The Isaac Card

Weigh consequences. Moral absolutism reproduces evil. Isaac 2 — Jeffrey C. Isaac, James H. Rudy Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center for the Study of Democracy and Public Life at Indiana University-Bloomington, 2002 (“Ends, Means, and Politics,” Dissent, Volume 49, Issue 2, Spring, Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via EBSCOhost, p. 35-36) As writers such as Niccolo Machiavelli, Max Weber, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Hannah Arendt have taught, an unyielding concern with moral goodness undercuts political responsibility . The concern may be morally laudable, reflecting a kind of personal integrity, but it suffers from three fatal flaws: (1) It fails to see that the purity of one’s intention does not ensure the achievement of what one intends. Abjuring violence or refusing to make common cause with morally compromised parties may seem like the right thing; but if such tactics entail impotence, then it is hard to view them as serving any moral good beyond the clean conscience of their supporters; (2) it fails to see that in a world of real violence and injustice , moral purity is not simply a form of powerlessness; it is often a form of complicity in injustice. [end page 35] This is why, from the standpoint of politics—as opposed to religion—pacifism is always a potentially immoral stand. In categorically repudiating violence, it refuses in principle to oppose certain violent injustices with any effect; and (3) it fails to see that politics is as much about unintended consequences as it is about intentions; it is the effects of action , rather than the motives of action, that is most significant . Just as the alignment with “good” may engender impotence, it is often the pursuit of “good” that generates evil. This is the lesson of communism in the twentieth century: it is not enough that one’s goals be sincere or idealistic; it is equally important , always , to ask about the effects of pursuing these goals and to judge these effects in pragmatic and historically contextualized ways. Moral absolutism inhibits this judgment . It alienates those who are not true believers. It promotes arrogance . And it undermines political effectiveness. What Is The Isaac Card Really About?

Weigh consequences — especially when responding to terrorism. Isaac 2 — Jeffrey C. Isaac, James H. Rudy Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center for the Study of Democracy and Public Life at Indiana University-Bloomington, 2002 (“Ends, Means, and Politics,” Dissent, Volume 49, Issue 2, Spring, Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via EBSCOhost, p. 35-37) As writers such as Niccolo Machiavelli, Max Weber, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Hannah Arendt have taught, an unyielding concern with moral goodness undercuts political responsibility . The concern may be morally laudable, reflecting a kind of personal integrity, but it suffers from three fatal flaws: (1) It fails to see that the purity of one’s intention does not ensure the achievement of what one intends. Abjuring violence or refusing to make common cause with morally compromised parties may seem like the right thing; but if such tactics entail impotence, then it is hard to view them as serving any moral good beyond the clean conscience of their supporters; (2) it fails to see that in a world of real violence and injustice , moral purity is not simply a form of powerlessness; it is often a form of complicity in injustice. [end page 35] This is why, from the standpoint of politics—as opposed to religion—pacifism is always a potentially immoral stand. In categorically repudiating violence, it refuses in principle to oppose certain violent injustices with any effect; and (3) it fails to see that politics is as much about unintended consequences as it is about intentions; it is the effects of action , rather than the motives of action, that is most significant . Just as the alignment with “good” may engender impotence, it is often the pursuit of “good” that generates evil. This is the lesson of communism in the twentieth century: it is not enough that one’s goals be sincere or idealistic; it is equally important , always , to ask about the effects of pursuing these goals and to judge these effects in pragmatic and historically contextualized ways. Moral absolutism inhibits this judgment . It alienates those who are not true believers. It promotes arrogance . And it undermines political effectiveness. [THE ISAAC CARD USUALLY ENDS HERE] What would it mean for the American left right now to take seriously the centrality of means in politics? First, it would mean taking seriously the specific means employed by the September 11 attackers—terrorism. There is a tendency in some quarters of the left to assimilate the death and destruction of September 11 to more ordinary (and still deplorable) injustices of the world system — the starvation of children in Africa, or the repression of peasants in Mexico, or the continued occupation of the West Bank and Gaza by Israel. But this assimilation is only possible by ignoring the specific modalities of September 11. It is true that in Mexico, Palestine, and elsewhere, too many innocent people suffer, and that is wrong . It may even be true that the experience of suffering is equally terrible in each case. But neither the Mexican nor the Israeli government has ever hijacked civilian airliners and deliberately flown them into crowded office buildings in the middle of cities where innocent civilians work and live, with the intention of killing thousands of people. Al-Qaeda did precisely this. That does not make the other injustices unimportant. It simply makes them different . It makes the September 11 hijackings distinctive , in their defining and malevolent purpose—to kill people and to create terror and havoc. This was not an ordinary injustice. It was an extraordinary injustice . The premise of terrorism is the sheer superfluousness of human life. This premise is inconsistent with civilized living anywhere. It threatens people of every race and class , every ethnicity and religion . Because it threatens everyone , and threatens values central to any decent conception of a good society , it must be fought . And it must be fought in a way commensurate with its malevolence. Ordinary injustice can be remedied. Terrorism can only be stopped. Second, it would mean frankly acknowledging something well understood, often too eagerly embraced, by the twentieth century Marxist left—that it is often politically necessary to employ morally troubling means in the name of morally valid ends . A just or even a better society can only be realized in and through political practice; in our complex and bloody world, it will sometimes be necessary to respond to barbarous tyrants or criminals, with whom moral suasion won’t work. In such situations our choice is not between the wrong that confronts us and our ideal vision of a world beyond wrong. It is between the wrong that confronts us and the means—perhaps the dangerous means—we have to employ in order to oppose it. In such situations there is a danger that “realism” can become a rationale for the Machiavellian worship of power. But equally great is the danger of a righteousness that translates, in effect, into a refusal to act in the face of wrong. What is one to do? Proceed with caution. Avoid casting oneself as the incarnation of pure goodness locked in a Manichean struggle with evil. Be wary of violence. Look for alternative means when they are available, and support the development of such means when they are not. And never sacrifice democratic freedoms and open debate. Above all, ask the hard questions about the situation at hand, the means available, and the likely effectiveness of different strategies. Most striking about the campus left’s response to September 11 was its refusal to ask these questions. Its appeals to “international law” were naive. It exaggerated the likely negative consequences of a military response , but failed to consider the consequences of failing [end page 36] to act decisively against terrorism. In the best of all imaginable worlds, it might be possible to defeat al-Qaeda without using force and without dealing with corrupt regimes and political forces like the Northern Alliance. But in this world it is not possible. And this, alas, is the only world that exists . To be politically responsible is to engage this world and to consider the choices that it presents. To refuse to do this is to evade responsibility . Such a stance may indicate a sincere refusal of unsavory choices. But it should never be mistaken for a serious political commitment. Problems With Isaac Card?

