The LD Library

The LD Library
INDEX
LIFE GOOD (Sanctity)

Life is more than mere biological existence. Outside of biology exists the question of a quality life. The debate between the sanctity of life (mere survival) and the quality of life (standards of living) has raged for decades in America. I feel this distinction to be artificial. It is impossible to have a good life without the prerequisite of survival. However, striving for mere survival alone often justifies vast oppression and killing. Both facets are essential in valuing life. Father Vctor Pajares, priest and bioethicist, May 31, 2005. Quality-of-Life vs. Sanctity-of-Life,(interview) Catholic Online, ACC. 5-3-2008, <http://www.catholic.org/featured/headline.php?ID=2216>. Q: Do you think that the expression "quality of life" has been hijacked by certain bioethicists, its meaning distorted? Father Pajares: In fact, many scholars who deal with this issue have avoided the "either-or" kind of approach. In this sense, you don't have to set the ideas of quality of life and sanctity of life against each other, as if one necessarily excluded the other. IT IS ETHICAL TO VIOLATE NOTIONS OF MORALITY TO PREVENT EXTINCTION Nick Bostrom, Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Yale University, March 2002. Analyzing Human Extinction Scenarios and Related Hazards, JOURNAL OF EVOLUTION AND TECHNOLOGY, vol. 9, p. 23. A preemptive strike on a sovereign nation is not a move to be taken lightly, but in the extreme case we have outlined - where a failure to act would with high probability lead to existential catastrophe - it is a responsibility that must not be abrogated. Whatever moral prohibition there normally is against violating national sovereignty is overridden in this case by the necessity to prevent the destruction of humankind THE STRIVE FOR SURVIVAL IS AT THE HEART OF ALL OTHER VALUES Philip Hefner, professor of systematic theology at the Lutheran School of Theology, June 1980. Survival As A Human Value, ZYGON, vol. 15, no. 2, p. 204. Such an argument may help us appreciate why survival tends to monopolize value discussions. Survival in any discussion, but particularly when it is described by scientists, bringing as they do a certain empirical earnestness to their opinions, speaks of a very serious gap, which in turn suggests a serious sense of requiredness to fill it. Certain scientific arguments-those of sociobiology, for example-engage in a gap-closing argument that goes something like this: If certain basic need x is not attended to, the human (or natural) system is threatened, that is, it will not continue or at least it will not continue well or as it is designed to function. There is an inferred gap here; we ought to do x or y or z in order that this gap not continue to exist; x or y or z becomes values, oughts, obligations. SURVIVAL NEEDS SHOULD BE A THE TOP WHEN DISCUSSING VALUES Philip Hefner, professor of systematic theology at the Lutheran School of Theology, June 1980. Survival As A Human Value, ZYGON, vol. 15, no. 2, p. 204. If basic needs are not attended to, scientists often argue, human beings will not continue to exist or at least will not continue to exist well or as they are designed to exist. Given this impressive, even ultimate, gap, most people will respond by insisting that we all ought to do something to close or fill the gap. Since ultimate or life-threatening gaps must be dealt with before other desirable or less urgent needs, survival rises to the top as the dominant issue in a discussion about values. LIFE IS THE FOUNDATION OF FREEDOM AND HAPPINESS Martha C. Nussbaum, Professor at the Chicago School of Law, 2000. In Defense of Universal Values, IDAHO LAW REVIEW, 36 Idaho L. Rev. 379, p. np. In other words, we want universals that are facilitative rather than tyrannical, that create spaces for choice rather than dragooning people into a desired total mode of functioning. But understood at its best, the paternalism argument is not an argument against cross-cultural universals. For it is all about respect for the dignity of persons as choosers. This respect requires us to defend universally a wide range of liberties, plus their material conditions; and it requires us to respect persons as separate ends, in a way that reflects our acknowledgment of the empirical fact of bodily separateness, asking how each and every life can have the preconditions of liberty and self-determination.

PROTECTING LIFE IS THE FUNDAMENTAL ACTION TO ATTAIN ALL OTHER VALUES Douglas Den Uyl and Douglas Rasmussen, both Professors of Philosophy at Bellarmine College and St. Johns University, 1981. READING NOZICK, p. 245. In so far as one chooses, regardless of the choice, one choose (value) man's life. It makes no sense to value some X without also valuing that which makes the valuing of X possible ~:notice that this is different from saying "that which makes X possible"). If one lets X be equivalent to "death" or "the greatest happiness for the greatest number," one is able to have such a valuation only because of the precondition of being a living being. Given that life is a necessary condition for valuation, there is no other way we can value something without also (implicitly at least) valuing that which makes valuation possible. Human life is absolute, regardless of who is being killed. Charles I. Lugosi, Visiting Professor of Law, Yale Law School, October 1, 2001. Playing God: Mary Must Die So Jodie May Live Longer, Issues in Law & Medicine, ACC. 8-24-08, <www.allbusiness.com/legal/3495532-1.html>. Human life is of absolute and infinite value. It is irrelevant whether that human life lasts for a moment, or for a hundred years. It matters not whether that human life is a Rhodes Scholar or a conjoined twin. It makes no difference whether that human life is the Lord Chief Justice or in the form of Mary Attard. LIFE IS A FUNDAMENTAL RIGHT THAT ENCOMPASSES ALL OTHER RIGHTS Antonio Ciaccia, Staff Writer, January 12, 2007. The Military Draft is Anti-Life: The only draft I support is the Steelers drafting Santonio Holmes, THE SENTINEL, <http://media.www.osusentinel.com/media/storage/paper1151/news/2007/01/12/Commentary/TheMilitary.Draft.Is.AntiLife-2629649.shtml>, Accessed 5-3-2009. As humans, we have one fundamental right, and that is our right to life. That right to life is not just a simple way of stating "you can't kill me." The right to life refers to each individual's freedom to do as he pleases with his life without interference from others. The right to life is essentially the right to your own mind and body - the right to yourself.

SACRIFICING SOME DOESNT PROMOTE THE OVERALL BALANCE OF UTLITY Geoffrey Scarre, Professor Philosophy at the University of Durham, 1988. UTILITARIANISM, p. 184. Utilitarians, then, can respond to the charge that they fail to draw sufficiently strong protective barriers around individuals by showing that on a suitably refined view of what makes lives go as well, there will rarely be a case for sacrificing the crucial interests of some individuals for the sake of others benefit. A utilitarian may favour making a millionare disgorge his surplus wealth in order to help the needy, but that is no more than what most civilized countries do anyway, through their tax systems. (The practice can be justified on the ground that while enough is as good as a feat, less than enough means starvation). Harming people in regard to their essential interests is another matter. Not only does this hardly ever produce a positive balance of utility: it can also subtly damage the seeming beneficiaries, by undermining the basis of their self-respect. How this happens will be explained below. KILLING AN INNOCENT PERSON IS ALWAYS MORALLY WRONG Charles I. Lugosi, Visiting Professor of Law, Yale Law School, October 1, 2001. Playing God: Mary Must Die So Jodie May Live Longer, Issues in Law & Medicine, ACC. 8-24-08, <www.allbusiness.com/legal/3495532-1.html>. In general, natural law is about doing good and rejecting evil. It is foundational to Roman Catholic ethics. In its simplest terms, the direct killing of an innocent person is always wrong, even if it is the only means to save another's life. To directly take the life of Mary, an innocent human person, violates the principles of non-maleficence (do no harm) and justice. To kill one innocent person to save the life of another is always, without exception, morally wrong. This is because every living human being is equal to every other human being in respect of the right to life. No human being may be discriminated against, or compared to another, to assess which individual is more deserving of a longer life. EXTINCTION IS A PRE-EMINENT CONCERN FOR DECISION MAKERS Jonathan Schell, the Harold Willens Peace Fellow at The Nation Institute and teaches a course on the nuclear dilemma at Yale, 2000. THE FATE OF THE EARTH, 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. VALUE JUDGEMENTS ABOUT LIFE MAKE CALCULATIONS INEVITABLE Brooke Alan Trisel, Staff Writer, February 2007. Judging Life and Its Value, SORTIES, Issue #18, p. 61. We could live life -- perhaps as animals do -- without judging whether it is good or bad, meaningful or meaningless, or worthwhile or not. However, we do not. We make judgements about the value of life, concluding that life has no value or great value, and then may attempt to convince each other that we have placed the proper value on life. It is not just philosophers who perform these evaluations. Many people, whether they realize it or not, compare their own lives, or life in general, to their expectations or desires, and then render a judgement about whether life, as they have experienced and view it, measures up to the standard they have adopted to judge it. There is a wide range of sophistication with these evaluations and judgements. At one extreme are simple, commonly uttered statements such as life is good or life is terrible, where it may be unclear how the person reached the conclusion they did. At the other extreme are the differing judgements of philosophers -- often carefully thought out and based on elaborate arguments. Between these two extremes are the evaluations and judgements of poets and playwrights, including Shakespeare's famous words that life is full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing. Different methods and standards have been and can be used to judge the value of life. Furthermore, our judgements about whether or not life has value depend, in large part, on which method is used, as will be shown. Therefore, it is important that attention be given to examining the methods used to make this judgement.
A2: NO VALUE TO LIFE

LIFE CAN ONLY BE CALCULATED. DETERMINING A VALUE TO LIFE IS IMPOSSIBLE Nicholas Rescher, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh, 1983. RISK: A PHILOSOPHICAL INTRODUCTION TO THE THEORY OF RISK EVALUATION AND MANAGEMENT, p. 169. We are told that a decision-theoretic approach to risk assessment throughout the whole range of life-threatening situations demands the quantitative determination of the value of a life and that such a value can and must be evaluated within the framework of a workable theory of risk. But unfortunately, this approach immerses the issue in darkness rather than light. The matter of determining the value of a life embarks us upon a vain and Quixotic quest for something that no one has been able to determine to anyone elses satisfaction.
A2: LIFE /SURVIVAL GOOD (Sanctity)

*Also see Quality of life good HOLDING LIFE UP OVER ALL OTHER VALUES IS A RETREAT FROM MORALITY S. Matthew Liao, Professor of Philosophy Johns Hopkins University, December 2006. The Right of Children to Be Loved, JOURNAL OF POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY, p. 420. Indeed, governments and other public institutions recognize that they cannot give absolute priority to whatever is most needed for action. To see this, consider the value of life. As a precondition for action, life is obviously very important. Still, we do not always promote life before we promote other values. For example, governments build schools and museums when they could build more hospitals to ensure that more people survive illnesses. As this does not seem morally objectionable, it suggests that although life is very important, we do not give it an absolute priority over all other values. Hence, even if one grants that being loved is not as urgent as being fed, it does not follow that being fed has absolute priority over being loved, especially given that both are essential needs that children have. FOCUSING ON SURVIVAL MAKES LIFE NOT WORTH LIVING AND RISKS EXTINCTION Daniel Callahan, PhD in philosophy from Harvard, 1973. THE TYRANNY OF SURVIVAL, pp. 100-101. The first is that it is possible to conceive of a variety of circumstances in which an excessive emphasis on survival, casting aside other human needs and values in the process, can severely jeopardize survival. Nuclear weapons, originally developed for self-defense, can be seen as the great symbol of that thesis. Almost as powerful a symbol can be found in excessive population growth rates, which stem, we should recall, from the powerful success which medicine has had in meeting the need to reduce death rates, i.e., in meeting the demand of human beings to survive rather than to die. The second point is that a viable, human ethic of survival must encompass all the other values and goals human beings seek and prize. Otherwise, it will either be self-defeating or productive of a life which most people will not find worth living. A SURVIVAL FOCUS TRIVIALIZES ALL OTHER VALUES Karl E. Peters, Zygon Editor and Associate Professor of Philosophy and Religion at Rollins College, June 1980. Evolutionary Naturalism: Survival As A Value, ZYGON, vol. 15, no. 2, p. 213-214. This viewpoint of evolutionary naturalism can be adopted with varying degrees of ease by liberal theists who stress the immanence of God, by pantheists who equate the universe with God, by religious humanists, and by agnostic and atheistic humanists. However, those who try to do their theological and philosophical reflection within the framework of evolutionary naturalism are often called upon to respond to questions regarding the significance of survival. Is reproductive success an important enough value on which to base a human being's life? Of course we all want to survive and pass on our heritage in some form or other to future generations, but is there not more to life than surviving or having offspring? If mere survival is all there is to living, do we not have a pretty paltry picture of ourselves? The thrust of this kind of questioning is to imply that the survival spoken of by evolutionary naturalism is rather simplistic and trivial as far as values are concerned. SURVIVAL AS A VALUE JUSTIFIES ALL ATROCITIES AT THE EXPENSE OF SOCIAL NEEDS Daniel Callahan, PhD in philosophy from Harvard, 1973. THE TYRANNY OF SURVIVAL, p. 91. The value of survival could not be so readily abused were it not for its evocative power. In the name of survival, all manner of social and political evils have been committed against the rights of individuals, including the right to life. The purported threat of Communist domination has for over two decades fueled the drive of militarists for everlarger budgets, no matter what the cost to other social needs. SURVIVAL JUSTIFIES A DICTATORSHIP IN A TYRANNY OF SURVIVAL Daniel Callahan, PhD in philosophy from Harvard, 1973. THE TYRANNY OF SURVIVAL, p. 93. For all these reasons, it is possible to counterpose over against the need for survival a tyanny of survival. There seems to be no imaginable which some groups is not willing to inflict on another for the sake of survival, no rights, liberties or dignities which it is not ready to suppress. It is easy, of course, to recognize the danger when survival is
falsely and maniputatively invoked. Dictators never talk about their aggressions, but only about the need to defend the fatherland, to save it from destruction at the hands of its enemies.

*Also see Quality of life good WE CAN VALUE LIFE INTRINSICALLY, YET NONABSOLUTELY Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. January 27, 2006. Intrinsic Value, Accessed 12-24-10, < http://web.archive.org/web/20070404022959/http://www.analphilosopher.com/posts/1138417835.shtml >. One more thing. It would be a mistake to think that there are just two possibilities: Either value innocent human life absolutely or value it (merely) extrinsically. Thats a false dichotomy. One can value human life intrinsically and nonabsolutely. That is, one can value it for its own sake (because of the kind of thing it is), but be willing to trade it for some greater good. Since valuation is a matter of degree, one can value human life very much without valuing it absolutely. For example, I might be unwilling to kill an innocent human being in order to save 10 innocent human beings but willing to kill an innocent human being in order to save 1,000 or 1,000,000 innocent human beings. Being willing to sacrifice an innocent human being does not make my valuation of innocent human beings extrinsic; it makes it nonabsolute. KILLING INNOCENT LIFE IS INSEPARABLE FROM CONSIDERING CONSEQUENCES Conrad D. Johnson, Ph.D., Professor of Law, University of Maryland, August 1985. The Authority of the Moral Agent, THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY, Vol. 82, No. 8, p. 392. If we follow the usual deontological conception, there are also well-known difficulties. If it is simply wrong to kill the innocent, the wrongness must in some way be connected to the consequences. That an innocent person is killed must be a consequence that has some important bearing on the wrongness of the action; else why be so concerned about the killing of an innocent? Further, if it is wrong in certain cases for the agent to weigh the consequences in deciding whether to kill or to break a promise, it is hard to deny that this has some connection to the consequences. THE UTILITARIAN QUEST FOR SURVIVAL SACRIFICES EVERYTHING ABOUT MORALITY Daniel Callahan, Institute of Society and Ethics, 1973. THE TYRANNY OF SURVIVAL, p. 93. We come here to the fundamental moral dilemma. If, both biologically and psychologically, the need for survival is basic to man, and if survival is the precondition for any and all human achievements, and if no other rights make much sense without the premise of a right to lifethen how will it be possible to honor and act upon the need for survival without, in the process, destroying everything in human beings which makes them worthy of survival. To put it more strongly, if the price of survival is human degradation, then there is no moral reason why an effort should be made to ensure that survival. It would be the Pyrrhic victory to end all Pyrrhic victories. FOCUSING ON SURVIVAL SUPPRESSES ALL OTHER RIGHTS AND VALUES Daniel Callahan, Institute of Society and Ethics, 1973. THE TYRANNY OF SURVIVAL, p. 93. But my point goes deeper than that. It is directed even at a legitimate concern for survival, when that concern is allowed to reach an intensity which would ignore, suppress or destroy other fundamental human rights and values. The potential tyranny survival as value is that it is capable, if not treated sanely, of wiping out all other values. Survival can become an obsession and a disease, provoking a destructive singlemindedness that will stop at nothing.

