] unfettered interchange of ideas for the bringing about of political and social changes desired by the people,” and thus is “the essence of self-government.” The Court has found speech to merit full First Amendment protection when it meets either the “status” test or the “content” test. The “status” test determines whether the subject of the speech is a public official or figure. Speech concerning private figures is accorded lesser First Amendment protection. The “content” test is met when the speech at issue is of public concern. 5. FREE SPEECH IS BEST MEANS TO PROTECT DEMOCRATIC SYSTEM Paul Harris, NQA, THE PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE OF FREEDOM OF SPEECH, 1971, p. 410. The right of the people to discuss freely government policy is inherent in a democracy. Yet the men who wrote the Constitution specifically expressed that right in the language of the first amendment. The first amendment and the other amendments which make up the Bill of Rights were to be the third formal check of the possible abuse of power. Since these rights reside in the people, they were the only one of the three checks of power outside the formal government structure. The right of the people to discuss and criticize government officials and policy was seen as the best means of protecting the democratic system.

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THERE IS NO JUSTIFICATION FOR CENSORSHIP IN A FREE SOCIETY 1. DENYING FREE SPEECH ON BASIS OF HIGHER GOOD THREATENS FREEDOM FOR ALL Curtis J. Sitomer, NQA, CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, October 10, 1985, p. 23. When Indianapolis’s ordinance, which defined pornography as “sexually explicit subordination of women,” was struck down in federal court, Federal Judge Sarah Evans Barker called it a restriction of free speech under the First Amendment. “To deny free speech in order to engineer social change in the name of accomplishing a greater good for one sector of our society erodes the freedom of all,” Judge Barker explained, adding that it “threatens tyranny and injustices for those subjected to the rule of such laws.” 2. RIGHT TO CENSOR MUST BE GRANTED TO ALL IF GRANTED TO ONE Alan Dershowitz, Professor of Law at Harvard University, LOS ANGELES TIMES, May 19, 1987, p. II 9. If a society—whether it be a government or a university—gives the power of censorship to any one group, it may not deny it to others with equally plausible claims. If students who are offended by South African apartheid can close that idea out of the marketplace, then by what principle could other students who are offended by abortion, atheism, homosexuality, feminism, sexism, socialism or capitalism be denied the power to close out those ideas? The result of giving one group the power to censor would be either inequality for other groups or pervasive censorship. 3. CENSORSHIP IS NOT JUSTIFIED TO UPHOLD A MORAL GOOD Curtis J. Sitomer, NQA, CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, October 10, 1985, p. 23. Censorship can still be censorship even when it is imposed in the name of upholding civil rights, preserving religious liberties, or combating violence against women. That’s basically what the courts are saying—and will likely continue to say in defense of freedom of speech and individual protections. FREEDOM OF SPEECH ALSO MEANS DUTY TO LISTEN 1. A FREE SOCIETY MUST ALLOW AND HEAR FREE SPEECH BY ALL Kurt Kuedtke, Former Editor of the Detroit Free Press, LOS ANGELES TIMES, January 1, 1987, p. II 7. It’s not difficult to listen to the philosophy you agree with or don’t care about. It’s the one that galls that must be heard. No idea is so repugnant that it must not be advocated. If we are not free to speak heresy and utter awful thoughts, we are not free at all. And if we are unwilling to hear that which we must violently disagree, we are not free at all. And if we are unwilling to hear that which we most violently disagree, we axe no longer citizens but have become part of the mob. 2. A FREE SOCIETY MUST ALLOW EVEN REPREHENSIBLE SPEECH Alan Dershowitz, Professor of Law at Harvard University, LOS ANGELES TIMES, May 19, 1987, p. II 9. [Professor Randall] Kennedy is profoundly wrong to suggest that speech that diverges widely from community values should not be tolerated. That is neither good education nor good politics. There are many alternatives to offended parties. They can boycott, picket, leaflet, debate, answer and even “boo” or “hiss” periodically to vocalize their disapproval— so long as the speaker is permitted to complete his message within reasonable bounds of civility and without threats of violence. The one option that is not available in a society committee to freedom of speech is for one group to prevent another group from listening to a speaker they wish to hear. 3. FREE SPEECH RIGHTS ARE MEANINGLESS IF NO ONE LISTENS Kurt Kuedtke, Former Editor of the Detroit Free Press, LOS ANGELES TIMES, January 1, 1987, p. II 7. The right to speak is meaningless if no one will listen, and the right to publish is not worth having if no one will read. It is simply not enough that we reject censorship and will not countenance suppression, we have an affirmative responsibility to hear the argument before we disagree with it.

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FIRST AMENDMENT MUST BE ABSOLUTE IN A FREE SOCIETY 1. FIRST AMENDMENT MUST BE ABSOLUTE Alan Dershowitz, Professor of Law at Harvard University, LOS ANGELES TIMES, May 19, 1987, p. II 9. It is best to tolerate even the most obnoxious and offensive ideas. We should be prepared to respond to the arguments of the racist who preaches apartheid, the terrorist who advocates genocide and the communist who favors the suppression of basic liberties. We should trust our citizens—even our students to reject these ideas. But only after they hear them. 2. FREE SPEECH DURING WARTIME IS A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH Howard Zinn, Professor Emeritus, Spellman College, DECLARATIONS OF INDEPENDENCE, 1990, p. 192. In crisis situations, the right of citizens to freely criticize foreign policy is absolutely essential, indeed a matter of life and death. National security is safer in the hands of a debating citizenry than with a secretive, untrustworthy government. Still, the courts have continued to limit free debate on foreign policy issues, claiming that national security overrides the First Amendment. 3. FREE SPEECH IS ESSENTIAL FOR SECURING ALL OTHER LIBERTIES James Smith, NQA, THE PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE OF FREEDOM OF SPEECH, 1971, p. 82. Popular government rests on the right of the public to choose between opposing views. Since an informed public opinion is vital to republic government, freedom of expression is necessary for the formation of that opinion. If people cannot communicate their thoughts to another without running the risk of prosecution, no other liberty can be secure, because freedom of speech and the press are essential to any meaning liberty. 4. FREE SPEECH DURING TIME OF CRISIS IS ESSENTIAL Paul Harris, NQA, THE PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE OF FREEDOM OF SPEECH, 1971, p. 402. To allow speech only after a crisis has calmed down means allowing speech after the community is no longer actively concerned. It is precisely in the crisis situation where the black community watches to see if “Whitey” will allow the deepest feelings of the ghetto to be heard. If national and states governments are concerned about creating a new atmosphere in which the black community will trust the white society, then it must allow the angry voice of the ghetto to speak. FREE SPEECH IS A VALUED AMERICAN LIBERTY 1. GUARANTEES OF THE FIRST AMENDMENT ARE PART OF AMERICAN IDEOLOGY Howard Zinn, Professor Emeritus, Spelman College, DECLARATIONS OF INDEPENDENCE, 1990, p. 182. The belief that the First Amendment guarantees our freedom of expression is part of the ideology of our society. Indeed, the faith of pledges written on paper and the blindness to political and economic realities seem strongly entrenched in that set of beliefs propagated by the makers of opinion in this country. We can see this in almost religious fervor that accompanied the year of the Bicentennial, 200 years after the framing of the Constitution. 2. RIGHT TO FREE SPEECH IS DISTINGUISHING MARK OF AMERICAN SOCIETY Kurt Kuedtke, Former Editor of the Detroit Free Press, LOS ANGELES TIMES, January 1, 1987, p. II 7. If is the law in this country, as in no other, that the individual has an extraordinary right to personal expression, The First Amendment to the Constitution protects the right to speak and to publish, these rights and the degree to which they are safeguarded are the distinguishing characteristics of American society. 3. CITIZENS WANT FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION Howard Zinn, Professor Emeritus, Spelman College, DECLARATIONS OF INDEPENDENCE, 1990, p. 226. We, as citizens, want freedom of expression for two reasons. First, because in itself it is fundamental to human dignity, to being a person, to independence, to self-respect, to being an important part of the world, and to being alive. Second, because we badly need it to help change the world and to bring about peace and justice.

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Free Speech Bad FREE SPEECH RIGHTS ARE NOT ABSOLUTE IN THE WORKPLACE 1. FREE SPEECH RIGHTS ARE NOT ABSOLUTE IN THE WORKPLACE Howard Zinn, Professor Emeritus, Spelman College, DECLARATIONS OF INDEPENDENCE, 1990, p. 200. Chuck Atchison, a forty-year-old quality control inspector for a construction company that built a nuclear energy plant in Texas, spoke out publicly in 1982 about numerous violations of safety regulations at the plant. He was fired. He lost his house, couldn’t find a job in his field, and at one point walked the highway picking up beer cans to sell for scrap aluminum. The Bill of Rights could give him no protection. 2. PRIVATE EMPLOYERS ARE NOT PROHIBITED FROM LIMITING FREE SPEECH Howard Zinn, Professor Emeritus, Spellman College, DECLARATIONS OF INDEPENDENCE, 1990, p. 199. As we have seen, for more than a hundred years it was only Congress that was forbidden by the First Amendment to curtail freedom of speech and press. Then in 1925, the Supreme Court wrote freedom of speech into the Fourteenth Amendment and ruled that states could not violate that freedom. But nothing in the constitution says that private employers may not limit the free speech of their employees. 3. INDIVIDUAL WORKERS ARE NOT PROTECTED BY FIRST AMENDMENT Howard Zinn, Professor Emeritus, Spelman College, DECLARATIONS OF INDEPENDENCE, 1990, p. 228. This is always the price of liberty—taking the risk of going to jail, of being beaten and perhaps being killed. There is another risk for people speaking and organizing in the workplace: loss of one’s job. Historically, the only way workers, subject to the power of a foreman or an employer, could have freedom of expression, was to join with other workers and form a union so that they could collectively defend themselves against the power of the employer. FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHTS HAVE BEEN ABRIDGED IN PAST 1. THE FIRST AMENDMENT DOES NOT ENSURE FREE SPEECH Howard Zinn, Professor Emeritus, Spelman College, DECLARATIONS OF INDEPENDENCE, 1990, p. 186. It would seem to an ordinarily intelligent person, reading the simple, straightforward words of the First Amendment— “Congress shall make no law... [sic] abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press .“— that the Sedition Act was a direct violation of the Constitution. But here we get our first clue to the inadequacy of words on paper in ensuring the rights of citizens. Those words, however powerful they seem, are interpreted by lawyers and judges in a world of politics and power, where dissenters and rebels are not wanted. Exactly that happened early in our history, as the Sedition Act collided with the First Amendment, and the First Amendment turned out to be poor protection. 2. ANTI-ANARCHY LAWS PROHIBIT SPEECH THAT INCITES VIOLENCE Paul Harris, NQA, THE PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE OF FREEDOM OF SPEECH, 1971, p. 383. The New York criminal anarchy statute, the prototype for most other state anarchy statutes, was held constitutional by the United States Supreme Court in Gitlow v. New York. The Court’s test of the first amendment’s protection of free speech was whether or not the words in question had a tendency to lead to an evil which the states constitutionally could prohibit. This test, often referred to as the “bad tendency” test, as broadly stated in Gitlow: “That a State in the exercise of its police power may punish those who abuse this freedom [of speech] by utterances inimical to the public welfare, tending to corrupt public morals, incite to crime, or disturb public peace, is not open to question.” 3. FIRST AMENDMENT PROTECTION IS NOT ABSOLUTE John P. Ellwood, NQA, THE YALE LAW JOURNAL, December 1992, p. 768. The First Amendment is couched in absolutist language: “Congress shall make no law... [sic]” Despite this sweeping 283

admonition, the Supreme Court has “long recognized that not all speech is of equal First Amendment importance” and that speech can be regulated consistent with the First Amendment. For example, speech may be regulated as to “time, place, and manner.”

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FIRST AMENDMENT PROVIDES NO PROTECTION DURING WARTIME 1. THE FIRST AMENDMENT PROVIDED NO PROTECTION DURING WARTIME Howard Zinn, Professor Emeritus, Spelman College, DECLARATIONS OF INDEPENDENCE, 1990, p. 190. Altogether, about 2,000 people were prosecuted and about 900 sent to prison, under the Espionage Act [of 1917], not for espionage, but for speaking and writing against the [First World] war. Such was the value of the First Amendment in time of war. 2. FREE SPEECH IS LIMITED DURING TIMES OF WAR Howard Zinn, Professor Emeritus, Spelman College, DECLARATIONS OF INDEPENDENCE, 1990, p. 191. Free speech is fine, but not in a time of crisis—so argue heads of state, whether the state is a dictatorship or is called a democracy. Has that not proved again and again to be an excuse for stifling opposition to government policy, clearing the way for brutal and unnecessary war? Indeed, is not a time of war exactly when free speech is most needed, when the public is most in danger of being propagandized into sending their sons into slaughter? How ironic that freedom of speech should be allowed for small matters, but not for matters of life and death, war and peace. 3. WARTIME LAWS HAVE ABRIDGED FREE SPEECH RIGHTS Howard Zinn, Professor Emeritus, Spelman College, DECLARATIONS OF INDEPENDENCE, 1990, p. 186. [The Espionage Act of 1917] also said that persons could be sent to prison for up to twenty years if, while the country was at war, they “shall willfully cause or attempt to cause insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty in the military or naval forces of the Untied States, or shall willfully obstruct the recruiting or enlistment service of the U.S.” This was quickly interpreted by the government as a basis for prosecuting anyone who criticized, in speech or writing, the entrance of the nation into the European war, or who criticized the recently enacted conscription law. Two months after the Espionage Act was passed, a Socialist named Charles Schenck was arrested in Philadelphia for distributing 15,000 leaflets denouncing the draft and the war. 4. SEDITION ACT OF 1798 LIMITED FREE SPEECH RIGHTS Howard Zinn, Professor Emeritus, Spelman College, DECLARATIONS OF INDEPENDENCE, 1990, p. 185. The number of people jailed under the Sedition Act [of 1798] was not large—ten—but it is the nature of oppressive laws that it takes just a handful of prosecutions to create an atmosphere that makes potential critics of government fearful of speaking their full minds. It would see to an ordinarily intelligent person, reading the simple, straightforward words of the First Amendment—”Congress shall make no law... [sic] abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”—that the Sedition Act was a direct violation of the constitution. 5. ESPIONAGE ACT OF 1917 ABRIDGED FREE SPEECH RIGHTS Howard Zinn, Professor Emeritus, Spellman College, DECLARATIONS OF INDEPENDENCE, 1990, p. 188. The powerful words of the First Amendment seem to fade with the sounds of war, or near war. The Sedition Act of 1798 expired, but in 1917 when the United States entered World War I, Congress passed another law in direct contradiction of the amendment’s command that “Congress shall make no law... [sic] abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” This was the Espionage Act of 1917. THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT HAS SUBVERTED THE FIRST AMENDMENT 1. FEDERAL AGENCIES VIOLATE THE FIRST AMENDMENT Howard Zinn, Professor Emeritus, Spelman College, DECLARATIONS OF INDEPENDENCE, 1990, p. 204. In our country, so proud of its democratic institutions, a national secret police has operated for a long time, in a clandestine world where the Constitution can be ignored. I am referring to the Federal Bureau of Investigations and the Central Intelligence Agency. It was a CIA official, Ray Clime who, when there was talk of the CIA’s activities violating the First Amendment, told Congress, “It’s only an amendment.” 285

FREEDOM OF SPEECH IS NOT AN UNQUALIFIED RIGHT 1. COMMON SENSE DENIES THAT FREEDOM OF SPEECH IS UNQUALIFIED Alexander Meildejohn, NQA, THE PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE OF FREEDOM OF SPEECH, 1971, p. 317-8. When self-governing men demand freedom of speech they are not saying that every individual has an unalienable right to speak whenever, wherever, however he chooses. They cannot declare that any man may talk as he pleases, when he pleases, about what he pleases, about whom he pleases, to whom he pleases. The common sense of any reasonable society would deny the existence of that unqualified right. 2. FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION IS NOT THE ONLY AIM OF A GOOD SOCIETY Thomas I. Emerson, NQA, THE PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE OF FREEDOM OF SPEECH, 1971, p. 335. The attainment of freedom of expression is not the sole aim of the good society. As the private right of the individual, freedom of expression is an end in itself, but it is not the only end of man as an individual. In its social and political aspects, freedom of expression is primarily a process or a method for reaching other goals. It is a basic element in the democratic way of life, and as a vital process it shapes and determines the ends of democratic society. 3. LIBELOUS SPEECH MUST BE PROHIBITED FOR WELFARE OF SOCIETY Alexander Meildejohn, NQA, THE PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE OF FREEDOM OF SPEECH, 1971, p. 314. No one can doubt that, in any well-governed society, the legislature has both the right and the duty to prohibit certain forms of speech. Libelous assertions may be, and must be forbidden and punished. So too must slander. Words which incite men to crime are themselves criminal and must be dealt with as such. Sedition and reason may be expressed by speech or writing. And, in those cases, decisive repressive action by the government is imperative for the sake of the general welfare. 4. FREE SPEECH MUST BE RECONCILED WITH OTHER LIBERTIES IN SOCIETY Thomas I. Emerson, NQA, THE PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE OF FREEDOM OF SPEECH, 1971, p. 335. But it is not through this process [of freedom of expression] alone that a democratic society will attain its ultimate ends. Any theory of freedom of expression must therefore take into account other value, such as public order, justice, equality and moral progress, and the need for substantive measures designed to promote those ideals. Hence there is a real problem of reconciling freedom of expression with the other values and objectives sought by the good society. GOVERNMENT MANIPULATION OF PRESS NEGATES NOTION OF FREE SPEECH 1. MANIPULATION OF PRESS NEGATES FIRST AMENDMENT PROTECTION Howard Zinn, Professor Emeritus, Spelman College, DECLARATIONS OF INDEPENDENCE, 1990, p. 217. The evidence is powerful that government has tried, often successfully, to manipulate the press. But as Noam Chomsky has said, “It is difficult to make a convincing case for manipulation of the press when the victims proved so eager for the experience.” In short the First Amendment without information is not of much use. And if the media, which are the main source of information for most Americans, are distorting or hiding the truth due to government influence or the influence of the corporations that control them, then the First Amendment has been effectively nullified. PROBLEM OF FREE SPEECH IS LACK OF ACCESS TO DISSIDENT VIEWS 1. FREE SPEECH PROBLEMS STEM FROM PROBLEMS OF DEGREE NOT ACCESS Howard Zinn, Professor Emeritus, Spelman College, DECLARATIONS OF INDEPENDENCE, 1990, p. 186. The problem with free speech in the United States is not with the fact of access, but with the degree of it. There is some access to dissident views, but these are pushed into a corner. And there is some departure in the mainstream press from government policy, but it is limited and cautious. 286

“Genocide” Rhetoric Good WE SHOULD USE “GENOCIDE” RHETORIC TO DESCRIBE ETHNIC CLEANSING 1. WE SHOULD USE THE TERM “GENOCIDE”, NOT LESSER TERMS Tim Giago, Publisher of Lakota Times Publishing, KNIGHT RIDDER/TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICES, May 11, 1999 p. np. I thought about these things when the words “ethnic cleansing'' kept bouncing around the airwaves. It put me in mind of the euphemisms used by the Nazis during World War II. When they first started to move Jews from their homes to concentration camps they called it “relocation.'' When they got real serious about exterminating the Jewish population of Europe, they called it “the final solution.” Ethnic cleansing is genocide, pure and simple. Creating a “Nice-Nellyism” to soften its meaning does not change the end result. It is still genocide. 2. MANY LEADERS THINK USING THE GENOCIDE RHETORIC IS FINE John Marks, Staff Writer, US NEWS AND WORLD REPORT, April 26, 1999, p. 30. And, of course, the White House has relied heavily on the comparison. While this bothers some Jews--like one prominent leader who deems it "unconscionable" to use the Holocaust to justify war--many, like Michael Schaal, approve the use of it. "I say this as someone who was very much opposed to the Vietnam War," Schaal concludes. "There's a bottom line here, and I think that we have to respond to it." 3. USING WORDS OTHER THAN GENOCIDE DOESN’T CHANGE THE FACTS Tim Giago, Publisher of Lakota Times Publishing, KNIGHT RIDDER/TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICES, May 11, 1999 p. np. In early America Manifest Destiny meant that God had chosen a race of people to occupy a land. To the American Indians the words still meant genocide. If an errant bomb or missile strikes a civilian neighborhood killing and maiming many people, the carnage is known as ``collateral damage.'' If an attack by artillery or bombers strikes its own forces by mistake and casualties happen, this is known as being killed by ``friendly fire.'' In the Lakota language, a very ancient language, it would be very difficult to create euphemisms. There are many words nearly impossible to translate into English. In fact, there were no words in Lakota for key, jail or prison because these objects or facilities did not exist in the pre-colonization land of the Lakota. 4. WORDS OTHER THAN “GENOCIDE” DON’T DO THE JOB Tim Giago, Publisher of Lakota Times Publishing, KNIGHT RIDDER/TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICES, May 11, 1999 p. np. When euphemisms are used to dilute or soften the meaning of words because they are offensive or cruel, perhaps they carry things too far. Ethnic cleansing is genocide and it should be referred to as such. Because Nazis used ``the Final Solution'' to describe the murder of millions of Jews did not make it easier on those being murdered. To me, euphemisms are fun only when they are not used to cover or disguise an evil deed. Winston Churchill could have told you that.

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KOSOVO IS A GOOD EXAMPLE OF WHY WE SHOULD USE GENOCIDE RHETORIC 1. KOSOVO IS A NEW VERSION OF THE HOLOCAUST John Marks, Staff Writer, US NEWS AND WORLD REPORT, April 26, 1999, p. 30. This weekend, when a group of Holocaust survivors and their descendants assemble for an annual meeting in Burlington, Vt., they will be grappling as much with the atrocities of 1999 as with those of the 1940s. Whether in the play Escaping Warsaw, which they will watch Saturday night, or in the keynote speech on the Holocaust's legacy the next day, participants will confront ghosts of a past they hoped had been forever exorcised. "Kosovo will be the backdrop of our gathering," predicts Michael Schaal, the event's organizer and the son of World War II refugees. But if the survivors of the Nazi genocide against the Jews, and Jewish people in general, have a particularly acute response to events now unfolding in the Balkans, they are not alone in their sense of hideous deja vu. As television broadcasts images of hundreds of thousands of refugees streaming out of the Serbian province of Kosovo, telling tales of slaughter and rape, of brothers executed and parents lost, Americans of all backgrounds feel that they are witnessing a version of the 20th century's defining calamity. 2. PEOPLE FEEL THAT THE HOLOCAUST IS REPEATING ITSELF John Marks, Staff Writer, US NEWS AND WORLD REPORT, April 26, 1999, p. 30. On campus, students have expressed little outrage over the use of force, and there have been few antiwar demonstrations of the kind that greeted the gulf war in 1991. Thomas Childers, a professor of World War II history at the University of Pennsylvania, says students support the intervention because they believe that history is repeating itself before their eyes. Churches from a variety of denominations around the country have opened their coffers to refugee relief, thanks, in part, to sermons invoking the terrors of the Third Reich. And seniors at a high school in Whitehall, N.Y., gave up their graduation trip to the Jersey shore and instead donated the $1,500 to the Red Cross. "I've seen pictures of the Holocaust," says class President Bryan Brooks. "We don't want it to happen again." 3. THE HOLOCAUST INFORMS OUR UNDERSTANDING OF KOSOVO John Marks, Staff Writer, US NEWS AND WORLD REPORT, April 26, 1999, p. 30. "There is a fundamental way in which [the Holocaust] informs our view of anything that looks like a genocide," explains Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, author of Hitler's Willing Executioners. "For many people . . . even when there is not an explicit comparison, it is lurking in the backs of their minds." Americans have also been primed for this moment by the growth of what some call a "Holocaust culture" in the United States. Movies like Schindler's List have made deep impressions on audiences; more than 10 million Americans have visited the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.; and in schools and colleges the catastrophe is used to teach tolerance. 4. NO OTHER MASS KILLINGS SO EVOKE THE HOLOCAUST John Marks, Staff Writer, US NEWS AND WORLD REPORT, April 26, 1999, p. 30. Even so, no other mass killings in recent memory--not in Bosnia, nor in Rwanda--have provoked such a visceral identification with that era. This is in part because images of the current war so strongly resemble the Holocaust, notes Cynthia Ozick, the novelist and essayist. These are Europeans, persecuted for their ethnicity, and they are being herded out in vast numbers; if the footage were black and white, the refugees might be taken for Polish Jews being cleared out of the Warsaw ghetto or Hungarian Jews waiting to board trains for Auschwitz. Trains are among the most indelible symbols of the Nazi machinery of death, and the Serbian transports bearing Kosovar refugees away from their homeland form yet another part of the visual tissue binding the two events. (In Israel, the comparisons are even more troubling; part of the debate there has centered on the irony that many Serbs are remembered--some say erroneously--as having helped Jews during World War II, while ethnic Albanians are perceived as having sided with the Nazis.)

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“Genocide” Rhetoric Bad “GENOCIDE” Rhetoric IS USED TO JUSTIFY BAD INTERVENTIONS 1. “GENOCIDE” RHETORIC PROVIDES FALSE PRETENSE FOR INTERVENTION Stephen R. Shalom, professor of government at William Patterson University, NEW POLITICS, Summer 1999, http://www.zmag.org/shalomnp.htm. Accessed on May 23, 1999. Genocide, of course, is different. There the human stakes are so high that our general presumption against nonintervention may be overridden. But what was going on in Kosovo before March 1999 was not even close to genocide. 2. KOSOVO IS AN EXAMPLE OF GENOCIDE RHETORIC FALSELY JUSTIFYING INTERVENTION Stephen R. Shalom, professor of government at William Patterson University, NEW POLITICS, Summer 1999, http://www.zmag.org/shalomnp.htm. Accessed on May 23, 1999. The two thousand Kosovar deaths, most at the hands of Serbian security forces, between March 1998 and March 1999 were appalling and inexcusable, as were the several hundred thousand displaced persons. But this was not genocide. We cheapen the term if we use it to characterize every atrocity. Nor is ethnic cleansing, despicable as it is, the same as genocide. When in 1948 Israel expelled three quarters of a million Palestinians, propelled by a massacre here and there to speed the flight, this was ethnic cleansing; it was not genocide. 3. DECLARATIONS OF GENOCIDE ARE OFTEN PROPOGANDA Stephen R. Shalom, professor of government at William Patterson University, NEW POLITICS, Summer 1999, http://www.zmag.org/shalomnp.htm. Accessed on May 23, 1999. Writing in The Nation of March 30, 1998, when the death toll was a small fraction of 2,000 and the refugee count in the tens of thousands, Ian Williams declared that Belgrade's behavior was "on the verge of triggering the duties of signatories to the Genocide Convention." But if these atrocities approached genocide, then the term had no meaning at all, and dozens of countries would be engaging in genocide every year. The Genocide Convention requires signatories to act to stop genocide -- though it doesn't specify how the existence of genocide is to be decided and what actions should be taken. Does Williams really think that China should have intervened (indeed, was duty bound to intervene) in India to stop "genocide" in Kashmir (where the toll far exceeded that of Kosovo)? According to Amnesty International, in June 1997, 40,000 people fled their homes during Philippine army counterinsurgency operations against the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. Should North Korea have intervened? Was North Korea obligated to intervene? 4. KOSOVO WAS FAR LESS SEVERE THAN OTHER HUMANITARIAN CRISES Noam Chomsky, professor at MIT and philosopher, interviewed by Max Boehnel,Z MAGAZINE April 8, 1999, www.zmag.org/chomintyug.htm, accessed May 10, 1999. Question: You don't believe that the reason for the NATO action was to rescue the Kosovo Albanians from oppression? CHOMSKY: It is virtually inconceivable on rational grounds and there are simple reasons for that. One reason is simply Kosovo itself. Up until the US/NATO bombing March 24th, there had been, according to NATO, 2000 people killed on all sides, and a couple of hundred thousand refugees. Well, that's bad, that's a humanitarian crises, but unfortunately it's the kind you can find all over the world. For example, it happens to be almost identical in numbers to what the state department describes as the last year in Colombia: 300,000 refugees, 2 or 3 thousand people killed, overwhelmed by the military forces and the para military associates, who the US arms, and in fact arms are going up. That' s the way the US, Britain and other countries act when there are humanitarian crises, namely they escalate them. Now, what happened in Kosovo, in fact the same thing. There were options on March 23rd, and they chose an option which, predictably, changed the situation from a Colombia style crisis to maybe approaching a disaster, and that was a conscious choice. The effects? Let me quote the US/NATO commanding General, Wesley Clark: two days after the bombing he said it was "entirely predictable" that the reaction of the Serb military on the ground would be exactly as it was.

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USING GENOCIDE RHETORIC OFTEN CAUSES HUGE PROBLEMS 1. USING THE TERM GENOCIDE INCORRECTLY CAUSES HORRIBLE PROBLEMS Stephen R. Shalom, professor of government at William Patterson University, NEW POLITICS, Summer 1999, http://www.zmag.org/shalomnp.htm. Accessed on May 23, 1999. Glib use of the term genocide causes another problem. During World War II, when it was proposed that the United States air force bomb Auschwitz or the rail links leading to the death camp, Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy refused, saying that it "might provoke even more vindictive action by the Germans." This was morally abhorrent, given that the Nazis were already doing the worst; there was no more vindictive action possible. To argue in early March 1999 that Milosevic was committing genocide against the Kosovar Albanians encouraged the view that nothing could be worse and that therefore NATO bombardment couldn't hurt. But much in fact could be worse, and NATO bombing has led to just that. 2. USING THE TERM GENOCIDE IN CERTAIN CASES INSULTS HITLER’S VICTIMS Noam Chomsky, professor at MIT and philosopher, interviewed by Max Boehnel, Z MAGAZINE April 8, 1999, www.zmag.org/chomintyug.htm, accessed May 10, 1999. Now the term genocide, as applied to Kosovo is an insult to the victims of Hitler. In fact, it's revisionist to an extreme. If this is genocide, then there is genocide going on all over the world. And Bill Clinton is decisively implementing a lot of it. If this is genocide, then what do you call what is happening in the southeast of Turkey? The number of refugees there is huge, it's already reached about half the level of Palestinians expelled from Palestine. If it increases further, it may reach the number of refugees in Colombia, where the number of people killed every year by the army paramilitary groups armed and trained by the United States is approximately the same as the number of people killed in Kosovo last year. 3. NOT EVERY ATROCITY SHOULD BE CALLED GENOCIDE: ONLY GENOCIDE Stephen R. Shalom, professor of government at William Patterson University, NEW POLITICS, Summer 1999, http://www.zmag.org/shalomnp.htm. Accessed on May 23, 1999. Many people, including many on the left, seem to have drawn the wrong lessons from this horror story. The lesson is not that every atrocity should be called genocide. (Genocide should be called genocide; lesser crimes should be called what they are -- which doesn't preclude the most vigorous condemnation.) Nor is the lesson that humanitarian concerns require the United States to side-step the United Nations and international law. (The UN could have acted -- it had a peacekeeping force in Kigali -- but the force was downsized when the killings began at the insistence of the United States; and all further UN action was blocked by Washington.) 4. GENOCIDE IMAGERY JUSTIFIES UNIMAGINABLE CRUELTY Stephen R. Shalom, professor of government at William Patterson University, NEW POLITICS, Summer 1999, http://www.zmag.org/shalomnp.htm. Accessed on May 23, 1999. So far the bombing has caused several hundred civilian deaths, a toll that will surely go up, perhaps exponentially as U.S. frustration with Milosevic grows, but this isn't the main catastrophe that threatens. That will come after the war when the wartime targeting of the civilian infrastructure -- the power plants, the fuel supplies, the bridges -- leaves the civilian population without adequate means to sustain decent lives amid a ruined environment. And this will have the same disastrous impact on democratic prospects in Serbia as U.S. policy has had on Iraq, where a ruthless leader has been able to turn the devastating economic assault on the populace to strengthen his position. A letterwriter to the New York Times wrote: "...just as the Holocaust could not have taken place without the acquiescence of the German public, the Serbian people clearly bear responsibility for the actions taken by their Government. Consequently, NATO should cease what appears to be its policy of avoiding all but highly targeted attacks on Serbia.” Concurring, Thomas Friedman wrote in the New York Times: “Like it or not, we are at war with the Serbian nation (the Serbs certainly think so), and the stakes have to be very clear: Every week you ravage Kosovo is another decade we will set your country back by pulverizing you. You want 1950? We can do 1950. You want 1389? We can do 1389 too.” What is needed, says Friedman, is a "merciless" air war, targeting "every power grid, water pipe, bridge, [and] road...." This indeed seems to have become U.S. policy, and it is the moral logic of Milosevic.

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Growth Responses Economic growth occurs whenever people take resources and rearrange them in ways that are more valuable. A useful metaphor for production in an economy comes from the kitchen. To create a final product which has some value, we mix ingredients which are inexpensive together according to a recipe. The cooking one can do is limited by the supply of ingredients, and most cooking in the economy produces undesirable side effects. If economic growth could be achieved only by doing more and more of the same kind of cooking, we would eventually run out of raw materials and suffer from unacceptable levels of pollution and nuisance. Human history teaches us, however, that economic growth springs from better recipes, not just from more cooking. Private entrepreneurs and investors, if provided appropriate incentives, security and access to markets, use their ideas, knowledge, and capital to establish companies that produce a wide variety of goods and services. In developing countries, many of the businesses are very small micro enterprises that employ fewer than ten people. Trade opportunities permit business enterprises to specialize in various products and services. The process of exchanging products and services through market operations, or trade, generates more wealth than would be otherwise created if companies were less specialized. Trade permits business enterprises to specialize in various products and services. The process of exchanging products and services through market operations, or trade, generates more wealth than would be otherwise created if companies were less specialized. Companies generally seek to build their businesses on the basis of some local advantage – oil, gold, weak environmental protection, lack of government oversight, a weak political system, land that can be used to flood foreign markets with cheap food, factories that are able to exploit the large urban populations, and so forth. According to USAID, “countries can boost the ability of the companies located in their territory to compete more effectively in trade if they pay attention to their policies and organization of governance,” the health and education of the workers, and the establishment of infrastructure such as modern energy systems, roads, airports, and seaports that enable goods to be produced and moved quickly and efficiently. This is how economic growth and development have been used to influence the political structures of poor countries by the wealthy. In the aftermath of World War II, besides the United Nations, the important international economic organizations created at the conference held at Bretton Woods were the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), now known as the World Bank. The World Bank was established to help finance the reconstruction of war-torn Europe and the development of the Impoverished countries of the world.1 The IMF mandate was to regulate an international monetary system based on convertible currencies to facilitate global trade while leaving sovereign governments in charge of their own monetary, fiscal, and international investment policies. Significantly, the effort to establish the International Trade Organization (ITO) ended in failure, leaving the "minimalist" General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) as its surviving remnant. But all that was more than 50 years ago. The IMF has now become the "point person" for efforts to "liberalize," or deregulate the international economic system. The IMF has prescribed the same medicine for troubled third world economies for two decades now: Monetary austerity: Tighten the money supply to raise internal interest rates to whatever heights are needed to stabilize the value of the local currency, Fiscal austerity: Increase tax collections and reduce government spending dramatically, Privatization: Sell off public enterprises to the private sector, Financial liberalization: Remove restrictions on the inflow and outflow of international capital as well as restrictions on what foreign businesses and banks are allowed to buy, own, and operate. 2 Only when governments sign this "structural adjustment agreement" does the IMF agree to lend enough to prevent default on international loans that are about to come due and otherwise would be unpayable.3 Arrange a restructuring of the country’s debt among private international lenders that includes a pledge of new loans. ECONOMIC GROWTH IS EURO CENTRIC According to Arturo Escobar development and economic growth have “relied exclusively on one knowledge system, namely, the modern Western one.” This reliance on one system of knowledge, the modern western one, allows other system’s of knowledge outside the traditional one from the modern west to e disqualified from legitimate discussion and marginalized.4 The belief that the only way to boost the economies of countries and the quality of life of its citizens is with the western method of development and economic growth. It’s the insistences that the west’s model of development is suitable for all that causes the problems encountered when trying to force western style economic growth and development on other countries in the world. 291

ECONOMIC GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT INTENSIFY POVERTY ON A GLOBAL LEVEL If structural adjustment has brought neither growth nor debt relief, it has certainly intensified poverty. In Latin America, according to Inter-American Development Bank president Enrique Iglesias, adjustment programs had the effect of "largely canceling out the progress of the 1960s and 1970s." The numbers of people living in poverty rose from 130 million in 1980 to 180 million at the beginning of the 1990s. Structural adjustment also worsened what was already a very skewed distribution of income, with the result that today, the top 20 percent of the continent's population earn 20 times that earned by the poorest 20 percent. In Africa adjustment has been a central link in a vicious circle whose other elements are civil war, drought, and the steep decline in the international price of the region's agricultural and raw material exports. The number of people living below the poverty line now stands at 200 million of the region's 690 million people, and even the least pessimistic projection of the World Bank sees the number of poor rising by 50 percent to reach 300 million by the year 2000. ECONOMIC GROWTH HURTS THE ENVIRONMENT Economic growth and development are terrible for the environment. They usually rely on heavy increase’s in industrial production. Industrial production leads to an increase in gas emissions which can lead to global warming, rainforest depletion, species depletion, all of which are catastrophic environmental problems. The devastation of species of flora and fauna make the earth less able to maintain life, and when the earth is no longer able to maintain life everything dies.5 IMF and Bank-supported adjustment policies have been among the major contributors to environmental destruction in the Third World. By pushing countries to increase their foreign exchange to service their foreign debt, structural adjustment programs have forced them to super exploit their exportable resources. In Ghana, regarded as a "star pupil" by the Fund and the Bank, the government has moved to intensify commercial forestry, with World Bank support.6 Timber production more than doubled between 1984 and 1987, accelerating the destruction of the country's already much-reduced forest cover, which is now 25 percent of its original size. The country is expected to soon make the transition from being an net exporter to being a net importer of wood. Indeed, economist Fantu Cheru predicts that Ghana could well be stripped of trees by the year 2000. Impoverishment, claims the World Bank, is one of the prime causes of environmental degradation because "land hungry farmers resort to cultivating erosion-prone hillsides and moving into tropical forest areas where crop yields on cleared fields usually drop after just a few years." What the World Bank fails to acknowledge is that its structural adjustment programs have been among the prime causes of impoverishment, and thus a central cause of ecological degradation. In the Philippines, for instance, a World Resources Institute study claims that the sharp economic contraction triggered by Bank-imposed adjustment in the 1980s forced poor rural people to move into and super exploit open access forests, watersheds, and artisanal fisheries. 8 INTERNATIONAL FINIANCIAL INSTITUTIONS ENGAGE IN ECONOMIC IMPERIALISM International financial institutions have long been promoted by western countries as a way to increase economic growth and development. Institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Bank, are very similar to crediting agencies and loan sharks, giving countries loan with enormous interest rates. Besides loans the IMF promotes “structural adjustment policies” for countries with poor economic growth and development. Structural adjustment policies reshape the way a countries economy works, most often changing simple agriculture and barter based economies to economies that are based around the export of products like textiles and food stuffs as well as privatizing almost the whole economy and opening it up to foreign investment. These structural adjustment policies can have horrific consequences in the countries in which they are forced. For example structural adjustment policies in Latin American led to countries, like Bolivia, privatizing their water supply. This led to a huge jump in price, the poorest families in the country, families that made less than $100 a month, had there water bill soar from around $2 a month to $20 a month, which is ten times as much. In what became known as the “Bolivian Water Wars.” Poor Bolivians from rural areas led constant protests and demonstrations over the privatization of their water supply by foreigners. Eventually the company of Bolivia bought back the water distribution rights from the company. 292

TRADE IS NOT BETWEEN EQUAL PARTNERS First, when two parties specialize and then trade to benefit from comparative advantages, gains could be split to benefit the worst-off party more, divided equally, or benefit the better-off party more depending on prices or what is called "the terms of trade." Some prices could even shuffle all the gains to one side. They could cause one side to be worse off then if they hadn’t traded in the first place, as in many instances of colonialism. So in the short-run, who benefits from trade and how much they benefit depends on prices. One of the ills of international trade is that larger economies can impose prices while smaller economies generally suffer the consequences. This doesn’t only mean that the U.S. and Germany can overwhelm Thailand and Guatemala. 9 Of the 100 largest economies in the world, 52 of them aren’t countries, they are corporations. Furthermore, with no restrictions on international investment, firms will force countries to compete against one another. 10 Every country and community is pressured to lower wages, lower taxes on business, and reduce environmental regulations if they are to attract and hold businesses. This is what has been called the race to the bottom. Additionally, in this system communities can be decimated if what they have specialized to produce can no longer be sold profitably on the world market. So, for example, if free trade means that U.S. corn has a lower price than Mexican corn, U.S.-made corn will be imported into Mexico and those who produce corn in Mexico may not only lose their land and livelihood, but be forced to leave their communities in search of employment elsewhere.11 Or suppose two countries trade and prices are such that both enjoy immediate material gains. However, suppose the division of labor allows one country to develop and diversify its economy, but forces the other country to focus overwhelmingly on one product, perhaps even a product that has no future. One country specializes in coffee or sugar and the other specializes in computer software. As a result, the continual downward pressure on prices of sugar or coffee as well as limited linkage to other industries causes inequality to persist and widen.12 Similarly, two countries could trade and one moves in ecologically positive directions, but the other focuses in areas with horrible environmental, labor, or social consequences. Additionally, whether an economic policy benefits only from profits rather than from social quality of life and ecological effects has much to do with domestic agendas in each country.13 If one country has death squads to silence opposition (paid for by the government of the other country), its labor costs can be pushed to rock bottom, children can be enslaved, toxic waste can be dumped.14 THE WTO IS A BANKRUPT ORGANIZATION The World Trade Organization (WTO) is the international organization which is supposed to regulate trade between countries and make sure that the playing field is equal. The WTO however doesn’t function in the utopian way it was “intended” to, instead it plays an active role in subverting the economies of developing countries.15 The WTO prioritizes trade and commercial considerations over all other values. WTO rules generally require domestic laws, rules, and regulations designed to further worker, consumer, environmental, health, safety, human rights, animal protection, or other non-profit centered interests to be undertaken in the "least trade restrictive" fashion possible— almost never is trade subordinated to these noncommercial concerns.16 The WTO undermines democracy by shrinking the choices available to democratically controlled governments, with violations potentially punished with harsh penalties.17 The WTO actively promotes global trade even at the expense of efforts to promote local economic development and policies that move communities, countries, and regions in the direction of greater self-reliance.18 The WTO forces Third World countries to open their markets to rich multinationals and to abandon efforts to protect infant domestic industries. In agriculture, the opening to foreign imports will catalyze a massive social dislocation of many millions of rural people on a scale that only war approximates.19 The WTO blocks countries from acting in response to potential risk—impeding governments from moving to resolve harms to human health or the environment, much less imposing preventive precautions.20 The WTO establishes international health, environmental, and other standards at a low level through a process called "harmonization." Countries or even states and cities can only exceed these low norms by winning special permission, rarely granted. The WTO thereby promotes a race to the bottom and imposes powerful constraints to keep people there.21 WTO tribunals rule on the "legality" of nations’ laws, but carry out their work behind closed doors. The very few therefore impact the life situations of the many, without even a pretense at participation, cooperation, and democracy. 22 The WTO limits governments’ ability to use their purchasing dollars for human rights, environmental, worker rights, and other noncommercial purposes. The WTO requires that governments make purchases based only on quality and cost considerations. Not only must corporations operate with an open eye regarding profits and a blind eye to everything 293

else, so must governments and thus whole populations.23 WTO rules do not allow countries to treat products differently based on how they were produced—irrespective of whether they were made with brutalized child labor, with workers exposed to toxins or with no regard for species protection.24 WTO rules permit and, in some cases, require patents or similar exclusive protections for life forms. In other words, the WTO does whatever it can to promote the interests of huge multinationals—there are no principles at work, only power and greed. 25 THE IMF HAS A NEGATIVE EFFECT ON THE ECONOMIES OF POOR COUNTRIES AS WELL AS THE WORLD The predictable consequences have always been disastrous. Tight monetary policy and skyrocketing interest rates not only stop productive investment, stampeding savings into short-run financial investment instead of long-term productive investment, it keeps many businesses from getting the kind of month-to-month loans needed to continue even ordinary operations. This fosters unemployment and drops in production and therefore income. Fiscal austerity—raising taxes and reducing government spending—further depresses aggregate demand, also leading to reductions in output and increases in unemployment. Likewise, if any of the government spending eliminated was actually improving people’s lives, then reductions in those programs eliminates those benefits. Privatization of public utilities, transport, and banks is always accompanied by layoffs. Whether productivity and efficiency is improved in the long run depends on how badly the public enterprises were run in the first place, and if private operation proves to be an improvement.26 One of the most glaring inefficiencies of "structural adjustment," even on its own terms, has been that in its haste to reduce public sector budgets, the IMF has seldom taken the time to try and distinguish between poorly run and well run public enterprises. In its crusade to privatize, the IMF routinely lumps efficient public enterprises together with "white elephants" that do provide poor service to the public while paying bloated salaries to relatives and political supporters of ruling political parties. 27The IMF never considers the possibility that private replacement might be even worse. Hasty removal of restrictions on international capital flows makes it easier for wealthy citizens and international investors to get their wealth out of the country, i.e., removal of "capital controls" facilitates capital flight, further reducing productive investment, production, income, and employment. 28 Removing capital controls further exposes the local economy to the vicissitudes of global capital mobility, including the disease of "contagion." ECONOMIC GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT INCREASES THE STATE’S POWER Central to the economic achievements of the South was an activist state or public sector. In some countries, the state sector was the engine of the development process. In others, state support was critical to the success of domestic businesses wishing to compete against foreign capital.26 While private ownership of land, resources, and enterprises was the rule in most of the newly independent societies of the South, and economic exchange was largely mediated by the market, government intervention in economic life was pervasive, and the state had a strategic role in economic transformation. Contrary to doctrinaire conservative interpretations, the prominence of the state in post-colonial economic development did not stem from a usurpation of the role of private enterprise; rather it was a response to the weakness of private industrial interests. "[T]he state," observes one analyst, "became a surrogate for private enterprise that could drive modernization without challenging....entrenched interests--indeed would continue to protect them--and without turning the country completely over to foreign interests."27 ECONOMIC GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT DESTROY DEMOCRACY The NAFTA agreement was rammed through Congress over strenuous popular opposition but with overwhelming support from the business world and the media, which were full of joyous promises of benefits for all concerned, also confidently predicted by the U.S. International Trade Commission and leading economists equipped with the most up-to-date models (which had just failed miserably to predict the deleterious consequences of the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement, but were somehow going to work in this case). 28 Completely suppressed was the careful analysis by the Office of Technology Assessment (the research bureau of Congress), which concluded that the planned version of NAFTA would harm most of the population of North America, proposing modifications that could render the agreement beneficial beyond small circles of investment and finance. Still more instructive was the suppression of the official position of the U.S. labor movement, presented in a similar analysis. Meanwhile labor was bitterly condemned for its ``backward, unenlightened'' perspective and ``crude threatening tactics,'' motivated by ``fear of change and fear of foreigners''; I am again sampling only from the far left of the spectrum, in this case, Anthony Lewis.29 The charges were demonstrably false, but they were the only word that reached the public in this 294

inspiring exercise of democracy. Further details are most illuminating, and reviewed in the dissident literature at the time and since, but kept from the public eye, and unlikely to enter approved history. While the experts have downgraded NAFTA to ``no significant effects,'' dispatching the earlier ``experts' view'' to the memory hole, a less than ``distinctly benign economic viewpoint'' comes into focus if the ``national interest'' is widened in scope to include the general population. Testifying before the Senate Banking Committee in February 1997, Federal Reserve Board Chair Alan Greenspan was highly optimistic about ``sustainable economic expansion'' thanks to ``atypical restraint on compensation increases [which] appears to be mainly the consequence of greater worker insecurity'' an obvious desideratum for a just society.32 The February 1997 Economic Report of the President, taking pride in the Administration's achievements, refers more obliquely to ``changes in labor market institutions and practices'' as a factor in the ``significant wage restraint'' that bolsters the health of the economy.33 One reason for these benign changes is spelled out in a study commissioned by the NAFTA Labor Secretariat ``on the effects of the sudden closing of the plant on the principle of freedom of association and the right of workers to organize in the three countries.'' The study was carried out under NAFTA rules in response to a complaint by telecommunications workers on illegal labor practices by Sprint. The complaint was upheld by the U.S. National Labor Relations Board, which ordered trivial penalties after years of delay, the standard procedure. The NAFTA study, by Cornell University Labor economist Kate Bronfenbrenner, has been authorized for release by Canada and Mexico, but not by the Clinton Administration. It reveals a significant impact of NAFTA on strike-breaking. About half of union organizing efforts are disrupted by employer threats to transfer production abroad; for example, by placing signs reading ``Mexico Transfer Job'' in front of a plant where there is an organizing drive. The threats are not idle: when such organizing drives nevertheless succeed, employers close the plant in whole or in part at triple the preNAFTA rate (about 15% of the time).34 Plant-closing threats are almost twice as high in more mobile industries (e.g., manufacturing vs. construction). These and other practices reported in the study are illegal, but that is a technicality, on a par with violations of international law and trade agreements when outcomes are unacceptable. The Reagan Administration had made it clear to the business world that their illegal anti-union activities would not be hampered by the criminal state, and successors have kept to this stand. There has been a substantial effect on destruction of unions - or in more polite words, ``changes in labor market institutions and practices'' that contribute to ``significant wage restraint'' within an economic model offered with great pride to a backward world that has not yet grasped the victorious principles that are to lead the way to freedom and justice. 35 What was reported all along outside the mainstream about the goals of NAFTA is also now quietly conceded: the real goal was to ``lock Mexico in'' to the ``reforms'' that had made it an ``economic miracle,'' in the technical sense of this term: a ``miracle'' for U.S. investors and the Mexican rich, while the population sank into misery. The Clinton Administration ``forgot that the underlying purpose of NAFTA was not to promote trade but to cement Mexico's economic reforms,'' Newsweek correspondent Marc Levinson loftily declares, failing only to add that the contrary was loudly proclaimed to ensure the passage of NAFTA while critics who pointed out this ``underlying purpose'' were efficiently excluded from the free market of ideas by its owners. Perhaps some day the reasons will be conceded too.36 ``Locking Mexico in'' to these reforms, it was hoped, would deflect the danger detected by a Latin America Strategy Development Workshop in Washington in September 1990. It concluded that relations with the brutal Mexican dictatorship were fine, though there was a potential problem: ``a `democracy opening' in Mexico could test the special relationship by bringing into office a government more interested in challenging the US on economic and nationalist grounds''- no longer a serious problem now that Mexico is ``locked into the reforms'' by treaty. The U.S. has the power to disregard treaty obligations at will but Mexico did not.37. The example illustrates how democracy is viewed as a threat and economic growth and development are seen as means of containing that threat. Democracy is permissible, even welcome, but again, as judged by outcome, not process. NAFTA was considered to be an effective device to diminish the threat of democracy. It was implemented at home by effective subversion of the democratic process, and in Mexico by force, again over vain public protest. The results are now presented as a hopeful instrument to bring American-style democracy to benighted Mexicans. A cynical observer aware of the facts might agree. ______________________________ 1 Escobar, Arturo. Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995. pg. 12. 2 Ibid, pg. 24. 295

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Ibid, pg 32. Ibid, pg 47. 5 Bello, Walden and Shea Cunningham. “The World Bank and the IMF”. http://www.zmag.org/zmag/articles/july94bello.htm. 1994. Last accessed May 30th, 2004 6 Ibid, NP. 7 Ibid, NP. 8 Albert, Michael. “A Q&A on the WTO, IMF, World Bank and Activism”. http://www.zmag.org/ZMag/articles/jan2000albert.htm. Last accessed May 30th, 2004. 9 Ibid, NP. 10 Ibid, NP. 11 Ibid, NP. 12 Ibid, NP. 13 Ibid, NP. 14 Ibid, NP. 15 Ibid, NP. 16 Ibid, NP. 17 Ibid, NP. 18 Ibid, NP. 19 Ibid, NP. 20 Ibid, NP. 21 Ibid, NP. 22 Ibid, NP. 23 Ibid, NP. 24 Ibid, NP. 25 Ibid, NP. 26 Chomsky, Noam. 1997. Market Democracy in a Neoliberal Order: Doctrines and Realities”. http://www.zmag.org/zmag/articles/chomksydavie.htm. Last Accessed May 28th, 2004 27 Ibid, NP. 28 Ibid, NP. 29 Ibid, NP. 30 Ibid, NP. 31 Ibid, NP. 32 Ibid, NP. 33 Ibid, NP. 34 Ibid, NP. 35 Ibid, NP. 36 Ibid, NP. 37 Ibid, NP. 4

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ECONOMIC GROWTH/DEVELOPMEDNT IS HARMFUL TO CULTURE 1. GROWTH’S DESTRUCTION OF CULTURE HARMS NATIONS George B.N. Ayittey, Professor of Economics at American University, The Collapse of Development Planning, Peter J. Boettke editor, 1994, pg. 171. African elites and governments were fascinated by shiny machines, industry, and new technology. In their selection of development projects, they displayed an abiding faith in the “religion of development”- a predisposition to castigate anything traditional and to exalt anything foreign as sanctified. Across Africa, industry was overemphasized to the neglect of agriculture. At independence, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Zambia, and many other African countries used to feed themselves. Two decades later, they were importing food. Agriculture was routinely denigrated by African elites as an inferior form of occupation. The late Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana was quite explicit: “Industry rather than agriculture is the means by which rapid improvement in Africa's living standards is possible. There are, however, imperialist specialists and apologists who urge the less developed countries to concentrate on agriculture and leave industrialization to some later time when their populations shall be well fed. The world's economic development, however, shows that it is only with advanced industrialization that it has been possible to raise the nutritional level of the people by raising their levels of income.” (Nkrumah, 1957, 7) Nkrumah was wrong. Five years into his presidency, food shortages had become serious and rampant in Ghana. In 1966, he was booted out of office in a military coup. 2. ECONOMIC GROWTH COMES AT THE COST OF CULTURE Gerald Berthoud, Professor at University of Lausanne in Paris, The Development Dictionary, 1992, pg. 70. In the minds of a growing number of decision-makers, it has become increasingly self-evident that the market should no longer be viewed as an institution which must be regulated by external social forces, but, on the contrary, that it should be used to regulate society as a whole. Market thus becomes the leading principle for individual and collective action. With the present tendency to impose market mechanisms and principles on a global scale, development is held to be possible only for those who are ready to rid themselves entirely of their traditions, and devote themselves to making economic profit, at the expense of the whole gamut of social and moral obligations. Too often a radical choice is imposed between individual freedom and collective solidarity. Such seems, today, the price to pay if one wishes to walk the long path of development. 3. DEVELOPMENT TRICKS PEOPLE INTO THROWING AWAYN CENTURIES OF CULTURE George B.N. Ayittey, Professor of Economics at American University. The Collapse of Development Planning, Peter J. Boettke editor, 1994, pg.168. The resources siphoned off from for "national development." But by African leaders and elites the rural sector were to be used development was misinterpreted to mean "change" rather than an “improvement" upon existing ways of doing things. Traditional ways of doing things were denigrated as "unmodern," "backward and primitive." To develop, they thought, Africans must adopt new ways, values, and systems. This mentality reached a low level of depravity when in 1975, the government of Ghana declared twelve imported items as "essential commodities." These were tinned corned beef, sardines, rice, sugar, tinned milk, and flour. The implication was that the native foodstuffs, upon which their forebears had subsisted for centuries, were not "essential." Therefore, Africans have to foreswear their culture or diet in order to develop-as if the Japanese, Koreans, and Singaporeans did so.

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ECONOMIC GROWTH/DEVELOPMENTCEMENTS PATRIARCHY 1. DEVELOPMENT DISCOURSE ENTRENCHES PATRIARCHY Arturo Escobar, Associate Professor of anthropology at University of Massachusetts, Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World, 1995, pg.43. In a similar vein, patriarchy and ethnocentrism influenced the form development took. Indigenous populations meant the adoption of the “right” values, namely, those held by the white minority or a mestizo majority and, in general, those embodied in the ideal of the cultivated European; programs for industrialization and agricultural development, however, not only have made women invisible in their role as producers but also have tended to perpetuate their subordination (see chapter 5). Forms of power in terms of class, gender, race, and nationality thus found their way into development theory and practice. The former do not determine the latter in a direct causal relation; rather they are the development discourse’s formative elements. 2. DEVELOPMENT KILLS CULTURE FOR WOMYN Arturo Escobar, Associate Professor of anthropology at University of Massachusetts, Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World, 1995, pg.50. Another study of the nature of development at the local level concerns women's notions of development and modernity in the town of Lamu, Kenya. In this community, the models of development are even more diversified; besides the Western sources, they include Islamic movements (revivalist or revisionist), cultural productions brought by migrants returning from affluent Arab states, and Indian music, films, and soap operas transmitted through videocassettes and the mass media. The crux of the matter is women's evolving understanding of what it means to be developed and modern while retaining their identity as Muslim. Female identity is at the center of this process, including questions such as whether to use the veil, schooling for girls, access to modern commodities, greater mobility, and the like. As young women wish to achieve maish mazuri (the good life), they seek to take distance from traditional practices such as veiling, which they nevertheless see not a as sign of inferior status or of control but as impractical or unmodern. (Fuglesang, 1992). 3. DEVELOPMENT CEMENTS EUROCENTRIC NOTIONS OF PATRIARCHY THAT MUST BE CHALLANGED Arturo Escobar, Associate Professor of anthropology at University of Massachusetts, Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World, 1995, pg.7. The West had come to live “as though the world were divided in this way into two: into a realm of mere representations and a realm of the ‘real’; into exhibitions and an external reality; into an order of mere models, descriptions or copies, and an order of the original” (32). This regime of order and truth is a quintessential aspect of modernity and has been deepened by economics and development. It is reflected in an objectivist and empiricist stand that dictates that the Third World and its peoples exist “out there,” to be known through theories and intervened upon from the outside. The consequences of this feature of modernity have been enormous. Chandra Mohanty, for example, refers to the same feature when raising the questions of who produces knowledge about Third World women and from what spaces: she discovered that women in the Third World are represented in most feminist literature on development as having “needs” and “problems” but few choices and no freedom to act. What emerges from such modes of analysis is the image of an average Third World woman, constructed through the use of statistics and certain categories: “This average third world woman leads an essentially truncated life based on her feminine gender (read: sexually constrained) and her being “third world” (read: ignorant, poor, uneducated, tradition-bound, domestic, family-oriented, victimized, etc.). This, I suggest, is in contrast to the (implicit) selfrepresentation of Western women as educated, as modern, as having control over their own bodies and sexualities, and the freedom to make their own decisions.” (1991b, 56) These representations implicitly assume Western standards as the benchmark against which to measure the situation of Third World women. The result, Mohanty believes, is a paternalistic attitude on the part of Western women toward their Third World counterparts and, more generally, the perpetuation of the hegemonic idea of the West’s superiority.

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DEVELOPMENT IS DEPENDENT ON TECHNOLOGY 1. WESTERN TECHNOLOGIES CRUSH CULTURAL SELF-DEFINITION AND TOLERATE NO ALTERNATIVES Otto Ullrich, Engineer and sociologist with Green Party, The Development Dictionary, 1993, pg. 275. Aside from its environmental and physical costs, the social and cultural costs of the introduction of Western technologies also remained largely hidden during the technological enthusiasm of the 1950s and '60s. Even 'clean' technologies force their laws upon society in such a way that cultural self-definition and autonomy cannot be maintained for long. That the import of Western industrial technologies combines a creeping cultural imperialism with the destruction of native culture is related to a little noted characteristic of these technologies. This characteristic is another dimension of their mystification, with its separation of phenomenal form and reality, immediate impact and later effects. The alleged tools of progress are not tools at all, but technical systems that worm their way into every aspect of life and tolerate no alternatives. 2. TECHNOLOGICAL SOLVENCY IS LINKED TO UNVERSALISTIC NOTIONS OF MARKET TRUTHS Gerald Berthoud, Professor at University of Lausanne in Paris, The Development Dictionary, 1992, pg. 71. This normative representation of social regulation is increasingly reinforced by technological innovations in key sectors like information, telecommunications and biogenetics. The clearest result of this process is market dynamism, giving the impression that commoditization has no limits whatsoever. `Can everything be bought and sold?' is a moral question which has been progressively emptied of all meaning. Faith in unlimited expansion follows from the close connection made between technoscience and the market. The former, with its conquest of new social spaces unthinkable not long ago, is seen as irresistible. Under pressure from the ideological success of technology, there is little chance of any effective general acceptance of ethical limits to market expansion. We are all subject to the compelling idea that everything that can be made must be made, and then sold. Our universe appears unshakably structured by the omnipotence of tech truth and the laws of the market. The middle-class ideal of our time is to establish a fully competitive society, composed of individuals for whom freedom of choice is the only way to express independence from their natural and social environment. But one unavoidable question remains: is not our reductive view - of supposedly independent individuals as the universal future for mankind - ultimately selfdeceptive; and are we not thereby misleading the entire world as well as ourselves?

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ECONOMIC GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT ARE EUROCENTRIC 1. THE DISCURSE OF DEVELOPMENT RELIES ON THE DOMINACE OF MODERN WESTERN KNOWLEDGE. Arturo Escobar, Associate Professor of anthropology at University of Massachusetts, Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World, 1995, pg.12. Another deconstruction’s approach (Sachs 1992) analyzes the central constructs or key words of the development discourse, such as market, planning, population, environment, productions, equality, participation, needs, poverty, and the like. After briefly tracing the origins of each concept in European civilization, each chapter examines the uses and transformation of the concept in the development discourse from the 1950s to the present. The intent of the book is to expose the arbitrary character of the concepts, their cultural and historical specificity, and the dangers that their use represents in the context of the Third World. A related, group project is conceived in terms of a “systems of knowledge” approach. Cultures, this group believes, are characterized not only by rules and values but also by ways of knowing, Development has relied exclusively on knowledge system, namely, the modern western one. The dominance of this knowledge system has dictated the marginalization and disqualification of non-Western knowledge systems 2. ECONOMIC GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT ARE WESTERN APPROACHES TO THE NOTION OF PROGRESS Arturo Escobar, Associate Professor of anthropology at University of Massachusetts, Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World, 1995, pg.44. The most important exclusion, however, was and continues to be what development was supposed to be all about: people. Development was- and continues to be for the most part- a top-down, ethnocentric, and technocratic approach, which treated people and cultures as abstract concepts, statistical figures to be moved up and down in the charts of “progress.” Development was conceived not as a cultural process (culture was a residual variable, to disappear with the advance of modernization) but instead as a system of more or less universally applicable technical interventions intended to deliver some “badly needed” goods to a “target” population. It comes as no surprise that development became a force so destructive to Third World cultures, ironically in the name of people’s interest. 3. DEVELOPMENT AND ECONOMIC GROWTH CIRULATE THEMSELVES INTO OTHER CULTURES. Arturo Escobar, Associate Professor of anthropology at University of Massachusetts, Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World, 1995, pg.47. More often than not, Nepalese development workers understand the discord between the attitudes and habits they are supposed to promote and those that exist in the villages; they are aware of the diversity of local situations in opposition to the homogenized village. Yet because what they know about real villages cannot be translated upward into the language of development, they fall back into the construction of “villagers” who “don’t understand things.” Pigg, however, states that social categories of development are not simply imposed they circulate at the village level in complex ways, changing the way villagers orient themselves in local and national society.

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Happiness Good HAPPINESS IS THE GOAL OF ALL ACTS 1. EVERYONE STRIVES TO ACHIEVE HAPPINESS Julia Anas, NQA, THE MORALITY OF HAPPINESS, 1993, p. 332. Happiness comes in, in the first place, as something that we obviously all go for. Once we see the need for a final end, an end we pursue in some way in every action, there is no better specification than happiness that we can come up with for it. (At least this is true of eudimonia in Greek, and of some uses, at least, of happiness in English, though not all.) 2. THE ULTIMATE END OF ALL ACTS IS HAPPINESS Julia Anas, NQA, THE MORALITY OF HAPPINESS, 1993, p. 332. For, while we can be said to want other things for the sake of being happy, we cannot be said to want to be happy for the sake of any further end. Before we start to reflect, happiness is our only end which is complete and selfsufficient. And hence, it is not so surprising that happiness should be our best initial way in to specifying what our final end is. Before starting to do philosophy, we have no other such way in. 3. HAPPINESS IS SELF-SUFFICIENT AND DESIRABLE Aristotle, Philosopher, NICOMACHEAN ETHICS, 1962, p. 15. For the present we define as “self-sufficient” that which taken by itself makes life something desirable and deficient in nothing. It is happiness, in our opinion, which fits this description. Moreover, happiness is of all things the one most desirable, and it is not counted as one good thing among many others. 4. THROUGH HAPPINESS ALL OTHER ACTIVITIES ARE PURSUED Julia Anas, NQA, THE MORALITY OF HAPPINESS, 1993, p. 329. Happiness is die best thing in life, the greatest of our goods. It is different from the other goods we aim at; it is not just another end, but the way we actively pursue those other ends, and so can be referred as the use we make of those ends. Since happiness is our own activity it is something we do, and so is commonsensically, ‘up to us.’ 5. HAPPINESS IS THE END OF ALL OUR ACTIONS Aristotle, Philosopher, NICOMACHEAN ETHICS, 1962, p. 15. But if it [happiness] were counted as one among many others, it is obvious that the addition of even the least of the goods would make it more desirable; for the addition would produce an extra amount of good, and the greater amount of good is always more desirable than the lesser. We see then that happiness is something final and selfsufficient and the end of our actions. 6. HAPPINESS IS THE GOAL OF OUR FINAL END Julia Anas, NQA, THE MORALITY OF HAPPINESS, 1993, p. 445. In ancient ethics, happiness is introduced via a broad notion of a life’s going well, and as a thin specification of our final end. In fact, questions about our final end are sometimes not carefully distinguished from questions about happiness, since it is taken for granted that happiness is just what we all think our final end is. Thus, happiness clearly inherits many of the points that we have seen are generally held to be true of our final end. A HAPPY PERSON CANNOT SIMULTANEOUSLY BE MISERABLE 1. A HAPPY PERSON IS NEVER MISERABLE Aristotle, Philosopher, NICOMACHEAN ETHICS, 1962, p. 26. If, as we said, the activities determine a man’s life, no supremely happy man can ever become miserable, for he will never do what is hateful and base. For in our opinion, the man who is truly good and wise will bear with dignity whatever fortune may bring, and will always act as nobly as circumstances permit, just as a good general makes the most strategic use of the troops at his disposal, and a good shoemaker makes the best shoe he can from the leather available, and so on with experts in all other fields. If this is true, a happy may will never become miserable; but even 301

so, supreme happiness will not be his if a fate such as Priam’s befalls him.

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HAPPINESS CANNOT EXIST WITHOUT PLEASURE 1. HAPPY ACTIONS ARE PLEASURABLE Aristotle, Philosopher, NICOMACHEAN ETHICS, 1962, p. 21. Actions which conform to virtue are naturally pleasant, and, as a result, such actions are not only pleasant for those who love the noble but also pleasant in themselves. The life of such men has no further need of pleasure as an added attraction, but it contains pleasure within itself. We may even go so far as to state that the man who does not enjoy performing noble actions is not a good man at all. Nobody would call a man just who does not enjoy generous actions, and so on. If this is true, actions performed in conformity with virtue are in themselves pleasant. 2. ONE MUST BE PLEASED TO BE HAPPY Elizabeth Telfer, NQA, HAPPINESS, 1980, p. 36. What we really have here is the difference between a partial and a total scope for happiness: the former comprising an attitude only to one’s external situation, the latter comprising not this but also an attitude to oneself, one’s character and feelings. The man who was described as happy but not pleased to be happy would be better described as someone who is not entirely happy; he is happy about his circumstances, but precisely because of that he is unhappy about himself, and so unhappy overall, since being happy requires freedom from major distresses. 3. A HAPPY PERSON IS A PLEASED PERSON Elizabeth Telfer, NQA, HAPPINESS, 1980, p. 36. I would suggest, then, that everyone who is happy must logically be pleased to be happy, because it is impossible to say of anyone that he is not pleased to be happy without thereby entailing that from a more comprehensive point of view he is not happy. It is only in this sense that everyone wants to be happy. HAPPINESS IS DEPENDENT ON ACTION 1. ACHIEVING HAPPINESS DEPENDS ON ACTION NOT CHANCE Aristotle, Philosopher, NICOMACHEAN ETHICS, 1962, p. 22. Moreover, if happiness depends on excellence, it will be shared by many people; for study and effort will make it accessible to anyone whose capacity for virtue is unimpaired. And if it is better that happiness is acquired in this way rather than by chance it is reasonable to assume that this is the way in which it is acquired. For, in the realm of nature, things are naturally arranged in the best way possible—and the same is also true of the products of art and of any kind of causation, especially the highest. To leave the greatest and noblest of things to chance would hardly be right. 2. HAPPINESS DEPENDS ON ACTION BY THE AGENT Julia Anas, NQA, THE MORALITY OF HAPPINESS, 1993, p.445. Happiness, says Arms, is the best thing in one’s life, or the greatest of one’s goods, or the most important. Happiness is one of our aims, but in being the final, overarching aim it is thought of as different in kind from our other aims. It can be sometimes thought of as the collection made up of our other ends but is more commonly thought of as the agent’s activity in the pursuit of these ends, as by Aristotle, or as her activity, or making use of other goods, as by later Peripatetics. Happiness is thus thought of as being commonsensically, up to the agent. 3. ACTING RIGHTLY PRODUCES THE HIGHEST VIRTUE OF HAPPINESS Aristotle, Philosopher, NICOMACHEAN ETHICS, 1962, p. 20. Now, in our definition we are in agreement with those who describe happiness as virtue or as some particular virtue, for our term “activity in conformity with virtue” implies virtue. But it does doubtless make a considerable difference whether we think of the highest good as consisting in the possession or in the practice of virtue, viz., as being a characteristic as an activity. For a characteristic may exist without producing any good result, or example, in a man who is asleep or incapacitated in some other respect. An activity, on the other hand, must produce a result: (an active person) will necessarily act and act well. Just as the crown at the Olympic Games is not awarded to the most beautiful and the strongest but to the participants in the contest—for it is among them that the victors are found— 303

so the good and noble things in life are won by those who act rightly.

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HAPPINESS IS AN END STATE VALUE 1. HAPPINESS IS DESIRABLE IN ITSELF Aristotle, Philosopher, NICOMACHEAN ETHICS, 1962, p. 45. Obviously, happiness must be classed as an activity desirable in itself and not for the sake of something else. For happiness lacks nothing and is self-sufficient. Activities desirable in themselves are those from which we seek to derive nothing beyond the actual exercise of the activity. Actions in conformity with virtue evidently constitute such activities; for to perform noble and good deeds is something desirable for its own sake. 2. HAPPINESS IS A DEFINITION OF OUR STATE AT THE END OF LIFE Julia Anas, NQA, THE MORALITY OF HAPPINESS, 1993, p..45. Further, Aristotle reports it as a common thought about happiness that is self-sufficiency of life and it is assumed to be stable and hard to change. This is no surprise, since happiness is how we specify our final end, which is what includes the ends we have in our life as a whole. 3. HAPPINESS IS AN END IN ITSELF Aristotle, Philosopher, NICOMACHEAN ETHICS, 1962, p. 14-15. Thus, if there is only one final end, this will be the good we are seeking; if there are several, it will be the most final and perfect of them. We call that which is pursued as an end in itself more final than an end which is pursued for the sake of something else; and what is never chosen as a means to something else we call more final than that which is chosen both as an end in itself and as a means to something else. What is always chosen as an end in itself and never as a means to something else is called final in an unqualified sense. This description seems to apply to happiness above else: for we always choose happiness as an end in itself and never for the sake of something else. 4. HAPPINESS JUSTIFIES ALL ACTION Richard Warner, NQA, FREEDOM, ENJOYMENT, AND HAPPINESS AN ESSAY ON MORAL PSYCHOLOGY, 1987, p. 176. Aristotle of course thinks that “there is some one end for all that we do:” Happiness is “that for the sake of which everything else is done.” Now, “that for the sake of which everything else is done” is what serves as the justification for doing “everything else.” So happiness is the ultimate source of all justification. 5. HAPPINESS IS SOUGHT AS A MEANS TO ITSELF Aristotle, Philosopher, NICOMACHEAN ETHICS, 1962, p. 15. Honor, pleasure, intelligence, and all virtue we choose partly for themselves—for we would choose each of them even if no further advantage would accrue from them—but we also choose them partly for the sake of happiness, because we assume that it is through them that we will be happy. On the other hand, no one chooses happiness for the sake of honor, pleasure, and the like, nor as a means to anything at all. 6. HAPPINESS IS SOUGHT FOR ITSELF Aristotle, Philosopher, NICOMACHEAN ETHICS, 1962, p. 287. Consequently, happiness does not consist in amusement. In fact, it would be strange if our end were amusement, and if we were to labor and suffer hardships all our life long merely to amuse ourselves. For, one might say, we choose everything for the sake of something else—except happiness; for happiness is an end ONE CANNOT BE HAPPY IN SOLITUDE 1. HAPPINESS IS NOT A SOLITARY VENTURE Julia Anas, NQA, THE MORALITY OF HAPPINESS, 1993, p. 428. Obviously, happiness, at the intuitive level, is not [sic] up to me; it involves success in ways which depend heavily on other people, and the world generally. And the demand, ahead of any actual theorizing, that happiness must turn out to be something which is not in this way dependent, is just wishful thinking. If this demand were in fact to be a formal demand prior to giving happiness content, it would be arbitrary in the extreme.

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THERE MUST BE VIRTUE IN HAPPINESS 1. HAPPINESS MUST CONFORM TO VIRTUE Julia Anas, NQA, THE MORALITY OF HAPPINESS, 1993, p. 331. The point has already been made that when we ask about the relation of virtue to happiness we are not trying to make two equally determinate notions fit together. Rather, happiness is the vague notion that has to bend to that of virtue, not the other way round. We now have a fuller understanding of this point, having seen the depth and extent of the commitment to morality and the interests of others involved in the ancient ethical perspective. 2. HAPPINESS CONFORMS WITH THE HIGHEST VIRTUE Aristotle, Philosopher, NICOMACHEAN ETHICS, 1962, p. 288. Now, if happiness is activity in conformity with virtue, it is to be expected that it should conform with the highest virtue, and that is the virtue of the best part of us. Whether this is intelligence or something else which, it is thought, by its very nature rules and guides us and which gives us our notion of what is noble and divine; whether it is itself divine or the most divine thing in us; it is the activity of this part (when operating) in conforming with the excellence or virtue proper to it that will be complete happiness. 3. HAPPINESS IS NOT ATTAINABLE WITHOUT VIRTUE Martin Ostwald, NQA, NICOMACHEAN ETHICS, 1962, p. xxii. The somewhat strait-laced and prudish connotations which “virtue” so often has in English are totally absent from the Greek. The work denotes afiinctional [sic] excellence or virtue not only in Aristotle’s usage but throughout ancient Greek literature, and it implies in Plato and Aristotle that there is a set of qualities which will make man fulfill his function as a man properly and well in much the same way as a different set of qualities makes a good horse fulfill its own proper function. There is thus nothing mysterious or divine about the conception of areté [sic]: when “virtue” is predicated of a person, it simply means that he is fulfilling his proper task well, and if happiness is accepted as the proper goal of human life, it is clear that without “virtue” this or any other proper goal cannot be attained. 4. A HAPPY PERSON ACHIEVES COMPLETE VIRTUE Aristotle, Philosopher, NICOMACHEAN ETHICS, 1962, p. 26. Is there anything to prevent us, then, from defining the happy man as one whose activities are an expression of complete virtue, and who is sufficiently equipped with external goods, not simply at a given moment but to the end of his life? Or should we add that he must die as well as live in the manner which we have defined? For we cannot foresee the future, and happiness, we maintain, is an end which is absolutely final and complete in every respect. If this be granted, we shall define as “supremely happy” those living men who fulfill and continue to fulfill these requirements, but blissful only as human beings.

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MORALITY IS ESSENTIAL IN HAPPINESS 1. THE PERMANENCE OF HAPPINESS IS SEEN IN A MORAL LIFE A ristotle, Philosopher, NICOMACHEAN ETHICS, 1962, p. 25. The happy man will have the attribute of permanence which we are discussing, and he will remain happy throughout his life. For he will always or to the highest degree both do and contemplate what is in conformity with virtue; he will bear the vicissitudes of fortune most nobly and with perfect decorum under all circumstances, inasmuch as he is truly good and “four-square beyond reproach.” 2. HAPPINESS MUST INVOLVE MORALITY Julia Anas, NQA, THE MORALITY OF HAPPINESS, 1993, p. 365. The notion of happiness current and acceptable in everyday life thus clearly shows two things. One is what I call the intuitive requirement [sic]: happiness must involve our enjoying the good things in life. It must be a pleasant life, in which we have access to what in our society counts as affluence. The other is what I shall call the theoretical pull [sic]: happiness must involve not just a satisfying state now, but self-sufficiency over one’s whole life, and it must involve morality, which we praise and value for its own sake, and not because of its contribution to further ends. 3. PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS CANNOT BE JUSTIFIED AT THE EXPENSE OF OTHER PEOPLE Elizabeth Telfer, NQA, HAPPINESS, 1980, p. 135-6. it is prudentially and morally appropriate for him to seek happiness, especially through eud~rmonia, where only he is concerned; but happiness cannot be regarded as the [sic] morally appropriate end, if this means that a man should seek his own happiness without regard to that of others. 4. THE VIRTUE OF A HAPPY LIFE IS MORAL Aristotle, Philosopher, NICOMACHEAN ETHICS, 1962, p. 288. The happy life is regarded as a life in conformity with virtue. It is a life which involves effort and is not spent in amusement. Moreover, we say that what is morally good is better than what is ridiculous and brings amusement, and the better the organ or man—whichever may be involved in a particular case—the greater the moral value of the activity. But the activity of the better organ or the better man is in itself superior and more conducive to happiness.

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Holism Good HOLISM IS A JUSTIFIED VALUE 1. HOLISTIC PARADIGM IS MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE FROM REDUCTIONIST SCIENCE Edward Goldsmith, Founder of THE ECOLOGIST magazine, THE WAY: AN ECOLOGICAL WORLDVIEW, 1993, p. 16. The view of the ecological community became so well-established that for David Simberloff it is a superorganism, 'ecology's first paradigm.' F.S. Bodenheimer wrote in 1953 that the concept of the community as an organism is stressed in nearly every textbook of ecology and, 'backed by established authority, is generally regarded if not as a fact, then at least as a scientific hypothesis not less firmly grounded than the theory of transformation' (or evolution). It is this concept above all, he wrote, 'that distinguishes ecology from biology proper.' The holism of the early ecologists is irreconcilable with the paradigm of science in terms of which the world is seen as random, atomized and mechanistic. Unfortunately, it is the latter view of the world that is alone capable of generating the science-based manufactured goods required to satisfy commercial ends (pesticides, antibiotics and genetically engineered microorganisms, for instance). The holistic approach, on the other hand, does not yield the sort of practical information required for this purpose. 2. REDUCTIONIST SCIENCE STOPS TRUE HOLISTIC UNDERSTANDING OF ECOLOGY Edward Goldsmith, Founder of THE ECOLOGIST magazine, THE WAY: AN ECOLOGICAL WORLDVIEW, 1993, p. 20. Reductionist science clearly cannot help us understand the problem caused by the disintegration of a larger system, such as an ecosystem or Gaia herself, whose principle features it continues to deny, and whose very existence, except in a metaphorical sense, it continues to question. Passmore feels that it is precisely because of this insistence on understanding the world in terms of physics the scientists have been so unsuccessful in understanding the real problems that face us today: "If we are still ignorant about most of the phenomena we encounter in our daily life-whether it be human nutrition or the life history of animals--this ignorance can in part be set down to the aristoscientific emphasis on a very different kind of knowledge." 3. EVEN ADVOCATES OF REDUCTIONISM ADMIT HOLISM IS NECESSARY TO SURVIVE Edward Goldsmith, Founder of THE ECOLOGIST magazine, THE WAY: AN ECOLOGICAL WORLDVIEW, 1993, p. 21. Eugene Odum, though he admits the successes of the reductionist approach, considers that "cell-level science will contribute very little to the well-being or survival of human civilization if we understand the higher levels of organization so inadequately that we can find no solutions to population overgrowth, social disorder, pollution, and other forms of societal and environmental cancer." It is probably by trying to understand the simple in terms of the complex, rather than the complex in terms of the simple, that one can best understand the true nature of our relationship with the world of living things. 4. RECOGNITION OF HOLISM IS PREREQUISITE FOR STOPPING RACISM & ECOCOLLAPSE Hiroshi Motoyama, President of California Graduate Institute for Human Science, and Director of Institute for Religious Psychology, VOICES ON THE THRESHOLD OF TOMORROW, 1993, p. 169. Instead of confronting nature, humans are essentially homogeneous and have a reciprocal influence with nature in all of the aforementioned dimensions. Humanity and nature have the same quality of the absolute and can ultimately return to the absolute through self-negation. Human beings can live in harmony and be unified with nature without discrimination. I think that the realization of humans as holistic beings who can live in harmony and without discrimination against other people, nature and the absolute, is a prerequisite for actualizing the global society for all the beings.

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HOLISM IS NECESSARY FOR PLANETARY SURVIVAL 1. RECOGNIZING HOLISM FIRST STEP TO SOLVING ROOT ENVIRONMENTAL HARMS Miriam Therese Macgillis, Cofounder of the Genesis Farm Intentional Community, CIRCLES OF STRENGTH, 1993, p. 16-7. Our bodies have incredible powers of regeneration. So does the earth. But when the immune system, the recuperative power of the former, breaks down to the degree and magnitude it has, then we must suspect that the immune system of the Earth is in serious difficulty. The Earth is sick. Our air, forests, food, water, birds and whales are sick. We each need to help heal the bioregions. The first step is to heal our own perceptions that fail to see the connections between ourselves and the Earth. It is time for the healers among us to go beyond treating only the symptoms of our diseases, and to focus their insights, energies and compassion on the root causes of these symptoms. 2. WE CAN'T SOLVE ANY PROBLEMS WITHOUT RECOGNITION OF THEIR CONNECTEDNESS Laird Sandhill, Organizer and group facilitator at the Federation of Egalitarian Communities, CIRCLES OF STRENGTH, 1993, p. 30. I wonder if it's possible today to be fully engaged in environmental issues--sustainable living, responsible resource use, and not find yourself drawn into issues around oppression and peace. All these issues overlap; they share a common dynamic. There are all kinds of peculiar entries to these issues, depending on where your fire is--racism, feminism, disabled people, whatever you've spent the most time thinking about and working on. But it's very hard to say you can fully engage in one without being drawn into the others. 3. MASS CHANGE OF MIND TO HOLISM WOULD UNIFY HUMANITY Barbara Marx Hubbard, author and President of the Center for Conscious Evolution, VOICES ON THE THRESHOLD OF TOMORROW, 1993, p. 9. The very same force that drew atom to atom, molecule to molecule, cell to cell, is drawing us together into a living organism. Our environments, our defense systems, our communication systems, our economics, our cultures are now irrevocably connected. The "noosphere," the thinking layer of Earth, as Teilhard de Chardin called it, is about to get "its collective eyes." This might mean a mass "metanoia," a mass change of mind, a shared mystical experience for the human race, when we would, in the twinkling of an eye, recognize ourselves as members of one body. 4. ONLY POSSIBLE RESULT OF REDUCTIONISM IS DESTRUCTION OF THE PLANET Edward Goldsmith, Founder of THE ECOLOGIST magazine, THE WAY: AN ECOLOGICAL WORLDVIEW, 1993, p. 10. When the Newtonian paradigm was in fashion, he admits, there were indeed laws. However, it was specifically by rejecting the notion that nature is governed by laws that it became possible to free society from the "Newtonian myth." The French philosopher and social theorist Edgar Morin seems to have accepted the Prigogine mythology in its entirety. It is only "in popular epistemology," he tells us, that one finds reference to the laws of nature. In other words, only the stupid and uneducated still believe that nature is governed by laws. Modern science has abolished them all and has thereby liberated man so that he is free to create his own laws and determine the course of his own evolution, and hence of his own destiny. This is exactly the message required to rationalize our modern individualistic and competitive society--the global free for all that is leading to the rapid destruction of our planet in order to satisfy short-term economic and political interests.

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Holism Bad HOLISM IS INEFFECTIVE 1. INCREMENTAL DECISION MAKING WORKS BETTER THAN HOLISM Jay N. Michaelson, Attorney with Joseph Levy and Co., Yale Law School JD, STANFORD ENVIRONMENTAL LAW JOURNAL, January 1998, p. 135. Surely, a holist would reason, it makes sense to have a unified approach to what is, in fact, an intricately complex but ultimately unified web of interrelationships. It may make sense ecologically, but not necessarily politically. For a policymaker, "changing everything" requires a big base of support, and differently situated people tend to have different, divergent interests. Addressing one problem at a time, while not as neat, ecologically sound or efficient as a signle integrated solution, does narrow the realm of affected behavior considerably, thus increasing the possibility for agreement. If one hundred people are together destroying the room they live in, for instance, it will be difficult to have them all change their behavior in a "holistic manner," because each will be subject to one or more aspects of the change. But if we can get them each to help clean the floor, perhaps all but a small minority will agree. Then we can think about getting the cigarette smoker on board. Each incremental decision--though in the aggregate less efficient than a "holistic" approach--is easier to arrive at when there is less room for disagreement. 2. STEP-BY-STEP APPROACH CAN WORK BETTER THAN HOLISM Jay N. Michaelson, Attorney with Joseph Levy and Co., Yale Law School JD, STANFORD ENVIRONMENTAL LAW JOURNAL, January 1998, p. 135. To take a more familiar example, it would surely be optimal to empower oppressed indigenous people at the same time as we save a tropical rainforest by granting local populations more control over forest resources. But if a simple purchase of land will save more rainforest, and a separate human-rights campaign can help the indigenous people, and if each has a better chance for success than the integrated empowerment solution, then perhaps it is wiser to divide and conquer. Better to divide opponents whose interests differ and reach incremental consensus than to fight them all at once and lose. A policy of land rights for indigenous people may offend agricultural interests, governing power elites, present title holders, and a host of other constituencies. A land purchase, on the other hand, offends fewer people, may please some (power elites for instance) and is more likely to succeed. Meanwhile, a separate human rights campaign is unlikely to interest agricultural users or (some) transnational corporations, and it also is more likely to succeed. Killing one bird at a time may be the "right" way to go , because it minimizes opposition and makes coalition building easier. 3. HOLISM IS FLAWED BECAUSE IT MULTIPLIES UNCERTAINTY Jay N. Michaelson, Attorney with Joseph Levy and Co., Yale Law School JD, STANFORD ENVIRONMENTAL LAW JOURNAL, January 1998, p. 136. Finally, holism is flawed because it tries to take the "big picture" into account without necessarily knowing how to frame the picture. Holism multiplies uncertainty. It requires large-scale guessing regarding both present conditions, causes for present conditions, and likely future conditions, with each guess clouded in uncertainties and information costs. Acting holistically makes sense if we know exactly where we are, why we are here, and where we are headed, but in an uncertainty-riddled context, such as global climate change, wholesale, holistic alterations radically amplify the risks of making mistakes. 4. HOLISM STOPS CONSENSUS-BUILDING Jay N. Michaelson, Attorney with Joseph Levy and Co., Yale Law School JD, STANFORD ENVIRONMENTAL LAW JOURNAL, January 1998, p. 136. Of course, holism remains important; only a fool would not look at causes, contexts, and consequences for points of leverage in battling climate change. In some cases, however, holistic policy prescriptions actually lessen the opportunity for consensus-building an may magnify the uncertainties and information costs associated with environmental policy.

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THE ALTERNATIVE TO HOLISM, REDUCTIONISM, IS NOT BAD 1. PROBLEMS BLAMED ON REDUCTIONISM ARE ACTUALLY THE FAULT OF DETERMINISM Ruth Macklin, Associate Professor of Behavioral Studies at the Hastings Center Institute of Society, Ethics and Life Sciences, THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF BIOETHICS, 1978, p. 1424-5. The general difficulty often thought to exist with any reductionist account of persons, regardless of its specific details, is this: If human thought, feeling and action can be analyzed or explicated wholly in terms of biochemical, electrophysiological or other physical states or processes, then there is no place for value concepts such as human dignity, rationality, responsibility, and a host of other notions central to our view of persons as capable of moral behavior. If humans are nothing but "machines," even of a very complex sort, how can we meaningfully consider ourselves responsible for our actions in a way that makes praise and blame, reward and punishment appropriate? Such questions can be answered by showing that the difficulties laid at the door of reductionism are properly to be located either within materialism (physicalism) or determinism. 2. REDUCTIONISM IS THE BASIS FOR IMPORTANT ELEMENTS OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE Alan Garfinkel, Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine and Department of Physiological Science, UCLA, FORMS OF EXPLANATION, 1981, p. 15. Some of the most basic claims of science are to be found in examples of reduction. Is all human behavior reducible to the working out of unconscious sexuality? This is a simple example of a reduction. So is the claim to explain all human behavior in terms of stimulus conditioning. Many social theorists (I think wrongly) cite Marx as the source for their view that all social phenomena is reducible to economics. Regardless of who held it, it is an important reduction to understand. Other reductions, also influential, have been based on biology and seek to explain social phenomena as the working out of various biological imperatives. 3. REDUCTIONISM RESULTS IN PROFOUND UNDERSTANDING Alan Garfinkel, Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine and Department of Physiological Science, UCLA, FORMS OF EXPLANATION, 1981, p. 15. The pull of reductionist views is very strong. They give us a kind of understanding that we regard as profound. When Newton demonstrated that terrestrial phenomena, like falling bodies, and celestial phenomena, like planetary motions, could be brought under a single set of laws, the effect on the general world view was profound. For before Newton, no two things could be more different than leaden weights falling from earthly towers and the patterns of the heavens. Newton changed this. The same sort of conceptual power, the ability to change the way we see a large class of phenomena, make reductions very attractive, be they physical, biological, economic, sexual, or any other kind. 4. HOLISM IS NOT ALWAYS EFFECTIVE: REDUCTIONISM CAN WORK BETTER Jay N. Michaelson, Attorney with Joseph Levy and Co., Yale Law School JD, STANFORD ENVIRONMENTAL LAW JOURNAL, January 1998, p. 135-6. Clearly, this is an oversimplified example, but the point should be clear: holism is not always effective. Treating the Earth system's problem of climate change, while separately addressing deforestation, fossil fuel consumption, habitat loss, population growth, and so on, may well be the best overall strategy. Different coalitions may be assembled to reach a consensus on each individual issue where no one coalition could be assembled to tackle it all together.

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Human Rights Responses It is likely that when most people use the phrase “human rights” they are referring more to a vague and nebulous concept than they are to a list of rights which should not be violated. However, the history of human rights as a concept provides a bit more detail on what the phrase alludes to and has come to mean in the world today. One author concedes, “The concept of human rights did evolve within the Western European and North American traditions of natural rights and liberal individualism. Many historians regard the writings of several seventeenthcentury English philosopher John Locke as a significant early expression of the idea of natural rights.” 1 The notion is that if a right is natural, there is no justification for taking it away. Locke argued that, “nature had endowed human beings with inalienable rights that could not be usurped by any governing authority. Locke also proposed that sovereignty resided with the people rather than with the state, and that governments were obligated to protect the rights of individuals.”2 Documents like the United States’ Bill of Rights and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen further added to the concept of human rights. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights formed by the United Nations lists the rights to, “freedom from involuntary servitude, persecution, arbitrary arrest, and torture; to freedom of thought, opinion, and expression; and to education, work, social security, rest, and a healthy standard of living.”3 Though this list is not exhaustive, it does provide good examples of what we are referring to when we discuss specific human rights, This essay will argue that the concept of global human rights is a negative and constructed reality that should be rejected. This argument does not necessitate that you argue that individual human rights should not be allowed or encouraged; rather, that defining such rights as global and inalienable is problematic. THE CHANGING DEFINITION OF HUMAN RIGHTS ALLOWS FOR ABUSE As we have noted already, the definition of human rights (as used in a global context) is changing and varied. The question of what human rights actually are raises difficult philosophical questions. Author Paul Gordon Lauren claims that at present, diplomats have only been on the margins of a serious and philosophical conversation about what human rights are and what the phrase actually means.4 This means that the definition of human rights can constantly change. Lauren notes, “They never before had been required to provide any precise definition of clear articulation of the meaning of ‘human rights’ or ‘fundamental freedoms,’ to wrestle with moral diversity on a global scale, not to create any thoughtful assessment of what the extension of rights might mean for the world as a whole.”5 Without this conversation, the definition of human rights is impossible to nail down. Lauren continues, “Instead, visions of human rights based on some normative theory of natural law, justice, or the intrinsic value of each individual person largely had come from scattered religious leaders, philosophers, individual men and women with a sense of responsibility toward victims of abuse, or NGOs (non-governmental organizations) determined to act on principles very different form that of national sovereignty.” 6 These multiple actors define human rights in various ways, This changing and nebulous definition of human rights is problematic for several reasons. Initially, the changing definition allows for no standard of predictability or progress for countries attempting to align themselves with a global declaration of human rights. A country that wants to become well-respected in the international community has no way of knowing what they must do in order to be upholding human rights. This only entrenches the current power deficits and inequalities in the global community by making less powerful countries play a guessing game rather than explicitly labeling what conditions must exist for human rights to be upheld. Second, this changing definition allows a manipulation for intervention. If there is no standard of human rights that is unchanging and clear, there is also no standard for when human rights are being violated. As a result, intervention must be handled on the basis of whatever definition the intervening country wishes to use. This is open to abuse in two ways. First, a country can claim that human rights are being violated and intervention is needed when it is really not in order to advance their own interests in a particular region. The country might be interested in extending their sphere of influence, gaining economic benefits from the country they intervene in, or in taking a government out of power that is unfriendly to their interests. Second, a country can claim that human rights are not being violated when they actually are in order to avoid the responsibility of intervention. Countries might be unwilling to sacrifice the troops and money necessary to intervene and protect human rights. A changing definition of the term means 312

that another country can never claim definitively that they are experiencing human rights violations that merit intervention. Whether it is an intervention with no real merit or the lack of involvement in a situation that demands it, the changing and unclear definition of human rights allows abuse to continue or begin in countries around the world. THE IMPLEMENTATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS IS COSTLY Author James W. Nickel argues that there are a variety of costs that come along with implementing human rights and accompanying standards into any society. Nickel notes, “Even though specific rights derive from very important moral considerations, they are not immune to being qualified or even deemed unjustifiable on the grounds of costs.”7 The idea is that we should not accept “human rights” as a universal good, but rather we should examine if the implementation of such human rights is justified when we measure the costs and benefits. In particular he outlines three kinds of costs. The first kind of cost is conflict costs. Nickel explains, “When a new right is introduced, conflicts with other norms, including other rights, may arise. Losses to other norms from recognizing, complying with, or implementing a right might be called conflict costs.”8 The conflict cost is whatever the new right requires us to give up. An example given is that a strong right to privacy would mean that exceptions would have to be inserted into the freedom of the press. The most severe form of conflict cost that Nickel identifies is when a right cannot be implemented without imposing severe burdens on some people, such that the imposition violates other important norms like the justice of distribution. For instance, Nickel explains, “We would probably reject the idea that people who need kidney transplants have a right to them if we knew that the only way to obtain the kidneys needed for these transplants would be by a national lottery in which the persons selected were forced to donate one kidney to a national kidney bank.”9 Conflict costs can be direct or indirect. A direct conflict cost comes when there is a contradiction in the explanations of two rights or in the normal exercise of those two rights. An indirect conflict costs is when the conflict is mediated by an extended causal linkage. The second kind of cost is the costs of using weaker means. In order to understand what Nickel means by this, we must first examine what the distinction is between duties not to infringe people’s rights and duties to uphold or protect people’s rights. Duties not to infringe people’s rights are negative because they only involve restraints. Duties to uphold people’s rights are positive in so much as they require an action to provide or protect a right. An example is the right against torture, which means that there are negative duties for both individuals and governments. Governments would also have a positive duty to uphold that right. Nickel says, “The truth is that the costs of not being able to act in a certain way, of not being permitted to take a certain course of action when it is the only or most effective means to a desired goal, are often substantial. We might call these kinds of costs the costs of using weaker means.”10 In the example of torture, governments will bye denied a preferred method of interrogation. Although Nickel does not think this case calls into question the justifications for human rights against torture, it does illustrate the loss of effective means to public goals. Therefore, negative rights are not always low in cost. The third kind of cost is implementation costs. Nickel explains, “Most political rights involve duties to uphold, as well as to not infringe. The costs of meeting duties to uphold might be called implementation costs.” 11 Institutional, executive, and military actions are often needed. Governments can be called upon to provide services, payments, or even opportunities. Governments can become the main suppliers of goods that are made a legal right. There are also two kinds of implementation costs. Direct implementation costs are those that are immediate costs for providing the services that uphold a right. Indirect implementation costs follow an extended causal chain to result in negative consequences.12 In considering all of these costs associated with human rights, it is important to realize that when costs in all of these categories add up; there are many instances where human rights are not effective and not beneficial. HUMAN RIGHTS NEGLECT CULTURAL DIVERSITY 313

Human rights are considered a global phenomenon that apply equally to all individuals, regardless of their race, geographical location, or country of origin. This universality, however, denies cultural diversity. Rein Mullerson notes, “Practically all UN human rights documents, directly or implicitly, proceed from the assumption of the universality of human rights, their indivisibility and equal importance. The Universal Declaration of Human rights of 1949 sets as a goal the securing of ‘universal and effective recognition and observance of all rights and freedoms enshrined in the Declaration.’”13 This idea that human rights are universal denies differences that cultures have about what is and is not sacred for individuals. Bilahari Kausikan argues that internationally defined standards for human rights often means that cultural values are ignored. He argues using the example that many Asians resent the emphasis that Western nations have places on individual rights due to their cultural beliefs. This is reflected in the fact that, “they believe that individualism disrupts community bonds and damages a country’s chances for social and economic prosperity.” 14 Kausikan contends that in every international norm reflects a specific historical configuration of power that leaves some countries to have influence and others to be outcast. The differences go beyond a simple dichotomy of Asian values versus Western values, those there are significant differences there. Kausikan notes, “One must keep in mind that the diversity of cultural traditions, political structures, and levels of development will make it difficult, if not impossible, to define a single distinctive and coherent human rights regime that can encompass the vast region from Japan to Burma, with its Confucian, Buddhist, Islamic, and Hindu traditions....What is clear, however, is that there is general discontent throughout the region with a purely Western interpretation of human rights, and rightly so.”15 There are differences not only between Asian countries, but between the West and Asian countries. “A recent study by David Hitchcock, a former official of the United States Information Agency, showed that there are some significant difference between Asian and Western societies in the realm of values. In the Hitchcock study, Asians placed a greater value on honesty, self-discipline, and order, while Americans were more concerned about personal achievement, helping others, and personal freedom. Thus it should not surprise anyone that Asian and Western societies have different understandings of human rights and emocracy.” 16 These differences should not be used to shield wrongs to humanity. However, they must be acknowledged to prove that human rights do not conjure up the same meaning to individuals from different cultures. Author Robert Weil further noted the cultural differences when he discussed China and the United States. He noted that while the United States often claims China is a violator of human rights, China feels that abuses of rights happens in America as well. This happens when the United States ignores poverty, police brutality, and discrimination against minorities. He notes, “The idea that the freedom to complain about joblessness and no medical coverage is a fundamental human right, but that jobs and health care are not, seemed ridiculous in China.” 17 It becomes difficult to say that human rights are truly international when differing cultures cannot agree on what those human rights are. Since human rights are not international, the attempts to push them on other cultures ignores cultural diversity and does not allow cultures to define themselves and their values. This cultural diversity in human rights can also lead to political problems. This is the argument advanced by Paul Gordon Lauren. He offers the example of the men and women who served on the Commission of Human Rights and attempted to define what human rights were. He says, “Despite all of the philosophical discourse and the many expressions of goodwill for the international community as a whole, they faced politics at every turn. Each of the rights identified by the Committee on the Philosophic Principles of the Rights of Man raised a political problem of some kind somewhere in the world.”18 While the problems of politics might seem insignificant, such problems can make it impossible to uphold or even define human rights for an international community seeking unity. Lauren continues, “If the United Nations attempted to implement any of these rights in practice it would immediately provoke fears of world government and prompt claims by states about he protection of their sovereignty under Article 2 (7) of the Charter against outside intervention in their own domestic affairs.” 19 In that sense, the ignoring of cultural diversity would have led to a resistance to human rights. It is therefore impossible to attempt to enforce a global standard for human rights without trampling on cultural diversity and destroying any attempts at forward progress at helping citizens around the world. HUMAN RIGHTS ARE ANTHROPOCENTRIC Author Antonio Augusto Cancado notes, “Modern international life has been deeply marked and transformed by current endeavors to meet the needs and fulfill the requirements of protection of the human person and the 314

environment.”20 However, the focus that human rights place on humanity might actually cause harm to the environment. This can be seen in several ways. First, the emphasis in human rights is obviously on humanity. Human rights offers a way to attempt to stop the destruction of human beings and the abuses of their rights around the world. The focus is placed on the damage that is being done to individual people and groups of people. The term “rights” is not extended to non-human animals or any other type of life. This justifies not focusing on damage being done to the environment based on the focus on humanity. Second, the environment is only to be protected because humanity has a human right to a clean surrounding. This encourages a mentality of using the environment as just another resource or tool for humanity’s advances. The environment must be cared for because people have a human right to livable surroundings. That places the environment below humanity on a scale of importance. Such a scale justifies the use of the environment to advance humans in other ways. These might include the devastation of rain forests to graze cattle or sell lumber, the pollution of the air for the sake of profit and production, or the destruction of water sources in an attempt to eliminate wastes at company production sites. When the environment is viewed as something to be used for the good of humanity, it can be wasted and destroyed. ENFORCEMENT OF HUMAN RIGHTS IS PROBLEMATIC If human rights are to be valued, they must be upheld. No one would argue that there are no places in the world today where human rights are being violated (though an argument might ensue over where such places are). If human rights are truly global and paramount, then there must be action taken when they are violated by a leader or government in the international community. The problem begins in the reaction to such intervention. There are three possibilities in terms of the reaction to the attempted enforcement of human rights. John Vincent labeled these reactions as contempt, cynicism, and accommodation. “As instances of contemptuous reaction, he cites the Argentine and Brazilian reactions to the Carter administration's decision to cut military aid to these countries because of their human rights records. These governments not only considered that the US policy constitutes interference in their internal affairs, but also responded by rejecting the aid which had already been approrpriated.”21 These types of scenarios cause major problems for the international community. First, they escalate tensions between countries. Increased tensions can lead to sanctions, war, or even moves like denying diplomatic talks. Additionally, when human rights are pushed on to countries, they will not respect the concept or the value of such rights. This will not lead to human rights being implemented, but rather resented and loathed. The backlash may be worse than the human rights violations were initially. If human rights cannot be enforced, they have no point. However, attempting to enforce human rights can lead to even bigger problems. As such, human rights themselves should be rejected. HUMAN RIGHTS RELY ON THE STATE The doctrine of human rights affirms simultaneously the fundamental principles of the human individual and the moral equality of all human individuals. These two principles in combination express a commitment to individualism that is egalitarian in its application and enforcement. However, as Michael Freeman explains, the doctrine of human rights takes place in an international discourse which constantly affirms the collectivist principles that justify states. He explains the two collectivistic principles that are upheld: “The first is that states are the primary agents of international relations. The second is that states represent nations.” 22 The way that rights are assigned is through an individual’s relationship with the state. “Locke and Rousseau both located the problem of political authority in the relation between the individual and the state.”23 The problem with this concept stems from the status of statehood in the modern world. First, individuals should not have to claim their rights from a state. They should be protected regardless of the status of the geographic region they inhabit. Second, there are peoples in the world currently being denied states. The Palestinians are a prime example. If the principle of human rights is true, Palestinians do not have human rights as they have no relationship 315

with a state of their own. Under the philosophy of John Locke, governments protect rights for their citizens. This mindset, however, grants only those who live within a state structure human rights and makes those who live outside of such a structure less deserving of protection and humanity. HUMAN RIGHTS DENY STATE SOVEREIGNTY The definition of human rights as a global standard has increased globalization. Globalization is, “the term used to characterize the processes of growing interconnection and interdependence in the modern world. It is generated by growing international economic, cultural, and political cooperation and links, as well as by the need to respond together to global problems which can be solve only on a planetary scale.” 24 Although globalization does have some benefits to offer, the globalization of human rights denies state sovereignty. A homogenous and global culture is being created worldwide, and this culture includes international definitions and standards for human rights. This globalization can have profound effects on nation-states. “The autonomy and policy-making capability of states is being undermined by economic and cultural internationalization. Everywhere the demands to liberalize, to limit states’ control over the economy and to privatize, bring a shrinking of the states’ involvement in national life....States’ sovereignty is gradually being limited...as a consequence of the existence of supranational political and economic orgnaizations.”25 This lack of sovereignty that is resulting from human rights has several negative impacts. First, it denies governments the ability to make the best decisions for the group that lives within their borders. That government best knows the population and its will, and should get to act accordingly as opposed to bowing to international standards. Second, and perhaps ironically, the process of globalization can actually harm “human rights” as companies expand into labor markets with fewer restrictions. Third, countries should be allowed to answer to the people who put them in power and no one else. Denying this relationship between the government and population will make it meaningless, and will distance a government from the population, allowing them to advance their own interests instead of those of the population. HUMAN RIGHTS RISK INSTABILITY Human rights are often considered to be a way for a government to gain legitimacy. However, as Rein Mullerson notes, “Sometimes the lack of democratic credentials coupled with a poor human rights record may be compensated for by domestic sources of legitimacy, such as historical and religious traditions, specific ideology, the personal charisma of a leader, functional efficiency of the government, the presence of rich natural resources, or by international recognition and support.”26 A government that does not uphold human rights and even has a poor human rights record may nonetheless be supported by the majority of the population and considered legitimate domestically and internationally. This scenario provides a stable state. Mullerson goes on to explain some examples. He notes, “In Saudi Arabia or Kuwait, or other Arab countries, and to a lesser extent in the former Soviet Central Asian republics of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, certain historical and religious traditions facilitate the denial or limitation of the civil and political rights of the whole population...Governments in such countries usually do not use, and it is not necessary for them to use, massive repression in order to keep the population in obedience, because the population does not actively claim its rights.”27 In instances like the examples listed, the attempt to start enforcing or creating human rights can lead to instability. Mullerson explains, “Attempts at the immediate introduction of human rights into such unprepared soil would cause serious risks to stability.”28 When stability is lessened, individuals do not feel secure and violence can even break out. This is also negative for the international community, since instability can lead to tensions between countries and possibly the creation of hostilities that involve the military. In these instances, it would actually be detrimental to attempt to introduce human rights, as it would change the entire position of the country and their value system. Instead, abandoning human rights as a global construct that extends to everyone is the best decision. SUMMARY Though the concept of human rights is used differently in conversation, the concept of a group of rights that are natural and inalienable is something the entire global community seems to now be discussing. The changing definition of human rights allows for abuse. The implementation of human rights is costly. Additionally, the concept 316

of human rights neglects cultural diversity. Human rights are anthropocentric. They also falsely rely on the state to grant human rights. Human rights deny state sovereignty and risk instability. There is much discussion in the world today about the need to defend and protect human rights. In light of this discussion, it is important to realize the problems with the current constructions and uses of the concept of human rights, so that we can move away from this idea and towards a better way to help individuals without globalizing the standards. ___________________________________________________ 1 Bender, David L. Human Rights: Opposing Viewpoints. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, Inc., 1998, pg. 12. 2 Ibid, pg. 12. 3 Ibid, pg. 13. 4 Lauren, Paul Gordon. The Evolution of International Human Rights: Visions Seen. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998, pg. 219. 5 Ibid, pg. 219. 6 Ibid, pg. 219. 7 Nickel, James W. Making Sense of Human Rights: Philosophical Reflections on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987, pg. 120. 8 Ibid, pg. 120. 9 Ibid, pg. 121. 10 Ibid, pg. 122. 11 Ibid, pg. 122. 12 Ibid, pg. 123. 13 Mullerson, Rein. Human Rights Diplomacy. London: Routledge, 1997, pg. 73. 14 Bender, David L. Human Rights: Opposing Viewpoints. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, Inc., 1998, pg. 21. 15 Ibid, pg. 23. 16 Ibid, pg. 23. 17 Ibid, pg. 25. 18 Lauren, Paul Gordon. The Evolution of International Human Rights: Visions Seen. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998, pg. 225. 19 Ibid, pg. 225. 20 Symonides, Janusz. Human Rights: New Dimensions and Challenges. Aldershot: Unesco Publishing, 1998, pg. 117. 21 Mullerson, Rein. Human Rights Diplomacy. London: Routledge, 1997, pg. 113. 22 Beetham, David. Politics and Human Rights. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1995, pg. 25. 23 Ibid, pg. 25. 24 Symonides, Janusz. Human Rights: New Dimensions and Challenges. Aldershot: Unesco Publishing, 1998, pg. 28. 25 Ibid, pg. 29. 26 Mullerson, Rein. Human Rights Diplomacy. London: Routledge, 1997, pg. 123. 27 Ibid, pg. 123-124. 28 Ibid, pg. 125.

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HUMAN RIGHTS RISK INSTABILITY 1. HUMAN RIGHTS LEAD TO CONFLICT Kennedy, David. Professor of Law at Harvard University. “Boundaries in the field of human rights: The international Human rights movement: Part of the Problem?” Harvard Human Rights Journal 15. Spring 2002. pg. 99. Encouraging conflict and discouraging politics among right-holders. Encouraging each person and group wishing to be free to tally the rights he/she/it holds in preparation for their assertion against the state reduces inter-group and inter-individual sensitivity. In emancipating itself, the right holder is, in effect, queue jumping. Recognizing. Implementing, enforcing rights is distributional work. Encouraging people to imagine themselves as right holders, and rights as absolute, makes negotiation of distributive arrangements among individuals and groups less likely and less tenable. There is no one to triage among rights and right holders—except the state. The absolutist legal vocabulary of rights makes it hard to assess distribution among favored and less favored right holders and forecloses development of a political process for tradeoffs among them, leaving only the vague suspicion that the more privileged got theirs at the expense of the less privileged. 2. HUMAN RIGHTS PROMOTION FORCES HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES UNDERGROUND AND INCREASES CONFLICTS Meron, Theodore. Board of Directors International Committee of the Red Cross, 2000 “The Humanization of Humanitarian Law” The American Journal of International Law, April, 94 A.J.I.L. pg. 239. More immediate and serious is the decline in observance of the rules. The normative progress in humanization brings into sharp relief the contrast between the normative framework and the harsh, often rabid reality of the battlefield. The events in Bosnia, Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Congo, Somalia, Afghanistan, and, not so long ago; Cambodia, Kuwait, and elsewhere represent a horrific series of massacres, rapes, and mutilations: In the confrontations between racial, ethnic, religious, and state interests of various kinds, it is the normative that has been eroding. International and national criminal tribunals have thus far engendered little demonstrable deterrence. Humanization may have triumphed, but mostly rhetorically. A recent report by the U.S. National Intelligence Council states that civilians have become key targets for combatants on all sides; that war now involves displacing people as much as moving borders; and that combatants are employing starvation, slaughter, and various civilian and military technologies to expel or kill civilians, including “demonstration killings and maiming.” The reports forecasts that the growing prominence of human rights in international politicians and law “will incline combatants to attempt to conceal their atrocities and to deny humanitarian access [and] to publicize, or even concoct, atrocities by the other side.” In response to genocidal emergencies, according to the report, the legal norms have been shifting somewhat from the principle of nonintervention in sovereign states toward intervention, but this shift is still inconclusive. 3. HUMAN RIGHTS PROMOTION LEADS TO CONFLICT WITHIN THE HUMAN RIGHTS MOVEMENT Kennedy, David. Professor of Law at Harvard University. “Boundaries in the field of human rights: The international Human rights movement: Part of the Problem?” Harvard Human Rights Journal 15. Spring 2002. pg. 99. Even bad for advocates. To come into experience of oneself as a benevolent and pragmatic actor throughout the professional vocabulary of legal representation has costs for the human rights advocate, compared with other vocabularies of political engagement or social solidarity. Coming into awareness of oneself as the representative of something else—heroic agent for an authentic suffering elsewhere—mutters one’s capacity for solidarity with those cast as victims, violators, bystanders, and stills the habit of understanding oneself to inhabit the world one seeks to affect. This claim is often put in ethical or character logical terms: human rights promotes emancipation by propagating an unbearably normative, earnest, and ultimately arrogant mod of thinking and speaking about what is good for people, abstract people, here and there, now and forever. This is bad for people in the movement—it can demobilize them as political beings.

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HUMAN RIGHTS RELY ON THE STATE 1. HUMAN RIGHTS DEPENDS ON STRENGTHENING THE STATE Kennedy, David. Professor of Law at Harvard University. “Boundaries in the field of human rights: The international Human rights movement: Part of the Problem?” Harvard Human Rights Journal 15. Spring 2002. pg. 99. Strengthening the state. Although then human rights vocabulary expresses relentless suspicion of the state, by structuring emancipation as a relationship between an individual right holder and the state, human rights places the state at the center of the emancipatory promise. However much one may insist on the priority or pre-existence of rights, in the end rights are enforced, granted, recognized, implemented, their violations remedied, by the state. By consolidating human experience into the exercise of legal entitlements, human rights strengthens the national governmental structure and equates the structure of the state with the structure of freedom. To be free is . . . to have an appropriately organized state. We might say that the right-holder imagines and experiences freedom only as a citizen. This encourages autochthonous political tendencies and alienates the “citizen” from both his or her own experience as a person and from the possibility of alternative communal forms. 2. HUMAN RIGHTS PROMOTION LEADS TO INCREASED STATISM Kennedy, David. Professor of Law at Harvard University. “Boundaries in the field of human rights: The international Human rights movement: Part of the Problem?” Harvard Human Rights Journal 15. Spring 2002. pg. 99. Strengthens repressive states and anti-progressive international initiatives. In some places, human rights implementation can make a repressive state more efficient. Human rights institutions and rhetoric can also be used in particular contexts to humanize repressive political initiatives and co-opt to their support sectors of civil society that might otherwise be opposed. Human rights institutions and rhetoric can also be used in particular contexts to humanize repressive political initiatives and co-opt to their support sectors of civil society that might otherwise be opposed. Human rights can and has also been used to strengthen, defend, legitimate a variety of repressive initiative, by both individuals and states. To legitimate war, defend the death penalty the entitlements of majorities, religious repression, access to (or restriction of) abortion, and so forth. The recent embrace of human rights by the international financial institutions may serve both functions—strengthening states that will need to enforce harsh structural adjustment policies while co-opting local and international resistance to harsh economic policies, and lending a shroud of universal/rational inevitability to economic policies that are the product of far narrower political calculations and struggles. As deployed, then human rights movement may do a great deal to take distribution off the national and international development agendas, while excusing and legitimating regressive policies at all levels. These difficulties are particularly hard to overcome because the human rights movement particularly subject to capture by other political actors and ideological projects. We need only think of the way the move to “responsibilities” signaled by the Universal Declaration on Human Responsibilities of 1998 was captured by neoliberal efforts to promotes privatization and weaken the emancipatory potentials of government.

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HUMAN RIGHTS NEGLECT CULTURAL DIVERSITY 1. WESTERN HUMAN RIGHTS LEAD TO THE DESTRUCTION OF OTHER EXPERIANCES AND CULTURES Kennedy, David. Professor of Law at Harvard University. “Boundaries in the field of human rights: The international Human rights movement: Part of the Problem?” Harvard Human Rights Journal 15. Spring 2002. pg. 99. Down side of the West. That the emancipation’s of the modern West have come with costs has long been a theme in critical writing—alienation, loss of faith, environmental degradation, immorality, etc. Seeing human rights as part of the Western liberal package is a way of asserting that at least some of these costs should be attributed to the human rights tradition. This might be asserted in a variety of ways. If you thought secularism was part of what is bad about the modern West, you might assert that human rights shared the secular spirit, that as a sentimental vocabulary of devotion it actively displaces religion, offering itself as a poor substitute. You might claim that the enforcement of human rights, including religious rights, downgrades religion to a matter of private and individual commitment, or otherwise advances the secular project. To the extant that human rights can be implicated in the secular project, we might conclude that it leaves the world spiritually less well off. Other criticisms of the modern liberal West have been extended to human rights in a parallel fashion. In particular, critics have linked the human rights project to liberal Western ideas about the relationships among law, politics, and economics. Western enlightenment ideas that make the human rights movement part of the problem rather then part of the solution include the following: the economy preexists politics, politics pre-exist law, the private pre-exists the public, just as the animal pre-exists the human, faith pre-exists reason, or the feudal pre-exists the modern. In each case, the second term is fragile, artificial, a human creation and achievement. And a domain of choice, while the first term identifies a sturdy and natural base, a domain outside human control. Human rights encourages people to seek emancipation in the vocabularies of reason rather than faith, in public rather than private life, in law rather than politics, in politics rather than economics. In each case, the human rights vocabulary overemphasizes the difference between what it takes as the (natural) base and as the (artificial) domain of emancipation, and underestimates the plasticity of what it treats as the base. Moreover, human rights is too quick to conclude that emancipation means progress forward from the natural passions of politics into the civilized reason of law. The urgent need to develop a more vigorous human politics is sidelined by the effort to throw thin but plausible nets of legal articulation across the glove. Work to develop law comes to be seen as an emancipatory end in itself; leaving the human rights movement too ready to articulate problems in political terms and solutions in legal terms. Precisely the reverse would be more useful. The posture of human rights as an emancipatory political project that extends and operates within a domain above or outside politics—a political project repackaged as a form of knowledge—deligitimates other political voices and makes less visible the local, cultural, and political dimensions of the human rights movement itself. As liberal Western intellectuals, we think of the move to rights as an escape from the unfreedom of social conditions into the freedom of citizenship, but we repeatedly forget that there is also a loss. A loss of experience of belonging, of the habit of willing in conditions of indeterminacy, innovating collectively in the absence of knowledge, unchanneled by an available list of rights. This may represent a loss of either thee presence of experience itself, experience not yet channeled and returned to the individual as the universal experience of a right holder, or of the capacity to deploy other vocabularies that are more imaginative, open and oriented to future possibility.

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HUMAN RIGHTS DON’T WORK 1. HUMAN RIGHTS GET DERAILED WHICH PREVENTS THEM FROM SOLVING ANYTHING Kennedy, David. Professor of Law at Harvard University. “Boundaries in the field of human rights: The international Human rights movement: Part of the Problem?” Harvard Human Rights Journal 15. Spring 2002. pg. 117-119. Emancipator as emancipation. Human rights offers itself as the measure of emancipation. This is its most striking-and misleading—promise. Human rights narrates itself as a universal/eternal/human truth and as a pragmatic response to injustive00there was the holocaust and then there was the genocide convention; women everywhere were subject to discrimination and then there was CEDAW. This posture makes the human rights movement itself seem redemptive—as if doing something for human rights was, in and of itself, doing something against evil. It is not surprising that human rights professionals consequently confuse work on the movement for emancipatory work in society. But there are bad consequences when people of good will mistake work on the discipline for work on the problem. Potential emancipators can be derailed—satisfied that building the human rights movement is its own reward. People inside the movement can mistake reform of their world for reform of the world. What seem like improvements in the field’s ability to respond to things outside itself may only be improvements in the field’s ability to respond to its own internal divisions and contradictions. Yet we routinely underestimate the extent to which the human rights movement develops in response to political conflict and discursive fashion among international elites. Thereby overestimating the field’s pragmatic potential and obscuring the field’s internal dynamics and will to power. 2. HUMAN RIGHTS FAIL BECAUSE THEY ARE CO-OPTED OUTSIDE ITS FRAMEWORK Kennedy, David. Professor of Law at Harvard University. “Boundaries in the field of human rights: The international Human rights movement: Part of the Problem?” Harvard Human Rights Journal 15. Spring 2002. pg. 103-104. In assessing costs and benefits, it is as easy to give human rights too much of the blame for costs as it is too much credit for benefits. It is possible, of course, that the potential costs of human rights—as a vocabulary and as a movement—arise when it is misused, distorted, or co-opted. It is possible that the benefits and burdens of human rights might, in the event, be swamped by the effects of other powers. Human rights may be a drop of liberation in an ocean of oppression, or a fig lead of legitimation over an evil collapsing of its own weight, In thinking pragmatically about human rights, all we can do is desegregate and assess these causes and effects as carefully as possible. At the same time, we should be suspicious if costs are always attributed to people and forces outside the movement, just as we should be suspicious of claims that everything bad that happens was somehow always already inherent in the vocabulary used by unwitting human rights advocates. In thinking pragmatically about human rights, we will usually find ourselves somewhere in between , evaluating whether the vocabulary or institutional form of the movement, in particular contexts, makes particular types of “misuse” more or less likely. Again, I hope this list will provide a checklist of possible costs that we might think of (in particular circumstances or under certain conditions) as either potential misuses or as outcomes that may be made more likely by the human rights machinery. 3. UNIVERSAL MORAL PRINCIPLES LIKE HUMAN RIGHTS ARE IMPOSSIBLE TO APPLY Parekh, Khikhu. Professor at University of Westminster, The Morality of Politics. 1972, pg. 111-112. There are realists, however who affirm not only the existence, but the relevance to political behavior, of a transcendental and universal ethic and of the moral principles, such as justice, ‘good faith’, a recognition of people as ‘persons’ not ‘things’, to be derived from it; and who see these principles as not only consonant with, but as necessary underpinners of, order. The application of these principles is bound to be relative to time and place, for ‘universal moral principles cannot be applied to the actions of states in their abstract universal formulation . . . they must e, as it were, filtered through the concrete circumstances of times and place.’ 1

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Individualism Good INDIVIDUALISM IS NECESSARY TO REALIZE DEMOCRATIC IDEALS 1. FREEDOM WITHOUT INDIVIDUALISM IS UNBEARABLE Erich Fromm, Social Philosopher, ESCAPE FROM FREEDOM, 1941, p. 36-7. There is only one possible, productive solution for the relationship of individualized man with the world: his active solidarity with all men and his spontaneous activity, love and work, which unite him again with the world, not primary ties by as a free and independent individual. However, if the economic, social and political conditions on which the whole process of human individuation depends, do not offer a basis for the realization of individuality in the sense just mentioned, while at the same time people have lost those ties which gave them security, this lag makes freedom an unbearable burden. It then becomes identical with doubt, with a kind of life which lacks meaning and direction. 2. INDIVIDUALISM GUARANTEES EQUALITY Ronald M. Glassman, NQA, DEMOCRACY AND EQUALITY THEORIES AND PROGRAMS FOR THE MODERN WORLD, 1989, p. 199. Liberalism at its best places the individual—every individual—at center stage. Everyone is important; no one’s life is meaningless or worthless—there are no “untouchables” or slaves or serfs or servants who are expendable; there are not aristocrats or lords who, like gods, think they are better than anyone else. This individualism, which we now take for granted in the modern world, came to us from liberalism. 3. DEMOCRACY DEPENDS ON INDIVIDUALISM Erich Fromm, Social Philosopher, ESCAPE FROM FREEDOM, 1941, p. 270-1. The future of democracy depends on the realization of the individualism that has been the ideological aim of modern thought since the renaissance. The cultural and political crisis of our day is not due to the fact that there is too much individualism but that what we believe to be individualism has become: an empty shell. The victory of freedom is possible only if democracy develops into a society in which the individual, his growth and happiness is the aim and purpose of culture, in which life does not need any justification in success of anything else, and in which the individual is not subordinated to or manipulated by power outside himself, be it the State or the economic machine, finally, a society in which his conscience and ideals are not the internalization of external demands, but are rally his and express the aims that result from the peculiarity of his self. INDIVIDUALISM IS DEMONSTRATED IN PRIVATE PROPERTY RIGHTS 1. INDIVIDUALISM CANNOT EXIST WITHOUT RIGHTS TO PROPERTY Tibor R. Machan, NQA, INDIVIDUALS AND THEIR RIGHTS, 1989, p. 146. Few individuals will be morally excellent and consistently responsible, and exacerbation of the problem is unavoidable without establishing a sphere of individual dominion and the corresponding legal machinery to keep track of it for purposes of making self-responsible conduct possible, as well as for resolving disputes among human beings. The right to privacy property is indispensable for a decent human community, one in which the moral life of individuals can flourish. Individuals cannot conduct themselves morally without a determinate sphere of authority. 2. INDIVIDUALISM PROVIDES MORAL BASIS FOR NEED OF PRIVATE PROPERTY Tibor R. Machan, NQA, INDIVIDUALS AND THEIR RIGHTS, 1989, p. 141 ‘Privacy property,’ then, refers to any valuable item or service which may be separated off from the public or sate, for individuals to manage or control The concept of a right to privacy property presupposes a moral standpoint that suggests a justification for the individual’s authority, within a social context, to decide on the disposition of a certain range of valued items that qualify as ‘private.’ It presupposes an account of human life that fixes responsibility for some basic human(s) and accomplishments resting with the individual. 3. INDIVIDUALISM PROVIDES SPHERE OF INFLUENCE NECESSARY FOR MORAL LIFE Tibor R. Machan, NQA, INDIVIDUALS AND THEIR RIGHTS, 1989, p. 162. The function of a good society is to enhance the moral life of its members. This is best achieved if individuals are 322

understood to require, and are in fact secure in, their proper sphere of authority to govern themselves. The best way to achieve this end is to identify and protect individuals’ right to private property.

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INDIVIDUALISM IS A VALUED AMERICAN TRADITION 1. AMERICAN INDIVIDUALISM HAS A LONG STANDING TRADITION Herbert J. Gans, NQA, MIDDLE AMERICAN INDIVIDUALISM, 1988, p.11. America’s popular individualism is as old as America, for the intent to move to a distant continent free from the existence of a state or a state religion and the search for happiness through the pursuit of property were invented in Europe. Indeed, the individualism pursued and achieved by the Americans with whom de Tocqueville talked 150 years ago seems not to have been very different from today’s, or else the ethnographic portions of his good could not continue to ring so true. 2. INDIVIDUALISM IS A WIDELY SHARED AMERICAN IDEOLOGY Herbert 1. Gans, NQA, MIDDLE AMERICAN INDIVIDUALISM, 1988, p. 1. America has often been seen—and has seen itself—as constantly in flux. Still, any anyone who has ever read de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America knows after just a few pages, there are many ways in which the United States has changed only slightly in over 150 years, and one of the stable elements is the continued pursuit of individualism by virtually all sectors of the population. At its most basic, individualism is the pursuit of personal control over the social and natural environment It is also an ideology—a set of beliefs, values, and goals-and probably the most widely shared ideology in the U.S. 3. TRADITION OF AMERICAN INDIVIDUALISM IS SYNONYMOUS WITH EQUALITY Herbert J. Gans, NQA, MIDDLE AMERICAN INDIVIDUALISM, 1988, p. 37. Fairness has many meanings, but in some respects it has turned into a simile for equality. Most of the time, equality means equality of opportunity or treatment, and perhaps the most frequent middle American conception of equality is equal opportunity for people to work hard so as to achieve success, whether in escaping poverty or becoming rich. However, that conception is also resolutely individualistic, since people are prepared to remove unfair obstacles to opportunity that stand in the way of individuals but are less willing to help entire groups or classes held back by unfair obstacles. INDIVIDUALISM ENCOMPASSES VALUES CENTRAL TO CAPITALISM 1. INDIVIDUALISM ENCOMPASSES VALUES CENTRAL TO CAPITALISM Thomas R. Dye, Director of Policy Studies, Florida State University, THE POLITICAL LEGITIMACY OF MARKETS AND GOVERNMENTS, 1990, p. 12. Tocqueville believed individualism undermined public virtue. But Americans embraced the spirit of self-reliance, personal achievement, and maximum individual freedom embodied in the concept. Individualism encompasses many other values central to the market system: ambition, achievement, the pursuit of profit, competition, and hard work. INDIVIDUALISM EXHIBITS QUALITIES OF AUTONOMY 1. INDIVIDUALISM EXHIBITS QUALITIES OF AUTONOMY Herbert J. Gans, NQA, MIDDLE AMERICAN INDIVIDUALISM, 1988, p.3. Popular individualism means the ability to make choices in a variety of settings. It is the right to be neighborly or to ignore the people next door. It is the ability to be distant from incompatible relatives and to be with compatible friends instead; to skip unwanted memberships in church or union; to vote for candidates not supported by parents or spouses or not to vote at all; and to reject unwelcome advice or demands for behavior change from the spouse, employer, or anyone else. INDIVIDUALISM PROVIDES FOR RATIONALITY IN HUMAN PLANNING 1. INDIVIDUALISM PROVIDES FOR RATIONALITY INVOLVED IN HUMAN PLANNING Herbert J. Gans, NQA, MIDDLE AMERICAN INDIVIDUALISM, 1988, p. 163. Individualism is not an apology for the exploitation of some by others, as Marxist have held. It is rather, the soundest conception of social life yet rationally formulated by the minds of human beings. Collectivism distorts the kind of rationality involved in human planning. Bona fide rationality can only be exercise by individuals. 324

INDIVIDUALISM IS THE SUPERIOR ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY 1. THE INDIVIDUAL IS PRIOR TO THE COLLECTIVE Emil Bruner, German Philosopher. JUSTICE AND THE SOCIAL ORDER, 1945, p. 734 Insofar as man is a person in relationship he is bound by the authority of the state, but insofar as he is a person before God, he is bound by no state. The state has never had rights over his soul; man never “belongs” to the state. Man never receives his human dignity through the state, but prior to the state and independently of it. 2. COMMUNITARIANS ADMIT THE INDIVIDUAL IS PRIOR TO THE COLLECTIVE Alisa Came, Philosopher at Georgetown. NOUS, June 1994, p. 195 There is evidence that the communitarian critics recognize some form of independence. Sandel, for example, insists that “as a self-interpreting being, I am able to reflect on my history and in this sense to distance myself from it” (1982, 179); Taylor puts forth a conception of the “strong evaluator,” “essential to our notion of the human subject” for whom what is at stake is the sort of person he wants to be (1985, 28). 3. MILL SUPPORTS THE PRIORITY OF THE INDIVIDUAL John Stuart Mill, Philosopher. ON LIBERTY, 1972, p. 170 The worth of a state, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it. . . a state which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands--even for beneficial purposes--will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished; and that the perfection of machinery to which it has sacrificed everything will in the end avail it nothing, for want of the vital power which, in order that the machine might work more smoothly, it has preferred to banish. (elipse in original) 4. INDIVIDUALISM ACCOUNTS FOR DIFFERING VIEWS AMONG COMMUNITY MEMBERS John Rawls, Philosopher at Harvard. POLITICAL LIBERALISM, 1993, p. 57 Thus, in a modem society with its numerous offices and positions, its various divisions of labor, its many social groups and their ethnic variety, citizens’ total experiences are disparate enough for their judgments to diverge, at least to some degree, on many if not most cases of any significant complexity. INDIVIDUALISM IS NECESSARY FOR PERSONAL FREEDOM AND HAPPINESS 1. EMBRACING OUR INDIVIDUALITY IS THE KEY TO DIGNITY AND THE END OF SUFFERING Alisa Came, Philosopher at Georgetown. NOUS, June 1994, p. 195 Undertaking a distanced stance with respect to one’s fundamental roles and attachments may be eery, distorting, or anxiety-producing, but it is certainly something we can and do. Indeed, we often suffer shame when we hold onto attachments and persist in roles, relationships, and pursuits that we have come to deem degrading, harmful, or otherwise unworthy. We suffer, when we do, because we believe that, as responsible people, we should try to overcome them and that it is often in our power to do so. 2. INDIVIDUALISM IS NECESSARY FOR MORAL FREEDOM John Rawls, Philosopher at Harvard. POLITICAL LIBERALISM, 1993, p. 30 First, citizens are free in that they conceive of themselves and of one another as having the moral power to have a conception of the good. This is not to say that, as part of their political conception, they view themselves as inevitably tied to the pursuit of the particular conception of the good that they affirm at any given time. Rather, as citizens, they are seen as capable of revising and changing this conception on reasonable and rational grounds, and they may do this if they so desire. As free persons, citizens claim the right to view their persons as independent from and not identified with any particular such conception with its scheme of final ends. Given their moral power to form, revise, and rationally pursue a conception of the good, their public identity as free persons is not affected by changes over time in their determinate conception of it. 3. PLACING THE INDIVIDUAL ABOVE SOCIETY IS NECESSARY TO PREVENT OPPRESSION John Rawls, Philosopher at Harvard. POLITICAL LIBERALISM, 1993, p. 146 To this objection, we say that the hope of political community must indeed be abandoned, if by such a community 325

we mean a political society united in affirming the same comprehensive doctrine. This possibility is excluded by the fact of reasonable pluralism together with the rejection of the oppressive use of the state power to overcome it.

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INDIVIDUALISM IS BEST FOR SOCIETY 1. INDIVIDUAUSM RESULTS IN A BE’ITER TOTAL SOCIETY David Gruber, Philosopher at Northeast Missouri State. JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY, Fall 1989, p. 616 Liberalism would end this style of individuality by extending it, substituting for its infrequency its universality, melioristically replacing the arbitrariness of monarchical abuses and potential abuses with faith in the reason of each person. Rather than a single sun, which no matter how brilliant cannot light up the entirety of the social landscape, there would be an infinity of suns, illuminating every corner, so that decision and action would have no dark side, no secrecy. Liberalism’s project would not be to dissolve this form of social power, but to disperse it, to intensify it and its potential by granting each human being the status of individuality. 2. INDIVIDUALISM DOES NOT LEAD TO SELFISHNESS OR AGGRESSION Alisa Carse, Philosopher at Georgetown. NOUS, June 1994, p. 200 If our community embraces a strong ideology of individualism, then it is possible that our ends and values will reflect this and be fundamentally individualistic. Marc, for example, characterizes capitalism in just this way. In an incendiary passage in The Manifesto of the Communist Party, he writes: “The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand. . . has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous ‘cash payment’.” We need not accept the extremity of Marx’s claim. And, admittedly, it is difficult to imagine a society in which there are not some people, at least, with social values and motivations, with affection and concern for others. The survival of a community devoid of concerned citizenship (let alone parenting and friendship) is doubtful. But our question here is not whether it is likely that socially-constituted beings would be asocial, or even how widespread asociality might be. Our question is whether the social constitution of persons entails the constitution of social persons (in our sense). And it seems clear that it does not. (elipse in original) 3. INDIVIDUALISM IS NECESSARY FOR A REASONABLE LEVEL OF SOCIAL JUSTICE John Rawls, Philosopher at Harvard. POLITICAL LIBERALISM, 1993, pp. 33-4 The third respect in which citizens are viewed as free is that they are viewed as capable of taking responsibility for their ends and this affects how their various claims are assessed. Very roughly, given just background institutions and given for each person a fair index of primary goods (as required by the principles of justice), citizens are thought to be capable of adjusting their aims and aspirations in the light of what they can reasonably expect to provide for. Moreover, they are viewed as capable of restricting their claims in matters of justice to the kinds of things the principles of justice allow. 4. INDIVIDUALISM ALLOWS FOR TRUE DEVOTION TO COMMUNITY John Rawls, Philosopher at Harvard. POLITICAL LIBERALISM, 1993, p. 51 Every interest is the interest of a self (agent), but not every interest is in benefits to the self that has it. Indeed, rational agents may have all kinds of affections for persons and attachments to communities and places, including love of country and of nature; and they may select and order their ends in various ways. 5. INDIVIDUALISM IS THE ONLY BASIS FOR SOCIAL COOPERATION John Rawls, Philosopher at Harvard. POLITICAL LIBERALISM, 1993, p. 264 All forms of legitimate social cooperation are, then, the handiwork of individuals who voluntarily consent to them; there are no powers or rights lawfully exercised by associations, including the state, that are not rights already possessed by each individual acting alone in the initial just state of nature.

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Individualism Bad INDIVIDUALISM IS PHILOSOPHICALLY UNJUSTIFIED 1. TRUE SELF-DETERMINATION IS LOGICALLY IMPOSSIBLE Galen Strawson, Philosopher. PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES, Vol. 75, 1994, p. 5 According to the Basic Argument, it makes no difference whether determinism is true or false. We cannot be truly or ultimately morally responsible for our actions in either case. The Basic Argument has various expressions in the literature of free will, and its central idea can be quickly conveyed. (1) Nothing can be causa sui--nothing can be the cause of itself. (2) In order to be truly morally responsible for one’s actions one would have to be causa sui, at least in certain crucial mental respects. (3) Therefore nothing can be truly morally responsible. 2. GENETICS AND ENVIRONMENT PRECLUDE INDIVIDUALISM Galen Strawson, Philosopher. PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES, Vol. 75, 1994, p. 18 We are born with a great many genetically determined predispositions for which we are not responsible. We are subject to many early influences for which we are not responsible. These decisively shape our characters, our motives, our general bent and strength of our capacity to make efforts of will. 3. CONCEPTION OF A FREE INDIVIDUAL IS UNJUSTIFIED Richard Double, Cognitive Philosopher. PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES, Vol. 75, 1994, p. 161 The conviction that underneath our jumbled assessments there must be a metaphysical unity concerning the conditions under which persons choose freely is perhaps Platonistic (recall Wittgenstein on games and tools), and, in any event, questionbegging. INDIVIDUALISM IS RESPONSIBLE FOR HUMAN CONFLICT 1. INDIVIDUALISM EMPHASIZES OUR DIFFERENCES, NOT OUR COMMONALITIES Peter J. Steinberger, Political Scientist at Reed College. LOGIC AND POLITICS, 1988, p. 7 Valuing individuality--in the bare bones sense, of itself and without qualification--commits one only to preserving the person’s opportunity to be spiritually different in some way and to act accordingly. And to the degree that all those who value individuality necessarily share in the bare bones concept, they necessarily share also this commitment to difference. 2. INDIVIDUALISM RESULTS IN BRUTALITY, VIOLENCE AND EXPLOITATION James Messerschmidt, Social Critic. CAPITALISM, PATRIARCHY AND CRIME, 1986, p.66 Those who accept this competitive individualism are led amorally to “objectify and exploit people as things. They adopt a callous and instrumental indifference to suffering” (Schendiger and Schwendinger, 1983, 204). When large numbers of people are marginalized from economic activity and then congregate in the inner city, the social life of a community deteriorates to produce a brutal street life filled with individual exploitation. 3. INDIVIDUALISM LEADS TO PSYCHOPATHIC BEHAVIOR John Rawls, Philosopher at Harvard. POLITICAL LIBERALISM, 1993, p. 51 I do not assume the reasonable is the whole of moral sensibility; but it includes the part that connects with the idea of fair social cooperation. Rational agents approach being psychopathic when their interests are solely in benefits to themselves. 4. EMBRACING INDIVIDUALISM LEADS TO LAWLESSNESS AND WAR Aristotle, Ancient Philosopher. THE PHILOSOPHY OF ARISTOTLE, 1963, p. 384 Clearly, then, the state is natural, and man is by nature an animal designed for living in states. The person who by nature, not accident, does not belong to a state is either an inferior creature or better than a mere human being. He is like the man criticized by Homer: “without a clan, without law, and without a home.” Such a person has also a passion for war, he is on his own, like an isolated piece in a game.

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INDIVIDUALISM WILL DESTROY SOCIETY 1. SOCIETY CANNOT FUNCTION ON THE BASIS OF INDIVIDUALISM Peter 3. Steinberger, Political Scientist at Reed College. LOGIC AND POLITICS, 1988, pp. 27-8 Indeed, for Rousseau, in order to create a good citizen it is necessary to “denature” the individual: “Good social institutions are those which know best how to denature man, to take away from him his absolute existence for himself while giving him a relative one, and to transport the ‘I’ into the common unity, with the result that each particular no longer believes himself to be a ‘one’ but [rather] a part of a unity, and to no longer have feeling except within the whole”. 2. INDIVIDUALISM LEADS TO CHAOS Peter 3. Steinberger, Political Scientist at Reed College. LOGIC AND POLITICS, 1988, pp. 207-8 Imagine, for a moment, a human body in which each of the various major parts were to have a mind of its own. The hand, for example, would have its own little thinking apparatus distinct from--though, let us say, somehow inferior to--the one located in the head, a small brain that it could utilize in order to think, will and act, all of the other parts of the body being similarly equipped. (Of course, I ignore here vexing questions regarding the relationship and putative difference between the “mind” and the “brain.”) Certainly, the opportunity for chaos here would be considerable, yet it is still possible to view these various anatomic entities as parts of an organic whole. 3. INDIVIDUALISM PROVIDES NO BASIS FOR GOOD CHOICES Peter 3. Steinberger, Political Scientist at Reed College. LOGIC AND POLITICS, 1988, p. 157 The language of virtue seems to assume that the individual is fundamentally a creature of caprice and inclination; thus, it counsels a heroic struggle to overcome these traits. But the struggle is, in some sense, directionless, since it remains unclear exactly what laws should be obeyed and what actions should be performed. INDIVIDUALISM HARMS LIBERTY 1. INDIVIDUALISTIC APPROACHES TO POLITICS FORCE THE STATE TO BE TOTALITARIAN Peter 3. Steinberger, Political Scientist at Reed College. LOGIC AND POLITICS, 1988, pp. 199-200 The individual, upon entering the larger world outside of his various families--the world beyond his constitutive social connections--encounters others as strangers with whom he may be involved simply and solely as a matter of convenience or economic necessity. There is, in short, no self conscious substantive relationship among such individuals. They are alien to one another, and are liable to look to each other simply with a view toward personal gain. As a result, the state itself--the public power-appears merely as an external instrumentality designed to order and regulate the practices of competition. From this perspective, the state is characteristically, in Hegel’s term, the Police power. 2. INDIVIDUALISM JUSTIFIES DEHUMANIZATION AND ENSLAVEMENT David Gruber, Philosopher at Northeast Missouri State. JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY, Nov. 1989, p. 6 individuality becomes less an agential locus of origination than this power’s vehicles, its instruments and means, the sites at which it is entrenched. This individuality is a product, an effect, not potential waiting to be emancipated. Punishment, for example, becomes correction, no longer exclusion or erasure, but irresistible inclusion and refinement of a new individuality. Individuality is greatest at the base of the social pyramid. 3. INDIVIDUALISM MAKES LIBERTY MEANINGLESS Peter 3. Steinberger, Political Scientist at Reed College. LOGIC AND POLITICS, 1988, p. 6 To value individuality is not necessarily to value individual liberty, though the two are frequently conflated. For individuality or spiritual distinctiveness can be associated with any number of other values such as attaining personal excellence, being well-adjusted, living in accordance with one’s particular nature, and the like, none of which is related in any obvious way to being free. Moreover, to define individuality simply in terms of individual freedom runs the risk of lumping together the many different and incompatible senses of the word liberty.

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INDIVIDUALISM HAS NEVER BEEN REALIZED IN THE U.S. 1. INDIVIDUALISM HAS NEVER BEEN REALITY IN U.S. Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Director of Women’s Studies and Professor of History, Emory University, GEORGE WASHINGTON LAW REVIEW, January 1986/March 1986, p. 362-3. Most Americans still behave and talk as if individualism and the free market shaped our society, still cherish the belief in individual rights and the free market as the bedrock of a free society. Yet we are living in a world in which neither individualism nor the market flourish unfettered. And indeed, they never did. 2. CONTEMPORARY INDIVIDUALISM IS A MYTH Philip Green, Chairman of Government Department, Smith College, THE PURSUIT OF INEQUALITY, 1981, p. 241. The contemporary version of individualism or anti-statism, then, is truly of the ivory tower—the product of men who have never worked to make their living, as most people do, in concern with others. Like the worst of the “bourgeois economists” whom Marx castigated, Nozick, on behalf of anti-statism, analyzes a fantasy world of his own creation in order to philosophize about the real social world that is wholly unlike it. Again the phantasm replaces the real thing: Cruso without Friday becomes the typical rational actor of an economy in which he could not actually survive for a month lacking the very unindividualist institutions of the modern welfare capitalist societies. 3. MYTH OF INDIVIDUALISM HAS NOT BEEN REALIZED BY DISADVANTAGED Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Director of Women’s Studies and Professor of History, Emory University, GEORGE WASHINGTON LAW REVIEW, January 1986/March 1986, p. 369. The politics of this decade have reinvigorated the myth of individualism, but have simultaneously condemned innumerable’ dreams. The (collective) position of black Americans has steadily worsened. The plight of the homeless testifies not so much, as some would have us believe, to the individual failures of alcoholism and drug addition, as to the declining possibilities to realize that greatest of all individual dreams: a home of one’s own—or even an affordable apartment. INDIVIDUALISM HAS NOT HELPED WOMEN 1. INDIVIDUALISM HAS SUBORDINATED WOMEN TO MEN Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Director of Women’s Studies and Professor of History, Emory University, GEORGE WASHINGTON LAW REVIEW, January 1986/March 1986, p. 367. So long as we retain our individualist premises, those who favor the maximum opportunity for women must favor their unfettered access to individualism and equality. Any other position, however thoughtful and possibly generous its motivation, objectively serves the subordination and comparative disadvantage of women. 2. INDIVIDUALISM HAS NOT PROVIDED JUSTICE OR FREEDOM FOR WOMEN Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Director of Women’s Studies and Professor of History, Emory University, GEORGE WASHINGTON LAW REVIEW, January 1986/March 1986, p. 363. As a people and a society we have stretched the principles of individualism about as far as we can. The struggle for women’s full access to individualism has, more than any other single development, exposed the bankruptcy of individualist principles as guidelines for a just society. Individualism worked as a standard of justice and of freedom only so long as more than half the population was excluded from it 3. INDIVIDUALISM WILL NOT LEAD TO EQUALITY FOR WOMEN Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Director of Women’s Studies and Professor of History, Emory University, GEORGE WASHINGTON LAW REVIEW, January 1986/March 1986, p. 365-6. For a time it looked as if all women required was equal access to individualism. Some women still clearly believe that unimpeded individualism will suffice, although privileged women are probably deluding themselves on that point. The imperatives of two-paycheck households for the middle classes seem to be ensuring that young women will be educated like their brothers. But so long as women participate in that education, and the perquisites to which it leads, on sufferance rather than by right, they will remain vulnerable to lower salaries, fewer promotions, and even expulsion from the fast track. 330

INDIVIDUALISM RESULTS IN DISCRIMINATION 1. DISCRIMINATION HAS BEEN JUSTIFIED UNDER INDIVIDUALISM Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Director of Women’s Studies and Professor of History, Emory University, GEORGE WASHINGTON LAW REVIEW, January 1986/March 1986, p. 339. Historically, our society has privileged the ideal of individual freedom of self-determination as the highest political good. Historically, it has also tolerated, and even encouraged, the exclusion of groups of individuals from the category of individual. In various ways and at various times, an individual’s race, class, or gender have been taken as adequate justification for such exclusion. 2. INDIVIDUALISM PROVIDES THE MORAL BASIS FOR RACISM Mary R. Jackman, Professor of Sociology at University of California Davis, THE VELVET GLOVE PATERNALISM AND CONFLICT IN GENDER, CLASS, AND RACE RELATIONS, 1994, p. 225-6. Students of class have been especially likely to see individualism as an intrinsic part of the defense of inequity in the contemporary Western world (for example, Parkin 1971; Jackman and Muha 1984). Parkin (19 17) has argued that the individualistic goals fostered by equality-of-opportunity issues have provided a convenient distraction from core redistributive issues, and that the political agendas of left-wing parties in Western democracies have shifted more toward equality-of-opportunity issues because they are less threatening to established groups and thus present a more fruitful venue for contention. And some students of racism have also identified the morality of individualism as something that is actively invoked in the defense of racial inequality (for example, Kinder and Sears 1981; Jackman and Muha 1984; Gamson and Modigliani 1987). Kinder and Sear have argued that the traditional American values of individualism and self-reliance form the moral basis for racism and also provide a “safe” outlet for voicing objections to affirmative action programs. 3. INDIVIDUALISM PREVENTED UPWARD MOBILITY OF WOMEN, BLACKS Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Director of Women’s Studies and Professor of History, Emory University, GEORGE WASHINGTON LAW REVIEW, January 1986/March 1986, p. 350. Those who subscribed to the dominant ideology of individualism [during the third quarter of the nineteenth century] opposed collectivism on principle, and accordingly should have favored admitting any qualified individual to any social role, but in actuality they regularly countenanced the exclusion of whole groups for the benefits of individualism. The contradiction in excluding categories of individuals from individual opportunity never prompted the proponents of individualism to question the justification for this systematic exclusion. In fact, that negative collectivism probably strengthened the myth that American society did not suffer from the iniquities of class relations by strengthening the myth that all men shared equal opportunities to advance, as well as equal opportunities to dominate their own women at home and to discriminate against blacks. Upward mobility depended upon the exercise of individual talent, which in practice turned out to be white male talent 4. WHITE MALE INDIVIDUALISM HAS LED RACISM AND SEXISM Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Director of Women’s Studies and Professor of History, Emory University, GEORGE WASHINGTON LAW REVIEW, January 1986/March 1986, p. 349-50. In a perverse way, both sexism and racism embodied collective principles, albeit in negative form. The prevailing view of individualism as a positive good, which collectivism curtailed, coexisted with the denial of access to individualism on collectivist grounds. In other words, the same people (propertied white men) who opposed labor unions because they interfered with the free play of the market might easily, to take examples at random, favor subordinating women within marriage, excluding women from lucrative professional opportunities such as medicine, and Jim Crow.

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TRADITION OF INDIVIDUALISM PREVENTS EQUALITY 1. NORM OF INDIVIDUALISM HAS TWISTED MEANING OF EQUALITY Mary R. Jackman, Professor of Sociology at University of California Davis, THE VELVET GLOVE PATERNALISM AND CONFLICT IN GENDER, CLASS, AND RACE RELATIONS, 1994, p. 257. Out of the growth pains of capitalist democracy, individualism has become established a bedrock moral tenet. The norm of individualism has infused popular conceptions intergroup policy goals and twisted the meaning of equality into something more accommodative—equality of opportunity. Attempts to assess popular sentiment for an egalitarian redistribution of resources have repeatedly run aground on the shoal of individualism. 2. INDIVIDUALISM IS USED TO JUSTIFY INEQUALITY Philip Green, Chairman of Government Department, Smith College, THE PURSUIT OF INEQUALITY, 1981, p. 241. Fewer people, however, are aware of the ways in which the expansion of the obtrusiveness of government is directly related to the expansion of concentrated economic power, which at the same time creates a multitude of human casualties in its wake and counsels us to treat their travail as their own fault. The alternative interpretation is so dangerous for the owners of concentrated wealth and their sympathetic functionaries in the state apparatus that they do everything possible to discourage its expression. Thus if in the United States many of us tend to think that the problem is the absence of an illusory freedom from interference rather than what it really is—the absence of political and economic democracy—that is not just because of our immersion in a liberal historical tradition but also because so many billions of dollars are spend every year to get us to think the one thought and be unaware of the other. The new free-market individualism—that is, the new corporate apologetic—is but a part of that expenditure. Just as the opponents of affirmative action misuse language of individual liberty to justify the continued exclusion of minorities from an equal place in the commonwealth, so these new individualists misuse that language in order to justify the special privileges of the minority to which they belong against the potential claims for more equality of popular majorities. 3. INEQUALITY HAS BEEN JUSTIFIED UNDER THEORY OF INDIVIDUALISM Mary R. Jackman, Professor of Sociology at University of California Davis, THE VELVET GLOVE PATERNALISM AND CONFLICT IN GENDER, CLASS, AND RACE RELATIONS, 1994, p. 225-6. I have argued that individualism has been the hallmark cry of dominant groups under challenge in the capitalistdemocracies, precisely, because it offers a principled way of denying the moral legitimacy of egalitarian demands made on behalf of groups (Jackman and Muha 1984). As Gamson and Modigliani (1987) point out, the symbolism that is thus invoked sounds conveniently like egalitarianism and it also makes a trenchant appeal to “fairness” norms. Individualism has been especially appropriate for the defense of class inequality in the “free-market” era because dominant classes have no incentive to emphasize the boundaries between classes. INDIVIDUALISM IS A MYTH IN A CAPITALIST ECONOMY 1. INDIVIDUALISM IS A MYTH IN A CAPITALISTIC ECONOMY Philip Green, Chairman of Government Department, Smith College, THE PURSUIT OF INEQUALITY, 1981, p. 241. Trade unions and working-class parties, class solidarity, “working to rule,” calling public power for protection against private nile, are not some lingering remnant of traditionalism but are the very essence of advance capitalism itself, and thus of “free enterprise” in its real historical development If it is a natural right to be treated as a freely, contracting, independent individual at one’s place of work, it is a right with has somehow failed to commend itself to most workers. Individualism may be an effective myth of capitalism, an ideology which justifies hierarchical reward systems, to those who accept their legitimacy as the price of “liberty.”

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INDIVIDUALISM RESPONSES Individualism is the philosophy that triumphed and then failed. To beat individualism, you need only to provide a material and economic context to the abstract claims of the individualists. You will be surprised how they hold to that abstract, refusing to acknowledge the validity of anything but the ideas themselves. No amount of anecdotes citing the poverty which results from the greed of others will convince the libertarian to agree on fair limits to economic freedom. No appeal to environmental degradation will stop the objectivist from claiming that a person can do whatever he or she wants on their own property. The question of individualism is primarily an economic question. It might not “start out” that way in a debate, but what is ultimately broken down conceptually is the question of materiality, of justice conceived in giving a thing-ness to the things which are justly due; or conversely, taking those things which we owe others. The economic question trumps even the area of “universal human rights,” since half the world seems to think this includes economic rights; as well as the area of U.S.constitutional rights, since “freedom of the press” is not the same for Mr. Hearst as it is for you or me. In refusing to acknowledge the material basis of individual action, philosophers of individualism inevitably privilege self-interest over collective needs. Their values are obscured by the foundational error of seeing the world idealistically, with rational actors who have perfect information and who start on a fair playing field to begin with. Nozick’s seemingly circulatory statement, paraphrased as “A just acquisition is one which is acquired justly,” is the perfect example of a philosophy which idealizes material exchange, trivializes differences, and fails to even apply that test to the acquisitions of history (such as the ones made by European settlers on this continent). THE ONCE REVOLUTIONARY PHILOSOPHY There was undoubtedly a time when a territorial aristocracy was an unavoidable and necessary element of society~ That, however, is very, very long ago. --Frederick Engels, socialist philosopher and economist, THE WAGES SYSTEM, 1977, p. 48 But ironically, this “old” philosophy was once very young, very appropriate, and even revolutionary. The very philosophy of individualism--and of many of its original proponents--cited in individual versus collective discussions was, in one sense, the philosophy of the most sweeping revolutions history has ever seen. While no socialist revolution ever completely overthrew capitalism, the democratic revolutions oi’ America and France swept feudalism away from half the world, leaving the other half to slowly but certainly follow. All of which is to say, at least, that a kernel of truth remains in individualism: that we are/should be free, that this freedom shouldn’t be violated arbitrarily, that this liberty is paramount. Smart collectivists have never bothered to question such arguments, because they indeed do hold such truths “to be self-evident...” What marked the collectivist case from the nineteenth century onward was the idea that there is a particular context to all human action, a material context which is, in some limited sense, deterministic. Rather than implying the strict “walking computer” determinism many mistake for Marxism, these thinkers simply believed that individual actions do not occur in a vacuum, and that an understanding of the individual goes beyond just that individual. In fact, Marx’s belief that unemployment and poverty are endemic under capitalism would hardly have offended Adam Smith, who wrote capitalism’s primer, The Wealth of Nations. Smith understood that capitalist nations would have to at least have relief programs for the poor. One cannot understand capitalism without understanding the way unemployment “works.” It is not only a byproduct; unemployment provides cheap labor essential for the workings of the economy itself, evidenced by the U.S. Federal Reserve Board’s decision to raise interest rates in proportion to total employment rates. Following the revolutions in America and France, these shortcomings of economic individualism became increasingly apparent as industrialization took its toll on the U.S. and Europe. Actually, though, the essential arguments against individualism preceded those revolutions; Jean-Jacques Rousseau believed that the spirit of community was lost 333

with the arbitrary and capricious advent of private property. Following his lead, Karl Marx began his now-familiar critique, using, ironically, the very same methods and data provided by classical individualists like Smith and Ricardo. Marx’s critique of capitalism was not a “moral” attack, although it was clear that Marx and Engels were disgusted with the alienation of their society and age. It would not be until a century later, when Jean-Paul Sartre converted to his own version of socialism, that the ethical case would become the center of the critique of capitalism. Sartre, however, had an existential basis for this critique: As early as his first masterpiece, Being and Nothingness (which was hardly considered an anti-individualist document) Sartre had argued that no person really can “exist” in a vacuum, that we rely on others to validate our existence and freedom (a fact which disturbed the young Sartre, but enthused the older Sartre). From Sartre’s Marxism came the subversion of individual rights to the notion of collective responsibility. Sartre argued that as semi-autonomous individuals living in a material environment, we could not avoid a certain responsibility to others. This idea that responsibility to others is unavoidable would prove fatal to classical individualism. THE NOW REACTIONARY PHILOSOPHY But individualism would rise again, this time in response to the success of socialist politics and communist revolutions. Suddenly, it became important for defenders of capitalism to assert that free markets were necessary for all freedom. In other words, this new and forceful case for individualism was reasserted in response to an enemy, the communist world. It was not a difficult battle considering what comxm~nism had degenerated to from the days of Marx, Engels, and even for a time, Lenin. Very good ideas, but executed with questionable results. The problem was precisely that individualism was unable to cope with the material failure despite the compelling ideology. Individualism was incapable of seeing the essential moral case for collectivism, and so mischaracterized soviet-style regimes as examples of the “alternative” to Western individualism. So even though individualism’s 20th Century reassertion was powerful and driven by the chief concerns .of the time, it was a short lived victory, and became even more dubious, ironically, with the fall of communism across the world. The inhabitants of those former Stalinist states suddenly had to contend with economic competition, for which they were not only ill-equipped, but also morally opposed. Even in the non-socialist world, the disillusionment among some of society’s leading critics was uncanny. The ever-increasing meaninglesness of equality drew the idea itself into question, as people saw how individualism was inevitably a zero-sum game. The victory over “communism’ was not an ideological victory by any means. Capitalism has had an equally bad rap, not because of interference from the state, but precisely because no state exists which protects the helpless majority from the whims of profit-seeking, greed, and undemocratic division of power. Nor was the victory over socialism and communism the victory of a superior economic system. Individualist economics is fraught with problems that collective democracy would not face. And while collectivism might have unforseen problems of its own, collectivist societies would be in a far better position to handle them. Capitalism is wasteful (consider the money spent on advertising) and war-driven (as imperialists expand themselves into uncharted territory, or vie for scarce resources). It fails to account for the long-term. It assumes perfect information. And as the evidence from Schweickart and others will assert, it seems plain irrational at times. Two leading 20th Century individualists kept the philosophy alive; one in intellectual and academic circles, the other in popular philosophy and culture. Robert Nozick and Ayn Rand are icons of mdvidualist thinking, but even they could not defend their system in the face of obvious problems.

NOZICK Robert Nozick is the most eloquent and convincing contemporary advocate of libertarianism. His 1974 classic, Anarchy, State and Utopia, came at a time when statist liberals were assumed to have won the day. Nozick passionately argued that living for oneself, and not for others, was acceptable and expedient. 334

Nozick argued that if an acquisition was just, then no person or group of people (ie the government) had the right to take any of that acquisition away (ie taxes). He also argued that a minimal state, a government which harkened back to Locke’s original “Night Watchman” functional theory of the state, would best protect liberty. Nozick reasoned that we would never allow people to take our money just out of the blue, so no rational person would believe it fair for the government, which is nothing more than a group of particularly privileged individuals, to tax people. Instead, people ought to be free to form their own notions of obligation. As compelling as is Nozick’s case, it suffered from two internal flaws which epitomize the differences between contemporary individualism and contemporary collectivism, also called “communitarianism.” First, the concept of “just acquisitions” is so distorted and, in an unjust system, well nigh impossible, that one could not use a simple exchange between two or more people as an example of such an acquisition. One immediately wonders, for example, where the items “originally” came from. Presumably, Nozick would think that inheritance is a just acquisition, the outcome of a free choice by the possessor of wealth to pass it along to his or her children. But what if that wealth was made from slavery? What if it was the booty of genocide against Native Americans? Nozick and others might reply that such an acquisition would be unjust only if it could be proven to have been acquired in some such manner. But what if the entire system of capitalist acquisition is rife with corruption? There is no way to draw a line between my great great great grandfather unethically acquiring land from Native Americans, and my use of that wealth. I may not be personally responsible, but clearly, I am benefitting from a corrupt transaction. There are no “just” acquisitions in an unjust system. There is no way to draw the line into the justice and acceptability of our inherited status. The second flaw in Nozick’s reasoning is that if he is so concerned with fairness in distribution, and so hostile to the unfair distribution of the state, why does he ignore the blatantly unfair distribution characteristic of market relations? It is hardly “fair” that some people inherit money they have not worked for, while others work over forty hours a week for a pittance. The entire idea that wealth is “earned” through “hard work” is undercut by the image of CEO’s of major corporations making millions of dollars per year while their workers, who may earn between $5 and $12 an hour, are being laid off because “the company is in trouble and needs to downsize.” In fact, the actual practices of the market make a mockery of fairness, as the evidence in this section from Engels will emphasize. RAND In a nutshell, Ayn Rand, the hero of individualist debaters, believed that a person should live only for him or herself. The best life possible, she believed, was a life devoted to improving and re-creating oneself, and naturally, this included the ability to become wealthy, even at the competitive expense of others. Many individualists recognize the need for charity and material relief, and more largely, for altruism. Adam Smith believed society would progressively solve its misery, but nevertheless that relief programs would be necessary. Even the libertarian Robert Nozick respected the right of people to advance themselves collectively, so long as the rights of others were maintained. But Rand thought altruism to be morally irresponsible, psychologically sick, and the symptom of a “statist” mentality which prevented the realization of human freedom. To help others, she reasoned, was to put their needs first, and so to essentially put them above the individual us question. This was contrary to the noble and authentic life of human beings. Debaters will use Ayn Rand whenever the primacy of the individual is questioned by a topic. If the topic deals with individual freedom versus social responsibility, Rand’s evidence will propose that there is no social responsibility, only individuals’ responsibilities to themselves. If capitalism and private ownership are in question, Rand will be employed to demonstrate that private property and cutthroat capitalism are the foundations not only of Americanism, but the foundations of existence itself. Ayn Rand is the embarasing Nietzsche of the radical right. Friedrich Nietzsche, son of the clergyman, and Ayn Rand, daughter of the dispossessed Russian aristocracy, could have been separated at birth. Interestingly, some 335

philosophers are now citing Rand’s similarity to Nietzsche as a reason to finally accept her as a serious philosopher; one doubts she would want to be identified with the various postmodern thinkers mentioned by Chris Matthew Sciabarra in his not entirely unconvincing 1995 book, Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical. Sciabarra takes issue with the general assumption that Rand did not study or understand “real” philosophy. In fact, Rand had to read a great deal of philosophy while a university student in Russia, and she had been undoubtedly influenced by N. 0. Lossky, her philosophy instructor at Petrograd, an “ecclectic” philosopher and by no means a primordial objectivist. The “revolt against dualism” which Sciabarra sees in Rand’s work places her, he contends, in a camp with Nietzche, Marx, Heidegger, and a host of other people Rand despised. That methodologically Rand’s work might resemble some of those thinkers, however, seems of only academic relevance. Rand’s objectivism was from the beginning a political methodology, both in intent and concerted application by the objectivist movement, whose fliers are found on walls of college campuses everywhere. If Rand resembles Nietzsche in form, in substance her philosophy is a grotesque mirrored distortion of the worst possible components and interpretations of Nietzsche’s thought. Nietzsche believed the construction of truth was a tool of the will to power. Rand did not believe truth was constructed, but the will to power was already seen by Objectivism as an ethical imperative, and so the application of truth could only lead to the same conclusion as Nietzsche. Nietzsche argued (some say ironically) that supporting the weak is ethically unsound, a denial of our nature. Rand believed the same thing, tempering her hatred of charity by mutely acknowledging that we possess the freedom to be charitable. Nietzsche predicted, and probably hoped, that A New Man would emerge, stripped away of old sentiment and enriched by a conception of good as nobility rather than pity or self-flagellation. God is dead, he declared, because we have destroyed him by humanizing his value, proving to ourselves we no longer need him. Rand also hopes, and writes, for such A New Man. God cannot exist, she declared, because the New Rational Man has no need of “mysticism” (never mind that quite a few rational people believe in a higher power; as the adage says, Nietzsche is dead and Rand too-- not God; we haven’t yet seemed able to shake that “need” for mysticism. The arguments Nietzsche uses to justify his New Man are so similar to the arguments Rand uses to justify unchecked egoistic capitalism that one wonders whether someone read Zarathustra and The Antichrist to Rand in her sleep. --

Rand’s world of happy, unconcerned capitalists is familiar to those of us who debate about philosophy and values, for some basic ideas. Like Robert Nozick and other individualist philosophers, she would take the Individual as the basic unit of study for philosophical, economic, and ethical analysis. Rand is particularly concerned that the idea of “rights” be confined to things possessed by individuals, and not groups. Groups, she says, including communities, organizations, and the democratic republican state, are merely combinations of particular individuals. As the O’Neill evidence in this section will indicate, that definition has more rhetorical power than rational value. Even people who speak in favor of collective needs admit that communities are “groups of individuals” nowadays. Gone is the Hegelian collectivist vision of the state as a prior and autonomous will-possessing entity. But for Rand, the use of collectivist discourse, the speaking of the rights of, say, women qua women, is unacceptable. Any right which comes to one as the result of being a member of a particular group is not a universal right, and therefore, not worthy of protection by law or ethics. Now, a Nietzschean would probably also be against the legal designation of “special rights.” But that is because Nietzsche sees law itself as a huge, metaphysical power-myth, something invented by the dominant group to placate and shield where appropriate. Rand is against ‘special rights” because she believes only in individual rights, and only in individuals. This atomism, this particularization of humans, has some interesting implications. Surely it is a metaphysical predisposition, strange but not unexpected from yet another philosopher who claims to escape metaphysics. If we possess some rights by virtue of simply being humans, then surely at least the possibility exists that some of us might possess rights by virtue of being members of a particular group; no foundational argument Rand makes can both single out humans AND simultaneously exclude the possibilities of certain groups of humans. Her insistence that one is either an individualist or a “mystic” committed to collectivist metaphysics is another example of her “either/or” thinking critiqued in the evidence cited by O’Neill. Another of Rand’s well-known propositions is that selfishness is a virtue. Here we enter into some messy philosophy. Those who insist self-interest inevitably governs our actions are called “psychological egoists.” Nietzsche might be categorized as a psychological egoist because of his belief that all living beings, and certainly humans, strive to 336

increase their own power. Rand certainly believes that egoism is closer to human nature than altruism, but she is more concerned with the normative, value-laden theory of “ethical egoism,” which holds that, regardless of our psychological predispositions, we “should” govern ourselves through self-interest. The two theories are different, but they also feed off each other. But complications ensue: If we are inevitably selfish, then neither ethical egoism nor ethical altruism make sense as ethical theories, because if psychological egoism is true, we have no choice. Nietzsche believed just that; we have no choice in the Nietzschean universe except whether or not to acknowledge our selfishness. But Rand spends so much time condemning altruism and urging us to become egoists that we cannot be sure how close egoism is to our nature. Rand certainly seemed to think the world was populated with weakminded altruists. The other complication concerns an equivocation (a misunderstanding regarding definitions) of the terms “selfishness” and “self-interest,” to say nothing of a misunderstanding of “altruism.” Many people will try to prove egoism by saying that if one behaves altruistically, one is “really” being selfish because it makes that person feel good to help others. This reasoning is quite circular and ignores the ethical question of one’s core motive in committing a charitable act. Agreed, it makes my friend Mimi feel good to help people, but this simply proves that the exact opposite of “selfishness” is Mimi’s core motive. Like other egoists, Rand attempts to resolve this conflict by admitting that we sometimes may be motivated to help others because we possess a more mature view of our needs than the childish selfishness of refusal. But if this is true, it seems to imply that altruism itself may in some, indeed many, cases, be rational. In fact, as the evidence against Rand in this section suggests, her understanding of altruism seems limited to the mystical “duty” philosophies of Kant and others who were simply seeking to preserve some sense of universal Platonic-Christian value in a new, science-based world. Our enlightened understanding of altruism as a synthesis, rather than a negation, as a combination of individual and collective purpose, makes Rand’s egoism an extreme rejected even by enlightened individualists; rejected, at least in defensiveness, from Rand and Nozick themselves. So at the outset, there are several problems with Rand’s ethical philosophy, which are detailed in the evidence in this section. Not only does she misunderstand rational altruism and attack it as “mysticism,” but she cannot coherently equate rational self-interest with a rejection of charity or collectivism. It may very well be in our interests, even as individuals, to be an altruist or a collectivist. Moreover, as James Baker’s evidence suggests, Rand’s philosophy will lead to destructive anarchy rather than mutual happiness. This is another manifestation of her misunderstanding of self-interest. Individualism becomes undermined because of its emphasis on the “zero sum” relationship between doing something for others and living for myself. This is an innacurate representation of reality. In fact, the number of times my interests converge with the interests of others is overwhelming. The generation of wealth itself is a social process, not a result of atomistic individual initiative. And, as we shall see below, our very survival as a species may depend on everyone’s ability to be something besides “selfish,” to recognize the need we have to live for and through others. This may seem “disgusting” and weak to Rand, just as it did to Nietzsche. But its undesirability is not an argument against its soundness. It should be pointed out, in conclusion, that Ayn Rand is especially embarrassing to some conservatives. It is her quasi-Nietzschean attitude towards religion, tradition and compassion that make her an ally only reluctantly accepted by advocates of free markets and traditional values. After all, as Baker points out, Rand’s world would be the very world anti-capitalists predict as the result of unchecked capitalism. Religion would vanish except as a source of wealth-generating consumption. People would not help each other out. It would be a war of all against all, because if one can do battle for something and win overwhelmingly, there is no rational reason not to use force as a means of acquisition. Rand might try to backpedal by saying the use of force is not rational, that it is coercive, counterproductive and perhaps even unjust. But those statements only make sense if both morality and reason are grounded in a system which rejects the primacy of selfishness. When Rand embraces and glorifies selfishness, she opens up the door for the abuse of power under the guise of rationality, the unchecked exploitation of the earth under the guise of progress, and the “right” to deny the means of life and liberty to those who have, through little fault of their own, ended up at the bottom of a system they had no voice in creating. Perhaps conservatives distrust Rand because she shows the true colors of conservative individualism.