Isaac is wrong — he’s demanding an all-out War on Terror. How’s that going? Steger 2 — Manfred B. Steger, Associate Professor of Politics & Government at Illinois State University, holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Rutgers University, 2002 (“Ends, Means, and the Politics of Dissent: Reply to Jeffrey C. Isaac,” Dissent, Volume 49, Issue 2, Spring, Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via EBSCOhost, p. 74-75) Idealizing “Realist Politics” Another reason for the systemic distortion and marginalization of the campus left’s pacifism is the widespread idealization of so-called “realist politics.” Throughout his article, Isaac adopts the questionable metaphysical assumptions that underlie the realist paradigm : “In the best of all imaginable worlds, it might be possible to defeat al-Qaeda without using force and without dealing with corrupt regimes and political forces like the Northern Alliance. But [end page 74] in this world it is not possible. And this, alas, is the only world that exists.” Note how Isaac claims for himself the same omniscient vantage point that he so dislikes in the campus left. This arrogant spirit of ontological absolutism pervades his essay. Here is another example: “To accomplish anything in the political world, one must attend to the means that are necessary to bring it about.” Of course, having defined what counts as the “political world,” Isaac employs the term “necessary” to imply war-like activities. In short, the only way to fight terrorism is to declare a large-scale war on it, thus fighting violence with greater violence. Anybody challenging Isaac ’s conclusions or his underlying realist metaphysics is naïve , unpragmatic , vague , irrational , an accomplice of terrorism , and—this is my favorite charge—out of touch with the “preoccupations and opinions of the vast majority of Americans.” Isaac’s cheap rhetorical appeal to “common sense,” is, indeed, an embarrassing move for an intellectual descendent of the gadfly Socrates who contributes regularly to a progressive magazine titled Dissent. The idealization of realism is very much part of the dominant ideology of violence . Once people accept that large-scale war constitutes the only “realistic” response to September 11, then its many failings are easily shrugged off as “unavoidable byproducts” or “collateral damage,” while its often meager achievements are blown out of proportion to maintain the public’s faith in the effectiveness of violence. A truly “realistic” evaluation of the retaliatory violence employed by the United States and its allies in the war on terrorism reveals the remarkable ineffectiveness of the violent method. What has actually been achieved? We toppled the Taliban regime, but the fighting in Afghanistan hasn’t come to an end. We killed between a thousand and thirty-seven hundred Afghan civilians. The oppressive situation for Afghan women has improved only marginally. The example of a large-scale “war on terrorism” has been copied by various regimes to justify aggressive action against “subversives.” Take, for example, conflicts in Israel/Palestine, India/Pakistan, Colombia, Central Asian republics, and so on. Although the war on terrorism costs U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars, our government has steadily expanded it to other parts of the world. The United States has struck questionable alliances with groups and nations that are profoundly undemocratic and have long records of human rights abuses. Civil rights and liberties in our country are being undermined in the name of national security— think of the 2001 Patriot Act. Finally, Osama bin Laden, Ayman al- Zawahiri, Mullah Omar, and other leading Taliban and al-Qaeda members have not been captured. This is by no means a great scorecard for the violent method, but because large-scale war is supposedly the only “realistic” course of action, most Americans tolerate the failures of our military response. Let me emphasize, finally, that I agree with Isaac’s assertion that finding a proper relationship between means and ends is the most difficult challenge for both political thinkers and activists. Contrary to his account, however, I believe that the pacifist campus left has played a constructive role by countering realist mainstream arguments that favor an all-out war on terrorism . This overreliance on military means has only pulled us further into the apocalyptic scenario of terrorist strikes, counterstrikes, and deepening misery. It has also contributed to the rapid buildup of a national security regime that threatens our liberties and democratic arrangements . Isaac’s pigeonholing of the pacifist campus left is wrong ; on balance, its members have expressed morally nuanced opinions and offered pragmatic alternative strategies.

The War on Terror has killed more than 1.3 million people. Wilkins 15 — Brett Wilkins, Editor-at-Large for U.S. News at Digital Journal, 2015 (“Doctors' group says 1.3 million killed in U.S. 'War on Terror',” Digital Journal, March 25th, Available Online at http://www.digitaljournal.com/news/world/study-1-3-million-killed-in-usa-war-on-terror/article/429180, Accessed 06-21- 2015) A group of international physicians' organizations has published a study concluding US-led wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan have killed more than 1.3 million people. The Nobel Prize-winning International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, along with Physicians for Social Responsibility and Physicians for Global Survival have released a report titled "Body Count: Casualty Figures after 10 Years of the 'War on Terror.'" The study examined direct and indirect deaths caused by more than a decade of US-led war in three countries, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, but did not include deaths in other countries attacked by American and allied military forces, including Yemen, Somalia, Libya and Syria. The study noted that while the United States closely monitors casualty figures for allied troops—4,804 coalition deaths in Iraq; 3,485 in Afghanistan, the number of civilians and enemy combatants killed by US and allied forces is " officially ignored ." The IPPNW investigation , which scoured the results of individual studies and data published by United Nations organizations , government agencies and n on- g overnmental o rganization s , concluded the ongoing war "has, directly or indirectly, killed around 1 million people in Iraq, 220,000 in Afghanistan and 80,000 in Pakistan." " The figure is approximately 10 times greater than that of which the public, experts and decision makers are aware," the study's authors write. " And this is only a conservative estimate . The total number of deaths in the three countries... could also be in excess of 2 million." Does Isaac Respond To..?