*Also see Quality of life good VIOLATING RIGHTS IN THE NAME OF SURVIVAL DESTROY THE VALUE TO LIFE Daniel Callahan, Institute of Society and Ethics, 1973. THE TYRANNY OF SURVIVAL, p. 91. The value of survival could not be so readily abused were it not for its evocative power. But abused it has been. In the name of survival, all manner of social and political evils have been committed against the rights of individuals, including the right to life. The purported threat of Communist domination has for over two decades fueled the drive of militarists for ever-larger defense budgets, no matter what the cost to other social needs. During World War II, native Japanese-Americans were herded, without due process of law, to detention camps. This policy was later upheld by the Supreme Court in Korematsu v. United States (1944) in the general context that a threat to national security can justify acts otherwise blatantly unjustifiable. The survival of the Aryan race was one of the official legitimations of Nazism. Under the banner of survival, the government of South Africa imposes a ruthless apartheid, heedless of the most elementary human rights. The Vietnamese war has seen one of the greatest of the many absurdities tolerated in the name of survival: the destruction of villages in order to save them. 4. SANCTITY OF LIFE ARGUMENTS CANNOT ACCOUNT FOR VALUE TO LIFE DEBATES Peter Suber, Professor in the Department of Philosophy, Earlham College, 1996. Against the Sanctity of Life, Accessed 2-11-09, <http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/writing/sanctity.htm>. The sanctity position values life independently of its quality or condition. It invests with ultimate value just life qua vital signs or life qua bio-electrical activity, and nothing more grandiose, because this is the only life left when quality and condition are disregarded. Several objections arise from this essential core of the position. First, the sanctity position as described is not capable of making distinctions of value among lives. From one angle this is the raison d'tre of the position: it is designed to value the very young and very old, the immature and the degenerating, the retarded and the competent, and wealthy and the indigent, all equally and all ultimately. What is often overlooked, however, is that the premise that justifies this uniform valuation also justifies, even requires, that we value plants, non-human animals, and human beings all equally and all ultimately. Because plants and animals share life qua life, life qua bio-electricity, sanctity must be ascribed to lives regardless of their zoological or botanical species. If life qua life independent of its quality is the locus of value, then we must value not just fetuses, but frogs and fungus, as much as we value mature and healthy human beings. THE SANCTITY OF LIFE IS USELESS BECAUSE NOT EVERYONE BELIEVES IN GOD George Konig, Minister and Consultant at Lucka Consultancy, June 26, 2005. Sanctity of Life vs. Quality of Life, Konig.org, Accessed 2-11-09, <http://www.konig.org/wc119.htm>. In the book What if Jesus Had Never Been Born? by D. James Kennedy and Jerry Newcombe, there is a paragraph on how we are reverting, in the Western world, to heathen paganism. The following is quoted from this book: "In modern times, we have drifted from a sanctity of life ethic to a quality of life ethic. The concept of sanctity of life is a spiritual life; it is a religious concept. The word "sanctity" means "holy or sacred unto God, inviolable, that which God has declared is of great value." It is therefore, a spiritual concept. However, for a humanist or an atheist or an unbeliever of most any kind, there is no such thing as sanctity of life. Unless there is a God who has given us a spirit and who sanctifies us, there cannot be a sanctity-of-life ethic. ETHICS OUTWEIGHS MERE SURVIVAL. THERE IS NO VALUE TO LIFE IN THEIR FRAMEWORK J. Charles King, Professor of Philosophy, Pomona College, 1984. THE PHILOSOPHIC THOUGHT OF AYN RAND, Douglas Den Uyl and Douglas Rasmussen, eds., p.110. But, Of course, it cannot follow from those mere facts that life will be the standard of value itself. Once one sees it is the possibility of desiring that is crucial for a being to be able to value, then one sees that, while life may be one among other values a being holds, it need have no privileged place. Of course, to most of us life is very high on our ordering of preferences and is, indeed, among the various things we want for their own sakes. But history records many individuals who, even if they could have continued to live what might be called a rational existence in Rand's terms, would nevertheless have preferred to sacrifice their own life to bring about some greater value. The point of this is simply that value finds its beginning in desire, not merely in the process of life that in our experience gives rise to desire. Desire enables one to value even things that transcend, in one way or another, one's own span of life.
QUALITY OF LIFE GOOD

*Also see A2: SOL AFFIRMING A QUALITY OF LIFE PERSPECTIVE CREATES BETTER MORAL DECISIONMAKING Peter Suber, Professor in the Department of Philosophy, Earlham College, 1996. Against the Sanctity of Life, Accessed 2-11-09, <http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/writing/sanctity.htm>. The concept of a life not worth living is central to the QL position. When there is competition for scarce resources, the central notion becomes that of a life less worth living than another life: we will not let the brain-dead patient with machine-driven pulse and respiration occupy a hospital bed or dialysis machine when healthier patients will become brain-dead without them. The usefulness of the notion of a life worth living, in short, is that it helps us to make the decisions that our medical cleverness has forced us to face and to make.
QUALITY OF LIFE BAD

*Also see Life Good (Sanctity)
A QUALITY OF LIFE PERSPECTIVE STRIPS PEOPLE OF THEIR MORAL EQUALITY Wesley J. Smith, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, January 24, 2003. Connecting the Dots: Sanctity of life threatened on many fronts, NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE, Accessed 2-1109, <http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-smith012403.asp>. To understand the full import of this story we need to connect some important dots by considering the context in which it arises. Unbeknownst to many, the sanctity-of-human-life ethic is under sustained attack. Indeed, the predominant view of contemporary bioethics rejects the view that life is sacrosanct simply and merely because it is human. Rather, what matters morally is whether a life be it animal, human, space alien, or machine is a "person," a status that must be earned by possessing relevant cognitive capacities. This subjective view of life as opposed to the objective approach contained in the sanctity-of-life ethic strips some humans of their moral equality and threatens to transform them into the moral equivalent of a lab animal or a natural resource.
EQUALITY GOOD
The government has a moral obligation to protect its citizens from harm and preserve the social order. Equality can only be realized when citizens are not subjected to a climate of fear and physical violence because they belong to a certain social group. Edward N. Zalta, Principle Editor, June 27, 2007. Equality, THE STANFORD ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY, p. np, Accessed 2-9-08, <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/equality/>. Equality in its prescriptive usage has, of course, a close connection with morality and justice in general and distributive justice in particular. From antiquity onward, equality has been considered a constitutive feature of justice. (On the history of the concept, cf. Albernethy 1959, Benn 1967, Brown 1988, Dann 1975, Thomson 1949.) Throughout history, people and emancipatory movements use the language of justice to pillory certain inequalities. WE HAVE A COLLECTIVE OBLIGATION TO AFFIRM EQUALITY AS A DUTY OF JUSTICE Edward N. Zalta, Principle Editor, June 27, 2007. Equality, THE STANFORD ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY, p. np, Accessed 2-9-08, <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/equality/>. The responsibility people have to treat individuals and groups they affect in a morally appropriate and, in particular, even-handed way has hence a certain priority over their moral duty to turn circumstances into just ones through some kind of equalization. Establishing justice of circumstances (ubiquitously and simultaneously) is beyond any given individual's capacities. Hence one has to rely on collective actions. In order to meet this moral duty, a basic order guaranteeing just circumstances must be justly created. EQUALITY IS THE PRE-REQUISITE TO REALIZING ALL OTHER SOCIAL GOODS Edward N. Zalta, Principle Editor, June 27, 2007. Equality, THE STANFORD ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY, p. np, Accessed 2-9-08, <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/equality/>. The presumption of equality is a prima facie principle of equal distribution for all goods politically suited for the process of public distribution. In the domain of political justice, all members of a given community, taken together as a collective body, have to decide centrally on the fair distribution of social goods, as well as on the distribution's fair realization. Any claim to a particular distribution, including any existing distributive scheme, has to be impartially justified, i.e., no ownership will be recognized without justification. Applied to this political domain, the presumption of equality requires that everyone, regardless of differences, should get an equal share in the distribution unless certain types of differences are relevant and justify, through universally acceptable reasons, unequal distribution. EQUALITY REPRESENTS A UNIVERSAL OBLIGATION TOWARD RESPECT FOR THE OTHER Edward N. Zalta, Principle Editor, June 27, 2007. Equality, THE STANFORD ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY, p. np, Accessed 2-9-08, <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/equality/>. The presumption in favor of equality can be justified by the principle of equal respect together with the requirement of universal and reciprocal justification; that requirement is linked to the morality of equal respect granting each individual equal consideration in every justification and distribution. Every sort of public, political distribution is, in this view, to be justified to all relevantly concerned persons, such that they could in principle agree. Since it is immoral to force someone to do something of which he or she does not approve, only reasons acceptable to the other person can give one the moral right to treat the person in accordance with these reasons. The impartial justification of norms rests on the reciprocity and universality of the reasons.
EQUALITY GOOD
TOLERANCE DOES NOT MEAN WE HAVE TO ALLOW DISCRIMINATION Joseph Raz, Professor of Philosophy at Oxford University, 1988. THE MORALITY OF FREEDOM, p. 401. Toleration implies the suppression or containment of an inclination or desire to persecute, harrass, harm or react in an unwelcome way to a person. But even this does not yet capture the essence of toleration. I do not tolerate the courageous, the generous and the kind even if I am inclined to persecute them and restrain myself because I realize that my desires are entirely evil. 5. FREEDOM AND AUTONOMY DO NOT OUTWEIGH EQUALITY Joseph Raz, Professor of Philosophy at Oxford University, 1988. THE MORALITY OF FREEDOM, p. 408. If the duties of non-interference are autonomy-based then the principle of autonomy provides reasons for holding that there are other autonomy-based duties as well. Every reason of autonomy which leads to the duties of noninterference would lead to other duties as well, unless, of course, it is counteracted by conflicting reasons. Such countervailing reasons are likely to be sometimes present, but they are most unlikely to confine the duties of autonomy to noninterference only.
EQUALITY BAD
EQUALITY CAN ONLY BE EVALUATED IN SPECIFIC CIRCUMSTANCES Edward N. Zalta, Principle Editor, June 27, 2007. Equality, THE STANFORD ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY, p. np, Accessed 2-9-08, <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/equality/>. Every effort to interpret the concept of equality and to apply the principles of equality mentioned above demands a precise measure of the parameters of equality. We need to know the dimensions within which the striving for equality is morally relevant. What follows is a brief review of the seven most prominent conceptions of distributive equality, each offering a different answer to one question: in the field of distributive justice, what should be equalized, or what should be the parameter or "currency" of equality? A UNIVERSALIST APPROACH TO EQUALITY IGNORES INDIVIDUAL MORAL RIGHTS Edward N. Zalta, Principle Editor, June 27, 2007. Equality, THE STANFORD ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY, p. np, Accessed 2-9-08, <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/equality/>. A strict and mechanical equal distribution between all individuals does not sufficiently take into account the differences among individuals and their situations. In essence, since individuals desire different things, why should everyone receive the same? Intuitively, for example, we can recognize that a sick person has other claims than a healthy person, and furnishing each with the same things would be mistaken. With simple equality, personal freedoms are unacceptably limited and distinctive individual qualities insufficiently regarded; in this manner they are in fact unequally regarded. Furthermore, persons not only have a moral right to their own needs being considered, but a right and a duty to take responsibility for their own decisions and their consequences. THE NOTION OF EQUALITY RESTS ON THE POSSIBILITY OF IMMORAL MEANS Edward N. Zalta, Principle Editor, June 27, 2007. Equality, THE STANFORD ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY, p. np, Accessed 2-9-08, <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/equality/>. Simple equality is very often associated with equality of results (although these are two distinct concepts). However, to strive only for equality of results is problematic. To illustrate the point, let us briefly limit the discussion to a single action and the event or state of affairs resulting from it. Arguably, actions should not be judged solely by the moral quality of their results as important as this may be. One also has to take into consideration the way in which the events or circumstances to be evaluated have come about. Generally speaking, a moral judgement requires not only the assessment of the results of the action in question (the consequentialist aspect) but, first and foremost, the assessment of the intention of the actor (the deontological aspect). STRICT EQUALITY LEADS TO UNIFORMITY AND THE ERASURE OF DIFFERENCE Edward N. Zalta, Principle Editor, June 27, 2007. Equality, THE STANFORD ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY, p. np, Accessed 2-9-08, <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/equality/>. Finally, there is a danger of (strict) equality leading to uniformity, rather than to a respect for pluralism and democracy (Cohen 1989; Arneson 1993). In the contemporary debate, this complaint has been mainly articulated in feminist and multiculturalist theory. A central tenet of feminist theory is that gender has been and remains a historical variable and internally differentiated relation of domination. The same holds for so called racial and ethnic differences. These differences are often still conceived of as marking different values. The different groups involved here rightly object to their discrimination, marginalization, and domination, and an appeal to equality of status thus seems a solution.
JUSTICE GOOD
Lean Legal Dictionary, Canadian Website for Legal Forms, 2006. LEANLEGAL.COM, accessed 8/6/2006 <http://www.leanlegal.com/dictionary/jk.asp>. A state of affairs in which conduct or action is both fair and right, given the circumstances. In law, it more specifically refers to the paramount obligation to ensure that all persons are treated fairly. Litigants "seek justice" by asking for compensation for wrongs committed against them; to right the inequity such that, with the compensation, a wrong has been righted and the balance of "good" or "virtue" over "wrong" or "evil" has been corrected. Lean Legal Dictionary, Canadian Website for Legal Forms, 2006. LEANLEGAL.COM, accessed 8/29/2007 <http://www.leanlegal.com/dictionary/jk.asp>. Justice is A state of affairs in which conduct or action is both fair and right, given the circumstances. In law, it more specifically refers to the paramount obligation to ensure that all persons are treated fairly. In the context of plea bargaining, this means that we should be concerned with the obligation to all persons, not just the select few. Justice requires a functioning system overall, one that can dispense justice for everyone that comes before it. Lean Legal Dictionary, Canadian Website for Legal Forms, 2006. LEANLEGAL.COM, accessed 8/6/2006 <http://www.leanlegal.com/dictionary/jk.asp>. Justice for all individuals should be a goal for every just society. As defined by Lean Legal Dictionary, justice is a state of affairs in which conduct or action is both fair and right, given the circumstances.
JUSTICE IS THE HIGHEST IN THE SCALE OF SOCIAL UTILITY AND THUS IS THE MOST PARAMOUNT OBLIGATION A SOCIETY SHOULD VALUE Michael J. Sandel, Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Government at Harvard University, 1998. LIBERALISM AND THE LIMITS OF JUSTICE, p. 3. To have a right, says Mill, is to have something which society ought to defend me in the possession of (1863: 459). So strong is societys obligation that my claim assumes that character of absoluteness, that apparent infinity, and incommensurability with all other considerations, which constitute the distinction between the feeling of right and wrong and that of ordinary expediency and inexpediency (1863: 460). But if asked hwy society must meet this obligation, it is for no other reason than general unity (1863; 458). Justice is properly regarded as the chief part, and incomparably the most sacred and binding part, of all morality, not by reason of abstract right, but simply because the requirements of justice stand higher in scale of social utility, and are therefore of more paramount obligation, than any others (1863: 465, 469).
JUSTICE BAD
JUSTICE IS AN ILLUSION FOR THOSE IN CONTROL TO EXERCISE POWER OVER SOCIETY Thomas Sowell, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, December 26, 1006. A Dangerous Obsession: Part I, Human Events, <http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=18638>, Accessed May 1, 2009. Today's "progressives" want to expand political control of incomes even more. They call it "social justice" but you could call it Rumpelstiltskin and it would still mean politicians deciding how much money each of us can be allowed to have. It is also worth noting that the people who are said to be earning "obscene" amounts of money are usually corporate executives. There is no such outrage whipped up when Hollywood movie stars make some multiple of what most corporate executives make. This is social or ideological bias added to envy and ignorance. It makes quite a witches' brew on which to base national policy. Lofty talk about "social justice" or "fairness" boils down to greatly expanded powers for politicians, since those pretty words have no concrete definition. They are a blank check for creating disparities in power that dwarf disparities in income -- and are far more dangerous.
DEMOCRACY GOOD
DEMOCRACY HAS INTRINSIC VALUE Amartya Sen, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, and Lamont University Professor Emeritus at Harvard University, 1999. Democracy as a Universal Value, JOURNAL OF DEMOCRACY, 10.3, pp. 11-12. If the above analysis is correct, then democracy's claim to be valuable does not rest on just one particular merit. There is a plurality of virtues here, including, first, the intrinsic importance of political participation and freedom in human life; second, the instrumental importance of political incentives in keeping governments responsible and accountable; and third, the constructive role of democracy in the formation of values and in the understanding of needs, rights, and duties. DEMOCRATIC GOVERNANCE IS ESSENTIAL TO ALL LIFE ON EARTH Larry Diamond, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, December1995. Promoting Democracy in the 1990s: Actors and Instruments, Issues and Imperatives, A Report to the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict, Carnegie Corporation of New York, http://wwics.si.edu/subsites/ccpdc/pubs/di/1.htm, Accessed 9-18-2008. This hardly exhausts the lists of threats to our security and well-being in the coming years and decades. In the former Yugoslavia nationalist aggression tears at the stability of Europe and could easily spread. The flow of illegal drugs intensifies through increasingly powerful international crime syndicates that have made common cause with authoritarian regimes and have utterly corrupted the institutions of tenuous, democratic ones. Nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons continue to proliferate. The very source of life on Earth, the global ecosystem, appears increasingly endangered. Most of these new and unconventional threats to security are associated with or aggravated by the weakness or absence of democracy, with its provisions for legality, accountability, popular sovereignty, and openness. DEMOCRACIES DO NOT GO TO WAR OR FOSTER ETHNIC CONFLICTS Larry Diamond, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, December 1995. Promoting Democracy in the 1990s: Actors and Instruments, Issues and Imperatives, A Report to the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict, Carnegie Corporation of New York, http://wwics.si.edu/subsites/ccpdc/pubs/di/1.htm, Accessed 9-18-2008. The experience of this century offers important lessons. Countries that govern themselves in a truly democratic fashion do not go to war with one another. They do not aggress against their neighbors to aggrandize themselves or glorify their leaders. Democratic governments do not ethnically "cleanse" their own populations, and they are much less likely to face ethnic insurgency. Democracies do not sponsor terrorism against one another. They do not build weapons of mass destruction to use on or to threaten one another. STRONG WESTERN DEMOCRACIES SERVE AS A GLOBAL MODEL Joshua Kurlantzick, Visiting Scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, September 14, 2008. Democracy on the wane - In country after country, democratic reforms are in retreat, THE BOSTON GLOBE, p. D1. Young democracy, with weak institutions, often brings to power, at first, elected leaders who actually don't care that much about upholding democracy. As these demagogues tear down the very reforms the middle classes built, those same middle classes turn against the leaders, and then against the system itself, bringing democracy to collapse. This is a process now being repeated in Africa, Asia, and parts of Latin America, regions that once seemed destined to become the third and fourth waves of global democratization, following the original Western democracies and the second wave in southern Europe and several other regions. The pattern has become so noticeable -- repeated in Venezuela, Russia, Bangladesh, and other states -- that one must even wonder about democracy 's future itself.
DEMOCRACY GOOD
THE CHOICE IS BETWEEN FOSTERING DEMOCRACY OR AUTHORITARIANIST CONFLICTS Robert Kagan, Contributing Editor, August 25, 2008. History's Back; Ambitious autocracies, hesitant democracies, THE WEEKLY STANDARD, Vol. 13 No. 46, p. np. The world may not be about to embark on a new ideological struggle of the kind that dominated the Cold War. But the new era, rather than being a time of "universal values," will be one of growing tensions and sometimes confrontation between the forces of liberal democracy and the forces of autocracy. In fact, a global competition is under way. According to Russia's foreign minister, "For the first time in many years, a real competitive environment has emerged on the market of ideas" between different "value systems and development models." And the good news, from the Russian point of view, is that "the West is losing its monopoly on the globalization process." Today when Russians speak of a multipolar world, they are not only talking about the redistribution of power. It is also the competition of value systems and ideas that will provide "the foundation for a multipolar world order." ONLY DEMOCRACY ENSURES FREE TRADE, ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AND SECURITY Larry Diamond, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, December 1995. Promoting Democracy in the 1990s: Actors and Instruments, Issues and Imperatives, A Report to the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict, Carnegie Corporation of New York, http://wwics.si.edu/subsites/ccpdc/pubs/di/1.htm, Accessed 9-18-2008. Democratic countries form more reliable, open, and enduring trading partnerships. In the long run they offer better and more stable climates for investment. They are more environmentally responsible because they must answer to their own citizens, who organize to protest the destruction of their environments. They are better bets to honor international treaties since they value legal obligations and because their openness makes it much more difficult to breach agreements in secret. Precisely because, within their own borders, they respect competition, civil liberties, property rights, and the rule of law, democracies are the only reliable foundation on which a new world order of international security and prosperity can be built. DEMOCRACY IS A UNIVERSAL VALUE THAT DEFINES THE QUALITY OF A COUNTRY Amartya Sen, Nobel Laureate, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, United Kingdom and University Lamont Professor Emeritus, Harvard University, February 14-17, 1999. Building the World Movement for Democracy, Extracts from Keynote Address to the Inaugural World Assembly, New Delhi, India, <http://www.wmd.org/conference/sen.html>, Accessed 10-14-2008. The idea of democracy as a universal commitment is quite new, and it is quintessentially a product of the twentieth century. Indeed, throughout the nineteenth century, theorists of democracy found it quite natural to discuss whether one country or another was yet "fit for democracy." That changed only in the twentieth century, with the recognition that the question itself was wrong: a country does not have to be judged to be fit for democracy, rather it has to become fit through democracy. DEMOCRACY IS INTEGRAL TO ADVANCING THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE Morton Halperin, Senior Vice President of the Center for American Progress and Director of the Open Society Policy Center, Et al, 2005. THE DEMOCRACY ADVANTAGE: HOW DEMOCRACIES PROMOTE PROSPERITY, p. 12. What explains the consistently superior development outcomes of democracies? We outline the conceptual underpinnings of democracys superior developmental performance in Chapter 2. The reasons are many and varied, but boil down to three core characteristics of representative government: shared power, openness, and adaptability. Although holding free elections is what commonly defines democracy, what makes it work is the way it disperses power. Consequently, in contrast to most autocratic governments, a broader range of interests are considered on a more regular basis. This increases the likelihood that the priorities of the general public will be weighed. Indeed, the argument that authoritarian governments can ignore special interest groups and therefore make decisions that are for the overall good of the society is based on a series of highly dubious assumptions.
DEMOCRACY GOOD
DEMOCRACY SHOULD BE RECOGNIZED AS A UNIVERSAL VALUE Amartya Sen, Nobel Laureate, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, United Kingdom and University Lamont Professor Emeritus, Harvard University, February 14-17, 1999. Building the World Movement for Democracy, Extracts from Keynote Address to the Inaugural World Assembly, New Delhi, India, <http://www.wmd.org/conference/sen.html>, Accessed 10-14-2008. It is also in this century that it was finally accepted that "franchise for all adults" must mean all--not just men but also women. We have at last reached the point of recognition that the coverage of universality, like the quality of mercy, is not strained. While democracy is not yet universally practised, nor indeed uniformly accepted, in the general climate of world opinion democracy has now achieved the status of being taken to be generally right. The ball is very much in the court of those who want to rubbish democracy to provide justification for that rubbishing. THE SPREAD OF DEMOCRACY REDUCES THE LIKELIHOOD OF WAR Larry Diamond, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, December 1995. Promoting Democracy in the 1990s: Actors and Instruments, Issues and Imperatives. A Report to the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict, <http://wwics.si.edu/subsites/ccpdc/pubs/di/1.htm>, Accessed 10-142008, p. np. The experience of this century offers important lessons. Countries that govern themselves in a truly democratic fashion do not go to war with one another. They do not aggress against their neighbors to aggrandize themselves or glorify their leaders. Democratic governments do not ethnically "cleanse" their own populations, and they are much less likely to face ethnic insurgency. Democracies do not sponsor terrorism against one another. They do not build weapons of mass destruction to use on or to threaten one another. THE DECLINE OF CONFLICT IN THE NINETIES SHOWS DEMOCRACIES FOSTER PEACE Morton Halperin, Senior Vice President of the Center for American Progress and Director of the Open Society Policy Center, Et al, 2005. THE DEMOCRACY ADVANTAGE: HOW DEMOCRACIES PROMOTE PROSPERITY, p. 12. Counter to the expectations of the prevailing school, a great deal of research in the 1990s on the political dimension of conflict has revealed a powerful pattern of a democratic peace. Democracies rarely, if ever, go to war with each other. This pattern has held from the establishment of the first modern democracies in the nineteenth century to the present. As an ever-greater share of the worlds states become democratic, the implications for global peace are profound. Indeed, as the number of democracies has been increasing, major conflicts around the world (including civil wars) have declined sharply. Since 1992, they have fallen by two-thirds, numbering just 13 as of 2003. DEMOCRACY IS IMPORTANT IN FIGHTING TERRORISM Susan B. Epstein, Nina M. Serafino, and Francis T. Miko, Specialists in Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Division at Congressional Reseach Service, December 26, 2007. Democracy Promotion: Cornerstone of U.S. Foreign Policy?, CRS REPORT FOR CONGRESS, Accessed 12-152008, <http://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL34296.pdf>. When U.S. administrations have encouraged democratic reform, they have claimed that benefits for the country, its neighbors, the United States, and the world will result. Many experts believe that extending democracy can reduce terrorism while encouraging global political stability and economic prosperity. In its 2006 National Strategy for Combating Terrorism, the George W. Bush Administration cites democracy promotion as a long-term solution for winning the War on Terror.
DEMOCRACY GOOD
DEMOCACY IS INDISPENSIBLE IN ADDRESSING TERRORISM AND VIOLENT CONFLICTS Representative David Price (D-NC) represents the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area of North Carolina, January 2009. Global Democracy Promotion: Seven Lessons for the New Administration, THE WASHINGTON QUARTERLY, vol. 32, no. 1, p. 169. Supporting the development of democratic systems around the world is critical to Americas moral leadership even as it enhances U.S. national security. Democracy is an antidote to terrorism and violent conflict because it facilitates economic opportunity and channels societal grievances into peaceful and predictable processes for addressing them. If U.S. officials are serious about the spread of democracy as a foreign policy goal, they must become far more serious about deploying the right means to achieve it. In addition to the other pressing challenges on the international agenda, the new president should undertake a major and comprehensive reform of the foreign aid architecture guided by a more coherent and sophisticated view of the democracy agenda.
DEMOCRACY BAD
THE U.S. DEMOCRATIC MODEL IS BROKEN WITH THE WORLD TURNING AGAINST US Francis Fukuyama, Professor of International Political Economy and Director of the International Development Program at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, Winter 2007-2008. [Should Democracy Be Promoted or Demoted?, THE WASHINGTON UARTERLY, Vol. 31 No. 1, p. 23. Today, this instrument needs repair. The U.S. model has been severely undermined by the methods that the administration has used to fight the global war on terrorism. Irrespective of the legal particulars that may or may not justify the indefinite detention of combatants/terrorists at the Guantanamo Bay detainment camp in Cuba, opinion polls demonstrate overwhelmingly that most of the world views U.S. detention policies as illegitimate and undemocratic. Thankfully, senior U.S. officials did not try to defend the inhumane treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib in 2004. THE PROCESS OF DEMOCRATIZATION INCREASES LIKELIHOOD OF MAJOR WARFARE Minxin Pei, Ph.D., Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, former Assistant Professor in the Department of Politics at Princeton University, December 1, 2002. Implementing the institutions of democracy, INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL ON WORLD PEACE, No. 4, Vol. 19, p. 3. The process of regime change--the fundamental restructuring of power relations between the state and society as well as within the state itself--is itself often destabilizing and likely increases the danger of war. Consequently, democratic transition is fraught with risks of instability and conflict. Democracy may bring peace among nations, but democratization could cause war, both among and within nations. Edward Mansfield and Jack Snyder argue that democratizing states are unstable and therefore have a greater propensity for external war. The risks of war may be low during the initial stages of regime change; but the likelihood of warfare increases over the next decade after transition. 2. DEMOCRATIC TRANSITIONS WITHIN WEAK INSTITUTIONS GUARANTEE CIVIL WARS Edward D. Mansfield, Associate Professor of Political Science at Columbia University and Jack Snyder, Professor of Political Science and Director of the Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University, Winter 2005. Prone to Violence, The Paradox of the Democratic Peace, THE NATIONAL INTEREST, Accessed 12-15-2008, <http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2751/is_/ai_n27864420>. In all of these varied settings, the turbulent beginning phase of democratization contributed to violence in states with weak political institutions. Statistical studies show that countries with weak institutions undergoing an incomplete democratic transition are more than four times as likely to become involved in international wars than other states, and that incomplete democracies are more likely to experience civil wars than either pure autocracies or fully consolidated democracies. Democratic transition is only one of many causes of war, but it can be a potent one. 3. NEWER FORMS OF DEMOCRATIZATION FOSTER NATIONALIST REVOLTS AND CIVIL WARS Edward D. Mansfield, Associate Professor of Political Science at Columbia University and Jack Snyder, Professor of Political Science and Director of the Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University, Winter 2005. Prone to Violence, The Paradox of the Democratic Peace, THE NATIONAL INTEREST, Accessed 12-15-2008, <http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2751/is_/ai_n27864420>. There is no reason to believe that the longstanding link between democratization and nationalist war is diminishing. Many of the countries that are still on the Bush Administration's "to do" list of democracy promotion lack the institutional infrastructure needed to manage the early stages of a democratic transition. The "third wave" of democratization in the 1980s and 1990s consolidated democratic regimes primarily in the richer countries of Eastern Europe, Latin America, southern Africa and East Asia. A fourth wave would involve more challenging cases: countries that are poorer, more ethnically divided, ideologically more resistant to democracy, with more entrenched authoritarian elites and a much frailer base of governmental institutions and citizen skills.
DEMOCRACY BAD
DEMOCRACY PROMOTION CANT OVERCOME MULTIPLE BARRIERS Steven Erlanger, Staff Writer, February 18, 2004. Selling democracy: an ideal difficult to implant, THE INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE, p. 1. The selling and implanting of democracy face three essential problems: institution-building, which requires time, money and commitment; making that effort palatable in a foreign land, so it is not seen as imperial; and making the effort sustainable in countries where other interests -- wars on terrorism or drugs, or maintenance of regional stability -- trump the ability to face down an illiberal state. "The principal struggle in all these societies is about modernization," said Fareed Zakaria, author of "The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad." "The idea that you can just hold elections while everything else remains feudal, medieval, means you won't get democracy but some perversion of it," he said. DEMOCRACY IS IN RETREAT AROUND THE GLOBE Larry Diamond, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and Co-Editor of the Journal of Democracy, March-April 2008. The democratic rollback: the resurgence of the predatory state, FOREIGN AFFAIRS, vol. 87, no. 2, p. 36. But celebrations of democracy's triumph are premature. In a few short years, the democratic wave has been slowed by a powerful authoritarian undertow, and the world has slipped into a democratic recession. Democracy has recently been overthrown or gradually stifled in a number of key states, including Nigeria, Russia, Thailand, Venezuela, and, most recently, Bangladesh and the Philippines. In December 2007, electoral fraud in Kenya delivered another abrupt and violent setback. At the same time, most newcomers to the democratic club (and some long-standing members) have performed poorly. Even in many of the countries seen as success stories, such as Chile, Ghana, Poland, and South Africa, there are serious problems of governance and deep pockets of disaffection. GEORGIA PROVES U.S. DEMOCRACY PROMOTION FAILS AT THE EXPENSE OF COOPERATION Lincoln A. Mitchell, the Arnold A. Saltzman Assistant Professor in the Practice of International Politics at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, May-June 2008. Democracy bound.(Contagions), THE NATIONAL INTEREST, p. 70. Finally, democracy itself needs to be balanced against other American interests--such as cooperation in the war on terror in Pakistan and Kenya or facilitating the West's energy security in Georgia. However, the recent events in the above three examples have demonstrated that de-emphasizing democratic development comes with a cost--even for America's core security interests. Of these three countries, Georgia is perhaps the most intriguing, because it shows just how difficult it is, even under reasonably good circumstances, to consolidate democratic gains--as well as how strong the temptation to cut democratic corners in the name of expedience and state building is, even for those who claim, with some legitimacy, to be democrats. IMPROVING CURRENT DEMOCRACIES IS A PRE-REQUISTE TO SPREADING DEMOCRACY Larry Diamond, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and Co-Editor of the Journal of Democracy, March-April 2008. The democratic rollback: the resurgence of the predatory state, FOREIGN AFFAIRS, vol. 87, no. 2, p. 36. Before democracy can spread further, it must take deeper root where it has already sprouted. It is a basic principle of any military or geopolitical campaign that at some point an advancing force must consolidate its gains before it conquers more territory. Emerging democracies must demonstrate that they can solve their governance problems and meet their citizens' expectations for freedom, justice, a better life, and a fairer society. If democracies do not more effectively contain crime and corruption, generate economic growth, relieve economic inequality, and secure freedom and the rule of law, people will eventually lose faith and turn to authoritarian alternatives.
DEMOCRACY BAD
YOUNG DEMOCRACIES ARE ENTERING A ROLLBACK Larry Diamond, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and Co-Editor of the Journal of Democracy, March-April 2008. The democratic rollback: the resurgence of the predatory state, FOREIGN AFFAIRS, vol. 87, no. 2, p. 36. Elsewhere in the developing and postcommunist worlds, democracy has been a superficial phenomenon, blighted by multiple forms of bad governance: abusive police and security forces, domineering local oligarchies, incompetent and indifferent state bureaucracies, corrupt and inaccessible judiciaries, and venal ruling elites who are contemptuous of the rule of law and accountable to no one but themselves. Many people in these countries-especially the poor--are thus citizens only in name and have few meaningful channels of political participation. There are elections, but they are contests between corrupt, clientelistic parties. There are parliaments and local governments, but they do not represent broad constituencies. There are constitutions, but not constitutionalism.
UTILITARIANISM / CONSEQUENTIALISM GOOD