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ANTI-INDIVIDUALIST SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT MARXISM Marxism proceeds from two basic theories: a theory of history, called “Dialectical Materialism,” and a theory of economic value, based on “Labor.” In a nutshell, Dialectical Materialism stresses that history is full of conflicts, progressive movements, and revolutionary changes, all concerning the ways various societies compete for resources, they way they produce and distribute goods, and who owns stuff and who does not. There will always be clash, Marx and Engels believed, as long as some groups of people had wealth and others did not. The Labor theory of Value explained exactly why this state of division between the rich and the poor could exist in the first place. According to the theory, the production of goods entails both capital and labor, but since capital and resources have absolutely no value without being shaped into sellable goods by workers, it is labor which ultimately determines the value of a product; the amount of work that went into it (and this is a fundamentally social, not individual, process, as W.E.B. DuBois would later argue). Capitalists, those “heroes” of Ayn Rand’s individualism, provide the materials for labor. But laborers generate far more in the worth of the projects than they receive in return. As Engels’ evidence in this section points out, it is only rational that a capitalist give as little in return as he or she can to the laborer, and receive as much as possible in return. That excess value is profit to the capitalist. The relationship between the capitalist and the laborer, according to Engels, cannot be “fair” in the sense of the colloquial and misled slogan, “A fair day’s wages for a fair day’s work.” The concept of “fairness” abstracted from general material conditions, as well as specific situations is ridiculous. The capitalist, says Engels, is always at the advantage. If the laborer demands more pay, the capitalist needn’t give it, since there are other poor laborers competing for the same job space. If the capitalist demands that the laborer accept lower wages, the laborer is in a precarious position to resist, for the same reasons. Engels and Marx were thorough in their analysis of falling wages and the inevitability of capitalism to not only generate, but actually require, an uncomfortable level of unemployment. These are forces beyond the individual’s control as long as private ownership remains in the hands of a few people. So if Marx and Engels are correct, individualism in the form of capitalism fails to produce the very things it claims to have a patent on: Individual freedom is accessible only for those who needn’t slave away for ten hours a day. Free expression is sold to the highest bidder in the form of publishing companies, meganewsmagazmes, television networks, etc. And perhaps the most precious freedom of all, the right to walk away from a bad deal, is unavailable to workers in a society with an inevitable three to six percent unemployment. FEMINISM There are several distinct and often conflicting schools of feminism, varieties such as socialist, radical, liberal, postmodern, anarchist, and the list goes on. However, by virtue of adopting the feminist title, these groups share certain concerns, and each asks questions they see as relevant to the status, history, conditions and further liberation of women. In fact, it may further be said that each group is concerned with questions of “power,” and that the condition from which they all begin is one which assumes women need more power than they have. In some cases, such as postmodern feminism, a radical redefinition of “power” might be suggested; in other forms, such as liberal feminism, women consciously seek to level the existing playing field of power relations. In each of these cases, there can be no ignorance of the role of both democratic institutions and competition-based distribution on the status of women. Almost all feminists agree, in fact, that individualism, while partially responsible for having liberated women in the 19th Century, is oppressive and sometimes dangerous to women. Innocuous social concepts can sometimes have different meanings for different groups. In the case of relations between men and women, the historical tendency of men to define the conversation behind the law as well as the law itself has created a difficult situation for women. This is clearly evident in the feminist critique of privacy. As defined by Western individualism, privacy is that domain to which the citizen is entitled to have strict control. This domain traditionally includes the person’s person, his or her body; thoughts; and actions that do not harm others. Many feminists, however, believe this conception is fundamentally flawed. As other thinkers in this section will also 338

argue, many feminists say that individuals cannot really be “private” in any sex~se. Besides the traditional communitarian argument that thoughts and actions make no sense outside of a community context, feminist critics of individualism also point out that even thoughts and seemingly private actions can be harmful to others. Catherine MacKinnon makes this very argument concerning pornography. Whereas strict individualism would limit the power of the state--or the community--to sanction what an individual reads or views in his or her own home, MacKinnon points to statistics that suggest the viewing of pornography makes potential rapists more likely to commit rape. What MacKinnon is really demonstrating, however, is that things which seem private are themselves based upon various ideological assumptions that should not be able to escape political struggle simply because they are shrouded in the cloak of privacy. The ideology of pornography--that women are objects for men’s sexual manipulation--is a violent ideology. Just as the state might be seen as justified for stopping particular hate speech or conspiratorial plotting, MacKinnon sees no reason why pornography’s violent ideology should not be kept from influence those who would endanger women. It is disingenuous to draw a line between “public” and “private,” feminists believe, when so many thoughts and actions blatantly cross that line. But privacy also includes an individual’s “dominion,” and in American society, “a man’s home is his castle,’ even though America is one continent sorely lacking in actual castles. As the arguments by FoxGenovese in this section assert, “privacy” has historically been an excuse for men to dominate women in the home. CONTEMPORARY LIBERALISM “Liberal” used to mean “free marketer.” Nowadays it means “in favor of limited redistribution of wealth by the government.” Contemporary liberalism was designed as an alternative to the radical redistribution called for by socialism. Essentially, liberalism is a political, and philosophical, undermining of property rights using welfare statism. This is philosophically justified in this section by J. Peter Byrne, who argues that, at least as our own Constitution sees it, property is finite and its ownership is dubious. Individualists are fond of arguing that property ownership by individuals rather than the state will increase individual responsibility and the incentive to protect the environment, ensuring the quality of life of not only those who live on the property, but also those around the property. But if history is any indication, say liberals, private property provides very little incentive to account for those who do not own the property, do not somehow increase the situation of the property for its owner (as pointed out by Engels), or somehow benefit from it. Consumer safety laws may be seen as “attacks’ on property rights, for example, because in the abstract sense, I ought to be able to make whatever I want and sell it for whatever price I see fit. But if there were no such violations of that right, I might, innocently or intentionally, hurt my consumers. I might sell them poison by mistake. The libertarian thinks the market would correct this because that information would keep other consumers away from my products. But without the perfect, instant-access communication assumed, but not provided, by individualistic libertarianism, and withciut some kind of state sanction, I have neither the incentive nor the means to stop myself from obeying the profit motive prior to the ethical motive. ENVIRONMENTALISM Environmentalism is an extension of the notion that the state should manage property, should keep the public interest in mind. There are mountains of paper-full of arguments against the state taking control of property and resources for the dubious sake of the public good, but there is no proof, nor, within a capitalist framework, should there be any proof, that private ownership benefits rather than damages the community at large.” This is because. for the individualist, there is no community, or a grudgingly accepted community at best. But as we saw with Rand, simply answering the individualist by saying “Well, there may not be a unitary entity called the community, but there are communities of people, all of whom stand to benefit or suffer in proportion to certain choices and beliefs,” seems sufficient. No one seriously believes the community “transcends” the individual anymore, right? Wrong. At the root of environmentalism is a holistic belief concerning the “lives” of entire ecosystems, in which all individuals are included. Many environmentalists even subscribe to the “Gaia” Hypothesis, which holds, not without 339

convincing evidence, that the entire planet is one living organism. Deep Ecologists, another credible environmental group, believe that humans should limit their actions to conform with their essential roles “in nature,” which is exceeded when humans exploit nature beyond fulfilling the absolute necessities of life. What does this do to individualism? If collectivism has a biological basis, as many scientists and philosophers belive it does, then individualists are confronted with several challenges. First, the right to produce and consume, considered by Rand and Nozick to be unspeakably sacred rights, must be curtailed when they come into conflict with the wellbeing of the environment. This alone reduces individualism to ideals only, for once this exception is made, any challenge to individual rights based on the biological needs of the environment, of the “chain of organisms” which are symbiotically linked to the individuals making those choices. Second, the belief that the environment transcends the individual is a gateway to the notion that the individual has an identity him or herself which transcends the alone-ness which logically follows individualism. While this may seem more spiritual than philosophical (and while environmentalism has been criticized as prefering a mystical rather than a scientific basis at times), philosophers like DeBeauvoir and Levinas, as well as economists such as Engels, also believe that humans exist as more than solitary units. APOCALYPTIC CRITICS For decades we have been hearing apocalyptic discourse grounded, consciously or unconsciously, in a critique of individualism. It is, to be sure, a critique which assumes individualism at a fairly excessive, acquisitive pace, but the assumption seems justified in light of the excessive consumption of much of the globe. If greed causes war, and there is good reason to believe it does, then the nightmare scenarios of nuclear war have not gone away with the reputed end of the Cold War. As long as people are allowed, by law or conscience, to disregard the needs of others in order to satisfy themselves, the risk of destroying entire populations with nuclear weapons, or if available, weapons far more efficient. The risk of mass destruction has simply gone out through the back door, lingers in the yard for someone to find it and use it. The collapse of statism, the decentralization of Eastern Europe into clumsy geopolitical entities, many of whom have or can acquire nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, casts a certain chill on the attempt to “introduce” capitalism into the region. Why not guarantee yourself and your cronies some capital, and some inexpensive security? Such specific scenarios aside, the mindset of exploitation itself seems to have evolved into a resigned statement of human nature which, with the proliferation of such apocalyptic narratives, might actually numb us to the destruction of humanity which is already occumng; the World War Three that, in a sense, is already slowly happening around us. From Bosnia to Kuwait to Zaire and Somalia, humanity seems to be fighting pointless, yet hunger and alienation driven, battles over resources in the name of Freedom, butchering ourselves a little at a time. Those who would stand up and cross-examine: “But why hasn’t humanity yet been destroyed?” are unaware of the anti-individualist argument that the destruction is happening already, albeit not in the life of the average debate opponent. We must hurt others if physical and biological circumstances pit lives against one another. This seems a scientific fact, but ethics should supposedly encompass and transcend science. For the recently deceased Emmanuel Levinas, a Lithuanian who studied under Heidegger, influenced Sartre and Derrida, and attempted a revolutionary and comprehensive ethical project, our failure to recognize the debt each “I” owes to its Others, Sartre’s existants who give us our identity and freedom, constitutes both a slow and ever-present death-b1~ow to humanity. Richard Cohen, an American editor of Levinas’ groundbreaking Time and the Other (1990), explains that individualism, stripped of its outdated metaphysical armor, is the source of an alienating objectification of the world, a view which could indeed be fatal to humanity in light of 20th century global holocausts: “Ours is an age of disaster-- an age without a guiding star, an age whose firmament has been shaken and is shaking, an unmoored epoch, so seemingly without bearings, where the future of humanity, if not life itself, is in question. We live, Levinas has written in a recent article, in ‘the century which in 30 years has known two world wars, the totalitarianisms of right and left, Hitlerism and Stalinism, Hiroshima, the Gulag, the genocides of Auschwitz and Cambodia.’ It has never been more difficult to think--but not just because the quantity of accumulated and available information has increased geometrically and geographically, as it has; nor only because, having tried and exhausted 340

more than two millenia of self-interpretations, and having recently tried several brilliant and varied renewals, thought no longer knows what to think of itself, can push its hyper-self-reflection no further; but more profoundly, because thought can no longer think in good conscience. Good conscience alone is not enough. To live the end of metaphysics, its fulfilment and termination, requires, Levinas insists, that we take bad conscience seriously, that we recognize the full extent and weight of our debts and obligations to the Other, that we value goodness and justice above being and order.” (Cohen, in Levinas, pp. 26-7) This moving and complicated passage deserves some attention, and just as reading any philosopher slowly and carefully can yield insightful conclusions, there are some points of interest in Cohen’s interpretation of Levinas which will be helpful to those intent on answering individualism. AN AGE OF DISASTER There may once have been a time, as Engels says, when there was a need or a purpose for nobility. Likewise, as the writings of the American and French Revolutions suggest, there may well have been a time when individuals needed to be seen, against older ideals, as paramount in themselves and requiring freedom from the dubiously defined “collectives” of the Regent or King. But this age is different, because of our external and internal interdependence. Not only must we recognize how each person’s actions, in the context of a volatile world, might affect the good of many others, but Levinas insists that we must also, in this age when metaphysics and absolutes no longer take hold of our lives, recognize how each of us is essentially made up by those around us, of our inability to avoid the responsibility that comes from their presence. “an unmoored epoch” and “the end of metaphysics.” Again, Cohen (citing Levinas) is referring to that age when we are no longer obsessed with finding unifying theories, authoritarian religions, in other words, a society without a comprehensive moral anchor. “Epoch” refers to an age. It is always helpful to have a dictionaiy near when reading evidence written by philosophers. “the totalitarianisms of right and left.” It may seem strange that an anti-individualist philosopher like Levinas would fear totalitarianism. This attitude represents the new communitarian thinking exemplified by a hatred of both selfishness and domination, traits which are going to be found among the purveyors of any totalitarian society. Socialists and other anti-individualists need not worry about defending Stalinism, since Stalinism (and its varieties among Mao, Pol Pot and other dictators) is a distortion of the “real” alternative to individualism, collective democracy. “two millenia of self-interpretations,” and “hyper-self-reflection.” Both of these terms refer to the metaphysical foundation of individualism, inspired by Descartes, the assumption that the self is prior to all else, is, in some sense, the ultimate source of identity and validation. Levinas, in contrast, believes that the other is actually prior to the self, at least in the sense that we cannot be who we are without the context provided by the existence of others; we are, in that sense at least, “socialized” (see the evidence under “Individualism is ethically flawed” written by DeBeavour). “Self-interpretation” and “self-reflection” are the projects of individualism. Valuing “goodness and justice above being and order.” This is the crux of the Cohen quote; it serves as a criterial weighing mechanism, an instruction to value what is good and just over something that simply makes sense by virtue of its axioms, something which anti-individualists like Levinas see as the basis of individualism. In other words, all else being equal, the theory which advances the justice and goodness of others should be prefered over the one that does not. CONCLUSION It is with Levinas’ fearful but optimistic argument that humans must abandon individualism of their own accord and recognize their debt to those around them, that we find ourselves conclusively equipped with a multifaceted critique of individualism. It is historically obsolete, philosophically indefensible, and perhaps ethically dangerous. Debaters who find themselves against Randian Objectivists or Libertarians of many colors must ask their opponents to account for the material context of their ideals. Can humans really live in circumstances where scarcity, inequality 341

and competition ground our every choice? Isn’t cooperation more productive than individualistic competition? Aren’t we now at a point where “no man is an island,” where communities are linked by electric data and satellite imagery, across the globe? Where does our responsibility begin, if not in response? And who are we responding to, if not to the others around us?

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Crittenden, Jack. BEYOND INDIVIDUALISM: RECONSTITUTING THE LIBERAL SELF (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992). Schmitt, Richard. BEYOND SEPARATENESS: THE SOCIAL NATURE OF HUMAN BEINGS (Boulder: Westview Press, 1995). Fox-Genovese, Elizabeth. FEMINISM WITHOUT ILLUSIONS: A CRITIQUE OF INDIVIDUALISM (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991). Loewy, Erich H. FREEDOM AS COMMUNITY: THE ETHICS OF INTERDEPENDENCE (Albany: SUNY Press, 1993). Perkins, Merle L. JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU ON THE INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1974). Forbes, Ian. MARX AND THE NEW INDIVIDUAL (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1990). Tucker, D.F.B. MARXISM AND INDIVIDUALISM (Oxford: B. Blackwell, 1980). Kingdom, J.E. NO SUCH THING AS SOCIETY?: INDIVIDUALISM AND THE COMMUNITY (Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1992). Baker, James Thomas. AYN RAND (Boston: Twayne, 1987). ONeill, William F. WITH CHARITY TOWARD NONE: AN ANALYSIS OF AYN RAND’S PHILOSOPHY (New York: Philosophical Library, 1971). Sciabaira, Chris Matthew. AYN RAND: THE RUSSIAN RADICAL (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995). EQUALITY AND LIBERTY: ANALYIZING RAWLS AND NOZICK (New York: St. Martins Press, 1991). READING NOZICK: ESSAYS ON ANARCHY, STATE AND UTOPIA (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1981).

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INDIVIDUALISM IS HISTORICALLY OBSOLETE 1. VALIDITY OF INDIVIDUALISM IS HISTORICALLY CONTINGENT Mary Ann Glendon, Professor of Law, Harvard University, BYU LAW REVIEW, 1993, P. 393 The debate about individualism and communitarianism, as the French reporter points out, is an old one, but it is one whose terms alter their weight and meanings under different historical conditions. Depending on the circumstances, the sorts of groups that in some countries at some phases of historical development promote individual liberty and participatory politics can operate in other times and places to oppress individuals and to stifle political life. 2. CURRENTLY INDIVIDUALISM IS HISTORICALLY BANKRUPT Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Director of Women’s Studies and Professor of History, Emory University, GEORGE WASHINGTON LAW REVIEW, March, 1986, p.363 As a people and a society we have stretched the principles of individualism about as far as we can. The struggle for women’s full access to individualism has, more than any other single development, exposed the bankruptcy of individualist principles as guidelines for a just society. Individualism worked as a standard of justice and of freedom only so long as more than half the population was excluded from it. 3. INDIVIDUALIST IDEOLOGY OBSCURES CONTEMPORARY CLASS INEQUALITIES Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Director of Women’s Studies and Professor of History, Emory University, GEORGE WASHINGTON LAW REVIEW, March, 1986, p.344 The American myth of individualism has probably stood as the single most important barrier to Americans’ perceptions of the class relations in which they are enmeshed. At least since the days of De Tocqueville, commentators on American society have widely acknowledged the power of that myth of individual mobility and opportunity. INDIVIDUALISM AND CAPITALISM ARE UNFAIR 1. INDIVIDUAL FAIRNESS DOES NOT EQUAL SOCIAL FAIRNESS Frederick Engels, socialist philosopher and economist, THE WAGES SYSTEM, 1977, p. 7. A fair day’s wages for a fair day’s work? But what is a fair day’s wages, and what is a fair day’s work? How are they determined by the laws under which modem society exists and develops itself? For an answer to this we must not apply to the science of morals or of law and equity, nor to any sentimental feeling of humanity, justice, or even charity. What is morally fair, what is even fair in law, may be far from being socially fair. Social fairness or unfaimess is decided by one science alone--the science which deals with the material facts of production and exchange, the science of political economy. 2. CAPITALIST NOTION OF FAIRNESS IS PREDOMINANTLY UNFAIR Frederick Engels, socialist philosopher and economist, THE WAGES SYSTEM, 1977, p. 8 The transaction, then, may be thus described--the workman gives to the Capitalist his full day’s working power; that is, so much of it as he can give without rendering impossible the continuous repitition of the transaction. In exchange he receives just as much, and no more, of the necessaries of life as is required to keep up the repitition of the same bargain every day. The workman gives as much, the Capitalist gives as little, as the nature of the bargain will admit. This is a very peculiar sort of fairness. 3. THE PLAYING FIELD CANNOT BE LEVEL UNDER CAPITALISM Frederick Engels, socialist philosopher and economist, THE WAGES SYSTEM, 1977, p. 8 The Capitalist, if he cannot agree with the Labourer, can afford to wait, and live upon his capital. The workman cannot. He has but his wages to live upon, and must therefore take work when, where, and at what terms he can get it. The workman has no fair start. He is fearfully handicapped by hunger. Yet, according to the political economy of the Capitalist class, that is the very pink of fairness.

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INDIVIDUALISM IS ETHICALLY FLAWED 1. HUMANS ARE FUNDAMENTALLY SOCIAL, NOT INDIVIDUAL Ian Hampsher-Monk, political scientist at Exeter (Britain), SOCIALISM AND THE COMMON GOOD, 1996, P. 203. Contraxy to contractarian or quasi-contractarian views tben widely canvassed, society was never established from individuals, rather, individuals were differentiated out of social wholes. The establishment of the legal and market social orders so characteristic of the modem state has, in all cases, supervened on a preexisting social whole or wholes, on which it has in many cases been hitherto reliant in establishing limits to the dangers otherwise inherent in unbounded individualism. 2. FREEDOM OF ONE PERSON REQUIRES THE FREEDOM OF ALL Simone DeBeauvoir, French philosopher. THE ETHICS OF AMBIGUITY, 1972, p. 71. This truth is found in another form when we say that freedom cannot will itself without aiming at an open future. The ends which it gives itself must be unable to be transcended by any reflection, but only the freedom of other men can extend them beyond our life. I have tried to show in Pyrrhus and Cineas that every man needs the freedom of other men and, in a sense, always wants it, even though he may be a tyrant; the only thing he fails to do is to assume honestly the consequences of such a wish. Only the freedom of others keeps each one of us from hardening in the absurdity of facticity. 3. CONCERN FOR OTHERS IS INEVITABLE Simone DeBeauvoir, French philosopher. THE ETHICS OF AMBIGUITY, 1972, p. 72. Man can find a justification of his own existence only in the existence of other men. Now, he needs such a justification; there is no escaping it. Moral anxiety does not come to man from without; he finds within himself the ancient question, ‘What’s the use?” Or, to put it better, he himself is this urgent interrogation. He flees it only by fleeing himself, and as soon as he exists he answers. It may perhaps be said that it is for himself that he is moral and that such an attitude is egotistical. But there is no ethics against which this charge, which immediately destroys itself, cannot be leveled; for how can I worry about what does not concern me? I concern others and they concern me. There we have an irreducible truth. The me-others relationship is as indissoluble as the subject-object relationship. COMPETITION SHOULD BE REJECTED 1. COMPETITION IS FUNDAMENTALLY IRRATIONAL David Schweickart, philosopher at Loyola University, AGAINST CAPITALISM, 1996, p. 80. There is something deeply irrational--one is tempted to say insane--about a world economy so structured as to require the best and brightest people in its most advanced and industrial sectors, and massive amounts of resources as well, be devoted to improving things that hardly need improving, when the planet has such obvious and desperate needs. 2. COMPETITION IS INAPPROPRIATE FOR TODAY’S WORLD David Schweickart, philosopher at Loyola University, AGAINST CAPITALISM, 1996, p. 79. If we think about it, it should strike us as exceedingly strange that in a world beset by such real problems as decaying cities, mass poverty, and environmental degradation, the citizens of the advanced capitalist countries should be so obsessed with competing with one another. It is bizarre to be so worried about who is ahead in high-definition television, or telecommunications or computers and software, or the new materials sciences, or biotechnology, or microelectronics. And yet, in a capitalist country, one must worry.

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INDIVIDUALIST IDEOLOGY OPPRESSES WOMEN 1. INDIVIDUALIST IDEOLOGY IS A SMOKESCREEN FOR WOMEN’S OPPRESSION Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Director of Women’s Studies and Professor of History, Emory University, GEORGE WASHINGTON LAW REVIEW, March, 1986, p.338 Some feminists simply reject the premise of individualism, which they may or may not name, but which they view as little more than a rationalization for men’s exercise of violence against women, nature, and those weaker than themselves. These feminists tend to view women as inherently different from men and as naturally “communal, introspective, intuitive, affiliative, warm, expressive, caring people.” 2. AMERICAN INDIVIDUALISM FAVORS PRIVILEGED MALES Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Director of Women’s Studies and Professor of History, Emory University, GEORGE WASHINGTON LAW REVIEW, March, 1986, p. 343-4 The American class system all pious denials notwithstanding, we are a class society has grounded its hegemony, like its invisibility, in the theory and practice of individualism. All men, according to our founding text, are born free and equal. The term men might, in time and place, have invited some confusion since some American men black slaves belonged to others. But that was a semantic problem. Men, in the constitutional sense, had less to do with gender than with class, even though precisely the reverse appeared to be the case. Man meant individual with the understanding that individual was a social role rather than an innate characteristic. --

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3. INDIVIDUALISM DISTORTS AND UNDERMINES GAINS FOR WOMEN Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Director of Women’s Studies and Professor of History, Emory University, GEORGE WASHINGTON LAW REVIEW, March, 1986, p.345 The confusions that surround or rather, are perpetuated by the American myth of individualism have influenced the kinds of gains women have made during the last two decades. Worse, they have distorted the theories of women’s oppression and the strategies for overcoming it. Chiseling away at women’s subordination to men within marriage has meant chiseling away at men’s responsibility for women within marriage. --

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4. INDIVIDUALISM PERPETUATES A PUBLIC/PRIVATE DISTINCTION WHICH HARMS THEM Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Director of Women’s Studies and Professor of History, Emory University, GEORGE WASHINGTON LAW REVIEW, March, 1986, p.346 The emergence of the claims for women’s rights as individuals exposed the fraudulence of this long-honored notion of separate public and private spheres. Since the dawn of time, the division of labor by gender had encouraged men and women to view the world as divided between male and female spheres. The theory. ascribed certain activities to men, others to women. It associated the activities with specific spaces: To men belonged the fields; to women, the inside of the house. The divisions could become complex and even overlap, but they effectively assigned social space and responsibilities by gender. Initially, the triumph of capitalism, especially industrial capitalism,wrought a powerful extension of the myth of separate male and female spheres.

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THE CONCEPT OF PROPERTY RIGHTS IS FLAWED 1. THERE IS NO CONSTITUTIONAL BASIS FOR PROPERTY RIGHTS J. Peter Byrne, Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center, NOTRE DAME LAW REVIEW, 1996, P. 1054. It is understandable why proponents of a constitutional property right would want to claim that a prepolitical entitlement justifies it. First, the positive case for the legitimacy of a right against regulatory takings is extremely weak.The text of the Takings Clause, the history of its adoption, the first 135 yearsof judicial interpretation, and modem regulatory takings decisions neither establish coherent doctrine or identify an appealing moral basis for such a right. 2. UTILITARIAN CONCERNS OUTWEIGH PROPERTY RIGHTS J. Peter Byrne, Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center, NOTRE DAME LAW REVIEW, 1996, p. 1054. Standard utilitarian arguments for property rights justify reconfiguration of entitlement whenever net social benefits can be achieved by doing so. While utilitarian concerns direct decisionmakers to weigh the costs of transition from one property rule to another, including the cost of discouraging socially beneficial reliance on the stability of property rights generally, they do not counsel either against making beneficial changes or for paying compensation to losers unless doing so retards social welfare. As Bentham insisted, the assessments of when reform will make a people better off as a whole should be conducted by the legislature. 3. NO NATURAL RIGHT TO PROPERTY EXISTS J. Peter Byrne, Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center, NOTRE DAME LAW REVIEW, 1996, p. 1055-6. To the extent that we can identify a real agreement (such as a constitution), we have no need of a myth of social contract. And the idea that there ever was universal consent to the institution of private property at some time or place is i~nciful, as has been recognized since the seventeenth century. Yet without ‘everyone’s agreement.. .rights have not been alienated in the establishment of private property, but rather abrogated or violated.” Tacit consent, as by entering into civil society, might seem an attractive alternative, as it did to Locke, but runs into daunting doubts about who may be presumed to have agreed to what.

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ANSWERS TO ROBERT NOZICK 1. NOZICK IS MISTAKEN TO CLAIM WEALTH CREATES SELF-ESTEEM David Schweickart, philosopher at Loyola University, AGAINST CAPITALISM, 1996, p. 205. What Nozick is suggesting is that if inequalities of income were reduced, then one who was ugly, ignorant and untalented would truly be miserable (and hence more envious) because he could not even compensate by becoming rich. But even if this rather bizaxre proposition were true, Nozick’s general conclusion would not follow, for if there were a “principle of conservation of envy,” then reducing inequalities could not make envy any worse, because ex hypothesi its quantity is unchangable. 2. NOZICK IS WRONG: RIGHTS ARE COLLECTIVE Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Director of Women’s Studies and Professor of History, Emory University, GEORGE WASHINGTON LAW REVIEW, March, 1986, p.369 The ideology of individualism assumes that our social rights derive from our innate natures. It assimilates property to our nature as the foundation and justification for those social rights. Those who oppose equality for women are quick to point out that affirmative action interferes with the natural workings of free competitive individualism and the free market. Their attacks have thrown defenders of affirmative action on the defensive. Nonetheless, the progress of the modem state, the nature of modem democracies, and the recent history of our faltering attempts to insure some justice for women demonstrate that social rights are indeed social that the rights of the individual as a member of society derive from society rather than from presocial nature. --

3. COLLECTIVISM IS SUPERIOR TO A MINIMAL INDIVIDUALIST STATE FOR TWO REASONS Brian Barry, London School of Economics, SOCIALISM AND THE COMMON GOOD, 1996, p. 132. The case for collectivism is twofold. The first is the one outlined at the end of the previous discussion: the more that the members of society are associated in common institutions the more likely they are to see themselves as being all in the same boat and to accept redistributive measures. An extention of this is simply that the human quality of a society in which people concern themselves with the fate of others is higher, quite apart from any difference it may make to policy outputs. The second argument is that there are many things we want which can only be achieved by collective action.

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ANSWERS TO AYN RAND 1. AYN RAND’S ENTIRE PHILOSOPHY IS BASED ON A SELF-SUPPORTED ERROR William F. O’Neill, philosopher at University of Southern California, WITH CHARITY TOWARD NONE: AN ANALYSIS OF AYN RAND’S PHILOSOPHY, 1971, P. 211. Miss Rand’s economic and political theory might be described as an elaborate and interlocking system of selfsupporting error. It is founded upon a series of extremely dubious assumptions (many of which have already been examined) which are looked upon either as self-evident or as logical assumptions growing out of such self-evident assumptions. 2. RAND’S PHILOSOPHY LEADS TO ANARCHY AND HEDONISM James T. Baker, philosopher at Western Kentucky University, AYN RAND, 1987, p. 138. Her (Rand’s) ethics, he says, is [are] self-interest, as she so proudly boasts; but the logical consequence is as often as not the very hedonism she detested. Her politics, so she says, is [are] capitalism; but if one follows her line of reasoning to its ultimate conclusion, it becomes anarchy. Rational self-interest may be a contradiction in terms: given the character of human nature, human reason may well fulfill itself by seeking pleasure, not productive work. Rational self-interest that results in production is always limited to a small elite, smaller than the one in Galt’s Gulch. Rand’s capitalist utopia would lead to anarchy because she offers no arbiter for disputes between competitors except a rather naive faith in the rationalism of capitalism. 3. RAND’S PHILOSOPHICAL VIEWS ARE TOO NARROW James T. Baker, philosopher at Western Kentucky University, AYN RAND, 1987, p. 146. Men are either individualists or collectivists, she said as a young woman and continued to say, simplistically, as she grew older. They follow either their reason or some mystical directive, and only the ones who follow reason find the truth. They are either men of rational self-interest or detestable altruists, all good or bad, never a mixture of the two. Religion is bad, capitalism good; big government is bad, small government good. Philosophers must see and speak in blacks and whites or they compromise the truth. Truth is truth, simply, absolutely. 4. RAND’S ATTACK ON ALTRUISM IS A STRAW FALLACY William F. O’Neill, philosopher at University of Southern California, WITH CHARITY TOWARD NONE: AN ANALYSIS OF AYN RAND’S PHILOSOPHY, 1971, p. 200. In a large degree, Miss Rand is guilty of destroying her customary straw man. Her attacks on altruism are not attacks on the type of rational altruism which is founded upon enlightened self-interest as is represented, for example, in the utilitarianism of John Stuart Mill. Instead, she concentrates her fire on.the outdated metaphysical altruism of Kant, explaining that”. it is Kant’s version of altruism that people, who have never heard of Kant, profess when they equate self-interest with evil.” ..

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Individual Responsibilty Good PEOPLE SHOULD ACCEPT PERSONAL RESPONSIBILTY FOR THEIR OWN ACTIONS 1. 95 PERCENT OF AMERICANS BELIEVE IN PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY Asa Hutchinson, Republican congressman from Arizona, CONGRESSIONAL RECORD, September 16, 1997, p. H7286. Mr. Speaker, recently in my Sunday newspaper, I saw a fascinating article in the USA Weekend section that was entitled `What Americans Agree On.' USA Weekend took a poll over the July 4th holiday and found out that 95 percent of Americans agree that freedom must be tempered with personal responsibility. Ninety-five percent, Mr. Speaker. 2. EDUCATION MUST FOCUS ON PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY Asa Hutchinson, Republican congressman from Arizona, CONGRESSIONAL RECORD, September 16, 1997, p. H7286. Now leaving aside the poll numbers, it is common sense that personal responsibility is vital to the American conception of freedom. But what if children come from homes in which blaming others for our shortcomings is a way of life? How will such children learn the basic American value of freedom in the context of personal responsibility? The answer is education. The problem is that too many schools are failing to teach what nearly all Americans agree on that is fundamental to our freedom. Personal responsibility, a concept shared by all Americans, is where education reformers should talk more about when thinking about educating our Nation's children. 3. TOO MANY PEOPLE LOOK FOR OTHERS TO BLAME Chandra W. Liem, International Business and Management Consultant, PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY, 1999, http://business.bohol.net/Business_Columns/LIEM/attitude.htm, accessed May 10, 1999. To many people, "responsibility" is a strange word. We are reminded of this all too often; heads of states claim they didn't know what their cabinet secretaries were doing; accused murderers told the courts that they were "temporarily" insane, so as to spare themselves from going to the gas-chamber, and thus can not be held responsible for their actions; busy parents who would blame the school system because "Cindy can't read." How can we possibly be so cruel as to hold these innocent parties responsible for their actions? The high school student cheats on his exams, the college graduate forges letters of recommendation in order to get into better graduate/prestigious school, the young businessman/woman falsifies financial statements so that he/she can get ahead financially and left his/her clients and customers in financial ruins, and everyone cheats on their resume. It sometimes seems like almost everyone is looking for someone else to blame, or to bail out when they find themselves in trouble. And so careers fail - or never really get going; working mothers and fathers get frustrated with children for misbehaving because they fail to spend enough quality time and teach virtues and (family/societal) values. All because of the failure to accept a full "personal responsibility." 4. PERSONAL RESPONSIBILTY IS THE PRICE OF FREEDOM Chandra W. Liem, International Business and Management Consultant, PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY, 1999, http://business.bohol.net/Business_Columns/LIEM/attitude.htm, accessed May 10, 1999. Sound like a burdensome obligation? This is the price of Freedom! Now, if no one can excuse or rescue us, would it also be true that no one can hold us back? It is self evidenced that "only one can help him/herself, and only you can stand in your own way!" Did you know that we are the ones who set the standards for our own conduct and behavior? And, did you know that we are also the ones who choose the thoughts and actions that will lead us on to success? The power to fulfill our dreams lies within each one of us. When we understand that we alone have the responsibility to shape our own lives, we know that nothing and no one can deny us "success" and "greatness!"

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LACK OF PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY CAUSES PROBLEMS 1. SHOULD CHARGE PEOPLE WITH RESPONSIBILITY FOR THEIR ACTIONS Reverend Sterling Durgy, AMERICAN NIGHT WATCH NEWSLETTER, July 1995, p. 7. Listening to the television news night after night, I find a strange reluctance to charge people with personal responsibility for their actions. If there is a drug problem it is because someone doesn't provide enough education about the dangers of drugs or pay for drug rehabilitation, if there are teenage pregnancies and if there is an epidemic of venereal disease (especially AIDS) it is because people aren't provided with condoms, if there are crimes it is because people aren't given opportunities to earn a living, if people shoot other people it is because someone doesn't keep guns out of the shooter's hands; it isn't thought to be the reponsibility of the drug user, the person who commits immorality, the criminal, or the assassin. 2. PEOPLE CAN CHOOSE WHETHER TO BE MORAL OR IMMORAL Reverend Sterling Durgy, AMERICAN NIGHT WATCH NEWSLETTER, July 1995, p. 7. Missing from the report is the truth that many people choose not to use drugs, choose not to be immoral, choose to direct their energies toward self-improvement rather than vindictive crime, and do not shoot others even if they have guns. 3. VICTIM IDEOLOGY UNDERMINES CHARACTER AND RESPONSIBILITY Reverend Sterling Durgy, AMERICAN NIGHT WATCH NEWSLETTER, July 1995, p. 7. To be sure, the reluctance of the media may be motivated more by a hesitancy to avoid offending viewers than to push an ideology. After all, people who are doing things that are wrong don't often appreciate having that pointed out to them, and may well avoid viewing programs that do so! But it also seems that there is an underlying belief that human beings are "prisoners" of their own humanity, creatures who cannot help but act in certain ways under certain circumstances. If this isn't the attitude of many reporters, it certainly is the attitude of many others thoughout our nation. In today's society, everyone seems to be a "victim" of something, no one is responsible for his or her situation or for self-improvement. 4. DEATH OF PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY = DEATH OF INDIVIDUAL AND CULTURE Reverend Sterling Durgy, AMERICAN NIGHT WATCH NEWSLETTER, July 1995, p. 7. One of the heavy prices that this outlook carries with it is despair. If we cannot help ourselves, we are, indeed, prisoners of our own selves. Life is totally deterministic, you are either blessed or damned, governed totally by fate and circumstances; reduced to a creature who can merely become angry if things don't turn out right. The death of personal responsibility is also the death of respect for individuals, the death of respect for the capabilities God gave each person to cope with life, the death of hope for individual accomplishment.

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Individual Responsibility Bad "PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY" DECREASES SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY 1. "PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY" JUSTIFIES INHUMANE ACTS Noam Chomsky, Professor at MIT, interviewed by David Barsamian, Z MAGAZINE, April 1997, p. 24. BARSAMIAN: In August 1996 the president signed something called the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act, which eliminated the 61-year-old federal government commitment to the poor. I know you've commented that that commitment has always been very limited and has declined sharply since around 1970. CHOMSKY: Since the assault began. BARSAMIAN: You've got to like the wording. CHOMSKY: The wording's fine. It says 7-year-old children have to have personal responsibility and now they have an opportunity which was deprived them before, the opportunity to starve. It's just another assault against defenseless people. It's now felt, Well, okay, we can kick them in the face. 2. IDEOLOGY OF "PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY" BASED IN PROPOGANDA Noam Chomsky, Professor at MIT, interviewed by David Barsamian, Z MAGAZINE, April 1997, p. 24. This, too, is based on a very effective propaganda campaign to make much of the population hate and fear the poor. That's smart. You don't want to get them to look at the rich guys. Don't let them take a look at the pages of Fortune and Business Week talking about the "dazzling" and "stupendous" profit growth. Don't let them look at the way the military system is pouring funds into advanced technology. You're not supposed to look at that. What you're supposed to look at is the black mother driving a Cadillac and picking up her welfare check so she can have more babies. Why should I pay for that? That's been done very effectively. It's striking, again, when you look at attitudes. Most people think the government has a responsibility to ensure reasonable standards, minimal standards for poor people. On the other hand, most people are against welfare, which does exactly that. That's a propaganda achievement that you have to admire. 3. "PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY" IS A MYTH DESIGNED TO SHRINK SOCIAL CONSCIENCE Noam Chomsky, Professor at MIT, interviewed by David Barsamian, Z MAGAZINE, April 1997, p. 24. There is a campaign to undermine public confidence in Social Security. Most of the talk about Social Security is pretty fraudulent. Take the question about privatizing it. That's a non-issue. If people believe that it would be better for Social Security to be invested in the stock market rather than in, say, Treasury bonds, that can be done whether it's public or private. I think the main goal is really to privatize it, that is, to make people in charge of their individual assets and not to have the solidarity that comes from doing something together. It's extremely important to break down the sense that I have any responsibility for the next person. The ideal is a society based on a social unit which consists of you and your television set and nothing to do with any other people. If a person next door has invested her assets badly and is now starving in her old age, well, it isn't my responsibility. Social Security was something that brought people together. They said, We're going to have a common responsibility to ensure that all of us have a minimal standard of living. That's dangerous, because it implies that people can work together. If you can work together, for example, you can replace corporate tyranny by worker control. You can get involved in the democratic process and make your own decisions. Much better to create a mentality in which each person behaves individually. The powerful will win. The poor will get smashed. There won't be any solidarity or communication or mutual support or information sharing or any of these things that might lead to democracy and justice. I think that's what lies behind the Social Security propaganda. The other issues are technical and of whatever significance they are, but probably not much. So a slightly more progressive taxation could keep Social Security functioning the way it is functioning for the indefinite future.

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WE HAVE RESPONSIBILITY NOT JUST FOR OUR ACTIONS, BUT OUR NATIONS 1. WE ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE LIKELY CONSEQUENCES OF OUR OWN ACTIONS Noam Chomsky, Professor at MIT, COMMENTARIES, May 8, 1999, www.zmag.org/Commentaries, Accessed May 10, 1999. There are, however, a few moral truisms that are relevant here. They hold for any person -- let's consider one such person, call him/her X. The first truism is that X is primarily responsible for the likely consequences of his/her own actions, or inaction. The second is that X's concern for moral issues (crimes, etc.) should vary in accordance with X's ability to have an effect (though that is of course not the only factor). The two principles tend to correlate, even coincide, in the conclusions that X will draw -- that is, if X is a moral agent, someone worth paying attention to. 2. WE HAVE A RESPONSIBILITY TO ADDRESS OUR NATION'S CRIMES Noam Chomsky, Professor at MIT, COMMENTARIES, May 8, 1999, www.zmag.org/Commentaries, Accessed May 10, 1999. To illustrate, it may be worthwhile to study the crimes of Genghis Khan, but there is little moral significance to that; we can't do anything about them. Similarly, it is highly worthwhile to attend to US-backed atrocities (say, in Turkey, or Colombia, or East Timor, or Iraq, or many other places), because we are responsible for the crimes and can do a lot about them very easily; namely, by withdrawing our (often decisive) support. But attention to Pol Pot's crimes, while a worthy enterprise (if done honestly, which was rarely the case), had little if any moral significance because there was no hint of a proposal as to what to do about them -- and when they were terminated, the US was infuriated and severely punished the criminals (the Vietnamese) who carried out the clearest case of "humanitarian intervention" since World War II. We understand these truisms very well when we are thinking of others. Thus no one in the U.S. was impressed when Soviet commissars railed about U.S. crimes; we were much impressed, however, when dissidents in the USSR condemned Soviet crimes. The reasons were the two moral truisms just mentioned (which, as is commonly the case, coincided in their implications). 3. WE HAVE A RESPONSIBILITY TO THE VICTIMS OF AMERICAN POWER Noam Chomsky, professor at MIT, AMERICAN POWER AND THE NEW MANDARINS, 1969, p. 397-398 Those of us who are not under direct attack and who are relatively free to choose a course of action have a responsibility to the victims of American power that we must face with unwavering seriousness. In considering some tactics of protest or resistance, we must ask what its consequences are likely to be for the people of Vietnam or of Guatemala or of Harlem, and what effect it will have on the building of a movement against war and oppression, a movement that will help to create a society in which one can live without fear and without shame. We have to search for ways to persuade vast numbers of Americans to commit themselves to this task, and we must devise ways to convert this commitment into effective action. The goal may seem so remote as to be a fantasy, but for those who are serious, this is the only strategy that can be considered. Persuasion may involve deeds as well as words; it may involve the construction of institutions and social forms, even if only in microcosm, that overcome the competitiveness and the single-minded pursuit of self-interest that proves a mechanism of social control as effective as that of a totalitarian state. But the goal must be to design and construct alternatives to the present ideology and social institutions that are more compelling on intellectual and moral grounds, and that can draw to them masses of Americans who find that these alternatives satisfy their human needs -- including the human need to show compassion, to encourage and to assist those who seek to raise themselves from the misery and degradation that our society has helped to impose and now seeks to perpetuate.

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Individual Rights Good INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS SHOULD BE SUPERIOR TO COMMUNITY 1. INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS SHOULD BE PARAMOUNT TO COMMUNITY Carl 3. Friedrich, author, THE CONCEPT OF COMMUNITY IN THE HISTORY OF POLITICAL AND LEGAL PHILOSOPHY, 1959, p. 5. The sense of human reality which animates these observations about the right size of polis similarly manifests itself in Aristotle’s recognition that neither individuals nor groups can exist without some measure of life of their own. It is the sense that a community presupposes beings who exist by themselves, but who have certain things in common which bind them together. 2. COMMUNITY UNDERMINES INDIVIDUAL ASPIRATIONS Robert 3. Roth, Professor and Dean at Fordham University, PERSON AND COMMUNITY, 1975, p 9-10. We are saying, however, that not to speak of man in society is not to speak of man as he is; it is to look at the evidence available and not to read all of it. When an individual enters the world, he enters a world that is not only already there but which already has a sense (the term signifies both “meaning” and “direction”) which he does not give it and which he is not free to take away from it. He chooses neither to be born or be born in these circumstances. The society in which he lives has been structured by a sum of human activity and environmental forces in the past in which neither he nor those around him have had any part. It is a society in which it can, it is true, also be restructured, but even the restructuring will be socially conditioned. He will speak a language which he as an individual does not choose, a language which is a given in the community and which will condition the way he experiences the world and life in it. He will neither create nor discover values independently of others; his very thinking will be conditioned by the structured community of which he is a part. 3. COMMUNITY CAN NOT EXIST WITHOUT THE INDIVIDUAL Bernard Susser, author, EXISTENCE AND UTOPIA, 1981, p. 46. Community can begin only with such “single ones,” for “one must truly be able to say I in order to know the mystery of the I-thou in its whole truth.” That is to say, Only the man who has become a ‘single one’, self, a real person, is able to have a complete relation to the other self.” When a number of such persons become a group, there arises an ~‘essential We” which is the cornerstone of community. 4. WITHOUT THE INDIVIDUAL, THERE CAN BE NO COMMUNITY Bernard Susser, author, EXISTENCE AND UTOPIA, 1981, pps. 46-47. The term ““means a community of several independent persons, who have reached a self and self-responsibility and being made possible by them. The special character of the “we” is shown in the essential relation existing or arising temporarily between its members; that is in the holding sway within the “we’ of an ontic directness which is the decisive presupposition of the “I-Thou relationship.” The we includes the thou potentially. Only men who are truly capable of saying Thou to one another can truly say “we” with one another. 5. FULFILLING INDIVIDUAL NEEDS BREEDS COMMUNITY AMONG MEN Claes 0. Ryn, author, DEMOCRACY AND THE ETHICAL LIFE, 1978, p. 85. Community, then, is experienced, not between skillfully calculating egoists, or, for that matter, between mere “lovers of humanity” lacking in understanding of man’s spiritual nature and destiny, but between individuals who are trying to rise above whatever is seperative and disruptive in their character’s to what is highest in each of them. The life they attain is not based on subjective whim, but on the supra-individual authority of ethical conscience. They are ordering their lives with reference to a “center of judgment set above the shifting impressions of the individual and the flux of phenomenal nature. ‘ They are unified with each other through loyalty to a self which is the same in all men. In religious terminology, they are unified in the will of god.

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CONFLICTS ARE LIKELY WITHIN COMMUNITIES 1. COMMUNITY INCREASES STRUGGLES FOR INFLUENCE Frank 0. Kirkpatrick, Professor at Trinity College, COMMUNITY A TRINITY OF MODELS, 1986, pp. 231-232. In the mutual/personal community there will also be a never-ceasing struggle to maintain social, political, and economic equality and sharing. While it believes that neither material equality nor inequality is an end in itself, the mutual understanding of community insists that person’s be valued for their whole selves, not simply for their “spiritual” dimension. It also insists that relationships which are sustained by means of imposed inequalities are fundamentally destructive of genuine mutuality. 2. COMMUNITIES DEMAND MORE RESOURCES W. Lloyd Warner and Paul S. Lunt, Professors at Yale University, THE SOCIAL LIFE OF A MODERN COMMUNITY, 1941, p. 17. The minimum essentials for the maintenance of an autonomous community, or tribe of individuals, are fundamentally biological: the first problems to be solved are those which will insure the biological continuity of the group. Biological continuity depends on the maintenance of a regular and dependable supply of organic necessities, and either directly or indirectly demands the possession or control of the land, water, and other resources found there. All social groups have provided themselves with an apparatus for getting physical necessities from their environment and for protecting the source of supply from the ravages of other groups, of other species, and of drastic natural change. 3. COMMUNITIES BREED AN ATMOSPHERE FOR CONFLICT James S. Coleman, Professor at John Hopkins University, COMMUNITY CONFLICT, 1957, p. 2. Controversies within communities are as old as civilization itself, yet each age approaches them as if they were unique phenomena, as if similar problems had never occurred elsewhere. Each community carries out for itself a trial and error process without benefit of the cumulative experience of other communities. Since controversy arising out of a particular kind of crisis is not likely to occur frequently in a community, each community has little opportunity to evolve, in a number of trials, the optimal procedures for handling disagreements. Quite to the contrary, the outcome of one dispute “loads the dice” in favor of a similar outcome next time. 4. CONFLICTS ARE MORE LIKELY TO OCCUR IN A COMMUNITY James S. Coleman, Professor at John Hopkins University, COMMUNITY CONFLICT, 1957, p. 14. The patterns of community disputes are often the same. An administration (of the community, of the school, of a local plant) is faced with a revolt. It may take the form of mere criticism, e.g., school controversies, or assume physical violence, as in the gun battles over political control in some southern communities a few years ago.

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SOCIETY VIEWS LEISURE AS MOST IMPORTANT 1. PEOPLE WOULD TRADE MONEY FOR MORE LEISURE TIME John Buell, University of Illinois Press, 1995, p. 87. It is clear that U.S. workers feel harried. Polls point to the loss of leisure as a major concern, and popular culture and the mass media provide even better indicators as to how widespread this issue has become. Although most citizens do not want less work now, they indicate that they would trade future gains in income for more time off. 2. THE GOAL OF LEISURE PRODUCES HARD WORK Chris Rojek, NQA, DECENTERING LEISURE, RETHINKING LEISURE THEORY, 1995, p. 184. Leisure was presented as oasis of release and freedom. However, this condition always existed more as an ideal than a reality. Industrialization polluted leisure with a constant time- consciousness and guilt about activity which was not directly productive. It required that individuals did not merely enjoy free time but extracted value from it by adding to personal growth. Divorced from the deep values and mores of traditional communities, the atomized individual began to learnt look to leisure as the reward for work. In this sense leisure became enmeshed in general market activity. 3. LEISURE HELPS SOCIETY ACHIEVE COLLECTIVE AIMS Stanley Parker, Phd, University of London, LEISURE AND WORK, 1983, p. 33. Leisure has functions in the life of an individual, and its experience by individuals and groups has functions for the society in which they live. We may consider first how leisure serves society. It does this in three main ways; (1) it helps people to learn how to play their part in society; (2) it helps them to achieve societal or collective aims; and (3) it helps the society to keep together (Gross, 1961). These functions apply to groups as well as to the wider society. 4. LEISURE IS AN IMPORTANT GOAL IN OUR SOCIETY William A. Faunce, Michigan State University, WORK AND LEISURE, 1963, p. 85. Many societies in the past have supported leisure classes of varying sizes with varying amounts of time free from productive activities. Leisure today is no longer the privilege of the few, however, but the prerogative of many. Never before has the question of how leisure time is to be used assumed such importance. 5. LEISURE IS THE PARAMOUNT GOAL OF LIFE Cyril Barrett, University of Warwik, THE PHILOSOPHY OF LEISURE, 1989, p. 1. Of course we cannot discuss leisure without reference to work. What we have attempted to do is to realign the two concepts. Dr. R.T. Allen and I have attempted to take the concept of leisure back to its classical origins, where work was considered as state inferior to that of leisure. Leisure, according to the ancients, is the proper state of man. Work is what is necessary for survival and a necessary condition for leisure. It is not and end in itself. Leisure is. It is the end, the goal, of human life. At least, that is how we see it.

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International Law Good INTERNATIONAL LAW IS A DESIRABLE VALUE 1. INTERNATIONAL LAW IS GROWING IN SALIENCE Jonathan I. Charney, Board of Editors, THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW, October, 1993, p. 529. In this shrinking world, states are increasingly interdependent and interconnected, a development that has affected international law. Early international law dealt with bilateral relations between autonomous states. The principal subjects until well into this century were diplomatic relations, war, treaties and the law of the sea. One of the most significant developments in international law during the twentieth century has been the expanded role played by multilateral treaties addressed to the common concerns of states. Often they clarify and improve rules of international law through the process of rendering them in binding written agreements. These treaties also promote the coordination of uniform state behavior in a variety of areas. International organizations, themselves the creatures of multilateral treaties, have also assumed increasing prominence in the last half of this century. They contribute to the coordination and facilitation of contemporary international relations on the basis of legal principles. 2. CREATING A FUNCTIONAL SYSTEM OF INTERNATIONAL LAW IS PLAUSIBLE Louis Rene Beres, Professor of International Law in the Department of Political Science at Purdue University, VANDERBILT JOURNAL OF TRANSNATIONAL LAW, March, 1994, p. 181. One can, indeed, imagine a new system of international law built upon empirically correct assumptions and upon incremental changes in human and state behavior. To be sure, these imaginings must have distant possibilities, and thoughtful near and intermediate-term remedies for international law will have to be fashioned if we are to survive as a species. Failing such imaginations of decisively new forms of legal order, humankind would continue to embrace atrocity as “normal.” Moreover, scholars would remain content with a system that confuses ponderousness with merit and that substitutes a pretentious formality for utility. Timothy Walker’s 1837 lecture on The Dignity of the Law as a Profession exhibits such false contentment. Referring to the “high moral sublimity” of international law, Walker inquires: Who, then, will question the dignity of this branch (international law) of legal study? Next to religion, I know not that the human mind can employ itself in contemplations more interesting or sublime; and if the law of nations be not as practical, as the branches which follow, it certainly makes up in grandeur, what it lacks in every day utility. 3. INTERNATIONAL LAW IS NECESSARY TO PROMOTE INTERNATIONAL PEACE Lea Brilmayer, Benjamin F. Butler Professor of Law at New York University Law School, WEST VIRGINIA LAW REVIEW, Winter, 1996, p. 616. The connection between international law and peace seems more direct than the connection between international law and prosperity. International law is directly concerned with the prevention of international aggression; with the inviolability of existing territorial borders. In addition, many forms of physical violence against individual human beings are prohibited by international human rights law, and some of the cruelest excesses of war are banned by conventions dealing with the proper conduct of armed conflict. The very notion of international law seems to carry with it the idea that disputes can and should be resolved through nonviolent means such as negotiation, diplomacy, mediation, and international litigation. 4. PEACE IS ESSENTIAL FOR SOCIETY’S WELL-BEING Lea Brilmayer, Benjamin F. Butler Professor of Law at New York University Law School, WEST VIRGINIA LAW REVIEW, Winter, 1996, p. 615. It hardly needs to be stated that two of our most important international aspirations are peace and prosperity. Peace, indeed, seems the basic precondition for virtually all other international goods. The cost of war must be measured not only in the lives and limbs that are lost directly to armed conflict, but also in the economic devastation caused by war and the psychological trauma suffered by those who witness it.

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INTERNATIONAL LAW IS A VALID VALUE 1. INTERNATIONAL LAW IS VALUABLE AS A FORUM FOR DISPUTE RESOLUTION Lea Brilmayer, Benjamin F. Butler Professor of Law at New York University Law School, WEST VIRGINIA LAW REVIEW, Winter, 1996, P. 621. To cite just one example of how international law has made it easier, safer, and more productive to meet, the rules of diplomatic immunity have made it possible for countries to exchange ambassadors without fear of their being maltreated. Such rules are rarely violated. Provision of a forum is valuable in many different ways. Countries often have important interests in common that cannot be adequately identified and acknowledged without the opportunity for discussion. Of course, interests are often not entirely congruent; but even where they have a conflictual element, face-to-face meetings may make those interests that they do have in common clear enough that the participants find it worthwhile to set aside their differences. Sometimes the advantage is in large part a psychological one; one’s enemies may seem more hostile and frightening when seen from a distance and meeting them may create a sense of common bonds of humanity. Negotiations sometimes pick up sufficient inertia that, once started, their inner logic provides its own motivations to settle. The fact that an international institution will be available to monitor both sides’ conduct after agreement has been reached also encourages consensus. 2. PROBLEMS OF FUTILITY AND IRRELEVANCE HAVE BEEN LARGELY REMEDIED Anne-Marie Slaughter Burley, Assistant Professor of Law and International Relations at the University of Chicago, THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW, April, 1993, p. 205. Writing in 1968 on the ‘relevance of international law,” Richard Falk described his efforts as part of the larger endeavor of ‘liberating the discipline of international law from a sense of its own futility.” In 1992 that task appears to have been accomplished. International legal rules, procedures and organizations are more visible and arguably more effective than at any time since 1945. If the United Nations cannot accomplish everything, it once again represents a significant repository of hopes for a better world. And even as its current failures are tabulated, from Yugoslavia to the early weeks and then months of the Somali famine, the almost-universal response is to find ways to strengthen it. The resurgence of rules and procedures in the service of an organized international order is the legacy of all wars, hot or cold. 3. INTERNATIONAL LAW DOES NOT EXCLUDE WOMEN Fernando R. Teson, Professor of Law at Arizona State University, VIRGINIA JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW ASSOCIATION, Spring, 1993, p. 655. In response to the first point, I find little plausibility in the claim of some feminists that the specific content of international law rules systematically privileges men. Positive international law is a vast and heterogeneous system consisting of principles, rules, and standards of varying degrees of generality, many of a technical nature. Rules such as the principle of territoriality in criminal jurisdiction, or the rule that third states should in principle have access to the surplus of the entire allowable catch of fish in a coastal state’s exclusive economic zone are not “thoroughly gendered” but, on the contrary, gender- neutral. It cannot be seriously maintained that such norms operate overtly or covertly to the detriment of women. The same can be said of the great bulk of international legal rules.

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International Law Bad INTERNATIONAL LAW IS AN INVALID VALUE 1. EVEN SUPPORTERS AGREE INTERNATIONAL LAW IS WIDELY IGNORED Lea Brilmayer, Benjamin F. Butler Professor of Law at New York University Law School, WEST VIRGINIA LAW REVIEW, Winter, 1996, P. 613. But from neither point of view is international law already as fully developed as domestic law. Even the most optimistic international lawyers would probably not insist that there already exists an optimal or even a satisfactory level of norm observance, although most of them are too concerned with showing what international law can do to be interested in making concessions about what it can’t. Whether the glass is half full or half empty, the point remains that no one claims that it is entirely full, or even as full as we would like it to be. --

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2. STATUS QUO INTERNATIONAL LAW CAN NEVER BE SUCCESSFUL Louis Rene Beres, Professor of International Law in the Department of Political Science at Purdue University, VANDERBILT JOURNAL OF TRANSNATIONAL LAW, March, 1994, pp. 161-164. Imnmanuel Kant once remarked: “Out of timber so crooked as that from which man is made, nothing entirely straight can be built.” Understood in terms of international law, this philosopher’s wisdom points toward a far-reaching departure from traditional emphases on structures of global power and authority. Newly aware that structural alterations of international law are always epiphenomenal, ignoring root causes of international crimes in favor of their symptomatic expressions, we could craft from this departure a new and promising jurisprudence. Acknowledging that human transformations must lie at the heart of all world-order reform, we could build upon the knowledge that international law never can be improved by institutions alone and that the record of “civilization” reveals persistent degradation and willful destructiveness. 3. INTERNATIONAL LAW CONSISTENTLY FAILS TO ACHIEVE INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE Lea Brilmayer, Benjamin F. Butler Professor of Law at New York University Law School, WEST VIRGINIA LAW REVIEW, Winter, 1996, p. 613. If the current state of international law is less than satisfactory, what should be said about international justice? Even those who are among the most optimistic about international law would probably not claim that international justice prevails. As with international law, moreover, international justice has those who doubt that it even makes sense as something to aim for. Justice, some think, exists only within societies; it is for a community to aspire to internally. Even some of our most prominent theorists of domestic justice, such as John Rawls, draw the line at applying their arguments to the international situation. 4. INTERNATIONAL LAW OPPRESSES WOMEN BY ENTRENCHING STATISM Fernando R. Teson, Professor of Law at Arizona State University, VIRGiNIA JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW ASSOCIATION, Spring, 1993, p. 656. Feminists are correct, however, on their second claim that international law overprotects states and governments. International law, as traditionally understood, is formulated in exaggeratedly statist terms. Statism, the doctrine that state sovereignty is the foundational concept of international law, repudiates the central place accorded to the individual in any liberal normative theory; and, by extension, it often results in ignoring the rights and interests of women within states. This criticism is identical to the one made by the Kantian theory of international law. The Kantian thesis insists upon disfranchising illegitimate governments, that is, governments that fail to respect basic human rights and are unrepresentative. Likewise, there is little doubt that the government of a state that denies women status as equal citizens is illegitimate, just as the apartheid regime in South Africa is (or was) illegitimate. Feminists are right in challenging statism.

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INTERNATIONAL LAW IS AN UNSUCCESSFUL VALUE 1 INTERNATIONAL LAW CANNOT FORCE COMPUANCE Lea Brilrnayer, Benjamin F. Butler Professor of Law at New York University Law School, WEST VIRGINIA LAW REVIEW, Winter, 1996, P. 630. In the international situation, moreover, there is an additional difficulty that stems from the fact that the amount of pressure that can be marshalled is limited. It may be difficult to apply enough pressure to force the violator to compensate the victim, because the amount of pressure sufficient to deprive the violator of the net benefit of its violation may still not be sufficient to force it to return the benefits it has received. If the net benefit of the violation is x, so that imposition of a penalty of that size is adequate to deprive it of any gains from its violation, a penalty of x may nonetheless not be sufficient to force it to return its unjust gains. It may simply prefer to suffer the penalty in silence. One important reason is that the violator would probably lose face if it admitted that it violated international law; giving in signals weakness to one’s opponents both at home and abroad. Because international law must rely on indirect pressure rather than directly forcing violators to comply, the violator that cares deeply about not compensating the victim is in a strong position to resist. If the amount of pressure that is applied is not effective to cause the violator to give compensation, in addition, then all of the international legal system~s efforts are wasted from a corrective justice point of view. 2. STRUCTURAL ADJUSTMENTS CANNOT FIX THE FLAWS OF INTERNATIONAL LAW Louis Rene Beres, Professor of International Law in the Department of Political Science at Purdue University, VANDERBILT JOURNAL OF TRANSNATIONAL LAW, March, 1994, pp. 166-167. What about improved structures of legal power and authority? Do international crimes essentially result from historic decentralization, a disastrous Westphalian legacy of the seventeenth century? Empirical information, as well as reasoned deductive argument, suggest otherwise. Clearly, an age of atrocity did not commence with the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire. Moreover, it is perfectly obvious that even the creation of an authentic world state, the most centralized expression of world law, could not end crimes of war and crimes against humanity. Finally, even if greater centralization of world security processes were desirable in principle, its feasibility would remain in serious doubt. Evil seemingly is not only an integral component of international criminality, but a component whose impact cannot be relieved via structural reconfigurations of power and sovereign authority. 3. INTERNATIONAL LAW CANNOT COMPEL UNIVERSAL COMPLIANCE Jonathan I. Charney, Board of Editors, THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW, October, 1993, p. 530. Unfortunately, the traditions of the international legal system appear to work against the ability to legislate universal norms. States are said to be sovereign, thus able to determine for themselves what they must or may do. State autonomy continues to serve the international system well in traditional spheres of international relations. The freedom of states to control their own destinies and policies has substantial value: it permits diversity and the choice by each state of its own social priorities. Few, if any, states favor a world government that would dictate uniform behavior for all. Consequently, many writers use the language of autonomy when they declare that international law requires the consent of the states that are governed by it. Many take the position that a state that does not wish to be bound by a new rule of international law may object to it and be exempted from its application. 4. THE SYSTEM OF INTERNATIONAL LAW IS INCAPABLE OF REACHING JUSTICE Lea Brilmayer, Benjamin F. Butler Professor of Law at New York University Law School, WEST VIRGINIA LAW REVIEW, Winter, 1996, p. 657. What seems deeply troubling, however, is that, as things currently stand, the deck is systematically stacked. Because of its paucity of institutional mechanisms, international law is incapable of recognizing claims of justice and incapable of responding to the needs of history. Given the great importance history has in shaping the identities of individuals and of peoples, the systematic inability to recognize its importance should be cause for concern even if that inability did not upset attempts to structure the events of the future.

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International Law Responses Before discussing international law in particular, it is important to note the function of law in general. The following quotation from author Werner Levi does an excellent job detailing this function: “The apparent wish of men and women is to survive collectively because they wish to live individually. An indispensable prerequisite for social existence is social order. Social order means regularity and predictability in the behavior of the society’s members. Such behavior cannot be created by the spontaneous or rational decisions of each member. Only social action can produce it and every society has instruments for doing so. Among them is law, a set of binding rules enjoining a certain behavior on all subjects under specified and comparable conditions.” 1 Law serves this purpose not only within a nation-state, but increasingly, in an international community as well. A basic definition of international law is, “the body of general principles and specific rules which are binding upon the members of the international community in their mutual relations.” 2 The past century has seen a dramatic increase in international cooperation and the formation of many international organizations. In light of such international coordination, it is necessary to evaluate if international law should be embraced or rejected. The following essay points out the flaws in international law that merit its rejection as countries and states move towards defining their own legal standards. THE “CRISIS” IN INTERNATIONAL LAW Legal scholar Anthony Carty points out in his book The Decay of International Law? that there is a crisis in method in international law. He explains, “Yet the question remains whether international law really satisfies minimum requirements of legal positivism.”3 There are many questions that still exist regarding international law, including, “Are there agreed criteria for identifying the existence of rules of law? Where principles and rules are supposed to have legal character, are they given sufficiently precise formulation to have unambiguous application in a particular crisis?” He answers, “The argument of this study will be that international law is not, never has been, and cannot be simply and exclusively a positivist system of law.”4 The reason is that nation-states (which are generally agreed upon as the principal subjects for international law) exist in a state of nature. This means that there is no world legislative, judicial, and executive body. There is no comprehensive definition of rights and duties states have to one another, nor is there a body to define such concepts. The coming into existence of states is similarly undefined and ungoverned by any legal system. There is no international sovereign, and a legal sovereign is the only way for individuals to be secure in their property and contracts. 5 These absences in the realm of international law severely undermine the legitimacy of international law as a way to advance the global community. Even worse, there seems to be little chance of these questions being answered anytime soon. The rise of nationalism in countries means that any imposition of international law that is viewed as being in conflict with their national interest will be rejected and resented. Since international law and its defenders base their arguments on international law being a legally positivist system, and those requirements have not been fulfilled, international law itself cannot prosper. At that level, it should be abandoned in favor of alternatives that can better answer the questions posed by the development of requirements for any given society. THE PROBLEM OF ENFORCEMENT International law does no good if it remains but a list of commands that no one pays attention to or follows. Yet, enforcement of international law remains a serious problem. Charles G. Fenwick notes, “More serious than the lack of adequate legislative and judicial machinery was the lack of adequate means for the proper enforcement of international law against individual members of the international community refusing to abide by their obligations.”6 The options for enforcing international law are limited, and none are particularly beneficial or worth adopting. There are perhaps instances where discussion and dialogue could lead a rogue nation to suddenly begin following the international law that it was violating. Such circumstances, however, are sure to be rare. More likely is the circumstance wherein a country refuses to follow international law and some consequence must be paid in order to punish the violation and ensure future obedience to international law. 361

A possible scenario for enforcement could include sanctions and other forcible measures that fall short of war. Sanctions, however, often punish the very people who are not making the decisions. Take for instance sanctions on Libya, in place partially to punish the country for supporting terrorist groups that shot down a civilian plane. Although it was the leadership of Libya that made the decision to fund and support terrorists, it was the population of Libya that suffered under the sanctions regime. Initially, it is the civilian population that loses food, medicine, and other products when sanctions are in place. The economy is also hampered, and individuals can no longer depend on exports or imports. Many will become jobless, and unable to support themselves and their families. The government which actually endorsed terrorism suffers very little, as they have built up political capital and economic status to continue using. In that sense, the process of enforcement through sanctions is ineffective and punishes the wrong people. It can also prove to be completely ineffective, as countries have lived through decades of sanctions without changing their behavior. This leaves as an option of enforcement war or combat. If all other mechanisms have failed, force would have to be used to enforce international law. As Fenwick puts it, “Forcible measures falling short of war might prove sufficient; but, failing these, war might be resorted to as the ultimate means of self-help; and, since it was regarded at international law as a legal remedy, the results secured by it were recognized by the international community as a final settlement on the case.” 7 This scenario presents several problems. First, war is costly and damaging to all involved. The financial costs and the loss of life and property can range in size, but are significant in all conflicts. Second, countries might hesitate to go to war and in that sense not be able to provide any enforcement for international law. If war remains the only way to ensure that international laws are followed and obeyed, enforcement depends on the willingness of countries to sacrifice their budgets and populations to uphold the law. Finally, the quotation from Fenwick alludes to the dissatisfaction that results from war. War often does not end the conflict, only entrenches the mindset in a country that they do not wish to follow international law. Without any enforcement mechanism, international law becomes largely useless. International law becomes merely another list of suggestions that countries might want to follow. None of the benefits that defenders of international law claim can be realized, and in that sense, international law without enforcement is more damaging than no international law at all. Flouting international law delegitimizes the whole system and yet no punishment can be enacted. INTERNATIONAL LAW IGNORES CULTURAL DIFFERENCES Law is necessarily a reflection of the social values held by those who created it. The logical prerequisite for having subjects accept laws, therefore, is having those subjects’ agreement on the values reflected in the laws. In the international community, no such consensus on values exists. Values and beliefs vary not only within nation-states, but drastically among nation-states. This argument has its roots back when international law was developed in the Western world and was applied only to “Christian” and “civilized” states. The Statute of the International Court of Justice still refers to the principles of law, “recognized by civilized nations” as one source of law. 8 Effective law requires a consensus on values, however, the consensus that primarily exists among nation-states is a divisive one. That is, the consensus is the belief that every state may live in a sovereign independence, and the common emotion is nationalism. The attachment people feel to their country and the behavior of their country seems to override a commitment to peace or the brotherhood of all humanity. Common sentiments and attitudes do not exist, and there is no agreement on a hierarchy of values.9 This dispute about a common consensus is not only theoretical. History shows that governments use the argument for their political purposes. The Christian states would colonize those made up of “heathens.” The racist basis for Nazi Germany and later for Fascists allowed them to commit genocide while staying in accordance with their own legal convictions. International law, therefore, has problems when it comes to cultural differences. Understandably, this approach is disliked by newer and non-Western states. Werner Levi explains, “Nevertheless, international lawyers remain concerned that cultural differences affect the possibility and efficacy of international law. They seek to overcome cultural barriers- as they see them- to the progress of international law by developing common denominators from difference cultures upon which universal rules of law could be based.” 10 Another aspect of the problem of cultural differences is that sometimes those differences can be valid and necessary. The law is different in different countries due to the beliefs and values of those varying populations. To 362

destroy these cultures by making their law subservient to international law, often not written by anyone but Western countries, is to commit acts of atrocities against these peoples by annihilating their cultures. In that sense, it is best to allow a variety of legal structures that reflect the cultures they come from. This not only ensures maximum cooperation with the legal system due to familiarity and comfort, but also allows each legal system to reflect its population. This would also increase involvement in the legal system, because if a person is comfortable they are more likely to participate. INTERNATIONAL LAW IS NOT ALWAYS VOLUNTARILY ENTERED INTO Treaties signed at the end of conflicts are a major source of international law. However, typically at the conclusion of a conflict, one side is the victor. That country can impose demands and its will upon the losing country which is for all practical purposes forced to sign the treaty. Once entered into, the victorious country will hold the losing country to the standards set in the treaty long into the future. This makes the obligations in international law unbalanced, favoring some countries more than others. Those countries which are favored tend to be those with superior military strength, reflecting large populations, a high level of technology, and a strong economy. In that sense, international law only reifies the inequality we have seen in the international community among nationstates. The implications of these unbalanced treaties effect countries for long periods of time. “A state is always free to release other contracting parties from their obligations if it considers that the popular support of the treaty is lacking in the cocontracting states; but there can be no obligation under international law to do so.” 11 Treaties that are therefore entered into due to a military defeat and that do not enjoy popular support in that country can still be enforced against the country. This indicates that international law is not always a voluntary venture. Some may wonder if forcing international law is actually a bad thing. It certainly is on several levels. First, it breeds resentment and sets the stage for conflicts to ensue in the future. Second, the treaty is not accepted at a philosophical level and so resistance is widespread. Even if the letter of the treaty is abided by officially, there will be attempts to sabotage the treaty and its requirements. Third, imposing upon a population something they do not desire is unethical and violates the standard of sovereignty. Fourth, this standard allows for the biggest and most powerful countries in a militaristic sense to rule the world by establishing treaties. International law loses its validity when it has a large basis in treaties. Treaties are often biased and one-sided, yet they are enforced. In that sense, international law guarantees that the will of the people around the world is denied so that one or several countries can prosper. This forced nature of international law makes it worthy of rejection. INTERNATIONAL LAW VALIDATES UNEQUAL TREATIES There is a difference between involuntary treaties and unequal treaties (though both result from and play a part in international law). A definition of an unequal treaty is needed before we move forward. An unequal treaty is, “an agreement which is concluded on unequal terms- that is, its contents are unequal for one of the parties. Therefore, the material contents of a treaty determine whether it qualifies as unequal rather than the way in which it was concluded.”12 Certainly, almost every treaty is somewhat unequal, but here we are referring to those that are obviously skewed in favor of one party over another. Often these unequal treaties involve a newly independent state, restrictions of territorial sovereignty, and the establishment of military bases by another power.13 Let us examine each of these examples of unequal treaties to see why they merit the rejection of international law. First, this shows how international law takes advantage of newly independent states. As these states are new, their governments are not as much in control as they may someday be. This is a chance to impose international law on a weaker system. Second, restrictions on territorial sovereignty mean that individuals can be denied access to their homelands and moved. Finally, the establishment of military bases not only breeds resentment, but continues a military mindset that war is the way to resolve disputes. Living under fear of a military base is not a peaceful existence. Given the negative consequences of unequal treaties and the fact that international law aids the creation of such treaties, international law should be abandoned in favor of a more personal governmental system. INTERNATIONAL LAW IS BASED ON FLAWED REASONING 363

The basis for international law is flawed in several basic and devastating ways. Initially, the basis for international law is common morality. The assumption is that individuals all share some form of morality that is consistent in all humanity regardless of their particular culture, upbringing, or location. This sameness justified one law that applies to the entirety of the international community. However, “the theory of common morality is often criticized for excluding reasoning about consequences.” The criticism is that common morality, “leaves no room for measuring and comparing different goods, for cost-benefit analysis, or for other forms of reasoning about consequences.” 14 While defenders of common morality often charge that international law does not eliminate these factors and only limits them, they do concede that, “What it does exclude is consequentialism, the doctrine that the consequences of an act, rather than its relation to principles of conduct, determines its rightness or wrongness, and that such principles have, at best, instrumental value in helping to secure morally desirable ends.” 15 This exclusion of consequentialism, however, is negative. It is important to look to the effects and results of policy decisions instead of just the philosophical purpose of an action. It shouldn’t matter if a person acts in the name of “justice” or “equality” if the result of their action is that individuals die or have their quality of life lessened. The determining factor in making decisions in the international community should be whether those actions will have a net positive or net negative effect. To suggest that not looking to consequences is preferable only justifies actions which take lives and cause harm. Since international law prevents looking to the consequences of decisions, it should be rejected. Additionally, international law being codified does not allow the flexibility that is needed in international relations. That is, “common morality is unequal to the complexity of public affairs because it is a morality of formal and rigid rules.”16 In situations effecting multiple countries, circumstances are constantly changing. This requires that the guidelines be flexible, and codified international law prevents that flexibility. The more options that are left open in a time of decision making, the more likely multiple avenues will be explored before moving to force or war. INTERNATIONAL LAW IS FORMED BY POWER PLAYERS International law, codified in treaties and bodies of law, is written by a select group of countries in the international community. With this select group making the decisions and defining the law, they are privileged and their interests are furthered. This is problematic on many levels. First, it denies individuals around the world the opportunity to have international law that reflects their opinions and values. Only those who live in a few countries have their values pushed into international law. This destroys cultures of individuals who want access to international law but were not involved in the process of creating such laws, and, “to tamper with culture is to disturb something intrinsic to the person.” 17 There is no justification for harming an individual by destroying their culture, and international law facilitates that destruction by attempting to take millions of differing viewpoints and consolidate them into one body of law. Second, international law is less likely to be followed if it is created and enforced by only a small portion of the international community. Law that is viewed as imposed will be less likely to win over supporters, and this means that the process of enforcing the law will become more difficult and drawn out. This increased need for enforcement will cost more and make international law more trouble than it is worth. Third, the hierarchy of the international community is re-entrenched. Powerful countries get more powerful, and this leads to a mentality where some individuals are better than others. Powerful countries take actions to benefit their own citizens, and they begin to believe that they are in some ways above other parts of the international community. Foreign citizens become tools in the quest for more power and resources. It is easy to justify denying these groups rights as they are not at the same level; so goes the reasoning. This hierarchy can also justify dehumanizing people or dispensing of them. One must only look around at international bodies to see the hierarchy in international law. The members of the United Nations’ Security Council each get a veto, making them more powerful than all the other member-countries combined. Countries like the United States can flout international law or go to war without the consent of the international community, while others who attempt to do the same are attacked. The World Trade Organization 364

enforces the economic hierarchy that exists between industrialized and non-industrialized countries, striking down environmental protections or labor standards as barriers to trade. Such actions help countries who are looking to expand into the international markets while harming countries who have less developed economies. International agreements allow those countries who already have nuclear weapons to continue testing and developing them while trying to prevent countries without nuclear weapons from ever attaining them, entrenching the divide between militarized countries and those who do not have the resources to militarize. These are but a few examples of how international law as enacted in international bodies favors power players. Making countries more powerful only continues the unequal treatment and problems that exist throughout the world. Another example can be international law as manifested in criminal trials. Organizations like the International Criminal Court show that there is an increasing amount of attention being paid to justice at the international level. These trials, however, are not equal. Take for instance trials of military leaders following a conflict. The military leaders of the victorious side are not taken to court or placed on trial. Only the military members from the losing country or alliance face justice in these international tribunals. In that sense, it is clearly biased in that the powerful countries can violate the law without paying the price while others are not afforded that same exemption. INTERNATIONAL LAW DECREASES ACCESS One of the complaints often levied at the judicial system in the United States is that it is too difficult to access. The Supreme Court, in particular, seems lofty. There is a long process that comes before your case can be heard. Hiring a lawyer is expensive, and the entire process is extremely time consuming. Not only that, but many average Americans feel overwhelmed and confused by the process and the legal system as a whole. These problems only get worse with the adoption of international law. Access to an international court is even more restricted. The body of law can get more and more complex, especially because it governs more territories and involves more actors. The body of law also can seem more distant from an individual, making that person feel like it is unreachable. The complexity and distance can lower a person’s efficacy, and cause them to turn from international law because they do not have access to it. Take, for example, a man who wanted to take his neighbor to court. He would probably be reasonably familiar with his city ordinances and state laws. He would also most likely know where the local courthouse is and be able to represent himself. If that same man wanted to take an issue to an international court, he would have a much more difficult time. Familiarity with international conventions, treaties, and laws is less likely. Similarly, the man will probably not know exactly where to go to raise his issue for attention. Given his unfamiliarity, he will likely require representation if he is to go before the court. These issues, taken from this hypothetical example, show how difficult it can be for a person to access international law. Without access, international law becomes just another tool of the elite to entrench their own power. INTERNATIONAL LAW DEPENDS ON “STATES” The members of the international community that is governed by international law are widely considered to be states, by which we mean nation-states. Therefore, in order to claim rights of bring a case to international courts, one must demonstrate citizenship in a state. Given the global population right now, this standard excludes many. Take, for example, Palestinians. They have no state that is recognized by the international community, yet they could perhaps benefits most from international legal protection. Similarly, Chechnya in Russian territory and the Basque separatists in Spain have no standing in international law. First, this minimizes the number of people who can benefit from international law. Second, it makes citizenship in a state a prerequisite for standing in the international community, making those without a state less than those who have citizenship. It is not likely that in a paradigm of international law statehood would be pushed for these and other areas. The creation of new states adds new powers to the international community to compete for influence with those already there. This gives a disincentive to creating states. It also sentences individuals who live in disputed territories to live without a state and without the benefits of international law. 365

SUMMARY While the focus on international law has increased in recent history, this trend is not to be embraced or viewed as positive. The problems with a system of international law are many. The current crisis in international law is not to be overlooked. There is also a significant problem when it comes to the enforcement of any standards that international law proclaims as paramount. International law as a concept and a reality ignores cultural differences around the world. The concept of international law violates sovereignty, as it is not always voluntarily entered into. It also validates unequal treaties, causing damage to countries around the world. At the basis of international law is flawed reasoning, making the entire concept intellectually unsound. International law is formed by power players, making it unequal. International law also decreases access. International law depends on the concept of state, which excludes many individuals in our current global population. ______________________________ 1 Levi, Werner. Law and Politics in the International Society. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1976, pg. 9. 2 Fenwick, Charles G. International Law. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc., 1948, pg. 27. 3 Carty, Anthony. The Decay of International Law? Oxford: Manchester University Press, 1986, pg. 1. 4 Ibid, pg. 1. 5 Ibid, pg. 1-2. 6 Fenwick, Charles G. International Law. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc., 1948, pg. 36. 7 Ibid, pg. 36. 8 Levi, Werner. Law and Politics in the International Society. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1976, pg. 135-136. 9 Ibid, pg. 136. 10 Ibid, pg. 136-137. 11 De Lupis, Ingrid Detter. International Law and the Independent State. Aldershot: Gower Publishing Company, pg. 167. 12 Ibid, pg. 195. 13 Ibid, pg. 196. 14 Nardin, Terry and David R. Mapel. Traditions of International Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, pg. 11. 15 Ibid, pg. 11. 16 Ibid, pg. 11. 17 Phillips, Robert L. and Duane L. Cady. Humanitarian Intervention: Just War vs. Pacifism. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1996, pg. 5.

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INTERNATIONAL LAW DEPENDS ON STATES 1. INTERNATIONAL LAW LEADS TO TOP DOWN SOLUTIONS WHICH DO NOT WORK Alvarez, Jose E., Professor of Law at University of Michigan. “Crimes of State/Crimes of Hate: Lessons from Rwanda,” 24 Yale Journal of International Law. 365. 1999, Summer, pg. 370. If one asks an international lawyer to explain why mass atrocities have repeatedly occurred fifty years after the Holocaust, one is likely to get a state-centric nature of much of international law, namely, that these crimes of states result from the actions of government perpetrators and the failure of other government actors to respond. For international lawyers, recent atrocities demonstrate the failure to enforce, against rogue government actors, fundamental rules of international humanitarian law proclaimed at Nuremberg by the victors of World War II and ratified many times since, including by the United Nations. Massacres in the Balkans or in Rwanda are regarded as shameful reminders that the promise of that law, solemnly memorialized by governments in a multitude of international instruments remain unfulfilled because of a lack of political will at the national and international levels. At the same times, international lawyers condemn the atrocities as aberrant deviations from the authorized rules for the conduct of war and argue that such behavior justifies the admittedly rare application of international criminal law by international society to express the community’s collective outrage against those relatively few state actors who violate fundamental norms of civilized behavior. Having defined the problem in interstate terms, international lawyers have tended to define the solution in similar ways. Since the perceived problem is the breakdown in enforcement of the international rule of law against rogue state actors, the solution needs to be provided, in topdown fashion, by the international community’s most reputable enforcer, namely the United Nations. This statecentric perspective continues to dominate the international lawyers’ approach to war crimes even though the central aim of criminal accountability is to enforce international obligations upon individuals not states, and even in instances, as with respect to Rwanda, where the vast majority of perpetrators were civilians with no clear government ties. 2. THE STATE-CENTRIC APPROACH TO INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE IGNORES THE MAJORITY OF CRIMES Alvarez, Jose E., Professor of Law at University of Michigan. “Crimes of State/Crimes of Hate: Lessons from Rwanda,” 24 Yale Journal of International Law. 365. 1999, Summer, pg. 377-378. International lawyers' emphasis on international forums has also been accompanied by clear preferences as to whom to indict. From the outset, most international lawyers have argued that the scarce resources of the international community need to be devoted to trying those perpetrators who have the greatest responsibility, by which they mean the leaders and instigators, at a high policy level, of mass atrocities in the former Yugoslavia and in Rwanda. While circumstances, such as the fortuitous sighting and subsequent arrest of a low-level Serbian perpetrator, Dusko Tadic, compelled the ICTY to proceed with his trial as its first full-fledged effort, tribunal insiders and supporters have generally argued that the tribunals' success will be judged by the degree to which both reach high-level perpetrators. Logistical limitations are not the only reason for this emphasis on investigating, indicting, and prosecuting primarily high-level individuals, even if this results in few actual trials. Such preferences are directly linked to the premise that these are crimes of states. Only exceptional crimes, after all, are committed by government elites, are the subject of international treaties or customary law, and implicate transborder issues of direct concern to organizations such as the United Nations. In addition, some contend that the enforcement advantages enjoyed by international tribunals apply only with respect to the prosecutions of "higher ups" and that, for this reason, low-level perpetrators should mostly be dealt with by national courts "as guided by the decisions of the international tribunal." The ICTR's prosecutors have been especially attentive to such recommendations. To date, the public indictments, suspects in custody, and ongoing trials of that tribunal, although few in number in proportion to the number of likely Rwandan perpetrators, have involved a veritable who's who of prominent persons within the former regime in Rwanda.

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INTERNATIONAL LAWS ARE FORMED BY POWER PLAYERS 1. INTERNATIONAL LEGAL NORMS FACILITATE THE SPREAD OF WESTERN IMPERIALISM Geisinger, Alex, Associate Professor of Law at Valparaiso University School of Law 1999. “Sustainable Development and the Domination of Nature: Spreading the Seed of the Western Ideology of Nature.” Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review, Volume 27 Issue 43, 1999. NP. This article will consider both the way in which international legal norms provide for the spread of the Western ideology of separation and domination, as well as the impact the spread of this ideology will have on international environmental protection. The article argues that the ideology of separation and domination is a particularly Western ideology, rooted in the institution of free-market democracy and not shared by other nations. It then considers the deep connection between the successful spread of free-market democracy and the rise of the driving norm of international environmental law – the principle of sustainable development. This article argues that sustainable development is not simply a reflection of the successful export of Western ideology, but is itself a force of ideological imperialism whereby Western values not shared or willfully accepted by other nations are unconsciously imposed upon them throughout the language and implementation of the principle. 2. INTERNATIONAL LAW PROMOTES WESTERN LEGTALISM AND FAILS TO RECOGNIZE THE UNIQENESS OF EACH NATION Alvarez, Jose E., Professor of Law at University of Michigan. “Crimes of State/Crimes of Hate: Lessons from Rwanda,” 24 Yale Journal of International Law. 365. 1999, Summer, pg. 437. What "national reconciliation" means or requires under the international legal paradigm is not altogether clear. It appears to mean governments that zealously seek to transcend racial or ethnic consciousness in favor of legal rules requiring equal protection regardless of status. n365 To the extent that the nature of national reconciliation is discussed at all, advocates of these tribunals express hope for societies that are not merely characterized by the absence of genocidal acts but are real, functioning pluralistic civil societies; ideally, democracies on the model of a United States or Canada. This is certainly the hope of those who see criminal prosecutions, at both the international and national levels, as facilitating a smoother transition to democratic nations that, over time, will be free of the ethnic, religious, racial, or cultural divides that gave rise to massacre. n366 And even those who are less sanguine hope that, whether or not truly democratic transitions occur or are encouraged, the example set by these international criminal prosecutions will at least encourage the adoption and effective implementation of national equal protection legal guarantees on behalf of all individuals. n367 It appears that international lawyers aspire for future governments in regions devastated by mass atrocities that are as committed to promoting ethnically neutral [*438] government actions as are the international judges who try the region's war crimes. Whether or not one accepts an integrationist agenda within states like the United States, n369 such a vision of the future, as applied to the former Yugoslavia or to Rwanda, is subject to considerable doubt, and not merely because of strenuous disagreements about the viability of the states that have emerged from the Dayton Agreements or about the viability of "failed states" such as Rwanda. n370 In other contexts, Western lawyers' faith in the export of ethnically neutral solutions has been dismissed as the product of cultural hubris or worse. Thus, the law and development movement, involving private foundations as well as the U.S. Agency for International Development particularly in Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s, was severely critiqued because it, too, evinced a naive faith in the transformative power of law and in the power of universally applicable Western liberal legal institutions to promote equal treatment for all citizens. n371 Further, as Professor Amy Chua has argued, at least in societies torn by ethnic conflicts along socioeconomic lines, the internationalist goals of trade liberalization and democratization may conflict. n372

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INTERNATIONAL LAW DESTROY’S STATE SOVEREIGNTY 1. INTERNATIONAL LAW FORCES COUNTRIES TO RELINQUISH THEIR NATIONAL SOVERIGNTY Nill, David A. “National Sovereignty: Must it be Sacrificed to the International Criminal Court?” BYU Journal of Public Law 1999, pg. 1. The essence of statehood, of being a country distinct from neighboring lands, is the capacity for self-determination. For centuries, if not for all of human history, sovereignty has been the core element of differentiation between groups, people, and nations. With the rise of international agreements, and the formation of multinational trading agreements, countries must face questions concerning national sovereignty that have never been encountered before. Clearly, increased involvement in international agreements and organizations will require countries to cede more and more sovereignty to international governmental organizations. 2. INTERNATIONAL LEGAL APPARATII DESTROY STATE SOVEREIGNTY Nill, David A. “National Sovereignty: Must it be Sacrificed to the International Criminal Court?” BYU Journal of Public Law 1999, pg. 130-131. Perhaps the central issue facing the ICC is its effect on sovereignty. However, most commentators plunge ahead, either tossing the issue aside as unimportant in the modern world or waving it as a standard that should be held inviolate. In light of the unthinking treatment sovereignty normally receives, consideration of the differing perceptions will be helpful. It is presumptuous to believe that all members of the world community accept the same definition of sovereignty as the United States. Sovereignty for an American, and for any person from a country based on a similar form of government, devolves from the people, not the state. Other nations perceive sovereignty as a national right belonging to the government. For nations that accept the latter definition of sovereignty, ceding it to an international entity is less troublesome. However, for individuals and nations that accept the definition of sovereignty as a power and right emanating from the people, cession to international entities is very troublesome. John Bolton, former assistant Secretary of State, described this theoretical divide: One of the executive branch's strongest powers is the law enforcement power. In the United States we accept this enormous power because we separate it from the adjudicative power and because we render it politically accountable through Presidential elections and congressional oversight... Europeans may feel comfortable with the ICC structure, no political accountability and no separation of powers, but that is a major reason why they are Europeans and we are not. Indeed, in the United States, ceding the "national" sovereignty presents problems that go to the core of the nation's legal structure. Thus, understanding there the are different perceptions of the meaning of sovereignty helps in appreciating the motivations of both those who signed and those who refused to sign the treaty. It also aids in recognizing the perceptions that different nations have of how the ICC will affect them.

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INTERNATIONAL LAW ALLOWS THE MOST POWER ACTORS TO DICTATE TERMS AND CONDITIONS 1. INTERNATIONAL LAW ALLOWS THE POWER PLAYERS TO CHOOSE WHETHER OR NOT TO COMPLY Nill, David A. “National Sovereignty: Must it be Sacrificed to the International Criminal Court?” BYU Journal of Public Law 1999, pg. 132-133. States are understandably jealous of their right to investigate and try international criminals in their own courts. National pride leads states to have faith in the competency and fairness of their domestic judicial systems. They do not want to surrender control over criminal cases to another tribunal. Certainly, with the exception of the core crimes, states are capable of prosecuting the majority of international crimes fairly and effectively, and the Statute [for the International Criminal Court] should encourage national prosecutions when feasible. Moreover, victimized states have incentives to pursue cases that an international tribunal might lack. This observation implies that, in most situations, nations do not need (and frequently will not want) the ICC because their legal systems are capable of handling most of the issues. Historically, nations punished for their violence dealt with in a punitive way and after a violent period tend to make poor members of the world community. Nations allowed to resolve their own crimes while receiving different international aid fare much better. An additional problem that the above quote addresses is the issue of parity. For example, "while the United States might take satisfaction in conducting trials of those who commit war crimes against its military personnel, that satisfaction would hardly be worth the discomfort of seeing American servicemen on trial in Baghdad or Tripoli." Any developed nation would feel similarly. Therefore, the likelihood of having such investigations by the ICC ignored is high. The U.S. delegation attempted to resolve this at the Rome Conference by preserving the right of reservation to specific aspects of the treaty. This proposal was soundly defeated by the rest of the delegates. While there may remain the option of amending the treaty, some groups are adamantly opposed to such a thought. They fear that amendments to the ICC, particularly by powerful nations, would only make it a tool of the UN Security Council and likely administer only "victor's justice." 2. POWER POLITICS IS WHAT CAUSES GENDERED CRIMES TO BE MORE OR LESS LEFT OUT FROM INTERNATIONAL LAW Nill, David A. “National Sovereignty: Must it be Sacrificed to the International Criminal Court?” BYU Journal of Public Law 1999, pg. 138-139. If the Rome Convention is any indication, this Court will not escape the extreme political pressures that characterized its inception. At the conference, when some delegates from conservative countries discovered language espousing a broad definition of gender, the negotiations intensified substantially. Additionally, some countries became concerned that the language of the treaty criminalizing enforced pregnancy and enforced motherhood might result in an international challenge to anti-abortion laws. Another attempt was made by some groups to get the delegates to agree on language that would remove the element of intent as a requirement for gender crimes. These attempts also became hotly debated issues, resolved by the delegates only in the final hours of the convention. Proponents of these issues were not pleased with the outcome and later complained that the statute failed to protect women. 3. POWER POLITICS BY THE UNITED STATES ALLOWED FOR DRUG LAWS AND TERRORISM STANDARDS INTERNATIONAL LAW FAVORED THEIR DOMESTIC POLICY Nill, David A. “National Sovereignty: Must it be Sacrificed to the International Criminal Court?” BYU Journal of Public Law 1999, pg. 139. Another dubious political move involved jurisdiction over terrorism and drug trafficking. The United States and other countries have been involved for years in the process of formulating the ICC, and had come to an agreement leaving drug and terrorism crimes outside its jurisdiction. Nevertheless, they discovered on the last day of the Rome conference that a small group of delegates had altered the text of the statute to include these crimes within the Court's jurisdiction.

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Intersectionality Good INTERSECTIONAL UNDERSTANDING SHOWS WOMEN ARE UNIQUELY OPPRESSED 1. UNDERSTANDING INTERSECTIONALITY KEY TO UNDERSTANDING DISCRIMINATION Kimberle Crenshaw, Professor of Law at UCLA, FEMINIST LEGAL THEORY: READINGS IN LAW AND GENDER, 1991, p. 63. This apparent contradiction is but another manifestation of the conceptual limitations of the single-issue analyses that intersectionality challenges. The point is that Black women can experience discrimination in any number of ways and that the contradiction arises from our assumptions that their claims are unidirectional. Consider an analogy to traffic in an intersection, coming and going in all four directions. Discrimination, like traffic through an intersection, may flow in one direction, and it may flow in another. If an accident happens in an intersection, it can be caused by cars traveling from any number of directions and, sometimes, from all of them. Similarly, if a Black woman is harmed because she is in the intersection, her injury could result from sex discrimination or race discrimination. 2. NOT RECOGNIZING DUALITY OF OPPRESSION DECREASES UNDERSTANDING Kimberle Crenshaw, Professor of Law at UCLA, FEMINIST LEGAL THEORY: READINGS IN LAW AND GENDER, 1991, p. 57. This focus on the most privileged group members marginalizes those who are multiply-burdened and obscures claims that cannot be understood as resulting from discrete sources of discrimination. I suggest further that this focus on otherwise-privileged group members creates a distorted analysis of racism and sexism because the operative conceptions of race and sex become grounded in experiences that actually represent only a subset of a much more complex phenomenon. 3. INTERSECTIONAL EXPERIENCE GREATER THAN THE SUM OF RACISM AND SEXISM Kimberle Crenshaw, Professor of Law at UCLA, FEMINIST LEGAL THEORY: READINGS IN LAW AND GENDER, 1991, p. 58. These problems of exclusion cannot be solved simply by including Black women within an already established analytical structure. Because the intersectional experience is greater than the sum of racism and sexism, any analysis that does not take intersectionality into account cannot sufficiently address the particular manner in which Black women are subordinated. Thus, for feminist theory and antiracist policy discourse to embrace the experiences and concerns of Black women, the entire framework that has been used as a basis for translating "women's experience" or "the Black experience" into concrete policy demands must be rethought and recast. 4. NO REAL PROTECTION FOR MINORITIES WITHIN THE INTERSECTIONS Kimberle Crenshaw, Professor of Law at UCLA, FEMINIST LEGAL THEORY: READINGS IN LAW AND GENDER, 1991, p. 59. Thus, the Court apparently concluded that Congress either did not contemplate that Black women could be discriminated against as "Black women" or did not intend to protect them when such discrimination occurred. The court's refusal in Degraffenreid to acknowledge that Black women encounter combined race and sex discrimination implies that the boundaries of sex and race discrimination doctrine are defined respectively by white women's and Black men's experiences. Under this view, Black women are protected only to the extent that their experiences coincide with those of either of the two groups. Where their experiences are distinct, Black women can expect little protection as long as approaches such as that in Degraffenreid, which completely obscure problems of intersectionality prevail.

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UNDERSTANDING INTERSECTIONALITY HELPS COMBAT BOTH RACISM AND SEXISM 1. ANY EFFORTS AGAINST RACISM MUST START WITH INTERSECTIONAL ANALYSIS Kimberle Crenshaw, Professor of Law at UCLA, FEMINIST LEGAL THEORY: READINGS IN LAW AND GENDER, 1991, p. 72. If any real efforts are to be made to free Black people of the constraints and conditions that characterize racial subordination, then theories and strategies purporting to reflect the Black community's needs must include an analysis of sexism and patriarchy. Similarly, feminism must include an analysis of race if it hopes to express the aspirations of non-white women. Neither Black liberationist politics nor feminist theory can ignore the intersectional experience of those whom the movements claim as their respective constituents. 2. INTERSECTIONAL UNDERSTANDING KEY TO DISMANTLING RACISM AND SEXISM Kimberle Crenshaw, Professor of Law at UCLA, FEMINIST LEGAL THEORY: READINGS IN LAW AND GENDER, 1991, p. 67. Feminists have attempted to expose and dismantle separate spheres ideology by identifying and criticizing the stereotypes that traditionally have justified the disparate social roles assigned to men and women. Yet this attempt to debunk ideological justifications for women’s subordination offers little insight into the domination of Black women. Because the experiential base upon which many feminist insights are grounded is white, theoretical statements drawn from them are overgeneralized at best, and often wrong. Statements such as "men and women are taught to see men as independent, capable, powerful; men and women are taught to see women as dependent, limited in abilities, and passive," are common within this literature. But this "observation" overlooks the anomalies created by crosscurrents of racism and sexism. Black men and women live in a society that creates sex-based norms and expectations which racism operates simultaneously to deny; Black men are not viewed as powerful, nor are Black women seen as passive. An effort to develop an ideological explanation of gender domination in the Black community should proceed from an understanding of how crosscutting forces establish gender norms and how the conditions of Black subordination wholly frustrate access to these norms. Given this understanding, perhaps we can begin to see why Black women have been dogged by the stereotype of the pathological matriarch or why there have been those in the Black liberation movement who aspire to create institutions and to build traditions that are intentionally patriarchal. 3. INTERSECTIONALITY HELPS US ALL--OTHER APPROACHES STOP COLLECTIVE ACTION Kimberle Crenshaw, Professor of Law at UCLA, FEMINIST LEGAL THEORY: READINGS IN LAW AND GENDER, 1991, p. 73. It is somewhat ironic that those concerned with alleviating the ills of racism and sexism should adopt such a topdown approach to discrimination. If their efforts instead began with addressing the needs and problems of those who are most disadvantaged and with restructuring and remaking the world where necessary, then others who are singularly disadvantaged would also benefit. In addition, it seems that placing those who currently are marginalized in the center is the most effective way to resist efforts to compartmentalize experiences and undermine potential collective action. 4. NON-INTERSECTIONAL VIEW TAKES RACE PRIVILEGE AS A GIVEN Kimberle Crenshaw, Professor of Law at UCLA, FEMINIST LEGAL THEORY: READINGS IN LAW AND GENDER, 1991, p. 60. The court's preference for "against females" rather than "against Black females" reveals the implicit grounding of white female experiences in the doctrinal conceptualization of sex discrimination. For white women, claiming sex discrimination is simply a statement that but for gender, they would not have been disadvantaged. For them there is no real need to specify discrimination as white females because their race does not contribute to the disadvantage for which they seek redress. The view of discrimination that is derived from this grounding takes race privilege as a given.

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Intersectionality Bad INTERSECTIONAL ANALYSIS MISGUIDED AND MISLEADING 1. INTERSECTIONAL ANALYSIS IGNORES GENDER'S UNIQUE ROLE IN SOCIETY Catharine A. MacKinnon, Professor of Law at the University of Michigan, YALE JOURNAL OF LAW AND FEMINISM, Volume 4, 1991, p. 17-8. The problem here, it seems to me, does not begin with a failure to take account of race or class, but with a failure to take account of gender. It is not only or most fundamentally an account of race or class dominance that is missing here, but an account of male dominance. There is nothing biologically necessary about rape, as Mechelle Vinson made abundantly clear when she sued for rape as unequal treatment on the basis of sex. And, as Lillian Garland saw, and made everyone else see, it is the way society punishes women for reproduction that creates women's problems with reproduction, not reproduction itself. Both women are Black. This only supports my suspicion that if a theory is not true of, and does not work for, women of color, it is not really true of, and will not work for, any women, and that it is not really about gender at all. 2. INTERSECTIONAL ANALYSIS EXCLUDES GENDERED ANALYSIS Catharine A. MacKinnon, Professor of Law at the University of Michigan, YALE JOURNAL OF LAW AND FEMINISM, Volume 4, 1991, p. 18. In recent critiques of feminist work for failing to take into account race and class, it is worth noting that the fact that there is such a thing as race and class is assumed, although race and class are generally treated as abstractions to attack gender rather than as concrete realities, if indeed they are treated at all. Spelman, for example, discusses race but does virtually nothing with class. In any event, race and class are regarded as unproblematically real and not in any need of justification or theoretical construction. Only gender is not real and needs to be justified. 3. INTERSECTIONAL ANALYSIS PRECLUDES A NECESSARY RECIPROCAL ANALYSIS Catharine A. MacKinnon, Professor of Law at the University of Michigan, YALE JOURNAL OF LAW AND FEMINISM, Volume 4, 1991, p. 18. Although many women have demanded that discussions of race or class take gender into account, typically these demands do not take the form that , outside explicit recognition of gender, race or class do not exist. That there is a diversity of experience of men and women of color, and of working class women and men regardless of race, is not said to mean that race and class are not meaningful concepts. I have heard no one say that there can be no meaningful discussion of "people of color" without gender specificity. 4. INTERSECTIONALITY UNWISELY PUTS GENDER IN THE BACKGROUND Catharine A. MacKinnon, Professor of Law at the University of Michigan, YALE JOURNAL OF LAW AND FEMINISM, Volume 4, 1991, p. 18. Thus the phrase "people of color and white women" has come to replace the previous "women and minorities" which women of color rightly perceived as excluding them twice, and embodying a white standard for sex and a male standard for race. But I hear no talk of "all women and men of color," for instance. It is worth thinking about that when women of color refer to "people who look like me," it is understood that they mean people of color, not women, in spite of the fact that both race and sex are visual assignments, both possess clarity as well as ambiguity, and both are marks of oppression, hence community.

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INTERSECTIONAL THOUGHT REPRODUCES INEQUITY AND DOMINANCE 1. INTERSECTIONAL VIEW TRIVIALIZES GENDER DISCRIMINATION Catharine A. MacKinnon, Professor of Law at the University of Michigan, YALE JOURNAL OF LAW AND FEMINISM, Volume 4, 1991, p. 20. Beneath the trivialization of the white woman's subordination implicit in the dismissive sneer "straight white economically-privileged women" (a phrase that has become one word, the accuracy of some of its terms being rarely documented even in law journals) lies the notion that there is no such thing as oppression of women as such. If white women's oppression is an illusion of privilege and a rip-off and reduction of the civil rights movement, we are being told that there is no such thing as a woman, that our practice produces no theory, and that there is no such thing as discrimination on the basis of sex. 2. INTERSECTIONALITY DOESN'T ACKNOWLEDGE THE PRIMACY OF GENDER BIAS Catharine A. MacKinnon, Professor of Law at the University of Michigan, YALE JOURNAL OF LAW AND FEMINISM, Volume 4, 1991, p. 20. Let us take this the other way around. As I mentioned, both Mechelle Vinson and Lillian Garland are AfricanAmerican women. Wasn't Mechelle Vinson sexually harassed as a woman? They thought so. the whole point of their cases was to get their injuries understood as "based on sex," that is, because they are women. The perpetrators, and the policies under which they were disadvantaged, saw them as women. What is being a woman if it does not include being oppressed as one? When the Reconstruction Amendments "gave Blacks the vote," and Black women still could not vote, weren't they kept from voting "as women?" When African-American women are raped two times as often as white women, aren't they raped as women? This does not mean that their race is irrelevant and it does not mean that their injuries can be understood outside a racial context. Rather, it means that "sex" is made up of the reality of the experiences of all women, including theirs. It is a composite unit rather than a divided unitary whole, such that each woman, in her way, is all women. 3. INTERSECTIONAL CRITIQUE DIS-IDENTIFIES WOMEN OF COLOR WITH WOMEN Catharine A. MacKinnon, Professor of Law at the University of Michigan, YALE JOURNAL OF LAW AND FEMINISM, Volume 4, 1991, p. 20-1. In my view, the subtext to the critique of oppression "as a woman," the critique that holds there is no such thing, is dis-identification with women. One of its consequences is the destruction of the basis for a jurisprudence of sex equality. An argument advanced in many critiques by women of color has been that theories of oppression must include all women, and when they do, theory will change. On one level, this is necessarily true. On another, it ignores the formative contributions of women of color to feminist theory since its inception. I also sense, though, that many women, not only women of color and not only academics, do not want to be "just women," not only because something important is left out, but also because it means being in a category with "here," the useless white woman whose first reaction when the going gets rough is to cry. I sense here that people feel more dignity in being part of any group that includes men that in being part of any group that includes that ultimate reduction of the notion of oppression, that instigator of lynch mobs, that ludicrous whiner, that equality coat-tails rider, the white woman. It seems that if your oppression is also done to a man, you are more likely to be recognized as oppressed, as opposed to inferior. Once a group is seen as putatively human, a process helped by including men in it, an oppressed man falls from a human standard. A woman is just a woman--the ontological victim--and so not victimized at all.

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Judicial Activism Good Courts Should Be Activist 1. LAWS ARE LIVING DOCUMENTS THAT MUST BE INTERPRETEDCongressman Bill Delahunt, Tenth District of Massachusetts, TESTIMONY BEFORE THE JUDICIARY SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE CONSTITUTION, July 29, 1997, www.house.gov/delahunt/judact.htm, Accessed May 26, 1999. It is perhaps ironic that this hearing comes as the flag above us flies at half-mast in honor of one of our country's greatest jurists. To some, William J. Brennan, Jr., was the epitome of the "judicial activist." To me and countless other admirers, he was a faithful servant of the Constitution, who saw it as a living document that must be reinterpreted by each generation in light of the changing needs of society. I think that Justice Brennan would have welcomed this hearing as part of that interpretive process. 2. JUDGES AREN'T ACTIVIST ENOUGH Nadine Strossen, President of the American Civil Liberties Union and a professor at New York Law School, INTELLECTUALCAPITAL.COM, February 20, 1997, www.IntellectualCapital.com/issues/issue76/item1580asp Accessed May 26, 1999. If these critics have indeed created a Frankenstein, though, it is one that has and uses too few powers, not too many. Most of our federal judges were appointed during the 12 years of court-packing under the Reagan and Bush Administrations. Continuing a trend that was kicked off by Richard Nixon's call for "law and order" judges 30 years ago, Reagan and Bush systematically selected judges who as a group were unusually hostile to the federal courts' special constitutional role in protecting rights of individuals and minority groups. In contrast, President Clinton has moved slowly and cautiously in filling federal judicial vacancies. He has avoided nominating individuals who would be ideological counterweights to the many extreme practitioners of "judicial restraint" who had been appointed during the preceding dozen years. The ideological tilt of the U.S. Supreme Court is typical of all our federal courts. On the one hand, the current Chief Justice and two of his brethren -- Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas -- are among the most conservative jurists to sit on the Court in recent history. On the other hand, there is not a single member who espouses the energetic enforcement of constitutional rights that was its hallmark under the leadership of Chief Justice Earl Warren. 3. THERE IS NOT ENOUGH JUDICIAL ACTIVISM Nadine Strossen, President of the American Civil Liberties Union and a professor at New York Law School, INTELLECTUALCAPITAL.COM, February 20, 1997, www.IntellectualCapital.com/issues/issue76/item1580asp Accessed May 26, 1999. During the Warren Court era, the right-wing battle-cry against "judicial activism" was at least understandable, insofar as it responded to that Court's active protection of individual liberties and civil rights. Now, two conservative Chief Justices later, the Court has significantly cut back on both the scope of rights it deems constitutionally protected and the remedies available when those rights are violated. 4. WITHOUT JUDICIAL ACTIVISM, OUR RIGHTS ONLY EXIST IN THEORY Nadine Strossen, President of the American Civil Liberties Union and a professor at New York Law School, INTELLECTUALCAPITAL.COM, February 20, 1997, www.IntellectualCapital.com/issues/issue76/item1580asp Accessed May 26, 1999. The Senate recently has deployed yet another tactic in its courtstripping campaign. It has nearly paralyzed the confirmation process for new federal judges, leaving a record number of vacancies in the face of climbing caseloads. As the adage says, "justice delayed is justice denied." If we can't get a prompt federal court hearing regarding violations of our rights under the U.S. Constitution and laws, those rights might as well exist only in theory. So, Messrs. Weyrich, Gingrich and Meese are correct. We do have a major problem concerning federal judicial activism: The federal courts have not been active enough, while those who crusade against them have been too active.

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Critics Of Judicial Activism Are Wrong 1. CONSERVATIVES WHO DERIDE JUDICIAL ACTIVISM ARE HYPOCRITICAL Congressman Bill Delahunt, Tenth District of Massachusetts, TESTIMONY BEFORE THE JUDICIARY SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE CONSTITUTION, July 29, 1997, www.house.gov/delahunt/judact.htm, accessed May 26, 1999. What is interesting about the current campaign against "activist" judges is that today many of them are conservatives who take an extremely narrow view of the scope of Congressional authority under the commerce power and an equally broad view of the powers reserved to the states under the Tenth Amendment. Those conservatives who recognize this have been slow to enlist in the crusade. Clint Bolick, for example, has wondered aloud how Justice Scalia would survive if activism were grounds for impeachment. 2. THOSE WHO CRITICIZE JUDICIAL ACTIVISM DEMONIZE THEIR OWN CREATION Nadine Strossen, President of the American Civil Liberties Union and a professor at New York Law School, INTELLECTUALCAPITAL.COM, February 20, 1997, www.IntellectualCapital.com/issues/issue76/item1580asp Accessed May 26, 1999. Right-wing activists recently stepped-up attacks on their perennial bogeymen, "activist" federal judges. At the end of January, Paul Weyrich's Free Congress Foundation announced "the largest coalition ever to organize in opposition to judicial activism." On January 7, Speaker Newt Gingrich announced to the full House that he had asked Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry Hyde to investigate this issue. Cheered former Attorney General Ed Meese, "Perhaps no issue is more in need of attention and effort." From the furor of the attack, one would suppose that our federal courts are dominated by "ACLU-Clinton-style judges" -- in the words of the Christian Coalition's Ralph Reed -- and that these judges were actively enforcing constitutional rights. How I wish! Alas, though, such a federal bench exists only in Ralph Reed's nightmares and my daydreams. Ironically, after decades of reshaping the federal courts to reflect their own ideology, right-wing activists are now demonizing their own creation. 4. MANY ATTACKS ON JUDGES ARE JUST PLAIN IRRESPONSIBLE Congressman Bill Delahunt, Tenth District of Massachusetts, TESTIMONY BEFORE THE JUDICIARY SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE CONSTITUTION, July 29, 1997, www.house.gov/delahunt/judact.htm, accessed May 26, 1999. There is a big difference between reasonable criticism and irresponsible attacks that distort the judge's record and focus on the result in a single case - usually without looking at the underlying facts and legal precedents. Most conscientious judges, regardless of their political views, will eventually be confronted with a situation in which the law requires that evidence be thrown out or a death sentence be overturned. Yet a judge who follows the law in such cases is labeled "soft on crime" and accused of "letting murderers go free." 4. INDEPENDENT JUDICIARY STOPS TOTALITARIANISM Congressman Bill Delahunt, Tenth District of Massachusetts, TESTIMONY BEFORE THE JUDICIARY SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE CONSTITUTION, July 29, 1997, www.house.gov/delahunt/judact.htm, accessed May 26, 1999. Nor is it helpful for Members of Congress to call for the impeachment of judges with whom they disagree. An independent judiciary is what distinguishes a free society from a totalitarian one. It is the ultimate check on tyranny. It is, in the words of Chief Justice Rehnquist, a "crown jewel" of our system of government. We should cherish that jewel, not chip away at it when we dislike a particular decision or see an opportunity for political gain.

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Judicial Activism Bad Judicial Activism Is Detrimental 1. JUDICIAL ACTIVISM IS WRONG: DUTY EXISTS TO OPPOSE ITR. Alexander Acosta, Director of the Project on the Judiciary at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, WASHINGTON TIMES, October 10, 1997, p. 3. President Clinton has flip-flopped once again. In a recent radio address, he criticized Congress' efforts to curb judicial activism as an unjustified attacked on the independence of the judiciary. Yet during his re-election campaign, the President assured us that he too opposed judicial activism and even threatened to call for an activist federal judge's resignation. Judicial activism is wrong and Congress and the President have a duty to oppose it. The President's unwillingness to follow through on his campaign rhetoric sadly ignores this duty. 2. JUDICIAL ACTIVISM HURTS RIGHT TO DEMOCRACY AND SELF-GOV'T R. Alexander Acosta, Director of the Project on the Judiciary at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, WASHINGTON TIMES, October 10, 1997, p. 3. Judicial activism occurs when a judge, believing that a law is unjust, substitutes his or her personal policy preferences for that law. Such judicial lawmaking is wrong. In our democracy, the people, through their elected representatives or through referenda, enact laws. When unelected, life-tenured federal judges replace the law with rules of their own making they deprive us of our most fundamental right, the right to self-government. 3. CHECKS AND BALANCES REQUIRE US TO CRITICIZE JUDICIAL ACTIVISM R. Alexander Acosta, Director of the Project on the Judiciary at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, WASHINGTON TIMES, October 10, 1997, p. 3. The President, who taught constitutional law at the University of Arkansas, thus understands that judicial independence does not mean that Congress and the President should refrain from criticizing activist decisions. Indeed, our system of checks and balances requires such criticism. This system recognizes that even well-meaning people will inevitably be driven by a natural human impulse to expand their power. It recognizes that mere words cannot curb this impulse. Rather, our system relies on Congress and the President to check judges' attempts to usurp law-making authority. 4. JUDICIAL ACTIVISM ATTACKS THE WEAK H. R. Khanna, Staff Writer, THE HINDU, September 27, 1995, p. 7. We have also been accustomed in judicial history to judges who have been influenced in economic matters by the theory of laissez faire and who have as such been inclined to strike down measures impinging upon the freedom of trade or those detracting from the property rights. The propertied classes and industrial and business magnates found in such judges a great bulwark for the protection of their rights and privileges. In the U.S. it led to judicial decisions striking down major measures of economic reform of the thirties to take America out of the grip of economic depression. By the spring of 1936 it seemed as if the Supreme Court had wrecked Roosevelt's New Deal on the shoals and rocks of unconstitutionality. In India it resulted in quashing measures for agro-economic reforms like abolition of zamindaries.

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Judicial Activism Risks Collapse Of The Constitution 1. COURTS MUST BE COMMITTED TO THE CONSTITUTION ALONE H. R. Khanna, Staff Writer, THE HINDU, September 27, 1995, p. 7. Any of the above commitments is considered by many to be inconsistent with the role of the judiciary as it has been built up in a free civilised society which postulates an independent judiciary unaffected by affection or ill-will and which can hold the scales even in any legal combat between the rich and poor, the mighty and the weak, the State and the citizen, without fear or favour. The commitment of the judiciary according to this view can only be to the Constitution and the laws and in the discharge of its functions it cannot allow itself to be influenced by an extraneous considerations. Yet it must be admitted that the court is not entirely free from the influence of environment; the society in which it functions affects its views in a subtle manner for as has been aptly said the great tides and currents which engulf the rest of mankind do not turn aside in their course and pass the judges idly by. 2. UNCONSTITUTIONAL ACTIVISM RISKS TOTALITARIANISM H. R. Khanna, Staff Writer, THE HINDU, September 27, 1995, p. 7. Both can not only co-exist in harmony, they also lend support and strength to each other. Attempts to extol one at the cost of the other would injure both. An undue stress on civil liberties and rights in complete disregard of the social justice and equality would result in a lopsided view of the things. We must not forget that many an appeal in the name of freedom is the masquerade of a desire to preserve one's privileges and keep them entrenched. The converse likewise is true and it is for that reason that it is necessary to sound a note of caution. Any stress on social justice and Directive Principles along in complete disregard of the other rights and liberties enshrined in Part III of the Constitution can only pave the way to totalitarianism. 3. CONSTITUTIONAL TROUBLE ARISES WHEN JUDICIARY OVERSTEPS BOUNDS H. R. Khanna, Staff Writer, THE HINDU, September 27, 1995, p. 7. As long as the three wings of the States -- the Legislature, Executive and Judiciary -- operate within their demarcated fields and show due deference to the other organs, no difficulty would arise in the working of the Constitution. The trouble arises when one wing tries to encroach upon the field of the other for it is bound to generate friction and result in constitutional imbalance. It is in this context that a special responsibility devolves upon the judiciary. 4. JUDGES CAN BE BIASED IN A VARIETY OF DIRECTIONS H. R. Khanna, Staff Writer, THE HINDU, September 27, 1995, p. 7. Past decisions and precedents are undoubtedly there to rely upon. But they help up to a point only, for a case may well call for a probe into some virgin territory, needing elaboration of an old principle and in the process giving birth sometime to a new principle and enunciation of a fresh dictum, thus making another step in the evolution of law. Judicial commitment can be of various types. A judge may be mentally committed to decide every constitutional dispute in favour of the Government and to uphold the validity of every law made by the legislative and every order made by Executive. An other type of committed judge is the one who is inclined to decide against the Government and to suspect everything done by the Executive. He would, therefore, be always on the lookout for some plausible ground or loophole and thus be more readily prone to strike down laws made by the Legislature or orders made by the Executive.

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Justice Good SHARED CONCEPTION OF JUSTICE IS ESSENTIAL FOR A GOOD SOCIETY 1. SHARED CONCEPTION OF JUSTICE IS NECESSARY FOR WELL-ORDERED SOCIETY John Rawls, Philosopher, A THEORY OF JUSTICE, 1971, p. 5. If men’s inclination to self-interest makes their vigilance against one another necessary, their public sense of justice makes their secure association together possible. Among individuals with disparate aims and purposes a shared conception of justice establishes the bonds of civic friendship; the general desire for justice limits the pursuit of other ends. One may think of a public conception of justice as constituting the fundamental charter of a well-ordered human association. 2. SOCIAL JUSTICE IS SUBJECT TO THE CULTURAL UNDERSTANDINGS OF SOCIETY Amy Gutman, Scholar and Author, PHILOSOPHY & PUBLIC AFFAIRS, Summer 1993, p. 173. Suppose that standards of justice are relative to particular cultural understandings such that the cultural meaning of each social good is what defines its just distribution. Cultural relativism, so understood, challenges the view that some seemingly conflicting practices sanctioned by different cultures, such as enforced monogamy and polygamy or gender integration and purdah [the Muslim practice of gender segregation], actually pose moral conflicts and on reflection call for criticism of one or both of the conflicting practices. If justice is relative to particular cultural understandings, then polygamy can be just for members of my culture and just for members of another culture whose social understandings of marital responsibility and kinship are radically different. 3. JUSTICE IS GROUNDED IN SHARED CONCEPTIONS John Rawls, Philosopher, POST-ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY, 1985, p. 201. When fully articulated, any conception of justice expresses a conception of the person, of the relations between persons, and of the general structure and ends of social cooperation. To accept the principles that represent a conception of justice is at the same time to accept an ideal of the person. In acting from these principles we realize such an ideal. 4. SOCIAL JUSTICE MUST BE VIEWED IN RELATION TO THE CULTURE Amy Gutman, Scholar and Author, PHILOSOPHY & PUBLIC AFFAIRS, Summer 1993, p. 173. Our views on social justice as they apply to our culture are justified (or not) relative to its social understandings. Views on social justice that apply to members of other cultures must be judged by their [sic] social understandings, not ours. We should ask not whether social practices like polygamy and purdah [the Muslim practice of gender segregation] are justified by the moral considerations that we [sic] find most compelling, but rather whether they are sanctioned by the relevant social understandings of the cultures within which they are practiced. There is no reason to assume that our moral principles, which we typically learn in relation to problems and practices of our own culture, are the same principles that should apply to other cultures, whose understandings of social goods such as kinship and gender relations differ dramatically from our own. 5. WELL-ORDERED SOCIETIES ARE REGULATED BY JUSTICE John Rawls, Philosopher, POST-ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY, 1985, p. 202. A well-ordered society is effectively regulated by a public conception of justice. That is, it is a society all of whose members accept, and know that the others accept, the same principles (the same conception) of justice. It is also the case that basic social institutions and their arrangement into one scheme (the basic structure) actually satisfy, and are on good grounds believed by everyone to satisfy, these principles. THEORY OF JUSTICE IS ROOTED IN EQUALITY 1. WOMEN SHOULD HAVE THE SAME RIGHTS AS MEN John Stuart Mill, JOHN STUART MILL: A SELECTION OF HIS WORKS, 1966, p. 1334. This obligation is almost entirely disregarded in the case of the family relations, a case, in its direct influence on happiness, more important than all others taken together. The almost despotic power of husbands over wives needs 379

not be enlarged upon here, because nothing more is needed for the complete removal of the evil, than that wives should have the same rights, and should receive the protection of law in the same manner, as all other persons; and because, on this subject, the defenders of established injustice do not avail themselves of the plea of liberty, but stand forth openly as the champions of power.

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JUSTICE PROVIDES A MECHANISM TO DISTRIBUTE GOODS OF SOCIETY 1. SOCIAL JUSTICE FAIRLY DISTRIBUTES THE BENEFITS AND BURDENS OF SOCIETY John Rawls, Philosopher, A THEORY OF JUSTICE, 1971, p. 4. There is a conflict of interests [among members of a society] since persons are not indifferent as to how the greater benefits produced by their collaboration are distributed, for in order to pursue their ends they each prefer a larger to a lesser share. A set of principles is required for choosing among the various social arrangements which determine this division of advantages and for underwriting an agreement on the proper distributive shares. These principles are the principles of social justice: they provide a way of assigning rights and duties in the basic institutions of society and they define the appropriate distribution of the benefits and burdens of social cooperation. 2. SOCIAL JUSTICE IS DISTRIBUTION OF GOODS ACCORDING TO CULTURAL MEANING Amy Gutman, Scholar and Author, PHILOSOPHY & PUBLIC AFFAIRS, Summer 1993, p. 173. Cultural relativism claims that the question we should be asking is not what should [sic] people choose between (state-enforced) monogamy and (state-permitted) polygamy, sexual integration and purdah [the Muslim practice of gender segregation], religious toleration and shunning, but rather what do [sic] people who share a culture—and therefore share substantive understandings of social goods as far ranging as kinship and love, education, jobs, health care, and divine grace—choose? Social justice, according to cultural relativism, is the distribution of goods according to their cultural meaning. 3. JUSTICE DETERMINES EQUITABLE DISTRIBUTION OF BENEFITS IN SOCIETY John Rawls, Philosopher, POST-ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY, 1985, p 203. The members of a well-ordered society are not indifferent as to how the benefits produced by their cooperation are distributed. A set of principles is required to judge between social arrangements that shape this division of advantages. Thus, the role of the principles of justice is to assign rights and duties in the basic structure of society and to specify the manner in which institutions are to influence the overall distribution of the returns from social cooperation. JUSTICE IS A UNIVERSAL VALUE 1. JUSTICE IS EXPECTED AND EXPERIENCED UNIVERSALLY Joseph V. Dolan, SJ, NQA, THE VALUE OF JUSTICE, 1979, p. 82. We must ask: What is this prelegal title or transcendent basis for one’s right to just treatment: The urgency of this question is by no means universally appreciated, and some react to it with annoyance. Several reasons account for this. Justice is an elementary notion which, like all “self-evident” and universally experienced realities is difficult to analyze. Furthermore, it is a value [sic] and primary datum of moral conscious. 2. WE CAN NEVER HAVE TOO MUCH JUSTICE Mortimer I. Adler, Chairman of the Board of Editors of the Encyclopedia Britannica, SIX GREAT IDEAS, 1981, p. 136. Only justice is an unlimited good, as we shall see presently. One can want too much liberty and too much equality— more than it is good for us to have in relation to our fellowmen and more than we have any right to. Not so with justice. No society can be too just; no individual can act more justly than is good for him or for his fellowman. 3 JUSTICE IS THE MOST IMPORTANT VALUE OF SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS John Rawls, Philosopher, A THEORY OF JUSTICE, 1971, p. 3. Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is to systems of thought. A theory however elegant and economical must be rejected or revised if it is untrue; likewise laws and institutions no matter how efficient and well-arranged must be reformed or abolished if they are unjust. Each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override. For this reason justice denies that the loss of freedom for some is made right by a greater good shared by others.

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RESPECT FOR OTHERS ESSENTIAL FOR JUSTICE 1. JUSTICE REQUIRES THAT PEOPLE TREAT OTHERS WITH LOVING RESPECT Leonard, C. Feldstein, NQA, THE VALUE OF JUSTICE, 1979, p. 60. In short, justice requires that truth of others be grasped as a representation of the interplay of the powers of both, a representation which is self-emending. In consequence, justice presupposes the idea of participatory truth: namely, that kind of mutual entrusting which is suffused by hope and, in the last analysis, identical with love, though love in a narrower sense than the kind of love which qualifies integrity, and in its supreme form pervades wisdom. MORALITY IS NECESSARY DIMENSION OF JUSTICE 1. JUSTICE DETERMINES VALIDITY OF MORAL BELIEFS Jeffrey Reiman, Philosophy Professor at American University, JUSTICE AND MODERN MORAL PHILOSOPHY, 1990, p. 2. Justice’s authority is not a matter of its alleged higher worth, like the authority of a noble over commoners, but of what is necessary to its unique function, like the authority of a police officer over other citizens. The analogy is apt because justice polices the border between might and right. It has authority over all moral ideals because anyone urging moral ideals must keep to the right side of this border to be moral at all. Justice is moralizing’s morality. AUTHORITY OF LAW IS DERIVED FROM JUSTICE 1. LAWS DERIVE AUTHORITY FROM JUSTICE Moitimer I. Adler, Chairman of the Board of Editors of the Encyclopedia Britannica, SIX GREAT IDEAS, 1981, p. 197. The man made law of the state derives its authority from justice in each of three ways: (1) by the enactment of measures that protect natural rights; (2) by legislation that prescribes or safeguards fairness in transactions among individuals; (3) by regulating matters affected with the public interest for the general welfare of the community.

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Justice Bad SOCIAL JUSTICE BASED ON CULTURAL RELATIVISM IS FLAWED 1. SOCIAL JUSTICE BASED ON CULTURAL RELATIVISM IS INHERENTLY FLAWED Amy Gutman, Harvard University, PHILOSOPHY AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS, Summer 1993, p. 171. Cultures are internally divided over matters of justice and most modern people are members of more than one culture, or are capable of adopting multicultural identities if they are permitted to do so. for these reasons among others (discussed below), a person’s standards of justice are not given simply by a culture. 2. RAWLSIAN SOCIAL JUSTICE FAILS TO ADDRESS DIVERSITY OF CULTURE George Klosko, NQA, AMERICAN POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEW, June 1993, p. 351. For example, in “Justice as Fairness: Political, Not Metaphysical,” Rawls speaks of the “important conception of democratic individuality expressed in the works of Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman” (1985, 246, n. 29). He also notes our “settled convictions” in regards to religious toleration and opposition to slavery, which can be regarded as “Provisional fixed points” round which a suitable conception of justice can be constructed (p. 228). But these brief remarks do little to address the variety of conflicting elements present in liberal culture. 3. SOCIAL JUSTICE BASED ON CULTURAL RELATIVISM DENIES DIVERSITY OF PEOPLE Amy Gutman, Harvard University, PHILOSOPHY AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS, Summer 1993, p. 171. People select, interpret, and evaluate stories, histories, and customs in attempts to make the best out of the various cultures given to them. They also interpret and evaluate the institutions, laws, practices, and procedures of the political community they inherit. Our range of moral responses includes obedience criticism, reform, civil disobedience, self-imposed exile, and revolution. All are part of the human potential for a morally reflective cultural and political identity. Cultural and political relativism leave too little room for recognizing this distinctively human capacity, exercised, most self-consciously by people who endure systematic social injustice. UTILITARIAN JUSTICE IS UNDESIRABLE 1. UTILITARIANISM DOES NOT PROVIDE ADEQUATE DEFINITION OF ACTION Rex Martin. NQA, RAWLS AND RIGHTS, 1985, p.3. So we see that duties and their rights which sometimes attach to them, in being so dependent on and responsive to considerations of general welfare or the public good, can never give us a self-standing reason for action in a certain way—one that is independent, or relatively so, of such considerations. Thus, rights having weight against such considerations cannot be justified on utilitarian grounds. 2. UTILITARIAN THEORY DOES NOT IMPOSE MORAL REQUIREMENTS Rex Martin. NQA, RAWLS AND RIGHTS, 1985, p. 5. There is, in sum, no direct requirement for action superior to the moral rules nothing that one must do as a utilitarian moralist. So, the rules function as a sort of shield against direct welfare arguments (arguments posed in terms of expediency). Hence it is possible for rights to block a welfare argument since the latter has no direct moral standing as such. Certainly we are not morally [sic] required to let an obligation go, or to let a right down, even when doing so would yield a greater net benefit. To think otherwise is to confuse what is required [sic] with what is desirable [sic]. 3. UTILITARIAN EXPLANATION OF BASIC RIGHTS IS CONTRADICTORY Rex Martin. NQA, RAWLS AND RIGHTS, 1985, p. 5. Thus, it is sensible to say, on the one hand, that rights and duties are attached to rules which can be justified on utilitarian grounds (as rules in the most desirable moral code, which justified from the perspective of long-term utility) and to say, on the other, that rights can withstand direct welfare arguments. Here we can say both that basic rights have independent moral force (since they can control conduct even in cases in which deviation from the rule would be expedient and certainly in cases in which deviation would be of only slight advantage) and that basic rights are compatible with the utilitarian goal of general welfare (since, though founded on the general welfare, they 383

cannot be required to be overridden by direct appeals to utility).

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THEORY OF DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE DOES NOT WORK 1. DISTRIBUTION OF JUSTICE MUST BE EQUAL Anthony Flew, NQA, EQUALITY IN LIBERTY AND JUSTICE, 1989, p. 147. What is primarily preposterous is to present this (if not exactly self-denying then at any rate) individuality-denying ordinance as a first and necessary step towards developing a conception of, in particular, justice. Certainly, if all possible grounds for any morally irrelevant, then indeed—always allowing that anyone is still to be allowed to deserve or to be entitled to anything at all—it does become obvious that everyone’s deserts and entitlements must be equal. Yet it is precisely and only upon what individuals severally and individually are, and have doe or failed to do, that all their several and surely often very unequal particular deserts and entitlements cannot but be based. It is, therefore, bizarre so superciliously to dismiss it all as ‘from a moral point of view’, irrelevant. 2. SOME SOCIAL GOODS ARE NOT DIVISIBLE John Schaar, NQA, SOCIAL THEORY AND PRACTICE, Vol. 3, 1974, p. 87. In summary, equal access to the social primary good called education does little to equalize income, status, or cognitive ability. It seems that education just is not a dividable social good in any simple sense: too much depends upon motivation, genetic endowment, accident, personal habits, family background, and so forth I suspect that this might be true of other social primary goods which Rawls would advise us, in principle, to distribute equally. This suggests that the second principle could easily lead us to a series of policy choices trying to assure equal opportunity that will have no significant impact on the overall distribution of wealth and power. 3. CREATING MORE EQUALITY FROM “MORE JUSTICE” IS A FALLACIOUS NOTION Anthony Flew, NQA, EQUALITY IN LIBERTY AND JUSTICE, 1989, p. 144-5. Suppose we allow, as everyone ought, that the claims of justice, although not absolutely indefeasible, must nevertheless be always both considerable and compelling. And suppose, forthwith and very fashionably, we proceed to mistake it that to ‘make a community more equal’ is thereby and necessarily to make it ‘more just’ Then we become committed either, on the one hand, to denying that there are or could be any such things either as deserts or as entitlements which are not deserved, or, on the other hand, to continuing still, while admitting that there are, to insist that in fact no differences obtain, and hence no inequalities, as between at least the sum totals of all the actual deserts and not-deserved entitlements of different individuals.

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UTILITARIAN CONCEPTIONS OF JUSTICE DENY BASIC RIGHTS 1. UTILITARIANISM IS INCOMPATIBLE WITH BASIC RIGHTS Rex Martin. NQA, RAWLS AND RIGHTS, 1985, p. 10. It is clear, then that the standard of aggregative general welfare would not support the assignment of rights— guaranteed benefits—to individuals in respect of interests that they have, even “vital” or “important” interests (such as the constant and common interest that each person has in security or autonomy). That is, it would not assign rights to each and every individual in advance and across the board—if, in effect, such across-the-board rights were meant to tie the utilitarian’s hands (as it is in indirect utilitarianism) against using the master principle of general welfare to make subsequent relevant determinations. Thus, it is unlikely that basic rights could ever have place or be grounded (justified) in theories that are recognizably utilitarian. And we reach the conclusion that utilitarianism is incompatible with basic rights. 2. UTILITARIANS CANNOT ACCOUNT FOR BASIC RIGHTS Rex Martin. NQA, RAWLS AND RIGHTS, 1985, p.3. Now, those who have traditionally advocated basic rights—whether moral or constitutional ones—have had in mind, precisely, tights that are able to withstand, up to a point at least, appeals to the greatest happiness or the public good. Such rights provide a guarantee of specified benefits to individuals independently of fluctuations in the general welfare; they assure benefits to individuals even on those occasions (or some of them) when the weight of welfare considerations would dictate a different path. Accordingly, it could plausibly be said that utilitarians cannot account for basic rights. 3. UTILITARIANISM IS INCOMPATIBLE WITH PRINCIPLES OF U.S. CONSTITUTION Marshall Cohen, Professor of Philosophy at The City University of New York, THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, July 16, 1972, p. 1. For too long now, the main tradition of moral philosophy has been utilitarian in its broad assumptions: people Out to work for “greatest happiness of the greatest number” of their fellow-men; minorities should submit to the interests of the majority. But utilitarian attitudes are incompatible with our moral judgment and with the principles on which are Constitution rests. 4. UTILITARIANISM SACRIFICES INDIVIDUALS’ RIGHTS TO THE MAJORITY Marshall Cohen, Professor of Philosophy at The City University of New York, THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, July 16, 1972, p. 1. [John] Rawls has in mind here such basic liberties as the right to vote and to stand for public office; freedom of speech and assembly; liberty of conscience and freedom of thought; freedom to hold (personal) property. Utilitarianism could easily justify abridging these basic liberties. For utilitarianism claims that we ought to see the greatest balance of satisfaction over dissatisfaction for society as a whole. If this is so, however, a violation of the basic liberties of an individual, or of a minority, would be justified if the violation brought sufficient satisfaction to the majority. 5. UTILITARIANISM NEVER ALLOWS FOR BASIC RIGHTS OVER GENERAL WELFARE Rex Martin. NQA, RAWLS AND RIGHTS, 1985, p.3. The more serious problem, then, is that in the Benthamic approach considerations of general welfare (“the greatest happiness of the greatest number” are thought to exercise an absolute monopoly in arguments; it would follow that, in any given instance, one could not use the notion of basic rights has having any independent effect in matters of justification, as having any special normative force. For there is no way in which such a right could be allowed to block, let alone override, a sound welfare argument, even one that suggested by a minimal increase in general wellbeing. 6. BASIC RIGHTS ARE AN “ILLUSION” IN UTILITARIANISM Rex Martin. NQA, RAWLS AND RIGHTS, 1985, p. 11. One point, though is universally agreed on: Rawls hold that utilitarians characteristically regard basic rights as “a socially useful illusion” and subject them to “the calculus of social interests.” Thus, Rawls believe utilitarianism would allow the sacrifice of some people’s right to liberty or opportunity if doing so would raise the level of (total or average) well-being in a society. 386

RAWLSIAN DEFINITIONS OF MORALITY AND JUSTICE ARE WRONG 1. RAWLS’ TEST FOR JUST ACTIONS ALLOWS FOR IMMORAL ACTIONS Vinit Haksar, University of Edinburgh, ANALYSIS, Vol. 32, 1972, p. 150-1. Rawls allows, as I said at the beginning of this paper, the possibility that some practices are unjust but on the whole moral. But if we use his method of testing the justice of practice, it could happen that people in a position of equal liberty opt for practices that are unjust but on the whole moral. For once one allows that choices in the state of equal liberty are subject to moral constraints, people may at least sometimes opt for a practice that is on the whole morally desirable, even if it is unjust. So an unjust but morally desirable practice may be considered just by Rawls’ test, which is absurd. 2. RATIONAL CHOICES ARE NOT THE SAME AS ETHICAL CHOICES John Schaar, NQA, SOCIAL THEORY AND PRACTICE, Vol. 3, 1974, p. 79. Rawls has not escaped the curse of all egoistic arguments for moral principles: “One can neither draw blood from a stone nor extract moral principles from the decisions of rational egoists.” We might, on various occasions and by various criteria, describe the decisions of such actors as prudent or reasonable, but it strains language to call them moral. Rawls does strain language in exactly this way when he subsumes ethical choices under the theory of rational choice. There are connections, of course, but not identity: the theory of justice is part of, but also something more than, the theory of rational choice. 3. RAWLS ALLOWS FOR JUST ACTIONS TO ALSO BE IMMORAL Vinit Haksar, University of Edinburgh, ANALYSIS, Vol. 32, 1972, p. 151. The chief criticism that I have made against Rawls in this paper does not arise from the fact that what is prima facie just may not be really just. My criticism arises from the fact if the choices of the people in a state of equal liberty are subject to moral constraints, then Rawls’ test will cease to be a test of justice, since his system allows that what is really just may be really immoral on the whole. Also, it is worth distinguishing my criticism from another criticism that some moralists may make against Rawls’ system, viz, that Rawls’ system is morally repugnant merely because it allows the possibilities that practices that are unjust may be moral, and that practices that are just may be immoral. 4. HUMAN BEINGS DO HAVE A CONCEPTION OF MORALITY John Schaar, NQA, SOCIAL THEORY AND PRACTICE, Vol. 3, 1974, p. 80. Sometimes he [Rawls] says the choosers have a conception of morality and religion but of no specific morality or religion. That is impossible. We cannot have a conception of morality that is not “contaminated” by a specific morality. It is as though Rawls invites, or requires, us to think about some thing without knowing anything of that thing. We cannot imagine human beings without culture, morality, or religions: Human beings are creatures who have those things; they do not think detached from those things.

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WESTERN JUSTICE IS PROBLEMATIC 1. BUDDHISM ACCEPTS THAT INJUSTICE IS PART OF NATURAL ORDER Winston L. King, Professor Emeritus, Vanderbilt University, JOURNAL OF BUDDHIST ETHICS, Volume 2, 1995, p. 73. "Justice" is a rare, almost non-existent word in the Buddhist canonical literature. Is this because there were/are no cases of injustice, of either the human or the cosmic sort in Asian Buddhist countries through the centuries? Emphatically not. Asia has had its full share of cruel oppressive rulers, in whose realms there was much of what the West today calls injustice. . .the dominance of the powerful over the weak, the few over the many. Greed and avarice have been as frequent in their occurrence as elsewhere. Recurring floods, famines, plagues and conquests liberally sprinkle Asian history. There have been inequalities of fortune irrespective of the virtuous or evil character of those involved. But on the whole the social order was accepted much like the natural order, simply as the way life was. One ducked one's head and hunched one's shoulders, accepting everything passively and continually, hoping that the present storm of oppression and misfortune could be waited out. As Ken Jones has written: "Until the nineteenth century the social order in the Orient evidently presented for many people much the same kind of inevitability as the natural order. Oppressive rulers and their wars and exactions together with flood, pestilence and famine were experienced as all a part of the same inevitable order of things within which good and bad fortune alternated." And there appears to have been no Buddhist Jobean protest raised against this passivity. One goes on to ask: Were there no Buddhist ideals for a good, perhaps "just," society? Not at least in those terms. 2. BUDDHISM HELPS OFFSET THE VINDICTIVENESS OF WESTERN JUSTICE Winston L. King, Professor Emeritus, Vanderbilt University, JOURNAL OF BUDDHIST ETHICS, Volume 2, 1995, p. 81. What then shall one say in conclusion? Perhaps this: That the Judeo-Christian West need have no monopoly on "justice" and that if Buddhism can disavow its spoken/unspoken reliance on the individualized version of karma to effect justice in samsaara and embody some forms of social activism, pointed to by the concept of "participative justice," the Buddhist tradition might well importantly contribute to and modify the sometimes stark vindictiveness of "eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth" Western justice. 3. CAN'T CREATE NIRVANA ON EARTH, BUDDHISM REASONS Winston L. King, Professor Emeritus, Vanderbilt University, JOURNAL OF BUDDHIST ETHICS, Volume 2, 1995, p. 73-4. Something of this same indifference or unconcern with questions of personal and social justice has characterized Buddhist cultures from the beginning. In the Canon of Pali scriptures the Buddhist Way was not conceived as having much responsibility or concern about making over the samsaaric socio-political order of the world. The samsaaric world, driven by greed, hatred, and delusion, was one ruled by the desires for power, wealth, fame, sensual enjoyment, and was intrinsically unsalvable. Hence it must be escaped by detachment from its lures; there was no hope of fundamentally reforming it of making it into a "Nirvana on earth." It was a gospel of personal salvation in and from time-space life, not its transformation. Thus, while today reform movements and "social awareness" are developing in the Buddhist world, the traditional base from which they must develop is scanty. Even the many Mahaayaana reformations of Pali Canon Buddhism have not entirely overcome this "otherworldly" bias.

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BUDDHISM PROVES JUSTICE IS FLAWED: KARMA IS SUPERIOR 1. JUSTICE TO BUDDHISM IS A NEGATIVE, ENDLESS CYCLE OF REVENGE Winston L. King, Professor Emeritus, Vanderbilt University, JOURNAL OF BUDDHIST ETHICS, Volume 2, 1995, p. 74. There is a further almost constitutional allergy in Buddhism to the seeming quid pro quo quality of most schemes of "justice." For Buddhists "justice" often seems too much of an unending revengeful tit for tat, a totally samsaaric entity structured by human pride and anger, an endless balancing of rival claims and "rights." This disposition is expressed in a well-known passage in the Dhammapada: "He abused me, he beat me, he defeated me, he robbed me," the hatred of those who do not harbour such thoughts is appeased. Hatreds never cease by hatred in this world; by love alone they cease." 2. ANY RETALIATION, EVEN IN JUSTICE'S NAME, IS WRONG Winston L. King, Professor Emeritus, Vanderbilt University, JOURNAL OF BUDDHIST ETHICS, Volume 2, 1995, p. 75. Retaliatory emotions and actions however "justified" are but one link in the ongoing chain of cause and effect that drive samsaaric futility and samsaaric rebirth forever onward. While these two factors are important in explaining the general lack of concern for justice in the Buddhist world of past and present, there is a more basic and fundamental reason for this disposition. Its name is karma. 3. KARMIC JUSTICE IS THE BEST TYPE OF JUSTICE Winston L. King, Professor Emeritus, Vanderbilt University, JOURNAL OF BUDDHIST ETHICS, Volume 2, 1995, p. 75. In the schema of time-space structured existence embodied in sentient existence at all levels and in all forms (human, sub-human, super-human) the karmic principle of justice rules without exception or hindrance. There is no such thing as unexplained, causeless suffering, Job to the contrary. Every state of existence, good or bad, animal, ghostly, hellish or heavenly is caused by ethically good or evil deeds. Karmic justice, like the mills of the Greek gods, may grind but grinds exceedingly fine. The only genuine escape from karmic justice is not into a better life or better world but into Nirvana. 4. NO POINT TO RETRIBUTIVE JUSTICE: KARMA PROVIDES THE RETRIBUTION Winston L. King, Professor Emeritus, Vanderbilt University, JOURNAL OF BUDDHIST ETHICS, Volume 2, 1995, p. 75. Two results have flowed from this basic world-view: With the all-pervading karmic principle in place in every age and part of the universe why should human beings think that they can or should do anything substantial to alter the "unjust" situations and conditions? All the actors therein will receive their full recompense, sooner or later; their actions, good or bad, just or unjust, will have their inescapable consequence. Second, there is the fully individualized character of all social conditions. A "bad" society is simply made up of a majority of people who have a "bad" individualized karmic character. Sometimes, according to some Buddhist scriptures, the proportion of individuals in human society with "bad karma" is so great that a whole universe (and there are many of them) is dragged down to destruction. Buddhaghosa even painted a fearsome portrait of such evil-caused cataclysms, a Buddhacizing of Indian cyclism. 5. ONLY THROUGH INDIVIDUAL KARMIC IMPROVEMENT CAN JUSTICE EXIST Winston L. King, Professor Emeritus, Vanderbilt University, JOURNAL OF BUDDHIST ETHICS, Volume 2, 1995, p. 75. Since society is perceived as only a collection of individual karmic characteristics, to talk about improving or reforming society in a collective way is futile. It is only by means of a one-by-one improvement of individual persons that any society can be changed. Thus it is fully evident that justice as an achievable goal of either individual or collective human effort does not rank high in the traditional Buddhist scale of values or possibilities.

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JUSTICE, ESPECIALLY RETRIBUTIVE, IS A WESTERN VALUE 1. JUSTICE A SUPREME CULTURAL VALUE OF THE WEST Winston L. King, Professor Emeritus, Vanderbilt University, JOURNAL OF BUDDHIST ETHICS, Volume 2, 1995, p. 73. This religiously certified right and power of the government to maintain justice on the earth has long since disappeared --save in the form of the British sovereign's mostly symbolical headship of church and state. But the career of "justice" has not ended with the disappearance of divine kingship. Indeed the religiously originated concept of justice, in its semi-secularized form, has become ubiquitous in the Western cultures. Anti-religious Communism sought to bring perpetual justice to the down-trodden by the "dictatorship of the proletariat." Building on, but outwardly discarding the Christian doctrine of the immortal soul, fueled by Renaissance humanist values, modern democrats like to speak of the inalienable right of each individual person to justice --cultural, legal. And we have a plethora of "justices": from the humble justices of peace, up through several levels of court justices, up to Supreme Court justices and governmental Ministries of Justice. Justice is surely one of the supreme cultural-social values of Western civilization. 2. IN WESTERN RELIGIOUS THOUGHT, SUFFERING IS CAUSED BY SIN Winston L. King, Professor Emeritus, Vanderbilt University, JOURNAL OF BUDDHIST ETHICS, Volume 2, 1995, p. 71. Ever since in the Jewish traditions this position has been maintained: If there is "unmerited" suffering, sin lies at the door. God's "chosen people" have through the centuries been struggling to understand the dark mystery of their continuing ordeal, examining their conduct with an ever more powerful moral microscope. So too, Christians, inheritors of the Jewish view of a just God have continued to apply the mathematics of suffering = sin. . .sometime, somewhere. 3. WESTERN JUSTICE SAYS THAT ALL PUNISHMENT IS DESERVED Winston L. King, Professor Emeritus, Vanderbilt University, JOURNAL OF BUDDHIST ETHICS, Volume 2, 1995, p. 71. The answer of the Jewish tradition to the harsh destiny of God's Chosen People is found in the words of the prophets who charge the people of Israel with unfaithfulness to Yahweh: they have not followed the principles of righteousness and justice in their daily conduct and had sought to bribe God with mere ceremonial. The prophet Amos, speaking for God, put the charge thus: "I hate, I despise your feasts, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies... Take away from me the noise of your songs; to the melody of your harps I will not listen. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream." (Amos 5:21, 23-4) To Amos and his fellow prophets it was the just God punishing his morally unfaithful people by famine, pestilence and even conquest by their "heathen" idolatrous neighbors; it was not God's unfaithfulness to his promises of health and prosperity to the righteous. 4. STORY OF JOB SHOWS WESTERN NOTION OF JUSTICE Winston L. King, Professor Emeritus, Vanderbilt University, JOURNAL OF BUDDHIST ETHICS, Volume 2, 1995, p. 70-1. Job the "perfect godly" man had been nearly destroyed by God's actions. Job challenges God to justify himself. The result of this challenge is a let-down, a moral cop-out on the part God. Elihu rebukes Job for his presumption in challenging the Almighty's decrees. Then God himself answers Job out of a whirlwind and derides his pretensions to righteousness or knowledge before Almighty creative Power. Job repents his self-justification "in dust and ashes" and ceases to complain, and is rewarded for his servile submission with renewed riches and a second family! If individual life does not quite bear out the assurance of righteous/just individual conduct infallibly producing prosperity, neither did it quite work out on the collective national level. Israel, the Chosen People of Yahweh, after two or three generations of relative prosperity in their Promised Land of Palestine, began to suffer reverses climaxing in their conquest and exile at the hands of un-Godly, idolatrous peoples. Where then was the God of justice and righteousness? A psalm poignantly expresses this sense of desertion by God: "Lord where is thy steadfast love of old, which by thy faithfulness thou didst swear to David? Remember, O Lord, how thy servant is scorned, how I bear in my bosom the insults of the peoples. . .with which they mock the footsteps of thy anointed."

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WESTERN LOGIC SAYS HUMANS MUST PROVIDE JUSTICE 1. MAN GETS JUSTIFICATION TO "EXECUTE WRATH" UNDER WESTERN JUSTICE Winston L. King, Professor Emeritus, Vanderbilt University, JOURNAL OF BUDDHIST ETHICS, Volume 2, 1995, p. 72. But one of the first century's Christian voices, that of St. Paul, anticipated the future more perceptively. He wrote prophetically of the semi-divine nature of civil government: "Let every person be subject unto the governing powers for there is no authority except from God and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore he who resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment...(The ruler) is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong be afraid for he does not bear the sword (of power) in vain; he is the servant of God to execute his wrath on the wrongdoer. (Romans 13:1-2, 4) 2. RULERS GET JUST POWER FROM GOD IN WESTERN TEACHING Winston L. King, Professor Emeritus, Vanderbilt University, JOURNAL OF BUDDHIST ETHICS, Volume 2, 1995, p. 72. A little less than three centuries later when Constantine, the inheritor of the ancient Roman emperorship, eastern division, converted to Christianity St. Paul's justice-enforcing emperor became a Christian one. And St. Augustine (354-430), a century later proclaimed Rome to be the City of God, seat of the Christian Roman emperor, and seat of the supreme pontiff of the Christian church. It was not long after this that the European doctrine of the divine right of kings was framed. From the human side power derived from the emperor's lineage; his divine power was derived from the church's investiture, and presumably God's will. 3. HUMANS ARE OBLIGATED TO PROVIDE JUSTICE UNDER WESTERN TEACHING Winston L. King, Professor Emeritus, Vanderbilt University, JOURNAL OF BUDDHIST ETHICS, Volume 2, 1995, p. 71-2. Without seeking to solve all of the problems of seemingly undeserved suffering we must observe another element in the Judeo-Christian theodicy and general world-view that puts a joker in the cosmic-justice deck, so to speak. It is given double in the book of Genesis. The first is found in the story of Adam's and Eve's expulsion from the Garden of Eden. They were enticed into disobedience to God by the wiles of the serpent, the prehistoric ancestor of the Christian Satan. This implies that God the Creator is not simply and mechanically almighty. Not only is there a resident factor of moral evil (serpent/Satan), but a portion of the divine power to alter the course of events, the power of a choosing will-force, on the part of his creatures. The other aspect of the creation's moral order is stated thus: "So God created man in his own image, male and female he created them. And God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion. . .over every living thing that moves upon the earth." (Genesis 1:27-8) Thus man, in some small measure at least, is called to be a kind of cogovernor of the earth, God's deputy, so to speak, in the establishment of righteousness and the administration of justice. This understanding of the function and responsibility of the political ruler is primary throughout the Jewish scriptures. There was first the archetypal figure of Moses the Lawgiver, followed by "judges," and sovereigns, all presumed to be upholders and enforcers of justness in Israel's corporate life.

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THERE IS A BASIS FOR RIGHTS IN BUDDHISM 1. HUMAN NATURE KEY TO BUDDHIST RIGHTS VISIONKenneth Inada, Professor at SUNY-Buffalo, ASIAN PERSPECTIVES ON HUMAN RIGHTS, 1990, p. 91. Let us return to a fuller treatment of soft relationships. In human experience, they manifest themselves in terms of the intangible human traits that we live by, such as patience, humility, tolerance, deference, non-action, humaneness, concern, pity, sympathy, altruism, sincerity, honesty, faith, responsibility, trust, respectfulness, reverence, love and compassion. Though potentially and pervasively present in any human relationship, they remain for the most part as silent but vibrant components in all experiences. Without them, human intercourse would be sapped of the human element and reduced to perfunctory activities Indeed, this fact seems to constitute much of the order of the day where our passions are mainly directed to physical and materialistic matters. The actualization and sustenance of these intangible human traits are basic to the Buddhist quest for an understanding of human nature and, by extension, the so-called rights of human beings. 2. COMPASSION IS BASIS FOR BUDDHIST RIGHTS Kenneth Inada, Professor at SUNY-Buffalo, ASIAN PERSPECTIVES ON HUMAN RIGHTS, 1990, p. 91. It can now be seen that all three characteristics involve each other in the selfsame momentary existence. Granted this, it should not be too difficult to accept the fact that the leading moral concept in Buddhism is compassion (karuna). Compassion literally means "passion for all" in an ontologically extensive sense. It covers the realm of all sentient beings, inclusive of non-sentients, for the doors of perception to total reality are always open. >From the Buddhist viewpoint, then, all human beings are open entities with open feelings expressive of the highest form of humanity This is well expressed in the famous concept of bodhisattva (enlightened being) in Mahayana Buddhism who has deepest concern for all beings and sympathetically delays his entrance to nirvana as long as there is suffering (ignorant existence) among sentient creatures. It depicts the coterminous nature of all creatures and may be taken as a philosophic myth in that it underscores the ideality of existence which promotes the greatest unified form of humankind based on compassion. This ideal form of existence, needless to say, is the aim and goal of all Buddhists. 3. BUDDHISM SAYS HUMAN NATURE IS BASIS OF HUMAN RIGHTS Kenneth Inada, Professor at SUNY-Buffalo, ASIAN PERSPECTIVES ON HUMAN RIGHTS, 1990, p. 91. Admittedly, the concept of human rights is relatively new to Asians. From the very beginning, it did not sit well with their basic cosmological outlook. Indeed, the existence of such an outlook has prevented in profound ways a ready acceptance of foreign elements and has created tension and struggle between tradition and modernity. Yet, the key concept in the tension is that of human relationship. This is especially true in Buddhism, where the emphasis is not so much on the performative acts and individual rights as it is on the manner of manifestation of human nature itself. The Buddhist always takes human nature as the basic context in which all ancillary concepts, such as human rights, are understood and take on any value. Moreover, the concept itself is in harmony with the extended experiential nature of things. And thus, where the Westerner is much more at home in treating legal matters detached from human nature as such and quite confident in forging ahead to establish human rights with a distinct emphasis on certain "rights," the Buddhist is much more reserved but open and seeks to understand the implications of human behavior, based on the fundamental nature of human beings, before turning his or her attention to the so called "rights" of individuals.

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Knowledge Good KNOWLEDGE IS THE STRONGEST TYPE OF POWER 1. KNOWLEDGE IS THE BEST SOURCE OF POWER Alvin Toffler, Author, POWERSHIFT, 1990, p. 16. Of the three roots sources of social control, therefore, it is knowledge, the most versatile, that produces what Pentagon brass like to call “the biggest bang for the buck.” It can be used to punish, reward, persuade, and even transform. It can transform enemy into ally. Best of all, with the right knowledge one can circumvent nasty situations in the first place, so as to avoid wasting force or wealth altogether. 2. HIGHEST-QUALITY POWER STEMS FROM KNOWLEDGE Alvin Toffler, Author, POWERSHIFT, 1990, p. 15-16. The highest-quality power, however, comes from the application of knowledge. Actor Sean Connery, in a movie set in Cuba during the reign of the dictator Batista, plays a British mercenary. In one memorable scene the tyrant’s military chief says: “Major tell what your favorite weapon is, and I’ll get it for you.” To which Connery replies: “Brains.” 3. KNOWLEDGE IS THE ULTIMATE ESSENCE OF POWER Alvin Toffler, Author, POWERSHIFT, 1990, p. 18. Knowledge itself, therefore, turns out to be not only the source of the highest-quality power, but also the most important ingredient of force and wealth. Put differently, knowledge has gone from being an adjunct of money power and muscle power, to being their very essence. It is, in fact, the ultimate amplifier. 4. RELATIONSHIPS AMONG KNOWLEDGE, VIOLENCE AND WEALTH DEFINE POWER Alvin Toffler, Author, POWERSHIFT, 1990, p. 16. To assess the different contenders in a power conflict—whether a negotiation or a war—therefore, it helps to figure out who commands access to which of the basic tools of power. Knowledge, violence, and wealth, and the relationships among them, define power in a society. KNOWLEDGE PROVIDES PROTECTION FROM POWER 1. KNOWLEDGE PROVIDES PROTECTION FROM POWER Alvin Toffler, Author, POWERSHIFT, 1990, p. 20. Today, in the fast-changing, affluent nations, despite all inequities of income and wealth, the coming struggle for power will increasingly turn into a struggle over the distribution of and access to knowledge. This is why, unless we understand how and to whom knowledge flows, we can neither protect ourselves against the abuse of power nor create the better, more democratic society that tomorrow’s technologies promise. 2. KNOWLEDGE IS NOT EXCLUSIVE TO ELITES Alvin Toffler, Author, POWERSHIFT, 1990, p. 20. But a last, even more crucial difference sets violence and wealth apart from knowledge as we race into what has been called an information age: By definition, both force and wealth are the property of the strong and the rich. It is the truly revolutionary characteristic of knowledge that it can be grasped by the weak and the poor as well. 3. KNOWLEDGE IS A THREAT TO THE POWERFUL Alvin Toffler, Author, POWERSHIFT, 1990, p. 20. Knowledge is the most democratic source of power. Which makes it a continuing threat to the powerful, even as they use it to enhance their own power. It also explains why every power-holder—from the patriarch of a family to a president of a company or the Prime Minister of a nation—wants to control the quantity, quality, and distribution of knowledge within his or her domain.

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HUMAN EXPERIENCE PRODUCES KNOWLEDGE 1. TRUTH OF KNOWLEDGE IS ROOTED IN RESULTS OF SOCIAL PRACTICE Mao Tse-Tung, Former Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, FOUR ESSAYS ON PHILOSOPHY, 1966, p. 4. The Marxist philosophy of dialectical materialism has two outstanding characteristics. One is its class nature: it openly avows that dialectical materialism is in the service of the proletariat. The other is its practicality: it emphasizes the dependence of theory on practice, emphasizes the dependence of theory on practice and in turn serves practice. The truth of any knowledge or theory is determined not by subjective feelings, but by objective results in social practice. Only social practice can be the criterion of truth. The standpoint of practice is the primary and basic standpoint in the dialectical-materialist theory of knowledge. 2. KNOWLEDGE DOES NOT EXIST APART FROM PRACTICE Mao Tse-Tung, Former Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, FOUR ESSAYS ON PHILOSOPHY, 1966, p. 9. All knowledge originates in perception of the objective external world through man’s physical and sense organs. Anyone who denies such perceptions denies direct experience, or denies personal participation in the practice that changes reality, is not a materialist. That is why the “know-all” is ridiculous. There is an old Chinese saying, “How can you catch tiger cubs without entering the tiger’s lair?” This saying holds true for man’s practice and it also holds true for the theory of knowledge. There can be no knowledge apart from practice. 3. PRODUCTION IS THE PRIMARY SOURCE OF KNOWLEDGE Mao Tse-Tung, Former Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, FOUR ESSAYS ON PHILOSOPHY, 1966, p. 1-2. In a classless society every person, as a member of society, joins in common effort with the other members, enters into definite relations of production with them and engages in production to meet man’s material needs. In all class societies, the members of the different social classes also enter, in different ways, into definite relations of production and engage in production to meet their material needs. This is the primary sources from which human knowledge develops. 4. KNOWLEDGE IS GAINED THROUGH PRODUCTION Mao Tse-Tung, Former Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, FOUR ESSAYS ON PHILOSOPHY, 1966, p. 2. Above all, Marxists regard man’s activity in production as the most fundamental practical activity, the determinant of all his other activities. Man’s knowledge depends mainly on his activity in material production, through which he comes gradually to understand the phenomena, the properties and the laws of nature, and the relations between himself and nature; and through his activity in production he also gradually comes to understand, in varying degrees, certain relations that exist between man and man. None of this knowledge can be acquired apart from activity in production. POWER IS NOT INHERENTLY GOOD OR BAD 1. POWER IS NOT INHERENTLY GOOD OR BAD Alvin Toffler, Author, POWERSHIFT, 1990, p. 12-13. Of course, cash, culture, and violence are not the only sources of power in everyday life, and power is neither good nor bad. It is a dimension of virtually all human relationships. It is, in fact, the reciprocal of desire, and since, human desires are infinitely varied, anything that can fulfill someone else’s desire is a potential source of power. 2. POWER IS INTRINSICALLY NEUTRAL Alvin Toffler, Author, POWERSHIFT, 1990, p. 473. Power is inherent in all social systems and in all human relationships. It is not a thing but an aspect of any and all relationships among people. Hence it is inescapable and neutral, intrinsically neither good nor bad.

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THERE IS NO LIMIT TO KNOWLEDGE 1. KNOWLEDGE IS LIMITLESS Alvin Toffler, Author, POWERSHIFT, 1990, p. 19-20. Unlike bullets or budgets, knowledge itself doesn’t get used up. This alone tells us that the rules of the knowledgepower game are sharply different from the precepts relied on by those who use force or money to accomplish their will. 2. KNOWLEDGE IS INFINITE Alvin Toffler, Author, POWERSHIFT, 1990, p. 19. Thus force, for all practical concerns, is finite. There is a limit to how much force can be employed before we destroy what we wish to capture or defend. The same is true for wealth. Money cannot buy everything, and at some point even the fattest wallet empties out. By contrast, knowledge does not. We can always generate more. 3. KNOWLEDGE IS INFINITELY EXPANDABLE Alvin Toffler, Author, POWERSHIFT, 1990, p. 19. The Greek philosopher Zeno of Elea pointed out that if a traveler goes halfway to his destination each day, he can never reach his final destination, since there is always another halfway to go. In the same manner, we may never reach ultimate knowledge about anything, but we can [sic] always take one step closer to a rounded understanding of any phenomenon. Knowledge, in principle at least, is infinitely expandable. POWER IS CONTROLLED BY GROUPS 1. GROUP POWER ALWAYS OVERCOMES THE STRENGTH OF AN INDIVIDUAL Hannah Arendt, Social Philosopher, CRISES OF THE REPUBLIC, 1972, p. 143. Strength [sic] unequivocally designates something in the singular, an individual entity; it is the property inherent in an object or person and belongs to its character, which may prove itself in relation to other things or person, but is essentially independent of them. The strength of even the strongest individual can always be overpowered by the many, who often will combine for no other purpose than to ruin strength precisely, because of its peculiar independence. The almost instinctive hostility of the many toward the one has always, from Plato to Nietzsche, been ascribed to resentment, to the envy of the weak for the strong, but this psychological interpretation misses the point. It is in the nature of a group and its power to turn against independence, the property of individual strength. 2. SPIRIT OF THE MOST POWERFUL GROUPS DETERMINES CULTURE Erich Fromm, Social Philosopher, ESCAPE FROM FREEDOM, 1941, p. 112-3. In any society the spirit of the whole culture is determined by the spirit of those groups that are most powerful in that society. This is so partly because these groups have the power to control the educational system, schools, church, press, theater, and thereby imbue the whole population with their own ideas; furthermore, these powerful groups carry so much prestige that the lower classes are more than ready to accept and imitate their values and to identify themselves psychologically. 3. GROUPS CONFER POWER. INDIVIDUALS DO NOT HAVE POWER INTRINSICALLY Hannah Arendt, Social Philosopher, CRISES OF THE REPUBLIC, 1972, p. 143. Power [sic] corresponds to the human ability not just to act but to act in concert. Power is never the property of an individual; it belongs to a group and remains in existence only so long as the group keeps together. When we say of somebody that he is “in power” we actually refer to his being empowered by a certain number of people to act in their name. The moment the group, from which the power originated to begin with (potestas in populo, without a people or group there is no power), disappears, “his power” also vanishes. In current usage, when we speak of a “powerful man” or a “powerful personality,” we already use the word “power” metaphorically; what we refer to without metaphor is “strength.”

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Leisure Good LEISURE INCREASES SOCIETY’S PRODUCTIVITY 1. LEISURE INCREASES INITIATIVE FOR WORK Georges Friedmann, NQA, ANATOMY OF WORK, 1961, p. 185 But the main form taken by this desire to escape after work hours is a desperate drive for leisure. While the engineer or industrial magnate, indeed anyone working in one of the liberal professions, will in many cases be entirely absorbed by his work, the worker is not, and so reserves his best efforts, his energy, for what be will do out of working hours in his “free time’. In the United States an average week’s work, which was 70.6 hours in 1850, dropped to 40.8 hours in 1950, while the week-end is now usually two complete days, and a seven-hour day seems already in sight. The worker seeks to regain in his leisure hours the initiative, responsibility and sense of achievement denied to him in his work. 2. LEISURE GIVES MEANING TO LIFE Kenneth Roberts, Phd, University of Liverpool, LEISURE, 1981, p 101 Undeniably the significance of work has universally receded into the background, and centrality in the formation of self-definition has passed within the compass of the non-occupational sphere, with leisure outstandingly the single most dominant element. It is in his leisure activity that late- industrial man satisfies his needs to feel adequate, derives his ego identification, and achieves skills instrumental towards social integration, possibly to the extent of even infusing meaningful content to objectively dull and monotonous work. 3. EVEN WHEN WORKING, LEISURE SHAPES THE WORK ENVIRONMENT Kenneth Roberts, Phd, University of Liverpool, LEISURE, 1981, p. 68. Fred Best believes that America, with other advanced industrial countries in its wake, is on the verge of becoming an abundance society in which people will work not primarily to satisfy their material needs but increasingly to enhance the quality of their lives. Hence the predicted demise of authoritarian management and routine jobs as workers refuse ‘wage slavery’ on monotonous assembly lines, demand satisfying work and opportunities to “participate”. Dumazedier envisages a time when industry will be obliged to adapt to leisure values. He foresees workers insisting upon pleasant working conditions, seeing recreational facilities among their fringe benefits and demanding that social relationships within their firms are agreeable and friendly. In other works, Dumazedier anticipates a grassroots movement towards a leisurely atmosphere at work. 4. LEISURE TIME CAN BE USED FOR WORK R.T. Allen, Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Education at the University of West Indies, Trinidad, THE PHILOSOPHY OF LEISURE, 1989, p. 21. When that assumption is made, free time is empty or filled by more work or with reference to work. I read in the newspaper that the Japanese are reluctant to take holidays, and take only short ones. On the ship-floor, many are interested in overtime, which, of course, is paid at higher rates. Many senior people in business, and in academic life, take home work in the evenings and work at the week-ends, when at least some of them could delegate much of it. And even those activities of free-time which are not yet more work may be taken up because of work, as relaxation from it and therefore as recreation for it. Often there are other motives even more directly related to work, such as playing golf in order to make useful business contacts. And we often think of free time as the time for relaxation and recreation, relaxation from work and recreation for it; so that, even when it is not occupied by extra work, free time is used for the purposes of work, for making us able to work again and better.

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SOCIETY’S VALUE INCREASES THROUGH LEISURE 1. LEISURE IS NECESSARY IN REGULATING SOCIETY Chris Rojek, NQA, DECENTERING LEISURE, RETHINKING LEISURE THEORY, 1995, p. 175. In other works they apparently indicate that leisure is something that human beings need just as they need food, shelter, warmth, security and production. At the same time our discussion of leisure under capitalism and modernity suggests that leisure is seen as quite low down on the scale of essential social values. Under these cultures a monetary view of leisure is maintained. That is, leisure is regarded as something to be given as a reward to the individual and society or withheld as a punishment or as a way of controlling social behavior. 2. LEISURE GIVES MEANING TO WORK Kenneth Roberts, Phd, University of Liverpool, LEISURE, 1981, p. 67. Nels Anderson alleges that from being an unintended by-product created by the unanticipated productive power and prosperity that industrialism unleashed, leisure has now grown to become the central element in many people’s lives. He argues that the expansion of leisure, creating new opportunities for people to develop interests, combined with the meaningless nature of so many industrial occupations, is encouraging more and more people to focus their main aspirations upon leisure. Historically leisure may have been a creation of industrial work, but today, Anderson argues, it is leisure that imparts meaning to work for most of the population. 3. THE GREATEST ACHIEVEMENTS OF SOCIETY HAVE COME FROM LEISURE Cyril Barrett, University of Warwick, THE PHILOSOPHY OF LEISURE, 1989, p. 1. The second reply is that leisure is more serious than it may at first appear. Of course there is the lighthearted side of leisure - lying on the beach, drinking in the pub, parties, dancing, playing games, watching TV or going to the flicks. But at the other end of the scale some, if not all, of the greatest achievements of mankind have come about precisely because, unlike the rest of the animal kingdom, some of us at least have leisure. Leisure to think, to create, to write, to make useless things.

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Leisure Bad LEISURE IS NOT VALUED IN SOCIETY 1. WORK IS NEEDED MORE THAN LEISURE Chris Rojek, NQA, DECENTERING LEISURE, RETHINKING LEISURE THEORY, 1995, p. 179. To some extent Sayers’ identification of work as a basic human need is polemical. He is concerned to rebut the argument made by “leisure society” theorists that real freedom lies in leisure not work. He contends that radical politics which is founded in the objective of “liberation from work” misunderstands human nature. It mistakenly presents work as a false and unnatural compulsion which will disappear when capitalism is dismantled. Again this Sayers maintains that work is an inalienable human need. Even is societies in which leisure is given a higher profile in the organization of everyday life there will be an acute need to work 2. LEISURE IS TOO SUBJECTIVE TO DEFINE Stanley Parker, Phd., University of London, LEISURE AND WORK, 1983, p. 3. One of the chief problems of defining leisure is that it is very difficult to take an objective approach to the subject. Perhaps even more than in the case of work, the say in which someone defines leisure tends to be determined by his view of what it ought to be. There is an element of this even in the kind of definition which sees leisure as that part of time left over after work and perhaps also after other obligations have been met, because the judgment about where work leaves off and leisure begins is usually a subjective one. 3. YOU CANNOT HAVE LEISURE WITHOUT WORK Edward Gross, University of Minnesota, WORK AND LEISURE, 1963, p. 41. Leisure refers to free time, free, that is, from the need to be concerned about maintenance, a freedom that could be purchased with slaves by a leisure class, or with money earned through labor by the working population. And, as Margaret Mend notes, it is usually earned or at least deserved. Work gives one not only the means but also the right to free time, an attitude which is a legacy, she feels, from Puritanism. Such an attitude is contrasted with that in ancient, Western civilizations, where leisure was felt to be the goal and proper activity of the whole man. 4. NOBODY CARES ABOUT OTHER PEOPLE’S LEISURE Bennett M. Berger, University of Illinois, WORK AND LEISURE, 1963, p. 23. Problems are not self-evident. Thus we may raise the empirical question of to whom and for whom leisure is a problem - for not everybody is concerned about the leisure problems of everybody else. The more familiar social problems of leisure have developed out of the concern by specific groups for the leisure of other specific groups, and an examination of these groups may cast some light on the conceptual problem of leisure. 5. LEISURE IS IMPOSSIBLE TO MEASURE Erwin 0. Smigel, New York University, WORK AND LEISURE, 1963, p. 13. Leisure is difficult to measure because much of it is intangible. If a man commutes to work, is the time he takes for travel to be considered work or free time?