1. The affirmative says “a modest increase in the risk of terrorism is acceptable in order to protect Americans’ privacy rights because the probability of harm from terrorism is much lower than the probability of harm from violating privacy.” The negative says “util — Isaac.” Does that make sense?

2. The affirmative says “the ends (reducing the risk of terrorism) don’t justify the means (violating privacy rights) because fundamental rights are side constraints when weighing costs and benefits.” The negative says “util — Isaac.” Does that make sense?

3. The affirmative says “violations of the Constitution can never be justified by appeals to ‘the greater good’ because doing so renders Constitutional law meaningless.” The negative says “util — Isaac.” Does that make sense?

4. The affirmative says “the bigotry advantage outweighs the terrorism DA because social justice is more important than security.” The negative says “util — Isaac.” Does that make sense?

5. The affirmative says “our poverty advantage outweighs the terrorism DA because increased poverty creates a miserable quality of life for millions of people.” The negative says “util — Isaac.” Does that make sense? Is This The Same As Isaac, part one?

Life is the highest value because it makes possible all other values. Blair 85 — Paul St. F. Blair, Xavier University, 1985 (“The Randian Argument Reconsidered: A Reply to Charles King,” Reason Papers: A Journal of Interdisciplinary Normative Studies, Issue 10, Spring, p. 95-96, Available Online at http://www.mises.org/reasonpapers/pdf/10/rp_10_7.pdf, Accessed 02-22-2006) ***We apologize for the gendered language The demonstration that life is the ultimate value has not yet been accomplished, however. The argument for man's life as his ultimate value begins with the recognition that beings whose action is self-sustaining, living beings, face the alternative of continuing to exist as self-sustaining or of failing to do so. Being alive means having one's existence as the fundamental object of one's action— life is the [end page 95] ultimate value for beings that are alive. Ceasing to be alive , on the other hand, means no longer having any values at all, as has been seen above. A living being must both act to sustain its life and succeed in doing so if its action is to be called self-sustaining. Acting with the goal of sustaining one's life is, therefore, a necessary but not necessarily sufficient condition for a successful life. If a being's life is made up of all of the self-generated, self-sustaining actions that it takes, then each action taken implies that a portion of that being's life is conditional upon that action. Every alternative a being faces thus exists only in so far as its life is contingent. Since all evaluation must be made in terms of some contingent goal, then it may be said that all alternatives open to a living being are evaluated (subjectively) with respect to the fundamental alternative of life or death. An ultimate value for a living being, then, is something that that being cannot help but to act to gain and/or keep, even if its action does not in fact attain that goal. The action of a living being is judged according to whether it does in fact reach that goal. Insofar as man is concerned, choice is involved in valuation, so that a man's actions are judged by whether he has chosen to take the proper means toward achieving his ultimate goal. The status of Rand's ultimate value for man now becomes evident: by whatever standard a man consciously judges what is good, all of these standards in fact ultimately reduce to "man's life," the objective ultimate value for man. This does not mean that man will always follow the objectively proper course of action-his perceptions of the proper means to achieve this end may be mistaken or mutually contradictory. A code of morality is not simply given to man; he must use his reason to discover it. Even should a man know what constitutes the morally proper course of action, he may not understand the reason why; he may thus be open to violating his moral principles in various circumstances. He is still, however, acting in pursuit of "man's life," though not in the right manner. In addition, even if man adopts the proper means, success in reaching his ultimate goal is not guaranteed to him. What is meant here is merely that, in any choice, man chooses what to him at that moment appears to be the means to achieving "man's life." One may therefore conclude with Den Uyl and Rasmussen: Given that life is a necessary condition for valuation, there is no other way we can value something without (implicitly at least) valuing that which makes valuation possible . Paradoxically perhaps, we could value not living any longer, but in making such a value we must nevertheless value life.. . .Therefore, we cannot "suppose" death or anything else (other than life) as the ultimate value, for the very activity of "holding something as a value ," let alone as an ultimate one, depends on life being a n ultimate value in the sense of "ultimate" discussed earlier. Thus there is an inconsistency in the request "prove that life is valuable." The very meaning of "valuable" presupposes the value of life.18 Is This The Same As Isaac, part two?