A UTILITARIAN CALCULUS JUSTIFIES CAPITALISM AND ECONOMIC FREEDOM Andy Bluden, PhD. from University College of London, March 2003. Amartya Sen; Utilitarianism, ACC. 5-2-2008, <http://home.mira.net/~andy/works/sen.htm>. Utilitarianism is a justification for free-market capitalism. The phenomena described in the dot points above are all too familiar phenomena of the action of the free market. They are not just anomalies for utilitarianism, they are its unambiguous expression. The point of utilitatarianism is simply to prove that all these abominations are the best of all possible worlds ridiculed three hundred years ago by Voltaire. CONSEQUENTIALIST THEORIES ARE JUST BECAUSE THEY SAVE THE MOST LIVES David Wasserman and Alan Strudler the Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications Branch of the National Human Genome Research Institute, 2003. Can a Nonconsequentialist Count Lives?, PHILOSOPHY AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS, 31.1, p. 72. In making choices about saving people from death, what moral significance should attach to the fact that one choice involves saving more people than another? Consequentialists typically have an easy time with such questions because they believe that the morally best choice produces the best consequences and that, other things being equal, more lives saved is a better consequence than fewer lives saved. The consequentialist position involves what might be called the compensation assumption: the proposition that other things equal, the gain that comes from saving a larger group of people somehow more than compensates for the loss that occurs by not saving some other, smaller group of people. UTILITARIANISM PROTECTS RIGHTS FOR THE SOCIAL GOOD Mirko Bagaric, Professor of Law and Head of Deakin Law School and Julie Clarke Lecturer, Deakin Law School, Spring, 2005. Not Enough Official Torture in the World? The Circumstances in Which Torture Is Morally Justifiable, UNIVERSITY OF SAN FRANCISCO LAW REVIEW, 39 U.S.F. L. Rev. 581, p. np. The criticism that utilitarianism has no place for rights must be responded to for the sake of completeness (and in an attempt to further redeem utilitarianism). Rights do in fact have a place in a utilitarian ethic, and, what is more, it is only against this background that rights can be explained and their source justified. Utilitarianism provides a sounder foundation for rights than any other competing theory. Indeed, for the utilitarian, the answer to why rights exist is simple: recognition of them best promotes general utility. Their origin accordingly lies in the pursuit of happiness. Their content is discovered through empirical observations regarding the patterns of behavior that best advance the utilitarian cause. EXTREME SITUATIONS REQUIRE UTILITARIAN DECISIONS FOR THE GREATEST GOOD Mirko Bagaric, Professor of Law and Head of Deakin Law School and Julie Clarke Lecturer, Deakin Law School, Spring, 2005. Not Enough Official Torture in the World? The Circumstances in Which Torture Is Morally Justifiable, UNIVERSITY OF SAN FRANCISCO LAW REVIEW, 39 U.S.F. L. Rev. 581, p. np. Horrible situations make for appalling decisions whichever way we turn, but ultimately we do make the utilitarian choice because of our lack of true commitment to any higher moral virtue. By opting for the utilitarian line we are soothed by one saving grace: at least the level of harm has been minimized. When the good of many or the whole is at significant threat, we have no difficulty selecting certain classes of innocent individuals, whose only "flaw" is their sex, state of health, and date of birth to go in to bat for the rest of us.