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Liberalism Good LIBERALISM IS GENERALLY DESIRABLE 1. LIBERALISM IS THE MOST HUMANE PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM KNOWN Fernando R. Teson, Professor of Law at Arizona State University, VIRGINIA JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW ASSOCIATION, Spring, 1993, p. 684. Liberalism is an ideal only partially realized, and its progress can at times seem painfully slow. Yet notwithstanding its imperfections, liberalism remains the most humane and progressively transformative system of social organization known to our time. Its aspiration to universal human flourishing is worthy; its principles of respect, equal treatment, and human dignity are sound. The great, pervasive injustices of the present arise not from liberalism, but from illiberal alternatives, and, sometimes, from the lack of resolve to press the liberal vision to its ultimate resolution. Those who would dispirit that resolve, even while wrapped in banners of liberation, deserve our most wary and searching scrutiny. 2. LIBERALISM MAKES IRREPLACABLE CONTRIBUTIONS TO AMERICAN SOCIETY Daniel Yankelovich, public opinion analyst, MOTHER JONES, November, 1995, p. 28. A liberalism in total disarray is not good for the nation: A weak left makes for an irresponsible right. Liberal values, which a majority of the electorate continues to embrace (as distinct from specific liberal policies), grow endangered. In the past, liberalism has made irreplaceable contributions to the nation: helping to create the American middle class, lifting millions out of poverty, and developing humane social policies. There is no inherent reason why a redeemed liberalism cannot make equally valuable contributions in the future. 3. LIBERALISM ENHANCES HUMAN DIGNITY AND EQUALITY Fernando R. Teson, Professor of Law at Arizona State University, VIRGINIA JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW ASSOCIATION, Spring, 1993, p. 681. Kantian liberalism, by contrast, is not a hermetically sealed conceptual system, but rather a set of normative commitments based on individual autonomy and respect for freely chosen social arrangements. Nothing in liberalism militates against human solidarity in voluntary social arrangements, nor compels solicitude for abusers of human rights. Liberalism strives toward an ideal of universal human flourishing, and does so by methods respectful of individual autonomy, human dignity, and the right to equal treatment. 4. LIBERALISM PROTECTS INDIVIDUALS FROM STATE INTRUSION Owen M. Fiss, Sterling Professor of Law at Yale and former Law Clerk to Thurgood Marshall, ARIZONA STATE LAW JOURNAL, Summer, 1994, p. 423. Liberalism presupposes a sharp dichotomy between the state and society, and absolves the state of any responsibility for most of what transpires in the social sphere. Indeed, liberal thought, in its most pristine form, treats every state intrusion in the social sphere and any regulation of citizen-citizen interaction with great suspicion, and strictly limits the state to curbing individual conduct that violates some moral principle which is almost universally held. 5. LIBERALISM IS THE KEY TO WOMEN’S LIBERATION Fernando R. Teson, Professor of Law at Arizona State University, VIRGINIA JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW ASSOCIATION, Spring, 1993, p. 670. A conspiratorial explanation of the modern state is not only impoverished and simplistic; it also overlooks both the magnitude and the direction of the social forces unleashed when the universality of human rights was proclaimed by the “bourgeoisie.” Feminists, radical and liberal, are correct that many of the architects (and stewards) of liberalism have intended the exclusion of women from many of the benefits of liberty. This, however, was the precipitate of a mistaken anthropology, not a mistaken ethics. Once the prejudice against women was exposed as such, the universality of liberal moral theory, logically entailed by the belief in the inherent dignity of all persons, acquired, as it were, a life of its own, and resulted in an astonishing improvement of the predicament of women in free societies. Given the egalitarian consequences of the Enlightenment and the liberal revolutions that it inspired, one is hard pressed to describe the modem liberal state and the international alliance of liberal states as inherently oppressive of women. More plausibly, they have been the matrix of women’s liberation. 399

CRITIQUES OF LIBERALISM ARE INVALID 1. LIBERALISM IS VALID REGARDLESS OF ORIGINS Fernando R. Teson, Professor of Law at Arizona State University, VIRGINIA JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW ASSOCIATION, Spring, 1993, P. 674. It is perfectly possible to concede that the concept of autonomy is masculine in origin or mental make-up, but that it is also the correct position to hold. Who created the theory or how it caine about or whether men or women think more about it may be interesting historical or anthropological questions, but they are irrelevant to whether or not the theory is justified. Dismissing liberalism as distinctively masculine because it was formulated by men or because it is a masculine way of thinking is like dismissing the theory of relativity as distinctively Jewish because it was formulated by Albert Einstein. Indeed, if I were persuaded by radical feminists that the feminine way of thinking about political philosophy is illiberal, I would do my best to keep women from power. But of course, the claim that women think about morality in less liberal ways is as false as the claim that men think about morality in more liberal ways. Liberals, it seems, give women more credit than do their radical defenders. 2. LIBERALISM IS SUPERIOR TO ITS ALTERNATIVES Stephen Holmes, Professor of Political Science and Law at the University of Chicago and Research Director at the Constitutional and Legislative Policy Institute in Budapest, FOREIGN AFFAIRS, September/October, 1996, p. 126. A strong central government with dangerous discretionary powers is necessary, at least for national defense and the repression of organized crime, but such a government can be held in check only by a well-functioning civil society, and civil society can be built most safely and durably around private property an institution that necessarily yields significant inequalities of welfare. Few liberals would subscribe to Katznelsons narrative of loss, in which “capitalism privatizes political power’ that once upon a time was publicly owned or democratically controlled. Liberal theory, on the contrary, presupposes that capitalist elites, while their disproportionate and morally dubious power looks repugnant from a standpoint of ideal fairness, appear less heinous when compared to historical alternatives such as warrior, theocratic, landed aristocratic, or bureaucratic elites. To assign government the task of relieving the indigent is reasonable, moreover, but the power to rectify all inequalities must not be irresistibly strong because tomorrow it may be cmelly misused for partisan, sectarian, or personal ends. --

3. LIBERALISM IS OPPOSED TO STATISM Fernando R. Teson, Professor of Law at Arizona State University, VIRGINIA JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW ASSOCIATION, Spring, 1993, p. 657. On the other hand, radical feminists also attack liberalism. Insofar as this attack is predicated on the perception that liberal philosophy and the liberal state oppress women, it must be met with a philosophical and political defense of the liberal vision. But if the feminist attack on liberalism is predicated on the belief that statism, as an assumption of international law, is necessarily entailed by liberalism, the answer is simply that this is a mistaken inference. Statism is at odds with liberalism. The human rights theory of international law (certainly the most liberal international legal theory) rejects statism because it protects illegitimate governments and is thus an illiberal theory of international law. The whole point of the liberal theory of international law is to challenge absolute sovereignty as an antiquated, authoritarian doctrine inhospitable to the aspirations of human rights and democratic legitimacy. 4. LIBERALISM IS INCLUSIVE AND MAXIMIZES SOCIAL JUSTICE Daniel Yankelovich, public opinion analyst, MOTHER JONES, November, 1995, p. 28. Liberalism’s greatest strengths are its three core values: *Inclusiveness. Liberals extend their world beyond their own family, community, and ethnic group to include a wide range of “others”--have-nots, minorities, the homeless, people with disabilities, people from other nations, and even the earth itself. *Social justice. Liberals believe a civilized and humane society ensures its weaker and poorer members are treated fairly. *A positive role for government. By and large, liberals see a strong government as a counterbalance to special interests and as a restraint assuring that an economy based on maximizing profits does not trample fundamental human needs.

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Liberalism Bad LIBERALISM IS AN INADEQUATE VALUE 1. LIBERALISM IS PHILOSOPHICALLY, MORALLY AND POLITICALLY BANKRUPT Lisa Schiffren, Associate Editor of The Public Interest, NATIONAL REVIEW, December 11, 1995, P. 94. Liberalism has been philosophically and morally bankrupt for years. Its political bankruptcy has followed. In irs wake liberalism is leaving behind a wounded and frightened country, with decaying cities, shattered families, divided races, and traditions and heritage under siege from the nation’s own cultural leadership. 2. LIBERALISM SIMULTANEOUSLY DISINTIGRATES SOCIETY AND MASKS THE DAMAGE John O’Sullivan, Professor of History, NATIONAL REVIEW, December 11, 1995, p. 58. Burnham’s thesis was a simple one rich in implications. He argued that liberalism was “the ideology of Western suicide,” by which he meant not that liberalism caused the West’s decline, but that it acted as a sedative reconciling Western man to it: It is as if a man, struck with a mortal disease, were able to say and to believe, as the flush of the fever spread over his i~ce, “Ah, the glow of health returning! “; as his flesh wasted away, “At least I am able to trim down that paunch the doctor always warned me about! ‘; as a finger dropped off with gangrene or leprosy, “Now I won’t have that bothersome job of trimming those nails every week!” Liberalism permits Western civilization to be reconciled to dissolution; and this function its formulas will enable it to serve right through to the very end, if matters turn out that way: for even if Western civilization is wholly vanquished.., we or our children will be able to see that ending, by the light of the principles of liberalism, not as a final defeat, but as the transition to a new and higher order in which Mankind as a whole joins in a universal civilization that has risen above the parochial distinctions, divisions, and discriminations of the past. 3. LIBERALISM IS THE CAUSE OF AMERICA’S SOCIAL AND CULTURAL ILLS Lisa Schiffren, Associate Editor of The Public Interest, NATIONAL REVIEW, December 11, 1995, p. 94. First, we have to bury liberalism. Now that conservatives control the Congress, some are tempted to wipe a cloth across the slate of the past. This would be a tremendous mistake. The road ahead will be difficult, and to keep moving forward we must convince the people that retreating into liberalism is impossible. We must consistently remind the Israelites of what life really was like in Egypt. So we should explicitly draw the conitection between liberalism and the conditions Americans so rightly deplore: between big government and the deficit, regulations and the loss of opportunity, high taxes and weak families, welfare and illegitimacy, relativism and crime. Conservative scholars should hammer these points home, and conservative legislators should remember that the debate over legislation is as important as the legislation itself. 4. CONSERVATIVISM IS CRITICAL TO PROMOTE CHARACTER FORMATION George F. Will, prizewinning syndicated columnist, PUBLIC INTEREST, Spring, 1996, p. 40. Contemporary conservatism’s greatest service to society has been to refocus attention on an elemental fact that the Founders understood: Society is a crucible of character formation. Human beings are political, meaning social, beings, fulfilled in associations. Government can damage associational life, and big government can do big damage. 5. CONSERVATIVISM PROMOTES SOLID INSTITUTIONS WHICH PROTECT CIVILIZATION Lisa Schiffren, Associate Editor of The Public Interest, NATIONAL REVIEW, December 11, 1995, p. 94. Conservatism is the perfect philosophy to lead the fight against materialistic despair. Conservatives believe neither in government, nor in narrow-minded individualism, but in the institutions that individuals have built over centuries, and which transmit the civilizing traditions of a society from one generation to the next. In America those institutions are marriage, private employment, local schools, voluntary associations, and religious organizations. Conservatives should pursue legislative policies that empower these institutions and allow us to proselytize the norms for which they stand: work, charity, faith, loyalty to family, respect for others. We should make clear that tax relief is about strengthening families and businesses, welfare reform is about marriage and work, and urban policy means rebuilding private life in America’s cities.

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LIBERALISM IS AN UNDESIRABLE VALUE 1. LIBERALISM IS NOT HELPFUL TO AMERICAN SOCIETY George F. Will, prizewinning syndicated columnist, PUBLIC INTEREST, Spring, 1996, P. 40. The search for restraint is an American constant. It is a search in which liberalism is not helpful. Liberalism was born when the primaly enemies of freedom were forces of order oppressive governments and established churches. Hence liberalism’s breezy faith that the good life would flourish when the last king had been strangled in the entrails of the last priest. Today, we know it is not that simple; we know that the good life is menaced by forces of disorder and that big government has become one of those forces. -

2. THE MAJORITY OF AMERICA NOW RECOGNIZES THE FAILURE OF LIBERALISM William Kristol, Chairman Project for the Republican Future, USA TODAY MAGAZINE, March, 1995, p. 87. What is most striking is how thoroughly liberalism has lost popular support. Despite the Democratic presidential victory in 1992 (with, after all, only 43% of the vote), polls indicated that most Americans believe the Federal government creates more problems than it solves and that they tend to favor lower taxes and less government. They also believe that government should support traditional family values as opposed to promoting “alternative lifestyles.” In short, the majority of Americans distrust contemporary liberalism. The 1994 elections provided ample evidence, with the defeat of many liberal incumbents in Congress and the statehouses. -

3. VALUE NEUTRALITY IGNORES BARRIERS OPPRESSING WOMEN Kimberly A. Yuracko, Stanford University Political Science Department, UCLA WOMEN’S LAW JOURNAL, Fall, 1995, p. 31. Liberalism’s desire to remain value-neutral toward individual conceptions of the good life and the good society is incompatible with virtually any version of substantive gender equality. At root, some viewpoints are compatible with gender equality and others are not. Widespread endorsement of women’s and men’s “naturally” different social roles, such as exists at present, prevents women and men from enjoying similar levels of public and private sphere participation and power. Feminists must recognize that gender equality requires abolishing not only formal barriers to women’s social participation but internal barriers as well. Liberalism’s neutral acceptance of all personal viewpoints as acceptable and worthy of social protection must be abandoned in favor of a feminist perfectionist critique that recognizes that certain private conceptions must be considered unacceptable in a society in which women and men truly have the same life chances. 4. LIBERALISM IS DESTRUCTIVE OF SOCIAL STABILITY AND PUBLIC MORALITY Lisa Schiffren, Associate Editor of The Public Interest, NATIONAL REVIEW, December 11, 1995, p. 94. Furthermore, the culture of liberalism multiculturalism, amorality, radical feminism has left our society so soiled and frayed that it is hard to see how it will mend. Specifically, the fact that 30 per cent of American babies were born to unwed mothers last year should wipe away any illusions about a quick transition to an independent, self-reliant society. Most of those babies will be on welfare till majority. They are prone to educational failure, violence, and repetition of early, out-of-wedlock childbearing, and there is no evidence that things will be salvageable for them as adults. --

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Libertarianism Good LIBERTARIANISM IS THEORETICALLY SOUND 1. HISTORY PROVES GOVERNMENT MUST BE MINIMIZED Doug Bandow, Cato Institute Fellow, THE WASHINGTON TIMES, May 5, 1997, p. 18. Paul Johnson, who wrote Modem Times, has called the 20th century the “Age of Politics,” and it certainly is that. We’ve had every conceivable ideology, including the great totalitarian ideologies of communism, fascism, Nazism. All of them promised in one way or another a “New Man,” created collectively. All of these experiences ended disastrously, so you’d think they were completely outside the pale. Even the modem welfare state! I tell people government does a few things well. It kills people well. It’s very good at seizing the people’s wealth. But it is not very good at the more sensitive tasks of molding a society and molding human beings. I think the experience of the inner cities is a very powerful lesson in what happens with even the milder form of collectivism that we have here allowing the state to destroy families, destroy communities, destroy economic opportunity, destroy education. All of these things are the result of government policy, and yet there are people who believe that the answer to poverty and the answer to the problems of the inner cities is yet more government intervention, some new government program with a new twist. -

2. BIBLICAL AUTHORITY SUPPORTS LIBERTARIAN PRINCIPLES Stephen Glass, assistant editor at the New Republic, THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR, March, 1997, p. np. Libertarians date their skepticism of power back to the Bible. Judges 21:25 says that Israel didn’t have a king. Instead, “every man did that which is right in his own eyes,” and judges settled disputes. But in Samuel I, the Jews begged for a king. God granted their wish, but warned that kings would take their sons for his own fields, their daughters for his own kitchens, their land for his own castle, and their beasts for his own work. While frequently overlooked by atheist libertarians, this passage provides the moral seed for much of early libertarianism. It’s in Samuel that Thomas Paine found biblical evidence that the British royalty was not divinely inspired. Its influence resonated in the Federalist papers, which called for ratification of the Constitution’s restrained government, and in Tocqueville’s fears that even goodhearted governments would overextend their reach and degrade their citizens. On this ethical foundation, Boaz’s anthology builds the case that the state is the greatest aggressor. 3. LIBERARIANISM IS GAINING GLOBAL ACCEPTANCE Stephen Chapman, syndicated columnist, ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH, January 30, 1997, p. 7B. Both, however, make hash of the notion that libertarians are just anti-social loners and selfish yuppies who care nothing about their fellow man. Both see freedom as valuable because it respects the choices and elevates the condition of everyone and because it demands the responsibility needed to foster productive. lives and a healthy society. Murray wants to explain how “such a society would lead to greater individual fulfillment, more vital communities, a richer culture. Why such a society would contain fewer poor people, fewer neglected children, fewer criminals.” What gives libertarianism, which is not a new way of thinking, its sudden appeal? Boaz explains: “The alternatives to libertarianism fascism, communism and the welfare state have all been tried in the 20th century, and all have failed to produce peace, prosperity and freedom.. More and more people in the United States and elsewhere recognize that Western-style big government is going through a slow-motion version of communism’s collapse.” That’s why from Bombay to Bonn to Buenos Aires the world is moving to ward less-regulated markets, lower taxes, a freer flow of information and greater respect for individual choices. -

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LIBERTARIANISM IS DESIRABLE 1. PEOPLE SHOULD BE FREE TO COMMIT ANY NON-HARMFUL ACTION THEY CHOOSE Nick Gillespie, senior editor, REASON, March, 1997, p. 56. Murray does a good even an excellent job of explicating basic libertarian ideas and their applications. “An adult making an honest living and minding his own business deserves to be left alone to live his life. He deserves to be free,” he writes. “A more elaborated version of this position depends on two beliefs that almost everyone shares: Force is bad and cooperation is good....The libertarian ethic is simple but stark: Thou shalt not initiate the use of force. Thou shalt not deceive or defraud.” Murray follows this logic to its end. After a discussion of the “mindful human beings” and their inalienable and inseparable rights to life, liberty, and property, he pretty much lets it all hang out: “A lone adult should be permitted to engage in any activity of his choice in private. This includes whatever he wants to read, watch, say, listen to, eat, drink, inject, or smoke. He may dance, sing, pray, chant, contemplate the stars or howl at the moon, and otherwise occupy himself however he wishes. Groups of adults have the same freedom, with the usual proscriptions against force and fraud.” -

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2. GOVERNMENT IS NOT TO BE TRUSTED IT SHOULD HAVE MINIMAL POWER Doug Bandow, Cato Institute Fellow, THE WASHINGTON TIMES, May 5, 1997, p. 18. I certainly grew up with the sense that government doesn’t handle economics well. But the way I’ve moved philosophically comes from looking at how the world works, as opposed to some exhaustive search among the great philosophers of world history. I look at programs to see if they work well or if they don’t. I look at them from a very practical standpoint. I am very much influenced by a sense of what happens when sinful man gains control of coercive institutions. Clearly government is necessary to protect people from the deprivations of sinful man. At the same time, however, you have to realize that when sinful people get control of government institutions, the likely result, all too often, I think, will be sin. So, that has pushed me in a skeptical direction toward the use of government across the board: the use of government to solve economic problems, to manipulate the marketplace but also the use of government to promote virtue. I tend to be skeptical whether it is a conservative or a liberal who claims to be doing good things if they’re in government. -

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3. CORPORATE POWER IS DISTINCT FROM STATE POWER BY VIRTUE OF VOLUNTARiISM Stephen Glass, assistant editor at the New Republic, THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR, March, 1997, p. np. Private companies, of course, amass power through voluntary payment people freely pay them for some service. Baseball players sell entertainment, General Motors sells cars. If you don’t like sports or need to drive, you don’t have to pay. Government, on the other hand, gets its money through taxation. You have no choice but to pay the IRS, or you will go to jail. Thankfully, Rothbard’s vitriol for government is quickly tempered with Richard Epstein’s explanation of the efficiency of severely limited government: “Government works best when it establishes the rules of the road, not when it seeks to determine the composition of the traffic.” Next, more than a dozen essays make a convincing case that spontaneous and more efficient order germinates when government is restrained. In a well -excerpted passage from F.A. Hayek’s Law, Legislation and Liberty the point is made that churches, clubs, and fraternal groups achieve goals better because they are “grown” from a specific purpose. In a world of constantly changing climes, it’s these local voluntary organizations that must adapt or fade away. Governments, on the other hand, are less able and have less urgency to change. --

4. ALTERNATIVES TO LIBERTARIANISM INEVITABLY DEGENERATE INTO OPPRESSION Nick Gillespie, senior editor, REASON, March, 1997, p. 56. Libertarianism underscores the anti-utopianism implicit in liberalism properly understood (Murray also does this, if not quite as memorably) a point one hopes is particularly salable at the end of a century still binding its wounds from great leaps forward, five-year plans, and other attempts to forcibly beat the world into some desired shape. “Karl Popper,” notes Boaz, “once said that attempts to create heaven on earth invariably produce hell. Libertarianism holds out the goal not of a perfect society but of a better and freer one. -

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Libertarianism Bad LIBERTARIANISM IS THEORETICALLY BANKRUPT 1. LIBERTARIANISM NEGLECTS THE IMPORTANCE OF POSITIVE LIBERTIES Richard H. Fallon, Jr., Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, STANFORD LAW REVIEW, April, 1994, P. 885-886. As positive libertarians stress, staunchly negative libertarian conceptions neglect something crucial: To be an ethically attractive concept, autonomy must imply some degree of critical awareness and self-control. A person who acts entirely voluntarily, but without self-awareness or self-control, is not self-governing in any ethically attractive or descriptively useful sense. Nor, once this is recognized, can it simply be assumed that autonomy is the normal condition of all competent adults in the private sphere. Descriptive autonomy is at least partly an achievement, which can be realized to greater or lesser degree, and the promotion of descriptive autonomy is a legitimate policy goal as long as it is pursued through acceptable means. 2. LIFE UNDER LIBERTARIANISM WOULD BE RISKY, UNSTABLE AND UNPLEASANT Daniel Casse, senior official in the Alexander and Dole presidential campaigns, THE WEEKLY STANDARD, January 20, 1997, p. 34. In Murray’s libertarian vision, drugs, like so many other social problems, are best dealt with by requiring citizens, not government, ~to take primary responsibility. This part of Murray’s argument awakens us to what happens when libertarian principles run head-on into bourgeois reality: The extremely limited government described in his book may not make for a very attractive place to live. The importance of personal freedom notwithstanding, most Americans loathe the idea of living in a country where heroin and cocaine are as legal as cigarettes. They want police to crack down on prostitution in downtown neighborhoods. They do not want to contemplate a society where the most troublesome chronic welfare families are left to fend for themselves. However critical we may be of existing government programs, there is no doubt that life under Murray’s regime would be uncomfortable, less stable, more risky, and require more effort from ordinary citizens. 3. LEVIATHAN DEMONSTRATES THAT LIBERTARIANISM IS NON-FUNCTIONAL Heidi Li Feldman, Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Michigan, MICHIGAN LAW REVIEW, May, 1996, p. 1886. Whatever system of rules would in fact maximize utility, Epstein, like other libertarians, tends to argue that freely contracting parties will bind themselves to the necessary directives without much action on the part of the state. This is exactly the proposition that Hobbes devotes Leviathan to denying. One need not be an ardent Hobbesian to think it unlikely that contract can solve all the cooperation and coordination problems that would interfere with achieving a host of modem welfare-enhancing systems. State-constructed legal structures and regulations make possible the existence of entities ranging from museums to national parks to corporations. Compliance with the laws that make these things possible may cost more than compliance with “rules that self-consciously maximize human happiness or welfare”. Although perhaps not: it can be expensive to figure out how to maximize welfare compared to what it costs to follow a more specific law that makes no reference explicit or implicit to welfare maximization. Furthermore, it can be costly to develop private welfare-maximizing agreements as opposed to implementing state regulations that accomplish the same ends. -

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4. SOCIAL PROBLEMS ARE TOO LARGE FOR LIBERTARIAN PLATITUDES Daniel Casse, senior official in the Alexander and Dole presidential campaigns, THE WEEKLY STANDARD, January 20, 1997, p. 34. This unavoidable truth about government is what Murray never fully confronts in What It Means to Be a Libertarian. The sheer magnitude of the problems that government now fumbles with may militate against the voluntary and private solutions that worked during the early part of this country’s history. No reader will argue with Murray’s ultimate goal of creating a society that relies more on individual responsibility than on government. But today, the movement toward limited government demands a way to promote and guarantee individual responsibility something that cannot be found in even Charles Murray’s thoughtful case for libertarianism. --

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LIBERTARIANISM IGNORES REAL PROBLEMS 1. LIBERTARIANISM IS EXCESSIVELY COMPLACENT ABOUT PRIVATE POWER SYSTEMS Richard H. Fallon, Jr., Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, STANFORD LAW REVIEW, April, 1994, p. np. Anyone who values descriptive autonomy undoubtedly has reason to fear the concentration of pervasive, homogenizing power in the hands of the state. Nonetheless, in their preoccupation with the perils of regulation, many negative libertarian theorists overlook the irreducible role of government in defining and enforcing the private rights of one citizen against another. My negative liberty my freedom from restraint in pursuing my goals and interests inevitably collides with the negative liberty of others. If someone has a right to stand on a street corner and hurl race-based insults, or if a shopping center owner has the right to prohibit someone from engaging in expressive activity on her property, it is because these acts lie within the conventionally defined boundaries of protected freedoms. But those boundaries might have been, or still right be, drawn differently. Animated by distrust of government, negative libertarians too often embrace the status quo as neutral and natural. In doing so, they fail to come to grips with government’s responsibility for defining private rights. A conception of autonomy as government non-interference with the existing distribution of rights is shallow and unconvincing if it fails to justify that distribution. -

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2. LIBERTARIANISM NEGLECTS THE EVILS OF RAMPANT CORPORATISM Greogory P. Magarian, J.D. candiate University of Michigan, MICHIGAN LAW REVIEW, May, 1992, pp. 1427-1428. Part of the problem lies in C3raber’s inadequate attention to the severe injuries that burgeoning corporations inflicted on Americans’ welfare during the early twentieth century. The abuses of unfettered capitalists rendered earlier conservative libertarian social justifications for property rights untenable, and this failure must have considerably aided Chafee’s denial of the movement’s importance. -

3. BIG GOVERNMENT DOES NOT OBSTRUCT SUCCESS Daniel Casse, senior official in the Alexander and Dole presidential campaigns, THE WEEKLY STANDARD, January 20, 1997, p. 34. True, most Americans do want to be left alone in theory. In practice, they show little enthusiasm for the sort of strippeddown government Murray proposes. That is not to say that Americans are blithely marching down the road to serfdom. But neither do they view our collection of costly, inefficient, and poorly managed programs as the primary threat to liberty and selfgovernment. And they are right. Federal farm programs, to cite a favorite target of libertarian ire, are certainly an example of big-government meddling. Yet despite them, America has developed the most efficient and productive agricultural system in the world. Similarly, government regulation is undoubtedly a drag on American business. Nonetheless, in the last two decades American entrepreneurs have managed to create a software and computer industry without rival. --

4. REAL PROBLEMS EXIST THAT REQUIRE GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION Daniel Casse, senior official in the Alexander and Dole presidential campaigns, THE WEEKLY STANDARD, January 20, 1997, p. 34. We don’t know whether any of these experiments will work, and libertarians are justified in being suspicious of some of the Big Brother aspects of the civil society” movement. What we do know is that Americans engaged in trying to create more responsible, safer communities of self-sufficient citizens have little patience for libertarian purity on matters like drug legalization and the dangers of paternalism. When Americans read about babies abandoned by teen-age mothers on crack, they want more paternalism, not less of it. Of course, government spending and regulation at any level can always benefit from a heavy dose of free market thinking. On this score, Murray’s policy arguments make the most sense. Yet for the most intractable problems the country faces longterm welfare dependence, teen drug addiction, a failed public school system, violent crime, and even domestic terrorism laissez-faire ideology seems beside the point. “

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Libertarianism Responses At its core, libertarianism is the belief that the government has few legitimate purposes. These purposes boil down to protecting individuals from forced harm and fraud. In his book What it Means to Be a Libertarian, Charles A. Murray offers a more specific definition of this philosophical viewpoint. He explains the purpose of his book, saying, “I ask you to meditate once again on the proposition that freedom, classically understood, is the stuff by which we live satisfying lives. It is as indispensable to happiness as oxygen is to life. Much of it has been taken from us. We must reclaim it.”1 Murray explains that a government should not be allowed to make many demands of an individual. He explicitly limits the legitimate functions of government. He claims that first, the government can legitimately use, “police power...to restrain people from injuring one another. Government accomplishes this end through criminal law and tort law.”2 Second, the government can legitimately use police power, “to enable people to enter into enforceable voluntary agreements- contracts.”3 Murray explains that some view another legitimate use of government as pursuing the public good. However, he responds by noting, “For the strictest libertarians, thee is no such thing as a public good.”4 For our purposes, we will view libertarianism as the philosophy which sees only restraint from injuring others and contract enforcement as legitimate governmental purposes. Libertarians claim freedom as the highest goal of an individual and a society. In that sense, they call upon individuals to take responsibility for only themselves and advocate for the decisions that benefit an individual. LIBERTARIANISM ALLOWS SELF-DESTRUCTION This is where the classic dispute over libertarianism comes into play: whether or not the government has a right to act paternalistically to protect its citizens. Take, for example, a scenario where many individuals are not wearing their seatbelts while driving. Given the evidence that a person is far more likely to be injured or killed in an accident when they are not wearing a seatbelt, should the government force individuals to buckle up while driving? While cases become far more complicated than this example, the underlying argument remains the same. Libertarianism ignores the general consequentialist calculus in favor of a broad appeal to liberty. Opposing libertarianism is a system of decision-making based on cost/benefit analysis.5 Jeffrie Murphy discusses this issue, saying, “Basic human rights (including the right to do stupid and dangerous things if one so desires) may be set aside, and the incompetent person may be treated as the object of someone’s (usually the states’) benevolent concern and management.”6 However, the problem comes in terms of defining when a person is incompetent. Many would consider the desire to do stupid and dangerous things a sign of incompetence, justifying intervention by the government. In a sense, all individuals are incompetent. Our knowledge as an individual is limited, and we are often unable to look beyond ourselves and our circumstances to be able to make the right decision. This incompetence justifies the government taking action to protect individuals from decisions that would hurt them. John Rawls also dealt with this issue, stating that, “weaknesses or infirmities of one’s reason or will” is a, “necessary condition for infringing on paternalistic grounds the particular liberties whose priority is expressed in the form of rights.”7 The argument to be made against libertarianism therefore is that the desire to harm oneself is a sign of a weakness or infirmity of reason and will. There is no justification for harming oneself, and therefore, the desire to do so should be stopped by a government. John Hodson, in defending paternalism, outlined the instances in which he felt it was acceptable. It is acceptable if, “there is good evidence that this person’s decisions would be supportive of the paternalistic intervention if they were not encumbered.” 8 Anyone taking an action that harms themselves is encumbered, and therefore it is permissible for government to intervene. Let us consider the consequences if the government did not intervene to prevent individuals from harming themselves. First, many individuals would have their lives cut short by destructive behavior. This would cause distress to those around them, and result in instability in a community. It would also mean that society as a whole would be robbed of the contributions that an individual could make to that society had they lived longer. Additionally, paternalism can prevent pain and suffering. Even when entered into at some sort of voluntary level, 407

pain and suffering is not something individuals should have to endure. They can be saved that heartache by government intervention. Therefore, because the philosophy of libertarianism prevents the government from stopping self-destruction, it must be rejected. Doing so will not only protect individuals, but their surrounding society by allowing them to continue to contribute. LIBERTARIANISM DENIES ADVANCES IN SOCIAL MOVEMENTS Libertarianism is based on the premise that an individual should be left alone if she/he is not doing any direct harm to any other individual. As Murray puts it, “An adult making an honest living and minding his own business deserves to be left alone to live his life. He deserves to be free.” 9 The problem is that this statement is based on a belief that people minding their own business do no harm to others. If we look at the history of the United States alone, it becomes clear that people minding their own business do in fact cause harm to others. One author explains, “Although the antiracist movements of the past half century have not achieved equality for blacks or ‘ended race,’ they have surely opened up possibilities unimaginable before. Black voices are now a loud and insistent part of a public conversation transformed by the expansion of the black middle class and the increasingly multiracial, multicultural texture of American life, by black’s participation in the media and in electoral politics and their direct and visible impact on mainstream popular culture.”10 The preceding quotation reveals the multiple ways in which libertarianism can deny the advances in social movements that we have seen historically. First, minority groups can be empowered by involvement in the government. It is a forum for visibility, a mark of success, and a chance to enact legislation that can help to stop the discrimination that exists throughout a country. Without a vibrant and active government, this avenue for social advancement is denied. Simultaneously, a government can help to combat racism or other forms of discrimination. Second, libertarianism and the quest to mind one’s own business denies the recruitment that makes social movements successful. The feminist movement should not only consist of women who are having their rights denied. Men, by joining that movement, make it more powerful. Not only does it help in terms of adding resources and encouragement, but it also forces the world to take notice by increasing the number of people involved. However, a mentality of only acting on one’s own behalf denies such involvement. A man is not directly effected by the losses of liberty a woman suffers. Under a libertarian viewpoint, that means that he is not obligated to participate in a movement to end such oppression. Finally, the idea that a person is to be left alone if they are minding their own business only allows discrimination to continue. A white business owner who only hires white employees is technically minding his/her own business. A corporate boss who fires female employees but keeps male employees who make the same mistakes is minding his/her own business and tending to the company. However, such actions cannot be allowed to continue. If they are allowed, it sends the message that parts of the population are less than human and do not deserve equal treatment. Passively watching these acts of discrimination is not acceptable. Instead, it is necessary to take action to ensure it is eliminated. A government is the only way to guarantee that hiring and firing cannot take place on accord of race or sex. Such actions are steps in the right direction of eliminating oppression and discrimination. Under a libertarian system, however, such advances would be denied since individuals can go about their own business without interference from the government or other individuals.

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LIBERTARIANISM’S CLAIMED NEED FOR PRIVATE PROPERTY IS FALSE John Stuart Mill, a famous defender of freedom and liberty, outlined many of the principles that libertarianism is built upon. For instance, he discusses the liberty of thought and feeling, freedom of opinion and sentiment, freedom to express and publish opinions, and the freedom to unite for purposes which do not harm others. One might assume that the ability to express and publish opinions requires a freedom to make use of external material things and that the ability to unite presupposes the right to be in an appropriate meeting place. It is upon this foundation that freedom of movement and private property are justified by libertarians. Author David Lloyd Thomas does an excellent job pointing out the problems of private property and the libertarian position. He notes that first, private property rights would actually be undesirable in the case of certain freedoms. “If all land were privately owned, then no one would have freedom of movement, except on his own land (if he owned some). The right to move to other places would be conditional upon obtaining the consent of all the owners of the land through which one passed. It would therefore seem that the land needed for rights of way should not be anyone’s private property.”11 The other problem that Thomas points out deals with distribution of property. He says that we can assume that each person would be assigned private-property rights equally over some portion of the material world in an ideal libertarian system. However, he notes, “If the rights assigned to individuals over their initial shares are privateproperty rights, it follows that who has private-property rights in what particular things can be changed by mutual agreement between owners.” This means that though sequences of transactions given luck, talent, and prudence; will produce a system where, “some people will come to have property rights in more extensive material possessions than others.” He continues, “Now a situation in which some have rights and control over extensive material possessions while others have rights over little or nothing would seem quite unsatisfactory.” 12 Libertarianism and the focus on private property, therefore, only entrenches inequality and actually denies individuals the right to control their own surroundings. This is exactly the opposite of what libertarianism claims to be reaching for. LIBERTARIANISM IS BASED ON FALSE ASSUMPTIONS Perhaps the most effective way to counter libertarianism is to point out all of the problems in the foundation of the philosophy. In Peter Radcliffe’s collection, Limits on Liberty: Studies of Mill’s On Liberty, Willmoore Kendall points out the problems in John Stuart Mill’s defense of liberty and libertarianism. Kendall begins by noting that that, “Mill’s proposals have as one of their tacit premises a false conception of the nature of society, and are, therefore, unrealistic on their face.” 13 Mill assumes that society is basically a debating club that is interested in pursuing the truth above all else. It would therefore be capable of dedicating itself to that pursuit. Yet, Kendall notes, “We know only too well that society is not a debating club- all our experience of society drives the point home- and that, even if it were one, like the UN General Assembly, say, the chances of its adopting the pursuit of truth as its supreme good are negligible.”14 Another objection that Kendall raises against libertarianism as embodied by Mill is his false conception of human beings and how they act in an organized society. Mill assumes that speech can do no harm in society. He simultaneously teaches that society can interfere to prevent hurt yet defends non-interference in terms of speech. Socrates taught us that someone who teaches evil is doing harm, be that teaching only speech. Mill also assumes that, “people can be persuaded either to be indifferent toward the possible tendency of what their neighbors are saying, or at least to act as if the were indifferent.” Kendall adds, “We know nothing about people, I suggest, that warrants our regarding such an assumption, once it is brought out into the open, as valid. Thus his proposals, like all political proposals that call implicitly for the refashioning of human nature, can be enforced only through some large-scale institutional coercion.”15 Kendall’s attacks on Mill do not stop there. He next contends, “that such a society as Mill prescribed will descend ineluctably into ever-deepening differences of opinion, into progressive breakdown of those common premises upon which alone a society can conduct its affairs by discussion, an so into the abandonment of the discussion process and the arbitrament of public questions by violence and civil war.”16 Without some unifying agent or principle, 409

society can be reduced to violence and disagreement. This is not difficult to imagine in a society where every person has a maximum amount of freedom and can do whatever they please to benefit themselves. With Kendall pointing out the flaws in the very basis of libertarianism, the philosophy must be rejected as impossible to achieve and built on errors. LIBERTARIANISM BREEDS WORRY AND FEAR In a libertarian society, the people have no real responsibility to the government, since it only exists to prevent an individual from doing harm to another and to enforce voluntary contracts. Similarly, a government has no responsibility to provide for an individual. With a person left on their own to fend for themselves, their responsibility increases to the point that it causes worry and fear. Individuals are responsible for providing their own protection from external threats. There is no medical system to pay for their injuries or medical needs. There is no governmental assistance program to help an individual if they get laid off or cannot find work. There is no federal or state system to provide daycare for children or to insure individuals. Senior citizens will have no federal program to rely upon when they can no longer work or take care of themselves. Children abandoned or abused by their parents will find no refuge in a governmental care-taking agency. Left on their own, individuals will experience worry and fear. They will be constantly attempting to avoid problems since they are responsible for recovering from any problematic situations. However, not only is this worry and fear psychologically damaging, it can also have negative physical effects. Dr. Charles H. Mayo, who founded the Mayo Clinic that gained international fame, said, “Worry affects the circulation- the heart, the glands, the whole nervous system. I have never known a man who died from overwork, but many who died from doubt.” 17 In that sense, libertarianism does not provide a freedom from government interference and unnecessary meddling; it instead turns people over to a harsh world with no one to depend upon. These circumstances inevitably cause people to worry and be afraid, devastating them mentally and physically. They are therefore unable to be productive citizens, and spend their days in a state of pessimistic doubt. LIBERTARIANISM DE-CONTEXTUALIZES FREEDOM Libertarians often claim to be following in the liberal tradition. However, author Thomas A. Spragens Jr. points out that libertarianism takes the concept of freedom of out historical context. Libertarians, in Spragens’ words, “extricate liberty from other elements of a satisfactory social existence and regard it as the greatest good of all things,” which is, “not being true to the best insights of the liberal tradition.” 18 Libertarians take the concept of freedom and liberalism and narrow it, ignoring that in liberalism, individual liberties are not the be-all and end-all of a good society. They do play a necessary role in association with other social goods and social obligations, but they are not the end goal in and of themselves. Spragens explains that equality and community are sought by liberalism, but that libertarianism has ignored these goals. Equality is not considered by classical liberalism as complete equality of condition or a need-based distribution. However, “liberals have generally recognized that some attempts to mitigate the unfairness of nature and social inheritance are both proper in moral terms and necessary for the preservation of liberty and for the sustenance of a viable political community.”19 Liberals also see validity in community and civic friendship. “Libertarians therefore distort and narrow the liberal version of the good society when they neglect community as an important social goal or when they grant it legitimacy only as a by-product of self-interested individual contractual agreements.”20 In that sense, libertarians ignore the natural obligations a citizen might have to fellow citizens for the sustenance that the community has created and sustained. Society bestows rights, and it would therefore be justified for citizens to give back to their community in return. Libertarianism, “is contemptible because it denies the genuine debt citizens owe their country for the resources, laws, and institutions that nourish their lives, protect their liberties, and accord them the opportunity to pursue happiness and to govern themselves.”21 Libertarians also oversimplify the concept of freedom. In the libertarian perspective, freedom is, “the freedom to do whatever I please. Whether what I choose to do is the product of conscientious reflection, habitual inclination, or 410

sheer impulse is entirely irrelevant.” However, perhaps a more correct definition of freedom would be, “autonomythe independence of action proper to a rational being.” 22 This follows in the tradition of John Locke, who associated civil liberty with lawfulness and rationality. Spragens adds, “We are politically free, according to the best liberal account, not when our wills our utterly ungoverned- and possible ungovernable- but rather when we are governed by a law of our own making. And such a law will perforce be constrained by the rationality that makes us human.”23 Finally, Spragens points out that libertarianism actually undermines the cultural basis of liberal freedoms that it claims to uphold. He explains, “Libertarians tend to assume that the behavioral norms appropriate for a liberal society are the same as the political norms appropriate for liberal governments.” Spragens goes on to note why this simplistic view is incorrect, stating, “Any functioning society requires some minimum of orderliness and adherence to basic norms of behavior that distinguish a civil society from a state of war. These elements of restraint and civil morality must come from somewhere. A political society can be open, free, and non-authoritarian, therefore, only where internalized norms or social suasions successfully restrain the human productivity to dominate or exploit others.”24 By noting the flaws in the foundational assumptions that libertarianism makes about freedom, we can see that it is an ideology ill-suited for constructing a worldview upon. LIBERTARIANISM PRODUCES RAMPANT CAPITALISM Libertarian Charles A. Murray explains that his goal is to, “Throw out all regulation of business.” 25 While Murray does make exceptions for environmental protection in terms of pollution and natural monopolies, the removal of the government from the economy has far-reaching negative implications. First, the government is necessary to establish a baseline standard for the ethical treatment of labor. Historically, workers in the United States, particularly in the beginnings of the industrial period, have been treated poorly. The easiest way to make money was to not only underpay workers, but to also have unsafe working conditions that didn’t require spending money on upgrades or safety precautions. Given a large workforce and an individual’s need for income, people worked in these horrible conditions. The government, however, sets standards now that attempt to prevent such abuse. Minimum wage laws ensure that individuals are fairly paid for the work that they are doing. Age restrictions prevent small children from slaving away all day, and hour limitations guarantee that people are not overworked in general. Similarly, the current labor market around the world proves the necessity for government intervention. Sweatshops exist around the world where workers’ health is declining and wages are miniscule. If the government is reduced to only preventing pollution, workers will lose the rights they have long fought for. In order to protect the working class of the world, libertarianism must be rejected. A second area that government intervention is needed is in terms of producing safe products and goods. Current government regulations ensure that medication cannot be sold until it is tested, and similar restrictions exist in all areas of the market. Intensive testing is necessary before a product can be sold to guarantee that it does not harm an unknowing public who purchases it. From an economic perspective, if you removed the requirement of testing products, producers could save money by selling products without testing them first. This would lead to more unsafe products on the market which would harm and possibly kill individuals who are attempting to merely better their lives. In the interest of protecting the public, therefore, the government must stay involved in the economy. The government must also be involved in the economy in order to prevent false and misleading advertising. This has been enforced by law and judicial decisions in the United States. Allowing for producers to knowingly put deceptive information on their marketing cons the public into buying a product that might not work or could actually cause harm. Regulations ensure that individuals are protected, and hold the producers accountable for the information they release. Finally, rampant capitalism places the value on profit as the ultimate goal. People, the environment, truth, and safety are all sacrificed in the quest to better the bottom line. This will lead to the exploitation of indigenous peoples around the world and the destruction of the environment. Though some regulations will exist in an attempt to prevent pollution, a world based on libertarianism will set those regulations at a minimum, and pollution and environmental damage will increase. When individuals do not live in a clean environment, their health and 411

productivity suffer. Similarly, people around the world who are exploited will lose their homes, families, and environmental surroundings so that capitalist producers can continue their quest for profit. Libertarianism allows for these situations to occur and multiply by removing government from the economy. Such a lack of regulation only ensures that the worst tendencies we see currently will multiply and prosper as there is now no incentive to do business in a more ethical way. In the interest of humanity and its interconnectedness to the environment, restrictions must be maintained and perhaps expanded, a prospect that would be impossible under libertarianism. SUMMARY Therefore, the philosophical viewpoint of libertarianism is riddled with problems. First, libertarianism allows for selfdestruction, causing rampant pain and suffering. Second, libertarianism denies advances in social movements that are so desperately needed to bring about equality and prosperity. The libertarian claim that private property is essential is false, and the entire philosophy is based on false assumptions. Libertarianism also breeds worry and fear, destroying a content life. The philosophy de-contextualizes freedom, making its assumptions flawed from the start. By focusing on individual choice, libertarianism also allows for capitalism to run rampant, destroying humanity in the process. With so many problems resulting from the adoption of a libertarian viewpoint, it is clear that the best society is one with a more expansive governmental role than is allowed for with libertarianism. ____________________________ 1 Murray, Charles A. What it Means to Be a Libertarian. New York: Broadway Books, 1997, pg. 4. 2 Ibid, pg. 7. 3 Ibid, pg. 9. 4 Ibid, pg. 9. 5 Sartorius, Rolf. Paternalism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983, pg. 237. 6 Ibid, pg. 238. 7 Ibid, pg. 238. 8 Ibid, pg. 238. 9 Murray, Charles A. What it Means to Be a Libertarian. New York: Broadway Books, 1997, pg. 5. 10 Willis, Ellen. Don’t think, smile! Boston: Beacon Press, 1999, pg. 92. 11 Lloyd Thomas, David. In Defence of Liberalism. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988, pg. 68. 12 Ibid, pg. 69. 13 Radcliffe, Peter. Limits of Liberty: Studies of Mill’s On Liberty. Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing Company, Inc., 1966, pg. 36. 14 Ibid, pg. 37. 15 Ibid, pg. 38. 16 Ibid, pg. 39. 17 Read, Leonard E. The Freedom Freeway. New York: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1979, pg. 59. 18 Ball, Terrence and Richard Dagger. Ideals and Ideologies: A Reader. New York: Longman, 2002, pg. 129. 19 Ibid, pg. 129. 20 Ibid, pg. 129-130. 21 Ibid, pg. 130. 22 Ibid, pg. 130. 23 Ibid, pg. 130. 24 Ibid, pg. 131. 25 Murray, Charles A. What it Means to Be a Libertarian. New York: Broadway Books, 1997, pg. 60.

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LIBERTARIANISMS ECONOMIC POLICIES DESTROY AUTONOMY 1. LIBERTARIAN ECONOMICS LIMIT INDIVIDUAL AUTONOMY.AND JUSTICE Ball, Terrence and Richard Dagger. Professors of Political Science Arizona State University. Ideals and Ideologies: A Reader. New York: Longman, 2002, pg. 135. Leaving economic power to the winners in the market place does indeed keep us free from government tyranny, but it by no means secures individual autonomy. Concentrations of economic power in private or public hands, combined with the absences of property holding by other members of society thwarts autonomy. Hence, if a free and democratic society both depends upon and finds moral value in the creation of an independent, self-governing citizenry, laissez-faire is obviously not enough. A liberal society need not and should not abandon all determination of property rights to the confluence of sheer luck, astuteness, effort, and private beneficence that libertarians would make sacrosanct. Instead, consistent with the demands of efficiency and justice, a liberal democracy should seek truly to decentralize economic power – to diffuse property holding as much as possible. The political value of liberal economics is its contribution to a society of free people and that is not the same thing as a market society. 2. LIBERTARIANISM DESTROYS LIBERAL IDEALS AND INSITUTIONS THAT WORK TO UPHOLD INDIVIDUAL AUTONOMY ANDS JUSTICE Ball, Terrence and Richard Dagger. Professors of Political Science Arizona State University. Ideals and Ideologies: A Reader. New York: Longman, 2002, pg. 135-136. A property policy directed toward the goal of human freedom – i.e., a citizenry of autonomous individuals – would not tolerate robber barons, company towns, or corporate domination in the name of abstract liberty. It would seek the contemporary equivalent of “forty acres and a mule.” It would structure tax incentives to encourage employee share-holding and participation in corporate governance. It would recall the original point of the mortgage interest deduction and reshape that provision to facilitate more extensive individual home ownership instead of subsidizing the vacation homes of the wealthy. It would look with favor upon the scheme of allowing public housing tenants to acquire an ownership interest in their dwelling places. An so on. Needless to say, these are not the usual proposals of libertarians. But that is not because they value liberty too much. It is because they understand liberty too narrowly and simplistically. 3. LIBERTRIANISM DISTORTS FREEDOM AS WELL AS DEVALUES EQUALITY AND COMMUNITY Ball, Terrence and Richard Dagger. Professors of Political Science Arizona State University. Ideals and Ideologies: A Reader. New York: Longman, 2002, pg. 129 When libertarians extricate liberty from other elements of a satisfactory social existence and regard it as the greatest of all good things, they are not being true to the best insights of the liberal tradition. Libertarians narrow and distort liberalism rather than, as they would allege, purify it and bring it to fruition. For in the mainstream of historical liberalism, individual liberties are not the be-all and end-all of the good society. Instead, they play an essential role in association with other social goods and in tandem with correlative social obligations. Specifically, the other social goods that liberalism has sought include equality and community. Liberal equality has not generally been taken to imply complete equality of condition or a strictly-need based ethic of distribution. For one thing, that kind of egalitarianism would require morally dubious and practically costly constraints on the freedom that liberalism, along with libertarianism cherishes. But liberals have generally recognized that some attempts to mitigate the unfairness of nature and social inheritance are both proper in moral terms and necessary for the preservation of liberty and for the sustenance of a viable political community.

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LIBERTARIANISM UNDERMINES LIBERAL IDEALS AND INSTITUTIONS 1. LIBERTARIANISM COLLAPSES ITS SOCIAL ETHIC AND JURIDICAL DOCTRINE. THIS UNDERMINES FREEDOM Ball, Terrence and Richard Dagger. Professors of Political Science Arizona State University. Ideals and Ideologies: A Reader. New York: Longman, 2002, pg. 131 In addition to its moral and conceptual simplism, libertarian thought is also guilty of empirical simplism in one important respect. Libertarians tend to assume that the behavioral norms appropriate for a liberal society are the same as the political norms appropriate for liberal governments. This is what I referred to earlier as the libertarians tendency to collapse its social ethic and its juridical doctrine. The assumption is that the ideal of political toleration and government neutrality entails a thorough social permissiveness and moral relativism. A liberal regime has no legitimate concerns about the character and values of its citizenry, since these are presumed to be purely private and subjective matters. This cheerful simplism is not sustained by most liberal theorists, who instead present a more complex and more persuasive account of the relationship between a polity and its underlying culture, On this account, cultural mores must compliment political institutions, not mirror them. 2. LIBERAL IDEALS AND INSTITUTIONS ARE KEY TO UPHOLDING BASIC RIGHTS AND FREEDOMS Ball, Terrence and Richard Dagger. Professors of Political Science Arizona State University. Ideals and Ideologies: A Reader. New York: Longman, 2002, pg. 131. Any functioning society requires some minimum of orderliness and adherence to basic norms of behavior that distinguish a civil society from a state of war. These elements of restraint and civil morality must come from somewhere. A political society can be open, free, and non-authoritarian, therefore, only where internalized norms or social suasions successfully restrain the human proclivity to dominate or exploit others. Where these pre-political restraints are unavailable, political authority must fill that vacuum. At the extremes, licentious societies produce – because they require – strong-armed sovereigns, whereas highly ordered societies could approach anarchy at the governmental level. Thomas Hobbes’s eccentric liberal realism depicts the ones extreme; Karl Marx’s romantic vision of the withering away of the state envisions the other. 3. LIBERTARIANISM DISTORTS AND DESTROYS LIBERAL IDEALS AND POLICIES Ball, Terrence and Richard Dagger. Professors of Political Science Arizona State University. Ideals and Ideologies: A Reader. New York: Longman, 2002, pg. 131. The argument thus far can be summarized in the following way. Libertarianism as political theory suffers from multidimensional simple-mindedness. It is morally simplistic in its elevation of the single norm of liberty over other important norms of a good society, It is conceptually simplistic in its tendency to conceive liberty as mere absence of impediment rather than autonomy. And it is empirically simplistic in its failure to recognize that the political institutions of a free society are viable only where the social culture provides the necessary complement of civility and restraint. Libertarians stoutly defend what is a genuinely important half-truth. But when they insist that this half-truth tells the whole story, they distort liberal ideals and weaken liberal policies.

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LIBERTARISNISM LIMITS FREEDOM 1. LIBERTARIANISM LlMITS LIBERTY LaFollette, Hugh. "Why Libertarianism Is Mistaken." Justice and Economic Distribution, 1979, pg. 194-206. The problem with libertarianism can be seen once we recognize the limitations that negative rights (libertarian constraints) themselves place on individual liberty. Suppose, for example, that I am the biggest and strongest guy on the block. My size is a natural asset, a physical trait I inherited and then developed. But can I use my strength and size any way I please? No! At least not morally. Though I am physically capable of pummeling the peasants, pillaging property, and ravishing women, I am not morally justified in doing so. My freedom is restricted without my consent. I didn't make a contract with the property owners or the women; I didn't promise not to rap, rob, or rape. Just the same, morally I cannot perform these actions and others can justifiably prohibit me from performing them. Consequently, everyone's life is not, given the presence of negative general rights and negative general duties, free from the interference of others. The "mere" presence of others imposes duties on each of us, it limits everyone's freedom. In fact, these restrictions are frequently extensive. For example, in the previously described case I could have all of the goods I wanted; I could take what I wanted, when I wanted. To say that such actions are morally or legally impermissible significantly limits my freedom, and my "happiness," without my consent. Of course I am not saying these restrictions are bad. Obviously they aren't. But it does show that the libertarian fails to achieve his major objective, namely, to insure that an individual's freedom cannot be limited without his consent. The libertarian's own moral constraints limit each person's freedom without consent. 7 This is even more vividly seen when we look at an actual historical occurrence. In the nineteenth century American slaveholders were finally legally coerced into doing what they were already morally required to do: free their slaves. In many cases this led to the slave owners' financial and social ruin: they lost their farms, their money, and their power. Of course they didn't agree to their personal ruin; they didn't agree to this restriction on their freedom. Morally they didn't have to consent; it was a remedy long overdue. Even the libertarian would agree. The slave holders' freedom was justifiably restricted by the presence of other people; the fact that there were other persons limited their acceptable alter natives. But that is exactly what the libertarian denies. Freedom, he claims, cannot be justifiably restricted without consent. In short, the difficulty in this: the libertarian talks as if there can be no legitimate non-consensual limitations on freedom, yet his very theory involves just such limitations. Not only does this appear to be blatantly inconsistent, but even if he could avoid this inconsistency, there appears to be no principled way in which he can justify only his theory's non-consensual limitations 2. LIBERTARIANISM IS BAD FOR LIBERTY Ball, Terrence and Richard Dagger. Professors of Political Science Arizona State University. Ideals and Ideologies: A Reader. New York: Longman, 2002, pg. 136. The limitations of libertarianism, then, originate in its oversimplification about the nature of human liberty and liberty’s role in the good society. Libertarians conceive liberty as absence of impediment rather than as the achievement of personal autonomy. They neglect the complementary liberal values of equality and fraternity. And they fail to remember that the freedoms of a liberal polity are made possible by the habits of the heart that engender social order and civility. The practical result of this narrow doctrine, in turn, is the promotion of social policies that impoverish and cripple a liberal public regime. The ultimate outcome of an unrestrainedly libertarian public policy would be an unsafe society of strangers where inequalities were extreme, where the wealthy hid behind walls defended by private security forces, where public spirit and a sense of common purpose were nowhere in evidence, where disadvantaged children were left bereft of the resources or the environment necessary to escape their misfortunes, where the social bond between individual citizens was reduced to the cash nexus complained about in the nineteenth century by Thomas Carlyle and Karl Marx Alike.

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LIBERTARIANISM PRODUCES RAMPANT CAPITALISM 1. CAPITALISM IS A MAJOR THREAT TO AN OPEN SOCIETY Soros, George. Philanthropist and Social Responsible Investor. “The Capitalist threat.” The Atlantic Online. http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/97feb/capital/capital.htm. NP. Popper showed that fascism and communism had much in common, even though one constituted the extreme right and the other the extreme left, because both relied on the power of the state to repress the freedom of the individual. I want to extend his argument. I contend that an open society may also be threatened from the opposite direction -- from excessive individualism. Too much competition and too little cooperation can cause intolerable inequities and instability. Insofar as there is a dominant belief in our society today, it is a belief in the magic of the marketplace. The doctrine of laissez-faire capitalism holds that the common good is best served by the uninhibited pursuit of self-interest. Unless it is tempered by the recognition of a common interest that ought to take precedence over particular interests, our present system -- which, however imperfect, qualifies as an open society -- is liable to break down. 2. LIBERTARIAN ECONOMICS ARE SCIENTIFICALLY PERVERSE Soros, George. Philanthropist and Social Responsible Investor. “The Capitalist threat.” The Atlantic Online. http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/97feb/capital/capital.htm. NP. Although laissez-faire doctrines do not contradict the principles of the open society the way Marxism-Leninism or Nazi ideas of racial purity did, all these doctrines have an important feature in common: they all try to justify their claim to ultimate truth with an appeal to science. In the case of totalitarian doctrines, that appeal could easily be dismissed. One of Popper's accomplishments was to show that a theory like Marxism does not qualify as science. In the case of laissez-faire the claim is more difficult to dispute, because it is based on economic theory, and economics is the most reputable of the social sciences. One cannot simply equate market economics with Marxist economics. Yet laissez-faire ideology, I contend, is just as much a perversion of supposedly scientific verities as MarxismLeninism is. The main scientific underpinning of the laissez-faire ideology is the theory that free and competitive markets bring supply and demand into equilibrium and thereby ensure the best allocation of resources. This is widely accepted as an eternal verity, and in a sense it is one. Economic theory is an axiomatic system: as long as the basic assumptions hold, the conclusions follow. But when we examine the assumptions closely, we find that they do not apply to the real world. As originally formulated, the theory of perfect competition -- of the natural equilibrium of supply and demand -- assumed perfect knowledge, homogeneous and easily divisible products, and a large enough number of market participants that no single participant could influence the market price. The assumption of perfect knowledge proved unsustainable, so it was replaced by an ingenious device. Supply and demand were taken as independently given. This condition was presented as a methodological requirement rather than an assumption. It was argued that economic theory studies the relationship between supply and demand; therefore it must take both of them as given. 3. LIBERTARIAN ECONOMICS DESTROY TRADITIONAL VALUES Soros, George. Philanthropist and Social Responsible Investor. “The Capitalist threat.” The Atlantic Online. http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/97feb/capital/capital.htm. NP. There has been an ongoing conflict between market values and other, more traditional value systems, which has aroused strong passions and antagonisms. As the market mechanism has extended its sway, the fiction that people act on the basis of a given set of non-market values has become progressively more difficult to maintain. Advertising, marketing, even packaging, aim at shaping people's preferences rather than, as laissez-faire theory holds, merely responding to them. Unsure of what they stand for, people increasingly rely on money as the criterion of value. What is more expensive is considered better. The value of a work of art can be judged by the price it fetches. People deserve respect and admiration because they are rich. What used to be a medium of exchange has usurped the place of fundamental values, reversing the relationship postulated by economic theory. What used to be professions have turned into businesses. The cult of success has replaced a belief in principles. Society has lost its anchor.

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Life Good LIFE IS THE HIGHEST VALUE 1. LIFE TAKES PRECEDENCE OVER ALL OTHER CONSIDERATIONS David Bleich, Prof. of Ethics, Yesbivaii Univ., and Prof. of Law, Cardozo Univ., ISSUES IN LAW AND MEDICINE, Fail, 1993, pp. 140-141. The value of human life is supreme and takes precedence over virtually all other considerations. This attitude is most eloquently summed up in a Tamudic passage regarding the creation of Adam: “Therefore only a single human being was created in the world, to teach that if any person has caused a single soul to perish, Scripture regards him as if he had caused an entire world to perish; and if any human being ever saves a single soul, Scripture regards him as if he had saved an entire world.” Human life is not a good to be preserved as a condition of other values but as an absolute, basic, and precious good in its own stead. The obligation to preserve life is commensurably allencompassing. 2. LIFE IS A FUNDAMENTAL PRECONDITION Irving Horowitz, Prof. of Political Science, Rutgers, TAKING LIVES, 1980, p. 12.

Life and death issues are uniquely fundamental, since they alone serve as a precondition for the examination of all other issues: public and private, local or historical, products or producers. 3. LIFE IS THE PRIMARY CONSIDERATION Leo Kuper, Ford Foundation, THE PREVENTION OF GENOCIDE, 1985, p. 67. There must surely be unanimity among the members of the United Nations on the primacy of the right to life. The emphasis on human rights would be quite meaningless without the survival of the living subjects to be the carriers of these rights. 4. THE INTRINSIC VALUE OF LIFE CAN BE DIVORCED FROM RELIGIOUS JUSTIFICATION Victor Cosculluela, Prof. of Philosophy, Univ. of Miami, THE ETHICS OF SUICIDE, 1995, p. 42. It is often said, especially in connection with the problem of abortion, that life, or at least human life, is sacred or that it has absolute value. Proponents of abortion, for example, are accused of failing to recognize the “sanctity of human life” or the supreme value of human beings. The expression “the sanctity of human life” suggests a religious doctrine. It suggests that what makes human lives so precious is the alleged fact that human beings, unlike other animals, have immaterial souls which were created by the deity. However, it is possible to divorce the claim that life has an absolute value (in some sense) from any theological assumptions. It can then be considered as a possible principle in a purely secular ethical standpoint. 5. PRESUMPTION RESTS WITH PRESERVING LIFE James Moreland and Norman Geisler, Profs. of Philosophy, Biola Univ. and liberty Univ., THE LIFE AND DEATH DEBATE, 1990, p. 50. Second, because life is a fundamental, presuppositional good (it must be present before other goods, such as liberty are possible), we have a prima facie duty to preserve life and benefit another person. The burden of proof in on withholding treatment to a defective newborn, and life should be preserved unless the quality of life is such that continued existence would be less appropriate than death itself.

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OTHER VALUES DO NOT TRUMP LIFE 1. HUMAN LIFE CANNOT BE ENDED FOR ANOTHER GOOD Hugo Bedau, NQA, DEATH IS DIFFERENT, 1987, p. 10. Distinct as the sanctity of human life and the right to life are, they have a common bond. Each expresses the view that it is morally wrong to take a purely instrumental view of human life. By “instrumental view of human life” I mean any conception that makes it permissible to kill persons in order to protect some other value (e.g., property) or in order to advance some social or political goal (e.g., national liberation). If every human life is sacred or if every person has a right to life, then the murder of an insignificant peasant is just as heinous as the assassination of a king. 2. SUFFERING DOES NOT JUSTIFY ENDING LIFE James Moreland and Norman Geisler, Profs. of Philosophy, Biola Univ. and liberty Univ., THE LIFE AND DEATH DEBATE, 1990, pp. 52-3. Regarding suffering, it can have a point in one’s own life or the life of others. This observation can be abused, but the mere presence of suffering is not sufficient to signal the presence of a morally inappropriate situation. For example, if life is a gift, then a life of suffering can be objectively meaningful and valuable because (1) that life has dignity and intrinsic value, (2) suffering can cause moral growth, (3) suffering can help teach others to face life’s difficulties and cause a person’s family and community to grow as well. 3. EXTINCTION IS ONE MILLION TIMES WORSE THAN THE DEATHS OF MANY Carl Sagan, Princeton Astrophysicist, THE LONG DARKNESS, 1986, p. 36. Some, their capacity for horror perhaps exhausted, have argued that the difference between the deaths of several hundred million people in a nuclear war (as has been thought until recently to be a reasonable upper limit) and the death of every person on Earth (as now seems possible) is only a matter of one order of magnitude. For me, the difference is considerably greater. Restricting our attention only to those who die as a consequence of the war conceals its full impact If we are required to calibrate extinction in numerical terms, I would be sure to include the number of people in future generations who would not be born. A nuclear war imperils all our descendants, for as long as there will be humans. Even if our population remains static, with an average lifetime of the order of a hundred years, over a typical time period for the biological evolution of a successful species (roughly 10 million years), we are talking about some 500 trillion people yet to come. By this criterion, the stakes are 1 million times greater for extinction than for the more modest nuclear wars that kill “only” hundreds of millions of people. There are many other possible measures of the potential loss - including culture and science, the evolutionary history of the planet, and the significance of the lives of all our ancestors who contributed to the future of their descendants. Extinction is the undoing of the human enterprise. 4. ANY RISK TO SURVIVAL ASSUMES THE STATUS OF AN INFINITE IMPACT Jonathan Schell, columnist for the New Yorker, THE FATE OF THE EARTH, 1982, p. 95 But the mere risk of extinction has a significance that is categorically different from, and immeasurably greater than, that of any other risk, and as we make our decisions we have to take that significance into account. Up to now, every risk has been contained within the frame of life; extinction would shatter the frame. It represents not the defeat of some purpose, but an abyss in which all human purposes would be drowned for all time. We have no right to place the possibility of this limitless, eternal defeat on the same footing as risks that we run in the ordinary conduct of our affairs in our particular transient moment of human history. To employ a mathematical analogy, we can say that although the risk of extinction may be fractional, the stake is, humanly speaking, infinite, and a fraction of infinity is still infinity. In other words, once we learn that a holocaust might lead to extinction we have no right to gamble, because if we lose, the game will be over, and neither we nor anyone else will ever get another chance.

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THE RIGHT TO LIFE IS INALIENABLE 1. RIGHT TO LIFE IS AN INALIENABLE AND UNIVERSAL RIGHT Hugo Bedau, NQA, DEATH IS DIFFERENT, 1987, pp. 11-12. In addition to being natural, the right to life was traditionally understood to be universal and inalienable. A universal right is a right that everyone has, regardless of where one is born or lives and regardless of sex or race. An inalienable right is a right that the possessor cannot transfer, sell, or give away to another person. Thus, killing one person is as much a violation of the right to life as killing any other person, and we cannot somehow give to others the right to kill us by giving them our right to life. 2. THE RIGHT TO LIFE IS INALIENABLE James Moreland and Norman Geisler, Profs. of Philosophy, Biola Univ. and liberty Univ., THE LIFE AND DEATH DEBATE, 1990, p. 104. According to this argument, each person has by nature - apart from the state - an inalienable right to life. In some versions of this view God is thought to be the author of this right. Thomas Jefferson, for example, saw this “inalienable right to life” as one of “Nature’s Laws” coming from “Nature’s God” or the “Creator.” His precursor, John Locke, also held this view. The principle of the right to life is capable, however, of being abstracted from religious associations and treated simply as a natural right. As such, it is argued that no one - not even the state - has the right to take another’s life.

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Life Bad THE RIGHT TO LIFE IS NOT PARAMOUNT 1. THE RIGHT TO LIFE IS NOT ABSOLUTE Eric Rakowski, Prof. of Law at Berkeley, COLUMBIA LAW REVIEW, 1993, p. 1104. Ordinary human beings have a powerful moral claim against their fellows not to be killed and, under certain circumstances, to be saved from death or serious harm. The scope of this right, however, is not, of course unrestricted. For example, it arguably does not protect, in the least some cases, innocent people who threaten others or who would be killed by the removal of what threatens others, should those in danger, or third parties wish to assist them, use necessary lethal force to eliminate the threat. That right not to be killed is also alienable. 2. RIGHT TO LIFE IS NOT SUPREME OVER OTHER RIGHTS Gus DiZerega, Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment, ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS, Spring, 1995, p. 25. Let us consider perhaps the most basic human right - the right to life. This right minimally require that no one may take the life of another so long as that other is not a physical threat to others. However, the right to life does not exist in a void. It is a part of a network of interrelated rights which, when taken as a whole, make a free polity possible. Human life cannot be lived outside of a community that makes decisions as to how its members shall live together. Many arguments and much history have demonstrated that we should possess formally equal voices in those decisions that determine our community’s character. Consequently, these rights apply to all capable of taking part in public life. Among such rights are freedom of speech, of organization, and of voting for representatives or policies. They are implied in the right to life just as the right to life is implied in them. 3. LIFE IS ONLY A RELATIVE GOOD--NOT AN ABSOLUTE James Moreland and Norman Geisler, Profs. of Philosophy, Biola Univ. and liberty Univ., THE LIFE AND DEATH DEBATE, 1990, p. 50. First, life is a relative good, not an absolute good. There is no moral duty to keep on living at all costs and in spite of circumstances. Life is a relative good; that is, life is a good because it is a precondition for other goods such as having friendships, pursuing personal goals, and so forth.

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HUMAN LIFE IS NOT THE GREATEST VALUE 1. HUMAN LIFE DOES NOT HAVE INFINITE VALUE Robert Holyer, Prof. of Philosophy, Lyon College, INTERNATIONAL PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY, Dec. 1994, p. 488. While there is much here that squares with our intuitions of the value and equality of human lives, it is obvious on reflection that the notion of infinite worth has troubling implications. If we do have to make choices between human lives on the basis of worth, it offers us no help whatsoever. There is no basis for valuing one life over another. Even more troubling, if one human life is of infinite worth, so are all human lives together. This clearly implies that all human lives are equal in value to a single life. In other words, evaluating social practices by the number of lives saved or lost, which itself has some intuitive appeal, makes no sense if a life is of infinite value. What is more, if we do have to judgments of value between human life and other goods, the notion of infinite worth is again of little use: if these other goods are not of infinite value, a single life outweighs them; if, contrary to what is usually claimed about the uniquely high value of human life, some other good is also of infinite worth, there is still no helpful comparison, since all infinities are equal. Because of these particular implications, one begins to suspect that, for all its intuitive appeal, this version of the sanctity of human life may be of little value in deciding ethical issues. 2. HUMAN LIFE MIGHT NOT BE WORTH LIVING James Moreland and Norman Geisler, Profs. of Philosophy, Biola Univ. and liberty Univ., THE LIFE AND DEATH DEBATE, 1990, p. 51. First, they hold that clearly we do not have an absolute obligation to preserve human life at all costs and irrespective of the state of the person whose life we are preserving. The mere presence of biological life does not signal a life worth living. Appropriately understood, this observation appears to be correct and even advocates of the sanctity of life view (see below) would agree that there is not always an obligation to continue treatment of the patient. 3. OTHER VALUES PRE-EMPT LIFE Robert Holyer, Prof. of Philosophy, Lyon College, INTERNATIONAL PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY, Dec. 1994, p. 497. What then can we say about the comparable value of human life? While we cannot say that it is of infinite value, we cannot even say that it is of preponderant value. There are other goods that seem to be worth more to us than life. What we should conclude, then, is that human life is of determinate value, and that the many efforts we make to assign to human life a comparable worth are not in principle mistaken. Indeed, once we reject the notion that the sanctity of life means that a human life is of infinite value, there is nothing to argue that assigning a life a comparable value runs contrary to the sincere and consistent affirmation of the sanctity of life in its broader meaning. 4. IT IS NOT ALWAYS WRONG TO KILL Victor Cosculluela, Prof. of Philosophy, Univ. of Miami, THE ETHICS OF SUICIDE, 1995, p. 42. It is hard to see how the principle of the sanctity of human life, so construed, can be squared with many practices which we are inclined to regard as permissible or even obligatory. For instance, we are inclined to say that it is permissible to kill in a just war. Likewise, it is permissible to kill in self-defense. With an even greater appearance of paradox, many of those who are most willing to use the rhetoric of the “sanctity of human life” are strongly in favor of capital punishment So it seems that the claim that human life has “absolute value” is not to be understood as meaning the following: (1) It is always wrong to kill a human being. If the principle did mean this, it would be surely be mistaken. 5. THERE IS NO CONSENSUS ON THE VALUE OF HUMAN SURVIVAL Laura Westra, Department of History, Philosophy, and Religion at Clemson, ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS, Winter, 1985, p. 346. Even though the survival of our progeny is at stake, the opinion that the preservation of mankind is a moral imperative is not universally held. For instance, Naveson in his paper “Utilitarianism and New Generations” concludes: “Is there any moral point in the existence of the human race as such? That is to say, would a universe containing people be morally better off than one containing no people? It seems to me that it would not be, as such, at any rate on utilitarian grounds.

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Lifestyle Vs Social Anarchism Everybody wants to be an anarchist these days. You see so many people walking around with the "A" symbol on their shirts, you wonder if they think it's the newest Oakland Athletics road jersey. Really, who can blame them? Americans pride themselves on individualism, iconoclasm and various other isms; there seems to be a rising social awareness among young people; and besides, who doesn't want to tell the government where to go every now and again? The romance quotient of the anarchist movement hit also hit a high point during Seattle's demonstrations against the World Trade Organization, when several black-clad individuals (the "Black Bloc," as they were called) were videotaped committing highly publicized assaults against corporate property. Rumored to be out of Eugene, Ore., these self-described "anarchists" quickly became the poster people for rebellion throughout the not-so-United States. This isn't the only - or even the most prevalent - face of anarchism, though. There's the academic and nerdy Noam Chomsky, who has been called "America's most important intellectual" and who confounds the image of anarchistas-rock-thrower-in-a-ski-mask. There are countless tree-hugging pacifists. There are even radical libertarians, hardly leftists, who identify with the mighty "A." But is a rejection of government authority the only thing you need to get your membership card stamped? Is everybody who cruises down the street blaring "Killing in the Name" by Rage Against the Machine an anarchist? I grew up in Eugene: does that give me anarchist credibility? Predictably, since the movement got such a publicity boost after the WTO protests, there have been a great deal of attempts to point fingers at who is a "legitimate" anarchist and who is not. I half expect to see some company come out with "official" anarchist lines of clothing. Strange as it may seem, though, debates about who the real anarchists are have been going on long before the lads and lasses in dark frocks threw their first Starbucks-bound rocks. We'll cover some of the other issues associated with the "Black Bloc" in another essay - whether their property destruction is justified, effective, etc. In this essay, though, we're going to talk about two feuding camps that both call themselves anarchists: the "social" anarchists, led by venerable Murray Bookchin of the Institute for Social Ecology; and the "lifestyle" anarchists, led by the trippy Hakim Bey, the biting wit of David Watson, and the selfindulgent ramblings of Bob Black. No report yet on whether Bob Black plans to sue the Black Bloc for copyright infringement, though I'll keep you posted. I should note that these two particular groups are far from the only classifications of anarchists. Plenty of other leftwing groups call each other names and question each others' authenticity - indeed, Bob Black generally doesn't think anyone is an anarchist but him. This particular divide, though, is deep, wide and relevant to debaters - therefore, I think it merits the deepest exploration at this time. If you don't agree, well, then I guess you're not a real anarchist. Report to Bob Black immediately for re-education. Or report to me. I'll make you type the blocks for my next West Coast paper, then (and only then) present you with an official "Jeff Shaw thinks I am a real anarchist" tee-shirt, printed on the real Oakland Athletics road jersey. YOU'RE NOT AN ANARCHIST, AND I'M TELLING EVERYONE One of my favorite bands, the late and lamented Jawbreaker, once started a song with these words: "You're not punk, and I'm telling everyone." This mirrors what social and lifestyle anarchists have been telling each other for years, especially since Bookchin's mid-1990s slam on the latter movement. 422

Here's the quick and dirty about the divisions between the two camps: social anarchists, like Bookchin, are concerned primarily with anarchism's socialist roots. By boosting radical labor movements, promoting collective (as opposed to individualist) economic enterprises and working in the political sphere toward a more cooperative economy, the theory goes, anarchists will work to make a better life for working - that is to say, most - people. Also, rallying against state-sponsored restriction of freedom is important to help build a future based on personal liberty and voluntary cooperation. This is why anarchism is sometimes called - most famously by Chomsky - "libertarian socialism." Bey, Watson and their ilk take a different tack, eschewing political organizing in favor of ignoring state power. They particularly Bey - regard politics as "boring," and devoid of the wine-sipping, bad poetry spouting passion mongering that is popular in their circles. Rather than form a labor union for redress of workplace grievances, Bey says, we ought to go on strike in protest of work's failure to fulfill our spiritual side. Yeah, that'll feed the kids and pay for Junior's braces. Not to mention win the widespread support of the working masses. The thing is, in fairness to the lifestyle anarchists, they don't really care much about the masses. Theirs is a very individualist anarchism, reminiscent of Max Stirner. Consider that, in the phrase "libertarian socialism," there are two parts. The lifestyle anarchists are heavy on the libertarian part, with everybody wanting to do their own creative thing. Social anarchists are heavier on the other part, emphasizing economic solidarity, community organizing, etc. ART SABOTAGE AND POETIC TERRORISM Temporary Autonomous Zones, the influential Bey book, is a great read. It reads like a synthesis of poetry, performance art and teenage rebellion with just a sprinkling of politics - the politics being mostly "Don't tell ME what to do: I'd rather get drunk and write steamy poems." Rather than community organizing, Bey suggests several unrelated rebellious and creative tasks, which he gives a variety of names to: "Art sabotage," "Poetic terrorism," "Amour fou (French for 'Crazy love')". Among the "art sabotage and poetic terrorism" tasks Bey suggests: "Kidnap someone - and make them happy." As a response, I suggest: "Then have your parents write them a fat check so they won't file charges." Most of the suggestions contained in the book amount to little more than pranks - less the pointed political satire of Adbusters (www.adbusters.org) than something out of the Tom Green movie "Road Trip." Nevertheless, there are some anarchist notions in the book. Temporary Autonomous Zones calls for a notion of "ontological anarchy" - an anarchy of the mind. The idea of the T.A.Z. is that people seeking to free themselves from state control should set up their own dwellings which are ostensibly autonomous. Contrary to what many Bey fans assumed, that didn't just mean the Internet - Hakim was talking about actual places where you could go and pretend you weren't in America, or Canada, or wherever you're reading this. He also delves into "Black Magick" rituals, curses and other irrationalities that may or may not be symbolic. Where he attempts political analysis, Bey just ends up sounding confusing - or, more often, confused. He tries to tackle the emotional abortion issue with what seems to be a pretty thoughtless response, declaring that "both sides" of the issue are "full of (it)." His rationale? Both sides are hostile to life: the pro-choicers because (I am not making this up) pro-choicers are generally vegetarian, and therefore should recognize the fetus is alive; and abortion foes are equally hostile to life, Bey argues, because they condemn single parenthood - while he would like to see every "bastard child" grow up wild and free. However you feel about that most emotional of issues, it should be apparent that this a pretty shallow and incomplete analysis. But what can you expect? Politics bore him. 423

THE GREAT DIVIDE Besides an ideological clash, there is a clear personal clash between these two groups. You can almost hear Bookchin muttering "stupid punk kids" while writing about the lifestyle anarchists; for their part, the lifestyle anarchists have compared him to Elmer Fudd, casting themselves in the role of Bugs Bunny. Bookchin is interested in building toward an anarchist future, and has little patience for joking about the matter; Watson and Black probably get drunk together and make jokes about Murray's mom, later going out to spray-paint buildings with goofy Bey slogans. But there's a distinction to be made between Bookchin's critics: not all of them are magic-touting Hakim Bey wannabes. Many critics of Murray - derisively referred to as "Dean Bookchin" by Bob Black - see the social ecologist leader as an ideologue enforcing his norms on their movement. People unfamiliar with the history and theory of anarchism (and that includes many self-described adherents to the philosophy) often make jokes about how difficult it must be to organize anarchists: "Doesn't anarchy, like, mean you believe in nothing but chaos?" A co-worker of mine asked if anarchists believed that private citizens should be able to own nuclear weapons. These misconceptions exist for a lot of reasons - some valid, some not so valid - but like most stereotypes, there's a reason why they exist. That reason: most anyone who describes themselves as an "anarchist" or "left libertarian" is a free thinking individual with passionate convictions. Put those two ingredients together, and you've got a recipe for serious disagreement among factions. Hence, you have people like Bey (who seems more concerned with creative expression than political realities) aligned with people like Black (a crotchety iconoclast) and David Watson, who wants to debate about the future of Bookchin's "social ecology." Now, you probably wouldn't expect those three people to necessarily end up on the same side of anything. All, though, have essentially the same criticisms of Bookchin: he gives what seem to be marching orders, which doesn't sit well with individualists; he's concerned more with building solidarity amongst various constituencies than fomenting revolution; he is too quick to defend technological fixes to problems, while most lifestyle anarchists are primitivists that romanticize pre-modern life; and even when he makes worthwhile points, he does so in a way that is disempowering to others. It is this last criticism that I believe is at the root of the divide, though I also think cultural and social forces are at work here. CRITICISM OF BOOKCHIN: IS IT FAIR? Murray Bookchin is a veteran of the ecology movement, social justice and anti-authoritarian movements. He's been an influential left author, tackling subjects that have previously been taboo - groundbreaking environmental work, a piece called "Listen, Marxist!" which distilled many of the left's critiques of communism into a tight and compelling narrative, and now a smack at the lifestyle anarchists. That said, no human being is perfect - so there are certainly legitimate grievances at work. Bookchin does tend to write rather harshly about his critics - though certainly no more harshly than, say, Bob Black writes about anyone and everyone. Bookchin sees the new, younger blood in the movement as betraying the communal ideals of anarchism. He's concerned about that, and writes vociferously about the evils of misanthropy, how knee-jerk anti-technologism is fruitless, etc. Naturally, his harsh tone along with his condemnation of the intellectual flavors of the month cause some consternation. That's only to be expected. 424

But his ideas, frankly, are well-argued and backed with more evidentiary support than any of his critics writings are. This, from a debater's perspective, probably makes Bookchin the most valuable source of any of the authors named. One of the most notorious anarchist writers these days is Eugene's John Zerzan, famous not just for his association with the famed Eugene Anarchists (t.m.), but also his friendship with Unabomber Ted Kaczynski. While I haven't seen him mention Bookchin by name, Zerzan rails against many of the ideas Bookchin holds dear: namely, that environmentally appropriate technology can help society, that resolving issues in human society is essential to resolving issues in the ecology - even that communities can rally together to forge common remedies to the world's problems. "In truth, there is no community," Zerzan writes. "And only by abandoning what is passed off in its name can we move on to redeem a vision of communion and vibrant connectedness in a world that bears no resemblance to this one. Only a negative "community," based explicitly on contempt for the categories of existent community, is legitimate and appropriate to our aims." Though Zerzan's name is not often mentioned alongside the names Bey, Black et. al., this might be the best summation of the lifestyle anarchists' rejection of the most basic social anarchist values. Even the notion of community must be thrown on the dustbin. It's in the face of this most fundamental challenge to his ideas that Bookchin writes. It's no wonder his writing is heated, his output greater than ever. CRITICISMS OF LIFESTYLE ANARCHISM Put aside your traditional anti-technology arguments about how the world's food production would collapse without modern conventions. Shelve your arguments about how misanthropic environmentalism undercuts public support we'll tackle that argument in another essay, anyway. The most basic criticism of lifestyle anarchism stems from a different source: critics say that the Hakim Beys of the world have become the "straw person" that the media set up to describe anarchists. The hedonism and overindividualism of the movement are exactly what the public are supposed to believe about anarchists. By "straw person," I mean an argument that is falsely constructed by an opponent of an idea: I say that "those anarchists think people should be able to privately own nuclear weapons," even though I know they don't. In this case, media outlets have painted anarchists as hedonistic, violent and nihilistic - which, as a rule, they haven't been. But now, here are some that fit the mold all too well. An illustration of the difference between the two schools of thought is their vision for the future. Bookchin (and other social anarchists) envision building and strengthening community organizations to counterbalance state power and corporate influence - labor unions, local business councils, etc. Bookchin calls his visions "Libertarian municipalism." Admittedly, it is a visions which is lacking in some areas - a credible transition mechanism, lack of short-term strategies. But when you contrast that with the lifestyle anarchists visions for a future society, which range from "Break things and perhaps that will cause industrial collapse," to "We should be more primitive - anybody know how to use this spear, or which berries won't kill us?" to (my personal favorite) "We should ignore the power of the state entirely." Evidently, that last one is based on the theory that, like Indiana Jones refusing to look at the Angels of Death in Raiders of the Lost Ark, averting your eyes from a monstrosity somehow means it isn't there or won't hurt you. If lifestyle anarchism seems like a pretty privileged outlook adopted largely by rich white kids, that's because it is. It's a lot easier to "ignore state power" if cops aren't stopping you based on racial profiles. And, as Bookchin has said, you can set up as many "Temporary Autonomous Zones" as you want in the apartments you share -- you still have to pay rent at the end of the month. 425

That is, ignoring the state is a privilege that a select few people can enjoy - which is hardly the basis for a mass movement. But is a mass movement really the aim of these particular folks? It sure doesn't seem like it. None of them makes overtures at establishing broader relations with other activist groups - labor, human rights or social justice organizations - to form the community structures Bookchin says are essential to a world without a state. Like it or not, humans need supporting institutions - even during the periods Zerzan and others romanticize, indigenous tribes had intricate rituals and procedures which helped keep their world in balance. After living in industrial society for all our lives, Bookchin posits, we ought to expect nothing less from ourselves. SUMMING UP Anarchism is more than absence of a state. It's also more than the media would like for you to think it is. If there's any positive thing the infighting between social anarchism and lifestyle anarchism is likely to engender, perhaps it's that a few of you reading this piece will check out some of the authors and decide for yourself who's right and who's wrong.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Michael Bakunin, THE BASIC BAKUNIN, Robert M. Cutler (trans. and ed.), Buffalo, N.Y.: Promethus Books, , 1994. Hakim Bey, THE TEMPORARY AUTONOMOUS ZONE, ONTOLOGICAL ANARCHY, POETIC TERRORISM, USA: Autonomedia, 1991. Bob Black, ANARCHY AFTER LEFTISM, Columbia: CAL Press, 1997. Murray Bookchin, POST SCARCITY ANARCHISM, London: Wildwood House, 1971. Murray Bookchin, TOWARD AN ECOLOGICAL SOCIETY, Montreal: Black Rose, 1980. Murray Bookchin, REMAKING SOCIETY: PATHWAYS TO A GREEN FUTURE, Boston: South End Press, 1990. Murray Bookchin, SOCIAL ANARCHISM AND LIFESTYLE ANARCHISM, San Francisco: AK Press, , 1995. Murray Bookchin, THE MODERN CRISIS, Philadelphia: New Society Publishers, 1986. Murray Bookchin, THE ECOLOGY OF FREEDOM: THE EMERGENCE AND DISSOLUTION OF HIERARCHY, Palo Alto: Cheshire Books, 1982. Murray Bookchin, "Communalism: The Democratic Dimension of Anarchism", DEMOCRACY AND NATURE, No. 8 (vol. 3, no. 2), pp. 1-12. Murray Bookchin, WHICH WAY FOR THE ECOLOGY MOVEMENT?, San Francisco: AK Press, 1994. Murray Bookchin, THE PHILOSOPHY OF SOCIAL ECOLOGY, New York: Black Rose Books, 1990. Murray Bookchin, "Nationality and the 'National Question'", SOCIETY AND NATURE, no. 5, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 8-36. George Bradford, HOW DEEP IS DEEP ECOLOGY?, California: Times Change Press, 1989. Sam Dolgoff (ed.), BAKUNIN ON ANARCHISM, 2ND EDITION, Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1980. Howard J. Ehrlich (ed.), REINVENTING ANARCHY, AGAIN, San Francisco: AK Press, Edinburgh/, 1996. Arthur Lehning (ed.), MICHAEL BAKUNIN: SELECTED WRITINGS,London: Jonathan Cape, , 1973. G.P. Maximov (ed.), THE POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF BAKUNIN, NewYork: The Free Press, , 1953. David Watson, BEYOND BOOKCHIN: PREFACE FOR A FUTURE SOCIAL ECOLOGY, USA: Autonomedia/Black and Red/Fifth Estate, 1996. David Watson, AGAINST THE MEGAMACHINE: ESSAYS ON EMPIRE AND ITS ENEMIES, USA: Autonomedia/Fifth Estate, 1997.

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LIFESTYLE ANARCHISM LEADS TO BAD INDIVIDUALISM AND FASCISM 1. LIFESTYLE ANARCHISM DESTROYS SOCIAL AWARENESS Murray Bookchin, Institute for Social Ecology, SOCIAL ANARCHISM OR LIFESTYLE ANARCHISM: AN UNBRIDGEABLE CHASM, 1995, p. 171. If anarchism loses its socialist core and collectivist goal, if it drifts off into aestheticism, ecstasy, and desire, and, incongruously, into Taoist quietism and Buddhist self-effacement as a substitute for a libertarian program, politics, and organization, it will come to represent not social regeneration and a revolutionary vision but social decay and a petulant egoistic rebellion. Worse, it will feed the wave of mysticism that is already sweeping affluent members of the generation now in their teens and twenties. Lifestyle anarchism's exaltation of ecstasy, certainly laudable in a radical social matrix but here unabashedly intermingled with 'sorcery,' is producing a dreamlike absorption with spirits, ghosts, and Jungian archetypes rather than a rational and dialectical awareness of the world. 2. LIFESTYLE ANARCHISM ISN'T REAL FREEDOM Murray Bookchin, Institute for Social Ecology, SOCIAL ANARCHISM OR LIFESTYLE ANARCHISM: AN UNBRIDGEABLE CHASM, 1995, p. 113. A return to mere animality -- or shall we call it 'decivilization'? -- is a return not to freedom but to instinct, to the domain of 'authenticity' that is guided more by genes than by brains. Nothing could be further from the ideals of freedom spelled out in ever-expansive forms by the great revolutions of the past. And nothing could be more unrelenting in its sheer obedience to biochemical imperatives such as DNA or more in contrast to the creativity, ethics, and mutuality opened by culture and struggles for a rational civilization. There is no freedom in 'wildness' if, by sheer ferality, we mean the dictates of inborn behavioral patterns that shape mere animality. To malign civilization without due recognition of its enormous potentialities for self-conscious freedom -- a freedom conferred by reason as well as emotion, by insight as well as desire, by prose as well as poetry -- is to retreat back into the shadowy world of brutishness, when thought was dim and intellectuation was only an evolutionary promise. 3. LIFESTYLE ANARCHISM ACTUALLY IMPAIRS INDIVIDUALITY Murray Bookchin, Institute for Social Ecology, SOCIAL ANARCHISM OR LIFESTYLE ANARCHISM: AN UNBRIDGEABLE CHASM, 1995, p. 113. The sovereign, self-sufficient 'individual' has always been a precarious basis upon which to anchor a left libertarian outlook. As Max Horkheimer once observed, 'individuality is impaired when each man decides to fend for himself. . . . The absolutely isolated individual has always been an illusion. The most esteemed personal qualities, such as independence, will to freedom, sympathy, and the sense of justice, are social as well as individual virtues. The fully developed individual is the consummation of a fully developed society.' 4. LIFESTYLE ANARCHISM LEADS TO FASCISM Murray Bookchin, Institute for Social Ecology, SOCIAL ANARCHISM OR LIFESTYLE ANARCHISM: AN UNBRIDGEABLE CHASM, 1995, p. 113-4. Not unjustifiably, Kropotkin, in his Encyclopaedia Britannica article, regarded the Stirnerite ego as elitist and deprecated it as hierarchical. Approvingly, he cited V. Basch's criticism of Stirner's individual anarchism as a form of elitism, maintaining 'that the aim of all superior civilization is, not to permit all members of the community to develop in a normal way, but to permit certain better endowed individuals 'fully to develop,' even at the cost of the happiness and the very existence of the mass of mankind.' In anarchism, this produces, in effect, a regression toward the most common individualism, advocated by all the would-be superior minorities to which indeed man owes in his history precisely the State and the rest, which these individualists combat. Their individualism goes so far as to end in a negation of their own starting-point -- to say nothing of the impossibility of the individual to attain a really full development in the conditions of oppression of the masses by the 'beautiful aristocracies.' In its amoralism, this elitism easily lends itself to the unfreedom of the 'masses' by ultimately placing them in the custody of the 'unique ones,' a logic that may yield a leadership principle characteristic of fascist ideology.

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LIFESTYLE ANARCHISM FAILS 1. LIFESTYLE ANARCHISM IS WHY ANARCHISM HAS FAILED TO CREATE A MOVEMENT Murray Bookchin, Institute for Social Ecology, SOCIAL ANARCHISM OR LIFESTYLE ANARCHISM: AN UNBRIDGEABLE CHASM, 1995, p. 120. In the United States and much of Europe, precisely at a time when mass disillusionment with the state has reached unprecedented proportions, anarchism is in retreat. Dissatisfaction with government as such runs high on both sides of the Atlantic -- and seldom in recent memory has there been a more compelling popular sentiment for a new politics, even a new social dispensation that can give to people a sense of direction that allows for security and ethical meaning. If the failure of anarchism to address this situation can be attributed to any single source, the insularity of lifestyle anarchism and its individualistic underpinnings must be singled out for aborting the entry of a potential left-libertarian movement into an ever-contracting public sphere. 2. TO BE SUCCESSFUL, ANARCHISM MUST OFFER SOLUTIONS TO SOCIAL PROBLEMS Murray Bookchin, Institute for Social Ecology, SOCIAL ANARCHISM OR LIFESTYLE ANARCHISM: AN UNBRIDGEABLE CHASM, 1995, p. 122. If a left-libertarian vision of a future society is not to disappear in a bohemian and lumpen demimonde, it must offer a resolution to social problems, not flit arrogantly from slogan to slogan, shielding itself from rationality with bad poetry and vulgar graphics. Democracy is not antithetical to anarchism; nor are majority rule and nonconsensual decisions incommensurable with a libertarian society. That no society can exist without institutional structures is transparently clear to anyone who has not been stupefied by Stirner and his kind. By denying institutions and democracy, lifestyle anarchism insulates itself from social reality, so that it can fume all the more with futile rage, thereby remaining a subcultural caper for gullible youth and bored consumers of black garments and ecstasy posters. To argue that democracy and anarchism are incompatible because any impediment to the wishes of even 'a minority of one' constitutes a violation of personal autonomy is to advocate not a free society but Brown's 'collection of individuals' -- in short, a herd. No longer would 'imagination' come to 'power.' Power, which always exists, will belong either to the collective in a face-to-face and clearly institutionalized democracy, or to the egos of a few oligarchs who will produce a 'tyranny of structurelessness.' 3. MUST RESOLUTELY REJECT LIFESTYLE ANARCHISM Murray Bookchin, Institute for Social Ecology, SOCIAL ANARCHISM OR LIFESTYLE ANARCHISM: AN UNBRIDGEABLE CHASM, 1995, p. 123. In short, social anarchism must resolutely affirm its differences with lifestyle anarchism. If a social anarchist movement cannot translate its fourfold tenets -- municipal confederalism, opposition to statism, direct democracy, and ultimately libertarian communism -into a lived practice in a new public sphere; if these tenets languish like its memories of past struggles in ceremonial pronouncements and meetings; worse still, if they are subverted by the 'libertarian' Ecstasy Industry and by quietistic Asian theisms, then its revolutionary socialistic core will have to be restored under a new name. 4. LIFESTYLE ANARCHISM IS CAPITALIST BOURGEOIS DECEPTION Murray Bookchin, Institute for Social Ecology, SOCIAL ANARCHISM OR LIFESTYLE ANARCHISM: AN UNBRIDGEABLE CHASM, 1995, p. 123. Indeed, far from being free, the ego in its sovereign selfhood is bound hand and foot to the seemingly anonymous laws of the marketplace -- the laws of competition and exploitation -- which render the myth of individual freedom into another fetish concealing the implacable laws of capital accumulation. Lifestyle anarchism, in effect, turns out to be an additional mystifying bourgeois deception. Its acolytes are no more 'autonomous' than the movements of the stock market, than price fluctuations and the mundane facts of bourgeois commerce. All claims to autonomy notwithstanding, this middle-class 'rebel,' with or without a brick in hand, is entirely captive to the subterranean market forces that occupy all the allegedly 'free' terrains of modern social life, from food cooperatives to rural communes.

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LIFESTYLE ANARCHISM IS AN IMPERATIVE 1. JUSTICE CAN'T BE OBTAINED UNDER ANY LAW Hakim Bey, No Qualifications Available, THE TEMPORARY AUTONOMOUS ZONE, ONTOLOGICAL ANARCHY, POETIC TERRORISM, 1991, p. 12. Justice cannot be obtained under any Law--action in accord with spontaneous nature, action which is just, cannot be defined by dogma. The crimes advocated in these broadsheets cannot be committed against self or other but only against the mordant crystallization of Ideas into structures of poisonous Thrones & Dominations. That is, not crimes against nature or humanity but crimes by legal fiat. 2. AMOUR FOU ('CRAZY LOVE') REJECTS ALL GOVERNMENT, INCLUDING REVOLUTIONARY Hakim Bey, No Qualifications Available, THE TEMPORARY AUTONOMOUS ZONE, ONTOLOGICAL ANARCHY, POETIC TERRORISM, 1991, p. 6. Amour fou IS NOT a Social Democracy, it is not a Parliament of Two. The minutes of its secret meetings deal with meanings too enormous but too precise for prose. Not this, not that - its Book of Emblems trembles in your hand. Naturally it shits on schoolmasters & police, but it sneers at liberationists & ideologues as well - it is not a clean welllit room. A topological charlatan laid out its corridors & abandoned parks, its ambush-decor of luminous black & membranous maniacal red. 3. POLITICS IS BORING - SHOULD FAVOR SPECTACLE INSTEAD Hakim Bey, No Qualifications Available, THE TEMPORARY AUTONOMOUS ZONE, ONTOLOGICAL ANARCHY, POETIC TERRORISM, 1991, p. 12. Public book burnings--why should rednecks & Customs officials monopolize this weapon? Novels about children possessed by demons; the New York Times bestseller list; feminist tracts against pornography; schoolbooks (especially Social Studies, Civics, Health); piles of New York Post, Village Voice & other supermarket papers; choice gleanings of Xtian publishers; a few Harlequin Romances--a festive atmosphere, wine-bottles & joints passed around on a clear autumn afternoon. Art Sabotage should probably stay away from politics (it's so boring)--but not from banks. 4. NO LAW SHOULD BE FIRM - NATURE HAS NO LAWS, ONLY HABITS Hakim Bey, No Qualifications Available, THE TEMPORARY AUTONOMOUS ZONE, ONTOLOGICAL ANARCHY, POETIC TERRORISM, 1991, 15. We spurn knee-jerk anti-Tech anarchism--for ourselves, at least (there exist some who enjoy farming, or so one hears) - and we reject the concept of the Technological Fix as well. For us all forms of determinism appear equally vapid - we're slaves of neither our genes nor our machines. What is "natural" is what we imagine & create. "Nature has no Laws - only habits." 6. THE TEMPORARY AUTONOMOUS ZONE IS A PERFECT TACTIC TO COUNTER THE STATE Hakim Bey, No Qualifications Available, THE TEMPORARY AUTONOMOUS ZONE, ONTOLOGICAL ANARCHY, POETIC TERRORISM, 1991, p. 101. Babylon takes its abstractions for realities; precisely within this margin of error the TAZ can come into existence. Getting the TAZ started may involve tactics of violence and defense, but its greatest strength lies in its invisibility the State cannot recognize it because History has no definition of it. As soon as the TAZ is named (represented, mediated), it must vanish, it will vanish, leaving behind it an empty husk, only to spring up again somewhere else, once again invisible because undefinable in terms of the Spectacle. The TAZ is thus a perfect tactic for an era in which the State is omnipresent and all-powerful and yet simultaneously riddled with cracks and vacancies. And because the TAZ is a microcosm of that "anarchist dream" of a free culture, I can think of no better tactic by which to work toward that goal while at the same time experiencing some of its benefits here and now.

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CRITICS OF LIFESTYLE ANARCHISM ARE MISGUIDED AND DANGEROUS 1. BOOKCHIN'S NOTION OF 'SOCIAL VS. LIFESTYLE' ANARCHISM IS AWFUL, STALINIST Bob Black, Anarchist, ANARCHY AFTER LEFTISM, 1997, p. 3. SOCIAL ANARCHISM OR LIFESTYLE ANARCHISM may well be the worst book about anarchists that any of them has ever written. According to the cover blurb, Murray Bookchin, born in 1921, has been ``a lifelong radical since the early 1930s.'' "Radical'' is here a euphemism for "Stalinist''; Bookchin was originally "a militant in the Young Pioneers and the Young Communist League". Later he became a Trotskyist. 2. BOOKCHIN'S MOVEMENT IS A PATHETIC FAILURE Bob Black, Anarchist, ANARCHY AFTER LEFTISM, 1997, p. 5. About 25 years ago, Murray Bookchin peered into the mirror and mistook it for a window of opportunity. In 1963 he wrote, under a pseudonym, Our Synthetic Society, which anticipated (although it seems not to have influenced) the environmentalist movement. In 1970, by which time he was pushing 50 and calling himself an anarchist, Bookchin wrote ``Listen, Marxist!'' - a moderately effective anti-authoritarian polemic against such Marxist myths as the revolutionary vanguard organization and the proletariat as revolutionary subject. In this and in other essays collected in Post-Scarcity Anarchism, Bookchin disdained to conceal his delight with the disarray of his Marxist comrades-turned-competitors. He thought he saw his chance. Under his tutelage, anarchism would finally displace Marxism, and Bookchin would place the stamp of his specialty, ``social ecology,'' on anarchism. Not only would he be betting on the winning horse, he would be the jockey. As one of his followers has written, "if your efforts at creating your own mass movement have been pathetic failures, find someone else's movement and try to lead it''. 3. BOOKCHIN IS AN EGOMANIACAL LEADER Bob Black, Anarchist, ANARCHY AFTER LEFTISM, 1997, p. 9. Something went awry. Although Dean Bookchin was indeed widely read by North American anarchists - one of his acknowledged sycophants calls him "the foremost contemporary anarchist theorist'" - in fact, not many anarchists acknowledged him as their dean. They appreciated his ecological orientation, to be sure, but some drew their own, more far-reaching conclusions from it. The Dean came up against an unexpected obstacle. The master-plan called for anarchists to increase in numbers and to read his books, and those parts came off tolerably well. It was okay if they also read a few anarchist classics, Bakunin and Kropotkin for instance, vetted by the Dean, with the understanding that even the best of them afford "mere glimpses" of the forms of a free society subsequently built upon, but transcended by, the Dean's own epochal discovery, social ecology/social anarchism. Bookchin does not mind standing on the shoulders of giants - he rather enjoys the feel of them under his heel - so long as he stands tallest of all. 4. BOOKCHIN USES STALINIST TACTICS Bob Black, Anarchist, ANARCHY AFTER LEFTISM, 1997, p. 12. Where Bookchin accuses rival anarchists of individualism and liberalism, Stalinists accuse all anarchists of the same. For example, there was that Monthly Review contributor who referred to Bookchinism as "a crude kind of individualistic anarchism"! In other words, capitalism promotes egotism, not individuality or "individualism." ... The term "bourgeois individualism"' an epithet widely used today against libertarian elements, reflects the extent to which bourgeois ideology permeates the socialist project - these words being, of course, those of Bookchin the Younger. That the Dean reverts to these Stalinist slurs in his dotage reflects the extent to which bourgeois ideology permeates his project. Fanatically devoted to urbanism, the Dean was being complimentary, not critical, when he wrote that "the fulfillment of individuality and intellect was the historic privilege of the urban dweller or of individuals influenced by urban life" Individuality's not so bad after all, provided it's on his terms.

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Literature as a Source of Values Lincoln-Douglas debate is, fundamentally, about evaluating competing values and philosophies. It follows a Hegelian model, where the affirmative presents a thesis (the value they advocate), the negative presents an antithesis, and the judge is asked to derive from the round the optimal synthesis. The most common strategy used to justify those competing values is descriptions of philosophical arguments made almost exclusively by European philosophers from earlier centuries. This strategy has gained a nearly universal, hegemonic grip over the teaching of LincolnDouglas debate today. My goal in this essay is to provide an alternative to this method. Rather than using the philosophies of a very limited group of traditional thinkers, I suggest that we explore literature as a source of support for values in debate. WHY NOT PHILOSOPHY? Perhaps the best reason to step away from the exclusive use of philosophy is simply because it is exclusive. Venturing into more creative ways of justifying your case will have many benefits. To begin with, the philosophers commonly used in Lincoln-Douglas debate-such as Locke, Hobbes, Kant and Mill-are significantly overused. The frequency with which debaters encounter these philosophers mean that nearly every debater is prepared to argue against them. Using non-traditional sources to justify your case will catch your opponent unprepared, creating for you a strategic advantage. An additional reason to avoid using exclusively traditional philosophical texts is that it is anti-educational. The more diverse research you do, the more you will get out of debate. WHY LITERATURE? There are innumerable reasons for using literature (as well as poetry) to explain and justify your arguments in a debate. The first, and perhaps most important reason is simply that literature can be an effective mechanism for proving your case. Literature is very germane to questions of philosophy, "the two disciplines are natural alliesphilosophy supplying perennial themes raised anew from one generation to the next, literature providing vivid illustrations of the meaning and poignancy of abstract thought" (Kleiman and Lewis xiii). A carefully selected literary passage, or poetic verse, may provide more warrants than a passage from a philosophical text. Second, literature utilizes underused component of persuasion: pathos. Lincoln-Douglas debate, concerned with the study of ethos, has become entirely logocentric. As it is currently practiced, community standards limit the kind of discourse deemed acceptable as arguments. It is a world in which the concepts of storytelling, analogy, and pathos have lost all value and acceptability. There is no good reason why these forms of argumentation should be excluded from debate. It is therefore important to make every effort to break down the tyranny of logocentric argumentation. Using literary passages in debate is an easy way to attempt to do that. Third, literary passages can often be a more persuasive means of conveying your argument than the use of dense philosophic texts. To begin with, the later is intended for a written, not spoken format. It is also written in an academic language that is not ideal for persuading ordinary people. While many of your judges may be well-versed in mainstream philosophy, some will not. However, using quotations from novels can be a more effective means of persuasion because it speaks to all of the different sorts of people you may have judge you, from someone with a degree in philosophy to somebody's mother. Additionally, a well-told story is more capable of evoking empathy and other emotions than nonfiction, and causing your judge to have an emotional response is a surefire way to get their attention and to make your speech memorable. Fourth, fictional passages can provide a more complex way of explaining your value than philosophical texts. While the later tends to be solely explicit, the former has the potential for figurative language, inventive characters, and symbolism, in addition to straightforward description of concepts. When they do not explicitly define the values in question, literary passages can often tell stories which do define values by analogy. This is a bit more difficult format to use than a straightforward definition of your value, but if you succeed in using it, the effect will be much stronger, and you will look far more creative and skilled as a speaker.

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Fifth, a more practical than theoretical justification, while most high school students have to actively seek out philosophical texts, or get them from coaches, the use of literary passages is much simpler. Upon reflection, dozens of books you have already read will emerge as possible sources of quotations. Moreover, the books used in English classes is extremely useful, because not only do you have to read it anyway, most classes will include an examination of important themes in the book, which will give you a head start in identifying what aspects of the book might be applicable to debate. Finally, one reason using literature might be important in and of itself, regardless of its affects on competitive success, is the potential for diversity that it opens up. As it has been said so frequently that it has become a cliche, philosophy is dominated by dead white men. While this is not technically true about philosophers in general-since many non-Western and modern philosophers have more diverse identities-it is certainly true about the philosophers that most Lincoln-Douglas debaters choose to use. The reliance on old European philosophy is incredibly limiting. However, women and racial minorities have greater access to the literary field than to philosophy, which has been the case for a long time. As a result, there are an exceptional number of authors who could be used for debate who would increase the diversity of the sources' identities. While I have not included any female authors, source diversity in the passages I have used include a focus on world literature (Dostoyevsky and Hesse), as well as authors who have intimate experience with class- and race-based discrimination (Steinbeck and Ellison, respectively). WHAT IS AN INDIVIDUAL? Valuing individualism or any other ego-oriented value requires that we first answer a fundamental question: what constitutes an individual identity? Following in the philosophical tradition, it seems that the body would be a poor measure, although that is the standard used by the scientific community, because of the historical mind/body dualism established by philosophers such as St. Augustine. Is it, then, the idea of a mind? The mind is a fickle standard; in cases of amnesia, significant change in personality over time, or psychological disorder, we do not say that the individual is an entirely different person. What an identity is, exactly seems to be impossible to pin down for certain. As a result, all of the texts used below have a somewhat different take on what it means to be an individual, what the purpose of an identity is, and whether or not we should focus on that as a value. They also speak to the contrasting question: if we do not value the individual's identity above all else, what should we value? For each of the texts used for evidence, I'll provide a context via a summary of relevant themes, and how the passages I've chosen could be useful in arguing for or against a value of individualism, egoism, etc. NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND (Fyodor Dostoyevsky) This novella is uniquely useful in examining the way novels often explicitly address subject-matter relevant to a Lincoln-Douglas debate, but in a more interesting format than philosophical texts. The book NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND is told in a somewhat original style. While the second half is a more traditional story, the first half of the book consists of a first person narrative, although diatribe would be a better word, directed explicitly towards the readers. The narrator says that he does not intend for anyone to read it, but at the same time, he specifically addressed the reader as "you," in a direct, accusatory tone. Using narrative writings like this is a good way of getting the attention of your judge. The section is filled with his philosophical ramblings, which frequently comes back to issues of individual identity and what motivates people to act as they do. Dostoyevsky himself saw the applicability of the personal, fictional narrative to larger concepts. He began the book with the disclaimer, "The author of these Notes, and the Notes themselves, are both, of course, imaginary. All the same, if we take into consideration the conditions that have shaped our society, people like the writer not only may, but must, exist in that society" (Dostoyevsky 13). This speaks directly to the use of literature in Lincoln-Douglas debate. None of the characters in these novels existed in real life. The situations prompting their musings were created in the imaginations of their authors. Regardless, what makes them any different, or less useful, than the non-fictional memoirs of a philosopher? For example, community standards allow the use of Thoreau's book WALDEN as a philosophical text. But what is the 433

difference between the observations on nature and life of Thoreau and the observations of Dostoyevsky's narrator? I would suggest that there is no difference, in terms of its utility in justifying or explaining your value. NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND is also demonstrative of the levels of complexity possible in a fictional work. In the passage I have quoted from, the narrator describes how the pursuit of individuality and absolute autonomy moves people to act stupidly, in ways counter to their own best interest. On face, this seems to be an indictment of individuality. However, the narrator is a strange man. Having lived underground for forty years, by his count, he has become bitter and angry. As a result, he revels in the oddities and flaws of human nature. In an ironic way, therefore, the negative qualities he ascribes to individuality are the very things which imbue it with value, for him. Because of this bizarre character, constructed by Dostoyevsky, we get a unique and complex perspective on the problems of individuality that would never appear in a non-fiction text. THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY (Oscar Wilde) Though its story is told in a much more typical format for a novel, THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY, like NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND, gives explicit commentary on the values of individualism. In Wilde's book, the arguments are made almost exclusively by the cynical and talkative character Lord Henry. In a series of conversations with his socialite friends, he addresses topics as diverse as virtue, beauty, pleasure, poetry, love, history, science, and others. The way Oscar Wilde's novel is constructed allows a sense of irony inaccessible in a serious philosophical text. Sir Henry describes individualism as of the highest importance. He also appears, to the reader, to be incredibly self centered, and we gather that the value he puts on individual identity is to a large extent the result of his focus on his own. However, the intricacy of Wilde's craft is apparent in that Lord Henry is fully aware of his own selfishness, so that rather than attempt to divorce individualism from selfishness, he weds the two and describes selfishness as a value. Typical non-fictional philosophy would merely take the first approach. This clearly demonstrates that using a literary passage can give an entirely unique and creative perspective on a value. Lord Henry also uses more standard justifications for the value of individualism. Making reference to the sorts of justifications typically used by Lincoln-Douglas debaters, he explains that morality is based on following the laws of nature: nature rewards moral behavior with pleasure, and acting individualistically is pleasurable. Thus, he proves that individualism is a moral value. While examples like this are less common, they prove that it is still possible to use literary passages and not only be entirely consistent with other philosophy, but that its use can dovetail perfectly, providing a more original flair to arguments you would have been making even without it. One other aspect of Wilde's writing that makes passages from his texts useful for a debater is Wilde's use of humor. While philosophical books tend to be dry, to say the least, novels are much more open to utilizing humor occasionally or consistently. Including entertaining parts of the passage in your speech can be an effective mechanism to improve your quality as a speaker, and make you more persuasive. Any time you can elicit an emotional response out of the judge, you are likely to have a stronger impact than a recitation of even the most well thought-out logical argument. The use of literature is incredibly useful for this pursuit, because whether your goal is to make your judge laugh or feel sad, literature and poetic passages are far more suitable than non-fiction texts. DEMIAN (Hermann Hesse) In its study of individual identity, DEMAIN-much like NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND and INVISIBLE MAN-focuses on the life of a person who, due to a variety of environmental factors, becomes an eccentric, but thoughtful, recluse. This is a common theme in the novels I've chosen, because studying the oddest of identities give us a stronger sense of what an identity is. Moreover, because of their self-imposed solitude, the narrators in each of these books is very much in touch with their own individuality, and are prone to comment on its importance. In DEMAIN, the main character is an outcast partly because of his odd personality and partly out of the desire to reject societal norms. Because he spends much of his life alone, contemplating his own identity, he places extraordinary value on it. He does not want his personality to be influenced by other people, so he isolates himself. While this demonstrates the danger of taking the value of individuality to the extreme, his description of the intrinsic worth of every human being, because they are unique, is a beautifully written articulation of the value of individual 434

identity, which far surpasses the eloquence of any philosophical passage describing that subject that I have read. It utilizes the pathos, not the logos, of persuasion to make its philosophical point. This book also indicates another positive feature of using literary works. While most philosophers want to phrase the arguments they make so that they sound completely original and new, fictional authors much more often embrace the influences they have had from their peers. In other words, a passage by a philosopher might give you their idea of what individuality means, but in Hesse's story, we can discern the influence of Nietzche, Dostoyevsky, and especially Freud. The position taken in Hesse's novel is therefore supported by any number of people and philosophical traditions. Not only is this invaluable when you use passages from novels like this in your case, but doing a little bit of background research on the author can often help you find many other sources of information relevant to the value you are working on that you can research in addition. INVISIBLE MAN (Ralph Ellison) There are many themes in INVISIBLE MAN that could be used in a Lincoln-Douglas debate round, but its examination of identity is perhaps the most poignant. The title of the book refers to its largest theme, which relates directly to the study of identity. In the prologue, the narrator describes the process by which he became invisible, "I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me" (Ellison 3). He describes it as a defect of the inner eyes, beyond the eyes which view physical reality. White society would like to deny his existence, and in doing that, they make him invisible. This simultaneously robs him of any sort of identity, and provides him with a new one. He is now the Invisible Man. Three passages indicate how this for the narrator, embracing his identity is crucial (although at times painful), and how the loss of individuality can be dehumanizing. In the first passage, the narrator has been in an accident at his job at the paint factory. He wakes up in a hospital bed with amnesia, and suffers a crisis of identity. He can no longer remember his name. In part because of the insistence of the doctors, but also because of his own standards of acceptability, the inability to remember his own name indicates to him that his identity has been erased, inspiring panic. In his failure to ascertain his name and his identity, the narrator feels only pain. In the second passage, which takes place earlier in the book, the narrator has found himself unfortunately in a saloon, and is in a conversation in a with a war veteran and Mr. Norton, a wealthy donor to the school who the narrator is supposed to be supervising. As the narrator becomes increasingly concerned for the well being of the very important person in his care, the veteran berates him for being so concerned about fulfilling the expectations of society. The veteran makes the argument that when you lose your individuality at the expense of doing what is expected of you, you fail to be human. The final passage from Invisible Man that I've included describes the fluidity of identity. The narrator discovers that when he speaks to large crowds, he gains confidence and develops nearly a new persona. Because the spectators see him as an entirely different person than he is in his private life, he sees public speaking as a means to transform his identity at will. This brings up an important question: if identity is fluid, and people can change the essence of their identities relatively easily, how can we focus on the value of individualism. There is no stable self to focus on. While each of these passages deals somewhat explicitly with the concept of individual identity, they are also useful because of their strong symbolic content. Ellison, and many writers like him, relies as much on recurring metaphors to tell the story as he relies on straightforward sentences which move the plot along. Some passages, where he focuses on a particular image and lets the story slow down, are important potential sources to look for value-related material. THE GRAPES OF WRATH (John Steinbeck) This excerpt, part of a much longer, but beautifully written passage, begins to get at the kind of values we must sacrifice when we put emphasis on the value of individualism. In the passage, Ma faces a dilemma. Her identity as mother, prescribes the role of taking care of her family first and foremost. Because they have only a little to eat, her instinct is to give it to her family. However, as she is cooking, children from all around the farm labor camp crowd 435

around to smell the stew, because they, just like her family, are malnourished and starving. Because of her compassion, Ma feels the competing desire to feed the children, even though it means she will be unable to provide for her family. This sets up the value conflict used in the majority of Lincoln-Douglas debate resolutions: the individual versus the community. In the end, Ma decides that she can't stand to watch the poor children starve, so she gives out the food. This indicates that in the end, she valued equality within the community, and her relationship to it, over her own individual identity. This passage never explicitly mentions either of the terms individual or community. Instead, it tells a brief story. This is illustrative of another way that debaters can make use of literary passages as evidence in debate rounds. Steinbeck's story provides an analogy that is useful when describing how individuals can make the choice so sacrifice some of their own rights, their identity, etc. in order to place a greater value on the community. For examples like this, it is often just as useful to describe the story as to read a passage from it. Unlike the other examples where the values in question were dealt with more explicitly and succinctly, in this passage it is the theme that is important, not the specific language. HOW TO RESPOND TO THE USE OF LITERATURE Responding to an opponent who uses literary passages in their speech is not much different than responding to any other style of argument. The first, critical step is to ascertain what point they are trying to make with the quotation. If you can figure out what the argument is, you can respond to it in any way you feel most comfortable. However, if it is not readily apparent to you what point they are trying to make, don't become flustered and assume that it's your fault. If, after listening to their case, you do not understand the point of the story they told, it is likely that it was due to an inadequate explanation on their part, and it is likely that the judge is just as confused as you are. An argument made explicitly or by analogy through the use of literature can be responded to in a typical logic-based fashion. If they are using it to define their value, for example, you can make the same sort of straightforwardly philosophical arguments against their value that you would have made regardless of the way they defended it. In fact, if you are feeling completely lost in terms of how to respond to their literary passage, ignore it entirely. You can focus on the specific arguments they are making throughout their case and respond to those, without ever acknowledging the way that they presented it. Another strategy, if you are prepared to do so, would be to counter their use of literature with your own. Use a different story, even one off the top of your head if you can think of one, to provide a counter-story to the one they told. If they used a passage from The Portrait of Dorian Gray to defend individualism as a form of positive selfishness, use a similar method to describe the negative effects of selfishness. Even if you did not prepare before the round, you may be able to think of a childhood fable or a personal narrative that can counter their argument. Do not allow the debate to digress so that it is all metaphor and no argument. As long as your counter-story or counter argument provides a good warrant to respond to theirs, it can be an effective strategy. BIBLIOGRAPHY Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND/THE DOUBLE, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1972. Ellison, Ralph, INVISIBLE MAN, New York: Vintage International, 1995. Gibson, Andrew, POSTMODERNITY, ETHICS AND THE NOVEL, New York: Routledge, 1999. Hesse, Herman, DEMIAN, New York: Bantam Books, 1965. Kleiman, Lowell and Lewis, Stephen, PHILOSOPHY: AN INTRODUCTION THROUGH LITERATURE, New York: Paragon House, 1990. PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE, ed. Denis Dutton, Danvers: Johns Hopkins University Press, April 1998. 436

Steinbeck, John, THE GRAPES OF WRATH, New York: Penguin Books, 1976. Wilde, Oscar, THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY, Toronto: Dover Publications, 1993.

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LITERATURE CAN SERVE AS PHILOSOPHY IN DEBATE 1. STORYTELLING IS INTEGRAL TO REASON AND PHILOSOPHY Denis Dutton, No Qualifications Available, PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE, April 1998, p.262 Turner's thesis is radical: the capacity to tell stories, and to project them on new contexts as parables, is the fundamental and essential tool of human reason. Turner challenges an idea presupposed by most of Western philosophy: that at the heart of language and communication lies an impulse to produce descriptions that are either true or false. The basic unit of speech-or so many philosophers seem to assume-is the simple declarative sentence, which, true or false, refers to some state of affairs. For Turner this is but a partial truth. For simple declarative sentences-The moon shines on the lake, a mother feeds her baby, the winds rustles the trees, I pour milk into my coffee-are each a tiny story event. The will to construct narratives, to build larger and larger stories from smaller ones, is virtually continuous in conscious thinking: "Narrative imagining-story-is the fundamental instrument of thought. Rational capacities depend on it. It is our chief means of looking into the future, of predicting, of planning, and of explaining. It is a literary capacity indispensable to human cognition generally." 2. USING LITERATURE BREAKS DOWN THE HEGEMONY OF PURE PHILOSOPHY Denis Dutton, No Qualifications Available, PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE, April 1998, p.263-264 When we move parabolically from one space to another we create a conceptual blend that, while neither true nor real, may tell us something we need to know. Traditional philosophy and psychology have been too often blind to blended spaces because of their obsession with truth and inferential thinking. But we are able with ease to blend and adapt meanings to create fictional situations and spaces which we know perfectly well are not "real" and yet are true about some aspect of the real: a story about talking animals and a farmer who understands them throws light on another story, which incidentally can be explained again in terms of flintlocks or mufflers. This is not a specialized skill, learned after more basic inferential skills and after clear distinctions between truth and falsity are established, but a process that small children, let alone adults, have no trouble mastering. 3. PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE, AS TWO OF THE HUMANITIES, ARE INTERRELATED Alfred Louch, No Qualifications Available, PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE, April 1998, p.231 Congress once tried to define the Humanities. The term embraces, said the bill establishing the National Endowment for the Humanities, the study of language, linguistics, history, jurisprudence, philosophy, archaeology, comparative religion, ethics, the history, criticism, theory and practice of the arts, those aspects of the social sciences which have humanistic content and employ humanistic methods...well, there's a bit more, and also a clause or two I have not bothered to include, but let's stop there. The authors of the bill evidently came to see that any list claiming to be complete would exclude some worthy claimants to the endowment's funds. Besides any definition describing exactly what humanists do was quite beyond the powers of their humanist advisors and therefore hardly a task for them. So they said in effect: you know what it's like to study Plato or Shakespeare, the Carthusians or the Cathars, diplomatic manoeuvers among nineteenth-century European powers or religious icons in Byzantine civilization, and of course what it means to acquire the discipline to produce impeccable texts and literate translations. That, and anything like it, is humanistic. The humanities is a family, and its various members share, as Wittgenstein would say, family resemblances.

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INDIVIDUAL IDENTITY IS A STRONG BASIS FOR VALUES 1. THE UNIQUE NATURE OF INDIVIDUALS MAKE THEM VALUABLE Herman Hesse, DEMIAN, 1965, p.3-4 Yet what a real living human being is made of seems to be less understood today than at any time before, and meneach one of whom represents a unique and valuable experiment on the part of nature-are therefore shot wholesale nowadays. If we were not something more than unique human beings, if each one of us could really be done away with once and for all by a single bullet, storytelling would lose all purpose. But every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world's phenomena intersect only once in this way and never again. That is why ever man's story is important, eternal, sacred; that is why every man, as long as he lives and fulfills the will of nature, is wondrous, and worthy of every consideration. 2. INDIVIDUAL IDENTITY IS CRITICAL TO BEING HUMAN Ralph Ellison, INVISIBLE MAN, 1980, p.239-240 WHAT IS YOUR NAME? A tremor shook me; it was as though he had suddenly given a name to, had organized the vagueness that drifted through my head, and I was overcome with swift shame. I realized that I no longer knew my own name. I shut my eyes and shook my head with sorrow. Here was the first warm attempt to communicate with me and I was failing. I tried again, plunging into the blackness of my mind. It was no use; I found nothing but pain. I was the card again and he pointed slowly to each word: WHAT...IS...YOUR...NAME? I tried desperately, diving below the blackness until I was limp with fatigue. It was as though a vein had been opened and my energy syphoned away; I could only stare back mutely. But with an irritating burst of activity he gestured for another card and wrote: WHO...ARE...YOU? Something inside of me turned with a sluggish excitement. This phrasing of the question seemed to set off a series of weak and distant lights where the other had thrown a spark that failed. Who am I? I asked myself. But it was like trying to identify one particular cell that coursed through the torpid veins of my body. Maybe I was just his blackness and bewilderment and pain, but that seemed less like a suitable answer than something I'd read somewhere. 3. SMALL FLAWS ARE WHAT MAKE INDIVIDUALS SPECIAL Oscar Wilde, THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY, 1891, p.13 "The real drawback to marriage is that it makes one unselfish. And unselfish people are colourless. They lack individuality. Still there are certain temperaments that marriage makes more complex. They retain their egotism, and add to it many other egos. They are forced to have more than one life. They become more highly organized, and to be highly organized is, I should fancy, the object of man's existence. Besides, every experience is of value, and, whatever one may say against marriage, it is certainly an experience. I hope that Dorian Gray will make this girl his wife, passionately adore her for six months, and then suddenly become fascinated by some one else. He would be a wonderful study." "You don't mean a single word of all that, Harry; you know you don't. If Dorian Gray's life were spoiled, no one would be sorrier than yourself. You are much better than you pretend to be." Lord Henry laughed, "The reason we all like to think so well of others is that we are all afraid for ourselves. The basis of all optimism is sheer terror. We think that we are generous because we credit our neighbour with the possession of those virtues that are likely to be a benefit to us."

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INDIVIDUALITY IS SUPERIOR TO A COMMUNITY FOCUS 1. THE PURPOSE OF HUMAN EXISTENCE IS SELF-DEVELOPMENT, NOT COMMUNITY Oscar Wilde, THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY, 1891, p.13 "Have you really a very bad influence, Lord Henry? As bad as Basil says?" "There is no such thing as a good influence, Mr. Gray. All influenced is immoral-immoral from the scientific point of vies." "Why?" "Because to influence a person is to give him one's own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of some one else's music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him. The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly-that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one's self. Of course they are charitable. They feed the hungry, and clothe the beggar. But their own souls starve, and are naked." 2. THE ESSENCE OF GOOD IS DEVOTION TO THE SELF, NOT TO OTHERS Oscar Wilde, THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY, 1891, p.13 "Pleasure is Nature's test, her sign of approval. When we are happy we are always good, but when we are good we are not always happy." "Ah! but what do you mean by good?" cried Basil Hallward. "Yes," echoed Dorian, leaning back in his chair, and looking at Lord Henry over the heavy clusters of purple-lipped irises that stood in the centre of the table, "what do you mean by good, Harry?" "To be good is to be in harmony with one's self," he replied, touching the thin stem of his glass with his pale, fine-pointed fingers. "Discord is to be forced to be in harmony with others. One's own life-that is the important thing. As for the lives of one's neighbors, if one wishes to be a prig or a Puritan, one can flaunt one's moral views about the, but they are not one's concern. Besides, Individualism has really the higher aim. Modern morality consists in accepting the standard of one's age. I consider that for any man of culture to accept the standard of his age is a form of the grossist immorality." "But, surely, if one lives merely for one's self, Harry, one pays a terrible price for doing so?" suggested the painter. "Yes, we are overcharged for everything nowadays. I should fancy that the real tragedy of the poor is that they can afford nothing but self-denial. Beautiful sins, like beautiful things, are the privilege of the rich." "One has to pay in other ways but money." "What sort of ways, Basil?" "Oh! I should fancy in remorse, in suffering in...well, in the consciousness of degradation." "Lord Henry shrugged his shoulders. "My dear fellow, mediaeval art is charming, but mediaeval emotions are out of date. One can use them in fiction, of course. But then the only things that one can use in fiction are the things one has ceased to use in fact. Believe me, no civilized man ever regrets a pleasure, and no uncivilized man ever knows what a pleasure is." 3. FULFILLING THE EXPECTATIONS OF SOCIETY DO NOT JUSTIFY SACRIFICING IDENTITY Ralph Ellison, INVISIBLE MAN, 1980, p.94 Then suddenly he fixed me with his eyes. "And now, do you understand?" "What?" I said. "What you've heard!" "I don't know." "Why?" I said, "I really think it's time we left." "You see," he said turning to Mr. Norton, "he has eyes and ears and a good distended African nose, but he fails to understand the simple facts of life. Understand. Understand? It's worse than that. He registers with his senses but short-circuits his brain. Nothing has meaning. He takes it in but he doesn't digest it. Already he is-well, bless my soul! Behold! a walking zombie! Already he's learned to repress not only his emotions but his humanity. He's invisible, a walking personifications of the Negative, the most perfect achievement of your dreams, sir! The mechanical man!" Mr. Norton looked amazed.

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COMMUNITY IS A BETTER VALUE THAN INDIVIDUALISM 1. FOCUSING ON THE COMMUNITY IS THE BEST MEANS TO EQUALITY John Steinbeck, THE GRAPES OF WRATH, 1976, p.330-332 The strange children stood close to the stew pot, so close that Ma brushed them with her elbows as she worked. Tom and Uncle John beside her. Ma said helplessly, "I dunno what to do. I got to food the fambly. What'm I gonna duo with these here?" the children stood stiffly and looked at her. Their Wes were blank, rigid, and their eyes went mechanically from the pot to the tin plate she held. Their eyes followed the spoon from pot to plate, and when she passed the steaming plate up to Uncle John, their eyes followed it up. Uncle John dug his spoon into the stew, end the banked eyes rose up with t the spoon. A piece of potato went into John's mouth and the banked eyes were on his face, watching to see how he would react. Would it be good? Would he like it? And then Uncle John seemed too see them for the first time. He chewed slowly. "You take this here," he said to Tom. "I ain't hungry." "You ain't et today," Tom said. "I know, but I got a stomickachhe. I ain't hungry." Tom said quietly, "You take that plate inside the tent an' you eat it." "I ain't hungry," John insisted.. "I'd still see 'em inside the tent." Tom turned on the children. "`You git," he said. "Go on now, git." The bank of eyes left the stew and rested wondering on his face. "Go on now, git. You Ain't doin' no good. There ain't enough for you." Ma ladled stew into the tin planes, very little stew, and she laid the plates on the ground. "I can't send 'em away;" she said. "I don' know what to do. Take Your plates an' go inside. I'll let 'em have what's lef'. Here, take a plate in to Kosasharm." She smiled up at the. children. "Look," she said, "you little fellas go an' get you each a flat stick an' I'll put what's lef' for you. But they ain't to be no fightin'." The group broke up with a deadly, silent swiftness. Children ran to find sticks, they ran to their own tents and brought spoons. 2. THE PINNACLE OF INDIVIDUALITY IS TO ACT IN A SELF-DESTRUCTIVE WAY Fyodor Dostoyevsky, NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND, 1864, p.36 But I repeat for the hundredth time that there Is one case, and only one, when a man can consciously and purposely desire for himself what is positively harmful and stupid, even the very height of stupidity, and that is when he claims the right to desire even the height of stupidity and not be bound by the obligation of wanting only what is sensible. After all, this height of stupidity, this shim, may be for us, gentlemen, the greatest benefit on earth, especially in some cases. And in particular it may be the greatest of all benefits even when it does us obvious harm and contradicts our reason's soundest conclusions on the subject of what is beneficial---because it does at any rate preserve what is dear and extremely important to us, that is our personality and dour individuality. 3. INDIVIDUAL IDENTITY IS TOO MUTABLE AND TEMPORAL TO BE A GOOD VALUE Ralph Ellison, INVISIBLE MAN, 1980, p.239-240 I sensed vaguely and with a flash of panic that the moment I walked out upon the platform and opened my mouth I'd be someone else. Not just a nobody with a manufactured name which might have belonged to anyone, or to no one. But another personality. Few people know me now, but after tonight...How was it? Perhaps simply to be know, to be looked upon by so many people, to be the focal point of so many concentrating eyes, perhaps this was enough to make one different; enough to transform one into something else, someone else; just as by becoming an increasingly larger boy one became one day a man; a man with a deep voice-although my voice had been deep since I was twelve. But what if someone from the campus wandered into the audience? Or someone from Mary's-even Mary herself? "No, it wouldn't change it," I heard myself say softly, "that's all past." My name was different; I was under orders. Even if I met Mary on the street, I'd have to pass her by unrecognized.

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Local Good LOCAL SELF RELIANCE IS GENERALLY DESIRABLE 1. LOCAL SELF RELIANCE BEST FOR MULTICULTURALISM, ECOLOGY AND COMMUNITY Wendell Berry, professor at the University of Kentucky, THE CASE AGAINST THE GLOBAL ECONOMY AND FOR A TURN TOWARDS THE LOCAL, 1996, p. 416-7. What we have before us, if we want our communities to survive, is the building of an adversary internal economy to protect against the would-be global economy. To do this, we must somehow learn to reverse the flow of the siphon that has for so long drawn resources, money, talent, and people out of our countryside, often with a return of only pollution, impoverishment and ruin. We must figure out new ways to affordably fund the development of healthy local economies. We must find ways to suggest economically--for no suggestion will be ultimately effective--that the work, talents and the interest of our young people will be needed at home. Our whole society has much to gain from the development of local land-based economies. They would carry us far toward the ecological and cultural idea of local adaptation. They would encourage the formation of adequate local cultures (and this would be authentic multiculturalism). They would introduce into agriculture and forestry a spontaneous and natural quality control, for neither consumer nor workers would want to see the local economy destroy itself by abusing or exhausting its resources. And they would complete at last the task of freedom from colonial economics begun by our ancestors more than two hundred years ago. 3. LOCALIZATION IS KEY FOR SUSTAINABILITY IN ECONOMICS AND ENVIRONMENT David C. Korten, President of the Foundation for People Centered Development and former Professor at Harvard Business School, THE CASE AGAINST THE GLOBAL ECONOMY AND FOR A TURN TOWARDS THE LOCAL, 1996, p. 30. Nonetheless, the fact is that sustainability in a growth-dependent economy is what Herman Daly calls an impossibility theorem. What is the alternative? Among those of us who are devoting significant attention to this question, the answer is the opposite of globalization. It lies in promoting economic localization--breaking economic activities down into smaller, more manageable pieces that link people who make decisions both positive and negative. It means rooting capital to a place and distributing its control among as many people as possible. 4. MORE LOCALISM THE ONLY WAY TO ACHIEVE ANYTHING POSITIVE Jerry Mander, Senior Fellow at the Public Media Center and co-founder of the International Forum on Globalization, THE CASE AGAINST THE GLOBAL ECONOMY AND FOR A TURN TOWARDS THE LOCAL, 1996, p. 19. The chapters in Part Four may not yet provide a clear road map from here to there, but what is certainly clear, as Edward Goldsmith writes in his final chapter, is that the shift to a more local direction is mandatory. It is the only way to show more promise for sustainability. The present path is, in fact, impossible; it can only lead to negative outcomes. Despite this, many people continue to call it utopianism to speak of changing directions. But it seems clear to me, and to my coeditor in this project, that the charge of utopianism is wrongly directed. What is truly utopian, and perhaps obsessive, is to continue to say that a development model that defies natural limits and economic and social equity can possibly function for long. It's far more practical to explore elsewhere. 5. LOCAL SELF RELIANCE ENHANCES HUMAN SPIRIT AND COMMUNITY WELL-BEING Satish Kumar, head of the Schumacher Society, Gandhian scholar and activist, THE CASE AGAINST THE GLOBAL ECONOMY AND FOR A TURN TOWARDS THE LOCAL, 1996, p. 420. The driving force behind mass production is a cult of the individual. What motive can there be for the expansion of the economy on a global scale, other than desire for personal and corporate profit? In contrast, a locally based economy enhances community spirit, community relationships, and community well-being. Such an economy encourages mutual aid. Members of the village take care of themselves, their families, their neighbors, their animals, lands, forestry and all the natural resources for the benefit of the present and future generations.

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LOCAL SELF RELIANCE IS ECOLOGICALLY SOUND 1. LOCALISM BEST TO STOP CRISES OF UNPARALLELED PROPORTIONS Edward Goldsmith, Founder of THE ECOLOGIST magazine, THE CASE AGAINST THE GLOBAL ECONOMY AND FOR A TURN TOWARDS THE LOCAL, 1996, p. 91. Clearly, there is no way of protecting our environment within the context of a global "free trade" economy committed to continued economic growth and hence to increasing the harmful impact of our activities on an already fragile environment. We must reverse our course. As Tim Lang and Colin Hines recommend in their book THE NEW PROTECTIONISM, we must seek to emphasize local production for local consumption, reduce global trade, and ensure strong environmental standards at all times. There is no evidence that trade or economic development are of any great value to humanity. World trade has increased by twelve times since 1950 and economic growth has increased fivefold, yet during this period there has been an unprecedented increase in poverty, unemployment, social disintegration and environmental destruction. The environment, on the other hand, is our greatest wealth, and to kill it, as the TNCs are methodically doing, is an act of unparalleled criminality. What is more, it is only in their very short-term interests to do so, for, as their leaders should realize, there can be no trade and no economic development on a dead planet. 2. LOCALISM MORE DEMOCRATIC, HUMANE AND ECOLOGICAL THAN GLOBALISM Jerry Mander, Senior Fellow at the Public Media Center and co-founder of the International Forum on Globalization, THE CASE AGAINST THE GLOBAL ECONOMY AND FOR A TURN TOWARDS THE LOCAL, 1996, p. 18. The movement towards economic globalization is no expression of democracy, nor is it the kind of "evolutionary" process that its advocates claim it is, like a force of nature. It's simply a scheme people thought up, an economic experiment designed to favor the institutions that promote it. It's been sold to businesses as an answer to the growing problems of the corporate and political elite. But it's the wrong answer, and it's not in the people's or the planet's best interests to continue. Although it's still difficult for most people in industrial countries to accept, a better answer than economic globalization is to go in the direction of revitalized local, diversified, and at least partially self-sufficient smaller economies. 3. LOCAL PRODUCTION MORE DEMOCRATIC AND SUSTAINABLE Ralph Nader, founder of Public Citizen, and Lori Wallach, head of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, THE CASE AGAINST THE GLOBAL ECONOMY AND FOR A TURN TOWARDS THE LOCAL, 1996, p. 107. But societies need to focus their attention on fostering community-oriented production. Such smaller-scale operations are more flexible and adaptable to local needs and environmentally sustainable production methods. They are also more easily subjected to democratic control, less likely to threaten to shift their operations abroad, and more likely to perceive their interests as overlapping with community interests. 4. LOCALISM REGENERATES CULTURE AND FOOD SUPPLY Karen Lehman, research director of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, and Al Krebs, director of the Corporate Agribusiness Project, THE CASE AGAINST THE GLOBAL ECONOMY AND FOR A TURN TOWARDS THE LOCAL, 1996, p. 130. Actions like those taken by the Indian farmers to challenge the hegemony of global corporations are one important response to the destruction of the local economy and culture. In addition, people in countries all over the world are challenging the practice of export dumping, in which food is sold at prices lower than production costs, thus driving small farmers off the land and into slums throughout the Third World. There are other approaches, however, that don't involve challenges to the global system but instead regenerate local food systems. These approaches will be different in every community, in every region, and in this diversity lies their strength. Peasants in a Mexican mountain village continue to grow corn, and urban dwellers in the United States can make connections directly with farmers who grow their food without the aid of a multinational corporation. Replacing corporate products with local produce on the dinner plate is a small first step in relocalizing the economy.

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Local Bad GLOBALIST FOCUS IS BETTER THAN LOCALIST 1. GLOBAL FOCUS IS BETTER THAN LOCAL FOR SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION Richard Falk, Center for International Studies at Princeton University, EXPLORATIONS AT THE EDGE OF TIME, 1992, p. 131. An emphasis of global implications tends to derive from those portions of the planet that harbor imperial dreams. This does not mean that the globalism of social movements has a secret imperial agenda but rather that the less burdensome context of immediate reality, together with the globalist undertakings of corporations, governments and media, infuse the imagination of reformist First Worlders with a global-scale conception of problems and solutions, and a correspondingly reduced feeling for the overwhelming intensities of local and regional preoccupations. In effect, an ideological unevenness on matters of perception restricts communication and effectiveness. Such restrictions cannot be eliminated, but better mutual understanding can help establish the foundation for more useful kinds of dialogue and social action. 2. NEED GLOBALIZED VISION OF CIVIL SOCIETY Richard Falk, Center for International Studies at Princeton University, EXPLORATIONS AT THE EDGE OF TIME, 1992, p. 103. More and more, various civil societies are becoming disillusioned with facets of the old ways but have yet to comprehend the feasibility of full-fledged alternatives. A primary task of political visionaries at this time is to join in the work of converting societal disillusion into creative social action to overcome the menace and begin to fulfill the promises contained in our situation, especially the visible contours of an emergent global civil society dedicated to human survival in an atmosphere of equity and happiness--a celebration as well as a necessity. 3. GLOBAL FOCUS IS KEY TO A JUST WORLD ORDER Richard Falk, Center for International Studies at Princeton University, EXPLORATIONS AT THE EDGE OF TIME, 1992, p. 125 The new social movements, and the theorizing that accompanies their emergence and evolution, reconstitute our understanding of "the political" and "the global". By bringing "peace and justice" into intimate social relations, we cause a distinct revolutionary challenge to arise that threatens to subvert all modes of oppression. And contrariwise, by refraining from addressing the oppressive element within ourselves, we cast grave doubt upon claims that ideas can play liberating historical roles on behalf of political movements purportedly dedicated to emancipation in one form or another. Both by enlarging our sense of "the political" and by insisting that everyday practices contain an element of "the global," new social movements are dramatically altering our understanding of what the pursuit of a just world order contains in a variety of concrete situations. 4. MUST LOOK BEYOND LOCAL TERRITORIES AND ACT, NOT JUST THINK, GLOBALLY Richard Falk, Center for International Studies at Princeton University, EXPLORATIONS AT THE EDGE OF TIME, 1992, p. 153-4. This ethos implies a reorientation of citizenship in order to go beyond loyal and diligent participation in the collective life of a territorially delimited society that qualifies as a sovereign state. The citizen sensitive to the claims of this emergent ethos needs to extend his or her notions in dimensions of both space (beyond the territory of any particular state) and time (beyond the present, reclaiming past wisdom and safeguarding future generations). Citizenship is conceived not so much as an affirmation of a nonexistent global community; to become a "world citizen" by self-proclamation is both too easy and ineffectual. Rather, implicit in the ethos is the outlook described earlier as that of the citizen-pilgrim, one who is embarked on a journey of deliverance that is centered on the continuing struggle to create a future approaching normative horizons that now seem mere aspirations; one who inhabits as an informing context a rudimentary stage of global civil society.

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LOCALISM CAN BE OPPRESSIVE 1. LOCAL COMMUNITIES CAN ADOPT OPPRESSIVE NORMS, SUCH AS COLONIALISM Michael Albert, Editor of Z MAGAZINE, Noam Chomsky, Professor of Linguistics at MIT, LIBERATING THEORY, 1986, p. 27. Communities can adopt oppressive norms internally, and moreover, whenever one community dominates another not only will the symmetry between their social positions break down, so will the symmetry of internal effects. Regarding colonialism, for example, one of the most oppressive of community relationships, Frantz Fanon writes in THE WRETCHED OF THE EARTH: "Because it is a systematic negation of the other person and a furious determination to deny the other person all attributes of humanity, colonialism forces the people it dominates to ask themselves the question constantly: 'In reality, who am I?'" 2. DEVOLVING POWER TO LOCAL COMMUNITIES OPPRESSIVE TO MINORITIES David Morris, Director the Institute for Local Self- Reliance, THE CASE AGAINST THE GLOBAL ECONOMY AND FOR A TURN TOWARDS THE LOCAL, 1996, p. 30. Delegating authority to communities, some argue, is an invitation to oppress minorities. Sociologists and political scientists worry about cultural insularity and isolation that could lead to Yugosla-type ethnic violence. This fear of Balkanization is a formidable concern and easily deflected. Cohesive, self-conscious communities will undoubtedly view themselves and different and perhaps superior to their neighbors. 3. LOCAL COMMUNITIES CAN BE RACIST, SEXIST AND HOMOPHOBIC Janet Biehl, Institute for Social Ecology, Left Green Network, CIRCLES OF STRENGTH, 1993, p. 57. Moreover, the decentralized community, seen abstractly without due regard to democracy and confederalism, has the potential to become regressive in many other ways as well. Homophobia, anti-Semitism, and other forms of racism as well as sexism, may become part of a parochial communitarian ethos that does not confront the troubling history of naturalistic prescriptions of inferiority or perversion that are applied to certain groups of people. 4. LOCAL GROUPS WITH DIFFERENT BELIEFS WILL CAUSE CONFLICT Michael Albert, Editor of Z MAGAZINE, and Noam Chomsky, Professor of Linguistics at MIT, LIBERATING THEORY, 1986, p. 25. But community differences arise both from differences in internal elaborated characteristics and from the interface between communities. All too often, for example, one community may fear a threatened invasion by another, or two communities may have different beliefs and customs, and each may worry that the other will impose its values or entice away community members. But whatever the real or imagined cause, hostility across community boundaries can have profound effects, including wars, followed by the assimilation or annihilation of one community into another. 5. EVEN WITHOUT WAR, HOSTILITY BETWEEN LOCALITIES CAUSES INTENSE CONFLICT Michael Albert, Editor of Z MAGAZINE, Noam Chomsky, Professor of Linguistics at MIT, et. al., LIBERATING THEORY, 1986, p. 25. Or, short of such intense conflict, the internal evolution of community/cultural forms can nonetheless be disfigured by the cultural products of an outward facing hostility. For example, how communities view each other can affect how each views itself. We need only think of the history of some of the world's most troubled communities--such as the Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs, or Northern Irish Catholics and Northern Irish Protestants--for examples of this powerful dynamic.

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Marxism and Postmodernism The Marxist Rehabilitation Of Modernity: Marxism As An Answer To Postmodernism …Marx's vision of overturning philosophy, like his vision of overthrowing the capitalist order, is still wedded to his philosophical forebears. Conflict-ridden and driven by seemingly opaque forces, Marx's account of modern history remains an Enlightenment narrative of humankind becoming master of its destiny. Class struggle may be the engine of this history, but science, reason, and critique are the agencies that put Enlightened humanity in the driver's seat.1 This is the story of two radical philosophies fighting similar battles, but who are at odds. The story begins a couple of centuries ago, during a time called the Enlightenment. Karl Marx was not yet born, and worldly thinkers were not using terms like “modernism” and “postmodernism.” The Enlightenment promised that humans could perfect their world without having to appeal to kings and gods. Marxism was the culmination of the Enlightenment. Marxism reminded the Enlightenment of its original promises, and posited a “scientific method” of determining why those promises went unkept, and how they could be restored. However, “Modernism,” or what we now call Enlightenment thinking, showed its dark side in the 20th Century. Human perfectibility was manifest as human greed. Science became the technology of weapons and death. And because Marxism had been appropriated by some very evil people, it too revealed a darkness. Millions died in its name, although any thinking person could see the huge leap from Marx and Engels to Stalin and Pol Pot. Nevertheless, like modernism, Marxism remains suspect. Recognizing the link between Modernist structuralism, totalitarianism, and oppression; concerned that individual interpretations always be allowed to flourish, the Postmodern pioneers—Foucault, Derrida, Levinas, Sartre—and their followers attempted to establish a new kind of philosophical discourse, devoted to exposing the tenuous nature of truth claims. Although their target was the same unfair power differentials sensed by Marx, Marx himself became a target of postmodernism’s eschewal of all things scientific. However, a few Marxist philosophers think their “system” can rise above postmodernism’s attack by pointing out two things: (1) the origin of interpretive tyranny in unfair material distribution; and (2) the promise of a “science for the people,” or a set of scientific methods for a democratized, compassionate society. That technique can still be Marxism, and for some thinkers, it must be. This essay will first summarize the postmodern dismissal of Marxism. Next, we will examine Marxism’s attack on post modernity, as well as Marxism’s promise of a philosophy which can be flexible and universal. After exploring the implications of this encounter for value debate, readers can examine the evidence that follows. POSTMODERNISM’S ATTACK ON MARXISM Although the term “postmodern” implies myriad definitions, I view it politically, arguing that postmodern politics treats oppression as a discursive, power-based phenomenon. This reflects Michel Foucault’s method of social critique, which emphasizes “the centrality of discursive practice to the construction and functioning of orders of knowledge, systems of power, and moral perspectives.”2 The privileging of discourse as an object of critique carries with it a concomitant de-privileging of materiality and class. Consequently, all “global models of social analysis and global solutions” give way to “a focus on local and group differences and the ways in which ordinary individuals adapt to and help reshape their environment.”3

William E. Forbath, “Habermas and Socio-Legal Theory,” Law and Social Inquiry (Fall, 1998): 967. Martha Cooper, “Rhetorical Criticism and Foucault’s Philosophy of Discursive Events,” The Central States Speech Journal 39 (1988): 4. See also Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, trans. A.M. Sheridan Smith (New York: Tavistock, 1972). 3 Edward Herman, “Postmodernism Triumphs,” http://204.181.81.41/zmag/articles/jan96herman.htm, 9 September 1998. 446 1 2

Many activists on the Left appear to have abandoned Marxism in favor of a postmodern approach to social change. Victor Wallace argues that the fragmentation which made individuated, non-systemic movements possible is a product of post-World War II repression. He observes that those attracted to postmodernism are the “natural constituents of any socialist project,” due to their concern for liberation, and so the postmodern movement may constitute the most visible immediate threat to “the survival of the socialist project.”4 The postmodern de-emphasis of class is part of a larger de-emphasis of universal struggle: a position that “new social movements” should struggle for merely small reforms. Scholars laud new movements which do not pose “a revolutionary attack against the system, but a call for democracies to change and adapt.”5 Such movements do not concern themselves with questions of economic distribution. Largely composed of the well-educated middle class, in occasional coalition with “marginalized social groups,” they pose no challenge to underlying power structures.6 The working assumption of new movements theorists is that because revolutionary demands can never succeed, movements must concentrate on small reforms: "Countercultural movements hardly succeed in reaching radical political goals. Their strong confrontational character and their lack of political allies make this very difficult. They have many more possibilities for obtaining some measure of success when they struggle for subcultural goals, that is, for goals that have an internal orientation."7 Postmodern approaches to social change discourage anti-systemic change and encourage fulfillment through greater individual shares of the social product. Like identity politics, postmodern movements have a particular ideological stance towards questions of materiality, struggle, class, and theory. Postmodern political theorists reject materialist analyses because of a cardinal rule that no “materiality” can be privileged. That general dismissal of materiality silences specific, personal and collective instances of material oppression. Moreover, postmodernism rejects the idea of a stable source of commonality for the agents of rhetoric comprising social movements. The postmodern belief in the inseparability of the discursive and extra-discursive suggests that movements really mobilize around discursive issues only, or more precisely, that the nature of mobilization is always primarily discursive. Similarly, postmodernists reject any objective notion of class, and their ideological identification with capitalism orients them decisively towards the more comfortable classes. Finally, although postmodernism claims to privilege oppression, it offers no strategic benefit to that privilege, since all oppression is ultimately individual and incapable of transcending local solutions. MARXISM’S DEFENSE AGAINST POSTMODERNISM According to its critics, postmodernism fails as a political ideology due to its denial of the extra-discursive reality of injustice, as well as its advancement of impossible standards for dissenting social movements. These critics argue that while postmodernism purports to combat ideological hegemony of any kind, it fails to critique the connection between liberal democracy and market capitalism.8 They argue that we ought to reject the theory that labor is the source of all value, reject the universality of the working class, and embrace the compatibility of planning and markets. In each of these resides an appeal to a history seen only through the eyes of a capitalist-superior position, one which assumes that class struggle is somehow unreal, and therefore worth de-emphasis.9 Edward Herman Victor Wallis, “Socialism Under Siege,” Monthly Review, January, 1996: 32. Russell J. Dalton, Manfred Kuechler and William Burklin, “The Challenge of New Movements,” Challenging the Political Order: New Social and Political Movements in Western Democracies, ed. Russell J. Dalton and Manfred Kuechler (New York: Oxford, 1990): 3. 6 Karl-Werner Brand, “Cyclical Aspects of New Social Movements: Waves of Cultural Criticism and Mobilization Cycles of New Middle-Class Radicalism,” Challenging the Political Order: New Social and Political Movements in Western Democracies, ed. Russell J. Dalton and Manfred Kuechler (New York: Oxford, 1990): 25-26. 7 Hanspeter Kriesi, Ruud Koopmans, Jan Willem Duyvendak and Marco G. Giugni, New Social Movements in Western Europe: A Comparative Analysis (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995): 237. 8 See Christopher Norris, “The ‘End of Ideology’ Revisited: The Gulf War, Postmodernism, and Realpolitik,” Philosophy and Social Criticism 17 (1991): 1-41. 9 See Moishe Postone, Time, Labor and Social Domination: a Reinterpretation of Marx’s Critical Theory (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993). Postone’s book is favorably reviewed in Eli Zaretsky, “A Marx for Our Time? Moishe Postone’s Reading of Capital,” Philosophy and Social Criticism 22 (1996): 109-116. The title of the review 447 4 5

points out the implicit connection between capitalist hegemony and postmodern political discourse, “a shared underpinning between the massive joining of the Swiss Guards by the elite of the economics profession and the rise of active audience and other postmodern modes of thought.”10 Dana L. Cloud links capitalism to postmodernism by way of their common embrace of individualism, arguing that the rejection of “universals” suggests that each act of oppression is different, and therefore that common material struggle is impossible and undesirable.11 This essay has described a retreat by some on the Left from class-based movement strategies to the metaphysics of identity politics and the anti-metaphysics of postmodernism. While these trends represent predominant strategies of the post-Marxist Left, they do not reflect an end to the structural economic conditions inspiring anti-capitalist movements, nor do they reflect an abandonment of labor politics by workers around the world. In the United States and elsewhere workers in clerical and industrial sectors earn poverty and sub-poverty wages in largely unregulated environments. Hundreds of millions are unemployed, and life for most people can reasonably be called what Marx and Engels once called it: “sad, horrible, heartbreaking.”12 Class differences have intensified rather than dissolved.13 Attempts to delegitimize welfare programs have run into the economic inevitability of poverty.14 Workers’ movements are still mobilizing around class issues.15 The mobility of capital, however, will necessitate struggles appealing to the universality of workers’ interests, a new international movement.16 In spite of a plethora of warrants for Marxist critique, “fashionable thinkers are busily deconstructing everything in sight—except what really counts, capitalism itself.”17 What, then, is the Marxist alternative to postmodern politics? If postmodernism cannot acknowledge poverty and material oppression, can Marxism do so without bringing in the supposedly oppressive ideological baggage of the 19th and 20th century? There seem to be three key components of the Marxist “rehabilitation” of modernity. First, Marxism is fundamentally about democracy. Not “democracy” in the liberal sense; that is, Marxism doesn’t stop with the political practice of representative voting. Rather, Marxists believe that if democracy can work in the political arena, if we can elect our leaders, then in some sense we can “elect” our policies, be they economic or political. article suggests that Marx’s initial theories were appropriate for the 19 th century but not for “our time,” a time when there is no more class conflict. 10 Herman http://204.181.81.41/zmag/articles/jan96herman.htm. 11 Dana L. Cloud, Control and Consolation in American Culture and Politics (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1998): 132. 12 Michael D. Yates, “Braverman and the Class Struggle.” Monthly Review, January 1, 1999, 2. 13 Diana Coole, “Is Class a Difference that Makes a Difference?” http://speke.ukc.ac.uk/secl/philosophy/rp/, 10 May 1999. 14 Carla Rivera, "Welfare Reform is Flawed, Study Says." Los Angeles Times, October 16, 1998: B-1. 15 See Fred Mosely, “The U.S. Economy in 1999: Goldilocks Meets a Big Bad Bear?” Monthly Review, March 1999: 10-21; “KMU Sees More Protests this Year,” Businessworld (Philippines), April 15, 1999, online, Nexis; William J. Emmanuel, “On the Health Care Horizon: The Unionization of Doctors,” The Metropolitan Corporate Counsel, December, 1998: 14; “Zimbabwe’s Labor Leaders Call Second National Strike,” Agence France Press, November 17, 1998, online, Nexis; “South Korean Union Warns of Chaos Over Massive Job Cuts,” Agence France Press, September 22, 1998, online, Nexis. A review of U.S. news media suggests that while the overall percentage of unionized work force has decreased (because of the number of new entrants into the labor pool), militant unionism has increased and localized. See Steven Greenhouse, “AFL-CIO Focuses on Recruiting to Stem Loss of Union Influence,” The New York Times, February 20, 1999: A-8; “Membership in Unions Rises by 100,000,” Charleston Daily Mail, January 26, 1999, online, Nexis; Andrew Julien, “Union Ranks Grew 6 Percent in State in 1998,” The Hartford Courant, January 30, 1999, online, Nexis; Illana DeBare, “State Labor Unions Gain 87,000 Members,” The San Francisco Chronicle, January 29, 1999, online, Nexis. Membership in communist organizations also appears to be increasing slightly. See David Talbot, “Ready for Revolution,” The Boston Herald, April 30, 1999, online, Nexis. Talbot reports: “John Bachtell, a national secretary of the Communist Party USA in New York, said national membership is on the rise and now stands at 20,000.” 16 See Daniel Singer, “Whose Millennium? Communism’s Future,” The Nation, April 19, 1999: 22; John Bellamy Foster, “Contradictions in the Universalization of Capitalism,” Monthly Review, April 1, 1999: 29; Robert W. McChesney, “Noam Chomsky and the Struggle Against Neoliberalism,” Monthly Review, April 1, 1999: 40. 17 John Bellamy Foster, “Rebuilding Marxism,” Monthly Review, March 1999: 38-45, 38. 448

To be sure, Marxists believe people must be emancipated beyond where we are now in order to become capable of self-management in the way described herein. To associate “modernism” in the sense of devising a method of emancipation, with the atrocities committed by Stalin and his ilk, however, is hasty. Stalin represented an almost pre-modern savagery in a country with absolutely no republican democratic tradition. The same applies to Mao, Pol Pot, and most of the East European dictators: these were leaders who had no concept of the Enlightenment’s prioritization of individual rights above the sovereignty of a dictator. Marx’s clumsy phrase “dictatorship of the proletariat” became easy symbolic legitimization for the dictatorship of dictators. Insofar as Marxism is “wedded” to the Enlightenment, it must be wedded to the Enlightenment’s concern for individual rights. To this concern, Marxism adds the importance of building a structural context for freedom: a world where people can think about the issues which affect them because they are not starving or forced to work a third of their lives making other people wealthy. Rights require the ability to exercise them. Second, Marxism recognizes the human necessity of “science,” if by this term we mean humans carefully planning their actions together. Marxism suggests this be done democratically. Marx “was concerned with social relations when studying political economy.” His use of dialectical reasoning necessitated “abstractions,” or theoretical generalizations, but “his abstractions…were not mere constructions of the mind but were taken from the uncomprehended concrete reality that confronted him, that is, capitalism.”18 Third, as Marxism is based in part on a progressive form of logic called dialectical, it is important to emphasize the flexibility and humility of a “people’s science,” whose main objective is the improvement of all human life. Fundamental to this objective is Marxism’s restraint from defining “the good” for “the masses.” Except for a commitment to material necessities, and a general egalitarian directive, socialism is about the freedom to choose for oneself what good can result from our collective material liberation: Indeed, Marx disdained the idea that he was seeking to fashion a “science of society.” Thomas writes, “There is, in other words, in Marx’s writings no general law formulated by abstraction from the principle of interaction itself.” The reason for this is intrinsic to Marxism: “Marx’s analyses of society do not subordinate society to permanent laws like those of physics because society is seen by Marx as being in transition, as moving toward a new arrangement in which the ‘laws’ of classical economics will not apply.” In other words, the goal of Marxism is to move humanity beyond the realm of necessity, where humans are determined by forces beyond their control, to the realm of freedom, where they self-consciously and freely decide their own fate. Historical materialism’s goal is to cancel itself out.19 In other words, a Marxism that retains its original purpose will not fall into the oppressive practices of modernist technology. Modernism fails because its chief practitioners are not concerned with equality of power, only with individualistic self-advantage by utilizing the methods at hand. Postmodernism perpetuates this inequality by emphasizing individualism and discouraging collective action. Marxism sees individuals as possessing intrinsic value, but recognizes mutual dependence, the very foundation of individual and collective self-actualization. IMPLICATIONS FOR DEBATE Few debates will ever be straight up “Marxism versus Postmodernism.” But debaters will bring both Marxist and postmodern principles with them into their arsenals of argument. For example, debaters may talk about the dangers of unchecked capitalism and the necessity to reign in corporations. In doing so, they will invoke the philosophy of Marxism. In other, perhaps more frequent instances, debaters will invoke postmodernism by quoting Foucault and others, saying that the attempt to value certain things above others is oppressive. In such instances, Marxism can offer an

Lawrence Wilde, “Logic: Dialectic and Contradiction,” THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO MARX, (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1994): 281. 19 Ronald Aronsen, After Marxism (New York: Guilford Press, 1995): 98-99. 18

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alternative: valuing certain things above others is fine, as long as people can fairly and equally choose those values, and as long as those values have the possibility of material actualization for everyone. CONCLUSION In response to postmodernism’s dismissal of the “structure” of the world, or its know-ability, Marxism’s answer is that matter exists: both raw and refined matter. Even more provocative is Marxism’s insistence that labor exists. Humans work matter, exchange matter, give to and withhold from one another those items that are necessary and edifying for bodies to encounter. In response to postmodernism’s distrust of the political, and especially mass politics, or to its dismissal of all statements as politically-laden (thereby destroying the distinctive meaning of politics as such), Marxism insists that people can and should take a hand in managing their affairs. And if postmodernism sees the limits of selfmanagement as local only, Marxism refuses to limit human interaction and theorization to mere “local” spaces. In response to postmodernism’s privileging of language and discourse, a healthy Marxism admits that words are important, but reminds us that words come out of mouths, bodily, material entities…that behind some of those mouths are empty stomachs, while other bodies possess more than they need, and that such differences in the physical realm exert a profound influence on the words we use, and the ears which hear them. It is unclear whether the Marxist project can succeed without resorting to practices that cut against its own normative values. Insofar as Marxists resort to those practices, the phrase “Marxism has failed” takes on a truer meaning than that of the catch phrase of conservatives, “Marxism is dead.” Dialectical thinking uniquely recognizes the interconnectedness of means and ends. If there is to be a rehabilitation of the original promises of democracy and science, activists must remember that no principle or truth is more important than the life or conscience of any human being.

Bibliography Althusser, Louis, FOR MARX, New York: New Left Books, 1965. Beilharz, Peter, POSTMODERN SOCIALISM, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1994. Callari, Antonio, Stephen Cullenberg, and Carole Biewener, editors, MARXISM IN THE POSTMODERN AGE, New York: Guilford Press, 1995. Eagleton, Terry, LITERARY THEORY: AN INTRODUCTION, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983. Eagleton, Terry, IDEOLOGY: AN INTRODUCTION, London: Verso, 1991. Jameson, Frederic, "Postmodernism or the cultural logic of capitalism." NEW LEFT REVIEW Vol. 146, 1984, p.53-92. Laclau, Ernesto and Mouffe, Chantel, HEGEMONY AND SOCIALIST STRATEGY: TOWARDS A RADICAL DEMOCRATIC POLITICS, London: Verso, 1985. Laclau, Ernesto and Mouffe, Chantel, "Post - Marxism without apologies." NEW LEFT REVIEW Vol. 166, 1987, p. 79104.

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MARXISM IS “GOOD MODERNISM:” IT STRESSES DEMOCRACY AND COOPERATION 1. MARXISM RESTORES HUMAN SELF-CONTROL BY CRITIQUING THE ECONOMIC SYSTEM Lawrence Wilde, Lecturer in Economics at Nottingham Polytechnic in England, THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO MARX, 1994, p. 283. What ought to become apparent is that Marx’s discussion of contradictions within the very foundation of capitalism is concerned with the loss of human control; the contradictions described are not simply between abstract concepts disembodied from their social authors. What we have in these discussions is the reappearance of the alienation theme that figures so importantly in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, but this time it takes the form of a technical analysis of the commodity form and the exchange process. In Capital Marx termed as commodity fetishism this process in which the producers lost control over their products. “It is nothing but the definite social relation between men themselves which assumed here, for them, the fantastic form of a relation between things.” Having established a contradiction in the simplest category of the capitalist production process, Marx proceeded to show how the apparent resolution of this contradiction in the development of the money system in fact produced more contradictions that would eventually become visible in crisis, those “great thunderstorms” in the mode of production. 2.MARXISM MOVES BEYOND OPPRESSIVE SCIENCE AND METHODOLOGY Ronald Aronsen, Chair if Interdisciplinary Studies at Wayne State University, AFTER MARXISM, 1995, p. 98-99. Indeed, Marx disdained the idea that he was seeking to fashion a “science of society.” Thomas writes, “There is, in other words, in Marx’s writings no general law formulated by abstraction from the principle of interaction itself.” The reason for this is intrinsic to Marxism: “Marx’s analyses of society do not subordinate society to permanent laws like those of physics because society is seen by Marx as being in transition, as moving toward a new arrangement in which the ‘laws’ of classical economics will not apply.” In other words, the goal of Marxism is to move humanity beyond the realm of necessity, where humans are determined by forces beyond their control, to the realm of freedom, where they self-consciously and freely decide their own fate. Historical materialism’s goal is to cancel itself out. 3. THE POSTMODERN ATTACK ON MARXISM IS UNSOUND Lawrence Wilde, Lecturer in Economics at Nottingham Polytechnic in England, THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO MARX, 1994, p. 294-295. Marx insisted that his method by itself offered no guarantees. In The German Ideology he was at pains to point out the limitations of his theory of history and to emphasize that it was no more than a guide to indicate fruitful areas of careful and exhaustive research. He derided Proudhon’s attempt to apply the dialectical method to political economy, because it evaded major problems rather than resolved them; he warned that Ferdinand Lassalle (a German labor organizer) would come to grief if he attempted to expound political economy in the manner of Hegel by trying to apply “an abstract, ready-made system of logic”; and he made a similar dismissal of the social critic Lorenz Von Stein. Clearly, Marx did not regard the adoption of dialectical logic as a magical solution for problems without having recourse to the thoroughness and rigor that he displayed in his own work.

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POSTMODERNISM STOPS PROGRESSIVE SOCIAL CHANGE 1. POSTMODERNISM’S EMPHASIS ON INDIVIDUALISM BLOCKS POSITIVE SOCIAL CHANGE Edward Herman, Political Critic, “Postmodernism Triumphs, Z MAGAZINE, January 1996, Accessed May 19, 2000, http://www.lbbs.org/zmag/articles/jan96herman.htm The postmodernist celebration of the power of the individual and rejection of global models (and inferentially, global solutions to problems) has an even deeper perversity, in that it reinforces individualism at a time when collective resistance to corporate domination is the central imperative. The market consists of numerous corporations that organize and plan to achieve their narrow goals, and which have been steadily growing in size, global reach, and power. At home, they and their political allies are well funded and active; externally, institutions like the IMF, World Bank, the GATT-based World Trade Organization, and the world's governments, work on their behalf. Individual powerlessness grows in the face of this globalizing market; meanwhile, labor unions and other support organizations of ordinary citizens have been under siege and have weakened. Stemming the current market tide, and any future turnabout, is going to require organization, programs, and strategies from below. In this context, could anything be more perverse politically and intellectually than a retreat to micro-analysis, the celebration of minor individual triumphs, and reliance on solutions based on individual actions alone? 2. POSTMODERNISM AVOIDS POLITICAL CRITIQUE, ENCOURAGING PESSIMISM Edward Herman, Political Critic, “Postmodernism Triumphs, Z MAGAZINE, January 1996, Accessed May 19, 2000, http://www.lbbs.org/zmag/articles/jan96herman.htm Pessimism and disillusionment have also led some to a further retreat, with an abandonment of the desire as well as hope for progressive change, and to a celebration of the status quo and the options it affords the individual. The postmodern celebration of popular culture as the locus of subversion and resistance ignores its increasing integration into the life-style and shopping mall world and takes the domination of consumer capitalism as a given. Some of the active audience analysts have become almost as fond of the market as Chicago School economists -- the market is “an expansive popular system” for Angela McRobbie, and an arena where workers struggle with bosses on not grossly unequal terms, as in media-audience interactions, for John Fiske. This is why, while postmodernism's questioning of the existence of anything called truth “has alarmed the bishops” it has “charmed the business executives” (Eagleton). 3. POSTMODERNISM IS INDIVIDUALIST, DENYING THE POSSIBILITY OF EQUALITY Zhao Yuezhi, Sociologist, CANADIAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY, April 1993, p. 83 But the post - modernist turn has also resulted in a celebration of the plurality of discursive positions and the virtual free play of signifiers that implies a liberal vision of abstract agency and an inflated sense of individual autonomy. As Gruneau argues, this emphasis on the radical disarticulation of hegemonic conventional relations between signifiers and signifieds in the media has taken us "far beyond any sense of a truly engaged response to relations of power anchored in a specific historical bloc." 4. POSTMODERNISM ENTRENCHES ELITE CONTROL Edward Herman, Political Critic, “Postmodernism Triumphs, Z MAGAZINE, January 1996, Accessed May 19, 2000, http://www.lbbs.org/zmag/articles/jan96herman.htm There is surely a shared underpinning between the massive joining of the Swiss Guards by the elite of the economics profession and the rise of active audience and other postmodern modes of thought. Terry Eagleton notes that “every central feature of postmodern theory can be deduced, read off as it were, from the assumption of a major political defeat” (Monthly Review, July-August 1995). With the increasing authority of the market, and associated erosion of democracy, radical change has seemed more and more utopian and taking existing arrangements as given necessary realism. In the intellectual and political mainstream, solutions by governmental action are clearly “out” and the age of entrepreneurship and individual achievement is “in.” In this context, it was perhaps inevitable that, on the one hand, many postmodernists should abandon politics altogether, and that, on the other hand, a new and pathetic strand of “populism” should emerge showing that ordinary individuals have power and can triumph, not just Bill Gates, Ted Turner, and Rupert Murdoch.

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POSTMODERNISM IS GENERALLY DESIRABLE 1. POSTMODERNISM PROVIDES THE KEYS TO POSITIVE SOCIAL CHANGE Zhao Yuezhi, Sociologist, CANADIAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY, April 1993, p. 81 Discourse theory and the post - Marxist turn to the politics of signification have made a contribution by reinforcing the recognition of the constitutive nature of language and discourse. These theoretical movements have offered a deserved critique of any theory of knowledge that claims to escape the reflexivity of language. In the area of media and popular culture, these theoretical movements call for the analysis of "media beyond representation" and a rejection of the mechanistic division between media and society, a division characteristic of mainstream media research. They also serve as an important (although hardly new) corrective to economic determinist and class reductionist tendencies in Marxist theories of ideology -- tendencies that are at least partly responsible for a failure on the part of the Left to recognize the importance of cultural politics. 2. POSTMODERN FLEXIBILITY IS AN ANTITODE TO MARXIST AND MODERNIST RIGIDITY Zhao Yuezhi, Sociologist, CANADIAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY, April 1993, p. 82 Finally, post - structuralism's decentring of the author and its emphasis on the polysemic nature of cultural texts and their interpretation by active audiences serve as an important corrective to notions of ideology implicit in such theories as the critique of mass culture by the Frankfurt School and in post - WW II radical political economy, where both meaning and reception are under - theorized (Horkheimer and Adorno, 1972 Miliband, 1973 Clement, 1975 Dorfman and Mattelart, 1975 Schiller, 1976 Smythe, 1981). In these theories, particularly in some political economy analyses, dominant ideology is often seen as flowing directly from corporate control of the media and as unambiguously inscribed in media texts -- texts which in turn produce immediate, and uncontested, ideological effects on the audiences. The new critique of ideology has led to a welcome turn to studies of audience decoding and the interpretation of ideological constructs.

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MARXIST MODERNITY IS TOTALITARIAN 1. DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM IS ABSURDLY CONSEQUENTIALIST: Marxists will accept the death of innocent people if it facilitates the dialectic of history. David A.J. Richards, Professor of Law at NYU, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW, December 1985, p. 1188. Merleau-Ponty argued in his remarkable Humanism and Terror that a Marxist commitment to dialectical materialism required one to adopt a wait-and-see attitude regarding the justifiability of the terror of the purge trials. On this view, standard "liberal" constraints on just punishment in general and political trials in particular should be suspended because the results may be justified on the consequentialist grounds that they advance "the recognition of man by man, internationalism, or the withering away of the State, and the realization of proletarian power." Lukes labels this view "a kind of ultra-consequentialism, in which the very meaning of an action is determined by its long-term results." On this view, irrespective of what a purge defendant such as Bukharin did, meant to do, or reasonably failed to do, his conviction may be justified if it ultimately facilitates the dialectic of history. Because such a consequence would, as it were, retrospectively validate the purge trials, Western Marxists should adopt a waitand-see attitude, rather than condemning the patent injustice of the purge trials. 2. DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM ERASES CIVIL SOCIETY, LEADING TO TYRANNY William E. Forbath, Reviewer, LAW AND SOCIAL INQUIRY, Fall 1998, p. 967. This notion of infusing citizenly interactions into the economy lent itself to a "demystfication" and denigration of the ideal of politics conceived as an autonomous sphere, a realm - in neither market nor state but civic space -where citizens freely talk and debate about the common good. This denigration of politics, in turn, proved useful to those who traded on the myth that putting the economy under control by the socialist state would make it subject to control by a socialist citizenry. Conversely, the suppression of civic space under Soviet rule has made the concept central - imperiously so, we'll see – for Habermas.