Reducing existential risk by even a tiny amount outweighs every other impact. The math is conclusively on our side. Bostrom 11 — Nick Bostrom, Professor in the Faculty of Philosophy & Oxford Martin School, Director of the Future of Humanity Institute, and Director of the Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology at the University of Oxford, recipient of the 2009 Eugene R. Gannon Award for the Continued Pursuit of Human Advancement, holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the London School of Economics, 2011 (“The Concept of Existential Risk,” Draft of a Paper published on ExistentialRisk.com, Available Online at http://www.existentialrisk.com/concept.html, Accessed 07-04-2011) Holding probability constant, risks become more serious as we move toward the upper-right region of figure 2. For any fixed probability, existential risks are thus more serious than other risk categories. But just how much more serious might not be intuitively obvious. One might think we could get a grip on how bad an existential catastrophe would be by considering some of the worst historical disasters we can think of—such as the two world wars, the Spanish flu pandemic, or the Holocaust—and then imagining something just a bit worse. Yet if we look at global population statistics over time, we find that these horrible events of the past century fail to register (figure 3). [Graphic Omitted] Figure 3: World population over the last century. Calamities such as the Spanish flu pandemic, the two world wars, and the Holocaust scarcely register. (If one stares hard at the graph, one can perhaps just barely make out a slight temporary reduction in the rate of growth of the world population during these events.) But even this reflection fails to bring out the seriousness of existential risk. What makes existential catastrophes especially bad is not that they would show up robustly on a plot like the one in figure 3, causing a precipitous drop in world population or average quality of life. Instead, their significance lies primarily in the fact that they would destroy the future. The philosopher Derek Parfit made a similar point with the following thought experiment: I believe that if we destroy mankind, as we now can, this outcome will be much worse than most people think. Compare three outcomes: (1) Peace. (2) A nuclear war that kills 99% of the world’s existing population. (3) A nuclear war that kills 100%. (2) would be worse than (1), and (3) would be worse than (2). Which is the greater of these two differences? Most people believe that the greater difference is between (1) and (2). I believe that the difference between (2) and (3) is very much greater. … The Earth will remain habitable for at least another billion years . Civilization began only a few thousand years ago . If we do not destroy mankind, these few thousand years may be only a tiny fraction of the whole of civilized human history . The difference between (2) and (3) may thus be the difference between this tiny fraction and all of the rest of this history . If we compare this possible history to a day, what has occurred so far is only a fraction of a second. (10: 453-454) To calculate the loss associated with an existential catastrophe, we must consider how much value would come to exist in its absence. It turns out that the ultimate potential for Earth -originating intelligent life is literally astronomical. One gets a large number even if one confines one’s consideration to the potential for biological human beings living on Earth. If we suppose with Parfit that our planet will remain habitable for at least another billion years, and we assume that at least one billion people could live on it sustainably, then the potential exist for at least 10 18 human lives . These lives could also be considerably better than the average contemporary human life , which is so often marred by disease, poverty, injustice , and various biological limitations that could be partly overcome through continuing technological and moral progress. However, the relevant figure is not how many people could live on Earth but how many descendants we could have in total. One lower bound of the number of biological human life-years in the future accessible universe (based on current cosmological estimates) is 10 34 years.[10] Another estimate, which assumes that future minds will be mainly implemented in computational hardware instead of biological neuronal wetware, produces a lower bound of 1054 human-brain-emulation subjective life-years (or 1071 basic computational operations).(4)[11] If we make the less conservative assumption that future civilizations could eventually press close to the absolute bounds of known physics (using some as yet unimagined technology), we get radically higher estimates of the amount of computation and memory storage that is achievable and thus of the number of years of subjective experience that could be realized.[12] Even if we use the most conservative of these estimates , which entirely ignore s the possibility of space colonization and software minds, we find that the expected loss of an existential catastrophe is greater than the value of 10 18 human lives . This implies that the expected value of reducing existential risk by a mere one millionth of one percent age point is at least ten times the value of a billion human lives . The more technologically comprehensive estimate of 1054 human-brain-emulation subjective life-years (or 1052 lives of ordinary length) makes the same point even more starkly. Even if we give this allegedly lower bound on the cumulative output potential of a technologically mature civilization a mere 1% chance of being correct , we find that the expected value of reducing existential risk by a mere one billionth of one billionth of one percent age point is worth a hundred billion times as much as a billion human lives. One might consequently argue that even the tiniest reduction of existential risk has an expected value greater than that of the definite provision of any “ordinary” good, such as the direct benefit of saving 1 billion lives. And, further, that the absolute value of the indirect effect of saving 1 billion lives on the total cumulative amount of existential risk—positive or negative—is almost certainly larger than the positive value of the direct benefit of such an action.[13] Does This Help To Clarify?

Reducing existential risk is desirable in every framework—our argument doesn’t require extreme utilitarianism. Bostrom 11 — Nick Bostrom, Professor in the Faculty of Philosophy & Oxford Martin School, Director of the Future of Humanity Institute, and Director of the Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology at the University of Oxford, recipient of the 2009 Eugene R. Gannon Award for the Continued Pursuit of Human Advancement, holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the London School of Economics, 2011 (“The Concept of Existential Risk,” Draft of a Paper published on ExistentialRisk.com, Available Online at http://www.existentialrisk.com/concept.html, Accessed 07-04-2011) We have thus far considered existential risk from the perspective of utilitarianism (combined with several simplifying assumptions). We may briefly consider how the issue might appear when viewed through the lenses of some other ethical outlooks. For example, the philosopher Robert Adams outlines a different view on these matters: I believe a better basis for ethical theory in this area can be found in quite a different direction—in a commitment to the future of humanity as a vast project, or network of overlapping projects, that is generally shared by the human race. The aspiration for a better society—more just, more rewarding, and more peaceful—is a part of this project. So are the potentially endless quests for scientific knowledge and philosophical understanding, and the development of artistic and other cultural traditions. This includes the particular cultural traditions to which we belong, in all their accidental historic and ethnic diversity. It also includes our interest in the lives of our children and grandchildren, and the hope that they will be able, in turn, to have the lives of their children and grandchildren as projects. To the extent that a policy or practice seems likely to be favorable or unfavorable to the carrying out of this complex of projects in the nearer or further future, we have reason to pursue or avoid it. … Continuity is as important to our commitment to the project of the future of humanity as it is to our commitment to the projects of our own personal futures . Just as the shape of my whole life, and its connection with my present and past, have an interest that goes beyond that of any isolated experience, so too the shape of human history over an extended period of the future , and its connection with the human present and past, have an interest that goes beyond that of the (total or average) quality of life of a population-at-a-time , considered in isolation from how it got that way. We owe, I think, some loyalty to this project of the human future . We also owe it a respect that we would owe it even if we were not of the human race ourselves, but beings from another planet who had some understanding of it. (28: 472-473) Since an existential catastrophe would either put an end to the project of the future of humanity or drastically curtail its scope for development, we would seem to have a strong prima facie reason to avoid it, in Adams’ view. We also note that an existential catastrophe would entail the frustration of many strong preferences, suggesting that from a preference-satisfactionist perspective it would be a bad thing. In a similar vein, an ethical view emphasizing that public policy should be determined through informed democratic deliberation by all stakeholders would favor existential-risk mitigation if we suppose, as is plausible, that a majority of the world’s population would come to favor such policies upon reasonable deliberation (even if hypothetical future people are not included as stakeholders). We might also have custodial duties to preserve the inheritance of humanity passed on to us by our ancestors and convey it safely to our descendants.[24] We do not want to be the failing link in the chain of generations , and we ought not to delete or abandon the great epic of human civilization that humankind has been working on for thousands of years, when it is clear that the narrative is far from having reached a natural terminus. Further, many theological perspectives deplore naturalistic existential catastrophes, especially ones induced by human activities: If God created the world and the human species, one would imagine that He might be displeased if we took it upon ourselves to smash His masterpiece (or if, through our negligence or hubris, we allowed it to come to irreparable harm).[25] We might also consider the issue from a less theoretical standpoint and try to form an evaluation instead by considering analogous cases about which we have definite moral intuitions. Thus, for example, if we feel confident that committing a small genocide is wrong, and that committing a large genocide is no less wrong, we might conjecture that committing omnicide is also wrong.[26] And if we believe we have some moral reason to prevent natural catastrophes that would kill a small number of people, and a stronger moral reason to prevent natural catastrophes that would kill a larger number of people, we might conjecture that we have a n even stronger moral reason to prevent catastrophes that would kill the entire human population. Disentangling Moral Theories

What is “utilitarianism”?