UTILITARIANISM IS ONLY MORAL WITHIN SPECIFIC GUIDELINES AND ISSUES Mirko Bagaric, Professor of Law and Head of Deakin Law School and Julie Clarke Lecturer, Deakin Law School, Spring, 2005. Not Enough Official Torture in the World? The Circumstances in Which Torture Is Morally Justifiable, UNIVERSITY OF SAN FRANCISCO LAW REVIEW, 39 U.S.F. L. Rev. 581, p. np. There are also other reasons why performing the utilitarian calculus on each occasion may be counter-productive to the ultimate aim. Our capacity to gather and process information and our foresight are restricted by a large number of factors, including lack of time, indifference to the matter at hand, defects in reasoning, and so on. We are quite often not in a good position to assess all the possible alternatives and to determine the likely impact upon general happiness stemming from each alternative. Our ability to make the correct decision will be greatly assisted if we can narrow down the range of relevant factors in light of pre-determined guidelines. A UTILITARIAN CALCULUS IS ESSENTIAL TO PROTECTING RIGHTS Mirko Bagaric, Professor of Law and Head of Deakin Law School and Julie Clarke Lecturer, Deakin Law School, Spring, 2005. Not Enough Official Torture in the World? The Circumstances in Which Torture Is Morally Justifiable, UNIVERSITY OF SAN FRANCISCO LAW REVIEW, 39 U.S.F. L. Rev. 581, p. np. Difficulties in performing the utilitarian calculus regarding each decision make it desirable that we ascribe certain rights and interests to people that evidence shows tend to maximize happiness - even more happiness than if we made all of our decisions without such guidelines. Rights save time and energy by serving as shortcuts to assist us in attaining desirable consequences. By labeling certain interests as rights, we are spared the tedious task of establishing the importance of a particular interest as a first premise in practical arguments. RIGHTS ARENT ABSOLUTE. ONLY UTILITARIANISM CAN DECIDE RIGHTS CONFLICTS Mirko Bagaric, Professor of Law and Head of Deakin Law School and Julie Clarke Lecturer, Deakin Law School, Spring, 2005. Not Enough Official Torture in the World? The Circumstances in Which Torture Is Morally Justifiable, UNIVERSITY OF SAN FRANCISCO LAW REVIEW, 39 U.S.F. L. Rev. 581, p. np. Thus, importance of rights in a utilitarianism view do not have a life of their own (they are derivative not foundational), as is the case with deontological theories. Due to the derivative character of utilitarian rights, they do not carry the same degree of absolutism or "must be doneness" as those based on deontological theories. This is not a criticism of utilitarianism, however; indeed, this characteristic is a strength because it is farcical to claim that any right is absolute. Another advantage of utilitarianism is that only it provides a mechanism for ranking rights and other interests. In the event of a clash, the victor is the right that will generate the most happiness. ONLY A CONSEQUENTIALIST ETHIC CAN SECURE POLITICAL RIGHTS Mirko Bagaric, Professor of Law and Head of Deakin Law School and Julie Clarke Lecturer, Deakin Law School, Spring, 2005. Not Enough Official Torture in the World? The Circumstances in Which Torture Is Morally Justifiable, UNIVERSITY OF SAN FRANCISCO LAW REVIEW, 39 U.S.F. L. Rev. 581, p. np. When examined closely, the concept of non-consequentialist rights is vacuous at the epistemological level. It has been argued that attempts to ground concrete rights in virtues such as dignity, integrity, concern, and respect are unsound because resort to such ideals is arbitrary and leads to discrimination against certain members of the community (for example, those with severely limited cognitive functioning) or speciesism (the systematic discrimination against non-humans). Ultimately, a non-consequentialist ethic provides no method for distinguishing between genuine and fanciful rights claims and is incapable of providing guidance regarding the ranking of rights in the event of a clash.

THE WORLD IS UNCERTAIN. ONLY UTILITARIANISM PROVIDES THE NECESSARY GUIDE Robert Goodin, Philosopher at the Research School of the Social Sciences, 1998. UTILITARIANISM AND PUBLIC PHILOSOPHY, p. 38. The great advantage of utilitarianism as a guide to public conduct is that it avoids gratuitous sacrifices, it ensures as best we are able to ensure in the uncertain world of public policy-making that policies are sensitive to people's interests or desires or preferences. The great failing of more deontological theories applies to those realms, is that they fixate upon duties done for the sake of duty rather than for the sake of any good that is done by doing one's duty. Perhaps it is permissible (perhaps it is even proper) for private individuals in the course of their personal affairs to fetishize duties done their own sake. It would be a mistake for public officials to do likewise, not least because it is impossible. IT IS ETHICAL TO VIOLATE NOTIONS OF MORALITY TO PREVENT EXTINCTION Nick Bostrom, Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Yale University, March 2002. Analyzing Human Extinction Scenarios and Related Hazards, JOURNAL OF EVOLUTION AND TECHNOLOGY, vol. 9, p. 23. A preemptive strike on a sovereign nation is not a move to be taken lightly, but in the extreme case we have outlined - where a failure to act would with high probability lead to existential catastrophe - it is a responsibility that must not be abrogated. Whatever moral prohibition there normally is against violating national sovereignty is overridden in this case by the necessity to prevent the destruction of humankind. WE CAN MAKE RATIONAL DECISIONS IN MORALITY. CALCULATION IS CRUCIAL TO SURVIVAL Andrew Sayer, Department of Sociology Lancaster University, May 2004. Restoring the Moral Dimension: Acknowledging Lay Normativity, ACC. 8/28/2008, <http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fss/sociology/papers/sayer-restoring-moral-dimension.pdf>. We need to reject the treatment of emotions as opposed to reason. On the contrary emotions can be rational. To be sure the evaluative judgements provided by emotions are fallible, but then so too is reason. Their fallibility derives from the fact that they are about something independent of them, such that they can be mistaken about it. Thus, we may mistakenly imagine that something is a threat to our well-being when it isnt, though some degree of success in evaluating such threats is a condition of survival. Only a consequentialist approach encompasses this inevitability of sacrifice necessary for justice Joseph Nye, Professor of International Relations at Harvard University, 1986. NUCLEAR ETHICS, p. 24. Whether one accepts the broad consequentialist approach or chooses some other, more eclectic way to include and reconcile the three dimensions of complex moral issues, there will often be a sense of uneasiness about the answers, not just because of the complexity of the problems but simply that there is no satisfactory solution to these issues at least none that appears to avoid in practice what most men would still regard as an intolerable sacrifice of value. When value is sacrificed, there is often the problem of dirty hands. Not all ethical decisions are pure ones. The absolutist may avoid the problem of dirty hands, but often at the cost of having no hands at all. Moral theory cannot be rounded off and made complete and tidy. That is part of the modern human condition. But that does not exempt us from making difficult moral choices. UTILITARIANISM IS BEST TO PROVIDE FOR BALANCED NEEDS Robert I. Field and Arthur L. Caplan, both with the Center for Vaccines Ethics and Policy, The Wistar Institute Vaccine Center, and the Vaccine Education Center of Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia, June 2008 A Proposed Ethical Framework for Vaccine Mandates: Competing Values and the Case of HPV, Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal Vol. 18, No. 2, p. 114. Utilitarianism takes the external judgment one step further to consider the best ultimate outcome for society, as a whole. It implements an explicit balancing of relevant factors to determine the optimum result for the greatest number of people regardless of competing individual needs. Utilitarian concerns can be consistent with those of beneficence, but they can also conflict, as when the best interests of some individuals are at odds with those of the majority.

RESOLVING UNCERTAINTY OF CONSEQUENCES IS CRUCIAL TO AVOID EXTINCTION Jonathan Schell, the Harold Willens Peace Fellow at The Nation Institute and teaches a course on the nuclear dilemma at Yale, 2000. THE FATE OF THE EARTH, p. 94. At just what point the species crossed, or will have crossed, the boundary between merely having the technical knowledge to destroy itself and actually having the arsenals at hand, ready to be used at any second, is not precisely knowable. But it is clear that at present, with some twenty thousand megatons of nuclear explosive power in existence, and with more being added every day, we have entered into the zone of uncertainty, which is to say the zone of risk of extinction. ONLY A UTILITARIAN VIEW CAN ACCOUNT FOR THE GOOD OF SOCIETY Thomas Hurka, Professor of Philosophy, University of Toronto, December 7, 2006. Normative Ethics: Back To The Future, Accessed 12-14-2008, <http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~thurka/ docs/futurefinal.pdf>. Perhaps that analysis requires a more subtle application of the principle of organic unities than has yet been considered; perhaps it is simply not possible. Even so, the identification of the two distinctions has greatly improved our understanding of this family of views. There have also been subtle suggestions about how a deontological view can weigh its prohibitions against the overall good an action will cause without aggregating that good in a simple additive way. Thus, the view can make it permissible to kill one innocent person to save some large number of other people from being killed or otherwise seriously harmed, but not to save any number of people from mild headaches. THE INEVITABILITY OF CONFLICTING MORAL CLAIMS NECESSITATES UTILITARIANISM Leslie Mulholland, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Newfoundland, 1986. Rights, Utilitarianism, and the Conflation of Persons, JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY, June, Vol. 83, No. 6, p. 328. For many, the persuasiveness of utilitarianism as a moral theory lies in its power to provide a way out of difficulties arising from the conflict of moral principles. The contention that utilitarianism permits people to override rights in case of conflict of principles or in those cases where some recognized utility requires that a right be disregarded, is then not an internal objection to utilitarianism. Nor does it even indicate a plausible alternative to the convinced utilitarian. For him, utilitarianism has its force partly in the coherence and simplicity of the principle in explaining the morality of such cases. ACTIONS THAT MAXIMIZE THE GREATER GOOD ARE MORALLY JUSTIFIED Charles Fried, Professor of Law at Harvard, 1994. ABSOLUTISM AND ITS CRITICS, p. 170. This line of analysis is enough to show that some quite plausible interpretations of absolute norms lead to impossibly stringent conclusions, lead in fact to total paralysis. But the case is in fact even worse. For it the absoluteness of the norm is interpreted to mean that the consequences such as the death of an innocent person is overwhelmingly bad, then not only are we forbidden to do anything, for anything carries with it a risk of death, we are indeed required to do nothing but to seek out ways to minimize the deaths of innocent persons. For if such a death is so bad that no good can outweigh it, we are surely not justified in pursuing some good, even if that good does not present this risk when we might instead be preventing this most undesirable of all consequences. So this interpretation is to actually a prescription for paralysis, it is more like an obsession. This norm, by virtue of this view of its absoluteness, takes over the whole of our moral life.
UTILITARIANISM / CONSEQUENTIALISM BAD

*Also see deontology good UTILITARIANISM OBLITERATES ALL NOTIONS OF HUMAN RIGHTS Mirko Bagaric, Professor of Law and Head of Deakin Law School and Julie Clarke Lecturer, Deakin Law School, Spring, 2005. Not Enough Official Torture in the World? The Circumstances in Which Torture Is Morally Justifiable, UNIVERSITY OF SAN FRANCISCO LAW REVIEW, 39 U.S.F. L. Rev. 581, p. np. There is now, more than ever, a strong tendency to advance moral claims and arguments in terms of rights. Assertion of rights has become the customary means to express moral sentiments: "There is virtually no area of public controversy in which rights are not to be found on at least one side of the question - and generally on both." There is no question that "the doctrine of human rights has at least temporarily replaced the doctrine of maximizing utilitarianism as the prime philosophical inspiration of political and social reform." EVEN CONSEQUENTIALISM REQUIRES THAT WE ACCOUNT FOR ETHICAL RESONSIBILITIES Nicholas Rescher, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh, 1983. RISK: A PHILOSOPHICAL INTRODUCTION TO THE THEORY OF RISK EVALUATION AND MANAGEMENT, p. 157. The assessment and management of risks is shot through with ethical involvements. One prominent way in which ethics enters into deliberations about risk is as a potential determiner of value: ethical conduct can (and should) itself be viewed as a positivity, and unethical conduct as a negativity. Accordingly, one may well find it necessary to "pay a price" for doing the ethical thing in risk-management situations. UTILITARIANISM WAS THE JUSTIFICATION FOR SLAVERY AND THE HOLOCAUST Sam Storms, November 6, 2006. Moral Relativism, Enjoying God Ministries, <http://enjoy.monkcms.net/article/moral-relativism>, accessed 1011-2007, p. np. Utilitarianism was the ethical justification for slavery in the southern U.S. The argument was made that slavery provided cheap labor which proved prosperous to the south and clearly benefited more people than it harmed. The so-called balance of consequences can thus be used to oppress minorities or perpetuate injustice. Hitler sought to justify the Holocaust on utilitarian grounds. UTILITARIAN ETHICS JUSTIFIES MURDER AND IMMORAL EXCEPTIONS Sam Storms, November 6, 2006. Moral Relativism, Enjoying God Ministries, <http://enjoy.monkcms.net/article/moral-relativism>, accessed 1011-2007, p. np. Utilitarianism allows one to violate what may appear to be a universal moral law if by doing so you ultimately produce a greater good for a greater number of people. Also known as generalism, this theory asserts that taking a human life is generally, but not universally, wrong. As a general rule, killing someone is morally wrong. But there are times when the rule should be broken, namely, when a greater good is served. In other words, there is almost always an exception to any moral law, and such exceptions allow the individual to resolve conflicts between moral duties.

*Also see deontology good EVEN IF THERE ARE EXCEPTIONS TO ABSOLUTE LIFE, IT DOES NOT MEAN THEY ARE JUSTIED Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. January 27, 2006. Intrinsic Value, Accessed 8-24-08, <http://www.analphilosopher.com/posts/1138417835.shtml>. Many people, especially in the Roman Catholic tradition, assign absolute value to innocent human life, which is why they say that it is wrong directly (i.e., intentionally) to kill an innocent human being. They value innocent human life for its own sake (i.e., they value it intrinsically) and they wont allow it to be traded or sacrificed for any other goods. If you assign absolute value to innocent human life, then you will oppose even voluntary active euthanasia. You will also oppose abortion, infanticide, and suicide (including physician-assisted suicide). But you need not oppose capital punishment, killing in self-defense, or killing in a just war, since in these cases the human being who is killed is not innocent. The prohibition against taking innocent human life doesnt apply in these cases. This isnt to say that its morally permissible to do these things, for there may be other reasons to forbear. It just means that the prohibition in question doesnt apply. A STRICT UTILITARIAN CALCULUS JUSTIFIES DOING EVIL FOR THE GREATER GOOD Richard Norman, Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Kentucky, 1995. ETHICS, KILLING, AND WAR, p. 207. Since the waging of war almost invariably involves the deliberate taking of life on a massive scale, it will be immensely difficult to justify. I have argued that utilitarian justifications are not good enough. We cannot justify the taking of life simply by saying that the refusal to take life is likely to lead to worse consequences. An adequate notion of moral responsibility implies that other people's responsibility for evil does not necessarily justify us is doing evil ourselves in order to prevent them. We cannot sacrifice some of our people for the others and claim that we are justified by a utilitarian calculus of lives. IT IS MORALLY WRONG TO COMMIT A SURE EVIL FOR THE POSSIBILITY OF PREVENTING MORE Alan Gewirth, Professor of Law at the University of Chicago, January 1981. Are There Any Absolute Rights?, THE PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY, p. 10. It may also be argued that it is irrational to perpetrate a sure evil in order to forestall what is so far only a possible or threatened evil. Philippa Foot has sagely commented on cases of this sort that if it is the son's duty to kill his mother in order to save the lives of the many other innocent residents of the city, then "anyone who wants us to do something we think wrong has only to threaten that otherwise he himself will do some thing we think worse". Much depends, however, on the nature of the "wrong" and the "worse". If someone threatens to commit suicide or to kill innocent hostages if we do not break our promise to do some relatively unimportant action, breaking the promise would be the obviously right course, by the criterion of degrees of necessity for action. The special difficulty of the present case stems from the fact that the conflicting rights are of the same supreme degree of importance. THE LOGIC OF UTILITARIANISM JUSTIFIES WAR AND TOTALITARIANISM George Kateb, Professor. of politics at Princeton University, 1992. THE INNER OCEAN: INDIVIDUALISM AND DEMOCRATIC CULTURE, p. 11. I do not mean to take seriously the idea that utilitarianism is a satisfactory replacement for the theory of rights. The well-being (or mere preferences) of the majority cannot override the rightful claims of individuals. In a time when the theory of rights is global it is noteworthy that some moral philosophers disparage the theory of rights. The political experience of this century should be enough to make them hesitate: it is not clear that, say, some version of utilitarianism could not justify totalitarian evil. It also could be fairly easy for some utilitarians to justify any war and any dictatorship, and very easy to justify any kind of ruthlessness even in societies that pay some attention to rights. There is no end to the immoral permissions that one or another type of utilitarianism grants. Everything is permitted, if the calculation is right.

*Also see deontology good UTILITARIANS SILENCE RIGHTS CLAIMS AND UNDERMINE MORALITY Erin Byrnes, JD, University of Arizona College of Law, 1999. Therapeutic Jurisprudence: Unmasking White Privilege to Expose the Fallacy of White Innocense: Using a Theory of Moral Correlativity to Make the Case for Affirmative Action Programs in Education, ARIZONA LAW REVIEW, 41 Ariz. L. Rev. 535, p. np. Utilitarianism conceives of rights as being cognizable only when they are legally recognized. To the utilitarian, there is no such thing as a moral right because it is not socially recognized. The utilitarian rejection of moral rights can be fatal to affirmative action. Rights in utilitarian rhetoric are synonymous with the idea of a valid claim to act. Put differently, one can be said to hold a valid claim when, and only when, that claim is grounded in a legally or socially recognized right. This normative theory of rights further posits that the exercise of rights is not dependent upon a duty incumbent upon others to acknowledge or respect that right. This is clearly problematic when applied to calls for affirmative action. Instead of conceiving of rights as corresponding with a duty, the utilitarian thinks of rights in terms of "immunity rights," which have a corresponding concept of a "disability." ULTILITARIANISM DEMANDS THE SLAUGHTER OF ENEMIES IN THE UEST TO AVOID DEATH Louis Rene Beres, Professor of International Law at Purdue University, September 1999. Death, The Herd and Human Survival, INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL ON WORLD PEACE, No. 3, Vol. 16, 326. Nevertheless, the fact of having been born is a bad augury for immortality, and the human inclination to rebel against an apparently unbearable truth inevitably produces the very terrors from which individuals seek to escape. Desperate to live perpetually, humankind embraces a whole cornucopia of faiths that offer life everlasting in exchange for undying loyalty In the end, such loyalty is transferred from the faith to the state, which battles with other states in what political scientists would describe as a struggle for power, but which is often, in reality, a war between the presumed Sons of Light ("Us") and the presumed Sons of Darkness ("Them"). The advantage to being on the side of the Sons of Light in such a significant contest is nothing less than the prospect of eternal life. ULTILITARIANISM JUSTIFIES ENDLESS ATROCITIES IN THE NAME OF THE GREATER GOOD Richard Norman, Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Kentucky, 1995. Ethics, Killing, and War, p. 207. Since the waging of war almost invariably involves the deliberate taking of life on a massive scale, it will be immensely difficult to justify. I have argued that utilitarian justifications are not good enough. We cannot justify the taking of life simply by saying that the refusal to take life is likely to lead to worse consequences. An adequate notion of moral responsibility implies that other people's responsibility for evil does not necessarily justify us is doing evil ourselves in order to prevent them. We cannot sacrifice some of our people for the others and claim that we are justified by a utilitarian calculus of lives.