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MARXIST MODERNISM IS SELF-DEFEATING 1. DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM DOESN'T TRULY REJECT CAPITALISM William E. Forbath, Reviewer, LAW AND SOCIAL INQUIRY, Fall 1998, p. 967. The rationality of this modern bourgeois order and the possibility that humankind could be "at home" in it were precisely what Karl Marx spurned. Marx embraced the contradictory nature of the modernity with which Hegel sought "reconciliation." He denounced the exploitation, alienation, an commodification of human capacities that were bound up with the modernization process. But equally he affirmed the positive, "progressive" features of capitalism, industrialization, and urbanization; he hailed Enlightened liberalism and capitalist modernity for breaking the carapace of "rural idiocy," ushering in mass literacy, and airing out the fumes of religion, "the opiate of the people," as well as for vastly expanding humankind's "productive forces." In all these ways, Marx proclaimed, capitalist modernity set the stage for a better, more fully developed, more rational modernity. 2. MARX'S LIBERAL-CAPITALIST ASSUMPTIONS, UNDERMINE HIS CRITIQUE OF POLITICS William E. Forbath, Reviewer, LAW AND SOCIAL INQUIRY, Fall 1998, p. 967. If the natural laws of classical liberal political economy were ideological, that was not so with Marx's Capital. By remedying the class-bound and ahistorical quality of the classics, Marx claimed a scientific status for his own economic laws. This was reassuring whenever capitalism's working-class gravediggers seemed to be slumbering. It also meant that Marx had no quarrel with the classic liberal economists' basic assumption that a science of humankind's production of its material means of existence was possible and desirable. What stood in the way of a truly rational organization of "social labor" was the irrationality of class divisions and the organization of production for profit instead of use. Abolish them, and capitalism's "rule over men" would become the mere "administration of things." This was the technocratic aspect of Marx's thought. It too contributed to the denigration of politics in Marxist theory and practice. Viewing human activity through the prism of production and "social labor," Marx could envision the end of class conflict as the end of politics. He tended to think that other forms of conflict and division - religious, ideological, or geographic conflicts, for example - would vanish along with the more "basic" conflicts and divisions of class; so he saw no need for a conception of politics apart from this paradigm of production. Marxism always would lack - indeed, spurn - any separate conception of politics as a realm necessary for individuals and groups with competing interests, ideal and material, to interact in order to arrive at compromises, common interests, and new understandings of the common good. 3. MARXISMS OBSESSION WITH RATIONALITY MAKES IT SELF DEFEATING David A.J. Richards, Professor of Law at NYU, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW, December 1985, p. 1188. Consistent with his morally neutral explanation of social change, Marx argues that revolutionary activity is motivated by self-perceived class interest. On this view, members of the proletarian class are motivated to revolutionary action by the morally neutral goal of advancing their interests. However, as Buchanan explains, each member of the class will not be rationally motivated to engage in revolutionary activity, because revolutionary activity is a public good; the benefits of such activity are available to all, whether or not they participated in the activity. Therefore, the rational potential revolutionary will reap the available benefits of the revolutionary activities of others and not incur the burdens of participation himself. In light of such facts, a motivation that could explain the occurrence of revolutionary activity is a common sense of justice and fairness among potential revolutionaries that both the benefits and burdens of the revolutionary activity be shared. This account of revolutionary activity is not available to Marxist theorists, however, because it recognizes that such activity is not morally neutral.

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Misanthropy and Earth First! I'll admit it: I hang around Earth First!ers. That's not to say I agree with everything they say or do, but I happen to have some friends in the environmental movement, so I get some exposure to it I might not otherwise have. That's a good thing, I think: it's an important modern cause, and it provides me with a close look at a subject I'm very interested in. In many ways, the ecology movement is like the earth itself: very diverse, often contradictory. Moods that change with the times, often violently. That said, it shouldn't be surprising that the radical arm of the environmental movement has faced many critiques not only from the right, but from within its own ranks. Women activists often found the groups sexist, while labor organizations sometimes found factions unsympathetic. One of the most persistent critiques, often levied by allies of the environmental movement or even members, was misanthropy. That's not surprising, for a variety of reasons -- not the least of which is that Christopher Manes, a longtime Earth First!er, wrote under the pen name Miss Ann Thropy for the Earth First! Journal. Get it? Misanthropy, huh, huh. Change the channel, Beavis. But that was a long time ago. The days when an Earth First! slogan was "Rednecks for Wilderness" are long gone. And Chris Manes has long since sold out, going off to practice law and scoff about his wilder days. To be frank, I really thought the charges of misanthropy were either 1. Overblown, or 2. Over. That was before I was at a gathering last year, when two guys started chanting, in unison, "Billions are living who should be dead! Billions are living who should be dead!" Not exactly your average cocktail party stuff, eh? There has always been a dark side to the population control movement. What seems at first to be a worthwhile cause, restraining the earth's burgeoning weight of humans from reproducing, is often a mask for more sinister agendas. Many right-wing foundations just want to limit the growth of non-white populations, for example. Many want to limit immigration to the United States drastically, even cut it off entirely. Earth First! found itself drawn into this, in some cases having to choose sides. Which sides did they choose? Well, in order to understand that, we've got to understand how they got their reputation in the first place. JUST WHAT IS THIS GROUP WITH AN EXCLAMATION POINT AFTER THEIR NAME? Earth First! is an activist group that emphasizes direct action, sometimes illegal direct action, as a solution to the environmental crisis facing the world. The guiding philosophy of Earth First! is called Deep Ecology, which purports to be a "biocentric" philosophy - that is, it is focused on the environment and ecosystems rather than humans. They publish the EARTH FIRST! JOURNAL out of Eugene, Ore., which provides a radical take on ecological matters. You can understand some of the principles contained in each standpoint by looking at the names - Earth First! rather than second, Deep Ecology rather than shallow ecology. The exclamation point, I think, is for emphasis. I mean, for emphasis! For years, a debate has raged in the radical environmental movement over the relative merits of biocentrism and anthropocentrism - anthropocentrism being the belief that the environment must be viewed from a humancentered perspective. This clash has often shown up in competitive debates as well, with the main authors on either side being Murray Bookchin speaking for anthropocentrism and Dave Foreman, Bill Devall or other Deep Ecologists speaking for biocentrism. But there has been a dark part to the debate, always lurking somewhere beneath the surface that has only gotten hotter in recent years. It's one thing to be focused on the earth, but its quite another to be misanthropic - overtly anti-human. Yet those are exactly the charges that have been leveled against Earth First! since the mid-1980s. How much merit do they have? 456

WHAT DO WE MEAN BY 'MISANTHROPY'? Webster's Dictionary defines the term as "Hatred or mistrust of humankind." Like many hatreds, misanthropy can take many forms. The misanthropy of the radical environmental movement generally stems from two distinct roots that merge into one overarching conclusion: the first is human activity which disturbs ecosystems, i.e. development, pollution, resource extraction. This leads to cynicism among the environmentalists about human nature. Don't people care about the fate of the earth, they wonder? And if they don't what does that say about people? This kind of dark outlook leads to a mistrust of humans, particularly as regards ecological activity. The second, and arguably more dangerous, route, comes from concerns about growing population levels in the world. This can take a variety of forms depending on the political slant of the group expressing concern, and there are certainly other groups than Earth First! that have these concerns. The far-right Population-Environment Balance and Zero Population Growth seem to be more concerned with restricting population of third world countries like India and China rather than America, though Americans consume vastly more than citizens of any other country on earth. A sympathetic observer can certainly see how one could get jaded by the activities humans engage in, from stripmining to nuclear testing to the Naval sonar technologies that cause whales to beach themselves - not to mention the pernicious development that continually seems to encroach on wilderness areas regardless of their supposed "protected" status. But an observer given to criticism could just ask easily ask: does that justify quotations like this? * "The optimum human population of earth is zero." - Dave Foreman, Earth First! (Foreman, a leading Earth First!er for many years, is now with the Sierra Club) * "The human race could go extinct, and I for one would not shed any tears." - Dave Foreman, Earth First! * "Human beings, as a species, have no more value than slugs." - John Davis, former editor of the EARTH FIRST! JOURNAL Even if you're a pretty radical environmentalist, these are tough things to swallow. Aren't humans a part of the environment in which they live? Shouldn't finding the solutions relate to mending human interaction with the environment, rather than ending it? Perhaps the most notorious of all eco-misanthropy came in 1987, when longtime radical (and author of the book GREEN RAGE) Christopher Manes wrote a paean to Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome under the "Miss Ann Thropy" pseudonym. Manes - who has now renounced his radical views, but remains an environmentalist and practices law - argued that the disease might help do away with what he saw as the predominant foe to the environment: the industrial economy. "More significantly, just as the Plague contributed to the demise of feudalism, AIDS has the potential to end industrialism, which is the main force behind the environmental crisis," Manes as Thropy reasoned, while asserting that "None of this is intended to disregard or discount the suffering of AIDS victims. Widely distributed was the article's paraphrase of Voltaire: (I)f the AIDS epidemic didn't exist, radical environmentalists would have to invent one." This is surely not an unprecedented viewpoint for members of the radical environmental movement to have adopted. "Man is always and everywhere a blight on the landscape," wrote John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club, proving that some of the roots of misanthropy were planted early. Is this just rhetoric, or is it serious? And how serious? Certainly, no Earth First!er that I know of has ever sought to physically harm other humans during a demonstration, nor have any of these folks sought to spread AIDS, come up with a scheme to reduce human population to that "optimum" level. Undoubtedly, there are some who actually believe life would be much better after a serious natural disaster - for those who survived. But, whether this excuses the rhetoric or not, they seem unwilling to bring about these 457

harrowing fantasies. At any rate, it has been a public relations problem for the movement, whose members have had to deal with being classified as anti-human is most every media piece that has given them notice. IN DEFENSE OF EARTH FIRST! There are a number of ways to answer the charges. For some (not all) members of the movement, their answer would be to grant the link and debate the impact - that is, to say "Yeah, I am a misanthrope, and why aren't you given all the evidence?" As I'll touch on later in this section, though, those folks are believed to be a minority. The more prominent spokespeople for the movement, like Bill Devall, have stressed biocentrism as a "web of life" or "tree of life" philosophy. Instead of respecting their proper role on the tree or in the web, Devall says, humans have allowed their role on the planet to expand too much. That exhibits little if any respect for the other residents of the planet - trees, plants and animals. This stands in stark contrast to the sensationalist rhetoric of Foreman, who made the famous remark about the planet's correct population level. Of course, he has moderated over the years as well. That's another tricky thing about the movement. Earth First! has gone through a series of phases, beginning with a bunch of people who described themselves as "Rednecks for Wilderness." But after a series of criticism from people who agreed with the movement's aims and radical tactics, it became more inclusive over the years - creating splinter and affinity groups within the ranks. One of the wonderful things about a grassroots movement is that it really begins and ends with the people who are part of it. That's also one of the most challenging and troubling things with a grassroots movement, particularly a radical one like Earth First! Everyone has their own ideas, and there is no "leader" per se - though there are certainly forceful personalities, as there are in any organization, that seek out the limelight. But with so many different factions within Earth First!, so many subgroups scattered throughout the world, and so little hierarchy, it's difficult to assign credit or blame for any statement other than to the individual who made that statement. That might seem like a cop-out, but it's true. After all, suppose someone on your debate team makes a statement you don't agree with to a local paper. They're quoted as being "a spokesperson for the local high school debate team." What do you do? Well, unless you're one of the few self-organized programs around the country, you probably go to your coach. If you are one of those self-organized programs, you probably already know the problem I'm leading up to: if there's no real authority figure, there's no way to stop people from doing what they please as long as it falls within some boundary. If they make an outlandish enough statement, everybody on the team will probably start to hate and shun them. They'll quit, or leave, or be forced out. The situation with Earth First! is similar. It's a multi-faceted movement full of a lot of different people. And unless you turn most of them against you, who are they to say you're not an Earth First!er? From this perspective, it is very difficult to tar an entire movement with the views of one or two of its members. An analogy might be to say that the entire membership of the Republican Party are Holocaust revisionists because David Duke, a member, is. This is made a bit more complex by the fact that a misanthropic thread clearly runs through the movement. There are people who, paradoxically, have little use for people. When I say "thread," though, I'm not just throwing in any word: it's an image that I really think is accurate. Earth First! as a rule is composed of radical environmentalists who are also concerned with social justice issues and easing human suffering. The misanthropes appear to be a vocal minority with a rich tradition that is unlikely to be 458

eradicated completely. That's especially true given the decentralized nature of Earth First!. Given a model of leaderless resistance and cells acting toward the same goal but using different tactics and strategy tailored to their local areas, it's almost impossible to nail down exactly what "the movement" stands for. DEBATE APPLICATIONS OF THIS The philosophical issues of anthropocentrism vs. biocentrism will continue to be a hot topic. Knowing the background of this debate is essential. To that end, I would suggest any debater interested in environmental issues pick up DEFENDING THE EARTH, a 1991 book where Murray Bookchin engages in dialogue with Dave Foreman, then the predominant voice for the biocentrists. It's a fascinating read, as each of them get to know the other's position a bit better over the course of the dialogue. Each also writes a little essay in the back discussing what they've learned, gained, changed and not changed as a result of the conversation. Needless to say, this gives you an edge in environmental debates. If you can catch an opponent using misanthropic environmental sources, you can use some of the pro-human arguments against her or him. On the other hand, though, this also gives you more flexibility in running pro-environment cases and positions. If you have a greater grasp of the criticisms, it gives you a better chance to dance around them, shift out of them or avoid them altogether. My advice is to learn all your sources well, choose them wisely, and be sure they haven't said something that could get you into trouble. Sort of how the presidential candidates choose running mates: someone that can speak articulately, but only when spoken to and without shifting from the given and carefully selected subject at hand. If you're serious about running radical environmentalist arguments - and don't get me wrong, I highly encourage it - I also encourage you to spend a great deal of time looking into the history of the movement, so as not to compromise any of your sources. You don't to find out in the middle of the round that someone you're quoting said that humans are only about as important as slugs. Unless, of course, you want to get into that debate. But I wouldn't recommend it. For those of you who are environmentalists yourself, but are so turned off by what you've just read that you think biocentrism isn't for you, check out Bookchin's 1994 book WHICH WAY FOR THE ECOLOGY MOVEMENT? There, he derides many modern environmental groups as misanthropic, eco-fascist or just plain ineffective. It is a slim volume packed with information: just how debaters like it. CONCLUSION The reasons this argument keeps coming up in academic journals, movement publications and elsewhere are twofold. For one thing, the issues at hand are of profound importance. There can be no jobs, no fun and no life on a dead planet. On a base level, most everybody realizes that. The other reason is that there are good arguments to be made for both sides. I don't pretend to have a monopoly on the truth here: just an eye for a great subject for debate research.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Murray Bookchin, WHICH WAY FOR THE ECOLOGY MOVEMENT?, AK Press, Edinburgh/San Francisco, 1994. Murray Bookchin, "Society and Ecology," in DEBATING THE EARTH, edited by John S. Dryzek, Head of Department of Political Science, University of Melbourne, 1998, p. 453. Murray Bookchin and Dave Foreman, DEFENDING THE EARTH: A DIALOGUE BETWEEN MURRAY BOOKCHIN AND DAVE FOREMAN, Black Rose Books, Montreal/New York, 1991. George Bradford, HOW DEEP IS DEEP ECOLOGY?, Times Change Press, California, 1989. Chaz Bufe, LISTEN, ANARCHIST!, Tucson: See Sharp Press, 1998. Bill Devall, "Tokar is Wrong," ALTERNATIVES, June/July 1989, p. 49-50. Christopher Manes, GREEN RAGE. RADICAL ENVIRONMENTALISM AND THE UNMAKING OF CIVILIZATION. Boston, Toronto, London: Little Brown, 1990. Kirkpatrick Sale, "Deep Ecology and its Critics," THE NATION, May 14, 1988, p. 670-675. George Sessions, Ed., DEEP ECOLOGY FOR THE TWENTY FIRST CENTURY. READINGS ON THE PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE OF THE NEW ENVIRONMENTALISM, Boston, London: Shambhala, 1995. Brian Tokar, "Social Ecology, Deep Ecology and the Future of Green Political Thought, THE ECOLOGIST, Vol. 18, Nos. 4/5, 1988, p. 132-141. Donald Worster, "The Rights of Nature. Has Deep Ecology Gone too Far?," FOREIGN AFFAIRS, Vol. 74, No. 6, Dec. 1995, p. 11. Michael E. Zimmerman, "Feminism, Deep Ecology, and Environmental Ethics," ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS, Spring 1987, p. 21-44. Michael E. Zimmerman, Quantum Theory, "Intrinsic Value, and Pantheism.," ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS, Spring 1988, p. 3-30. Michael E. Zimmerman, "Rethinking the Heidegger- Deep Ecology Relationship," ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS, Fall 1993, S. 195-224

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EARTH FIRST! IS NOT MISANTHROPIC 1. DEEP ECOLOGY IS NOT MISANTHROPIC, RACIST OR GENDER BIASED Bill Devall, Ecological Philosopher, ECO-WATCH, May 14, 1993, Accessed May 23, 2000, http://www.fs.fed.us/eco/eco-watch/ew930514. While implicit in these remarks, given the unjustified assertions made by some people about the deep ecology kind of perspective, I want to make it clear that there is nothing in deep ecology which is misanthropic or racist or gender biased. Nor does the deep, long-range ecology movement demand that supporters be followers of any guru or any philosophical or religious position. While some eco-feminists, for example, demand that people take an eco-feminist position before becoming ecologists and some Christians demand that one believe in their doctrines concerning Jesus Christ before becoming an ecologist, the deep, long-range ecology movement is a kind of neutral movement on issues of faith or historical cultural changes. 2. HUMANS ARE BUT ONE LEAF IN THE TREE OF LIFE Bill Devall, Ecological Philosopher, ECO-WATCH, May 14, 1993, Accessed May 23, 2000, http://www.fs.fed.us/eco/eco-watch/ew930514. Understanding deep ecology and its potential contribution to our future involves consideration of ecocentric philosophy, the movement to bring our population in line with our ecology, and the optimal human population for North America. The wellsprings of deep ecology lie in the appeal to our primal sense of our intimate relationship with Nature. What is ecocentric, deep ecology? Deep ecology, or transpersonal ecology as some call it, is based on the understanding that humans are one leaf on the tree of life. Each leaf is important, but leaves develop and they fall without the will of the leaf having any great importance to the whole tree of life. Each human life is part of the tree of life and has some consciousness of other individuated humans, but is not separate from the tree of life and not dominating any branch or twig of the tree of life. 3. REMARKS AREN'T MADE TO DISCOUNT HUMAN SUFFERING Miss Ann Thropy (pseudonym for environmental author Christopher Manes), EARTH FIRST! JOURNAL, 1987, p. 4. More significantly, just as the Plague contributed to the demise of feudalism, AIDS has the potential to end industrialism, which is the main force behind the environmental crisis. None of this is intended to disregard or discount the suffering of AIDS victims. But one way or another there will be victims of overpopulation - through war, famine, humiliating poverty. As radical environmentalists, we can see AIDS not as a problem, but a necessary solution (one you probably don't want to try for yourself). To paraphrase Voltaire: if the AIDS epidemic didn't exist, radical environmentalists would have to invent one.

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CRITICS OF EARTH FIRST! ARE WRONG 1. WRITINGS OF EARTH FIRST!ERS HAVE BEEN TAKEN OUT OF CONTEXT Sandy Irvine, REAL WORLD RESOURCES GUIDE, 1996, Accessed May 23, 2000, http://www.gn.apc.org/eco/resguide/1_16.html. Another alleged piece of evidence with which political ecology is condemned is the column in Earth First! penned by Miss Ann Thropy, who once welcomed famine in Ethiopia and AIDS as a thinning out of surplus population. Again, this line of argument has not been echoed anywhere else in the green movement while the pseudonym used by the columnist might suggest that it should be taken not too seriously, an example perhaps more of bad taste than fascist values. 2. CRITICS OF DEEP ECOLOGY COMMIT THE SAME FALLACIES James J. Hughes, Founder of Eco-Socialist Review, SOCIALIST REVIEW, No. 3, 1989, p. 103. Finally, Bookchin seems to lead himself back into one of the same errors that he so eloquently critiques in deep ecology: the separation of the social order from "the natural." On the one hand, Bookchin insists that, since humans are naturally evolved, anything we do is natural. On the other hand, he insists that nature abhors hierarchy, and that once we get back in touch with our continuity with the natural order we will eschew hierarchy, and vice versa This is again the problem of the leap from IS to OUGHT. Hierarchies exist in the ecosystem, including animal class and gender systems, and our hierarchies are just as "naturally" evolved as theirs. The reason for us to oppose hierarchy has to do with an existential human ethical decision, not with its "unnaturalness." 3. CRITICS, LIKE BOOKCHIN, TAKE TOO UTOPIAN A VIEWPOINT James J. Hughes, Founder of Eco-Socialist Review, SOCIALIST REVIEW, No. 3, 1989, p. 103. Bookchin's equation of nonhierarchical organization with ecology leads us astray not only philosophically, but also politically; it leads us into a utopian rejection of engagement with the actual existing (albeit hierarchical) political structures, such as the Democratic Party and Congress. A complex social order, like a complex organism, requires some degree of specialization, centralization and hierarchy. But the range of possibilities within the human social niche is very broad and we need to ethically decide which of these possible adaptations will ensure the survival of the species and the ecosystem, while satisfying our ethical goals.

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EARTH FIST! HAS EXHIBITED HORRIBLE MISANTHROPY 1. EARTH FIRST! HAS DECLARED AIDS A GOOD THING Chaz Bufe, Anarchist Author, LISTEN, ANARCHIST!, 1998, Accessed May 10, 2000 http://flag.blackened.net/daver/anarchism/listen.html. In a similar vein, "Miss Ann Thropy," a regular contributor to Earth First!, has argued that AIDS is a "good" thing, because it will reduce population. In the May 1, 1987 issue of that paper, "Miss Throp" stated: "...if the AIDS epidemic didn't exist, radical environmentalists would have to invent one [an epidemic]." In the Dec. 22, 1987 issue of Earth First!, he or she adds that "...the AIDS epidemic, rather than being a scourge, is a welcome development in the inevitable reduction of human population." 2. DEEP ECOLOGY EMBRACES MALTHUSIANISM Chaz Bufe, Anarchist Author, LISTEN, ANARCHIST!, 1998, Accessed May 10, 2000 http://flag.blackened.net/daver/anarchism/listen.html. The connecting thread between the arguments in favor of AIDS and starvation is a crude Malthusianism. (The 19th century British parson Thomas Malthus argued, in his Essay on the Principle of Population, that unlimited population growth was the primary danger to humanity; that population increased geometrically while food supply increased arithmetically.) A latter day disciple of the good parson, Daniel Conner, a "deep ecologist," self-aggrandizingly expressed his faith in Malthus' principle in the Dec. 22, 1987 issue of Earth First!: "Population pressure, they ['thoughtful environmentalists'] claim, lies at the root of every environmental problem we face." 3. MISANTHROPIC DEEP ECOLOGY IS BASED ON FAULTY CONCLUSIONS Chaz Bufe, Anarchist Author, LISTEN, ANARCHIST!, 1998, Accessed May 10, 2000 http://flag.blackened.net/daver/anarchism/listen.html. The conclusions the misanthropic "deep ecologists" draw from their faulty premises are breathtaking. They want us to return to our "natural role" as hunter-gatherers, because, according to their faulty reasoning, "Earth simply cannot support five billion large mammals of the species Homo sapiens." This argument has been demolished elsewhere; the best work on the subject, is Frances Moore Lappe's and Joseph Collins' Food First. For our purposes, suffice it to say that there is actually a huge surplus of food at present. According to Lappe, approximately 3600 calories of grain alone is produced on a daily per capita basis. That doesn't even take into account fruits, vegetables and grass-fed meat. This is enough food that, if the grain alone were equally distributed and all - or even two-thirds of it consumed, most of us would be as fat as pigs. It should also be emphasized that production of this amount of food does not "necessarily" involve environmental degradation: Non-environmentally harmful, organic methods of agriculture can produce at least as much food as destructive, chemically-based methods in the short run; and in the long run, they can increase the "value" of land and preserve high levels of production. 5. OTHER SOLUTIONS EXIST RATHER THAN MISANTHROPIC SOLUTIONS Chaz Bufe, Anarchist Author, LISTEN, ANARCHIST!, 1998, Accessed May 10, 2000 http://flag.blackened.net/daver/anarchism/listen.html. In some of the European countries, notably Germany, population "decline" through lowering of the birth rate has already begun. In his article "Fertility in Transition," in the Spring 1986 issue of World Focus (journal of the American Geographical Society), James L. Newman traces the causes of the decline in fertility in the European countries. He concludes that there were three reasons for a decline in the birth rate. One was industrialization: "Out of it came the public health discoveries that reduced mortality, followed by a new lifestyle which no longer necessitated large families. . . . Whereas on farms and in cottage industries children contributed their labor to the family enterprise, in the city they became consumers. Only a few offspring could be afforded if the family was to maintain or...improve its standard of living." The second reason for the decline in fertility was birth control. It "was the answer to these new social and economic realities."

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MISANTHROPY IS WRONG 1. HUMANS SHOULD NOT BE PITTED AGAINST NATURE Murray Bookchin, Institute For Social Ecology, DEBATING THE EARTH, 1998, p. 453. The historic theme that civilization must inevitably be pitted against nature, indeed, that it is corruptive of human nature, has surfaced in our midst from the days that reach back to Rousseau - this, precisely at a time when our need for a truly human and ecological civilization has never been greater if we are to rescue our planet and ourselves. Civilization, with its hallmarks of reason and technics, is viewed increasingly as a new blight. Even more basically, society as a phenomenon in its own right is being questioned so much so that its role as integral to the formation of humanity is seen as something harmfully "unnatural" and inherently destructive. 2. SAYING 'HUMANS ARE THE PROBLEM' IS WRONG Murray Bookchin, Institute For Social Ecology, DEBATING THE EARTH, 1998, p. 453. Ancient Egypt, for example, had a significantly different attitude toward nature than ancient Babylonia. Egypt assumed a reverential attitude toward a host of essentially animistic nature deities, many of which were physically part human and part animal, while Babylonians created a pantheon of very human political deities. But Egypt was no less hierarchical than Babylonia in its treatment of people and was equally, if not more, oppressive in its view of human individuality. 3. MISANTHROPY STOPS SOLUTIONS TO VEXING SOCIAL PROBLEMS Murray Bookchin, Institute For Social Ecology, DEBATING THE EARTH, 1998, p. 453. Admittedly, few antihumanists, "biocentrists," and misanthropes, who theorize about the human condition, are prepared to follow the logic of their premises to such an absurd point. What is vitally important about this medley of moods and unfinished ideas is that the various forms, institutions, and relationships that make up what we should call "society" are largely ignored. Instead, just as we use vague words like "humanity" or zoological terms like homo sapiens that conceal vast differences, often bitter antagonisms, that exist between privileged whites and people of colour, men and women, rich and poor, oppressor and oppressed; so do we, by the same token, use vague words like "society" or "civilization" that conceal vast differences between free, nonhierarchical, class, and stateless societies on the one hand, and others that are, in varying degrees, hierarchical, class-ridden, statist, and authoritarian. Zoology, in effect, replaces socially oriented ecology. Sweeping "natural laws" based on population swings among animals replace conflicting economic and social interests among people. 4. BLAMING HUMANS FOR ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS IS MISGUIDED Murray Bookchin, Institute For Social Ecology, DEBATING THE EARTH, 1998, p. 453. Accordingly, we are fed a steady diet of reproaches by liberal and environmentalists alike about how "we" as a species are responsible for the breakdown of the environment. One does not have to go to enclaves of mystics and gurus in San Francisco to find this species-centred, asocial view of ecological problems and their sources. New York City will do just as well. I shall not easily forget an "environmental" presentation staged by the New York Museum of Natural History in the seventies in which the public was exposed to a long series of exhibits, each depicting examples of pollution and ecological disruption . The exhibit which closed the presentation carried a startling sign, "The Most Dangerous Animal on Earth," and it consisted simply of a huge mirror which reflected back the human viewer who stood before it. I clearly recall a black child standing before the mirror while a white school teacher tried to explain the message which this arrogant exhibit tried to convey. There were no exhibits of corporate boards or directors planning to deforest a mountainside or government officials acting in collusion with them. The exhibit primarily conveyed one, basically misanthropic, message: people !as such!, not a rapacious society and its wealthy beneficiaries, are responsible for environmental dislocations-- the poor no less than the personally wealthy, people of colour no less than privileged whites, women no less than men, the oppressed no less than the oppressor. A mythical human "species" had replaced classes; individuals had replaced hierarchies; personal tastes (many of which are shaped by a predatory media) had replaced social relationships; and the disempowered who live meagre, isolated lives had replaced giant corporations, self-serving bureaucracies, and the violent paraphernalia of the State.

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Modernization Good MODERNIZATION NEEDED BY DEVELOPING COUNTRIES 1. MODERNIZATION HELPS STRENGTHEN EMERGING DEMOCRACIES Jos. Antonio Ocampo, Executive Secretary of ECLAC, “Eclac's Vision For Equity And Poverty” 27 TH SESSION OF THE COMMISSION, April 18, 1998, p. np., ECLAC homepage, Accessed 5/22/98, http://www.cepal.org/english/Coverpage/summit.htm. If the society of the future is to be a society of knowledge, access to knowledge must be democratized. Otherwise we shall be sowing even greater inequality for the future. By improving equity, quality and relevance in education, on the one hand, and linking efforts in education and training more closely to productive modernization and civic education, on the other, we shall be taking a positive step towards strengthening the connection between economic and social development and the strengthening of democracy, which have been so elusive in the history of our region. 2. MODERNIZATION ALLOWS HUMANS TO LIVE IN DIGNITY Sophie Bessis, specialist in the political economy of development, “Management Of Social Transformations--UNESCO Policy Paper - No. 2,” 1998, p. np, UNESCO homepage, Accessed 5/21/98, http://www.unesco.org/most/besseng.htm. The defense of another type of development, that is both durable and social in character, is not, as some claim, a negative reaction to the shock effects of modernity. On the contrary, it is a fight for modernity, as Sixto Roxas maintains. In creating the crisis and revealing itself incapable of improving the condition of the whole of humanity, the current economic and political systems well as the technologies upon which they are based, have shown their obsolescence. The only way to prepare for the twenty-first century will be to challenge the validity of the current systems and develop alternatives, which will be capable of closing the fault lines that coming tremors in the world order promise to breach. That is to say, to enable all of humanity to feel part of global society, with equal opportunity to live in dignity. 3. COUNTRIES LIKE CHINA REQUIRE MODERNIZATION Jim Erickson and David Hsieh, Staff Writers, ASIAWEEK, March 13, 1998, p. 1. Some of the changes, such as SOE reform announced at last October's 15th Communist Party Congress, are already under way. China's goal of becoming a global economic force requires modernization and more open financial markets. Its outward-looking decision to hold the line on the renminbi reflects a sensitivity to pressure from the G-7 countries and a desire to minimize its trade deficit with the U.S. "China aims to join the World Trade Organization," says Laurence Brahm, managing director of Naga Group, a Beijing-based business consultancy. "I don't think the Chinese would give the Americans one more reason to block their entry. China wants to maintain its image as a rock of stability in the sea of turmoil." 4. MODERNIZATION IS CRUCIAL FOR FULFILLING WORK United Nations Economic Commission For Latin America And The Caribbean, “The Equity Gap. Latin America , The Caribbean And The Social Summit,” 1997, p. 212, ECLAC homepage, Accessed 5/23/98, http://www.cepal.org/english/basictexts/gab.htm. In order to boost productivity in lagging sectors, it seems essential to complement general policies with some specific measures, including credit, marketing and technical assistance programmes and heavy investment in education and training. The push towards technological modernization is crucial, not only to cope with the demands of international competition, but also to meet the need for better-quality employment and higher wages.

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MODERNIZATION HELPS ALLEVIATE POVERTY 1. MODERNIZATION CAN HELP OVERCOME RURAL POVERTY United Nations Economic Commission For Latin America And The Caribbean, “The Equity Gap. Latin America , The Caribbean And The Social Summit,” 1997, p. 212, ECLAC homepage, Accessed 5/23/98, http://www.cepal.org/english/basictexts/gab.htm. More effective progress in fulfilling the commitments made at the World Summit for Social Development demands an approach that integrates economic and social policy in a mutually supportive relationship and permits complementarity between measures to encourage competitiveness and measures to promote social cohesion. Although they may seem to conflict in the short run, public policy can benefit from the many points of complementarity between economic and social measures, chiefly in the areas of macroeconomic management capable of stimulating high, stable growth rates; promotion of competitiveness; and public policies that enhance the contribution of growth to employment. Investment in human resources and an approach that integrates the concepts of territory, business linkages and productive development offer the most promise for progress in these tasks. In addition, agricultural modernization can assist in overcoming rural poverty, provided there are public policies to grant access to land and regularize land tenure and provided an effort is made to improve the infrastructure of production and establish closer links between agro-industry and small-scale producers. 2. PRODUCTIVE MODERNIZATION HELPS ALLEVIATE POVERTY United Nations Economic Commission For Latin America And The Caribbean, “The Equity Gap. Latin America , The Caribbean And The Social Summit,” 1997, p. 212. ECLAC homepage, Accessed 5/23/98, http://www.cepal.org/english/basictexts/gab.htm. Reducing the equity gap requires, first, faster economic growth and increased investment, in a context of openness and macroeconomic stability. Second, it calls for strengthening the link between growth and job creation, improving access to capital, land, technology and business skills for small and medium-sized firms and micro-enterprises, which are responsible for the bulk of the region's jobs. And third, it needs continuing increases in social spending, with improved efficiency and targeting. Reforms are also needed in the latter area to link resources to performance and quality of service and to improve coordination among programmes, some of which should be adapted to the reality of "hard poverty"; to strengthen links with productive development and provide opportunities for the private provision of social services, with appropriate systems of regulation, information, user protection and quality safeguards. Equity also entails adapting policies and institutions to the eradication of discrimination, both on gender grounds and against ethnic groups and other vulnerable sectors. 3. MODERNIZATION FREES PEOPLE FROM THE GREATEST OF ALL CHAINS--POVERTY Ralph Nansen, Former NASA Engineer, SUN POWER, 1995, p. 152-3. As great as the benefits are for the United States, much of the rest of the world has even more to gain. Without sufficient energy to provide the necessities of life, people in developing countries have no hope to improve their lives. Many of these people are shackled with the bonds of poverty. Bonds stronger than prison bars and more binding than oppressive governments, for even if prison doors are thrown open and governments allow freedom of choice, what good is freedom if there is nothing to eat, no roof to give protection from the elements, no money or possessions? Survival, by necessity, then becomes the most basic human drive. When the problem of seeking food and shelter dominates all effort, freedom is only a word--without meaning--to people who are starving.

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Modernization Bad MODERNIZATION DESTROYS TRADITIONAL CULTURES 1. MODERNIZATION DESTROYS TRADITIONAL CULTURE IN EXTREMELY SHORT TIME Helena Norberg-Hodge, Codirector of the International Forum on Globalization, THE CASE AGAINST THE GLOBAL ECONOMY AND FOR A TURN TOWARDS THE LOCAL, 1996, p. 34. Until 1962, Ladakh, or "Little Tibet," remained almost totally isolated from the forces of modernization. In that year, however, in response to the conflict in Tibet, the Indian army built a road to link the region with the rest of the country. With the road came not only new consumer items and a government bureaucracy but, as I shall show, a first misleading impression of the world outside. Then, in 1975, the region was opened up to foreign tourists, and the process of "development" began in earnest. Based on my ability to speak the language fluently from my first year in Ladakh, and based on almost two decades of close contact with the Ladakhi people, I have been able to observe almost as an insider the effect of these changes on the Ladakhis' perceptions of themselves. Within the space of little more than a decade, feelings of pride gave way to what can best be described as a cultural inferiority complex. In the modern sector today, most young Ladakhis--the teenage boys in particular--are ashamed of their cultural roots and desperate to appear modern. 2. MODERNIZATION ALIENATES PEOPLE FROM THEIR TRADITIONAL CULTURE Jan Knippers Black, Professor of Sociology at the University of the Pacific, DEVELOPMENT IN THEORY AND PRACTICE, 1991, p. 38-9. This "modern man," having adopted the tastes, material needs, and attitudes of the stereotyped West, and finding himself awash in a sea of "traditionals," becomes alienated from and perhaps even contemptuous of the majority of his countrymen. (Businessmen linked to multinational corporations and military establishments dependent upon foreigners for training and equipment are by definition in this modern sector). In a context of scarce resources, modern man is likely to see popular demands for a larger share of the pie as a threat to his lifestyle. 3. MODERNIZATION CAUSES PROBLEMS PEOPLE AREN'T PREPARED FOR Helena Norberg-Hodge, Codirector of the International Forum on Globalization, THE CASE AGAINST THE GLOBAL ECONOMY AND FOR A TURN TOWARDS THE LOCAL, 1996, p. 36. This same pattern is being repeated in rural areas all over the South, where millions of young people believe contrary Western culture is superior to their own. This is not surprising: looking as they do from the outside, all they can see is the material side of the modern world--the side at which Western culture excels. They cannot so readily see the psychological or social dimensions: the stress, the loneliness, the fear of growing old. Nor can they see the environmental decay, inflation, or unemployment. This leads young Ladakhis to develop feelings of inferiority, to reject their own culture wholesale, and at the same time to eagerly embrace the global monoculture. They rush after the sunglasses. walkmans and blue jeans--not because they find those jeans more attractive or comfortable but because they are symbols of modern life. 4. MODERNIZATION BRINGS VIOLENCE TO PEACEFUL CULTURES Helena Norberg-Hodge, Codirector of the International Forum on Globalization, THE CASE AGAINST THE GLOBAL ECONOMY AND FOR A TURN TOWARDS THE LOCAL, 1996, p. 36. Modern symbols have also contributed to an increase in aggression in Ladakh. Young boys can now see violence glamorized on the screen. From Western-style films, they can easily get the impression that if they want to be modern, they should smoke one cigarette after another, get a fast car, and rush through the countryside shooting people left and right.

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MODERNIZATION ON BALANCE CAUSES MORE PROBLEMS THAN IT SOLVES 1. MODERNIZATION HAS ON BALANCE NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCES FOR MOST Jan Knippers Black, Professor of Sociology at the University of the Pacific, DEVELOPMENT IN THEORY AND PRACTICE, 1991, p. 20. For the great majority, however, modernization has been accompanied by chronic unemployment, chronic inflation, unpayable debts, denationalization of resources, environmental degradation and a deepening of dependency. In the case of dependency, direct political ties between the colony or client state and the metropole may have become attenuated and economic ties of investment, trade and aid may have been diversified; but subsistence farming, almost everywhere under assault, threatens to go the way of subsistence hunting and fishing, and handicrafts have become virtually dependent upon tourism for their survival. The world capitalist system has penetrated the steepest mountain ranges, the steamiest jungles, and the loneliest islands; and the community, in First World or Third, that does not depend for its livelihood on decisions made in faraway places by people unconcerned with its welfare is very rare indeed 2. MODERNIZATION HAS PROBLEMS THEORY CANNOT PREDICT Jan Knippers Black, Professor of Sociology at the University of the Pacific, DEVELOPMENT IN THEORY AND PRACTICE, 1991, p. 39. If this modern man were really the rugged individualist he is purported to be, and if the poor were so collectively oriented, they might not be poor in the first place. And modern man, far from depending on his own devices, unites with other individuals and entities--national and foreign--whose interests are threatened and plots to protect his lifestyle, at whatever cost to the nation as a whole. It appears, then, that the consequences of modernization have more often been the opposite of those predicted by critics. 3. MODERNIZATION THREATENS DEMOCRACY BY HOMOGENIZING GLOBAL CULTURE, Richard Barnet, Co-founder of the Institute for Policy Studies, and John Cavanagh, Co-Director of IPS, THE CASE AGAINST THE GLOBAL ECONOMY AND FOR A TURN TOWARDS THE LOCAL, 1996, p. 76-7. Not many dead poets, pundits, or even departed best-selling novelists last long on the shelf, but, thanks to videotape and the near-universal hunger for American movies, music and television programs, dead rock stars and movie actors go on forever. One persuasive explanation is that it fills the vacuum left by the pervasive collapse of traditional family life, the atrophying of civic life, and the loss of faith in politics that appears to be a worldwide trend. Others, such as Helena Norberg-Hodge, argue that the entertainment industry also causes the collapse of these traditions. Popular culture acts as a sponge to soak up spare time and energy that in earlier times might well have been devoted to nurturing and instructing children or to participating in political, religious, civic or community activities or to crafts, reading, and continuing self-education, Such pursuits may sound a bit old fashioned today, although political theory still rests on the assumption that these activities are central to the functioning of a democratic society. 4. MODERNIZATION DECREASES INDIVIDUALITY Helena Norberg-Hodge, Codirector of the International Forum on Globalization, THE CASE AGAINST THE GLOBAL ECONOMY AND FOR A TURN TOWARDS THE LOCAL, 1996, p. 41. Surprisingly, perhaps, modernization in Ladakh is also leading to a loss of individuality. As people become selfconscious and insecure, they feel pressure to conform, to live up to the idealized images--to the American Dream. By contrast, the traditional village, where everyone wears the same clothes and looks the same to the casual observer, there seems to be more freedom to relax, and villagers can be who they really are. As part of a close-knit community, people can be free to be themselves.

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Multiculturalism Good MULTICULTURALISM PROTECTS MINORITY GROUPS 1. MULTICULTURALISM PROTECTS GROUP RIGHTS John O’Sullivan, Editor of the National Review, NATIONAL REVIEW, February 21, 1994, p. 39. Ultimately, multiculturalism is a theory of American nationality. It seems America is “more than a nation, an idea.” (Indeed, the man who coined that pregnant phrase was Horace Kallen, the great guru of “cultural pluralism,” a precursor doctrine of multiculturalism) It accepts the central tenet of the dominant liberal [sic] theory of American nationality—namely, that America is a set of political, constitutional, and legal principles. But where the liberal theory sees these principles as protecting and uniting individuals and individual rights, multiculturalist theory seems them as protecting progress and group rights—in particular ethnic groups and ethnic identities. 2. REVERSING MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION WILL DOOM ALL MINORITY CULTURES Jon Michael Spencer, Author and Scholar, THE BLACK SCHOLAR, Winter/Spring 1993, p. 2. This conspiracy [to reverse the implementation of multicultural education in public schools] is the postmodern equivalent to the earlier “melting pot” theory, which postulated that all Americans should melt into a single cultural identity. What makes the postmodern version just as disturbing as its “melting pot” precursor is that it too seeks to leave black people and other peoples of colors with no alternative but to fulfill Frantz Fanon’s prophecy in Black Skin, White Masks. “However painful it may be for me to accept this conclusion,” prophesies Fanon, “I am obliged to state it. For the black man there is only one destiny. And it is white.” 3. EUROCENTRIC CURRICULA MARGINALIZES ETHNIC AND RACIAL MINORITIES Michael R. Olneck, Professor of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, AMERICAN JOURNAL OF EDUCATION, May 1993, p. 248. When critics allege that curriculum is Eurocentric they are not claiming merely that people of color, Latinos, and Native Americans are excluded or omitted, though that is among the claims they make. They are claiming as well, and perhaps more importantly, that non-Europeans or non-Euro-Americans are marginalized and subordinated (see, e.g., Asante 1991; New York State Commissioner of Education’s Task Force on minorities 1989). According to this critique, marginalized and subordinated groups are represented as voiceless objects, defined by their apartness and difference from, or by their inferior relationship to, those more central. In curricular representations, it is alleged, the perspectives from which history and experience occur, the actions deemed central, and the experiences, and cultural expressions, and projects deemed valid and valuable are all those of dominant groups. 4. MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION IS A FORM OF RESISTANCE TO OPPRESSION Christine E. Sleeter, Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside, JOURNAL OF EDUCATION, Vol. 171, 1989, p. 60. Multicultural education can be viewed as a form of resistance to oppressive social relationships. It represents resistance on the part of educators to White dominance of racial minority groups through education, and also (to many) male dominance. Multicultural education developed out of the ferment of the 1960s and early 1970s, receiving its major impetus from the rejection of racial minority groups to racial oppression; it subsequently was joined to some extent by feminist groups rejecting sexual oppression. It was grounded in a vision of equality and served as a mobilizing site for struggle within education. 5. EUROCENTRIC CURRICULA SUBORDINATES ETHNIC AND RACIAL MINORITIES Michael R. Olneck, Professor of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, AMERICAN JOURNAL OF EDUCATION, May 1993, p. 248. This critique [of Eurocentric/Euro-American curricula] does not deny that those with power determine the contours of history and society; indeed, the critique attributes to broader forms of material power the cultural and ideological power to represent authoritatively as natural and mainstream a particular construction of reality. What is wanted by the critics is the recognition that these reigning representations are both the result of and a means to reproduce the power of the dominant groups. What is wanted, as well, are representations in which people of color, Latinos, and Native Americans are subjects who act in and define time and space, who interpret and speak their own experience, whose symbol systems, practices, 469

and collective actions no less than those of white males construct “our” world, and who are no less the “we”with whom students are asked to identify.

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MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION INCREASES EQUALITY OF ALL STUDENTS 1. MULTICULTURALISM INCREASES RACIAL EQUALITY Jon Michael Spencer, Author and Scholar, THE BLACK SCHOLAR, Winter/Spring 1993, p. 5. The only nostalgia felt by those who are pro-multicultural is a nostalgia for an understanding of the whole historical story, not just a part of it told to bolster the status and security of those who have been this country’s physical conquerors and ideological rulers. We suffer from no “integration shock” or “inferiority anxiety” in wanting to see a reconciliation of American and world history. For us to succumb to the postmodern conspiracy to explode racial identity—for us to transcend the notion of race—when the quest for racial equity is a central motivation factor in multiculturalism, is to undermine this historical movement. 2. MULTICULTURALISM TEACHES “EQUAL RESPECT’ AND “EQUAL OPPORTUNITY” Michael R. Olneck, Professor of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, JOURNAL OF EDUCATION, May 1993, p. 244. Despite limits on its practice, multicultural education is important for advancing a notion of “equal respect” as it is for advancing “equal opportunity” (on the distinction, see Kirp [1982]). Multicultural education, at least in some forms, expresses a commitment to ensuring that the experience of schooling be equally affirming for all groups of students, and that no groups should be disproportionately alienated from or stigmatized by the school’s expressive and instrumental orders. In the case, for example, of language-minority students, equality understood in this way would require “the same combination of comfort with the familiar and introduction to the unfamiliar that the majority-language student typically encounters in public school” (Minow 1985, p. 188). 3. MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION ATTEMPTS TO INSTILL PRIDE IN CHILDREN Christine E. Sleeter, Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside, JOURNAL OF EDUCATION, Vol. 171, 1989, p. 60. One task of the social movements of the 1960s was, as Michael Omi and Howard Winant (1986) put it, to create “collective identity by offering their adherents a different view of themselves and their world; different, that is, from the worldview and self-concepts offered by the established social order” (p. 93). Multicultural education’s attempts to instill in children pride in their own racial heritage were a part of this larger task of creating new collective identities that emphasize strength and pride. 4. EQUAL RESPECT AND DIGNITY MUST EXIST IN SCHOOLS Michael R. Olneck, Professor of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, AMERICAN JOURNAL OF EDUCATION, May 1993, p. 235-6. The question of whether educational resources and opportunities are to be distributed identically and differentially according to particular criteria (Jencks 1988) is of less consequence here than the questions of what performances count as valorized educational outcomes and what materials and practices are recognized and efficacious educational inputs. The questions of whether groups enjoy equal educational opportunity when they receive the same resources, when they progress academically at the same pace, or when their achievement levels converge (Coleman 1968) is less significant here than the questions of whether groups enjoy equal respect, status, dignity, and honor in school, whether groups equally influence the symbol systems and social practices that schools help construct and legitimate, and whether groups enjoy equal autonomy and authority to determine the nature of their own and others’ educations. MULTICULTURALISM SEEKS TO REPRESENT EXPERIENCES OF ALL PEOPLE 1. MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION CHALLENGES HIERARCHY OF THE STATUS QUO Michael R. Olneck, Professor of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, AMERICAN JOURNAL OF EDUCATION, May 1993, p. 234. Through an analysis of bilingual education, community control, and multicultural education, I reach the conclusion that multiculturalism’ s challenge to hierarchy and to prevailing terms of inclusion in the national community have been largely contained. Nevertheless, the accepted meaning of equality has been broadened to include the absence of bias in curricular materials and the representation of equal status among racial and ethnic groups. Furthermore, multiculturalism remains a focal point of conflict over Euro American dominance and continues to offer possibilities for reordering political relationships, for redefining legitimate curricular content, and for transforming established 471

symbol systems.

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Multiculturalism Bad MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION DOES NOT WORK 1. MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION DOES NOT BENEFIT STUDENTS Linda Chavez, Director of the Center for the New American Community, NATIONAL REVIEW, February 21, 1994, p. 30. The multiculturalists know they risk losing their constituency if young blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and others don’t maintain strong racial and ethnic affiliations. Younger generations must be trained [sic] to think of themselves as members of oppressed minority groups entitled to special treatment. And the government provides both the incentives and the money to ensure that this happens. Meanwhile, the main beneficiaries are the multicultural professionals, who often earn exorbitant incomes peddling identity. 2. THE AIM OF MULTICULTURALISM IS FUTILE Louis Menand, Contributing Editor of the New Republic, HARPER’S BAZAAR, September 1992, p. 404. The multicultural movement in public education (like its counterpart in the university) is in this sense really a reargued action, an effort to preserve vanishing cultural identities in a country which people axe more and more alike, and their culture is more and more mixed. It’s one thing to teach about the ingredients, insofar as they’re separable, of the mix; but to pretend that each ethnic type has contributed, and must identify with, certain specific ingredients, is a mistake. It’s like trying to unmix paint. 3. MULTICULTURALISM PROVIDES AN INADEQUATE BASIS TO SUCCEED IN SOCIETY John O’Sullivan, Editor of the National Review, NATIONAL REVIEW, February 21, 1994, p. 39. But Asian-Americans, who are at least as handicapped as other ethnic groups linguistically and culturally, are doing a great deal better than most people expected—and indeed better than most people perform. And it is at least arguable that an ideology that proposes to instruct people either in foreign languages or an impoverished form of slang, that teaches racial myths as history, that selects for particular attention the literatures and philosophies of other civilizations, and that ignores or traduces the achievements of American civilization and its European sources will give children a very inadequate basis for succeeding in American society. 4. MULTICULTURALISM IS A PATERNALISTIC APPROACH TO EDUCATION Louis Menand, Contributing Editor of the New Republic, HARPER’S BAZAAR, September 1992, p. 404. There is everything to be said for emphasizing diversity—and not only ethnic diversity but that of ideas and tastes as well. However, it’s unwise and misleading to encourage children to think that they have little culturally in common with one another (though the pretense evaporates the minute they leave the classroom and turn on MTV). Inventing a “culture” for schoolchildren to identify with is a perfect example of the paternalistic “we know what’s best for you” philosophy of education that is one thing that really needs reform. RACISM INCREASES TENSION BETWEEN BLACKS AND WHITES 1. SOCIETY’S DOUBLE-STANDARD ON RACISM INCREASES BLACK NATIONALISM Cornel West, Professor of Religion, Princeton University, RACE MATTERS, 1993, p. 3-4. As long as double standards and differential treatment abound—as long as the rap performer Ice-T is harshly condemned while former Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl F. Gates’s antiblack comments are received in polite silence, as long as Dr. Leonard Jeffries’ s anti-Semitic statements are met with vitriolic outrage while presidential candidate Patrick J. Buchanan’s anti-Semitism receives a genteel response black nationalism will thrive.

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LACK OF EQUALITY IS NOT INHERENTLY IMMORAL 1. ABSENCE OF EQUALITY IS NOT INHERENTLY IMMORAL Alvin Toffler, Author, POWERSHIFT, 1990, p. 475. Perfect equality implies changelessness, and is not only impossible but undesirable. In a world in which millions starve, the idea of stopping change is not only futile but immoral. The existence of some degree of inequality is not, therefore, inherently immoral; what is [sic] immoral is a system that freezes the maldistribution of those resources that give power. It is doubly immoral when that maldistribution is based on race, gender, or other inborn traits.

MULTICULTURALISM DESTROYS CULTURES 1. MULTICULTURALISM TEACHES SEPARATISM John O’Sullivan, Editor of the National Review, NATIONAL REVIEW, February 21, 1994, p. 41. Their [multiculturalists] prescriptions, short of rhetoric, come down to educating minorities and immigrants in languages other than English, and otherwise promoting the Western leftist, counter-culture—antiimperialist history, anti-capitalist economics, and anti-Western literature. The actual consequences of such an approach, if vigorously pursued, are likely to be wholly negative, even sordid: adding cultural and linguistic separatism to racial segregation; turning ethnic groups into political constituencies, in a racial spoils system; discrediting America’s traditional culture as oppressive; and destroying any concept of a common culture as the basis for a common American identity. 2. MULTICULTURALISM IS AN ELITIST MOVEMENT Linda Chavez, Director of the Center for the New American Community, NATIONAL REVIEW, February 21, 1994, p. 30. The impetus for multiculturalism is not coming from immigrants, but from their more affluent and assimilated native-born counterparts. The proponents are most often the elite—the best educated and most successful members of their respective racial and ethnic groups. College campuses, where the most radical displays of multiculturalism take place, are fertile recruiting grounds. 3. MULTICULTURALISM DISREGARDS AMERICAN CULTURE John O’Sullivan, Editor of the National Review, NATIONAL REVIEW, February 21, 1994, p. 40. For although they [multiculturalists] advocate, passionately, the encouragement of ethnic particulars, the equality of cultures, the right of every culture to be judged on its own terms, there is one culture to which in practice they grant no such regard: the traditional American culture, now given such epithets as hegemonic Euro-Americanism. That culture alone is held up to ridicule, abuse, and calumny, its crimes highlighted, its achievements attributed to others, its sole genuine ability being apparently the knack of stealing things other have created and passing them off as its own work, as if Western civilization were a vast museum with stolen artifacts of the higher civilizations of Africa, Asia, and pre-Columbian America. 4. MULTICULTURALISM JUDGES PEOPLE BY COLOR NOT BY CHARACTER Linda Chavez, Director of the Center for the New American Community, NATIONAL REVIEW, February 21, 1994, p. 28-30. What is clear is that multiculturalists have abandoned the ideal that all persons should be judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. Indeed, the multiculturalists seem to believe that a person’s character is determined [sic] by the color of his skin and by his ancestry. Such convictions lead multiculturalists to conclude that, again the words of Asante, “[T]here is no common American culture.” The logic is simple, but wrong-headed: Since Americans (or more often, their fore-bearers) hail from many different places, each of which has its own specific culture, the argument goes, America must be multicultural. And it is becoming more so every day as new immigrants bring their cultures with them. LEGAL EQUALITY DOES NOT GUARANTEE ACTUAL EQUALITY 1. LEGAL EQUALITY OF WOMEN HAS NOT PRODUCED SOCIAL EQUALITY Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Director of Women’s Studies and Professor of History, Emory University, GEORGE WASHINGTON LAW REVIEW, January 1986/March 1986, p. 341. Stripping away legal disabilities does not in itself revolutionize social relations or eradicate social and economic disabilities, much less wipe out deeply ingrained attitudes on the part of men—and of women themselves. The acquisition of the positive status that derives from functional individualism, or independence, has not produced the equality many naively hoped it would.

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Nationalism Good NATIONALISM IS KEY TO THE FUTURE 1. NATIONALISM GIVES THE MODERN STATE IT’S LIFE AND ENERGY. Hans Kohn, Professor at Harvard University, THE IDEA OF NATIONALISM, 1944, p.4.. The growth of nationalism is the process of integration of the masses of the people into a common political form. Nationalism therefore presupposes the existence, in fact or as an ideal, of a centralized form of government over a large and distinct territory. This form was created by the absolute monarchs, who were the pacemakers of modern nationalism; the French Revolution inherited and continued the centralizing tendencies of the kings, but at the same time it filled the central organization with a new spirit and gave it a power of cohesion unknown before. Nationalism is unthinkable before the emergence of the modern state in the period from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. Nationalism accepted this form, but changed it by animating it with a new feeling of life and with a new religious fervor. 2. NATIONALISM IS THE MEANS TO MODERNIZATION AND REFORM Louis L. Snyder, Professor of History at New York University, GLOBAL MINI-NATIONALISMS -AUTONOMY OR INDEPENDENCE, 1982, p. 224-225. The new African nationalism operated at two levels. On one level, negatively and externally, it was a response to European imperialism - the right of black Africans to win freedom from white rule. In this sense it was a reaction against alien control and racial supremacy. On the other level, positively and internally, it represented the aspirations of Africans to win the benefits of modernization. They would propel themselves into the 20th century with all its promises. Both the educated African elite and the illiterate masses were convinced of the desirability of European customs and technology. At the same time, they wanted reform on their own terms, without subservience or patronizing orders. They saw their new nationalism as the combination of the best of their past and the advanced technology of their former European masters. 3. NATIONALISM FOSTERS COMMUNITY George Mosse, Professor at Brandeis University, CONFRONTING THE NATION - JEWISH AND WESTERN NATIONALISM, 1993, p. 42. Nationalism could reconcile the need for emotion and order, and for individualism and community. Dreams and longing were channeled toward national goals, led by a dedicated leadership. This community was not abstract but personalized through camaraderie, through its liturgy and its symbols. Personal interrelationships were given a new meaning through shared goals and emotions, while national flags, anthems, and monuments helped to make concrete the abstract ideas of the nation or people. Modern nationalism grew to maturity in the age of the French Revolution; it was the first effective movement in the nineteenth century to posit a comprehensive ideal of community. Such, then, was the background to the strength and development of this rightist ideal, which rested upon the national mystique.

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NATIONALISM IS LINKED WITH TRUE DEMOCRACY 1. DEMOCRACY OWES ITS BIRTH TO NATIONALISM Eugene Kamenka, Professor in the History of Ideas at the Australian National University, NATIONALISM - THE NATURE AND EVOLUTION OF AN IDEA, 1976, p.39. Nationalism must be considered as linked to the democratic impulse of the century, and it was this link which led to the creation of a new kind of politics taking on liturgical form. The myths and symbols of nationalism, its rites, monuments and festivals, appealed to the longings of a multitude of people, and by drawing them into their orbit transformed a random mass into a cohesive and sometimes disciplined mass movement. A new style of politics evolved, based upon a secularized theology and its liturgy; democracy meant participation in the drama which grew from these foundations. 2. NATIONALISM MUST EVOLVE FROM THE PEOPLE Eugene Kamenka, Professor in the History of Ideas at the Australian National University, NATIONALISM - THE NATURE AND EVOLUTION OF AN IDEA, 1976, p.46. National unity had come from above and not from below, it was the gift of statesmen and the democratic impulse seemed lost. This fact seemed to stifle the official national cult. While national unity bad to be achieved against the establishment, the political liturgy of nationalism showed an ideological and dramatic impetus which was lost once nationalism had become established doctrine. But, as Jabn had already remarked, festivals could not be successful if they were simply decreed and manipulated from above. They had to be infused with spontaneity arising out of a democratic thrust based upon shared historical memories. The people must worship themselves and not a king or mere military power and glory. 3. AMERICAN NATIONALISM IS THE BEST EXAMPLE OF DIVERSITY IN UNITY Hans Kohn, Professor at City of New York, AMERICAN NATIONALISM - AN INTERPRETIVE ESSAY, 1957, p. 154-155. Yet the American idea of liberty - with its recognition of diversity in origins and religious background - has proved a stronger national cement and a more secure basis for ordered liberty and economic prosperity than bonds of common blood or religion or the uniformity of a closed society. In spite of the lesser homogeneity of the population, there is greater national cohesion in the United States - and less danger of disruptive factionalism - than in France, Germany or Italy. In America diverse people are held together by their common faith in individual liberty and equality; these carry in America a different meaning from that observable on the European continent; they create therefore an entirely different ambiance which continental European observers often fail fully understand. 4. AMERICA IS THE FIRST COUNTY FOUNDED ON NATIONALISM Hans Kohn, Professor at City of New York, AMERICAN NATIONALISM - AN INTERPRETIVE ESSAY, 1957, p. 154-155. A French author, who studied the United States in 1890, has drawn a brilliant picture of the different attitudes in France and in the United States toward liberty and equality. “With us [the French], the government and the privileged classes, believe themselves always exposed to a counteroffensive of the dispossessed adversaries. They call up memories which put the individual on his guard against the state. In America, liberty forms part of the very foundations of the state. Liberty was born at the same time as the state. It is not a ‘natural right’ of the individual recovered after a long historical struggle; it is rather a common heritage, common to the individual and to the nation, a collective possession rather than a private one but one of which the individual by a tacit accord has kept the guardianship...”

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Nationalism Bad NATIONALISM IS AN AMORPHOUS CONCEPT 1. NATIONALISM CANNOT BE CLEARLY DEFINED OR DISTINGUISHED Hans Kohn, Professor at Harvard University, THE IDEA OF NATIONALISM, 1944, p. 12. Nationalism as a group-consciousness is therefore a psychological and sociological fact, but any psychological or sociological explanation is insufficient. An American psychologist defined a nation as “a group of individuals that feels itself one, is ready within limits to sacrifice the individual for the group advantage that prospers as a whole, that has groups of emotions experienced as a whole, each of whom rejoices with the advancement and suffers with the losses of the group.... Nationality is a mental state or community in behavior.” This definition is valid, as far as it goes, not only for the nation, but for any other supreme group to which man owes loyalty, and with which he identifies himself. It is therefore not sufficient to distinguish the national group from other groups of similar important and permanence. 2. THE DEFINITION OF NATIONALISM IS ALWAYS CHANGING Boyd Shafer, author, FACES OF NATIONALISM - NEW REALITIES AND OLD MYTHS, 1972, p.3. Ever since scholars began serious study of nationalism they have sought to define it. In history - that is, in human experience - nothing is so certain to flow, change, and variation. Just as the realities of nationalism have reflected human experience, so have the definitions. It is simply not true that when one has studied the nationalism of one time and place one has studied the nationalisms of all times and places. 3. NATIONALIST WRITINGS PROVIDE UNCLEAR DEFINITION OF NATIONALISM Boyd Shafer, author, FACES OF NATIONALISM - NEW REALITIES AND OLD MYTHS, 1972, p.6. Other difficulties face a student trying to encompass the complexities of nationalism. The best sources on nationalism and what it means are, of course, the writings of articulate nationalists. But it is not easy to get behind their heated rhetoric and find out what it is they really have meant. Without humor or perspective, they generally have been deadly earnest partisans, and this was true whether they were politically of the ‘left” or the “right,” whether they were Italian (Mazzim or Mussolini), French (Michelet or Maurras), German (Herder or Treitscbke), or whether they were American (Theodore Roosevelt), Arab (Nasser), Ghanian (Nkrumah), or Jewish (Herzl). 4. WORLD LANGUAGES ALL DIFFER IN DEFINITION OF NATIONALISM Boyd Shafer, author, FACES OF NATIONALISM - NEW REALITIES AND OLD MYTHS, 1972, p. 7 When a student confronts the word nationalism in other languages the problem becomes still more troublesome, for even the conates - in German, French, Polish - do not have quite the same content, while the words meaning or translated as nationalism in nonwestern languages - Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Hebrew - all represent somewhat different ideas that are rooted deeply in the differing national experiences.

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NATIONALISM IS A DANGEROUS, FANATICAL WAVE 1. NATIONALISM CANNOT BE SATIATED Louis L. Snyder, Professor of History at New York University, GLOBAL MINI-NATIONALISMS -AUTONOMY OR INDEPENDENCE, 1982, p.5. Self-determination as a force for divergence is disintegrative and disruptive. Here we see the unwillingness of a people inside the larger nationalism to accept the domination of the centralized state. They may call for more accommodation, more autonomy, or even separation and independence. As the process of national selfdetermination declined in the 20th century, this “Balkanized” regional self-determination took on added significance. Unsatisfied minorities believed that the centralized politico-economic and cultural aspirations. They insisted that they had the right to rule themselves. This kind of self-determination may be called the “smaller nationalism.” 2. NATIONALISM THREATENS WORLD PEACE K. H. Silvert, Professor of Government at Dartmouth College, EXPECTANT PEOPLES -NATIONALISM AND DEVELOPMENT, 1963, p.11. Thus nationalism has become a powerful political threat not only to international peace but also to human freedom, perhaps the most powerful threat because nationalism in our time far excels other appeals to human emotions social or religious appeals - by its impact on masses and individuals alike. Communist Marxism, originally an anational and anti-national movement, had to take this into account has lately developed a new kind of national socialism. Nationalism today unleashes forces which deepen antagonisms and hallow them by appeals to an idealized and oversentimentalized past. 3. NATIONALISM EQUALS TOTALITARIAN STATE K. H. Silvert, Professor of Government at Dartmouth College, EXPECTANT PEOPLES -NATIONALISM AND DEVELOPMENT, 1963, p.31. “Nationalism” is a base epithet in many parts of the world, made so by persons who elect themselves the representatives of the nation and attempt to bend others to their often manic will. In this sense nationalism is often synonymous with fascism. Despicable as these uses of the nation are, they are not the only ones which must be considered as the ideologies of nationalism. But it would indeed be blind to pretend that the sick national society does not lend itself to making possible totalitarianism, an authoritarianism whose rigor and generality of application are possible only in a modern situation in which the supremacy of the state is such that all intervening buffer institutions which may protect the individual have shrunk in power and normative significance. 4. NATIONALISM HISTORICALLY LEADS TO THE MOBILIZATION AND CONTROL OF PEOPLE George Masse, Professor at Brandeis University, CONFRONTING THE NATION - JEWISH AND WESTERN NATIONALISM, 1993, p. 75-76. German nationalism, like all modem nationalism, involved the mobilizing and control of the masses. To achieve this, it constructed a world of illusion which in its content bore no resemblance to the French Revolution. This world, which the Nazis adopted as their own, was a rural, not an urban world (like that of the Revolution), one in which a mythical German past had remained alive, pointing to a better future. Most nations represented themselves through preindustrial symbols like the native landscape, projecting a feeling of continuity and harmony in contrast to the modem age. Hitler boasted that with the rise of national socialism “the nervous nineteenth century had come to an end.” The images and the rhetoric of nationalism were opposed to that which Jacobins had projected. The storming of the Bastille was made into a metaphor symbolizing the perils of modernity.

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Native American Sovereignty At least 10,000 years ago, what is now thought of as North America was inhabited by hundreds - perhaps thousands - of distinct communities. Despite the best efforts of invaders from another continent over the past 500 years, most of those communities remain at least ostensibly intact. It's true that the indigenous peoples of this continent largely don't live like they did back then - as one American Indian elder told me, "Times changed: we had to change with the times" - but considering what their cultures have been through, many tribes have done a remarkable job of preserving and recovering the traditional aspects of their way of life. But the rights and sovereign status of these most ancient nations remain under attack. The tools have changed - it's no longer acceptable for opinion makers to declare, as Lord Jeffrey Amherst once did, that we should 'extirpate this execrable race' - but the motives and consequences of these efforts remain the same. Groups like the North Central Idaho Jurisdiction Alliance, United Property Owners of America, and other so-called "wise use citizens alliances" use the oldest of tools, racism and ignorance, in attempts to tear down the governing structures of the First Nations. Since this effort has stepped up in recent years, it's all the more important that we understand the legal and moral basis for indigenous peoples' sovereign status as nations. It is, of course, impossible to cover hundreds of years of legal wrangling, treaty-making and breaking over the course of five pages. I will do my best to provide the basics, and encourage everyone to check out the books in the Bibliography, especially Ward Churchill's modern classic STRUGGLE FOR THE LAND. Vine Deloria's CUSTER DIED FOR YOUR SINS, though older, is also highly recommended for its groundbreaking (and at times heartbreakingly funny) analysis of American Indian life. HIDDEN HISTORY OF INDIAN NATIONS If you're like me, Indian tribes appear in about 15 seconds of your high school education. They show up at Thanksgiving, feed a bunch of starving white people, then gracefully bow out into the woods. Unless your school is on or near a reservation, I'd bet that's what you learned, too. In fact, Europeans arrived on this continent to find thriving populations of tribal people who became integral to their lives through trade, social interaction, and of course the feeding-whites-when-they-were-starving thing. After the Revolutionary War, though, the new United States wanted to expand, exercise what it considered to be its "Manifest Destiny" to settle throughout the continent. In order to do that, the new nation had to acquire land. What I want to show - and what isn't taught in school - is that the early Americans realized that Indian nations were powerful and sovereign. The Articles of Confederation and the Constitution of the United States were designed with tribes in mind - designed to deal with them on an equal level, as sovereign nations. But gradually, that was stripped from the tribes - and from history. Through legal manipulations, genocidal policies and misinformation campaigns, the rights of Indian nations were trampled upon. Now, tribal government jurisdiction even over recognized Indian land is minimal - more like a county or a municipality. And tribal sovereignty remains under assault by so-called "wise use" groups, anti-Indian racist groups and radical private property advocates. The weapons those individuals use are ignorance of history and the law. It's time to fight back. TRIBAL SOVEREIGNTY 101: A GOVERNMENT-TO-GOVERNMENT RELATIONSHIP

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There are 371 federally recognized treaties the United States government entered into with indigenous nations. All have, in one way or another, been broken. The reasons for this are rooted in both military power and the force of the law, but in the beginning, the European settlers had neither on their side. Military power? The revolutionaries had just fought a long, costly war against mother England. They didn't want to get into new, costly scraps with the numerous Indian tribes. And what about force of law? The United States was not exactly welcomed with open arms into the international community, save the French, who helped us just to stick it to their arch-rivals, the limeys. Most every other country considered the rebel colonies to be utterly illegitimate as political entities. Thus, the new United States was compelled to deal with Indian nations in a manner befitting a real country - the better to show the world it was one. Hence, the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution both contained (and the latter still contains) the strictest protocols for dealing with tribes - they are to be considered fully sovereign entities. That's important: Articles I and 6 of the United States Constitution strictly forbid states or localities from entering into treaties. Only the federal government can do so, and it can only do so with another fully sovereign entity. That's to prevent the United States from making a treaty with, say, Monaco, and claiming that the treaty applies to all of France. Thus, the very action of treaty-making ensures that tribes have to be considered fully sovereign governments. Either that's true, or all the treaties are invalid and the United States holds no title to aboriginal lands. How important are treaties? Well, Article 6, Section 2 of the Constitution declares them to be the "supreme law of the land" - on a par with the very constitution itself. Whenever anybody tells me they think we should abrogate the treaties, I always ask them if they believe in the Constitution. Because if they do, they believe in treaties too.

THE CHEROKEE CASES AND THE DECLINE OF SOVEREIGNTY Now, let's talk more about that "law" business. By the early 1800s, the United States recognized that land title out west must be somehow secured if the country were to expand. After the Louisiana Purchase - which, by the way, was not a land purchase: it only gave the U.S. the exclusive right to trade with the aboriginal occupants of the land and negotiate future land purchases with them - Americans were thirsting' to go west. But even international law of the time said that land could only be taken if it was uninhabited (territorium res nullius). And there were lots of tribes in the most resource-rich parts of the west, where settlers longed to travel. America turned to Chief Justice John Marshall of the Supreme Court, who did not disappoint. Marshall himself had been "deeded" 10,000 acres of land in Indian territory himself - and not by Indians, either - so he had a real interest in creating legal justification out of thin air. And he did. In the 1810 Fletcher v. Peck case, he declared vast areas of the country "vacant," though they clearly weren't. In fact, some of the places were in the process of being defended by tribes with military force. He followed that case up with the even more appalling Johnson v. Macintosh case - more appalling because it continues to cast a shadow of legal precedent over Indian law today. That case codified the "Discovery Doctrine" into American law. It said that "discoverers" of land had more of a right to it than indigenous occupants of that land. His opinion was something of a legal codification for the "Manifest Destiny" notion. But Marshall wasn't stupid. He knew that however expedient his rulings might have been politically, other countries would frown upon them - rightfully so, given there was virtually no basis for application of the doctrine of discovery. Somehow, more legal rulings would have to be created which bolstered his opinions in the earlier cases - and that's how we got the two Supreme Court cases which provided the basis for modern Indian law. 480

In Cherokee Nation v. Georgia and Worcester v. Georgia, Marshall ruled that Indian tribes were indeed nations - but nations of a "peculiar" variety, both "domestic to" and "dependent upon" the United States. Thus, he concluded, they possesses some sovereignty - but less than the United States federal government, which may exercise plenary power over them. The logical absurdities of the ruling are apparent enough: Indian tribes had been living for thousands of years without United States "protection" or "trusteeship," so there was no way they were "dependent on" the U.S.; and craziest of all, the doctrine was applied to all indigenous nations, even those the United States had not yet encountered. How can you be dependent upon someone you've never met? Additionally, those tribes the United States hadn't encountered yet included the Lakota, Navajo, and Apache - three of the Indian nations with the largest land base and mineral wealth. Besides the seeming illogic of the ruling, it also violated substantial portions of the existing Law of Nations. It also justified just about any assault on the lands of native people - you could go into someone's backyard and "discover" their dwelling, for example. Surprisingly enough, the "domestic dependent nations" doctrine has survived to become one of the main points of modern Indian law. It's one of the main legal precedents cited whenever a court rules that Indian tribal sovereignty should be limited - they're only "dependent nations," after all, with a "partial sovereignty." Some legal scholars have compared the doctrine of quasi-sovereignty to the doctrine of quasi-pregnancy. It doesn't exist, you say? Hmmm. The right to self-determination is the most fundament for a people sharing a common identity, language and history. It's not coincidental that it was the first right Americans sought to erode. OBJECTIONS TO SOVEREIGNTY Now, some of you are undoubtedly thinking about arguments against sovereignty. Maybe you're thinking about feasibility, or maybe you've heard certain lines of reasoning used before that you would like to see addressed. I will try to address some of the most common objections to tribal sovereignty in this next section. If I don't address a question you have, though, I would wager that one of the sources in the bibliography does. "Having hundreds of small sovereign nations occupying one continent - surrounded by a larger nation -- can't happen, can it?" Actually, plenty of smaller nations exist throughout the world, and have for centuries. Ward Churchill notes that the Navajo Nation "holds a land base considerably larger than a number of Caribbean islands - such as Grenada - each of which hold an obvious and unquestionable right to sovereignty and self-determination. The Navajo population is also greater than that of Grenada and a number of other, smaller Caribbean islands." It's not just islands, either. Monaco and Liechtenstein, among other tiny nations, have survived and prospered in Europe - though they are surrounded by larger countries. "Tribes take aid from the federal government, therefore they aren't truly sovereign." If this argument is true, someone please tell Israel that they aren't a sovereign nation. After all, they're one of America's primary aid recipients. But this argument is flawed on more levels than that one. For one thing, most of the so-called "aid" occurs on the basis of a trust relationship established by treaties, which as we established are the supreme law of the land in the United States. In exchange for the lad, many tribes were given guarantees of aid in perpetuity, as well as royalties for natural resource extraction that occurs on Indian land. 481

I always want to ask people who make this argument to tally up the balance sheet on both sides -- after all, Bruce Babbitt's Department of the Interior just lost (misplaced somewhere) billions of dollars in tribal trust money. (Who do they think they are, the military?) Then, you have to consider tribes like the Choctaw, who were moved from their reservation once it was determined that the land they were "given" was too fertile. You should also probably consider the 10s of billions of dollars the First Nations have lost in oil, coal and uranium royalties due to outmoded resource laws and federal corruption. The Bureau of Indian Affairs negotiated mining contracts that typically paid less than 15 percent of market value "on behalf" of "its Indian wards." Those leases almost never included cleanup provisions, so the tribes had to bear the brunt of the costs. Incidentally, about two-thirds of known "U.S." uranium reserves, 25 percent of low sulfur coal reserves, 20 percent of oil and natural gas reserves - as well as other minerals - lie beneath reservation lands. This also speaks to Indian nations being able to survive on their own - despite that "domestic dependent nation" status. "Tribal governments and tribal operations aren't the same traditional Indian activities that took place hundreds of years ago." This is a clear example of a logical fallacy, or perhaps a failure to properly define the terms being discussed. If we're discussing whether Indian nations - or any nations - have sovereignty, we don't have to discuss at all whether they're "the same" as when white people arrived on the continent. That would be like saying America isn't truly sovereign because we no longer wear buckskins or fight the British. And, like most aspects of Indian history, this is another example of the American government directly attempting to alter indigenous traditions. Every tribe had its own form of traditional government - many based on the advice of elders, some based on family succession, others a more formalized process of consensus democracy. The very form of government implemented by the United States in the late 1700s was based on the model used by the Haudenosaunee (Iriquois) confederacy, showing that the notion of "backward" Indian government is hypocritical and wrong. That all changed in 1934, when the Indian Reorganization Act formally abolished existing native governments. Those governments were replaced with a system based on "Tribal Councils" - whose main purpose in those early days was to sign away mineral rights to the government. Interestingly enough, Indian governments were always considered sovereign enough to sign away mineral rights, or waive environmental protections - but never sovereign enough to enforce them. So that's why traditional native governing structures no longer exist, or at least exist in subdued form behind the primacy of tribal councils. It has nothing to do with a loss of tradition or a loss of culture - which wouldn't matter to the sovereignty question anyway - it has to do with external interference from the colonizing power. "Treaties gave white settlers legal title to the country fairly." I'm not going to rehash all the broken treaty facts, because that would fill a book and I suspect you already have a good idea what I'm going to say. I'm also not going to talk about all the treaties that were forged, or were signed under physical threats, or were signed by someone who didn't have authority from the tribe to sign, or were falsely represented by the treaty negotiator. Those are many treaties - Churchill estimates about one-third of ratified treaties fall under one of these categories -- and you can read all about them elsewhere. I'm just going to let you know what the Indian Claims Commission, a body federally sanctioned to examine land claims - but not repatriate land - found in the 1970s. It found that "the U.S. had no legal basis - no treaty, no agreement, not even an arbitrary act of Congress - to fully one-third of the area within its boundaries." That means 482

over 30 percent of what is now the United States was simply taken - not counting the fraudulent treaties, broken treaties, etc. A FINAL WORD For me, the question of treaty rights begins and ends with one question: Do you believe in keeping promises? If you do, congratulations: you believe in treaty rights and tribal sovereignty. That question could also be phrased like this: do you believe in the Constitution? If so...welcome on board the tribal sovereignty bandwagon. It's unfortunate and tragic that so much about the history of Indian people is overlooked. Perhaps with a fresh look back at these issues - which continue to affect us all today - that will begin to change.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY William C. Canby, AMERICAN INDIAN LAW IN A NUTSHELL, Second ed., St. Paul :West Publishing, 1988. Ward Churchill, STRUGGLE FOR THE LAND, Common Courage Press, 1993. Ward Churchill, Interviewed by Jeff Shaw, James Johnston and Ben Heizer, EARTH FIRST!, Spring 2000. Ward Churchill, Z MAGAZINE, May 1997, p. 16. Felix S. Cohen, HANDBOOK OF FEDERAL INDIAN LAW, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1942. [New York : AMS Press, 1972]. Vine Deloria Jr., CUSTER DIED FOR YOUR SINS: AN INDIAN MANIFESTO, Avon Books, 1969. Vine Deloria Jr., SPIRIT AND REASON, Fulcrum Publishing, 1999. Charles J. Kappler, INDIAN AFFAIRS: LAWS AND TREATIES, (5 volumes) Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904-41. [New York, AMS Press, 1971]. Winona LaDuke, ALL OUR RELATIONS: NATIVE STRUGGLES FOR LAND AND LIFE, South End Press, 1999. Leah Slaney, Robert Crawford et. al., THE DIGNITY REPORT: Journal of The Northwest Coalition for Human Dignity, Summer 2000.

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RESPECTING TRIBAL SOVEREIGNTY IS THE ONLY MORAL COURSE OF ACTION 1. AMERICA HAS BROKEN OVER 400 INDIAN TREATIES Vine Deloria Jr., Native American Scholar and Activist, CUSTER DIED FOR YOUR SINS: AN INDIAN MANIFESTO, 1969, p. 35. Some years back Richard Nixon warned the American people that Russia was bad because she had not kept any treaty or agreement signed with her. You can trust the communists, the saying went, to be communists. Indian people laugh themselves sick when they hear these statements. America has yet to keep one Indian treaty or agreement despite the fact that the United States government signed over 400 such treaties and agreements with Indian tribes. It would take Russia another century to make and break as many treaties as the United States has already violated. 2. RESPECTING TREATY RIGHTS IS THE FIRST STEP TO MORALITY Vine Deloria Jr., Native American Scholar and Activist, CUSTER DIED FOR YOUR SINS: AN INDIAN MANIFESTO, 1969, p. 59. When one considers American history in its imperialistic light, it becomes apparent that if morality is to be achieved in this country's relations with other nations a return to basic principles is in order. Definite commitments to fulfill extant treaty obligations to Indian tribes would be the first step toward introducing morality into American foreign policy. 3. NEW SENSE OF MORAL VALUES MUST RESPECT INDIAN TREATIES Vine Deloria Jr., Native American Scholar and Activist, CUSTER DIED FOR YOUR SINS: AN INDIAN MANIFESTO, 1969, p. 57-8. Cultural and economic imperialism must be relinquished. A new sense of moral values must be inculcated into the American blood stream. American society and the policies of government must realistically face the moral problems created by the roughshod treatments of various segments of that society. The poverty program only begins to speak of this necessity, the Employment Act of 1946 only hinted in this direction. It is now time to jump fully into the problem and solve it once and for all. 4. STRENGTHENING INDIAN ORGANIZATION IS THE BEST THING WHITES CAN DO Vine Deloria Jr., Native American Scholar and Activist, CUSTER DIED FOR YOUR SINS: AN INDIAN MANIFESTO, 1969, p. 271. Interested white people often ask what they can do to help Indians. Many have done a great deal for Indian people. And many more would help if they knew how. Indians, I believe, have passed the point where they reject assistance because of their nationalistic momentum. I would suggest the best help non-Indians could render would be to support the two most important national Indian organizations. If we could be assured that we have adequate financial resources to determine our own future by receiving strong support for our work, then it would be up to us to provide our own solutions. 5. MUST SUPPORT NATIVE JURISDICTION AND GOVERNANCE Winona LaDuke, Program Director, Honor the Earth Fund, Founding Director, White Earth Land Recovery Project, ALL OUR RELATIONS: NATIVE STRUGGLES FOR LAND AND LIFE, 1999, p. 200. We must follow Bressette's example and charge ourselves with curbing the rights of corporations and special interests, transforming the legal institutions of the United States back toward the preservation of the commons, and preserving everyone's rights, not just those of the economically privileged. On a community level, we must support local self-reliance and the recovery of Indigenous systems of knowledge, jurisdiction, practice and governance.

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TRIBAL SOVEREIGNTY IS JUSTIFIED 1. RIGHT OF INHERENT SOVEREIGNTY APPLIES TO INDIAN NATIONS Ward Churchill, Professor of American Indian Studies, University of Colorado-Boulder, STRUGGLE FOR THE LAND, 1993, p. 19. First, there is a doctrine within modern international law known as "the right of inherent sovereignty." This principle holds that a people constitute a nation simply because, "since time immemorial," it has always done so. That is, from the point of its earliest contact with other peoples or nations the people in question have been known to possess: a given territory; a means of providing its own subsistence; a common language; a structure of self-governance; a form of legality; and means to determine its own membership and social composition. 2. AMERICAN LAW JUSTIFIES TRIBAL AUTONOMY AND SOVEREIGNTY Ward Churchill, Professor of American Indian Studies, University of Colorado-Boulder, STRUGGLE FOR THE LAND, 1993, p. 20. Second, the conventional understanding on international law and custom is that treaty-making and treaty relationships are only entered into between nations. This is reflected in U.S. domestic law at the highest level. Articles I and VI of the U.S. Constitution clearly restrict U.S. treaty-making prerogatives to the federal rather than state, local or individual levels. It asserts that the federal government is itself forbidden from entering into treaty relationships with other than fully sovereign entities (i.e., the U.S. federal government is not legally empowered to enter into treaty relations with provincial, state or local governments, or with individuals). The U.S. government's willing entry into 371 treaty relationships with various indigenous peoples in North America between the years 1790 and 1870 corroborates their claim to status as sovereign national entities under the right of inherent sovereignty. It also established beyond any reasonable doubt that these peoples enjoy valid legal claims to sovereign national status under both international and U.S. domestic law. 3. NATIVE AMERICAN SURVIVAL ESSENTIAL TO HUMAN SURVIVAL Winona LaDuke, Program Director, Honor the Earth Fund, Founding Director, White Earth Land Recovery Project, ALL OUR RELATIONS: NATIVE STRUGGLES FOR LAND AND LIFE, 1999, p. 5. Our experience of survival and resistance is shared with many others. But it is not only about Native people. In the final analysis, the survival of Native America is fundamentally about the collective survival of all human beings. The question of who gets to determine the destiny of the land, and of the people who live on it - those with the money or those who pray on the land - is a question that is alive throughout society. The question is posed eloquently by Lil'wat grandmother Loretta Pascal: "This is my reason for standing up. To protect all around us, to continue our way of life, our culture. I ask them, Where did you get the right to destroy these forests? How does your right supercede my rights? These are our forests, these are our ancestors." 4. TREATY RIGHTS ARE KEY TO ALL STRUGGLES FOR JUSTICE AND SANITY Winona LaDuke, Program Director, Honor the Earth Fund, Founding Director, White Earth Land Recovery Project, STRUGGLE FOR THE LAND, 1993, p. 5. What is perhaps most important about Indian treaty rights is the power of documents at issue to clarify matters which would otherwise be consigned by nation-state apologists to the realm of "opinion" and "interpretation." The treaties lay things out clearly, and are instruments of international law. In this sense, the violation of the treaty rights of any given people represents a plain transgression against the rights of all people everywhere. This can be a potent weapon in the organization of struggles for justice and sanity in every corner of the globe.

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TRIBAL SOVEREIGNTY VIOLATES AMERICAN PRINCIPLES 1. TRIBAL SOVEREIGNTY VIOLATES EQUALITY AND JUSTICE United Property Owners of Washington, ISSUES: TRIBAL SOVEREIGN IMMUNITY, 1999, Accessed May 29, 2000 http://www.unitedpropertyowners.com/issues.htm. It's a sad but true fact of life that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. As members of UPOW we must actively work to defend the constitutional principles of equality under the law and private property ownership upon which this nation was founded. To survive and prosper in peace and harmony, united and strong, Americans must be one people, one nation, with one flag, and one law, applicable to ALL. It's simply not fair for tribal governments to be "Above the Law" which all others must follow. We cannot continue to allow our federal government to promote preferences based on race as practiced under current Indian policy because the inevitable outcome has been to divide us as a people, rather than bringing us together. 2. TRIBAL SOVEREIGNTY CAUSES ETHNIC BALKANIZATION United Property Owners of Washington, ISSUES: TRIBAL SOVEREIGN IMMUNITY, 1999, Accessed May 29, 2000 http://www.unitedpropertyowners.com/issues.htm. As our country has been carved up into hundreds of separate "sovereign nations" we have seen integration, assimilation, "The Melting Pot," and Dr. Martin Luther King's dream of racial equality and a color-blind society suddenly being derided by tribal supporters as racist cultural genocide. We should not believe America is immune to the ethnic balkanization that threatens much of the world. Conflicts between Indians and their non-Indian neighbors will only worsen until federal law is changed. And Congress has full authority to make the necessary and much needed changes in America's flawed federal Indian policy. 3. FEDERAL LEGISLATION NEEDED TO COMBAT SOVEREIGNTY United Property Owners of Washington, ISSUES: TRIBAL SOVEREIGN IMMUNITY, 1999, Accessed May 29, 2000 http://www.unitedpropertyowners.com/issues.htm. UPOW's goal is to restore the due process rights of all Americans and bring fairness and justice to our dealings with tribal governments. Specifically, we seek to pass federal legislation which would (a) allow Tribes to be sued for tort and contract violations; (b) allow suit against Tribes to enforce constitutional provisions, including both for nonIndians and for tribal members; (c) allow suit against Tribes for the lawful collection of state and local taxes due. We need to pass federal legislation which would allow Tribes to be sued to mandate compliance with federal and state laws to the same extent that state governments or private entities can be sued. 4. THE SUPREME COURT AGREES United Property Owners of Washington, ISSUES: TRIBAL SOVEREIGN IMMUNITY, 1999, Accessed May 29, 2000 http://www.unitedpropertyowners.com/issues.htm. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled on three separate occasions that Indian Tribes should collect and remit taxes on sales to non-Indians, but there is no enforcement mechanism to force tribal governments to follow the Law of the Land. Local businesses hurt by what they see as unfair competition and discriminatory enforcement of tax laws are losing hundreds of millions of dollars in sales due to the tribal competition in sales of cigarettes, gasoline, liquor, fireworks, and more. State and local governments annually lose hundreds of millions of dollars more in sales taxes which should be lawfully collected and paid. Tribes use sovereign immunity to completely shield themselves and their actions from legal review, often behaving irresponsibly and as if they are legally invincible. State and local governments, and even charities, have over the past several decades, been forced to waive their sovereign immunity. So it's time for the playing field to be leveled. Tribes must be held accountable for their actions, like the rest of us.

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TRIBAL SOVEREIGNTY DISCOURAGES ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT 1. SOVEREIGNTY A THREAT TO INVESTMENT IN NATIVE AMERICAN BUSINESS Susan Woodrow, Senior Counsel, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, Active Volunteer at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, COMMUNITY DIVIDEND, Summer 1998, p. 4. Native American tribes consider sovereign immunity to be crucial for the protection of tribal resources and the promotion of tribal economic and social interests. Because of the uncertainties surrounding this doctrine, however, this very same tool of self-determination may be viewed as a significant obstacle to the non-Indian investor, lender or developer who otherwise may be interested in doing business in Indian Country. 2. SOVEREIGNTY CAUSES INVESTOR CONFUSION Susan Woodrow, Senior Counsel, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, Active Volunteer at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, COMMUNITY DIVIDEND, Summer 1998, p. 4. Although these principles are well established, how they (or any exceptions to them) apply in any given situation often is not clear, whether with respect to regulatory or taxation authority matters or to criminal or civil jurisdiction. The interests of the tribes, states and federal government all factor into any analysis, the variables of which make any determination of jurisdiction dependent on the specific case. Some of the uncertainty regarding the relationship between tribes and states, in particular, and thus the reluctance on the part of many nontribal entities to conduct business with tribes, can be attributed in part to the confusion surrounding the various legal roles a tribe may play or the legal status of a tribe. The federal government, through court decisions and legislation, has introduced numerous laws, rules and tests (and exceptions to those) that have further faded the bright line that originally delineated tribal sovereignty. The confusion is compounded by the variety of ways in which land in Indian Country may be owned or held, and the nature of the particular tribal, federal or state interests that may be involved. In brief, it is often difficult for a nontribal entity to know with whom it is dealing, with whom it is best to deal, and with what it is dealing. 3. SOVEREIGNTY IS NOT ABSOLUTE Susan Woodrow, Senior Counsel, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, Active Volunteer at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, COMMUNITY DIVIDEND, Summer 1998, p. 4. A sovereign state is one that is independent from all other authority, retaining the right and power to regulate its internal affairs without foreign interference. Sovereign immunity is the doctrine that precludes the assertion of a claim against a sovereign without the sovereign's consent. Indian tribes are sovereign entities. The exact nature of tribal sovereignty, however, is not clear. One theory holds that tribal sovereign status is inherent. Tribal sovereignty is not granted to tribes by the United States but rather reserved as inherent in their status as governments predating the formation of the United States. The fact that the colonizing nations and, subsequently, the U.S. government entered into treaties with tribes supports this view. A competing theory holds that notwithstanding original sovereignty, tribes today are only "quasi-sovereign." Tribes retain the attributes of sovereignty over their members and territory but only to the extent that sovereignty has not been limited or withdrawn by the federal government. In other words, tribes have been permitted to retain their sovereign status subject to the federal government's authority to revoke, limit or otherwise modify tribal immunity at its discretion.

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Natural Capitalism Good NATURAL CAPITALISM IS DESIREABLE 1. NOTHING WRONG WITH CAPITALISM EXCEPT IT HASN’T BEEN TRIED Paul Hawken, Chair of the Natural Step Educational Foundation, MOTHER JONES, March/April 1997, p. 30. One is tempted to say that there is nothing wrong with capitalism except that it has never been tried. Our current industrial system is based on accounting principles that would bankrupt any company. Conventional economic theories will not guide our future for a simple reason: They have never placed "natural capital" on the balance sheet. When it is included, not as a free amenity or as a putative infinite supply, but as an integral and valuable part of the production process, everything changes. Prices, costs, and what is and isn't economically sound change dramatically. Industries destroy natural capital because they have historically benefited from doing so. As businesses successfully created more goods and jobs, consumer demand soared, compounding the destruction of natural capital. All that is about to change. 2. NATURAL CAPITALISM CAN REPLACE THE BAD SYSTEMS Paul Hawken, Chair of the Natural Step Educational Foundation, MOTHER JONES, March/April 1997, p. 30. Our living systems and social stability are at risk. But the solutions are profitable, creative, and eminently possible. In 1750, few could imagine the outcome of industrialization. Today, the prospect of a resource productivity revolution in the next century is equally hard to fathom. But this is what it promises: an economy that uses progressively less material and energy each year and where the quality of consumer services continues to improve; an economy where environmental deterioration stops and gets reversed as we invest in increasing our natural capital; and, finally, a society where we have more useful and worthy work available than people to do it. A utopian vision? No. The human condition will remain. We will still be improvident and wise, foolish and just. No economic system is a panacea, nor can any create a better person. But as the 20th century has painfully taught us, a bad system can certainly destroy good people. 3. NATURAL CAPITALISM CAN MAKE A POSITIVE DIFFERENCE Paul Hawken, Chair of the Natural Step Educational Foundation, MOTHER JONES, March/April 1997, p. 30. Natural capitalism is not about making sudden changes, uprooting institutions, or fomenting upheaval for a new social order. (In fact, these consequences are more likely if we don't address fundamental problems.) Natural capitalism is about making small, critical choices that can tip economic and social factors in positive ways. 4. SHOULD EXPAND MARKET LOGIC, NOT RETRACT IT Paul Hawken, Chair of the Natural Step Educational Foundation, MOTHER JONES, March/April 1997, p. 30. Natural capitalism may not guarantee particular outcomes, but it will ensure that economic systems more closely mimic biological systems, which have successfully adapted to dynamic changes over millennia. After all, this analogy is at the heart of capitalism, the idea that markets have a power that mimics life and evolution. We should expand this logic, not retract it. For business, the opportunities are clear and enormous. With the population doubling sometime in the next century, and resource availability per capita dropping by one-half to three-fourths over that same period, which factor in production do you think will go up in value -- and which do you think will go down? This basic shift in capital availability is inexorable.

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NATURAL CAPITALISM CAN ADDRESS CURRENT PROBLEMS 1. EMBRACING NATURAL CAPITALISM IS A GREAT OPPORTUNITY Paul Hawken, Chair of the Natural Step Educational Foundation, MOTHER JONES, March/April 1997, p. 30. Economist Herman E. Daly cautions that we are facing a historic juncture in which, for the first time, the limits to increased prosperity are not the lack of man-made capital but the lack of natural capital. The limits to increased fish harvests are not boats, but productive fisheries; the limits to irrigation are not pumps or electricity, but viable aquifers; the limits to pulp and lumber production are not sawmills, but plentiful forests. Like all previous limiting factors, the emergence of natural capital as an economic force will pose a problem for reactionary institutions. For those willing to embrace the challenges of a new era, however, it presents an enormous opportunity. 2. CURRENT SYSTEM MASKS VALUE OF NATURAL CAPITAL Paul Hawken, Chair of the Natural Step Educational Foundation, MOTHER JONES, March/April 1997, p. 30. Economists make no distinctions when reporting growth -- whether we've invested in new schools or paid to clean up a toxic waste spill. The value of natural capital is masked by a financial system that gives us improper information -- a classic case of "garbage in, garbage out." Money and prices and markets don't give us exact information about how much our suburbs, freeways, and spandex cost. Instead, everything else is giving us accurate information: our beleaguered air and watersheds, our overworked soils, our decimated inner cities. All of these provide information our prices should be giving us but do not. 3. NATURAL CAPITALISM HELPS CREATE JOBS Paul Hawken, Chair of the Natural Step Educational Foundation, MOTHER JONES, March/April 1997, p. 30. Reducing resource waste creates jobs. Industry has always sought to increase the productivity of workers, not resources. And for good reason. Most resource prices have fallen for 200 years -- due in no small part to the extraordinary increases in our ability to extract, harvest, ship, mine, and exploit resources. If the competitive advantage goes to the low-cost provider, and resources are cheap, then business will naturally use more and more resources in order to maximize worker productivity. Such a strategy was eminently sensible when the population was smaller and resources were plentiful. But with respect to meeting the needs of the future, contemporary business economics is pre-Copernican. We cannot heal the country's social wounds or "save" the environment as long as we cling to the outdated industrial assumptions that the summum bonum of commercial enterprise is to use more stuff and fewer people. Our thinking is backward: We shouldn't use more of what we have less of (natural capital) to use less of what we have more of (people). While the need to maintain high labor productivity is critical to income and economic well-being, labor productivity that corrodes society is like burning the furniture to heat the house. Our pursuit of increased labor productivity at all costs not only depletes the environment, it also depletes labor. Just as overproduction can exhaust topsoil, overproductivity can exhaust a workforce. The underlying assumption that greater productivity would lead to greater leisure and well-being, while true for many decades, has become a bad joke. In the United States, those who are employed, and presumably becoming more productive, find they are working 100 to 200 hours more per year than 20 years ago. Yet real wages haven't increased for more than 20 years. 5. IT’S CHEAPER TO DO THE RIGHT THING: NATURAL CAPITALISM Paul Hawken, Chair of the Natural Step Educational Foundation, MOTHER JONES, March/April 1997, p. 30. At this point, you may well be skeptical. The last summary is too hopeful and promises too much. If economic alternatives are this attractive, why aren't we doing them now? A good question. I will try to answer it. But, lest you think these proposals are Pollyannaish, know that my optimism arises from the magnitude of the problem, not from the ease of the solutions. Waste is too expensive; it's cheaper to do the right thing.

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Natural Capitalism Bad PROBLEMS INHERENT IN CAPITALISM, NATURAL OR NOT 1. THE MARKET IS THE PROBLEM, NOT THE SOLUTION Michael Albert, Activist, Z MAGAZINE, April 1997, p. 11. First, Hawken ignores that the reason markets and prices do not account for ecological impact is that markets account only for the direct effects of transactions on the immediate buyers and sellers. This is all the agents involved learn about or have reason to care about, given the behaviors their roles dictate. And Hawken also fails to understand that a real effort to seriously address this weakness of markets would counter capital’s retaining and expanding its dominance, though modest interventions to prevent calamities that would hurt capital, are, of course, what the state is economically for. 2. PROFIT MOTIVE IS THE ROOT OF BUSINESS INTEREST Michael Albert, Activist, Z MAGAZINE, April 1997, p. 11. Second, Hawken fails to recognize that each individual plant is not in the business of doing good for consumers, much less for society, but is in the business of making a profit for its owners and maintaining their dominant position, and that each business will continue to do this with a vengeance (or go out of business), short of being redefined into an entirely new mold, or coercively restrained. 3. RESOURCE ALLOCATION PROBLEMS ARE INHERENT IN CAPITALISM Michael Albert, Activist, Z MAGAZINE, April 1997, p. 11. Third, there is no understanding that the allocation of resources and energies to useless production rather than to socially beneficial production is not a horrible by-product of stupid holdover habits, but an important virtue of the system, at least from the perspective of those who run it. Allocation to waste and warfare instead of social wages and welfare does not happen because capitalists are sadists or mired in some outdated mindset of the past. They do not spend money on useless missiles, or on systems to thwart their workers’ initiative, or on cleaning up preventable messes, because they enjoy seeing poor people suffer for want of proper housing, health care, or education, or because they are in the habit of doing it and can’t break out. By the same token, there is no way that they are interested in seeing all these funds applied to mitigating social ills. A self-centered, socially oblivious outlook is imposed by nearly every aspect of corporate life. As a result, capitalist care about everyone else’s condition only insofar as everyone else’s condition bears on their profits and power. To give the public good housing, education, health care, and protection against want would make society’s worst off much better off, and it would, as a by product, dramatically alter the balance of power between labor and capital, threatening capital’s ability to scarf up profits. 4. CAPITALISM NECESSITATES WASTE PRODUCTION Michael Albert, Activist, Z MAGAZINE, April 1997, p. 11. It’s just like unemployment. Anyone who works knows that when unemployment is high and the fear of losing one’s job is overwhelming, workers run scared and overtime will increase, conditions will worsen, and pay will drop. But when unemployment is low, and the threat to move on to a new job and leave the owner saddled with a hard-to-fill slot is real, workers get uppity, conditions improve, and pay increases. Social programs have the same effect on bargaining power and thus on the distribution of wealth, and this means their impact goes way beyond their immediate effect on recipients. That is why useless waste production is so much better from capital’s perspective than production that betters the lot of the worst off. It doesn’t even matter if socially beneficial production can be done with short term profits higher than the short term profits of cleaning up spillage or making weapons, or that social production can be done employing more people than high tech waste production (actually, this is a debit from capital’s perspective). What matters is the effect not only on immediate profits, but also on the conditions of being able to continually accrue more profits in the future.

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NATURAL CAPITALISM ADVOCATES ARE MISLEADING 1. HAWKEN CONFUSES THE ISSUES MORE THAN ANYTHING Michael Albert, Activist, Z MAGAZINE, April 1997, p. 11. Decades later, there are indeed some approaches to addressing environmental problems that deal with many injustices in society, some that carefully skirt non environmental injustices even pandering to the interests of pollution’s main perpetrators, and some that brazenly enhance the situation of elites at the expense of everyone else. The cover story of the April issue of Mother Jones by Paul Hawken is titled "Natural Capitalism." Hawken finds symptoms of illness, describes the full disease, explains its cause, and proposes a remedy. The trouble is, Hawken confuses the issue more than he clarifies it. 2. HAWKEN HAS A LIMITED VIEW OF WHAT IS WRONG Michael Albert, Activist, Z MAGAZINE, April 1997, p. 11. Hawken relates all the social ills he uncovers back to resource mis-utilization and bad accounting. For example, he makes a compelling case that there is an immense productive capacity wasted—he says $2 trillion out of $7 trillion in annual output—due to roadway congestion, highway accidents, free parking, guarding sea lanes for oil, inefficient energy expenditures, non-essential and fraudulent medical care, substance abuse, obesity treatments, air pollution related health problems, tax code idiocy, and crime. He concludes that if we could save all this expenditure, it would be available for education and good health care. Part of the problem is that Hawken has a limited view of what is wrong. For example his waste list doesn’t include lost work due to worker recalcitrance to deliver for bosses, investment in otherwise unproductive tools to disempower and control workers, education to limited social slots instead of for human fulfillment and development, losses due to racist and sexist assumptions about whole populations, bureaucratic waste, advertizing and packaging to sell regardless of need, over production of private goods and under production of public ones, duplication of efforts, or anything else that points inexorably toward oppressive social relations and particularly oppressive class, race, or gender relations. 3. HAWKEN IS CLUELESS TO THE REAL PROBLEMS Michael Albert, Activist, Z MAGAZINE, April 1997, p. 11. Additionally, Hawken seems clueless as to the real underlying causes of the misallocation problems he perceives. He writes "one is tempted to say that there is nothing wrong with capitalism except that it has never been tried. Our current industrial system is based on accounting principles that would bankrupt any company." And "industries destroy natural capital because they historically benefited from doing so." Hawken thinks the big problem is that modern industry and technology have untracked the minds of entrepreneurs, causing them to become habituated to ignoring the intrinsic value of natural systems and the importance of husbanding resources. Because of this (a) we are destroying the ecology and suffering grave hardships and dangers, (b) we are immensely wasteful, leaving little for important social expenditures, and (c) we fail to utilize human labor sufficiently, always preferring to use resources instead, causing unemployment. The upshot is that we (in this case presumably meaning those who make corporate decisions) need to re-attune ourselves to the importance of husbanding natural systems and using our technical intelligence more wisely, and Hawken is optimistic this will happen because he thinks it will be in capitalists’ interest to wake up—Hawken says that it will be "profitable." It is a comforting framework. Hawken can plead loudly and even militantly for change, yet never once indicate that anyone is doing anything oppressive. Ignorance and outmoded habits are the only problem. 4. HAWKEN IGNORES THE ROLE OF ELITES Michael Albert, Activist, Z MAGAZINE, April 1997, p. 11. More, there is no need to take on the rich and famous. The change sought is in their interest, too. We don’t have to force elites to relent to our agenda, we just have to converse with them and they will see the light and do business right—the natural way. Yes, there will have to be wiser use of taxes to provide proper incentives, but there is no need to mention redistributing wealth or power, much less changing defining institutions such as private ownership or allocation by means of market competition. We just have to give capitalism plus ecological wisdom a chance. Capitalism will do fine for us all, once we remove the crusty anachronistic habits of resource profligacy that the age of steam engines hoisted on our entrepreneurs.

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Negative Utilitarianism Good NEGATIVE UTILITARIANISM IS SUPERIOR TO POSITIVE UTILITARIANISM 1. NEGATIVE UTILITARIANISM REFLECTS THE BASIS OF MORAL URGENCY Karl Popper, Professor of Philosophy, THE OPEN SOCIETY AND ITS ENEMIES, 1952, p. 508. Although my own position is, I believe, clearly enough implied in the text, I may perhaps briefly formulate what seems to me the most important principles of humanitarian and equalitarian ethics. 1) Tolerance towards all who are not intolerant and who do not propogate intolerance. This implies, especially, that the moral decisions of others should be treated with respect, as long as such decisions do not conflict with the principle of tolerance. 2) The recognition that all moral urgency has its basis in the urgency of suffering or pain. I suggest, for this reason, to replace the utilitarian formula 'Aim at the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number' or briefly 'Maximize happiness' with the formula 'The least amount of avoidable suffering for all,' or briefly, 'Minimize suffering.' Such a simple formula can, I believe, be made one of the fundamental principles (admittedly not the only one) of public policy. (The principle 'Maximize happiness,' in contrast, seems to be apt to produce a benevolent dictatorship.) 3. SUFFERING IS A DIRECT MORAL APPEAL, UNLIKE HAPPINESS Karl Popper, Professor of Philosophy, THE OPEN SOCIETY AND ITS ENEMIES, 1952, p. 570-1. I believe that there is, from the ethical point of view, no symmetry between suffering and happiness, or between pain and pleasure. Both the greatest happiness principle of the Utilitarians and Kant's principle, 'Promote other people's happiness ...,' seem to me (at least in their formulation) fundamentally wrong on this point, which is, however, not one for rational argument. In my opinion, human suffering makes a direct moral appeal, namely, the appeal for help, while there is no similar appeal to increase the happiness of a man who is doing well anyway. 4. SUFFERING IS OF MUCH MORE MORAL CONSEQUENCE THAN HAPPINESS Karl Popper, Professor of Philosophy, THE OPEN SOCIETY AND ITS ENEMIES, 1952, p. 508-9. We should realize that from the moral point of view suffering and happiness must not be treated as symmetrical; that is to say, the promotion of happiness is in any case much less urgent that the rendering of help to those who suffer, and the attempt to prevent suffering. (The latter task has little to do with 'matters of taste,' the former much.) 5. PAIN OUTWEIGHS PLEASURE FROM A MORAL POINT OF VIEW Karl Popper, Professor of Philosophy, THE OPEN SOCIETY AND ITS ENEMIES, 1952, p. 571. A further criticism of the Utilitarian formula 'Maximize pleasure' is that it assumes, in principle, a continuous pleasure-pain scale which allows us to treat degrees of pain as negative degrees of pleasure. But, from the moral point of view, pain cannot be outweighed by pleasure, and especially not one man's pain by another man's pleasure. Instead of the greatest happiness for the greatest number, one should demand, more modestly, the least amount of avoidable suffering for all; and further, that unavoidable suffering--such as hunger in times of unavoidable shortage of food--should be distributed as equally as possible.

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NEGATIVE UTILITARIANISM IS GENERALLY DESIRABLE 1. NEGATIVE UTILITARIANISM ADDS CLARITY TO ETHICS Karl Popper, Professor of Philosophy, THE OPEN SOCIETY AND ITS ENEMIES, 1952, p. 571. I find that there is some kind of analogy between this view of ethics and the view of scientific methodology which I have advocated in my LOGIK DER FORSCHUNG. It adds clarity to the field of ethics if we formulate our demands negatively, i.e. if we demand the elimination of suffering rather than the promotion of happiness. Similarly, it is helpful to formulate the task of scientific method as elimination of false theories (from the various tentatively proffered) rather than the attainment of established truths. 2. NEGATIVE UTILITARIAN VIEW IMPROVES LIFE: NOT RESPECTING IT CAUSES SUFFERING Karl Popper, Professor of Philosophy, THE OPEN SOCIETY AND ITS ENEMIES, 1952, p. 155. This difference is far from being merely verbal. In fact, it is most important. It is the difference between a reasonable method of improving the lot of a man, and a method which, if really tried, may easily lead to an intolerable increase in human suffering. It is the difference between a method which can be applied at any moment, and a method whose advocacy may easily become a means of continually postponing action until a later date, when conditions are more favorable. And it is also the difference between the only method of improving matters which has so far been really successful, at any time, and at any place (Russia included, as will be seen) and a method which, wherever it has been tried, has led only to the use of violence in place of reason, and if not to its own abandonment, at any rate to that of its original blueprint. 3. FIGHTING AGAINST EVIL IS BETTER FOR HAPPINESS THAN FIGHTING FOR GOOD Karl Popper, Professor of Philosophy, THE OPEN SOCIETY AND ITS ENEMIES, 1952, p. 155. But he will be aware that perfection, if at all attainable, is far distant, and that every generation of men, and therefore also the living, have a claim; perhaps not so much of a claim to be made happy, for there are no institutional means of making a man happy, but a claim not to be made unhappy, where it can be avoided. They have a claim to be given all possible help, if they suffer. the piecemeal engineer will, accordingly, adopt the method of searching for, and fighting against, the greatest and most urgent evils of society, rather than searching for, and fighting for, its greatest ultimate good. 4. QUESTIONS OF SUFFERING ARE MORE URGENT MORAL QUESTIONS Karl Popper, Professor of Philosophy, THE OPEN SOCIETY AND ITS ENEMIES, 1952, p. 65. But artificiality by no means implies full arbitrariness. Mathematical calculi, for instance, or symphonies, or plays, are highly artificial, yet it does not follow that one article, or symphony or play is just as good as any other. Man has created new worlds--of language, of music, of poetry, of science, and the most important of these is the world of the moral demand for equality, for freedom and for helping the weak. When comparing the field of morals with the field of music or of mathematics, I do not wish to imply that these similarities reach very far. there is, more especially, a great difference between moral decisions and decisions in the field of art. Many moral decisions involve the life and death of other men. Decisions in the field of art are much less urgent and important. It is therefore most misleading to say that a man decides for or against slavery as he might decide for or against certain works of music or literature, or that moral decisions are purely matters of taste. Nor are they decisions about how to make the world more beautiful, or about other luxuries of this kind; they are decisions of much greater urgency.

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Negative Utilitarianism Bad NEGATIVE UTILITARIANISM JUSTIFIES MISGUIDED AND EVIL PRACTICES 1. NEGATIVE UTILITARIANISM CAN BE DISPROVEN BY EXAMPLES R. N. Smart, Professor of Philosophy at the University of London, MIND, Vol. 67, 1958, p. 542. Professor Popper has proposed a negative formulation of the utilitarian principle, so that we should replace 'Aim at the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number' by 'The least amount of avoidable suffering for all.' He says: 'It adds clarity to the field of ethics if we formulate our demands negatively, i.e. if we demand the elimination of suffering rather than the promotion of happiness'. However, one may reply to negative utilitarianism (hereafter called NU for short) with the following example, which is admittedly fanciful, though unfortunately much less so than it might have seemed in earlier times. Suppose that a ruler controls a weapon capable of instantly and painlessly destroying the human race. Now it is empirically certain that there would be some suffering before all those alive on any proposed destruction day were to die in the natural course of events. Consequently the use of the weapon is bound to diminish suffering, and would be the ruler's duty on NU grounds. On the other hand, we should surely regard such an action as wicked. On utilitarian grounds we might defend this judgment by pointing to the positive enjoyments and happiness likely to be found in the great number of lives destroyed. 2. NEGATIVE UTILITY JUSTIFIES WICKED MORAL JUDGMENTS R. N. Smart, Professor of Philosophy at the University of London, MIND, Vol. 67, 1958, p. 543. Admittedly, NU as a conservative political principle has some advantages, in that people more readily agree on evils than on goods; but any clarity it brings to ethics is brought at the expense of allowing certain absurd and even wicked moral judgments. Admittedly also my example does not quite work as it stands against Professor Popper inasmuch as he propounds two other principles to set alongside NU, viz. briefly 'Tolerate the tolerant' and 'No tyranny'. Presumably, the benevolent world-exploder might be thought intolerant and/or tyrannical. But these two other principles, I would maintain, capable of relative straightforward justification, and are therefore not principles in the sense NU is. 3. NEGATIVE UTILITARIANISM IS COUNTER-INTUITIVE AND SETS BAD PRECEDENTS David Pearce, BLTC Research, THE HEDONISTIC IMPERATIVE, May 15, 1998, p. np, Accessed May 17, 1998, http://www.hedweb.com/negutil.htm. Ethical negative-utilitarianism is a value-system which challenges the moral symmetry of pleasure and pain. It doesn't question the value of enhancing the happiness of the already happy. Yet it attaches value in a distinctively moral sense of the term only to actions which tend to minimize or eliminate suffering. This is what matters above all else. The doctrine is counter-intuitive, not least insofar as it entails that from a purely ethical perspective it wouldn't matter if nothing at all had existed, or everything ceased to exist. Indeed, if the option were humanly available, the logic of the position morally obligates bringing the world to an end were this the only way to banish the suffering endemic to it. 4. NEGATIVE UTILITY ELIMINATES IMPORTANT PRINCIPLES R. N. Smart, Professor of Philosophy at the University of London, MIND, Vol. 67, 1958, p. 543. For example, tyranny, even if benevolent in one generation, leads to misery in the long run, etc. Professor Popper has given sufficient illustrations of why we should, under normal circumstances, resist tyranny passionately. But of course there is no long run to worry about if there is a benevolent world-exploder. In any event, if we allow 'Tolerate the tolerant and 'No tyranny' to stand as principles alongside NU, there will be conflict between them and NU regarding our example. If we take NU seriously, surely we should override the other principles. Would not our benevolent world-exploder be truly the savior of mankind, and for the animals, too? The sincere proponent of NU can see a novel significance in the saying that those whom the gods love die young.

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POSITIVE UTILITARIANISM SAVES MORE LIVES THAN NEGATIVE UTILITARIANISM 1. NEGATIVE UTILITARIANISM PROVIDES JUSTIFICATION FOR MURDER R. N. Smart, Professor of Philosophy at the University of London, MIND, Vol. 67, 1958, p. 542. Again, consider NU in relation to murder and abortion. Painless killing would be a benefit to the victim. True, (I) his dear ones might suffer, through (a) the sorrow occasioned by his death and (b) the possible deprivation accruing on the removal of a breadwinner; and (II) without a rule against murder society might become chaotic and therefore miserable. As for (a), mourning as an expression of sympathy for the victim would be irrational; better to be glad that he will fear no more the heat of the sun nor the furious winter's raging, etc. (Religious people sometimes come near to this, but not for NU reasons: the dead one is enjoying the bliss of heaven.) And as to (b) and (II), controlled murder would be quite all right, e.g. child-exposure (or rather, painless child murder, like the human disposal of unwanted kittens), provided this did not upset population balance, etc.: one could have a state-administered system of licenses, for instance. 2. NEGATIVE UTILITARIANISM UNCONVINCING ON LIFE-FOCUSED GROUNDS R. N. Smart, Professor of Philosophy at the University of London, MIND, Vol. 67, 1958, p. 542-3. Furthermore, racial suicide, child-murder and abortion, while undoubtedly beneficial to the victims if painlessly carries out, might be justifiable even if the methods were somewhat painful: the amount of toothache and illness in store for a man will usually far outweigh the brief misery of the stiletto in his back. In general, then, NU will be unconvincing whenever we are concerned wit the cutting off of life. 3. POSITIVE UTILITY CAPTURES MORE BENEFITS THAN NEGATIVE UTILITY R. N. Smart, Professor of Philosophy at the University of London, MIND, Vol. 67, 1958, p. 543. As indicated above, positive utilitarianism ('Maximize happiness') does better in these matters; and incidentally it covers a large part of the ground covered by NU, since although a happy man does not suffer appreciably less when tortured, a tortured person, especially one of tender years, may well turn out to be less happy.

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Nonviolence Responses In his book Exploring Nonviolent Alternatives, Gene Sharp writes, “For effective application, nonviolent struggle has requirements, as does violence; if these are not met it can fail, as can any other type of struggle. People differ in their estimates of the extent to which nonviolent action is, or can be made, sufficiently effective in actual combat to replace violence as the ultimate sanction and means of struggle.”1 Nonviolence is often glorified though examples like Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. It is seen as a noble course of action that is opposed to violence. Violence, on the other hand, has a very negative connotation for most people. James Gilligan notes that, “The use of violence as a means of resolving problems between persons, groups, and nations is a strategy we learn first at home. All of our basic problem-solving, problem-exacerbating, and problem-creating strategies, for living and dying, are learned first at home....Human violence is much more complicated, ambiguous and, most of all, tragic, than is commonly realized or acknowledged.”2 This view that violence is a tragedy is a common one, and leads people to think that nonviolence is a superior alternative. Gilligan adds, “To approach the study of violence as the study of tragedy is to see that tragic dramas are all about violence; that violence is what they have been re-enacting and embodying, meditating and pondering on, and eliciting grief and compassion about, from the time they first evolved from religious rituals two and a half millennia ago.”3 With such impassioned views on violence on both sides, we need a clear cut definition of violence in order to move forward. Violence is the “creation of a medical problem, namely, the infliction of physical injury on a person by a person, especially lethal injury, but also including those injuries that are serious enough to be life-threatening, mutilating, or disabling.”4 Nonviolence then would be the absence of such actions. This includes a wide range of strategies and actions, but provides enough clarity that the two can be distinguished. The following essay will argue that nonviolence should be rejected in favor of violence in many circumstances. Violence is more effective and often the only possible way to be successful in achieving a goal. VIOLENCE IS NECESSARY FOR REVOLUTION Only looking at the title of this section, readers might immediately start naming to themselves times when nonviolence has been successful at starting and finishing a revolution. However, not only are these rare exceptions, but they likely do not take into account modern circumstances and the changing political environment. Author Anthony Burton notes, “Revolution in a modern State is a hopeless undertaking if classical models are followed. Suddenly to overturn the social structure of such a State requires a degree of social unrest and access to organizational power which can both be denied by Governments.” 5 These sorts of classical models would include nonviolent movements of resistance against any oppression carried out by the government. If nonviolence is ineffective, the logical question to consider is whether or not a world without revolutionary possibilities is acceptable or not. Governments have historically provided many benefits to their populations. However, history is also marked by those who took power and used it against populations (domestically or internationally). A few examples will prove this point. The German government, led by Adolf Hitler, systematically began a project to exterminate Jews. Also targeted were homosexuals and the handicapped. The British government ruled India and colonies in Africa with a brutal hand, denying rights and privileges to indigenous people to benefit the empire. The government of the United States participated in the systematic killing of Native Americans. Clearly, there are times and circumstances that merit revolution. If nonviolence cannot work, we must examine if violence can be successful. Burton does concede that violence has little chance of success at creating a successful revolution if used in traditional manners. He says, “As an offensive technique for overthrowing Governments, guerrilla tactics look anachronistic.”6 Yet this only applies to guerrilla tactics and violence utilized in ways they have been utilized in the past. Burton explains, “However, as a defensive technique for raising the cost of attack to a level unacceptable to a potential invader, they seem more promising...The fact that the age of revolutionary war appears to be over does 497

not mean that revolutionary violence can no longer be employed. Indeed, the phrase ‘revolutionary war’ is already taking on a new meaning. Just as in the context of war between States there is now an accepted category of ‘limited war,’ so there is now a developing kind of ‘limited revolutionary violence.’” 7 Burton makes a great point here about the way that violence is accepted when it is committed on behalf of a State, but not when it is committed by those attacking the State. He continues, “Instead of attacking the nation-state outright, the new revolutionary selects a specific demand or area of weakness and uses violence to extract concessions at that particular point.” 8 If used tactically as Burton discusses, violence thus provides the best chance of getting not only concessions form a government, but perhaps also resulting in revolution. When governments use their massive amounts of power and resources to destroy life and commit atrocities, they must be effectively challenged. Traditional principles like nonviolence fail to challenge those governments and cannot secure concessions in the modern world. Thus, in order to rid the world of abusive governments when they arise, violence must be utilized. FAILURE IS WORSE WITH NONVIOLENT RESISTANCE Author Harry Prosch makes some fantastic observations about the potential in the use of violence and nonviolence as political tools. He notes initially that a person has no real idea if they will succeed if they use nonviolence. He says, “In view of all these uncertainties and dangers, nonviolent civil disobedience, thought of as a mode of moral persuasion, seems indeed to be a risky business. Not only are the chances of success not very good, due to the difficultly in knowing when the proper conditions for its success prevail, but the penalties for failure are rather severe.”9 Prosch makes two important points here. Initially, he agrees with many other philosophers in explaining the small chances of success that come with nonviolence. The second point he makes involves the punishment that comes along with failed nonviolence. Violence usually ends with one of the sides losing and a violent loss can entail death. However, if nonviolence fails, the person who loses is subject to the victor’s whims. Take for example those who nonviolently fought in the struggle for civil rights here in the United States. The government used dogs, hoses and police brutality on them. In addition, lynchings throughout the South were attempts to show people not to challenge the status quo. Those who fail at nonviolence are (at least initially) still alive and can be punished to the fullest by the government or the opposing side. Given that either violence or nonviolence can fail, it is important to consider what comes after the failure in making a determination about the tactics to use. Since nonviolence entails a worse punishment and lengthened time for such punishment, it should be rejected in favor of violence. VIOLENCE IS THE ONLY WAY TO HAVE EFFECTIVE NONVIOLENCE A way to make nonviolence effective involves getting the government (or other opposing side) to take your position seriously. This involves the other side not wanting to worsen the conflict. Nonviolence is easily tolerated by the government, as it does no real damage to their authority. However, if such nonviolence were to escalate into violence, that presents a true threat to the government. Therefore, if violence is a real possibility, nonviolence may succeed in getting the government to give in so as to prevent that violence. But if the threat of violence is not perceived as real, there is no reason the government will give in to nonviolence. Civil rights leader Malcolm X perfectly expressed this idea in his speech, “The Ballot or the Bullet.” The principle theme of this speech is that if nonviolence does not succeed in securing the African-American community the rights they are demanding, then they will abandon that strategy in favor of something more radical. There are multiple references in the speech where Malcolm X discusses the need for action, where there would otherwise be an escalation. Malcolm X says, “And these handkerchief-heads who have been dillydallying and pussyfooting and compromising- we don’t intend to let them pussyfoot and dillydally and compromise any longer.” 10 He continues, “And now you’re facing a situation where the young Negro’s coming up. They don’t want to hear this ‘turn-the-other-cheek’ stuff...It’ll be ballots, or it’ll be bullets. It’ll be liberty, or it will be death. The only difference about this kind of death- it’ll be reciprocal.”11 Perhaps he most directly discusses the need for violence when he says, “If you don’t take an uncompromising stand- I don’t mean go out and get violent; but at the same time you 498

should never be nonviolent unless you run into some nonviolence. I’m nonviolent with those who are nonviolent with me. But when you drop that violence on me, then you’ve made me go insane, and I’m not responsible for what I do.”12 These quotations from Malcolm X point out how violence (or the threat of violence) can create effective nonviolence. The government is more likely to make concessions to a nonviolent movement if they see the potential for that movement to become violent. This might explain why Martin Luther King, Jr. was treated differently by the United States government. Compared to Malcolm X, who blatantly condoned violence, Martin Luther King, Jr. was less of a threat and easier to work with. Martin Luther King Jr. looked appealing to the government and the establishment because in comparison to Malcolm X, he was less radical and more willing to work with the government. Concessions were made, therefore, only because the threat of violence existed. Therefore, nonviolence alone cannot create change in the same way that violence can. Perhaps without Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr. would have looked like the biggest threat and the government would not have made any concessions. Someone who was willing to threaten violence had to come along to convince the government to make any concessions at all. Only when they felt their power was in danger did they take action to make concessions to the part of the movement that arguably presented the smallest threat to the power of the government. At that level, violence is superior as a tool of political change. H.L. Nieburg also refers to this useful threat of violence. He notes, “The threat of violence and the occasional outbreak of real violence- which gives the threat credibility- are essential elements in peaceful social change not only in international but also in national communities. Individuals and groups, no less than nations, exploit the threat as an everyday matter.”13 The widespread uses of violence enables nonviolence to be effective. On both individual and group levels, violence as a possible escalation gives incentive to prevent such a move forward in intensity. This motivation can allow nonviolence at both levels to be effective at garnering change. VIOLENCE AS A TOOL OF THE STATE IS LEGITIMIZED To say that nonviolence is a preferred mode of protest assumes that violence is in some way not preferred or even wrong. Yet, protest is often directed at the use of violence by the state or government. One author notes, “Individuals and groups, no less than nations, exploit the threat as an everyday matter. This induces flexibility and stability in democratic institutions.”14 This quotation notes that violence is common and exists in the world we encounter on a daily basis. The common element of violence merits that appropriate responses exist. The author continues, “I refer not only to the police power of the state and the recognized right of self-defense but also to private individual or group violence, whether purposive of futile, deliberate or desparate.” 15 Here, the author indicates the way that violence is used on a regular basis by the police and the government in a state. These forms of violence are used to keep down social protest, as well as to instate and boost law and order. If the use of violence by the state is considered legitimate, it should also be considered legitimate when used in opposition to the state. The most effective way to counter violence and force is with those same tools. It would be philosophically inconsistent to say that while the state has the right to use violence, no one else does. A state can make just as many mistakes as an individual. However, when the state decides to do something immoral or wrong, more people’s lives are at risk because of the large amounts of power and influence that the state wields. If it is acceptable for this body of power to use violence, it must be said that it is also acceptable to respond to such illegitimate or mistaken uses of power with violence as well. In that way, the best check on the illegitimate use of governmental power is provided. VIOLENCE IS MERITED IN RESPONSE TO GENOCIDE It is an unfortunate reality that in our modern world genocide and ethnic cleansing still take place. These occurrences shake the world and consciousness, and thus call for a response. The international community must consider whether violent intervention is in the interest of the community and should be considered. A perfect example is what took place in Bosnia. One author notes, “In examining the worst excesses of ethnic cleansing we are transfixed by Bosnia which has given the chilling euphemism ‘ethnic cleansing’ to the late twentieth century. It is 499

the suffering of the Bosnians that challenges frontally European self-perception and self-identity, a fact not fully appreciated here in Britain.”16 Author Akbar S. Ahmed gives a disturbing description of Bosnia saying, “Ethnic hatred has a mimetic quality: the opposed groups mirror the hatred, rhetoric and fears of each other. It makes everyone an outsiders; and it makes everyone a target. Everywhere- in the shopping arcade, at the bus stop, in the cinema, in your living room- you are vulnerable to sudden, random violence. Anger and hatred are easily crated. The hatred is generalized, universal and maintained at a high level...All this creates an anger at the world around and a scapegoat is easy to locate. Members of the neighboring ethic group are dirty outsiders, fifth-columnists, disloyal, speak a different language and have different customs. They must be cleansed.”17 This explanation of the mentality surrounding ethnic cleansing offers us an opportunity to consider if violence as a response is justified in such a situation. There is no way for the international community to offer nonviolence as a way to stop such genocide and ethnic cleansing. Military forces that intervene must be willing and able to use violence to stop the death that is going on in the area. Oftentimes the government of the area is involved in the atrocious killings, and therefore is not an effective ally in stopping the problem. Additionally, the hatred is nonrational and engrained, so offering sanctions or other means of encouragement to stop the destruction are ineffective. In such a situation, it is necessary that intervention forces be allowed to use violence. While a few individuals will be lost, the cessation of a waged war on a certain ethnic group or portion of the population is far more valuable and must be allowed to exist. While perhaps the international community could use sanctions or send diplomats to try to stop ethnic cleansing in any location around the world, violence must be used if such nonviolent means fail. To claim that nonviolence must always be advocated and used condemns those victims of ethnic cleansing to constantly be hunted until nonviolence can persuade those pursuing them to stop. Such condemnation is not justified and should not be allowed as an option. When circumstances are beyond hopeless and violence is available as a tool, it must be utilized so that in the long term as many people as possible can be protected. NONVIOLENCE STILL USES FORCE Criticisms levied at violence usually center on the use of force. Violence is wrong because it harms others using force making them do something against their will. However, the line between violence and nonviolence as a means of resistance is not so clear as many might hope or portray it to be. Instead, nonviolence still uses force. Author Harry Prosch explains using the example of civil rights movements. He says, “The most attractive moral rationale for nonviolent civil disobedience seems to run something like this: Some laws, or some practices buttressed by some laws, are unjust or wrong, and, in simply doing what these laws say you should not do- that is, in simply placing your body where they forbid it to be places- you are only asking those who presumable believe in the justice of these laws whether or not they really believe in it. You are no coercing them by violence or the threat of violence. You are merely putting to them a question. And so your own hands remain clean.” 18 While this may seem an appealing strategy that leaves the nonviolent protester with no guilt, there is still the use of force. The use of force in nonviolence means that it is open to criticism the same way that violence is. Prosch explains, “In terms of practical impact, therefore, your tactic is basically a military one rather than a morally persuasive one- or even a political one. It is a contest of force, even though the only force you may be resorting to is that of the inertia of your own body.”19 In that sense, even nonviolence as a tool of protest uses force and encourages physical harm to at least one of the parties involved. Whether that party be the person initiating the protest or the person attempting to stop it is irrelevant at that level. The criticisms levied at violent protest that include people being harmed and the use of force equally apply to nonviolence. Therefore, nonviolence is not a more morally justified tactic than violence is. VIOLENCE AS A TOOL LENDS LEGITIMACY We discussed earlier the way that it is considered legitimate for governments and state actors to use violence as a means of accomplishing their goals. Therefore, if non-state actors can also use violence, it lends them legitimacy as well. One example of how this can be used is to look at “terrorists.” Anthony Burton notes, “Terrorists like Carlos 500

(Martinez) see themselves as actors on the international stage; in their own eyes they are as legitimate as the governments, international organizations and multinational companies which also have roles to play. They are entitled, therefore, to use diplomacy, including that of force, just as Governments are.” 20 By using the tools of those they are fighting, terrorists give themselves legitimacy. The world is more likely to listen to them and their cause if they have gathered attention by the use of violence. It puts them on a more equal playing field with the state actors they oppose. Burton adds, “The attraction of violence to such people, whether in support of anarchists, separatists or Palestinians, is that it can be seen as simultaneously weakening the capitalist system and its arch-protector the ‘imperialist’ United States. Since sovereign States have their organization of co-operation, such as NATO, it is ‘logical and necessary’ for terrorists to do likewise.”21 This legitimacy is also explained in that it ranges from difficult to impossible for a non-state actor or group of nonstate actors to wage a conventional war. War is the accepted form of violence that a state actor can use. Burton sums this up, noting, “Lenin argued that war was the great opportunity for revolution; today terrorism is the closest the revolutionary can get to it.”22 Since war is not an available tool for terrorists or non-state actors, the way to gain legitimacy in working towards a revolution involves other uses of violence. Such uses put non-state actors on a more even playing field. VIOLENCE SHOWS COMMITMENT TO A CAUSE When individuals speak against violence they often assume that all violence is unjustified and capricious. However, there are times when a situation or action is so wrong that it must be countered in every way possible. As Joan Bondurant notes, “It is not difficult to understand the man who takes up the weapons of violence to destroy whatever appears to him to be immoral and unjust. For violence is a time-honored mode of fighting injustice, whether against some form of tyranny at home or against some perceived threat from abroad....And more puzzling is the behavior of others who demonstrate their hostility through acts of destruction while, at the same time, they shout slogans of ‘peace.’”23 Gendered language aside, this quotation shows that violence is used when people have a strong commitment to a their cause. If something is worth fighting for, violence can be justified to show commitment to the cause. In the face of attack, genocide, racism, sexism or other horrible atrocities, violence is justified and shows that a person feels strongly about the cause they are fighting for and defending. VIOLENCE ON A MASS LEVEL CAN WORK Thomas C. Schelling, in describing civilian defense and the prospect of a people unifying to use violence, concedes that these ideas can work. He says, “One has to admit that it could work. Structures of power (governments, social organizations) always depend upon the voluntary cooperation of great numbers of individuals even when the structures seem to rely on physical force. The chief wielders of power, in other words, must have the assistance and cooperation of hundreds or even thousands of persons for the administration of physical force. The task of those who oppose a structure having physical force at its command, therefore, is to persuade hundreds of men to refuse any longer to cooperate with the tyrant or other administrator of violence.” 24 The most effective way to bring force is to unite many people together. In that sense, violence can bring people into a group and allow them to put all of their power together to best challenge their opponent. This unifying aspect of violence only intensifies the power it wields as a tool of revolt or political action. There are examples of times when nonviolence was effective. However, it is important to examine these examples to see if there is a threat of violence present. Like the example of Martin Luther King Jr. compared to Malcolm X, often nonviolence is heralded as successful when in reality such success were only possible with the threat of violence also being in play. In that sense, it is impossible to claim that nonviolence alone is always or even sometimes effective. Violence however, is a tool that can be effective at getting an opponent to back down or change their course of action. SUMMARY Nonviolence has accrued a large amount of praise over the generations as a noble form of protest or advocacy. However, oftentimes it must be rejected in favor of violence. First, violence is necessary for revolution, which is 501

needed in a world where governments easily can and do become corrupt. Failure is also worse with nonviolent resistance. Additionally, violence is the only way to have effective nonviolence. Violence as a tool of the state is legitimized, and the only effective way to counter such legitimized violence is with violence in return. Violence is also justified in response to genocide. Nonviolence still uses force, which means it is not immune to the criticism levied at violence as a means of resistance. Violence as a tool lends legitimacy to a cause and an actor. Similarly, violence shows commitment to a cause. Violence at a mass level can work. Many like to think that nonviolence is a more moral form of protest of activism than violence is. However, when seeking the most effective way to facilitate change in the world full or problems that is around us, violence is a legitimate and useful tool. ______________________________ 1 Sharp, Gene. Exploring Nonviolent Alternatives. Boston: Porter Sargent Publisher, 1970, pg. viii. 2 Gilligan, James. Violence. New York: Putnam’s Sons, 1996, pg. 5. 3 Ibid, pg. 7. 4 Ibid, pg. 19. 5 Burton, Anthony. Revolutionary Violence: The Theories. New York: Crane, Russak and Company, Inc., 1978, pg. 9. 6 Ibid, pg. 9. 7 Ibid, pg. 9. 8 Ibid, pg. 9. 9 Bondurant, Joan V. Conflict: Violence and Nonviolence. Chicago: Aldine Atherton Inc., 1971, pg. 54. 10 Steger, Manfred B. and Nancy S. Lind. Violence and Its Alternatives: An Interdisciplinary Reader. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999, pg. 169. 11 Ibid, pg. 169. 12 Ibid, pg. 170. 13 Bondurant, Joan V. Conflict: Violence and Nonviolence. Chicago: Aldine Atherton Inc., 1971, pg. 73. 14 Ibid, pg. 73. 15 Ibid, pg. 73. 16 Steger, Manfred B. and Nancy S. Lind. Violence and Its Alternatives: An Interdisciplinary Reader. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999, pg. 236. 17 Ibid, pg. 240. 18 Bondurant, Joan V. Conflict: Violence and Nonviolence. Chicago: Aldine Atherton Inc., 1971, pg. 52. 19 Ibid, pg. 53. 20 Burton, Anthony. Violence: The Theories. New York: Crane, Russak, and Company, Inc., 1978, pg. 141. 21 Ibid, pg. 142. 22 Ibid, pg. 144. 23 Bondurant, Joan V. Conflict: Violence and Nonviolence. Chicago: Aldine Atherton Inc., 1971, pg. 121. 24 Ibid, pg. 172.

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VIOLENT RESISTANCE IS KEY TO OVERCOMING STATE CONTROL AND DOMINATION 1. NON-VIOLENT RESISTANCE IS COLLUSION WITH THE STATE, VIOLENT RESISTANCE IS NECESSARY TO BREAK FREE FROM THE STATE Ward Churchill, Keetoowah Band Cherokee, Professor of Ethnic Studies and Coordinator of American Indian Studies at University of Colorado, 2001, Pacifism as Pathology, pg. 61-62. Precisely. The preoccupation with avoiding actions which might “provoke violence” is thus not based on a sincere belief that violence will, or even can, truly be avoided. Pacifists, no less than their unpacifist counterparts, are quite aware that violence already exists as an integral component in the execution of state policies and requires no provocation; this is a formative basis of their doctrine. What is at issue then cannot be a valid attempt to stave off or even minimize violence per se. Instead, it can only be a conscious effort not to refocus state violence in such a way that it would directly impact American pacifists themselves. This is true even when it can be shown that the tactics which could trigger such a refocusing might in themselves alleviate a real measure of the much more massive stateinflicted violence occurring elsewhere; better that another 100,000 Indochinese peasants perish under a hail of cluster bombs and napalm than America’s principled progressives suffer real physical pain while rendering their government’s actions impracticable. Such conscientious avoidance of personal sacrifice (i.e., dodging the experience of being on the receiving end of violence, not the inflicting of it) has nothing to do with the lofty ideals and integrity by which American pacifists claim to inform their practice. But it does explain the real nature of such curious phenomena as movement marshals, steadfast refusals to attempt to bring the seat of government to a standstill even when a million people are on hand to accomplish the task, and the consistently convoluted victim-blaming engaged in with regard to domestic groups such as the Black Panther Party. Massive and unremitting violence in the colonies is appalling to right-thinking people but ultimately acceptable when compared with the unthinkable alternative that any degree of real violence might be redirected against “mother country radicals.” Viewed in this light, a great many things make sense. For instance, the persistent use of the term “responsible leadership” in describing the normative nonviolent sector of North American dissent — always somewhat mysterious when applied to supposed radicals (or German Jews) — is clarified as signifying nothing substantially different from the accommodation of the status quo it implies in more conventional settings. The “rules of the game” have long been established and tacitly agreed to by both sides of the ostensible “oppositional equation”: demonstrations of “resistance” to state policies will be allowed so long as they do nothing to materially interfere with the implementation of those policies. The responsibility of the oppositional leadership in such a trade-off is to ensure that state processes are not threatened by substantial physical disruption; the reciprocal responsibility of the government is to guarantee the general safety of those who play according to the rules This comfortable scenario is enhanced by the mutual understanding that certain levels of “appropriate” (symbolic) protest of given policies will result in the “oppositional victory” of their modification (i.e., really a ‘tuning” of policy by which it may be rendered more functional and efficient, never an abandonment of fundamental policy thrusts), while efforts to move beyond his metaphorical medium of dissent will be squelched by “any means necessary” and by all parties concerned. Meanwhile, the entire unspoken arrangement is larded with a layer of stridently abusive rhetoric directed by each side against the other. We are left with a husk of opposition, a ritual form capable of affording a sentimentalist “I’m OK, you’re OK” satisfaction to its subscribers at a psychic level but utterly useless in terms of transforming the power relations perpetuating systemic global violence. Such a defect can, however, be readily sublimated within the aggregate comfort zone produced by the continuation of North American business as usual; those who remain within the parameters of non-disruptive dissent allowed by the state, their symbolic duty to the victims of U.S. policy done (and with the bases of state power wholly unchallenged), can devote themselves to the prefiguration of the revolutionary future society with which they proclaim they will replace the present social order (having, no doubt, persuaded the state to overthrow itself through the moral force of their arguments).92 Here, concrete activities such as sexual experimentation, refinement of musical/artistic tastes, development of various meat-free diets, getting in touch with one’s “id” through meditation and ingestion of hallucinogens, alteration of sex-based distribution of household chores, and waging campaigns against such “bourgeois vices” as smoking tobacco become the signifiers of “correct politics” or even revolutionary practice.” This is as opposed to the active and effective confrontation of state power.

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VIOLENCE IN ORDER TO PREVENT GENOCIDE IS LEGITIMATE 1. VIOLENCE IS KEY TO RESIST OMNICIDE Mike Ryan, Canadian anti-imperialist, Pacifism as Pathology, 2001, pg. 161. We recognize the right of oppressed peoples to respond to their oppression with violence, but we abstain from engaging in violence ourselves. Thus we recognize our own participation in the oppression of other peoples while we also attempt to deny the critical situation in which we ourselves are found today, a circumstance described by Rosalie Bertell in an earlier quote. If, as Bertell suggests, we are sitting upon a dying earth, and consequently dying as a species solely as a result of the nature of our society, if the technology we have developed is indeed depleting the earth, destroying the air and water, wiping out entire species daily, and steadily weakening us to the point of extinction, if phenomena such as Chernobyl are not aberrations, but are (as I insist they are) mere reflections of our daily reality projected at a level where we can at last recognize its true meaning, then is it not time--long past time -when we should do any thing, indeed everything, necessary to put an end to such madness? Is it not in fact an act of unadulterated self-defense to do so? Our adamant refusal to look reality in its face, to step outside our white skin privilege long enough to see that it is killing us, not only tangibly reinforces the oppression of people of color the world over, it may well be the single most important contributor to an incipient omnicide, the death of all life as we know it. In this sense, it may well be that our self-imposed inability to act decisively, far from having anything at all to do with the reduction of violence, is instead perpetuating the greatest process of violence in history. It might well be that our moral position is the most mammoth case of moral bankruptcy of all time. 2. THE FAILURE OF NON-VIOLENT RESISTANCE DURING THE HOLOCAUST SHOWS THE NECESSITY FOR VIOLENT RESISTANCE WHEN FACED WITH GENOCIDE Ward Churchill, Keetoowah Band Cherokee, Professor of Ethnic Studies and Coordinator of American Indian Studies at University of Colorado, 2001, Pacifism as Pathology, pg. 32-37. Pacifism possesses a sublime arrogance in its implicit assumption that its adherents can somehow dictate the terms of struggle in any contest with the state.’ Such a supposition seems unaccountable in view of the actual record of passive/nonviolent resistance to state power. Although a number of examples can be mustered with which to illustrate this point — including Buddhist resistance to U.S. policies in Indochina, and the sustained efforts made to terminate white supremacist rule in southern Africa — none seems more appropriate than the Jewish experience in Hitlerian Germany (and later in the whole of occupied Europe). The record is quite clear that, while a range of pacifist forms of countering the implications of Nazism occurred within the German Jewish community during the l930s, they offered virtually no physical opposition to the consolidation of the Nazi state. To the contrary, there is strong evidence that orthodox Jewish leaders counseled “social responsibility” as the best antidote to Nazism, while crucial political formulations such as the Zionist Hagana and Mossad el Aliyah Bet actually seem to have attempted to coopt the Nazi agenda for their own purposes, entering into cooperative relations with the SS Jewish Affairs Bureau, and trying to use forced immigration of Jews as a pretext for establishing a “Jewish homeland” in Palestine.8 All of this was apparently done in an effort to manipulate the political climate in Germany — by “not exacerbating conditions” and “not alienating the German people any further” — in a manner more favorable to Jews than the Nazis were calling for.~ In the end, of course, the Nazis imposed the “final solution to the Jewish question,” but by then the dynamics of passive resistance were so entrenched in the Jewish zeitgeist (the Nazis having been in power a full decade) that a sort of passive accommodation prevailed. Jewish leaders took their people, quietly and nonviolently, first into the ghettos, and then onto trains “evacuating” them to the east. Armed resistance was still widely held to be “irresponsible.” Eventually, the SS could count upon the brunt of the Nazi liquidation policy being carried out by the Sonderkommandos, which were composed of the Jews themselves. It was largely Jews who dragged the gassed bodies of their exterminated people to the crematoria in death camps such as Auschwitz/Birkenau, each motivated by the desire to prolong his own life. Even this became rationalized as “resistance”; the very act of surviving was viewed as “defeating” the Nazi program. By 1945, Jewish passivity and nonviolence in the face of the weltanschauung der untermenschen had done nothing to prevent the loss of millions of lives. The phenomenon sketched above must lead to the obvious question: “[How could] millions of men [sic] like us walk to their death without resistance.

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VIOLENT RESISTANCE IS SUCCESSFUL 1. VIOLENCE IS THE ONLY MEANS FOR WHICH SOCIAL MOVEMENTS HAVE SUCCEEDED Ward Churchill, Keetoowah Band Cherokee, Professor of Ethnic Studies and Coordinator of American Indian Studies at University of Colorado, 2001, Pacifism as Pathology, pg. 44-45. Violent intervention by others divides itself naturally into the two parts represented by Gandhi's unsolicited "windfall" of massive violence directed against his opponents and King's rather more conscious and deliberate utilization of incipient anti-state violence as a means of advancing his own pacifist agenda. History is replete with variations on these two sub-themes, but variations do little to alter the crux of the situation: there simply has never been a revolution, or even a substantial social reorganization, brought into being on the basis of the principles of pacifism. In every instance, violence has been an integral requirement of the process of transforming the state. 2. WITHOUT VIOLENT ACTS, SOCIAL MOVEMENTS ONLY PROP UP THE STATUS QUO Carl Webb. Collusion Online, volume 20, February 2001, accessed May 24, 2004, http://www.collusion.org/Article.cfm?ID=280. NP. He suggests that far from challenging State power, non-violent action is a valuable means by which the State can reinforce its legitimacy: "The message of civil disobedience as it is now practiced is this: There is opposition in society. The state deals with this opposition firmly but gently, according to the law. Unlike some countries, Canada is a democratic society which tolerates opposition. Therefore, it is unnecessary for anyone to step outside the forms of protest accepted by this society; it is unnecessary to resist." (p.140) Such recuperation clearly has implications for those whose actions go beyond the accepted boundary by allowing the State to simply divide and rule. As 'the violent minority' are isolated and crushed, the State can claim the tacit (or sometimes explicit) support for its actions from those who remain (unbruised and morally superior) within the permitted boundaries of dissent. 3. CONFRONTATION IS AN INTEGRAL REQUIREMENT THAT ONLY VIOLENCE CAN ACHIEVE Carl Webb. Collusion Online, volume 20, February 2001, accessed May 24, 2004, http://www.collusion.org/Article.cfm?ID=280. NP. However, if they concede the historical fact that "there simply has never been a revolution, or even a substantial social reorganization, brought into being on the basis of the principles of pacifism. In every instance, violence has been an integral requirement of the process of transforming the state" (p.45) then pacifists must begin to realize that there is not just an option to accept violence as a method of social change, but an imperative. In the author's view the fact that pacifists are so reluctant to get to this point in their reasoning has much to do with the fact that for most, struggle against the state is not a daily reality. Indeed, their whole concern stems from a moral objection to the 'wickedness' of the state, rather any personal threat to their lives and communities. From such a privileged position, pacifists can espouse non-violent revolution and engage in political action without the risks most political dissidents take.

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NONVIOLENT RESISTANCE FAILS 1. PREVIOUS MOVEMENTS’ SUCCESS WAS ONLY BASED ON BACKINGS OF VIOLENCE Carl Webb. Collusion Online, volume 20, February 2001, accessed May 24, 2004, http://www.collusion.org/Article.cfm?ID=280. NP. Churchill looks in particular at the popularly quoted 'successes' of the movements headed by MK Gandhi in India, and Dr. Martin Luther King in North America. In both these instances he argues that the 'success' of the movements in gaining their demands depended massively upon the threat of violence from other sources against the British and American governments respectively. In the case of North America, the pressure came from "the context of armed self-defense tactics being employed for the first time by rural black leaders and the eruption of black urban enclaves. It also coincided with the increasing need of the American state for internal stability due to the unexpectedly intense and effective armed resistance mounted by the Vietnamese against US aggression in Southeast Asia." 2. NONVIOLENT ACTION IS UNREALISTIC AND USED TO MANIPULATE PEOPLE Ward Churchill, Keetoowah Cherokee, Associate chair of the ethnic studies department and professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Colorado, Pacifism As Pathology, 2000, pg. 30. Pacifists, with seemingly endless repetition, pronounce that the negativity of the modern corporate-fascist will atrophy thought defection and neglect once there is a sufficiently positive social vision to take its place. Known in the Middle Ages as alchemy, such insistence on the repetition of insubstantial themes and failed experiments to obtain a desired result has long been consigned to the realm of fantasy, discarded by all but the most wishful or cynical (who use it to manipulate people). I don’t deny the obviously admirable emotional content of the pacifist perspective. Surely we can all agree that the world should become a place of cooperation, peace and harmony. Indeed, it would be nice if everything would just get better while nobody got hurt, including the oppressor who (temporarily and misguidedly) makes everything bad. Emotional niceties, however, do not render a viable politics. 3. NONVIOLENT RESISTANCE LEADS TO MASS DEATH Ward Churchill, Keetoowah Cherokee, Associate chair of the ethnic studies department and professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Colorado, Pacifism As Pathology, 2000, pg. 32. Pacifism possesses a sublime arrogance in its implicit assumption that its adherents can somehow dictate the terms of struggle in any contest with the state. Such a supposition seems unaccountable in view of the actual record of passive/nonviolent resistance to state power. Although a number of examples can by mustered with which to illustrate this point – including Buddhist resistance to U.S. policies in Indochina, and the sustained efforts made to terminate white supremacist rule in southern Africa – none seems more appropriate than the Jewish experience in Hitlerian Germany (and later in the whole of occupied Europe). The record is quite clear that, while a range of pacifist forms of countering the implications of Nazism occurred within the German Jewish community during the 1930s, they offered virtually no physical opposition to the consolidation of the Nazi state. (…) By 1945, Jewish passivity and nonviolence…had done nothing to prevent the loss of millions of lives 4. CIVIL DISOBEDIENTS NEVER SUCCEED IN CHANGING LAWS: COURTS CONDEMN THEM Tara Adams Ragone, Senior Articles Editor, Annual Survey of American Law, Annual Survey of American Law, 1999, pg. 311-312. Courts almost unanimously reject defendants' efforts to invoke the necessity defense in indirect civil disobedience political protest cases. As discussed above, courts generally do not excuse conduct that violates a law simply because the defendant wishes to express moral or political opposition to a law or policy. More specifically, in applying the four elements of the necessity defense to indirect civil disobedients, many courts find the defendants' evidence insufficient as a matter of law to establish the second and fourth elements of the necessity defense.

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NOT IN THEORY OR PRACTICE: ANSWERING MARXISM AND SOCIALISM INTRODUCTION Capitalism versus socialism--this has been the struggle that has defined the end of the last century and most of this one. We have been told that the outcome has been decided, but that’s not the first time we’ve heard that. And if Marx was right, then socialism isn’t here yet, and could not have been, but will yet be. If capitalists are correct, capitalism will be around forever. Why is this such a big deal? Because many political philosophers (and average folks) believe that the most important decision a society can make is how to produce and distribute its goods. Who makes what, who gets what, etc? We consider these fundamental questions of survival. Often, claims about human nature, the descriptive claims made by political philosophers, have to do with what sort of normative claims those same thinkers make about what individuals and societies should do. Socialists believe that human nature is changeable, that we do what we’re taught, and work in our context. Capitalism teaches us to be competitive and ruthless; socialism teaches us to be cooperative. Is it that simple? Before capitalism became an accepted point of departure for social analysis, social science was without a unifying anchor. The prevalence of psycho-historical explanations, or appeals to transcendent principles, seemed poor metaphors for tiying to predict and understand, in an interlocking way, the nuances of social phenomena. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels developed a series of formulae, combined it with a compelling narrative to rival the most tragic and hopeful of humanity’s primitive myths, with the added explanation of social phenomena and open-endedness, borrowing what they needed freely and openly, from Hegel, Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and the various utopian socialists. Marxism has invisibly influenced nearly every subsequent theory in a variety of academic disciplines. In particular, it has given an analytical basis to the long ignored but ever present face of oppression and suffering that earlier philosophies, written by men far wealthier than Marx, far more powerful than Engels, tended to conveniently ignore. Marxism has a sister named feminism. In many ways, the siblings are similar. Like feminism, Marxism strives to be a philosophy of the oppressed, for the oppressed and for their liberation. Like feminism, Marxism ultimately has failed, at least thus far, to actually take hold of even the most conscientious of the oppressed it claims to represent, although this is less a moral judgment than a pragmatic one. But unlike feminism, Marxism has an air of logical respectability which makes it easily assimilated into completely nonpolitical analysis. Thinkers such as Max Weber, Margaret Mead, Stephen Jay Gould, Frank Lloyd Wright, and others across equally diverse spectrums have been influenced by the angry, “tinny” voiced (as someone referred to it in a letter) German philosopher and economist. And as a side note, there was a time, not really long ago at all, when Marxism was the “official” doctrine of nearly half the human race. Although the official doctrine was often supplanted by thoroughly non-Marxist fakery, not many philosophies can make the claim of being written into national constitutions around the world, far more than have cited John Locke. UTOPIAN SOCIALISM As early as Plato, Western philosophers speculated about the relative advantages of having property in common. The fact that this notion predated capitalism should not surprise us; “private property” was in possessing less social weight than the owners of our time, but nevertheless generating value, employing slaves, and exploiting labor and capital to their advantage.

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The early critiques of capitalism were universally ethical critiques, not economic indictments. In light of what Marx and Engels argue in The Communist Manifesto, this is understandable; they point out that it is capitalism as a universal system, which did not really begin taking over until the 17th Century, which reduces ethical matters to mere economic calculations. Prior to capitalism, the concept of nobility was not connected by necessity to the concept of wealth, although they often proved to coincide. Utopian socialism is best described as a type of proposition concerning how to structure a non-competitive, collective society, a blueprint designed to solve problems the utopians spotted in private ownership. Such visions are only ‘utopian” because they do not give any details on how such a society would be inspired in the first place; for Marx and Engels, who coined the phrase, utopians lacked a sese of history, essential to understand why it will eventually be “time” for socialism. Although Marx and Engels admired the early sparks of vision, they decried the lack of history. Indeed, some utopians, such as the 19th Century’s Robert Owen, needed no such historical details because they were busy building such communities themselves. In England he had several successful enterprises based on his well-detailed principles of collective, if not complete, worker autonomy. During a time when education was a privilege, Owen considered it a right, essential to both the individual and to society, and his workers’ children were among the best educated in Britain before his collectives eventually tapered out financially (competing against capitalists with a collective enterprise is difficult because the expendability of labor, as we shall see, is integral to successful enterprise). Owen’s attempt to set up a similar collective in America was over much faster than the relatively successful projects he had evisioned and ingeniously engineered in Britain. America has never been kind to socialists. Engels’ Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, of which many editions exist, is the best short guide to the utopian schemes of the early stages of capitalist development. RELIGIOUS COMMUNITARIANISM Marx’s eschewment of ethics, his dismissal of them as untrustworthy ideological mutterings, is a failure for a philosophy of the caliber of Marxism. For a 19th Century economic theory, it offered the chance to change history for people besides economists and philosophers, and it certainly had the opportunity to embrace an ethics reflective of the young Marx’s humanistic observations, and the essence of optimism that surrounded the political component of his later work. Instead, Marx wanted to insist upon explaining how ethics were themselves assimilated into and destroyed in capital. This is certainly an important ethical question, in that it describes the conditions for the realization of ethics: that ethics requires a political and economic space more or less autonomous, that we might strive to meet the material conditions for ethics to be more than just ideals. But to stop there was intellectually dishonest, and it is surprising if Marx did not, in some way, realize this. Yet his intolerance of other points of view might suggest that he considered it a violation of his theoretical autonomy to comment on moral concerns. This presents a couple of problems for the practical realization of Marxism. First, if there is no coherent moral theory in Marxism, then we are forced to go outside it to decide what we, as individual actors, have to do. Marx can speak all he wants of what a class might do; he can even, without a substantive ethical theory, approach the question of what a class should do; but if, in my own perceptions, I do not see the difference so long as I am acting as an individual in a class, then I am left without guidence for some potentially difficult everyday decisions. The religious movements of 19th Century America were inevitably social movements, and sociological theory can do some justice to them. But at the core, they were ethical movements, whose leaders were convinced that “man’s redemption can only be found in a conversion of the heart,” as an old saying goes. So Latter Day Saints, Shakers, and other religious movements were building the soul and the community at the same time.

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The price religious movements paid for such an endeavor was scientific accountability. But this only matters to theoreticians, and Marx himself sought a unity of theory and practice. What the religious movements did was give an ethical component to socialism that Marx tried to take away. And given the crimes committed by false Marxists, always in the name of their Father, one wonders what difference a strong, ethical socialism might have made. In our evidence section, various thinkers will warn that Marxism’s track record for treatment of both fellow humans and the natural environment is highly suspect.

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MARX AND ENGELS To be fair, no one was feeling particularly sentimental in the 1840’s, when revolutions swept across Europe, promising many things and delivering on little but the execution of thousands. Marx and Engels joined the communist movement when in their twenties, not much older than many of you. They had read all that had been written on socialism, classical economics, and the labor theory of value available in print. Engels would research history and its various subsets, including religious social movements, for the rest of his life. Marx would read practically everything and write on anything he considered important. Karl Marx was not the best of people. He seemed to have a strong taste for drink, and although he loved his family, particularly his wife Jenny, theirs was never a happy life, and one could not say that Herr Marx was the model wageearning father. He borrowed money from Engels to get by, sold stories occasionally, and spent most of his time in the British Museum researching and writing about the subjects we’ll explain in this section. Engels seems to have been a quiet, well-mannered revolutionary. The son of a wealthy factory family, Frederick Engels learned manners and all about exploitation; he kept himself well-mannered and exposed the exploitation. His love for Marx was inspiring, and although Marx must have returned that admiration, the relationship seemed onesided and at times unfair. Perhaps Engels, a fine philosopher who knew he was working with a superior thinker, accepted his historical role like a good communist. They left behind two theories which together form a ‘critique” of capitalism. Together, they also provide a basis for socialism, especially when we speak of dialectical materialism, the first component. But the labor theory of value also implies its own solution, which is realized, ultimately, in socialism: DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM “Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given, and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all the dead generations weighhs like a nightmare on the brain of the living. And just when they seem engaged in revolutionizing themselves and things, in creating something that has never yet existed, precisely in such periods of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service and borrow from them names, battle cries, and costumes in order to present the new scene of world history in this time honored disguise and this borrowed language.” (Marx, THE EIGHTEENTH BRUMAIRE OF LOUIS BONAPARTE). First, the dialectic, as we shall explore in the section on Hegel, is a system concerned with the progressive unity of opposites. In order for opposites to unify, there must be a struggle. One of the opposites will “win” but will in doing so be affected by its opponent, and what emerges is something which maintains the strongest component from both. Second, the materialist aspect of the dialectic indicates that the struggle of opposites takes place within a context of matter, or stuff, which we call resources, since as humans that is our nature. Basically, we struggle over things, as things symbolize or must necessarily precede everything else; we have to eat before we can think. Third, through the struggle of opposing socio-economic forces history is made. In modem society this happens through a class system, capitalism, in which some people own the means of production and others do not. The most fundamental simplification of Marxism in this regard is that it is “The Golden Rule: whoever has the gold makes the rules.” For Marx and Engels, the “base” of a society is its economic production forces. Everything else in the “superstructure” is built upon the base. The Cahan evidence in this section will question this twofold model of society, base-superstructure, by questioning whether there really is a difference. Fourth, no problem can be solved, or even explained, completely, without dialectical analysis. Or to put the matter logically: 1. To understand something is to understand how that thing is connected to all other things 2. It is the nature of dialectical materialist thinking that it seeks the material connections between all things; 3. Therefore, dialectics seeks complete understanding. 510

4. No other method seeks out the connections between things as much as dialectical materialism; 5. Therefore, no other method is as close to complete understanding as is dialectical materialism. How accepted is this logic? A contemporary of Marx and Engels, anarchist Peter Kropotkin, wryly observes in a passage quoted at length in the evidence section: “No discovery of the ninetheenth century, in mechanics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, psychology or anthropology, has been made by the dialectic method. All the immense acquisitions of the century are due to the use of the inductive-deductive method--the only scientific method. And as man is a part of nature, as his personal and social life is a natural phenomenon, just as the growth of a flower, or the evolution of life in societies of ants or bees--there is no reason why we should, when we pass from flower to man, or from village of beavers to a human city, abandon the method which till then has been so useful, and look for another method in the realms of metaphysics.” THE LABOR THEORY OF VALUE The labor theory has two essential parts. The first is that the value of a product is a reflection of the labor “put into” the product. “Value” here is supposedly an economic term and nothing more. The labor theory of value is the reason automobiles cost more than the chunks of metal, plastic and rubber they require to manufacture. That pile of metal, plastic and rubber itself would cost more than the latent products which sit undeveloped in the ground, in rubber trees, and the like. Because work is what determines value, labor is the key element of the production process in any system, capitalism or otherwise. The second part of the labor theory of value is that the relationship between capital (the money which is invested in the making of products) and labor (the power and time workers put into the products) is fundamentally skewed towards capital in such a way that it can be called “exploitation.” “Exploitation” simply means that one is giving something in order to get more in return than what one gave. When I was in college and I wasn’t cutting evidence or flying to tournaments, I made pizza for a local pizzaria. In a typical lunch hour I probably made fifteen or twenty pizzas at an average consumer price of twelve dollars per pizza. The ingredients for each pizza probably amounted to a dollar at most, and I was paid an additional four dollars per hour. The remaining seven dollars of the first pizza, and the entire value of each additional pizza, was “profit.” Maybe ten or twenty cents of each pizza’s return went to other expenses such as extraneous wages or repair or power or licencing or whatever. By Marx’s definition, I was being exploited. I earned the company at least six dollars more, around five dollars more after any expenses, than I was receiving simply by virtue of my labor, without which it would not have been a pizza in the first place. If I made twenty pizzas this or that hour, I would be earning the same amount, four dollars, as if I had only received one or two pizza orders. I would be doing twenty times more work too. But that would then earn the company about two hundred and thirty dollars to my four. Other social thinkers, such as W.E.B. DuBois, make similar claims regarding the nature of wealth and wealth-making. These claims stem from a principle which was used, though not invented, by Marx. In fact, ironically, Marx relies on Adam Smith and David Ricardo, both ardent capitalists, to prove that the generation of wealth is a “communal” process involving, at the very least, the convergence of capital and labor, ownership and workers, bosses and grunts. If this theory is true, it seems a moral case might be made that the employer-employee relationship is fundamentally unfair. Although Marx doesn’t make this case, in The Wages System (quoted in the section on individualism) Engels calls employer-employee relations “a strange sort of fairness” and other socialists have made more of the fairness issue. Answers for it are included below. REVOLUTIONS Revolutions are inevitable because masses respond to fundamental social laws. It is a fundamental social law, Marx and Engels continue, that when systems have outlived their historical propensity, they must be overthrown. And 511

since (1) dialectical materialism shows the primary struggle under capitalism to be between the owning and working classes; and (2) the labor theory of values demonstrates how the working class is the exploited class, then (3) capitalism will be overthrown by the workers. This has some historical precedent (the merchants overthrew the feudalists) but not enough to justify the inevitablity of a unquely socialist revolution. Workers as a class may have a greater understanding of exploitation, but that does not give them the ethical motivation to reject its use once they are in power. The odds seemed strangely revealing to Marx and Engels. Today we are more careful, after having seen a few such revolutions that even Marxists admit exacerbated, and did not ameliorate, exploitation.

INITIAL SUCCESS The most immediately obvious fact about those socialist revolutions in the early 20th Century is that they all, each of them, proceeded differently than Marx’s laws had predicted. Lenin’s party had to spur the working class on because there was not a powerful and conscientious working class leadership. Another of Lenin’s problems, which Stalin and Mao both shared and thought they could solve, much to the immiseration and murder of millions, was the nonworking class, according to the strict definition of the term, but nevertheless vital and very exploited farmer class. Finally, Marx could not have imagined that the capitalist world, which he always considered to be very dull-minded except when in the act of accumulating capital, would do such a good job of starving out revolutions and propagandizing against them. Yet despite these variables, many people initially supported the Soviet “experiment,” including people who would turn away later, when Stalin’s crimes were revealed. Some of the best “anti-Marxist” literature comes from former Marxists like Sidney Hook, or left groups explaining why Marxism is currently inappropriate. But socialism did “work” for a while. The standard of living would increase substantially. The cause of women’s rights was the focal point of several Bolshevek projects, including the right to abortion, public laundry facilities, universal education, divorce on demand, and such, all within the first months of the Revolution. More evidence of the complex success of Marxism was found in the Third World, where anti-colonialists suddenly found an ideology that would move their causes beyond dozens of petty nationalisms. Again, these were variables Marx hadn’t thought much about. These were countries where conditions were not developed to the point of ‘readiness” for socialism. But if not ready for socialism, then why were revolutions occuring in these countries, while in advanced countries which Marx and Engels had thought would fall like dominos, people seemed content enough, even during periods of economic crisis, to keep going to work eveiy day? Something was strange about the success of these “socialist” nations across the globe. The USSR had really begun as a Russian revolution. From there, communist parties, whether the majority or not, were swept into power in countries surrounding Russia, but that transition was little more than a series of ruthless coups. Marx would have asked, where are the trade unions so essential to my revolution? They would have answered, dead. China seemed genuine enough, but Maoism was a mystification, an application of Confucian principlism to what was supposedly a scientific dogma. The Eastern Bloc, save Yugoslavia, were more Russian lackies. With Cuba, North Korea and Viet Nam all in direct conflict with the U.S., those nations had to act independently to survive, but even they had help which suggested that communism was nothing more than a geopolitical ploy for most of its cynical leaders, who we knew drove around in limos and ate caviar. Something wasn’t right about this, anyway. Even with the genuinely sincere justice in the hearts of the rank-and-file revolutionaries, one just couldn’t get past the feeling. THE FALL

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Although there is a Marxist explanation for the fall of the Soviet Bloc (that it failed to fulfill the needs of the people and was thus shocked back into capitalism), it didn’t seem to do much good for socialists, since that very explanation said mountains about the possibility of implementing socialism. Socialists are correct when they say that capitalization is increasing the misery of the people in those countries. But what ultimately appears to be emerging is a mixed system, which will be very far from the dreams of Karl Marx. The people, meanwhile, are condemned to have to choose between corrupt capitalist owners~.and venture sharks, or live in a system where, if they don’t keep their mouth shut, they might disappear. The people are the real losers. Socialism doesn’t seem to do much about those basic power structures either, simply reproducing them in a different economic sphere. POST-STALINIST FRAGMENTATION Meanwhile, the left of the world is as fragmented as it has ever been, bringing to mind the line from Monty ~on’s “The Life of Brian,” where various terrorist groups with similar-sounding names and minute theoretical differences did battle with each other while trying to usurp Roman power in Jerusalem. In America alone: The CP, SWP, RCP, SP, SLP, WWP, IWW, and a host of other anti-capitalist groups would form a significant minority if they could overcome their differences. Critics of Marxism say this cannot happen, since Marxist philosophy lacked the coherence to get past factionalism and scholastic obsession with theoretical details. ETHICAL PROBLEMS WITH SOCIALISM “The general point illustrated by the Wilt Chamberlain example and the example of the entrepreneur in a socialist society is that no end-state principle or distributional patterned principle of justice can be continuously realized without continuous interference with people’s lives. Any favored pattern would be transformed into one unfavored by the principle, by people choosing to act in various ways; for example, by people exchanging goods and services with other people, or giving things to other people, things the transferers are entitled to under the favored distributional pattern. To maintain a pattern one must either continuously interfere to stop people from transferring resources as they wish to, or continually (or periodically) interefere to take from some persons resources that others for some reason choose to transfer to them.” Robert Nozick, libertarian philosopher ( ANARCHY, STATE AND UTOPIA, 1974, p. 163.) Redistribution is coercive. So are revolutions. But these events might be swept under the claims of “necessary evil” to make a better society. However, what if it can be proven that the very idea of “collectivism” is fundamentally unfair? Individualists say it is, collectivists disagree. The individualist case, however, is based on a critique of the notion of a ‘collective,” and may also be applied to the Marxian notion of “class.” To even say we have, for example, a responsibility to the community, it is necessary to posit an entity called the community. (To illustrate its grandly metaphysical nature, we’ll give it a capital C: Community.) The Conimunity, it is claimed, by Rousseau and others, is more than the sum of its parts: It is more than just the individuals of whom It is made. Just what that “something more” means is often elusive. Sometimes it is Utilitarian, which makes it sound analytically correct, but really is only a plea for majority of individuals. Other times it is a “General Will” and, along with other of Rousseau’s philosophy of the state, is based on a sentimental acknowledgment of Classical notions of the City (Athens, for example). There is no life outside these walls... But for individuals, there are no walls, no city, nothing, without the individuals who build them. Collective needs are simply amalgamated individual needs, and are to be weighed against other individual needs, with consideration given to keeping acquisitions where they are, strongly against forced redistribution for the sake of the Community. The example of forced redistribution, Nozick’s as well as Rand’s tragic foil, shows everything that’s wrong with basing political philosophy on some abstract notion of equality or collectivism. For Nozick, in Anarchy, State and

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Utopia, it means something very important to this resolution: Humans can voluntarily give to others, in fact perhaps ought to, but there is no justification for forced redistribution. ENDS JUSTIFY MEANS Marx assumed the revolution would be violent in most countries (although he once offhandedly excluded the UnitedStates, Britain and Belgium from the predictions) and seemed to accept that as a necessary evil. Lenin went further, rhetorically glorifying the “terror” of the state. The Irish Republican Army, a fundamentally leftist group, supports terrorism, along with the Maoist Shining Path in Peru. Terrorism, it is argued, may be the inevitable, and perhaps justified, outcome of the state’s monolithic control over dissent and discussion. Groups with radical agendas might be forced into committing shocking acts of violence precisely because such acts are shocking, and because such “shock” is necessary to wake people up to oppression and state violence. Incidentally, it should be noted that such violence is hardly the exclusive domain of the political left (who, in fact, generally reject individual acts of terrorism for strategic reasons). The “right” in America seems to have adopted the traditional leftist criticism of American institutions, and the Oklahoma bombing indicates that many such groups are prepared to “shock the system.” But other traditionally-designated terrorist groups have anticapitalist or anti-statist agendas which can be called “leftist,” and all such groups seem to have decided that selectively targeted violence will further their aims. But, we ask, why does a political cause, however just, legitimize the death of innocent people? There initially seems to be no support in any “just war” doctine to excuse the image of the Oklahoma fireman holding a dead baby in his arms. Defenders of terrorism admit this is a complex and difficult question, but they answer that the “enemy” (the United States) has also used such measures. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, of Dresden in the defeat of Axis powers in Europe, all killed more innocent people than terrorists have altogether. The “system” which terrorism targets, it is argued, is ultimately responsible for the very conditions which allow innocents to be harmed by either side in the struggle. And the world which such radicals ultimately envision will be one, they say, free of violence and oppression. The utilitarian test again, this time with the assumption that the struggle can be successful. Some social activists who disagree with terrorist tactics (such activists include socialists as well as many who struggle for civil rights, etc.) point out two problems with such arguments. First, terrorism is counterproductive, since it will only delegitixnize the terrorist cause, target the small groups by the police and others, and divert attention from the very reasons why terrorists take up arms in the first place. In other words, while there may be a time in the future when mass movements must take up arms to defend their gains from the reactionary elites, for now, attention must be paid to building those movements; individual acts of terrorism only weaken that larger struggle. Second, if twentieth century history shows anything to radicals, it is that non-violent struggle can achieve many more aims than the random violence of terrorism. Ghandi brought down the British in India without his followers firing a single gunshot, and Martin Luther King accomplished great things in the United States, also using non-violent civil disobedience. Supporters of violence see such arguments as naive, however, because those gains were minimal compared to what could have been accomplished with an all-out armed struggle. In any case, it can be pointed out that Ghandi’s boycott of British cotton (boycotts are a standard ‘non-violent” form of struggle) resulted in the deaths of innocent children in England due to the failure of textile industry that resulted from the boycott. It is impossible, one may argue, to draw the line between violence and nonviolence, since the system is set up in such a way that any resistence is going to harm those innocent people who unwittingly depend on oppressive structures for their wellbeing. Only the destruction of that system will free us from its volitile tendency to harm its citizens, and whatever tactics are necessary in the destruction are, by virtue of their necessity, justified. The debate goes on and on. But it is a debate conducted by those who commonly agree changes need to be made. Those who advocate and defend violence have a burden to prove exactly what it will accomplish, and to prove it won’t hurt the cause in the long run.