What is “consequentialism”?

What is “deontology”?

What is “contractualism”?

The morality of an action can be determined based on its means, ends, or intentions. Define those terms.

If I said that Person A was using Person B as “a means to an end,” what would that mean? What is an example where that would be true?

The neg says “the Constitution is not a suicide pact.” What are they talking about? (see, e.g. Richard Posner) Aff Cards: What Moral Theory?

1. Utilitarian defenses of NSA surveillance are wrong because they conflate efficiency with utility. The case outweighs within a utilitarian framework. Hladik 14 — Casey Hladik, Philosophy Student at Ball State University, citing Alan Rusbridger—Editor of The Guardian newspaper which published articles by Glenn Greenwald and its own reporters about the National Security Agency based on documents leaked by Edward Snowden, and John Stuart Mill—a 19th century British philosopher who wrote the seminal work Utilitarianism, 2014 (“Rusbridger’s ‘The Snowden Leaks and the Public’ and Mill’s Utilitarianism: An Analysis of the Utilitarian Concern of ‘Going Dark’,” Stance, Volume 7, April, Available Online at http://www.bsu.edu/libraries/virtualpress/stance/2014_spring/03Hladik29-40.pdf, Accessed 06-20-2015, p. 38-40) Conclusion What the British and American people gain in security from the surveillance activities of the NSA and GCHQ is modest in comparison to what they lose in security. These practices also strip away their moral rights to privacy and freedoms . The utilitarian appeal put forth by the British and American officials who support these practices has been shown to be unsustainable in a utilitarian framework—largely because they determine the dictates of utility with a fundamental lack of understanding of the pleasures and pains involved. [end page 38] Therefore, according to Mill’s theory of utility, these surveillance programs are expedient rather than ethical. Indeed, Mill writes, there have been many institutions throughout history which have been justified by supposed appeals to utility, only to be condemned later as blatantly unethical . One example which Mill cites is slavery : at one point in the history of the United States, slavery was argued to be a “necessity of social existence” because the social benefits outweighed the drawbacks.36 It has since been clarified, however, that the institution is a violation of the utilitarian paradigm that each ought to receive what he or she justly deserves. Mill writes, “ The entire history of social improvement has been a series of transitions by which one custom or institution after another, from being a supposed primary necessity of social existence, has passed into the rank of a universally stigmatized injustice and tyranny.”37 Indeed, history will show that the mass surveillance programs of the NSA and GCHQ followed the dictates of expedience rather than ethics. This fact is evident in a remark by the head of a British intelligence agency: “There’s nothing in it for us in being more open about what we do.”38 This official is clearly more concerned about the efficiency of his organization than the good of British citizens. Indeed, although the NSA and GCHQ appeal to utilitarianism in attempting to justify their practices, when these practices ( i.e., their consequences ) are critiqued according to the utilitarian framework, it becomes clear that these practices are consistent with efficiency rather than utility . The negative consequences of these activities clearly outweigh the positive ones: the NSA and GCHQ are compromising rather than bolstering security in the United States and Britain, and they are threatening the moral rights promoted in the utilitarian framework rather than protecting them , so they are detracting from the peaceful functioning of society rather than facilitating it. Government officials who approve of the indiscriminate, large-scale spying on American and British citizens by the NSA and GCHQ claim that, if their practices are limited, the world will “go dark” and chaos will ensue. Although the utility behind this argument initially seems compelling , it does not hold . Those who oversee the intelligence organizations are not fully informed as to the pleasures [end page 39] and pains involved, and, hence, their ethical calculus is skewed . In actuality, the negative consequences of these programs outweigh the positive ones. As a result, these programs can be said to be expedient rather than ethical , and they ought to be terminated.