*Also see deontology good UTILITARIANISM UNDERMINES ONTOLOGICAL INVESTIGATION Jonny Anomaly, Graduate Fellow at the Murphy Institute, 2005. Nietzsches Critique of Utilitarianism, THE JOURNAL OF NIETZSCHE STUDIES, p. 8. Although this statement is merely a descriptive assessment of allegedly incompatible normative theories, Nietzsche quickly proceeds to criticize utilitarianism and socialism by taking for granted the truth of Schopenhauers teleological view of culture. Nietzsche announces his allegiance to Schopenhauer in answering a question posed to his readers: [H]ow can your life, the individual life, receive the highest value, the deepest significance? How can it be least squandered? Certainly only by your living for the good of the rarest and most valuable exemplars, and not for the good of the majority (SE 6). This apparently corroborates Camerons interpretation that Nietzsche opposed utilitarianism primarily because it impedes the development of those rare specimens that Schopenhauer considered the goal of culture, and for whom Nietzsche shared Schopenhauers reverence: the artist, the philosopher, and the saint. UTILITARIANISM IS A SELF-DEFEATING TRAP THAT DENIES HAPPINESS Jonny Anomaly, Graduate Fellow at Murphy Institute, 2005. Nietzsches Critique of Utilitarianism, THE JOURNAL OF NIETZSCHE STUDIES, p. 4. Nietzsches critique of utilitarianism is so far only as strong as his caricature of certain of its advocates. Even if some utilitarians (Bentham perhaps) believed happiness is maximized by eschewing pain and directly pursuing pleasure, others (such as Mill) have stressed the indirect felicific effects of intellectual struggle. Moreover, sophisticated utilitarians since Mill have been remarkably willing to accommodate empirical data by adjusting their practical prescriptions. They concede that if aggregate utility fails to be maximized when each person devotes him or herself to minimizing the pain of others, then utilitarians must reject the blind benevolence Nietzsche criticizes. Sidgwick even embraces the possibility that a Utilitarian may reasonably desire, on Utilitarian principles, that some of his conclusions should be rejected by mankind generally [if their rejection will ultimately lead to greater aggregate happiness]. In short, the fact that utilitarianism may require its own suppression as a basis for practical decision-making does not undermine utilitarianism as a standard of value, even if it undermines utilitarianism as a decision procedure. UTILITARIANISM MASKS WHITE PRIVILEGE Erin Byrnes, JD, University of Arizona College of Law, 1999. Therapeutic Jurisprudence: Unmasking White Privilege to Expose the Fallacy of White Innocense: Using a Theory of Moral Correlativity to Make the Case for Affirmative Action Programs in Education, ARIZONA LAW REVIEW, 41 Ariz. L. Rev. 535, p. np. Again, utilitarianism's specific rejection of the tie between rights and duties renders recognition of white privilege nearly impossible. Without this recognition, there can be no meaningful solution. If accepted, moral rights would provide the grounds for the appraisal of law and other social institutions, a system of appraisal antithetical to utilitarianism's rubric of assessment. Moral rights carry with them the expectation that institutions will be erected with an eye towards respect and furtherance of such rights. Such a proposition would certainly require more than just striving towards color-blindness were it applied to affirmative action. Utilitarianism, however, requires that institutions and rights be evaluated solely with respect to the promotion of human welfare, welfare being the satisfaction of overall citizen desires.

*Also see deontology good UTILITARIANISM MASKS WHITE PRIVILEGE Erin Byrnes, JD, University of Arizona College of Law, 1999. Therapeutic Jurisprudence: Unmasking White Privilege to Expose the Fallacy of White Innocense: Using a Theory of Moral Correlativity to Make the Case for Affirmative Action Programs in Education, ARIZONA LAW REVIEW, 41 Ariz. L. Rev. 535, p. np. Again, utilitarianism's specific rejection of the tie between rights and duties renders recognition of white privilege nearly impossible. Without this recognition, there can be no meaningful solution. If accepted, moral rights would provide the grounds for the appraisal of law and other social institutions, a system of appraisal antithetical to utilitarianism's rubric of assessment. Moral rights carry with them the expectation that institutions will be erected with an eye towards respect and furtherance of such rights. Such a proposition would certainly require more than just striving towards color-blindness were it applied to affirmative action. Utilitarianism, however, requires that institutions and rights be evaluated solely with respect to the promotion of human welfare, welfare being the satisfaction of overall citizen desires. UTILITARIANISM JUSTIFIES GENOCIDE IN THE NAME OF THE COMMON GOOD Jonny Anomaly, Graduate Fellow at the Murphy Institute, 2005. Nietzsches Critique of Utilitarianism, THE JOURNAL OF NIETZSCHE STUDIES, p. 5. Thus Nietzsche thinks utilitarians are committed to ensuring the survival and happiness of human beings, yet they fail to grasp the unsavory consequences which that commitment may entail. In particular, utilitarians tend to ignore the fact that effective long-run utility promotion might require the forcible destruction of people who either enfeeble the gene pool or who have trouble converting resources into utilityincurable depressives, the severely handicapped, and exceptionally fastidious people all seem potential targets. Nietzsche also, however, criticizes utilitarianism by questioning the psychological possibility of the sort of disinterested altruism he thinks utilitarians endorse. UILITARIANISM SACRIFICES THE VALUE TO LIFE Alan Gewirth, Professor of Law at the University of Chicago, January 1981. Are There Any Absolute Rights?, THE PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY, p. 9. A mother's right not to be tortured to death by her own son is beyond ally compromise. It is absolute. This absoluteness may be analysed in several different interrelated dimensions, all stemming from the supreme principle of morality. The principle requires respect for the rights of all persons to the necessary conditions of human action, and this includes respect for the persons themselves as having the rational capacity to reflect on t heir purposes and to control their behaviour in the light of such reflection. The principle hence prohibits using any person merely as a means to the well-being of other persons. For a son to torture his mother to death even to protect the lives of others would be an extreme violation of this principle and hence of these rights, as would any attempt by others to force such an action. NEUROSCIENCE PROVES THAT HUMANS INHERENTLY REJECT STRICT UTILITARIANISM Lewis Smith, Science Reporter, March 22, 2007. Science finds why our heart rules our head, The Times (London), ACC. 8/28/2008, <http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article1550784.ece>. Antonia Damasio, of the University of Southern California, said: This component of the system is one among several that contribute to our wisdom and humanity. The findings indicate that purely rational accounts of moral judgments do not describe all the possible conditions humans face. Emotions appear to contribute to some of those judgments. It does appear from our study that humans reject extreme forms of utilitarian calculation. That rejection is tied to the deployment of social emotions. I think this mixed form of moral judgment, combining reason and emotion, manifests wisdom slowly accumulated over evolutionary time. The classic extreme moral dilemma is when people have to decide whether to kill one innocent person to save others. Rationally there is only the simple choice between the good of the one and the good of the many but most people waver or refuse to act for the apparent greater good.

*Also see deontology good UTILITARIANISM CAN BE USED TO JUSTIFY PRIVILEGING THE FEW OVER THE MANY Robert W. McGee, Director, Center for Accounting, Auditing and Tax Studies at Florida International University, November 20, 2008. An Ethical Analysis of Corporate Bailouts, SSRN Working Paper, Accessed 12-11-2008, <http://papers.ssrn.com/ sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1304754>. One criticism of utilitarian ethics is that the greatest good might be served by having a few individuals benefit a lot while the vast majority is harmed just a little. This is the argument used to justify protectionism of various industries that are facing the heat of foreign competition. Maybe the general public will have to spend an extra five dollars for a shirt, but 50,000 jobs will be saved in the textile industry by protecting it from foreign competition. So a small minority, the 50,000 workers whose jobs will be saved, will benefit, while a hundred million or more consumers of shirts will suffer just a little, perhaps not enough to even notice. UTILITARIANISM JUSTIFIES DENYING PROPERTY RIGHTS IN FAVOR OF STALINISM Robert W. McGee, Director, Center for Accounting, Auditing and Tax Studies at Florida International University, November 20, 2008. An Ethical Analysis of Corporate Bailouts, SSRN Working Paper, Accessed 12-11-2008, <http://papers.ssrn.com/ sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1304754>. The worst flaw in any utilitarian analysis is the total disregard of property and contract rights. For a utilitarian, all that matters is whether the result is a positive-sum game or a negative-sum game. If a few heads have to be broken to achieve the desired result, then a few heads will have to be broken. Or, to paraphrase Stalin, if one wants to make an omelet, one must break a few eggs. THERE IS NO VALUE TO LIFE IN THE UTILITARIAN FRAMEWORK Michael Dillon, Professor of Political Science at the University of Lancaster, April 1999. Another Justice, POLITICAL THEORY, vol. 27, no. 2 p. 165. Economies of evaluation necessarily require calculability. Thus no valuation without mensuration and no mensuration without indexation. Once rendered calculable, however, units of account are necessarily submissible not only to valuation but also, of course, to devaluation. Devaluation, logically, can extend to the point of counting as nothing. Hence, no mensuration without demensuration either. There is nothing abstract about this: the declension of economies of value leads to the zero point of holocaust. However liberating and emancipating systems of value rightsmay claim to be, for example, they run the risk of counting out the invaluable. Counted out, the invaluable may then lose its purchase on life. Herewith, then, the necessity of championing the invaluable itself. For we must never forget that, we are dealing always with whatever exceeds measure. But how does that necessity present itself? Another Justice answers: as the surplus of the duty to answer to the claim of Justice over rights. That duty, as with the advent of another Justice, is integral to the lack constitutive of the human way of being. UTILITARIANISM BENEFITS ONLY A PRIVILEGED FEW Feng Liu, PhD, University of Pennsylvania, 2000 Environmental Justice Analysis: theories, methods and practice, p.20-21. However, its strengths are also its weaknesses. Its quantifications techniques are far from being simple, straightforward, and objective. Indeed, they are often too complicated to be practical. They are also to flexible and subject to manipulation. They are impersonal and lack compassion. More importantly, they fail to deal the issue of equity and distributive justice. Seemingly, you cannot get fairer than this. In calculating benefits and costs, each person is counted as one and only one. IN other words, people are treated equally. For Mill, justice arises from the principle of utility. Utilitarianism in concerted only the aggregate effect, no matter how the aggregate is distributed. For almost all policies, there is an uneven distribution of benefits and costs. Some people win, while others lose. The Pareto optimality would is almost nonexistent. A policys outcome is Pareto optimal if nobody loses and at least one person gains.
DEONTOLOGY GOOD
PEOPLE SHOULD BE TREATED AS ENDS NOT AS MEANS Carol Anne Leuchs Prager, Professor of political Science at the University of Alberta and Trudy Govier, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Lethbridge, 2003. DILEMMAS IN RECONCILIATION: CASES AND CONCEPTS, p. 153. Humanity exists "in our own person, as an end in itself," and when one person treats another person not as an endin-itself, then humanity is also not treated as an end-in-itself."" Here humanity is not a common substantive set of beliefs but simply what all humans share in common that makes them all of the same species, disregarding whatever it is that makes individual persons unique. Kant argues that humanity exists in each person and can be harmed when someone disregards the humanity of a person by treating that person as a means to some other end rather than treating that person as a fellow human deserving of respect as such. DEONTOLOGICAL IMPERATIVES ARE STILL JUSTIFIED EVEN IF THERE ARE EXCEPTIONS Mark Tushnet, prof. of Constitutional Law at Georgetown University, 2003. Wisconsin Law Review, Wis. L. Rev. 273, p. 282. Categorical approaches are designed to offset this tendency by screening out of consideration the features of the circumstances that are likely to induce misjudgment. And, under some conditions, they may succeed in doing so, when the categorical rules address decision-makers who might not appreciate the importance of considerations thought to be peripheral to their more central tasks. Consider, for example, a categorical rule against torture by police officers. Judges might think that in the abstract they can imagine situations in which torture might be a valuable investigative technique. Judges might think that they must communicate rules effectively to police officers. They might also think that any verbal formulation of the (limited) circumstances in which torture might be acceptable is too likely to be misinterpreted in ways that would lead the officers to engage in torture more often than they should. The judges could then conclude that they should announce a categorical rule against torture despite their awareness that such a rule does not correspond to their own sense of what is acceptable. ITS IMPOSSIBLE TO EVALUATE MORAL ACTIONS BASED ON CONSEQUENCES J.J.C. Smart, Prof. of Philosophy at the University of Adelaide, 1973. UTILITARIANISM: FOR AND AGAINST, p. 82. 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 one 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 mean set themselves ends and work towards them, it is very often not really the supposed end, but the effort towards which they set the 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 they choose somewhere to arrive, in order to travel. Even on that view, not everything would have consequential value; what would have non-consequential value would in fact be traveling, even though people had to think of traveling as having the consequential value, and something else the destination the non-consequential value.
DEONTOLOGY BAD
* also see util good DEONTOLOGY IS UTOPIAN. ONLY UTILITARIANISM CAN ACCOUNT OF INEVITABLE CHOICES Thomas Spragens, Professor of Political Science at Duke University, 2000. POLITICAL THEORY AND PARTISAN POLITICS, p. 81-82. Simply put, the problem is that the contingencies of the world ineluctably allocate assets and sufferings quite unfairly. We can cope with and try to compensate for these "natural injustices," but only at the price of introducing other elements of unfairness or compromising other moral values. The other major problem in this context is that real world human beings are not deontologists: their moral intuitions about distributive justice are permeated and influenced by their moral intuitions about the good. The empirical consequence of these two difficulties is the falsification of Rawls's hermeneutic claims about an overlapping consensus. Rational people of good will with a liberal democratic persuasion will be able to agree that some possible distributive criteria are morally unacceptable. But, as both experience and the literature attest, hopes for a convergence of opinion on definitive principles of distributive justice are chimerical. A DEONTOLOGICAL STANCE IS USELESS IN DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN RIGHTS Mirko Bagaric, Professor of Law and Head of Deakin Law School and Julie Clarke Lecturer, Deakin Law School, Spring, 2005. Not Enough Official Torture in the World? The Circumstances in Which Torture Is Morally Justifiable, UNIVERSITY OF SAN FRANCISCO LAW REVIEW, 39 U.S.F. L. Rev. 581, p. np. Despite the dazzling veneer of deontological rights-based theories and their influence on present day moral and legal discourse, when examined closely, such theories are unable to provide persuasive answers to central issues such as: What is the justification for rights? How can we distinguish real from fanciful rights? Which right takes priority in the event of conflicting rights? Such intractable difficulties stem from the fact that contemporary rights theories lack a coherent foundation for rights.
SOCIAL WELFARE GOOD / SOCIAL CONTRACT

LOOKING TO WHAT IS BEST FOR SOCIETY AS A WHOLE RATHER THAN VALUING CAPITAL INCREASES IS THE ONLY WAY TO SOLVE POVERTY AND HUMAN MISERY, ULTIMATELY AVOIDING EXTINCTION Harry Magdoff, editor, and Fred Magdoff, Professor, Plant and Soil Science, University of Vermont, July-August 2005. Approaching Socialism, MONTHLY REVIEW v. 57 n. 3, www.monthlyreview.org/0705magdoffs1.htm. The critical social, economic, and environmental problems of the world are inherent to capitalism. Thus, capitalism must be replaced with an economy and society at the service of humanitynecessitating also the creation of an environment that protects the earths life support systems. What we have described above are suggested basic principles and issues that will need consideration during the construction of a socialist society. The experiences of the Soviet Union and China indicate that the attainment of a mobilized and educated populace willing and capable of taking powerunderstanding the basic problems and limitations and capable of checking the growth of a new bureaucratic class or stratawill not come easily. However, we must learn how to do so if there is to be any hope of significantly improving the conditions of the vast number of the worlds people who are living hopelessly under the most severe conditions while also preserving the earth as a livable planet. This is necessary not only for humans but for all the other species that share the planet with us and whose fortunes are intimately tied to ours. THE SOCIAL CONTRACT PROTECTS DEMOCRACY, PEACE, SAFETY, AND JUSTICE Thomas E. Wallenmaier, Director of Science-Humanities Education Services, July 20, 2007. Political Philosophy, Accessed 10-14-2008, <http://www.philosophyclass.com/politicalphilosophy.htm>. This political philosophy was proposed by Thomas Hobbes, an English philosopher (1588-1679). It was further developed by John Locke (1632-1704) and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778). It was an attempt to answer the question concerning the origin of government. The social contract concept was an attempt to challenge the divine right of kings philosophy which was used by monarchs of the time. According to this philosophy people in a society made a contract with each other or with a ruler to guarantee them certain needs such as peace, safety and justice. If the ruler did not meet his part of the contract, then the people had a right to select a new ruler. This is the basic philosophy that a democracy is based on. WE MUST REVIVE RESPONSIBILITY UNDER THE SOCIAL CONTRACT FOR GLOBAL DEMOCRACY Henry A. Giroux, Ph.D. and Global Television Network Chair in English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University, May 5, 2006. Translating the Future and the Promise of Democracy, Address to convocation, Accessed 10-14-2008, <http://www.henryagiroux.com/awards/convocation_address.htm>. As you well know, the futures we inherit are not of our own making, but the futures we create for generations of young people who follow us arise out of our ability to imagine a better world, recognize our responsibility to others, and define the success of a society to the degree that it can address the needs of coming generations to live in a world in which the obligations of a global democracy and individual responsibility mutually inform each other. Translating the future in such terms poses a serious and important challenge for your generation because the language of democracy and social justice has come under serious attack within the last few decades. Not only has a widespread pessimism about public life and politics developed in countries such as the United States as politics is devalued and public space is commercialized or privatized, but the very idea of justice is under attack as the language of the social contract and democracy are either devalued or ignored.
SOCIAL WELFARE GOOD / SOCIAL CONTRACT