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And more importantly, if we use violence to accomplish our revolutionary goals, then what kind of revolution are we trying for? What sort of society, having been founded upon terror, easily gives it up? THE ECONOMIC PROBLEMS It certainly seems that in the Soviet Union, the guarantee of a job was horrible for productivity. Socialists might decry this “carrot and stick” mentality, but we do not necessarily need to obsess over how humans naturally respond to stimuli. But there is a deeper meaning of “incentive.” If one knew her invention was to immediately become property of everyone else, then, even if she were not a selfish person, she would feel as if she had not been uniquely rewarded for her work; after all, the labor theory of value would presumably place a high emphasis on the creativity of the worker. Socialism has no immediate answer for lack of incentive. Che Guevara, revolutionary Cuba’s famous Argentine statesman, even admitted, as other revolutionary governments silently admitted, that the consciousness of workers was such that they required incentives to work well. The task as he saw it was to somehow teach the workers that something besides the assumption that “greed” governs humanity: “As we enter a new society, work cannot be considered the dark side of life but rather the opposite. Our educational task in the coming years is to transform work into a moral necessity, an internal necessity. We have to rid ourselves of the erroneous view --appropriate only to a society based on exploitation-- that work is a disagreeable human necessity. We have to bring out work’s other aspect, as a human necessity within each individual” (in Carlos Tablada. ECONOMICS AND POLITICS IN THE TRANSITION TO SOCIALISM, 1990, p. 178). How this upset the idealistic but grudgingly realistic Che was obvious in his speeches: “As for the presence of material interest in an individualized form, we recognize it (although fighting it and attempting to speed up its elimination through education) and apply it in our norms of hourly work plus bonuses, and wage penalties for nonfulfillment of these norms. We believe that in economics this kind of lever quickly takes on an existence of its own and then imposes its strength on the relations between men. In our view, direct material incentives and consciousness are contradictory terms”((elipses in original) pp. 192-3). But neither Cuba nor any other socialist nation got past the incentive problems. Workers in some countries are beaten into submission (resulting in high Chinese productivity) while others steal their employers blind, such as in Cuba. ECONOMIC CALCULATION Ludwig von Mises was the exception to that rule that few capitalists were willing to engage in a gritty dialogue with Marxism. Von Mises’ famous thesis, the “answer” to socialism that everyone should have, is that socialism cannot calculate prices or values of things nearly as well as the market can. Other substitutes will not work; the market seems to be the only self-correcting mechanism which takes all actions and desires into account. If this is true, Von Mises claims, socialism is doomed. It cannot deliver goods, period. Read his books to learn more about why this is true, because it involves a rather long economic calculation. But to explain it, just imagine that there was suddenly no way to know what to make, or how much to make it. Von Mises and his followers claim that the market ensures this, and it is vital to our survival. The attempt, Von Mises assures us, to build socialism, might well destroy humanity before it ever shows an example, a single example, of socialism knowing which goods to deliver where. SOCIALISM, WOMEN AND THE ENVIRONMENT

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This is ~n entirely separate level of criticism of Marxism. One could ignore all the above arguments and out-radical the socialists simply by going for these positions. To begin with, as DeBeauvoir explains below, Marxism treats the ‘woman” question the same way he treats the “worker” section. But women have a component that goes far beyond labor power; besides just childbearing (an element not of production but of re-production) woman is also under-represented in the workforce, often victims of violent working class men, and lots of other uniquely oppressive situations. which make working the line at Chrystler pretty attractive by comparison. And speaking of car factories, the other radical contingent critical of Marxism and socialism is environmentalism, which quietly points out that Marx had the same view of progress as Adam Smith, the same lust for power (simply collective power) at the expense of nature. Not a moral indict, because maybe he couldn’t have known, the failure of socialism to have a good environmental strategy before the fall is inexcusable for an anti-capitalist philosophy.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Catephores, George. MARXIST ECONOMICS (Basmgstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan Education, 1989). Moore, Stanley Williams, MARX VERSUS MARKETS (University Park, Pa. : Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993). Heilbroner, Robert L. MARXISM FOR AND AGAINST (New York: Norton, 1980). Grundmann, Reiner. MARXISM AND ECOLOGY (New York Oxford University Press, 1991). Burkitt, Brian. RADICAL POLITICAL ECONOMY: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE ALTERNATIVE ECONOMICS (Brighton, Sussex : Wheatsheaf Books, 1984). Napoleoni, Claudio. SMITH, RICARDO, MARX (New York Wiley, 1975). Wright, David McCord THE TROUBLE WITH MARX (New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1967). Roemer, John E. FREE TO LOSE: AN INTRODUCTION TO MARXIST ECONOMIC PHILOSOPHY (Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1988). Hoffman, John. MARXISM AND THE THEORY OF PRAXIS: A CRITIQUE OF SOME NEW VERSIONS OF OLD FALLACIES (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1975). Machen, Tibor. THE LIBERTARIAN READER (Savage, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1982). Parkinson, G.H.R. (editor). MARX AND MARXISM (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982). Von Mises, Ludwig. SOCIALISM (Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1981).

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DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM IS FUNDAMENTALLY FLAWED 1. THE BASE AND THE SUPERSTRUCTURE OF SOCIETY CANNOT BE SEPARATED Jean Cahan, philosopher at University of Nebraska, SCIENCE AND SOCIETY, Winter, 1995, pp. 395-6. The objection to Marx’s idea of property being raised, then, is the following: one of the principle theses of Marx’s historical materialism is that causal links exist between the socioeconomic base of a society and its legal and political superstructures, a conceptual separation between the socioeconomic base and the politico-legal superstructure must be shown to be possible before one can advance to discussing causal links between bases and superstructures; however, a difficulty arises in that Marx says that social relations of production are at the same time property relations; since social relations of production constitute the (economic) base of a society, property relations are part of the base; but Marx also says that legal relations belong to the superstructure of society; property is a legal entity (because it is a system of rights), therefore it would seem that for Marx property must also be part of the superstructure. It follows that it makes no sense to say that the economic base of a society determines its legal superstructure, for if base and superstructure cannot be distinguished from one another, there cannot be any sense in saying that one causally determines the other, while the converse is not the case. 2. DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM IS UNSCIENTIFIC AND UNECESSARY Peter Kropotkin, anarchist, EVOLUTION AND ENVIRONMENT, 1995, p. 115. The dialectic method reminds the modem naturalist of something very antiquated that has had its day and is forgotten, happily long since forgotten by science. No discovery of the ninetheenth century, in mechanics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, psychology or anthropology, has been made by the dialectic method. All the immense acquisitions of the century are due to the use of the inductive-deductive method--the only scientific method. And as man is a part of nature, as his personal and social life is a natural phenomenon, just as the growth of a flower, or the evolution of life in societies of ants or bees--there is no reason why we should, when we pass from flower to man, or from village of beavers to a human city, abandon the method which till then has been so useful, and look for another method in the realms of metaphysics.

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MARXIST AND SOCIALIST THEORIES OF LABOR ARE FLAWED 1. EMPLOYER-EMPLOYEE RELATIONSHIP IS ADVANTAGEOUS FOR BOTH Jeffery Tucker, Dir. Research at the Ludwig von Mises Institute, THE FREEMAN, May 1997, P. 271-2 This system of mutual rights creates peaceful cooperation between the employee and the employer. Each understands the obligations he has to the other. The goal, as with any economic exchange, is to better the lot of everyone involved. Contrary to the old Marxian claim that an inherent conflict exists between labor and capital, a free market makes it possible for them to engage in a mutually advantageous and profitable manner. 2. EMPLOYERS ARE NOT UNFAIRLY PRIVILEGED UNDER CAPITALISM Ludwig von Mises, German economist. SOCIALISM, 1981, p. 170 Under capitalism the employer appears to have great power over the employee. Whether he engages a man, how he employs him, what wages he gives him, whether he dismisses him--all depend upon his decision. But this freedom on his part and the corresponding unfreedom of the other are only apparent. The conduct of the employer to the employee is part of a social process. If he does not deal with the employee in a manner appropriate to the social valuation of the employee’s service, then there arise consequences which he himself has to bear. He can, indeed, deal badly with the employee, but he himself must pay the costs of his arbitrary behavior. To this extent therefore the employee is dependent upon him. But this dependence is not greater than the dependence of each one of us upon our neighbor. For even in a state where the laws are enforced everybody of course who is willing to bear the consequences of his action, is free to break our windows or do us bodily harm. 3. EMPLOYER’S WEALTH DOES NOT GRANT THEM AN INHERENT ADVANTAGE Ludwig von Mises, German economist. SOCIALISM, 1981, p. 172 Socialists usually attempt to refute the argument for freedom by contending that under Capitalism only the possessor is free. The proletarian is unfree because he must work for his livelihood. It is impossible to imagine a cruder conception of freedom. That man must work, because his desire to consume is greater than that of the beasts of the field, is part of the nature of things. That the possessor is able to live without conforming to this rule is a gain derived from the existence of society which injures no one--not even the possessionless. And the possessionless themselves benefit from the existence of society, in that cooperation makes labour more productive. 4. SOCIALIST CLAIMS FOR EMPLOYEE RIGHTS ARE UNSOUND Ludwig von Mises, German economist. SOCIALISM, 1981, p. 51 But the demand that every citizen should have a right to work in his accustomed profession at a wage not inferior to the wage rates of other labour more in demand is utterly unsound. The organization of production cannot dispense with a means of forcing a change of profession. In the form demanded by the socialist, the Right to Work is absolutely impracticable, and this is not only the case in a society based on private ownership of the means of production. For even the socialist community could not grant the worker the right to be active only in his wonted profession; it, also, would need the power to move labor to the places where it was most needed.

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CAPITALISM IS GENERALLY BENEFICIAL 1. CAPITALIST WORK CREATES UNIVERSAL GOOD Jeffery Tucker, Dir. Research at the Ludwig von Mises Institute, THE FREEMAN, May 1997, P. 274 Work even generates universal good, in that we are participating in the international division of labor and acquire the knowledge of what it requires the world over to bring about a prosperous social order. Of course, none of this is possible in a collectivist setting, where worker and employer are not free to contract with each other. The institutional setting required to ennoble work is one of markets, competition, and above all, private property, which Wyszynski calls “the leading principle of a well-regulated society.” The true glory of private property is not that it allows personal accumulation. Rather, it allows us to employ others and to be employed in enterprise, with justly given and received wages, and thereby spreads prosperity to more and more members of society in service of the common good. 2. ECONOMIC FREEDOM BENEFITS EVERYONE Robert Nozick, libertarian philosopher. ANARCHY, STATE AND UTOPIA, 1974, p. 228. People’s talents and abilities are an asset to a free community; others in the community benefit from their presence and are better off because they are there rather than elsewhere or nowhere. (Otherwise they wouldn’t choose to deal with them). Life, over time, is not a constant-sum game, wherein if greater ability or effort leads to some getting more, that means that others must lose. In a free society, people’s talents do benefit others, and not only themselves. 3. EMPIRICALLY, CAPITALiSM MAKES THE POOR RICHER Don Matthews, Professor of economics at Coastal Georgia Community College, THE FREEMAN, April 1997, p. 194 The claim has also been regularly made that the poor have been getting poorer for over a decade. Yet households officially counted as poor are as likely to own a host of major consumer goods as was the general population just two decades ago. But these data indicate something even more striking: the remarkable amount of goods owned by poor families: In the United States today a household which owns a washer, dryer, refrigerator, stove, microwave, color TV, VCR, and car might still be considered poor. The point i~, the free market has not only dramatically improved the well-being of the poor; it has generated so much wealth that it has completely transformed what we consider poverty to be. 4. CAPITALISM GUARANTEES BOTH WEALTH AND LIBERTY Don Matthews, Professor of economics at Coastal Georgia Community College, THE FREEMAN, April 1997, p. 194 The soul of the free market is not wealth creation but liberty and private property, and it is liberty and private property which enable entrepreneurs to create more efficient production methods that yield better goods and services. Entrepreneurs were the primary cause of the income growth that we’ve observed, as well as all those new and improved products consumed by everyone. The free market does not leave the poor behind, it makes them, as well as everyone else, richer. Much richer.

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SOCIALISM IS DOOMED BY ITS INABILITY TO ASSESS VALUE 1. SOCIALISM CANNOT CALCULATE ECONOMIC VALUE Ludwig von Mises, German economist. SOCIALISM, 1981, p. 186 In a socialist community the possibility of economic calculations is lacking: it is therefore impossible to ascertain the cost and result of an economic operation or to make the result of the calculation the test of the operation. This in itself would be sufficient to make Socialism impracticable. But, quite apart from that, another insurmountable obstacle stands in its way. It is impossible to find a form of organization which makes the economic action of the individual independent of the co-operation of other citizens without leaving it open to all the risks of mere gambling. 2. INABILITY TO ASSESS VALUE MAKES SOCIALISM UNWORKABLE Ludwig von Mises, German economist. SOCIALISM, 1981, p. 117 To prove that economic calculation would be impossible in the socialist community is to prove also that Socialism is impracticable. Eveiytbing brought forward in favor of Socialism during the last hundred years, in thousands of writings and speeches, all the blood which has been spilt by supporters of Socialism, cannot make Socialism workable. The masses may long for it ever so ardently, innumerable revolutions and wars may be fought for it, still it will never be realized. 3. SOCIALISTS CANNOT REFUTE VALUE ASSESSMENT PROBLEM Ludwig von Mises, German economist. SOCIALISM, 1981, p. 117 The discovery of this fact is clearly most inconvenient for the socialist parties, and socialists of all kinds have poured out attempts to refute my arguments and to invent a system of economic calculation for Socialism. They have not been successful. They have not produced a single new argument which I have not already taken account of. Nothing has shaken the proof that under Socialism economic calculation is impossible. 4. PROFIT MOTIVE IS NECESSARY FOR ECONOMIC CALCULATION Ludwig von Mises, German economist. SOCIALISM, 1981, p. 119 It is only the prospect of profit which directs production into those channels in which the demands of the consumer are satisfied at the least cost. If the prospect of profit disappears the mechanism of the market loses its mainspring, for it is only this prospect which sets it in motion and maintains it in operation. The market is thus the focal point of the capitalist order of society; it is the essence of capitalism. Only under capitalism, therefore, is it possible; it cannot be ‘artificially’ imitated under Socialism.

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SOCIALISM WOULD FAIL MISERABLY 1. SOCIALISM WOULD DESTROY RATHER THAN SAVE CIVILIZATION Ludwig von Mises, German economist. SOCIALISM, 1981, p. 118 Socialist writers may continue to publish books about the decay of capitalism and the coming of the socialist millennium: they may paint the evils of capitalism in lund colors and contrast them with the enticing picture of the blessings of a socialist society; their writings may continue to impress the thoughtless--but all this cannot alter the fate of the socialist idea. The attempt to reform the world socialistically might destroy civilization. It would never set up a successful socialist community. 2. SOCIALISM WILL NOT OVERCOME THE PROFIT MOTIVE Ludwig von Mises, German economist. SOCIALISM, 1981, p. 157 It need only be said that unfortunately we have no reason to assume that human nature will be any different under Socialism from what it is now. And nothing goes to prove that rewards in the shape of distinctions, material gifts, or even the honorable recognition of fellow citizens, will induce the workers to do more than the formal execution of the tasks allotted to them. Nothing can completely replace the motive to overcome the irksomeness of labour which is given by the opportunity to obtain the full value of that labour. 3. SOCIALISTS PROMISE FREEDOM AND LATER BECOME TOTALITARIAN Ludwig von Mises, German economist. SOCIALISM, 1981, p. 51 Wherever it is not in power, Marxism claims all the basic liberal rights, for they alone can give it the freedom which its propaganda urgently needs. But it can never understand their spirit and will never grant them to its opponents when it comes into power itself. MARXISM AND SOCIALISM FAIL TO LIBERATE WOMEN 1. SOCIALISM CANNOT IGNORES THE NON-ECONOMIC NATURE OF WOMEN’S SITUATIONS Simone DeBeauvoir, French philosopher. THE SECOND SEX, 1989, pp. 58-9. A truly socialist ethics, concerned to uphold justice without suppressing liberty and to impose duties on individkials without abolishing individuality, will find most embarrassing the problems posed by the condition of women. It is impossible simply to equate gestation with a task, a piece of work, or with a service, like military service. Woman’s life is more seriously broken in upon by a demand for children than by regulation of the citizen’s employment--no state has ever ventured to establish obligatory copulation. In the sexual act and in maternity not only time and strength but also essential values are involved for women. Rationalist materialism tries in vain to disregard this dramatic aspect of sexuality; for it is impossible to bring the sexual instinct under a code of regulations. 2. ABOLITION OF THE FAMILY WILL NOT GUARANTEE WOMEN’S EQUALITY Simone DeBeauvoir, French philosopher. THE SECOND SEX, 1989, p. 58. But for that matter, to do away with the family is not necessarily to emancipate woman. Such examples as Sparta and the Nazi regime prove that she can be none the less oppressed by males, for all her direct attachment to the state. 3. SOCIALISM CANNOT ELIMINATE THE INDIVIDUAL BASIS OF SEXUAL OPPRESSION Simone DeBeauvoir, French philosopher. THE SECOND SEX, 1989, p. 59. In vain have the totalitarian or authoritative regimes with one accord prohibited psychoanalysis and declared that individual, personal drama is out of order for citizens loyally integrated with the community; the erotic experience remains one in which generality is always regained by an individuality. And for a democratic socialism in which classes are abolished but not individuals, the question of individual destiny would keep all its importance--and hence sexual differentiation would keep all its importance.

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MARXISM DESTROYS THE ENVIRONMENT 1. MARXISM OBSCURES SOCIETY’S RELATIONSHIP TO NATURE Murray Bookchm, Social Ecologist, THE PHILOSOPHY OF SOCIAL ECOLOGY, 1995, p. 102. “Dialectical materialism,” or “diamat”--which Frederick Engels restated as “laws’ like the “unity of opposites,” the transformation of “quantity into quality,” and the ‘negation of the negation”--anchored social development in an almost mechanistic causality that was as damning to the modem claims of individuality and freedom as it was to the complex relationships of society to nature. 2. MARX FOLLOWED MODERN PHILOSOPHERS’ EXPLOITATION OF NATURE Reiner Grundman, philosopher at the European University Institute, MARXISM AND ECOLOGY, 1991, p. 58. I think it is plain that Marx had an anthropocentric world-view and did not set up moral barriers to the investigation of nature. He was clearly a follower of Enlightenment thinkers like Bacon and Descartes. However, both have become the main scapegoats in ecological literature. 3. MARXISM HAS NO COHERENT APPROACH TO ECOLOGY Reiner Grundman, philosopher at the European University Institute, MARXISM AND ECOLOGY, 1991, p. 8. Alfred Schmidt in his pioneering study has already remarked that we have to collect many scattered remarks from a wide range of Marx’s theory, since Marx never treated the concept of nature in a separate discussion. These scattered remarks, when put together, open up a complex discourse, since its elements are interwoven in many ways. There are many possible connections with other elements of his theory or with the theories of others. This could take us to philosophy, natural sciences, history, epistemology, political economy, sociology, and further afield, where there is considerable danger in being distracted from the centrally important discussion. 4. MARXIST CONCEPT OF ECOLOGY IS OUTDATED IN THE PRESENT WORlD Reiner Grundnian, philosopher at the European University Institute, MARXISM AND ECOLOGY, 1991, p. 3. But Marx’s concern with transforming the exploitative human social relations expressed in class systems does not extend to the exploitation of nature. Giddens concludes that this Promethean attitude is indefensible in the twentieth century since the expansion of the productive forces can no longer be treated unproblematically as conducive to social progress.

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Objectivity Bad OBJECTIVITY DOES NOT EXIST IN HUMAN INQUIRY 1. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS OBJECTIVITY IN HUMAN INQUIRY Hannah Arendt, Social Philosopher, BETWEEN PAST AND FUTURE, 1954, p. 49. In other words, the experiment “being a question put before nature” (Galileo), the answers of science will always remain replies to questions asked by men; the confusion in the issue of objectivity was to assume that there could be answers without questions and results independent of a question-asking being. Physics we know today, is no less a man-centered inquiry into what is than historical research. The old quarrel, therefore between the subjectivity of historiography and the objectivity of physics has lost much of its relevance. 2. NO FUNDAMENTAL STANDARD OF VALUES EXISTS Alasdair Maclntyre, Professor of Social Philosophy at the University of Essex, THREE RIVAL VERSIONS OF MORAL ENQUIRY, 1990, p.4. On the one hand are those who hold that in certain cases where two large-scale systems of thought and practice are in radical disagreement—such various examples have been cited as the disagreements between the physics of Aristotle and the physics of Galileo or Newton, those between the beliefs in practice of witchcraft by some African peoples and the cosmology of modem science, and those between the conceptions of right action characteristic of the Homeric world and the morality of modem individualism— there is and can be no independent standard of measure of appeal to which their rival claims can be adjudicated, since each has internal to itself its own fundamental standard of judgment. Such systems are incommensurable, and the terms in and by means of which judgment is deliberated in each are so specific and idiosyncratic to each that they cannot be translated into the terms of the other without gross distortion. 3. THERE ARE NOT OBJECTIVE TRUTHS OR VALUES Mao Tse-Tung, Former Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, FOUR ESSAYS ON PHILOSOPHY, 1969, p. 18. The Marxist-Lenin theory of knowledge, characterized as it is by scientific social practice, cannot but resolutely oppose these wrong ideologies. Marxists recognize that in the absolute and general process of development of the universe, the development of each particular process is relative, and that hence, in the endless flow of absolute truth, man’s knowledge of a particular process at any given stage of development is only relative truth. The sum total of innumerable relative truths constitutes absolute truth. THERE IS NO JUSTIFICATION FOR IMMORAL ACTION 1. THERE IS NO JUSTIFICATION FOR IMMORAL ACTION Richard Warner, NQA, FREEDOM, ENJOYMENT, AND HAPPINESS AN ESSAY ON MORAL PSYCHOLOGY, 1987, p. 178. One might hope for more along these lines than just ‘a criticism of The Counter’s life. One might hope that the concept of the justification of action—the concept that every person has and employs—has the following property: a person never has a justification, or never an adequate one, for immoral action while always having a decisive justification for moral action. 2. MORALITY CANNOT HAVE EXTERNAL JUSTIFICATION Alasdair Maclntyre, Professor of Social Philosophy at the University of Essex, A SHORT HISTORY OF ETHICS, 1966, p. 85. For to justify justice is to show that it is more profitable than injustice, that it is to our interest to be just. But if we do what is just and right because it is to our interest, then, so Prochard takes almost for granted, we are not going to because it is just and right and all. Morality indeed cannot have any justification external to itself; if we do not do what is right for its own sake, and whether it is to our interest or not, then we are not doing what is right.

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A VALUE SYSTEM BASED ON OBJECTIVITY IS UNDESIRABLE 1. EMBRACING THE VALUE OF OBJECTIVITY DENIES SELF Hannah Arendt, Social Philosopher, BETWEEN PAST AND FUTURE, 1954, p. 49. The modern historian as a rule is not yet aware of the fact that the natural scientist, against whom he had to defend his own scientific standards for so many decades, finds himself in the same position, and he is quite likely to state and restate in new, seemingly more scientific terms the distinction between a science of nature, and a science of history. The reason is that the problem of objectivity in the historical sciences is more than a mere technical, scientific perplexity. Objectivity, the “extinction of the self’ as the condition of “pure vision” (das reine Sehen der Dinge—Ranke ) meant the historian’s abstention from bestowing either praise or blame, together with the attitude of perfect distance with which he would follow the course of events as they were revealed in his documentary sources. 2. ONE MUST NOT HAVE A VALUE SYSTEM BASED ON OBJECTIVE AND ABSOLUTE TRUTHS Mao Tse-Tung, Former Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, FOUR ESSAYS ON PHILOSOPHY, 1969, p. 18-19. The development of an objective process is full of contradictions and struggles, and so is the development of the movement of human knowledge. All the dialectical movements of the objective world can sooner or later be reflected in human knowledge. In social practice, the process of coming into being, developing and passing away is infinite and so is the process of coming into being, developing and passing away in human knowledge. 3. THERE IS NO DISTINCTION BETWEEN FACT AND VALUE Richard Rorty, Professor of Humanities at University of Virginia, PHILOSOPHY AND THE MIRROR OF NATURE, 1979, p. 364. Only if we assume that there is a value-free vocabulary which renders these sets of “factual” statements commensurable can the positivist distinction between facts and values, beliefs and attitudes, look plausible. But the philosophical fiction that such a vocabulary is on the tips of our tongues is, from an educational point of view, disastrous. It forces us to pretend that we can split ourselves up into knowers of true sentences on the one hand and choosers of lives or actions or works of art on the other. PRACTICE CANNOT BE SEPARATED FROM VALUES 1. WE CANNOT SEPARATE PRACTICE FROM OUR VALUES Mao Tse-Tung, Former Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, SELECTED WORKS OF MAO TSE-TUNG, VOLUME ONE: 1926-1936, 1954, p. 284. The theory of knowledge of dialectical materialism raises practice to the first place, holds that human knowledge cannot be separated the least bit from practice, and repudiates all incorrect theories which deny the importance of practice or separate knowledge from practice. Thus Lenin said, Practice is higher than (theoretical) knowledge because it has not only the virtue of universality, but also the virtue of immediate reality. 2. THEORY IS WORTHWHILE IF IT HELPS GUIDE PRACTICE Mao Tse-Tung, Former Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, FOUR ESSAYS ON PHILOSOPHY, 1966, p. 14. But Marxism emphasizes the importance of theory precisely and only because it can guide action. If we have a correct theory but merely prate about it, pigeonhole it and do not put it into practice, then that theory, however good, is of no significance. Knowledge begins with practice, and theoretical knowledge is acquired through practice and must then return to practice.

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Original Intent Responses When it comes to interpreting the Constitution, there are a variety of schools of thought regarding what the Constitution means. Some hold to strict construction, others to a literalist approach. Some Supreme Court Justices believe that the Constitution is a changing and evolving document and should be interpreted with such changes in mind. Still others adopt a framework of interpretation known as original intent, sometimes referred to as framer’s intent. Those who interpret the Constitution using original intent look to what the authors of the Constitution intended. William J. Brennan explains, “The claim that the Constitution should be interpreted, in its various phrases and provisions, according to the original intent of its framers, is familiar and full of controversy. In one sense, the claim has obvious and compelling merit. Since the Constitution formed a lasting union and is, by any measure, a remarkable political achievement, should we not honor the written and unwritten design and wisdom of the framers? And since the Constitution is supreme basic law, are we not all bound by its terms and intent, obliged neither to fall short of them nor go beyond? Proponents of the doctrine of original intent argue that it is part of the rule of law itself.” 1 The Constitution means many things to a variety of people, and so the method by which the Constitution is interpreted is extremely important. As the Supreme Court continues to interpret the document and hand down decisions that effect not only Americans but the world, we must analyze what method of interpretation is superior. That method is not original intent. ORIGINAL INTENT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO DETERMINE The standard of original intent seems clear cut on face: determine what the framers of the Constitution intended and make the decision accordingly. However, actually determining what the original intent was is impossible, rendering this method of Constitutional interpretation not only illegitimate, but fictional as it can never be achieved. Richard S. Randall notes, “Attractive as the idea may be, original intent raises difficult questions of method and suitability. Many words and phrases of the Constitution, such as ‘direct tax,’ appellate jurisdiction,’ ‘commerce among the states,’ are unclear, not because Gouverneur Morris was a careless draftsman, but because the framers either could not agree on more exact terms or wanted to leave them in general, open-ended language.” 2 Even those individuals gathered together to write the Constitution could not come to agreement regarding some of the terms they eventually used in the document. If that group of individuals could not reach consensus on their own intent, there is absolutely no way that a modern judge or person could determine the intent of that group. The Constitution itself, therefore, with vague phrases and hard to define principles, is a testament to why original intent should not be used. In an attempt to determine the intent of the framers, some judges have gone beyond the document of the Constitution itself. They turn to historical documents from the time period in which the Constitution was written in an attempt to understand the frame of mind of individuals who lived at wrote during that period. “The Court has sometimes also looked to The Federalist Papers, treating their explication of particular Constitutional provisions as approximate authority. It may also look to history for light on what words meant at the time they were written. Where some justices have found clarity, however, others see uncertainty.” 3 Examining the Federalist Papers in particular points out several problems with original intent. First, the Federalist Papers were written by a limited group of people who were at the Constitutional Convention. Other members of the Constitutional Convention actually argued against the principles espoused in the Federalist Papers. The heated debate and argument surrounding this document shows that it clearly does not express the intent of all of the framers. Additionally, this document speaks to a limited number of issues in the Constitution, leaving some areas completely not discussed. Another way in which it is impossible to determine the original intent goes beyond the multiple interpretations of words and phrases in the Constitution. There are a myriad of topics that the Constitution does not even reference specifically and that the framers could not have anticipated when they were writing the original document. On such subjects, determining the original intent is nonsensical, as the framers could not have had intent or opinions on the topics. Randall explains, “Many other great constitutional matters- for example, growth of national police power 526

and a national common law, conflict between treaties and acts of Congress, the president’s power to remove executive subordinates were not dealt with at all because the framers did not fully anticipate them.” 4 Undoubtedly, the framers of the constitution were forward-thinking, and showed a remarkable ability to anticipate disputes and circumstances that might arise as the country moved forward. Nobody could anticipate everything, however, so there are some subjects on which original intent cannot be established because it doesn’t exist. “There are numerous respects in which the structure and functions of the American government have evolved well beyond the anticipations, even the intentions, of the framers and early interpreters of the Constitution. In several instances this can be attributed to the inevitable changes wrought by increases in the size an complexity of the American society and also defended in terms of principles of restraint (even as activist as what the framers would have intended if…) still consistent with the idea of constitutionalism.” 5 A method of constitutional interpretation should be rejected if it cannot be depended upon. Given that the original intent is highly debatable on topics even explicitly addressed in the Constitution, the method is not reliable. Additionally, there are a myriad of topics that the Constitution does not address where framers’ intent does not exist. Not only is the original intent of the Constitution difficult to define, heated debates take place over the actual intent of the framers. Martin Diamond explains, “It has been a common teaching among modern historians of the guiding ideas in the foundation of our government that the Constitution of the United States embodied a reaction against the democratic principles espoused in the Declaration of Independence. This view has largely been accepted by political scientists and has therefore had important consequences for the ay American political development has been studied.” 6 Diamond, however, disagrees with this largely accepted interpretation. He adds, “I shall present here a contrary view of the political theory of the Framers and examine some of its consequences.” 7 Diamond feels that the framers actually were not attempting to stem democracy, but were very much in favor of a government for and by the people. There are two ways to look at Diamond’s opposition to the traditional way that the original intent is viewed. First, one can assume that Diamond is correct and traditionally, scholars have been wrong. That would mean that original intent should be rejected since it is easily manipulated and basically the entire political community had been convinced of an incorrect interpretation of that intent. Second, one can assume that Diamond is incorrect. This still merits a rejection of original intent because of its susceptibility to revisionist history. As individual look at original intent from their own perspectives and surroundings, the modern world influences what they consider the original intent to be. Ironically, interpreting the original intent becomes reflective of modern America. THE FRAMERS THEMSELVES REJECTED ORIGINAL INTENT The framers themselves knew that questions about the Constitution would be considered long after they were gone, and thus debated the merits of Constitutional interpretation. The present-day debates over the origin of the constitution revisits ground that the framers have already discussed. The consensus seemed to be that original intent as a standard was not only irrelevant but also infertile. John Adams, in a debate with William Brattle over the origin of judicial independence, acknowledged the limits of what today would be called original intent. He noted, “I would not be understood, however, to lay any great stress on the opinions of historians and compliers of antiquities, because it must be confessed that the Saxon constitutions is involved in much obscurity, and that the monarchical and democratic factions in England, by their opposite endeavors to make the Saxon constitutions swear for their respective systems, have much increased the difficulty of determining, to the satisfaction of the world, what that constitution, in many important particulars, was.” 8 While Adams did value history, he did so as a means of moving forward as opposed to using it as a way to interpret documents. Therefore, somewhat ironically, to honor the original intent of the framers is to reject the standard of original intent in constitutional interpretation. That is, “Adams was no more rejecting history than Wilson would do. Both, however, were rejecting the concept of ‘origins’ in favor of a different fundamental historical assumption about how rights and the principles that guaranteed them had emerged out of the historic past of the British people.” 9 Since even those individuals who wrote the Constitution recognized that it would be impossible for future generations to know their intent, we must reach that same conclusion and reject the standard of original intent. 527

ORIGINAL INTENT IS BASED ON NAIVETY Author Daniel A. Farber uses Robert Bork as a paramount example of a judge who believes in the standard of original intent for constitutional interpretation. Farber then explains how Bork’s belief that it is possible and favorable to know and use the framer’s intent is naïve. Of those judges seeking to use original intent he says, “All these scholars seem alarmed at any hint of judicial discretion, at least in constitutional cases. They thus seek a grand theory that will constrain judges and provide definitive answers to difficult interpretive questions…These commonalities lead our scholars to make some similar mistakes.” 10 The mistakes the Farber finds in Bork and other scholars advocating for original intent are serious and undermine their framework of judicial interpretation. The first mistake is that these original intent scholars view constitutional interpretation as a mechanical act. Bork wrote that, “a judge’s first principles are given to him by the document, and he need only reason from these to see that those principles are vindicated in the cases brought before him…all that counts is how the words used in the Constitution would have been understood at the time they were enacted.” 11 He assumes that there is a single meaning that is authoritative, and believes that this meaning is readily apparent. We have already seen that these assumptions are false, given the debate over the original intent of the Constitution. Farber notes, “These originalists, then, look at judges and see potential tyrants in need of strong restraints. They look at the Constitution and see a simple recipe. And they look at history and find clear directions.” 12 This is a naïve position to take, as it assumes that there is no middle ground between adherence blindly to originalism and purely political decisionmaking. This middle ground exists, “Good judicial opinions simultaneously acknowledge our debt to the past and deny that the past must control the present. David Strauss, in an insightful and influential article, has described this process as integral to both the common law and constitutional development.” 13 In addition, this original intent position does little to address Bork’s desire to rein in judges. There is no way for judges to access the original intent of the framers. Therefore, asking judges to act according to the original intent invites their discretion in determining what the original intent was. In that sense, the original intent approach only guarantees that judges use their own opinions, which is the exact opposite effect of what original intent advocates were pushing for. ORIGINAL INTENT STALLS PROGRESS The world was a very different place when the Constitution was written, and the opinions held by those framers of the Constitution are fundamentally different from the values of modern America. While some would argue that American values have deteriorated and there is a need to return to our roots, in terms of progress for civil liberties and equality, we have moved forward as time progressed. Forcing judges to be accountable to the original intent of the Constitutional framers would stall progress and create a world where inequality and a lack of liberty ruled. For example, take the court case of Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, a landmark case about segregation. In this case, the Supreme Court decided unanimously that the equal protection of the laws guaranteed under the 14 th amendment made segregation public schools unconstitutional. The major precedent on the issue was overturned in this case, as historically, segregation had been viewed as legitimate. “What changed the thinking of the justices in the Brown case and led them to reverse past policy was the extralegal evidence that was submitted to them by social scientists and psychologists. This evidence demonstrated clearly, to their thinking, that even with all other things being equal (which they usually were not), the mere fact of racial segregation, with the clear inference it connoted of the inferiority of one of the segregated groups, effected real psychological harm- measured by selfconcepts, motivational and performance levels, and so on- to those who were the objects of the segregation.” 14 If the judges in this instance had chosen to use original intent, segregation would have been upheld, and the psychological damage demonstrated would have continued indefinitely. Original intent would also stall other forms of progress. Author Daniel A. Farber looks at the works of Robert Bork, an advocate of original intent, to see what decisions he felt were merited. By examining the ramifications of the acceptance of a doctrine of original intent, we can truly see if the approach should be accepted or rejected. Bork is radical when it comes to individual rights, as he wants to overturn settled doctrine in a variety of areas. “For example, he argues that it is constitutional for public schools in Washington D.C. to be segregated by race and for 528

homeowners to use the courts to enforce racially restrictive covenants in order to prevent blacks from buying their neighbors’ homes. (The Supreme Court invalidated the former in 1954 and the latter in 1948.) He hints that the 1964 Civil Rights Act- in which Congress prohibited race and gender discrimination in employment and public accommodations- might be unconstitutional, because it was ‘social or moral legislation’ rather than commercial legislation.” 15 These sorts of judicial decisions (made with original intent as a justification) would allow racism to run rampant. In addition, this would increase the harm done to non-white Americans since the government would be justifying and legitimizing it. Original intent can also have negative effects on freedom of speech. Bork and other original intent advocates would strip most speech of constitutional protection. “First, he has argued that only explicitly political speech should be protected by the First Amendment…Even more radically, Bork laments the increasing protection given to political speech, waxing nostalgic for the days when the government could censor unpopular speech. He finds ‘no reason whatever’ to protect what he considers to be dangerous political ideas.” 16 Other advocates of original intent would also destroy progress. “Lawson writes that ‘the post-New Deal administrative state is unconstitutional, and its validation by the legal system amounts to nothing less than a bloodless constitutional revolution…Easterbrook does not make many concrete proposals, but he does suggest that other conservatives are too worried about the potentially radical consequences of their constitutional theory. We must have constitutional rules, not standards, he says, even if they might produce horrible results (he includes ‘horsewhipping for double parking’ and ‘zoning laws eliminating churches’ in his list of unreasonable fears).” 17 The last example we will examine in depth regarding limitations of original intent on progress is regarding the application of the Bill of Rights to states and the federal government. Using original intent, Justice Marshall’s conclusion in Barron v. Baltimore was that, “the Bill of Rights did not limit state powers because its drafters, members of the first Congress, intended only to limit the national government.” 18 The inclusion of the Bill of Rights to the states is an important development that was only allowed by rejecting the original intent. In the case of Gitlow v. New York, the Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment would apply to the states as well, using the fourteenth amendment as justification for expanding the rights in this way. With such expansion, the states now are also unable to violate the rights of individual citizens. This is key in protecting the rights outlined in the first amendment, including freedom of speech, press, and religion. Only by abandoning original intent can these rights be protected from both the federal and state governments. The benefits that come from the expansion of these rights far outweighs any need to maintain the original intent of the framers. Original intent goes even further. At the time that the Constitution was written, only white men were allowed to vote. Slavery was legal. These practices would all be upheld if we were only looking to what the framers had intended and validated. It would be a tragedy to back away from the progress that groups have made in the United States through the Court system and judicial interpretation. Women now have the right to vote, cannot be fired from their job based on their gender, and have legal protection. Minorities and other races cannot be denied education or a job based on their race. Discrimination is punished. To say that this progress is unconstitutional since it was not intended by the framers would do a disservice to the entire country. On that basis, original intent must be rejected. The words of Justice William Brennan should be recognized, when he discussed the limits of the original intent of the Constitution. He said, “The genius of the Constitution rests…in the adaptability of its great principles to cope with current problems and current needs. What the constitutional fundamentals mean to the wisdom of other times cannot be the measure of the vision of our time.” 19 In order to reach the vision we have for our country today, we must free ourselves from the original intent of the Constitution and instead adhere our decisions to the values espoused in the Constitution: equality, freedom, liberty, and progress. ORIGINAL INTENT DISRUPTS FEDERALISM Following the war for independence from Great Britain, the colonies established a government that attempted to avoid the problems they had witnessed in their relationship with the monarchy. The abuses that the King had been allowed to act out against the colonies had helped spark the revolution, and so those forming the government took care to limit the federal power of the new structure. In that sense, the Articles of Confederation (an interim 529

government before the Constitution was written and ratified) leaned heavily toward state power and away from federal power. This quickly became a problem, however, as the government was put into place. The Articles of Confederation created such a weak central government that the federal government was unable to enforce taxation and treaties. Individual states were acting in any way they pleased, and the country was not united. In this atmosphere delegates gathered to write the Constitution and to move toward federal power. However, in order to get the Constitution ratified, they had to reassure the public that the federal government would not have too much power in the new structure. In order to do so, the Bill of Rights was added. This listed the rights of individuals that the federal government could not impede upon. In addition, it reserved all powers not articulated specifically in the Constitution to the states. The Constitution, then, gave great latitude to the states and severely limited federal power. Original intent would allow for this to continue, constantly ruling in favor of state power and against federal intervention or involvement. This is problematic because it would allow for states to abuse citizens in ways that the federal government is explicitly forbidden from acting. In addition, the delicate checks and balances that act to constrain both the state and federal government would be ruined if the states always were given the benefit of the doubt. An example can be drawn in considering Constitutional treatment of religion. Author Walter B. Mead explains, “In the entire United States Constitution there are only two brief references to religion. Most of the Founders felt that the new central government did not have to be constitutionally restrained in its dealings with religion because there was nothing they had put into the Constitution that assigned the government any such powers to begin with. Where government had been ceded authority over religious matters, it was assumed from the beginning to be strictly at the state and local level.” 20 To continue believing that states should always take precedence would upset the balance between state and federal power, allowing states to do whatever they please to individual citizens. ORIGINAL INTENT IS BASED ON THE EMPIRICIST THEORY OF LANGUAGE Original intent assumes that in the words and works of the framers, an intent can be found. Though some advocates of original intent look beyond the actual Constitution, they are still depending on the words written and recorded by the framers and their followers. This is problematic because it is based on the empiricist theory of language. John Brigham notes, “The predominant view among philosophers who have influenced the social sciences has been that the essence of language exists in a relation between words and the objects to which they refer. This position, the positivist or empiricist theory of language, inadequately describes some essential features of ordinary language which have considerable bearing on judicial decision in a realm like constitutional law, which has many of these features.” 21 This empiricist theory has several problems. It assumes that the name of an object has some relation to the object itself. Yet, this problem of identification appears to not be present with all of the terms used in the Constitution. Brigham explains, “These ‘Constitution words’ are defined in the document, and like the ordinary words that define them, they have not been the subject of extensive judicial interpretation. The ‘United States of America’ provides one of the best illustrations of these words. This string of words in the Constitution is a specific reference clearly dependent on the constitutional formulation. In the case of ‘United States of America,’ as with all similar words, it took more than the Constitution to give them the significance they now have. Without their use in the Constitution, however, the subsequent developments which gave the present meaning to these words would not have been possible.” 22 The argument, therefore, is that only some words in the Constitution receive scrutiny as to what the original intent was. Other words and phrases are unquestioned and allowed to morph meanings. In that way, original intent is never successful, because only some parts of the Constitution are subjected to an inquiry into the original intent of the authors. The best result would therefore be partial original intent, while other phrases and words became constantly changed without advocates of original intent even knowing it. This is because their position is based on a flawed view of language that believes in absolute meanings for phrases and words that can be known. Since such meanings can never be codified or made stagnant, the theory fails at its most basic level. SUMMARY 530

There are a multitude of philosophies on interpreting the Constitution. One popular and historically well-grounded approach is to look for the original intent of the framers of the Constitution and act accordingly. This interpretation should be rejected. Original intent is impossible to determine, and cannot be utilized. The framers themselves rejected original intent. In addition, original intent is based on naivety. Original intent stalls progress and disrupts federalism. It is based on the empiricist theory of language. There are many ways that have been advocated to interpret the Constitution. Justices will continue to use varied approaches, with varied results. The choice they should not make, however, is to use the standard of original intent. ______________________________ 1 Randall, Richard S. American Constitutional Development. New York: Addison Wesley Longman, Inc., 2002, pg. 44. 2 Ibid, pg. 44. 3 Ibid, pg. 88. 4 Ibid, pg. 44. 5 Mead, Walter B. The United States Constitution: Personalities, Principles, and Issues. Columbia: The University of South Carolina Press, 1987, pg. 179. 6 Smith, James Morton. The Constitution. New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, 1971, pg. 172. 7 Ibid, pg. 172. 8 VanBurkleo, Sandra F. Constitutionalism and American Culture: Writing the New Constitutional History. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002, pg. 20-21. 9 Ibid, pg. 21. 10 Farber, Daniel A. Desperately Seeking Certainty. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2002, pg. 13. 11 Ibid, pg. 13. 12 Ibid, pg. 13. 13 Ibid, pg. 14. 14 Mead, Walter B. The United States Constitution: Personalities, Principles, and Issues. Columbia: The University of South Carolina Press, 1987, pg. 171. 15 Farber, Daniel A. Desperately Seeking Certainty. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2002, pg. 25. 16 Ibid, pg. 25-26. 17 Ibid, pg. 27. 18 Randall, Richard S. American Constitutional Development. New York: Addison Wesley Longman, Inc., 2002, pg. 88. 19 Ibid, pg. 45. 20 Mead, Walter B. The United States Constitution: Personalities, Principles, and Issues. Columbia: The University of South Carolina Press, 1987, pg. 194. 21 Brigham, John. Constitutional Language: An Interpretation of Judicial Decision. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1978, pg. 178. 22 Ibid, pg. 19.

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BORK'S ORIGINALISM IS HORRIBLE 1. ROBERT BORK ORIGINALISM IS VERY BASIC Farber, Daniel A. Desperately Seeking Certainty. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2002, pg. 10 Robert Bork, whose failed nomination to the Supreme Court may have been the Lexington and Concord of the culture wars-the "shot heard round the world"- is perhaps the first and most prominent of the constitutional foundationalists. Bork endorses the simplest form of originalism: he believes that the Constitution should interpreted to reflect the public intentions of those who drafted and ratified it. But, like all the other scholars we examine, his originalism is unmistakably shaped by his political and moral positions. Although we begin with Bork, we view him more as a spokesman for originalism than as a serious practitioner of this method of interpretation. His own account of the founders' original intent is superficial and anachronistic. But his work provides an accessible and vivid description of the most basic type of originalism, and he has made a name for himself as a conservative constitutional icon. Thus his theories deserve attention in their own right. 2. THE WAY BORK SEE'S INTERPRATING OF THE CONSTITUTION AS A MECHANICAL ACT IS FLAWED Farber, Daniel A. Desperately Seeking Certainty. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2002, pg. 13 The first mistake is to view constitutional interpretation as something of a mechanical act. For example, Bork writes that a judge's "first principles are given to him by the document, and he need only reason from these to see that those principles are vindicated in the cases brought before him."16 In interpreting the Constitution, Bork writes, "[all] that counts is how the words used in the Constitution would have been understood at the time [they were enacted]."17 He assumes not only that the Constitution has a single, authoritative meaning, but also that modern interpreters can easily discern that meaning. He says the words of the Constitution mean "what the public of that times would have understood the words to mean," and that the answer to such an inquiry is "readily apparent" from the historical record.18 Other originalists also seem to view constitutional interpretation as a simple exercise that inevitably leads to a single right answer. They stress repeatedly that constitutional interpretation must depend on fixed rules rather than flexible standards.19 Easterbrook argues that judicial review cannot be justified unless we believe both "that there [is] one right answer to a problem," and that judiciary ought to be the source of that right answer.20 This is no cause for worry, however: judges need not "reach for Augustine" or some other esoteric guidance, because "there is likely to be a simple rule, a bit of law that can be used in its stead."21 Calabresi writes of "the written Constitution of 1787, as amended-nothing more and nothing less,"22 suggesting that it is a simple matter to extract its full meaning. He apparently not only believes that there are simple answers to constitutional questions, he thinks that any American child can recite them: he confidently asserts that "the Constitution's elegant simplicity" embodies exactly what we were taught by "out grade school and high school civics teacher." 23 3. ORIGINALISM IS BASED ON A FLAWED METHOD OF HISTORICAL INTERPRATATION Farber, Daniel A. Desperately Seeking Certainty. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2002, pg. 14. This is a naive view both of the judicial enterprise and of history. As for judging, these scholars fall prey to the fallacy that there is no middle ground between blind adherence to originalism and purely political decision-making. Martha Nussbaum has described the fallacy as a belief that "if not the heavens, then the abyss."25 But judges do find middle ground, negotiating the treacherous territory between fanatical obedience to the dead hand of the past and unconstrained discretion to implement their own political will. Judging is an act of tightly controlled cr4eativity. Good judicial opinions simultaneously acknowledge out debt to the past and deny that they past can control the present. David Strauss, in an insightful and influential article has described this process as integral to both the common law and constitutional development.26 Original meaning seems to be a particularly problematic response to the presumed need to rein in judges. Originalists necessarily assume that we can ascertain the intent of the founding generation. For Bork, this confidence arises mostly because he himself has apparently never looked carefully at the historical record.

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IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO KNOW WHAT THE ORIGINAL INTENT WAS 1. THERE IS MORE TO THE CONSTITUION THEN THE WRITTEN CONSTITUTION Prakash, Saikrishna, Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. "Overcoming the Constitution: Implementing the Constitution" Georgetown Law Journal, January, 2003. 91 Geo. L.J. 407. pp.407-409. Professor Richard Fallon's sophisticated, fair-minded, and engaging attempt to disabuse those who mistakenly believe that the written Constitution is the only legitimate source of our constitutional law. Fallon claims that descriptively and normatively, constitutional law is not just about reading the Constitution, discerning its meaning, and then applying that meaning to concrete situations. Instead, he argues that contemporary constitutional law more accurately consists of "implementing" the Constitution by considering various factors that do not emerge from the Constitution's text (hence the book's title). Fallon asserts that when we describe the constitutional law that emanates from the courts, we should not overlook the significance of seemingly "incorrect" precedent, entrenched historical practices, and other adjudicative norms such as the use of value judgments. n2 Furthermore, Fallon notes that judges endeavor to render practical, easily administrable decisions that reflect the reasonable disagreements that exist in society and amongst the government's branches about the Constitution's meaning and how it ought to be [*408] implemented. n3 Fallon also believes, as a normative matter, that contemporary constitutional jurisprudence is legitimate because the people have accepted and embraced a broader concept of the Constitution. n4 People cherish the rights that the courts have teased out of the Constitution even though some of these rights seem to have only the faintest basis in the Constitution. A robust understanding of the freedom of speech, powerful rules against racial and sexual discrimination, and the controversial right to privacy all have arisen from an expansive notion of the proper sources of constitutional law. Such rights would not exist but for the mediation of seemingly extra-constitutional factors such as precedent and value judgments. If these rights were not enforced, there might not be a popular acceptance of our Constitution. But once we admit that consideration of supposedly extra-constitutional factors is entirely legitimate in constitutional implementation, Fallon insists that we must revisit our narrow conception of the Constitution. When we narrowly describe our Constitution as just the "written Constitution," we misrepresent what one might call the "legitimate Constitution"--the Constitution that legitimately and actually reigns as the supreme law of the land. n5 Instead, claims Fallon, our legitimate Constitution (both normatively and descriptively) encompasses not just the written Constitution familiar to most, but also the "unwritten constitution"--those additional factors mentioned above. n6 I will call Fallon's conception of the legitimate Constitution the "Fallonian Constitution." n7 It is the combination of the written Constitution's meaning and the unwritten constitution's various elements such as precedent, practices, and value judgments, that actually generate the constitutional law accepted by the people. To regard the written Constitution as the sum total of the legitimate Constitution is only slightly better than viewing the written Constitution's seven articles as the sum total of the legitimate Constitution. After Part I recounts the basic details of Fallon's book, the rest of the Review makes four general points. Part II contends that Fallon must articulate a much more comprehensive account of what constitutes "acceptance" if that concept is to legitimate the unwritten constitution. Otherwise, we have very little reason to [*409] reject the sensible intuition that the legitimate Constitution consists of the written Constitution only. Part III briefly highlights some problems with the Fallonian Constitution. Specifically, it considers whether fidelity to both the written and the unwritten constitutions is possible, whether the Fallonian Constitution is desirable, and whether the Fallonian Constitution counts as a constitution at all (as Fallon describes the latter term). Part IV argues that Fallon's criticisms of originalism are generally wrong-headed or unfair. Most of Fallon's critique is better leveled against the written Constitution itself and not originalism as an interpretive methodology. Finally, Part V makes some brief comments meant to clear up common confusion about originalism as an interpretive theory.

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ORIGINAL INTENT PREVENTS IMPLEMENTATION 1. IMPLEMENTATION IS MORE IMPORTANT THEN INTENT Prakash, Saikrishna, Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. "Overcoming the Constitution: Implementing the Constitution" Georgetown Law Journal, January, 2003. 91 Geo. L.J. 407. pp.410-411. Fallon argues that rather than merely interpreting the written Constitution--engaging in a single-minded search for the Constitution's true meaning--the Supreme Court more accurately and more appropriately struggles to "implement" the Constitution. n23 Indeed, to characterize what the Court does (or what it ought to do) in constitutional cases as just interpreting the Constitution is to exclude all the other considerations the Court properly takes into account. In constitutional cases, the Court does far more than interpret the Constitution and enforce it according to its meaning. [*411] On the other hand, "implementing" the Constitution more accurately connotes what the Court actually does. Implementing the Constitution encompasses collaboration and compromise amongst the Justices; Justices properly may subordinate or temper their views about the best reading of the Constitution to secure a majority opinion or to project a unified front. n24 "Implementation" also suggests accommodation of the views of the other branches of government; for example, the Court occasionally will defer to the considered judgment of other branches because the Constitution is meant to be implemented by the other branches no less than the Court. n25 According to Fallon, implementation also intimates that what the Supreme Court does is highly practical. When formulating constitutional rules, formulas, and tests, the Court devises and implements pragmatic strategies for enforcing constitutional values. n26 This "distinctively lawyers' work" includes allocating responsibility between courts and other institutions of government. n27 For instance, tests often reflect the Court's judgment about an appropriate standard of judicial review of legislative or executive action. Appropriate standards of judicial review sometimes require doctrinal tests that fail to fully enforce underlying constitutional norms. At other times, the Court will adopt prophylactic rules that ensure over enforcement of ultimate constitutional values. n28 Likewise, because implementation involves discerning what will work in practice, the Justices must consider the insights of psychology, sociology, history, and economics when implementing the Constitution. n29 2. IMPLEMENTATION ALLOWS EQUALITY Prakash, Saikrishna, Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. "Overcoming the Constitution: Implementing the Constitution" Georgetown Law Journal, January, 2003. 91 Geo. L.J. 407. pp.411-412. Though implementation is grounded in practical realities, the Justices occasionally may implement "the best 'moral reading' of constitutional guarantees." n30 Fallon contends that Brown v. Board of Education n31 stands as the best example of the Court playing this role. n32 Yet, the Justices need not always apply the moral reading of the Constitution (as they understand the best moral reading). n33 In addition to sometimes compromising with other Justices n34 and with the other governmental branches, n35 the Justices must consider the democratic acceptability of implementing the best moral reading of a constitutional provision. n36 Fallon posits the existence of an "unwritten constitution" to explain why the Supreme Court may appropriately implement the Constitution in a manner not [*412] always consonant with the written Constitution's meaning (however understood). He believes the unwritten constitution consists of those additional factors typically relied upon in Supreme Court constitutional decision making: precedent, settled practices, and other adjudicative norms. According to Fallon, the unwritten constitution's factors do not preempt or supplant the written Constitution so much as supplement or mediate it. n37 For instance, judicial precedent and entrenched practices enjoy at least limited constitutional authority because both may dictate results in constitutional cases different from the results that would be reached under the best interpretation of the written Constitution. n38 Likewise, the Supreme Court properly may be "required to make practical, predictive, and sometimes tactical judgments" about the types of doctrinal rules to apply. n39 Yet, in no case may the Supreme Court appropriately rely upon the unwritten constitution to trump or displace a provision of the written Constitution. n40 Fallon appreciates that merely positing an unwritten constitution hardly legitimates the use of an unwritten constitution to decide cases. n41 He rejects numerous possible reasons why the written Constitution and the unwritten constitution are legitimate sources of fundamental law. n42

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ORIGINALISM PREVENTS OTHER METHODS OF CONSTITUIONAL INTERPRATATION 1. NON-ORIGINALISM IS BEST Meagher, Dan, Lecturer, School of Law at Deakin University. "New Day Rising? Non-Originalism, Justice Kirby and Section 80 of The Constitution." The Sydney Law Review, June 2002. 24 Sydney L. Rev. 141, NP. First, it should be noted that in Australia common ground exists between the main protagonists in the interpretation debate. Both sides concede that hard constitutional cases cannot in the majority of situations be satisfactorily resolved by resorting to 'intentionalism' n11 or what Goldsworthy has called the 'more extreme versions of originalism'. n12 This theory states that 'if the meaning of the words of a constitution is not clear, the words should bear the meaning which the founders understood them to mean.' n13 But as Goldsworthy has noted, 'resort to the founders' intentions cannot answer all, or probably even most, interpretative disputes of the kind which appellate courts are required to resolve.' n14 Similar criticisms of extreme originalism have been made by Sir Anthony Mason, n15 David Tucker n16 and, of course, Justice Kirby. n17 Jeremy Kirk has also pointed out that seeking to discern the collective intent of the founders is fraught with uncertainty: A parallel source of uncertainty in intentionalism relates to the question of the appropriate generality of meaning (as opposed to generality of evidence) ... This does not mean there can be no limit on stating what level of meaning was likely to have been intended; just that finding where that limit lies is intrinsically uncertain ... The indeterminacy of intentionalism undermines its claims to having substantially greater legitimacy than forms of non-originalism. n18 In addition, to characterise the debate as being between two, self-contained and completely separate interpretative theories would be misleading. There is some overlap between non-originalism and the modern originalist theories in their theoretical underpinnings and practical application. This is neither surprising nor controversial as the primary aim of any modern theory of constitutional interpretation is to articulate a methodology that allows a Constitution to evolve [*144] and adapt to new and unforeseen social, economic and political circumstances without compromising the integrity of its text and structure. For example, both non-originalism and the modern originalist theories provide a principled explanation for the High Court's decision in Sue v Hill. n19 The primary difference between non-originalism and modern originalist theories is the relevance and/or abidingness of the framers' intentions in the resolution of hard constitutional cases: in other words, the differing importance each theory attaches to the framers' intentions in determining the scope of legitimate constitutional evolution. However, as Professor Greg Craven has correctly noted, the debate 'is unlikely to be quite as fierce in Australia as it has been ... in the United States'. n20 He states that: the reason for this is clear. The originalism debate in the United States has largely been fought over the interpretation of the Bill of Rights, with its broad, sweeping guarantees of fundamental human rights. It is in this highly emotive context, the stalking-ground of rights to abortion and freedom from racial discrimination, that the performance of the Supreme Court has been vilified or defended according to the stance of commentators upon the question of original intent. The Australian Constitution does not include a bill of rights, and so the High Court has not been called upon to deploy its interpretative armory in so controversial a field. n21 No doubt there are strong arguments on both sides of the debate. However, hard constitutional cases necessitate judicial choice. It is in these situations that Justice Kirby advocates non-originalism as the preferred theory of constitutional interpretation. Although the scope of this paper will not permit an exhaustive critique of every relevant issue, I will endeavor to outline and assess what I consider the main arguments made against nonoriginalism by Australian constitutional lawyers and philosophers.

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Pacifism Good PACIFISM SHOULD BE SUPPORTED AS THE HIGHEST VALUE 1. PACIFIST PRINCIPLES MUST BE PRESERVED AT ALL COSTS Adin BaIlou, Author and co-founder of the New England Non-resistance society, as quoted in THE PACIFIST CONSCIENCE, edited by Peter Mayer, 1966, p. 135. Still it may be asked: ‘What is to be done if uninjurious force should prove inadequate? May life be sacrificed, limbs broken, the flesh mangled, or any other injuries allowed in extreme cases?’ Never. The principle of non-injury must be held inviolable. It is worth worlds, and must be preserved at all hazards. What cannot be done uninjuriously must be left undone. But these extreme cases are mostly imaginary. The truth is that what cannot be done uninjuriously can scarcely ever be done at all. Experience in the case of the insane has already proved that incomparably more can be done by uninjurious forces, scrupulously and judiciously employed, than by any mixtures of the injurious element. 2. WE MUST HAVE PACIFISM TO AVERT CATASTROPHES Peter Mayer, Editor, THE PACIFIST CONSCIENCE, 1966, p. 11. The terms in which the choice is set before us today are by no means simple and easy. The use of violence in the resolution of differences has implications which were never more frightening. Total destruction is now a practical possibility. We have two objects: we must find adequate ways of making peace and we must learn to achieve social goals without resorting to violence. The existence of aggressive states and inflexibly undemocratic societies requires us to act, for we would not have them persist by default 3. EVEN IF PACIFISM HAS CONTRADICTIONS, THE RISK OF WAR JUSTIFIES IT Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., as quoted in THE PACIFISTS CONSCIENCE, edited by Peter Mayer, 1966, p. 407. I have tried to embrace a realistic pacifism. Moreover, I see the pacifist position not as sinless but as the lesser evil in the circumstances. Therefore I do not claim to be free from the moral dilemmas that the Christian nonpaciflst confronts. But I am convinced that the church cannot remain silent while mankind faces the threat of being plunged into the abyss of nuclear annihilation. If the church is true to its mission it must call for an end to the arms race. 4. ARGUMENTS THAT SAY PACIFISTS ARE DEFENSELESS ARE FALSE Ralph Waldo Emerson, American Philosopher and poet, THE PACIFIST CONSCIENCE, edited by Peter Mayer, 1966, p. 119-20. In reply to this charge of absurdity on the extreme peace doctrine, as shown in the supposed consequences, I wish to say that such deductions consider only one half of the fact. They look only at the passive side of the friend of peace, only at his passivity: they quite omit to consider his activity. But no man, it may be presumed, ever embraced the cause of peace and philanthropy for the sole end and satisfaction of being plundered and slain. A man does not come the length of the spirit of martyrdom without some active purpose, some equal motive some flaming love. If you have a nation of men risen to that height of moral cultivation that they will not declare war or carry arms, for they have not so much madness left in their brains, you have a nation of lovers, of benefactors, of true, great and able men. Let me know more of that nation; I shall not find them defenseless, with idle hands springing at their sides. I shall find them men of love, honor and truth; men of an immense industry; men whose influence is felt to the end of the earth; men whose very look and voice carry the sentence of honor and shame; and all forces yield to their energy and persuasion. Whenever we see the doctrine of peace embraced by a nation, we may be assured that it will not be one which invites injury; but one, on the contrary, which has a friend in the bottom of the heart of every man, even off the violent and the base; one against which no weapon can prosper; one which is looked upon as the asylum of the human race and has the tears and the blessings of mankind.

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PACIFISM IS SUPERIOR TO VIOLENCE 1. THE CHOICE IS NONVIOLENCE OR NONEXISTENCE Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., as quoted in THE PACIFISTS CONSCIENCE, edited by Peter Mayer, 1966, p. 407. During recent months I have come to see more and more the need for the method of nonviolence in international relations. While I was convinced during my student days of the. power of nonviolence in group conflicts within nations, I was not yet convinced of its efficacy in conflicts between nations. I felt that while war could never be a positive or absolute good, it could serve as a negative good in the sense of preventing the spread and growth of an evil force. War, I felt, horrible as it is, might be preferable to surrender to a totalitarian system. But more and more I have come to the conclusion that the potential destructiveness of modern weapons of war totally rules out the possibility of war ever serving again as a negative good. If we assume that mankind has a right to survive then we must find an alternative to war and destruction. In a day when sputniks dash through outer space and guided ballistic missiles are carving highways of death through the stratosphere, nobody can win a war. The choice today is no longer between violence and nonviolence. It is either nonviolence or nonexistence. 2. HISTORY SHOWS PACIFISM BREEDS SUCCESS WHILE THE VIOLENT DIE BY VIOLENCE William Lloyd Garrison, Founder of the American Non-Resistance Society, Non-Resistance Society Declaration of Principles, 1838, as quoted in THE PACIFIST CONSCIENCE, edited by Peter Mayer, 1966, p. 125. The history of mankind is crowded with evidence, proving that physical coercion is not adapted to moral regeneration, that the sinful dispositions of man can be subdued only by love; that evil can be exterminated from the earth only by goodness. It is no safe to rely upon an arm of flesh, upon man whose breath is in his nostrils, to preserve us from harm; that there is great security in being gentle, harmless, long-suffering, and abundant in mercy; that it is only the meek who shall inherit the earth, for the violent who resort to the sword are destined to perish with the sword. 3. PACIFISM IS NECESSARY BECAUSE OF THE HORROR OF VIOLENCE Albert Einstein, as quoted in THE PACIFIST CONSCIENCE, edited by Peter Mayer, 1966, p. 235. My pacifism is an instinctive feeling, a feeling that possesses me because the murder of men is disgusting. My attitude is not derived from any intellectual theory but is based on my deepest antipathy to every kind of cruelty and hatred. I might go on to rationalize this reaction, but that would really be a posteriori thinking. I am an absolute pacifist. One of the main objects of my life is to oppose, at every turning, the ancient European tradition of warfare. That tradition still retains its power, but even so I am not discouraged. I believe in taking a holy oath never to participate in any act of violence. 4. FIGHTING FOR RELIGION IS COUNTER TO RELIGIOUS TEACHINGS George Fox, Founder of the Quakers, THE PACIFIST CONSCIENCE, edited by Peter Mayer, 1966, p. 92. All that pretend to fight for Christ are deceived for his kingdom is not of this world, therefore his servants do not fight. Fighters are not of Christ’s kingdom, but are without Christ’s kingdom; his kingdom starts in peace and righteousness, but fighters are in the lust; and all that would destroy men’s lives, are not of Christ’s mind, who caine to save men’s lives. Christ’s kingdom is not of this world; it is peaceable: and all that are in strife, are not of his kingdom. All that pretend to fight for the Gospel, are deceived; for the Gospel is the power of God, which was before the devil, or fall of man was; and the gospel of peace was before fighting was. Therefore they that pretend fighting, are ignorant of the Gospel; and all that talk of fighting for Zion, are in darkness; for Zion needs no such helpers.

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Pacifism Bad PACIFISM DOES NOT WORK 1. UNCONDITIONAL PACIFISM HAS PROVEN COUNTERPRODUCTIVE Michael Mertes, NQA, DAEDALUS, January, 1994, page 1. At the beginning of 1991, the German peace movement made a deeply disturbing discovery: unconditional pacifism is counterproductive; it only emboldens aggressive dictators. The decisive lesson of the 1930s is not simply Never again war!” but “Never again appeasement in the manner of Munich!” One cannot wipe aggression off the face of the earth by simply giving in to it. This also holds for domestic policy: The series of xenophobic arson attacks since the events of Hoyerswerda in the autumn of 1991 taught many German supporters of an unquestioning tolerance that, in the interest of a successful battle against terrorist violence and political extremism, you cannot do without a reasonable dose of “law and order,” sustained by a more efficient law enforcement system. 2. EVEN GANDHI BELIEVED ABSOLUTE PACIFISM WAS NOT FEASIBLE Mohandas Gandhi, Indian leader, as quoted in THE PACIFIST CONSCIENCE, edited by Peter Mayer, 1966, page 214. I do believe that, where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence. Thus when my eldest son asked me what he should have done, had he been present when I was almost fatally assaulted in 1908, whether he should have run away and seen me killed or whether he should have used his physical force which he could and wanted to use, and defended me, I told him that it was his duty to defend me even by using violence. Hence it was that I took part in the Boer War, the so called Zulu rebellion and the late War. Hence also do I advocate training in arms for those who believe in the method of violence. I would rather have India resort to anus in order to defend her honour than that she should in a cowardly manner become or remain a helpless witness to her own dishonour. 3. PACIFIST TRADITION IS FULL OF CONTRADICTIONS Peter Mayer, Editor, THE PACIFIST CONSCIENCE, 1966, page 25-6. It is well to remember here that the pacifist tradition, even when broadly interpreted, is full of contradictions. In this collection the editor has also selected those statements which do not precisely fit the tradition, and some that appear inconsistent viewed in an historical light. Martin Buber, for example, generally considered a Hebrew pacifist, replied in 1939 to Gandhi’s suggestion to the German Jews --that they practice nonviolence to demonstrate their moral superiority over the Nazis --that in certain situations resistance with violence was inevitable and necessary, but that ‘No one who counts himself in the ranks of Israel can desire to use force’. On the issue of a Jewish homeland and the probable necessity of fighting for it, Buber confronted Gandhi with his own words: ‘Have I not repeatedly said that I would have India become free even by violence than that she would remain in bondage ?‘ Randolph Boume in ‘The War and the Intellectuals bitterly complains in 1919 of the intellectuals who professed peace in tune of peace but who supported war when it came; and in 1946 Albert Canius, who had fought in the war, wrote what is certainly one of the most stirring appeals to mankind to give up violence and to seek communication through a ‘dialogue’ - a Buberian concept - with other men. Albert Einstein, our century’s most prominent pacifist, wrote in the summer of 1929: ‘I believe in taking a holy oath never to participate in any act of violence.’ In the late thirties, however, he was able to maintain his pacifism by stating that his early absolutism was an absolutism within a specific context, the conditions of which no longer obtained. Deluged by letters from unbelieving former admirers, he did not seem overly embarrassed. He took care to state his position, declaring always that he had never ceased to consider himself a pacifist.

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HISTORY HAS PROVEN PACIFISM FAILS AND IS COUNTERPRODUCTIVE 1. PACIFISTS HISTORICALLY SUPPORTED CENSORSHIP AND RESTRICTION OF FREEDOMS Mark Gilbert, Adjunct lecturer in Political philosophy at Dickinson College Center for European Studies, Pacifist Attitudes to Nazi Germany, JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY HISTORY, July 1992, p. 499. The ‘warmongers’ of Bell’s pamphlet were not Hitler and Mussolini, but British public figures, such as Churchill and Sir Stafford Cripps, who denounced the abuses of the fascist states. Warmongers contained an explicit appeal to the British government to censor these critics of Germany and Italy which is well worth quoting at length, since it illustrates more clearly than any summary the nature of the principles which were governing pacifist writing during this period: We may have to limit freedom of speech... novels and plays are censored, I do not quite see why political speeches and leading articles should be immune. It will be impossible to create an atmosphere favourable to peace if newspapers constantly print things calculated to inflame and exasperate the touchiness of foreign countries. It is probable that a part of the French and English press do more than any home-bred propagandist to keep ablaze the warlike spirit in central Europe. Liberal uld renounce her continental role entirely, permitting Germany to ‘absorb’ France, Poland, the Low Countries and the Balkans. In a masterpiece of euphemism, he described this policy as ‘uniting the continent under German leadership’. 2. NONVIOLENCE STOPS ANIMAL RIGHTS MOVEMENTS Damela Iacono, NQA, Proprietary to the United Press International, December 16,1984, p. np. Animal Liberation Front spokesman Ronnie] Lee, a bespectacled businessman who founded the group in 1976 and who has been jailed twice for his activities, said the ALF was forced to turn to violence to make its voice heard. There is a place for violence, and to deny its use to the movement when necessary is to demand that we should fight ... with one hand tied behind our backs,” he said. 3. PACIFIST MOVEMENTS EXCUSED AND EXALTED HITLER Mark Gilbert, Adjunct lecturer in Political philosophy at Dickinson College Center for European Studies, Pacifist Attitudes to Nazi Germany, JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY HISTORY, July 1992, p. 508-9. It must be added, however, that the PPU was willfully ignorant of the true character of nazism. The PPu’s apologetics for nazism were, in effect, a rejection of the empirical attitude to politics. The principal intellectuals of the PPU chose to believe that the nazis were a potential force for the good despite the evidence of their eyes and understanding. In this regard, the obvious parallel is with left-wing ‘progressives such as Harold Laski and Kingsley Martin, whose attitude to the Soviet Union was also an act of blind faith, rather than a rational deduction from observed fact. The PPU’S behaviour, however, was more extreme than Martin’s or Laski’s. The ‘progressives’ did at least share some common ideological ground with communism. The PPU and nazism shared none. It is not an exaggeration to say that between 1938 and 1943, the PPU offered the most bizarre intellectual spectacle witnessed during the second world war: an avowedly pacifist movement whose public statements, more often than not, excused, or even exalted, the most ruthless user of military force known to modem man. 4. PACIFISTS GLORIFIED LIFE IN NAZI GERMANY Mark Gilbert, Adjunct lecturer in Political philosophy at Dickinson College Center for European Studies, Pacifist Attitudes to Nazi Germany, JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY HISTORY, July 1992, p. 499-500. It was a short step from arguing that censoring critics of the fascist regimes was a desirable move to giving a false picture of life in nazi Germany. After Munich, Peace News began what can only be described as a co-ordinated campaign to persuade public opinion that life in Germany was by no means as black as it was painted. This campaign took two forms. First, Peace News persistently printed flattering accounts of life in the Third Reich by pacifists— usually unnamed—who were alleged to have recently visited Germany, or to be experts on German life and culture. Invariably these pacifists discovered that the Germans were anxious for peace with Britain, that Germany was not preparing for war and that ordinary Germans considered that Germany had been left out of the share-out of the world’s resources. In June 1939, for instance, ‘R.L.W.’, who had recently returned from a motoring tour in Germany, was reported to have seen ‘no scowls, but many smiles in the villages, much waving, few swastika flags, no postcards of Hitler so fax as I could see, no militarism, no airplanes [sic], no searchlights and in fact no trace of the warmindedness there is here, either outwardly or in conversation.’ 539

Participatory Economics Good PARTICIPATORY ECONOMICS PROMOTES FREEDOM 1. PARTICIPATORY ECONOMICS IS DEMOCRATIC Robin Hahnel, Professor of Economics at American University, IN DEFENSE OF PARTICIPATORY ECONOMICS, 1998, www.zmag.org/ParEcon/beta/writings/hahdefpe.htm, accessed May 4, 1999. We know a democratic economy will not result from a non-democratic political process. If the history of twentieth century Communism proves nothing else, it proves this. Only a social movement committed "body and soul" to democracy and justice in all spheres of social life, comprising at least a third of the population, and supported by at least another third of the population, can establish a participatory economy. This means the solid beginnings of a system of equitable cooperation that won the approval of an overwhelming majority of the population must be established during decades of struggle. But this is precisely the democratic process that can lead to a participatory economy. Those who are sufficiently oppressed or disgusted by the economics of competition and greed to struggle for the economics of equitable cooperation must demonstrate a "living proof" of the possibility and desirability of an economy based on those principles. That is also how they could win the approval of another third of the population. We always assumed a transition could require many decades of blood, sweat, and tears with no guarantees. But, for us, that is a better prospect than another 500 years of greed and exploitation. 2. PARTICIPATORY ECONOMICS PROMOTES FREEDOM, EFFICIENCY, AND ECOLOGY Robin Hahnel, Professor of Economics at American University, IN DEFENSE OF PARTICIPATORY ECONOMICS, 1998, www.zmag.org/ParEcon/beta/writings/hahdefpe.htm, accessed May 4, 1999. As long as the problem is viewed as how to get an economic elite to make decisions in the public interest rather than their own, we won't get very far in thinking about a truly desirable economy. Whether they be capitalists, central planners, or managers of public enterprises, economic elites will imperfectly serve the public interest at best, and more often than not end by subverting it to their own interest. A desirable economy must be a classless economy. Moreover, the social process of consciously, democratically, and equitably coordinating our interconnected economic activities is fundamentally different from the social process of competing against one another in the exchange of goods and services. And while both "solutions" to the economic problem are feasible, only responsible cooperation is compatible with self-management (decision making input in proportion to the degree one is affected by the outcome), equity (to each according to personal sacrifice or effort), efficiency (maximizing the benefits from using scarce productive resources), solidarity (concern for the well being of others), and ecological restoration. 4. PEOPLE ARE FREE IN A PARTICIPATORY ECONOMY Robin Hahnel, Professor of Economics at American University, IN DEFENSE OF PARTICIPATORY ECONOMICS, 1998, www.zmag.org/ParEcon/beta/writings/hahdefpe.htm, accessed May 4, 1999. Everyone is free to consume whatever goods or services she wants. Of course an individual's overall consumption is constrained in a participatory economy, by her effort or sacrifice, just as an individual's overall consumption is constrained in a market economy, by her income, which is usually not the same as her effort or sacrifice. But there is complete freedom of choice in a participatory economy regarding what one wishes to consume. Moreover, consumers' preferences determine what will be produced in a participatory economy, just as they supposedly do in a market economy. The difference is that markets bias people's choices by overcharging for goods whose production or consumption entail positive external effects, undercharging for goods with negative external effects, and by over supplying private goods relative to public goods. Participatory planning is carefully designed to eliminate these important infringements on "consumer sovereignty." People in a participatory economy are also free to choose more consumption and less leisure, or visa versa, simply by working more or fewer hours, and are free to distribute their effort and consumption over their lives as they wish. To accomplish this in market economies people must deal with banks and loan officers, whereas borrowing and saving is handled by consumer councils and federations in participatory economies.

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PARTICIPATORY ECONOMICS BEST ECONOMIC MODEL 1. ONLY A PARTICIPATORY ECONOMY LEADS US TO A SANE WORLD Robin Hahnel, Professor of Economics at American University, IN DEFENSE OF PARTICIPATORY ECONOMICS, 1998, www.zmag.org/ParEcon/beta/writings/hahdefpe.htm, accessed May 4, 1999. Only as enough of us come to our senses and put our shovels to better use will the increasing human misery and environmental destruction that marks the end of the century that should have been capitalism's last, give way to a sustainable economy of equitable cooperation. Unfortunately, "coming to our senses" is easier said than done. It will come to pass only after more sweat and tears have flowed in more campaigns on more fronts than we can yet imagine. Fortunately, sweat and tears in the cause of justice and freedom are at the center of the human spirit, and the best of all ways of life. 2. MARKETS DON'T ACCOMPLISH SELF-MANAGEMENT LIKE PARTICIPATORY ECON Robin Hahnel, Professor of Economics at American University, and Michael Albert, Activist and Author, REVIEW OF RADICAL POLITICAL ECONOMICS, vol. 24, 1992, p. 3. We have explained why markets are incompatible with equity and systematically destructive of solidarity. We have explained why market economies will continue to destroy the environment, and why a radical view of social life implies that external effects are the rule rather than the exception, which means markets generally misestimate social costs and benefits and misallocate scarce productive resources. And we have explained that while markets may fulfill the liberal vision of individual economic freedom to dispose of one's personal capabilities and property however one chooses, they are inconsistent with the radical goal of self-management for everyone. While many have told us casually that markets are not as bad as we make them out to be, no political economist has yet responded specifically to a single criticism we have made. We can't help but feel the debate between progressive minded marketeers and "third wayers" such as ourselves would be more engaging if marketeers responded more directly to their critics as we have attempted to do here. 3. BEST NEW VISION OF EQUITABLE, DEMOCRATIC ECONOMY IS PARTICIPATORY Robin Hahnel, Professor of Economics at American University, and Michael Albert, Activist and Author, REVIEW OF RADICAL POLITICAL ECONOMICS, vol. 24, 1992, p. 3. In conclusion, we believe those who reconcile themselves to market "socialist" models do so illogically and unnecessarily. Illogically because the negative experience of authoritarian planning tells us very little, if anything, about the potential of participatory planning. Illogically because the collapse of communism is incapable of reducing the liabilities of market systems that are becoming more rather than less apparent. Unnecessarily because socialism as it was always meant to be is not impossible. And unnecessarily because the vision of an equitable, democratic economy, generating increasing solidarity among its participants, is as attractive and appealing as ever. 4. PARTICIPATORY ECONOMY ENJOYS IMPORTANT ADVANTAGES OVER CAPITALISM Robin Hahnel, Professor of Economics at American University, and Michael Albert, Activist and Author, REVIEW OF RADICAL POLITICAL ECONOMICS, vol. 24, 1992, p. 3. While this is no different than under capitalism, a participatory economy enjoys important advantages. Most importantly, direct recognition of "social serviceability" is a more powerful incentive in a participatory economy, which reduces the magnitude of the trade-off. Secondly, a participatory economy is better suited to allocating resources efficiently to R&D because research and development is largely a public good which is predictably under supplied in market economies but would not be in a participatory economy. Third, the only effective mechanism for providing material incentives for innovating enterprises in capitalism is to slow their spread, at the expense of efficiency. This is true because the transaction costs of registering patents and negotiating licenses from patent holders are very high. But while we would recommend it only as a last resort, the transaction costs of delaying the recalibration of work complexes for innovative work places, or even granting extra consumption allowances for a period of time would not be high in a participatory economy.

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Participatory Economics Bad PARTICIPATORY ECONOMICS BAD FOR FREEDOM 1. PARTICIPATORY ECONOMICS DECREASES FREEDOM Thomas Weisskopf , Economic Scholar, REVIEW OF RADICAL POLITICAL ECONOMICS, Vol. 24, 1992, p. 21-22. The issue is how much value we should attach to libertarian rights such as freedom of choice, privacy, and the development of one's own specialized talents and abilities -- as compared to the more traditional socialist goals of equity, democracy and solidarity.... Replacement of markets with a participatory economic system would arguably contribute to a more egalitarian, democratic and solidaristic society, but would appear to do so at a cost in terms of libertarian objectives. 2. EXISTING MARKET SYSTEM WOULD = MORE FREEDOM Thomas Weisskopf , Economic Scholar, REVIEW OF RADICAL POLITICAL ECONOMICS, Vol. 24, 1992, p. 19. A participatory system is likely to require people to justify many of their choices to some kind of collective decisionmaking body, which in turn is bound to limit the extent to which people can really get their choices accepted -- no matter how democratically decision-making bodies are constituted. By enabling individuals to make most choices without reference to what others think about their decisions, a market system provides much greater freedom of this kind. 3. NEW CLASS OF OPPRESSORS WOULD RISE FROM PARTICIPATORY ECONOMICS Nancy Folbre, Activist, " Z MAGAZINE, July/August 1991, p. 69. One perverse incentive could be labeled 'The Dictatorship of the Sociable.' Some people really like meetings. They like to talk, to negotiate, to debate. As a result, they often attend meetings enthusiastically, and they often prevail at them. 4. PARTICIPATORY ECONOMICS AND DEMOCRACY INCOMPATIBLE Thomas Weisskopf , Economic Scholar, REVIEW OF RADICAL POLITICAL ECONOMICS, Vol. 24, 1992, p. 21-22. To transform homo economicus into homo socialis would involve a massive change in people's mind-sets. Such a transformation might conceivably be imposed on a society by an authoritarian elite, but it is virtually impossible to imagine it being generated by a democratic process that respected the current attitudes and preferences of the general public.

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PARTIPATORY ECONOMICS UNFEASIBLE 1. PARTICIPATORY ECONOMICS IS TOO COMPLEX TO BE FEASIBLE Thomas Weisskopf , Economic Scholar, REVIEW OF RADICAL POLITICAL ECONOMICS, Vol. 24, 1992, p. 14-17. Wouldn't the allocation of resources in a complex economy by means of participatory decision-making institutions place impossible demands on information processing and inordinate demands on people's time? The mere listing of the requirements for decision- making in a participatory economy is enough to generate skepticism about whether and how they can possibly be met. Even if, in principle, institutions and processes can be developed to accomplish the necessary tasks (and Albert & Hahnel and Devine have advanced some ingenious ideas to do so), one is bound to wonder whether the whole system would actually function in practice. Assuming that computer technology could be relied upon to process and disseminate the enormous amount of information needed to make the system work, how would people be persuaded to provide the needed information in an unbiased and disinterested manner? And even if all the needed information could be accurately compiled, wouldn't participatory planning require each individual to dedicate so much time, interest and energy to assessing the information and participating in decision-making meetings that most people would get sick and tired of doing it? 2. PARTICIPATORY ECONOMICS IMPOSSIBLE IN PRACTICE Thomas Weisskopf , Economic Scholar, REVIEW OF RADICAL POLITICAL ECONOMICS, Vol. 24, 1992, p. 15-16. Isn't the practice of participatory democracy sufficiently difficult, time-consuming and emotionally draining that it would in practice have to be limited to a relatively small range of decisions? In practice such a system might well enable some people to exercise much greater influence over decisions than others. Disproportionate influence would not arise from disproportionate wealth or income, but from disproportionate interest in and aptitude for the relevant decision-making processes. These kinds of concerns about the operation of democratic decision-making processes should not of course be read as a condemnation of democracy.... Rather, such concerns suggest that democratic political institutions ought to focus on a critical and manageable range of decision-making areas, rather than be used for all kinds of economic as well as political decisions. 3. PARTICIPATORY ECONOMICS WILL BE EITHER UNFEASIBLE OR UNEQUAL Michael Hagar, Activist, Z MAGAZINE, July/August 1991, p. 71. Because success, even in a non-capitalist order, may easily turn on talent, luck, and other morally undeserved factors, it is easy for the authors to show that equity favors distribution according to effort. My question, however, is whether they succeed in showing that distribution according to effort achieves efficiency alongside equity.... A society seeking optimum production needs to discourage clumsy effort and encourage proficient effort so as to avoid waste. Otherwise, the less successful have no material incentive to modify bungling methods or to seek work where their comparative advantage in contribution is greater. For efficiency, one must at least reward efforts to improve the success of efforts, and rewarding contribution may be the only feasible way to do so. 4. DECREASED SPECIALIZATION WOULD HURT PRODUCTIVITY Thomas Weisskopf , Economic Scholar, REVIEW OF RADICAL POLITICAL ECONOMICS, Vol. 24, 1992, p. 20. Apart from their inhibition of personal freedom, balanced job complexes designed to avoid specialization seem likely to deprive society of the benefits of activities performed well only by people who have devoted a disproportionate amount of time and effort to them.

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Participatory Economics Maybe you're a left-leaning individual who sees the ravages of capitalism but is suspicious of state-run solutions. Perhaps you're a populist with pro-labor inclinations, but shudder at the word "socialism," which conjures up the thought of a Soviet-style bureaucracy. It could be that you look at all the economic systems humans have tried so far and wonder, can't we do better than this? If any of the above sounds like you - or if you're a mercenary debater who wants to throw a monkey wrench into the old, tired "capitalism vs. socialism" arguments - then perhaps Michael Albert's notion of participatory economics is for you. Participatory economics - Parecon for short (www.parecon.org) - attempts to navigate that little-trod third path between our two diametrically opposed economic notions, and does quite a deft job of it. Building on the criticisms of Marxism on both the right and the left, Parecon aims to foster a richer, more extensive analysis of class and the role it plays in our lives. By melding the best of socialism with a staunchly antiauthoritarian attitude, Albert and his supporters hope to create a means of economic organization that is truly humane. But would it work? What would this system look like? Would it be a heretofore unrealized hybrid of the state and private enterprise, or an entirely new best? And how can you and your teammates use it to win debate rounds, anyway? All in good time, grasshopper. For now, let's take a gander into the life and times of the man who continues to be the main driving force behind Parecon: Michael Albert. ALBERT AND THE PRINCE - NO CAN, THOUGH Unless you're a reader of Z Magazine or regularly visit the magazine's companion site, ZNet (www.zmag.org), you probably don't know that Michael Albert is one of the most prolific writers in America. In fact, besides Noam Chomsky, Albert is probably the radical thinker with the most column inches under his belt. That's true even though Albert doesn't crank out as many books as, say, Barbara Ehrenreich or Chomsky. By continually updating ZNet with observations, essays, thoughts and interviews - not to mention dropping in on the web site's expansive forum system - he tallies a word count that would do Dostoyevsky proud, weighing in on issues ranging from military policy to gay rights and feminism. You can tell, though, that class relations and economic justice are subjects near and dear to his heart. A lifelong activist, Albert sees ZNet as the high-tech realization of his radical goals - a forum where people gather to discuss matters of mutual concern, where vigorous political debate occurs on a relatively level playing field. The writer puts his money where his egalitarian mouth is, too, answering letters and forum posts from just about everyone - even when the material has been tackled in detail elsewhere. It stands to reason that Albert would have faith in the deductive processes of average people, because he spends most of his time every day in one form of dialogue or another. That's the guiding principle behind Parecon, too - people working with people in a democratic, cooperativelyplanned environment to build a better world. Sound good? It'll sound even better after we discuss what Parecon can do for you in a debate. WHAT DO WE MEAN BY "PARTICIPATORY" ECONOMICS? Let's not get ahead of ourselves, though. Before we examine how to utilize participatory principles in a round, let's examine what Albert - and his colleague, American University economics professor Robin Hahnel - envision when constructing Parecon. Right now, few Americans take part in large-scale economic decisions: that's the way markets are supposed to work. 544

Think about it: if you have stock, whether the market goes up or down is beyond your control. If you're buying a house, you can't determine what interest rate you are going to pay - ditto for an automobile and most other large purchases. It would be an exaggeration to say you can count on two hands the number of people in America who make longterm, overarching economic decisions. But not too much of an exaggeration. You've got Alan Greenspan, Grand Poobah of the Federal Reserve; the Fed's board of governors; American trade representative Charlene Barshefsky; and probably a few others I'm leaving out. If you count Congress - who can vote on whether or not to grant subsidies to industry or countries, and vote on proposed budgets - then than number expands to a few hundred people. But there are (pending results of the latest census) around 300 million Americans! When you consider that our prime criticism of socialism surrounds the socalled "centrally planned economy," our own economic structure seems to smack of hypocrisy. That's not to say capitalism and socialism have no differences, or that socialism avoids the "central planning" criticism any better. It's true that you and I have more decisions to make in our market than, say, the Chinese do. But is the choice between Pepsi, Coke and (Obey your thirst!) Sprite any more empowering than just drinking Commie Cola? Seems like a wash to many. It certainly did to that famous German, Karl Marx, who said the capitalist class would centralize wealth and power in their own hands under a market system. And though you'll only find this statement whispered in corporate boardrooms or hidden in the alternative press, the old Kraut was right. Trouble is, that's as far as he got. Though Marx waxed intellectual about how the purpose of philosophy was to change the world rather than theorize about it, he left us with little more than a theoretical understanding of how markets screw the poor sideways. He tried to point the way to a new system - but his "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" too often devolved into just plain dictatorship. The workers had nothing to lose but their chains, yet communist societies just seemed to offer new chains without the designer labels from Abercrombie and Fitch or The Gap. A lot of observers on the left, as well as the right, were left asking "What's the difference?" Albert and Hahnel suggest, though, that we should ask a different question: "What's the same about these two systems?" You can probably guess the answer right off, even if you don't put the same name on it that Albert and Hahnel do. In each of these systems, there are powerful people who are telling the masses what to do and how to do it. In capitalism, you've got your capitalist class - the Bill Gateses, Rupert Murdochs of this Era. They control most of the wealth. As such, they decide what people should consume and produce - then shove it down their throats through relentless advertising, and buy a politician or two for good measure to ensure favorable tax status. Under communism, though, we didn't fare much better - if better at all. Instead of rich people purchasing power, we had Communist Part officials and bureaucrats simply exercising power. In a planned economy, a central committee decides what gets produced, how much of it the people get, and how much of it stays in the power of the party. The problems with this have been well-documented. Corruption, clumsily slow responses to economic crises, etc., were all part and parcel of the Faustian bargain people made to get out from under the capitalist boot. Instead of a capitalist class serving as oppressor, Albert and Hahnel reasoned, people were oppressed by a "coordinator class" - a group of individuals who choose for an entire society how to run things. The Who once said it well: "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."

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Does it have to be this way, though? Surely the people who actually work in auto factories, clothing manufacturing plants and the like have wisdom that the coordinator class could benefit from. Or do we even need a coordinator class at all? Marx said we did, arguing that a "vanguard party" of elite folk would be necessary to lead the masses to freedom. But of course, Uncle Karl didn't pretend to know everything: as he famously uttered (albeit in a somewhat different context), "I am not a Marxist." Humans make advances in social organization slowly. Often, the thinkers behind those advances don't have everything right. Many have argued that if Adam Smith (who is often mistakenly called "The Father of Capitalism" could see what his notion of markets wrought, he would run screaming - if he wasn't already dead, of course. Still, his insights into market theory helped people advance out of the horribly oppressive mercantilist system. Could the same be said of Marx? For all his faults, would his critique of capitalism ultimately make a contribution to a real transformation of the social order - instead of the aborted transition offered by state socialism? If Albert, Hahnel and others have anything to say about it, the answer will be yes. WHAT DOES PARECON LOOK LIKE? Asking that question is similar to asking what a Rottweiler mixed with a Basset Hound looks like: it's almost impossible to visualize unless you've seen an example. Unfortunately, as you might expect, there has been no real example on a large scale of what Hahnel and Albert advocate. Fortunately, they've set out in intricate detail a blueprint for a Parecon society in the slim, readable LOOKING FORWARD: PARTICIPATORY ECONOMICS FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY. It's quick, required reading if you're interested in the subject. Just because the ideal of Parecon has not been realized in toto in any one society doesn't mean that there haven't been examples of participatory principles in action. Albert and Hahnel use the early years of Poland's Solidarity labor union as examples of a push toward participatory principles. Cuba is an example, they say, of where participatory and coordinator tendencies are at war with each other. So there are places you can look for guidance. The principles of participatory economics are probably the best guiding lights for debaters, though. Here are a few: * Workplaces should exist without hierarchy. The jobs we do invariably have impacts on the way we live. If you're a journalist, it's your job to be skeptical. If you're a politician, it's your job to smarm your way around the key issues. If you make widgets, it's your job to make widgets as quickly and efficiently as possible. So in a society with class divisions, Hahnel and Albert argue, the upper classes will generally get the fulfilling work that promises to engage their intellect - corporate executive, televisions pundit - while the lower classes won't be as fortunate. A participatory economy would move towards a more equitable division of responsibilities, using tools such as job rotation. * Employees should be actively engaged in making workplace decisions. This should be accomplished, the authors suggest, by a series of councils at the office level and above. People would vote on matters of group concern - what products should be encouraged, what products dropped, etc. * Consumption, not merely production, should be an issue tackled by these councils. Since each person's consumption affects the whole community, people should be concerned by consumptive decisions. Sound less than specific? Possibly. But through the books they write, the constant dialogue through Z Magazine and the Parecon website, Albert and Hahnel are constantly developing the vision of this peculiar economic creature.

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Oh, and by the way: a Rottweiler/Basset mix looks sort of like a Rottweiler cut off at the knees - a furry, vicious end table. And, kind of like Parecon, it looks cooler than you would think at first. In order to convince you of that, though, I'd best get to discussing how this odd beast can help you emerge victorious and in what circumstances. HOW TO USE PARECON For Lincoln-Douglas debaters, the Parecon position could be a real gold mine. It simultaneously attacks the presumptions of both major economic systems argued in LD. For policy debaters, applying the argument maybe a bit trickier, but it will be no less valuable. Waiting for the policy topic which screams for Parecon as an affirmative case may just exhaust your eligibility, though should an economics topic arise, the impacts are quite good. Most likely, though, you'll use it as a counterplan against any case that uses market mechanisms. It is also quite useful as a policy critique - but let us tackle that latter usage, the counterplan, before delving into the moral and philosophical basis of participatory economics. After that section, we'll show the usefulness of participatory philosophy for both policy and LD debaters. The wonderful thing about this argument as a counterplan is the clear mutual exclusivity it affords against both capitalist cases and socialist cases. The hierarchies both engender - capitalism's class biases and regimented workplaces, socialism's coordinator mentality - are anathema to the participatory ideal, not to mention practice. The strategic advantage this confers is that debaters now only have to worry about winning a net benefit to win the round. In addition, improved (economic) solvency can serve as a net benefit: either a capitalist case or a socialist case will mostly claim harms based on the negative impact of the other. If Parecon avoids those harms more effectively than the aff, then Parecon should win. This absolves negative debaters of worrying about a good generic disadvantage. The biggest problem with Parecon is the lack of a consistent transition mechanism. In LOOKING FORWARD, Albert and Hahnel suggest that widespread creation of these workers' councils will be a requisite first step - and a significant first step. But many of the impacts debaters will want to claim probably hinge on a transition out of capitalism (or the avoidance of socialism), and that will require a clean transition mechanism. As with most systems worth creating, you can't just wave the magic wand of fiat and will it to be so. There is evidence available suggesting that a widespread economic crisis (my personal favorite transition mechanism) could spawn a shift to this financial system based on solidarity, voluntary cooperation and mutual aid. Debaters have the option of running the position as a disadvantage with this link, or running it as a counterplan with the impacts of Parecon as the net benefit. But as I used to tell my high school coach when he made me do Individual Events, "Why worry about transitions if you don't have to?" Then, I meant I wanted to start my extemp speeches with "Observation one: the status quo presents significant problems." Now, I mean that both policy and LD competitors should use participatory philosophy as their primary use of this position. It captures all of the good stuff about the position - a moral challenge to two problematic economic systems - while avoiding the nasty side effect of being somewhat utopian. That said, here's how to use participatory philosophy in rounds. AGAINST CAPITALISM AND SOCIALISM: THE THIRD WAY The beautiful elements to running Parecon as a philosophical objection/critique are twofold: first, there is a readymade link story that applies to both capitalism and socialism equally well; second, there are several other link levels that can be added to bolster the argument.

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The predominant link story, of course, is hierarchy. Both capitalism and socialism call for it - indeed, require it - while participatory economics at least ostensibly repudiates it. Adding to the fun of this argument, many feminist authors point to hierarchical manners of thinking as the root of human problems - so you've got your big impact all set, as well as your value objection. This simple, two-step argument - all economic systems but Parecon foster hierarchy, hierarchy is bad - can go a long way. But this is far from a two-step and done argument. Against market-based cases, Albert and Hahnel make all the requisite "markets foster alienation, inequality, etc." claims, which give you additional link levels. But with a clear alternative - Parecon - you not only avoid the "socialism is bad" answers, you also avoid the "critique stops change" criticism. Against socialist cases, you can run all the standard "socialism is bad" arguments - totalitarianism is bad, socialism is bad for the economy - without fearing the classism responses. You can also run "coordinatorism is bad" as an additional link level, and likely throw your opponents off guard with a term they haven't heard before. I would suggest writing a standard critique/value objection using the hierarchy argument, then adding additional links as time and judge adaptation permit. You can also change up the links you argue if you're using the argument twice or three times during a tournament. AND IN CONCLUSION ... Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel have provided us with - and, through the Web, Albert continues to provide us with - a valuable addition to economics debates. Though some participatory economics ideas are presented in stilted, academic language, most of the ideas the authors present are straightforward and easily understandable. Of course, not all the ideas in LOOKING FORWARD or elsewhere will turn out to be good ones: but that's part of the excitement with researching this argument. You can be part of a new, evolving theory which could undercut the assumptions of all mainstream economics. And maybe win a few debates in the meantime.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel, LOOKING FORWARD: PARTICIPATORY ECONOMICS FOR THE TWENTY FIRST CENTURY, South End Press, 1991. Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel, THE QUIET REVOLUTION IN WELFARE ECONOMICS, Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990. Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel, THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PARTICIPATORY ECONOMICS, Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press,, 1991. Michael Albert, Leslie Cagan, Noam Chomsky, Robin Hahnel, Mel King, Lydia Sargent and Holly Sklar, LIBERATING THEORY, South End Press, 1986. Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel, "Socialism As It Was Always Meant To Be," REVIEW OF RADICAL POLITICAL ECONOMICS 24 (3&4), 1992. Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel, "Participatory Economics," SCIENCE & SOCIETY, Vol. 56, 1992. Michael Albert, THINKING FORWARD, Arbeiter Ring Press, 1997. Pat Devine, DEMOCRACY AND ECONOMIC PLANNING: THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF A SELF GOVERNING SOCIETY, Boulder: Westview Press, 1988. Nancy Folbre, "Roundtable on Participatory Economics," Z MAGAZINE, July/August 1991, p. 67-70. David Levy, "Book Review: Seeking a Third Way" DOLLARS AND SENSE, November 1991, p. 18-20. Alec Nove, THE ECONOMICS OF FEASIBLE SOCIALISM, London: George Allen and Unwin, 1983. Thomas Weisskopf, "Toward a Socialism for the Future in the Wake of the Demise of the Socialism of the Past," REVIEW OF RADICAL POLITICAL ECONOMICS 24 (3&4), 1992. Z Magazine Network's Participatory Economics site, http://www.parecon.org.

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PARTICIPATORY ECONOMICS IS FEASIBLE AND WOULD WORK WELL 1. PARTICIPATORY ECONOMICS CREATES ECONOMIC FREEDOM Michael Albert, Activist and Co-editor, Z MAGAZINE, "Movement for a Participatory Economy: An Overview," Jan 23, 2000, Accessed May 21, 2000, http://zmag.org/ZSustainers/ZDaily/2000-01/23albert.htm. In contemporary societies, people at the top of corporations and government bureaucracies have vast economic power. Others mostly obey. Why should we aim to level these power differentials and seek self-management, defined as decision-making input proportionate to the degree one is affected by outcomes? Why not aim for "economic freedom," giving everyone the right to do whatever they wish with themselves and their property? Or why not seek simple democracy, giving everyone equal say over all economic decisions? Or why not seek meritocracy, giving the more knowledgeable or more successful more say than those who are less knowledgeable or less successful? 2. PARTICIPATORY ECONOMICS WOULD FIGHT RACIAL AND GENDER DISCRIMINATION Michael Albert, Activist and Co-editor, Z MAGAZINE, "Movement for a Participatory Economy: An Overview," Jan 23, 2000, Accessed May 21, 2000, http://zmag.org/ZSustainers/ZDaily/2000-01/23albert.htm. We would clearly need to fight to reduce and ultimately eliminate pay differentials based on race or gender, reduce and ultimately eliminate reward for property, power, and/or contribution to output, and finally correlate rewards that people receive to the levels of effort and sacrifice they actually expend. To create a program furthering these ends a second commentary on Just Rewards will advocate such reforms as affirmative action; profit, property, wealth, inheritance, and income taxes; and a full employment program, minimum wage supports, increased social wage payments, reverse income taxes, and many job actions for increased wages, among other immediate objectives. 3. PARTICIPATORY ECONOMICS FAVORS DIGNIFIED WORK FOR EVERYONE Michael Albert, Activist and Co-editor, Z MAGAZINE, "Movement for a Participatory Economy: An Overview," Jan 23, 2000, Accessed May 21, 2000, http://zmag.org/ZSustainers/ZDaily/2000-01/23albert.htm. Then, having agreed that dignified work entails each worker having a fair mix of empowering and uplifting as well as boring and rote labor so there is no class division between those monopolizing empowering work and those following orders, and having countered fears that such a choice will reduce output by diminishing expertise, what demands should we then make about job definitions, information, knowledge, and training that will lead toward balanced job complexes for all? We would certainly need to compensate those with less desirable work with time off that they can use for further schooling or other efforts to attain better circumstances. And we would need to require those with more desirable jobs to spend compensating time doing onerous work as well. And finally, as workers' organization and power to influence their conditions grows and as their capacity to demand serious changes in workplace relations increases, we would favor reforms seeking to reduce disparities in desirability and empowerment between different jobs by reallocating tasks between them. 4. PARTICIPATORY ECONOMICS PROMOTES EQUITY WHILE MEETING PEOPLES' NEEDS Michael Albert, Activist and Co-editor, Z MAGAZINE, "Economics and the Rest of Society," April 2, 2000, Accessed May 21, 2000, http://www.zmag.org/ZSustainers/ZDaily/2000-04/02albert.htm. A Participatory Economy produces, consumes, and allocates to meet people''s needs and develop their capacities. It also promotes equity, solidarity, diversity, and self-management. Its central features are workers' and consumers' councils, remuneration according to effort and sacrifice, balanced job complexes, and participatory planning.

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PARTICIPATORY ECONOMICS IMPROVES OTHER STRUCTURES IN SOCIETY 1. PARTICIPATORY ECONOMICS FIGHTS TRADITIONAL SEXIST STRUCTURES Michael Albert, Activist and Co-editor, Z MAGAZINE, "Economics and the Rest of Society," April 2, 2000, Accessed May 21, 2000, http://www.zmag.org/ZSustainers/ZDaily/2000-04/02albert.htm. Parecon structures would violate a sexist household hierarchy by not subordinating women to men and by giving women and men expectations contrary to male supremacy. Sexist kinship arrangements would violate balanced job complexes by apportioning tasks unfairly in the home and by giving women and men expectations contrary to universal equity. The parecon would produce equitable expectations that the kinship sphere would violate. The kinship sphere would impart expectations of female subordination that the economy would violate. But if an economy produces people to not fit their households and households socialize people to not fit their economy, the economy or households must change. In light of this, suppose a feminist movement favors genderless parenting instead of mothering and fathering. Or maybe it rejects patriarchal marriage and the nuclear family. Whatever its preferences, a new feminist vision would certainly require that a compatible economy not violate kinship values. Likewise, a compatible kinship vision would have to respect parecon''s economic requirements. 2. PARTICIPATORY ECONOMICS BUILDS FEMINIST KINSHIP SPHERES Michael Albert, Activist and Co-editor, Z MAGAZINE, "Economics and the Rest of Society," April 2, 2000, Accessed May 21, 2000, http://www.zmag.org/ZSustainers/ZDaily/2000-04/02albert.htm. Once we understand this reciprocity, we see that building a participatory economy impacts building a feminist kinship sphere and vice versa, and therefore need to be compatible. And similarly, for a good economy to fit with desired innovations in education, or the state, or culture, or international relations, it must incorporate structures that respect the new aims of those other realms--and vice versa. 3. PARTICIPATORY ECONOMICS CREATES MUCH BETTER EDUCATION THAN CAPITALISM Michael Albert, Activist and Co-editor, Z MAGAZINE, "Economics and the Rest of Society," April 2, 2000, Accessed May 21, 2000, http://www.zmag.org/ZSustainers/ZDaily/2000-04/02albert.htm. For ideal educational institutions, we would want these two aims to be mutually consistent and supportive. Education for people to be what they desire should be precisely what's needed to also prepare them for positions that society will willingly remunerate. Education that prepares people to fit a good society's roles, should imply addressing people's fulfillment and development. A good society, in other words, offers people diverse role options in tune with their true desires and inclinations. But think about capitalism. It often needs compliance, passivity, and a willingness to obey orders and endure boredom. Thus capitalism violates education for human fulfillment and development, and capitalist schools dumb most people down. Parecon, in contrast, needs schools to educate people to deal well with information, to make smart decisions, and to utilize their special talents and capacities as they prefer and are able. Parecon not only doesn't conflict with good educational priorities, it fosters them. 4. PARTICIPATORY ECONOMICS INTRINSICALLY VALUES RESOURCES AND ECOLOGY Michael Albert, Activist and Co-editor, Z MAGAZINE, "Economics and the Rest of Society," April 2, 2000, Accessed May 21, 2000, http://www.zmag.org/ZSustainers/ZDaily/2000-04/02albert.htm. Any economy says to any effort to address the ecology, "fine, but do it in a way consistent with business as usual." A market system thus says to those concerned about ecology, "fine, worry about the ecology, but don't distort ecologically unsound market prices or curtail ecologically unconcerned market transactions or otherwise disrupt ecologically dismissive market logic." In contrast, participatory planning intrinsically properly values resources and ecological diversity in terms of their impact on human well-being and development.

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PARTICIPATORY ECONOMICS IS UNWORKABLE 1. NO THIRD WAY EXISTS BETWEEN CAPITALISM AND SOCIALISM Alec Nove, No Qualifications Available, THE ECONOMICS OF FEASIBLE SOCIALISM, 1983, p. 183. I feel increasingly ill-disposed towards those who substitute for hard thinking an image of a world in which there would be no economic problems at all (or where any problems that might arise would be handled smoothly by the associated producers). In a complex industrial economy the interrelation between its parts can be based in principle either on freely chosen negotiated contracts [i.e., markets], or on a system of binding instructions from planning offices [i.e., central planning.] There is no third way. 2. PARTICIPATORY ECONOMICS IS IMPOSSIBLE BECAUSE OF TIME DEMANDS Thomas Weisskopf, No Qualifications Available, REVIEW OF RADICAL POLITICAL ECONOMICS 24 (3&4), 1992, p. 14. Wouldn't the allocation of resources in a complex economy by means of participatory decision-making institutions place impossible demands on information processing and inordinate demands on people's time? The mere listing of the requirements for decision- making in a participatory economy is enough to generate skepticism about whether and how they can possibly be met. Even if, in principle, institutions and processes can be developed to accomplish the necessary tasks (and Albert & Hahnel and Devine have advanced some ingenious ideas to do so), one is bound to wonder whether the whole system would actually function in practice. Assuming that computer technology could be relied upon to process and disseminate the enormous amount of information needed to make the system work, how would people be persuaded to provide the needed information in an unbiased and disinterested manner? And even if all the needed information could be accurately compiled, wouldn't participatory planning require each individual to dedicate so much time, interest and energy to assessing the information and participating in decision-making meetings that most people would get sick and tired of doing it? 3. PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY WON'T WORK FOR THE ECONOMY Thomas Weisskopf, No Qualifications Available, REVIEW OF RADICAL POLITICAL ECONOMICS 24 (3&4), 1992, p. 16. These kinds of concerns about the operation of democratic decision-making processes should not of course be read as a condemnation of democracy. Rather, such concerns suggest that democratic political institutions ought to focus on a critical and manageable range of decision-making areas, rather than be used for all kinds of economic as well as political decisions. 4. SOME WOULD EXERCISE DISPROPORTIONATE INFLUENCE OVER OTHERS Thomas Weisskopf, No Qualifications Available, REVIEW OF RADICAL POLITICAL ECONOMICS 24 (3&4), 1992, p. 15. Isn't the practice of participatory democracy sufficiently difficult, time-consuming and emotionally draining that it would in practice have to be limited to a relatively small range of decisions? In practice such a system might well enable some people to exercise much greater influence over decisions than others. Disproportionate influence would not arise from disproportionate wealth or income, but from disproportionate interest in and aptitude for the relevant decision-making processes.

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PARTICIPATORY ECONOMICS WOULD UNDERMINE LIBERTY 1. PARTICIPATORY ECONOMICS DECREASES LIBERTY Thomas Weisskopf, No Qualifications Available, REVIEW OF RADICAL POLITICAL ECONOMICS 24 (3&4), 1992, p. 2122. The issue is how much value we should attach to libertarian rights such as freedom of choice, privacy, and the development of one's own specialized talents and abilities -- as compared to the more traditional socialist goals of equity, democracy and solidarity.... Replacement of markets with a participatory economic system would arguably contribute to a more egalitarian, democratic and solidaristic society, but would appear to do so at a cost in terms of libertarian objectives. 2. MARKET SYSTEM PROVIDES MORE FREEDOM THAN PARTICIPATORY ECONOMICS Thomas Weisskopf, No Qualifications Available, REVIEW OF RADICAL POLITICAL ECONOMICS 24 (3&4), 1992, p. 17. A participatory system is likely to require people to justify many of their choices to some kind of collective decisionmaking body, which in turn is bound to limit the extent to which people can really get their choices accepted -- no matter how democratically decision-making bodies are constituted. By enabling individuals to make most choices without reference to what others think about their decisions, a market system provides much greater freedom of this kind. 3. PARTICIPATORY ECONOMICS DOES NOT SERVE THE SOCIAL GOOD Thomas Weisskopf, No Qualifications Available, REVIEW OF RADICAL POLITICAL ECONOMICS 24 (3&4), 1992, p. 16-7. Second, while it would presumably elicit greater work effort and sacrifice on the part of individuals, it would do nothing to assure that such effort and sacrifice were expended in a desirable way. The social good is best served by encouraging activities the results of which are highly valued relative to the cost of undertaking those activities. In order to motivate people to expend their efforts in a desirable way, it is therefore necessary to reward activities according to the value of work output rather than according to the quantity of work input. 4. PARTICIPATORY ECONOMICS REQUIRES PRIOR CONSCIOUSNESS SHIFT Thomas Weisskopf, No Qualifications Available, REVIEW OF RADICAL POLITICAL ECONOMICS 24 (3&4), 1992, p. 17. Wouldn't a participatory economic system be viable only if there were a prior transformation of people's basic consciousness from one that is individually oriented to one that is socially oriented?" In order for mechanisms [of participatory economics] to add up to a workable system of motivation which could substitute for individual material incentives, there would surely have to be a wholesale conversion of human behavior patterns from homo economicus to what might best be characterized as homo socialis -- i.e. a person whose very consciousness was socially rather than individually oriented.... The first issue is whether and how people could be expected to change from homo economicus, as we know him/her in contemporary capitalist societies, to homo socialis, as he/she is depicted in the operation of participatory socialist societies.... If people act essentially as homo economicus, it follows that a significant amount of inequality, hierarchy, competition, etc. is a necessary ingredient of an efficient economic system. 5. CONSCIOUSNESS SHIFT COULD NOT COME THROUGH DEMOCRACY Thomas Weisskopf, No Qualifications Available, REVIEW OF RADICAL POLITICAL ECONOMICS 24 (3&4), 1992, p. 2122. To transform homo economicus into homo socialis would involve a massive change in people's mind-sets. Such a transformation might conceivably be imposed on a society by an authoritarian elite, but it is virtually impossible to imagine it being generated by a democratic process that respected the current attitudes and preferences of the general public."

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Personal Responsibility It's a stodgy combination of words: perhaps that's why the old guard of the Republican party likes it so much. They've been using the phrase "personal responsibility" to describe their solutions to almost every political issue, from welfare to tort law to Newt Gingrich's affairs with young campaign workers. Oops! Maybe they didn't use it for that last one. Seriously, though, "personal responsibility" falls into the category of what Public Relations specialists call "purr words" - words that just plain sound good and imply positivity. After all, who could find fault with personal responsibility? Are you in favor of personal irresponsibility? Or perhaps you would prefer impersonal responsibility? Words such as these are popular with politicians and spin-meisters because (to put it in debater language) they are impossible to turn. If you can't argue that the values infused in the word are bad, it takes away a part of your rhetorical ammunition. Other examples include the ever-popular freedom, liberty, justice and my personal favorite, reform. If you're not in favor of reforming something (improving it), then by golly, what are you for? For a long time, the Democrats and the Republicans refused to use each others' "purr words" for fear their core voters would think they were actually conservatives/liberals in disguise. The Democrats stuck to words like justice, equality, compassion, while the GOP opted for responsibility, property rights, and the like. Both milked liberty and freedom for all it was worth. Now, though, politicians are supposed to muddle in the middle to attract the mythical "soccer mom," the middle-ofthe-road voter who is pro-choice, fiscally conservative and usually socially progressive. Thus, you have one leading presidential candidate with a famous name touting "compassion" and one famous President apologizing for his dalliance with an intern by "admitting responsibility." Let it never be said that great ideas don't get around as much as the President himself. It's a testament to how postmodern politics have become that conservative leaders are now quoting Dr. Martin Luther King, JR to justify their assaults on affirmative action. Of course, King was one of the first people to suggest affirmative action policies, and his other writings make that clear. But PR guys and politicians don't care about truth and accuracy when they've got a tidy sound bite. But that's another essay or two. The point is, most mainstream politicians don't actually believe in anything, so they rely on nice-sounding ideas and phrases which are relatively non-controversial to carry them through. Phrases like "personal responsibility," for example. One American intellectual, though, actually believes in something and has been using the same nice-sounding phrase for several years now. But for all the press Noam Chomsky has received of late - well, maybe not "press," but attention from the debate community - little has been said about his moral ideas, which are inextricably linked with his political ideas. There are reasons for that other than a willful disregard. Chomsky writes, speaks and is interviewed a lot: his body of work is huge. He also speaks mostly about specific political issues. From time to time, though - particularly in interviews with David Barsamian - we get a glimpse into the ethics that undergird his radical notions. The notion of responsibility is especially important to value debaters. It may be run as a value, or as a criteria, or an integral part of a debater's case. The notion can also be use in policy debate critiques, as its applicability is universal. Chomsky's ideas about personal responsibility, which take a completely different tack than the aforementioned conservative politicians, can be useful to debaters for the fresh take they bring to an oft-bandied phrase.

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For those of you who are familiar with Chomsky's other work, you will notice that though the primary source for this article is an article called "Writers and Intellectual Responsibility," from POWERS AND PROSPECTS, the author's notion of responsibility is woven into virtually every major work he has undertaken. You will also no doubt be unsurprised when people are perhaps slow to accept Chomksy's ideas on responsibility - but I hope that won't deter you. INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY VERSUS SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY When the right talks about responsibility, the first thing they bring up is welfare: people who are out of work, the claim goes, are irresponsible and wasting the public's resource. Hence the title of 1996's caustic welfare reform bill, "The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act," implying that cutting off benefits is an opportunity. As you would expect, Chomsky scoffs at the idea that children should be held responsible for their parents' inability to find work. But rather than tackle this issue head on, he shifts the focus to a more global perspective of responsibility. To understand why, let's take a broader view of the moral base that he draws from. Chomsky considers himself a left libertarian in the "classical liberal" tradition, which includes von Humboldt, Mill, and Adam Smith. These writers all pushed notions of fulfilling work, a better lot for the average person and so forth. To this extent, it is easy to see roots in the principle of Utilitarianism, the "greatest good for the greatest number" idea advanced by Mill and Jeremy Bentham. Chomsky says in a variety of places that issues which "have to do with human consequences" are of the most concern to him, so it's no great surprise that is ideas would spring from philosophy which seeks to provide the greatest good to the greatest number of people. Now, ask yourself what issues are likely to affect the most people in the world. Hunger? War? Violent, statesponsored terrorism? Environmental calamities? If you answered any (or all) of the above, there's a good chance you're right. A follow-up question: what nation in the world is most likely to have an influence over these issues. It would have to be a rich country, of course, with substantial agricultural wealth. It definitely would have to be a country of extraordinary military might - might that it isn't afraid to exert against other countries that don't act the way it thinks they should. It would have to have client states, which it helps along through military and other forms of assistance. And it would have to have a powerful voice in international affairs - say a seat on the United Nations Security Council, which carries with it a veto of all UNSC resolutions. There's only one country that fits those criteria since the Cold War ended, and it's the United States. No nation has more influence in the world on the issues that matter most to people. Going right along with that principle, no people in the world have a greater opportunity to work change than people living in that country - particularly if the nation is ostensibly a democracy with room for public participation. So if you're concerned about the issues that affect the most peoples lives; and if you happen to live in a country which has a substantial grip on those issues; and if that country happens to have room for nominal input from you; don't you have an obligation to get involved with the issues that matter, or at least investigate? To Chomsky, the answer is yes. That's why it seems silly to him that such a powerful word, "responsibility," is being used to condemn the impoverished people who live in the richest country on Earth. WORDS AS LOADED WEAPONS - RECLAIMED WEAPONS The word responsibility is powerful because it contains emotional connotations that sway peoples' opinions. The same is true of the words I listed at the beginning of this essay: freedom, liberty, justice, equality, etc.

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So it should come as no surprise that mainstream politicians have tried to reclaim these words from their opposing political party. But there is another, less cynical interpretation of these trends: politicians are finally crossing party lines to understand that there is wisdom in the opposing viewpoint that they can learn from. After all, what is wrong with taking a little responsibility? Shouldn't we all take responsibility for the state of the world we live in, as well as our own lives? The answer, I think any reasonable person would say, is yes. But people have different definitions of the word. One of the anarchists involved in the property destruction at the WTO meeting in Seattle was being interviewed on local television said words to the effect of: traditional protests are self-serving, but property destruction is exercising personal responsibility. Of course, a caller phoned in during the interview to ask his address, saying he, too wanted to exercise a little "personal responsibility." Like I said, different definitions. Chomsky is not blind to this. He knows the potency of the word and the concept. That's why, in interviews with Barsamian, he breaks down the reasons for his alternative, more global notion of personal responsibility. Some examples of United States power which Chomsky has critiques are painfully familiar. As a college professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for example, he was one of the first prominent American intellectuals to oppose the war in Vietnam. Since Chomsky had the dedication to be thrown in jail multiple times for his antiVietnam War views, you know that's one of the imperial adventures he believes people had a responsibility to oppose. Add to that list America's continual undeclared wars and CIA-sponsored coups in Central America during the 1980s and early 1990s. Support for totalitarian regimes in El Salvador, Guatemala - and the death squads in both countries which were, in many cases, trained by United States soldiers and paid for with United States tax dollars - were the types of activities that American citizens had a moral obligation to oppose. More generally, though, he reminds that all things are basically related to ethics. "Tactical issues are basically moral issues," he says, because "they have to deal with human consequences." Thus, tactical principles like wartime strategy - or even the decision to go to war in the first place-are the kinds of things all people should be involved in. There's more to being responsible, of course, than checking on the activities of one's government. One ought to assess the places where one could do the most good, and act accordingly - and of course, that requires making actions in your life as an individual s well as keeping track of what Uncle Sam is doing this week. There are other important criteria, though, in Chomksy's decision making calculus. TAKING ACTIONS THAT MATTER It should be apparent by now that Chomsky's moral system suggests people find the best way to help the most people they possibly can. His suggestion for how to do so is covered in "Writers and Intellectual Responsibility," and while he's specifically speaking to journalists, the three principles apply to everyone. "(I)t is a moral imperative to find out and tell the truth as best one can, about things that matter, to the right audience," he writes. We've already covered what the things that matter are. It's not a small intellectual leap to find out what "the truth" is. They key to the equation is who the right audience is: and in learning the answer, you'll see why these principles apply to more people than just the writers to whom the essay is addressed. Rather than speaking truth to people in power - a main tenet of the Quakers, a progressive Christian group - one should speak to other people with similar concerns, attempting to develop a unified group. "The audience is entirely wrong" Chomsky writes, if the people being spoken to are "Henry Kissinger, or the CEO of General Motors." To do so is "hardly more than a form of self-indulgence," because the truth is something "they already know well enough." 556

"To speak truth to power is not a particularly honorable vocation. One should seek out an audience that matters and furthermore (another important qualification) it should not be seen as an audience, but as a community of common concern in which one hopes to participate constructively. We should not be speaking to, but with," he writes. This last portion of argument hints at Chomksy's opinion of social responsibility, which we'll touch on in the next section. CRITICISMS OF CHOMSKY Some of Chomsky's critics have noticed that he, in his writing and speaking, tends to focus on certain tragedies more than others. For instance, he was one of the first intellectuals in America to write extensively on the genocide occurring in East Timor. He has also written extensively on the human rights violation Palestinians experience at the hands of the Israeli government. So, some wonder, where is the greatest good for the greatest number principle in this calculus, and how does it jive with this seemingly unequal treatment of the globe's holocausts? Well, Chomsky answers, it's not like I'm Amnesty International over here. I'm one writer - one prolific writer, true, but still only one guy. It only seems logical that choices have to be made in what one focuses on. With that established, another principle of Chomskyan responsibility comes out: one should focus on the issues where one can most likely be successful. This, of course, goes hand in hand with the beliefs Chomsky establishes about writing. Those "other" believers in personal responsibility don't often deign to answer Noam's arguments directly, but they often scorn other like-minded individuals by accusing them of letting "welfare queens" get away with what they claim is feeding at the public trough. You can insert your traditional pro-welfare argument here - most people do, and Noam is no exception - but he spins it off into a more interesting idea that I think holds the potential for expansion as a debate argument. One of the main tenets of the Republican "personal responsibility" ideology is that everyone should be out for themselves. That's the implication behind this anti-welfare sentiment, and it's also used to attack Social Security. Chomsky says that true personal responsibility must be social - the great thing about Social Security, he says, is that it's something we've gone in on together. The individualist personal responsibility advocates, he charges, are trying to batter down any sense of solidarity people feel -- any sense of unity with other people in the community. This argument, I think, has a lot of potential. Another main criticism of Chomsky is somewhat paradoxical: the "America, love it or leave it" set often points out that this country is among the most free in the world. Why does Chomsky insist on constantly criticizing it? I'll let Noam answer for himself: "The moral culpability of those who ignore the crimes that matter by moral standards is greater to the extent that the society is free and open, so that they can speak more freely, and act more effectively to bring those crimes to an end." Chomksy has become a popular figure in debate arguments, with good reason. Some of his thinking on personal moral responsibilities should make a valuable addition to your arsenal.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Noam Chomsky, CHRONICLES OF DISSENT: INTERVIEWS WITH DAVID BARSAMIAN, Monroe: Common Courage and AK Press, 1992. Noam Chomsky, DETERRING DEMOCRACY, London: Vintage, 1992. Noam Chomsky, KEEPING THE RABBLE IN LINE: INTERVIEWS WITH DAVID BARSAMIAN, Edinburgh: AK Press, 1994. Noam Chomsky on Anarchism, available at: http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/interviews/9612-anarchism.html Noam Chomsky, WORLD ORDERS, OLD AND NEW, London: Pluto Press, 1994. Noam Chomsky, YEAR 501: THE CONQUEST CONTINUES, London: Verso, 1993. Noam Chomsky, NECESSARY ILLUSIONS: THOUGHT CONTROL IN DEMOCRATIC SOCIETIES, London: Pluto Press, 1991. Noam Chomsky, interviewed by David Barsamian, Expanding the Floor of the Cage, Parts I and II, Z MAGAZINE, March-April 1997, http://www.zmag.org/zmag/zarticle.cfm?Url=articles/mar97barchom.htm Noam Chomsky, Rollback Parts I to IV, Z MAGAZINE, January to May 1995, http://www.zmag.org/zmag/zarticle.cfm?Url=articles/chomrollall.htm Noam Chomsky, POWERS AND PROSPECTS, Common Courage Press, 1997. James Peck, Ed., THE CHOMSKY READER, New York: Pantheon Books, 1987.

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SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY IS SUPERIOR TO PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY 1. PREVALENT IDEAS OF "PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY" ARE WRONG Noam Chomsky, Professor of Linguistics at MIT, interviewed by David Barsamian, Z MAGAZINE, April 1997, p. 15. DB: In August 1996 the president signed something called the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act, which eliminated the 61-year-old federal government commitment to the poor. I know you've commented that that commitment has always been very limited and has declined sharply since around 1970. NC: Since the assault began. DB: You've got to like the wording. NC: The wording's fine. It says 7-year-old children have to have personal responsibility and now they have an opportunity which was deprived them before, the opportunity to starve. It's just another assault against defenseless people. It's now felt, Well, okay, we can kick them in the face. This, too, is based on a very effective propaganda campaign to make much of the population hate and fear the poor. That's smart. You don't want to get them to look at the rich guys. Don't let them take a look at the pages of Fortune and Business Week talking about the "dazzling" and "stupendous" profit growth. Don't let them look at the way the military system is pouring funds into advanced technology. You're not supposed to look at that. What you're supposed to look at is the black mother driving a Cadillac and picking up her welfare check so she can have more babies. Why should I pay for that? That's been done very effectively. 2. MOST PEOPLE UNDERSTAND WHAT RESPONSIBILITY OUGHT TO MEAN Noam Chomsky, Professor of Linguistics at MIT, interviewed by David Barsamian, Z MAGAZINE, April 1997, p. 15. It's striking, again, when you look at attitudes. Most people think the government has a responsibility to ensure reasonable standards, minimal standards for poor people. On the other hand, most people are against welfare, which does exactly that. That's a propaganda achievement that you have to admire. Incidentally, there's another aspect of this which is being much less discussed but is quite crucial. One of the purposes of driving people into work away from welfare is to lower wages. Remember there's supposed to be a natural unemployment rate. We're not allowed to get below that unemployment rate, or all sorts of terrible things happen. We can talk about that. But assuming that that's true, we ought to be paying these people to be on welfare. They're keeping the unemployment rate high. Suppose you put them in the labor market. What's going to happen? Presumably they're going to take jobs. If they get jobs it's going to lower unemployment. Terrible thing. If they don't get jobs they're going to drive down the wages. In fact, even if they do get jobs it will drive down wages. It's already happening. In New York, city services are now using partially subsidized workfare, which simply eliminates union labor. That's a good way of making everybody suffer. So put a lot of unskilled, hopeless labor into the workplace, make conditions so awful that people will take virtually anything, maybe have some public subsidy to keep them doing it, and you can drive down wages that way. 3. CONSERVATIVE NOTIONS Of RESPONSIBILITY ARE HYPOCRITICAL Noam Chomsky, Professor of Linguistics at MIT, Z MAGAZINE, Feb. 1995, p. 27. The "conservatives" -- I'll adopt the term, reluctantly -- cannot be faulted for concealing what they have in mind. Their agenda hews closely to the traditional double-edged conception of markets, personal responsibility, freedom from government interference, and so on. The slogans are to be interpreted literally and harshly for everyone -apart from the rich minority, who are exempt from such strictures. Quite the contrary. The interests of the privileged are to be enhanced by a powerful and interventionist "nanny state," which transfers vast public subsidies to them and otherwise caters to their whims. Newt Gingrich's conservative constituents in their wealthy Atlanta suburb cannot be expected to face market discipline. They must maintain their lead among recipients of public subsidies, so that they can bask in self-praise for their "independence" and "entrepreneurial values," and indulge in their "visceral distaste" for the federal government that fills their pockets with public funds -- without which, they would soon join the laggards and spongers they despise.

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INDIVIDUALS ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR USES OF US POWER 1. AMERICANS CLAIM CREDIT FOR GOOD CONDITIONS IN THEIR SPHERE OF INFLUENCE Noam Chomsky, Professor of Linguistics at MIT, Z MAGAZINE, March 1990, p. 13. At the extreme of the establishment left, Anthony Lewis of the New York Times writes that "the Reagan policy did not work. It produced only misery, death and shame." Why it did not work, he does not explain; it appears to have worked very well, including those parts that were supported throughout by the doves. Lewis then proceeds to hail "the experiment in peace and democracy," which "did work." This triumph of democracy, he writes, gives "fresh testimony to the power of Jefferson's idea: government with the consent of the governed, as Vaclav Havel reminded us the other day. To say so seems romantic, but then we live in a romantic age." We are "dizzy with success," as Stalin used to say, observing the triumph of our ideals in Central America and the Caribbean, the Philippines, the Israeli-occupied territories, and other regions where our influence reaches so that we can take credit for the conditions of life and the state of freedom. 2. AMERICANS SHOULD THEREFORE BE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE USES OF U.S. POWER Noam Chomsky, Professor of Linguistics at MIT, Z MAGAZINE, March 1990, p. 13. The reference to Havel merits some reflection. Havel's address to Congress had a remarkable impact on the political and intellectual communities. "Consciousness precedes Being, and not the other way around, as the Marxists claim," Havel informed Congress to thunderous applause; in a Woody Allen rendition, he would have said "Being precedes Consciousness," eliciting exactly the same reaction. But what really enthralled elite opinion was his statement that the United States has "understood the responsibility that flowed" from its great power, that there have been "two enormous forces -- one, a defender of freedom, the other, a source of nightmares." We must put "morality ahead of politics," he went on. The backbone of our actions must be "responsibility -- responsibility to something higher than my family, my country, my company, my success." To be moral, then, we must not shirk our responsibility to suffering people in the Dominican Republic, Timor, Vietnam, Guatemala, El Salvador, Mozambique, and others like them throughout the world who can offer direct testimony to the great works of the "defender of freedom." 3. EMPIRES, INCLUDING THE U.S. AND FORMERLY RUSSIA, HAVE CONSEQUENCES Noam Chomsky, Professor of Linguistics at MIT, Z MAGAZINE, March 1990, p. 13. Havel's "voice of conscience" has another familiar counterpart. In the Third World, one sometimes hears people say that the Soviet Union defends our freedom while the U.S. government is a nightmare. I have heard such sentiments in remote villages in Vietnam in areas destroyed by U.S. bombardment, in the Israeli-occupied territories, and other places, as have many others. Journalist T.D. Allman, who wrote one of the few serious articles on El Salvador in the early eighties, described a visit to a Christian base community, subjected to the standard practice of the U.S.-backed security forces, where an old man told him that he had heard of a country called Cuba across the seas that might have concern for their plight, and asked Allman to "tell us, please, sir, how we might contact these Cubans, to inform them of our need, so that they might help us."

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PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY IS BETTER THAN SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY 1. TOO MANY PEOPLE LOOK FOR OTHERS TO BLAME Chandra W. Liem, International Business and Management Consultant, PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY, 1999, Accessed May 10, 1999, http://business.bohol.net/Business_Columns/LIEM/attitude.htm. To many people, "responsibility" is a strange word. We are reminded of this all too often; heads of states claim they didn't know what their cabinet secretaries were doing; accused murderers told the courts that they were "temporarily" insane, so as to spare themselves from going to the gas-chamber, and thus can not be held responsible for their actions; busy parents who would blame the school system because "Cindy can't read." How can we possibly be so cruel as to hold these innocent parties responsible for their actions? The high school student cheats on his exams, the college graduate forges letters of recommendation in order to get into better graduate/prestigious school, the young businessman/woman falsifies financial statements so that he/she can get ahead financially and left his/her clients and customers in financial ruins, and everyone cheats on their resume. It sometimes seems like almost everyone is looking for someone else to blame, or to bail out when they find themselves in trouble. And so careers fail - or never really get going; working mothers and fathers get frustrated with children for misbehaving because they fail to spend enough quality time and teach virtues and (family/societal) values. All because of the failure to accept a full "personal responsibility." 2. PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY IS THE PRICE OF FREEDOM Chandra W. Liem, International Business and Management Consultant, PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY, 1999, Accessed May 10, 1999, http://business.bohol.net/Business_Columns/LIEM/attitude.htm. Sound like a burdensome obligation? This is the price of Freedom! Now, if no one can excuse or rescue us, would it also be true that no one can hold us back? It is self evidenced that "only one can help him/herself, and only you can stand in your own way!" Did you know that we are the ones who set the standards for our own conduct and behavior? And, did you know that we are also the ones who choose the thoughts and actions that will lead us on to success? The power to fulfill our dreams lies within each one of us. When we understand that we alone have the responsibility to shape our own lives, we know that nothing and no one can deny us "success" and "greatness!" 3. DEATH OF PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY CAUSES DEATH OF INDIVIDUAL AND CULTURE Reverend Sterling Durgy, AMERICAN NIGHT WATCH NEWSLETTER, July 1995, p. 7. One of the heavy prices that this outlook carries with it is despair. If we cannot help ourselves, we are, indeed, prisoners of our own selves. Life is totally deterministic, you are either blessed or damned, governed totally by fate and circumstances; reduced to a creature who can merely become angry if things don't turn out right. The death of personal responsibility is also the death of respect for individuals, the death of respect for the capabilities God gave each person to cope with life, the death of hope for individual accomplishment. 4. PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY BETTER FROM ALL PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES Daniel Shapiro, Associate Professor of Philosophy, West Virginia University, , "THE MORAL CASE FOR SOCIAL SECURITY PRIVATIZATION ," CATO INSTITUTE SOCIAL SECURITY PAPER No. 14, October 29, 1998, p. 1. In fact, privatization is defensible not only from the classical 1iberal or libertarian perspective, based on maximizing individual choice and liberty, but from virtually every perspective in political philosophy. Egalitarians, who frame their arguments in terms of fairness, welfare theorists who frame their arguments in terms of economic security, communitarians who frame their arguments in terms of community, and anyone who frames an argument in terms of whether average citizens understand the institutions or programs which they are asked to support, should all support privatization.

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USES OF US POWER ARE BENEVOLENT 1. AMERICA HAS AN OBLIGATION TO INTERVENE IN OTHER COUNTRIES' AFFAIRS James Woolsey, Former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency "Power Politics? James Woolsey and Noam Chomsky Debate How Far the U.S. Can Go In Foreign Policy," March 12, 1998, Accessed May 29, 2000, http://www.pbs.org/newshour/forum/march98/intervention_3-12.html. All countries intervene, in one way or another, in one another's affairs -- the question is, it seems to me, whether there is anything unique about the United States, i.e. whether we have any special claim on the right, or the obligation, to conduct ourselves differently than any other country would -- to take action beyond doing such things as, say, fighting if we were directly attacked or using trade leverage to get another country to treat our exports fairly. The way I look at it is that we Americans really don't have any special claim as a matter of right -- Americans are not inherently better than anyone else. But in some circumstances, I believe we do have an obligation to act, to intervene in international affairs, even if our direct interests are not immediately threatened. 2. COUNTRIES LIKE THE U.S. HAVE A RIGHT AND RESPONSIBILITY TO INTERVENE James Woolsey, Former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency "Power Politics? James Woolsey and Noam Chomsky Debate How Far the U.S. Can Go In Foreign Policy," March 12, 1998, Accessed May 29, 2000, http://www.pbs.org/newshour/forum/march98/intervention_3-12.html. But I believe that it should be true for countries, in this regard, just as it should be for individuals -- for those to whom much is given, much should be demanded. In those periods, such as the 1920's and 1930's when we withdrew from the world things didn't subsequently work out very well. In retrospect, for example, if we had led a coalition to stop Hitler as soon as he moved into the Rhineland, most historians agree that he would have been deposed as Chancellor -- we could have saved the world a lot of pain and death by intervening then instead of sitting here as we did, self-satisfied, behind our two oceans, until some six years later we ourselves were attacked more than two years after the beginning of World War II. 3. INTERVENTION HAS PROVEN EFFECTIVE, NOT IMPERIALISTIC James Woolsey, Former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency "Power Politics? James Woolsey and Noam Chomsky Debate How Far the U.S. Can Go In Foreign Policy," March 12, 1998, Accessed May 29, 2000, http://www.pbs.org/newshour/forum/march98/intervention_3-12.html. Of course we don't always intervene wisely -- we make mistakes, we get full of ourselves and try to do too much, and so on. But in great measure because of our interventions in the 20th century, our one-time enemies in the three great wars of the century (two hot, one cold) are on the ash-heap of history: Imperial Germany, the Axis powers, and the Soviet bloc are gone. Not only are these regimes now largely replaced by democracies, the same is true of most of the autocratic states that were at one time or another allied with us in the cold war and that we pushed to reform their governments -- e.g. almost all of Latin America, the Philippines, Taiwan, South Korea, Spain, Portugal, etc. 4. ON THE WHOLE, UNITED STATES ACTION HAS BEEN GOOD James Woolsey, Former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency "Power Politics? James Woolsey and Noam Chomsky Debate How Far the U.S. Can Go In Foreign Policy," March 12, 1998, Accessed May 29, 2000, http://www.pbs.org/newshour/forum/march98/intervention_3-12.html. On the whole, if you look at results, our interventions in this century have left the world a much better place than it would have been if we had behaved during the rest of the century in the non-intervening way we did in the 20's and 30's. I don't think that such use of force sets any precedent that we, or any other member of the Security Council or, for that matter, any other country will go dashing about the world randomly attacking people. Indeed I think that the risk is quite the reverse -- it is more likely that no one will act in time and thus we will fail to stop a dictator, such as Saddam, from extending his power the way we failed to stop Hitler in the 1930's. As discussed in the answer to question 1, I see this set of issues as involving not some uniquely American right, but rather an obligation.

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Philosophy Good PHILOSOPHY HELPS EVERYONE, EVEN NON-PHILOSOPHERS 1. PHILOSOPHY IS USEFUL EVEN TO PEOPLE WHO ARE IGNORANT OF IT Bertrand Russell, Philsopher, THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY, 1959, p. 156. Having now come to the end of our brief and very incomplete review of the problems of philosophy, it will be well to consider in conclusion, what is the value of philosophy and why it ought to be studied. It is the more necessary to consider this question, in view of the fact that many men, under the influence of science or of practical affairs, are inclined to doubt whether philosophy is anything better than innocent but useless trifling, hair-splitting distinctions, and controversies on matters concerning which knowledge is impossible. This view of philosophy appears to result, partly from a wrong conception of the ends of life, partly from a wrong conception of the kind of goods which philosophy strives to achieve. Physical science, through the medium of inventions, is useful to innumerable people who are wholly ignorant of it; thus the study of physical science is to be recommended, not only, or primarily, because of the effect on the student, but rather because of the effect on mankind in general. Thus utility does not belong to philosophy. If the study of philosophy has any value at all for others than students of philosophy, it must be only indirectly, through its effects upon the lives of those who study it. It is in these effects, therefore, if anywhere, that the value of philosophy must be primarily sought. 2. ONLY MATERIALISTS CAN REFUSE TO RECOGNIZE PHILOSOPHY’S BENEFITS Bertrand Russell, Philsopher, THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY, 1959, p. 156. But further, if we are not to fail in our endeavour to determine the value of philosophy, we must first free our minds from the prejudices of what are wrongly called 'practical' men. The 'practical' man, as this word is often used, is one who recognizes only material needs, who realizes that men must have food for the body, but is oblivious of the necessity of providing food for the mind. If all men were well off, if poverty and disease had been reduced to their lowest possible point, there would still remain much to be done to produce a valuable society; and even in the existing world the goods of the mind are at least as important as the goods of the body. It is exclusively among the goods of the mind that the value of philosophy is to be found; and only those who are not indifferent to these goods can be persuaded that the study of philosophy is not a waste of time. 3. PHILOSOPHY FREES US FROM NARROW, PERSONAL AIMS Bertrand Russell, Philsopher, THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY, 1959, p. 156. Apart from its utility in showing unsuspected possibilities, philosophy has a value-perhaps its chief value-through the greatness of the objects which it contemplates, and the freedom from narrow and personal aims resulting from this contemplation. The life of the instinctive man is shut up within the circle of his private interests: family and friends may be included, but the outer world is not regarded except as it may help or hinder what comes within the circle of instinctive wishes. In such a life there is something feverish and confined, in comparison with which the philosophic life is calm and free. The private world of instinctive interests is a small one, set in the midst of a great and powerful world which must, sooner or later, lay our private world in ruins. Unless we can so enlarge our interests as to include the whole outer world, we remain like a garrison in a beleaguered fortress, knowing that the enemy prevents escape and that ultimate surrender is inevitable. In such a life, there is no peace, but a constant strife between the insistence of desire and the powerlessness of will. In one way or another, if our life is to be great and free, we must escape this prison and this strife. One way of escape is by philosophic contemplation.

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PHILOSOPHY LEADS TO HUMAN FREEDOM 1. PHILOSOPHY PROVIDES US WITH TRUE FREEDOM Bertrand Russell, Philsopher, THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY, 1959, p. 156. The mind which has become accustomed to the freedom and impartiality of philosophic contemplation will preserve something of the same freedom and impartiality in the world of action and emotion. It will view its purposes and desires as parts of the whole, with the absence of insistence that results from seeing them as infinitesimal fragments in a world of which all the rest is unaffected by any one man's deeds. The impartiality which, in contemplation, is the unalloyed desire for truth, is the very same quality of mind which, in action, is justice, and in emotion is that universal love which can be given to all, and not only to those who are judged useful or admirable. Thus contemplation enlarges not only the objects of our thoughts, but also the objects of our actions and our affections: it makes us citizens of the universe, not only of one walled city at war with all the rest. In this citizenship of the universe consists man's true freedom, and his liberation from the thraldom of narrow hopes and fears. 2. PHILOSOPHY HELPS DISMANTLE PREJUDICES Bertrand Russell, Philsopher, THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY, 1959, p. 156. The value of philosophy is, in fact, to be sought largely in its very uncertainty. The man who has no tincture of philosophy goes through life imprisoned in the prejudices derived from common sense, from the habitual beliefs of his age or his nation, and from convictions which have grown up in his mind without the cooperation or consent of his deliberate reason. To such a man the world tends to become definite, finite, obvious; common objects rouse no questions, and unfamiliar possibilities are contemptuously rejected. As soon as we begin to philosophize, on the contrary, we find, as we saw in our opening chapters, that even the most everyday things lead to problems to which only very incomplete answers can be given. Philosophy, though unable to tell us with certainty what is the true answer to the doubts which it raises, is able to suggest many possibilities which enlarge our thoughts and free them from the tyranny of custom. Thus, while diminishing our feeling of certainty as to what things are, it greatly increases our knowledge as to what they may be; it removes the somewhat arrogant dogmatism of those who have never traveled into the region of liberating doubt, and it keeps alive our sense of wonder by showing familiar things in an unfamiliar aspect. 3. PHILOSOPHY KEEPS ALIVE THE SPECULATIVE INTEREST IN THE UNIVERSE Bertrand Russell, Philosopher, THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY, 1959, p. 156. This is, however, only a part of the truth concerning the uncertainty of philosophy. There are many questions-and among them those that are of the profoundest interest to our spiritual life-which, so far as we can see, must remain insoluble to the human intellect unless its powers become of quite a different order from what they are now. Has the universe any unity or plan or purpose, or is it a fortuitous concourse of atoms? Is consciousness a permanent part of the universe, giving hope of indefinite growth in wisdom, or is it a transitory accident on a small planet on which life must ultimately become impossible? Are good and evil of importance to the universe or only to man? Such questions are asked by philosophy, and variously answered by various philosophers. But it would seem that, whether answers be otherwise discoverable or not, the answers suggested by philosophy are none of them demonstrably true. Yet, however slight may be the hope of discovering an answer, it is part of the business of philosophy to continue the consideration of such questions, to make us aware of their importance, to examine all the approaches to them, and to keep alive that speculative interest in the universe which is apt to be killed by confining ourselves to definitely ascertainable knowledge.

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Philosophy Bad PHILOSOPHY IS NOT HELPFUL 1. PHILOSOPHY HAS NOT ACCOMPLISHED SERIOUS BREAKTHROUGHS Peter Suber, Philosophy Department, Earlham College, THE EARLHAMITE, Winter 1993, p.12. Philosophy did not die because its problems completely disappeared, however. On the contrary, the analysis of language revealed the extent to which thought is channeled and confused by language and the difficulty of escape. "Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language," and its mission is "to shew the fly the way out of the fly-bottle." On this program, philosophy cannot end until a triumph of human ingenuity or self-deception occurs; we're still waiting. 2. PHILOSOPHY IS ONLY APPROPRIATE FOR LITTLE CHILDREN Plato, Philosopher, GORGIAS, 380 B.C.E, translated by Benjamin Jowett, p. 52. CALLICLES: And people of this sort, when they betake themselves to politics or business, are as ridiculous as I imagine the politicians to be, when they make their appearance in the arena of philosophy. For, as Euripides says, "Every man shines in that and pursues that, and devotes the greatest portion of the day to that in which he most excels, but anything in which he is inferior, he avoids and depreciates, and praises the opposite partiality to himself, and because he from that he will thus praise himself. The true principle is to unite them. Philosophy, as a part of education, is an excellent thing, and there is no disgrace to a man while he is young in pursuing such a study; but when he is more advanced in years, the thing becomes ridiculous, and I feel towards philosophers as I do towards those who lisp and imitate children. For I love to see a little child, who is not of an age to speak plainly, lisping at his play; there is an appearance of grace and freedom in his utterance, which is natural to his childish years. But when I hear some small creature carefully articulating its words, I am offended; the sound is disagreeable, and has to my ears the twang of slavery. So when I hear a man lisping, or see him playing like a child, his behaviour appears to me ridiculous and unmanly and worthy of stripes. 3. PHILOSOPHY IS TORMENTED BY PROBLEMS Peter Suber, Philosophy Department, Earlham College, THE EARLHAMITE, Winter 1993, p.12. Ludwig Wittgenstein hoped that the clarification of language would dissolve, rather than solve, philosophical problems, and thereby bring philosophy to an end. For the clarity that we are aiming at is indeed complete clarity. But this simply means that the philosophical problems should completely disappear. The real discovery is the one that makes me capable of stopping doing philosophy when I want to. -The one that gives philosophy peace, so that it is no longer tormented by questions which bring itself into question. 4. PHILOSOPHY HAS BEEN PREOCCUPIED WITH ITS OWN PROBLEMS Peter Suber, Philosophy Department, Earlham College, THE EARLHAMITE, Winter 1993, p.12. But maybe philosophy is ending because it has become preoccupied by its own problems. If it is directed to the question whether it is dead, can it be much alive? I reply that if this disciplinary narcissism were widespread or unavoidable, philosophy would not deserve our attention; we would all be much better off making lots of money.

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PHILOSOPHY IMPEDES INTELLECTUAL PROGRESS 1. THEORY WITHOUT PRACTICE IS STERILE, STOPS PROGRESS Helen Forsey, Communitarian, CIRCLES OF STRENGTH, 1993, p. 7. Thus, in order to make possible the fundamental changes in all our relations which alone can form the basis of viable communities, we need to continually develop our understanding of what must be changed and why, as well as our determination and ability to live and interact differently in our daily lives. Without such understanding, the old destructive patterns will tend to dominate our understanding, whereas theory alone, without practice, is sterile. 2. PHILOSOPHY HAS PROVOKED MANY DISAGREEMENTS, BUT NO PROGRESS Peter Suber, Philosophy Department, Earlham College, THE EARLHAMITE, Winter 1993, p.12. Analytic philosophers are in revolt against the grand manner of traditional philosophy which claimed much and (in their view) established nothing. Consequently, they hope to make progress by diagnosing the source of error bewitchment by means of language- and curbing their own ambitions. Wittgenstein's goal is simply to escape the systematic delusion of language; other analytic philosophers wish (in John Lange's phrase) to bring one honest pebble to the pile of knowledge. But rather than abandon or deeply reform philosophy, they have kept the title of philosophy and labored in the fields of linguistics and mathematics -areas where progress was possible. Consequently they have left philosophy with new paradigms and disagreements but no progress. Contributions in linguistics and mathematics can pass for philosophy among analytic philosophers because the pressure to make progress has led them to redefine philosophy, just as pressure to be jolly and optimistic has led recent presidents to redefine 'recession'. As Ernest Gellner put it (in Words and Things), a cleric who loses his faith abandons his calling, but a philosopher who loses his redefines his subject. 3. TOO MUCH PHILOSOPHY IS THE RUIN OF HUMAN LIFE Plato, Philosopher, GORGIAS, 380 B.C.E, translated by Benjamin Jowett, p. 52. And this is true, as you may ascertain, if you will leave philosophy and go on to higher things: for philosophy, Socrates, if pursued in moderation and at the proper age, is an elegant accomplishment, but too much philosophy is the ruin of human life. Even if a man has good parts, still, if he carries philosophy into later life, he is necessarily ignorant of all those things which a gentleman and a person of honour ought to know; he is inexperienced in the laws of the State, and in the language which ought to be used in the dealings of man with man, whether private or public, and utterly ignorant of the pleasures and desires of mankind and of human character in general. 4. PHILOSOPHY CONVERTS PEOPLE OF SENSE INTO FOOLS Plato, Philosopher, GORGIAS, 380 B.C.E, translated by Benjamin Jowett, p. 52. CALLICLES: And you must not be offended, my dear Socrates, for I am speaking out of good-will towards you, if I ask whether you are not ashamed of being thus defenceless; which I affirm to be the condition not of you only but of all those who will carry the study of philosophy too far. For suppose that some one were to take you, or any one of your sort, off to prison, declaring that you had done wrong when you had done no wrong, you must allow that you would not know what to do:-there you would stand giddy and gaping, and not having a word to say; and when you went up before the Court, even if the accuser were a poor creature and not good for much, you would die if he were disposed to claim the penalty of death. And yet, Socrates, what is the value of an art which converts a man of sense into a fool, who is helpless, and has no power to save either himself or others, when he is in the greatest danger and is going to be despoiled by his enemies of all his goods, and has to live, simply deprived of his rights of citizenship?he being a man who, if I may use the expression, may be boxed on the ears with impunity. Then, my good friend, take my advice, and refute no more: Learn the philosophy of business, and acquire the reputation of wisdom. But leave to others these niceties, whether they are to be described as follies or absurdities: For they will only give you poverty for the inmate of your dwelling. Cease, then, emulating these paltry splitters of words, and emulate only the man of substance and honour, who is well to do.

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Pluralism Good PLURALISM MORE REALISTIC AND LOGICAL THAN ALTERNATIVES 1. PLURALISM IS REALISTIC AND PREFERABLE TO THE ALTERNATIVES Nicholas Rescher, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh, PLURALISM: AGAINST THE DEMAND FOR CONSENSUS, 1993, p. 3. Against such tendencies, the presently envisioned pluralism takes a more realistic and pragmatic line that eschews the overly convenient recourse of idealization in cognitive and practical matters. In each case, so it is argued, the burden that consensus is asked to bear is more than can be justifiably placed upon it. And in each case there is much more to be said--on grounds of both theoretical and practical considerations--as to why an appropriate form of pluralism should be seen as preferable. 2. MORAL MONISM IS WRONG FOR SEVERAL REASONS Bhikhu Parekh, Professor of Political Theory at the University of Hull, PHILOSOPHY AND PLURALISM, 1996, p. 127. Moral monism is open to several objections. First, it implies that one has discovered the final truth about how human beings ought to live, an inherently implausible and unacceptably arrogant claim to make for any human being. Even if the privileged way of life is revealed by God, it is humanly mediated and necessarily liable to errors of interpretation, translation and execution. And since other religions make similar claims, one cannot substantiate one's views without becoming either dogmatic or circular. 3. MORAL MONISM IS LOGICALLY UNTENABLE Bhikhu Parekh, Professor of Political Theory at the University of Hull, PHILOSOPHY AND PLURALISM, 1996, p. 127-8. Second, the view that one way of life is the best and represents the highest good is logically untenable. Human capacities conflict for at least three reasons, namely inherently, because of the limitations of the human condition, and because of the constraints of social life: the first because they often call for different and contradictory skills, attitudes and disposition, so that the realization of some of them renders the realization of others difficult if not impossible; the second because human energies and resources are necessarily limited so that no one can develop all her capacities; third because every social order has a specific structure and militates against the combination of specific capacities and values. Since human capacities conflict, the good they are capable of cultivating also conflicts. Like the human capacities, values too conflict for similar reasons. Justice and mercy, respect and pity, equality and excellence, love and impartiality, moral duties to humankind and to one's kith and kin, moral claims of contemplative life and of the dying wife, and so on often point in different directions and are not easily reconciled. In short every way of life, however good it might be, entails a loss. And since it is difficult to say which of these values are higher both in the abstract and in specific context, the talk of a way of life representing the highest good is unintelligible. 4. IMPERFECT WORLD JUSTIFIES PLURALISM Nicholas Rescher, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh, PLURALISM: AGAINST THE DEMAND FOR CONSENSUS, 1993, p. 4. The fact is that we live in an imperfect world. The resources at our disposal are limited--our own intellectual resources included. We have to be prepared for the fact that a consensus among people, be it global or local in scope, international or familial, is in general unattainable. In a world of pervasive disagreement we must take recourse to damage control We must learn to live with dissensus -- with pluralism in matters of opinion. And we must and can bring to realization frameworks of social inclination that make collaboration possible despite diversity and that facilitate co-operation in the face of dissensus.

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PLURALISM BRINGS STABILITY AND A MORE DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY 1. PLURALISM HELPS CREATE STABLE SOCIAL ORDER Nicholas Rescher, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh, PLURALISM: AGAINST THE DEMAND FOR CONSENSUS, 1993, p. 4. In the setting of issues regarding social interaction, dissensus tolerance should prove positive and constructive. In the setting of issues regarding knowledge and inquiry it can, properly configured, lay the basis for a contextualistic rationalism in intermediate between dogmatic absolutism on the one hand and relatvistic nihilism on the other. The aim of the book is the development and substantiation of these rather ambitious claims. Its deliberations are undertaken in the belief that it is crucial for theoretical and practical purposes alike that we come to terms with the idea of an intellectual and social order that can function effectively even in the presence of dissensus. 2. PLURALISM MORE REALISTIC SOCIAL RESPONSE TO DISAGREEMENT Nicholas Rescher, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh, PLURALISM: AGAINST THE DEMAND FOR CONSENSUS, 1993, p. 5. Two very different approaches to the prospect of disagreement and dissensus can be envisioned: 1) The consensualist: 'Do whatever is needed to avert discord. Always and everywhere work for consensus.' 2) The pluralist: 'Accept the inevitability of dissensus in a complex and imperfect world. Strive to make the world safe for disagreement. Work to realize processes and procedures that make dissensus tolerable if not actually productive.' The first is a policy of dissensus avoidance; the second a policy of dissensus management. 3. PLURALISM, NOT CONSENSUS, HELPS ACCOMMODATE DIVERSITY Nicholas Rescher, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh, PLURALISM: AGAINST THE DEMAND FOR CONSENSUS, 1993, p. 7. There is thus much to be said on behalf of consensus as an epistemic touchstone. But, perhaps unfortunately, much can also be said against it. Wise leaders, after all, do not ask their advisers for a collective opinion from which all element of dissent has been eliminated: they realize that the interests of understanding are best served by a complex picture that portrays the state of existing information and speculation--and ignorance!--in its fully diverse complexity. Dissensus and diversity can often play a highly constructive role in human affairs. It will, accordingly, be maintained here that contemporary partisans of consensus methodology seriously overestimate the need and desirability for according a central position to consensus and that--in matters of inquiry and praxis alike--strong claims to cogency and appropriateness can be urged on behalf of a less consensus-oriented, more pluralistic approach. 4. DISSENT IS INEVITABLE: PLURALISM HELPS MANAGE IT Nicholas Rescher, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh, PLURALISM: AGAINST THE DEMAND FOR CONSENSUS, 1993, p. 77. The key point is that even where there is agreement about the aims of the cognitive enterprise (determining the truth about how things work in the world), and even where there is agreement about the appropriate means and methods for attaining this end (the scientific-inductive), inquirers will nevertheless still arrive at discordant and conflicting results when the data afforded by the course of their experience are different--as differences in the times, societies and circumstances render inevitable. And so, to re-emphasize: cognitive dissensus is rendered inevitable by experiential diversity among inquirers. Accordingly the pluralism that a sensible empiricism engenders in the light of such variable experiential conditions is rationally justified. The unavailability of consensus and inescapability of cognitive pluralism are realities of the life of reason with which any satisfactory theory of knowledge has to come to terms.

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Pluralism Bad PLURALIST ANALYSIS OF THE WORLD OBSCURES REAL TRUTHS 1. PLURALIST ANALYSIS IS INADEQUATE Michael Albert, Editor of Z MAGAZINE, and Noam Chomsky, professor of linguistics at MIT, LIBERATING THEORY, 1982, p. 8-9. Countering monism, pluralist approaches claim we must use more than one set of intellectual tools because social causes cannot be reduced to a single class of determining relations. Many activists simultaneously claim to be Marxist and feminist, anarchist and nationalist, or feminist and anarchist, because they rightly recognize the complexity of their environment and see merit in more than one analysis orientation. Whether a pluralist analysis succeeds obviously depends upon the analyst's skill in choosing the right tools to scrutinize changing circumstances. Yet pluralism dictates that to analyze the economy you should use Marxist categories while to analyze the family you should use feminist categories, and this advice is inadequate. 2. PLURALIST OUTLOOK OBSCURES IMPORTANT TRUTHS Michael Albert, Editor of Z MAGAZINE, and Noam Chomsky, professor of linguistics at MIT, LIBERATING THEORY, 1982, p. 9. Pluralist approaches try to escape these distortions by adopting more than one perspective, but since events are often so multifaceted that only a comprehensive theory can reveal their true character, this too often fails. Imagine looking at a country scene using, in turn, blue red and green filters. Though you would see much, you would also have great difficulty discerning features dependent upon how colors mix. Similarly, a Marxist-feminist will see traditional economic exploitation and also patriarchal violence against women, but miss many of the more subtle ways that gender relations redefine class definitions or that economic dynamics redefine family norms. 3. PLURALISM IS INCOMPATIBLE WITH REALISM CJ McKnight, Lecturer in Philosophy at Queen's University in Belfast, PHILOSOPHY AND PLURALISM, 1996, p. 99. What they may have been pointing at, however, in a confused way is something that could still be correct; namely that different values, ways of life and obligations will almost certainly conflict in practice. Ways of life have to be lived, values realized and obligations met, whether they be those of different societies, of different people within a single society or even those of a single individual. But these are practical conflicts and practical disharmonies and as such are not truth-involving. Pluralism comes into its own when ethical discourse is seen as addressing practical questions; but that is the point where realism becomes inappropriate. Pluralism and realism make uneasy bedfellows. 4. MORAL THEORY OF TRUTH LEAVES NO ROOM FOR PLURALISM CJ McKnight, Lecturer in Philosophy at Queen's University in Belfast, PHILOSOPHY AND PLURALISM, 1996, p. 97. It should be clear that moral theory viewed in this way as a search for realist truth leaves no room for pluralism. Where judgments are generally truth-incompatible, they cannot both provide true descriptions of moral reality. In the case of conflicting 'oughts,' which feature in dilemmas, both can be true because the conflict is not a truth conflict, but here again there is no space for pluralism about truth. We might of course encourage the development of a plurality of theories on the grounds that truth, though single, is by no means always easy to discover and conflicting theories may have an equal chance of being right or may both contain elements which are true. Thus Popper, whose account of science is as realist as one could wish, favors the proliferation of theories without at all being committed to pluralism about truth.

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PLURALIST OUTLOOK STOPS SOCIAL HARMONY, LEADS TO DISCRIMINATION 1. ACCORDING TO PLURALISM, CULTURAL CONFLICTS ARE INESCAPABLE John Skorupski, Professor of Moral Philosophy at St. Andrews, PHILOSOPHY AND PLURALISM, 1996, p. 105-6. These relativities, arising from diversity of situation, are a main source of the diversity of obligations and commitments--within a culture and across cultures. They give substance to 'ethical life'. But do they give any basis to value-pluralism? Nothing in our sketch of logic so far provides it. Value-pluralism involved the thesis that some conflicts of values are inarbitable, or that in some conflicts of value wrong doing is inescapable. 2. PLURALISM LEADS TO DISCRIMINATION, STOPS INTEGRATION Jacques Muglioni, Chief Inspector of French Secondary Schools, THE REPUBLIC AND THE SCHOOL, 1994, p. 75. But is it the citizen that makes the republic or the republic that makes the citizen? The reciprocal link is only made possible by the school, beyond any respect for the family, work or community links, even for traditions, however great they may be. The school is at the service neither of the family nor of the employers. Its only function is to shape the mind, without any consideration for interests or beliefs and to bring it to its highest level of freedom. The republic admits of individual beliefs, but only as what is due to any human being, not in the name of pluralism; this would go against integration and lead to discrimination when the particular religious or racial origins are being signaled by the institution, even by the identity card! 3. NO REASON TO BELIEVE PLURALIST VIEW OF MULTIPLE ETHICAL SOVEREIGNS John Skorupski, Professor of Moral Philosophy at St. Andrews, PHILOSOPHY AND PLURALISM, 1996, p. 106. The most natural representation of this thought about fated, inescapable blame is a world-picture in which one is subject to separate laws, coming from distinct but severally authoritative sovereigns, all of them legitimately armed with punishments for transgression: these gods and those, the edicts of the gods and the necessary law of the state. I am only saying 'the most natural'--I can see nothing positively incoherent in the idea of a single source of legitimation which sanctions laws capable of throwing the agent into inescapable wrong-doing. But it seems to me to lack any plausible, self-sustaining rationale. The very legitimacy of the source is vitiated if it dooms agents to unavoidable blame. If therefore we think of morality as an integral, unitary system--as I believe we do--it becomes hard to understand the possibility that moral blame might be inescapable. Is it not anachronistic to conceive a plurality of ethical sovereigns? I think (to be blunt) that it is. 4. PLURALISM ASSIGNS MORAL BLAME TO PEOPLE NO MATTER WHAT THEY DO John Skorupski, Professor of Moral Philosophy at St. Andrews, PHILOSOPHY AND PLURALISM, 1996, p. 108. What then is the value-pluralist saying? Apparently he envisages strong dilemmas, as I will call them, in which there is a plurality of justified but incompatible answers as to which course of actions I uniquely ought to pursue. The answers are rationally inarbitrable: this must mean that there is adequate reason to accept each one of them, and no adequate reason to accept just one of them over the others. The situation then differs from that in which there is short list of optimal things to do. But what difference to moral life does this abstractly framed distinction, between strong dilemmas and choices between optimal actions, actually make? The only possible answer is that in the strong dilemma one incurs legitimate blame no matter what one does.

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Postmodernism Good POSTMODERNISM IS A DESIRABLE VALUE 1. MODERNISM CREATES IMPERIALISM AND FASCISM Richard Falk, Center for International Studies at Princeton University, EXPLORATIONS AT THE EDGE OF TIME, 1992, p. 2. Modernism is by no means a spent force. It may yet persist in this next, globalist phase of international relations, providing a technological unity for a planet administered from corporate headquarters and the office buildings of leading states. Such a globalism, as it encounters environmental frictions of a more and more serious character, is destined to become more and more coercive, especially towards the poor. The prolongation of modernism is likely to give rise to a variety of forms of control that share ecofascist orientations and to push North-South relations toward imperialist restructuring. 2. MODERNISM STOPS ALL HAPPINESS Richard Falk, Center for International Studies at Princeton University, EXPLORATIONS AT THE EDGE OF TIME, 1992, p. 6. Most obviously, nuclear weapons as instruments for struggle by part against part doom the whole and overwhelm any possibility of modernist sanity: insisting that my persistence as fragment validates ending the world as we know it so radically disrupts the relation of means to ends that any genuine form of collective happiness is precluded. Indeed, the prevalence of drugs, escapism, and mind-numbing popular music, especially among our young, is a warning that those inevitably entrusted with the future are tuning out of a world with no solidarity or promise. 3. MODERNISM KILLS CULTURAL IDENTITY Richard Falk, Center for International Studies at Princeton University, EXPLORATIONS AT THE EDGE OF TIME, 1992, p. 49. Especially to the extent that "the culture of modernism" does not deliver materially, impoverished masses will become ever more susceptible to appeals based on the need for purification and for the revival and assertion of indigenous cultural traditions, first of all, as a defense against foreign (that is, Western, which itself is further deconstructed to be seen as America) penetration and domination--which has become more sinister in the postcolonial era because presented in a universalist container. In this regard, cultural identity depends on defending indigenous tradition against modernist encroachment. 4. POSTMODERNISM IS MULTICULTURAL AND HUMANIZING Richard Falk, Center for International Studies at Princeton University, EXPLORATIONS AT THE EDGE OF TIME, 1992, p. 50-1. Culture was conceived, if at all, as an internal factor largely extraneous to the functioning of international relations. In contrast, the collision of emergent globalisms draws on opposed cultural emphases, both originated in the West but both aspiring to provide the basis for a more integrated future existence on the planet. Modernism is almost completely an outgrowth of Western civilization, whereas postmodernism within its main Western home but drawing inspiration from the lived existence of all the peoples of the earth, including premodern enclaves. It thereby evolves in an eclectic fashion that is constituted by various specific cultural experiences, yet finds, as well, common humanizing elements that can provide the belief and mythic foundations for progressive thought and action beneath the banner of postmodern globalism.

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POSTMODERNISM STOPS DOMINATION 1. POSTMODERNISM ATTACKS STRUCTURES OF DOMINATION Richard Falk, Center for International Studies at Princeton University, EXPLORATIONS AT THE EDGE OF TIME, 1992, p. 5. The postmodern sensibility registers a strong reaction by way of both taste and values. Postmodernism denies the capacity of language, mind or spirit to establish standards in an objective manner. It is radically deconstructionist, destroying, if it can, all illusions that anything whatsoever can be singled out as truly significant. The postmodern mode is characterized above all else by a critical turn of mind, both skeptical and ironic. At its best, this postmodern sensibility helps emancipate us from the colonizing forms of knowledge associated with both evident and disguised structures of domination: statism, nuclearism, patriarchy, Western hegemony. 2. POSTMODERNISM HELPS THE WORLD TRANSCEND VIOLENCE Richard Falk, Center for International Studies at Princeton University, EXPLORATIONS AT THE EDGE OF TIME, 1992, p. 6. Now this cultural expression of the postmodern is quite different from the spirit that animates these explorations. This spirit is reconstructionist, optimistic, normative. It does not at all repudiate rationality and the benefits of modernity, but seeks to repudiate their negative features. A postmodern possibility implies the human capacity to transcend the violence, poverty, ecological decay, oppression, injustice and secularism of the modern world. The failures of the modern world are here overwhelmingly associated with artifical and constraining boundaries on imagination and community, which then become springboards for conflict, inducing violence and massive suffering. 3. POSTMODERNISM HALTS HIERARCHY Richard Falk, Center for International Studies at Princeton University, EXPLORATIONS AT THE EDGE OF TIME, 1992, p. 6. Such specialization as an organizing principle endows instrumental reason with a superior status in human affairs, creating the familiar hierarchical dualism of mind and body, spirit and flesh, reason and emotion, objectivity and subjectivity, thought and feeling, even virtue and vice. The modernist bias is to act-in-the-world as if these polarities express and exhaust the real structures and experience, providing both orientation and guidance. Postmodernism, by way of contrast, is trying to "reinvent" reality in more holistic, less hierarchical imagery. 4. POSTMODERNISM ALLOWS HUMAN UNITY WITHOUT CENTRALIZATION Richard Falk, Center for International Studies at Princeton University, EXPLORATIONS AT THE EDGE OF TIME, 1992, p. 7. The postmodern in this broader sense implies the rediscovery of normative and spiritual ground upon which to find meaning in human existence. It does not imply a return to the past, even to the early modern or premodern reality of a world given coherence and religious sanction by the acceptance of the great monotheistic religions with their faith bestowed on a centralized, hierarchical, patriarchal deity reigning over earthly matters from a heavenly throne. The postmodern horizon of spiritual recovery proceeds on a different basis: a dispersion of spiritual energy that is associated with the sacredness of the whole universe, and a related feminization of political life that finds power in relations rather than capabilities for dominance and destruction--in earthborne more than in skyborne energy. Unity without centralization or hierarchy provides the only design imperative in conceiving desirable world order arrangements for the future.

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Postmodernism Bad POSTMODERNISM ENTRENCHES THE VERY CAPITALIST SYSTEM IT CRITIQUES 1. POSTMODERNIST DISCOURSE STOPS ANTICAPITALIST MOVEMENTS Julie Graham, Professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and Katherine Gibson, Director of Women's Studies at Monash University, RETHINKING MARXISM, Summer 1993, p. 11-12. In the context of postmodern theory both the political subject and the social totality have been rent apart and the social totality have been rent apart and retheorized as open, continually under construction, decentered, constituted by antagonisms, fragmented, multivocal, plural, discursively as well as naturally and socially constituted; but capitalism has been relatively immune to radical reconceptualization. Its recent development has been duly charted and tracked within the confines of traditional modernist conceptions (e.g., regulation theory) that have remained largely unchallenged by postmodern critical thought. Indeed, rather than being subjected to deconstruction and discursive dissolution, capitalism is often addressed with honorifics that evoke its seniority, its hegemony, its powerful and entrenched position. It appears unnamed but nevertheless unmistakable as a "societal macrostructure," "a large-scale structure of domination," "the global economy," and "flexible accumulation," "postFordism," or even "consumer society." Often associated with an adjective that evokes its protean capactities, it emerges as "monopoly capitalism," "global capitalism," "postindustrial capitalism," "late capitalism." These terms, like other terms of respect, are not usually defined by their immediate users. Rather they function to express and constitute a shared state of admiration and subjection. For no matter how diverse we might be, how essentialist or antiessentialist, how concerned with equality or difference, how modernist or postmodernist, most of us somewhere acknowledge that we live within something large that shows us to be small--a Capitalism (whether global or national) in the face of which all our transformative acts are ultimately inconsequential. 2. FOLLOWING POSTMODERNISM MEANS CAPITALISM CAN'T BE TRANSFORMED Julie Graham, Professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and Katherine Gibson, Director of Women's Studies at Monash University, RETHINKING MARXISM, Summer 1993, p. 12. Turning to these modernist conceptions of capitalism themselves (those developed and purveyed by marxists who theorize the economy--David Harvey, for example--and drawn upon by cultural theorists, feminists, and other social analysts), we may see that Capitalism has a number of prominent discursive forms of appearance. I call these discursive features of Capitalism "unity," "singularity," and "totality." I believe that these features can be distinguished from each other (though none of them ever truly exists alone) and that taken together (as they seldom are in particular textual settings) they construe capitalism as "an object of transformation that cannot be transformed." 3. POSTMODERNIST METAPHORS ENTRENCH CAPITALISM Julie Graham, Professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and Katherine Gibson, Director of Women's Studies at Monash University, RETHINKING MARXISM, Summer 1993, p. 12-3. The birth of the concept of Capitalism as we know it coincided in time with the birth of the economy as an autonomous social sphere. Not surprisingly then, Capitalism shares with its more abstract sibling the qualities of an integrated system and the capability of reproducing itself (or of being reproduced). Like the economy, Capitalism is more often portrayed as a unified entity than as a set of practices scattered over the landscape. Represented as an organism of "system" through which flows of social labor circulate in various forms, it regulates itself according to logics or laws, propelled by a life force in the form of surplus-value or capital expansion along a preordained (though not necessarily irreversible or troubled) trajectory of growth. In company with, and sometimes as an alternative to, organicist conceptions, the unity of Capitalism is sometimes represented in more architectural terms. Capitalism (or capitalist society) becomes a structure in which parts are related to one another, linked to functions, and arranged in accordance with an architecture that is internal as well as external, no less invisible than visible." The architectural or structural metaphor confers qualities of stability, durability and persistence, as well as unity and coherence, thereby giving Capitalism greater purchase on social reality than more ephemeral phenomena.