2. The consequences of terrorism don’t justify violations of fundamental freedom — math. Friedersdorf 13 — Conor Friedersdorf, Staff Writer for The Atlantic, 2013 (“The Irrationality of Giving Up This Much Liberty to Fight Terror,” The Atlantic, June 10th, Available Online at http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/06/the-irrationality-of-giving-up-this-much-liberty-to-fight- terror/276695/, Accessed 06-21-2015) As individuals, Americans are generally good at denying al-Qaeda the pleasure of terrorizing us into submission. Our cities are bustling; our subways are packed every rush hour; there doesn't seem to be an empty seat on any flight I'm ever on. But as a collective, irrational cowardice is getting the better of our polity. Terrorism isn't something we're ceding liberty to fight because the threat is especially dire compared to other dangers of the modern world. All sorts of things kill us in far greater numbers . Rather, like airplane crashes and shark attacks, acts of terror are scarier than most causes of death. The seeming contradictions in how we treat different threats suggest that we aren't trading civil liberties for security, but a sense of security. We aren't empowering the national-security state so that we're safer, but so we feel safer. Of course we should dedicate significant resources and effort to stopping terrorism. But consider some hard facts . In 2001, the year when America suffered an unprecedented terrorist attack – by far the biggest in its history – roughly 3,000 people died from terrorism in the U.S. Let's put that in context. That same year in the United States: * 71,372 died of diabetes. * 29,573 were killed by guns. * 13,290 were killed in drunk driving accidents. That's what things looked like at the all-time peak for deaths by terrorism. Now let's take a longer view. We'll choose an interval that still includes the biggest terrorist attack in American history: 1999 to 2010. Again, terrorists killed roughly 3,000 people in the United States. And in that interval, * roughly 360,000 were killed by guns (actually, the figure the CDC gives is 364,483 -- in other words, by rounding, I just elided more gun deaths than there were total terrorism deaths). * roughly 150,000 were killed in drunk-driving accidents. [Graphic Omitted] Measured in lives lost, during an interval that includes the biggest terrorist attack in American history, guns posed a threat to American lives that was more than 100 times greater than the threat of terrorism. Over the same interval, drunk driving threatened our safety 50 times more than terrorism. Those aren't the only threats many times more deadly than terrorism, either. The CDC estimates that food poisoning kills roughly 3,000 Americans every year . Every year, food-borne illness takes as many lives in the U.S. as were lost during the high outlier of terrorism deaths. It's a killer more deadly than terrorism. Should we cede a significant amount of liberty to fight it? Government officials, much of the media, and most American citizens talk about terrorism as if they're totally oblivious to this context – as if it is different than all other threats we face, in both kind and degree. Since The Guardian and other news outlets started revealing the scope of the surveillance state last week, numerous commentators and government officials, including President Obama himself, have talked about the need to properly "balance" liberty and security. The U.S. should certainly try to prevent terrorist attacks, and there is a lot that government can and has done since 9/11 to improve security in ways that are totally unobjectionable. But it is not rational to give up massive amounts of privacy and liberty to stay marginally safer from a threat that, however scary, endangers the average American far less than his or her daily commute . In 2011*, 32,367 Americans died in traffic fatalities. Terrorism killed 17 U.S. civilians that year. How many Americans feared dying in their vehicles more than dying in a terrorist attack? [Footnote (*) moved from end of article: Said Ronald Bailey in a piece published in September of 2011, "a rough calculation suggests that in the last five years, your chances of being killed by a terrorist are about one in 20 million. This compares annual risk of dying in a car accident of 1 in 19,000; drowning in a bathtub at 1 in 800,000; dying in a building fire at 1 in 99,000; or being struck by lightning at 1 in 5,500,000. In other words, in the last five years you were four times more likely to be struck by lightning than killed by a terrorist." Certainly not me! I irrationally find terrorism far scarier than the sober incompetents and irresponsible drunks who surround my vehicle every time I take a carefree trip down a Los Angeles freeway. The idea that the government could keep me safe from terrorism is very emotionally appealing. But intellectually, I know two things: * America has preserved liberty and privacy in the face of threats far greater than terrorism has so far posed (based on the number of people actually killed in terrorist attacks), and we've been better off for it. * Ceding liberty and privacy to keep myself safe from terrorism doesn't even guarantee that I'll be safer! It's possible that the surveillance state will prove invasive and ineffective. Or that giving the state so much latitude to exercise extreme power in secret will itself threaten my safety. I understand, as well as anyone, that terrorism is scary. But it's time to stop reacting to it with our guts, and to start reacting with our brains, not just when we're deciding to vacation in Washington or New York, but also when we're making policy together as free citizens. Civil libertarians are not demanding foolish or unreasonable courage when they suggest that the threat of terrorism isn't so great as to warrant massive spying on innocent Americans and the creation of a permanent database that practically guarantees eventual abuse. Americans would never welcome a secret surveillance state to reduce diabetes deaths, or gun deaths, or drunk-driving deaths by 3,000 per year. Indeed, Congress regularly votes down far less invasive policies meant to address those problems because they offend our notions of liberty. So what sense does it make to suggest, as Obama does, that "balancing" liberty with safety from terrorism – which kills far fewer than 3,000 Americans annually – compels those same invasive methods to be granted, in secret, as long as terrorists are plotting? That only makes sense if the policy is aimed at lessening not just at wrongful deaths, but also exaggerated fears and emotions**. Hence my refusal to go along. Do you know what scares me more than terrorism? A polity that reacts to fear by ceding more autonomy and power to its secret police.