SECURING THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE LIMITS THE EXCESSES OF DEMOCRACY AND GROWTH Morton Halperin, Senior Vice President of the Center for American Progress and Director of the Open Society Policy Center, Et al, 2005. THE DEMOCRACY ADVANTAGE: HOW DEMOCRACIES PROMOTE PROSPERITY, p. 12. The multiplicity of influences on the decision-making process in democracies also leads to more moderate and nuanced policies. This moderating influence contributes to one of the most distinctive qualities of democratic developmentits steadiness. The ups and downs of economic growth in low-income countries are smaller in democracies. Rather than experiencing alternating bouts of boom and bust, economies in democracies are more likely to undergo a stable pattern of moderate gains and small declines. For poor democracies, that quality of steadiness is exceedingly important, for it means that they are more able than countries run by dictators to avoid economic and humanitarian catastrophes. For broad segments of their populations, this is the difference between life and death. REPRESENTING THE WILL AND OPINION OF THE PEOPLE IS THE CORE OF DEMOCRACY Ghia Nodia, a Georgian political analyst and member of the Cabinet of Georgia as Minister of Education and Science, 1994. Nationalism and Democracy in L. Diamond and Marc F. Plattner (eds), NATIONALISM, ETHNIC CONFLICT, AND DEMOCRACY, pp. 5-7. At the core of democracy is the principle of popular sovereignty, which holds that government can be legitimized only by the will of those whom it governs. This general principle has to be distinguished from democratic procedures, which are intended as devices for discerning what the people really will. The main procedure is, of course, elections. Other sets of procedures help to safeguard democracy but restraining elected rulers through such measures as the separation of powers, limits on reelection, special requirements for constitutional amendments, and so on. Democracy is supposed to be a highly rational enterprise. Its debt to the rationalist philosophical tradition can be easily seen in the notion of the social contract, which conceives of society as the construct of free and calculating individuals bent on maximizing their own interests. Democracy is a system of rules legitimized by the will of the people; it is presumed that the people will generally choose what seems to be in their best interest. VIOLATING THE SOCIAL CONTRACT SACRIFICES POLITICAL RIGHTS, LIKE VOTING Brian Pinaire, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, Lehigh University, Et al, July 2003. Barred From the Vote: Public Attitudes Toward the Disenfranchisement of Felons, FORDHAM URBAN LAW JOURNAL, 30 Fordham Urb. L.J. 1519, p. np. According to traditional social contract rationale, freely choosing individuals begin from an original bargaining position and design a system of neutral arrangements that will protect and promote their basic rights and interests. Central to this reasoning is the idea that all people have basic needs and that they form a community and institute rules of governance in order to provide security and a structure that will allow them to enjoy their liberty. A violation of the terms of the "contract" disrupts the balance of rights and responsibilities, invites a punitive response according to pre-determined rules, and essentially (at least temporarily) strips the individual of her right to participate in the political process. REFUSING TO OBEY THE LAWS OF SOCIETY JUSTIFIES WITHDRAWING VOTING RIGHTS Roger Clegg, President and General Counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity, July 24, 2007. Should felons have the right to vote? - NO: Felon disenfranchisement is actually a good idea, ST. LOUIS EXAMINER, <http://www.examiner.com/a-1502826~Should_felons_have_the_right_to_vote____NO__Felon_ disenfranchisement_is_actually_a_good_idea.html>, Accessed 10-13-2008. Well, why not let felons vote? Because you dont have a right to make laws if you arent willing to follow them yourself. To participate in self-government, you must be willing to accept the rule of law. We dont let everyone vote; children, noncitizens and the mentally incompetent dont. Voting requires certain minimum, objective standards of trustworthiness, loyalty and responsibility, and those who have committed serious crimes against their fellow citizens dont meet those standards.
SOCIAL WELFARE / SOCIAL CONTRACT GOOD

THE SOCIAL CONTRACT FORMS THE VERY BASIS OF DEMOCRATIC GOVERNANCE Sam C. Holliday, Former Director of Stability Studies at the Army War College and Ph.D. in International Relations from the University of South Carolina, September 8, 2006. Is Democracy the Solution?, AMERICAN DIPLOMACY, 11 (4), Accessed 10-14-2008, <http://www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat/item/2006/0709/holl/holliday_democracy.html>. A social contract is the agreement within a body politic that tends to preserve the whole. It assumes that the duties, rights, and responsibilities of both individuals and groups depend on some form of agreement. That might be expressed in a written constitution or understood through custom and tradition. A social contract specifies the relationships of individuals and factions within a polity; it defines what is just or unjust. It serves as the source of laws, and it allows for nonviolent evolutionary change. It defines both the distribution of power within the polity (monarchy, oligarchy, theocracy, democracy, and dictatorship) and the structures and processes of governance (unitary, federation, or confederation). THE FOUNDATION FOR CONSTITUTIONAL DEMOCRACY LIES IN THE SOCIAL CONTRACT Eric Menhert, Staff Writer, November/December 2007. A Constitutional Democracy or Feudal Capitalism?, THE MAINE DEMOCRAT, Accessed 10-14-2008, <http://www.polarbearandco.com/mainedem/cdc.html>. The Reverend John Winthrop spoke to the early colonists on the worlds hope for America. As the colonists embarked on their voyage to create a new society he said: "We must delight in each others conditions as our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labour and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and our community in the work ... [so] that men shall say of succeeding plantations; the Lord make it like that of New England for we must consider that we shall be as a City upon a Hill." In his sermon to the scared colonists just setting out, the reverend gave voice to the concept of the social contract. The idea that we have a responsibility to one another and to our government and that, in turn, other members of our society and our government have a responsibility to us. It is that concept of the social contract which forms the foundation for our constitutional democracy. PUBLIC WELFARE SHOULD SUPERCEDE CORPORATE WELFARE UNDER THE CONSTITUTION Robert Morpheal, Staff Writer, December 10, 2008. Constitutional Challenge to Corporate Bailouts, Democratic Underground, Accessed 12-11-2008, <http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=114x50305>. Thus the governments funds must be spend differently and not given to corporate entities, when the class of legal entities categorized as individuals, the we the people of the constitution, have needs that can be readily legally argued to necessarily take precedence. In that case of argument the needs of the people would have to be met before any surplus to those needs could be granted by government to other classes of entities. Whether it is the need for individuals to have transportation, or whether it is other needs that take precedence is less of a point and might in fact be a mute point, in comparison to the more basic problem of whether government can legitimately and legally provide government bailout funding, from government revenues, to corporations, as anything other than surplus to all matters of funding that can be argued to be for the common welfare of the legal class of entities known as individuals.
GOVT OBLIGATION TO PROTECT CITIZENS

THE SOCIAL CONTRACT BINDS GOVERNMENTS TO THE PROTECT OF ITS CITIZENS Scott Hawkins, Senior Researcher Fellow for Skandia Strategic Solutions, 2004. Ethical and Moral Issues Facing the Virtual Organization, COLLABORATIVE NETWORKED ORGANIZATIONS, A RESEARCH AGENDA FOR EMERGING BUSINESS MODELS, p. 160. Social contract theory does more than provide an ethical methodology to understand business's obligations. Beyond explaining the boundaries applying to both business and society, it helps provide an understanding of why business is formed, just as political social contracts help explain why governments are formed. It does this by reflecting the agreement between society and business and the purpose each provides for the other. It is this justification argument, why business organizations are formed and their role in society, that lies at the heart of the debate about business ethics and morality. The debate reflects competing answers to the justification question. THE GOVERNMENT HAS A CLEAR OBLIGATION TO MAINTAIN THE SOCIAL ORDER Michael Goodhart, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Pittsburgh, 2006. Human Rights and Non-State Actors, NON-STATE ACTORS IN THE HUMAN UNIVERSE, p. 25. The social contract establishes public and private realms; the public, the realm of civil society and government, is created explicitly by the contract and establishes the legitimate power of the state, at least for so long as the state fulfills its obligation to protect the rights of citizens. The social contract also structures the private realm, both in the immediate sense that what is private is determined by those "reserved" or "retained" rights held by citizens qua natural individuals, and in the mediate sense that public authority regulates and maintains the private sphere through various laws and institutions. The two realms are mutually constitutive. U.S. CONSTITUTIONAL LAW IS BUILT ON THE FOUNDATION OF THE GOVERNMENTS OBLIGATION TO PROTECT ITS CITIZENS Edward Keynes is Professor of Political Science at Penn State University, 1996. LIBERTY, PROPERTY, AND PRIVACY, TOWARD A JURISPRUDENCE OF SUBSTANTIVE DUE PROCESS, p. 49-50. In addition to sharp divisions between Democrats and Republicans, within the Republican Party there were significant differences of opinion among moderates, conservatives, and radicals. Some moderates like William Lawrence (R-Ohio) found support for fundamental rights in the Declaration of Independence, the Preamble to the Constitution, and various constitutional provisions, such as the privileges and immunities clause (Article Four) and the Fifth and Thirteenth Amendments. Other moderates appealed to general principles of the political contractthat is, to the reciprocal duties between governors and the governed. In exchange for citizen loyalty, government has an obligation to protect the individual's fundamental rights throughout the United States. CONSTITUTIONAL LAW AFFIRMS A GOVERNMENTS OBLIGATION TO PROTECT RIGHTS Edward Keynes is Professor of Political Science at Penn State University, 1996. LIBERTY, PROPERTY, AND PRIVACY, TOWARD A JURISPRUDENCE OF SUBSTANTIVE DUE PROCESS, p. 50. Some radicals like William Windom (R-Minn.) stressed the inalienable, preconstitutional basis of the citizen's rights. Other radicals, such as John Broomall (R-Pa.)" and Samuel Shellabarger (R-Ohio)," emphasized the government's basic duty to protect fundamental liberties. According to Broomall, the Preamble establishes a basic obligation to protect every person within the jurisdiction of the federal government, at home and abroad."
PROTECTION OF RIGHTS GOOD
PROTECTION OF RIGHTS Leif Wenar, 19 Dec. 2005. STANFORD ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY, accessed 8/6/2006, <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rights/>. For any society to remain just, it must protect the rights of its citizenry. The most important right among these is the right to life, and no society can maintain justice while sacrificing this right. As Leif Wenar explains, Locke argued that men have rights to "life, liberty, and estate" in a pre-political state of nature, and that these natural rights put limits on the legitimate authority of the state. Locke's influence can be seen in the revolutionary American and French political documents of the eighteenth century, and especially in Jefferson's Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness." RIGHTS ARE AN ESSENTIAL MORAL CHECK ON THE EXCESSES OF UTILITARIANISM Erin Byrnes, JD, University of Arizona College of Law, 1999. Therapeutic Jurisprudence: Unmasking White Privilege to Expose the Fallacy of White Innocense: Using a Theory of Moral Correlativity to Make the Case for Affirmative Action Programs in Education, ARIZONA LAW REVIEW, 41 Ariz. L. Rev. 535, p. np. Though the pursuit of welfare would be deemed morally relevant and would justify a course of action on welfare's behalf, in a scenario where that course of action constituted a mere "minimal increment of utility," it would be incapable of overcoming the argumentative threshold of rights. 255 Thus, the argument is that the recognition of moral rights is diametrically opposed to utilitarianism because in a moral rights regime, rights act as a limitation upon the utilitarian goal of fulfilling as many individual desires as possible.
DIGNITY GOOD / DEHUM BAD

By affirming the value of human dignity, we adopt a moral mechanism for social change. Daniel B. Klein, Associate Professor of Economics, Santa Clara University, Winter 1997. Liberty, Dignity, and Resposibility: The Moral Triad of a Good Society, THE INDEPENDENT REVIEW, Vol. 1, No. 3, p. 325. Dignity is a worthy goal for a political or social movement, perhaps the worthiest. But my present goal is not to celebrate dignity or to recommend a plan for its achievement. Rather, I have introduced dignity to show the moral mechanisms linking liberty and responsibility. If liberty and responsibility each have a reflexive relationship with dignity, then they have a reflexive relationship with each other. DIGNITY IS AN AFFIRMATION OF LOVE AND JUSTICE Arthur Ashe, Former Tennis Pro and HIV/AIDS spokesperson, May 8, 2006. DAYS OF GRACE (autobiography), reprinted in Arthur Ashe, Patricia Nordman, EZINE ARTICLES, Accessed 12-18-07, <http://ezinearticles.com/?Arthur-Ashe&id=192931>. I wish more of us would understand that our increasing isolation, no matter how much it seems to express pride and self-affirmation, is not the answer to our problems. Rather, the answer is a revival of our ancient commitment to God, who rules over all the peoples of the world and exalts no one over any other, and to the moral and spiritual values for which we were once legendary in America. We must reach out our hand in friendship and dignity both to those who would befriend us and those who would be our enemy. We must believe in the power of education. We must respect just laws. We must love ourselves, our old and our young, our women as well as our men. DIGNITY REFLECTS OUR OUTWARD RELATIONS WITH THE OTHER Daniel B. Klein, Associate Professor of Economics, Santa Clara University, Winter 1997. Liberty, Dignity, and Resposibility: The Moral Triad of a Good Society, THE INDEPENDENT REVIEW, Vol. 1, No. 3, p. 325. The observer cannot peer into the private ocean of another, but the observer can gauge the extent to which someone comports himself in relations with others so as to afford himself self-respect. In a word, we can form an idea of the extent to which the individual comports himself with dignity. Dignity is a social phenomenon. It is not about how one behaves in the exclusive company of oneself, but about one's outward behavior in relations with others. ACTING TOWARD DIGNITY WITH OTHERS IS A RECIPROCAL RELATIONSHIP Daniel B. Klein, Associate Professor of Economics, Santa Clara University, Winter 1997. Liberty, Dignity, and Resposibility: The Moral Triad of a Good Society, THE INDEPENDENT REVIEW, Vol. 1, No. 3, p. 325. We value dignity in our fellows because their example and standard aid us in behaving with dignity ourselves, which helps us to respect ourselves. By behaving with dignity, we take possession of ourselves, sort out our impulses, measure the worthiness of one impulse against another, clean ship if necessary, and on the whole give ourselves a more coherent and enduring sense of mission. The captain nourishes the crew members, but he is nourished in turn by them. DIGNITY SHOULD COME FIRST BECAUSE IT AFFECTS HOW WE ACT WITH OTHERS IN FOSTERING SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY AND JUSTICE Daniel B. Klein, Associate Professor of Economics, Santa Clara University, Winter 1997. Liberty, Dignity, and Resposibility: The Moral Triad of a Good Society, THE INDEPENDENT REVIEW, Vol. 1, No. 3, p. 325. Let us place dignity then in the footlights along with liberty and responsibility. Dignity measures a certain quality in the behavior of the members of the society. That quality has two aspects: first, the extent to which they guard their own self-respect, or preserve their own dignity, in their social behavior; second, the extent to which they accommodate the self-respect of others, or preserve the dignity of others with whom they interact.
FASCHING: SACRED AND THE HOLY

In evaluating actions as morally justified, we should employ the distinction between the sacred and the holy. This is not necessarily a pro- or anti- religious stance, but an overarching criteria for evaluating immigration issues like sanctuary cities in the context of moral justification. The morally justified action is that which embraces a holy ethic. Professors Fasching and deChant explain the unique distinction between the sacred and the holy and its role in recognizing human dignity: Darrell Fasching, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of South Florida and Dell deChant, Professor of Religious Studies at USF, 2001. COMPARATIVE RELIGIOUS ETHICS: A NARRATIVE APPROACH, p. 10. The terms "the sacred" and "the holy," which have typically been used interchangeably, are proposed here as names for these opposing types of experience. The sacred defines those who share a common identity as "human" and sees all others as profane and less (or less than) human. The sacred generates a morality expressed in narratives of mistrust and hostility toward the stranger. The holy, by contrast, generates an ethic which calls into question every sacred morality in order to transform it in the name of justice and compassion, especially toward the stranger. The task of an ethic of the holy is not to replace the morality of a society, but to transform it by breaking down the divisions between the sacred and profane, through narratives of hospitality to the stranger, which affirm the human dignity of precisely those who do not share my identity and my stories. ??? Darrell Fasching, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of South Florida and Dell deChant, Professor of Religious Studies at USF, 2001. COMPARATIVE RELIGIOUS ETHICS: A NARRATIVE APPROACH, p. 20. While the center of a sacred society is within its boundaries and measured by all who share the same identity, in a holy community the center is to be found, paradoxically, outside its boundaries, in the stranger who is wholly other. For strangers and outcasts are those whose identity does not fit within the sacred order of things and consequently cannot be named or measured in its categories. A holy community is typically a subculture which functions as a "counterculture," an alternative community within a sacred society whose way of life calls that society's sacred order into question. THE SACRED ORDER SEES ALL NON-CITIZENS AS THREATS TO BE KILLED UNDER THE BANNER OF MORALITY Darrell Fasching, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of South Florida, 1993. THE ETHICAL CHALLENGE OF AUSCHWITZ AND HIROSHIMA: APOCALYPSE OR UTOPIA?, p. 287. Citizens are encouraged to believe their particular way of life and the values embodied in it are universal. As such their way of life ought to be universally accepted or at the very least it ought to be recognized that their way is the most fully human. Hence the stranger and his or her community, who live by some other standard, represent a threat to those who embody "true humanity." Once one enters into such a story, its inner logic leads to the ideal of killing in order to heal. To destroy the stranger and the stranger's alternate way of life becomes a necessary moral obligation justified by the goal of "saving humanity." EMBRACING THE STRANGER THROUGH A HOLY ETHIC IS CRUCIAL TO HUMAN DIGNITY Darrell Fasching, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of South Florida, 1992. NARRATIVE THEOLOGY AFTER AUSCHWITZ: FROM ALIENATION TO ETHICS, p. 82. The holy community calls the larger social order into question in the name of a "wholly other" order of values that the community seeks to embody. The point of the alternative ethic is not so much to replace the cosmological ethic of society (since that would result only in the production of another sacred order) as it is to desacralize its sacred order so as to protect human dignity, especially that of the stranger. Every society needs the continuing counterpresence of alternative communities if human dignity is to be recognized and respected.