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SHOULDN'T TRY TO MOVE OUT OF MODERNISM 1. REJECTING MODERNITY IN TOTO GENERATES FASCIST TENDENCIES Michael E. Zimmerman, Professor of Philosophy at Tulane University, MINDING NATURE: THE PHILOSOPHERS OF ECOLOGY, 1996, p. 63. Radical environmentalists are ill-informed if they believe that Marxists and liberal theorists criticize radical environmentalism solely because it threatens their growth-centered economies. Instead, such criticism is also advanced because progressive thinkers (here I mean the best socialists and liberal theorists) recall National Socialism's celebration of the link between a healthy race and an unpolluted landscape. In view of that link, socialist and liberal theorists are understandably suspicious of radical environmentalists who either condemn modernity in tot, or who claim that they are neither left nor right but "out in front". If environmentalists are correct in saying that modernity gives rise to totalizing systems with ecologically destructive tendencies, supporters of modernity are also right in replying that radical ecology may inadvertently help to generate ecofascism by promoting an antiuniversaltic antihumanism that undermine's modernity's emancipatory claims. 2. SHOULD RETAIN AT LEAST PARTS OF MODERNITY FOR EMANCIPATION Michael E. Zimmerman, Professor of Philosophy at Tulane University, MINDING NATURE: THE PHILOSOPHERS OF ECOLOGY, 1996, p. 63. Radical environmentalists are faced with the daunting tasks of envisioning new social forms and modes of awareness that retain the beneficial aspects of modernity, while at least minimizing its ecologically destructive dark side. For radical ecology to succeed, then, it must help to transform the emancipatory aims of modernity as well as the means by which they are to be achieved. Ideally, the achievement of human rights and self-realization should not have to come at the cost of exterminating other species and dramatically altering whole ecosystems. 3. WHOLESALE CONDEMNATION OF MODERNITY COUNTERPRODUCTIVE Michael E. Zimmerman, Professor of Philosophy at Tulane University, MINDING NATURE: THE PHILOSOPHERS OF ECOLOGY, 1996, p. 77. Some people associated with deep ecology, such as Fritjof Capra, speak of an incipient turning point or paradigm shift that will move humankind beyond the dualistic and anthropocentric basis of communism and capitalism. The call for a total, extrapolitical paradigm change is appealing, as Robert Pois has noted, "when one bears in mind the rape of planet Earth that has occurred as the most significant result of predatory capitalism (and, I might add, state socialism--MEZ)." Though I agree that neither capitalism nor communism can solve the ecological crisis that they have helped to generate, and though I join in the search for alternatives, I am unwilling to engage in a wholesale condemnation of modernity. Needed is a more nuanced critique that would seek to both expand and transfrom modernity's emancipatory goals, while questioning its arrogant anthropocentrism. 4. SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION CAN'T OCCUR IF WE TOTALLY REJECT MODERN IDEAS Michael E. Zimmerman, Professor of Philosophy at Tulane University, MINDING NATURE: THE PHILOSOPHERS OF ECOLOGY, 1996, p. 77. If we are successfully to develop a "third way" between capitalism and communism, and beyond arrogant anthropocentrism and antihumanist biocentrism, we must do so without regressing psychologically and socially to collective states that erase the gains won by the difficult process of human individuation. Because of the masculinist, dissassociative slant of such individuation, however, it must be transformed in such a way that some day, a truly free person will be recognized as one who has integrated the corporeal and the spiritual, the immanent and the transcendent. For a community of such persons, the practice of wantonly destroying nonhuman life and ecosystems in the name of "human freedom" and "progress" would make as little sense as enslaving some people for the "liberation" of others.

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Pragmatism Good PRAGMATISM AS ESPOUSED BY RORTY IS GOOD 1. ACADEMIC LEFT IGNORES ECONOMIC ISSUES Richard Rorty, Philosopher, University Professor of Humanities at the University of Virginia, NEW STATESMAN, May 8, 1998, p. 28.. Yet during the same period in which socially accepted sadism has steadily diminished, economic inequality and insecurity have steadily increased. While the left's back was turned, the bourgeoisification of the white proletariat which began in the second world war and continued up through the Vietnam war has been halted. It has, indeed, gone into reverse: America is now proletarianising its bourgeoisie. Since 1973 the assumption that all hard-working American married couples would be able to afford a home, and that the wife could then, if she chose, stay home and raise kids, has begun to seem absurd. The question now is whether the average married couple, both working full time, will ever be able to take home more than $30,000 a year. But that sum will not permit home ownership or buy decent daycare. In a country that believes neither in public transportation nor in national health insurance, this income permits a family of four only a humiliating hand-to-mouth existence, constantly tormented by fears of wage rollbacks and downsizing, and of the disastrous consequences of even a brief illness. 2. ACADEMIC LEFT'S IGNORANCE WILL LEAD TO FASCISM Richard Rorty, Philosopher, University Professor of Humanities at the University of Virginia, NEW STATESMAN, May 8, 1998, p. 28. At that point, something will crack. The nonsuburban electorate will decide the system has failed and start looking around for a strongman - someone willing to assure them that, once he is elected, the smug bureaucrats, tricky lawyers, overpaid bond salesmen, and postmodernist professors will no longer call the shots. Then the gains made by black and brown Americans, and by homosexuals, will very likely be wiped out. Jocular contempt for women will come back into fashion. The words "nigger" and "kike" will again be heard in the workplace. All the sadism which the academic left has tried to make unacceptable to its students will come flooding back. 3. ACADEMIC LEFT SHOULD ENGAGE WITH SOCIETY, NOT IGNORE IT Richard Rorty, Philosopher, University Professor of Humanities at the University of Virginia, NEW STATESMAN, May 8, 1998, p. 28. But a renewal of sadism will not alter the effects of selfishness. After my imagined strongman takes charge, he will quickly make his peace with the international super-rich, just as Hitler made his with German industrialists. He will invoke the glorious memory of the Gulf war to provoke military adventures that will generate short-term prosperity. He will be a disaster for the country and the world. People will wonder why there was so little resistance to his rise. Where, they will ask, was the American left? Why was it only rightists such as Pat Buchanan who spoke to the workers about the consequences of globalisation? It is often said that we Americans, at the end of the 20th century, no longer have a left. Since nobody denies the existence of the cultural left, this amounts to an admission that the left is unable to engage in national politics. It is not the sort of left that can be asked to deal with the consequences of globalisation. To get the country to deal with those consequences, the present cultural left would have to transform itself by opening relations with the residue of the old reformist left, and in particular with the labour unions. It would have to talk much more about money, even at the cost of talking less about stigma. 4. ACADEMIC LEFT SHOULD EMBRACE REFORM Richard Rorty, Philosopher, University Professor of Humanities at the University of Virginia, NEW STATESMAN, May 8, 1998, p. 28. One day, perhaps, cumulative reforms will be found to have brought about revolutionary change. Such reforms might someday produce a presently unimaginable non-market economy, and much more widely distributed powers of decision-making. They might also, given similar reforms in other countries, bring about an international federation, a world government. But in the meantime, we should not let the abstractly described best be the enemy of the better. We should not let speculation about a totally changed system, and a totally different way of thinking about human life and human affairs, replace step-by-step reform of the system we presently have. 575

CRITICS OF RORTY ARE MISTAKEN 1. RIGHT WING DISTORTS RORTY'S IDEAS Carlin Romano, literary critic of the Philadelphia Inquirer, professor of philosophy at Bennington College, THE NATION, July 27, 1998, p. 25. Rorty, it appears, is ready for the close-up American philosophers get--a quick once-over. Thanks to this year's Achieving Our Country (Harvard), the widely reviewed tip of his secular, reformist, anti-epistemological iceberg, he's drawing the usual misreading and distortion from the political right--as if he were William Ginsburg in toga, needing to be shown his place. To Roger Kimball in The American Spectator, America's 66-year-old philosophical maverick is a "happy nihilist" and "the official philosopher of postmodern liberals," even though Rorty prominently zapped "postmodernism" last November in the New York Times's "Most Overrated Idea" symposium--he branded it "a word that pretends to stand for an idea," and one "it would be nice to get rid of." According to David Brooks in The Weekly Standard, Rorty predicts in Achieving Our Country that "we are about to become a dictatorship," even though a glance at the text shows that Rorty is extrapolating from Edward Luttwak's suggestion that "fascism may be the American furore." To Arnold Beichman in the Washington Times, Rorty seeks "to resuscitate a moribund Marxified radicalism," an odd size-up, given Rorty's statement that "Marxism was not only a catastrophe for all the countries in which Marxists took power, but a disaster for the reformist Left in all the countries in which they did not." 2. GEORGE WILL'S CRITIQUE IS DISINGENUOUS AND FALSE Carlin Romano, literary critic of the Philadelphia Inquirer, professor of philosophy at Bennington College, THE NATION, July 27, 1998, p. 25. The most disingenuous criticism, however, has to be George Will's May 25 Newsweek attack on Rorty's "remarkably bad book." Will charges that Rorty "radiates contempt for the country" and "seems to despise most Americans." Asking, "When was the last time Rorty read a newspaper?" Will declares that Rorty "knows next to nothing" about the "real America." Quite unfair, you might think, to a book that variously touches on the Wagner Act, Stonewall and other non-ivory-tower events. Nowhere does Will advise his Newsweek readers that he's derided by Rorty in Achieving Our Country as one of those "columnists" who base their "know-nothing criticisms of the contemporary American academy" on believing "everything they read in scandal-mongering books by Dinesh D' Souza, David Lehman and others. They do not read philosophy, but simply search out titles and sentences to which they can react with indignation." 3. REFORMIST LEFTISM BETTER THAN RADICAL, ACADEMIC LEFTISM Richard Rorty, Philosopher, University Professor of Humanities at the University of Virginia, NEW STATESMAN, May 8, 1998, p. 28. The reformist American left of the first two-thirds of the century accomplished a lot. But most of the direct beneficiaries were white males. After women won the right to vote, the male reformers pretty much forgot about them for 40 years. Right up through the early sixties, male leftists in the hiring halls and faculty lounges often spoke of women with same jocular contempt, and of homosexuals with the same brutal contempt, as did male rightists in the country clubs. From the point of view of today's left, the pre-sixties left may seem as callous about the needs of oppressed groups as was the nation as a whole. But it was not really that bad. The reformist left hoped that the mistreatment of the weak by the strong in general, and racial discrimination in particular, would prove to be a byproduct of economic injustice. They saw the sadistic humiliation of black Americans, and of other groups, as one more example of the unselfishness which pervaded an unreformed capitalist economy. They assumed that as economic inequality and insecurity decreased, prejudice would gradually disappear.

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Pragmatism Bad RORTY’S PRAGMATISM IS UNDESIREABLE 1. RORTIAN NOTIONS Of TRUTH ARE WRONG AND SHORT-SIGHTED Michael Albert, Activist, Z MAGAZINE, November 1998, p. 12. Richard Rorty denies that "the search for objective truth is a search for correspondence to reality and urge[s] that it be seen instead as a search for the widest possible intersubjective agreement." Bruno Latour is a famous French sociologist, highly admired by left academics in numerous countries, who takes Rorty seriously. As Sokal and Bricmont relate in their revealing new book Intellectual Impostures, Latour rejects a claim by French Scientists working on the mummy of the Paraoh Ramses II, that Ramses died in roughly 1213 due to tuberculosis. Latour asks, "How could he pass away [in 1213] due to a bacillus discovered by Robert Koch in 1882?" In other words, in tune with Rorty Latour forgets about there being or not being a bacillus and wonders only when people intersubjectively about one, concluding that "before Koch, the bacillus has no real existence." What would Rorty reply? For that matter, how would Rorty distinguish claims by biologists working for Marlboro from claims by biologists seeking objectivity? And if true beliefs do not "correspond to the intrinsic nature of reality," but arise only from "intersubjective agreement," how does Rorty counter when the entire U.S. media says the U.S. bombed Vietnam to benefit the Vietnamese? 2. RORTY'S NOTIONS OF TRUTH ARE LUDICROUS Michael Albert, Activist, Z MAGAZINE, November 1998, p. 12. Rorty says, "If I have concrete specific doubts about whether one of my beliefs is true, I can resolve those doubts only by asking whether it is adequately justified-by finding and assessing additional reasons pro and con. I cannot bypass justification and confine my attention to truth." Okay, but what counts as justification? Correspondence to reality doesn't count and warranted intersubjective agreement does count. Okay, what kind of intersubjective agreement counts? If it isn't tested against evidence is it fortified by wish fulfillment, myth making, or lying? Rorty continues: "The difference between true beliefs considered as useful nonrepresentational mental states and as accurate…representations of reality, seemed [to] make no difference to practice." Suppose I consider claims that the U.S. invaded Vietnam, that cigarettes cause cancer or that markets inexorably produce anti-social behavior by checking to see if they accurately "represent reality." The U.S. Secretary of State, the Marlboro Man, and the head of the World Bank check the same claims for "usefulness." Does Rorty believe we will arrive at equally valid views? Racism corrupts the human spirit. Is this claim true only because I can find people who nod yes, intersubjectively agreeing when I say it? If that's Rorty's position, would it be false if I couldn't find people to nod yes? When Newton wrote his Principia were his claims about gravity false because there was no one to nod in agreement that they were true? 3. RORTY IS INCORRECT ABOUT HUMAN NATURE Michael Albert, Activist, Z MAGAZINE, November 1998, p. 12. Rorty says, "The best and probably the only argument for putting foundationalism behind us is the one I have already suggested: It would be more efficient to do so, because it would let us concentrate our energies on manipulating sentiments, on sentimental education." If I ignore Rorty's equation of sentimental education with manipulating sentiments, then of course I agree that to reveal emotions or values folks have not felt by communicating sentimentally via fiction or actual examples can be a fine undertaking. But how does believing in human nature impede doing that? I believe in human nature but urge reading novels or experiencing diverse situations to learn about complex behavior, not molecular biology textbooks, of course.

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RORTY’S PRAGMATISM LEADS TO INEQUALITY 1. RORTIAN THOUGHT IS ETHNOCENTRIST AND CLASSIST Michael Albert, Activist, Z MAGAZINE, November 1998, p. 12. Lest you think I am being unfair to Rorty, here we have some more on the same topic. "By 'security' I mean conditions of life sufficiently risk-free to make one's difference from others inessential to one's self-respect, one's sense of worth. These conditions have been enjoyed by North Americans and Europeans-the people who dreamed up the human rights culture-much more than they have been enjoyed by anyone else." What if one's conditions are so risk-free and materially exalted that out of guilt one has to rationalize them by seeing oneself as more deserving and superior? In Rorty's view, North Americans and Europeans, particularly the especially rich and therefore especially secure ones, are ethically advanced. Is this another special insight that accrues to the anti-foundationalist method? 2. RORTY IS EURO-CENTRIC AND MISGUIDED Michael Albert, Activist, Z MAGAZINE, November 1998, p. 12. Rorty reports that "outside the circle of post-enlightenment European culture, the circle of relatively safe and secure people who have been manipulating one another's sentiments for two hundred years, most people are simply unable to understand why membership in a biological species is supposed to suffice for membership in a moral community." This is either a large typo or utterly vile. Does Rorty really believe that outside advanced industrialized societies folks don't know that other folks are in the same moral universe? For that matter, does Rorty not know that it is precisely the "most safe and secure people" who have most often defined the "human community" to be only their near neighbors? The archetype of advanced European culture was, of course, Germany in the 1920s. Was post WWI Germany, for Rorty, a cauldron of moral sentiment exploding into the superior sensitivity of Nazism? 3. RORTY'S CLASSIST NOTIONS ARE EMPIRICALLY WRONG Michael Albert, Activist, Z MAGAZINE, November 1998, p. 12. Rorty explains why he thinks the poor and third world lack an understanding that unrelated humans deserve of moral respect: "This is not because they are insufficiently rational. It is, typically, because they live in a world in which it would be just too risky-indeed, would often be insanely dangerous-to let one's sense of moral community stretch beyond one's family, clan, or tribe." If danger and insecurity are the only things that wreak havoc with morality are we to expect that danger-free Wall Street, the Pentagon, and Yale Reunions must be full of folks with admirable moral sensibilities? 4. INSTITUTIONS ARE BLAMELESS, ACCORDING TO RORTY Michael Albert, Activist, Z MAGAZINE, November 1998, p. 12. Rorty continues by addressing "possible remedies" for violations of human rights: "Producing generations of nice, tolerant, well-off, secure, other-respecting students in all parts of the world is just what is needed-indeed, all that is needed-to achieve an Enlightenment utopia." So Rorty's only agenda is not to transform institutions so that the roles people fill don't destroy solidarity, homogenize diversity, violate equity, and centralize power, but to teach the young to be nice while occupying elite roles. Rorty says "it would be better to teach our students that these bad people are no less rational, no less clear-headed, no more prejudiced than we good people who respect Otherness…. Instead of treating all those people out there who are trying to find and kill Salman Rushdie as irrational, we should treat them as deprived." Ignoring the inattention to institutional influences, Rorty's comment makes clear, again, that he thinks folks like him and the intellectual high brows at the Ford Foundation or in the board rooms of Microsoft or the State Department are moral, due to being safe and secure and educated. On the other hand, peasants and the poor of the world are immoral, due to their insecurity and ignorance. Can someone perhaps tell me why some leftists are forming study groups about Rorty's work?

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Pragmatism Responses In his article “What Pragmatism Means,” William James said of pragmatism, “Theories thus become instruments, not answers to enigmas, in which we can rest.” 1 More simply put, the American Heritage Dictionary defines pragmatism as, “A movement consisting of varying but associated theories, originally developed by Charles S. Peirce and William James and distinguished by the doctrine that the meaning of an idea or a proposition lies in its observable practical consequences.” 2 The Colombia Encyclopedia defines pragmatism as a, “method of philosophy in which the truth of a proposition is measured by its correspondence with experimental results and by its practical outcome. Thought is considered as simply an instrument for supporting the life aims of the human organism and has no real metaphysical significance.” 3 James Bissett Pratt, in his book, What is Pragmatism?, describes pragmatism in the following way, “Don’t’ seek to solve a question, says pragmatism, until you know what you mean by it. Think so far as possible in concrete terms. Never let yourself be hoodwinked and browbeaten by big words and verbal abstractions. Remember that the meaning of philosophical terms may often by in inverse proportion to their length…Concerning every object of discussion ask the questions: What is it known as? What does it mean to me? For, as G.H. Lewes has said, and as Aristotle said long before him, a thing is what it does. All that it can ever mean is just the difference that it can make to some one.” 4 Pratt also says that in an address given in 1898 the basics of pragmatism were laid forth, when Professor James said, “I think myself that it [the principle of pragmatism] should be expressed more broadly than Mr. Pierce expresses it…I should prefer to express Peirce’s principle by saying that the effective meaning of any philosophic proposition can always be brought down to some particular consequence in our future practical experience, whether active or passive; the point lying rather in the fact that the experience must be particular than in the fact that it must be active.” 5 PRAGMATISM IS BASED ON FAULTY ARGUMENTS In his book Anti-Pragmatism, Albert Schinz outlines three major arguments that the pragmatists’ position rests on. He readily answers all three of these arguments, showing the problems with pragmatism at even a basic, elementary level. The first argument that pragmatists make is that, “all philosophical systems that are based on a principle purely intellectual have failed to give satisfaction.” 6 Schinz answers this argument on several levels. First, William James, “recognizes that all philosophical theories have their value, of one sort or another, were it only that of making straight the way for a better, and in this practical and relative application it is worthy of esteem.” 7 At that level, therefore, he practically justifies even flawed philosophical paradigms for the progress they can create. It also means, however, that the flaws in other philosophies is not in any way a justification for pragmatism. The second argument that pragmatists make is that, “All of our philosophical theories, whether we suspect it or not, are inspired by practical reasons that look toward pragmatic ends.” 8 Schinz answers this argument by explaining how it defeats itself. He notes that the fact that all philosophies think pragmatically does not prove any superiority of pragmatism. What results is, “either that the other philosophies are worth as much as pragmatism, considered as a philosophy, or that pragmatism is not worth more than they.” 9 If all philosophies in the end are reduced to pragmatic considerations of human interest and the effects caused on individual lives, then all philosophies are equal. This merits not a rejection of philosophies other than pragmatism, but rather an acceptance. The third argument that pragmatists make is that, “Pragmatism, by bringing forward a principle that co-ordinates all true theories, thereby fulfils the conditions of a philosophy.” That principle is “expediency.” 10 Shinz answers this argument by pointing out a contradiction. If we want to decide whether or not pragmatism does offer a principle of unity, it must be distinguished from the principle of pragmatic “expedient.” Expedient used by non-pragmatists is an intellectual value and the other is a moral or social expedient. For example, the geocentric system that according to scientific pragmatism always has been false and will remain so, is viewed by moral pragmatism to have been correct during the middle ages but would be false today. This contradiction has some problematic consequences. Should it be accepted? “If it is, then pragmatism is no longer to be distinguished from intellectualism and the pragmatic 579

movement is naught. If it is not, then we deny the possibility of any philosophy at all, pragmatism of course included.” 11 At the level that these very basic justifications for pragmatism have been answered and refuted, the philosophy is on shaky ground. If it cannot prove the basic tenants that it asserts make it worthy of adoption, then it must be rejected. Shinz offers us reasons to reject each of the basic arguments made in support of pragmatism. PRAGMATISM LEADS TO “VICIOUS RELATIVISM” C.G. Prado explains that pragmatism has been charged with “vicious relativism.” While this charge is rather philosophically simple, it also merits attention. Regarding belief, the argument is that when foundationalism is abandoned in epistemology (or epistemology itself is abandoned), the result is identical to relativism. Prado notes, “By giving up truth as an absolute standard, the pragmatist loses the capacity to properly prioritize beliefs. To the critic, once truth is relativized to societal norms, or to anything else, then all beliefs must be held equal.” 12 The problems come by examining the effects of the decision that all beliefs must be held equal. This sort of relativism justifies negative actions in the world and society. If no “truth” can be located and it is impossible to call something right or wrong; then all actions must be equally viewed as legitimate. Therefore, instances of oppression or pain would be called justifiable because truth is relative. If a society wants to subject women to deplorable treatment and view them as second-class citizens, nothing can be done to stop them since all belief systems have equal merit. Similarly, this relativism disallows any possibility for intervention or criticism when such pain or oppression takes place. It would become unacceptable to criticize a racist society, as doing so would imply that their belief system is not as valid as other systems. While there is merit in attempting to understand the perspective that others come from, sentencing society to absolute relativism takes that attempt at understanding too far; crippling any actions to stop oppression and pain. Since pragmatism leads to this “vicious relativism,” it must be rejected. PRAGMATISM IS PROBLEMATIC FOR FEMINISM In a recent article, pragmatist philosopher Richard Rorty responded to feminist warnings about the dangers of postmodernism by recommending that feminists adopt his version of pragmatism as a guiding philosophy. Carol Bacchi responds to this advice given by Rorty by examining how the acceptance of pragmatism by the feminist movement would be devastating. First, we need to clarify Rorty’s advice on what the feminist movement should do. He says that feminism can take postmodernism on directly by becoming pragmatists. This means that feminists, according to Rorty, should be, “dropping realism and universalism, dropping the notion that he subordination of women is intrinsically abominable, dropping the claim that there is something called ‘right’ or ‘justice’ or ‘humanity’ which has always been on their side, making their claims true.” The reasons that Rorty offers include that so many feminists are involved in the demonstration that “knowledge” has often been constructed by men. Rorty therefore wants the feminists to welcome he displacement of knowledge as a universal concept. 13 This advice by Rorty and the pragmatist position is hugely problematic. Bacchi argues that Rorty, “offers a morally vacuous doctrine which would inflict immense and irreparable harm upon feminists and their projects. Rorty’s lack of knowledge of, or deliberate misreading of recent feminist theory surfaces in his summation of what pragmatism could do for feminists.” 14 Rorty goes on to argue that women do not have moral identities or staring points from which to make claims because of relativism. However, Catherine MacKinnon and other feminists that Rorty cites are not rebelling against the name of “woman.” They are instead noting that women have suffered; because to claim their personhood they have had to work within a language that is polluted and carries with it characterizations which are no more than that. Her argument is not that women should not claim personhood, just that it is difficult to do so. 15 Rorty claims in the end that women should not claim personhood as a gender or sex, which denies much of what feminists are currently advocating. Additionally, this implicates the language feminists could use. “As already suggested, feminists are more sensitive to the problems of using the ‘master’s language’ than most, but what Rorty does here is to make of this difficulty an 580

insuperable disability. And, leading from this, it becomes a disability which lowers the person’s value. He ignores the fact of resistance and in the process justifies ‘the masters’ rule.” 16 Rorty condemns the use of most language, but fails to give feasible alternatives. The worst atrocity that Rorty commits against the feminist movement in advocating they adopt pragmatism is to suggest that the oppression of women is historically justified. Bacchi, reading and citing Rorty’s article, explains, “Hence, and he spells it out, for ‘pragmatists,’ male oppression in the past was no unjust since ‘women are only now in the process of achieving a moral identity as women.’ Women were, in Rorty’s past, lesser persons and therefore their oppression was understandable. If there was any ‘wrongness’ in past male oppression, says Rorty, we should identify it with ‘its suppression of past potentiality, rather than in its injustice to past actuality.’” 17 This is not only incredibly offensive, but suggests that women who lived in the past had no actuality. But as Bacchi points out, “There is an obvious contradiction here- for how can a person have ‘potential’ if indeed postmodernists are refusing any notion of an essential personhood, which is Rorty’s claim?” 18 Marilyn Frye, a feminist writer, is also misused by Rorty. She does not argue that women do not yet have realized personhood. “She does not mean that men can either make or unmake women but, that through domination of the ‘conceptual community,’ they can define what a person is and hence try to banish women but, that through domination of the ‘conceptual community,’ they can define what a person is and hence try to banish women from it. Rorty, I would suggest, is doing exactly this. The key point at issue here is an understanding of personhood or subjectivity.”19 Rorty denies that women can find personhood when they are oppressed, enforcing a belief that such oppression was somehow justified. Rorty simultaneously condemns the feminist movement by suggesting that they retreat into themselves. He notes that they should, “retreat to separatist communities where they can create their own language and their own identity.” 20 This would hurt the feminist movement by saying that only women can participate and that they must distance themselves from society as a whole. Overall, while Rorty claims women should note they are attempting to escape the traps men have created for them, his position results in, “no grounds for claiming a just portion of that power.”21 Bacchi summarizes: “Rorty…effectively denies women the right to contest male domination. Not only is his position ill-founded, therefore; it would prove to be politically disastrous. The claims that he makes for the benefits ‘pragmatism’ can bring to feminism are a chimera. Rather than empowering feminists, his version of ‘pragmatism’ depoliticizes them. It is not a godsend, but a death wish.” 22 Pragmatism, therefore, can be devastating to feminism, and should be rejected. If it is not, the feminist movement and advances for women will be hurt if not destroyed. PRAGMATISM DEMANDS COMMODIFICATION Pragmatism as a philosophy mandates that individuals look to the practical ends of adopting a certain position or viewpoint. That is, the tangible effects that a decision will have on the individual and the surrounding society should be used to weigh out whether the decision should be made one way or another. In that sense, pragmatism demands commodification in order to make a decision. By commodification, I mean the placing of value in numerical terms so that one object’s worth or value can be compared directly to another’s. Take for example environmental protection. In order to weigh out the importance of environmental protection, pragmatists require that it be assigned a value that can be compared with other concepts. The protection of the environment must be considered in the sense of how such protection will directly affect individuals. However, when we place a price or value on these priorities, we are saying that in certain circumstances violating that priority is acceptable. In other words, commodification creates a sliding scale where there is always a certain price at which destruction becomes acceptable. A pragmatic viewpoint would not allow us to say that it is never acceptable to pollute the environment or to subjugate other races of people besides one’s own. Instead, pragmatism would assign a threshold at which such actions became acceptable, allowing them to be weighed against other competing options.

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The alternative to this adoption of pragmatism is to create a value system where there are certain objects that can never be sacrificed, regardless of the practical effects of that decision. In our example given above, the alternative would be to commit to never degrading the environment and never allowing racism to exist. By setting up such a concrete worldview, one can guarantee that such values are not violated, regardless of the temptations offered by pragmatic consequences. PRAGMATISM UNNECESSARILY DEMANDS ACTION In her book Pragmatism, Hilary Putnam offers a synthesis of many pragmatist writers. “What the pragmatist thinkers I have discussed in these lectures had in common was the conviction that the solution to the problem of ‘loss of the world’ is to be found in action and not in metaphysics (or ‘postmodern’ anti-metaphysics). Peirce and James and Dewey would have said that democratically conducted inquiry is to be trusted; not because it is infallible, but because the way in which we will find out where and how our procedures need to be revised is through the process of inquiry itself.” 23 This is a problem for two reasons. First, action should not always be considered as the paramount solution to problems. This predisposition to action can actually lead to more problems. Oftentimes the best course of action is to wait, taking no action at all. This allows a person time to make a more accurate consideration of the circumstances. Additionally, some problems will take care of themselves if allowed time. For example, if a person is mad at you, sometimes the best thing to do is allow them time to cool down. Attempting to take action right away by talking to them or resolving the issue might only make them angrier. Similarly, rushed action often breeds mistakes. A hasty course of action can lead to possibilities being overlooked, or mistakes leading to more trouble than existed in the beginning. The mindset of action first also starts from a position that assumes action is the only way to resolve problems. It assumes that individuals have the agency to solve problems through action. In reality, oftentimes the actions that are presented to us as choices are limited in scope and controlled by a higher force of authority, for example, the government or state. The second problem with pragmatism that is identified in Putnam’s idea is the trust of democratically conducted inquiry. Democracy is not the panacea that pragmatists think it is. A decision reached democratically leaves out the minorities who voted against the course of action. In that sense, it fosters alienation and frustration. Pragmatically speaking, alienation and frustration can lead to revolt, violence, and more harm. Instead, the best course of action might not involve a democratic decision making calculus, but rather one of consensus. Since pragmatism sees only action as remedy and puts too much faith in democratic procedures, it must be rejected as flawed. PRAGMATISM’S CONCEPTION OF EXPERIENCE HARMS SOCIAL MOVEMENTS In his book The Principles of Pragmatism, Henry H. Bawden details the way that pragmatism views experience as a concept. He says, “Philosophy is the general theory of experience. Its primary task is to explain the meaning of life. To do this, it must begin with our practical activities and attitudes, and use these as a basis for testing all the abstract principles of science and metaphysics. Immediate personal experience- this is the starting-point. We find, to be sure, that a complete knowledge of our own experience ultimately implies a theory of the entire universe. But whatever the outcome, our philosophy must be grounded upon an empirical basis of concrete values and events.” 24 Pragmatists, therefore, believe that lived personal experience is paramount in decision making. First, this emphasis on personal experience hurts social movements. A heterosexual person can never understand the experience of being a queer individual in the world today. However, there should be a place for heterosexuals in the queer rights movement. Maximizing the number of people that can participate increases the chances that the movement will have success in making demands of the government and society as a whole. However, to say that only personal experience can control decisions would deny the expansion of social movements beyond those directly effected. It would imply that a heterosexual (having never experienced homophobia) cannot contribute to a movement designed to end homophobia. 582

Second, this emphasis on personal experience denies individuals opportunities for growth and empathy. A person should be encouraged to lean about other people’s experiences and take them as their own. However, if only directly lived personal experience is valid in a decision making calculus, individuals are encouraged to only consider what happens to them and how it makes them feel. This destroys social connections and encourages the valuing of individualism over the good of the citizenry as a whole. Finally, the quotation from Bawden implies that we can generalize our own lived experiences to what constitutes truth universally. This is dangerous, as it means that we must accept the belief that everyone lives the same experience. That is certainly not true, as we have discussed above. Expanding our own experiences to become universal truth denies our ever learning about what other people experience. It classifies their experiences as illegitimate because we have not lived them. In that sense, it makes individuals less than human by denying the legitimacy of the experiences they have lived, and justifies not taking their opinions into account. PRAGMATISM FOSTERS THE TRANSFER OF POWER OUTSIDE THE SELF The Colombia Encyclopedia says of pragmatism, “Richard Rorty has argued that theories are ultimately justified by their instrumentality, or to the extent to which they enable people to attain their aims.” 25 The problem with this approach is that it gives a necessary advantage to the State and other powerful entities. Such larger bodies of power have a natural ability to use instrumentality because they have more resources at their disposal. However, pragmatism in that sense justifies the philosophy of whoever is more powerful is right. This sort of mentality would allow bodies like governments, militaries, and international organizations to always be empowered. Those types of organizations have more resources because they are larger in number and structure. However, these are often not the best organizations to take action. The government often does not look out for the needs of the people and seeks only to expand their influence. Similarly, the introduction of the military can facilitate violence and resentment, only entrenching a conflict or problem. International organizations are also looking for ways to validate themselves and can neglect the needs of those they intervene on behalf of. Simultaneously, this argument disempowers individual action. It says that because your action may be small, it is not worth taking. Instead, individuals should be encouraged to use all of their agency and abilities to challenge circumstances around them, regardless of how “large” their effect may be overall. An individual, despite not having the most instrumentality, may have the best understanding of a circumstance and a problem. In that sense, their individual action could do more good than a larger and more “effective” State action, as those larger actors do not have knowledge of the problem itself at the same level that individuals do. By saying that individual action must be neglected, problems are only entrenched. For this reason, pragmatism should be rejected. THE QUEST FOR UTOPIA HAS VALUE Pragmatism would have individuals make concessions, to sacrifice the quest for utopia in a practical attempt to achieve smaller goals. However, reaching for the unattainable has value that should not be neglected. Initially, searching for utopia allows individuals to discover what truly is important in their value system. It simultaneously encourages further achievement than would be accrued with pragmatism. Pragmatism, in that sense, encourages giving up early; whereas reaching for utopia, even when it cannot be achieved, carries a person or group further in the direction of perfection than they would have moved otherwise. The struggle to be greater than we are is an essential part of the human experience. It allows us to improve ourselves and forces us to critically examine the world around us. Otherwise, we would merely accept the problems we see around us. Pushing for perfection is setting an impossible goal, but it also makes us stronger people by continuing a push and a drive forward. While we may never reach utopia, as we continue to strive for it we get closer and closer. It is better to continue that drive than to stop in the place we are in and say we cannot go any further. Some people might charge that the reach for utopia is discouraging since it is unattainable. However, the true discouragement is to say that we must accept the present or the practical. Such circumstances are riddled with problems and depression, and only an attempt to move forward can destroy this discouragement to provide optimism and fulfillment. 583

SUMMARY While pragmatists set out with the goal of better solutions to problems through practical action, their philosophical approach is riddled with problems. Initially, the very arguments that pragmatism uses to justify its experience are easily refuted. Pragmatism also leads to relativism that destroys an ability to make decisions. The philosophy is detrimental to the feminist movement, especially in the way it is explained by Richard Rorty. Pragmatism demands commodification and unnecessarily pushes us into action as the only solution to problems. By focusing on personal experience, pragmatism harms social movements and encourages the transfer of power to agents outside of the self. ______________________________ 1 Kennedy, Gail. Pragmatism and American Culture. Boston: D.C. Heath and Company, 1950, pg. 15. 2 The American Heritage Dictionary, www.dictionary.com. 3 The Colombia Encyclopedia, http://education.yahoo.com/reference/encyclopedia. 4 Pratt, James Bissett. What is Pragmatism? New York: The Macmillan Company, 1909, pg. 6-7. 5 Ibid, pg. 19. 6 Schinz, Albert. Anti-Pragmatism. Boston: Small, Maynard, and Company, 1909, pg. 25. 7 Ibid, pg. 25. 8 Ibid, pg. 26. 9 Ibid, pg. 21. 10 Ibid, pg. 37. 11 Ibid, pg. 21-22. 12 Prado, C.G. The Limits of Pragmatism. Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press International, Inc., 1987, pg. 12. 13 Bacchi, Carol. “’Pragmatism’ be damned: Richard Rorty’s death wish for feminism.” Hecate. St Lucia: 1992, Vol. 18, Iss. 2, pg. 97. 14 Ibid, 97. 15 Ibid, 98. 16 Ibid, 98. 17 Ibid, 99. 18 Ibid, 99. 19 Ibid, 99. 20 Ibid, 100. 21 Ibid, 100. 22 Ibid, 100. 23 Putnam, Hilary. Pragmatism. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Inc., 1995, pg. 74-75. 24 Bawden, Henry H. The Principles of Pragmatism. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1910, pg. 51. 25 The Colombia Encyclopedia, http://education.yahoo.com/reference/encyclopedia.

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PRAGMATISM HARMS WOMEN 1. PRAGMATISM IS MORALLY VACOUS FOR WOMYN Bacchi, Carol. “Pragmatism’ be damned: Richard Rorty’s death wish for feminism”. Hecate. St. Lucia: 1992, Volume 18 Issue 2, pg. 98. There are many problems with Rorty’s argument. I will concentrate upon his selective reading of feminist theorizing, his fundamental and disturbing contention about the relative value of persons, and a circularity which leaves feminists nowhere to go politically except back to their consciousness-raising groups. I will argue that he offers a morally vacuous doctrine (and I choose the word carefully) which would inflict immense and irreparable harm upon feminists and their projects. Rorty’s lack of knowledge of, or deliberate misreading of recent feminist theory surfaces in his summation of what pragmatism could do for feminists. 2. PRAGMATISM JUSTIFIES DOMINATION OF WOMYN Bacchi, Carol. “Pragmatism’ be damned: Richard Rorty’s death wish for feminism”. Hecate. St. Lucia: 1992, Volume 18 Issue 2, pg. 99. As already suggested, feminists are more sensitive to the problems of using “the master’s language” than most, but what Rorty does here is to make of this difficulty an insuperable disability. And, leading on from this, it becomes a disability which lowers the person’s value. He ignores the fact of resistance and in the process justifies “the masters” rule. For why should not the person of greater value oversee those of lesser worth? Hence, and he spells it out, for “pragmatists”, male oppression in the past was not unjust since “women are only now in the process of achieving a moral identity as women.” Women were, in Rorty’s past, lesser persons and therefore their oppression was understandable. If there was any ‘wrongness’ in past male oppression says Rorty, we should identify it with “its suppression of past potentiality, rather than in its injustice to past actuality.” 3. PRAGMATISM IS ANTI-WOMEN Bacchi, Carol. “Pragmatism’ be damned: Richard Rorty’s death wish for feminism”. Hecate. St. Lucia: 1992, Volume 18 Issue 2, pg. 101. This is a very odd ending indeed for a prescription which characterizes “social-political movements” as “a vast social hope,” and which alleges that it offers feminists a “few pieces of special-purpose ammunition – for example, some additional replies to charges that their aims are unnatural, their demands irrational, or their aims hyperbolic.” by undermining the claim that women are equal moral persons (without denying the problematic nature of these terms), who can demand to be treated with respect, Rorty has added to the stock of arguments against rather that for feminist projects. Feminists will now be told simply that it is indeed unnatural and irrational to demand that those who have not yet attained moral identity be treated justly. If this line of reasoning could be applied to slaves, why not then to women?

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PRAGMATISM IS INNEFICIENT 1. PRAGMATISM FAILS AT CREATING MEANINGFULL SOCIAL CHANGE Roithmayr, Daria, Associate Professor of Law, University of Illinois College of Law. ““Easy for You to Say": An Essay on Outsiders, the Usefulness of Reason, and Radical Pragmatism”. The University of Miami Law Review. 2003, pg 946947. After arguing that pragmatism is falsely modest because it is too rationalist, Schlag then switches gears to argue (from the formalists' perspective) that pragmatism is insufficiently rationalist. According to Schlag, neopragmatists champion a "neither this nor that" solution, a dialogic oscillation between binary oppositions that takes no position. n19 The raw irony in this procedure is that because the pragmatic moment of modesty is indeed genuinely modest (verging toward emptiness), when it comes time to produce the solution pragmatism can be made to mean or to require just about anything. Not too cold, not too hot, just right - does indeed mean just about anything. n20 Thus, for the formalists, the problem is that pragmatism's "neither/nor-ism" n21 is infinitely protean and anything but objective. Pragmatism can be used to defend multiple and contradictory outcomes, the particulars depending, of course, on which pragmatist you choose to follow. n22 It is important to note that, again when it comes to Radin, Schlag's description is a bit of a mischaracterization. Radin does not argue a "middle way" as some sort of Goldilocks synthesis or hybridization of [*947] both poles of the Derridean binary opposition. Rather, Radin argues that the pragmatist will choose sometimes one pole in the dichotomy, and sometimes the other, and that there is no set of methodological rules to tell the pragmatist in advance which to choose. n23 To the extent that the rationalists are looking for some foundationalist anchor to predict outcomes in advance, pragmatists like Radin would have no problem conceding that there is none to be had. 2. PRAGMATISM FURTHERS OPRESSION Roithmayr, Daria, Associate Professor of Law, University of Illinois College of Law. ““Easy for You to Say": An Essay on Outsiders, the Usefulness of Reason, and Radical Pragmatism”. The University of Miami Law Review. 2003, pg 945. Critical race theory scholars responded that, regardless of any fundamental indeterminacy, rights discourse historically was quite important to people of color in advancing political commitments to inclusion and equality. For example, Kimberle Crenshaw and Patricia Williams argued that communities of color could use rights discourse pragmatically, as the prevailing ideology, to enlist the power of the state on their behalf to advance their political commitments. n4 Williams also argued that rights were important symbols in the political rhetoric of inclusion, and thus were of great historical value for the African-American community. 3. PRAGMATISM FAILS IN BEING RADICAL ENOUGH TO CREATE MEANINGFUL SOCIAL CHANGE Roithmayr, Daria, Associate Professor of Law, University of Illinois College of Law. ““Easy for You to Say": An Essay on Outsiders, the Usefulness of Reason, and Radical Pragmatism”. The University of Miami Law Review. 2003, pg. 948. In addition, radical pragmatism also differs in its focus on the "disempowered community" rather than some more universal concept of community. Building on Radin's call to adopt the perspective of the oppressed, radical pragmatism focuses on the question, "What works for the disempowered community?" This focus is not designed to confront pragmatism's tendency toward conservatism. Rather, working from Radin's conception of pluralist perspectives, radical pragmatism finds it more useful to consider the disempowered community separately from the dominant group in order to focus on differing needs, political commitments, and preferred measures of usefulness. It is important to note, however, that radical pragmatism has limited ambitions. Radical pragmatism is offered not as a universalist, ahistorical prescription, but as a suggestion for what might be useful for disempowered communities in the current political, social, economic, and legal climate. At the moment, it may well be useful for the disempowered community to move away from an exclusive reliance on universalist discourses like reason and truth, toward something both more pragmatic and postmodernist. (At another moment, in another place, it may be less useful.)

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PRAGMATISM FAILS TO ACHIEVE ANYTHING 1. PRAGMATISM IS DISEMPOWERING Roithmayr, Daria, Associate Professor of Law, University of Illinois College of Law. ““Easy for You to Say": An Essay on Outsiders, the Usefulness of Reason, and Radical Pragmatism”. The University of Miami Law Review. 2003, pg. 94946. First, Schlag argues that the neopragmatists suffer from false modesty because they continue to privilege reason and foundationalism even as they purport to do the opposite. n10 According to Schlag, pragmatists like Stephen Toulmin, Margaret Radin, Richard Posner, and Joe Singer all pretend to acknowledge that reason does not constitute an adequate foundation, but then covertly replace reason with some other foundationalist metanarrative. In Schlag 's view, these scholars have merely substituted one foundationalist program for another. [*945] Each author simply exchanges the metanarrative of reason for an alternative metanarrative: adopting the perspective of the oppressed (Radin, along with Elizabeth Spelman and Martha Minow), furthering economic efficiency (Posner), or engaging in cross-historical and cross-cultural comparison (Toulmin). n11 For the moment, I want to focus on Schlag's critique of Margaret Radin and her pragmatic call to adopt the perspective of the oppressed. It is here that Schlag at least partly takes up the relationship between reason and the disempowered outsider. Radin has argued in much of her work that the pragmatist should seriously consider the perspective of the oppressed when engaged in pragmatic policymaking. n12 In Radin's view, the call to consider the oppressed confronts the complacent tendency inherent in pragmatism and guards against bad coherence. Radin argues that because pragmatism adopts a coherence view of truth, rather than one centered on correspondence to external reality, pragmatism runs the risk of conservatism and bad coherence. For example, Radin points out that although a system like slavery or sexism might cohere within itself from the viewpoint of the dominant group, it nevertheless might be incoherent or produce suffering when viewed from the perspective of the community's more marginalized members. n13 Radin asks pragmatist decision makers to consider the perspective of the oppressed in order to counter the possibility of bad coherence. For Radin, considering the perspective of the oppressed makes possible the pluralist understanding that there is not one "we," but many. Moreover, "one 'we' can have very different conceptions of the world, selves, communities, than another." n14 In her view, by taking seriously the perspective of the oppressed, the dominant group can come to understand that its perspective is not the only possible point of view. Thus, considering the perspective of the oppressed is a pragmatic corrective, designed to confront pragmatism's conservative tendency and to move it in the direction of progressive social change. n15 Schlag argues that, like the call to consider efficiency or cross-cultural comparison, Radin's argument to consider the perspective of the [*946] oppressed is just as foundationalist a metanarrative as reason, and as such is equally problematic. n16 In Schlag's opinion, Radin's approach is "dogmatic" and "threatens to obliterate the perspectivalism, the relativism, the contextualism, that made pragmatism seem so modest in the first place." 2. PRAGMATISM PREVENTS THE EMANCIPATORY USE OF REASON Steir, Mark. “Making Historicism Safe for Democracy or The Best Offense is a Good Defense: A Critique of Rorty's Philosophy and Politics.” http://www.stier.net/writing/historicism/w2wfrm.htm. Last accessed May 27th, 2004. NP. Second, Rorty is accused of holding that the world is wholly constituted by how we think of it, or the vocabularies we use to describe it. The first charge suggests that Rorty denies that the world exists independently of the mental. This second one holds that Rorty denies the objectivity of the world. These critics argue that Rorty denies that the nature of things in the world are what they are regardless of our beliefs, theories or vocabularies.[5] From the point of view of these critics, Rorty must argue that, in developing our theories, we make things in the world rather than finding out the nature of what already exists. This claims seems to undermine the central task of reason. For philosophers from Plato to the present have thought that the aim of reason is precisely to distinguish between appearance and reality, between what is objectively there and what we subjectively believe or project. To his critics, Rorty eliminates the sole criterion by which to evaluate our use of reason and the sole constraint on the development of our theories.

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TRADITIONAL PHILOSOPHICAL QUESTIONS HAVE VALUE 1. PRAGMATISM DESTROY’S THE QUEST FOR UTOPIA AND IDEALISM Steir, Mark. “Making Historicism Safe for Democracy or The Best Offense is a Good Defense: A Critique of Rorty's Philosophy and Politics.” http://www.stier.net/writing/historicism/w2wfrm.htm. Last accessed May 27th, 2004. NP. The heart of Rorty's philosophy is, in essence, negative. He has taken up cudgels against two mainstays of the philosophical tradition, metaphysical realism and foundationalism. Rorty's main line of attack in Contingency, irony, and solidarity is against metaphysical realism and the correspondence theory of truth. The central idea of metaphysical realism is that there is a way the world is in itself. The correspondence theory of truth holds that what makes our statements about the world true is their corresponding to how the world is in itself. A usual adjunct to metaphysical realism is the notion that there is only one way the world is in itself. The presumption of metaphysical realists amounts to the idea that nature has a preferred way of being described. There is one language or-as Rorty puts it-one vocabulary that really gets at how things are.[3] The central metaphor of this conception, then, is that truth is found out there in the world. Rorty does not present a direct attack against this conception. Rather, his initial claim is that no one has ever been able to make it work. As natural as the notion of correspondence might be, on reflection, there is something problematic about the notion of the way the world is in itself.[4] How, in the absence of Platonic ideas or the Judeo-Christian God, can the world have a preferred way of being described? If we separate language (or, in other versions, the mind) from the world in itself, we seem to create an unbridgeable gap. How can the world as it is in itself determine our conception of it? Some great philosopher might have been able to bridge this gap. But so far, the problem is unsolved. And, on Rorty's view, the time has come to simply set it aside. For the hope to find the one right way to talk has come to seem a useless, indeed, constraining view, one which no longer helps us attain what we want. Perhaps it did in the past, as a weapon of the enlightenment against the Church or of the romantics against the enlightenment. But now this weapon can be discarded. Against this old conception, Rorty embraces a new one which he learned from Dewey, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein. He says that, in his favorite phrase, we should simply "give up" the whole notion of the world as it is in itself and truth as correspondence to the world. Rorty says that we should think of language as an assemblage of tools used to attain our various purposeswhich includes defining these purposes. No one set of tools is more fundamental than the others. In using these tools we make claims about how the world is. But these are not statements about how the world is in itself. Rather, how we interact with the world and what we take to be in the world is determined by the languages we choose to use. And the languages we use are those which help us attain the goals we have set for ourselves. Rorty's setting aside of the metaphysical realism has been subject to two criticisms. The first claims that Rorty is some kind of idealist. This is a common complaint against philosophers who take a position such as Rorty's, but it is not terribly plausible. To support this charge, critics would have to take Rorty to be saying that the world is essentially mental in nature. But in rejecting the notion of the world is in itself, Rorty rules out any philosophical claim that the world is essentially mind, material or, anything else. While we cannot say how the world is in itself, we can say how the world is in the various vocabularies with which we talk about the myriad things around us. And no vocabulary we use today could plausibly lead us to conclude that rocks, tables, skyscrapers and airplanes are essentially mental or spiritual in nature. The point here is not that we have any philosophical reason to rule idealism out. But from within the concrete vocabularies with which we cope with things in the world now, idealism is preposterous. And we know no place to stand outside or above all of these vocabularies

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Praxis Good WE NEED PRAXIS TO OVERCOME OPPRESSION 1. IDEALISM WONT STOP OPPRESSION, WE NEED PRAXIS AND ACTION Paolo Friere, Brazilian educator and philosopher, PEDAGOGY OF THE OPPRESSED, 1970, page 34. This solution cannot be achieved in idealistic terms. In order for the oppressed to be able to wage the struggle for their liberation, they must perceive the reality of oppression not as a closed world from which there is no exit, but as a limiting situation which they can transform. This perception is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for liberation; it must become the motivating force for liberating action. Nor does the discovery by the oppressed that they exist in dialectical relationship to the oppressor, as his antithesis--that without them the oppressor could not exist--in itself constitute liberation. The oppressed can overcome the contradiction in which they are caught only when this perception enlists them in the struggle to free themselves. 2. LIBERATION WILL ONLY COME THROUGH PRAXIS Paolo Friere, Brazilian educator and philosopher, PEDAGOGY OF THE OPPRESSED, 1970, page 36. Reality which becomes oppressive results in the contradistinction of men as oppressors and oppressed. The latter , whose task it is to struggle for the liberation together with those who show true solidarity, must acquire a critical awareness of oppression through the praxis of this struggle. One of the gravest obstacles to the achievement of liberation is that oppressive reality absorbs those within it and thereby acts to submerge men’s consciousness. Functionally, oppression is domesticating. To no longer be prey to its force, one must emerge from it and turn upon it. This can be done only by means of the praxis: reflection and action upon the world in order to transform it. 3. WE NEED PRAXIS OR ALL POSSIBILITY OF POSITIVE CHANGE IS LOST Helen Forsey, Member of the Federation of Egalitarian Communities, HOME, 1990, page 83. And we ask: How can we make the most of these efforts to create a new reality out of our best visions? What pitfalls do we need to look out for and avoid, so as not to fall back into our oppressive patterns? How can we build, from our small scattering of communities, a network of growing strength that can truly help to bring about the enormous cumulative changes that the world so desperately needs? A fundamental part of the answer is that we need to be ready and able to draw on both our experience and our understanding, and allow the theory and the practice to nourish and deepen each other. Unless we can become aware of the meanings of our experience and reinterpret those meanings in our actions, we risk losing the valuable lessons we can learn from the experience... 4. NO PEDAGOGY CAN LIBERATE THE OP?RESSED WITHOUT PRAXIS Paolo Friere, Brazilian educator and philosopher, PEDAGOGY OF THE OPPRESSED, 1970, page 39. In any event, no reality transforms itself, and the duty which Lukacs ascribes to the revolutionary party of “explaining to the masses their own action” coincides with our affirmation of the need for the critical intervention of the people in reality through the praxis. The pedagogy of the oppressed, which is the pedagogy of men engaged in a fight for their own liberation, has its roots here. And those who recognize, or begin to recognize, themselves as oppressed must be among the developers of this pedagogy. No pedagogy which is truly liberating can remain distant from the oppressed by treating them as unfortunates and by presenting for their emulation models from among the oppressors. The oppressed must be their own example in the struggle for their redemption. 5. WE NEED A “THEORY OF ACTION”--PRAXIS--TO LIBERATE THE OPPRESSED Paolo Friere, Brazilian educator and philosopher, PEDAGOGY OF THE OPPRESSED, 1970, page 185-6. This work deals with a very obvious truth: just as the oppressor, in order to oppress, needs a theory of oppressive action, so the oppressed, in order to become free, also need a theory of action. The oppressor elaborates his theory of action without the people, for he stands against them. Nor can the people--as long as they are crushed and oppressed, internalizing the image of the oppressor--construct by themselves the theory of their liberating action. Only in the encounter of the people with the revolutionary leaders--in their communion, in their praxis--can this theory be built.

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VALUES WITHOUT FRAMEWORK FOR ACHIEVING THEM ARE USELESS 1. TO AFFIRM A VALUE LIKE FREEDOM AND DO NOTHING TO ACHIEVE IT IS USELESS Paolo Friere, Brazilian educator and philosopher, PEDAGOGY OF THE OPPRESSED, 1970, page 34-5. Solidarity requires that one enter into the situation of those with whom one is in solitary; it is a radical posture. If what characterizes the oppressed is their subordination to the consciousness of the master, as Hegel affirms, true solidarity with the oppressed means fighting at their side to transform the objective reality which has made them these “beings for another.” The oppressor is solidary with the oppressed only when he stops regarding the oppressed as an abstract category and sees them as persons who have been unjustly dealt with, deprived of their voice, cheated in the sale of their labor--when he stops making pious, sentimental, and individualistic gestures and risks an act of love. True solidarity is found only in this act of love, in its existentiality, it its praxis. To affirm that men are persons, and as persons should be free, and yet to do nothing tangible to make this affirmation a reality, this is a farce. 2. PURE CRITIQUE FAILS John Dryzek, author, DISCURSIVE DEMOCRACY: THE POLITICS OF POLICY AND POLITICAL SCIENCE, 1990, page 31. Pure and indirect critique can of course be forces of change. But critique that intimates no feasible alternative fails in its practical task. For defenders of the status quo, warts and all, can argue that really “there is no alternative” to use of Margaret Thatcher’s favorite expressions. And if there is no alternative, then ultimately there is no critique. 3. ENTIRE GOAL OF CRITIQUE SHOULD ULTIMATELY BE PRAXIS Paolo Friere, Brazilian educator and philosopher, PEDAGOGY OF THE OPPRESSED, 1970, page 174. To divide the oppressed, an ideology of oppression is indispensable. In contrast, achieving their unity requires a form of cultural action through which they come to know the why and how of their adhesion to reality--it requires de-ideologizing. Hence, the effort to unify the oppressed does not call for mere ideological “sloganizing.” The latter, by distorting the authentic relation between the subjective and objective reality, also separates the cognitive, the affective, and the active aspects of the total, indivisible personality. The object of dialogical-libertarian action is not to “dislodge” the oppressed from a mythological reality in order to “bind” them to another reality. On the contrary, the object of dialogical action is to make it possible for the oppressed, by perceiving their adhesion, to opt to transform an unjust reality. 4. NEED PRAXIS IN ADDITION TO THEORY FOR SOCIAL CHANGE Jeff Muray and Julie Ozanne, authors and researchers, JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH, September, 1991, Pg. 129. Critical theory holds that, because scientific theorizing is inseparable from political action, the researcher should take into account who benefits from the research. Research should be emancipatory, designed not only to reveal empirical and interpretive understanding but also to free social actors who are constrained. Researchers should move beyond mere observation of subjects or reveal constraints, thereby motivating informants to engage in conscious political action (praxis) . Simply put, the purpose of critical research is to make life better for the social actor. Thus, the relationship between the critical theorist and the social actor is one that is based on a continuing dialogue or critical discourse. Metaphorically, the critical theorist is a “liberator” seeking through dialogue to make social actors aware of oppressive structures, a first step on the road to social change.

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Praxis Bad PRAXIS HURTS HUMAN CULTURE AND SPIRITUAL LIBERATION 1. PRAXIS HOLDS A FLAWED VIEW OF CULTURE AND LEAVES OUT IMPORTANT FACTS Andrew Brink, South African writer, Professor of Modern Literature at Rhodes University, UNESCO COURIER, November 1992, page 44. In this respect a culture of struggle against oppression brought a valuable corrective, since it activated, not individual artists only, but the masses, the whole of an oppressed people. This grassroots culture has opened, for all societies closed until very recently, new vistas of invaluable opportunities. Yet this culture, too, can be demonstrated to harbour seeds of destruction: directed, through the exigencies of oppression, only towards a struggle for political liberation, the field of focus of such a culture threatens to become extremely narrow and immediate. What is not expedient, what cannot be sloganized or digested immediately, what does not offer itself as a praxis’ as “a weapon for liberation”, is all too easily discounted or discarded. The problem of this vision of culture, and of the role of the intellectual creator in it, does not lie in the fact that it summons culture to fulfill a political function, but that it conceives of culture only in function of its political usefulness. 2. PRAXIS DENIES HUMANITY, HURTS QUEST FOR SPIRITUAL FREEDOM & DEMOCRACY Andrew Brink, South African writer, Professor of Modern Literature at Rhodes University, UNESCO COURIER, November 1992, page 44. A well-known anecdote told by the Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca illuminates the problem. A rich farmer and a peasant are walking along a river bank on a particularly beautiful morning. Moved by the scenery, the rich man stops to exclaim, “Isn’t it beautiful? Look at those trees ... the clouds ... the reflections!” But the peasant can only clutch his stomach, groaning, “I am hungry, I am hungry, I am hungry!” This has often been interpreted to suggest that aesthetics are obscene; that our needs are first of all material. But such an interpretation is an insult to our humanity. The poor and the oppressed do indeed require food, and shelter, and comfort. But to suggest that beauty or excellence are attainable only at the expense of what are alleged to be more “basic” needs is a denial of what makes us human. The needs of the mind are as essential as those of the body. It is not enough that we live; we also need to ask questions about living: we need to pursue, incessantly, the endless possibilities of meaning in life. And this defines culture as a key dimension of any society’s movement towards a fuller experience of freedom and democracy. 3. MUST SHIFT FROM “VICTIM-OPPRESSOR” MENTALITY OF PRAXIS Andrew Brink, South African writer, Professor of Modern literature at Rhodes University, UNESCO COURIER, November 1992, page 44. Whether the individual creator wills it or not, whatever he or she does, or neglects to do, in a society still groping towards democracy, is allied to one of the two great social dimensions involved in the process: that of the erstwhile power establishment, the haves, the oppressors; or that of the erstwhile victims, the havenots, the oppressed. The moral choice is obvious. Yet there is no point in simply promoting or advancing a cause, however worthy it may be in itself. And before we can accede to a fuller awareness of the truly democratic, we need to be liberated as much from the mentality of “victim” as from that of “oppressor”. This is why our composite insect acquires such vital importance. 4. UNLESS WE SHIFT ALLEGIANCE FROM PRAXIS, BEAUTY WILL HAVE NO RELEVANCE Andrew Brink, South African writer, Professor of Modern Literature at Rhodes University, UNESCO COURIER, November 1992, page 44. In order to keep alive this faith in something beautiful, something meaningful, in a sordid world; in order constantly to shock the world out of complacency; in order to prod the human mind into that kind of awareness which never takes yes for an answer, the first allegiance of the creator-intellectual-artist is to his or her conscience, not to a party or a group, not even to a cause, not even to “the people”. But--and this is the crux of the matter--unless that conscience is forged in action and in communion with others, with “the people”, and unless the most private of its discoveries is informed by the acknowledgment of a total involvement in the history--the past, the present, the future--of its society, it has no weight and no relevance.

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CRITICAL ANALYSIS KEY TO ANY FUTURE CHANGE 1. ARTICULATION OF PHILOSOPHICAL THEORIES IS NECESSARY FOR CHANGE Arne Naess, philosopher, ECOLOGY, COMMUNITY, & LIFESTYLE, 1989, page 164. In this chapter a basic positive attitude to nature is articulated in philosophical form. It is not done to win compliance, but to offer some of the many who are at home in such a philosophy new opportunities to express it in words. This is necessary so that society and politics will give consideration to the kind of lifestyle which is a natural consequence of such a philosophy. 2. CRITICAL ANALYSIS ESSENTIAL TO TRANSFORMATION TO LIVABLE FUTURE Brian Tokar, ecological activist and writer, THE GREEN ALTERNATIVE: CREATING AN ECOLOGICAL FUTURE, Revised Edition, 1992, page 25-6. To create a livable future, some deeply held assumptions may have to be questioned: the rights of land ownership, the permanence of institutions, the meaning of progress, the traditional patterns of authority within our society. It will be necessary to explore the real meaning of our traditional values of freedom, equality, democracy, and selfreliance. This search will help to reveal ways to begin reshaping our communities and our lives to reflect the kind of world in which people can truly flourish, in celebration of the wonders of nature and the love and sharing of our fellow humans. THEORETICAL CRITICISM IS NECESSARY FOR THE RIGHT MINDSET 1. THEORY ARTICULATION NECESSARY EVEN FOR FORMULATING THE RIGHT QUESTIONS Arne Naess, philosopher, ECOLOGY, COMMUNITY, & LIFESTYLE, 1989, page 77. Ecological deliberation takes place in the widest possible scope for thought. Therefore attempts at articulation result in the emergence of a philosophical system. Even assuming the least possible dogmatic attitude, say, simply posing questions, one builds on hypotheses and norms. Otherwise we could not formulate specific questions at all. 2. CRITIQUE IS KEY TO ANY MINDSET CHANGE Ynestra King, Author, REWEAVING THE WORLD, 1990, page 109. A critical analysis of and opposition to the uniformity of technological, industrial culture--capitalist and socialist--is crucial to feminism, ecology, and the struggles of indigenous peoples. At this point in history, there is no way to unravel the matrix of oppressions within human society without at the same time liberating nature and reconciling that part of nature that is human with that part that is not. 3. LOOKING AT THE PROBLEMS AND STUDYING THEM IS THE FIRST STEP Hal Zina Bennett, PhD, author and editor of over 20 books, VOICES ON THE THRESHOLD OF TOMORROW, Edited by Georg and Linda Feurstein, 1993, page 311. Clearly, out greatest crises--the environment, war waged over centuries-old grudges, famines, AIDS, the spreading of worldwide epidemics, living with great stockpiles of dangerous chemicals and nuclear wastes, et cetera, et cetera-are the ones we ourselves have made. To look unflinchingly upon these and own them unequivocally, as proof of our power, is the first step toward a solution; to deny them is to deny our own power and submit to our own selfdestruction.

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Privacy Good RIGHT TO PRIVACY IS COVERED BY LAW 1. RIGHT TO PRIVACY IS PART OF COMMON LAW OF STATES John P. Ellwood, NQA, THE YALE LAW JOURNAL, December 1992, p. 751. “There’s no such thing as privacy rights.... [sic] That’s just something the Supreme Court said. It’s nowhere in the Constitution.” These are not the words of Robert Bork, although they could be. The quoted speaker is instead gay activist Michelangelo Signorile. Signorile is right on one count: privacy rights appear nowhere in the text of the constitution. But he is wrong on another count: there is such a thing as a right to privacy, which is alive (if certainly not well) in the common law of the states. 2. RIGHT TO BE LEFT ALONE IS INCLUDED IN U.S. CONSTITUTION Grant Mindle, Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of North Texas, JOURNAL OF POLITICS, August 1989, p. 578. The makers of our Constitution undertook to secure conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness. They recognized the significance of man’s spiritual nature, of his feelings and of his intellect. They knew that only a part of the pain, pleasure and satisfaction of life is to be found in material things. They sought to protect Americans in their beliefs, their thoughts, their emotions and the sensations. They conferred, as against the government, the right to be let alone—the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men. (quoting Supreme Court Justice Brandeis in dissenting opinion of Olmstead vs. U.S., 19280.) 3. RIGHT TO PRIVACY HAS BEEN PROTECTED BY GOVERNMENTS AND COURTS John P. Ellwood, NQA, THE YALE LAW JOURNAL, December 1992 State and federal legislatures, recognizing the importance of informational privacy, have enacted a multitude of provisions that forbid the disclosure of private information by the government. Congress has recognized a fundamental constitutional right to informational privacy. Courts have zealously protected private information from government disclosures, holding official action to implicate constitutional values. ORIGINAL DOCTRINE OF RIGHT TO PRIVACY IS STILL RELEVANT 1. ORIGINAL DOCTRINE OF RIGHT TO PRIVACY IS TIMELESS Randall P. Benzanson, Dean and Professor of Law at Washington and Lee University School of Law, CALIFORNIA LAW REVIEW, October 1992, p.1 134. The Right to Privacy was a product of its time. Yet while using the definitional framework of the late nineteenth century, the article expressed an age-old and still enduring concept of privacy. The continuing impact of the Warren and Brandeis article is testament to the timeless quality of the idea of privacy, an idea reflecting much more than a plea for freedom from tasteless gossip and the salacious prying eye of the press. The ingenious manner in which its authors drew on threads of past jurisprudence, constructing a legal concept of personality out of property doctrine, tort law, copyright law, and damage principles, reinforced the article’s timelessness. 2. ORIGINAL DOCTRINE OF RIGHT TO PRIVACY WAS POWERFUL Randall P. Benzanson, Dean and Professor of Law at Washington and Lee University School of Law, CALIFORNIA LAW REVIEW, October 1992, p. 1172. The idea of privacy expressed by Warren and Brandeis is a powerful one. Its persistence is a testament to its importance and vitality. It represents a manifestation of deeply held convictions about the relationship between the individual and organized society, and about the responsibilities owed by a society through private as well as governmental institutions to the individual. VIOLATION OF PRIVACY RIGHTS THREATENS FREEDOM 1. DISCLOSURE OF PERSONAL INFORMATION THREATENS FREEDOM Randall P. Benzanson, Dean and Professor of Law at Washington and Lee University School of Law, CALIFORNIA LAW REVIEW, October 1992, p. 1146. Today the source of individual identity tends to rest most prominently with the individual and with new and varied types of

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associations chosen by the individual, not with the family or the community. As a result, disclosures at a local and decentralized level are of greater significance to privacy interests. They threaten freedom, but also, and more importantly, they threaten the function of control now lodged in groups selected by the individual rather than imposed by (or generally accepted by) society. In short, disclosures threaten because, in their monolithic quality, they do not reflect today’s idiosyncratic pattern of personal associations.

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FIRST AMENDMENT SHOULD NOT ALWAYS SUPERSEDE PRIVACY RIGHTS 1. FIRST AMENDMENT INTERESTS SHOULD NOT ALWAYS SUPERSEDE PRIVACY John P. Ellwood, NQA, THE YALE LAW JOURNAL, December 1992, p. 776. Current law favors First Amendment interests to the virtual exclusion of privacy rights, treating celebrities as public figures even for purposes of their sexuality. This balance of constitutional and common law rights is erroneous. Because it need never be manifested publicly, sexual preference is not inherently newsworthy. The disclosure of a person’s sexual preference is therefore lesser First Amendment value unless it is relevant to a “matter of public concern.” 2. FIRST AMENDMENT CLAIMS SHOULD BE WEIGHED AGAINST PRIVACY RIGHTS John P. Ellwood, NQA, THE YALE LAW JOURNAL, December 1992, p. 776. When activists out a prominent figure to provide a positive example of homosexuals—so-called “role model” outing—information about his sexuality is relevant only to the general, sociological issue of the role of gays in society. In such cases, the privacy interest is at its apex while the interest in disclosure is at its nadir. The compelling state interests advanced by privacy rights should therefore prevail. 3. NOT ALL SPEECH IS OF EQUAL FIRST AMENDMENT VALUE John P. Ellwood, NQA, THE YALE LAW JOURNAL, December 1992, p. 775. The outing controversy involves a direct clash between competing values—the First Amendment and the common law right of privacy. When full First Amendment protection is implicated, it dominates the hierarchy of rights, and outing speech must be protected at the expense of privacy rights. However, not all speech is of equal First Amendment value. INDIVIDUALS SHOULD CONTROL THEIR OWN RIGHTS TO PRIVACY 1. PROTECTION OF PRIVACY MUST BE IN THE CONTROL OF THE AFFECTED PERSON Randall P. Benzanson, Dean and Professor of Law at Washington and Lee University School of Law, CALIFORNIA LAW REVIEW, October 1992, p. 1150. In a complex society in which local communities are numerous, diverse, and specialized rather than few and monolithic, privacy cannot be protected by generalized distinctions between family and neighbors or between oral and written expression, as Warren and Brandeis proposed. If we are to protect privacy as it is manifested in today’s social environment, the legal system’s policies must be crafted on the fabric of more idiosyncratic patterns of behavior, on which embellishments of justification, waiver, public interest, and the like can be placed. They must be grounded in the individual’s [sic] choices, and placed substantially in the individual’s [sic] hands. 2. FOCUS OF PRIVACY RIGHTS SHOULD BE ON INDIVIDUAL CONTROL Randall P. Benzanson, Dean and Professor of Law at Washington and Lee University School of Law, CALIFORNIA LAW REVIEW, October 1992, p. 1150. My suggestion that we focus privacy on individual control and embed it in the idea of confidentiality is based primarily on the social dimension of privacy—the aspect of privacy that serves to foster the development of individual personality in intimate associations through excluding disclosures in other settings. But it also reflects the changes that have occurred in the other dimensions of privacy—freedom from exposures to others. 3. ISSUE OF PRIVACY RIGHTS SHOULD BE FROM INDIVIDUAL’S PERSPECTIVE Randall P. Benzanson, Dean and Professor of Law at Washington and Lee University School of Law, CALIFORNIA LAW REVIEW, October 1992, p. 1151. In proposing to shift the protection of privacy toward individual control over information, I do not mean that individuals should be given unilateral legal authority to control all disclosure of personal information, even if the types of information considered private are narrowly defined. Rather, I am suggesting that we change the basic premise of the law’s approach, that we look at privacy from the bottom up rather than the top down, from the perspective of the individual choice rather than from publisher judgment. We should look to the individual—his or her conduct, preferences, and voluntary disclosures. 595

Privacy Bad RIGHT TO PRIVACY CAN SUPERSEDE FIRST AMENDMENT CLAIMS 1. SEXUAL ORIENTATION IS PROTECTED BY RIGHT TO PRIVACY John P. Ellwood, NQA, THE YALE LAW JOURNAL, December 1992, p. 771. If there is a zone of privacy around the intimate details of even famous individuals’ lives, as the Supreme Court consistently has suggested in dicta, sexual orientation, as the most private of facts, must fall within that zone. Sexual orientation is distinct from conduct. Whatever the “cause” of sexual preference, sexuality inheres in the psyche, and need never be manifested in a way that is visible to me public eye. Perhaps for these, reasons, one federal court held disclosure of one’s own sexual preference was not a matter of public concern for First Amendment purposes within the context of employment. PRIVACY UNDERMINES INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM 1. PRIVACY UNDERMINES INDIVIDUAL AUTONOMY AND FREEDOM Morton Kaplan, Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago, WORLD & I, September 1990, p. 511. The “right to be left alone,” however, is counterproductive as a generalized doctrine, a fault that can be attributed to its abstract treatment of freedom of choice. It fails to come to terms with the complex interrelationships between self and society that make the concept of individual choice meaningful. Hence, rather than supporting, it undermines, and in extremes, would dissolve, that individual autonomy and human freedom it attempts to serve. 2. RIGHT OF PRIVACY DAMAGES CITIZENSHIP Grant Mindle, Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of North Texas, JOURNAL OF POLITICS, August 1989, p. 578. The nature of the political community which, however respectful of private rights and private pursuits it may be, is fundamentally a collection of citizens, and not a conglomeration of private individuals. To have recognized a general right to privacy, a right to be let alone unattached to a more specific natural or legal right, would have damaged that sense of citizenship or civic spirit indispensable to the integrity and welfare of the political community. 3. PRIVACY THREATENS INDIVIDUALITY AND FREEDOM Morton Kaplan, Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago, WORLD & I, September 1990, p. 512. The formula “the right to be left alone” contains a greater threat to individuality and freedom to choose than fascism or communism ever posed. If carried to term, it would threaten the dissolution of the organized self, it would do so without providing a big brother against whom we could build internalized defenses of the kind that are breaking out into manifest activity in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.

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PRIVACY DAMAGES SOCIETY 1. CURRENT ANTISOCIAL BEHAVIOR IS CAUSED BY PRIVACY RIGHTS Morton Kaplan, Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago, WORLD & I, September 1990, p. 518. It is highly likely that many of the asocial and antisocial activities of the current period—including drugs and widespread dishonesty—are caused in part by the philosophy that underlies the concept of a generalized right of privacy. And when standards erode to this point, the very conception of the absence, or even the capability to conceive of, direct harm to others will be seriously diminished. 2. PRIVACY THREATENS STATE SURVIVAL David Clark Esseks, NQA, MICHIGAN LAW REVIEW, May 1989, p. 1627. Hixson is concerned that a society where individuals are “afraid of being manipulated and worr[ied] about their personal privacy” (p. 131) will give too much legal and moral protection to privacy, at the expense of the civic responsibility and public commitment necessary to maintain our interdependent world. “If the state is to survive, the individual must be more public than private” (p. 93). 3. RIGHT TO PRIVACY IN THE EXTREME CAN DESTROY COMMUNITY Gary Marx, Professor of Sociology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, WORLD AND I, September 1990, p. 532. Unlimited privacy is hardly an unlimited good. It can shield irresponsible behavior—protecting child and spouse abusers, unsafe drivers, and money laundress. Taken too far, it destroys community. RIGHT TO PRIVACY SHOULD NOT INFRINGE ON OTHER RIGHTS 1. RIGHT TO PRIVACY SHOULD NOT INFRINGE ON FIRST AMENDMENT GUARANTEES Gary Marx, Professor of Sociology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, WORLD AND I, September 1990, p. 532. Noting the social functions of privacy certainly is not to deny that privacy taken to an extreme can be harmful. Nor should the right to privacy infringe on other important values, such as the public’s right to know and the First Amendment guarantees. 2. PRIVACY IS NOT AS IMPORTANT AS OTHER RIGHTS Russell Hiltinger, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Fordham University, WORLD AND I, September 1990, p. 489. Being left along no doubt has a place in the mythic structure of American individualism, but it is not self-evident that civilized men value privacy as an architectonic liberty of the same order as the right of free speech, freedom of religion, and the rights of due process and equal protection under the law. 3. PRIVACY IS INCONSISTENT WITH LIBERTY Grant Mindle, Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of North Texas, JOURNAL OF POLITICS, August 1989, p. 579. But before proceeding down this path, it may be useful to pause and ask ourselves why the Framers had nothing to say about “the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men.” Perhaps their failure to articulate a right to privacy was not a mere oversight, but a sign of its inconsistency with their understanding of the nature of civil and religious liberty. PRIVACY ALIENATES PEOPLE FROM EACH OTHER 1. PRIVACY IN THE EXTREME RESULTS IN ISOLATION David Clark Esseks, NQA, MICHIGAN LAW REVIEW, May 1989, p. 1627. Drawing on Hannah Arendt’ s work in philosophy, Hixson answers that privacy, taken to an extreme, leads to the isolation of individuals. And in modem society, which “functions largely on the interdependence of individuals” (p. 132), a real life is impossible without the “presence of others.” 2. ISOLATION PRODUCED FROM PRIVACY FOSTERS ALIENATION David Clark Esseks, NQA, MICHIGAN LAW REVIEW, May 1989, p. 1627. Our modem society, by encouraging competitiveness among otherwise egalitarian individuals, the 597

privatizing of persons, actually creates a high degree of competitive indifference that works against common progress. When such a society promotes isolation, it fosters alienation among its people.

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Progress Good PROGRESS IS A GOOD VALUE 1. PROGRESS IS THE PARAMOUNT VALUE WHICH GIVES ALL OTHER VALUES MEANING Robert A. Nisbet, University of California at Riverside, HISTORY OF THE IDEA OF PROGRESS, 1980, pp. 4-5. No single idea has been more important than, perhaps as important as, the idea of progress in Western civilization for nearly three thousand years. Other ideas will come to mind, properly: liberty, justice, equality, community, and so forth. I do not derogate from one of them. But this must be stressed: throughout most of Western history, the substratum of even these ideas has been a philosophy of history that lends past, present, and future to their importance. Nothing gives greater importance or credibility to a moral or political value than belief that it is more than something cherished or to be cherished; that it is an essential element of historical movement from past through present to future. Such a value can then be transposed from the merely desirable to the historically necessary. Simply stated, the idea of progress holds that mankind has advanced in the past - from some aboriginal condition of primitiveness, barbarism, or even nullity - is now advancing, and will continue to advance through the foreseeable future. 2. PROGRESS IS AN ETHICAL IMPERATIVE Raymond Duncan Gastil, PROGRESS: CRITICAL THINKING ABOUT HISTORICAL CHANGE, 1993, p. 16. Leaving aside the paradoxical implication of this affirmation of his dedication to scientific relativism, Bury accepts progress as the guiding concept of his age because it fits his understanding of reality. He also accepts progress because he sees it as an ethical imperative that people should believe in a concept that stretches ethical responsibility over time and space in a way that transcends immediate personal interest. Only in a “world of becoming” is it possible for people in each generation to be grateful to their ancestors for having laid the basis for a better life than the ancestors could have experienced, and to feel through this gratitude responsibility to generations still to come to provide them with a basis for a better life than is possible in the present. 3. PROGRESS HAS HISTORICALLY BEEN CONSIDERED A CRITICAL VALUE Waiter Tniett Anderson, fellow of the Berkeley-based Meridian Institute, STAR TRIBUNE, January 11, 1994, p. ba. This is a remarkable state of affairs when you consider how important the belief in progress has been in America’s history. Until recently it was the dominant and unifying force in the political life of Western civilization, a true secular faith. The religion of progress dates from the mid-eighteenth century when European intellectuals, their minds on fire with new ideas, began to proclaim the inevitable march of human betterment. The young French philosopher Turgot, generally considered the founding father of the doctrine, gave a public lecture at the Sorbonne declaring that humankind “advances ever, though slowly, towards greater perfection.” His ideas had an electrifying impact, inspiring many others including Thomas Jefferson, and took on a new dimension after Darwin’s “Origin of Species” showed progress as a driving force in all organic life. the belief in progress was so fervently embraced that the only real controversy it provoked was about which form of progress people should subscribe to. Religious progressives believed things were getting better because God personally guided the course of history. Secular progressives said it was mainly due to human ingenuity and the application of rational thought. Statist progressives believed governments should take an active part in leading the march of progress. Laissez-faire progressives thought governments ought to get out of the way and let individual enterprise work its magic for the betterment of all.

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PROGRESS IS NOT ENVIRONMENTALLY INSENSITIVE 1. IT IS POSSIBLE TO CONCEIVE OF PROGRESS IN AN ENVIRONMENTALLY SENSITIVE WAY Jeremy Rifkin and Carol Grunewaid Rifkin, authors and environmental activists, VOTING GREEN, 1992, p. 30. By contrast, the Green concept of progress is based on the assumption of economic sustainability rather than unlimited growth and consumption. Progress, in the world of Green politics, is defined as new scientific, technological, and economic initiatives that enhance the well-being of the community, conserve the resources, steward the environment, and protect the interests of future generations of human beings and other species. 2. PROGRESS NOW ADDRESSES THE ENVIRONMENT AND OTHER VALUES Alvin Toffler, Visiting Professor at Cornell, Visiting Scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation, and Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, THE THIRD WAVE, 1980, p. 295. Today there is a fastspreading recognition around the world that progress can no longer be measured in terms of technology or material standard of living alone - that a society that is morally, aesthetically, politically, or environmentally degraded is not an advanced society, no matter how rich or technically sophisticated it may be. In short, we are moving toward a far more comprehensive notion of progress -progress no longer automatically achieved and no longer defined by material criteria alone. 3. PROGRESS IS NOW ENVIRONMENTALLY SENSITIVE Jeremy Rifkin and Carol Grunewald Rifkin, authors and environmental activists, VOTING GREEN, 1992, pp. 30-3 1. The theme of ecological progress was explored by a handful of legislators in 1990 during consideration of new clean air legislation. While industry lobbies and their political allies on Capitol Hill and in the White House argued that economic growth, profits, and employment would all suffer if tough new clean air statutes were adopted, a few members of Congress challenged the old shibboleths, arguing that progress means more than simple output. They reminded their colleagues of the increased health bills that accompany air pollution, as well as the toll atmospheric pollution is taking on the nation’s environment and infrastructure. They warned of the long-term biospheric, economic, and social consequences of failing to address the worsening air pollution crisis. They pleaded on behalf of the interests of future generations whose quality of life would be seriously compromised by failure to act now. And finally, a few legislators introduced bills to ease the transition for workers whose jobs would be lost by new clean air provisions that were being considered. In short, they argued for a new perspective with regard to progress. 4. PROGRESS CAN BE VIEWED IN A MATURE AND ECOLOGICAL WAY Walter Truett Anderson, fellow of the Berkeley-based Meridian Institute, STAR TRIBUNE, January 11, 1994, p. bOA. It’s time for a course correction - not back to the narrow-minded boosterism of the past, but onward to a mature vision that combines hope and determination with a realistic recognition that the future is going to include stunning scientific and technological advances, lots of industry, lots of people, lots of striving, big cities and large organizations. Learning, not simply linear betterment, is what progress is about. It involves costs, mistakes, pain, and occasionally unpleasant information. The human race is making a lot of progress, and will continue to do so. While we’re at it, we need to make some progress in our thinking about progress.

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PROGRESS HAS GOOD CONSEQUENCES 1. ON-BALANCE, PROGRESS HAS DONE MORE GOOD THAN BAD Robert A. Nisbet, University of California at Riverside, HISTORY OF THE IDEA OF PROGRESS, 1980, p. 8. But, corruptions of the idea of progress understood - and the two I have just mentioned do not exhaust the number - I remain convinced that this idea has done more good over a twenty-five hundred-year period, led to more creativeness in more spheres, and given more strength to human hope and to individual desire for improvement than any other single idea in Western history. One may say that what is ultimately crucial, the will to advance or improve, lies in the individual alone, that an unverifiable, paradoxical, cosmic dogma is not needed. The individual’s own drives and aspirations will suffice to effect progress, and therefore so comprehensive and abstract a proposition as the Western idea of progress is expendable. I do not agree. The springs of human action, will, and ambition lie for the most part in beliefs about universe, world, society, and man which defy rational calculations and differ greatly from physio- psychological instincts. These springs lie in what we call dogmas. That word comes from Greek roots with the literal meaning of “seems-good.” As Tocqueville wrote, “No society can prosper; no society can exist” without dogma. 2. FAITH IN PROGRESS UNDERCUTS AUTHORITARIANISM Leo Marx, TECHNOLOGY REVIEW, January, 1987, p. 32. The modern idea of progress, as developed by its radical French, English, and American adherents, emerged in an era of political revolution. It was a revolutionary doctrine, bonded to the radical struggle for freedom from feudal forms of domination. To ardent republicans like the French philosopher Condorcet, the English chemist Priestley, and Benjamin Franklin, a necessary criterion of progress was the achievement of political and social liberation. They regarded the new sciences and technologies not as ends in themselves, but as instruments for carrying out a comprehensive transformation of society. The new knowledge and power would provide the basis for alternatives to the deeply entrenched authoritarian, hierarchical institutions of l’ancien regime: monarchical, aristocratic, and ecclesiastical. 3. REJECTING PROGRESS CONSTITUTES GIVING UP ON HUMANITY Walter Tniett Anderson, fellow of the Berkeley-based Meridian Institute, STAR TRIBUNE, January 11, 1994, p. bOA. The trouble with the old cult of progress was that it deliberately blinded itself to the costs of change. The trouble with the new cult of no-progress is that it can too easily become self-fulfilling prophecy. It gives up on science, gives up on institutions - ultimately, gives up on humanity. The people the Utne group regards as optimists are the ones who see nature as somehow healing the wounds caused by human striving.

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Progress Bad PROGRESS IS A DESTRUCTIVE VALUE--ESPECIALLY TO THE ENVIRONMENT 1. THE WORLD CANNOT SUSTAIN PARAMOUNT FOCUS ON PROGRESS Bob Goudzwaard, Professor of Economic Theory at the Free University in Amsterdam and former member of the Dutch Parliament, CAPITALISM AND PROGRESS, 1979, p. 120. Can a societal system in which everything is directed to uninterrupted progress indeed continue to exist? That question must be asked because, with respect to at least three points, such a “system of progress” appears to be distinctly vulnerable. This is true first of all for the environment in which economic and technological expansion takes place and which in the final analysis furnishes the material possibilities for such expansion. We can employ an analogy here: a spaceship may be equipped with the most reliable rocket engines and its internal system may function perfectly, but to make its journey it needs adequate fuel which has its source outside of the spaceship. It is not a self-sufficient system. In one way or another it puts a strain on its environment. With respect to our larger problem, we must ask: can the finite earth upon which we live tolerate in the long run the strain of our unbridled progress? Secondly, the functioning of the system itself is vulnerable. We noted earlier that the market economy required government support; at times it was even in need of fundamental revision. Still, the economy in most countries does not function smoothly at all. To the contrary, certain problems of economic policy, such as unemployment and inflation, now seem quite unsolvable. Last, but not least, the vulnerability applies to men and women, the passengers who travel the road of progress. Will they always be prepared to play the role assigned to them? Will not the adaptation this requires ultimately be unbearable? In these three forms of vulnerability we encounter almost all the problems posited in the Introduction as challenges to our present-day western culture. 2. PROGRESS IS ECOLOGICALLY AND PHILOSOPHICALLY UNTENABLE William Julius Wilson, the Lucy Rower University Professor of Sociology and Public Policy at the University of Chicago, THE NEW YORK TIMES, January 27, 1991, p. 1. However, in “The True and Only Heaven” he maintains that the idea of progress rests on several untenable propositions: that material expectations can be constantly revised, that luxuries can be ceaselessly redefined as necessities, that new groups can be continually incorporated into the culture of consumption and that a global market embracing impoverished populations around the world can be ultimately created. Neither the right nor the left has yet come to grips with an increasingly obvious problem: “the earth’s finite resources will not support an indefinite expansion of industrial civilization.” Given the present rate of population growth, he argues, an environmental disaster would be created if the Western standard of living were successfully exported to the poorer nations of the world. Moreover, the advanced countries have neither the will today nor the resources to assume such an immense program of development They cannot even address their own problems of poverty. “In the United States, the richest country in the world,” Mr. Lasch writes, “a growing proletariat faces a grim future, and even the middle class has seen its standard of living begin to decline.” 3. “PROGRESS” IS USED TO JUSTIFY PATRIARCHAL DOMINATION OF NATURE Luanne Armstrong, Master’s in feminist ecology, ALTERNATIVES, April, 1995, p. 32. Paradoxically, sentimentalizing the earth as female, as passive, and as available to be acted upon and changed by men, is not, by any means, a new idea. It was present in the Enlightenment in Europe, especially among scientists, like Sir Isaac Newton or Francis Bacon. Merchant writes: Melding together a new philosophy based on natural magic as a technique for manipulating nature, the technologies of mining and metallurgy, the emerging concept of progress and a patriarchal structure of family and state, Bacon fashioned a new ethic sanctioning the exploitation of nature. These men tended to personalize nature as virgin, and/or female; their job was to tame and subdue her, to explore her secrets and penetrate her hidden places.

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PROGRESS IS HARMFUL SOCIALLY 1. FAITH IN PROGRESS PRODUCES ALIENATION AND FATALISM Bob Goudzwaard, Professor of Economic Theory at the Free University in Amsterdam and former member of the Dutch Parliament, CAPITAUSM AND PROGRESS, 1979, pp. xxii-xxiii. In the third place, it is striking that the mutually intertwined problems of which we spoke earlier are also, in one way or another, related to the technically and economically oriented progress of the West This is true not only for environmental and resource problems but also for the particular character of inflation and unemployment Moreover, alienation and loneliness are also closely connected with technical and economic progress. The same is undoubtedly true of what Alvin Toffler describes as “future shock” - the emotional inability to keep up with rapid change in the modem world. Furthermore, the theme of progress has been a welcome occasion for several interpreters of our culture to entertain notions of fatalism and feelings of profound impotence. 2. NIHILISM AND AUENATION ARE INTRINSIC TO THE IDEA OF PROGRESS Theodore Olson, Professor of Philosophy, MILLENNIALISM, UTOPIANISM, AND PROGRESS, 1982, p. 296. If the present century’s development of the doctrine of progress is, from some perspectives, morally distasteful or if - perhaps worse - it shows signs of foundering on the congruence of self-assertion and nihilism, these problems are traceable to the inherent instability of the notion of progress itself. There is no pleasure in this assertion; and I have no wish to end by labeling this or that “ism” as the root of modern man’s problems. We are all too deeply implicated in the problems of the present for any of us to take so simple a position. It is sad to record the flawed development of the doctrine of progress. We can see its issue in our own time in a reductionism in which success and nothingness are almost indistinguishable. The final achievement of the will to knowledge becomes the loss of both knowledge and will - a loss so complete that its advocates cannot even recognize it as such. Such an enterprise diminishes all men. This tendency, I repeat, is not one that can be bracketed as an aberration. It seems to me central to the doctrine of progress itself. 3. PRO-PROGRESS AUTHORS IGNORE THE COSTS OF PROGRESS Joel Nilsson, editorial writer, THE ARIZONA REPUBLIC, May 13, 1995, p. BlO. Progress is a word that conveys the image of inevitability. Woe be the one who dares to stand in the way of progress. There’s a fatalism at work, as if progress is preordained and if something should stand in the way of fulfillment then it’s just too darn bad. Invariably, there has to be a sacrifice, mind you, in the name of progress. Those denizens of progress talk passionately about it as if, by definition, all progress, no matter how insignificant, is good. They conveniently ignore that there are costs to progress -- human, economic and social. Just ask anybody in rural America where superstores have gone in and undercut the small mom and pop retailers.

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Property Rights Good PROPERTY RIGHTS ARE BENEFICIAL 1. PROPERTY RIGHTS CREATE MORE EFFICIENCY AND GREATER INGENUITY lames V. DeLong, Senior Consultant with Sanders International and Competitive Enterprise Institute Adjunct Scholar, PROPERTY MATTERS: HOW PROPERTY RIGHTS ARE UNDER ASSAULT AND WHY YOU SHOULD CARE, 1997, pp. 35-36. If Locke developed the Argument from Justice for property, economists have developed the Argument from Economic Efficiency. First off, people work harder, more efficiently, and with greater ingenuity when they work for themselves. Throughout history, idealists have thought it would be a kinder, gentler world if people were more generous and if they contributed according to the Marxist idea of from each according to his ability and to each according to his need. It may work in small, tightly knit religious communities, where the communitarian nature of the enterprise is usually enforced by bloodcurdling sanctions of ostracism and shame on earth and damnation in the hereafter. It has failed to work for any extended period of tune anywhere else. The irony is that even in religious communities, people work for themselves, but the coin is salvation rather than money. Rewards that depend on a pure sense of altruism are not successful. -

2. PROPERTY RIGHTS ARE CRITICAL TO POPULATION CONTROL Paul Kaihla, staff, MACLEAN’S, September 5, 1994, p. 22. As for crowded slums and food shortages in the developing world, cornucopians point out that couples tend to have fewer children as their incomes rise. Economist Michael Walker of the Fraser Institute, a conservative Vancouver think-tank, says that the key is to increase the productivity of farmers like those in Kenya’s Nyanza province. That can be accomplished, he says, by protecting property rights so that farmers can take out loans and invest in tools and crops. Walker adds that the UN should concentrate on restructuring developing countries along free-market lines rather than spending money on family planning and health services. “Fancy having a conference on how you’re going to manipulate millions of people into having fewer babies,” Walker says mockingly. “State intervention does not work.” 3. PROPERTY RIGHTS ARE NECESSARY TO DEVELOP AND PROTECT RESOURCES James V. DeLong, Senior Consultant with Sanders International and Competitive Enterprise Institute Adjunct Scholar, PROPERTY MATTERS: HOW PROPERTY RIGHTS ARE UNDER ASSAULT AND WHY YOU SHOULD CARE, 1997, p. 37. Ownership in perpetuity encourages not just investment but long-term investment. Giving people ownership of assets over time encourages them to think for the long rather than the short term. If you have the right to use property for only a limited time, you will make only those investments that will bear fruit during your term. You will not plant trees on a woodlot that will reach maturity only after your lease is up, for example. You are also likely to waste resources. You will cut immature trees that would be more valuable in a few years because you get the value of trees cut now, but not trees cut in the future. Property rights are a means of conserving resources. If the trees are yours forever, then you will calculate more shrewdly. -

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PROPERTY RIGHTS ARE A DESIRABLE VALUE 1. PROPERTY RIGHTS IMPROVE OVERALL DECISION MAKING James V. DeLong, Senior Consultant with Sanders International and Competitive Enterprise Institute Adjunct Scholar, PROPERTY MAUERS: HOW PROPERTY RIGHTS ARE UNDER ASSAULT AND WHY YOU SHOULD CARE, 1997, Pp. 45-46. The effect of ownership in fostering good decisions goes still deeper. The quality of my decisions about a piece of property depends on the quality of the information and attention I bring to bear. Ownership provides me with incentive to get the right amount of information and to take it seriously. Should I turn my farm into a coal mine? How should I know, until I look at the markets for the different types of products, determine the long-term effects on the land and its uses, and consider how all of these will affect the way my family will live? Ownership gives me the motive to collect the information on these points. Now ask me if a parcel in the next state should be a coal mine or a farm. Again, I do not know, only now I will not bother to find out either. The effort required to get the information will produce no return, so why should I make it? If you tell me that I must make a decision anyway, I will shrug and flip a coin, or decide on whim. -

2. PROPERTY IS A CENTRAL RIGHT, KEY TO SUSTAINING ALL OTHERS Carol M. Rose, Gordon Bradford Tweedy Professor of Law and Organization at Yale Law School, NOTRE DAME LAW REVIEW, 1996, pp. 332-333. How different from these slights to property, then, are the startlingly bold observations of Adam Smith, not on the mere importance of property as a political matter, but on its centrality to governance. Here are his words in his Lectures on Jurisprudence, given in the 1 760s, and somewhat unartfully passed on to us through his note-takers: The first and chief design of every system of government is to maintain justice; to prevent the members of a society from incroaching (sici on one anothers [sici property, or siezing [sici what is not their own. The design here is to give each one the secure and peacable [sici possession of his own property. The end proposed by justice is the maintaining [of] men in what are called their perfect rights. Each of these three sentences essentially repeats the same message: three times over, Smith tells us that justice means protecting people in what is theirs. Note that this is not simply an object of government, but rather “the first and chief’ one a sort of Benthamite program for the security of property, but with the name “justice” tacked on. An even more pointed comment on property’s centrality was made by an American contemporary of Smith’s, Arthur Lee, according to whom property is “the guardian of every other right.” A modern legal historian, James Ely, has titled his history of property with Lee’s line, and he has used it to argue that property rights are equal in status to all other constitutional rights. --

3. PROPERTY RIGHTS PROTECT US AGAINST TYRANNY James V. DeLong, Senior Consultant with Sanders International and Competitive Enterprise Institute Adjunct Scholar, PROPERTY MATTERS: HOW PROPERTY RIGHTS ARE UNDER ASSAULT AND WHY YOU SHOULD CARE, 1997, pp. 46-47. One bulwark against tyranny is for property to be in the hands of individuals, rather than doled out by the government. Any book of quotations is filled with epigrams worrying over the tendency of any government or governing class to abuse its power. The institution of private property is an important check on this tendency. People with an independent basis of economic support are able to stand up, speak freely, and oppose government. People whose income can be cut off by government must be much more careful... It remains true that democratic government needs an electorate with a stake in the society, one with something to lose if politics runs off the rails. The types of stakes that fill this bill have expanded beyond those available to the eighteenth century to include suburban homes, retirement accounts, Ph.D.s, copyrights and trademarks, stocks and bonds, job tenure, and other things. The principle remains constant: widespread distribution of private property, of a material stake in the orderly operation of the society, is essential to the long-term survival of democratic government. -

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Property Rights Bad PROPERTY RIGHTS LACK JUSTIFICATION AND SUPPORT 1. WEALTH MAXIMIZATION IS AN INADEQUATE JUSTIFICATION FOR PROPERTY RIGHTS Carol M. Rose, Gordon Bradford Tweedy Professor of Law and Organization at Yale Law School, NOTRE DAME LAW REVIEW, 1996, P. 33 1-332. But suppose all this is true: from the perspective of constitutional ordering, the obvious question is, “So what?” Even supposing that the security of property brings greater wealth, why should a constitution aim at wealth? Should it not rather aim at orderly processes of governance and the individual rights that support those processes? Our own constitution protects property and commerce, but to what end? As Patrick Henry thunderously complained during the ratification debates: “You are not to inquire how your trade may be increased, nor how you are to become a great and powerful people, but how your liberties can be secured; for liberty ought to be the direct end of your government.” 2. CONTRACT ThEORY DOES NOT JUSTIFY PROPERTY RIGHTS J. Peter Byrne, Professor of Law at the Georgetown University Law Center, NOTRE DAME LAW REVIEW, 1996, pp.

1055-1056. Rawls, for one, has shown how careful attention to the position of rational people who do not know what place they will find in society plausibly can produce a redistributive social contract. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine people agreeing in a state of nature that every owner may use his property in ways that representative lawmakers rationally believe will injure the community’s welfare. In any event, as Jeremy Waldron points out, arguments of consent of any sort provide no defense in principle against reformulation of property interests ‘except for the highly contestable claim that, as a matter of fact, those arrangements were not the ones entered into.” 3. PROPERTY RIGHTS LEAD TO EXCESSIVE CONCENTRATION OF POWER Carol M. Rose, Gordon Bradford Tweedy Professor of Law and Organization at Yale Law School, NOTRE DAME LAW REVIEW, 1996, p. 342-343. The problem is that even initially-diffuse wealth winds up concentrating itself, particularly through politics. According to the public choice theorists, people with relatively narrow but intense interests can capture the political process from those with wide but diffuse interests. When they do so, they can pull up the gangplank behind themselves, and secure to themselves the special privileges, monopoly franchises, subsidies, and tax breaks that make their lives so easy, while making the lives of competitors and consumers more costly and difficult. Commodities producers are a case in point. Through what seem to be unbreakable locks on legislatures the world over, agriculturalists, lumberers, miners, and ranchers enjoy price supports, import limits, subsidized water and transportation, and special rights to use public resources and then they cite their foreign competitors’ subsidies as a justification for their own continued support. Do they want diffusion of power, particularly economic power? Don’t bet the farm on it. Special interests are much more likely to want to keep the goodies for themselves. And to a surprising degree, they succeed, even in democratic governments. Indeed, they succeed so well that one prominent author in the public choice school, Mancur Olson, thinks that the natural fate of economic forces in stable governments is to drift toward oligopoly. --

4. NATURAL LAW DOES NOT SUPPORT PROPERTY RIGHTS J. Peter Byrne, Professor of Law at the Georgetown University Law Center, NOTRE DAME LAW REVIEW, 1996, p. 1056. If attempts to ground property rights in consent are fraught with difficulties, it is harder still to base a natural right on some unilateral act by an individual. Merely appropriating a thing, of course, does not give one a right to retain it. Locke offered a famous and complicated solution conceming mixing the labor of his own body, which each owns as a matter of right, with resources already owned in common with others. The meaning and merit of this argument have been debated for three hundred years; however, given its insistence on the right of every person to appropriate what he needs to survive, and its reliance on tacit consent to translate a moral into a political right, Locke’s solution cannot provide a basis for a modern constitutional right restricting revision of property interests.

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PROPERTY RIGHTS ARE AN UNDESIRABLE VALUE 1. PROPERTY RIGHTS UNDERCUT THE PURSUIT OF OTHER INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS Carol M. Rose, Gordon Bradford Tweedy Professor of Law and Organization at Yale Law School, NOTRE DAME LAW REVIEW, 1996, P. 332. Other doubts about property are raised in the double standard of rights introduced by the notorious footnote four of United States v. Carolene Products, according to which “mere” economic rights like property take a constitutional back seat to the rights associated with political participation or the avoidance of majoritarian oppression. And a modem commentator on constitutional property, Jennifer Nedeisky, argues that the security of property may be as much a hindrance as a help in securing individual rights particularly when individual rights are understood in the light of an egalitarian vision of constitutionalism. --

2. RESPECT FOR LIBERTY WARRANTS ABOLISHING PRIVATE PROPERTY ENTIRELY Jeffrey Riedinger, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Michigan State University, CAPITAL UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW, Fall, 1993, p. 909-910. If property rights are to be based on individual liberty, the harm occasioned by such rights should be measured by the same principle. The power of exclusion associated with property rights is the power to limit the liberty of others; those excluded suffer harm relative to the state of nature (in which everyone enjoys equal opportunity to make use of all resources). The logical extension of this reformulation of Nozick’s analysis is to invalidate private property altogether for reasons of its adverse effect on individual liberty. 3. PROPERTY HAS AT BEST AN ACCIDENTAL ASSOCIATION WITH LIBERTY Carol M. Rose, Gordon Bradford Tweedy Professor of Law and Organization at Yale Law School, NOTRE DAME LAW REVIEW, 1996, p. 339. Summing up, then, the Priority Argument for property is normally nairated as a bottom-up story, first of property and then of governance. But in fact, the history of property regimes shows a strong streak of top-down features. From the top-down perspective, the central point of property and commerce is to build national strength and the ability to make war. And in that top-down story, property~s association with liberty i.s at most accidental. 4. PROPERTY RIGHTS ARE SECONDARY TO THE WELFARE OF SOCIETY J. Peter Byrne, Professor of Law at the Georgetown University Law Center, NOTRE DAME LAW REVIEW, 1996, p. 1058. Thus we cannot conclude that natural rights theories support a constitutional regulatory takings right. Property rights do not assume a natural dimension or form that precedes and binds subsequent law. Rather. than viewing property rights as standing against law, they are the creations of the law, designed to serve social interests in the ways Professor Rose eloquently recounts. But property rights also, as Professor Rose takes pains to show, cause problems, some of which may be ameliorated by revision of the rights themselves. It would be odd if the government were disabled from revising the contours of property interests to better account for the interests of its citizens in order to protect established benefits; such a rule would weaken the property system in the long run. As seems implicit in Professor Roses article, property should serve society rather than society serving property.

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Rationality Good RATIONALITY IS THE PARAMOUNT VALUE 1. RATIONALITY IS OF UTMOST IMPORTANCE John Kekes, Professor at the State University of New York at Albany, A JUSTIFICATION OF RATIONALITY, 1976, p. 7. Rationality is commonly held to be the attitude of the man who holds rational beliefs and who acts, when the need arises, in accordance with his beliefs. To be rational is desirable because rational beliefs generally have a far better chance of being true than do beliefs that are held independently of or in the face of reasons. A man acting rationally is much more likely to achieve his goal than one who acts on other grounds. 2. RATIONALITY SHOULD BE PARAMOUNT Harvey Siegel, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Miami, EDUCATING REASON, 1988, p. 137. My final argument, however, is for the proposition that critical thinking is, at a minimum, “first among equals” in the pantheon of educational ideals. Why should critical thinking be the ultimate, if not the only, educational ideal? Consider a case in which that ideal conflicts with some legitimate other. In such a case, one might argue that the other should override the critical thinking in this instance. And perhaps so it should. But it requires rational argument, and appeal to reason, in order to make the case for the preferability of the rival ideal to that of critical thinking. And such appeal is, of course, an appeal to, and an honoring of, the latter ideal itself. Consequently, an overriding of critical thinking by a rival educational ideal at one level requires acknowledgment of the reign of critical thinking at the next highest level. In this way critical thinking must preside over and authorize the force of its rivals. In so far, critical thinking is rightfully seen as first among equals, or, more dramatically, as the ultimate educational ideal. It must be seen so for reasons which parallel those which secure the place of rationality at the head of intellectual ideals more generally. 3. RATIONALITY IS A UNIVERSALLY NEEDED TO COME TO APPROPRIATE ENDS Nicholas Rescher, Author, RATIONALITY, 1988, p. 1 Rationality consists in the intelligent pursuit of appropriate ends. It pivots on the use of intelligence or reason, the crucial survival instrument of the human race, in the management of our affairs. The three main contexts of rationality are the cognitive, the practical, and the evaluative. All are united in the common task of implementing the best reasons - reasons for belief, action, and evaluation, respectively. In each case, rationality requires the use of intelligence for optimizing - that is, for figuring out the best thing to do in the circumstances. Good reasons must be both cogent in themselves and, comparatively, the best available, referring to the real interests of the agent rather than mere wants. Although the rational resolution of an issue depends on the contextual circumstances, nevertheless, rationality is universal in the sense that anyone if just the same circumstances would be rationally well advised to adopt the same resolution. 4. RATIONALITY TAKES TOP PRIORITY Nicholas Rescher, Author, RATIONALITY, 1988, p. 218 Accordingly, one cannot be too rational for one’s own good. If, contrary to fact, there were such a defect - if this could be established at all - then reason herself could bring this circumstance to light. Intelligence does not stand as one limited faculty over against others (emotion, affection, and the like). It is an all-pervasive light that can shine through to every endeavor - even those in which reason herself is not involved. Whatever undertaking is valid and appropriated can be shown to be sound by the use of reason. It is the exercise of rationality that informs us about priorities. For that very reason it takes priority

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NO OBSTACLES EXIST TO BEING RATIONAL 1. NO DELIBERATION IS NECESSARY TO BE RATIONAL Steven Nathanson, Cambridge University, THE IDEAL OF RATIONALITY, 1985, p. 39 Once we see this, it is easy to think of instances in which a person behaves rationally, even though his action is preceded by no deliberation. Deliberation is not a necessary condition of rational action. For example, it can be rational for me to stop at the curb of a busy street prior to crossing even though I have not evaluated this action with respect to my goals, assessed its efficacy as a means, made unbiased and objective judgments, and so on. While this kind of evaluation would yield the conclusion that my action is rational, I need not consciously carry out the evaluation myself in order for my stopping to be rational. the probable results of my stopping or not stopping are the measure of the rationality of my action, and no reference is required to a method criterion of rationality. 2. NO NEED TO DELIBERATE TO ACT RATIONALLY Steven Nathanson, Cambridge University, THE IDEAL OF RATIONALITY, 1985, p.44 It is possible for an agent to perform the act and yet to be totally unaware of the facts that make the act rational, and in this case, it would be fair to say that be was not rational in performing the act. Nonetheless, it is a mistake to infer that he was not rational in performing the act, he must precede it with explicit deliberations. All that is required is that the considerations that make the act rational for him to perform should in some way be operative in the agent. That is, it need only be that a true explanation of why the agent acted as he did includes a reference to the reasons that make the act rational. That the agent did not consciously think about some fact does not mean that he was ignorant or unaware of it. 3. YOU CAN NEVER BE TOO RATIONAL Nicholas Rescher, Author, RATIONALITY, 1988, p. 219 People can certainly neglect those various valuable a-rational activities in favor of over-calculation, over-planning, and an inflated over-commitment to various uses of reason. However, the salient fact is that rationality itself disrecommends this. In being too rational one would, strictly speaking, not be rational enough. It is perfectly rational sometimes to do heedless or even madcap things in this life-to break the monotony and inject an element of novelty and excitement into an otherwise prosaic existence. All work and no play makes life go stale. People can sometimes take quite appropriate pleasure from irrational actions - climbing mountains, betting on the ponies, dipping into a freezing river. To break the mold of a colorless rationalism is, within limits, not all that irrational - is not at all unintelligent. It is part and parcel of a deeper rationality that goes beyond the superficial. After all, rationality aims at goods as well as goals. 4. RATIONALITY DOES NOT DENY EMOTION Nicholas Rescher, Author, RATIONALITY, 1988, p. 221 Yet, does rationality not undermine the emotional and affective side of man - the uncalculated, unselfish, open, easygoing, relaxed side that is no less significant in the overall scheme of human affairs that the sterner enterprise of pursuing our ends: Is reason not deficient in one-sidedly emphasizing the calculating aspect of human nature: Not at all! There are good grounds for reason not to deny the claims of man’s emotional and affective side. For life is infinitely fuller and richer that way! Reason, after all, is not our sole directress. Emotion, sentiment, and the affective side of our nature have a perfectly proper and highly important place in the human scheme of things - no less important than the active striving for ends and goals. In so far as other valid human enterprises exist, there is good reason why reason can (and should) recognize and acknowledge them. To insist on reasoning as the sole and allcomprising agency in human affairs in not rationalism but a hyper-rationalism that offends against rationality as such.

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Rationality Bad TOO MANY OBSTACLES PREVENT RATIONALITY FROM OCCURRING 1. RATIONALITY CANNOT OVERCOME CULTURAL DIFFERENCES Albeit Lauterbach, Phd, THE ODYSSEY OF RATIONALITY, 1989, p. 290 The fifth distinction, again overlapping with some of those discussed earlier, follows cultural variations in the rationality concept. This applies to the various rational in fact widely different interpretations of tradition, group solidarity, or, work, and leisure. The rationality concept is determined in each case not by an objective calculus but by the predominant value system. This also applies to the perceptions of social scientists. Edinond Usle writes: “The major obstacle to valid comparisons is the cultural gap itself: the fact that social scientists form different cultures have a communications problem - of which they are generally unaware - even when they have been trine in the same discipline, are tackling the same problem (urban growth, immigration, education, etc.) and are of approximately the same ideological persuasion.” 2. RATIONALITY IS OVERCOME BY INDIVIDUAL URGES FOR IRRATIONAL BEHAVIOR Albert Lautergack, Phd, THE ODYSSEY OF RATIONALITY, 1989, p. 290 What is especially upsetting for believers in a prevalence of rationality in some absolute sense if the frequency, precisely in our technologically advanced age, of individual and collective urges for irrational thinking and behavior. This is evidenced by the recurrent need of many people for some kind of villain who is responsible for all the world’s evils, a need which expresses itself in totalitarian witch hunting and periodic persecution of heretics. This practice has not always been confined to fascist or communist regimes. The socially requires irrationality in such cases elevates to leadership precisely the irrational individual, in extreme contrast to the fully rational person in who nineteenth-century rationalists believed as the natural leader in society. 3. RATIONALITY IS MUDDIED DUE TO POLITICAL INTERESTS Albert Lautergack, Phd, THE ODYSSEY OF RATIONALITY, 1989, pp. 290-291 Daniel Gell draws the following conclusions regarding the limits of rationality on the political scene: “Politics, in the sense that we understand it, is always prior to he rational, and often the upsetting of the rational. The rational, as we have come to know it, is the routines, settled, administrative and orderly procedure by rules...The concept of a rational organization of society stands confounded. Rationality, as a means - as a set of techniques for efficient allocation of resources - has been twisted beyond the recognition of its forebear’s; rationality, as an end, find itself confronted with the cankerousness of politics, the politics of interest an the politics of passion.” 4. RATIONALITY CAN’T BE DETERMINED BECAUSE CULTURE PREVENTS Stephen Palmer, Professor at University of Manchester, HUMAN ONTOLOGY AND RATIONALITY, 1992, p. 35. The task is to undermine any dualist distinction between classes of beliefs which involves explaining one class, seen as rational. In terms of that very rationality, and leaving a second, irrational, class to be explained in terms of social context. Such a distinction depends on a theory of rationality which transcends any given context in which terms in which true beliefs can be explained. The problem here is that what are considered good reasons vary between cultures as much as the beliefs for which they are taken to be good reasons. If the dualist attempts to distinguish between what are taken to be good reasons and what really are good reasons, then there is either an equation of the latter with what are locally taken to be good reasons within the dualist’s culture, or, in refusing to deal with what are taken to be good reasons, an abdication from the realm of discourse altogether; good reasons stem from a transcendent realm and not from the human world.

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RATIONALITY EQUALS UNHAPPINESS 1. RATIONALITY CANNOT ENSURE HAPPINESS Nicholas Rescher, Author, RATIONALITY, 1988, p. 214 Somebody is bound to object: Surely rational people are the happier for their rationality, even in the affective mode of happiness, because their intelligence is capable of benefiting them in this regard as well. It would doubtless be very nice if this were so. But, alas, it is not, For, while intelligence an lead one to water, it cannot ensure that drinking produces any worthwhile effects. People being what they are, there is no reason to thin that conducting their affairs intelligently benefits them in terms specifically of increased affective happiness. 2. HAPPINESS IS RESISTANT TO RATIONALITY Nicholas Rescher, Author, RATIONALITY, 1988, pp. 214-215 And there is yet another, less obvious, aspect of the matter. Rational comportment is a matter of the intelligent use of means towards realizing our appropriate ends. The region where it will prove productive is where intelligent action can be expected to bear good fruit. But happiness in its hedonic sense is not a good instance of this. For affective happiness is something too ephemeral and capricious to lend itself to effective manipulation by rational means. (Even - and perhaps especially - people who have everything may yet fail to be happy; there is nothing all that paradoxical or even unusual about someone who says I know that in these circumstances I should by happy, but Fm just not.) Affective happiness is largely a matter of moods and frames of mind - easily frustrated by boredom or predictability. It is an ironic aspect of the human condition that affective happiness is inherently resistant to rational management. 3. RATIONALITY LEADS TO UNHAPPINESS MORE OFTEN THAN HAPPINESS Nicholas Rescher, Author, RATIONALITY, 1988, pp. 217-218 No doubt rationality pays. But, the irony of human condition is that as far as affective matters are concerned the utility of reason is vastly more efficacious at averting unhappiness than at promoting happiness in its positive dimension.

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Rational Choice Theory For a long time, value debate has been plagued by an inability to articulate an adequate account of current market theory as it applies to political value decisions. The Objectivism of Ayn Rand is too thick in its axioms and too thin in its conclusions: cumbersome and arrogant, it cannot explain either what we should or will do. Similarly, Nozick’s “minimal state” argument is too utopian. We do not live in a minimal state, and thus we cannot use it to guide our current moral decisions. If the free market has won the battle of history (and many believe it has), there ought to be a theory derived from markets to guide our action in other human arenas. After all, life is—in many ways—like a game. How do we play it? How should we? This essay argues that rational choice theory, a relatively recent metaphysic of economics, can serve as a simple but rich criteria system for value debate. Rational choice theory serves as a metaphor for human action that emphasizes both individualism and the collective decisions of individuals. Rational choice theory argues that individuals make decisions—political, economic, moral and otherwise—based on the weighing of advantages and disadvantages, the speculation of perceived rewards, and on what they expect others to choose. Because this is true, it is naturally also true that people should be allowed to choose, treated as rational beings with the ability to choose, and that social choices ought to be based on the compatibility of individual choices rather than on a scheme set up by a few to bring “happiness” to others. This short essay briefly explains rational choice theory. After considering its most important features, I will list some important objections to rational choice theory. This will be followed by some speculation as to rational choice’s application to value debate. RATIONAL CHOICE THEORY EXPLAINED The basic axiom of choice theory is that humans are rational, egoistic, beings who seek to maximize utility. Our choices are, and should be, based on those things which will increase our happiness, whatever we define that to be. Moreover, we ought to define our happiness rationally, being realistic about what we can achieve, and paying attention to possible undesirable consequences. Although we do not always choose correctly, and although we may not always possess perfect information to choose among options, rational choice theory holds that we basically choose to maximize what we perceive to be our self-interest. If everyone does this, and tries to do it rationally, society will be better off. A recent New York Times article outlines the main components of the theory. It seems relatively simple: The defining feature of rational choice theory is that people always try to maximize their interests when it comes to things like whom to vote for or whether to volunteer politically. The approach has many variants. Decision theory, for example, centers on cost-benefit calculations that individuals make without reference to anyone else's plans, whereas game theory analyzes how people make choices based on what they expect other individuals to do. (“Making a Science Of Looking Out For No. 1,” The New York Times, February 26, 2000, p. B-11.) Rational choice theory assumes that actors choose for themselves. There is no “collective decision” beyond the totality of individual decisions. Insofar as any “collective” rational action is possible, it is only because the majority of actors involved in the decision choose rationally. This has several implications for collective value theories: for rational choice doesn’t necessarily say all collective decisions are illegitimate; but it does warn that we ought not pretend those decisions are somehow more than the sum of their parts. They are not. Rational choice theory has application to political choices, international decisions, and philosophical systems. In the case of political choices, human beings participate in politics as they see it benefiting their interests. The market analogy is useful because political choices are like products. Candidates are like sales people. They represent organizations that have to be run like businesses—they must please the consumers or they will die. Even political figures possessing visions which go beyond markets must sell their visions to the public. The public political consumers ought to be given as much information as possible to make their choices. Political leaders will often make 612

deals among themselves to maximize their profits. Similarly, consumers might get together to form particular coalitions, thus increasing the demand for a particular product. In the area of international relations, rational choice theorists have questioned the assumption that “international crises” tend to make leaders behave differently than they normally do. Michael Nicholson suggests that although international conflict may seem to generate erratic behavior, most of the choices leaders make are still rational. They are still designed to maximize the benefit of the leader’s area of interest or influence (Michael Nicholson, “Rational Decision in International Crises: A Rationalization,” PREFERENCES, INSTITUTIONS, AND RATIONAL CHOICE, 1995, p. 163). Philosophical value systems can and should also be the result of individual rational choice. People are aware that there are consequences associated with holding a particular world view. As they are educated in alternative perspectives, they essentially “choose” a world view that maximizes what they think is important. There may be negative consequences associated with the view; agents will decide whether those consequences are worth holding the view. COST-BENEFIT DECISION THEORIES Rational choice theory often utilizes experiments that help illustrate how individuals calculate costs and benefits. The example I have chosen in this section was chosen because it immediately refutes the notion that rational choice precludes cooperation. In some instances, it is rational to cooperate, while in other instances it is not. The prisoner’s dilemma is a common example of a “game” that illustrates how individual choices affect one another. Two prisoners are places in separate cells, and urged by the police to confess and implicate the other prisoner. The payoffs for both prisoners staying silent are the highest possible for both of them. But if one helps convict the other, he or she will enjoy the maximum benefit at the expense of the other. This proves not only that the pursuit of rational self-interest often runs afoul of social cooperation. But it also proves that a “higher” rationality is possible if both prisoners act with consideration for the other. Rationality does not always require selfishness (Peter Self, GOVERNMENT BY THE MARKET? 1993, p. 11). Rational choice theory in the political realm is often called “Public Choice Theory,” and many books can be found under that subject heading. Public choice theorists “model the study of politics upon the methods and assumptions of neo-classical market economics.” (Peter Self, GOVERNMENT BY THE MARKET? 1993, p. 1). We choose policies and candidates the same way we choose products, and at least on an aggregate scale, we do so rationally. Moreover, public choice theory rejects the distinction between public and private choice (Self, p. 2), holding that we make all our choices using the same basic criterial structure: what are the risks? How will I benefit? How will others whom I care about benefit? Rational choice theory is more ethical than behaviorist accounts of political behavior, which assume people act from passions or propaganda beyond their control. This statement underscores rational choice theorists’ belief that people should be trusted to make decisions for themselves. Because of this, rational choice theorists reject the notion of “false consciousness,” believing instead that people must be assumed to be fully aware of the ramifications of their choices. If we are not so aware in every instance, this is only proof of the need to gather more information; it is not a validation for theories which urge greater social control over individuals not able to think for themselves. OBJECTIONS TO RATIONAL CHOICE THEORY Rationality isn’t our primary nature. We are not beings who, like Star Trek’s Commander Data, calculate things according to objective or verifiable rules in order to make correct decisions. Sometimes Candidate A just seems more honest than Candidate B. Sometimes I will sacrifice my own happiness for the happiness of someone I don’t even know. Like Commander Data, who in his journey to become “more human” had to suspend much of his binary logic, we also remind ourselves that we are something more than rational. As Bailey Kuklin writes: In deciding what is best for herself, a person is not "a lightning calculator of pleasures and pains." Nor is a person even a molasses calculator, 613

if by "calculator" one means a mathematically certain reckoner. Given all the time she needs, an individual does not consciously calculate the value of reasonably anticipated costs and benefits in a manner expected of a statistical sophisticate under suitable conditions. Instead, the appraisal tends to be too conservative or too liberal. (Bailey Kuklin, “The Gaps Between the Fingers of the Invisible Hand, Brooklyn Law Review, Fall, 1992, pp. 840-841.) Kuklin reasons that even if we possess calculative features, we cannot base an entire system of human decisionmaking on features that are not the essence of our knowing the world. Similarly, other writers point out that human nature is full of incalculable moral epiphanies, drives which rational choice cannot accommodate: "The backsliding problem might seem superficial and easily resolved. Some may deny any parallel between the creation and abandonment of honest preferences. Perhaps those with an honest character recoil in horror at the prospect of losing that character, whereas dishonest individuals are content to view character change as merely one means among many of obtaining economic opportunity. Yet this account is hard to square with rational choice theory. We can easily imagine that all individuals find the idea of changing their character to be distasteful, but that would not explain why preference change toward morality was easier than backsliding. What lies behind the intuition that honest preferences are more stable than dishonest preferences is, I believe, just the moral intuition that honest preferences are better than dishonest preferences. But rational choice theory cannot easily accommodate the use of moral reasons as motivations." (Richard H. McAdams, “Modeling Morality,” BOSTON UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW, June, 1998, p. 947.) Rational choice theory cannot explain our moral drives, because it contains its own normative assumption that we ought to be primarily self-interested. But there are more systemic objections to the theory as well. Basing a decisional system on capitalist markets is problematic from the beginning. Markets are inefficient, and are thus poor metaphors for political action. According to Bailey Kuklin, who echoes the sentiments of many economists critical of capitalism, the market works if and only if the following conditions are met: "1. Full information is available about the performance and quality of goods and services and the costs of all alternative ways of producing them, and the cost of this information is zero. 2. Costs of enforcing contracts and property rights are zero, and property rights, including rights to the means of production, are established and stable. 3. Individuals are rational in this sense: their preferences are organized in a transitive ordering (such that if an individual prefers A to B and B to C, he also prefers A to C) and they are capable of selecting appropriate means toward their ends. 4.(a) Transaction costs are zero (transaction costs include costs of bringing goods and services together for exchange, and costs of reaching agreements for exchange...) or (b) there is perfect competition (that is, no buyer or seller can influence prices by his own independent actions and there is complete freedom to enter and exit the market) and no externalities are present. (An externality is a "neighborhood" or "third-party" effect of a market exchange: an effect on someone's well-being which is not taken into account in the market exchange.) 5. Products offered in the market are undifferentiated -- buyers cannot distinguish between the products offered by various sellers and vice versa. "(Bailey Kuklin, “The Gaps Between the Fingers of the Invisible Hand, Brooklyn Law Review, Fall, 1992, p. 839.) Kuklin thus lists five conditions: full information, free enforcement, genuine rationality, no transaction costs, and undifferentiated products. Let us examine just a couple of these: the information question, and the question of true rationality. Imperfect information prevents us from making truly rational choices. In order to choose among options, we seek information about the conditions of each choice and its possible consequences. Similarly, investors and businesses choose between competing economic options. What prevents those choices from always being the right ones is imperfect information. As Richard McAdams writes: To decide whether a preference change is in one's interests requires information about the opportunities created by different preferences, whether it is possible to acquire new preferences, and the costs of doing so. The latter two facts are particularly difficult to determine: We can often experiment with consumption, but - unless preference change is very easy - we cannot often experiment with different preference sets. When faced with such informational problems, people often look to see what others are doing. For this reason, decisions about what character to seek or to instill in one's children will likely be heavily influenced by social norms. These decisions will then be subject to the problem of "herd behavior," where individuals with limited information presume that it is in their interest to follow the decisions being made by most other individuals. (Richard H. McAdams, “Modeling Morality,” BOSTON UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW, June, 1998, p. 947.) 614

In other words, we fill in the gaps in information (there simply aren’t time or means to acquire perfect information in any situation) through cultural instincts or other prejudices. This helps explain why “individualism” so often goes hand-in-hand with racism, environmental pollution, or other seemingly unintended consequences of unregulated market activity. Imperfect information guarantees that, at some level, our choices will always be just a little less than rational. Rational choice theory doesn’t explain altruism or self-sacrifice. Most rational choice accounts of altruism make an appeal to some kind of self-satisfaction in helping others. This self-satisfaction may be appropriate for small acts of giving, such as charitable contributions or volunteer work. But satisfaction assumes that, upon later reflection, I am happy with what I have done. At the very least, it assumes that I will engage in a pattern of unselfish acts over time, which will make me happy with my character. Even in this instance, the fact that I am more satisfied with an unselfish character than a selfish one says something about egoism’s inability to explain all human action. But there is a higher state of sacrifice: I might willingly give my life for others. Moreover, I may do so for complete strangers. If I throw myself on a grenade or take a bullet, I “rationally” know that I will not be around to experience the satisfaction of such sacrifice. Something else pushes me to die for others. If what pushes me is some kind of egoistic search, then it is unclear how the cessation of my ego can bring perceived satisfaction. Rational choice theory is not Buddhism. There is no immediate rationality to suicide, and yet nearly everyone would agree that those who give their lives for others are counted among the highest moral actors. Because rational choice cannot explain the entirety of self-sacrifice, it remains both ethically and empirically flawed. APPLICATION TO DEBATE As a criterion, rational choice theory is simple, easy to explain, and easy to defend through subsequent explanation. The first step involves laying forth its simplicity as a criterial tool. The question is, would rational actors prefer this particular value, the course of action or attitude suggested by the resolution, or the answers to particular questions of fact? If rational actors would affirm the resolution, then so should the judge; if rational agents should think the resolution flawed, then a negative ballot is warranted. Of course, this necessitates giving reasons why rational people would prefer or reject a particular statement. In other words, debaters must explain why this is a good or bad idea, by giving real world examples of individuals taking these courses of action or others suggested by the resolution. There is a clear preference for realism here, since rational actors are prone to reject schemes or ideas that are good “on paper” but too difficult to implement in the real world. Again, it is the job of the debaters to make distinctions about realistic application of values, or practical examples of the resolution. Secondly, debaters should explain rational choice theory as simply as possible when introducing it as criteria. “Rational choice theory assumes individuals choose between competing options based on perceived costs and benefits, wanting primarily to advance their own interests.” Moreover, it is important to point out that sometimes one’s interests are in common with others, and thus rational choice theory does not discourage collective action. Third, debaters should allow their explanations of rational choice theory to grow in response to opponents’ answers. There is much to explain about rational choice, even though it is simple: debaters should stick to explanations necessary for the objections at hand. If the objection is that it’s too individualistic, reply that it doesn’t preclude collective action. If the objection is that markets are imperfect, point out that they can still predict behavior and still serve as a realistic model of decisionmaking. And so on. CONCLUSION Rational choice theory represents an honest effort by market economists to account for private and public choice. Although it suffers from the same flaws as market thinking in general, particularly in over-individualizing the decisionmaking process, rational choice theory is predictive enough to explain political decisions, collective action, and even choices seemingly inconsistent with the “greedy” self-maximization of market behavior. 615

As a criteria for value debate, rational choice theory is certainly more realistic than some hypothetical “veil of ignorance” or “original position.” Rational market behavior occurs more frequently than Kantian deontological choices. It is certainly more real world than utilitarianism, since we are not all leaders of nations and we cannot know what it is like to decide between the fifty-one and forty-nine percent. We mostly decide for ourselves, and in this regard, rational choice makes sense.

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Bibliography Carver, Terrell, and Thomas, Paul, editors, RATIONAL CHOICE MARXISM, University Park: Pennsylvania University Press, 1995. Chong, Dennis, RATIONAL LIVES: NORMS AND VALUES IN POLITICS AND SOCIETY, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. Dowding, Keith, and King, Desmond, editors, PREFERENCES, INSTITUTIONS, AND RATIONAL CHOICE, New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. Laver, Michael, PRIVATE DESIRES, POLITICAL ACTION: AN INVITATION TO THE POLITICS OF RATIONAL CHOICE, London: Sage, 1997. Mueller, Dennis C., PERSPECTIVES ON PUBLIC CHOICE: A HANDBOOK, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Nurmi, Hannu, RATIONAL BEHAVIOR AND THE DESIGN OF INSTITUTIONS: CONCEPTS, THEORIES AND MODELS, Northampton: Eldward Elgar, 1998. Self, Peter, GOVERNMENT BY THE MARKET? THE POLITICS OF PUBLIC CHOICE, Boulder: Westview, 1993. Zafirovski, Milian, “Profit-Making as Social Action: An Alternative Social-Economic Perspective.” REVIEW OF SOCIAL ECONOMY, March, 1999, p. 47-79. Zey, Mary, RATIONAL CHOICE THEORY AND ORGANIZATIONAL THEORY: A CRITIQUE, Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1998.

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RATIONAL CHOICE IS A SUPERIOR PARADIGM FOR POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS 1. RATIONAL CHOICE BALANCES INDIVIDUALS AND COLLECTIVES: This enhances our understanding of politics. Patrick Dunleavy, Professor of Government, London School of Economics, & Helen Margetts, Lecturer in Public Policy, University of London, PREFERENCES, INSTITUTIONS, AND RATIONAL CHOICE, 1995, p. 87. Somewhere between the affirmation of identity and the pressures of others, rational individuals strike a balance in electoral choices as much as in other aspects of their social lives. A public-choice theory which seriously connects with this dialectic can enhance our empirical understanding of contemporary politics. 2. MARKETS ARE AN APPROPRIATE ANALOGY FOR PREDICTING POLITICAL BEHAVIOR. Peter Self, Visiting Fellow, Urban Research & Politics , Australian National University, GOVERNMENT BY THE MARKET? THE POLITICS OF PUBLIC CHOICE, 1993, p. 3 Markets are assumed to work through voluntary exchanges between free individuals, each pursuing his or her private self-interest. Markets move towards an equilibrium point where no individual would profit from buying or selling a different product, or from changing his or her occupation. However this equilibrium point is continually moving with changes in individual tastes, costs of production, or the arrival of new products. If in the homely example, individuals start demanding more coffee and less tea, the production of these commodities will shift until the marginal revenue that can be earned from either product equals the marginal cost of its production. By such continual marginal adjustments markets are said to respond spontaneously to consumer demands, thereby achieving “allocative efficiency.” Actual market systems do not satisfy the strong requirements of this ideal model, for example over perfect competition, full information or in other respects. However public choice theorists can still utilize this model to map certain features of political life. Following this approach, voters can be likened to consumers; political parties become entrepreneurs who offer competing packages of services and taxes in exchange for votes; political propaganda equates with commercial advertising; government agencies are public firms dependent upon receiving or drumming up adequate political support to cover their costs; and interest groups are cooperative associations of consumers or producers of public goods. Moreover the whole political system can be viewed as a gigantic market for the demand and supply of “public goods,” meaning all outputs supplied through a political instead of a market process (and including regulations and transfer payments as well as goods and services). 3. PERSONAL, RATIONAL DECISIONMAKING BEST EXPLAINS POLITICAL ANALYSIS Peter Self, Visiting Fellow, Urban Research & Politics , Australian National University, GOVERNMENT BY THE MARKET? THE POLITICS OF PUBLIC CHOICE, 1993, p. 6 For example, whatever a politician’s motives or ultimate goals, he needs to get elected to pursue them. Similarly, whether a bureau chief seeks only a bigger salary for himself or believes in the social value of his bureau’s function, he will still want to maximize his bureau’s budget and output. These arguments are not watertight, but they do draw attention to the importance of personal incentives and constraints in particular political or bureaucratic situations. The second defense is to claim that the self-interest assumption, while not always true, is prevalent enough to serve as a useful hypothesis for political analysis.

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RATIONAL SELF-INTEREST OUGHT TO GUIDE DECISIONMAKING 1. PEOPLE GENERALLY ACT IN THEIR OWN SELF INTEREST Peter Self, Visiting Fellow, Urban Research & Politics , Australian National University, GOVERNMENT BY THE MARKET? THE POLITICS OF PUBLIC CHOICE, 1993, p. 5 Even so the pursuit of private gain is generally pursued and (subject to some moral as well as legal constraints) legitimized within the market system. The ultimate motive need not be a selfish one; I may want to make a lot of money in order to give to charity or an ailing friend. However public choice writers stress that the market relationship itself is instrumental and impersonal in its nature. Market consumers look for the best buy and while a few individuals may (for example) boycott South African oranges, even a socialist will usually buy a hi-fi set on purely personal preference without regard to the labor policies or other practices of the company making it. 2. THERE IS NO “PUBLIC GOOD” OUTSIDE OF INDIVIDUAL DECISIONS: Attempts to define such goods for others are dangerous Peter Self, Visiting Fellow, Urban Research & Politics , Australian National University, GOVERNMENT BY THE MARKET? THE POLITICS OF PUBLIC CHOICE, 1993, p. 232-233. Does public choice have a public philosophy at all? The question must be asked because many writers deny meaning to such terms as “public interest” or “public good.” This conclusion is liked with their strong methodological individualism which holds that only individuals have wants or values. The idea of a “public good” is seen as a sort of holy grail, external to individual preferences or values and waiting to be discovered by some cooperative inquiry. When allied with the power of the state, this search for the public interest becomes an “organismic monstrosity.” 3. COLLECTIVE DECISIONS ARE REALLY JUST THE SUM OF INDIVIDUAL DECISIONS Peter Self, Visiting Fellow, Urban Research & Politics , Australian National University, GOVERNMENT BY THE MARKET? THE POLITICS OF PUBLIC CHOICE, 1993, p. 233. There seems no reason to dispute “methodological individualism” if it means that the only subjects of consciousness, experience and thought are individual beings. An organization can make choices and issue decisions through collective processes, but it does not feel or think as a single entity. Individual feelings of mutual sympathy and shared beliefs can produce so strong a sense of social cohesion that it may be likened to a “collective consciousness” or a “group mind,” but they still rest upon individual choices, commitments and possibilities of withdrawal. To that extent methodological individualism is true. 4. THE ULTIMATE JUDGE OF PUBLIC INTERESTS CAN ONLY BE THE INDIVIDUAL Peter Self, Visiting Fellow, Urban Research & Politics , Australian National University, GOVERNMENT BY THE MARKET? THE POLITICS OF PUBLIC CHOICE, 1993, p. 241 More broadly, “public interest” in a modern democracy must refer to the normative standards and practices which guide the political life of the society. Behind these standards there will always exist some version of a “public philosophy”, which seeks to define the acceptable role of the state and its relationship to other constituent elements of society. Public philosophies are inevitably contestable, and in a society which values individual freedom of thought there can be no hope of achieving general agreement. The ultimate moral judge, as Brennan and Buchanan say, can only be the reflective individual.

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RATIONAL CHOICE THEORY IS FLAWED 1. RATIONAL CHOICE THEORY FAILS TO RECOGNIZE POLITICAL COMPLEXITY Peter Self, Visiting Fellow, Urban Research & Politics , Australian National University, GOVERNMENT BY THE MARKET? THE POLITICS OF PUBLIC CHOICE, 1993, p. 237-238 Public choice theory fails also to recognize the complexity of political motivations. There is ample evidence that individuals are influenced both by personality factors and social identifications. The distinction between authoritarian and liberal, or “tough” and “tender”, types of personality is now well-known. While the distinction is too absolute, it does show up in individual evaluations of social issues, such as the extent of reliance upon government assistance or self-help for relieving poverty and other hardships. Views on this matter seem to have a weak relationship to personal material circumstances, although they are certainly influenced by the political culture of the society in question. Social identifications lead individuals to align their interests with a particular class, party or regime in ways which may not correspond at all well with their material interests. Rational egoism is in limited supply in politics at the mass or popular level. 2. RATIONAL CHOICE THEORY IS FLAWED AND SIMPLISTIC Peter Self, Visiting Fellow, Urban Research & Politics , Australian National University, GOVERNMENT BY THE MARKET? THE POLITICS OF PUBLIC CHOICE, 1993, p. 9 However, public choice theory links rationality closely with self-interest. This frequent association seems due to the idea that self-interest offers a simple and plausible basis for defining the scope of rationality. Even so self-interest has many political expressions, such as the pursuit of power, glory or social status and esteem. Some public choice writers argue that these apparent goals cover up opportunities for material gains. This simplification keeps public choice theory consistent with its economic origins but is a very strained and cynical interpretation of political behavior. 3. THE SELF-INTEREST MODEL DOES NOT EXPLAIN ALTRUISM Peter Self, Visiting Fellow, Urban Research & Politics , Australian National University, GOVERNMENT BY THE MARKET? THE POLITICS OF PUBLIC CHOICE, 1993, p. 6 Altruism appears to be a much more widespread factor in political than in market behavior. In economic terms this means that an individual’s own “utility” is increased by contributing to the “utility” of others, whether particular groups or the whole community. Public choice theorists explain this factor as a sort of “psychic income,” but this rather cumbrous explanation weakens the concept of self-interest as a workable assumption. Self-interest can have little explanatory force unless it can be contrasted with altruistic behavior.

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RATIONAL CHOICE THEORY IS DESTRUCTIVE 1. RATIONAL CHOICE ENCOURAGES APATHY Peter Self, Visiting Fellow, Urban Research & Politics , Australian National University, GOVERNMENT BY THE MARKET? THE POLITICS OF PUBLIC CHOICE, 1993, p. 234 If voters did in fact act simply as “rational egoists”, the political outlook would be extremely bleak. If I had no children there would be no reason for me to support public education; if I was too old to worry about the greenhouse effect and other such dangers, there would be no reason for me to support environmental controls; if I lived in a comfortable tree-lined suburb, why should I bother about the blighted and crime-ridden problems of inner cities? And so on. 2. APATHY DESTROYS DEMOCRACY Peter Self, Visiting Fellow, Urban Research & Politics , Australian National University, GOVERNMENT BY THE MARKET? THE POLITICS OF PUBLIC CHOICE, 1993, p. 239-240 In the longer run political apathy undermines and will eventually destroy democracy. It deprives democratic politics of the essential lubricant of individual concern and participation; it starves the political process of inputs of belief and opinion; and it runs down the maintenance, let alone the improvement, of political norms which lose their moral force if few are interested or believe in them. The growth of apathy is sometimes defended on the grounds that it is at least preferable to the arousal of partisan passions or utopian expectations that the state cannot satisfy. However it seems rather to be the case that apathy paves the way for demagogic partisan movements. The rise of extremist and authoritarian right-wing parties in France, Germany and elsewhere, preaching ethnic hostility and discrimination, is helped by the political indifference of ordinary citizens as well as the economic failures and social tensions which governments have failed to ameliorate.

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Realism Good REALISM IS A WELL SUPPORTED PARADIGM 1. REALIST PRINCIPLES PROVIDE A FOUNDATION FOR AGILE GLOBAL STRATEGY David M. Abshire, president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, THE WASHINGTON QUARTERLY, Spring, 1996, p. 39. Realism would offer the basic foundation of assumptions for an agile strategy. This strategy’s starting point is the basic insight of realism: World politics remains a modified form of anarchy in which power and influence are at stake. Therefore, conflicting national interests are a permanent and inevitable aspect of international relations. This does not mean that war among the great powers is unavoidable; it does not mean that the rule of law cannot be established in specific areas; and it does not mean that states (or people) are necessarily more inclined to competition than cooperation. What it does mean is that military conflict subnational, regional, or global cannot be ruled out for the foreseeable future, and that economic competition among the world’s major powers will remain a permanent feature of world affairs. An agile strategy must therefore provide the United States with the ability to operate in a world where military conflict is always possible and economic competition is inevitable. The economic competition, however, becomes constructive rather than destructive the more markets are not mercantiistic but mutually open, thus providing a win-win situation. --

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2. REALISM ENHANCES OUR UNDERSTANDING OF INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT David M. Abshire, president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, THE WASHINGTON QUARTERLY, Spring, 1996, p. 39. Realism also suggests that balances of power tend to preserve peace, and imbalances of power invite conflict. In the nuclear age, the relationship between power imbalances and war may not be as simple as it once was; but it would be a mistake to assume that the relationship has disappeared altogether. The insights of realism therefore call for an agile strategy that works to preserve balances of power in the key regions of the world. 3. REALISM ENHANCES OUR UNDERSTANDING OF INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION Joseph M. Grieco, Professor of Political Science at Duke University, NEOREALISM AND NEOLIBERALISM: THE CONTEMPORARY DEBATE, 1993, p. 135. These tests are likely to demonstrate that realism offers the most effective understanding of the problem of international cooperation. In addition, further analysis of defensive state positionality may help pinpoint policy strategies that facilitate cooperation. If relative gains concerns do act as a constraint on cooperation, then we should identify methods by which states have been able to address such concerns through unilateral bargaining strategies or through the mechanisms and operations of international institutions. For example, we might investigate states’ use of side-payments to mitigate the relative gains concerns of disadvantaged partners. Thus, with its understanding of defensive state positionality and the relative gains problem for collaboration, realism may provide guidance to states as they seek security, independence, and mutually beneficial forms of international cooperation. 4. REALISM CORRECTLY IDENTIFIES THE LIMITS TO AMERICAN POWER David M. Abshire, president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, THE WASHINGTON QUARTERLY, Spring, 1996, p. 39. Finally, realism offers a cautionary note about foreign commitments. It enjoins national leaders to keep their ends and means in balance, and to avoid global crusades, which almost always prove self-defeating for example, rapid worldwide democratization, or unquestioning anticommunism in every corner of the globe. Thus an agile strategy must recognize the limits to American power and must outline goals for foreign policy that operate within those limits. This again requires taking seriously the distinction between short-term and long-term aims: long-run strategy can be more idealistic and seek a gradual transformation of world politics, but in the short term, pragmatism and prioritization must reign supreme. --

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REALISM IS A DESIRABLE FRAMEWORK 1. REALISM IS THE DOMINANT PARADIGM IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS Joseph M. Grieco, Professor of Political Science at Duke University, NBOREALISM AND NEOLIBERAUSM: THE CONTEMPORARY DEBATE, 1993, p. 116. Realism has dominated international relations theoiy at least since World War II. For realists, international anarchy fosters competition and conflict among states and inhibits their willingness to cooperate even when they share common interests. Realist theory also argues that international institutions are unable to mitigate anarchy’s constraining effects on interstate cooperation. 2. RUSSIA HAS ADOPTED AN EXPLICITLY REALIST FOREIGN POLICY Mikhail A. Alexseev, Visiting Scholar at the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, FLETCHER FORUM OF WORLD AFFAIRS, Winter/Spring, 1997, p. 34. This Cold Peace national security consensus in Russia is likely to endure and shape Russia’s foreign policy over the long term, whatever the outcome of Yeltsin’s medical treatment or the power struggle in the Kremlin halls and at the polls, for four major reasons. First, this consensus has its roots in basic assumptions about the nature of world politics. Consistent with the main tenets of political realism, the current international system is conceptualized as structural anarchy, in which interactions take the form of zero-sum games and the central motivation of the key actors, nation-states, is to maximize military aixi economic power. Second, the Cold Peace paradigm cuts across ideological divides among the major political parties in Russia, as evidenced by the writings of party leaders. Third, it embraces the national security and intelligence establishment that has shown considerable resilience and continuity amidst Russia’s political upheaval. This establishment is likely to be a major source of politically significant information about the outside world for any Russian administration. Finally, reassessment of Russia’s strategic posture by the political elites is underlined by anti-Western trends in public opinion. 3. REALISM IS COMPATIBLE WITH GLOBAL COOPERATION David M. Abshire, president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, THE WASHINGTON QUARTERLY, Spring, 1996, p. 39. In addition to the insights of idealism, an agile strategy must recognize that in many new areas, serious emergent problems and challenges must be addressed and hopefully solved on a cooperative transnational basis and with proper recognition of interdependence. This is not a modification of realism in favor of some sort of one-world idealism. Rather, it is the supremely realistic view that the perils as well as the promises of a range of global trends with revolutionary implications can only be handled transnationally, which, by the way, means with U.S. leadership. These revolutionary trends include changes in demography, telecommunications, and world financial markets, and the increasing salience of international organized crime. Nongovernmental actors become more important than ever. Hence, ideas and even ideals count, and the various instruments of public diplomacy as well as private organizations remain important in propagating such ideas in the post-cold war world. 4. REALISM ALLOWS STATES TO ASSESS RELATIVE POSITIONS Michael Mastanduno, Associate Professor of Government at Dartmouth, NEOREALISM AND NEOLIBERALISM: THE CONTEMPORARY DEBATE, 1993, p. 255. One of the key insights of the realist approach to international relations is that nation-states are consistently sensitive to considerations of relative gain and advantage. As Robert Gilpin has observed: “Nation-states are engaged in a never-ending struggle to improve or preserve their relative power positions.” Relative position matters because nation-states exist in anarchy, without a higher governing authonty. Anarchy breeds fear and distrust, leading nation-states to worry, at the extreme, that they will be conquered or destroyed by their more powerful counterparts. Even if nation-states do not fear for their physical survival, they worry that a decrease in their power capabilities relative to those of other nation-states will compromise their political autonomy, expose them to the influence attempts of others, or lessen their ability to prevail in political disputes with allies and adversaries.

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Realism Bad REALISM IS A FAILED FRAMEWORK 1. WORLD RESPONSE TO AMERICAN HEGEMONY DISPROVES REALIST TENETS Robert Kagan, Alexander Hamilton Fellow at American University in Washington and a contributing editor of the Weekly Standard, COMMENTARY, April, 1996, p. 21. The unique style of American hegemony at the end of the cold war led to a situation that ought to have been impossible according to any theory of international equilibrium. In the words of one leading neorealist, Kenneth N. Waltz, the “excessive strength” of one power should “prompt other states to increase their arms and pool their efforts against the dominant state.” But when the Soviet empire collapsed and the United States was left as the sole remaining superpower, the normal and predictable response of the world’s other great nations--to pull together in a coalition to check American power--did not happen. The reaction of America’s European and Asian allies was not to fear or resist the emergence of this new giant. Their fear, rather, was that the United States would withdraw from its leadership role and unburden itself of responsibilities for preserving the world order it had created and from which they had so greatly benefited. Even Russia, America’s mortal enemy in the cold war, came to understand that American hegemony, while harmful to Russian egos, might not be at odds with fundamental Russian interests. This is a critical point often overlooked in the historical debate over the causes of the Soviet empire’s collapse. Although Mikhail Gorbachev and his reform-minded associates had many reasons to seek a reordering of their society and a reprieve from the costly competition with the West, beneath all their calculations lay a fundamental assumption: they knew that what the United States wanted from them was not incompatible with the survival of the Russian state, or even with its prosperity and well-being. Put bluntly, they knew it was safe to surrender; and, as Germany and Japan could attest, it might even be lucrative. If American military and economic power had helped force the Soviets to a moment of painful decision, American principles made the choice for reform and integration into the American world order a fairly easy one. 2. IDEALISM IS ESPECIALLY PERTINENT IN THE GLOBAL INFORMATION AGE David M. Abshire, president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, THE WASHINGTON QUARTERLY, Spring, 1996, p. 39. This is especially true of the central tenet of idealism: the notion that ideas count in international relations. America’s democratic system and ideals exercise a critical influence on its foreign policy the making of that policy, its appeal, and its effectiveness just as Japan’s unique interpretation of capitalism and China’s central Communist rule influence those countries’ relationships with other states. Whether or not we believe, as Francis Fukuyama has argued, that world history has become a relatively unilinear trend toward free markets and democratic systems, it is clear that the democratic ideal has at least temporarily infected a much larger percentage of the world’s population and it is just as clear that this development carries substantial implications, largely positive, for U.S. national interests. Apart from (and to some degree in contrast to) democracy and free markets, the category of ideas and identities to be found under the broad heading of culture also has powerful implications for world politics. Here the starkest model has been proposed by Samuel Huntington, who sees a coming “clash of civilizations” produced by cultural differences in political and economic matters. n4 And here again, whether or not one agrees fully with Huntington’s thesis, one cannot deny that cultural habits, identities, and biases exercise an effect in international relations-an effect that cannot be captured by looking at all actors as equivalent “black boxes” whose political structure, economic organization, and cultural norms are irrelevant to their behavior in the global community. In an information age, it could be that the relationship of ideas to policy is closer than it has ever been. --

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REALISM IS AN UNDESIRABLE FRAMEWORK 1. MODERN REALISM IMPLIES A DANGEROUS LEVEL OF ISOLATIONISM Robert Kagan, Alexander Hamilton Fellow at American University in Washington and a contributing editor of the Weekly Standard, COMMENTARY, April, 1996, p. 21. But perhaps the first thing to be said about today’s realists is that, their appeals to tradition notwithstanding, there is a big difference between their position and that of the realists of 50 years ago. That difference is rooted in historical circumstances. In a bipolar world, espousing a realist definition of the national interest meant accepting the need for constant international engagement and constant preparedness for war. Even today, if the world were genuinely multipolar--with six major powers of relatively equal strength competing for preeminence--the older conception of the national interest would still require American vigilance on the international stage. But in the world as it actually is, with a single, predominant superpower and several much weaker powers, the realist position logically impels the nation toward minimalism, if not toward isolationism. Indeed, the greater our power in the world, the more we would seem required, by realist definitions, to withdraw from active involvement. Or, to put it another, paradoxical way, the greater our power, the smaller our national interest. The Western hemisphere, after all, seems fairly secure these days; and the danger that a single power will come to dormuate the Eurasian World Island and then cast its greedy eyes on the New World is smaller now than at any time in this century. In such a world, those “vital national-security interests” which many Congressmen insist can alone justify the loss of a single American life would seem hard to come by, while excuses for indifference or disengagement are plentiful. If there is a “temptation” abroad in the land today, this is it. Whatever the inadequacies of early cold-war realism, its goal had been to find the place where the pursuit of principles intersected with the realities of international power politics. Given those realities, Reinhold Niebuhr, for one, hoped that America would “accept its full share of responsibility” for solving the world problem. Today, with the acquisition of unparalleled global influence, one might argue that our share of responsibility for the “world problem” has not shrunk but grown. Yet the only people willing to assert this are not today’s realists but a shrinking camp of internationalists with nothing but airy “humanitarianism” on their side. 2. REALISM IS DENIED BY EMPIRICAL OBSERVATION OF THE ACTUAL WORLD RobertO. Keohane, Stanfleld Professor of International Peace at Harvard University, NEOREALISM AND NEOLIBERALISM: THE CONTEMPORARY DEBATE, 1993, p. 271. Serious challenges to realism only arose when anomalies appeared between its presumptions and patterns of action in the world. The anomolies that were noticed in the United States were, not surprisingly, those that liberals could easily recognize, including the increasing salience of economic interdependence and the apparent tendency of democracies to behave differently in foreign policy than authoritarian states. Commercial liberalism and republican liberalism the beliefs that economic interdependence contributes to preace and that democracies are more peaceful, at least in some relationships, than non-democracies have long been important strains in liberal thinking. So has what Joseph Nye calls “sociological liberalism,” which in Nye’s words, “asserts the transformative effect of transnational contacts and coalitions on national attitudes and definitions of interests.” -

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Republicanism Good REPUBLICANISM/ELITE DEMOCRACY BEST FOR SOCIETY 1. REPUBLICANISM STOPS NATIONALISM AND WAR Catherine Audard, Professor at the International College of Philosophy in Paris, PHILOSOPHY AND PLURALISM, 1996, p. 164. The ideal Republic as a civic nation appears, therefore, to be the best protection against nationalism and war. The French Revolution had had the privilege of being the prime mover in this process by freeing the people from their particular roots and bonds and by 'recreating' them as the abstract bearers of rights: no more a Breton or an Auvergnat or a Jew or a Pole, but a French citizen with equal rights and dignity. To be French, therefore, implied special responsibilities, very similar to those carried by the American notion of citizenship, beyond the differences of class, ethnic origins, language and religion. France had invented the notion of the 'civic nation' and, as such, exemplified one particular instance of the 'universal Republic.' 2. PUBLIC OFFICIALS MUST OBEY OWN CONSCIENCE, NOT THE PEOPLE'S WISHES Walter Lippman, Dean of American Journalism, ESSAYS IN THE PUBLIC PHILOSOPHY, 1955, p. 51. Yet implicit in them there is a principle which, if it can be applied deeply enough, gets at the root of the disorder of modern democracy. It is that though public officials are elected by the voters, or are appointed by men who are elected, they owe their primary allegiance not to the opinions of the voters but to the law, to the criteria of their professions, to the integrity of the arts and sciences in which they work, to their own conscientious and responsible convictions of their duty within the rules and the frame of reference they have sworn to respect. 3. REPUBLICANISM FOSTERS A DEMOCRATIC COMMUNITY Catherine Audard, Professor at the International College of Philosophy in Paris, PHILOSOPHY AND PLURALISM, 1996, p. 169. But once again, one should not see the Republic only as the enemy of personal, 'negative' freedom, but also as a political instrument of integration within a civic, not an ethnic nation, where citizenship in the substitute for cultural homogeneity. One is not born French, to paraphrase Simone de Beauvoir. The birth of a democratic community is made possible by a seemingly totalitarian ideology. 4. RULER OWES DUTY TO HIS OFFICE, NOT TO THE PEOPLE Walter Lippman, Dean of American Journalism, ESSAYS IN THE PUBLIC PHILOSOPHY, 1955, p. 51-2. The implied principle may be defined in other terms by saying that while the electors choose the ruler, they do not own any shares in him and they have no right to command him. His duty is to the office and not to the electors. Their duty is to fill the office and not to direct the office-holder. I realize that, as I have stated it, the principle runs counter to the popular view that in a democracy public men are the servants (that is, the agents) of the people (that is, the voters). As the game of politics is played, what I am saying must seem at first like a counsel of perfection. There are, however, reasons for thinking it is not an abstract and empty bit of theorizing. 5. FREE SOCIETY CAN'T SURVIVE IF THE FEW LOSE POWER Walter Lippman, Dean of American Journalism, ESSAYS IN THE PUBLIC PHILOSOPHY, 1955, p. 26. This devitalization of the governing power is the malady of democratic states. As the malady grows the executives become highly susceptible to encroachment and usurpation by elected assemblies; they are pressed and harassed by the haggling of parties, by the agents of organized interests, and by the spokesmen of sectarians and ideologues. The malady can be fatal. It can be deadly to the very survival of the state as a free society if, when the great and hard issues of war and peace, of security and solvency, of revolution and order are up for decision, the executive and judicial departments, with their civil servants and technicians, have lost their power to decide.

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REPUBLICANISM IS BEST: POPULAR DEMOCRACY IMPOSSIBLE AND INEFFECTUAL 1. MASSES ARE INCAPABLE OF GOVERNING Walter Lippman, Dean of American Journalism, ESSAYS IN THE PUBLIC PHILOSOPHY, 1955, p. 14. If I am right in what I have been saying, there has developed in this century a functional derangement of the relationship between the mass of the people and the government. The people have acquired power which they are incapable of exercising, and the governments they elect have lost powers which they must recover if they are to govern. What then are the true boundaries of the people's power? The answer cannot be simple. But for a rough beginning let us say that the people are able to give and withhold their consent to being governed--their consent to what the government asks of them, proposes to them, and has done in the conduct of their affairs. They can elect the government. They can remove it. They can approve or disapprove of its performance. But they cannot administer the government. They cannot themselves perform. They cannot normally initiate and propose the necessary legislation. A mass cannot govern. 2. MASS OPINION OF THE GOVERNMENT DECREASING FUNCTIONS OF DEMOCRACY Walter Lippman, Dean of American Journalism, ESSAYS IN THE PUBLIC PHILOSOPHY, 1955, p. 15. When mass opinion dominates the government, there is a morbid derangement of the true functions of power. The derangement brings about enfeeblement, verging on paralysis, of the capacity to govern. This breakdown in the constitutional order is the cause of the precipitate and catastrophic decline of Western society. It may, if it cannot be arrested and reversed, bring about the fall of the West. 3. PUBLIC OPINION OFTEN CAUSES CATASTROPHIC DECISIONS Walter Lippman, Dean of American Journalism, ESSAYS IN THE PUBLIC PHILOSOPHY, 1955, p. 20. The unhappy truth is that the prevailing public opinion has been destructively wrong at the critical junctures. The people have imposed a veto upon the judgments of informed and responsible officials. They have compelled the governments, which usually knew what would have been wiser, or was necessary, or was more expedient, to be too late with too little, or too long with too much, too pacifist in peace and too bellicose in war, too neutralist or appeasing in negotiation or too intransigent. Mass opinion has acquired mounting power in this century. It has shown itself to be a dangerous master of decisions when the stakes are life and death. 4. PUBLIC OPINION IS TOO SLOW AND WEAK TO BE EFFECTIVE Walter Lippman, Dean of American Journalism, ESSAYS IN THE PUBLIC PHILOSOPHY, 1955, p. 20-21. The errors of public opinion in these matters have a common characteristic. The movement of opinion is slower than the movement of events. Because of that, the cycle of subjective sentiments on war and peace is usually out of gear with the cycle of objective developments. Just because they are mass opinions there is an inertia in them. It takes much longer to change many minds than to change a few. 5. PUBLIC DOESN'T HAVE ALL THE FACTS NEEDED FOR EFFECTIVE GOVERNANCE Walter Lippman, Dean of American Journalism, ESSAYS IN THE PUBLIC PHILOSOPHY, 1955, p. 25. Usually, moreover, when the decision is critical and urgent, the public will not be told the whole truth. What can be told to the great public it will not hear in the complicated and qualified concreteness that is needed for a practical decision. When distant and unfamiliar and complex things are communicated to great masses of people, the truth suffers a considerable and often a radical distortion. The complex is made over into the simple, the hypothetical into the dogmatic, and the relative into an absolute. Even when there is no deliberate distortion by censorship and propaganda, which is unlikely in time of war, the public opinion of masses cannot be counted upon to apprehend regularly and promptly the reality of things.

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Republicanism Bad REPUBLICANISM/ELITE DEMOCRACY IS TOTALITARIAN 1. PLATO'S REPUBLIC IS MORALLY IDENTICAL WITH TOTALITARIANISM Karl Popper, Professor of Philosophy, THE OPEN SOCIETY AND ITS ENEMIES, 2nd edition, 1952, p. 87-8. In spite of such arguments I believe that Plato's political program, far from being morally superior to totalitarianism, is fundamentally identical with it. I believe that the objections against this view are based upon an ancient and deeprooted prejudice in favor of idealizing Plato. That Crossman has done so much to point out and to destroy this inclination may be seen from this statement: "Before the Great War ... Plato ... was rarely condemned outright as a reactionary, resolutely opposed to every principle of the liberal creed. Instead he was elevated to a higher rank ... removed from practical life, dreaming of a transcendent City of God." Crossman himself, however, is not from that tendency which he so clearly exposes. It is interesting that this tendency could persist for such a long time in spite of the fact that Grote and Gomperz had pointed out the reactionary character of some doctrines of the REPUBLIC and the LAWS. But even they did not see all the implications of these doctrines: they never doubted that Plato was, in fact, a humanitarian. And their adverse criticism was ignored, or interpreted as a failure to understand and to appreciate Plato who was by Christians considered a 'Christian before Christ," and by revolutionaries a revolutionary. This kind of complete faith in Plato is undoubtedly still dominant, and field, for instance, finds it necessary to warn his readers that 'we shall misunderstand Plato entirely if we think of him as a revolutionary thinker.' This is, of course, very true; and it would be pointless if the tendency to make of Plato a revolutionary thinker, or at least a progressivist, were not fairly widespread. 2. PLATONIC JUSTICE LEADS TO TOTALITARIANISM Karl Popper, Professor of Philosophy, THE OPEN SOCIETY AND ITS ENEMIES, 2nd edition, 1952, p. 89. What did Plato mean by 'justice'? I assert that in the REPUBLIC he used the term 'just' as a synonym for 'that which is in the interests of the best state.' And what is in the interest of this best state? To arrest all change, by the maintenance of a rigid class division and class rule. If I am right in this interpretation, then we should have to say that Plato's demand for justice leaves his political program at the level of totalitarianism; and we should conclude that we must guard against the danger of being impressed by mere words. 3. PLATO'S REPUBLIC DEFINES JUSTICE AS SLAVERY Karl Popper, Professor of Philosophy, THE OPEN SOCIETY AND ITS ENEMIES, 2nd edition, 1952, p. 90. From this argument, which is closely related to the principle that the carrying of arms should be a class prerogative, Plato draws his final conclusion that any changing or intermeddling between the three classes must be injustice, and that the opposite, therefore, is justice: 'When each class in the city minds its own business, the money-earning class as well as the auxiliaries and the guardians, then this will be justice.' This conclusion is reaffirmed and summed up a little later: 'The city is just ... if each of its three classes attends to its own work.' But this statement means that Plato identifies justice with the principle of class rule and class privilege. For the principle that every class should attend to its own business means, briefly and bluntly, that the state is just if the ruler rules, the worker works, and the slave slaves. 4. PLATO'S REPUBLIC CREATES JUSTICE FOR THE STATE, NOT FOR INDIVIDUALS Karl Popper, Professor of Philosophy, THE OPEN SOCIETY AND ITS ENEMIES, 2nd edition, 1952, p. 90. It will be seen that Plato's conception of justice is fundamentally different from our ordinary view as analyzed above. Plato calls class privilege 'just,' while we usually mean by justice rather the absence of such privilege. But the difference goes further than that. We mean by justice some kind of equality in the treatment of individuals, while Plato considers justice not as a relationship between individuals, but as property of the whole state based upon a relationship between its classes. The state is just if it is healthy, strong, united--stable.

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REPUBLICAN DEMOCRACY/SAYING THE WISE SHOULD RULE IS INCORRECT 1. DECLARING THAT THE WISE SHOULD RULE IS USELESS Karl Popper, Professor of Philosophy, THE OPEN SOCIETY AND ITS ENEMIES, 1952, p. 119. It is my conviction that by expressing the problem of politics in the form "Who should rule?" or "Whose will should be supreme?" etc., Plato created a lasting confusion in political philosophy. It is indeed analogous to the confusion he created in the field of moral philosophy by his identification, discussed in the last chapter, of collectivism and altruism. It is clear that once the question "Who should rule?" is asked, it is hard to avoid some such reply as 'the best' or 'the wisest' or 'the born ruler,' 'he who masters the art of ruling' (or perhaps 'The General Will,' or 'The Master Race,' or 'The Industrial Workers' or 'The People'.) But such a reply, convincing as it may sound--for who would advocate the rule of 'the worst' or 'the greatest fool' or 'the born slave'?--is, as I shall try to show, quite useless. 2. EVEN ASKING 'WHO IS TO RULE' ?' OBSCURES THE REAL PROBLEMS OF DEMOCRACY Karl Popper, Professor of Philosophy, THE OPEN SOCIETY AND ITS ENEMIES, 1952, p. 119-20. First of all, such a reply is liable to persuade us that some fundamental problem of political theory has been solved. But if we approach political theory from a different angle, then we find that far from solving any fundamental problems, we have merely skipped over them, by assuming that the question 'Who should rule?' is fundamental. For even those who share this assumption of Plato's admit that political rulers are not always sufficiently 'good' or 'wise' (we need not worry about the precise meaning of those terms), and that it is not at all easy to get a government on whose goodness and wisdom one can implicitly rely. If that is granted, then we must ask whether political thought should not face from the possibility of bad government; whether we should not prepare for the worst leaders, and hope for the best. But this leads to a new approach to the problem of politics, for it forces us to replace the question: Who should rule? by the new question: How can we so organize political institutions that bad or incompetent rulers can be prevented from doing too much damage? 3. PROCEDURES DON'T MAKE A DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY--CITIZENS MUST BE INVOLVED Noam Chomsky, Professor of Linguistics at MIT, interviewed by David Barsamian, SECRETS, LIES AND DEMOCRACY, 1993, p. 6-7. BARSAMIAN: So there's a dictionary definition of democracy and then a real-world definition. CHOMSKY: The realworld definition is more or less the one Carothers describes. The dictionary definition has lots of different dimensions, but, roughly speaking, a society is democratic to the extent that people in it have meaningful opportunities to take part in the formation of public policy. There are a lot of different ways in which that can be true, but insofar as that's true, the society is democratic. A society can have the formal trappings of democracy and not be democratic at all. The Soviet Union, for example, had elections. 4. ELITE-RULED 'DEMOCRACY' STOPS PUBLIC PARTICIPATION Noam Chomsky, Professor of Linguistics at MIT, interviewed by David Barsamian, SECRETS, LIES AND DEMOCRACY, 1993, p. 12. Of course, the descriptions of the facts are a little more nuances, because modern 'democratic theory' is more articulate and sophisticated than in the past, when the general population was called 'the rabble'. More recently, Walter Lippmann has called them the 'ignorant and meddlesome outsiders.' He felt that 'responsible men' should make the decisions and keep the 'bewildered herd' in line. Modern 'democratic theory' takes the view that the role of the public--the 'bewildered herd,' in Lippman's words--is to be spectators, not participants. They're supposed to show up every couple of years to ratify decisions made elsewhere, or to select among representatives of the dominant sectors in what's called an 'election.' That's helpful, because it has a legitimizing effect.

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Revolution Good RIGHT TO REVOLT IS ESSENTIAL TO A DEMOCRACY 1. A DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT CANNOT OPPRESS CITIZENS’ RIGHT TO REVOLT Charles R. Wilson, NQA, THE AMERICAN IDEA, 1942, p. 11 The third principle in American democracy is the right of revolution. This embraces something of a contradiction, for the right of revolution clashes with the generally acknowledged right of an established government to protect itself against violence. The difficulty is resolved, however, by the faith that in a democratic system the government itself can never oppress. Only a particular administration may attempt to destroy the right of the people. Consequently, every individual has an equal right of revolution against an administration so long as he does not aim at the subversion of the essential governmental system. 2. DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENTS PROVIDE METHOD FOR REVOLT Joseph R. Gusfield, University of California San Diego, PROTECT, REFORM, AND REVOLT; A READER IN SOCIAL MOVEMENTS, 1970, p.8. Sporadic protests, revolutionary violence, insurrections, conspiracies, and riots are a few examples of behavior which lie outside legitimate modes of conflict in many advanced societies. The use of reform as the model of change is therefore not a universal fact but is a method more likely to be found in societies whose institutions admit reform and dissent. 3. RIGHT TO REVOLT IS INTEGRAL TO AMERICAN DEMOCRACY Charles R. Wilson, NQA, THE AMERICAN IDEA, 1942, p. 11 Periodic epidemics of broken heads and bloody noses are averted by the common-sense recognition that revolution against an administration is better expressed by ballots than bullets—through regular constitutional channels rather than through armed force. But if the administration will not recognize, constitutional principles and all other avenues are blocked, the right of the people to use force without committing treason is an integral part of the American democratic theory.

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REVOLUTIONS ARE NECESSARY TO LIBERATE SOCIETY 1. REVOLUTION IS NECESSARY TO LIBERATE SOCIETY Herbert Marcuse, Social Philosopher, AN ESSAY ON LIBERATION, 1969, p. ix. In proclaiming the “permanent challenge” (la contestation permanente), the “permanent education,” the Great Refusal, they [the militants] recognize the mark of social repression, even in the most sublime manifestations of traditional culture, even in the most spectacular manifestations of technical progress. They have again raised a specter (and this time a specter which haunts not only the bourgeoisie but all exploitative bureaucracies): the specter of a revolution which subordinates the development of productive forces and higher standards of living to the requirements of creating solidarity for the human species, for abolishing poverty and misery beyond all national frontiers and spheres of interest, for the attainment of peace. In one word: they have taken the idea of revolution out of the continuum of repression and placed it into its authentic dimension: that of liberation. 2. REVOLUTIONS DO NOT HAVE TO BE SUCCESSFUL TO INCREASE LIBERTY Hannah Arendt, Social Philosopher, ON REVOLUTION, 1963, p. 111. And we also know to our sorrow that freedom has been better preserved in countries where no revolution ever broke out, no matter how outrageous the circumstances of the powers that be, and that there exists more civil liberties even in countries where the revolution was defeated than in those where revolutions have been victorious. 3. REVOLUTION IS NECESSARY TO REVERSE CYCLE OF CAPITALIST DOMINATION Herbert Marcuse, Social Philosopher, AN ESSAY ON LIBERATION, 1969, p. 18-19. Capitalist progress thus not only reduces the environment of freedom, the “open space” of human existence, but also the “longing,” the need for such an environment. And in doing so, quantitative progress militates against qualitative change even if the institutional barriers against radical education and action are surmounted. This is the vicious circle: the rupture with the self-propelling conservative continuum of needs must precede [sic] the revolution which is to usher in a free society, but such rupture itself can be envisaged only in a revolution—a revolution which would be driven by the vital need to be freed from the administered comforts and the destructive productivity of the exploitative society, freed from smooth heteronomy, a revolution which, by virtue of this “biological” foundation, would have the chance of turning quantitative technical progress into qualitatively different ways of life—precisely because it would be a revolution occurring at a high level of material and intellectual development, one which would enable man to conquer scarcity and poverty. REVOLUTION IS JUSTIFIED TO OVERTHROW THE STATUS QUO 1. VIOLENT REVOLUTION IS NECESSARY TO REMOVE STATUS QUO Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, P/C IS DEAD, 1992, p. 79. There can be no such thing as a “peaceful revolution.” Revolution means the transformation of the economic base and the superstructure of society; it requires the replacement of one ruling class by another. And no ruling class has ever voluntarily “stepped down” to make way for the class that was rising up to replace it. 2. VIOLENT REVOLUTION IS NECESSARY TO FIGHT STATUS QUO Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, P/C IS DEAD, 1992, p. 79. To think about carrying out such a revolution peacefully—particularly when it is up against the massive machinery of violence and destruction that is controlled by the bourgeois states in this era and up against ruling classes that have repeatedly demonstrated their absolutely ruthless determination to remain in power regardless of the cost in carnage and human misery—is the height of folly, at best. To promote such a notion as a political program and to oppose it to the necessity for violent proletarian revolution is deception of the greatest magnitude.

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Revolution Bad VIOLENCE IS NECESSARY FOR SUCCESSFUL REVOLUTION 1. VIOLENCE IS NECESSARY FOR SUCCESSFUL REVOLUTION Hannah Arendt, Social Philosopher, ON REVOLUTION, 1963, 111. Necessity and violence, violence justified and glorified because it acts in the cause of necessity, necessity no longer either rebelled against in a supreme effort of liberation or accepted in pious resignation, but, on the contrary, faithfully worshipped as the great all-coercing force which surely, in the words of Rousseau, will “force men to be free”—we know how these two and the interplay between them have become the hallmark of successful revolutions in the twentieth century, and this is to such an extent that, for the learned and the unlearned alike, they are now outstanding characteristics of all revolutionary events. REVOLUTIONS IMPEDE PROGRESS IN A SOCIETY 1. REVOLUTIONS BLOCK PROGRESS Jean-François Revel, Author, DEMOCRACY AGAINST ITSELF, 1993, p. 40. Getting out of communism is like physical therapy for the severely crippled, not Olympic training for top athletes. In practice, however, the key point is that democracy gives progress a chance; revolution blocks it. 2. REVOLUTIONS RARELY PRODUCE DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT Hannah Arendt, Social Philosopher, CRISES OF THE REPUBLIC, 1972, p. 220. Finally, it is perfectly true, and a sad fact indeed, that most so-called revolutions, far from achieving the constituto libertatis, have not even been able to produce constitutional guarantees of civil rights and liberties, the blessings of “limited government,” and there is no question that in our dealings with other nations and their governments we shall have to keep in mind that the distance between tyranny and constitutional, limited government is as great as, perhaps greater than, the distance between limited government and freedom. 3. REVOLUTION HAS HARMED DEMOCRATIC PROGRESS Jean-François Revel, Author, DEMOCRACY AGAINST ITSELF, 1993, p. 34. A false idol has dominated politics, and in particular the political culture of the Left, since the late eighteenth century: the idea of revolution. It is difficult to think of other misconceived notions that have caused more harm, and that have done more to retard progress toward democracy and liberty everywhere. It is here that we find the noxious idea that society cannot be improved little by little, that it must, rather, be destroyed and rebuilt from top to bottom. This prejudice produced nothing but contempt for serious and efficient reforms, and it led to Nazism and communism.

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Rights Good SOCIETY MUST PROTECT RIGHTS 1. RIGHTS REQUIRE PROTECTION Louis Henkin, Legal Philosopher, THE AGE OF RIGHTS, 1990, p. 211. One need not look far afield to find philosophers and jurists who assert that there is same essential connection between rights and protection. A familiar passage springs to mind: “When we call anything a person’s right, we mean that he has a valid claim on Society to protect him in the possession of it, either by for or by law, or by that of education and opinion” (Mill, 1951,66). It certainly seems that rights provide, or at least ought to provide, some special protection for their right-holders, and it may even be that protection enters, in one way or another, into the very analysis of the concept of a right. 2. SOCIETY HAS AN OBLIGATION TO PROTECT RIGHTS Louis Henkin, Legal Philosopher, THE AGE OF RIGHTS, 1990, p. 3. Human rights imply the obligation of society to satisfy those claims. The state must develop institutions and procedures, must plan, must mobilize resources as necessary to meet those claims. Political and civil rights require laws, institutions, procedures, and other safeguards against tyranny, against corrupt, immoral, and inefficient agencies or officials. Economic and social rights in modem society require taxation and spending and a network of agencies for social welfare. 3. RIGHTS MUST BE PROTECTED AGAINST ALL COMERS Judith Best, Prof. of Political Science, SUNY Cortland, THE FRAMERS AND FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS, ed. by Robert Licht, 1992, p. 38. The major and overriding problem with relying on parchment prohibitions is revealed by the questions: Where does the danger to fundamental rights arise? Against whom must they be protected? Who or what is to secure them? The answers to these questions are: Dangers to liberty arise in all times and places, and under unpredictable and changing circumstances. Rights must be protected against all comers- against threats from individuals and organizations of all kinds, both inside and outside of our own society. 4. SOCIETY MUST ACT TO PROTECT RIGHTS Louis Henkin, Legal Philosopher, THE AGE OF RIGHTS, 1990, p. 3. Human rights are claims upon society. These claims may derive from moral principles governing relations between persons, but it is society that bears the obligation to satisfy the claims. Of course, the official representatives of society must themselves respect individual freedoms and immunities; political society must also act to protect the individual’s right against private invasion. As regards claims to economic and social benefits, society must act as insurer to provide them if individuals cannot provide them for themselves.