3. Constitutional rights can’t be “outweighed” on the basis of cost-benefit analysis. This is especially important in the context of terrorism. Cole 7 — David Cole, Professor at Georgetown University Law Center, has litigated many significant constitutional cases in the Supreme Court, holds a J.D. from Yale Law School, 2007 (“Book Review: The Poverty of Posner's Pragmatism: Balancing Away Liberty After 9/11 (Review of Richard A. Posner’s Not A Suicide Pact: The Constitution In A Time Of National Emergency),” Stanford Law Review (59 Stan. L. Rev. 1735), April, Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via Lexis-Nexis) II. The Disappearing Constitution The general problem with Posner's approach is that it does away with the animating idea of the Constitution - namely, that it is a form of collective precommitment . The genius behind the Constitution is precisely the recognition that "pragmatic" cost-benefit decisions of the type Posner favors will often appear in the short term to favor actions that in the long term are contrary to our own best principles . Just as we may be tempted to smoke a cigarette tonight [*1746] even though in the long term we are likely to suffer as a result, so we know collectively that in the short term we are likely to empower government to suppress unpopular speech, invade the privacy of "dangerous" minorities, and abuse suspected criminals, even though in the long term such actions undermine the values of free speech, equality, and privacy that are necessary to democracy and human flourishing . If we were always capable of rationally assessing the costs and benefits in such a way as to maximize our collective well-being, short-term and long-term, we might not need a Constitution. But knowing that societies, like individuals, will be tempted to act in ways that undermine their own best interests , we have precommitted to a set of constitutional constraints on pragmatic balancing . Posner's view that the Constitution must bend to the point of authorizing virtually any initiative that seems pragmatic to him reduces the Constitution to a precommitment to balance costs and benefits, and that is no precommitment at all. Constitutional theory demands more than ad hoc balancing. n27 While the nature of competing interests means that at some level of generality, a balance must be struck, constitutional analysis is not an invitation to the freewheeling , all-things-considered balance of the economist. Instead, it requires an effort, guided by text, precedent, and history, to identify the higher principles that guide us as a society , principles so important that they trump democracy itself (not to mention efficiency). The judge's constitutional duty was perhaps best captured by Justice John Marshall Harlan, writing about the due process clause: Due process has not been reduced to any formula; its content cannot be determined by reference to any code. The best that can be said is that through the course of this Court's decisions it has represented the balance which our Nation, built upon postulates of respect for the liberty of the individual, has struck between that liberty and the demands of organized society. If the supplying of content to this Constitutional concept has of necessity been a rational process, it certainly has not been one where judges have felt free to roam where unguided speculation might take them. The balance of which I speak is the balance struck by this country, having regard to what history teaches are the traditions from which it developed as well as the traditions from which it broke. That tradition is a living thing. A decision of this Court which radically departs from it could not long survive, while a decision which builds on what has survived is likely to be sound. No formula could serve as a substitute, in this area, for judgment and restraint. n28 Instead of looking to the Constitution and its jurisprudence as a reflection of our collective effort to determine the higher principles that should guide us, as Harlan suggests, Posner would start from scratch, assessing what is best from a pragmatic, open-ended balancing approach that he admits ultimately involves weighing imponderables. [*1747] Posner insists that to declare a practice constitutional is not the same as saying that it is desirable as a policy matter: "Much that the government is permitted by the Constitution to do it should not do and can be forbidden to do by legislation or treaties" (p. 7). That is certainly true as a theoretical matter, at least where one's constitutional theory is not reducible to one's policy preferences. But Posner appears to view questions of constitutionality as simply a matter of weighing all the costs and benefits, which is surely the same utilitarian calculus the policymaker would use to determine whether a practice is desirable. Under Posner's approach, then, it is difficult to see why there would be any room between what is desirable and what is constitutional. If constitutionalism is to have any bite, it must be distinct from mere policy preferences. In fact, our Constitution gives judges the authority to declare acts of democratically elected officials unconstitutional on the understanding that they will not simply engage in the same cost-benefit analyses that politicians and economists undertake. The very sources Judge Posner dismisses - text, precedent, tradition, and reason - as unhelpful in the face of the threat of catastrophic terrorism are absolutely essential to principled constitutional decision-making. It is true that text, precedent, tradition, and reason do not determine results in some mechanistic way. That is why we ask judges, not machines, to decide constitutional cases. But these sources are nonetheless critically important constraints on and guides to constitutional decision-making. They are what identify those principles that have been deemed fundamental - and therefore constitutional - over our collective history. The Framers of the Constitution did not simply say " the government may engage in any practice whose benefits outweigh its costs," as Judge Posner would have it. Instead, they struggled to articulate a limited number of fundamental principles and enshrine them above the everyday pragmatic judgments of politicians. They foresaw what modern history has shown to be all too true - that while democracy is an important antidote to tyranny, it can also facilitate a particular kind of tyranny - the tyranny of the majority. Constitutional principles protect those who are likely to be the targets of such tyranny, such as terror suspects, religious and racial minorities, criminal defendants, enemy combatants, foreign nationals, and, especially in this day and age, Arabs and Muslims. Relegating such individuals to the mercy of the legislature denies the existence of that threat . The Constitution is about more than efficiency and more than democracy; it is a collective commitment to the equal worth and dignity of all human beings . To fail to see that is to miss the very point of constitutional law. Posner's trump card is that because terrorism in the twenty-first century poses the risk of truly catastrophic harm, it renders constitutional precedent and history largely irrelevant. Everything has changed. We are in a new paradigm, in which, as Alberto Gonzales said of the Geneva Conventions, the old rules (apparently including even those enshrined in the Constitution) are now [*1748] "quaint" or "obsolete." n29 But each new generation faces unforeseen challenges. The advent of modern weaponry changed war as we knew it. Communism backed by the Soviet Union posed a "new" threat of totalitarian takeover. The development of the nuclear bomb ushered in yet another new era. This is not to deny that there is a real threat that terrorists may get their hands on weapons of mass destruction, and that this threat must be taken very seriously. But it is to insist on what is a truly conservative point - that principles developed and applied over two centuries still have something important to say in guiding us as we address the threat of modern terrorism. The corollary to Posner's pragmatic and utilitarian balancing approach to the Constitution is that judges should defer to the political branches on national security questions. Judges have no special expertise in national security, he argues, while the political branches do (p. 9). Decisions invalidating security measures as unconstitutional reduce our flexibility, for they are extremely difficult to change through the political process, and may cut off avenues of experimentation (p. 27). But the Constitution was meant to cut off certain avenues. Trying suspected terrorists without a jury, locking them up without access to a judge, convicting them without proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, searching them without probable cause or a warrant, and subjecting them to torture all might make terrorists' tasks more difficult (although, as I have argued elsewhere, many of these shortcuts actually help the terrorists and make us more vulnerable, because of the backlash they provoke). n30 But while the Constitution may not be a "suicide pact," neither is it a license to do anything our leaders think might improve our safety.