THE SACRED SEEKS TO SUSTAIN THE PRESENT, WHERE A HOLY ETHIC EMBRACES INFINITE OPENNESS Darrell Fasching, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of South Florida and Dell deChant, Professor of Religious Studies at USF, 2001. COMPARATIVE RELIGIOUS ETHICS: A NARRATIVE APPROACH, p. 19. While a sacred society is founded on a shared set of answers that belong to the finite world of "the way things are," a holy community is founded on experiences of openness to the infinite. The experience of the infinite is not an experience "of" some "thing" but of a "lack" or "absence" that opens us up to seeing and acting on new possibilities. This type of experience is expressed in our capacity for doubt. To be seized by doubt, we are suggesting, is to be seized by the holy, that is, by the infinite. Indeed, doubt is probably the most common human experience of the infinite. While doubt tends to negate and undermine the way things are, it is not a purely negative force. A HOLY COMMUNITY IS RADICALLY DIFFERENT FROM THE SACRED ORDER Darrell Fasching, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of South Florida and Dell deChant, Professor of Religious Studies at USF, 2001. COMPARATIVE RELIGIOUS ETHICS: A NARRATIVE APPROACH, p. 18. The way things are in this sacred order is the way they ought to be (Is = Ought). A very different form of religious experience gives rise to the holy community. For the experience of the holy generates a human response to the sacred, which calls it into question by insisting that ultimate truth and reality are radically different than this world and its sacred powers and sacred orders. INFINITE OPENNESS IS THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN THE HOLY AND THE SACRED Darrell Fasching, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of South Florida and Dell deChant, Professor of Religious Studies at USF, 2001. COMPARATIVE RELIGIOUS ETHICS: A NARRATIVE APPROACH, p. 20. While a sacred society is founded on a shared set of answers that belong to the finite world of "the way things are," a holy community is founded on experiences of openness to the infinite. The experience of the infinite is not an experience "of" some "thing" but of a "lack" or "absence" that opens us up to seeing and acting on new possibilities. This type of experience is expressed in our capacity for doubt. To be seized by doubt, we are suggesting, is to be seized by the holy, that is, by the infinite. Indeed, doubt is probably the most common human experience of the infinite. ADHERENCE TO NATIONALIZED IDENTITIES FORCLOSES OPENNESS TO THE STRANGER Darrell Fasching, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of South Florida, 1993. THE ETHICAL CHALLENGE OF AUSCHWITZ AND HIROSHIMA: APOCALYPSE OR UTOPIA?, p. 287. Thus, instead of openness to the stranger, surrender to national identity generates an absolute unquestioning loyalty to the sacred order of one's society and its way of life. This transfer and diminishing of authentic religious selftranscendence is accomplished, Niebuhr suggested, by identifying the universal with the particular. NOTIONS OF SACRED AND THE HOLY ARE OPPOSING FORCES TOWARD MORALITY Darrell Fasching, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of South Florida and Dell deChant, Professor of Religious Studies at USF, 2001. COMPARATIVE RELIGIOUS ETHICS: A NARRATIVE APPROACH, p. 17. The distinction between the sacred and the holy is meant to express the idea that religious experiences are not all the same "the sacred" and "the holy" name two categories of types of experience (in each category the experiences are not necessarily all the same, either, but can be grouped together because they have similar functional impacts on society) that shape the narrative imagination in opposing directions, so that the very same tradition and the very same stories can be interpreted very differently, encouraging opposing patterns of behavior.

HOLDING AN OBLIGATION TO CITIZENS ONLY REPRESENTS A SACRED ETHIC Darrell Fasching, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of South Florida, 1992. NARRATIVE THEOLOGY AFTER AUSCHWITZ: FROM ALIENATION TO ETHICS, p. 81. A sacred society sacralizes its own finite order and requires conformity of all human selves to their divinely ordained place in that order, which inevitably identifies some as more human than others. By contrast, a holy community sees all selves as having an irreducible dignity that stems from being radically open to the infinite. Because the self is seen as mirroring the infinite it cannot be defined and confined to any dehumanizing definitions, and hence all selves are equal by virtue of their indefinability. (Both the Judaic understanding of the self created in the image of a God without image and the Buddhist understanding of no-self would be examples.) Holy communities oppose the cosmological ethic of a sacred society with an anthropological ethic that makes human dignity the measure of a just societyprovided that the measure of the human is the infinite. WE SHOULD NOT TIE NOTIONS OF DIGNITY AND MORALITY TO THE NATION-STATE Darrell Fasching, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of South Florida, 1993. THE ETHICAL CHALLENGE OF AUSCHWITZ AND HIROSHIMA: APOCALYPSE OR UTOPIA?, p. 290. The most important thing both Buddhists and Christians can learn from the Jewish narrative traditions of chutzpah is the audacity to question all authority in the name of human dignity and in defense of the stranger. Both Buddhism and Christianity have exhibited a disturbing propensity to reduce their anthropological visions to cosmological visions for the legitimation of nationalismsnationalisms that inspire an ethic of unquestioning obedience whose logic culminates in obligation to kill in order to heal. The utopianism of an ethic of audacity on behalf of the stranger lies in its capacity to create a new public order that relativizes nationalism and subordinates it to human dignity and human interdependence. ATTACHING IDENTITY TO THE NATION-STATE SUSTAINS THE SACRED ORDER Darrell Fasching, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of South Florida, 1993. THE ETHICAL CHALLENGE OF AUSCHWITZ AND HIROSHIMA: APOCALYPSE OR UTOPIA?, p. 287. Nations seem to be the largest social unit whose symbolic narratives have been able to evoke a sense of common identity sufficient to motivate persons to sacrifice themselves for the good of others, and even nations seem to need the threat of war to stir up such fervor. Because the capacity to identify with others seems unable to transcend national boundaries, at these boundaries authentic self-transcendence is usually replaced by a surrender to some finite sacred order. Where the holy-infinite provokes questions; the sacred forbids them. EMBRACING AN ETHIC OF OPENNESS TO THE STRANGER AFFIRMS HUMAN DIGNITY Darrell Fasching, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of South Florida and Dell deChant, Professor of Religious Studies at USF, 2001. COMPARATIVE RELIGIOUS ETHICS: A NARRATIVE APPROACH, p. 43. Yet, despite the seemingly overwhelming dominance of techno- bureaucratic tribalism and mass killing in the twentieth century, a modest but important counter-trend also emerged a cross-cultural and interreligious ethic of audacity on behalf of the stranger, linked to such names as Tolstoy, Gandhi, and King. The purpose of this chapter is to grasp the ethical challenge of modernity as symbolized by Auschwitz and Hiroshima. The purpose of the remainder of this book is to examine the potential of the ethical response to that challenge offered by the tradition of non-violent civil disobedience, symbolized by Gandhi and King, for a cross-cultural and interreligious post/modern ethic of human dignity, human rights, and human liberation.

EMBRACING A DIVERSITY OF IDENTITIES IS A MORAL RESOURCE FOR ETHICS Darrell Fasching, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of South Florida, 1992. NARRATIVE THEOLOGY AFTER AUSCHWITZ: FROM ALIENATION TO ETHICS, p. 173-174. The diversity of identities we take on in our various social contexts is a potential moral resource. Our capacity to move consciously and comfortably between diverse roles or identities represents a sociological differentiation of consciousness. If differentiated social consciousness enables each of us to relate all our various selves (social roles) to each other and to assume responsibility for all of them. The failure of such a differentiation leads to a Manichaean compartmentalization of selves, such that the right hand pretends not to know what the left hand is doing. THE SACRED/HOLY DISTINCTION WORKS TO EVALUATE MORALITY CLAIMS Darrell Fasching, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of South Florida and Dell deChant, Professor of Religious Studies at USF, 2001. COMPARATIVE RELIGIOUS ETHICS: A NARRATIVE APPROACH, p. 17. By separating the uses of "sacred" and "holy" (and in a parallel manner, "morality" and "ethics") in this way we are saying that the collection of social behaviors that are generally labeled "religious" are not all religious in the same way. So we are arguing that it is very helpful to give separate meanings to terms that have been used interchangeably in order to help us see and understand these differences. EMBRACING INFINITE OPENNESS TO THE STRANGER TRANSFORMS THE SACRED ORDER Darrell Fasching, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of South Florida and Dell deChant, Professor of Religious Studies at USF, 2001. COMPARATIVE RELIGIOUS ETHICS: A NARRATIVE APPROACH, p. 19. These three critical expressions of the holy oppose the way things are with the way things ought to be. They call the sacredness of a particular way of life into question on the basis of an experience of openness to an infinite that can neither be named nor measured because it is beyond all measures a finite mind can apply to it. In each case a sacred way of life is called into question as not doing justice to the infinite mystery of being human. In each case, an experience of an infinite or "wholly other" dimension which was beyond measure and imagination was thought to provide a true measure of the human, calling for a transformed way of life. Each of these is a precursor for what today we call human dignity. THE SACRED DEFINES THE STRANGER AS A SUB-HUMAN OTHER Darrell Fasching, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of South Florida and Dell deChant, Professor of Religious Studies at USF, 2001. COMPARATIVE RELIGIOUS ETHICS: A NARRATIVE APPROACH, p. 18. In a sacred society all who are alike (for example, share a common ethnic identity) are the same sacred and human. All strangers that is, all who are different are profane and less (or less than) human. The experience of the sacred sacralizes the finite order of the society, seeing a society's way of life as an expression of the sacred cosmic order of things. And what is sacred is held to be beyond question. SACRILIZING DIFFERENCE UNDERMINES HUMAN DIGNITY Darrell Fasching, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of South Florida and Dell deChant, Professor of Religious Studies at USF, 2001. COMPARATIVE RELIGIOUS ETHICS: A NARRATIVE APPROACH, p. 19. Like the holy, human dignity can neither be named or imaged. We cannot say what it is, only what it is not. It does not reside in our race, in our gender or even our religion. Human dignity, we say, is what we have in common despite differences in race, gender, social class, and religion. Our dignity ought to be respected in spite of our differences, and so we criticize the way our differences are sacralized so as to make some seem worthy of respect while others are not.

A SACRED MORALITY SUPPRESSES ALL REFLECTIVE CRITICISM Darrell Fasching, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of South Florida and Dell deChant, Professor of Religious Studies at USF, 2001. COMPARATIVE RELIGIOUS ETHICS: A NARRATIVE APPROACH, p. 18. The power of the sacred lies, in great part, in its ability to surround itself with a sense of "taboo" that forbids all doubt and questioning, seeing such criticism as a sacrilege. Yet the experience of the holy seems to have the capacity to evoke the audacity to doubt and question precisely what is "beyond question." Indeed, as Paul Tillich has argued, both mystical and prophetic criticism function this way. Moreover, by desacralizing the sacred, they also prepare the way for the secular-ethical critique of the irrationality of the sacred. This is the kind of critique the Greek philosopher Socrates engaged in when he asked if what people called the "good" or "virtue" really was good or virtuous or just. WE SHOULD QUESTION SACRED NOTIONS OF MORALITY AND WELCOME THE STRANGER Darrell Fasching, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of South Florida and Dell deChant, Professor of Religious Studies at USF, 2001. COMPARATIVE RELIGIOUS ETHICS: A NARRATIVE APPROACH, p. 311. The way we have put the issue is that ethics is the questioning of sacred morality in the name of human dignity so as to bring morality into harmony with the demands of holiness. And dignity, we have argued, is precisely that which makes our humanity indefinable. Thus, from this perspective, it is not a matter of transcending ethics through religion but of transcending sacred morality in order to embrace a religious ethic of holiness. Such an ethic transcends dualism precisely by welcoming the stranger and loving one's enemies, and yet is prepared to make ethical judgments about justice and take action on behalf of those treated unjustly but only by acting non-violently.
INFINITE OBLIGATION TO THE OTHER GOOD