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RIGHTS ARE LEGITIMATE AND BENEFICIAL 1. RIGHTS ARE CONCRETE AND VALID CLAIMS Louis Henkin, Legal Philosopher, THE AGE OF RIGHTS, 1990, p.2. Human rights are rights of individuals in society. Every human being has, or is entitled to have, ‘rights’ -legitimate, valid, justified claims- upon his or her society; claims to various goods’ and benefits. Human rights are not some abstract, inchoate “good”; they are defined, particular claims listed in international instruments such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the major covenants and conventions. They are those benefits deemed essential for individual well-being, dignity, and fulfillment, and that reflect a common sense of justice, fairness, and decency. 2. RIGHTS ARE CRITICAL TO ADVANCEMENT OF WOMEN AND MINORITIES Gus DiZerega, Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment, ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS, Spring, 1995, p. 24-25. Of course, no community perfectly exemplifies these rights, but its failure to do so provides our most powerful means for criticizing that society’s practices. For example, many early advocates of liberal rights for White men would have opposed their extension to women and Blacks. But, once made, an argument takes on a life of its own, and the logic of liberal human rights demands their extension to Blacks, women, and any other beings capable of active participation in a free political community. It is for this reason that the argument that some liberal rights are “White, male, patriarchal rights” is deeply mistaken. If an American society did not already acknowledge the legitimacy of equal human rights, rather than just those of White males, civil rights and feminist arguments would have fallen on deaf ears rather than on uncomfortable ones. Blacks and women are certainly human, but will never be White males. 3. RIGHTS TRADEOFFS ARE RESOLVABLE Louis Henkin, Legal Philosopher, THE AGE OF RIGHTS, 1990, p. 4. The individual has obligations to others and to the community, and society may ask all individuals to give up some of their rights for the rights of others and for the common goad, but there is a core of individuality that cannot be invaded or sacrificed. And all individuals count equally. An individual’s right cannot be sacrificed to another’s right only when choice is inevitable, and only according to some principle of choice reflecting the competing value of each right. No particular individual can be singled out for particular sacrifice, except at random or by some other “neutral principle,” consistent with the spirit of equal protection of the laws. RIGHTS ARE PARAMOUNT 1. RIGHTS ARE PREEMPTIVELY INVIOLABLE Louis Henkin, Legal Philosopher, THE AGE OF RIGHTS, 1990, p. 5. The idea of human rights has implications for the relation of the individual’s rights to other public goods. It is commonly said that human rights are “fundamental.” That means that they are important, that life, dignity, and other important human values depend on them; it does not mean that they are absolute, that they may never be abridged for any purpose in any circumstances. Human rights enjoy a prima facia, presumptively inviolability, and will often trump other public goods. Government may not do some things, and must do others, even though the authorities are persuaded that it is in society’s interest (and perhaps even in the individual’s own interest) to do otherwise; individual human rights cannot be lightly sacrificed even for the goad of the greatest number, even for the general goad of all. 2. RIGHTS ARE UNIVERSAL Louis Henkin, Legal Philosopher, THE AGE OF RIGHTS, 1990, pp. 2-3. Human rights are universal: they belong to every human being in every human society. They do not differ with geography or history, culture or ideology, political or economic system, or stage of societal development To call them “human” implies that all human beings have them, equally and in equal measure, by virtue of their humanity regardless of sex, race, age; regardless of high or low “birth,” social class, national origin, ethnic or tribal affiliation; regardless of wealth or poverty, occupation, talent, merit, religion, ideology, or other commitment Implied in one’s humanity, human rights are inalienable and imprescritible: they cannot be transferred, forfeited, or waived; they cannot be lost by having been usurped, or by one’s failure to exercise or assert them. 634

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Rights Bad RIGHTS ARE HARMFUL AND ILLEGITIMATE 1. RIGHTS PROVIDE FALSE JUSTICE Mark Tushnet, Prof. of Law, Georgetown, TEXAS LAW REVIEW, 1984, p. 1363. Rights, most people believe, are “Good Things.” In this Article, I developed four related critiques of rights discussed in contemporary American legal circles. The critiques may be states briefly as follows: (1) Once one identifies what counts as a right in a specific setting, it invariably turns out that the right is unstable; significant but relatively small changes in the social setting can make it difficult to sustain the claim that a right remains implicated. (2) The claim that a right is implicated in some settings produced no determinate consequences. (3) The concept of rights falsely converts into an empty abstraction (reifies) real experiences that we ought to value for their own sake. (4) The use of rights in contemporary discourse impedes advances by progressive social forces, which I will call the “party of humanity.” 2. RIGHTS ARE DETRIMENTAL AND ILLEGITIMATE Ernst Tugendhat, NQA, NORMS, VALUES, AND SOCIETY, ed. by H. Pauer-Studer, 1994, p. 38. The liberal system of human rights is, therefore, not legitimate; first, because it does not consider the interests of several parts of the population, and second, because it creates new power structures favoring the privileged class. One might ask whether this proposition could at least be softened by admitting that this conception of human rights is, at least, legitimate for the privileged class; but first, it does not seem to make sense to relativize legitimacy in this way and second, this had not been the claim of the liberal tradition. The liberal tradition claimed real legitimacy for its conception. 3. NO DIVINE OR NATURAL JUSTIFICATION FOR RIGHTS IS VALID Barry Gower, Prof. of Philosophy, Univ. of Durham, HUMAN RIGHTS, ed. by Frank Dowrick, 1979, p. 53. The view that there are absolute inalienable rights is traditionally associated with the doctrine that there is a “Divine” or “Natural” law which is morally binding on all. Scrutiny of God’s purpose or of the human situation will, according to such a doctrine, enable us to discover this law and thereby identify certain rights as absolute. To many, such a speculative account of the origin and justification of rights will appear dubious if not downright superstitious, and certainly there has been little of the stability of content or emphasis in the history of the doctrine that might be expected if the account were true. Moreover, it is had to see how facts concerning God’s purpose can be used to derive the moral conclusions expressed in ascriptions of rights. 4. RIGHTS ONLY BENEFIT PRIVILEGED CLASSES Ernst Tugendhat, NQA, NORMS, VALUES, AND SOCIETY, ed. by H. Pauer-Studer, 1994, pp. 38-9. This second blind spot was probably facilitated by the fact that children, women, the aged and the incapacitated were considered as mere appendages of the male adults and not as subjects with rights of their own. Now it is just this fact, that the liberal tradition did not simply deny the interests of other people who did not belong to the privileged class, but only overlooked or misinterpreted them, which makes it possible not to simply oppose the illegitimate liberal tradition, but to demonstrate to the liberalist that the partially legitimate content of his own conception, if its partiality is admitted, leads of its own accord to a more comprehensive view. 5. RIGHTS ARE ONLY GIVEN BY THE STATE--NATURAL RIGHTS DO NOT EXIST Ernst Tugendhat, NQA, NORMS, VALUES, AND SOCIETY, ed. by H. Pauer-Studer, 1994, p. 33. Of course, such entities as rights cannot exist in nature. It can only have a metaphorical sense to say there are natural rights. Just as any other rights, human rights can only exist if they are bestowed or implemented. The claim that they exist universally can only have the sense that any state that does not contain them, that does not bestow them on its citizens, cannot be considered legitimate.

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RIGHTS ARE NOT ABSOLUTE 1. RIGHTS MUST BE LIMITED FOR PEACE AND STABILITY Barry Gower, Prof. of Philosophy, Univ. of Durham, HUMAN RIGHTS, ed. by Frank Dowrick, 1979, p. 52. There is also a suspicion that insistence upon individual rights will make cooperation in the pursuit of the common good more difficult. Accordingly, emphasis is placed on such matters as personal duty and it is pointed out that the protection of rights depends on the existence of an ordered society. Peace and security, law and order, are the sine quibus non of any meaningful right, and if they cannot be preserved without restricting or even extinguishing some rights and freedoms, that is not an unreasonable price to pay. 2. MAKING A RIGHT ABSOLUTE MAY RUIN IT Michael Freeman, Prof. of Politics, Mansfield College, RIGHTS, 1991, p. 36. It is rather to suggest that a slightly weaker form of a basic right may in fact be a more efficient way of promoting what it protects. It recognizes that human relationships cannot usually be sorted out neatly; indeed, that to insist on the absoluteness of a right is to allow a sing counter-instance to nullify it. For a concept to be viable, it must be allowed to bend slightly when unbearable stress is exerted; otherwise it will snap. 3. UNLIMITED EXERCISE OF RIGHTS IS DISASTROUS Richard Flathnian, Prof. of Political Science, Johns Hopkins Univ., HUMAN RIGHTS, ed. by Ellen Paul, 1984, p. 150. The extreme version of rights theory can be put into cadence of a once notorious slogan - “Extremism in the exercise of rights is no vice.” As thus understood, some critics see the practice of rights as lacking in principles of moderation. Thus, we have a number of familiar plaints (sic) about rights: the “Weiniar plaint” about extremists that use their political rights to sabotage a civil order; the “Dickens plaint” about the well-heeled grinding down in the impoverished by holding them to the letter of their obligations vis a vis contractual rights; the “Rachel Carson” or “Sierra Club plaint” about property holders treating their rights as licenses to despoil the commons. Arrangements that give one person or group such powerful weapons in competitions and conflicts with others, that give one person or group so much as an approximation to “sole and despotic dominion” over the goods available to human kind are, on the face of things, objectionable and dangerous arrangements. 4. NO RIGHT IS UNUMITED James Moreland and Norman Geisler, Profs. of Philosophy, Biola Univ. and Liberty Univ., THE LIFE AND DEATH DEBATE, 1990, p. 105. One way the basic principle is justified is to note that even “absolute” rights can be preempted. Moral duties are only prima facie; they stand only until challenged by something greater, like the law of justice or protecting the lives of the innocent. Killing in self-defense is an example. While it is a moral duty not to kill another person - even a bad person - nonetheless, it is another matter if they are about to kill you. 5. RIGHTS CANNOT BE ABSOLUTE Michael Freeman, Prof. of Politics, Mansfield College, RIGHTS, 1991, p. 34-5. The question of absoluteness runs up against three types of complications. There may be a clash between two competing natural rights, so that the realization of one can only be attained at the expense of the other; there will be internal contradictions even in the conferral of any one natural right and there may be occasions (examined in Chapter 6) when a natural right has to give way to another human or social value. Thus, for example, the indiscriminate pursuit of A’s liberty to do what he wants to many curtail B’s ability to hold on to her property; for A may claim the liberty to take possession of it. It could be maintained that this merely infringes B’s absolute right to property, rather than annihilating it, but the operations problems of absolute rights suggest that it is meaningless to assert them because there is no logical solution to the compatibility of two absolute rights which compete over arrangements for desirable human behavior. The conflict of such rights will outlast conflicts among persons; the former is essential, whereas the latter may be merely contingent.

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GRANTING RIGHTS JUST UNDERMINES OTHER RIGHTS 1. RIGHTS CLASH WITH OTHER RIGHTS Michael Freeman, Prof. of Politics, Mansfield College, RIGHTS, 1991, p. 25. A second or additional property of tights consequently relates to their strength (or weight), i.e. their capacity to override a value that might clash with their postulation. A right to free speech might clash with the goal of national security during a military emergency. How vital, it may be queried, is free speech w then information could be inadvertently passed on to enemies? And how demoralizing and unconducive to maximizing the war effort could suppression be? 2. RIGHTS IMPEDE ECONOMIC EFFICIENCY Arthur M. Okun, senior economist, member, and chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors and Brookings Institution senior fellow, EQUALITY AND EFFICIENCY: THE BIG TRADEOFF, 1975, p. 10. In short, the domain of rights is full of infringements on the calculus of economic efficiency. Our rights can be viewed as inefficient, because they preclude prices that would promote economizing, choices that would invoke comparative advantage, incentives that would augment socially productive effort, and trades that potentially would benefit buyer and seller alike. 3. RIGHTS DISCOURSE CRIPPLES PROGRESS TOWARDS SEXUAL EQUALITY Frances Olsen, Acting Professor of Law, University of California at Los Angeles, TEXAS LAW REVIEW, November, 1984, pp. 389-390. Moreover, thinking in terms of rights encourages a partial and inadequate analysis of sexuality. Just as rights theory conceptualizes a society composed of self-interested individuals whose conflicting interests are mediated by the state, it conceptualizes the problem of sexuality as a question of where social controls should end and sexual freedom should begin. Libertines and moralists alike tend to think of sexuality as a natural, presocial drive that is permitted or repressed by society; they disagree only over where to draw the line between freedom and social control. At one extreme, social control is limited to requiring consent of the participants; the realm of sexual freedom should extend to all consensual sexual activity. At the other extreme, freedom is limited to procreational sex within marriage; social control should restrict sexuality outside this realm. The important issue, however, is not where to draw such a line, but the substance and meaning that we give to sexuality. 4. RIGHTS CONFLICT AND TRADE-OFF Michael Freeman, Prof. of Politics, Mansfield College, RIGHTS, 1991, p. 94. But there may also be tradeoffs among rights themselves. For instance, the optionalizing of rights makes them potentially alienable, others not. Hence some individuals will bear such rights; others will not. Here we can envisage the purchase of rights, the currency being another right or a different good. If you accord me the right to walk through your garden, I will afford you the right to use my car.

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Security Good SECURITY SHOULD BE THE PARAMOUNT VALUE 1. SOCIETY’S QUEST FOR SECURITY IS ETERNAL E.J. Faulkner, President of the Woodmen Accident and Life Insurance, MAN’S QUEST FOR SECURITY, 1966, p. V. Man’s quest for security is eternal. In prehistoric times it was elemental and constant, concerned with physical protection against the forces of nature. As civilization has advanced, this quest has become more sophisticated, involving a myriad of social, economic, and political devices. Since security in its broadest sense is a universal aspiration of mankind, interest in it is widespread, engaging the thought and testing the ingenuity of the scholar and the urchin in the street, the professional person and the layman, the informed and the ignorant Security and man’s never ending quest for it have many dimensions. 2. SECURITY MEANS AN ELIMINATION OF ALL OF LIFES PROBLEMS Robert H. III, Professor of Philosophy at University of Nebraska, MAN’S QUEST FOR SECURITY, 1966, p. 22. Integral to these paradoxes is a vacillation between the notion, on the one hand, of “security” as the predicate of the ability to solve particular problems of a financial, medical, ethical, social, esthetic nature; and, on the other hand, of “security” as the predicate of a situation wherein all problems, actual and possible, are in fact solved. In the latter sense, security is properly asserted, therefore, only when there are no more problems, i.e., when there remains no hunger, pain, disease, anxiety, war, death--no more evils or unpredictables. 3. THE ULTIMATE GOAL OF ANYTHING SHOULD BE SECURITY Dr. Stephen Shapiro, Director of the Volunteer Counseling Service of Rockland County, New York, FEELING SAFE, 1976, p. 1. The self, the family, and the political form are involved in complex reciprocal interactions which, at our present stage of development, idealize empathy, but practice scapegoating. The world has been so unsafe, and our defenses against vulnerability so rigidly canalized, that we find ourselves using our defensive systems instead of our human capacities. As individuals, families, groups, and nations, we allow our defense budgets to become inflated by our fantasies. 4. SECURITY IS ESSENTIAL TO HUMAN EXISTENCE Otto Pick, Professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science, COLLECTIVE SECURITY, 1974, p. 15. Security is an essential precondition of an ordered human existence; it is natural for men to take precautions against danger. Governments must provide a secure environment which would allow people to pursue their economic and social goals without undue anxiety and fear. The concept of security covers every facet of life, and governments find it difficult to meet every contingency which might arise. The actual process of providing social and economic security has too frequently brought about a condition of insecurity caused by excessive state interference in private matters.

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SECURITY IS DESIRABLE 1. THE PURPOSE OF EVERY INSTITUTION IS TO PROVIDE SECURITY E.J. Faulkner, President of the Woodmen Accident and Life Insurance, MAN’S QUEST FOR SECURITY, 1966, pp. V-VI. The interest of the Company in the subject of security derives from the nature of its business--the provision of protection against the financial consequences of the three great hazards, death, disability, and dependent old age. Dr. William Haber, Dean of the College of Literature, Science, and Art, University of Michigan, noted in the first Clarence Axman Lecture that “All of life--and business activity is no exception--is surrounded with a substantial degree of insecurity. Every institution in our society whose object is to provide protection against insecurity, whether to corporate institutions or families and individuals, against the vicissitudes of change, against the uncertainties of tomorrow, performs an indisposable function in our society.” 2. SECURITY IS MORE DESIRABLE THAN INSECURITY Sidney Hook, Professor of Philosophy and head of the department at New York University, MAN’S QUEST FOR SECURITY, 1966, p. 13. In discussing the quest for security we must always specify the context within which it is sought. We must not speak of security as if “total security” were possible or desirable. A considerable degree of insecurity, in some respects, is tolerable, if some security in other respects is assured. In the hierarchy of values each individual must make his own choice. A man who is secure in his love and friendship may even enjoy the insecurities of battle because he knows that defeat does not mean the black despair of the spirit which follows the annihilating failure. On the other hand, a man secure in his sense of achievement or power, or in his sense of mission, may be able to live with the uncertainties of the esteem and regard and even affection of his fellows, without troubled concern. 3. SECURITY IS DESIRABLE Dr. Howard P. Rome, President of the American Psychiatric Association, MAN’S QUEST FOR SECURITY, 1966, p. 64. Political man bears the social stamp of his family’s rearing patterns. These fit the young to the mirrored expectations of their elders and thereby achieve what Thomas More described as the “best state of a Publiyque Weale.” The issue of what is best is another of the many moot points of value. Investigations in recent times have produced a rich but again a bewildering varied and uneven assortment of conclusions about the nature of man. Nevertheless, a few salient features of the security quests of modern man do stand out 4. PEOPLE GENERALLY LIKE AND WANT SECURITY Dr. Henry Link, Author, THE WAY TO SECURITY, 1951, p. 73. Those who preferred working for the government gave as their chief reason: “security.” Those who preferred working for private industry gave us their principal reason, greater chance for advancement.” Since more than one citizen in every eight is already on the government payroll, this means that almost twice as many more would also prefer this kind of security. They want to be taken care of rather than the adventure of taking care of themselves. 5. WITHOUT SECURITY, NO POLICIES CAN SUCCEED Otto Pick, Professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science, COLLECTIVE SECURITY, 1974, p. 17. Whilst it is true that, in the long run, a government cannot guarantee the external security of the state, it is equally true that a secure and stable society cannot develop in an atmosphere of complete international insecurity, when the very existence of the state may be at risk. Internal stability and external security interact continuously. It is ultimately true that without external security, policies designed to create and maintain social cohesion cannot succeed.

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Security Bad MANY THINGS ARE NEEDED FOR SECURITY TO EXIST 1. SECURITY CANNOT EXIST WITHOUT KNOWLEDGE Dr. Clifford M. Hardin, Chancellor at University of Nebraska, MAN’S QUEST FOR SECURITY, 1966, pp. ix-x. Along with the other forms of life, man has struggled with the basic practical problems of getting food and shelter and ensuring the continuation of his species. Man alone, however, has also sought to unravel the mysteries of his environment and his place in it. He has been concerned with the reason for his being. As a result, he has forever explored for more knowledge; he has reviewed his findings; and from time to time he has readjusted his concepts. All of these efforts have been directed toward a final goal of winning a total security of the mind and spirit, as well as the body. 2. SECURITY WILL ALWAYS HAVE A PRICE Sidney Hook, Professor of Philosophy and head of the department at New York University, MAN’S QUEST FOR SECURITY, 1966, p.6. Nor is this the whole story. Volumes could be filled with the evidence that with respect to the privations and disasters from which men have suffered in the past, life has become much safer. To be sure, the conquest of new worlds, the opening up of new horizons and dimensions of experience, carries with it risks and dangers previously unknown. In the future, there probably be multiple hazards in space travel, but the cumulative impact of the scientific skills which make the advances possible will also enable us to reduce these hazards as well as those of present-day automotive travel. Indeed, we already know enough to reduce the latter substantially even now, if we were prepared to pay a sufficient price for it That human safety and security have a price will always be true in a world of limited resources no matter what economic system prevails. 3. CHANCE PREVENTS 100% SECURITY Sidney Hook, Professor of Philosophy and head of the department at New York University, MAN’S QUEST FOR SECURITY, 1966, p. 11. Psychologically we can carry the quest for security too far. Everything in the world may be causally determined, but there are so many independent and plural chains of events intersecting each other that the mind reels at the prospect of the many different ways in which things can go wrong for us even in a well-ordered world. For the number of ways in which things can go wrong is indefinitely larger than the ways they can go right This is the basis for the promulgation of “Murphy’s law: If anything can go wrong, it will.” One of the disadvantages of a lively imagination is its capacity of envisaging the possibilities of disaster where probabilities cannot be easily determined. 4. MUST HAVE COMMUNITY FOR SECURITY TO EXIST Sidney Hook, Professor of Philosophy and bead of the department at New York University, MAN’S QUEST FOR SECURITY, 1966, p. 12. There is even a more obvious aspect of security which seems independent at first glance of achievement or triumph over risk. The secure individual is one who enjoys a certain status dependent upon the respect and esteem of the community. He is a person who counts for something and is counted upon by others. There are some strong souls who feel so secure in themselves that they can live without discomfort or anxiety in open and contemptuous defiance of, or indifference to, their fellow men. But most of us are not so sternly self-sufficient. The rebel, the hermit, the recluse, and all authors who have gone into internal emigration pat a price for their isolation. It is significant that even they, like so many mindless dissenters and nonconformists today, tend to huddle together in groups in order to reinforce their sense of conformity in dissent.

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SECURITY IS IMPOSSIBLE 1. SECURITY CAN NEVER BE ACHIEVED Sidney Hook, Professor of Philosophy and head of the department at New York University, MAN’S QUEST FOR SECURITY, 1966, p.7. Why is it then, despite the increase in the power of man to control his physical environment--shortly before his death von Neumann predicted that man would be able to control certain aspects of the weather!--there is such a widespread feeling of insecurity among human beings today? The mood of our culture at home and abroad is one of crisis, uneasiness, uncertainty, and insecurity. The sense of alienation and anxiety seems to be developing almost pan passu with the growth of human power. To be sure one might question whether such a judgment could be substantiated, since we do not have anything comparable in the way of firm documentary evidence concerning popular consciousness of past ages. 2. SECURITY IS IMPOSSIBLE BECAUSE HUMAN NATURE WILL ALWAYS TAKE RISKS Sidney Hook, Professor of Philosophy and head of the department at New York University, MAN’S QUEST FOR SECURITY, 1966, pp 10-11. There are other reasons why the quest for security is likely to be perennial even in our technological utopia. If we define security as escape from risk, we can always reduce risk by reducing the occasions for living. But man is complex and especially so when he seems to be making simple demands. He is a risk-seeking and risk-enjoying creature who at the same time wants to be safe and secure in his adventure. He craves for the excitement of danger even as he seeks the assurance of a happy ending. Give him a world in which there is no risks and it will seem stale and unprofitable to him. He will find occasion to create risks in irrational ways beyond fathoming. One can only make a surmise about its causes, but the facts seem undisputable that for many persons an element of gratuitous risk-taking seems necessary, to give spice and savor to their life. Even children when unobserved sometimes will take breathtaking risks walking the glazed ridges of tenement roofs--not altogether explainable by their childishness--and I dressy it would be difficult to find an adult, no matter how carefully buttoned up he now is, who has not taken some utterly foolish and dangerous risk in the course of his life. 3. SECURITY IS IMPOSSIBLE BECAUSE INSECURITY WILL ALWAYS EXIST Robert H. Hurlbutt Ill, Professor of Philosophy at University of Nebraska, MAN’S QUEST FOR SECURITY, 1966, p. 21. Modem western man, for instance, is more secure than his forebears in that his children are less likely to face the disease diphtheria, and yet he is not secure in that he is more likely to face mental disease. Modem man is more secure, in certain countries at least, in that there is less hunger; but, in counter argument, it is claimed that he is insecure in that he has not got rid of war. He is socially secure in the objective senses of less hunger, better medical care, safer shelter, but he nevertheless has to die, or possibly go to hell, or find himself drowning in some other shoreless lake of cosmic insecurity. 4. SECURITY HAS NO PRACTICAL OR EMPIRICAL MEANING Robert H. Hurlbutt Ill, Professor of Philosophy at University of Nebraska, MAN’S QUEST FOR SECURITY, 1966, p. 23. Now it takes very little thought to see that this is not a viable analogy to life as we know it to be. As Professor Hook says, there will never be a situation, for either an individual or a culture, when his or its problems, each and every one. are all resolved. To put it another way, if we assume that security comes only when the problem-box is empty, then security becomes impossible, i.e., there will be no actual case in which we can truly assert that a person or a culture is secure. Security, then, in this sense has no practical or empirical meaning.

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Self-Determination Good SELF-DETERMINATION IS ESSENTIAL FOR RIGHTS 1. SELF-DETERMINATION ESSENTIAL TO ALL OTHER HUMAN RIGHTS Eric Kolodner, currently completing a joint degree at New York University School of Law and Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School, CONNECTICUT JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW, Fall 1994, page 153. The effective exercise of a people’s right to self-determination is an essential condition or prerequisite...for the genuine existence of the other human rights and freedoms. Only when self-determination has been achieved can a people take the measures necessary to ensure human dignity, the full enjoyment of all rights and the political, economic, social and cultural progress of all human beings... 2. EVEN IF SELF-DETERMINATION DOESN’T GUARANTEE FREEDOM, IT IS STILL ESSENTIAL David Ziskind, Associate Editor, COMPARATIVE LABOR LAW JOURNAL, Fall 1981, p np. There are, of course, legitimate national differences in self-evaluation, in the recognition of problems and in the interpretation of how local laws deal with those problems. These differences are part of the right to self-determination. They are essential, but they do not guarantee freedom from error nor do they negate the probability that consultation and agreement with other nations will rebound to the nations’ mutual advantage. SELF-DETERMINATION IS MORALLY CORRECT 1. SELF-DETERMINATION IS MORALLY NECESSARY FOR HUMAN INTEGRITY Lawrence 0. Gostin, MD, JAMA: THE JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION, September 13, 1995, Page 844. The Nuremberg Code, Helsinski IV, and the Council of International Organizations of Medical Sciences’ ethical guidelines focus on the need for full disclosure to enable individuals to make free and informed decisions. Informed consent is also thought to be incorporated into the right to security of the person recognized in the International Bill of Human Rights. The right to autonomy or self-determination, then, is broadly perceived to be a morally necessary method of demonstrating genuine respect for human integrity. 2. ONLY THROUGH SELF-DETERMINATION CAN WE SUPPORT NATIVE AMERICAN RIGHTS Rebecca L. Robins, former assistant professor of Education at Arizona State University, Editor of the journal Thought and Action, THE STATE OF NATIVE AMERICA, edited by M. Annette Jaimes, 1992, page 110. There is no taking back the unrelenting trauma and suffering undergone by generations of native people forced to live in squalor as the wealth of their assets poured into the coffers of their oppressors. Nor can the extent of the lies, the seamless web of mendacity and duplicity to which Euroamerican has subjected Native America since the first European “boat person” set foot in this hemisphere ever be retrieved. Probably, not even the damage done to the very treaty-guaranteed land that has been so mirthlessly stripped from native nations can at this point be fixed. Things will never be as they might have been. Still, if things cannot be set exactly right, they can at least be made better. Native North America can at last be accorded its fundamental human right to self-determination.

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SELF-DETERMINATION DOES NOT EQUAL HORRIFIC SECESSIONISM 1. SELF-DETERMINATION DOESN’T NECESSARILY MEAN SECESSION: EMPIRICS PROVE Eric Kolodner, currently completing a joint degree at New York University School of Law and Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School, CONNECTICUT JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW, Fall 1994, page 153. The external right to self-determination, however, does not necessarily implicate secession. A legitimate exercise of external self-determination, for example, can also result in a situation where a people becomes loosely federated with another independent State; runs its own domestic affairs while relinquishing control of its foreign relations to another State; or entirely merges with an existing nation. For example, in 1965, the territory of Ifnii chose to incorporate with Morocco; and in 1975, the Mariana Islands chose to become freely associated with the United States. 2. EVEN IF RISK OF SECESSION EXISTS, WE SHOULDN’T REJECT SELF-DETERMINATION Eric Kolodner, currently completing a joint degree at New York University School of Law and Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School, CONNECTICUT JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW, Fall 1994, page 153. Although external self-determination does not necessarily implicate secession, it is undeniable that the exercise of this right will sometimes send tremors through the domestic or international order. However, this risk of increased tension should not persuade the international community to categorically reject movements for external selfdetermination. There currently exist and will exist situations in which a people possesses a legitimate claim to external self-determination and where its interests and rights cannot be protected unless it is granted external selfdetermination -- even if this involves the establishment of a new independent state. Such peoples potentially include the East Timorese in Indonesia, the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, and the Tibetans living under the Chinese government. 3. SELF-DETERMINATION DOESN’T MEAN SECESSIONISM, BUT THE RIGHT TO DECIDE Rebecca L. Robins, former assistant professor of Education at Arizona State University, Editor of the Journal Thought and Action, THE STATE OF NATIVE AMERICA, edited by M. Annette Jainies, 1992, page 112. This need not be understood as meaning that each and every indigenous nation will automatically secede, becoming a sovereignty separate from the United States. Rather, it means that their intrinsic right to do so must be acknowledged, formally and unequivocally, by their colonizers. Only from this position--free from a dominating power unilaterally precluding certain of their options for its own reasons--can any nation “freely determine its political, social, and economic destiny,” and hence the nature of its mode of governance. Viewed in any other way, the term “self-determination” is at best meaningless, at worst, a subterfuge meant to mask its exact opposite, the continuation of a relation between colonizer and colonized.

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Self-Determination Bad BETTER VALUE ALTERNATIVES TO SELF-DETERMINATION EXIST 1. SELF-DETERMINATION IS A BAD, VIOLENT VALUE Amitai Etzioni, Professor at George Washington University, FOREIGN POLICY, Winter 1992-1993, p34. Selfdetermination should not be treated as an absolute value, trumping all others. Self-determination is meant to enhance justice in the world through self-government. However, in spite of its positive role in previous periods, the violence and destruction--even war--it now incites greatly undercut its legitimacy. 2. DEMOCRACY AND COMMUNITY ARE HIGHER VALUES THAN SELF-DETERMINATION Amitai Etzioni, Professor at George Washington University, FOREIGN POLICY, Winter 1992-1993, p35. Now, in most states of the world, further fragmentation is likely to imperil democratic forces and endanger economic development. Only when secessionist movements seek to break out of empires--and only when those empires refuse to democratize--does self-determination deserve our support. Otherwise, democratic government and community-building, not fragmentation, should be accorded the highest standing. 3. SELF-DETERMINATION NARROWS HUMAN RIGHTS: HUMAN RIGHTS A BE1TER VALUE Richard C. Holbrooke, Assistant Secretary for European and Canadian Affairs, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE DISPATCH, June 26, 1995, p np. Above all, civil society demands respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. Assertions of selfdetermination that are based solely on ethnic identity or historic claims, in an area in which peoples and borders do not match, do not guarantee individual freedom. In fact, they are likely to narrow human rights rather than expand them. Respect for individual human rights, on the other hand, does make possible the free expression of ethnic, linguistic, and cultural identities. It also underpins a fundamental principle of international order: borders should not be changed by force. 4. IT CAN BE MORALLY WRONG TO ALLOW SELF-DETERMINATION Alan Wolfe, reviewer of books, COMMONWEAL, October 21, 1994, Page 24. For Walzer, tribes require thin moral reasoning. The minimal moral principle we ought to apply to other nations is to recognize their right to self-determination. This even applies to nations within nations: we cannot tell the Slovaks that they have no right to be independent of the Czechs. Yet demands ought to be resisted sometimes, even the demand for self-determination; it would have been morally wrong for Abraham Lincoln to allow the South independence. “Let the people go who want to go,” Walzer writes. This is too easy, especially when ethnic identity is the issue.

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SELF-DETERMINATION DESTROYS DEMOCRACY 1. MUST RESIST SELF-DETERMINATION OR RISK CHAOS AND DEATH OF DEMOCRACY Amitai Etzioni, Professor at George Washington University, FOREIGN POLICY, Winter 1992-1993, p 28 Even the romantics of self-determination must pause before the prospect of a United Nations with thousands of members. The world may well survive the creation of ever more toy states, smaller than Liechtenstein and less populated than the South Pacific island-country of Nauru (population 9,300), but what meaning does self-determination have when miniscule countries are at the economic and military mercy, even whim, of larger states--states in whose government they have no representation at all? If the world is to avoid such chaos, the call for self-determination should no longer elicit almost reflexive moral support. We should withhold political and moral support unless the movement faces one of the truly exceptional situations in which self-determination will enhance democracy rather than retard it. 2. SELF-DETERMINATION MUST BE DUMPED OR IT WILL KILL DEMOCRACY Max M. Kampelman, Secretary with the US State Department, CURRENT, November, 1993, Page 35. The right of selfdetermination of peoples is associated with Woodrow Wilson, one of America’s most illustrious presidents, who, in turn, is associated with peace, civility, and responsibility in international relations. Prudence, therefore, calls for hesitation before undertaking to challenge that principle. It is, however, not necessary to challenge the right in order to avoid its obviously mischievous and most dangerous misapplication in many parts of the world today as growing ethnic conflicts become associated with assertions of the right of self-determination. Unless a distinction between self-determination and secession is made and understood, the right of self-determination will either drag the world body politic into violence and chaos, or the principle itself will have to be dumped onto the trash heap of history as one that has outlived its usefulness and could undermine the potential for democratic development. 3. SELF DETERMINATION IS A DESTRUCTIVE FORCE WHICH UNDERMINES DEMOCRACY Amitai Etzioni, Professor at George Washington University, FOREIGN POLICY, Winter 1992-1993, p 21 Selfdetermination movements, a major historical force for more than 200 years, have largely exhausted their legitimacy as a means to create more strongly democratic states. While they long served to destroy empires and force governments to be more responsive to the governed, with rare exceptions self-determination movements now undermine the potential for democratic development in nondemocratic countries and threaten the foundations of democracy in the democratic ones. it is time to withdraw moral approval from most of the movements and see them for what they mainly are--destructive. 4. STRIFE FROM SELF-DETERMINATION UNDERMINES DEMOCRACY Amitai Etzioni, Professor at George Washington University, FOREIGN POLICY, Winter 1992-1993, p 21 If tolerance between groups is not fostered, the resulting breakups will not lead to the formation of new stable democracies, but rather to further schisms and more ethnic strife, with few gains and many losses for proponents of self-government The United States, then, should use moral approbation and diplomatic effort to support forces that enhance democratic determination and oppose those that seek fragmentation and tribalism. 5. SELF-DETERMINING STATES ARE ANTI-DEMOCRATIC AND LESS TOLERANT Amitai Etzioni, Professor at George Washington University, FOREIGN POLICY, Winter 1992-1993, p 33 In contrast, breakaway states based on ethnicity tend to fashion communities that are more sociologically monolithic than their parent states. Quebec, obviously, would be more “French”--and the remaining Canada more “English”--than the current composite. The great intolerance breakaway states tend to display toward minority ethnic groups heightens the polarization. Ethnically based breakaway states generally result in more ethnic homogeneity and less pluralism, meaning that they often lack the deeper sociological foundations of democracy.

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Socialism Good SOCIALISM WILL SAVE HUMANITY FROM DESTRUCTION OF CAPITALISM 1. ONLY HOPE OF SURVIVAL FOR HUMANITY IS SOCIALIST REVOLUTION MANIFESTO OF THE 9TH CONGRESS OF THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNIST CURRENT, 2ND QUARTER, 1992, P. 4. Workers! Never have the predictions of the last century’s revolutionaries been so up-to-date. “Socialism, or barbarism” was what they said. In the absence of the proletariat’s world revolution, barbarism has now become general and threatens the survival of humanity itself. More than ever, the only hope for the future lies in the overthrow of the capitalist system, and the creation of new social relationships freed from the contradictions which are strangling society. 2. SOCIALISM WILL SAVE HUMANITY FROM DECOMPOSITION OF CAPITALISM INTERNATIONAL REVIEW, 2nd Quarter, 1991, p. 17. Today, after 20 years of stalemate where the ruling class has been unable to unleash its “solution” of worldwide apocalypse, but where the proletariat has not had the strength to impose its own revolutionary solution, capitalism has entered a state of decomposition which engenders a new kind of conflict: the Gulf war is its first concretisation. For the world working class, and especially for workers in the main industrialised countries, the warning is clear: either the class will be able to develop its fight to a revolutionary conclusion, or the dynamic of decomposing capitalism, from one “local” war to the next, will eventually call humanity’s survival into questions. 3. ONLY SOCIALISM WILL STOP DESTRUCTION OF HUMANITY INTERNATIONALISM, Spring 1992, p.8. Since the first world war, capitalism has been a decadent social system. It has twice plunged humanity into a barbaric cycle of crisis, world war, reconstruction and new crisis. In the 1980s, it entered into the final phase of this decadence, the phase of decomposition. There is only one alternative offered by this irreversible historical decline: socialism or barbarism, world communist revolution or the destruction of humanity. 4. BARBARISM OF CAPITALISM CAN ONLY BE STOPPED BY SOCIALIST REVOLUTION Eduardo Smith, NQA, INTERNATIONALISM, Spring 1992, p.2. Throughout this century, capitalism has more than proved that it is a decadent mode of production, the mere continued existence of which represents a danger for the very survival of humanity. The onset of the phase of decomposition has taken the self-destructive tendency inherent to capitalism’s decadence to the extreme. As we have shown throughout this article, today’s evolution of the international situation is characterized by an increasing barbarism that, left to its own dynamic, can only get worse until it destroys humanity. Only the communist revolution can put an end to this threat. 5. ONLY ABOLITION OF CAPITALISM WILL SOLVE CRISIS IT CREATED MANIFESTO OF THE 9TH CONGRESS OF THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNIST CURRENT, 2nd Quarter, 1992, p. 4. The bourgeoisie’s ideological campaigns are today singing the praises of the market, which is supposed to solve all the problems of the world economy. What a sinister swindle! It is precisely because capitalism is based on the production of commodities, of value for exchange and not for use, that its economy is plunging irredeemably into the abyss. The failure of the Stalinist economies lay not in abolishing capitalism and the market, but in trying to cheat its laws on a grand scale, without ever abolishing it. The only way for society to overcome the crisis of capitalism is not to have “more capitalism” or “less capitalism” nor to reform the system. It is to overthrow the laws that govern it, and to abolish capitalism itself. SOCIALISM IS BENEFICIAL TO WOMEN 1. SOCIALISM IS GOOD FOR WOMEN Catharine MacKinnon, Feminist Author, TOWARD A FEMINIST THEORY OF THE STATE, 1989, p. 28. Socialism would end women’s oppression by integrating them into the workforce, transforming their isolated “private” work in the home into “public” social production. By eliminating the public/private split incident to the divisions between classes under capitalism, socialism provides the essential condition for women’s emancipation. 647

TRUE COMMUNISM WILL CREATE EGALITARIAN SOCIETY 1. COMMUNIST REVOLUTION WILL BRING ABOUT TRUE EQUALITY CHALLENGE, July 15, 1992, p. 5. The Demopublicans and the Perotblicrats all have to go! The profit system doesn’t deserve to exist. It can’t meet the needs of the working class. The answer to racism, unemployment, and endless imperialist war is a communist revolution, the abolition of the wage system, and a new society, run by workers, based on equality, and without bosses. 2. PROLETARIATS MUST DEFEND THEMSELVES AGAINST ATTACKS OF CAPITALISM Eduardo Smith, NQA, INTERNATIONALISM, Spring 1992, p.2. However, this [communist] revolution is not an automatic process. It requires the consciousness and organized action of the whole working class, its collective struggle and its willingness to confront the capitalist state. But in order to be equal to these demands, the working class has to be able to lift itself from its present state of disorientation. And to start with, the proletariat has to defend itself, on its own class terrain, against the rain of attacks that capitalism is unleashing against it. In this combat for the defense of its conditions of life, against wage cuts, lay offs, etc., the working class will create the weapons that it needs to destroy capitalism before it destroys humanity. 3. COMMUNISM PROVIDES REAL FREEDOM CHALLENGE, June 17, 1992, p. p. Capitalists dominate every aspect of our lives. They take away our jobs, they raise prices, they send us to war, and they spread racism and sexism. The capitalists have the right to do all these things. This is the capitalist concept of freedom. Under communism workers will have job security, freedom from war and racism, the freedom to live a full and meaningful life, and the freedom—in fact, the responsibility—to raise their ideas about every aspect of society as part of the collective effort to improve society for the working class. 4. THEORY OF SOCIALISM LESSENS CLASS STRATIFICATION Marilyn French, Feminist author, BEYOND POWER, 1985, p. 455. Capitalism is designed to create stratifications and maintain them so that there will always be both a superior (elite, transcendent) class, and classes whose inferiority functions as a seal, a guarantee of the elite’s superiority. Any political-social structure that worships power necessarily involves such stratification, but socialist theory [sic], at least, is intended to eliminate it. 5. COMMUNISM WILL ABOLISH RACISM CHALLENGE, June 10, 1992, p. 9. In the U.S., unemployment is extremely fascist, affecting mainly black and Latin workers and youth. Racism is a key ingredient in the maximization of profits. It creates divisions among workers,. weakening their struggles against the bosses. The lower wages bosses pay black and Latin workers reduce the wage level of all workers, providing the capitalists with superprofits. Under a communist society, racism won’t exist since its main cause, exploitation of the working class for private profits, will be abolished, and a constant struggle will be waged against all manifestations of racism. 6. SOCIALISM PROVIDES HIGHEST DEGREE OF DEMOCRACY Paul Hirst, Professor of Political Science, Brirkbeck College, NEW STATESMAN, 3rd Quarter, 1989, p. 8. The obvious question arises: why not abandon socialism? Because of this central reason: socialism is not only a narrowly pragmatic political enterprise, it is also based on certain fundamental principles about how society should be organized and how people are to be treated in it. Socialists favour co-operation and mutual assistance over competition, the greatest measure of equality of condition attainable between individuals, economic autonomy rather than the subordination to management or owner of the worker, the highest amount of democratic selfgovernment and freedom of expression attainable. These principles rather than any specific institutional arrangements—like central planning or state welfare—are what is at the heart of the socialist enterprise.

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END OF COLD WAR IS AN OPPORTUNITY FOR SOCIALISM 1. END OF COLD WAR IS NOT A VICTORY FOR CAPITALISM INTERNATIONAL REVIEW QUARTERLY, 3rd Quarter, 1993, p. 13. Events which rushed along after the collapse of the Eastern bloc, by raising a whole series of questions and contradictions to the bourgeoisie’s campaigns of 1989, contributed to undermining a part of the mystifications in which the working class had been plunged. Thus, the crisis and the Gulf War began to deal some decisive blows to illusions on the installation of an “era of peace” that Bush had announced at the time of the collapse of the rival imperialism from the east. At the same time, the barbaric behaviour of the “great democracy” of America and its acolytes, the massacres of Iraqi soldiers and the civilian population helped to unmask the lies of the “superiority” of democracy, on the victory of the “right of nations,” and of the “rights of man.” 2. COMMUNIST REVOLUTION MUST EMERGE FROM END OF COLD WAR ERA CHALLENGE, June 24, 1992, p. 7. Once again the capitalist rulers of the world have announced the death of communism. But millions and millions of workers worldwide are looking for an alternative to life today under capitalism, and its mass starvation, racist police terrorist death squads, mass unemployment and nationalist wars. We in Progressive Labor Party believe that communism—which never existed in either the former Soviet Union or China—is the way out of this capitalist holocaust. But communism won’t fall from the sky. It will only come through the organized revolutionary action of the masses of workers, soldiers, to smash it and build a new society based on social equality—communism. 3. COLLAPSE OF COMMUNISM DOES NOT PROVE CAPITALISM IS SUPERIOR INTERNATIONAL REVIEW QUARTERLY, 3rd Quarter, 1993, p. 30. In the “developed” countries too, the “economic miracles” have had their day. The tidal wave of unemployment and the attacks on every level of workers’ living conditions have brought the economic crisis once again to the fore. The propaganda on the “triumph of capitalism” and the “bankruptcy of communism” hammers home the message that “nothing is better than capitalism” The economic crisis shows that under capitalism, on the contrary, the worst is still to come. SOCIALISM PROTECTS PRIVATE PROPERTY 1. SOCIALISM PROTECTS PRIVATE PROPERTY Mao Tse-Tung, Former Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, ON COALITION GOVERNMENT, 1967, p. 62. Why do we say our revolution in the present period is bourgeois-democratic in nature? We mean that the target of the revolution is not the bourgeoisie in general but national and feudal oppression, that the measures taken in this revolution are in general directed not at abolishing but at protecting private property, and that as a result of this revolution the working class will be able to guild up the strength to lead China in the direction of socialism, though capitalism will still be enabled to grow to an appropriate extent for a fairly long period.

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Socialism Bad COMMUNIST REGIMES DENY PRINCIPLES OF DEMOCRACY 1. COMMUNIST TOTALITARIANISM PERVERTED DEMOCRACY Jean-François Revel, Author, DEMOCRACY AGAINST ITSELF, 1993, p. 22. Communist totalitarianism perverted the very question of democracy in our times. (Nazi and fascist totalitarianism never claimed to be democratic.) For much of this century, it perpetuated the hoax that it was an advanced form of democracy, and even when this notion lost credibility, it was able to identify as “progressive” and as “left” (with the democratic connotations this implies) regimes that oppressed and starved people, while terming “right” liberal regimes that enhanced property and human rights. SOCIALISM IS DYING THROUGHOUT THE WORLD 1. SOCIALISM IS DYING Vladimir Bukovsky, Former Soviet Dissident and President of Resistance International, TOTALITARIANISM AT THE CROSSROADS, 1990, p. 11. The events of the last decade leave little doubt that we are witnessing the end of socialism, its final stage—a worldwide crisis of the totalitarian system created according to the recipe of “scientific socialism”. The idea itself was in trouble for a long time, and like another utopian dream of humanity—perpetual motion—it was at odds with science even at the beginning of this century. 2. SOCIALISM IS NOT A VIABLE FUTURE GOVERNMENT Ronald M. Glassman, NQA, DEMOCRACY AND EQUALITY THEORIES AND PROGRAMS FOR THE MODERN WORLD, 1989, p.1. In recent years we have witnessed the decline of socialism as a motivating ideology and as an immanent utopian model. Socialism no longer engenders a romantic image of a classless, stateless society or a workers’ democracy. No stage of pure communism is envisioned in the impending future. 3. MARXIST COUNTRIES ARE MOVING TO MARKET ECONOMIES Jean-François Revel, Author, DEMOCRACY AGAINST ITSELF, 1993, p.4. The general secretary of the Italian Communist Party, Achille Occhetto, stated in 1989: “Our objective is no longer the socialist system achieved by democratic means, but democracy guided by socialist ideals.” This is more than a revision—this is a reversal of Marxism. As to the socialist parties, they accepted one after the other not only social democracy, but even economic liberalism or market economics. 4. SOCIALISM HAS BEEN AN U7ITER FAILURE Alvin Toffler, Author, POWERSHIFT, 1990, p. 415. With minor exceptions, state socialism had led not to affluence, equality, and freedom, but to a one-party political system. . . [sic] massive bureaucracy.. . [sic] heavy-handed secret police ... [sic] government control of the media... [sic] secrecy... [sic] and the repression of intellectual and artistic freedom. Setting aside the oceans of spurting blood needed to prop it up, a close look at this system reveals that every one of these elements is not just a way of organizing people, but also—and more profoundly—a particular way of organizing, channeling, and controlling knowledge.

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SOCIALIST STATISM DESTROYS ECONOMIES 1. STATISM PLUNDERS ECONOMIES AND SOCIETY Jean-François Revel, Author, DEMOCRACY AGAINST ITSELF, 1993, p. 26. They entire twentieth century is a demonstration of the fact that the expansion of the role of the state in society has been accompanied by proliferating misery, hunger, inequalities, illegalities, human rights abuses, police repression, frauds, black markets, and profiteering by the rulers at the expense of the ruled. There is not much need for theoretical arguments here, against such a historical record. 2. STATIST COUNTRIES RUIN THEIR OWN AND THEIR NEIGHBOR’S ECONOMIES Ayn Rand, Author, THE CAPITALIST READER, 1977, p. 170. When a statist ruler exhausts his own country’s economy, he attacks his neighbors. It is his only means of postponing internal collapse and prolonging his rule. A country that violates the rights of its own citizens will not respect the rights of its neighbors. Those who do not recognize individual rights will not recognize the rights of nations; a nation is only a number of individuals. 3. STATIST COUNTRIES CRIPPLE THEIR OWN ECONOMIC GROWTH Jean-François Revel, Author, DEMOCRACY AGAINST ITSELF, 1993, p. 25. Now in the same way, when the stale tries to do what the private sphere does better, it succeeds only in crippling its own proper mission. Communist and Third World regimes have offered abundant evidence of this. Statism plus interference retards development and even aborts it. This is why so much foreign aid to developing countries is counterproductive—at least where the majority of the people supposedly being aided is concerned—for as to the rulers, they rarely fail to profit handsomely from the West’s misguided generosity. MARXIST PHILOSOPHY HAS RESULTED IN SOCIAL FAILURE 1. MARXIST “THIRD WORLDISM7” MENTALITY HAS RESULTED IN SINISTER FAILURE Jean-François Revel, Author, DEMOCRACY AGAINST ITSELF, 1993, p. 5. “Third Worldism” came under increasing criticism in the 1980s. The term had been used, on the one hand, to explain underdevelopment in Marxist terms, as in “rape of the Third World” and “unfair exchanges” by capitalism, and, on the other, to justify “revolutionary” and “progressive” dictatorships as the only way to mobilize poor countries and liberate them from “dependence.” Every experiment along these lines ended in sinister failure, deteriorating into misery, famine, corruption, despotism, and sometimes bloodbaths. 2. MARXISM HAS CREATED HARMS PREDICTED OF CAPITALISM Vladimir Bukovsky, Former Soviet Dissident and President of Resistance International, TOTALITARIANISM AT THE CROSSROADS, 1990, p. 19. However, a hundred years after Marx died, the “capitalist” world’s development still does not follow his predictions. In fact, the free world’s economy developed in exactly the opposite direction. Ironically, his predictions did materialize with frightening accuracy in the socialist countries, precisely because those countries followed his prescriptions to the letter. It is a bizarre twist on a self-fulfilling prophecy, ironic and tragic at the same time. 3. MARXIST “THIRD WORLDISM” FAILED TO SATISFY ANY HUMAN NEEDS Jean-François Revel, Author, DEMOCRACY AGAINST ITSELF, 1993, p. 9. The events of the late 1980s demolished their long-standing arguments for the superiority of “real” over “formal” liberties and gave the lie to their apologies for the left-wing regimes that supposedly promoted economic well-being and social justice, even if they did so at some cost to political democracy. What was evident was that by whatever name they were called, socialist and communist regimes inspired by Marxist progressivism or “Third Worldism” failed to satisfy any human needs, material or spiritual: neither well-being nor liberty, neither social rights nor political rights, neither human dignity nor economic security, neither culture nor nourishment.

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SOCIALISM DOES NOT IMPROVE ECONOMIC CONDITIONS 1. SOCIALIST STATES NEGATIVELY INTERFERE WITH ECONOMY Ronald M. Glassman, NQA, DEMOCRACY AND EQUALITY THEORIES AND PROGRAMS FOR THE MODERN WORLD, 1989, p. 193. It was precisely the success of the Prussian state, in its modern rational form, in assisting the industrial process that led Weber to predict the eventual expansion of the modern rational bureaucratic states, and to warn of the danger in this. The danger was that of despotic authoritarian control, which could overwhelm legal-democracy and relegate it to a secondary level of institutional process—an analysis repeated by C. Wright Mills in his Power Elite. As we have already described, this danger is made worse by socialism, which expands administrative power of the state over the economy. 2. SOCIALISM CANNOT HANDLE COMPLEXITIES NECESSARY FOR ECONOMIC GROWTH Alvin Toffler, Author, POWERSHIFT, 1990, p. 420. The incapacity of the central planning system to cope with high levels of information thus set limits on the economic complexity necessary for growth. The new wealth-creation methods require so much knowledge, so much information and communication, that they are totally out of reach of centrally planned economies. The rise of the super-symbolic economy thus collides with a second foundation of socialist orthodoxy. 3. COMMUNISM IS THE WORST THING EVER FOR WORKING CLASSES Jean-François Revel, Author, DEMOCRACY AGAINST ITSELF, 1993, p. 35. One of the most striking features of the Soviet system is that for seventy years it did the exact opposite of what it claimed it meant to do. Yet this is the very essence of Leninism. Lenin proclaimed that all political power would reside in the workers’ councils (the soviets); he then imposed a single party, a political monstrosity for which he deserves full credit: the “proletariat party” which turned into the worst thing that ever happened to the proletariat, treating workers incomparably worse than any boss could. MARXISM IS OPPRESSIVE TO AFRICAN-AMERICANS 1. MARXISM DOES NOT ACCOUNT FOR RACIAL OPPRESSION OF BLACKS Molefi Kete Asante, Philosopher, AFROCENTRCITY, 1988, p. 1. Marxism over-simplifies the significance of our history. The idea that the whole history of the world is merely the record of the struggle of classes dismisses the racist factor in non-homogenous industrialized nations. Everything is a reflection of economics for Marxism. 2. MARXISM DOES NOT UNDERSTAND SIGNIFICANCE OF RACE AND CULTURE Molefi Kete Asante, Philosopher, AFROCENTRCITY, 1988, p. 1. There is almost no understanding of race and culture (within Marxism]. Thus, Marxism does not answer questions which confront people of African descent in societies where Europeans control the economics. Any view that does not recognize culture, race, and state as contributing factors in the debate but only a group of self-interested individuals and classes misses the intractable nature of racism and the essential value of culture. 3. MARXISM DENIES AFRICAN CULTURE Molefi Kete Asante, Philosopher, AFROCENTRCITY, 1988, p. 3. Marxism explains European history from a Eurocentric view; it does not explain African culture from an Afrocentric view. It is in fact the ultimate example of European rationalism. 4. MARXISM IS ANTAGONISTIC TO AFROCENTRIC WORLDVIEW Molefi Kete Asante, Philosopher, AFROCENTRCITY, 1988, p. 2. Marxism’s Eurocentric foundation makes it antagonistic to our worldview; its confrontational nature does not provide the spiritual satisfaction we have found in our history of harmony. This history of harmony, stemming from a strong sense of God-consciousness in nature and each other, is denied by European materialism which views harmony as a lack of progress. Progress in a Eurocentric manner, grows out of conflict, as a sort of dialectic of forces.

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Statism Responses Statism is at its most basic level a description of any social or political system that allows State intervention to play a major role. However, the use of the term that we will be dealing with is when individuals argue that the legitimate powers of some element of society have been illegitimately absorbed or taken over by the State. Statism is in no way a cohesive or singular ideology. Various forms of the statism position exist, ranging from a foundation in socialism or communism, liberal economics, or post-modern statism. Those who advocate statism generally believe that the State as an institution is flawed beyond repair and is in and of itself damaging. They argue in favor of a need to reject the State and move away from typical power structures. Statism maintains that the State is racist, homophobic, sexist, and generally more concerned with furthering its own power than it is with protecting individuals within its sphere. The rejection of the State system is seen as the key to liberating individuals and having not only true equality, but also true freedom and prosperity. The arguments made against the State have been made for years, but the unique part of statism as a philosophy or position in debate is the argument that the State structure is inherently the cause of the problems in the world around us. The following pages provide arguments that can be used to prove that the State is necessary and valuable for humanity’s protection and forward progress. They can be used either in combination or alone. They would probably be best utilized with an advocacy of reform. That way, specific and isolated problems in the State can be fixed and the institution as a whole can remain. CHANGE IS POSSIBLE EVEN WITHIN THE STATIST STRUCTURE Many critics of the State charge that its use of legal authority undermines the ability for the law to be neutral, fair, or correct. This position, voiced often by advocates of critical legal studies, argues that the law itself is a tool of the state that prevents social progress and change. Therefore, in answering statism, it is key to advance the argument that change and social progress are not made impossible by the State structure. In fact, the State and accompanying legal structures may very well help groups within society that are pushing for change. E. Dana Neacsu argues that those calling for the abandonment of the State and legal system go too far. She says, “The salvation for CLS (critical legal studies) can only be achieved by abandoning its almost cartoon-like popular hype in favor of an authentic leftism.”1 She continues, “Thus, originally, CLS offered a philosophical structure to those who sought a critical position of the social (legal) system in order to rectify social justice.” 2 If justice is the goal, then change must be allowed within a system. A system that can provide for such change can also eventually achieve justice. Critical legal studies scholar Roberto Unger argued that change is possible within the legal system while simultaneously criticisms of that system can still be made. He, “viewed that transformation as taking place through an ‘internal development’ in which the ideal conflicts of law are exploited to transform the actual law bit by bit, first changing the law, then revising ideal conceptions in light of that change, and then working for more change.” 3 Neacsu even argues that criticisms of the State’s legal system (like CLS) were, “born as an effort, however modest, to provide the future legal elite with the tools necessary for social change.” 4 The State and its accompanying legal system can actually help groups push for change. As Neacsu explains, “Thus, legal scholars who identify themselves as minority or feminist scholars criticized CLS for its failure to focus on the possibility that various minorities might be empowered through civil rights activism.” 5 This argument would be aided by examples. Feminist activists, for instance, long pushed for women to be recognized as equal (and continue that fight today). The State and its legal system aided such activism with the passage of the 19th amendment. Women found solace in the courts with cases like Roe v. Wade, which guaranteed a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion. Without a legal system, these battles would have to be fought time and time again by individual women. However, the legal system through making sweeping reforms guarantees that all women are affected by these decisions. The lack of a State structure would force women to fight battles for these rights time and again instead of focusing on one court decision or legislative action. Another example is the civil rights movement in the 653

1960’s. While the State had previously been used as a racist mechanism that held racial and ethnic minorities in lower positions, it then became a tool of progress in the area of civil rights. Examples would include the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Both of these pieces of legislation made sweeping reforms that affected all individuals living in the United States. Post the passage of these pieces of legislation, any denial of civil rights or voting rights could be challenged in a governmental forum. A black man denied the right to vote no longer was unable to challenge that violation of his rights; instead, he could present these harms to the government and be vindicated. Without the sweeping reforms, however, the battles would have to be continually fought on an individual level. Every African American would have to fight for the right to vote, instead of that being accomplished in a large-scale reform. The examples of women’s rights and the civil rights movement show that while historically the State may have functioned in a stagnant way, it can also be used to create and facilitate change. In that sense, the statist legal structure in particular actually helps social advances and change, which is what advocates of statism seek. THE STATE IS THE BEST MECHANISM OF PROVISION Statist philosophers argue frequently that the state infringes upon the personal freedoms and liberties of individuals. This argument is true. Being a member of a State does limit your ability to act absolutely and in accordance with your own free will. However, in beating back the argument that the State is bad, one can and should argue that this infringement upon personal choice is positive. Limiting individuals’ actions means that the State can best provide for its population on several levels. First, the State is the best mechanism to protect against individuals abusing their freedom to the detriment of others. G.W.F. Hegel, who lived from 1770-1831, maintained that it was inherent within the destiny of humankind to live in a State structure and develop within that structure. Andrew Vincent explains Hegel’s views, saying, “We are not just social creatures but State-creatures. The State does not exist by accident…The State, however, was not just a system of laws, a sovereign-ruler or institutional arrangement. The ethical theory was an extraordinary ambitious attempt to make something far more significant out of the State.” 6 Hegel goes on to argue that if individuals are left to pursue what benefits themselves alone without any limitations, their quest for their own fulfillment can lead them to impede upon the freedom of others. “Hegel maintains that if each individual only sought their own totally individual ends, the social world would be torn apart by caprice. He was arguing here neither for conformity with some pre-established ends nor the abandonment of harmless goals. He was arguing, however, that there must be some agreed normative ends upon which social life is based- for example, respect for persons and their right to self-development. Concrete freedom exists where individuals control their impulses through such socially established norms.” 7 In that sense, the State is a mechanism which protects individuals from others, those people who are looking out only for their own gain and advantage. With self-preservation a basic and strong instinct, individuals spend large portions of their lives trying to advance their own interests. This can unfortunately lead to harm for others who do not share those interests. In those cases, the State can act as a preventative tool in stopping selfish interests from doing harm to others. Second, the state is the best mechanism to provide for those who cannot provide for themselves. There are groups within populations who need more care than others. Children would be one such group. The State can provide means by which children are taken care of, even when their biological parents cannot provide for them. The foster care system is an example of a State service that protects children. After receiving reports of suspected child abuse, the social service agency of the State investigates the parents or caregivers to determine if abuse has occurred. The agency can then obtain a court order that removes the abused child from her or his home. The child is then placed in the custody of the State. 8 Without the State system, these children would be forced to remain in homes where they are abused because they have no alternatives. “State foster care statutes allow for the placement of abandoned, abused, or neglected children in the homes of adults selected and licensed by the social service agency to serve as foster parents. The eligibility of adults to serve as foster parents is typically limited by certain statutory criteria, such as satisfaction of a background check or meeting a minimum age requirement.” 9 While foster care is certainly not a perfect system, it is far superior to the options these children would face without a State: continued abuse or a life lived on their own on the streets. Other examples of the State providing for people who might normally have difficulty providing for themselves include Medicare, welfare, social security, food stamps, and the provision of student aid for underprivileged college 654

students. Individuals who cannot afford medication needed to keep them healthy and functioning receive support from the government. Without such aid programs, they would live with more pain or perhaps even pass away. Social security offers help to individuals who can no longer serve in the workforce and are therefore no longer receiving income. Food stamps and welfare reach out to those who are not making enough money to support themselves, guaranteeing that these individuals and families have resources at their disposal. A world in which the State does not exist can never guarantee that these groups within the population are provided for. THE STATE IS THE BEST MECHANISM OF PROTECTION The world around us provides multiple instances of violence being used, both as a political tool and as a means of people seeking furtherance of their own issues. Violence can not only take lives, but can scar and harm the lives of those who survive. In a world where violence is inevitable, the State provides the best mechanism of protection for individuals on several levels. First, the State offers the best mechanism of protection on an international level. It would be impossible for an individual alone to defend him/herself against another country who wanted to attack. The State is necessary for mounting such a defense. That is because the State as a body has more power than any individual. Such power is explained by David Beetham, who says, “Power in this general sense depends upon certain preconditions: the presence of personal capacities or ‘powers’ such as health, strength, knowledge and still; the possession of material resources; and space or scope, in the sense of freedom from control, obstruction or subservience to the purposes of others.” 10 Clearly, a State has more personal capacities, more material resources, and more space than any individual. The State, therefore, is better equipped to defend a group of people from aggressors than any individual is within that group. Similarly, States are better equipped to negotiate with one another and assert mutual interests. It is such interests that prevent aggression and promote peace internationally. States can prevent widespread violence that could harm everyone who lives within the borders of those States. Second, the State offers international protection for its citizens in dealing with other jurisdictions. A citizen of one State traveling in another can go to an embassy if they experience any problems. The State’s protection, therefore, even extends beyond its own borders to encircle individuals as they travel. When other nations deny the rights of a citizen of a State, that State has the duty to act to protect its citizens. For example, Mexico was angered by the United States’ willingness to apply the death penalty to Mexican citizens. The State of Mexico has a better chance of demanding change from the United States than does any singular Mexican citizen. In that sense, the State serves as an advocate for individuals living within the borders of that State, and exercises more influence than any single wronged individual could hope to exert over another State. Third, the State offers a means for rights to be codified and protected. Individuals who are wronged cannot claim that wrong unless there is a body to bring that claim to. The law and the State allow a means for individuals who have been wronged to receive restitution. C. Raj Kumar explains, “When societies recognize human rights and formulate legal, judicial, and institutional frameworks to protect and promote human rights, they commit to ensure that states provide the victims of human rights violations with justice.” 11 Without a State, an individual who has had a crime committed against them has nowhere to turn for protection or justice. Left without such institutionalized mechanisms like the State, individuals are left in precarious situations. These situations lead to the fourth way that the State offers protection. The State is a means to escape the necessity of retaliatory violence on an individual level. Take for example, a world in which a woman is raped and the State exists. Though the legal system is nowhere near perfect in dealing with sexually-based crimes, the woman has several options. She has the resources of the police in helping her find the person who raped her, the resources of the district attorney’s office in helping her put the person in jail, and the resources of the State as a whole in defining the person’s behavior as criminal and therefore unacceptable. In a world without the State, however, none of those institutions exist. This leaves two options. First, the woman can do nothing. This, however, leaves her most likely feeling vulnerable and without vindication. It also means that the person who committed the crime of rape is free and capable of doing so again and again. Second, the woman can seek personal justice by finding the person that she thinks wronged her. This would involve no trial, no necessary proof, and no means of punishment except personal action. Retaliation would occur by either the victim, or a friend or family member of the victim who took 655

justice into their own hands, committing violence against the person who originally committed the rape. In that sense, the cycle of violence would continue. While the State and a legal system can never guarantee that the criminal is caught or found guilty, the world absent a State guarantees that justice must be retaliatory or lacking. The choice between retaliatory justice and no justice should never be forced upon individuals, and the State is a way to escape such a circumstance. POWER STRUCTURES STILL EXIST OUTSIDE OF THE STATE Advocates of statism argue that the power structures set up by the State are problematic and allow for abuses of power. Certainly, there have been instances where the State and State officials have abused the power they have been given. However, the removal of the State does not remove power, nor does it eliminate abuses of power. Consequently, removing the State only allows other forms of power to take control. These forms of power are even more devastating than the State itself. If the harms of abuse of power continue even without a State, there is no justification for removing the State itself. The State prevents tyranny of the majority. This might, at first glance, seem contradictory. The State that we live in proclaims itself as a democracy, which means the majority’s will is enacted. However, there are mechanisms within our governmental structure which prevent the will of the majority from becoming law. For example, all laws are subject to review by the Supreme Court if they are so challenged. Additionally, the representatives that make up the House and Senate are not obligated in any direct way to the will of those they represent while serving their term in office. The President has veto power. All of these systematic checks mean that the will of the majority is not left unfettered. Certainly, within a democracy there are times when the majority gets to make decisions. But those decisions are never the final word on a subject, as systemic constraints operate to filter these decisions through the necessary checks and balances in an attempt to guarantee that everyone’s interest is represented. A system absent a State, however, is left at the mercy of the majority’s will. Those who are in the majority can push their opinion on others, through force or intimidation. This is the problem Alexis de Tocqueville encountered when he attempted to defend the elimination of the State. As author Preston T. King notes, “Tocqueville’s impracticable ideal of justice attempted to reconcile two opposed and morally defective ideals: the complete liberty of self-rule and the egalitarian authority of group-rule.” 12 Yet, as he later realized, “neither liberty nor equality- strictly conceived- can be reconciled with majority rule.” 13 Therefore, eliminating the State allows the majority to rule. This leads to a denial of civil liberties to groups that do not make up the majority. A community that was made up of a majority of white citizens could decide that African-Americans did not deserve liberty or rights. As the majority, they would have the power and the authority to deny those benefits. There would be no Supreme Court to check that decision back, no legislature to stop the passage of a law to deny those rights, and no President to veto any attempt at removing rights. Instead, the majority would rule unfettered. The history of the world shows that often the majority is incapable of understanding the position of the minority. In an attempt to serve their own interests, majorities often abuse and use minorities without considering the effects it has on these populations. The checking power of the State, therefore, is an effective counterbalance to the majority and their will. Additionally, the absence of a State structure allows the physically stronger to control the physically weaker. A physically powerful person can force a smaller or weaker person to do whatever they want them to do. Similarly, the physically powerful person can abuse and take advantage of the physically weaker person. Within a State system that includes law and punishment, the physically stronger can be kept in check. To examine the necessity of law and the State in preventing physical strength as power, we can look to an example. Spousal abuse, specifically of women, is an instance where the State is key in preventing the stronger partner from abusing the physically weaker partner. Elizabeth M. Schneider argues that the State and law in particular can be used to protect women from abuse. She notes, “The challenge for feminist lawmaking is profound. Feminist legal theorists and practitioners must confront the theoretical implications of strategic choices and strategic implications of theoretical choices in women’s rights litigation, and in legal work on battering particularly. I have argued that the task for feminist lawyers is both to describe and allow for change: to describe a legal problem for women- describe in detail and context- and translate it to unsympathetic courts in such a way that it is not misheard and at the same time does not remain static. Feminist lawmakers must develop legal theory and practice that are accurate to the realities of women’s diverse 656

experiences but hat also take account of complexity and allow for change.” 14 In that sense, the State is necessary to make public the commitment of the law to protect against abuse based on physical power. Schneider continues, “Lawmaking has been a crucial part of the work of the battered women’s movement. Feminist lawmaking on battering has built on the experiences of battered woman and has sought to transform law in light of this experience. This process of lawmaking, legal and legislative advocacy, legal reform, and representation of battered women’s organizations has reflected core assumptions concerning the link between gender and violence…Feminist lawmaking is what Robert Cover has called ‘jurisgenerative’- lawmaking that seeks to transform social meaning. Lawmaking can express the fundamental aspirations and vision of a social movement. Assertion of rights can move a political struggle forward be revealing theoretical contradictions and dilemmas in political vision.”15 When the State exists as a forum for not only punishing those who wrongly exert physical dominance, but for committing the people against such violence, it is preferable to an absence of a State. Schneider concludes, “Thus, public claims of legal rights do more than simply put women’s sense of self into the personal moral equation. The assertion of rights claims and the use of rights discourse help women to overcome the pervasive sense of privatization and personal blame that has perpetuated women’s subordination in public and private spheres alike.” 16 Without the State and legal system to counter the physical abuse, women are responsible individually for fixing this problem. Due to the exercise of physical dominance by a partner, this is often impossible. The State, therefore, while maintaining its system of power, prevents the more dangerous structure where physical strength is paramount. THE STATE FURTHERS ECONOMIC PROSPERITY Although the State’s primary functions are arguably political and judicial, the State also is involved with the economy. The State’s existence is economically beneficial in several ways. The State allows for better specialization. Specialization is the process of focusing on a particular product or service instead of attempting to diversity within your means of production. A farmer who grows all types of crops in minimal quantities to feed her family has not specialized. However, should that farmer grow only tobacco and trade for the other things the family needs, she would be practicing specialization. As John H. Schaar notes, “Ideally, we might strive towards a truly pluralistic society in which nearly everybody could find a specialty he could do fairly well and where he would enjoy friendly competition with others.” 17 A State provides specialization on several levels. First, a State allows the country to specialize. Involvement in international trade organizations means that one country can specialize in a certain product. They become well-equipped and efficient at manufacturing that product. They sell that product to other countries that are specializing in other products and goods. This allows for countries to make the best use of their resources and people to determine what they can effectively produce. A State is necessary for entering into these large-scale trade agreements. For instance, Brazil can become a member of the World Trade Organization or the Free Trade Area of the Americas. John Doe, however, cannot. Hence, a State provides greater economic benefits due to its ability to participate in international economic specialization. The State is also economically beneficial in that it governs economics within its borders. In that sense, it can take action to benefit the country economically. A State can break up monopolies to guarantee that prices stay lower. If one company has a monopoly on an area of industry or production, they can charge whatever prices they want to for their services. Breaking up monopolies, therefore, lowers prices and gives more people access to the products being produced. States also can use subsidies to help domestic production. In the area of farming, for example, struggling farmers can continue to produce with the help of governmental aid money. Similarly, the government can enact tariffs to protect domestic production. This prevents other countries from flooding a market with their goods and crowding out domestic producers. Only a State can take these actions on a national level, bringing economic benefits to the people and producers who live within those borders. CONCLUSION It would be a foolish strategy to attempt to argue that the State and its representatives have never committed negative actions. That is not the argument in answering statism. Rather, the argument is that the problems identified in the State structure exist outside of that structure as well, and that the State is key in mitigating their 657

impacts. The State system does allow for change to take place, at a level that effects everyone throughout a society. The State is also a superior provider, both in terms of protecting citizens from the selfish acts of others and in terms of helping those who can no longer help themselves. Protection is best achieved by the State, internationally and domestically. This protection comes not only from international and external agents, but from the need to act violently in retaliation for crimes. While the State is a power structure, it is the most preferable power structure, and its elimination would only allow either the majority or the physically strong to take control. Finally, the State also helps individuals and countries to benefit economically. Given all of the advantages that we know are guaranteed within a State system, the preferable action would not be the elimination of the State; but rather, periodic reforms to the State in an attempt to make it as effective as it can possibly be. ______________________________ 1 Neacsu, E. Dana. “CLS Stands for Critical Legal Studies, If Anyone Remembers.” Journal of Law and Policy. 2000, pg. 419. 2 Ibid, pg. 421. 3 Ibid, pg. 425. 4 Ibid, pg. 427. 5 Ibid, pg. 431. 6 Vincent, Andrew. Theories of the State. Oxford: Basil Blackwell Ltd., 1987, pg. 119. 7 Ibid, pg. 129. 8 Harper, Laura A. “The State’s Duty to Children in Foster Care- Bearing the Burden of Protecting Children.” Drake Law Review. 2003, pg. 795. 9 Ibid, pg. 796. 10 Beetham, David. The Legitimation of Power. Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press International, Inc., pg. 43. 11 Raj Kumar, C. “National Human Rights Institutions: Good Governance Perspectives on Institutionalization of Human Rights.” The American University International Law Review, 2003, pg. 102. 12 King, Preston T. Fear of Power: An Analysis of Anti-Statism in Three French Writers. London: Frank Cass and Company Limited, 1967, pg. 102. 13 Ibid, pg. 102. 14 Schneider, Elizabeth M. Battered Women and Feminist Lawmaking. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000, pg. 7-8. 15 Ibid, pg. 34. 16 Ibid, pg. 40. 17 Schaar, John H. Legitimacy in the Modern State. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1981, pg. 205.

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THE STATE IS CRITICAL TO PROTECTING INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS 1. THE STATE PROTECTS ITS CITIZENS FROM COMPETING JURISDICTIONS Fleishman, Michael. “Reciprocity Unmasked: The Role of the Mexican Government in Defense of Its Foreign Nationals in United States Death Penalty Cases.” Arizona Journal of International and Comparative Law. 2003. pg. 361-362. Mirroring the development of international law, the rise of the consular institution was essentially a functional outgrowth of international trade. Increased commercial activity led individual nations to permit foreign representatives, often referred to as consuls or consulates, to establish permanent consular posts. Among the leading maritime nations, consulates were often chosen among the merchants themselves, providing a sense of security and confidence for those eager to establish trade in foreign countries. As an agent of the sending government, a consul's role was traditionally to promote and protect the nation's commercial interests. To achieve these interests, a consul was employed to oversee a diverse range of duties, which often included: overseeing imports and exports of the sending state; economic investigation; protection of the shipping interests of the sending nation; development of commercial intercourse with the receiving state; and rendering services to nationals. While the historical functions of a consulate were largely defined by custom between nations, the scope of a consulate's modern duties are not amenable to precise definition. These duties depend on the economic objectives of each nation, the political stature of the host and receiving nation, and inevitably, geographic factors. The conduct of individual nations is not confined by the contrived borders separating it from another. Permission to establish consular posts was, and continues to be, based on mutual consent and international notions of reciprocity. Reciprocity demands moving beyond self-interest to an internalization of the foundational subtleties of international law. Reciprocity effectively ensures "the observance of justice and good faith, in [the] intercourse [that] frequently occur[s] between two or more independent states, and the individuals belonging to each." Reciprocity is the cornerstone of what William Blackstone referred to as the "law of nations." The fledgling United States was founded on principles of the law of nations; its very success as a concept and nation depended on reciprocity with other nations. The same is true with the consular institution. 2. THE STATE IS ABLE TO PROTECT THE RIGHTS OF ALL ITS CITIZENS Hayden, Patrick. Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Northwestern State University. John Rawls: Towards a Just World Order. University of Wales Press. 2002. pg. 176. The establishment of individual civil and political rights in a constitutional democracy protects the fundamental right of all citizens to equal respect and concern, providing a convergence or overlapping consensus on core human rights norms within the context of a political society representing a diversity of interests. 3. THE STATE PROTECTS INDIVIDUALS FROM ATTACKS Hayden, Patrick. Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Northwestern State University. John Rawls: Towards a Just World Order. University of Wales Press. 2002. pg. 176.In addition to these negative duties, governments also have a duty to protect the citizens of their states against violence generated by other governmental or private agencies. An effective system of human rights protection requires a governmentally enacted system of regulation to ensure that police, intelligence and security agencies comply with its standards, and impose significant penalties on those who fail to comply.

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STATES CREATE A BETTER WORLD BY PREVENTING VIOLENCE 1. THE STATE IS CRITICAL TO WORLD PEACE Hayden, Patrick. Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Northwestern State University. John Rawls: Towards a Just World Order. University of Wales Press. 2002. pg. 142. In Kant’s view, then, the republican constitution is the most conducive to perpetual peace. Grounded upon public accountability, commerce and representative-democratic norms – including separation of the legislative, judicial and executive powers, the rule of law and respect for human rights – republicanism provides the conditions for a lasting peace when extended to a world order of confederated communities, each of which would reciprocally recognize the equal rights of their members as world citizens. As Kant recognized, “peace can neither be inaugurated nor secured without a general agreement between the nations; thus a particular kind of league, which we might call a pacific federation(foedus pacificum) is required.” 2. THE STATE IS CRITICAL FOR RESOLVING CONFLICTS WITHOUT VIOLENCE Hayden, Patrick. Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Northwestern State University. John Rawls: Towards a Just World Order. University of Wales Press. 2002. pg. 145. Another relevant feature highlighted in the literature on democratic peace is that liberal democracies accept the norms of compromise and conflict resolution, and have developed internal mechanisms for conflict resolution which do not relay on a resort to violence. Democratic states will then attempt to apply the same mechanisms to the resolution of external conflicts, and will expect other democratic states to do the same. These normative and institutional attributes are viewed as responsible for creating and maintaining the pacific union between democratic states. In this way we can regard democracy as a vehicle for peacekeeping as well as for peacemaking. 3. STATES BETTER ALLOW FOR THE PEACEFUL RESOLUTION OF CONFLICT Hayden, Patrick. Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Northwestern State University. John Rawls: Towards a Just World Order. University of Wales Press. 2002. pg. 151. In Kant’s view, for instance, the peaceful resolution of conflicts is a characteristic of ‘mature,’ stable democracies that repudiate the incessant preparation for war and embrace the ideals of social justice and non-violence. The possibility for attaining a just and lasting peace for all peoples is one reason why I think it would be permissible, indeed obligatory, for mature democracies (or those democracies striving for maturity) to exert greater diplomatic and legal pressure for democratic reform and the protection of equal human rights. In other words, actively promoting global democracy and human rights is essential to the pursuit of perpetual peace.

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THE STATE BEST PROVIDES NECESSITIES FOR LIVING 1. THE STATE PROVIDES MEDICINE TO THE ELDERLY Jesse, Laura. “Seniors hear details on new drug cards; Speaker emphasizes choosing the right one before signing up.” San Antonio Express-News. May 7, 2004. pg. B3. Senior citizens need to fully investigate options available through the Medicare-approved drug discount program to become available in June, a speaker at a seniors conference said Thursday. The cards will immediately provide senior citizens with a 10 percent to 25 percent discount on outpatient prescription drugs, said Dr. Cristina Beato, acting assistant secretary for health and science with the U.S. Health and Human Services Department. Beato was speaking at the "Live Longer and Love It" conference at St. Paul's Community Center. Texas has 2 million senior citizens who use Medicare benefits, Beato said, and of those, 592,000 have no access to prescription drug coverage. Additionally, a single senior making less than $12,569 a year is eligible for an annual $600 credit to be used on prescriptions, he said. Nearly 500,000 Texans qualify for this credit. "You need to know there is a mechanism in place to get immediate relief for prescription drug costs," Beato said. Senior citizens can enroll in the program for the remainder of this year and all of 2005 until the formal Medicare prescription benefits begin Jan. 1, 2006. Private companies, such as pharmacies or insurance companies that have met criteria set by Medicare, will offer the cards. The companies offering the cards will select which drugs to discount and the amount of the discount, which means seniors will have to choose the best card based on the prescriptions they have, Beato said. To compare the various cards offered, Medicare recipients can go to www.medicare.gov or call (800) 633-4227. "Before you sign to a card, before you even think of signing up, please go to medicare.gov and figure out what you need," said Domingo Fernandez of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services regional office in Dallas. Once the card is selected, it cannot be changed until November for the following year, Beato said, adding seniors can get only one Medicareapproved discount card. "You don't have to sign up right away," Beato said. "We want to make sure seniors have more choices to have something that fits their needs. Communicate with your family to see what is best for you." The government will do its part to make sure the companies do not raise prices without a legitimate reason approved by Medicare, Beato said. "The government will have people checking prices all the time," Beato said. "If you are told one price for a prescription, but then are charged another price, immediately let us know." 2. THE STATE PROVIDES MONEY FOR EDUCATION Mui, Yian. “School Funding Increased but not enough for some.” The Washington Post. May 6, 2004. pg. B2.Maryland's Board of Public Works yesterday approved $126 million for new school buildings and renovation in the coming year, $50 million more than the panel granted in January but far less than some school districts say they need. The school construction total covers 106 projects, including new campuses in almost every Washington area school district. It also provides money to build science labs in high schools and add classrooms to comply with a state mandate that all kindergartners attend a full day of school by 2008, said David Lever, executive director of the Public School Construction Program. An additional $1.6 million will go to improve aging schools.

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THE STATE BEST RUNS THE ECONOMY 1. ANTI-TRUST LAW ROCKS Muris, Timothy. “The December 2002 Proceedings of the Milton Handler Annual Antitrust Review: Looking Forward: The Federal Trade Commission and the Future Development of U.S. Competition Policy.” The Columbia Business Law Review. 2003. pg. 365. The United States has chosen antitrust law to provide the governing rules for competition in most sectors of the economy. Why antitrust law? Our faith in the market system is firmly grounded in the principle that free enterprise and competition are the best guarantors of commercial freedom, economic efficiency, and consumer welfare. Effective competition is most likely to yield the optimal mix of goods and services at the lowest cost. Antitrust law helps maintain effective competition by prohibiting conduct that unreasonably restricts markets. Sectoral regulation may be appropriate in certain, limited applications, but it is the antithesis of competition, with its restrictions on price, entry, and conduct. A large and sad literature documents how sectoral regulation often has harmed consumers by imposing needless controls on entry, pricing, and new product development. 2. TARIFFS WORK Armstrong, David. “U.S. steel industry on the rebound. Exports help feed China's growing demand.” The San Francisco Chronicle. May 4, 2004. pg. C1.The steel industry was helped by tariffs slapped on some imported steel between 2002 and March of this year, Surma said. After finding the room to restructure, "We were able to make a $1 billion acquisition (National Steel Co. ) at this time when that was maybe half of our market cap. We're a different company today.'' During this breather, which was roundly criticized by free-trade advocates who decried the tariffs as protectionism, U.S. Steel and other producers won concessions on pensions and other issues from organized labor, tapped capital markets for modernization and increased productivity. "It's been a good year,'' said Bob Smith, president of USS-Posco Industries, a joint venture of U.S. Steel and South Korea's Pohang Iron and Steel Co. in Pittsburg.

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Suffering Good SUFFERING CAUSES NEW AWARENESS 1. HIITING BO1TOM IS THE POINT OF EPIPHANY Catherine Ingram, Author, VOICES ON THE THRESHOLD OF TOMORROW, Edited by Georg and Linda Feurstein, 1993, page 301. As is often true with turmoil, hitting bottom can be a point of epiphany. For me this came in the form of a series of realizations--transcendent in nature, but including the suffering of our world. I saw that, on the larger screen, the big picture, no one goes anywhere. Worlds are created and dissolved back into the void, back into the silence from which they temporarily sprang, just as our own short lives dissolve back into their own eternal source. These perceptions were experiential, not intellectual, for I had heard teachings about them for twenty years, yet had previously remained locked in the cellar of my mind and conditioning, a domain with which I had become all too familiar. Now I had opened the door to discover a vast silent sky of light, a “shimmering Void,” in which all my little hopes and fears, and indeed, everything else arose and fell like tiny pin drops in an ocean. Expanding the view in this way relieved my constricted feelings of both personal and worldly suffering. 2. SURVIVORS OF CALAMITY COME OUT BEITER THAN BEFORE Viktor Frankl, most gifted psychotherapist of the 20th century, owner of at least seven doctorates, concentration camp survivor, MAN’S SEARCH FOR MEANING, 4th Edition, translated by Usa Larsh, 1984, page 89. I said that even in this Europe in the sixth winter of the second World War, our situation was not the most terrible we could think of. I said that each of us had to ask himself what irreplaceable losses be had suffered up to then. I speculated that for most of them these losses had really been few. Whoever was still alive had reason for hope. Health, family, happiness, professional abilities, fortune, position in society--all these were things that could be achieved again or restored. After all, we still had all our bones intact. And I quoted from Nietzsche: “Was niich nicht umbringt, macht mich starker.” (That which does not kill me, makes me stronger.) SUFFERING SHOWS US THE MEANING OF LIFE 1. WE CAN FIND THE MEANING OF LIFE THROUGH SUFFERING Viktor Franld, most gifted psychotherapist of the 20th century, owner of at least seven doctorates, concentration camp survivor, MAN’S SEARCH FOR MEANING, 4th Edition, translated by Ilsa Larsh, 1984, page 116. The third way of finding a meaning in life is by suffering. We must never forget that we may also find meaning in life even when confronted with a hopeless situation, when facing a fate that cannot be changed. For what then matters is to bear witness to the uniquely human potential at its best, which is to transform a personal tragedy into a triumph, to turn one’s predicament into a human achievement. When we are no longer able to change a situation-just think of an incurable disease such as inoperable cancer--we are challenged to change ourselves. 2. IF SUFFERING HAS NO MEANING, THEN THERE IS NO MEANING TO SURVIVAL Viktor Franld, most gifted psychotherapist of the 20th century, owner of at least seven doctorates, concentration camp survivor, MAN’S SEARCH FOR MEANING, 4th Edition, translated by Ilsa Larsh, 1984, page 90. A bit later, I remembered, it seemed to me that I would die in the near future. In this critical situation, however, my concern was different from that of most of my comrades. Their question was, “Will we survive the camp? For, if not, all this suffering has no meaning.” The question which beset me was, “Has all this suffering, this dying around us, a meaning? For, if not, there is ultimately no meaning to survival; for a life whose meaning depends upon such a happenstance--as whether one escapes or not--ultimately would not be worth living at all.

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THE WAY WE ACCEPT SUFFERING IS KEY 1. THE WAY WE ACCEPT SUFFERING AND EVEN DEATH GIVES LIFE ITS MEANING Viktor Frankl, most gifted psychotherapist of the 20th century, owner of at least seven doctorates, concentration camp survivor, MAN’S SEARCH FOR MEANING, 4th Edition, translated by Ilsa Larsh, 1984, page 90. Then I spoke of the many opportunities of giving life a meaning. I told my comrades (who lay motionless although occasionally a sigh could be heard) that human life, under any circumstances, never ceases to have a meaning, and that this infinite meaning of life includes suffering and dying, privation and death. I asked the poor creatures who listened to me attentively in the darkness of the hut to face up to the seriousness of our position. They must not lose hope but should keep their courage in the certainty that the hopelessness of our struggle did not detract from its dignity and its meaning. I said that someone looks down on each of us in difficult hours--a friend, a wife, somebody alive or dead, or a God--and he would not expect us to disappoint him. He would hope to find us suffering proudly-not miserably--knowing how to die. 2. THE WAY WE ACCEPT SUFFERING DETERMINES MEANING OF OUR LIFE Viktor Franld, most gifted psychotherapist of the 20th century, owner of at least seven doctorates, concentration camp survivor, MAN’S SEARCH FOR MEANING, 4th Edition, translated by Llsa Larsh, 1984, page 76. The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity--even under the most difficult circumstances--to add a deeper meaning to his life. It may remain brave, dignified, and unselfish. Or in the bitter fight for self-preservation he may forget his human dignity and become no more than an animal, here lies the chance for a man to either make use of or to forgo the opportunities of attaining the moral values that a difficult situation may afford him. And this decides whether he is worthy of his sufferings or not. 3. BRAVELY FACING SUFFERING AND DEATH SETS THE CORRECT EXAMPLE Ernest Becker, PhD, professor at Berkeley, San Francisco State, and Simon Fraser University, in the Pulitzer Prize Winning THE DENIAL OF DEATH, 1973, page 11-12. They also very quickly saw what real heroism was about, as Shaler wrote just at the turn of the century: heroism is first and foremost a reflex of the terror of death. We admire most the courage to face death; we give such valor our highest and most constant adoration; it moves us deeply in our hearts because we have doubts about bow brave we ourselves would be. When we see a man bravely facing his own extinction we rehearse the greatest victory we can imagine. 4. NOT ACCEPTING SUFFERING ROBS OUR LIVES OF MEANING Viktor Frankl, most gifted psychotherapist of the 20th century, owner of at least seven doctorates, concentration camp survivor, MAN’S SEARCH FOR MEANING, 4th Edition, translated by Ilsa Lamb, 1984, page 80. A man who let himself decline because he could not see any future goal found himself occupied with retrospective thoughts. In a different connection, we have already spoken of the tendency there was to look into the past, to help make the present, with all its horrors, less real. But in robbing the present of its reality there lay a certain danger. It became easy to overlook the opportunities to make something positive of camp life, opportunities which really did exist. Regarding our “provisional existence” as unreal was in itself an important factor in causing the prisoners to lose their hold on life; everything in a way became pointless. Such people forget that it is just such an exceptionally difficult external situation which gives man the opportunity to grow spiritually beyond himself. Instead of taking the camp’s difficulties as a test of their inner strength, they did not take their life seriously and despised it as something of no consequence. They preferred to close their eyes and live in the past Life for such people became meaningless.

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Suffering Bad ALLOWING SUFFERING IS IMMORAL AND UNJUST 1. ACTIONS ARE WRONG IN THAT THEY TEND TO PROMOTE THE REVERSE OF HAPPINESS John Stuart Mill, Philosopher, UTILITARIANISM, 1863, 1987 Prometheus Books Edition, page 16. The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals utility, or the greatest happiness principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By ‘happiness’ is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by ‘unhappiness,’ pain, and the privation of pleasure. To give a clear view of the moral standard set up by theory, much more requires to be said; in particular, what things it includes in the ideas of pain and pleasure; and to what extent this is left an open question. But these supplementary explanations do not affect the theory of life on which this theory of morality is grounded--namely, that pleasure, and freedom from pain, are the only things desirable as ends; and that all desirable things (which are as numerous in the utilitarian as in any other scheme) are desirable either for the pleasure inherent in themselves, or as means to the promotion of pleasure and the prevention of pain. 2. STANDARD OF MORALITY MUST BE AVOIDANCE OF PAIN John Stuart Mill, Philosopher, UTILITARIANISM, 1863, 1987 Prometheus Books Edition, page 22. According to the ‘greatest happiness principle, as above explained, the ultimate end, with reference to and for the sake of which all other things are desirable (whether we are considering our own good or that of other people), is an existence exempt as far possible from pain, and as rich as possible in enjoyments, both in point of quantity and quality; the test of quality, and the rule for measuring it against quantity, being the preference felt by those who in their opportunities of experience, to which must be added their opportunities of comparison. This, being, according to the utilitarian opinion, the end of human action, is necessarily also the standard of morality; which may accordingly be defined, the rules and precepts for human conduct, by the observance of which an existence such as has been described might be, to the greatest extent possible, secured to all mankind; and not to them only, but, so far as the nature of things admits, to the whole sentient creation. 3. THINGS WHICH ARE PLEASANT ARE THE DESIRABLE COMMODITIES WE STRIVE FOR John Stuart Mill, Philosopher, UTILITARIANISM, 1863, 1987 Prometheus Books Edition, page 54. And now to decide whether this is really so; whether mankind does desire nothing for itself but that which is a pleasure to them, or of which the absence is a pain: we have evidently arrived at a question of fact and experience, dependent, like all similar questions, upon evidence. It can only be determined by practiced self-consciousness and self-observation, assisted by observation of others. I believe that these sources of evidence, impartially consulted, will declare that desiring a thing and finding it pleasant, aversion to it and thinking of it as painful, are phenomena entirely inseparable, or rather two parts of the same phenomenon; in strictness of language, two different modes of naming the same psychological fact; that to think of an object as desirable (unless for the sake of its consequences), and to think of it as pleasant, are one and the same thing; and that to desire anything, except in proportion as the idea of it is pleasant, is a physical and metaphysical impossibility. 4. NOTHING IS GOOD TO HUMAN BEINGS IF IT DOESN’T GET PLEASURE OR AVOID PAIN John Stuart Mill, Philosopher, UTILITARIANISM, 1863, 1987 Prometheus Books Edition, page 56. Will is the child of desire, and passes out of the dominion of its parent only to come under that of habit. That which is the result of habit affords no presumption of being intrinsically good; and there would be no reason for wishing that the purpose of virtue should become independent of pleasure and pain, were it not that the influence of the pleasurable and the painful associations which prompt to virtue is not sufficiently to be depended on for the unerring constancy of action until it has acquired the support of habit. Both in feeling and in conduct, habit is the only thing which imparts certainty; and it is important because of the importance to others of being able to rely absolutely on one’s feelings and conduct, and to oneself of being able to rely on one’s own that the will to do right ought to be cultivated into habitual independence. In other words, the state of the will is a means to a good, not intrinsically a good; and does not contradict the doctrine that nothing is a good to human beings but in so far as it is either itself pleasurable, or a means of attaining pleasure or averting pain. 665

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SUFFERING DOES NOT CAUSE TRANSFORMATION 1. HIITING BO~FOM IS NO GUARANTEE OF CHANGE, JUST GREATER SUFFERING Gary Coates, Professor at Kansas State University, VOICES ON THE THRESHOLD OF TOMORROW, Edited by Georg and Linda Feurstein, 1993, page 178. Things are likely to get a good deal worse before they even have a chance of becoming better. Like the alcoholic or drug addict, we shall probably have to hit bottom before we can begin to find the wisdom and motivation to change. And hitting bottom in itself is no guarantee of understanding nor is it a promise of a shift toward wholeness and health. There is only the certainty of greater suffering. 2. DEVELOPING AWARENESS THROUGH SUFFERING WONT WORK: GREED IS STRONGER John Briggs, PhD and Associate Professor of Science at Western Connecticut University, VOICES ON THE THRESHOLD OF TOMORROW, Edited by Georg and Linda Feurstein, 1993, page 225. Desperately our species flails for a means to save itself from a crushing oblivion in the twenty-first century-oblivion beneath the weight of its own greed. One doubts that any idealism will save us because there are too runny cynics and too many idealists eager to impose their conflicting ideals. One doubts that evolution can save us because the time scales for evolving a new faculty of harmony are too long--and our greed is too quick. 3. HUMANS CREATE CRISES AND SUFFERING, BUT DON’T RESPOND TO THEM Peter Russell, writer and management consultant, VOICES ON THE THRESHOLD OF TOMORROW, Edited by Georg and Linda Feurstein, 1993, page 111. We initially embarked upon this fateful course with the best of intentions. We were applying our creativity to the task of improving the quality of our lives. And there can be no blame for that. It is only now as we realize the many ways in which our best intentions have backfired that we are having to respond to the crisis we have inadvertently created. And yet, at the very time we need it most, the will to change seems curiously lacking. Instead we continue to rush headlong toward catastrophe.

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Sustainability Good SUSTAINABILITY IS A DESIRABLE VALUE SYSTEM 1. SUSTAINABILITY IS AN ABSOLUTE GLOBAL NECESSITY Dennis Pirages, economist, THE FUTURIST, March 13, 1997, P. 17. It is not possible to diffuse the West’s materially comfortable lifestyle to the entire planet without destroying the environment, according to the essays in this volume. Our goal should be to create a more sustainable society through our values and institutions, policies and technologies, systems and paradigms. In his introduction, Pirages writes, “An ongoing debate over the future of resource-intensive growth has advanced well beyond the early skirmishes over the potential ‘limits to growth in a finite world.” He concludes that the widespread belief that more consumption without regard for ecological limits is essential to human development “no longer gives useful guidance in confronting the sustainability issues of the next century.” -

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2. SUSTAINABILITY IS AN INCLUSIVE APPROACH Thomas N. Gladwin, Director of the Global Environment Program at the Leonard N. Stern School of Business at New York University, et. al., ACADEMY OF MANAGEMENT REVIEW, October, 1995, p. 874. Inclusiveness. The sustaincentric paradigm allows the interests of today and tomorrow, of rich and poor, of North and South to acquire fuller and deeper attention. Greater balance is sought within the “3-E’ triad of sustainable development: economy, ecology, and ethics. Whereas ecocentrism biases the triangle toward ecology and rights of nature, and technocentrism biases it toward the economy and market-based rights, sustaincentrism attempts to transcend these two with a more pluralist and greater embrace of the world. 3. SUSTAINABILITY IS NOT A RHETORICAL SHAM Christopher D. Stone, Roy P. Crocker Professor of Law, University of Southern California, CHICAGO-KENT LAW REVIEW, 1994, pp. 980-981. Whatever else “sustainable development” is, the term is not pure sham, but often an earnest invitation to constructive cooperation. Indeed, considering their limited resources, the relevant international agencies, including the United Nations Environmental Program, the Global Environmental Facility, and the Commission on Sustainable Development, may find their hands full just identifying and launching progranis that are uncontroversially worthwhile to all sides. 4. SUSTAINABILITY IS A PRUDENT VALUE TO ADOPT Thomas N. Gladwin, Director of the Global Environment Program at the Leonard N. Stern School of Business at New York University, et. al., ACADEMY OF MANAGEMENT REVIEW, October, 1995, p. 874. Prudence. Sustaincentrism embodies the precautionary principle and urges humility in the face of irreducible uncertainty and complexity in ecological and human systems. It assumes the ability of human knowledge and institutions to reveal limits and thresholds, determine carrying capacities, and pinpoint stress and collapse, such that human activities can be kept within such bounds. It offers a “managerialist” approach to environment and development. Some theorists question whether we possess or will ever possess the wisdom and the will to “manage the planet” in such a fashio, yet the same could be asked of the other paradigms. Security. We contend that sustaincentrism is more likely to keep ecosystems resilient to change than technocentrism; it is also more likely to keep socioeconomic systems resilient to change than ecocentrism, given current historical realities.

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SUSTAINABILITY IS A VALID VALUE SYSTEM 1. SUSTAINABILITY ENHANCES POLITICAL PARTICIPATION Thomas N. Gladwin, Director of the Global Environment Program at the Leonard N. Stem School of Business at New York University, et. al., ACADEMY OF MANAGEMENT REVIEW, October, 1995, p. 874. Sustainability is a participatory process that creates and pursues a vision of community that respects and makes prudent use of all its resources natural, human, human-created, social, cultural, scientific, etc. Sustainability seeks to ensure, to the degree possible, that present generations attain a high degree of economic security and can realize democracy and popular participation in control of their communities, while maintaining the integrity of the ecological systems upon which all life and all production depends, and while assuming responsibility to future generations to provide them with the where-with-all for their vision, hoping that they have the wisdom and intelligence to use what is provided in an appropriate manner. -

2. SUSTAINABILITY IS A SOLID VALUE SYSTEM Robert Morris Cohn, Associate Professor of Law at the University of Oregon School of Law and Robert William Collin, Visiting Associate Professor of Planning at the University of Oregon Department of Planning and Public Policy Management, JOURNAL OF ENYRIONMENTAL LAW AND LITIGATION, 1994, pp. 407-408. Definitive values tie together the entire literature of sustainability. One value includes an explicit concern for future generations. The major documents on sustainability all refer to a principle of resource use that protects the interests of future generations of humans and of nonhuman species. The central defining characteristic of sustainabiity is its concern that contemporary humans conduct themselves in a way that protects the interests of future generations of humans; this is a very specific kind of intergenerational equity. In this way, intergenerational equity is the central core value of sustainability as a philosophy. This value is reflected in the concepts of carrying capacity, sustainable development, and resource management. As compared with other philosophical idealogies, the concern of sustainability with future generations is unique. 3. SUSTAINABILITY BALANCES BETWEEN ECOCENTRISM AND TECHNOCENTRISM Rodger Schlickeisen, President of Defenders of Wildlife, TULANE ENVIRONMENTAL LAW JOURNAL, Winter, 1994, pp. 193-194. In the first step, ecological information on the biotic systems in question, its strength and redundancy, its vulnerability to stress, and so forth, must be considered. Some systems may be so vulnerable that they should not be exploited at all, others may be extremely resilient and appropriate objects of heavy exploitation. Other systems range between these extremes, but the maximal degree of exploitation should be dete~ned... by the functional relationships within the system and its resilience in the face of proposed management regimens. The second step in deciding resource use.., can only be taken after natural scientific data, drawn from ecology, soil studies, climatology, etc. have been used to establish the constraints on exploitation which are inherent in the land community. In this second step, economic considerations are used to determine which of the permissible models of exploitation will maximize human material well-being in the present. Economic choices are therefore constrained by ecological data on the health of the system and its susceptibility to riskless exploitation.

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Sustainability Bad SUSTAINABILITY IS AN UNDESIRABLE VALUE 1. SUSTAINABILITY ISOLATES WOMEN AND EXCLUDES THEM FROM DECISION MAKING Christopher C. Joyner, Professor of International Law in the Department of Government of Georgetown University and George E. Little, University Graduate Fellow and Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Government of Georgetown University, BOSTON UNIVERSITY INTERNATIONAL LAW JOURNAL, Fall, 1996, pp. 258-259. Irrespective of the answers, it appears certain that the international community desires to achieve ‘sustainable development’ under the guise of ‘positive’ sovereignty. The Non-Legally Binding Authoritative Statement of Principles for a Global Consensus on the Management, Conservation and Sustainable Development of All Types of Forests (Authoritative Statement) embodies the belief in “positive” sovereignty. The Authoritative Statement’s preamble declares: ‘Recognizing that the responsibility for forest management, conservation and sustainable development is in many States allocated among federal/national, state/provincial and local levels of government, each State, in accordance with its constitution and/or national legislation, should pursue these principles at the appropriate level of government.’ This Authoritative Statement, clearly a ‘soft’ law instrument, was designed to ensure that the gendered state system will attempt through domestic law to protect the environment. As a result, women will have little opportunity to participate in ‘sustainable development’ as it relates to forestry resources. Forests are not an isolated example. Statistical data suggests that women have not profited from economic development generally during last twenty-five years. For instance, one authoritative document concludes that, ‘[rieduction in real income and contraction of aggregate demand has caused a decline in demand for informal-sector goods and services.’ As a consequence, the female share of informal-sector employment has plummeted. 2. SUSTAINABILITY REMAINS AN ANTHROPOCENTRIC FRAMEWORK Ronald E. Purser, Assistant Professor of Organization Development at Loyola University of Chicago, et al, ACADEMY OF MANAGEMENT REVIEW, October, 1995, p. 1053. On a larger front, the universal slogan of sustainable development has capitalized on the notion that economic growth can be accomplished as long as it is sustainable. As defined by the United Nations Commission on Environment and Development, “Sustainable development is the development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. This definition clearly reflects an anthropocentric bias in that the unit of sustainabiity is the human being future generations of humanity with an emphasis on ensuring the equitable distribution of economic development opportunities. -

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3. SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT EMPLOYS AN EMPIRICALLY-FAILED IDEOLOGY Thomas J. DiLorenzo, professor of economics in the Sellinger School of Business and Management at Loyola College, THE FUTURIST, September, 1993, p. 14. But if any lesson can be learned from the collapse of socialism in the former communist countries, it is that government ownership and control of resources is a recipe for economic collapse and environmental degradation. Socialism is no more effective in protecting the environment than it is in creating wealth. Government ownership of natural resources inevitably leads to the tragedy of the commons, but that is all too often the “solution” offered by the Brundtland Commission. The Commission recommends government control of everything from outer space to energy, which is supposedly “too important for its development to continue in such a manner” as the free market allows. 4. SUSTAINABILITY IS AN AMORPHOUS CONCEPT Christopher D. Stone, Roy P. Crocker Professor of Law, University of Southern California, CHICAGO-KENT LAW REVIEW, 1994, p. 977. “Sustainable development” is increasingly surfacing in discussions, in policy documents, and even in international agreements. Professor Helen Endre-Stacy has several objections to the term and to the ways in which it is used. Sustainable development is a “still slippery concept” that is “trapped by its own (self-imposed) boundaries” and must “enliven itself with “revitalized ideas of community and precaution.”

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Tax Relief Good TAX RELIEF IS NECESSARY 1. INCOME TAXES ARE UNJUSTLY RISING NATION'S BUSINESS, May 1999, p. 27 Overall, the administration's tax and spending policies are combining to keep the federal tax take at more than 20 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) far into the future. It reached that level in the 1998 fiscal year for the first time since the World War II years. And the administration projects the rate at 20 percent or more for at least the next five years. Federal tax income has been rising not only as a result of the robust economy but also because the size of its share of GDP has also climbed significantly That share was 17.8 percent when Clinton took office, and it's 20.4 percent this year, meaning the government has taken $270 billion more out of the explosive economy than it would have if the GDP share had stayed at the 1993 level. 2. TAX RELIEF IS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY NATION'S BUSINESS, May 1999, p. 27 Private enterprise has a counterproposal that is relevant to this era of budget surpluses: Don't raise taxes, cut them. In recent congressional testimony on tax policy, the largest and most representative business organization stated: "The federal tax burden on American businesses is too high and needs to be reduced.... We must orient our tax policies in a way that encourages more savings, investment, productivity growth, and economic growth." While calling for immediate tax relief, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is also urging adoption of the long-debated taxlimitation amendment to the Constitution. Under this amendment, taxes could be raised only with the approval of two-thirds of the members of the House and Senate, not with the simple majority as now required. 3. TAX RELIEF HELPS EVERYONE AND THE ECONOMY NATION'S BUSINESS, May 1999, p. 27 Bruce Josten, the U.S. Chamber's executive vice president for government affairs, said at a recent Capitol Hill news conference on such an amendment: "We must provide Congress with the means and the will to stop tax increases. ... Requiring a super-majority ... will force the government to evaluate and prioritize its commitments and expenditures." The combination of prompt tax relief and the tax-limitation amendment would help ensure the continuing health of the economy by allowing companies and individuals to invest funds that otherwise would be used to fuel more and more government spending. To that end, Congress should provide business-tax relief promptly and begin the process of making the tax-limitation amendment a reality. 4. WE ARE OVERTAXED, WHICH HURTS THE ECONOMY NATION'S BUSINESS, May 1999, p. 27 Nonetheless, the government has performed effectively in one role: collecting the massive revenue increases generated by the boom. President Clinton forecasts a $117 billion surplus for the next fiscal year, and the administration projects that federal revenues will exceed spending by $4.4 trillion over the next 15 years. And what is the administration's attitude toward the economic powerhouse whose creativity and know-how have brought about this windfall? While boasting of bulging surpluses, the president is recommending more than 80 business-tax increases totaling $82 billion over five years. Apparently, no consideration is being given to the fact that draining more money from the economy would deprive many businesses of the investment capital needed to sustain growth. 5. GOVERNMENT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ECONOMIC BOOM NATION'S BUSINESS, May 1999, p. 27. Comments from the White House and affiliated political quarters frequently suggest that the record peacetime economic boom the nation is enjoying is the gift of a benevolent government. In fact, however, it is primarily the result of two factors in the private sector. One consists of business initiatives that provide new and improved products and services with global appeal. The other factor is growing investor confidence, which stimulates technological improvements in the tools and machinery that enable businesses to keep employment and productivity high and inflation low. 671

ECOLOGICAL TAXES RELIEVE TAX BURDEN, HELP ENVIRONMENT 1. MUST SHIFT BURDEN FROM PRODUCTIVE ACTIVITY TO POLLUTION Steve Bernow, Senior Research Director, Tellus Institute for Resource and Environmental Strategies, BIOSCIENCE, March 1998, p. 193. A growing international trend is for governments to shift the burden of taxation away from productive activities and onto pollutants. This trend is rooted in the recognition that taxes not only raise necessary revenue for governments, but also discourage the taxed activity. When levied on productive activities, taxes place an extra burden on the economy, whereas when levied on pollution, taxes help to control it. These principles are simple and powerful, but they come with a suite of ancillary issues, including concerns about fairness, economic efficiency, jobs, and disruption during the period of transition to the new taxes. 2. SHOULD SHIFT TAX AWAY FROM WORKERS AND TO ECOLOGY Steve Bernow, Senior Research Director, Tellus Institute for Resource and Environmental Strategies, BIOSCIENCE, March 1998, p. 193. Recent proposals for tax reform in the United States have centered on the relative merits of taxes on labor, capital, wealth, and consumption. But all of these tax bases stem from generally constructive activities, which the proposed taxes penalize and discourage. For example, taxing labor income tends to discourage employment by making labor more expensive to employers and employment less profitable for workers. 3. ECOLOGICAL TAXES RELIEVE TAX BURDEN ON WORKERS Steve Bernow, Senior Research Director, Tellus Institute for Resource and Environmental Strategies, BIOSCIENCE, March 1998, p. 193. At the same time, the United States faces costly problems of environmental pollution and natural resource depletion at local, national, and global scales. The methods of addressing these problems have often involved regulations that are sometimes inefficient, as well as direct government expenditures of tax dollars. The United States also faces the threat of losing jobs in traditional manufacturing sectors due to technological change and increasing international competition, especially from countries with low production costs. Many Americans have also experienced a trend of declining wages, and disparities in income between rich and poor have increased. 4. ECOLOGICAL TAXES HELP CONSUMERS AND THE ENVIRONMENT Robert A. Bohm, Professor of Economics, University of Tennessee, ENVIRONMENT, September 1998, p. 10. Under an emissions tax scheme, those producers who are least effective in reducing pollution will suffer a competitive disadvantage and lose sales because of their higher after-tax costs. Consumers, on the other hand, will reduce their consumption of "dirty" products because the relative price of those products will increase. In this way, market incentives will both provide information about opportunities for improvement and induce action upon them to a much greater extent than could be mandated by outside authorities. 5. ECOLOGICAL TAXES REDUCE POLLUTION Robert A. Bohm, Professor of Economics, University of Tennessee, ENVIRONMENT, September 1998, p. 10. The advantages of an emissions tax such as that incorporated in PLS are that it provides incentives at all stages of production and consumption to make pollution-reducing decisions. To avoid taxes, individual producers will alter production processes, including maintenance and operation controls, looking at all the opportunities for emissions reductions.

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Tax Relief Bad TAX RELIEF IS NOT WARRANTED 1. TAXES ARE A LOW SHARE OF FAMILY INCOME BUSINESS WEEK, April 26, 1999, p. 24. It's April, the time of year when allergies and tax-cutting fever usually run rampant. So far, it seems Americans are in for a normal allergy season--if my son's symptoms are any guide. But contrary to previous years, the country has developed a healthy immunity to tax-cutting fever. Despite the best efforts of the Republican Party to rally support for an across-the-board cut in federal income taxes, polls indicate that voters prefer to spend the government's surplus on Social Security, Medicare, education, and debt reduction. Why has the tax-cutting message fallen on deaf ears--even though federal tax receipts are to claim about 20.6% of gross domestic product this year, a level unmatched since World War II? The answer is simple. While overall federal tax receipts have been rising as a share of the economy, the effective federal tax burden on most taxpayers is falling. Indeed, calculations by the Congressional Budget Office show that, taken together, income, payroll, and excise taxes claim a smaller share of family income than at any time during the past 20 years. 2. TAX BURDEN ISN'T INORDINATE BUSINESS WEEK, April 26, 1999, p. 24. Federal tax receipts as a share of the overall economy are a misleading indicator of the nation's tax burden. First, in addition to tax revenues, federal receipts include such things as criminal fines and penalties paid to the government, state unemployment-insurance premiums deposited at the U.S. Treasury, and the retirement contributions of federal employees. You don't have to be a statistician to realize that these do not represent tax payments and should be excluded from measures of the burden of federal taxes on economic activity. Second, although the figure for federal tax receipts correctly includes taxes paid on income from realized capital gains, the figure for GDP does not include such income. This distorts the ratio of federal tax receipts to GDP, making it appear larger than it really is. People aren't groaning under an inordinate tax burden. 3. TAXES AS A SHARE OF INCOME HAVE FALLEN FOR MOST AMERICANS BUSINESS WEEK, April 26, 1999, p. 24. Federal coffers are swollen because of a booming stock market that is increasing the number of wealthy Americans, who are paying more in capital gains. (Tax returns showing adjusted gross income of more than $200,000 have grown by more than 50% since 1992.) Third, federal tax receipts as a share of GDP is an average that fails to distinguish between what is happening to the taxes paid by different income groups. This average obscures the fact that, while taxes as a share of income have risen for the richest Americans, they have been falling for most others. In 1998, for example, the typical American family of four with income of about $54,000 will face a tax bite of 15.5% of income, down from 16.8% in 1992 and lower than in any year during which Ronald Reagan, the champion of taxcutters, was President. For a family of four earning $27,000, federal taxes will claim only 7% of family income in 1998, down from 12.2% in 1992 and the lowest burden in three decades. 4. NO PUBLIC DESIRE TO RETURN TO SUPPLY-SIDE ECONOMICS EXISTS Froma Harrop, Providence Journal Editorial Writer, KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE, April 20, 1999, p. K2061. However, there has been a more fundamental shift: an increasingly nuanced view toward government spending and the taxes that pay for it. A return to the ``supply-side economics'' of the Reagan era now seems about as appealing as a revival of the Lambada (the ``forbidden dance'' of the '80s). Supply-side economics holds that by reducing tax rates, Americans would work harder, earn more money, and that total tax revenues would therefore soar.

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ECOLOGICAL TAXES ARE NOT JUSTIFIED 1. ECOTAXES ARE INFLEXIBLE, AND SPUR INFLATION Robert A. Bohm, Professor of Economics, University of Tennessee, ENVIRONMENT, September 1998, p. 10. Environmental taxes are often criticized for being inflexible and difficult to adjust to changing conditions. Inflation is the culprit most often cited in this regard. Another factor is the growth in number and size of pollution sources and the consequent higher level of emissions. Still another is the increase in the public's willingness to pay for improved environmental quality as incomes rise and environmental sensitivity increases. In a rapidly industrializing and growing economy such as China's, these latter factors are particularly important. 2. REVENUE BENEFITS ARE UNCERTAIN Robert A. Bohm, Professor of Economics, University of Tennessee, ENVIRONMENT, September 1998, p. 10. Projecting revenues from the reformed PLS over time is difficult both because data on the tax base are incomplete (and will change) and because the behavioral responses to the incentive to reduce pollution are uncertain. However, a revenue simulation pilot study covering 77 cities and using 1995 data found that receipts would have been about 10 times the amount actually collected by the old system, assuming no changes in behavior due to the tax itself. Using the most likely set of assumptions for the nation as a whole, the reformed PLS would have resulted in revenue of about 0.9 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 1995. This falls well short of the estimate of total environmental damage from pollution in 1992, which was about 4.9 percent of national income. 3. ECOTAXES REQUIRE CONSCIOUSNESS SHIFT BEFORE THEY CAN WORK NATIONAL CATHOLIC REPORTER, February 9, 1996, p.24. These innovative tax ideas are not making their way into the presidential debates -- and perhaps with reason. They require a mind shift, a new way of thinking. This change does not come easy and will be resisted by some corporate interests.

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Technocentrism Bad TECHNOCENTRISM IS SHALLOW AND UNSUSTAINABLE 1. TECHNOCENTRISM FAILS NUMEROUS TESTS OF VALIDITY AND SUSTAINABILITY Thomas N. Gladwin, Director of the Global Environment Program at the Leonard N. Stern School of Business at New York University, et. al., ACADEMY OF MANAGEMENT REVIEW, October, 1995, p. 874. Appraising technocentrism versus sustamability. We proposed earlier that for a woridview to be congruent with sustainable development it must manifest inclusiveness, connectivity, equity, prudence, and security. The technocentric worldview, in our opinion, performs poorly on all five tests. Inclusiveness. Technocentrism disassociates the human economy from nonhuman nature. It disregards a broad range of scientific understandings regarding thermodynamic limits on resource availability, irreversibilities associated with losses of critical natural capital, biophysical interdependence between human capital and natural capital, and the finite, nongrowing, materially closed character of the global ecosystem. Its overarching economic efficiency calculus represses attention to matters of appropriate ecological scale and fair distribution of resources and property rights. Its exclusive reliance on markets subordinates concern with community, nature, the poor, marginalized segments of society, including women and minorities, and the interests of future generations. 2. TECHNOLOGICAL QUICK FIXES ARE TEMPORARY AND HAVE SIDE EFFECTS Douglas Futnyma, evolutionary biologist, SCIENCE, January 6, 1995, p. 41. Most important, perhaps, evolutionary biologists are trained in a world view that is by no means universal but may be indispensable: One that recognizes that species are genetically variable in almost every respect; that species and their environments are highly complex, sometimes unpredictable systems; that nothing is constant in the fullness of time; and that technological quick fixes will have manifold but often predictable side effects and will provide only temporary solutions. “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution’, it is often said, and both biologists and those who use biology are coming to understand that this light can illumine almost every aspect of our lives. 3. TECHNOCENTRISM FURTHERS DOMINATION OF HUMANS AND NATURE Thomas N. Gladwin, Director of the Global Environment Program at the Leonard N. Stern School of Business at New York University, et. al., ACADEMY OF MANAGEMENT REVIEW, October, 1995, p. 874. Equity. Technocentrism is viewed as ‘arrogantly” human centered. Ecofeminists see it as a pathological domination logic of men over both women and nature. Many development and environmental economists see technocentrism’s logic of growth via market mechanisms as variously perpetuating poverty and underdevelopment, deepening economic and social disparities, giving privileges to a wealthy minority at the expense of the human majority, exhausting and dispersing a one-time inheritance of natural capital, reducing the rights of future generations, legitimating the concentration of economic and political power, and separating control of productive assets from the communities that depend on them.

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TECHNOCENTRISM IS AN UNDESIRABLE APPROACH TO NATURE 1. TECHNOCENTRISM JEOPARDIZES OUR ECOLOGICAL SECURITY Thomas N. Gladwin, Director of the Global Environment Program at the Leonard N. Stern School of Business at New York University, et. al., ACADEMY OF MANAGEMENT REVIEW, October, 1995, p. 874. Prudence. The core economic and technological assumptions of technocentrism are rather dangerous, we believe, given large uncertainty and complexity. Technocentrism’s heavy discounting of the future, by which distant catastrophic consequences become virtually irrelevant in the short-term present, also biases policies toward inaction. Continuing with technocentrism as usual may, quite simply, represent a huge gamble with survival. Security. Although it is unfair to trace all world problems to technocentrisms doorstep, it is clearly correlated with a world “in agony”. Evidence of declining renewable resources, persistent pollution, and a threatened biological base are well documented. Even within developed countries, most important environmental indicators remain negative, and trends are not improving. In the social realm, data clearly suggest persistent deprivation for the human majority, widening disparities within and between nations, and gathering forces of social decomposition and divisiveness posing threats to human security. 2. TECHNOLOGY IS INCAPABLE OF RESPONDING TO ENVIRONMENTAL DEGREDATION Rodger Schlickeisen, President of Defenders of Wildlife, TULANE ENVIRONMENTAL LAW JOURNAL, Winter, 1994, pp. 188-189. Unfortunately for those who pin their hopes on ecological engineering, natural ecosystems are so complex and so little understood that once destroyed it would be impossible to rebuilt them on a large scale. Despite decades of trying, skilled specialists find it difficult or in many cases impossible even to restore damaged U.S. saltwater wetlands, some of the simplest ecosystems in the world in terms of their species composition. We barely know enough to introduce a single new species into a functioning ecosystem with safety, and the ecological literature is full of horror stories of ecosystems severely damaged by such attempts. 3. TECHNOCENTRISM IS AN UNSUSTAINABLE IDEOLOGY Thomas N. Gladwin, Director of the Global Environment Program at the Leonard N. Stern School of Business at New York University, et. al., ACADEMY OF MANAGEMENT REVIEW, October, 1995, p. 874. In summary, technocentrism fails, in our view, the litmus tests of sustainability. It pathologically disassociates or represses many critical components bearing upon life-support systems. It fractures or severs the connections that sustainabiity requires. It fails to deal adequately with intergenerational, intragenerational and interspecies equity. It hubristically places an extremely large and risky wager on the future. Finally, although it produces material wealth and power for a privileged minority, it gives rise to risks and imbalances that threaten the future of the entire human community.

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Technology Good TECHNOLOGY HAS RAISED OUR STANDARD OF LIVING 1. TECHNOLOGY HAS RAISED OUR STANDARD OF LIVING David Hamilton, Former Industrial Editor of New Scientist, TECHNOLOGY, MAN AND THE ENVIRONMENT, 1973, p. 27. Without a doubt, technology has played a major part in raising the world’s living standards. By providing more machinery to aid the workers, it has enabled him to produce more with less effort whether it is in the factory or the fields. According to one estimate, technological advances in the United States accounted for 90 percent of the rise in output per man-hour between 1871 and the mid 1950s. A similar sort of conclusion could almost certainly be reached for other major industrial powers. 2. ADVANCES IN PRODUCTIVITY ARE DUE TO ORGANIZED TECHNOLOGY Ronald M. Glassman, NQA, DEMOCRACY AND EQUALITY THEORIES AND PROGRAMS FOR THE MODERN WORLD, 1989, p. 192. The productivity of the American economy during WWII is legendary. It exceeded the wildest dreams of F.D.R., who could hardly believe that his war-crisis production goals were not only met, but dramatically exceeded. Yet that remarkable productivity was not a laissez-faire productivity, but rather a productivity born of government-corporate partnership and the organization of technology by the giant firms. 3. TECHNOLOGY PROMOTES THE WELL-BEING OF ALL Samuel C. Florman, Author, BLAMING TECHNOLOGY, 1981, p. 94. Large technology—at least as it has developed in the Western democracies—tends to promote the physical wellbeing of all citizens, and in this respect I would call it a towering force for moral good. If we abandon this technology before the needs of impoverished masses are attended to, I say that we will be guilty of unethical behavior. And if we turn against this technology because it has failed to make us all happy, then I fear that we are saying less about technology than we are about our own lack of maturity. WOMEN MUST PARTICIPATE IN TECHNOLOGY 1. WOMEN MUST PARTICIPATE IN TECHNOLOGY TO END CULTURAL ALIENATION Alvin Toffler, Author, POWERSHIFT, 1990, p. 129-30. For better or for worse, technology lies at the heart of our contemporary culture, and the technologist is akin to pa priest who knows the secrets of the temple. In this sense, and in this sense only, those who speak of a technocratic elite are touching on a profound truth. Until women share in the understanding and creation of our technology— which is to say, until large numbers of women become engineers—they will suffer from cultural alienation that ordinary power cannot cure. 2. WOMEN’S INVOLVEMENT IN TECHNOLOGICAL PROGRESS WILL PREVENT SEXISM Cheris Kramarae, Feminist Author, TECHNOLOGY AND WOMEN’S VOICES: KEEPING IN TOUCH, 1988, p. 12. Many of us are skeptical of technological changes—which are often designed with our labors (but not our interests, interaction, health or happiness) in mind. There is widespread concern among women that unless we become involved in the decision making that is called technological progress, new processes will embody the same old sexism, racism and classism (Rakow 1984). Reviewing the current, seemingly progressive arguments made to encourage women to train for and obtain computer jobs, Berch (1984) states that despite the appearance of new opportunities for women, the new technology represents ‘more than anything else the reconstruction of domination: new technology bears the sexist/classist imprint of its designers.’ 3. WOMEN MUST ACCEPT CHALLENGE TO CREATE TECHNOLOGY Samuel C. Florman, Author, BLAMING TECHNOLOGY, 1981, p. 125. Dependent upon technology, but removed from its sources and, paradoxically, enslaved by it, women may well have developed deep-seated resentments that persist even in those who consider themselves liberated. If this situation 677

does exist, we might expect that the feminists would respond to it as a challenge. The brightest and most ambitious women should be eager to bend technology, at long last, to their own will. But this is not happening. The feminists seem content to write articles assuring each other that they have the talent to fix leaky faucets.

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BENEFITS OF TECHNOLOGY OUTWEIGH RISKS 1. BENEFITS OF TECHNOLOGY ARE WORTH THE RISK OF HARMS Samuel C. Florman, Author, BLAMING TECHNOLOGY, 1981, p. 86. The critics of high technology are fond of pointing out that large systems are “vulnerable.” When there is a blackout, it is apt to be widespread. When there is an earthquake or a hurricane—or a war or sabotage—the potential for extended damage is great. This is true; but the vulnerability of large systems to large failures is more than offset, I believe, not only by the benefits of civilization being work the risks, but by the self-healing capability of large communities. 3. TECHNOLOGY CRITICS FAIL TO CONSIDER CONSEQUENCES OF NO TECHNOLOGY Samuel C. Florman, Author, BLAMING TECHNOLOGY, 1981, p. 191. We are accountable for what we do or, more often, for what we neglect to do. The most shameful feature of the anti-technological creed is that it so often fails to consider the consequences of not taking action. The lives lost or wasted that might have been saved by exploiting our resources are the responsibility of those who counsel inaction. 4. ONE MUST ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY OF TECHNOLOGY AS WELL AS ITS BENEFITS Samuel C. Florman, Author, BLAMING TECHNOLOGY, 1981, p. 193. By saying that I espouse the tragic view of technology, I mean to ally myself with those who, aware of the dangers and without foolish illusions about what can be accomplished, still want to move on, actively seeking to realize our constantly changing vision of a me satisfactory society. I mean to oppose those who would evade harsh truths by intoning platitudes. I particularly mean to challenge those who enjoy the benefits of technology but refuse to accept responsibility for its consequences. 5. ANTI-TECHNOLOGISTS DISREGARD ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF TECHNOLOGY Samuel C. Florman, Author, BLAMING TECHNOLOGY, 1981, p. 104. In identifying industrial work as a major source of contemporary malaise, the antitechnologists divert us from asking ourselves what we can do to improve mental health, foster common courtesy, and nourish concern of one person for another. Those who would blame all of life’s problems on an amorphous technology, inevitably reject the concept of individual responsibility. This is not humanism. It is a perversion of the humanistic impulse. TECHNOLOGY SHAPES OUR CULTURE 1. TECHNOLOGY SHAPES OUR CULTURE Herbert Marcuse, Social Philosopher, ONE DIMENSIONAL MAN, 1964, p. xvi. As the project unfolds, it shapes the entire universe of discourse and action, intellectual and material culture. In the medium of technology, culture, politics, and the economy merge into an omnipresent system which swallows up or repulses all alternatives. The productivity and growth potential of this system stabilize the society and contain technical progress within the framework of domination. Technological rationality has become political rationality. 2. TECHNOLOGY SHAPES CULTURAL ATTITUDES AND VALUES Stephen V. Monsma, Fellow of the Calvin Center for Christian Scholarship, RESPONSIBLE TECHNOLOGY, 1986, p.3. Technology affects, among other things, the ways societies look at and think about themselves and their world; it shapes cultural attitudes and values. In the nineteenth century the Industrial Revolution and the resulting urbanization deeply affected attitudes and values. Today, television has changed politics, affected child-rearing practices, altered the economic system, shaped the development of language, influenced religious evangelism, and molded a host of ideas. Similarly, earth satellites, automated industries, and changes in medical technologies are having social, economic, and political impacts that are difficult even to imagine. In the process, human culture is transformed.

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TECHNOLOGY’S PRESENCE PERMEATES SOCIETY 1. TECHNOLOGICAL PRESENCE PERMEATES THE ENTIRE SOCIETY Stephen V. Monsma, Fellow of the Calvin Center for Christian Scholarship, RESPONSIBLE TECHNOLOGY, 1986, p.2. It is an understatement to say that the structures and institutions that develop and manufacture earth satellites, computers, cars, electrical appliances, sophisticated medical equipment, and many other technological objects are large and complex. One immediately thinks in terms of giant corporations such as General Dynamics, AT&T, and General Motors with their tens of thousands of employees, research, and testing laboratories, and worldwide support systems. The very size of these institutions means their presence is felt everywhere in society. 2. POWERS OF TECHNOLOGY ARE INCREDIBLE David Hamilton, Former Industrial Editor of New Scientist, TECHNOLOGY, MAN AND THE ENVIRONMENT, 1973, p. 17. The powers that technology has given us are already almost incredible. Technology can sustain men in space and the ocean depths. It can harness the immense surge of the tides and modify the weather. It can blast whole cities to ruins in the blinding flash of an atomic explosion and yet control the same enormous power to yield plentiful supplies of electricity. 3. TECHNOLOGY INFLUENCES EVERY AREA OF HUMAN LIFE Stephen V. Monsma, Fellow of the Calvin Center for Christian Scholarship, RESPONSIBLE TECHNOLOGY, 1986, p. 12. It is hard to overstate technology’s persuasiveness and power in modern, technologically oriented societies such as those found in Western Europe, North America, and Japan. A little reflection reveals that no area of human life in modem societies is left untouched by today’s technology. People move themselves and their goods about by cars, trucks, trains, and planes; use energy such as electricity and various oil and gas products that have been produced or processed by highly complex technological means; live in a world of technologically produced materials such as plastics and synthetic fibers; and process, manipulate, store, and transmit information by using calculators, computers and satellites. Even entertainment often depends on technology: witness video games, powerboats and television. 4. TECHNOLOGY PRODUCES RESULTS THAT REACH ALL PARTS OF SOCIETY David Hamilton, Former Industrial Editor of New Scientist, TECHNOLOGY, MAN AND THE ENVIRONMENT, 1973, p. 17. It [technology] can produce on a massive scale substances both to prevent pregnancy and to enable infertile women to bear children—previously a divine prerogative. It has created machines like the heart-lung unit, and artificial, powered limbs that assume functions of the human body for a time. Its crowning achievement, the computer, extends the power of the mind and will have the most pervasive influence upon our world of any machine so far conceived. 5. TECHNOLOGICAL PROCESS HAS FULFILLED OUR DESIRES Thomas H. Robinson, NQA, THE AMERICAN IDEA, 1942, p. 65. We have to shape and re-shape all sorts of materials to get want-satisfying goods. We have to carry these materials from where they are less needed to where they are more needed. Sometimes we have to store them for future needs. In short, we have to produce most of our goods. Needless to say, the remarkable progress of science, and its application through inventions to the task of producing goods from nature’s stores, have been immeasurably important in providing us with what we want. 6. TECHNOLOGY HAS CONTRIBUTED TO “AMERICAN GOOD FORTUNE” Thomas H. Robinson, NQA, THE AMERICAN IDEA, 1942, p. 64-5. A second factor [which has contributed to America’s good fortune] is to be found in the extraordinary scientific and technological developments in America during the past 175 years. Nature, by herself, makes a very inadequate provision for our wants. A few—a very few—things exist in a condition fit to satisfy wants and [sic] in such quantities that all of us can take all we desire. A few more things that are in a want-satisfying condition are relatively scarce. But the great bulk of our resources must have something done to them before they can be used. 680

TECHNOLOGY CAN IMPROVE SOCIETIES WORLDWIDE 1. TECHNOLOGY HAS CREATED A GLOBAL VILLAGE David Hamilton, Former Industrial Editor of New Scientist, TECHNOLOGY, MAN AND THE ENVIRONMENT, 1973, p. 36. Already technology has shrunk the world into a ‘global village’. Not many years ago, it took a fast ship five days to cross the Atlantic. Now we can fly it in five hours or less. We can watch events on the other side of the world, as they happen, by television signals relayed to us from satellites hovering 36,000 km (22,3000 miles) above the earth. Without rapid communications an organization becomes sluggish and indecisive. Technology has given us the means to make the world and its organization as responsive and as vital as we like. 2. TECHNOLOGY CAN PROVIDE MECHANISMS FOR PEACE AND UNDERSTANDING Charles Susskind, Professor at the University of California Berkeley, UNDERSTANDING TECHNOLOGY, 1973, p. 124. In summary, the search for peace through international understanding presents a challenge that can be met in part by technology through cooperation, mutual aid, and education, provided the application of technology is not bedeviled by a narrow view of its capabilities and effects, and that its carriers respect the values, or tastes, or preferences of all peoples. 3. TECHNOLOGY CAN CLOSE THE GAP BETWEEN RICH AND POOR NATIONS Charles Susskind, Professor at the University of California Berkeley, UNDERSTANDING TECHNOLOGY, 1973, p. 119. International understanding, the road to peace, is the greatest problem facing mankind. Technology can contribute much to its solution. Like science, technology knows no national boundaries; and technology is foremost among the gifts that the rich nations can bestow on the poor to begin to close the gap an lessen world tensions.

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Technology Bad TECHNOLOGICAL AND SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS MANIPULATE SOCIETY 1. TECHNICAL PROGRESS EXTENDS A SYSTEM OF DOMINATION Herbert Marcuse, Social Philosopher, ONE DIMENSIONAL MAN, 1964, p. xii. But here, advanced industrial society confronts the critique with a situation which seems to deprive it of its very basis. Technical progress extended to a whole system of domination and coordination, creates forms of life (and of power) which appear to reconcile the forces opposing the system and to defeat or refute all protest in the name of the historical prospects of freedom from toil and domination. Contemporary society seems to be capable of containing social change—qualitative change which would establish essentially different institutions, a new direction of the productive process, new modes of human existence. 2. SCIENCE AND KNOWLEDGE MARGINALIZES THOSE THAT ARE DIFFERENT Michel Foucault, Former Chair-College of France, POLITICS, PHILOSOPHY, CULTURE: INTERVIEWS AND OTHER WRITINGS, 1977-1984, 1988, p. 106-7. But what seems to me to be more interesting to analyze is now science, in Europe, has become institutionalized as a power. It is not enough to say that science is a set of procedures by which prepositions may be falsified, errors demonstrated, myths demystified, etc. Science also exercises power: it is, literally, a power that forces you to say certain things, if you are not to be disqualified not only as being wrong, but more seriously than that, as being a charlatan. 3. SCIENTIFIC RATIONALITY AND MANIPULATION ARE WELDED TOGETHER Herbert Marcuse, Social Philosopher, ONE DIMENSIONAL MAN, 1964, p. 146. Scientific-technical rationality and manipulation are welded together into new forms of social control. Can one rest content with the assumption that this unscientific outcome is the result of a specific societal application of science? I think that the general direction in which it came to be applied was inherent in pure science even where no practical purposes were intended, and that the point can be identified where theoretical Reason turns into social practice.

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VALUE AND MORALITY OF TECHNOLOGY MUST BE ADDRESSED 1. SOCIETY MUST UNDERSTAND VALUE ASPECT OF TECHNOLOGY Stephen V. Monsma, Fellow of the Calvin Center for Christian Scholarship, RESPONSIBLE TECHNOLOGY, 1986, p.4. Technology itself is value-laden. (This point is so important and yet so seldom recognized that much of Chapter Three is spend explicating it.) Thus responsibility in technological society necessarily means that we must have insights into the valuing that is reflected in the technology with which we are surrounded. Only then can we make responsible choices. 2. TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCES MUST BE ANALYZED FROM A MORAL PERSPECTIVE Joan Davis-Swiss, Institute for Water and Pollution Control, ALTERNATIVES TO GROWTH, 1977, p. 234. As for the longer-term future, nobody today can prove or disprove the feasibility that ecological risks, unprecedented in kind and magnitude, are inherent in the present course of technological-economic development. Therefore, the decision whether or not to follow the strategies of technological breakthrough is a moral and ethical one, involving the assessment of these risks. This question cannot be resolved on a scientific basis only. 3. TECHNOLOGY IS VALUE-LADEN Stephen V. Monsma, Fellow of the Calvin Center for Christian Scholarship, RESPONSIBLE TECHNOLOGY, 1986, p. 31. Technology proceeds out of whole human experience and is affected by the confessional, religious commitments unique to human beings. As a result, technology is value-laden, the product of the inevitable valuing activities of human beings. Clearly, the non-neutrality and the value-ladenness of technology are two sides of the same coin. Valuing penetrates all technological activity, from the analytical framework used to understand technological issues through the processes of design and fabrication to the resulting technological objects—tools and products. Although valuing is also involved in the uses to which people put these technological objects, it begins long before the use stage. 4. DESTRUCTION CAUSED BY TECHNOLOGY MUST BE ANALYZED MORALLY Murray Bookchin, Environmental Philosopher, THE MODERN CRISIS, 1987, P. 111. So deep-seated a capacity to use technology’s malignant power to destroy instead of its benign power to create requires a searching analysis of the moral elements and origins of what we today all “civilization,” Here it suffices to emphasize that the “means of production” have now become too powerful—too manipulable by small, idiosyncratic if not crazed elites, too prolific and cancerous in their matestatic growth—to be designed, much less used, as means of destruction. The steel that the Alexanders and Caesars used to dispatch human life, like the black power that the Napoleons employed for their artillery bombardments, are puny relics of a relatively benign past. They have been replaced by thermonuclear and neutron bombs, nerve gasses, lethal microbes and toxins, and unerring delivery systems that can be used intercontinentally to inflict horrendous destruction by only a few psychologically conditioned human robots—and soon, inhuman robots which can be programmed to “declare” war or peace by men whose own sanity and mental stability are high dubious. 5. TECHNOLOGY IS NOT VALUE NEUTRAL Stephen V. Monsma, Fellow of the Calvin Center for Christian Scholarship, RESPONSIBLE TECHNOLOGY, 1986, p.4. Adding to the need to understand technology is the fact that it is not neutral. Engaging in technological activities inevitably and necessarily means valuing; there is no escaping this fact. At times the argument is made that technology and its tools and products are neutral, and that only the uses to which they are put involve valuing. But there can be no such neat division. Of course valuing affects how technological tools and products are used, but valuing begins long before the use stage.

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NOT ALL TECHNOLOGY IMPROVES THE QUALITY OF LIFE 1. TECHNOLOGICAL PROGRESS HAS DECREASED THE QUALITY OF LIFE Marilyn French, Feminist Philosopher, BEYOND POWER, 1985, p. 21. Our technology has been created irresponsibly. Besides creating pollution in manufacture, and producing nonbiodegradable waste, it functions poorly and is subject to dangerous accidents. Air-conditioning systems spread contaminating viruses and even cancer-causing agents; new synthetic materials used in construction and decorating hotels and other buildings give off lethal fumes during fires, causing deaths that might not otherwise occur. Chemicals spilled in accidents require towns to be evacuated; oil spills kill the life in the sea and on the beaches. 2. SOCIETAL MALAISE HAS BEEN CAUSED BY TECHNOLOGY Stephen V. Monsma, Fellow of the Calvin Center for Christian Scholarship, RESPONSIBLE TECHNOLOGY, 1986, p.6. To many of us it seems that technological prowess has somehow outstripped the other aspects of human life. The works of minds and hands seem to have outstripped those of the heart; the technological appears to loom large in our lives while the spiritual languishes. Some fear that the facts of technology have outshone and perhaps in some sense “done in” the value by which we can measure and control technology. These distinctions are, as we will see, faro too simple, yet they get at a fundamental cause of the malaise of our times. There is widespread worry that, as E.F. Schumacher put it, “Man is far too clever to be able to survive without wisdom.” 3. TECHNOLOGY HAS PRODUCED PRODUCTS WHICH LIFE MORE STRESSFUL Marilyn French, Feminist Philosopher, BEYOND POWER, 1985, p. 15. The stressful quality of our lives arises mainly from our “conveniences,” as we become aware when we spend time away from urban centers in more “primitive” environments. We are not willing to give up our “conveniences,” yet we cannot find a way to live with them in relative peacefulness. 4. TECHNOLOGY HAS NOT MADE THE WORLD A BE7ITER PLACE FOR WOMEN Cheris Kramarae, Feminist author, TECHNOLOGY AND WOMEN’S VOICES: KEEPING IN TOUCH, 1988, p. 6. The tech-fix, the belief that technology can solve all kinds of problems, even social ones (Bush 1983, 152), has not worked to make a better world for women. This is not to say that women do not use and profit from many innovations. Technological change can be positive for women, either through chance benefits resulting from changes introduced primarily by business managers for themselves or from conscious addressing of women’s problems. It is just that this has seldom happened. 5. THE TRADE-OFFS TO ENJOY TECHNOLOGICAL CONVENIENCES ARE HARMFUL Marilyn French, Feminist Philosopher, BEYOND POWER, 1985, p. 15. A final reward offered by our technological world is convenience. This is also problematic, for while it is more convenient to have running water, a washing machine, an automobile, or a plane, than to have to go to the well, scrub clothes by hand, and walk long distances, the subsidiary inconveniences of these conveniences are deeply oppressive. Traffic jams, late planes, the noises of cities, the poor air and water quality are only a few of the payments required for our conveniences. INCREASED TECHNOLOGY DOES NOT INCREASE KNOWLEDGE 1. INCREASED TECHNOLOGY DOES NOT EQUAL AN INCREASE IN KNOWLEDGE Jean-François Lyotard. Professor Emeritus at the University of Paris, THE INHUMAN, 1991. p. 63. The penetration of techno-scientific apparatus into the cultural field in no way signifies an increase of knowledge, sensibility, tolerance and liberty. Reinforcing this apparatus does not liberate the spirit, as the Auflddrung thought. Experience shows rather the reverse: a new barbarism, illiteracy and impoverishment of language, new poverty, merciless remodeling of opinion by the media, inuniseration of the mind, obsolescence of the soul, as Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno repeatedly stressed.

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TECHNOLOGY HAS DESTROYED THE ENVIRONMENT 1. TECHNOLOGY OF MAN HAS DESTROYED THE ENVIRONMENT David Hamilton, Former Industrial Editor of New Scientist, TECHNOLOGY, MAN AND THE ENVIRONMENT, 1973, p. 262. Until now Man has plundered, pillaged and polluted his planet with careless abandon, thinking only of his short-term gain. He has used technology as a crude instrument with which to wrest food and materials from it, as though his were the sole claim on its resources. He has been too bind to see that he depends on this well-being of the environment, including all its other forms of plant and animal life. 2. TECHNOLOGY HAS CREATED POLLUTION Paul Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich, Professors of Population and Biological Studies at Stanford University, EARTH, 1987, p. 187. Many economists simply believe [sic] that science can always pull a technological rabbit out of a hat to solve any problems. They don’t understand that there are very important laws of nature that limit what kinds of rabbits can be pulled Out of which hats, and so persist in assuming, among other things, that perpetual motion machines will soon be with us. And they pay no attention whatever to the additional fact that many of the rabbits that can [sic] be pulled out of hats produce such noxious droppings that it would be better if they had never left the hat in the first place. 3. TECHNOLOGY IS RAPIDLY DESTROYING OUR ENVIRONMENT Murray Bookchin, Environmental Philosopher, THE MODERN CRISIS, 1987, P. 106. Industrially and technologically, we are moving at an ever-accelerating pace toward a yawning chasm with our eyes completely blindfolded. From the 1950s onward, we have placed ecological burdens upon our planet that have no precedent in human history. Our impact on our environment has been nothing less than appalling. The problems raised by acid raid alone are striking examples of the innumerable problems that appear everywhere on our planet. TECHNOLOGY OF ADVANCED SOCIETIES DESTROYS THE INDIVIDUAL 1. ADVANCED TECHNICAL SOCIETIES DESTROY INDIVIDUALITY Herbert Marcuse, Social Philosopher, ONE DIMENSIONAL MAN, 1964, p. 1. A comfortable, smooth, reasonable, democratic unfreedom prevails in advanced industrial civilization, a token of technical progress. Indeed, what could be more rational than the suppression of individuality in the mechanization of socially necessary but painful performances; the concentration of individual enterprises in more effective, more productive corporations; the regulation of free competition among unequally equipped economic subjects; the curtailment of prerogatives and national sovereignties which impeded the international organization of resources. 2. PRODUCTIVE APPARATUS IS INHERENTLY TOTALITARIAN Herbert Marcuse, Social Philosopher, ONE DIMENSIONAL MAN, 1964, p. xv. In this society, the productive apparatus tends to become totalitarian to the extent to which it determines not only the socially needed occupations, skills, and attitudes, but also individual needs and aspirations. It thus obliterates the opposition between the private and public existence, between individual and social needs. Technology serves to institute new, more effective, and more pleasant forms of social control and social cohesion. 3. THE EXPLOITATION OF HUMANS HAS BECOME INCREASINGLY SCIENTIFIC Herbert Marcuse, Social Philosopher, ONE DIMENSIONAL MAN, 1964, p. 146. Society reproduced itself in a growing technical ensemble of things and relations which included the technical utilization of men--in other words, the struggle for existence and exploitation of man and nature became ever more scientific and rational. The double meaning of rationalization is relevant in this context. Scientific management and scientific division of labor vastly increased the productivity of the economic, political, and cultural enterprise. Result: the higher standard of living. At the same time and on the same ground, this rational enterprise produced a pattern of mind and behavior which justified and absolved even the most destructive and oppressive features of the enterprise. 685

Technology Good TECHNOLOGY IS THE PROTECTOR OF HUMANITY 1. TECHNOLOGY PROMOTES JUSTICE Joseph Agassi, Professor Tel-Aviv University and York University, Toronto, TECHNOLOGY -PHILOSOPHICAL AND SOCIAL ASPECTS, 1985, p. 229. The growth of physical technology of necessity will bring about more social change - it will have to create a new social technology. It is clear that in our semi-utopia it will be easy to decide to change one’s job annually. This has to invite a new kind of labor organization, and a new kind of public administration -especially of emergency services. And at least one thing must be unquestionably accepted in the semi-utopia: we must eliminate current blatant injustices concerning the assignments of jobs and the remuneration from work - especially race and sex discrimination and segregation. Also, today’s various versions of the work ethic will be extinct. Most societies recognize the right to work only minimally and our society recognizes also the right to full employment; the semiutopia will uphold both. The incentives to work should suffice, and no compulsion of any kind will back it, economic, social or moral. 2. TECHNOLOGY REQUIRES DEMOCRACY AND RATIONALITY Joseph Agassi, Professor Tel-Aviv University and York University, Toronto, TECHNOLOGY -PHILOSOPHICAL AND SOCIAL ASPECTS, 1985, p. 258. The problems of the modern world are more formidable than we ever faced. In this respect all opponents to technology are right. Yet a solution can only be found, if at all, by stepping technology up, not down, and by making it more rational, not less, as can be better achieved by democratization than by suppressing technocracy. 3. TECHNOLOGY ENABLES THE HUMAN SPIRIT David Rothenberg, Author, HAND’S END - TECHNOLOGY AND THE LIMITS OF NATURE, 1993, p.52 It is also wrong, however, to imagine that technology pushes us away from the most essential parts of our humanity. Through embodiment, practical realization, and the returning arc of influence, human dynamism is expressed through technology. Every tool contains some of the spirit of the artistic conduit, like the pencil or the clarinet. A device that can turn the rough motions of the hands into precise and variable gradations of line and shading opens up desires which we never bad before. Similarly, a musical instrument that offers a key or a tone hole for each of what should be played. Whole musical phrases well out of us into the material realm of sound before we can analyze what we are going. While making art, we are anything but independent of our environment, expressing something of ourselves through material form, engaging the world as we are startled by what comes from inside us. 4. TECHNOLOGY FOSTERS EMPATHY David Rothenberg, Author, HAND’S END - TECHNOLOGY AND THE LIMITS OF NATURE, 1993, p. 50. Again, technology heightens wonder whenever our awe of the universe may be encouraged by information. When we watch films of the lives of strange creatures in the deserts and jungles which we could never witness in person (because they are both far away from us and perhaps active only at night, when only the camera may see them), reverence for the intricacies of life reaches beyond immediate experience. This affirms our sense of location in the environment only if this sense expresses an interest in other forms of life, leading to empathy with non-human ways of being. This is not a sentimental move, but a step toward spiritual recognition of humanity contained within an encompassing universe, connected to all things we may learn about. This would be a religion which could fortify itself with information, and would not let itself be destroyed by the arrival of new facts with time.

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TECHNOLOGY PROTECTS THE JOB MARKET 1. ACCELERATING TECHNOLOGY BENEFITS EVERYONE Elting Morison, Lecturer at California Institute of Technology, MEN, MACHINES, AND MODERN TIMES, 1966, p. 93. I am not trying to suggest that the computer will soon bring us all under the cloak of the mathematical reality of its programs. But today the tendency to work with quantifiable elements and logical systems seems to me accelerating. There are more tests and measurements (the brain of a candidate for college works within precisely graded scale from, presumably, 1 to 1800), more rational systems like those of Keynes and Freud to assist us in ordering the economy and the personality, more mathematical models, and more efforts, as in the schools of management, to reduce administrative experience to quantifiable elements. This, in the name of clarification and the advancement of general understanding, is quite obviously all to the good. 2. TECHNOLOGY PREVENTS UNEMPLOYMENT C.R. DeCarlo, Author, DIALOGUE ON TECHNOLOGY, 1967, p. 40. The National Commission on Technology, Automation, and Economic Progress joins in respecting the sanctity of work. Recognizing that unemployment will increase if the economy is left to its own devices, the Commission has reached the astonishing conclusion that the cause is not too-rapid technological change, but too-slow economic growth. By Increasing the economic growth rate to 4-5% per year, we are told, we can hold unemployment to its present level. For an economy which seldom has exceeded a 3-5% growth rate in the past, this indeed is an Alicethrough-the-looking-glass solution: “It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.” 3. TECHNOLOGISTS ARE VITAL TO SOCIETY C.R DeCarlo, Author, DIALOGUE ON TECHNOLOGY, 1967, p. 66. A third aspect of the technological society which operates as a background factor in the educational environment is the increased leverage of the scientific and technical community. Despite the fact that scientists, engineers, technicians, and teachers o technicians, constitute less than 3% of the labor force, they have influence far beyond their proportionate composition in the society. Of the highest importance is the educational development of people who can encompass scientific and professional careers, while at the same time remaining open to the responsibilities of individual growth and civic responsibility. 4. DEMAND FUELS INDUSTRIAL GROWTH Jacob Schmookler, Author, INVENTION AND ECONOMIC GROWTH, 1966, p. 165. All this seems in sharp contradiction to the fact, visible to the naked eye, that part of invention in the past century or so has occurred in the chemical and electrical fields, because the progress of science and engineering expanded inventive possibilities in those fields relative to those in other fields. Inventive effort in these two areas promised a higher reward, and inventive manpower shifted into them. This obviously suggests that not demand but the changing state of knowledge, with its effects on the relative costs of inventions in different fields, guided- or at least greatly affected - the rate and direction of inventive activity.

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TECHNOLOGY IS KEY TO COMMUNICATION 1. TECHNOLOGY ENABLED EDUCATION FOR THE MASSES James Feibleman, Author, TECHNOLOGY AND REALITY, 1982, p. 145-146. Universal education, that is to say, education for all members of society, was probably not possible until the invention of printing. Johannes Gutenberg in 1456 with his edition of the vulgate Bible printed on movable type showed that books could be manufactured at a cost which put them within reach of many who would not have been able to buy the relatively expensive copies before that had to be made slowly by hand. 2. TECHNOLOGY HAS BECOME A COMMUNICATIONS ENABLER James Feibleman, Author, TECHNOLOGY AND REALITY, 1982, p. 147. In short, technology has transformed the method of communication and with it the entire life of human society and culture. And this is true not only of social relations in general but also the relations of the individual in particular. Communication prepares him for participation in his culture: he acquires a language when he is young, and learns the most effective ways to use it when he grows older. 3. TECHNOLOGY EMULATES HUMAN SOCIETY FOR OUR BENEFIT Howard Rosenbrock, Author, MACHINES WITH A PURPOSE, 1990, p. 29-30. At another level it is the debate in ‘artificial intelligence’ about whether there is anything which a human being can do, which cannot also be done by a computer. Stated in a rather crude form, the argument which denies that any such things exists runs as follows. A man is a machine. The computer is a universal machine which can simulate any machine. Therefore anything which can be done by a man can also be done by a computer, given suitable sensors and actuators to connect it to the surrounding world.

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TECHNOLOGY IS NOT INCOMPATIBLE WITH ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH 1. THERE IS NO ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS ON THE HORIZON Julian L. Simon, population biologist, THE FUTURIST, March 13, 1997, p. 17. The proposition that there is a crisis in our environment is all wrong on the scientific facts. Even the U.S Environmental Protection Agency makes clear that our air and water have been getting cleaner rather than dirtier in the past few decades. Every agricultural economist knows that the world has been eating better oj average since World War II. Every resource economist knows that natural resources have been becoming more available rather than more scarce, as shown by their falling prices over the past decades and centuries. Every demographer knows that the death rate has been fulling all over the world. Life expectancy has almost tripled in the rich countries over the past couple of hundred years, and almost doubled in just the past 50 years or so in the poor countries. It is also clear now that population growth does not hinder economic development. In the 1 980s, there was a complete reversal in the consensus of thinking of population economists about this: There is no negative connection between population growth and economic development; that is, no statistical negative correlation. So here’s my central assertion: Almost every trend in material human welfare points in a positive direction, as long as we look at the matter over reasonably long period of time. 2. THE EARTH IS TOO RESILIENT TO BE SIGNIFICANTLY HARMED Bob Pepperman Taylor, Associnte Professor of Political Science at the University of Vermont, OUR LIMITS TRANSGRESSED: ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICAL THOUGHT IN AMERICA, 1992, pp. 107-108. Lovelock not unreasonably concludes that his own ideas suggest that human degradation of the environment is not an especially serious threat to the overall health of the living earth. If Gaia is a resilient living system, “the evidence for accepting that industrial activities either at their present level or in the immediate future may endanger the life of Gaia as a whole, is very weak indead.” The earth, quite simply, is capable of taking care of itself. Lovelock argues that the concept of pollution is “anthropocentric and may even be irrelevant in the Gaian context.” The environmental disturbances of the biosphere produced by modem civilization merely cause the earth to readjust to accommodate them 3. TECHNOLOGY ALWAYS ADAPTS TO COPE WITH ECOLOGICAL CRISES Paul Kaihla, staff, MACLEAN’S, September 5, 1994, p. 22. While the steep rise in the world’s population in the last half of the 20th century has brought calls for zero or even negative, population growth, many conservative economists insist that there is no crisis over the Earth’s ability to support the expected increase. Nicknamed “cornucopians,” they argue that the international market will always find a substitute product or a new technology to circumvent shortages of particular resources. A case in point is copper: in the 1970s, some environmentalists predicted that the metal would be in short supply in the 1 990s. Instead, there is a glut of copper and prices have plummeted because fibre-optic cable and plastic piping have replaced copper in many uses. 5. TECHNOLOGY IDENTIFIES ENVIRONMENTAL HARMS AND MOVES TO CORRECT THEM Bob Pepperman Taylor, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Vermont, OUR LIMITS TRANSGRESSED: ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICAL THOUGHT IN AMERICA, 1992, p. 108. Lovelock is actually quite skeptical about environmentalists (he refers to environmental politics as a “lush new pasture for demagogues”), and he is confident that industrial society is capable of recognizing environmental problems and correcting them: “When urban industrial man does something ecologically bad he notices it and tends to put things right again.” In short, the primary scientific exponent of the Gaia thesis draws environmental conclusions that are much less disturbing for contemporary society than those drawn by environmentalists like Sale.

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TECHNOLOGY BETTERS HUMAN EXISTENCE 1. TECHNOLOGY ENABLES QUANTUM LEAPS IN HUMAN DEVELOPMENT Brink Lindsey, trade attorney and contributing editor, REASON, December 1, 1996, P. 36. The capacity to produce technology to remake the world around us in the image of our thoughts is a basic aspect of human nature. It is as old as our first ancestors, who chipped stone axes 2 million years ago: We have named them homo habilis “handy man” because of their toolmaking. In the past century or so, however, this capacity has achieved an entirely new potency. A sustained, focused, and intricately integrated creative outburst on the part of millions of people has redefined the pace and possibilities of human existence in ways previously only dreamed about. Life dominated by natural rhythms and limits has given way to life mediated and liberated by artifacts. This transformation, still unfolding, is one of the greatest quantum leaps in human development. -

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2. CRISES ONLY MAKE TECHNOLOGY MORE BENEFICIAL Julian L. Simon, population biologist, THE FUTURIST, March 13, 1997, p. 17. This is the theory of how these benign trends can come about: There come to be more people or increased income, or both. More people and increased income lead to pressure on resources. This leads to either higher prices or expected higher prices. That’s where the Malthusian theory stops, right there. But the process doesn’t end right there. What happens is that these higher prices represent opportunity to business people, who can make money by fulfilling the need. The higher prices also represent opportumty to scientists, who say, “Here’s a chance for me to make a great discovery, win the Nobel Prize.” The astonishing aspect of the process is that we wind up better off than if the problem had never arisen in the first place. 3. TECHNOLOGY IS INTEGRAL TO HUMAN DEVELOPMENT AND EVOLUTION Walter Truett Anderson, political scientist and journalist, REASON, December 1, 1996, p. 36. In recent times we have seen the emergence of a new polarization anti-technology vs. pro-technology, Luddite vs. techie. The neo-Luddites dream of people leaving technology behind and advancing into a future that looks well, looks a lot like the past. The techies dream of artificial intelligence computers so brilliantthat they can advance and leave people behind. (See, for example, the cyberpunk classic Neuromancer.) Along with this goes a lot of argument much of it useless hyperbole about whether technology is good or bad, destroyer or savior. What we really need to do, rather than take sides in any such simplistic fistfights, is to understand how inseparable technological change is from human evolution. Technology is us. -

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4. TECHNOLOGY IS INSEPERABLE FROM HUMAN NATURE Walter Truett Anderson, political scientist and journalist, REASON, December 1, 1996, p. 36. Bruce Mazlish of MIT makes a similar point in The Fourth Discontinuity (1993), although his framework is more historical than evolutionary. He takes his title from the proposition that the human species has in recent centuries gone through a number of “discontinuities,” each of which involved learning new and disturbing lessons about the world and our place in it. We learned the Copernican lesson that our planet is not discontinuous from the heavenly bodies, we learned the Darwinian lesson that humans are not discontinuous from the animals, and we learned the Freudian lesson that the conscious mind is not discontinuous from its preconscious origins. Now, he says, “humans are on the threshold of decisively breaking past the discontinuity between themselves and machines,” discovering “that tools and machines are inseparable from evolving human nature.” -

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Technology Bad TECHNOLOGY DESTROYS SOCIETY 1. SOCIETY IS NOT READY FOR TECHNOLOGY Joseph Agassi, Professor Tel-Aviv University and York University, Toronto, TECHNOLOGY -PHILOSOPHICAL AND SOCIAL ASPECTS, 1985, p. 234. What remains of the radical approach is at most he demand that technology or the economy cease to grow. This is to demand the impossible. It is also to demand the unreasonable: we must develop some sectors of the world’s economy - at least as long as starvation is so very common. And for this we must develop some sectors of our technology, and we must curb other sectors. But even for curbing any sector - of the economy or of technology - we need develop new sectors. Our social machinery needs both better accelerators and better breaks and we must develop these and be quick about it. We must, in particular, develop the technology of controls. 2. TECHNOLOGY’S ROLE MUST BE DEFINED BEFORE IT IS USED Elting Morison, Lecturer at California Institute of Technology, MEN, MACHINES, AND MODERN TIMES, 1966, p. 87. The computer has stated the problem bluntly. What is left is to refine the definition and to solve the problem. To the dangerous work of solving it there is no reason to believe we will not bring the same qualities we have possessed in the past. Since the machine can only simulate, the work of creating the future is still in man’s hands. If he fails, if he misuses the machine, then in simulation it will misuses him in exactly the same way. Then, in terms of what we ever thought we could be or hoped to be, we will have acquired an incredible extension of the power of ourselves, our real selves. 3. TECHNOLOGY’S BENEFITS DO NOT OUTWEIGH HUMAN ALIENATION Bernard Gendron, Author, TECHNOLOGY AND THE HUMAN CONDITION, 1977, p. 136. The industrial era may have improved the lot of workers in many ways; remuneration may have become higher and gross fatigue lower (though this is not sure). Some of the bad or unpleasant features of work may have been attenuated in the industrial era, at least by the time it ran its course. But there can be no doubt that the rise of industrial technology in the West has been associated with increasing powerlessness, meaninglessness, self-estrangement, and social isolation for the worker, and hence with dramatic increases in the alienation of the worker.

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TECHNOLOGY DEVALUES HUMAN LIFE 1. TECHNOLOGY PLACES HUMAN VALUES IN JEOPARDY C.R. DeCarlo, Author, DIALOGUE ON TECHNOLOGY, 1967, p. 75. To the extent that a technological society takes on aspects of dehumanization, religious and educational leadership must counter by placing urgent and highest priority upon the human values in the educational process. Otherwise life can become inhumane, can become bound in technique and can suffer confusion of purpose. 2. TECHNOLOGY DEHUMANIZES AND DEMORALIZES James Feibleman, Author, TECHNOLOGY AND REALITY, 1982, p. 86. Technology intensifies the forces making conformity at the time that they confront perversity with its strongest challenge. The products of technology are artifacts which by their very nature and function demand to be employed by everyone in exactly the same way. Driving a car, playing a television set, or using a telephone, does not bring out the uniqueness in the individual but to the contrary presses for conformity, and because its workings lie beyond the average man’s understand it is demoralizing. Tools and languages act to shape people uniformly and so operate in favor of conservatism. Artifacts often function as selection pressures. Because most manufactured articles are produced by thousands and even millions in identical copies, they set the conditions for conventional behavior. There is no variety in the demands made by the electric waster, the typewriter or the adding machine. All are inclined to reinforce a kind of destructive conformity and so tend to make robots out of men. 3. TECHNOLOGY DESTROYS VALUES Howard Rosenbrock, Author, MACHINES WITH A PURPOSE, 1990, p. 29-30. Now the main line of argument which we wish to pursue here is the contention that science incorporates values which are not part of science, but which profoundly affect the way we view the world, and the way we behave. In particular, science eliminates purpose. TECHNOLOGY EMPIRICALLY HARMS HUMANITY 1. THERE HAVE BEEN NO GAINS FROM TECHNOLOGY Bernard Gendron, Author, TECHNOLOGY AND THE HUMAN CONDITION, 1977, p. 141. If we look at the history of the West, there is constant correlation between technological growth and growth in leisure; sometimes the former is associated with growth in leisure, and sometimes with diminution in leisure. No doubt, the growth of leisure and technology have been positively correlated in the century. But the rate of decrease of work time has not been terribly large (something like 4 percent every decade for the first half of the century); at this rate, it would take near two hundred years to cut in half our present workweek or workyear. Because of the increase in life expectancy, the number of years each adult human can expect to work has increased since 1900. And in the last fifteen years, increases in leisure for manual works and others have been very small or nonexistent. 2. TECHNOLOGY DOES NOT REDUCE MANUAL LABOR Bernard Gendron, Author, TECHNOLOGY AND THE HUMAN CONDITION, 1977, p. 144. There is good reason to believe that automation will not undo by itself all the forms of alienation which have been caused or intensified by mechanization. This means that the postindustrial era in technology by itself will most probably not be able to cancel out within the foreseeable future all the forms of alienation which have been associated with the industrial era in the West. It most probably will not eliminate work in general or manual work in particular, and it most probably will not significantly reduce all by itself the alienation of those who perform manual labor.