3. The neg’s impact comparison relies on juking the stats. “Balancing” liberty and security is a rigged game that always already subjugates rights. Sidhu 9 — Dawinder S. Sidhu, Visiting Researcher at the Georgetown University Law Center, former Fellow at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford University, holds a J.D. from The George Washington University Law School and an M.A. in Government from Johns Hopkins University, 2009 (“Wartime America and the Wire: A Response to Posner's Post-9/11 Constitutional Framework,” George Mason University Civil Rights Law Journal (20 Geo. Mason U. Civ. Rts. L.J. 37), Fall, Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via Lexis-Nexis) IV. Rigging the Game "Juking the stats." n101 - Roland "Prez" Pryzbylewski, The Wire In Not a Suicide Pact, Posner not only presents an unhelpful balancing scheme between liberty and security, a contest that is attended only by civil libertarians and hawkish security folks, but then also stacks the deck against the preservation of liberty such that security will invariably be dominant and liberty must consequently give way. n102 In particular, Posner posits that in times of war, greater weight is to be placed on security measures due to the heightened interest in protecting the homeland. He writes, "In times of danger, the weight of concerns for public safety increases relative to that of liberty concerns, and civil liberties are narrowed." n103 He continues, "[A] decline in [*55] security causes the balance to shift against liberty," n104 and "the more endangered we feel, the more weight we place on the interest in safety." n105 Moreover, according to Posner, elevating security concerns above liberty interests may be necessary to ward off future terrorist activity. He speculates that "[a] minor curtailment of present civil liberties, to the extent that it reduces the probability of a terrorist attack, reduces the likelihood of a major future curtailment of those liberties." n106 Otherwise, "rooting out" the enemy "might be fatally inhibited if we felt constrained to strict observance of civil liberties." n107 From the government's point of view, Posner simply notes, "It is better to be safe than sorry." n108 Prez and others in The Wire often expressed their disappointment with the concept of " juking the stats ." n109 This refers to a situation in which the powers that be—police commanders, high-level public school officials, or politicians— would manipulate perspectives or information to ultimately achieve a predetermined, preferred outcome. n110 It refers to the rigging of the system ; it is result-oriented decisionmaking by those at the top of the power structure to the detriment [*56] of those stakeholders with little or no bargaining ability. n111 For example, in an effort to appease the city's political leadership and the public to which the politicians were accountable, the high-level police officials implemented a strategy to increase the absolute number of arrests; in essence, they manufactured the impression that they were making a dent in city crime. n112 Although the number of arrests did increase, the arrests were of minor users and offenders; as such, police resources were drawn away from infiltrating the primary sources of the city's drug and related crime problems. n113 Even when the police furnished statistics that supported the suggestion that they were successful in addressing crime, in actuality the drug camp was unfazed and the public remained vulnerable to widespread drug trafficking and associated criminal activities. n114 The campaign, though successful on its face, was in truth ineffective and counterproductive. Just as information could be "juked" to support a self-fulfilling outcome in The Wire, legal commentators recognize that the constitutional equation suggested by Posner is not objectively calibrated , but instead will yield only one pre-determined answer : Civil liberties must defer to security programs or policies. David Cole of the Georgetown University Law Center observed that " constitutional interpretation for Posner is little more than an all-things-considered balancing act—and when the potential costs of a catastrophic terrorist attack are placed on the scale, the concerns of constitutional rights and civil liberties are almost inevitably outweighed." n115 Two others criticize Posner's law and economics approach to security issues because his "method works largely through a cost-benefit analysis where equality and antisubordination never quite measure up to the concerns against [*57] which they are being measured." n116 Similarly, another commentator writes that Posner's "method ... tilts in the favor of security more often than not." n117 In proposing that post-9/11 constitutional questions implicating the security of the nation be reduced to a balancing of purportedly competing interests, Posner offers a mechanism that is not only faulty in design, as both security and liberty can be simultaneously managed, but also troublesome in its application, as security invariably subjugates other constitutional interests, specifically individual rights. Accordingly, Posner's recommendation is consistent with the "rigging" exhibited and discredited in The Wire —giving the impression of an objective approach to produce a pre-determined outcome , but in essence depriving the people of a legitimate debate on the proper relationship between national security and individual rights. False Positive Paradox

Suppose one out of every million people is a terrorist. You have a machine that can determine whether someone is a terrorist with 99.9 percent accuracy. You’ve used the machine on your friend Jerry and it gives a positive result. What are the odds Jerry is a terrorist?

Answer: 0.1 percent (or 1 in 1,000).

Out of every million people, 1 will be a terrorist and 1,000 (0.1 percent of 1 million) will be false positives. Therefore, Jerry’s probability is 1/ (1000+1) = 0.001, or 0.1 percent.

If the test is 50% accurate, Jerry’s probability is 1/(500,000+1) = 0.000001, or . 0001 percent.

Source: http://theweek.com/articles/547119/simple-math-problem-that-blows-apart-nsas-surveillance-justifications.

Doctorow 8 — Cory Doctorow, journalist and science fiction author, Co-Editor of Boing Boing, 2008 (“Chapter 8,” Little Brother, Published by Tor, ISBN 1429972874, p. 128-129) If you ever decide to do something as stupid as build an automatic terrorism detector, here's a math lesson you need to learn first. It's called "the paradox of the false positive," and it's a doozy. Say you have a new disease, called Super-AIDS. Only one in a million people gets Super-AIDS. You develop a test for Super-AIDS that's 99 percent accurate. I mean, 99 percent of the time, it gives the correct result -- true if the subject is infected, and false if the subject is healthy. You give the test to a million people. One in a million people have Super-AIDS. One in a hundred people that you test will generate a "false positive" -- the test will say he has Super-AIDS even though he doesn't. That's what "99 percent accurate" means: one percent wrong. What's one percent of one million? 1,000,000/100 = 10,000 One in a million people has Super-AIDS. If you test a million random people, you'll probably only find one case of real Super-AIDS. But your test won't identify one person as having Super-AIDS. It will identify 10,000 people as having it. Your 99 percent accurate test will perform with 99.99 percent inaccuracy. That's the paradox of the false positive. When you try to find something really rare, your test's accuracy has to match the rarity of the thing you're looking for. If you're trying to point at a single pixel on your screen, a sharp pencil is a good pointer: the pencil-tip is a lot smaller (more accurate) than the pixels. But a [end page 128] pencil-tip is no good at pointing at a single atom in your screen. For that, you need a pointer -- a test -- that's one atom wide or less at the tip. This is the paradox of the false positive, and here's how it applies to terrorism: Terrorists are really rare. In a city of twenty million like New York, there might be one or two terrorists. Maybe ten of them at the outside. 10/20,000,000 = 0.00005 percent. One twenty-thousandth of a percent. That's pretty rare all right. Now, say you've got some software that can sift through all the bank-records, or toll-pass records, or public transit records, or phone-call records in the city and catch terrorists 99 percent of the time. In a pool of twenty million people, a 99 percent accurate test will identify two hundred thousand people as being terrorists. But only ten of them are terrorists. To catch ten bad guys, you have to haul in and investigate two hundred thousand innocent people. Guess what? Terrorism tests aren't anywhere close to 99 percent accurate. More like 60 percent accurate. Even 40 percent accurate, sometimes. What this all meant was that the Department of Homeland Security had set itself up to fail badly. They were trying to spot incredibly rare events -- a person is a terrorist -- with inaccurate systems. Is it any wonder we were able to make such a mess?