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Technology Responses Defining technology is in and of itself an arduous task. J.K. Galbraith defines technology as, “the systematic application of scientific or other organized knowledge to practical tasks.” 1 This definition has been used as a starting point and expanded upon by other authors. Clarification moved the definition to, “the application of scientific and other organized knowledge to practical tasks by ordered systems that involve people and machines.” 2 Perhaps technology falls into the broader category of things that are hard to define but easily recognizable. It cannot be contested that technology has drastically advanced over the last few centuries. As machines and their interactions with humans become more complex and more rewarding, many are turning to technology to solve the problems they see in the world around them. This reliance on technology has been aided by the fact that without a doubt, some of these technological advances have brought about favorable impacts. The following essay will focus on why reliance on technology and technology itself are problematic and should be rejected. It does not explicitly call for a return to a time before machines, but does make arguments about why such a time would be less likely to incur the problems inherent in technology and its developments. With technology increasing at such a rapid pace all around us, there is no better time to consider the consequences of this technological progress. TECHNOLOGY DEHUMANIZES Though many authors and philosophers have written about the dangers of technology, Martin Heidegger is one of the most well-known critics. He writes of how technology can cause human beings to lose their humanity through a process called enframing. Tad Beckman notes, “What we call technology and think to be a neutral instrument standing ready for our control is actually a specific manifestation of this whole process.”3 Enframing is where human life in the context of the natural world is gathered into technology. This is how human life is developing and challenging us to a mode of revealing the real, or of ordering nature into standing reserve. He adds, “Our control over technology is an illusion; it and we alike are being shaped...in the process that Heidegger called enfrmaing.” 4 Beckman does an excellent job explaining what this process of enframing will lead to, stating, “To see the essence of technology in this way delivers us into the final phase of Heidegger’s analysis, the great danger to humanity that technology represents. Just as enframing organizes our lives progressively into a disposition of challenging and ordering the things around us into standing reserve, its progress as a development of human destiny challenges and orders us into standing reserve for its own ends.”5 This danger manifests itself in two ways,. First, it dooms individuals to being part of a standing reserve of what is needed for technology and advancements. People lose their humanity because they are seen as means to an end. Second, humanity comes to see itself as lord over the earth given their technology. This can lead to dangerous behavior and the destruction of the environment. “Modern technology, in Heidegger’s view, is the highest stage of misrepresentation of the essence of being human.”6 In that process, dehumanization occurs. Dehumanization is not something to be taken lightly. If technology is causing us to lose our humanity, we can justify sacrificing life in an attempt to progress. One author says of dehumanization and technology that, “its destructive toll is already greater than that of any war, plague, famine, or natural calamity on record-- and its potential danger to the quality of life and the fabric of civilized society is beyond calculation.” 7 If persons lose their humanity in the eyes of others, they become dispensable and death will result. The description of these impacts shows why we must move as far away as possible from anything that will cause dehumanization, including technology: “When we calculate the actual losses and the virtual benefits, we approach a nearly inestimable value greater than any tools which we can currently use to measure it. Dehumanization is nuclear war, environmental apocalypse, and international genocide. When people become things, they become dispensable. When people are dispensable, any and every atrocity can be justified.”8 Technology moves us away from our humanity by causing life to be seen as a means to an end. With a focus on efficiency and forward progress, humanity and life itself can become of lower value. Given the results of 693

dehumanization, it is important to reject technology to avoid such problems. The paramount value should be the preservation of human life. Dehumanization explicitly rejects that value, and as such, is the most important mindset and circumstance to avoid. TECHNOLOGY ENABLES IMPERIALISM In his book The Tools of Empire, Daniel R. Headrick discusses the relationship between technology and imperialism throughout history. He notes, “Among the many important events of the nineteenth century, two were of momentous consequence for the entire world. One was the progress and power of industrial technology; the other was the domination and exploitation of Africa and much of Asia by Europeans. Historian have carefully described and analyzed these two phenomena, but separately, as though they had little bearing on each other. It is the aim of this book to trace the connections between these great events.” 9 There were many motivations for imperialism. Some emphasize factors like naval strategy, international rivalries or competitions, frontier instability, a desire to divert popular attention from domestic problems, or pressure groups influencing the government. Others, like the English economist J.A. Hobson, suggest that economics are the prime motivator, including the need for raw materials, more secure markets, and the ability and opportunity to invest. However, regarding the question about the motives of expansion, “Behind this question lies the tacit assumption that once Europeans wanted to spread their influence, they could readily do so, for they had the means close at hand.”10 Therefore, while the motivation for imperialism may come from a variety of factors, the tools for imperialism come from technology. More specific historical examples might clarify this point. Advances in technology in the years of 1860 to 1880 made imperialism possible. Headrick explains, “These were the years in which quinine prophylaxis made Africa safer for Europeans; quick-fitting breech-loaders replaced muzzle-loaders among the forces stationed on the imperial frontiers; and the compound engine, the Suez Canal, and the submarine cable made steamships competitive with sailing ships, not only on government-subsidized mail routes, but for ordinary freight on distant seas as well. Europeans who set out to conquer new lands in 1880 had far more power over nature and over the people they encountered than their predecessors twenty years earlier had; they could accomplish their tasks with far greater safety and comfort.”11 Technology and its advances made empire and imperialism possible. Finally, we must examine why imperialism is something that should be rejected. Initially, it involves the rule of a group of people by someone who does not represent them or their interests. They are often powerless to influence that government in any way, and this denies them agency or an ability to facilitate change. Second, imperialist systems are designed to benefit the mother country. Resources and people were shipped from these areas to the mother country. This devastated indigenous cultures and economies. The environment in these other locations suffered, and the empire benefited while individuals enjoyed very little results from those benefits. The history of imperialism has produced many wars and thousands of lives have been lost. These are unacceptable consequences and they were enabled by technology. If technology was abandoned, the motives for imperialism would probably not cease to exist. Yet those motives are far less dangerous if they cannot be realized in actual imperialism. At that level, while the elimination of technology will not solve all of the problems associated with imperialism, it is a step in the right direction. TECHNOLOGY CREATES AN ELITE As technology advances, it becomes more and more complicated. A group emerges who understands, creates, and works with technology. Explains James Martin, “On the other hand, the persons outside of technology who are involved in society’s fabric, the lawyers, teachers, bankers, politicians, writers, sociologists and managers, seem to have little comprehension of future technology or of how technology might change their institutions.” 12 This leaves only a small portion of the population who knows how technology is advancing and can utilize that advancement. This is a problem on several levels. First, it reduces the check on technological development. If persons outside of technology who are involved in the fabric of society do not understand technology, they cannot provide guidance and advice to those who do have the technical expertise. These persons could be instrumental to ensuring that 694

technology was developed for moral and legitimate purposes. Second, it explodes the potential for abuse of advancing technology. The small portion of the population who understands can use technology to their benefit. If they so chose, they could even use technology to harm others and entrench their own power. While this might seem like an unrealistic and illusive future scenario, the fact of the matter is that few would see it coming given the lack of knowledge about the state of technology. Next, the creation of an elite can cause a hierarchical society, where those in the lower stages can be abused and used. This should not be accepted at any level. Finally, this progression means that large portions of society do not get to experience the benefits of technology until those who understand choose to give it to society as a whole. The way technology progresses is linked closely to the creation of an elite, and therefore must be rejected. This elite can even manifest itself in the form of the government. George Orwell wrote in his classic 1984 about a government that was totalitarian and lived under the slogan, “Big Brother is watching you.” The kind of surveillance that Orwell described in the book is now a realistic option given the advances made in technology. Martin asks, “As we hurtle into a society where microchips are as common as nuts and bolts, can we retain our freedom, our right to be let alone? The technology that is emerging so rapidly and inexorably can be used to oppress us or free us.” 13 He continues, “There is an extreme contrast between the image of a future society with electronically aided totalitarianism and a future society that uses technology to enhance the democratic process and create an Athenslike capability to debate social issues. Both are now possible.” 14 Current events seem to indicate that technology is being used to produce a more totalitarian government. The federal government in the United States recently proposed a program that would scan a person’s records, including financial and educational background, when they bought an airplane ticket. Surveillance cameras are becoming more and more prevalent. Automated cameras take pictures of cars that violate traffic laws and send tickets to their drivers in the mail. With the government having invested in research and development, they often have the most access to technological developments. Should those developments be used against a citizenry, we would be facing a constant watch on our everyday activities. This must be prevented, and the only way to do so is to move away from technology. THE PROBLEMS OF TECHNOCRACY The concept of technocracy involves the idea that scientists and engineers are able to translate their knowledge about technology into power over their fellow citizens. Technocrats would use the idea of ordering society in accordance with technical and scientific principles and laws. It is also reflected in the belief that the systems of government need scientific restructuring. This warrants scientists and engineers, rather than businesspeople and government officials, worthy of supervising restructuring. 15 Perhaps what is most frightening about technocracy is not that technocrats push for it, but oftentimes the public can be tricked into pushing for it as well. One author explains, “The idea that society can be, or should be, ‘engineered’ appealed only fleetingly to a handful of engineers, and then was discarded as being impractical, if not immoral. But the concept appealed to the general public in a time of crisis, and that is what makes the technocratic craze so interesting.” This is problematic, because, “the technocratic concept can be seen to be a jumble of absurd inconsistencies. It starts with intellectuals who want to enlist science in the cause of social justice. It derives emotional intensity from a naive public faith in technical experts. But because science can neither establish standards of virtue nor encompass the vagaries of human desire,” technocratic schemes are dangerous.16 Technology can run rampant, and if it is put in the hands of someone who is not responsible, can be used to inflict large amounts of damage and suffering. Technology does not come with an instruction manual and cannot be forced to abide by ethical standards. While we are not currently ruled by a technocracy, the quotations above point to human tendencies to trust those who appear to know more than we do. In a time of crisis, many might very well turn to scientists to solve problems. This would allow morals and other standards to leave in an interest of efficiency and progress. The caring side would disappear. Additionally, those making the decisions would no longer be elected individuals who serve the public and represent their will. Instead, they would be those individuals with no accountability to the people who could only be interested in furthering their own careers or goals. In that sense, a technocracy presents a real danger to a world 695

where accountability and virtue matter. Since technology breeds technocracy and the two are inter-related, we must reject technology in order to preserve our society. TECHNOLOGY INCREASES THE DEVASTATION OF WAR James Martin notes, “The most frightening and dangerous aspect of future technology is its impact on the machinery of war. The cost per kiloton of explosives has dropped precipitously. The world arsenals of nuclear weapons have grown to a size at which they endanger the entire planet. Particularly alarming, the accuracy of missile systems has increased so as to render obsolete or dangerous many of the earlier mechanisms for command and control.” 17 Technology has increased the accuracy and strength of tools used to fight and win wars. Before examining nuclear weapons in particular, let us explore why technology has increased the devastation of war. This increase in devastation has happened on two levels. First, technology increases the willingness of a country to go to war. If a country feels like they will be superior, they are more likely to engage in a combat situation. A country that thinks it will lose will attempt to avoid a war. Technology and the weapons it produces give countries the feeling that they are superior and will be able to win the engagements they enter into. While this may or may not be true, the mindset also facilitates increased amounts of war. More war means more death and loss of property and stability. This cannot be tolerated, yet technology allows the mindset of victory which precedes war. Second, the technological developments in the military have made wars far more deadly. A single weapon can kill more people now than ever before in history. Weapons can go places they have never gone before and destruction spreads all around this technology. Chemical, nuclear and biological weapons have all increased the suffering and pain that comes along with war. They have also increased the number of people to be directly effected by launching only one weapon. Technology brought us these “advances,” but they are actually moves backwards due to their effects. The case and example of nuclear weapons deserves special attention in examining the devastation that is increased due to technology. “Nuclear weapons, of course, are the greatest technological threat, and they are doubtless responsible for much antitechnological dread.”18 The author goes on to note that nuclear weapons should not be blamed, as thousands of people died at the hands of the sword before the development of nuclear technology. While it might be true that it is impossible to take the desire for war out of humankind, that is certainly no justification for giving humanity more effective killing tools. Wars might have been fought without nuclear weapons, but wars fought with nuclear weapons would cost far more in terms of lives lost and long-term destruction. Swords, you see, do not leave the environment destroyed. Nuclear blasts ruin surrounding soil and water for thousands of years. Individuals at the outer edge of the blast will suffer through years of effects from nuclear fallout. Animals and plants in the area will die because of the nuclear material. Not only that, but nuclear weapons create danger in transport and testing. Additionally, the disposal of nuclear waste merits rejection of technology. This waste ruins the surrounding environment, and is usually placed in areas where the population cannot fight back. In the United States, this includes a history of dumping nuclear waste on the land of Native Americans. Therefore, while wars were fought before nuclear weapons, the impacts were never as horrifying the way those of a nuclear war would be. This proves that scientific advances and technology are not always used for good. In a 1955 issue of the Ladies’ Home Journal, it was predicted that nuclear energy would create a world, “in which there is no disease...where hunger is unknown...where food never rots and crops never spoil...where ‘dirt’ is an old-fashioned word, and routine household tasks are just a matter of pushing a few buttons...a world where no one stokes a furnace or curses the smog, where the air is everywhere as fresh as on a mountain top and the breeze from a factory as sweet as from a rose.”19 Those ideas certainly did not materialize as a result of nuclear power and technology. Instead, Hiroshima and Nagasaki can provide a better illustration of what nuclear technology resulted in. This nuclear technology has also not resulted in increased security for the world. Suitcase nuclear weapons are a greater danger than we have known. Leaks and explosions like Chernobyl show what dangers nuclear technology actually provides. The world lives with fingers on the buttons and safety is not the result. A constant state of fear can be harmful to individuals even when a direct conflict is not going on. The thought that entire destruction of the 696

earth could happen if a nuclear war began is not good for the mental and emotional well-being of the earth’s population. The example of nuclear weapons perfectly illustrates the way that technology increases the devastation of war. For that reason, despite its potential for positive impacts the actual negative results merit a rejection of technology. TECHNOLOGY DISCRIMINATES BASED ON CLASS As technology becomes more and more advanced, it becomes expensive to own. In that fundamental sense, technology promotes inequality between classes. Only those with high enough incomes can come to possess technology that is advanced in their own homes. Technology then becomes another measure for dividing the classes. This discrimination based on class also means that a large portion of the population cannot benefit from technology. While that may seem like an impact that is largely irrelevant, an example can clarify. Take for instance two women who have a rare disease. One is from a wealthy family and the other is lower class. Insurance often does not cover risky or experimental surgeries, so even if the lower class woman could afford health care, her insurance will not cover every surgical option. The wealthy woman, on the other hand, can buy experimental and cutting-edge surgery to save her life. This example shows that technology and its varying access based on class actually makes some groups within the population less than human. The message sent is that not all people deserve technology or the benefits it can provide. This not only denies these benefits to those groups but entrenches a mindset of superiority in the upper classes that can make lower class individuals dispensable. Technology is invasive, because, “most of us never stop to think how new everything we now call technology actually is.”20 This has two important implications regarding class. First, the quotation reveals how there is a quest for technology that does not question motive. Things are so new that we want them in an attempt to further ourselves and be caught up with the world around us. Second, the relative newness of technology has in ways justified the exclusion of lower classes. Since technology is so new and moves at a rapid pace, not much attention is paid to who does not have access to technology. If the pace were slowed, perhaps more focus would be placed on individuals who never have access to technology. Caught up in the frenzied pace of keeping up with new technological developments, selfish desires for possession of the latest fad keeps our attention on our own wants. Another way that technology discriminates based on class is in terms of the areas being researched and developed. Technology has provided many luxury items. The multiple versions of televisions, DVD players, musical stereo systems and movie production show that technology has improved the ability to enjoy expensive entertainment. Cars and boats and planes have become more and more advanced and luxurious, yet all the while large portions of the population suffer. If technology was really attempting to reach the needs of the population, it would be invested more in the areas of food and heath care production. The fact that technology is so focused on materialistic and superficial needs shows that it caters to the wealthy who are taken care of and can afford to spend their money on luxury items. In that sense, technology has largely abandoned those who are not wealthy by not serving or researching their interests. If the energy being devoted to entertainment technology was channeled into providing substantive solutions to real problems like hunger and crime, perhaps technology would be merited. However, given the way technology currently operates, it should be rejected. Technology therefore unevenly effects people based on their financial status and class membership. That only serves to entrench divisions in society and move us away from solving long term problems. SUMMARY Though technology is advancing all around us, it is important to stop and consider the implications of these advances. First, technology dehumanizes. It also made possible imperialism and the resulting destruction of indigenous cultures. Technology creates an elite, lowering access to its advances for a large portion of the population. Oftentimes that elite is the government which can abuse the power of technology. The creation of a technocracy brings about problems as well, and results from technology. Technology increases the devastation of war. It also discriminates based on class. 697

It will be impossible to win the argument that technology never did anything beneficial. However, that argument need not be won in order to win that the rejection of technology is merited. While in an ideal world technology would only be used to advance human interest, in actuality, its use is anything but humanistic. ______________________________ 1 Pacey, Arnold. The Culture of Technology. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983, pg. 6. 2 Ibid, pg. 6. 3 Beckman, Tad. “Martin Heidegger and Environmental Ethics.” http://technicity.net/articles/heidegger_and_environmental_ethics.htm, 2000, NP. 4 Ibid, NP. 5 Ibid, NP. 6 Ibid, NP. 7 Berube, David. “Nanotechnological Prolongevity: The Down Side.” NanoTechnology Magazine, 3:5, June-July 1997. 8 Ibid, NP. 9 Headrick, Daniel R. The Tools of Empire. New York: Oxford University Press, 1981, pg. 3. 10 Ibid, pg. 5. 11 Ibid, pg. 205. 12 Martin, James. Technology’s Crucible. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1987, pg. 10. 13 Ibid, pg. 85. 14 Ibid, pg. 86. 15 Florman, Samuel C. Blaming Technology: The irrational search for scapegoats. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1981, pg. 25. 16 Ibid, pg. 27-28. 17 Martin, James. Technology’s Crucible. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1987, pg. 131. 18 Florman, Samuel C. Blaming Technology. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1981, pg. 53. 19 Corn, Joseph J. Imagining Tomorrow: History, Technology, and the American Future. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1986, pg. 58. 20 Gartmann, Heinz. Man Unlimited: Technology's Challenge to Human Endurance. London: Jonathan Cape, 1957, pg. 19. TECHNOLOGY DEHUMINIZES 1. TECHNOLOGY LEADS TO INCREASED ALIENATION Zerzan, John. “Against Technology.” April 23, 1997. http://www.insurgentdesire.org.uk/against.htm. Last accessed May 29th, 2004. NP. Another quotation to similarly mark this descent, if you will, is a short one from a computer communications expert, J.C.R. Licklider. In 1968 he said, "In the future, we'll be able to communicate more effectively through a machine than face-to-face." If that isn't estrangement, I don't know what is. At the same time, one striking aspect in terms of cultural development is that the concept of alienation is disappearing, has almost disappeared. If you look at the indices of books in the last, say, 20 years, "alienation" isn't there any more... It's another commonplace that is apparently just accepted and not scrutinized. And, of course, capital is increasingly technologized. A kind of obvious point. The people who think that it's about surfing the Net and exchanging e-mail with your cousin in Idaho or something, obviously neglect the fact that the movement of capital is the computer's basic function. The computer is there for faster transactions, the faster movement of commodities and so on. That shouldn't even have to be pointed out. So anyway, back to the theme of how the whole field or groundwork moves and our perception of technology and the values we attach to it change, usually pretty imperceptibly. Freud said that the fullness of civilization will mean universal neurosis. And that sounds kind of too sanguine, when you think about it. I'm very disturbed by what I see. I live in Oregon, where the rate of suicide among 15- to-19year olds has increased 600% since 1961. I find it hard to see this as other than youth getting to the threshold of adulthood and society and looking out, and what do they see? They see this bereft place. I'm not saying they consciously go through that sort of formulation, but some kind of assessment takes place, and some just opt out. A study of several of the most developed countries is showing that the rate of serious depression doubles about every ten years. So I guess that means if there aren't enough people on anti-depressants right now, just to get through the day, we'll all be taking them before long. You can just extrapolate from this chilling fact. If you look for a reason why that won't keep going, 698

what would that be without a pretty total change? And many other things. The turn away from literacy. That's a pretty basic thing that is somewhat baffling, but it isn't baffling if you think that people are viscerally turning away from what doesn't have meaning anymore. The outbursts of multiple homicides. That used to be unheard of, even in this violent country, just a few decades ago. Now it's spreading to all the other countries. You can hardly pick up the paper without seeing some horrendous thing in McDonald's or at a school or some place in Scotland or New Zealand, as well as L.A. or wherever in the U.S. Rancho Santa Fe. You probably remember this quote from the news. It's from a woman who was part of the Heaven's Gate group there. "Maybe I'm crazy, but I don't care. I've been here 31 years, and there's nothing here for me." I think that speaks for quite a lot of people who are surveying the emptiness, not just cult members. So we're seeing the crisis of inner nature, the prospect of complete dehumanization, linking up with the crisis of outer nature, which is obviously ecological catastrophe. And I won't bore you with the latter; everyone here knows all its features, the accelerating extinction of species, etc., etc. Up in Oregon, for example, the natural, original forest is virtually one hundred percent gone; the salmon are on the verge of extinction. Everybody knows this. And it's greatly urged along by the movement of technology and all that is involved there. Marvin Minsky--I think this was in the early '80s--said that the brain is a three-pound computer made of meat. He's one of the leading Artificial Intelligence people. And we have all the rest. We have Virtual Reality. People will be flocking to that, just to try to get away from an objective social existence that is not too much to look at or deal with. The cloning of humans, obviously is just a matter of probably months away. Fresh horrors all the time. Education. Get the kids linked up when they're five or so to the computer. They call it "knowledge production." And that's the best thing you could say about it.

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TECHNOLOGY IS A TOOL OF DOMINATION 1. TECHNOLOGY IS A TOOL OF COLONIAL POWER Bailey, Ronald. “Reason.” July 2001. http://reason.com/0107/fe.rb.rage.shtml. Last accessed May 29th, 2004. NP. If autos set the gold standard for neo-Luddite contempt, then computers and the Internet are not far behind. "Films, radio, computers, TV, [and] the Internet are imprinting a unified pattern of thought and a single pattern on our way of life," declared Mander, brushing aside any thought that recent technological innovations have allowed millions of new voices to be heard on the Internet and elsewhere. "We are in the terrifying situation in which a few billionaires colonize the minds of millions of people, teach people to hate where they live, worship McDonald’s, and trust corporations." "Computers are a colonizing technology," pronounced Chet Bowers, an adjunct professor in the Environmental Studies Department at the University of Oregon. "Computers profoundly alter how we think and inevitably reduce our ability to understand nature and cultures other than our own." (The obligation other cultures might have to try to understand our culture went unexplored.) And over at primitivism.com, Sale put it this way: "The computer, particularly the PC, will bring unmitigated disaster, simply because it enables the powers of this society to do faster and more efficiently the kinds of things it likes to do, with resulting social disintegration, economic polarization, and environmental devastation." Colonizing? This claim can be made about any communicative activity, but for neo-Luddites, it’s an all-purpose pejorative deployed to describe an activity that one dislikes. Langdon Winner, a professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, summed it up thus: "Everything and everyone is colonized." That amounts to little more than the observation that everyone learns involuntarily from the social and cultural environment in which he finds himself. "The point is the way new technologies are introduced to us without a full discussion of how they are going to affect the planet, social relationships, political relationships, human health, nature, our conceptions of nature, and our conceptions of ourselves," says Mander. The neo-Luddites have a tool which they believe will force this "full discussion": the precautionary principle. According to Stephanie Mills, the precautionary principle embodies the "sensible idea that new chemicals and new technologies should be presumed guilty until proven innocent." But it’s clear that neo-Luddites invoke the precautionary principle not to evaluate new technologies, but to stack the deck against them. Martin Teitel, a philosopher who directs the antibiotech activist group the Council for Responsible Genetics, was quite explicit about what the precautionary principle could do to stop technological progress. When asked how any scientist could prove that a biotech crop was completely safe without the field trials that the precautionary principle would simultaneously require and ban, Teitel replied that that’s just fine. "Politically," he explained, "it’s difficult for me to go around saying that I want to shut this science down, so it’s safer for me to say something like ‘it needs to be done safely before releasing it.’" Requiring biotechnologists to prove a negative under the guise of implementing the precautionary principle means that "they don’t get to do it period," Teitel noted. 2, TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER’S JOBS FROM IMPOVERISHED COUNTRIES TO TECHNOLOGY FRIENDLY WESTERN COUNTRIES. Bailey, Ronald. “Reason.” July 2001. http://reason.com/0107/fe.rb.rage.shtml. Last accessed May 29th, 2004. NP. One must oppose electric lighting because it will put candle makers out of business. The neo-Luddites point to chronic "underemployment" in the developing world. It’s true that many people there are "underemployed" in the sense that they do not have access to the machinery, the infrastructure, or even basic sanitation that would allow them to build better lives for themselves and their families. The causes for this sorry state of affairs are many, and corrupt authoritarian governments pursuing bad social and economic policies are at the top of the list. But it is certainly not the result of globalization or modernization of traditional methods of production.To neo-Luddites, inefficiency creates more jobs -- just think how many more jobs there would be if bricks were still made by hand, clothes sewn by hand, coal mined by hand, and on and on. Neo-Luddites also believe that one has an unconditional right to continue one’s "livelihood" regardless of changed economic circumstances.

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TECHNOLOGY DEHUMINZES 1. TECHNOLOGY DESTROY’S THE HUMAN SPIRIT Liana, Pop. Professor of Philosophy at University of Romania. “Philosophy and Technology”. http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Tech/TechPop.htm. Last Accessed May 29, 2004. NP. The concern Gabriel Marcel had with regard to technique or technology is how the condition created by the spirit of technology could become detrimental to the flowering of humanity and work adversely against the aspiration of the person toward its fulfillment in being. What is at stake for Gabriel Marcel is the natural vocation of the human person open to a spiritual life and with an orientation toward transcendence. The issue is a metaphysical one requiring a commitment to the whole of the person as an embodied spirit functioning in and through its material external condition and its internal spiritual exigency. (8) The need is to establish a balance sheet recognizing our achievements in creating a better worldly life through the progress of technology and our prospects for an enrichment of our being with a fuller personal life.But keeping in mind the devastating results of the techniques of degradation at work in Nazi concentration camps and in the waging of wars in our century, one should be wary of the progress of technology because of its possible dehumanizing and depersonalizing effects on the private and public life of human beings. (9) The approach of Gabriel Marcel is a cautionary one warning about the dangers involved in allowing technology to take over the culture and to thus reduce the human person to the status of being a "mere technical man." (10) His negative criticisms are not intended to reject technology and to seek to destroy it. He continuously reminds his readers of the positive contributions of technology. In itself, technology serves an invaluable purpose in making life more pleasant, more humane, and safer. (11) The danger comes from the fallouts connected with technology which place the integrity of the human being at risk. (12) 2. TECHNOLOGY DEHUMINIZES Liana, Pop. Professor of Philosophy at University of Romania. “Philosophy and Technology”. http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Tech/TechPop.htm. Last Accessed May 29, 2004. NP. Gabriel Marcel stressed that technology cannot promote peace since the faith about and the understanding of the higher human values are "foreign to the spirit of the man of mere technique," (14) and that technology is conducive to war by fomenting means of degradation and refining instrument of destruction. (15) There is a parallel between the features of technology which explain its detrimental effects and its impoverishing of the human potential and the conditions which are conducive to war and render peace problematic. In analyzing the conditions which promote peace and which occasion war Gabriel Marcel used an analysis which brought out his concerns for the fate of humankind with regard to a meaningful creative life for the human person. The danger consisted in accepting a way of life which would allow for a primacy given to the abstract, to opinion, and to equality instead of promoting a primacy given to the concrete, the truth, and fraternity. Gabriel Marcel brought out, both in his philosophical works and in his dramatic stage plays, how a concrete and existential approach to life situations produces a respect for the human person contributing to peace while the spirit of abstraction and generalization is a factor in causing war, (16) how truth and authenticity brings about a society in which communication and invocation lead to peace while opinion and self-deception create an atmosphere leading to war, (17) and how fraternity and communion promote a community of persons seeking peace while equality and competition encourage war. (18) Technology while facilitating material living conditions, enhancing production of goods, and controlling nature operates in the abstract, on the level of opinion, and on the supposition of equality leaving out of consideration the concrete, the truth, and fraternity. There results a lack of integrity with regard to the whole self of the human person, a lack of authenticity in the revealing of the true self as a person, and a lack of fidelity in participating in a community of persons. The human person is frustrated in its aspiration for an integration of its being with existential transcendence, for a revelation of its being in communicating with others and for a creation of its being in communion with others. Technology leaves the self with a sense of loss of uniqueness, of a solid foundation, and togetherness. Faced with a sense of frustration, of despair, and of alienation caused by the inadequacies of technology in dealing with the whole human person, Gabriel Marcel sought to discover the flaws inherent to technology and to try to find some way out of the quagmire. (19)

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TECHNOLOGY IS DETRIMENTAL TO THE ENVIRONMENT 1. TECHNOLOGY TAKES HUMAN BEINGS OUT OF THEIR NATURAL ENVIRONMENT THEN DESTROY IT. Beckman, Tad. “Martin Heidegger and Environmental Ethics.” http://technicity.net/articles/heidegger_and_environmental_ethics.htm, 2000. Last accessed May 29th, 2004. NP. What Heidegger pointed out in "The Question Concerning Technology" is, first of all, that this critique is fundamentally misplaced. It is misplaced in time and it is misplaced in scope. It is misplaced in time because we assume that technology has been problematic for us only in the last two centuries; it is misplaced in scope because we assume that technology is merely a neutral instrument in our hands and with which we can do as we will. Both of these erroneous assumptions tend to render us less effective in working out our problems with technology and with ourselves. By limiting the era of technology to the last two centuries, we create the hidden assumption that the historical path of Western development is essentially independent of technology. Thus, we assume that Western civilization is founded firmly on various roots that can be called forth to deal with technology. Seeing technology as a relative newcomer, we assume that we are anchored in something else that can take "spiritual" command of technology and turn it into a more constructive agency of design. Our mistaken assessment of the life time of technology is really caused by our failure to understand its essence. Technology must be understood in its essence and not merely as industrial machinery, space-age refrigerators, and computer-directed guidance systems. If we understand technology in its essence, Heidegger claimed, we will see that all of the West's historical development has been built out of it; technology is the central theme of our civilization. To move out of the dangers that technology presents, then, requires more than retrenching ourselves in "traditional values;" it requires a transformation of values, a process of placing Western civilization on a whole new course. This is clearly similar to what Nietzsche recognized and called the "transvaluation of all values," though Heidegger asserted that Nietzsche himself was never able to make the transformation or to recognize the whole extent to which it is necessary. The problem of technology is not merely its obvious physical dangers to us nor is it merely these confusions of time and scope. Technology is more than just a name for Western thinking, Western dispositions, and Western inventiveness. Technology is also a mode of self-consciousness, a mode of seeing ourselves and, hence, of letting ourselves enter into the world. Heidegger's analysis demands a new calling-forth of human consciousness. It demands that humans come to presence in the world in a new way more fitting to their essential nature. It is the object of this final section to interpret this last portion of the argument and its relevance to environmental ethics. Let us return to the essay "The Question Concerning Technology" because it was there that Heidegger set us underway against "the greatest danger" and in possession of the idea that it may be through art that we can come to a saving power. If he was correct in his understanding of technology as enframing, it poses a great danger to human life; this danger is that the epoch of enframing locks human activity into its own form of the destining-of-revealing and, hence, tends to limit human freedom by concealing the possibility of other forms of revealing and, within that, the possibility of human involvement in other forms of revealing. The threat to man does not come in the first instance from the potentially lethal machines and apparatus of technology. The actual threat has already affected man in his essence. The rule of Enframing threatens man with the possibility that it could be denied to him to enter into a more original revealing and hence to experience the call of a more primal truth." {[7], p. 28} As human beings become progressively more involved as the orderers of a reality conceived as standing-reserve, they too become standing-reserve at a higher level of organization. In other words, as human beings come to see other beings in the world only for their potential applications to human dispositions, humans themselves come to mirror this shallowness of "being" and to see themselves merely in terms of potential resources to the dispositions of others. Enframing challenges us forth in the decisive role as organizer and challenger of all that is in such a way that human life withdraws from its essential nature. Within this role the essence of our humanity falls into concealment; we can no longer grasp the real nature of life. We withdraw into a conception of reality that is subjective and isolated; but Heidegger asserts that the human essence is not a being in isolation.

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Teleological Vision Good TELEOLOGICAL VISION SUPERIOR TO DEONTOLOGICAL 1. DESIRED ENDS ARE WHAT MAKE DEONTOLOGICAL RIGHTS KEY IN THE 1ST PLACE Michael J. Sandel, Professor of Government at Harvard University, LIBERALISM AND THE LIMITS OF JUSTICE, 1982, p. 4. The overriding importance of justice and rights makes them 'more absolute and imperative' than other claims, but what makes them important in the first place is their service to social utility, their ultimate ground. 'All action is for the sake of some end, and rules of action, it seems natural to suppose, must take their whole character and color from the end to which they are subservient.' 2. MANY SITUATIONS EXIST WHERE WEIGHING THE ENDS IS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY Samuel Scheffler, Professor of Philosophy at the University of California-Berkeley, CONSEQUENTIALISM AND ITS CRITICS, 1988, p. 249. But do we really cease to understand what is meant by 'a better state of affairs' if the question is raised whether infringing a right or telling a lie or treating a particular individual unfairly might perhaps produce a better state of affairs that failing to do so? I do not think so. Many moral dilemmas take the form of conflicts between considerations of justice, rights, or fairness on the one hand, and considerations of aggregate well-being on the other. And it seems to me quite natural to characterize the dilemmatic feature of a situation of this kind by saying, for example, that one is faced with a problem because violating someone's rights would in this case produce better results on a whole than would respecting them. I do not think that it is only consequentialists who think of matters in these terms, and unless it can be shown that there is something incoherent about any interpersonal aggregation of benefits and burdens, I see no reason to deny us this way of speaking and conceiving about the matter. 3. DEONTOLOGICAL VISION IS FLAWED AND DISEMPOWERING Michael J. Sandel, Professor of Government at Harvard University, LIBERALISM AND THE LIMITS OF JUSTICE, 1982, p. 177-8. But the deontological vision is flawed, both within its own terms and more generally as an account of our moral experience. Within its own terms, the deontological self, stripped of all possible constitutive attachments, is less liberated than disempowered. As we have seen, neither the right nor the good admits of the voluntarist derivation deontology requires. As agents of construction we do not really construct, and as agents of choice we do not really choose. What goes on behind the veil of ignorance is not a contract or an agreement but if anything a kind of discovery; and what goes on in "purely preferential choice" is less a choosing of ends than a matching of preexisting desires, undifferentiated as to worth, with the best available means of satisfying them. For the parties to the original position, as for the parties to ordinary deliberative rationality, the liberating moment fades before it arrives; the sovereign subject is left at sea in the circumstances it was thought to command. 4. DEONTOLOGY ROBS US OF UNIQUE IDENTITY Michael J. Sandel, Professor of Government at Harvard University, LIBERALISM AND THE LIMITS OF JUSTICE, 1982, p. 181-2. So to see ourselves as deontology would see us is to deprive us of those qualities of character, reflectiveness and friendship that depend on the possibility of constitutive projects and attachments. And to see ourselves as given to commitments such as these is to admit a deeper commonality than benevolence describes, a commonality of shared self-understanding as well as the 'enlarged affections'. As the independent self finds its limits in those aims and attachments from which it cannot stand apart, so justice finds its limits in the forms of community that engage the identity as well as the interests of the participants.

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TELEOLOGY BEST FOR ENVIRONMENTAL UNDERSTANDING 1. ONLY TELEOLOGY CAN HELP US UNDERSTAND THE ENVIRONMENT Edward Goldsmith, Founder of THE ECOLOGIST magazine, THE WAY: AN ECOLOGICAL WORLDVIEW, 1993, p. 27. Ecology has to be teleological, for purposiveness is possibly the most essential feature of the behavior of living things. Only a methodology that accepts this can enable us to understand the roles that living things play within the Gaian hierarchy of which they are the differentiated parts. 2. TELEOLOGICAL, GOAL-ORIENTED ETHICS BEST FOR THE ENVIRONMENT Edward Goldsmith, Founder of THE ECOLOGIST magazine, THE WAY: AN ECOLOGICAL WORLDVIEW, 1993, p. 23. The teleological explanation of the life process centers on its goal--Aristotle's 'final cause'--rather than on its antecedent cause, which alone is accepted by the scientific community. Teleology, the neurophysiologist and Nobel Laureate Raganr Granit tells us, is required to answer the question of why things happen, without knowing which it is very difficult to answer the question of how things happen. This must be true of any entity or process. Thus Robert Fuller and Roger Putnam tell us that "a skilled electronics engineer is often unable to derive the function of a rather simple electronic circuit, despite a complete knowledge of the network and the properties of its elementary units. On the other hand, if one has a guiding idea as to the overall function of the circuit, then it is possible to examine the component parts and see just what role they play in this function." In this case, the elementary units only acquire meaning once their function within the electronic circuit is established. Grant's example is the discovery of how the eye adapts to darkness: "When rods and cones were discovered in the vertebrate retina, had it not become evident that rods dominated in retinas of the night animals and cones in those of daylight animals, this discovery would have remained an observation of but limited consequence. Instead, understanding of its meaning (why) made it a cornerstone in a large body of biological research dealing with the adaptation of the eye to light and darkness, rod vision and cone vision, and the rod-free central fovea of the human retina." Rods and cones, however brilliantly they are described, only acquire meaning once one knows what they are for. In the same way, it is only once one has established the goal of any organism or natural system that one is in a position to ask how it achieves this goal. 3. NON-TELEOLOGICAL UNDERSTANDING CREATES THE FLAWED PARADIGM OF SCIENCE Edward Goldsmith, Founder of THE ECOLOGIST magazine, THE WAY: AN ECOLOGICAL WORLDVIEW, 1993, p. 24-5. In terms of the paradigm of science, this teleological method of building up knowledge is totally illegitimate. To accuse a scientist of using a teleological argument is to accuse him of being unscientific, indeed of being a veritable charlatan. Very few scientists would be willing to take that risk. Even James Lovelock does not admit that his argument is teleological. The Daisy World Model developed by Andrew Watson of the Marine Biological Association at Plymouth, to which Lovelock attaches so much importance, is primarily designed to show that cybernetic processes need not be teleological. However, to model a rudimentary and hypothetical cybernetic process is one thing; but it is quite another to build a realistic model capable of demonstrating that the very much more sophisticated cybernetic behavior of complex forms of life in the real world is non-teleological.

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Teleological Vision Bad TELEOLOGY IS INFERIOR: INTENT, NOT OUTCOME, IS KEY TO MORALITY 1. AN ACTION DERIVES ITS MORAL WORTH NOT FROM EFFECT, BUT INTENT Immanuel Kant, Philosopher, FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OF THE METAPHYSIC OF MORALS, 1785, p. np., Politics Hypertext Library, Accessed 5/20/98, http://www.swan.ac.uk/poli/ texts/kant/kantcon.htm. The second proposition is: That an action done from duty derives its moral worth, not from the purpose which is to be attained by it, but from the maxim by which it is determined, and therefore does not depend on the realization of the object of the action, but merely on the principle of volition by which the action has taken place, without regard to any object of desire. It is clear from what precedes that the purposes which we may have in view in our actions, or their effects regarded as ends and springs of the will, cannot give to actions any unconditional or moral worth. In what, then, can their worth lie, if it is not to consist in the will and in reference to its expected effect? It cannot lie anywhere but in the principle of the will without regard to the ends which can be attained by the action. For the will stands between its a priori principle, which is formal, and its a posteriori spring, which is material, as between two roads, and as it must be determined by something, it that it must be determined by the formal principle of volition when an action is done from duty, in which case every material principle has been withdrawn from it. 2. SAYING MORAL VIRTUE COMES FROM CONSEQUENCES IS INFINITELY REGRESSIVE Bernard Williams, Professor of Philosophy at the University of California-Berkeley, CONSEQUENTIALISM AND ITS CRITICS, 1988, p. 21. No one can hold that everything, of whatever category, that has value, has it in virtue of its consequences. If that were so, one would just go on for ever, and there would be an obviously hopeless regress. That rgeress would be hopeless even if one takes the view, which is not an absurd view, that although men set themselves ends and work after them, it is very often not really the supposed end, but the effort towards it on which they set value--that they travel, not really in order to arrive (for as soon as they have arrived they set out for somewhere else), but rather that they choose somewhere to arrive in order to travel. 3. MORAL WORTH OF AN ACTION LIES IN MOTIVATION Immanuel Kant, Philosopher, FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OF THE METAPHYSIC OF MORALS, 1785, p. np., Politics Hypertext Library, Accessed 5/20/98, http://www.swan.ac.uk/poli/ texts/kant/kantcon.htm. Thus the moral worth of an action does not lie in the effect expected from it, nor in any principle of action which requires to borrow its motive from this expected effect. For all these effects- agreeableness of one's condition and even the promotion of the happiness of others- could have been also brought about by other causes, so that for this there would have been no need of the will of a rational being; whereas it is in this alone that the supreme and unconditional good can be found. The pre-eminent good which we call moral can therefore consist in nothing else than the conception of law in itself, which certainly is only possible in a rational being, in so far as this conception, and not the expected effect, determines the will. This is a good which is already present in the person who acts accordingly, and we have not to wait for it to appear first in the result. 4. AT LEAST SOME THINGS HAVE INTRINSIC VALUE UNRELATED TO THEIR ENDS Bernard Williams, Professor of Philosophy at the University of California-Berkeley, CONSEQUENTIALISM AND ITS CRITICS, 1988, p. 21-2. If not everything that has value has it in virtue of consequences, then presumable there are some types of thing which have non-consequential value, and also some particular things that have such value because they are instances of such types. Let us say, using a traditional term, that anything that has that sort of value, has intrinsic value. I take it to be the central idea of consequentialism that the only kind of thing that has intrinsic value is states of affairs, and that anything else that has value has it because it conduces to some intrinsically valuable state of affairs.

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MORAL LAWS MUST BE UNIVERSAL AND NON-TELEOLOGICAL 1. MUST ACT AS IF YOUR ACTION SHOULD BE CONFORMED TO UNIVERSALLY Immanuel Kant, Philosopher, FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OF THE METAPHYSIC OF MORALS, 1785, p. np., Politics Hypertext Library, Accessed 5/20/98, http://www.swan.ac.uk/poli/ texts/kant/kantcon.htm. But what sort of law can that be, the conception of which must determine the will, even without paying any regard to the effect expected from it, in order that this will may be called good absolutely and without qualification? As I have deprived the will of every impulse which could arise to it from obedience to any law, there remains nothing but the universal conformity of its actions to law in general, which alone is to serve the will as a principle, i.e., I am never to act otherwise than so that I could also will that my maxim should become a universal law. Here, now, it is the simple conformity to law in general, without assuming any particular law applicable to certain actions, that serves the will as its principle and must so serve it, if duty is not to be a vain delusion and a chimerical notion. The common reason of men in its practical judgements perfectly coincides with this and always has in view the principle here suggested. 2. ACTING OUT OF A UNIVERSAL DUTY OUTWEIGHS PRACTICAL WORTH Immanuel Kant, Philosopher, FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OF THE METAPHYSIC OF MORALS, 1785, p. np., Politics Hypertext Library, Accessed 5/20/98, http://www.swan.ac.uk/poli/ texts/kant/kantcon.htm. I do not, therefore, need any far-reaching penetration to discern what I have to do in order that my will may be morally good. Inexperienced in the course of the world, incapable of being prepared for all its contingencies, I only ask myself: Canst thou also will that thy maxim should be a universal law? If not, then it must be rejected, and that not because of a disadvantage accruing from it to myself or even to others, but because it cannot enter as a principle into a possible universal legislation, and reason extorts from me immediate respect for such legislation. I do not indeed as yet discern on what this respect is based (this the philosopher may inquire), but at least I understand this, that it is an estimation of the worth which far outweighs all worth of what is recommended by inclination, and that the necessity of acting from pure respect for the practical law is what constitutes duty, to which every other motive must give place, because it is the condition of a will being good in itself, and the worth of such a will is above everything. 3. OBLIGATIONS BASED ON REASON ARE UNIVERSAL, UNLIKE OUTCOME-BASED IDEAS Immanuel Kant, Philosopher, FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OF THE METAPHYSIC OF MORALS, 1785, p. np., Politics Hypertext Library, Accessed 5/20/98, http://www.swan.ac.uk/poli/ texts/kant/kantcon.htm. The conception of an objective principle, in so far as it is obligatory for a will, is called a command (of reason), and the formula of the command is called an imperative. All imperatives are expressed by the word ought [or shall], and thereby indicate the relation of an objective law of reason to a will, which from its subjective constitution is not necessarily determined by it (an obligation). They say that something would be good to do or to forbear, but they say it to a will which does not always do a thing because it is conceived to be good to do it. That is practically good, however, which determines the will by means of the conceptions of reason, and consequently not from subjective causes, but objectively, that is on principles which are valid for every rational being as such. It is distinguished from the pleasant, as that which influences the will only by means of sensation from merely subjective causes, valid only for the sense of this or that one, and not as a principle of reason, which holds for every one.

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Third Parties Good THIRD PARTIES HELP DEMOCRACY 1. SUPPORTING THIRD PARTIES ONLY WAY FOR DEMOCRACY John Nichols, Staff Writer, THE PROGRESSIVE, August 1997, p. 32. "There was a real feeling that Serna was going to be another typical Democrat in Washington, and these days typical Democrats vote pretty much like typical Republicans," says Carol Miller. "That's what people inside the Democratic Party and outside of it are tired of." Running on a platform that emphasized opposition to NAFTA and GATT and support for universal health care, progressive taxation, protection of federal lands from development, and abortion rights, Miller argued that Green policies were much closer to the mainstream than the religious-right politics of Republican Redmond or the mushy centrism of Serna. A lot of New Mexicans agreed. Miller won the endorsements of the Albuquerque Journal and the Albuquerque Tribune, the state's two largest newspapers, as well as the widely circulated Santa Fe Reporter and Taos News publications. Nader campaigned for her. And former Sierra Club executive director David Brower urged voters to disregard endorsements of Serna by national environmental groups and go with Miller. "You've got to say what you believe, and support the Green Party," he argued. "That's the only way to get democracy going again." 2. THIRD PARTIES HELP GET PUBLIC INVOLVED, RENEW DEMOCRACY John Nichols, Staff Writer, THE PROGRESSIVE, August 1997, p. 32. Several weeks after the election, Miller says, a man stopped her on the street in Santa Fe to tell her the Green campaign had convinced him that, for the first time in years, voting was worthwhile. "That's what it's all about. People aren't going to get excited about politics until they believe that their votes really matter." explains Miller. "And that's not going to happen if you tell them that they're spoiling something if they don't vote for a Republican or a Democrat. The Greens aren't spoiling anything. We're renewing democracy." 3. HISTORICALLY, THIRD PARTIES HELP ALL HAVE A VOICE Tiffany Danitz, Staff Writer, INSIGHT ON THE NEWS, Jan 12, 1998, p. 22. Third-party candidates have a long, and often unmentioned, place in U.S. history. Firebrand Belva Ann Lockwood, for instance, had gained some notoriety when in 1879 she won the right for women to argue cases in front of the Supreme Court. This more than likely aided her 1884 presidential bid, at age 54, against James G. Blaine and Grover Cleveland. Running on an equal-rights ticket, Lockwood garnered thousands of popular votes from an all-male electorate. She may not have been a spoiler, but she forced a public debate on women's suffrage. "We get more influence by challenging [the Republicans and Democrats]," says Howie Hawkins, a coordinating-committee member for the environmentalist Green Party, "but maybe that is how to get all voices to have representation in the legislature." 4. THIRD PARTIES SHOULDN'T COOPERATE, BUT OFFER ALTERNATIVE John Nichols, Staff Writer, THE PROGRESSIVE, August 1997, p. 32. But 1996 Green Party Presidential candidate Ralph Nader rejects the no-spoiling line. "It's impossible to spoil something that is already rotten to the core," he says. Cooperation with the Democrats, in the form of a "stay-clear" rule in competitive races, has not advanced the progressive cause, argue a growing number of Greens. The answer, they say, is to offer a clear and consistent alternative to both major parties. 5. EVEN IF CRITICS ARE RIGHT, THIRD PARTIES ARE IMPORTANT Susan Crabtree, Staff Writer, INSIGHT ON THE NEWS, September 16, 1996, p. 11. Despite the criticism third parties have inspired this campaign season, Rob Richie, executive director of the Center for Voting and Democracy, says they cannot be cast aside, especially when there is such widespread voter angst for the two-party system. Richie still believes the fledgling Reform Party could siphon off crucial votes in November and that it is gearing up for an even greater influence next election cycle by building its voter and funding base. "It is organizing the old-fashioned way," he says, "And to me, that's the best way."

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THIRD PARTIES ARE EFFECTIVE 1. THIRD PARTY CANDIDATE COULD WIN IN 2000 Jack Beaudoin, Staff Writer, SCHOLASTIC UPDATE, October 4, 1996, p. 14. But others think the idea of a third party capturing the highest office in the land isn't as far-fetched as mainstream politicians say. David Broder, a leading political analyst and columnist for The Washington Post, predicts that if the two major parties can't end their gridlock over solving pressing issues like the deficit, angry and disillusioned voters will seek an alternative. The 1996 election, Broder writes, may be "the launching pad for a third-party candidacy in the year 2000 that could remake our political system." 2. MULTIPLE PARTIES OFFER MORE CHOICES Jack Beaudoin, Staff Writer, SCHOLASTIC UPDATE, October 4, 1996, p. 14. With the Democrats and Republicans having a stranglehold on the political system, the odds are against a third party gaining the Presidency. But many political observers are convinced that, though Perot has little chance of winning this year, America may be ready for a new political party four years from now. "Americans want more choices," says University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato. "They like the idea of a third party, or even a fourth or fifth party, on the ballot." 3. PEOPLE ARE DISSATISFIED WITH JUST TWO PARTIES Jack Beaudoin, Staff Writer, SCHOLASTIC UPDATE, October 4, 1996, p. 14. Polls show that growing numbers of Americans are dissatisfied with the two major parties. Perot's message taps into that dissatisfaction. Democrats and Republicans, he says, have placed "politics as usual" ahead of dealing with important national problems, especially the growing budget deficit--the difference between the amount of money the government spends and what it takes in. 4. MUST WORK FOR CHANGE OUTSIDE MAJOR PARTIES John Nichols, Staff Writer, THE PROGRESSIVE, August 1997, p. 32. "Building a progressive third-party movement right now is a lot more important than sending one more Democrat to Congress," says Cris Moore. a Santa Fe city -- council member active in the loose-knit national federation of statebased Green Parties. "Even people who want to move the Democratic Party to the left ought to recognize that it's just not going to happen inside their party," adds Moore. "It's like Frederick Douglass said: 'Power concedes nothing without a demand.' No one is going to change the system until Democrats lose some elections because they've moved too far to the right. That's the lesson from here: Until they lost a race that they actually cared about, they didn't pay attention." 5. NOW IS THE TIME FOR THIRD PARTY SUCCESS Tiffany Danitz, Staff Writer, INSIGHT ON THE NEWS, Jan 12, 1998, p. 22. David Gillespie, author of Politics at the Periphery: Third Parties in Two-Party America, explains that the primary role of the third party has been to popularize ideas before the major parties are ready to address them. But he says the time for a larger role for third parties has come and cites a Maricopa Research Inc. poll which found that more than 60 percent of Americans would like to see a new political party. "I think the year 2000 may well be a year some third-party movement organizes and comes closer to the mainstream than ever before. This is the movement of the militant center," he says. Historically, he adds, third-party success has depended upon a downturn in the economy or a national crisis. But he tells Insight current indicators point to an American electorate that is disgruntled despite a peaceful and economically prosperous decade.

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Third Parties Bad THIRD PARTIES ARE INEFFECTIVE 1. THIRD PARTIES ARE PLAGUED WITH PROBLEMS Susan Crabtree, Staff Writer, INSIGHT ON THE NEWS, September 16, 1996, p. 11. Why are third parties often plagued with general disorganization and unique alliances? Ken Kollman, a professor of political science at the University of Michigan, says that the people involved are devoted to single issues, such as environmentalism or political reform. In order to achieve visibility, he says, they need to gain a lot of followers for their ballot-access efforts. "So they make alliances with people that they may not agree with," he says. 2. HISTORY SHOWS THIRD PARTIES FAIL Susan Crabtree, Staff Writer, INSIGHT ON THE NEWS, September 16, 1996, p. 11. Michael Kazin, a political historian at The American University, compares the current third-party movement to the rise and fall of the People's Party in the late 1890s. After it was dissolved, most of its followers went back to their original Republican and Democratic party identifications. "At least in the polls so far, that's happening to Perot people tool" he says, suggesting that most of the former Reform Party members likely will vote Republican. 3. THIRD PARTIES AREN'T TAKEN SERIOUSLY Jack Beaudoin, Staff Writer, SCHOLASTIC UPDATE, October 4, 1996, p. 14. Chances are, however, that most voters will never hear of these parties or the candidates. For the most part, they are not covered by the media, nor invited to the Presidential debates, and they don't generate enough funding or popularity to be taken seriously. Third parties have difficulty just getting on the ballot. Many states require independent parties to obtain the signatures of thousands of registered voters before they can be listed. The highprofile Perot was on the ballot in all 50 states in 1992, and will probably be again this year. But Nader, who is running as the candidate of the Green Party, may be on only 35 states' ballots. 4. MONEY IS A BIG PROBLEM FOR THIRD PARTIES Jack Beaudoin, Staff Writer, SCHOLASTIC UPDATE, October 4, 1996, p. 14. Another obstacle to challenging the two major parties is money. A Presidential election campaign can cost more than $100 million. For the Democratic and Republican candidates, that money comes from federal funds. This government funding was designed to put the parties on an even playing field and reduce the influence of private donations. But it also reduces the possibility of a third party emerging.

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MANY BARRIERS TO THIRD PARTY SUCCESS 1. FEAR OF WASTED VOTES IMPAIRS THIRD PARTIES Jack Beaudoin, Staff Writer, SCHOLASTIC UPDATE, October 4, 1996, p. 14. Finally, third parties must contend with voters' fear of "wasting their vote" on candidates they may like but who they think can't win. For example, in 1992, some polls showed that 40 percent of the electorate would have voted for Perot if they thought he had a real chance. 2. THIRD PARTIES HAVE SERIOUS BARRIERS TO OVERCOME Tiffany Danitz, Staff Writer, INSIGHT ON THE NEWS, Jan 12, 1998, p. 22. Third-party candidates have to jump a number of state and federal election-law hurdles to get access to the ballot box. The states with the loosest restrictions require only that a presidential contender be formally organized, but in Florida, for instance, third parties must collect 450,000 signatures to qualify for a run, according to Kris Williams, a legal expert for the Libertarian Party. 3. MANY OBSTACLES TO THIRD PARTY SUCCESS Tiffany Danitz, Staff Writer, INSIGHT ON THE NEWS, Jan 12, 1998, p. 22. Gillespie says that while third parties must spend large sums and struggle to remain on the harlot. the two major parties are occupied with qualifying for matching funds from the federal government to finance their elaborate campaigns. In 1996 the Libertarians spent $500,000 to get Browne on the ballot in all 50 states, compared with Perot's rump 1992 presidential bid, which cost him $17 million. "If you're a major candidate and people assume you will win and add all this money and automatic ballot access, you are bound to win," says Gillespie. "It is like saying, `No third-party candidate need apply."' 4. ODDS OF THIRD PARTY SUCCESS ARE SLIM TO NONE Jack Beaudoin, Staff Writer, SCHOLASTIC UPDATE, October 4, 1996, p. 14. But do the two major parties really have anything to fear? Most political experts see the odds of a third party ever capturing the White House as slim to none. "Not a single [third] party has ever come close to winning the Presidency [since Lincoln]," says the University of Virginia's Sabato. The best these parties can hope for is to put issues that have been ignored on the national agenda--as Perot did with the deficit and Nader hopes to do with the environment.

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Tradition Good TRADITION IS A GOOD VALUE 1. TRADITION HAS INTRINSIC WORTH Jaroslav Pelikan, 1983 Jefferson Lecturer in the Humanities, THE VINDICATION OF TRADITION, 1984, p. 53. To begin at the beginning, in fact with our own beginnings: tradition derives some of its vindication from the sheer fact of its existence, “just because its there,” as the cliché about mountain climbing says. Coming to terms with the presence of the traditions from which we are derived is, or should be, a fundamental part of the process of growing up. Obviously, that ought to include a knowledge of the contents of those traditions. As I have suggested earlier, we do not have a choice between being shaped by our intellectual and spiritual DNA and not being shaped by it, as though we had sprung into being by some kind of cultural spontaneous generation. Some teenagers (including certain teenagers well past their teens) seem to wear their clothes as though they had invented sex; yet their very presence here is an indication that someone must have thought of it before. 2. TRADITION IS CENTRAL TO HUMAN LIFE David Gross, NQA, THE PAST IN RUINS, 1992, p.3. Tradition has been central to human life for millennia. Its main function has been to provide the values, beliefs, and guidelines for conduct that have helped mold communities into organic wholes. It has also been the crucial force providing linkage from one generation to the next. Where animals have had instinct to bind them together, human beings have had tradition. From the very earliest tribal and communal beginnings down to the advent of the modem age, tradition has always been present as virtual second nature. Without it there would have been no effective social integration, nor any connecting tissue holding together, in Edmund Burke’s words, “those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are [yet] to be born.” 3. TRADITION IS NOT OPPOSED TO CREATIVITY Paul Oskar Kristeller, Columbia University, JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS, January, 1983, p. 111. In facing now the second part of our topic, tradition (and its relation to creativity), we are confronted with even greater difficulties and complexities. In an obvious sense, tradition does not form a simple contrast with creativity; it is only the advocates of creativity who have set tradition up as a straw man and claim that in their pursuit of novelty they free themselves and their contemporaries from the dead weight of tradition. TRADITION IS NECESSARY FOR CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN CULTURE 1. A COLLAPSE OF TRADITION WILL DO UNPRECEDENTED HARM TO AMERICAN CULTURE Jim Nelson Black, researcher at the University of Paris, Sorbonne, and recipient of the Medaille Vermeil from the French Academy, WHEN NATIONS DIE, 1994, p. 147. Culture and tradition are interwoven at every stage of our national life, and to assault one is to do damage to the other. Just as the loss of tradition was destructive to the French Republic and as the loss of foundational principles and values contributed to the collapse of the ancient empires, the tendency to underestimate the importance of traditional values in this country (and especially at this time) threatens this nation with unprecedented disaster. If we continue to allow political polarization and social fragmentation to rip out the threads of society, be assured that we will see the fabric of America’s future disintegrate before our eyes. 2. UNDERSTANDING OF TRADITION IS NECESSARY FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY Jaroslav Pelikan, 1983 Jefferson Lecturer in the Humanities, THE VINDICATION OF TRADITION, 1984, p. 20. Knowledge of the traditions that have shaped us, for good or ill or some of both, is not a sufficient preparation for the kind of future that will face our children and our grandchildren in the twenty-first century - not a sufficient preparation, but a necessary preparation. The rediscovery of tradition belongs to the design of the curriculum, and to the definition of the goals and the content of general education, also in a nation that has - if I may say so, traditionally - been more hungry for its future than addicted to its past. That rediscovery is made possible, and made necessary, by the continuity of tradition, what Edmund Burke called a “partnership in all science, all art, every virtue,” 711

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LACK OF TRADITION WOULD BE HARMFUL 1. DISREGARD FOR TRADITION RISKS WORSE CONSEQUENCES Edward Shils, Professor ax the University of Chicago and T.S. Eliot Memorial Lecturer at the University of Kent at Canterbury, TRADITION, 1981, p. 329. The respectful treatment of traditions is also enjoined on us by awareness that to refuse a tradition is not a guarantee that it will be well replaced. It might be replaced by a pattern of conduct or behave which is a poorer thing. It should be remembered that, once a particular tradition or belief or conduct is jettisoned and has remained in relegation or suppression for an extended period, it might fade away entirely or nearly so, leaving an unfilled place, which will be felt as a gap and then replaced by a poorer belief or practice. Specific traditions may be lost forever or retained only in the record of physical artifacts. A tradition once it has receded from regular usage cannot be deliberately restored. 2. TRADITION GIVES EVERYTHING SIGNIFICANCE George Allan, Professor of Philosophy and Dean of the College at Dickinson College, THE IMPORTANCE OF THE PAST, 1986, p. 240. Tradition is a serious house, built by human workmen on this serious earth. It was constructed out of the recognition that time is all there is, that the flux of things is the sole repository of whatever is of value in the universe. This house was raised up in response to the tragic fact that what is lost is irretrievable and therefore that what is won is of inestimable worth. The achievement of some determinate actuality, the shaping of a “this” from the vague possibilities of the flux, is precious for itself and is the sole base of all significance. Tradition is the serious attempt to rescue some of what is precious from the ravages of a process that constantly destroys what it permits, that offers death as life’s reward. 3. TRADITION HAS BEEN PROVEN SUCCESSFUL EMPIRICALLY Edward Shils, Professor at the University of Chicago and T.S. Eliot Memorial Lecturer at the University of Kent at Canterbury, TRADITION, 1981, pp. 328-329. The fact that certain beliefs, institutions, and practices existed indicates that they served those who lived in accordance with them. The human beings who lived in accordance with them in the past were not fundamentally different from those who lived in succeeding generations or who are alive now. They did not arrive arbitrarily at their beliefs; the institutions in which they lived were not forced upon them from the outside. These institutions had to make sense to them, if they took them seriously. These traditions were not so crippling that human beings could not live under them. Nor did they prevent the human race from accomplishing great things. Rather the opposite! They enabled many great things to be accomplished by individuals in a dramatic form and by collectivities working much more gradually and silently. 4. TRADITION IS THE FUNDAMENTAL BASIS OF MOST KNOWLEDGE AND GROWTH Jaroslav Pelikan, 1983 Jefferson Lecturer in the Humanities, THE VINDICATION OF TRADITION, 1984, p. 81. For the dichotomy between tradition and insight breaks down under the weight of history itself. A “leap of progress” is not a standing broad jump, which begins at the line of where we are know; it is a running broad jump through where we have been to where we are to go next. The growth of insight - in science, in the arts, in philosophy and theology - has not come through progressively sloughing off more and more of tradition, as though insight would be purest and deepest when it has finally freed itself of the dead past. It simply has not worked that way in the history of tradition, and it does not work that way now. By including the dead in the circle of discourse, we enrich the quality of the conversation. Of course we do not listen only to the dead, nor are we a tape recording of the tradition. That really would be the dead faith of the living, not the living faith of the dead. But we do acquire the “insight” for which Emerson was pleading when we learn to interact creatively with the “tradition” which he was denouncing.

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Tradition Bad TRADITION IS A BAD VALUE 1. TRADITION IS AN INCOHERENT CONCEPTUAL MYTH Robert L. Hayman Jr., Associate Professor of Law, Widener University, C.R.-C.L. LAW REVIEW, Winter, 1995, p. 57. In many ways, however, the argument over the level of generality may be misleading: it frames the debate in epistemological terms, when the critical issue is quite likely metaphysical. The difficulty, in other words, is not so much that we cannot achieve a consensus on the appropriate cognitive process for identifying tradition, but rather that we cannot achieve a consensus on the necessary premise, i.e., that there is a tradition waiting out there to be identified. Indeed, the deconstruction of “tradition” problematizes this metaphysical premise: inasmuch as every “tradition” harbors the trace of a “counter-tradition,” the notion that any given “tradition” may be reduced to an objective, determinate reality is undermined. Moreover, “tradition” proves to be unstable both over space (within and among cultures) and over time: shifting political valences produce a “semantic drift” through which a “tradition” may periodically come to reexpress its embedded opposite. 2. TRADITION IS ITSELF SELF CONTRADICTORY George Grant, Chairman of the Department of Religion at McMaster University, TRADITION AND REVOLUTION, 1971, p. 87. In our era it is not necessary to emphasize the limitations of being oriented to the traditional. The story is told over and over again of the impossibility of tradition in an age where the dominant tradition is orientation to the future. How can there be tradition when the tradition is the tradition of the new? How can there be reverence when the dominant religion is the religion of progress? What has been handed down to us has not been the ancestral or the customary; what has been handed down is that we must change. 3. EMPHASIS ON TRADITION PRODUCES SOCIAL STAGNATION Alvin Toffler, Visiting Professor at Cornell, Visiting Scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation, and Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, POWERSHIFT, 1990, p. 397-8. Before the market system arose as an instrument for making investment choices, tradition governed technological decisions. Tradition, in turn, relied on “rules or taboos to preserve productive techniques that were proven workable over the slow course of biological and cultural evolution,” according to economist Don Lavoie. With most people living at the bare edge of subsistence, experiment was dangerous, innovators were suppressed, and advances in the methods of wealth creation came so slowly they were barely perceptible from lifetime to lifetime. Moments of innovation were followed by what seemed like centuries of stagnation. 4. TRADITION IS INFLEXIBLE AND RACIST Robert L. Hayman Jr., Associate Professor of Law, Widener University, C.R.-C.L. LAW REVIEW, Winter, 1995, p. 57. Among the latter’s prospects for redemption, none figures more prominently than “tradition.” The call to ‘tradition” has been voiced in both academic and juridical circles. But here, as elsewhere, postmodern jurisprudence is characterized by an enormous disjunction between theory and practice, between the legal academy and the judiciary. For the academy, “tradition” is evolutive, negotiable, and boundless, a (con)textual end as well as a means; for the judiciary, “tradition” is fixed and determinate, a neutral tool for fixing the meaning of some other text. And there is one additional difference: while in postmodern theory “tradition” may comprise an infinite spectrum of hues, in judicial practice, “tradition” is nearly always white. 5. TRADITIONS RISK HARDENING INTO EXCESSIVE RIGIDITIES Joseph S. Bell, columnist, LOS ANGELES TIMES, December 23, 1989, p. N5. Its a fine line, indeed. Every family and every country has its own set of traditions. They are the stable reference points which prevent our lives from being in a constant state of tilt, and they are tampered with only at some risk. But when tradition hardens into rigidity -- into a kind of mental rigor moms -- the joy is squeezed out of it. And, by then, it may be too late to change -- or too painful. This happens most often to religious institutions, where many of the precepts on which the church was founded are violated to defend the institution against change. It happens in families, too. 714

TRADITION FOR ITS OWN SAKE IS WRONG 1. TRADITION IS NOT UNIFORMLY GOOD - ONLY GOOD PARTS OF TRADITION HAVE MERIT Paul Oskar Kristelier, Columbia University, JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS, January, 1983, p. 113. However, in stressing the value of tradition in the arts and elsewhere, we must also emphasize that tradition as such is not always valuable. Within the multiplicity of traditions and traditional elements that have been handed down to us, there are many which are not valuable, or which have lost their value with changing conditions, and which hence to not deserve to be retained or revived. The appeal to tradition is valid only for those elements of a tradition which are considered to be valuable. 2. WHEN TRADITION OBSTRUCTS CHANGE, IT IS COUNTERPRODUCTIVE Joseph S. Bell, columnist, LOS ANGELES TIMES, December 23, 1989, p. N5. This foolishness didn’t last very long, but it lasted long enough for me to relearn a lesson that surely applies yearround but is especially appropriate at Christmas: that tradition and change aren’t mutually exclusive. There is enormous merit in both, and it is quite possible for them to live together in harmony. But sometimes tradition can be a mote in the eye of change; and that, it seems to me, is when tradition becomes counterproductive. 3. WE SHOULD RESIST THE IMPULSE TO DEFEND TRADITION FOR ITS OWN SAKE Joseph S. Bell, columnist, LOS ANGELES TIMES, December 23, 1989, p. N5. There’s no comfortable way of knowing when that time comes, beyond our own instincts -- and generally they can and should be trusted. Each generation looks at its own traditions and decides which ones to carry forward and pass along to their children, and that’s the way it should be. But one of the oddities of this process is that the group most likely to resist change are the children themselves. To children, the familiar -- even when it isn’t altogether satisfying -- is infinitely preferable to the unknown. When my children were growing up, there was a tradition of going to church on Christmas Eve and opening gifts on Christmas morning. When the children were small, the tree wasn’t brought in and decorated until Christmas Eve. As each child grew older, he or she was allowed to participate in the activity until the Santa Claus myth ran its course. Celebrating Christmas now with their own families, they have carried on some of these traditions and discarded others. And their children will, in turn, do the same. There’s a risk that as we grow older, we will revert to the child in us that suffers change badly and builds high defenses around tradition. 4. BLINDLY FOLLOWING TRADITION IS INAPPROPRIATE Merle Rubin, book reviewer, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, January 4, 1985, p. B3. It seems possible to extract from this thought-provoking book a kind of scale for evaluating responses to tradition: (-) To rush to discard tradition is foolish, even dangerous. (+) To examine tradition, even critically, even to deviate from it knowingly and knowledgeably, can be a good thing, and may one day be absorbed into tradition. (+) To attempt to preserve, follow, and develop the spirit of tradition is wise. (-) To follow tradition blindly, without examining it, can have negative consequences and, indeed, may be false to the spirit of tradition. 5. TRADITION NEEDS TO ADJUST TO CHANGE Merle Rubin, book reviewer, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, January 4, 1985, p. B3. Sometimes, Pelikan reminds us, those who appear to be heterodox - even heretical - are in fact the true heirs of a tradition in whose name they are condemned. Tradition, be believes, is - or should be - a living entity with a “capacity to develop while still maintaining its identity and continuity.” Pelikan points to the similarity of the American constitutional tradition and the Judeo-Christian tradition in sharing this capacity for preservation and selfmodification.

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Trashing and Property Destruction Back in the day, mass protests rarely ended in widespread property destruction. Whether this is because the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement were largely stocked with pacifists or not is up for debate. Still, most every protest would follow the same pattern. Where there was lawbreaking, it was mass lawbreaking done in a nonviolent and public fashion - termed "civil disobedience," of course. Sit-ins which violated "no trespassing" codes. Peaceful actions where people would step onto restricted areas at American military bases, knowing they would be arrested. You've seen the video: the cops drag people away, everybody sings "We Shall Overcome," and it's see you next time, Sparky. In fact, the only time riots generally erupted from these pacifistic displays were when some aggro police or counterdemonstrators just started physically abusing the poor priest, college kid or hippie that was doing the sit-in. Peacelover or no, most people don't stand idly by when their friends are getting beaten down with truncheons. If events such as that took place, then you would see some rocks being thrown, some windows get broken and perhaps a car or two given a free taste of what "upside-down" looks like. Only under extreme circumstances, though. That changed on Nov. 30, when about 30 anti-World Trade Organization protesters showed up in Seattle - with plenty of disobedience, but fresh out of civil. Self-described anarchists calling themselves (among other things) the "Black Bloc" knocked out the windows of corporate offices and big businesses, spray-painted slogans on city walls, and commandeered at least one dumpster for the purposes of one big, hearty bonfire. The outcry in the mainstream press was predictable. It was the resulting debate in the alternative media, though, that I found most interesting. No matter how you feel about property destruction, these events raised an important moral issue as well as an important practical issue for the demonstrators: is trashing property (especially corporate property) the same thing as or morally equivalent to physical violence against a person? Even if it isn't as bad as physical violence, is it an effective tactic for accomplishing the movement's goals, or does it just make everybody look bad in front of the television people? Many of the Black Bloc protesters evidently agreed with the French anarchist Pierre Proudhon, who opined that "property is theft." Or maybe they were influenced by Propaghandi, Canada's best anarchist, vegan punk band, who wrote: I'd rather be imprisoned, in a George Orwellian world Than in this pacified society of happy boys and girls I'd rather know my enemies, and let you know the same Whose windows to smash, whose tires to slash And where to point the (bleeping) blame. The issues involved with this sort of topic are very germane to debate in a variety of ways: for anyone who has ever argued social movements or an equivalent position, the issue offers a rare and valuable window into movement strategy. It also offers a fresh look at the age-old discussion about when pacifism works and when it perhaps isn't the best option. THERE ARE THREE SIDES TO EVERY STORY Actually, in this case, there are more than three sides to the story - but the three main perspectives I'll be discussing are the three strongest positions: 1. The possession of private corporate property is itself a violent ideology, and as such is more harmful to society than the act of smashing the possessions - hence "trashing" is justified. 2. Violence of any sort - against people or possessions - is immoral and impractical for movement-building. 3. There might be certain times when destroying property is justified, but there are also other times when it is not. Decisions should be made on a case-by-case basis. 716

Most of the parties to the post-November 30 tactical discussion have taken one of these three positions, or some offshoot thereof. Of course, a lot of people have mixed feelings, or adopt some combination of the above positions: Seattle Weekly columnist Geov Parrish, an anarchist himself, wrote that he agrees with the contention that property is violent - but disagreed with the decision to destroy property at what was supposed to be a mass, peaceful demonstration. Some of you are undoubtedly wondering what the importance is of giving so much ink to the property destroyers. Won't it only encourage them? My response is this: sometimes, legitimate grievances find their form in actions that might not be construed as positive by most people. It's less important to shut your eyes and ears to the unpleasantness than to attempt to understand the motivations behind those actions. Hence, we start off with the case for the defense: why did these self-styled anarchists smash windows, burn dumpsters and the like? Well, why don't we ask them? THE CASE FOR PROPERTY DESTRUCTION The first thing the Black Bloc would like for people to do is make a distinction between violence against human beings and violence against property. The ACME Collective, a group supposedly behind the Black bloc's activities, distributed their side of the story in a widespread communique. I will be quoting liberally from this document, which is available on-line at http://www.zmag.org/acme.htm, because I feel it's sometimes best to let people speak for themselves about their decisions. "We contend that property destruction is not a violent activity unless it destroys lives or causes pain in the process. By this definition, private property--especially corporate private property--is itself infinitely more violent than any action taken against it," the document reads. Actually, that's fairly straightforward stuff. It's where the group makes a distinction between personal property and private property that it gets tricky: "Private property should be distinguished from personal property. The latter is based upon use while the former is based upon trade. The premise of personal property is that each of us has what s/he needs. The premise of private property is that each of us has something that someone else needs or wants. In a society based on private property rights, those who are able to accrue more of what others need or want have greater power. By extension, they wield greater control over what others perceive as needs and desires, usually in the interest of increasing profit to themselves," the anarchists wrote. Critics - especially critics concerned with building support for their cause - might point out that whether you're breaking Starbucks windows or Jeff Shaw's windows, it looks the same on the nightly news. To these folks, though, destroying corporate property has neither the connotation nor the moral equivalence to destroying personal property. Later in the communique, they discuss the selection of targets: all of the places listed - The Gap, Niketown, Old Navy - have reasons listed for why they were targeted. This company uses sweatshop labor, that company suppresses the rights of indigenous people. (Actually, there's one business that doesn't have a reason listed. It's Planet Hollywood and the reason listed is "Because it's Planet Hollywood.") But even this small treatment shows a substantially different picture of the Black Bloc than people got from the news media: however you feel about their actions, they were specifically planned actions, considered on the basis of a few specific principles. 717

We'll get deeper into the ACME Collective's justification for their actions in a moment, but for now let's consider the alternative viewpoints. THE CASE AGAINST BREAKING STUFF One of the problems with taking a contrarian viewpoint during property destruction is that people play the "more radical than thou" card. Human being what they are, this kind of anarchist peer pressure can - sadly - be effective at times. For instance, during the WTO demonstrations I heard one Black Bloc member shout at a peaceful protester that he was a "collaborator!" and the hooded demonstrator had to be restrained by his comrades after it looked like he was going to pop the guy in the mouth. Would he have? I don't think so, but I really don't know, and at any rate the intended effect had been accomplished. He had sent a message that the people breaking things were the "real" radicals. Given that conditions like the one I just described were relatively common, it is quite remarkable that, in a protest that reached 70,000-100,000 people, only about 30 were breaking windows, etc. But that's not why I brought up the example: I wanted to discuss the people who questioned the tactic of breaking private property, and the response they met. The response visited upon writers like Brian Dominick and Michael Albert - who published an extensive website for the purpose of discussing this very issue at www.zmag.org/trashing.htm - was not unlike the one levied on the peaceful protester. Since the exchange was taking place over the Internet, no one had to restrain anyone, but you could tell that the writings criticizing Albert and Dominick amounted to shouts of "collaborators!" The funny thing is, neither of them even condemned the use of property destruction as a tactic per se - both simply questioned how it was applied in Seattle. That gives you some idea about the varying spectrum of opinion that existed on the subject. Some radical pacifists referred to in the Black Bloc communique as "the Peace Police" - attempted to deter or even restrain the Black Bloc anarchists from smashing windows, etc. A group of self-declared peace marshals attempted to keep the entire demonstration from becoming a trashing festival. Presumably, these people object to the smashing of private goods on moral grounds. To my surprise, though, I have not come across a "moral defense of protecting private property" coming from any other protesters. Rather, the debate has largely been one of strategy and tactics. Brian Dominick suggests that the destructive protesters should have stayed away from what was supposed to be a giant, non-violent demonstration. The implication is, as others have argued, that media coverage will always focus on the more violent and destructive aspects of anything. In the wake of the WTO, my journalist brothers and sisters proved that last part, at least, to be right on. Images of the action in Seattle were almost exclusively tear gas canisters being thrown back at police, windows being smashed, and trash being burned. This, in addition to the general public's predisposition against masked young people breaking things, certainly didn't do wonders for the average person's opinion of the demonstration. Can you see you dad, uncle or grandfather saying this while stretched out in front of the TV?: "Look at those kids smashing those windows. While some might consider it random vandalism, I think it's a bold critique of private property ownership is an advanced capitalist culture. They're really demystifying the veneer that surrounds corporate property. And hey, pass me the chips, will ya?"

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Dominick, in an otherwise scattershot essay, posits another interesting hypothesis. You've got 70,000 people clogging the streets of Seattle. The cops aren't sure what to expect, and there's standing room only basically everywhere you go. Most of the Black Bloc anarchists have masks, and expressed a real aversion to being arrested, unlike their nonviolent counterparts, who were arrested in droves without resistance. But the Black Bloc communique brags about helping captured counterparts get "un-arrested." The point is, it was darned tough for the police to deal with the crowd and the peaceful protesters without worrying about the 30 or so people smashing windows. And when they did try to chase the anarchists, it was difficult to catch them because of the massive crowds. It sort of resembled a heavily armed, riot gear-clad Wile E. Coyote chasing a hooded, rock-throwing roadrunner. Or perhaps Steve Smith of the Portland Trail Blazers running an opponent into a crushing Brian Grant screen. It's actually this last image that Dominick seems to think best represents what the Black Bloc did: he accuses them of exploiting the goodwill of the nonviolent masses. Wherever the Black Bloc went, tear gas and truncheons were sure to follow - yet the nonviolent types didn't turn them in, and only a few tried to restrain the. (Of course, it's difficult to restrain people when you're choking on tear gas). Dominick says that the type of demonstration the Black bloc planned had no place in Seattle - but that it was very convenient of them to exploit the pacifists, because the pacifists would end up taking the lumps and getting arrested. BLACK BLOC'S RESPONSE TO CRITICISM Some critics have taken Dominick's argument much further, saying that the Black Bloc escalated situations on the 30th, leading to the tear-gassing of passive, non-violent protesters. The answer to this argument, however you feel about their tactics, is that the gassing and pepper-spraying began long before the anarchists started engaging in property destruction. The first round of gassing began around 10 a.m., and the property smashing began shortly thereafter, as the crowds were chased through the street by advancing lines of police. So, some might try to justify the Black Bloc's behavior by saying that police induced a violent, destructive response. Thanks but no thanks, the anarchists say to those who might defend them in this manner. They freely admit that they planned to engage in property destruction - and just took the opportunity to do so after the police violence began. "While this might be a more positive representation of the black bloc, it is nevertheless false. We refuse to be misconstrued as a purely reactionary force. While the logic of the black bloc may not make sense to some, it is in any case a pro-active logic.," the Black Bloc communique says. That pro-active logic extends to some thought about the role of police. "The police are charged with protecting the interests of the wealthy few and the blame for the violence cannot be placed upon those who protest those interests," their communique says. Following this line of reasoning, the Black Bloc challenges the conventional wisdom of nonviolent protesters. The general idea of passive resistance, getting arrested for what you believe in, etc., is twofold: first, you try to stop what you disagree with without hurting anybody; second, you draw support for your cause by your willingness to selfsacrifice. This doesn't seem too noble to the Black Bloc, however. 719

"Those who pose the greatest threat to the interests of Capital and State will be persecuted," the communique reads. "Some pacifists would have us accept this persecution gleefully. Others would tell us that it is a worthy sacrifice. We are not so morose. Nor do we feel we have the privilege to accept persecution as a sacrifice: persecution to us is a daily inevitability and we treasure our few freedoms. To accept incarceration as a form of flattery betrays a large amount of "first world" privilege. We feel that an attack on private property is necessary if we are to rebuild a world which is useful, healthful and joyful for everyone. And this despite the fact that hypertrophied private property rights in this country translate into felony charges for any property destruction over $250." Finally, one Black Bloc response to the objections provides some food for thought: when compared to the anarchists, the nonviolent types looked pretty good to the average observer - and even, probably to the average police officer. That echoed something Malcolm X - who famously advocated black liberation "by any means necessary" - told Coretta Scott King upon his arrival in Selma, Alabama. "I want Dr. King to know that I didn't come to Selma to make his job difficult. I really did come thinking I could make it easier. If the white people realize what the alternative is, perhaps they will be more willing to hear Dr. King." That's not to equate the two movements in any way, though you can argue that similarities exist. Still, the issues raised in movement strategy parallel each other. Surprisingly, it seems that the predominant opinion - even if it isn't spoken too loudly - is that property destruction can be a valid tactic in certain cases. What those cases are, of course, is up for a lively and vociferous debate. BIBLIOGRAPHY Ward Churchill, with Mike Ryan, PACIFISM AS PATHOLOGY, Arbeiter Ring Publishing, 1999. Colin Hall and Stephen Whitworth, THE DAILY CARILLON, March 4, 1999, p. 4. Kenneth Pennington, EMORY UNIVERSITY STUDIES IN LAW & RELIGION, Winter 1997-8, p. 1150. Howard Ryan, CRITIQUE OF NONVIOLENT POLITICS: FROM MAHATMA GANDHI TO THE ANTI-NUCLEAR MOVEMENT, 1984, http://www.netwood.net/~hryan. Howard Ryan, NONVIOLENCE FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS http://www.zmag.org/bulletins/pnon.htm. Ruth Teichroeb, SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER, Dec. 1, 1999, p. A1. Peter Waldman, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, Dec. 4, 1999, p. A1. Z Magazine Network's "Trashing" site, http://www.zmag.org/trashing.htm

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ANTI-PROPERTY VIOLENCE IS GOOD 1. CRIMES AGAINST PROPERTY DIFFERENT THAN CRIMES AGAINST PEOPLE Colin Hall, Activist, Regina University Student, THE DAILY CARILLON, March 4, 1999, p. 4. Let us first make the distinction between violence against people and violence against property. Violence against property is expressed through vandalism at its most spontaneous and monkey-wrenching at its most organized. Violence against property is an effective tactic in both intimidating and delaying the plans of your enemy. Violence against people is expressed through physical assaults utilizing any number of weapons and techniques. 2. TO OVERTHROW CAPITALISM, MUST USE VIOLENCE Colin Hall, Activist, Regina University Student, THE DAILY CARILLON, March 4, 1999, p. 4. At this point we may address the question: is violence a legitimate tactic for Canadian activists? The answer is at once simple and complex. Before we can answer we must address another question: what is the goal of Canadian activists? If the goal is parliamentary reforms, increased awareness of issues, and just feeling better about yourself, then the answer is no. Violence brings more violence. For those seeking a safe, happy life for themselves, violence is not an option. If, however, the goal of Canadian activists is the overthrow of the Canadian State, the end of capitalism and the creation of a peaceful, sustainable and stable world, then the answer must be yes. Someone who claims to be against capitalism and against the use of violence in overthrowing capitalism is naive at best and delusional at worst. The handful of millionaires running the world at this point are not going to peacefully hand over the productive forces of the earth to a bunch of hippies singing "Give Peace a Chance." The only way to evenly distribute the enormous wealth of the world is to use force. 3. LEGITIMATE ACTIVISM SHOULD USE ANY TACTICS NECESSARY Colin Hall, Activist, Regina University Student, THE DAILY CARILLON, March 4, 1999,p. 4. Poverty is violence. Unemployment is violence. Pollution is violence. Revolution is the negation of violence because it is the negation of pollution, unemployment, and poverty. Legitimate activism should be open to any and all tactics in order to secure victory. After all, we are not in this to lose. We should be flexible in our struggle. 4. SABOTAGE WORKS: EMPIRICS VERIFY THIS Colin Hall, Activist, Regina University Student, THE DAILY CARILLON, March 4, 1999, p. 4. Monkey-wrenching and sabotage in the workplace have been a key to successful labour struggles for hundreds of years. Other forms of sabotage, such of spiking trees and destroying machines, will continue to gain in popularity as poverty and ecological exploitation continue to make our lives more miserable. 5. VIOLENCE AGAINST PROPERTY ISN'T THE SAME AS HURTING PEOPLE Ruth Teichroeb, Reporter, SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER, Dec. 1, 1999, p. A1. A 17-year-old protester called "Rain" said protests in the 1960s failed to overthrow the government because "they were passive." "I don't think it's right to hurt someone," said Rain, who had joined in the rampage, smashing windows and shouting. "But property destruction is not violence . . . And we're not just going to lay down and say, 'Peace, Love, let me give you a flower, piggie.'" Rain said concerns run the gamut from excessive consumerism, environmental issues to urban despair of poverty and homelessness. She also said spray-painting and property damage are effective tools. "It's fun and it gets people's attention," Rain said.

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PROPERTY ITSELF IS HARMFUL, THUS DESTRUCTION OF IT IS JUST 1. PHILOSOPHERS HAVE RECOGNIZED THAT PROPERTY IS VIOLENCE Kenneth Pennington, Professor of Medieval History, Syracuse University, EMORY UNIVERSITY STUDIES IN LAW & RELIGION, Winter 1997-8, p. 1150. Tierney, however, focuses on a set of rights which were established in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries that do not fit quite so comfortably into the ethical and moral world of the modern industrial state: the rights of the poor. In discussing these rights, Tierney refers to Gratian''s Decretum, which includes a number of texts that contain trenchant admonitions to provide for the poor. Perhaps the most poignant of these passages is one taken from the writing of Rufinus of Aquileia (circa 344-410) which masqueraded as the words of Ambrose in Gratian: ""No one may call his own what is common, of which if he takes more than he needs, it is taken with violence."" Rufinus''s words echo across the centuries and are summed up by the contemporary American bumper sticker seen not infrequently on the highways: ""Poverty is Violence."" If the bumper sticker were to echo Rufinus exactly, it might read: ""Property is Violence."" 2. NATURAL LAW WAS USED TO JUSTIFY THIS PRINCIPLE Kenneth Pennington, Professor of Medieval History, Syracuse University, EMORY UNIVERSITY STUDIES IN LAW & RELIGION, Winter 1997-8, p. 1150. Rufinus''s words do not lead directly to the idea that the poor have a right to subsistence, but the twelfth-century jurists had the vocabulary and the inclination to develop that idea. Tierney illustrates the emergence of their thought brilliantly. Again, Huguccio was a key figure. He declared that by natural law we should keep what is necessary and distribute what is left to the needy--particularly in times of famine and great need. Later jurists expanded Huguccio''s thought and formulated a right of the poor to steal or to take food in times of need. As Hostiensis, foremost jurist of the thirteenth century put it: ""One who suffers the need of hunger seems to use his right rather than to plan a theft." 3. VIOLENCE IS JUST SELF-DEFENSE AGAINST THE SYSTEM Colin Hall, Activist, Regina University Student, THE DAILY CARILLON, March 4, 1999, p. 4. I want to make one thing very clear in this article: WE ARE DYING. We are being killed by our lifestyles. We are being killed by our jobs, killed by our cities, killed by our repressed desires; we are being killed by capitalism. Armed resistance is not aggression, it is self-defence. Millions of people have been killed by our lifestyle and more die every day. If we do not resist we are allowing the killing to continue. If we are not struggling against this system we are an accomplice to the most horrendous crime in the whole of human history. 4. PROPERTY DESTRUCTION BEST TO GET ATTENTION Peter Waldman, Reporter, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, Dec. 4, 1999, p. A1. But most telling of all, (John Zerzan) claims, was the "encouraging" reaction of some trade unionists and "liberals" during the Seattle protests -- people exposed to the black block's rage for the first time. While many of the demonstrators shouted "shame, shame" at the vandals and tried to thwart their property attacks, others, after holding heated arguments in the streets, tacitly supported them, Mr. Zerzan says. "I hope we're getting past the point of needing to throw bricks to get attention," he says. "But you really can't say violence doesn't produce anything. I wouldn't be talking to you right now if it weren't for the violence. It's sad but true." 5. PROPERTY IS VIOLENT, NOT VANDALISM Ruth Teichroeb, Reporter, SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER, Dec. 1, 1999, p. A1. A 28-year-old Oregon protester who identified himself only as "Smoke" said yesterday the rampage was justified. "The idea of property is violent," said the man, wearing a black army helmet with the circled "A" symbol. "Some people are focusing their energy on the WTO instead of capitalism in general. Even if we stop the WTO here, we're not stopping capitalism."

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VIOLENCE IS COUNTER-PRODUCTIVE 1. VIOLENCE IS COUNTER-PRODUCTIVE TO ACHIEVING SOCIAL JUSTICE Stephen Whitworth, Activist, Regina University Student, THE DAILY CARILLON, March 4, 1999, p. 4. The 90s have been a troubled period for activists in Canadian history. This decade has seen an increase in the use of violence against peaceful protesters by the police, RCMP, and Canadian Armed Forces. Types of violence utilized include the use of non-lethal technologies such as pepper spray and stun guns. It includes rough handling of protesters, resulting in bruises and sometimes broken bones. It includes intimidation tactics such as strip searches and forcible confinement. This is why some activists might consider violence as a political option at this point in Canadian history. Although it is difficult to criticize an activist from considering violence when the Canadian State itself continually exercises this option, it remains a problematic and counter-productive approach to achieving social justice. 2. VIOLENCE AND VANDALISM DON'T GARNER PUBLIC SUPPORT Stephen Whitworth, Activist, Regina University Student, THE DAILY CARILLON, March 4, 1999, p. 4. I contend that the average Canadian finds the use of violence to be unacceptable. It can be argued that this is because the majority of Canadians have been conditioned by years of media, government, and corporate propaganda. Or that the distaste for violence comes from the predominant Judeo-Christian culture. Whichever, the result is that activists are not going to be able to develop support for their cause through the use of violent tactics. Without popular support, change is impossible. 3. PEACEFUL, HUMOROUS PROTESTS ARE MORE SUCCESSFUL Stephen Whitworth, Activist, Regina University Student, THE DAILY CARILLON, March 4, 1999, p. 4. A far better approach than violent protest is popular protests that utilize humor. One international organization is finding both success and support through this approach right now. In a continuing protest against the hegemony of petroleum interests in this country and elsewhere, the group Critical Mass takes to the streets on bicycles. Often wearing dinosaur costumes, these infectiously cheerful activists can't help but catch the attention of passing motorists in their earth-despoiling vehicles. They are inherently media-friendly, which gives them the opportunity to get their message out through interviews in the newspapers and on television. At the end of the day, a group like this gets some people to stop and think about what we are doing to our planet environmentally. 4. PEACEFUL PROTESTS CAN STILL GARNER MEDIA ATTENTION Stephen Whitworth, Activist, Regina University Student, THE DAILY CARILLON, March 4, 1999, p. 4. Colourful protests create a context for a serious discourse on political, social, and environmental issues. This discourse has in the past included, and should continue to employ large scale non violent protest. A popular myth is that these protests are ineffective. They are not; the problem is that we need more of them. Protests are still able to garner national media attention. The APEC conference is a good example of this. Almost a year and a half after demonstrators were pepper-sprayed by the RCMP, the story is still able to get press. That means that their cause, which was to condemn the welcoming of Indonesian dictator Suharto, whose genocidal policies have been documented, is still alive. 5. VICTIMIZED ACTIVISTS GET FAVORABLE PRESS COVERAGE Stephen Whitworth, Activist, Regina University Student, THE DAILY CARILLON, March 4, 1999, p. 4. The activists receive favourable coverage as a result of their status as victims. Pepper- sprayed students get more support because they didn't start lobbing molotov cocktails when they were attacked. If the event had turned into a violent melee they would not have been able to get the level of support that they've received. And the Canadian government has been forced into paying the students' legal fees at a public inquiry they don't want to happen. Concrete results from non-violent protests!

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TRASHING IS MISGUIDED 1. VIOLENT PROTESTERS ACTED OPPORTUNISTICALLY Brian Dominick, Activist Organizer, "ANARCHY, NON/VIOLENCE AND THE SEATTLE ACTIONS," Fall 1999, Accessed May 15, 2000 http://www.zmag.org/anarchynv.htm. A simple test of my concern reveals a sad answer: Why didn't those who hold that property destruction furthers the cause against neoliberal globalization simply engage in such acts on another day, or in a place far removed from putting thousands of law-abiding others at risk? The answer can only be that the black bloc "rioters" needed to use that mass as a shield, as they would essentially later admit. They were acting opportunistically. 2. PROPERTY DESTRUCTION LETS NONVIOLENT PROTESTERS TAKE THE BRUNT Brian Dominick, Activist Organizer, "ANARCHY, NON/VIOLENCE AND THE SEATTLE ACTIONS," Fall 1999, Accessed May 15, 2000 http://www.zmag.org/anarchynv.htm. Here's another snippet from the ACME communique: The black bloc was a loosely organized cluster of affinity groups and individuals who roamed round downtown, pulled this way by a vulnerable and significant storefront and that way by the sight of a police formation. Unlike the vast majority of activists who were pepper-sprayed, teargassed and shot at with rubber bullets on several occasions, most of our section of the black bloc escaped serious injury by remaining constantly in motion and avoiding engagement with the police. And that's how they portray themselves! Implicit in the above statement is the notion that those engaged in property destruction -- using highly mobile hit-and-run methods -- were allowing the rabid police response to their tactic (not caused by, but predictably inflamed by, these folks'' activities), to be absorbed by the anti-violence mass of the demonstration. That is, a very mobile collection of slippery affinity groups was engaging in activities that are actually illegal (as opposed to demonstrations, etc), and a much larger group -- whose express purpose was to be particularly immobile! -- was taking the brunt of police reaction instead. 3. CONFRONTATIONS PICK THE WRONG TARGETS Brian Dominick, Activist Organizer, "ANARCHY, NON/VIOLENCE AND THE SEATTLE ACTIONS," Fall 1999, Accessed May 15, 2000 http://www.zmag.org/anarchynv.htm. Another question that's arising is the actual value of confronting police. It's been pointed out regularly and responsibly with regard to the Seattle events, that police are not supposed to be the adversary of the day. In actions against neoliberal globalization (and most other issues, too), our real target is elites, not working class cops. Unfortunately, police tend to form the elites' second line of defense (the first being the mass media outlets). 4. NONVIOLENT ACTIVISTS WERE THE ONES WORKING CHANGE IN SEATTLE Brian Dominick, Activist Organizer, "ANARCHY, NON/VIOLENCE AND THE SEATTLE ACTIONS," Fall 1999, Accessed May 15, 2000 http://www.zmag.org/anarchynv.htm. What happened in Seattle on November 30, then, is of tremendous significance. Without using any violence whatsoever, activists on the frontlines demonstrated more than just their opinions vis-a-vis world trade: they also demonstrated how to immobilize an entire police force. Huge groups of dedicated protestors effectively shut down the entire convention, using their bodies. The police response and ensuing melee (let alone the residual tear gas affecting delegates, not just demonstrators) further restricted access to the convention site.

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Truth Good TRUTH IS INTRINSICALLY AND INSTRUMENTALLY DESIRABLE 1. TRUTH IS ESSENTIAL FOR THE PRESERVATION OF PERSONAL AUTONOMY Erwin Chemerinsky, Legion Lex Professor of Law at the University of Southern California Law Center, CASE WESTERN RESERVE LAW REVIEW, 1991, P. 750. More importantly, Professor Schauers analysis ignores the values of autonomy and choice. Truthful information allows individuals to make their own decisions about what to believe and how to act. A person should be able to decide whether to admire George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Franidin Roosevelt, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton based on accurate portrayals. Similarly, people should be able to decide whether to smoke or drink based on correct information concerning the health effects and where to place their money based on truths about the stability of banks. Professor Schauer also argues that information yields power. False information disempowers; it denies individuals the ability to make choices about the decisions in their lives. Professor Schauer simply ignores the importance of truth for individual autonomy. Honest, open public dialogue, dialogue that might help individuals and society discover their best interests, is prevented by the falsehoods. 2. TRUTH IS KEY BOTH TO KNOWLEDGE AND TO HUMAN FREEDOM Fernando R. Teson, Professor of Law at Arizona State University, VIRGINIA JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW ASSOCIATION, Spring, 1993, p. 680. In contrast, liberals regard free intellect as the engine of human progress, and intellectual integrity as an unconditional ethical commitment rather than a political value to be weighed against others. Honesty for the Kantian is part of the categorical imperative to respect other rational beings by not using them manipulatively as means to other ends. The liberal commitment to rational discourse encompasses both science and morality. If we abandon it, as radicals urge, we jeopardize not only the path to knowledge and scientific progress, but also our most precious freedoms. -

3. TRUTH IS NECESSARY TO MAKE INFORMED DECISIONS Erwin Chemerinsky, Legion Lex Professor of Law at the University of Southern California Law Center, CASE WESTERN RESERVE LAW REVIEW, 1991, pp. 750-751. The same arguments can be made against Professor Schauer~s contention that ignorance is often better than knowledge. Although at times ignorance may be bliss, Professor Schauer gives no weight to the right of the people to know about government and other matters of public concern. Professor Schauer also fails to recognize the importance of knowledge to people who wish to exercise their autonomy by making informed choices about their lives. For example, it might be better if the government did not acknowledge that airport metal detectors cannot identify plastic explosives. In fact, terrorists might be best deterred if the Federal Aviation Administration falsely publicized the technical ability to detect such weapons. This, however, would deny the right of people to decide whether to fly based on an accurate appraisal of the risks. As argued earlier, the ultimate exposure of the truth might undermine the credibility of all government declarations concerning airplane safety. 4. TRUTH IS OF INHERENT VALUE Eric Bjorhum, Boston College Law School, GEORGETOWN JOURNAL OF LEGAL ETHICS, Summer, 1996, p. 1121. Before launching into an analysis of my next maxim, I would like to offer a “proof” for the inherent value of truth in law. This simple proof follows from some of my earlier comments about skepticism. Assume that truth has no inherent value in law. Then we must accept one of two conclusions: either truth is instrumentally good, or it has no value whatsoever not even instrumentally. This second conclusion is easy to refute, because we have already seen that some belief about truth is necessary for the legal system to function, e.g., the legal system must claim to assign blame, not arbitrarily, but for things that happen in the world. The first conclusion is more difficult. Yet if we accept it, we must accept that lack of truth, or lying, could be just as good instrumentally (depending on the circumstance), and this I do not think we are ready to accept. We have already seen that lying is logically and empirically flawed. Thus, the original premise was wrong, and therefore its opposite must be true truth is at least its own inherent good. In the legal system, much of the apparatus is constructed around the search for truth. --

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FALSEHOOD IS INTRINSICALLY AND INSTRUMENTALLY UNDESIRABLE 1. FALSEHOOD CAUSES NET HARM WHEN TRUTH SURFACES Erwin Chemerinsky, Legion Lex Professor of Law at the University of Southern California Law Center, CASE WESTERN RESERVE LAW REVIEW, 1991, p. 749. If people falsely are encouraged to believe that the bank has their money on hand in reserves, there is a real risk of a bank run when depositors learn that they have been deceived. Similarly, there is a potential for serious backlash if people learn that they have been misled regarding the race of prominent Americans. Indeed, people will come to distrust anything said by those attempting to advance racial equality. If people learn that they were deceived concerning the effects with regard to baldness of smoking and drinking, they rnigbt then distrust all information concerning the adverse health effects of these practices. Spreading falsehoods to serve greater truths risks undermining those truths once the falsehoods are uncovered. 2. THE IMPORTANCE OF TRUTH SUPERCEDES ALL OTHER CONCERNS William P. Marshall, Galen J. Roush Professor of Law at Case Western Reserve University Law School, GEORGIA LAW REVIEW, Fall, 1995, p. 21. A second potential argument in support of the truth justification rests upon the contention that transcendent truth might exist, and therefore, the search for truth is not necessarily futile. Certainly, if truth does exist, its importance is, virtually by definition, ultimate. Thus, even if the search for truth holds almost no possibility of success, the importance of truth is so great that its pursuit may still be seen as invaluable. 3. PROMOTION OF FALSEHOOD IS PATERNALISTIC Erwin Chemerinsky, Legion Lex Professor of Law at the University of Southern California Law Center, CASE WESTERN RESERVE LAW REVIEW, 1991, p. 750. There is a tremendous paternalism to this argument: believing he knows what the greater truths are, Professor Schauer decides that others would benefit by believing falsehoods. This view, that deception is permissible to serve a greater good, is frightening. There are no standards to guide the implementation of this utilitarian analysis or the determination of which falsehoods are justified. Professor Schauer seems to say little more than that falsehoods are permissible whenever they might make people better off in some way. His argument provides no stopping point for these lies and fails to recognize the dangers of deception. 4. NO OFFICIAL AGENT SHOULD DECIDE BETWEEN TRUTHS AND FALSEHOODS Erwin Chemerinsky, Legion Lex Professor of Law at the University of Southern California Law Center, CASE WESTERN RESERVE LAW REVIEW, 1991, pp. 75 1-752. Thus, the question has to be faced as to who should decide when others are better served by lies or ignorance. Professor Schauer attempts to avoid this question by recognizing the dangers in creating an institution that would determine this for society. Even if no such institution is established, the question still has to be faced as to who shall decide when deception is acceptable. Should the government be able to decide when the people are better off with lies about its activities? History shows that government officials often will lie or suppress information to serve their own self-interest and rationalize their behavior by saying it serves the publics good. Should corporations or professionals be able to decide when we are better off being deceived? Again, history and experience teach that we are better off insisting on truth than trusting others to protect our interests through lies.

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Truth Bad TRUTH IS AN INADEQUATE VALUE 1. TRUTH TOO INCOMPREHENSIBLE TO BE A’1TAINED William P. Marshall, Galen J. Roush Professor of Law at Case Western Reserve University Law School, GEORGIA LAW REVIEW, Fall, 1995, P. 21-22. For example, even if truth does exist, it will be of little utility in serving as a meaningful direction for human conduct unless it is also comprehensible to human understanding. The possibility and importance argument, therefore, depends not only on truth’s existence, but also upon its accessibility--a factor that, although not undercutting truth’s importance, makes the search potentially even less likely to achieve fruition. 2. TRUTH ITSELF IS RELATIVE AND CONTEXT DEPENDANT Tracy E. Higgins, Associate Professor of Law Fordham University, HARVARD WOMEN’S LAW JOURNAL, Spring, 1996, p. 94. Central to postmodernism is its critique of the claim that scientific knowledge is universal and can be justified in a noncontextual way. Postmodernists contend that standards of truth are context-dependent.... Postmodernists tend to favor forms of social inquiry which incorporate an explicitly practical and moral intent, that are contextual and restricted in their focus (local stories are preferred over general ones), and that are narratively structured rather than articulating a general theory. -

3. TRUTH IS NOT INTRINSICALLY PREFERABLE IGNORANCE MAY OflEN BE SUPERiOR Frederick Schauer, Frank Stanton Professor of the First Amendment at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, CASE WESTERN RESERVE LAW REVIEW, 1991, pp. 708. When the question is so rephrased, it then appears that what is at issue is not whether it is better (for you? for me?) that you believe (correctly) that I am an academic rather than (falsely) that I am a professional wrestler, but whether it is better that you believe (correctly) that I am an academic than that you have no beliefs at all about me. And what if I were in fact a professional wrestler? Or a religious fundamentalist? In these cases I might be better off if you had no knowledge at all. And maybe so would you, and so would society. Think of what it means to say, “I wish I hadn’t known that.” It is possible that in most cases it is better to have a true belief than a false one. It is also possible, however, that in a nontrivial number of cases it is no better to have a true belief as opposed to no belief whatsoever. -

4. TRANSCENDENT TRUTH DOES NOT EXIST William P. Marshall, Galen J. Roush Professor of Law at Case Western Reserve University Law School, GEORGIA LAW REVIEW, Fall, 1995, p. 3. Contemporary philosophical thought, it is said, does not believe in truth, at least in the “objective” or “transcendent” sense of the word. To the contemporary mind, objective or transcendent truth is seen as nonsensical or, at best, unintelligible. The Enlightenment claim that the powers of reason could lead humanity to a knowledge of truth has been savaged. Beliefs in religious revelation, while still accepted by some, are seen as too idiosyncratic and too faith-laden for constructing universal notions of truth. Human cognitive powers fare no better. Humanity has yet to recover from the empirical skepticism of Hume or the scathing attack on the capabilities of human knowledge and reason leveled by Nietzsche. 5. TRUTHS ARE VALUELESS, OTHERS CAUSE MORE HARM THAN THEY ARE WORTH Frederick Schauer, Frank Stanton Professor of the First Amendment at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, CASE WESTERN RESERVE LAW REVIEW, 1991, pp. 710-711 As a number of the examples above were designed to suggest, it is clear that many increases in someone s knowledge come at the expense of someone else’s well-being or dignity. I find it wildly implausible to suppose that in every case the well-being of the recipient of the new information is increased by more than the well-being of the subject is decreased as a result of the disclosure. Here, however, it is important to distinguish those activities that are, on balance, undesirable from those that have no value at all. Under one view, all increases in knowledge are valuable, but some may also cause disvalues outweighing the value produced. Yet under another view, some increases in knowledge simply have no value at all. 727

TRUTH IS AN UNDESIRABLE VALUE 1. TRUTH SIMPLY DOES NOT EXIST AND IS NOT ATTAINABLE Gerald F. Kreyche, philosophy professor, USA TODAY MAGAZINE, September, 1996, p. 82. Perhaps Plato was right in holding that Iruth does not exist in this world, but only in a higher one. Or wa.~ German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche correct in stating that there are no facts, only interpretations? David Hume, the Scottish philosopher, might have summed it up best, maintaining that ‘The truth is, there is no truth.” 2. TRUTH IS NOT INTRINSICALLY DESIRABLE FALSEHOOD MAY BE PREFERABLE Frederick Schauer, Frank Stanton Professor of the First Amendment at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, CASE WESTERN RESERVE LAW REVIEW, 1991, pp. 706-707. Given the deep-seeded racism in the United States, I would consider it an open-question whether the United States would be better off if everyone in the country believed (falsely) that George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Franidin Roosevelt, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were African-Americans. I am not convinced that the country would be, on balance, hurt if American men believed (falsely) that cigarettes and alcohol cause baldness. I am also willing to entertain the possibility that the (false) belief of most Americans that their banks have well in excess of fifty percent of deposits available for immediate withdrawal is an essential condition for the successful operation of the banking system in the United States, which is in turn (possibly) instrumental to economic stability, which is in turn (possibly) instrumental to the general welfare of the people of the United States. At the very least, therefore, it appears that if truth is instrumental, then more truth, or even less falsity, is not in every case instrumental to what it is that truth is instrumental to. -

3. LACK OF TRUTH CREATES HUMAN FREEDOM William P. Marshall, Galen J. Roush Professor of Law at Case Western Reserve University Law School, GEORGIA LAW REVIEW, Fall, 1995, p. 22-23. Arguably, humanity is free precisely because truth is not known. It is only because of the absence of discernible divine or natural law that humanity is free to create its own rules of conduct. Truth, on the other hand, presumably binds humanity to its precepts. Thus, as Leonard Levy notes, neither freedom of speech nor freedom of press could “become a civil liberty until the truth of men’s opinions, especially their religious opinions, was regarded as relative rather than absolute.” If there were only one “true religion,” there could be no toleration of dissent because everyone would “be compelled to accept it for their own salvation as well as for the good of God and the nation.” 4. “WHO’S TO DECIDE” IS AN INADEQUATE RESPONSE TO THE CRITIQUE OF TRUTH Frederick Schauer, Frank Stanton Professor of the First Amendment at the John F. Kennedy School of Govermnent at Harvard, CASE WESTERN RESERVE LAW REVIEW, 1991, pp. 705. Of course, the benefits of falsity might be overwhelmed by the harms consequent upon establishing some institution to determine which falsehoods are socially desirable, but this does not defeat the point in the text that falsity is not necessarily bad, and truth is not necessarily good. As to the latter, consider whether to disabuse a dying person of her false belief, which now brings her great happiness, that her son has never been in trouble with the law. Thus, my concern, not just here but in general, is that the lawyers typical “Who’s to decide?” challenge is a rhetorical device that conflates two distinct questions. The first question is whether some distinction can be drawn between alternatives, at least within the discursive context in which the distinction is offered. That is, do you, the reader, and I, the writer, agree that there is a distinction between x and y? In some cases we may not, or we may agree that there is no distinction. But, if we agree that there is a distinction, then the next but distinct question is about the circumstances, if any, under which some institution might be empowered to draw x/y distinctions. It is a mistake to conclude from the inadvisability or impossibility of creating such institutions that there is no drawable distinction. Similarly, it is equally inappropriate to infer from the putative undesirability of a governmental institution established to determine truth, or to determine the value of truth, that distinguishing truth from falsity or determining the value of truth is impossible.

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Utilitarianism Good UTILITARIANISM IS THE BEST FRAMEWORK 1. WEIGHING UTILITARIAN CONSEQUENCES PROVIDES THE BEST DECISIONS Jeremy Benthani, Philosopher, THE PRINCIPLES OF MORALS AND LEGISLATION, 1948, p. 1-2. Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other a chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne. They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think: every effort we can make to throw off our subjugation, will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it. In words a man may pretend to abjure their empire: but in reality be will remain subject to it all the while. The principle of utility recognizes this subjugation, and assumes it for the foundation of that system, the object of which to rear the fabric of felicity by the hands of reason and law. Systems which attempt to question it, deal in sounds instead of sense, in caprice instead of reason, in darkness instead of light. 2. UTILITARIANISM IS AN ALL-ENCOMPASSING PRINCIPAL OF MORALITY Indira Carr, Prof. of Law at Univ. of Wales, LEGAL STUDIES, March 1992, p. 93. In response to (1), for Bentham, the principal of utility is an all-encompassing one covering all acts, including those of legislation. It is the fundamental criterion, the basic principal in terms of which the rightness or wrongness of an act is determined. It is the standard which decides what ought to be done and what ought not be done. Bentham lends support to this view of the relationship of the principal of utility to law when he says; “In morals, as in legislation, the principal of utility is that which holds up to the view as the sources and tests of right and wrong, human suffering and enjoyment - pain and pleasure.” Given this context, there are a number of ways in which this principal could apply to law. All legal rules are means to bring about consequences; so, these can be judged according to the effects assignable to them. 3. UTILITARIAN CONSEQUENCES OFFER A CLEAR PROCEDURE Baruch Brody, Prof. of Ethics at Rice University, ETHICS AND ITS APPLICATIONS, 1983, p. 16. Herin lies another appeal of consequentialism. The consequenualist at least offers a relatively clear procedure for finding out what is the right thing to do: list the alternatives, ascertain their probably consequences, and evaluate the consequences in light of their implications for everyone affected. Clearly, each of these steps involves many problems, and in most cases it is not easy to be sure that one has carried out all those steps adequately. Still, one at least has some guidelines. And in this respect, consequentialism seems to have an advantage as a moral theory. 4. IMPOSSIBLE TO SEPARATE ACTIONS FROM THEIR CONSEQUENCES Alan Ebenstein, NQA, THE GREATEST HAPPINESS PRINCIPLE, 1991, p. 3. Moreover and essentially, future consequences very often determine what present actions are. Consider, for example, the non-frivolous case of an attempt to kill Hitler during World War II: should such as attempt be considered as murder, a grave moral wrong, or as salvation, a way of saving millions of lives, a great moral right? Future considerations (or, at least, intended future consequences in terms of ascribing personal liability or credit for actions) affect what present actions should be considered. All attempts to rigidly split existing occurrences and their consequences are doomed to failure. 5. UTILITARIANISM IS INTUITIVELY VALID David Schweickart, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University of Chicago, CAPITALISM OR WORKER CONTROL?: AN ETHICAL AND ECONOMIC APPRAISAL, 1980, p. 61. Of course, one can go further; one can declare that human happiness is the sole or ultimate value, and that everyone’s happiness counts equally. In this case, one is a utilitarian; one regards an action or institution as moral if and only if it promotes the greatest happiness for the greatest number. This position is more controversial. Now I must confess to being drawn toward utilitarianism, particularly as applied to social structures. If one set of institutions makes more people happier than another, then there is considerable intuitive appeal to the claim that the former set ought to be instituted instead of the latter. 729

UTILITARIANISM RESOLVES DISPUTES BETWEEN MORAL CLAIMS 1. UTILITARIAN CONSEQUENTIAUSM RESOLVES MORAL DILEMMAS Baruch Brody, Prof. of Ethics at Rice University, ETHICS AND ITS APPLICATIONS, 1983, p. 17. Consequentialism seems to offer us a way out of this sort of dilemma by regarding plausible moral rules as useful rules of thumb rather than as inviolate commandments. Experience has taught us that, in most cases, following these rules will lead to the best consequences. However, when the circumstances are unusual and an examination of the consequences leads to the conclusion that the best results will come from breaking the moral rule, then we must treat the case as an exception. The consequentialist, then, would see the bomb-threat situation as an unusual circumstance with special consequences and would suspend the rule of thumb in order to achieve the best result - saving thousands of lives. In short, then, consequentialists claim that morality is more flexible than it traditionally has been viewed, and that their approach to resolving moral dilemmas provides a key to mobilizing that flexibility. We simply need to recognize the special cases in which there is good reason to believe that the consequences of following the traditional moral rule are worse than the consequences of making an exception. 2. UTILITARIANISM RESOLVES CLASHING RIGHTS OR DUTIES Robin Barrow, Professor of Philosophy at Simon Fraser University, UTIL1TARIANISM: A CONTEMPORARY STATEMENT, 1991. p 171. Kant, St Paul, John Stuart Mill and John Doe all believe that we ought to keep promises. It is morally right to do so. None can avoid the possibility of a dilemma, when in real life the obligation to keep a promise clashes with some other obligation, though sometimes the utilitarian has what may seem as an advantage over others, in that he has a rational way of turning what seemed like a dilemma into a soluble problem. 3. UTILITARIAN CONSEQUENTIALISM IS A VEHICLE TO RESOLVE MORAL CONFLICTS Baruch Brody, Prof. of Ethics at Rice University, ETHICS AND ITS APPLICATIONS, 1983, p. 18. Consequentialists do not claim to have an easy answer to this question. They do claim, however, that they can provide us with a vehicle for helping to resolve such conflicts. From the consequentialist perspective, the existence of a conflict in rules is a signal that we are dealing with one of those exceptional circumstances in which we cannot simply follow the soundest of rules. The consequentialist, therefore, advises the judge to examine the consequences of each of the options open to him and to choose the action with the best consequences. Here, the strength of the consequentialist approach is that it points out those cases in which one cannot rely upon traditional moral rules. 4. ONLY UTILITARIAN CONSEQUENTIALISM PROVIDES A RATIONAL FRAMEWORK Baruch Brody, Prof. of Ethics at Rice University, ETHICS AND ITS APPLICATIONS, 1983, p. 33. We pointed out in the last chapter that one of the strengths of consequentialism is that it offers an explanation of why we take morality so seriously: by doing the right thing we will bring about the best consequences for those affected. Deontologists do not have such a clear-cut reason for why morality is important per-se, and that is just a fundamental truth about the universe. The Consequentialists see this inability as an important drawback of rulebased moralities.

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UTILITARIANISM IS BETTER THAN ALTERNATIVES 1. UTILITARIAN CONSEQUENTIALISM WOULD SAVE THE MOST LIVES Philip Pettit, Prof. of Philosophy at Australia National Univ., A COMPANION TO ETHICS, ed. by Peter Singer, 1991, p. 234. It is usually said against consequentialist[s] that it would lead an agent to do horrendous deeds, so long as they promised the best consequences. It would forbid nothing absolutely: not rape, not torture, not even murder. This charge is on target but it is only relevant of course in horrendous circumstances. Thus if someone of ordinary values condoned torture, that would only be in circumstances where there was a great potential gain - the saving of innocent lives, the prevention of catastrophe - and where there were not the bad consequences involved, say, in state authorities claiming the right to torture. Once it is clear that the charge is relevant only in horrendous circumstances, it ceases to be clearly damaging. After all the nonconsequentialist[s] will often have to defend an equally unattractive response in such circumstances. It may be awful to think of torturing someone but it must be equally awful to think of not doing so and consequently allowing, say, a massive bomb to go off in some public place. 2. UTILITARIAN CONSEQUENTIALISM IS SIMPLE Philip Pettit, Prof. of Philosophy at Australia National Univ., A COMPANION TO ETHICS, ed. by Peter Singer, 1991, p. 237. It is common practice in the sciences and in intellectual disciplines generally to prefer the more simple hypothesis to the less, when otherwise they are equally satisfactory. Consequentialism, it turns out, is indisputably a simpler hypothesis than any form of non-consequentialism and that means that, failing objections such as those rejected in the last section, it ought to be preferred to it. If non-Consequentialists have not seen how much their view loses on the side of simplicity, that may be because they do not generally assent to our key proposition. They imagine that there are certain values which are susceptible only to being promoted, others that are susceptible to being honored. 3. UTILITARIANISM RESPECTS AND PROTECTS RIGHTS Barry Gower, Prof. of Philosophy, Univ. of Durham, HUMAN RIGHTS, ed. by Frank Dowrick, 1979, p. 54. Utilitarian principals, for example, are often criticized on the grounds that they do not give sufficient weights to rights and it is significant that rather than deny that rights should be given weight, defenders of these principles maintain that the objection depends upon too narrow an interpretation of utility. Mill, for example, in his discussion of paternalism, finds that he is able ‘to forego any advantage which could be derived to my argument from the idea of an abstract tight, as a thing independent of utility,’ by insisting that the utility he regards ‘as the ultimate appeal on all ethical questions.., must be utility in the largest sense, grounded on the permanent interests of a man as a progressive being.’ Once we ask what the force of this ‘must’ is, it begins to look very much as though a moral principle is being adjusted to accommodate an intuition about tights, and unless we have some independent reason for thinking the intuition true, such a procedure is bound to appear unsatisfactory especially when, as in this case, the result of the adjustment is a principle is so vague as to be worthless. 4. CONSEQUENTIALISM CAPTURES THE JUSTIFICATIONS FOR RIGHTS T.M. Scanlon, Prof. of Philosophy, Harvard, CONSEQUENTIALISM AND ITS CRITICS, ed. by Samuel Scbeffler, 1988, p. 74. In attacking utilitarianism one is inclined to appeal to individual rights, which mere considerations of social utility cannot justify as overriding. But rights themselves need to be justified somehow, and how other than by appeal to the human interests their recognition promotes and protects? This seems to be the incontrovertible insight of the classical utilitarians. Further, unless rights are to be taken as defined by rather implausible rigid formulae, it seems that we must invoke what looks very much like the consideration of consequences in order to determine what they rule out and what they allow.

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Utilitarianism Bad UTILITARIANISM USES FAULTY VALUES 1. UTILITARIAN CONSEQUENTIAUSM TURNS US INTO IMMORAL COMPUTERS Philip Pettit, Prof. of Philosophy at Australia National Univ., A COMPANION TO ETHICS, ed. by Peter Singer, 1991, p. 234. The idea behind this charge is that any consequentialist moral theory requires agents to change their deliberate habits in an objectionable fashion. They will have to calculate about every choice, it is said, identifying the different prognoses for every option, the value associated with each prognosis and the upshot of those various values for the value of the option. Doing this, they will be unable to recognize the rights of others as considerations that ought to constrain them without further thought of the consequences; they will be unable to acknowledge the special claims of those near and dear to them, claims that ought normally to brook no calculation: and they will be unable to mark distinctions between permissible options, obligatory options and options of supererogatory virtue. They will become moralistic computers, insensitive to all such nuances. F.H. Bradley made the point nicely in the last century, in Ethical Studies (j). 107). ‘So far as my lights go, this is to make possible, to justify, even to encourage, an incessant practical casuistry; and that, it need scarcely be added, is the death of morality.’ 2. UTILITARIAN CONSEQUENTIALISM DISREGARDS INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS Baruch Brody, Prof. of Ethics at Rice University, ETHICS AND ITS APPLICATIONS, 1983, p. 19. The second objection, then, is that consquentialism does not take into account the existence of individual rights in deciding on moral issues. Similar examples would include any situation involving the right to life, the right to bodily integrity, the right to privacy, and so forth. The traditional morality supports the view that, generally, others may not infringe upon an individual’s rights, even when some social gain could be realized from such infringement. Consequentialism, because it fails to make provisions for individual rights, is unable to do justice to this aspect of morality. 3. UTILITARIANISM DISREGARDS THE INTRINSIC WORTH OF HUMANS James Moreland and Norman Geisler, Profs. of Philosophy, Biola Univ. and Liberty Univ., THE LIFE AND DEATH DEBATE, 1990, p.52. Regarding persons, the (utilitarian) view fails to treat persons as entities with intrinsic value simply as human beings, and it tends to reduce to value of human beings to their social utility or to a view of humans a bundles of pleasant mental and physical states or capacities. But, it can be argued, humans are substances which have mental and physical states, they are not merely a bundle of states themselves, and judgments of value are grounded on humans as substances with inherent moral worth, not on the presence or absence of certain states or capacities. 4. UTILITARIANISM IGNORES MOTIVES James Moreland and Norman Geisler, Profs. of Philosophy, Biola Univ. and Liberty Univ., THE LIFE AND DEATH DEBATE, 1990, p. 15. Finally, rule (and act) utilitarianism is inadequate in its treatment of motives. We praise good motives and blame bad ones. But utilitarianism implies that motives have no intrinsic moral worth. All that matters from a moral point of view is the consequences of actions, not the motives for which they are done. 5. UTILITARIANISM WOULD SANCTION NAZI GENOCIDE James S. Fishkin, Associate Professor of Political Science, Yale University, COLUMBIA LAW REVIEW, January, 1984, p. 265. Perhaps Hare is right that it is difficult to imagine an individual Nazi whose preferences are so intense in favor of the Holocaust that they outweigh, in a strict utilitarian calculation, all the misery they would require. But the utilitarian vulnerability to this kind of case does not require such a horrendous individual utility monster. The problem cannot be dispatched so easily because the desires of numerous individuals must be taken into account. If there are enough Nazis with hatred of even moderate intensity, a strict utilitarian calculation about total preference satisfaction in the society may conceivably support horrendous or tyrannous policies directed against the Jews or other minority groups -- once the numbers and intensities on both sides are summed up throughout the society. 732

UTILITARIANISM IS A FAULTY FRAMEWORK 1. CONSEQUENTIALISM IS AN INFINITE REGRESS Bernard Williams, Prof. of Philosophy, Berkeley, CONSEQUENTIAUSM AND ITS CRITICS, ed. by Samuel Scheffler, 1988, p. 20. No one can hold that everything, of whatever category, that has value, has it in virtue of its consequences. If that were so, one would just go on for ever, and there would be an obviously hopeless regress. That regress would be hopeless even if one takes the view, which is not an absurd view, that although men set themselves ends and work towards them, it is very often not really the supposed end, but the effort towards it on which they set value - that they travel, not really, in order to arrive (for as soon as they arrive they set out for somewhere else), but rather they choose somewhere to arrive, in order to travel 2. UTILITARIANISM DOES NOT MAXIMIZE UTILITY Geoffrey Thomas, Prof. of Philosophy, Birkbeck College, AN INTRODUCTION TO ETHICS, 1993, p. 76. The criticism rests essentially on the idea that certain rules of behavior, and hence assurance of people’s reliability in following them, maximize welfare. These rules are below the level of abstraction of the act-utilitarian principle itself; they are rules of promise-keeping and truth-telling (with whatever exceptions one needs to include in order to make the rules plausibly welfare-maximizing). But, the claim is, these rules count for nothing in society of actutilitarians because, for an act-utilitarian, every situation is to be assessed on its merits. If a situation requires me to break my promise or to lie in order to maximize welfare, that is what I must do as an act-utilitarian. That is, rules of promise-keeping and truth telling do not apply in such a society. Therefore, in the absence of mutual trust, welfare is not maximized. 3. CURRENT PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS REJECTS UTILITARIANISM James S. Fishkin, Associate Professor of Political Science, Yale University, COLUMBIA LAW REVIEW, January, 1984, p. 263. Anglo-American moral and political theory in the twentieth century was premised until quite recently, on “the widely accepted old faith that some form of utilitarianism, if only we could discover the right form, must capture the essence of political morality.” Over the last ten years, this old faith has been largely supplanted by new theories of distributive justice emphasizing the inviolability of individuals and founded on some appeal to impartiality or fairness. 4. UTILITARIANISM IS TOO SIMPLE TO BE VALID Samuel Scheffler, Prof. of Philosophy, UC Berkeley, THE REJECTION OF CONSEQUENTIALISM, 1994, p. 3. Classical utilitarianism, which ranks states of affairs according to the amount of total satisfaction they contain, is the most familiar consequentialist view. But classical utilitarianism is widely though to be too crude a theory. Although its defenders point with approval to its simplicity, critics charge that this simplicity is achieved at too high a cost. They argue that utilitarianism relies on implausible assumptions about human motivation, incorporates a strained and superficial view of the human good, and ignores a host of important considerations about justice, fairness, and the character of human agency. More generally, they accuse utilitarianism of relentless insensitivity to the nature of a person, and suggest that it has forfeited any serious claim to account for the complex and varied considerations that intrude on the moral life, and which give rise to the severest tests of our decency. Indeed, utilitarianism has gained a reputation for moral clumsiness that is unparalleled among ethical theories. Bernard Williams, writing that ‘the simplemindedness of utilitarianism disqualifies it totally,’ suggests that ‘[t]he day cannot be too far off in which we hear no more of it.’

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UTILITARIANISM CANNOT FIND MORALITY 1. GOOD RESULTS DO NOT MAKE AN ACT RIGHT James Moreland and Norman Geisler, Profs. of Philosophy, Biola Univ. and Liberty Univ., THE LIFE AND DEATH DEBATE, 1990, p. 146. Third, the results do not make an act right. Rightness is not conferred by -consequences, but is inherent in the value represented by the ethical rule. An act of well-intended bravery or benevolence is right in and itself, manifest the rightness of an act; they do not make an act right. 2. GOOD ENDS DO NOT JUSTIFY EVIL MEANS James Moreland and Norman Geisler, Profs. of Philosophy, Biola Univ. and Liberty Univ., THE LIFE AND DEATH DEBATE, 1990, p. 146. Fifth, results should never lead us to formulate, change, or break rules known to be based on intrinsic value. For instance, the long-range genetic results of mercy-killing of handicapped persons may be good in that it relieves society of the great burden of caring for them. However, in this sense the end (a genetically more perfect world) does not thereby justify the means (violating the human right to life). It is never right to break a good rule simply to obtain good results. 3. UTILITARIANISM VIOLATES INDIVIDUAL INTEGRITY Geoffrey Thomas, Prof. of Philosophy, Birkbeck College, AN INTRODUCTION TO ETHICS, 1993, p. 77. William’s claim that utilitarianism interferes with the individual’s integrity. Integrity is a matter of commitment to particular projects - a categorical commitment which is not up for negotiation. But utilitarianism puts every particular personal project up for negotiation. It requires us to adopt the course which maximizes value; and in order to perform that action, the individual may have to surrender his commitment to particular projects. And to look at the matter from the other side, integrity may require one not to adopt the course which maximizes value. 4. UTILITARIANISM DISREGARDS INTRINSICALLY GOOD AND BAD ACTS James Moreland and Norman Geisler, Profs. of Philosophy, Biola Univ. and Liberty Univ., THE LIFE AND DEATH DEBATE, 1990, p. 15. At this point, the real difficulty with utilitarianism seems obvious. Contrary to what utilitarianism implies, some acts just appear to be intrinsically good or bad (torturing babies for fun), some rules seem to be intrinsically trivial (what to eat for breakfast) or supererogatory (giving up half your income to the poor) from a moral point of view, not because such acts of praise or blame produce utility, and humans seem to have intrinsic value and rights which ground what is just and unjust treatment regarding them. In our opinion, utilitarianism fails to adequately explain these features of the moral life. 5. UTILITARIANISM FAILS TO RESPECT THE INHERENT WORTH OF INDIVIDUALS Lilly-Marlene Russow, THE HASTINGS CENTER REPORT, May, 1990, p. S4. Despite its obvious appeal, classical utilitarianism has been subject to important criticisms. First, the method of summing up or averaging the good or harm for all concerned is often seen as failing to respect those affected as separate and distinct individuals. For instance, utilitarian theories seem to condone secretly killing someone who contributes no good to society, friends, or family in order to transplant her organs into four or five worthy but dying people. Moreover, hedonism seems too narrow as a full account of “the good”; after all, many people freely forgo pleasure to obtain other things they deem worthy of pursuit.

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UTILITARIANISM SUFFERS FROM SERIOUS THEORETICAL PROBLEMS 1. UTILITARIANISM DOES NOT ACCOUNT FOR SUPEREROGATORY ACTS James Moreland and Norman Geisler, Profs. of Philosophy, Biola Univ. and Liberty Univ., THE LIFE AND DEATH DEBATE, 1990, pp. 14-15. A supererogatory act is one which is not morally obligatory (one is not immoral for failing to do such an act) but which is morally praiseworthy if it is done. A supererogatory act is thus an act of moral heroism done above and beyond the call of moral duty. Examples would be giving up half of one’s income to the poor, throwing oneself on a bomb to save another person, and so on. In each of these cases one could either do the supererogatory act or fail to do it. Either would produce a certain amount of utility, and the option which produced the greater utility would be morally obligatory according to rule (and act) utilitarianism. So supererogatory acts become impossible. But in spite of utilitarianism, such acts not only seem plausible, they sometimes appear to happen. 2. UTILITARIANISM DOES NOT ACCURATELY ASSESS OUR WORLD Ray Billington, Prof. of Ethics, Bristol Polytechnic, LIVING PHILOSOPHY, 1988, p. 135. A further cause for concern lies in the egalitarian view of people which utilitarians insist upon. On the face of it, this sounds fine: ‘Everybody to count for one, nobody for more than one,” wrote Bentham. Mill modified this slightly, though the effect was the same: ‘every person has an equal claim to happiness.’ So far as issues that affect the public are concerned, this is a laudable aim (and to be fair to Bentham and Mill, we should remember that their main concern lay in the field of the social and political reform). The law of the land should be administered impartially: the owner of a Rolls-Royce as likely to get a parking ticket as the owner of a clapped-out Mini; finance ministers should have the whole nation in mind when preparing their budgets, not just a favored minority; access to medical and surgical treatment should be as open to the poor as to the rich. The issue is not whether this utilitarian principle is viable in public life, but whether it accurately reflects the way people view and treat each other. Manifestly, it does not. The fact is that in all our lives there are some people whom we count more highly than others, particularly members of our family and close friends. 3. UTILITARIANISM DISREGARDS SPECIAL RELATIONSHIPS Geoffrey Thomas, Prof. of Philosophy, Birkbeck College, AN INTRODUCTION TO ETHICS, 1993, p. 79. Utilitarianism tells us to maximize utility. It does not allow us, so the criticism runs, to allocate utility favorably to those with whom we have a special relationship. But ordinary moral views do allow this. William Godwin’s graphic case of Archbishop Fenelon versus My Mother’ is supposed to show this counter-intuitive deliverance of utilitarianism here. In Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, Godwin poses a dilemma: in a burning building, I can rescue either my mother or, a more general benefactor to humanity, the scholarly Archbishop. (Since Godwin was a militant atheist, the example is not without irony.) Hurl your relative into the flames, Godwin says, and save the Archbishop. Where utility requires no less, conscience should require no other. 4. UTILITARIAN CONSEQUENTIALISM DISREGARDS SPECIAL OBLIGATIONS Baruch Brody, Prof. of Ethics at Rice University, ETHICS AND ITS APPLICATIONS, 1983, p. 19. The point of this example is to illustrate a major objection to consequentialism - that it does not account for the fact that we have special obligations to certain people, such as family and friends, individuals to whom we have made promises, those who have helped us in the past to whom we are grateful, and so on. These special obligations, it seems, often require us to put the interests of these individuals before the interests of strangers. Consequentialism, however, would have us weigh the interests of everyone equally. So this first objection is that consequentialism is inadequate as a moral theory because it fails to take into account our special moral obligations to people with whom we have a special relation.

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Utopia Good UTOPIANISM PROMOTES BENEFICIAL SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION 1. UTOPIANISM FOSTERS A BELIEF IN AND A PATH TO A BETTER FUTURE John W. Delicath, Researcher in Critical Ecology Theory, EARTHTALK, 1996, p. 156. Society and nature must be regarded as something to be made. We need a vision of utopia that will take us forward and make us active participants in an ecological future of our own making. This is the rationale behind a theory of utopia as dialogue and the commitment to utopian rhetorics. Establishing the search for ecotopia as the goal of "radical environmentalism" creates a unique context for effective Earthtalk. Utopian rhetorics not only serve as a reminder that society can change, but they also foster a belief that the future can be different than it is. 2. UTOPIAN IDEA LEADS TO TRANSFORMATION OF SOCIETY John W. Delicath, Researcher in Critical Ecology Theory, EARTHTALK, 1996, p. 155. Here, I draw upon Angelika Bammer's concept of utopia as process. As a process, utopia is continuously defined as dialogue, debate and artistic creation. A theory of utopia as a process of dialogue presents the future as one in the making, being crafted by the cooperative interaction of humans with humans and of humanity with the natural environment. Such a conceptualization allows for a diversity of approaches while promoting certain goals because it holds them open for interpretation, definition and a variety of strategies for achieving them. A commitment to utopian rhetorics operates on the assumption that society is continuously transformed by the interaction of humans and their natural environment, utopian rhetorics are premised on the idea that society can and does change. 4. UTOPIAN UNDERSTANDING ASSISTS US IN FINDING THE BEST POSSIBLE WORLD Paul Edwards, Editor In Chief, THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY, 1967, p. 215. Third is the contribution of utopian literature to general sociology. The great utopias--Plato's Republic and Laws, the relevant parts of Aristotle's Politics, More's Utopia, Campanella's The City of the Sun, Morella's Code de la Nature, the writings of Saint-Simon and Fourier, HG Wells' A Modern Utopia--incorporate a great deal of sociological wisdom. Common to these and other utopias is the ideal of the integration of social institutions in its most intense versions, utopian harmony. To utopian writers no habit or practice seems innocent of significance for the proper maintenance of the utopian society. Utopian writers are therefore constantly pointing out connections between things that appear unrelated. This attentiveness to detail is complemented by a sense of proportion. Part of utopian analysis consists in the attempt to identify the major characteristics of society and to demonstrate how they act on one another and how each must be adjusted to the others if the best possible world is to be attained. 5. UTOPIANISM RESPECTS DIVERSITY, LEADS TO TRANSFORMATION John W. Delicath, Researcher in Critical Ecology Theory, EARTHTALK, 1996, p. 155. A theory of utopia as dialogue allows us to place the goal of a utopia up for debate while allowing for a diversity of utopian forms, functions and contents, all of which are designed, in one way or another, to facilitate the transformation of society. Utopia as dialogue would see the utopian project as one in the making. In Bookchin's words, it is "an interchange of utopian views that still awaits". As a processual dialogue, utopianism would recognize a diversity of forms, functions and contents. The search for ecotopia would embrace utopianism in a variety of forms, from motion pictures to political programs, in order to perform a range of functions, from consciousness raising to critique and design of political and economic institutions, all of which would be promoted by a diversity of perspectives.

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UTOPIANISM IS GENERALLY DESIRABLE 1. SEVERAL BENEFITS TO HUMANITY COME FROM UTOPIANISM Paul Edwards, Editor In Chief, THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY, 1967, p. 215. Apart from their place in history, of what use are the works of Utopianism? The utopian tradition is made up of grand uninhabited places--grand imaginary structures that may amuse the realist if they do not fill him with contempt. In the long series of utopian writings, is there, however, something of enduring value, all questions of application aside? There are, in fact, several benefits conferred by utopianism. As already noted, a cause of utopian writing is playful delight in the act of imagining the social reality. This delight can be answered by pleasure taken in the results of that playfulness. The standards for judging a utopia from this point of view are primarily aesthetic-plausible novelties in the projected way of life, clever and ingenious details, daring departures from customary practices. The inner coherence of the utopia matters more than any closeness to probability, although naturally too much strain on belief weakens the pleasure. Admiration for the skill of the utopian writer can be mixed with gratitude for being allowed to live another life vicariously. No stimulus to make one's own better need be felt. This may make the utopian enterprise somewhat precious, but it can be a source of ideal intellectual satisfaction even to the most conservative temperaments. The utopian works of HG Wells are famous for their power to gratify the taste of sampling different worlds, however else they may instruct. 2. UTOPIANISM CREATES CONDITIONS FOR HUMAN HAPPINESS John W. Delicath, Researcher in Critical Ecology Theory, EARTHTALK, 1996, p. 159. Utopia is a distinctly humanistic enterprise. Utopias maintain faith in the ability of humanity to construct an ideal society. They are founded in the belief that the future is ours for the making. Indeed, the utopia often holds humanity responsible for the task of constructing the future. Matthew Plattel argues that "the utopian imagination is born from man's desire to bring about his own happiness by his own creative endeavors. Utopian thought is essentially humanistic insofar as it implies an act of faith in man and doesn't start from the premise that man's life is immutably fixed." 3. UTOPIANISM HELPS CREATE AN ECOLOGICALLY FRIENDLY SOCIETY John W. Delicath, Researcher in Critical Ecology Theory, EARTHTALK, 1996, p. 156. Utopianism opens up the dialogue on the environment and makes possible the introduction of new issues into the debate. A utopian dialogue and its commitment to utopian rhetorics shift the grounds of the debate in such a way that emphasizes both the desire for and the possibility of an ecological society. By operating on the assumption that restructuring society is not only a possibility, but a necessity, utopian rhetorics move the discussion to one that concerns the nature and direction of an ecological society. 4. EVEN IF THE GENERAL PUBLIC IS OPPOSED TO IT, UTOPIANISM IS A MUST John W. Delicath, Researcher in Critical Ecology Theory, EARTHTALK, 1996, p. 154. Martin Lewis may be correct to suggest that the "anarchic utopianism that marks the dominant strains of radical environmentalism stands little chance of gaining public acceptance. Yet this need not mean that we should reject utopian rhetorics. Utopianism is uniquely relevant and important to "radical environmentalism's" struggle to reconstruct society along ecological lines. What is called for is a way to appropriate utopian discourse in a manner capable of mobilizing creative energies and offering empowering visions of an ecological future. For "radical environmentalists" to make the most effective use of utopian discourse it will be necessary to retheorize both utopian and ecological thought. It is my contention that utopia should be seen as a dialogue and that "radical environmentalists" must make a commitment to adopt utopian rhetorics.

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Utopia Bad UTOPIANISM IS UNDESIRABLE 1. TRYING FOR HEAVEN ON EARTH LEADS TO HELL ON EARTH Karl Popper, Professor of Philosophy, THE OPEN SOCIETY AND ITS ENEMIES, 1952, p. 164. Aestheticism and radicalism must lead us to jettison reason, and to replace it by a desperate hope for political miracles. This irrational attitude, which springs from an intoxication with dreams of a beautiful world is what I call Romanticism. It may seek its heavenly city in the past or in the future; it may preach 'back to nature' or 'forward to a world of love and beauty'; but its appeal is always to our emotions rather than to reason. Even with the best intentions of making heaven on earth it only succeeds in making it a hell--that hell which man alone prepares for his fellowmen. 2. UTOPIANISM NEGLECTS PRACTICAL ACTION Karl Popper, Professor of Philosophy, THE OPEN SOCIETY AND ITS ENEMIES, 1952, p. 154. The Utopian approach may be described as follows. Any rational action must have a certain aim. It is rational in the same degree as it pursues its aim consciously and consistently, and as it determines its means according to this end. To choose the end is therefore the first thing we have to do if we wish to act rationally; and we must be careful to determine our real and ultimate ends, from which we must distinguish clearly those intermediate or partial ends which actually are only means or steps along the way to the ultimate end. If we neglect this distinction, then we must also neglect to ask whether those partial ends are likely to promote the ultimate end and accordingly, we must fail to act rationally. These principles, if applied to the realm of political activity, demand that we must determine our ultimate political aim, or the Ideal State, before taking any practical action. Only when this ultimate aim is determined, in rough outlines at least, only when we are in the possession of something like a blueprint of the society at which we aim, only then can we begin to consider the best ways and means of its realization, and to draw up a plan for practical action. 3. EVEN IF ONE PERSON HAS A PERFECT IDEA, UTOPIA WILL STILL FAIL Karl Popper, Professor of Philosophy, THE OPEN SOCIETY AND ITS ENEMIES, 1952, p. 157. Another difficulty of Utopian engineering is related to the problem of the dictator's successor. In chapter 7 I have mentioned certain aspects of this problem. Utopian engineering raises a difficulty analogous to, but even more serious than, the one which faces the benevolent tyrant who tries to find an equally benevolent successor. The very sweep of such a Utopian undertaking makes it improbable that it will realize its ends during the lifetime of one social engineer, or group of engineers. And if the successors do not pursue the same ideal, then all of the suffering of the people for the sake of the ideal may have been in vain. 4. PIECEMEAL REFORM MORE LIKELY TO BE SUPPORTED THAN UTOPIAN CHANGE Karl Popper, Professor of Philosophy, THE OPEN SOCIETY AND ITS ENEMIES, 1952, p. 155-6. In favor of this method, the piecemeal engineer can claim that a systematic fight against suffering and injustice and war is more likely to be supported by the approval and agreement of a great number of people than the fight for the establishment of some ideal. The existence of social evils, that is to say, social conditions under which many men are suffering, can be comparatively well-established. those who suffer can judge for themselves, and the others can hardly deny that they would not like to change places. It is infinitely more difficult to reason about an ideal society. Social life is so complicated that few men, or none at all, could judge a blueprint for social engineering on the grand scale; whether it be practicable; whether it would result in a real improvement; what kind of suffering it may involve; and what may be the means for its realization. As opposed to this, the blueprints for piecemeal engineering are comparatively simple. They are blueprints for single institution health and unemployed insurance, for instance, for arbitration courts or antidepression budgeting or educational reform. If they go wrong, the damage is not very great, and a readjustment not very difficult. They are less risky, and for this reason less controversial.

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UTOPIANISM DESTROYS FREEDOM 1. UTOPIANISM LEADS TO DICTATORSHIP Karl Popper, Professor of Philosophy, THE OPEN SOCIETY AND ITS ENEMIES, 1952, p. 156. As opposed to that, the Utopian attempt to realize an ideal state, using a blueprint of society as a whole, is one which demands a strong centralized rule of the few, and which is therefore likely to lead to a dictatorship. This I consider a criticism of the Utopian approach; for I have tried to show, in the chapter on the Principle of Leadership, that an authoritarian rule is a most objectionable form of government. 2. UTOPIAN DICTATORSHIPS WILL NOT BE BENEVOLENT DICTATORSHIPS Karl Popper, Professor of Philosophy, THE OPEN SOCIETY AND ITS ENEMIES, 1952, p. 156. Some points not touched upon in that chapter furnish us with even more direct arguments against the Utopian approach. One of the difficulties faced by a benevolent dictator is to find whether the effects of his measures agree with his good intentions. The difficulty arises out of the fact that authoritarianism must discourage criticism; accordingly, the benevolent dictator will not easily hear of complaints concerning the measures he has taken. But without some check, he can hardly find out whether his measures achieve the desired benevolent aim. 3. UTOPIANISM EXCLUDES ALL DISSENT Karl Popper, Professor of Philosophy, THE OPEN SOCIETY AND ITS ENEMIES, 1952, p. 156-7. The situation must become even worse for the Utopian engineer. The reconstruction of society is a big undertaking which must cause considerable inconvenience to many, and for a considerable span of time. Accordingly, the Utopian engineer will have to be deaf to many complaints; in fact, it will be part of his business to suppress unreasonable objections. But with it, he must invariably suppress reasonable criticism also. 4. WHAT APPEARS UTOPIAN TO ONE GENERATION WON'T TO THE NEXT Karl Popper, Professor of Philosophy, THE OPEN SOCIETY AND ITS ENEMIES, 1952, p. 157. A generalization of this argument leads to a further criticism of the Utopian approach. This approach, it is clear, can be of practical value only if we assume that the original blueprint, perhaps with certain adjustments, remains the basis of the work until it is completed. But that will take some time. It will be a time of revolutions, both political and spiritual, and of new experiments and experience in the political field. It is therefore to be expected that ideas and ideals will change. What had appeared the ideal state to the people who made the original blueprint may not appear so to their successors. If that is granted, then the whole approach breaks down. 5. DISAGREEMENTS REGARDING UTOPIA WILL LEAD TO VIOLENCE Karl Popper, Professor of Philosophy, THE OPEN SOCIETY AND ITS ENEMIES, 1952, p. 158. Any difference of opinion between Utopian engineers must therefore lead, in the absence of rational methods, to the use of power instead of reason, i.e. to violence. If any progress in any definite direction is made at all, then it is made in spite of the method adopted, not because of it. The success may be due, for instance, to the excellence of the leaders; but we must never forget that excellent leaders cannot be produced by rational methods, but only by luck.

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Utopian Thinking Good UTOPIAN THINKING IS GOOD FOR SOCIETY 1. UTOPIAS LEAD THE WAY TO A BETTER FUTURE Vincent Geoghegen, Author, Lanham University, UTOPIANISM AND MARXISM, 1987, p. 2 Utopia can be see as the good alternative, the outline of a better future, an ought’ to the current ‘is’. The possibility of such a future helps undermine the complacency and overcome such a future helps undermine the complacency and overcome the inertia of existing society be showing that it is neither eternal nor archetypal but merely one form amongst many. This need not lead to teleology (i.e. this is your future), for the alternative has many shapes. A past utopia, for example, may be considered impossible or undesirable but none the less be thought to contain gold-bearing seams; or a utopia might be devised as a type of mental game playing with possibilities and exploring hypotheses; or it might be used to speculate about the fate or destiny of specific social groups. 2. UTOPIANISM CAN DO IT ALL, THERE IS NO END TO ITS USES! Krishan Kumar, Author, UTOPIANISM, 1991, p. 98 Utopia has to be dissociated from its putative embodiment in various practices. there is plenty for it to do other than write party manifestos or ‘recipes for the cookshops of tomorrow’ (Marx’s slighting but misapplied comment on utopias). It can satirize and criticize; it can clarify standards and expectations; it can conduct thoughtexperiments, to try out new possible arrangements of social life; it can pick out and protect hopeful trends, reworking them in a picture of future society that draws us on by the force of its imaginative realization. By its very extremism and one-sideness, by the force and simplicity of its message, it can not only ‘refurbish values and renew their impact on society’ but it can also inject new values into the life of the community. It can keep alive the ‘principle of hope’. It can serve as an imaginative reminder of the nature of historical change’, by insisting, ‘as a matter of general principle, that temporarily and locally incredible changes can and do happen. And it can contribute to that change by ‘the education of desire’. It can open the way to aspiration because utopias can ‘teach desire to desire, to desire better, to desire more, and above all to desire in a different way’. Such a striving may, in utopia’s most general effect, be open ended, the desire simply for something radically other. But utopia can also direct us to concrete, specific forms of the future. It can be, as Wells claimed, a form of sociology, ‘knowledge rendered imaginatively’, where the focus is on all the attempts, past, present and in an imagined future, to realize the harmonious ‘Social Idea’ in human civilization. 3. UTOPIAS ACT AS INSPIRATIONAL VEHICLES FOR SOCIETY Kerry S. Walters, Author, THE SANE SOCIETY IDEAL IN MODERN UTOPIANISM, 1989, p. 67 Utopias, on the other hand, are deliberate attempts to ‘transcend” both “objective” reality and currently existent ideological structures. They make no claim to either metaphysical privilege or universal validity. They are imaginary speculations about what the character of a nonideological social matrix might be. In separating themselves from the total ideological structure, they both criticize its shortcomings and offer for consideration alternative models, but do so with full knowledge that these alternative models do not exist, are not representative of a “real” state of affairs. They are not illusory in the same way that ideologies are, because they are not deceived about their own characters. They are imaginary and claim only to serve as inspirational vehicles for the construction of a new society. They are “selfconscious” transcendent ideas, whereas ideological structures might be described as ‘blind’ or “unconscious” ones.

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UTOPIANISM IS KEY TO THE SURVIVAL OF OUR SPECIES 1. A MAP OF THE WORLD WITHOUT UTOPIANISM IS NOT WORTH GLANCING AT Krishan Kumar, Author, UTOPIANISM, 1991, p. 107 Utopia confronts reality not with a measured assessment of the possibilities of change but with the demand for change. This is the way the world should be. It refuses to accept current definitions of the possible because it knows these to be part of the reality that is seeks to change. In its guise as utopia, by the very force of its imaginative presentation, it energizes reality, infusing it, as Paul Tillich has said, with ‘the power of the new’. To some this has always appeared an abandonment rather to illusion and wish-fulfillment, to irresponsible fantasy in the face of the real world. But there are different ways of grasping reality. What we call illusions are often, in truth, a wider vision of past and present realities - a willing movement of a man’s soul with the larger sweep of the world’s forces - a movement towards a more assured end than the chances of a single life. Wilde was right; ‘A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at.’ 2. LARGE NUMBERS OF SOCIETY SUPPORT UTOPIAS Kerry S. Walters, Author, THE SANE SOCIETY IDEAL IN MODERN UTOPIANISM, 1989, p. 68 The broader representaionality of bona fide utopian models is an important facet which is often overlooked by commentators upon the utopian project. All too often, the assumption is that utopian visions are primarily solitary, isolated productions which in no fundamental way enjoy the support of large segments of the population until after their initial appearance (if, of course, even then). Mannheim argues that this is an inversion of the real situation. Those forms of social knowledge which he designates as utopian depend for their very appearance upon widespread dissatisfaction with existent ideological forms, in addition to a common intuition about the character of alternative models. Utopian thought forms, in short, are social products, as is all knowledge for Mannheim. That they can serve as competitors and eventual replacements of ideological structures points to the fact that they are perceived by increasingly large segments of a given society’s population to be more representative of their interests than ideological thought forms. 3. UTOPIANISM GIVES MANKIND INSPIRATION Ruurd Veldhuis, Author, REALISM VERSUS UTOPIANISM?, 1975, p. 149 We may start by noting the advantage which utopia has in comparison with abstract ethical theory. If an explicit utopia sounds reasonable enough to convince us of its desirability, if it manages, for example, to combine what is morally desirable with the principle of pleasure in an attractive way, it will make a greater impression than an abstract moral admonition in terms of lofty ideals and imperatives could do. People seem to need a vision to inspire them with moral ardor and courage. This is basically a psychological function of utopia. 4. THE QUEST FOR UTOPIA PUSHES PEOPLE TOWARD A BEITER FUTURE John Joseph Marsden, Author, MARXIAN AND CHRISTIAN UTOPIANS, 1991, p. 13 The perception of the individual as an active subject, and of the constitutive role of human consciousness in transforming society, suggests the need for socialism to cultivate utopian aspirations. The vision of a new society nurtures a form of consciousness which calls into question the existing social order, and which is enthused by the prospect for change. Images of the future evoke the desire for their fulfillment, and challenge people to work for their realization. Through their power to inspire, they act like a magnet, drawing people toward the other and better future.

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Utopianism Bad UTOPIANISM CAN NEVER BE ACHIEVED 1. UTOPIANISM IS A THING OF THE PAST DUE TO MODERN THINKING Maurice J. Meisner, Author, MARXISM, MAOISM, AND UTOPIANISM, 1982, p. 8 But if the utopians had been socially critical and historically progressive in their times, their time now had passed. With the emergence of mature capitalism and a mature modern proletariat - and with the appearance of Marxian “scientific socialism” as the “theoretical expression of the proletarian movement” -the persistence of the utopian socialist mode of thought had become a barrier to the working class movement and its socialist mission. As Marx put it: “...although the originators of these (utopian socialist)systems were, in many respects, revolutionary, their disciples have, in every case, formed reactionary sects. They hold fast by the original views of their masters, in opposition to the progressive historical development of the proletariat.” It was not the ends the utopian socialists sought that made them “utopian” in the Marxist sense, but rather the inadequacy of the means proposed to achieve those ends. This incongruity between means and ends in utopian socialist ideologies, according to Marx, was a function of history, or more precisely, a reflection of the conditions of historical underdevelopment which originally gave rise to those ideologies. Indeed, the Marxist critique of utopian socialism is essentially a criticism of the failure of the utopians to understand the workings of modem history, neither recognizing the restrains that history imposes nor appreciating the potentialities that history offers. 2. UTOPIAS ARE NO PLACE Maurice J. Meisner, Author, MARXISM, MAOISM, AND UTOPIANISM, 1982, p. 13 “Utopia,”, both “the good place” and “no place.” For the most part, Western scholars prefer the latter meaning and ignore the former. That which is “utopian,” as the term is commonly used, is that which is unrealizable in principle. And it therefore follows that those who strive to achieve “the impossible” are, at best, hopeless daydreamers in search of “no place,” or more often than not, dangerous fanatics driven to irrational actions. It is very much in the main-stream of contemporary Western thought and scholarship to contrast (and condemn) the “utopian” mode of thinking against that celebrated as “rational,” ”realistic,” “sober,” ‘empirical” and “pragmatic” Thus we are constantly warned to beware of the danger of utopian visions and messianic prophecies intruding into the practical and secular realm of politics, and we are encouraged to applaud the demise of utopian aspirations and ideologies, and to deplore their survivals and revivals. The widespread acceptance of the profoundly antiutopian writings of J.L. Talmon, Norman Cohn, Hannah Arendt, Karl Poper, Adam Ulam, and those associated with the school of thought which proclaimed (prematurely, it would seem) “the end of ideology,” testifies to the dominant Western scholarly view that utopian strivings are not only futile endeavors to reach “no place,” but also politically dangerous and historically pernicious. 3. UTOPIANISM FAILS TO TRANSCEND REALITY Kerry S. Walters, Author, THE SANE SOCIETY IDEAL IN MODERN UTOPIANISM, 1989, p.58 A genuine utopian form is recognized not merely by an awareness of its “transcendent” character, since, after all, ideologies are likewise “transcendent.” Rather, a utopian is differentiated from an ideological model by virtue of what it does. And the functions of the two forms are quite distinct. Mannbeim’s distinction between the two models is as follows: (a utopian) state of mind in experience, in thought, and in practice, is oriented towards objects which do not exist in the actual situation. However, we should not regard as utopian every state of mind which is incongruous with and transcends the immediate situation (and in this sense, “departs from reality”). Only those orientations transcending reality will be referred to by us as utopian which, when they pass over into conduct, tend to shatter, wither partially or wholly, the order of things prevailing at the time. In limiting the meaning of the them “utopia” to that type of orientation which transcends reality and which at the same time breaks the bonds of the existing order, a distinction is set between the utopian and the ideological states of mind. This distinction between utopias and ideologies, then, is based upon the difference in the “concrete effectiveness~~ or “realization” of each. Ideologies, as we saw in the previous section, are networks of transcendent ideas which de facto fail to instantiate their appropriate social agendas, a failure which is directly linked to the totalizing nature of their world views.

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A UTOPIAN FANTASYLAND WOULD DESTROY THE HUMAN RACE 1. UTOPIANISM IS A FANTASYLAND Maurice J. Meisner, Author, MARXISM, MAOISM, AND UTOPIANISM, 1982, p. 3 The ambiguity of “utopia” - at once suggesting the grandeur of striving to reach “the good place” and the futility of searching for “no place” - reflects the ambiguity inherent in utopian modes of thought and their ambiguous relationship to history. For utopias are the products of trans-historical moral ideals, and the relationship between oral demands and historical realities is a most tenuous and uncertain one. Utopia, the perfect future that men wish for, and history, the imperfect future that men are in the process of creating, do not correspond. And it is the consciousness of that lack of correspondence which gives utopian thought its sense of moral pathos and its historical ambiguity. Morally, utopia may the “the food place,” but historically it may be “no place”. 2. UTOPIANISM IS ONLY EMPTY FANTASIZING Maurice J. Meisner, Author, MARXISM, MAOISM, AND UTOPIANISM, 1982, p. 7 Such utopian images of the future communist society, however scattered and fragmentary in the writings of Marx and Engels, form an essential component of Marxist theory - and one that is essential for understanding the appeals of Marxism in the modern world. Although one can hardly imagine a more idyllic utopian vision that Marx’s picture of the “all-round” communist man creatively and cooperatively realizing his fully human potentialities “just as (he has) a mind,” Marx nevertheless condemned as “utopian” in the Marxist vocabulary refers at best to idle and empty fantasizing about the future, and more often than not, to reactionary ideologies opposed to the progressive demands of history and the necessity of class struggle. 3. UTOPIANISM WOULD MARK THE END OF THE HUMAN RACE AS WE KNOW IT Ruurd Veldhuis, Author, REALISM VERSUS UTOPIANISM?, 1975, p. 90 For Leszek Kolakowske, too, utopia leads to ‘totalitarian coercion’. He is above all concerned that the utopian striving for perfect equality and perfect harmony among humans leads to the suppression of the conflict and diversity that are an inescapable and enriching part of human life. A feasible utopian world must presuppose that people have lost their creativity and freedom, that the variety of human life forms and thus the personal life have been destroyed, and that all of mankind has achieved the perfect satisfaction of needs and accepted a perpetual deadly stagnation as its normal conditions. Such a world would mark the end of the human race as we know it and as we define it.

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Violence Good VIOLENCE IS NEEDED TO STOP STATE OPPRESSION 1. REVOLUTIONARY CHANGE NECESSITATES VIOLENCE IN THE TRANSITION Gary Leupp, Assistant Professor of History at Tufts University, MONTHLY REVIEW, March 1993, p. 26. Yet many on the U.S. left and in “human rights organizations” do not applaud but rather condemn Peru’s ongoing revolutionary process, saving their most denunciatory rhetoric not for the bourgeois state, its Sincbi death squads, paramilitary forces, and international allies, but for Sendero and its People’s Guerrilla Army. Their pained references to the revolutionary violence in Peru remind me of Mao’s characterization of ‘even quite revolutionary-minded people” who, in hearing of the Hunan peasant revolt of 1926, could only describe it as “terrible.” Nonsense, argued Mao. Revolution always means exceeding “proper limits”; it means “to create terror for awhile” to overthrow the power of the gentry, who after all have “for ages.. .used their power to tyrannize over the peasants and trample them underfoot.” 2. VIOLENCE IS EFFECTIVE AS A BASIC PA1TERN OF SOCIAL CHANGE William H. Sewell, Jr., Presenter at the University of Michigan Symposium, Politics and Society, December 1990, p. 528. The theoretical perspective has an important methodological implication. Incidents of collective violence riots, scuffles between crowds and police, violent demonstrations, and brawls between rival groups are much more likely to find their way into the historical record than ordinary, nonviolent collective activities. If it is true that collective violence grows out of day-to-day loyalties, habits, values, and patterns of organization, the relatively well recorded violent events can be used as a kind of tracer for collective action and loyalties in general. This makes the study of collective violence a far more important task of sociology and social history than it would seem to be if we accepted the pathological” approach. Violent events, rather than being a series of curiosities occasionally thrown off by society in its basically orderly course of development, become indicators of the basic power struggles and, I would add, of the fundamental loyalties that determine the very shape of the social order. Tily has demonstrated that the study of collective violence leads straight to the most basic processes of social change. 3. SAYING THAT VIOLENCE SHOULDN’T BE USED ENDORSES THE STATE Gary Leupp, Assistant Professor of History at Tufts University, MONTHLY REVIEW, March 1993, p. 26. Any suggestion that the revolutionary violence of the oppressed and their leadership even violence that is in specific instances excessive, mistaken, or misdirected is somehow morally equivalent to, or worse than, the reactionary violence of the bourgeois state, implicitly constitutes an endorsement of the bourgeois state. 4. EMPIRICALLY, CITIZENS USE VIOLENCE TO FIGHT STATIST AND CAPITALIST ABUSES William H. Sewell, Jr., Presenter at the University of Michigan Symposium, Politics and Society, December 1990, p. 528. But the state whose gradual and inexorable rise is traced by incidents of collective violence is a state that consistently favored capitalism. In Tilly’s account, capitalism and the rise of the state, although distinct processes, are tightly intertwined. Many of the classic forms of Tilly’s ‘reactive’ violence are directed as much against capitalist intrusion favored or fostered by the State as against state control per Se. Take, for example, the grain riot, probably the most important type of reactive violence in the eighteenth and much of the nineteenth centuries. Grain riots typically took place at a time of high grain prices when the sufficiency of local supply was threatened by the shipment of grain to other areas, particularly to Paris where it could fetch a higher price. In the grain riots, local people would seize grain being stored by local merchants and farmers or would block barges or wagons loaded with grain to be transported out of the area. Once the grain had been seized, it was usually sold to local people at a “just price in other words, at considerably below its market value. The grain riot was at once a protest against the local officials’ unwillingness or inability to carry out their traditional role of assuring local people’s access to local grain supplies and a protest against the extension of market principles into the realm of subsistence--an extension fostered by the state in order to assure provisioning of grain-short regions and above all of Paris.

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VIOLENCE HELPS THOSE WHO ARE OPPRESSED 1. VIOLENT ACTIONS HELP THE POOR AND POWERLESS ORGANIZE William H. Sewell, Jr., Presenter at the University of Michigan Symposium, POLITICS AND SOCIETY, December 1990, p. 535-6. Generally speaking, violent actions were the recourse of corporate bodies or of would-be corporate bodies whose privileges lacked clear legal standing. The poor and powerless classes of prerevolutionary France were rarely able to establish full-fledged, officially recognized corporate organizations. Yet when they organized themselves, they did so in corporate forms, and when they acted in defense of their interests, they understood and justified those interests in terms consistent with the overall corporate constitution of society. 2. VIOLENCE IS A MEANS FOR MARGINALIZED PEOPLE TO DEFEND THEIR INTERESTS William H. Sewell, Jr., Presenter at the University of Michigan Symposium, Politics and Society, December 1990, p. 528. Tilly begins from a very different set of assumptions. He sees society as composed of groups with conflicting interests that are held together not by a value consensus or by the reequilibrating motions of a finely tuned social system but by the exercise of economic and political power. He treats conflicts between different groups as an inevitable feature of social life and argues that collective violence typically arises when groups act to defend or extend their own interests however they arc conceived against others. Hence collective violence, far from being an irrational outburst of anemic and disturbed social marginals, is usually the consequence of purposeful collective action of a constituted group of some kind. 3. HISTORICALLY VIOLENCE HAS BEEN USED TO PROTEST ABUSES William H. Sewell, Jr. Presenter at the University of Michigan Symposium, POLITICS AND SOCIETY, December 1990, p. 530-1. Anticapitalist motives are no less important in protests against enclosures, another very common form of eighteenth and nineteenth century collective violence. In this case the rural poor invaded meadows or forests that had been enclosed by landlords. In doing so, they were affirming traditional collective rights of the village community that were suppressed when landlords claimed formerly common land as their property. Once again, this extension of capitalist claims had been fostered by the state, which hoped thereby to encourage innovations and increase agricultural production. In other words, long before the so-called “bourgeois revolution” of 1789, the state seems commonly to have acted in French villages as a promoter of capitalist development and as an enemy of the collective rights of the poor.

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VIOLENCE IS JUSTIFIED IN APPROPRIATE CIRCUMSTANCES 1. VIOLENCE CAN SOMETIMES ONLY BE DEFEATED BY COUNTERVIOLENCE THE BALTIMORE SUN, July 23, 1994, p. 6A. In the keynote speech, Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel, a Free Democrat, accused Ms. Scharping’s party of a false pacifism and drawing the wrong lessons from the Holocaust. Unfortunately, the lesson to be drawn from the Nazi era is that violence can often only be defeated by counter-violence,” Ms. Kinkel said. “Or should the Allies have stood idly by during Hitler’s aggression? 2. AMERICAN HISTORY PROVES VIOLENCE CAN BE JUSTIFIED Carol Bradley, Reporter, quoting Bart Gordon and Jim Cooper, Democratic Representatives from Tennessee, GANNETT NEWS SERVICE, June 26, 1990, np. American history is littered with examples of our own violence,” said Cooper, of Shelbyville, after hearing the deputy president of the African National Congress address a joint session of Congress. The Boston Tea Party, the Revolutionary War - there are loads of examples. We don’t have clean hands on that subject.” It’s certainly not preferable,” added Gordon, of Murfreesboro. “But if there is a last resort ... as (Mandela) pointed out, in our American revolution violence was necessary for American colonies to become free. 3. CERTAIN VALUES MUST BE DEFENDED WITH VIOLENCE Nelson Mandela, African Political Lcader, as quoted by Carol Bradley, reporter, GANNE1T NEWS SERVICE, June 26, 1990, Np. Equality, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are fundamental human rights which are not only inalienable but must, if necessary, be defended with the weapons of war. 4. LIBERATION THEOLOGISTS BELIEVE THE OPPRESSED CAN USE VIOLENCE FOR JUSTICE Kenneth Freed, Staff Writer, LOS ANGELES TIMES, October 9, 1990, p. Hi. The two Jesuit priests carry no guns, but they are forces, major ones, in the decade-long war by the radical leftist Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front against the armed forces and the oligarchic government of the country. Ponseele and Velazquez are the advance guard, the personification, of one of the Roman Catholic Church’s most controversial movements -- liberation theology, a 22-year-old philosophy founded in the belief that economic, social and political oppression are sins that can be eradicated only when the oppressed seize control of their own destiny, even if that means with a gun. 5. VIOLENCE AS A RESPONSE TO OPPRESSION IS GOOD VIOLENCE Kenneth Freed, Staff Writer, Los Angeles Times, October 9, 1990, p. Hi. A major influence on such priestly involvement was a theme developed by Ellacuria, the slain theologian, who argued that there are two kinds of violence, that of ‘the unjust oppressor, which is the original aggressive violence,’ and the ‘violence performed on behalf of the oppressed, the violence with which God punishes the unjust oppressor on this ~... good violence.’

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Violence Bad VIOLENCE IS WRONG 1. VIOLENCE DESTROYS THE END-STATE OF ANY SOCIETY Derrick Pike, Anarchist movement theoretician, ANARCHO-PACIFISM: QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS, p. 18-9. It is only in the field of human relationships that we do not behave in a scientific manner - at least those who use violence do not. But we want to produce an opulent and just society inhabited by good people who care for one another so we must take into account the relationship between ends and means, we must be scientific. And that means we cannot use any form of force to achieve our ideals because to do so is to proceed in a direction which is the very opposite of where we want to go. We shall make the wrong changes in people and society. We shall produce bad people instead of good, and we shall produce a bad society instead of a good one. 2. JUSTIFICATIONS FOR VIOLENCE ARE GROUNDLESS AND ABSURD Leo Tolstoy, Author, LETTER TO A HINDU, as quoted in THE PACIFIST CONSCIENCE, edited by Peter Mayer, 1966, p. 171. The third scientific’ justification of violence, the most prominent, and, unfortunately, the most widespread, is, in reality, the oldest religious justification very slightly changed in aspect It runs as follows: In social life the use of violence against some for the welfare of many is inevitable; therefore however desirable love amongst people may be, coercion is indispensable. The difference between the justification of violence by pseudo-science and that of pseudo-religion lies in the different answers that they give to the question ‘Why such and such people, and not others, have the right to decide whom violence may, and must, be used against’ - science does not say that these decisions are just because they are pronounced by personages who possess a divine power - but that these decisions represent the will of the people, which under a constitutional form of government, is supposed to express itself in all the decisions and actions of those who, at any given time, are in power. Such are the scientific justifications of coercion, which arc not only groundless but simply absurd; but they are so necessary to people occupying privileged positions that they as implicitly believe in them and as confidently propagate them, as they formerly did the doctrine of the immaculate conception. 3. VIOLENCE CAN NEVER HAVE A GOOD END BECAUSE THE MEANS ARE CORRUPT Derrick Pike, Anarchist movement theoretician, ANARCHO-PACIFISM: QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS, p. 40. To make the social change we need, we must understand the real nature of humanity and our present society. We must know that people are not innately evil but have to be debased before they can be made to act evilly. We must realize that just as a bad society can make people evil so a good society can make them good. And to produce the good society use must be made of the relationship between ends and means. The end we want can never justify the means we use because the means we use determine the end we get. So we must always advance directly towards our goal. We shall not start by destroying and imitating the behaviour of those who oppose us. That is why we must always be non-violent rather than violent No ideals whether in war or revolution can ever be achieved by violence.

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VIOLENCE IS HARMFUL 1. VIOLENCE CAUSES GREAT HUMAN TRAGEDY Adin Ballou, Author and co-founder of the New England Non-resistance society, as quoted in THE PACIFIST CONSCIENCE, edited by Peter Mayer, 1966, p. 130-1. It has been held justifiable and necessary, for individuals of nations to inflict any amount of injury which would effectually resist a supposed greater injury. The consequence has been universal suspicion, defiance, armament, violence, torture and bloodshed. The earth has been rendered a vast slaughterfield - a theatre of reciprocal cruelty and vengeance - strewn with human skulls, reeking with human blood, resounding with human groans, and steeped with human tears. Men have become drunk with mutual revenge; and they who could inflict the greatest amount of injury, in pretended defence of life, honor, rights, property, institutions and laws, have been idolized as the heroes and rightful sovereigns of the world. Non-resistance explodes this horrible delusion; announces the impossibility of overcoming evil with evil; and, making its appeal directly to all the injured of the human race, enjoins on them, in the name of God, never more to resist injury with injury; assuring them that by adhering to the law of love under all provocations, and scrupulously suffering wrong, rather than inflicting it, they shall gloriously ‘overcome evil with good’, and exterminate all their enemies by turning them into faithful friends. 2. VIOLENT RESISTANCE MULTIPLIES VIOLENCE Mohandas Gandhi, Indian leader, as quoted in THE PACIFIST CONSCIENCE, edited by Peter Mayer, 1966, p. 214. In my humble opinion, non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good. But in the past, noncooperation has been deliberately expressed in violence to the evil doer. I am endeavoring to show to my countrymen that violent non-cooperation only multiplies evil and that as evil can only be sustained by violence, withdrawal of support of evil requires complete abstention from violence. Non-violence implies voluntary submission to the penalty for non-cooperation with evil. 3. VIOLENCE DESTROYS ANY POSSIBILITY OF EGALITARIAN SOCIETY Derrick Pike, Anarchist movement theoretician, ANARCHO-PAC1FISM: QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS, p. 19. We shall make the wrong changes in people because since humans are not naturally aggressive (See the answer to Question 8) their characters have to be debased before they will exert force on their fellow creatures and perhaps kill them. Their characters are further debased when they exert the force. But we do not want debased human beings: we want improved human beings. So we have gone in the wrong direction and finished with characters we do not want. Similarly with our society. To use violence, people have to be organized, directed, and often forced to take part in it. Now, there is only one form of social pattern where this is all possible: the state. Organized violence needs the state just as the state needs organized violence. So again if we use violence we have gone in the wrong direction and finished up with the kind of society we do not want. We do not want a hierarchical society; we want an egalitarian society where no power is exerted. 4. VIOLENCE BREEDS WORSE VIOLENCE Derrick Pike, Anarchist movement theoretician, ANARCHO-PACIFISM: QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS, p. 19. And violence breeds violence. People who are defeated harbour thoughts of revenge and retaliation so that as soon as possible they rebel and perhaps fight again in order to rectify what they consider to be a wrong. Each side of a conflict initiates the violence in turn and each time the violence is used it escalates.

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VIOLENCE DOES NOT TRANSFORM SOCIETY FOR THE BETTER 1. THERE ARE MANY REASONS NOT TO USE VIOLENCE, EVEN IN REVOLUTION Derrick Pike, Anarchist movement theoretician, ANARCHO-PACIFISM: QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS, p. 19. There are many other reasons why we must not use violence either in revolution or war. For example, violence changes in the wrong way the character not only of ourselves but also of our enemies. So they too have characters which are the very opposite of those we desire. 2. VIOLENCE PERPETUATES THE STATE SYSTEM, WHICH IS AT THE ROOT OF VIOLENCE Derrick Pike, Anarchist movement theoretician, ANARCHO-PACIFISM: QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS, p. 30. When people make war they put everyone in danger not only directly in the war itself but also indirectly because they perpetuate the state system which causes all wars (it also produces criminals, terrorists, and soldiers who rape).For the same reason, people must not fight in a revolution. If they join a revolutionary group they will find that their violence is used for a purpose which is very different from the one they expect. They will also find that they have maintained the state pattern of society which made the revolution necessary in the first place (see the answer to Question 6). So refusing to fight in wars and revolutions is the most important aspect of pacifism. If we want to protect our relatives, we must renounce mass violence which puts them in danger. It is because pacifists want to defend their families that they will not fight. 3. VIOLENT REVOLUTIONS CAN’T PRODUCE AN IDEAL SOCIETY Derrick Pike, Anarchist movement theoretician, ANARCHO-PACIFISM: QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS, p. 39-40. Many anarchists and other revolutionaries feel trapped into having to use violence because they know of no alternative. Seeing the injustice, poverty, and violence in society, and believing that no other method for changing society is practical, they feel that a change can be made only by using violence to abolish their government or the state. “What else can we do,” they ask, “but change our social conditions by violence?” They know that social evils can be eliminated only by producing the ideal society but they wrongly imagine that violence is the way to produce it. 4. VIOLENCE IS COUNTERPRODUCTIVE IN CREATING THE IDEAL SOCIETY Derrick Pike, Anarchist movement theoretician, ANARCHO-PACIFISM: QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS, p. 41. There are yet other reasons why we must not use any form of force to make the revolutionary change. We cannot force people to live in the ideal society. To try to do so would mean that limitless violence would have to be used continuously. Fortunately, there is no need to use force because when people understand that it is to their advantage to live in an ideal society, they will be only too ready to do so. Likewise, there is no need to use violence to destroy our present society. The rulers have no power of any kind except that which is given them by the people. It is the ruled themselves who man the police, the security forces, and the armed services. So in order to deprive the rulers of their power, there is no need to take it from them; all we have to do is to refuse to give it to them. 5. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO USE VIOLENCE TO CREATE A NON-VIOLENT SOCIETY Derrick Pike, Anarchist movement theoretician, ANARCHO-PACIFISM: QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS, p. 40. We must, of course, at the start have some idea of the kind of society we want to create. Then knowing it, we must, as far as possible behave as if we were already in it. This will tell us how to behave. We shall do nothing we would not do in the ideal society. We must take no part in the activities of any group if such a group would not exist in the ideal. This means that we shall take no part in governmental violence nor shall we join a group to practice violence ourselves.

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NON-VIOLENCE IS SUPERIOR TO VIOLENCE 1. NONVIOLENT RESISTANCE SUBDUES VIOLENT PEOPLE Richard Gregg, Author, Moral Jiu-Jitsu, as quoted in THE PACIFIST CONSCIENCE, edited by Peter Mayer, 1966, p. 2256. Thus nonviolent resistance acts as a sort of moral jiujitsu. The nonviolence and goodwill of the victim act in the same way that the lack of physical opposition by the user of physical jiujitsu, does, causing the attacker to lose his moral balance. He suddenly and unexpectedly loses the moral support which the usual violent resistance of most victims would render him. He plunges forward, as it were, into a new world of values. He feels insecure because of the novelty of the situation and his ignorance of how to handle it. He loses his poise and self-confidence. The victim not only lets the attacker come, but, as it were, pulls him forward by kindness, generosity and voluntary suffering, so that the attacker loses his moral balance. The user of nonviolent resistance, knowing what he is doing and having a more creative purpose, keeps his moral balance. He uses the leverage of a superior wisdom to subdue the rough direct force of his opponent. 2. NONVIOLENCE SOLVES VIOLENT CONFUCT Richard Gregg, Author, Moral Jiu-Jitsu,-- as quoted in THE PACIFIST CONSCIENCE, edited by Peter Mayer, 1966, p. 225-6. Another way to state it is that between two persons in physically violent combat there may appear to be complete disagreement, but in reality they conduct their fight on the basis of a strong fundamental agreement that violence is a sound mode of procedure. Hence, if one of the parties eliminates that basic agreement, announcing by his actions that he has abandoned the method used by his ancestors almost as early as the beginning of animal life, it is no wonder that the other is startled and uncertain. His instincts no longer tell him instantly what to do. He feels that he has plunged into a new world. Just as in jiujitsu, violence itself helps to overthrow its user. 3. NON-VIOLENCE IS BEST TO CHANGE THE OPPRESSED AND THE OPPRESSOR Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., as quoted in THE PACIFISTS CONSCIENCE, edited by Peter Mayer, 1966, p. 407. So the nonviolent approach does not immediately change the heart of the oppressor. It first does something to the hearts and souls of those committed to it. It gives them new self-respect; it calls up resources of strength and courage that they did not know they had. Finally, it reaches the opponent and so stirs his conscience that reconciliation becomes a reality. 4. NON-VIOLENT RESPONSES TO VIOLENCE ARE MORE EFFECTIVE Richard Gregg, Author, Moral Jiu-Jitsu,-- as quoted in THE PACIFIST CONSCIENCE, edited by Peter Mayer, 1966, p. 225-6. If one man attacks another with physical violence and the victim hits back, the violent response gives the attacker a certain reassurance and moral support. It shows that the position of violence on the victim’s scale of moral values is the same as that of the attacker. A mere display of either fear or anger by the victim is sufficient to have this effect. It makes the attacker sure of his own savoir-faire, of his choice of methods, of his knowledge of human nature and hence of his opponent. He can rely on the victim to react in a definite way. The attacker’s morale is sustained, his sense of values is vindicated. But suppose the assailant, using physical violence, attacks a different sort of person. The attitude of this new opponent is fearless, calm, steady, because of a different belief, training, or experience he has much self-control. He does not respond to the attacker’s violence with counterviolence. Instead, be accepts the blows good-temperedly, stating his belief as to the truth of the matter in dispute, asking for an examination of both sides of the dispute, and stating his readiness to abide by the truth. He offers resistance, but only in moral terms. He states his readiness to prove his sincerity by his own suffering rather than by inflicting suffering on the assailant. He accepts blow after blow, showing no signs of fear or resentment, keeping steadily good-humored and kindly in look of eye, tone of voice, and posture of body and arms. To violence he opposes nonviolent resistance. The assailant’s first thought may be that his opponent is afraid of him, that he is a coward, ready to give way and acknowledge defeat. But the opponent’s look and posture show not fear but courage. His steady resistance of will reveals no subservience. His unflinching endurance of pain is startling, particularly because, as F. C. Bartlett has pointed out, ‘it is easier and requires less courage to attack than to withstand fire without retaliation.’

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Western Rights Good BUDDHIST and WESTERN RIGHTS ARE COMPATIBLE 1. BUDDHIST RIGHTS DOCTRINE IS UNIVERSAL Kenneth Inada, Professor at SUNY-Buffalo, ASIAN PERSPECTIVES ON HUMAN RIGHTS, 1990, p. 91. Alone among the great systems of Asia, Buddhism has successfully crossed geographical and ideological borders and spread in time through out the whole length and breadth of known Asia. Its doctrines are so universal and profound that they captured the imagination of ail the peoples they touched and thereby established a subtle bond with all. What then is this bond? It must be something common to all systems of thought which opens up and allows spiritual discourse among them. 2. CAN RECONCILE WESTERN WITH BUDDHIST IDEA OF RIGHTS Kenneth Inada, professor at SUNY-Buffalo, ASIAN PERSPECTIVES ON HUMAN RIGHTS, edited by Claude E.Welch, Jr., and Virginia A. Leary, 1990, p. 91. An apparent sharp rift seems to exist between the Western and Buddhist views, but this is not really so. Actually, it is a matter of perspectives and calls for a more comprehensive understanding of what takes place in ordinary human relationships. For the basic premise is still one that is focused on human beings intimately living together in the selfsame world. A difference in perspectives does not mean non communication or a simple rejection of another's view, as there is still much more substance in the nature of conciliation, accommodation and absorption than what is initially thought of. Here we propose two contrasting but interlocking and complementary terms, namely, "hard relationship" and "soft relationship." 3. BUDDHIST RIGHTS ARE “SOFT” WESTERN RIGHTS ARE “HARD” Kenneth Inada, Professor at SUNY-Buffalo, ASIAN PERSPECTIVES ON HUMAN RIGHTS, 1990, p. 91. By contrast, the Buddhist view of human rights is based on the assumption that human beings are primarily oriented in soft relationships; this relationship governs the understanding of the nature of human rights. Problems arise, on the other hand, when a hard relationship becomes the basis for treating human nature because it cannot delve deeply into that nature itself and functions purely on the peripheral aspects of things. It is another way of saying that a hard relationship causes rigid and stifling empirical conditions to arise and to which we become invariably attached. 4. BUDDHIST “SOFT” RIGHTS COMPATIBLE WITH HARD RIGHTSKenneth Inada, Professor at SUNY-Buffalo, ASIAN PERSPECTIVES ON HUMAN RIGHTS, 1990, p. 91. A soft relationship has many facets. It is the Buddhist way to disclose a new dimension to human nature and behavior. It actually amounts to a novel perception or vision of reality. Though contrasted with a hard relationship, it is not in contention with it. If anything, it has an inclusive nature that "softens," if you will, all contacts and allows for the blending of any element that comes along, even incorporating the entities of hard relationships. This is not to say, however, that soft and hard relationships are equal or ultimately identical. For although the former could easily accommodate and absorb the latter, the reverse is not the case. Still, it must be noted that both belong to the same realm of experiential reality and in consequence ought to be conversive with each other The non-conversive aspect arises on the part of the "hard" side and is attributable to the locked-in character of empirical elements which are considered to be hard stubborn facts worth perpetuating. But at some point, there must be a break in the lock, as it were, and this is made possible by knowledge of and intimacy with the "soft" side of human endeavors. For the "soft" side has a passive nature characterized by openness, extensiveness, depth, flexibility, absorptiveness, freshness and creativity simply because it remains unencumbered by "hardened" empirical conditions.

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