WE HAVE AN INFINITE OBLIGATION OF HOSPITALITY TO THE OTHER Sen Hand, Reader in French Culture at London Guildhall University, 1989. THE LEVINAS READER, p. V. Emmanuel Levinas is one of the most profound, exacting and original philosophers of twentieth-century Europe. His post-rational ethics stands as the ultimate and exemplary challenge to the solitude of Being, a rigorous and moving testimony of one's infinite obligation to the other person. Levinas's teaching reveals ethics to be the first philosophy: his call to responsibility henceforth obliges thought to refer not to the true but to the good. In assuming this colossal responsibility, Levinas has changed the course of contemporary philosophy. HOLDING AN ETHICAL OBLIGATION TO THE OTHER IS THE ONLY PATH TO ETHICS Michael L. Morgan. Chancellor's Professor of Philosophy and Jewish Studies, Indiana University, 2007. DISCOVERING LEVINAS, p. 224. Later in Otherwise Than Being, Levinas says that "the Infinite orders to me the neighbor as a face. This way for the order to come from I know not where, this coming that is not a recalling... we have called Welty. It is the coming of the order to which I ant subjected before hearing it, or which I bear in my own saying. It is an august command, but one that does not constrain or dominate...." This latterthis elevated order that does not overwhelm I have said is the residue left behind by an awesome transcendence (divine omnipotence) that has passed by, so to speak. It is the normative force left behind in the face of the other person who confronts me; it is what makes that face not only vulnerable to me but also binding for me. Indeed, there is no other way that ethics could be binding for Levinas. AN INFINITE RESPONSIBILITY TO THE OTHER IS BASIS FOR ETHICS Adriaan Theodoor Peperzak, Ph.D., Arthur J. Schmitt Professor, Philosophy Department, Loyola UniversityChicago, 1997. BEYOND: THE PHILOSOPHY OF EMMANUEL LEVINAS, p. 158. Levinas stresses the interval between my election to responsibility for the Other and the emergence of conscious autonomy; upon awakening, my spontaneous egoism is not ready to agree with the infinite demands of responsibility which took possession of men without my consent and against the desires of my spontaneity. But this excludes neither the possibility of a future agreement with the orders of the God, nor the perspective of a final peace through full adherence to the law of infinite obligation. Isn't death, after all, the possibility of a full payment of all debts? EMBRACING THE RADICAL ALTERITY OF THE OTHER DEMANDS AN INFINTE OBLIGATION TO THE OTHER Elif Cirakman, Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy, Middle East Technical University 2005. Transcendence and the Human Condition: Reflections on Kant, Heidegger and Levinas, PHENOMENOLOGY OF LIFE: MEETING THE CHALLENGES OF THE PRESENT-DAY WORLD, p. 329. Levinas claims that the tension between existence and the existent can only be resolved by the "alterity" of the Other. Thus, the Other drives the self-identical ego out of its enchainment to existence. For one thing, since the "I" alone cannot pardon its being. or unchain its ties with impersonal existence, its liberation from this tension can only come from its submission to the other person. The resolution of the dialectic of this "unhappy" state could be made possible only by the ethical responsibility for the Other. However, because this responsibility for the Other is the infinite obligation of the self, it only designates an impossible possibility revealing the absolute ethical significance in Levinas thinking.
LOVE GOOD
LOVE IS UNIVERSAL IS NATURE AND PARTICULAR IN OUR EXPERIENCES Robert E. Wagoner, Professor of Philosophy at Juniata College, 1997. THE MEANINGS OF LOVE: AN INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY OF LOVE, p. 147. Even though we also deal with our solitude in other ways, through work and political life and other kinds of socializing, love seems more important because it is more all-encompassing and is closer to our sense of identity. For that reason we expect a lot from love. It promises total meaning in return for total devotion. Half-hearted lovers need not apply. The totality of love, however, is always defined in some specific way, in terms of certain assumptions and definitions. Love may be global in its reach, but we are specific in how we think about it. As a result, the problem is usually not that love fails to deliver, but that the meaning it delivers is a consequence of the particular way in which we define it. EMBRACING LOVE IS ESSENTIAL TO EXTENDING AN OBLIGATION TO THE OTHER Sharon Todd, Associate Professor and Co-Director of Outdoor Education Practicum, SUNY-Cortland, 2003. LEARNING FROM THE OTHER: LEVINAS, PSYCHOANALYSIS AND ETHICAL POSSIBILITIES, p. 73. This meaning of love therefore suggests that it is not what I know about the Other that is important for establishing connection, but that I simply am for the Other in my feeling for her; I learn in from and respond to her difference. The Other as other is therefore related to in all her singularity, and I, too, am singular in feeling love for the Other. Thus drawn out of me is my own uniqueness as a response to the absolute limit the Other imposes. As a consequence, the spontaneity of love establishes a being-for that has specifically ethical dimensions. "In love, commitment and depth are profounder than in compassion; emotionally, more is involved at the giving as well as at the receiving end" (209-210). This suggests that love could be the feeling-for the Other requisite to the kind of commitment that being-for the Other entails. AN INFINITE RESPONSIBILITY TO THE OTHER CAN ONLY STEM FROM LOVE Dr. Brian Treanor, Department of Philosophy, Loyola Marymount University, 2006. ASPECTS OF ALTERITY: LEVINAS, MARCEL, AND THE CONTEMPORARY DEBATE, p. 154. For Levinas, love, in its ethically significant form, is the "love of one's neighbor." However, love of one's neighbor is itself nothing other than responsibility.' Therefore, when Levinas says, "love is originary," he is in fact speaking of disinterested love, love without eros; that is, responsibility. "Love is originary" means "responsibility is originary." It is love qua responsibility that concerns Levinasa responsible love that both informs and submits to the justice that must supersede it in society. Justice and responsibility remain the ethically significant modes of relation to the other for Levinas. LOVE IS CENTRAL TO ETHICS BUT MUST BE EXPRESSED IN SPECIFIC SITUATIONS Marguerite La Caze, an Australian Research Fellow in Philosophy at The University of Queensland, 2005. Love, That Indispensable Supplement: Irigaray and Kant on Love and Respect, HYPATIA, Vol. 20, No. 3, p. 93. What role should love play in ethical life? Those philosophers who believe that love is relevant to ethics are divided over its nature and how fundamental an ethical concept it is. Respect is generally taken to be essential to the ethical life, and love an optional extra. Furthermore, many philosophical discussions of love neglect the social and political context in which love is experienced. Here I examine the work of Luce Irigaray and Immanuel Kant, who both show considerable insight into the role of love in ethics and politics. Kant's discussion of respect as a basis for ethics is well known, as is Irigaray's treatment of love.
MORALITY GOOD
MORALITY IS THE ESSENTIAL GUIDE FOR ACTION AllAboutPhilosophy, 2007. Morality By Design, AllAboutPhilosophy.org, <http://www.allaboutphilosophy.org/morality.htm>, p. np, Accessed 12-17-2007. Morality describes the principles that govern our behavior. Without these principles in place, societies cannot survive for long. In today's world, morality is frequently thought of as belonging to a particular religious point of view, but by definition, we see that this is not the case. Everyone adheres to a moral doctrine of some kind. MORALITY GUIDES HUMANE AND SOCIALLY BENEFICIAL BEHAVIOR AllAboutPhilosophy, 2007. Morality By Design, AllAboutPhilosophy.org, <http://www.allaboutphilosophy.org/morality.htm>, p. np, Accessed 12-17-2007. Morality as it relates to our behavior is important on three levels. Renowned thinker, scholar and author C.S. Lewis defines them as: (1) to ensure fair play and harmony between individuals; (2) to help make us good people in order to have a good society; and (3) to keep us in a good relationship with the power that created us. Based on this definition, it's clear that our beliefs are critical to our moral behavior. EVEN CONSEQUENTIALISM REQUIRES A FOR MORAL RESONSIBILITIES Nicholas Rescher, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh, 1983. RISK: A PHILOSOPHICAL INTRODUCTION TO THE THEORY OF RISK EVALUATION AND MANAGEMENT, p. 157. The assessment and management of risks is shot through with ethical involvements. One prominent way in which ethics enters into deliberations about risk is as a potential determiner of value: ethical conduct can (and should) itself be viewed as a positivity, and unethical conduct as a negativity. Accordingly, one may well find it necessary to "pay a price" for doing the ethical thing in risk-management situations. EMBRACING AN INFINITE RESPONSIBILITY TO THE OTHER IS THE BASIS OF MORALITY Adriaan Theodoor Peperzak, Ph.D., Arthur J. Schmitt Professor, Philosophy Department, Loyola UniversityChicago, 1997. BEYOND: THE PHILOSOPHY OF EMMANUEL LEVINAS, p. 158. Levinas stresses the interval between my election to responsibility for the Other and the emergence of conscious autonomy; upon awakening, my spontaneous egoism is not ready to agree with the infinite demands of responsibility which took possession of men without my consent and against the desires of my spontaneity. But this excludes neither the possibility of a future agreement with the orders of the God, nor the perspective of a final peace through full adherence to the law of infinite obligation. Isn't death, after all, the possibility of a full payment of all debts? MORALITY AFFECTS EVERYTHING WE DO IN OUR DAILY LIVES AllAboutPhilosophy, 2007. Morality By Design, AllAboutPhilosophy.org, <http://www.allaboutphilosophy.org/morality.htm>, p. np, Accessed 12-17-2007. Morality impacts our everyday decisions, and those choices are directed by our conscience. Again, we must decide for ourselves where the conscience originates. Many people hold to the idea that the conscience is a matter of our hearts, that concepts of right, wrong, and fairness are "programmed" in each of us.
MORALITY GOOD
POLICYMAKING THAT DENIES MORALITY MAKES EXTINCTION MORE LIKELY Henry Shue, Professor of Ethics and Public Life at Princeton University, 1989 NUCLEAR DETERRENCE AND MORAL RESTRAINT, p. 45. How one judges the issue of ends can be affected by how one poses the questions. If one asks "what is worth a billion lives (or the survival of the species)," it is natural to resist contemplating a positive answer. But suppose one asks, "is it possible to imagine any threat to our civilization and values that would justify raising the threat to a billion lives from one in ten thousand to one in a thousand for a specific period?" Then there are several plausible answers, including a democratic way of life and cherished freedoms that give meaning to life beyond mere survival. PUBLIC POLICIES THAT VIOLATE MORALITY DO MORE HARM TO SOCIETY THAN GOOD Tibor R. Machan, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Auburn University, 2003. THE PASSION FOR LIBERTY, p. 96. All in all, then, I support the principled or rights-based approach. In normal contexts, honesty is the best policy, even if at times it does not achieve the desired good results; so is respect for every individual's rights to life, liberty, and property. All in all, this is what will ensure the best consequencesin the long run and as a rule. Therefore, one need not be very concerned about the most recent estimate of the consequences of banning or not banning guns, breaking up or not breaking up Microsoft, or any other public policy, for that matter. It is enough to know that violating the rights of individuals to bear arms is a bad idea, and that history and analysis support our understanding of principle. To violate rights has always produced greater damage than good, so let's not do it, even when we are terribly tempted to do so, Let's not do it precisely because to do so would violate the fundamental requirements of human nature. EVEN CONSEQUENTIALISM REQUIRES A COMPASS FOR MORAL RESONSIBILITIES Nicholas Rescher, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh, 1983. RISK: A PHILOSOPHICAL INTRODUCTION TO THE THEORY OF RISK EVALUATION AND MANAGEMENT, p. 157. The assessment and management of risks is shot through with ethical involvements. One prominent way in which ethics enters into deliberations about risk is as a potential determiner of value: ethical conduct can (and should) itself be viewed as a positivity, and unethical conduct as a negativity. Accordingly, one may well find it necessary to "pay a price" for doing the ethical thing in risk-management situations. MORALITY SHOULD NOT BE SEPARATED FROM RATIONAL DECISION MAKING Andrew Sayer, Department of Sociology Lancaster University, May 2004. Restoring the Moral Dimension: Acknowledging Lay Normativity, Accessed 12-15-2008, <http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fss/sociology/papers/sayer-restoring-moral-dimension.pdf>. Emotions as authors like Martha Nussbaum, Margaret Archer, Andrew Collier, Jack Barbalet and Bennett Helm emphasize have a cognitive and evaluative character: they are embodied evaluative judgements regarding matters partly or wholly independent of us which are thought to affect our well-being (Nussbaum, 2001; Archer, 2000, 2003; Collier, 2003, Barbalet, 2001, Helm, 2001). They are about something. They provide unarticulated commentaries on our situation. They are ". . . highly discriminating evaluative responses, very closely connected to beliefs about what is valuable and what is not" (Nussbaum, 1993, p. 239). We need to reject the treatment of emotions as opposed to reason. On the contrary emotions can be rational. To be sure the evaluative judgements provided by emotions are fallible, but then so too is reason.
MORALITY BAD
WE SHOULD GET RID OF MORAL OBLIGATIONS ALTOGETHER Andrew McCallum, staff writer, Spring 2000. An Ethics Free of Moralic Acid, THE EXAMINED LIFE, ONLINE PHILOSOPHY JOURNAL, p. np, Accessed 12-17-07, <http://examinedlifejournal.com/articles/archives/v1ed1.shtml>. In a genuinely non-religious ethics, we will have to learn to do without the whole idea of moral obligation, since this notion depends for its significance on a religious context of divine or crypto-subjective command. Moreover, it is (despite the professions to the contrary of its Enlightenment proponents) anti-humanistic in the sense that, while it may appear all innocence and common sense, it nevertheless promotes an arrogant self-righteousness on the part of some over others, prohibits mutual understanding between those who are different, dissident, or deviant, and belies the sheer diversity thats the true and natural human condition. EXCESSIVE MORALISM INTERFERES WITH EUITABLE RACE RELATIONS Melvyn Fein, Prof. of Sociology at Kennesaw University, 2001. RACE AND MORALITY: HOW GOOD INTENTIONS UNDERMINE SOCIAL JUSTICE AND PERPETUATE INEQUALITY, p. 17. Yet this remarkable feat has not produced uniform benefits. Easily the most swindled have been black Americans. The real question thus becomes how to bring them into the fold. Paradoxically, an excess of moralism can interfere with this effort. White consigning a segment of our population to predestined failure is, in a real sense, pernicious, too narrow a fixation on this iniquity can be counterproductive. Intense moralizing may be a natural response to such abuses, especially when me is their victim, but it can prevent people from seeing what needs to be seen, saying what needs to be said, or accomplishing what must be accomplished. UTILITARIANISM IS ESSENTIAL TO PROTECTING RIGHTS OF CITIZENS Mirko Bagaric, Professor of Law and Head of Deakin Law School and Julie Clarke Lecturer, Deakin Law School, Spring, 2005. Not Enough Official Torture in the World? The Circumstances in Which Torture Is Morally Justifiable, UNIVERSITY OF SAN FRANCISCO LAW REVIEW, 39 U.S.F. L. Rev. 581, p. np. Difficulties in performing the utilitarian calculus regarding each decision make it desirable that we ascribe certain rights and interests to people that evidence shows tend to maximize happiness - even more happiness than if we made all of our decisions without such guidelines. Rights save time and energy by serving as shortcuts to assist us in attaining desirable consequences. By labeling certain interests as rights, we are spared the tedious task of establishing the importance of a particular interest as a first premise in practical arguments. MORALITY CAN BE JUST AS DESTRUCTIVE AS BENEFICIAL Melvyn Fein, Prof. of Sociology at Kennesaw University, 1997. HARDBALL WITHOUT AN UMPIRE: THE SOCIOLOGY OF MORALITY, p. 6. It is startling just how widespread are moralitys destructive elements. There is no time in history, or place on earth, where some human beings have not claim special advantages because of presumed virtues. Nor have any elites prove immune to injurious sermonizing. Thus many conservatives believe they have a special patent on virtue, but so do liberals. MORALITY IS A POOR GUIDE AND SOWS THE SEEDS OF HATRED AND RESENTMENT Melvyn Fein, Prof. of Sociology at Kennesaw University, 1997. HARDBALL WITHOUT AN UMPIRE: THE SOCIOLOGY OF MORALITY, p. 6. Evidently, morality creates problems. It is so constituted as to incite acts detrimental to human well-being. Because it contains the seeds of hurtful behavior, no matter how noble the intentions of its practitioners, it breeds unfairness, stupidity and injury. Sadly, this immorality is not an aberration and therefore cannot be eliminated simply be instructing people to do good.
MORALITY BAD
WE CAN MAKE RATIONAL DECISIONS IN MORALITY. CALCULATION IS CRUCIAL TO SURVIVAL Andrew Sayer, Department of Sociology Lancaster University, May 2004. Restoring the Moral Dimension: Acknowledging Lay Normativity, ACC. 8/28/2008, <http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fss/sociology/papers/sayer-restoring-moral-dimension.pdf>. We need to reject the treatment of emotions as opposed to reason. On the contrary emotions can be rational. To be sure the evaluative judgements provided by emotions are fallible, but then so too is reason. Their fallibility derives from the fact that they are about something independent of them, such that they can be mistaken about it. Thus, we may mistakenly imagine that something is a threat to our well-being when it isnt, though some degree of success in evaluating such threats is a condition of survival. FRAMING MORALITY AS TOTALISTIC ALIENATED SET OF NORMS DENIES EMOTION Andrew Sayer, Department of Sociology Lancaster University, May 2004 Restoring the Moral Dimension: Acknowledging Lay Normativity, ACC. 8/28/2008, <http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fss/sociology/papers/sayer-restoring-moral-dimension.pdf>. There are of course different views and assumptions about how we should act on any particular occasion, even within the same culture, but we cannot avoid deciding, and we often soon find out if others are disturbed by our behaviour towards them. In sociology, morality is often seen as a set of external regulative norms or conventions, and often-reactionary ones at that, which govern or attempt to govern behaviour. I call this an alienated view of morality. It is alienated from what I began by asking readers to think about matters of what we care about, what is important for our psychological, social and physical well-being, particularly in relation to how people treat one another. They include commitments, and have a strong emotional aspect (Archer, 2000). THESE ALIENATED VIEWS OF MORALITY WILL BE BROKEN IN SPECIFIC CIRCUMSTANCES Andrew Sayer, Department of Sociology Lancaster University, May 2004 Restoring the Moral Dimension: Acknowledging Lay Normativity, ACC. 8/28/2008, <http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fss/sociology/papers/sayer-restoring-moral-dimension.pdf>. On the alienated view, moral judgement is often seen pejoratively as moralising and implicitly authoritarian, and constraining rather than progressive. Treating morality simply as a set of conventions (what we do round here), norms and rules, backed up by sanctions, which tend to produce social order, renders opaque what matters to us or why morality should have any internal force. We do not just treat others in a certain way simply because there are norms dictating that we should and because we fear sanctions if we dont. Nor do we object to things simply because they upset us. We often behave in a certain way regardless of whether there are any penalties for not doing so, because we feel that it is right, because it is conducive to well being, and because to do otherwise would cause some sort of harm to people. To be sure, it is partly because we have internalised those norms, but some norms are easier to internalise than others: some seem moral, others immoral. EXCESSIVE MORALISM INTERFERES WITH EQUITABLE RACE RELATIONS Melvyn Fein, Prof. of Sociology at Kennesaw University, 2001. RACE AND MORALITY: HOW GOOD INTENTIONS UNDERMINE SOCIAL JUSTICE AND PERPETUATE INEQUALITY, p. 17. Yet this remarkable feat has not produced uniform benefits. Easily the most swindled have been black Americans. The real question thus becomes how to bring them into the fold. Paradoxically, an excess of moralism can interfere with this effort. White consigning a segment of our population to predestined failure is, in a real sense, pernicious, too narrow a fixation on this iniquity can be counterproductive. Intense moralizing may be a natural response to such abuses, especially when me is their victim, but it can prevent people from seeing what needs to be seen, saying what needs to be said, or accomplishing what must be accomplished.
MORALITY BAD
MORALITY IS A POOR GUIDE AND SOWS THE SEEDS OF HATRED AND RESENTMENT Melvyn Fein, Prof. of Sociology at Kennesaw University, 1997. HARDBALL WITHOUT AN UMPIRE: THE SOCIOLOGY OF MORALITY, p. 6. Evidently, morality creates problems. It is so constituted as to incite acts detrimental to human well-being. Because it contains the seeds of hurtful behavior, no matter how noble the intentions of its practitioners, it breeds unfairness, stupidity and injury. Sadly, this immorality is not an aberration and therefore cannot be eliminated simply be instructing people to do good. MORALITY CAN BE JUST AS DESTRUCTIVE AS BENEFICIAL Melvyn Fein, Prof. of Sociology at Kennesaw University, 1997. HARDBALL WITHOUT AN UMPIRE: THE SOCIOLOGY OF MORALITY, p. 6. It is startling just how widespread are moralitys destructive elements. There is no time in history, or place on earth, where some human beings have not claim special advantages because of presumed virtues. Nor have any elites prove immune to injurious sermonizing. Thus many conservatives believe they have a special patent on virtue, but so do liberals. WE SHOULD GET RID OF MORAL OBLIGATIONS ALTOGETHER Andrew McCallum, staff writer, Spring 2000. An Ethics Free of Moralic Acid, THE EXAMINED LIFE, ONLINE PHILOSOPHY JOURNAL, p. np, ACC. 8/27/2008, <http://examinedlifejournal.com/articles/archives/v1ed1.shtml>. In a genuinely non-religious ethics, we will have to learn to do without the whole idea of moral obligation, since this notion depends for its significance on a religious context of divine or crypto-subjective command. Moreover, it is (despite the professions to the contrary of its Enlightenment proponents) anti-humanistic in the sense that, while it may appear all innocence and common sense, it nevertheless promotes an arrogant self-righteousness on the part of some over others, prohibits mutual understanding between those who are different, dissident, or deviant, and belies the sheer diversity thats the true and natural human condition. ABSOLUTIST MORALISM ALLOWS NEOCONSERVATIVES TO HIJACK ETHICS FOR WAR Hulsman, Senior fellow at the Davis Institute for Foreign Policy Studies, and Lieven, Senior Fellow for Foreign Policy and Defense Studies at the Russia and Eurasia Center, 2005 The ethics of realism, NATIONAL INTEREST, Summer, p. 37. This is why we need to bring morality in American statecraft down from the absolutist heights to which it has been carried and return it to the everyday world where Americans and others do their best to lead ethical lives while facing all the hard choices and ambiguous problems that are the common stuff of existence in this "lower world." The neoconservative excuse, so often heard today with reference to the Iraq War, that disastrous consequences can be excused if intentions were good, is not valid if actions are accompanied by gross recklessness, carelessness and indifference to the range of possible consequences. Such actions fail the test not only of general ethics, but of the sworn moral commitment of state servants and elected officials to defend the interests of their peoples and not simply to pursue at all costs their own ideas of morality.
FREEDOM / LIBERTY GOOD

FREEDOM COMES BEFORE ALL OTHER VALUES Sylvester Petro, professor of law at Wake Forest, Spring 1974, Civil Liberty, Syndicalism, and the N.L.R.A., Toledo Law Review, p. 480. However, one may still insist on echoing Ernest Hemingway I believe in only one thing: liberty. And it is always well to bear in mind David Humes observation: It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once. Thus, it is unacceptable to say that the invasion of one aspect of freedom is of no import because there have been invasions of so many other aspects. That road leads to chaos, tyranny, despotism, and the end of all human aspiration. Ask Solzhenstyn, Ask Milovan Djilas. In sum, if one believes in freedom as a supreme value and proper ordering principle for any society aiming to maximize spiritual and material welfare, then every invasion of freedom must be emphatically identified and resisted with undying spirit. Freedom is the lifeblood of any great society. Its value lies not in materiality, but in principle. Joseph Raz, Professor of Philosophy at Oxford University, 1988. THE MORALITY OF FREEDOM, p. 265. The view to be explained there is a familiar one. It is a perfectionist view of freedom, for it regards personal political freedom as an aspect of the good life. It is a view of freedom deriving from the value of personal autonomy and from value-pluralism. Freedom is valuable because it is, and to the extent that it is, a concomitant of the ideal of autonomous persons creating their own lives through progressive choices from a multiplicity of valuable options. Freedom should not be judged by its effects or outcomes. It has intrinsic worth. Joseph Raz, Professor of Philosophy at Oxford University, 1988. THE MORALITY OF FREEDOM, p. 265. The perception of freedom as constituted by the ideals of personal autonomy and value-pluralism is familiar and used to be very popular. It would not qualify as an interpretation of liberalism if it were not. But in recent times trends in moral philosophy which, to those who come under their influence, make it all but incomprehensible, have gathered force and extended their popularity. Theories of instrumental rationality and of consequentialist morality impose a regimented and impoverished range of concepts which are supposed to be the only ones used in practical thought. To be able to appreciate the traditional strand of liberal thought which rests on pluralism and autonomy it is necessary to shake free of the shackles imposed by those theories. FREEDOM IS A PRECURSOR TO ETHICS Thomas Magnell, Drew University, 2000. Preface, BETWEEN FREEDOM AND NECESSITY: AN ESSAY ON THE PLACE OF VALUE, p. ix. If the very notion of ethics presupposes the possibility of freedom of action, then the realm of moral value is bounded by the limits to liberty, necessity, and chance Within those bounds lies a broad range of conduct, more or less subject to suggestion, direction, guiding, goading, restraint, and constraint. Some incursions on freedom are inevitable in order to live well, and even, odd as it sounds, for their instrumental value in extending freedom. FREEDOM IS THE ANTITHESIS OF EXPLOITATION AND DISCRIMINATION Freya Dinsha, Vice president of the American Vegan Society, July 31, 2006. The Value Of Freedom, 32nd World Vegetarian Congress 1996, Accessed 2-11-08, <http://www.ivu.org/congress/wvc96/freedom.html>. Freedom is not a simple matter of doing what we want to do, and having fun; although some may think so, for a while at least. Freedom cannot just be viewed from a personal standpoint, for we will upset others by selfishly pursuing our own desires. Freedom IS freedom from bondage and exploitation. It is a state in which we may grow and learn, be nourished, and in which we may develop our talents, and explore life and the world in its many dimensions. This is what we want for ourselves, for our families, our friends and neighbors, our country, the world. FREEDOM AND AUTONOMY REPRESENT EVERYTHING THAT IS GOOD ABOUT LIFE Joseph Raz, Professor of Philosophy at Oxford University, 1988. THE MORALITY OF FREEDOM, p. 408.
These reflections clarify the relation between autonomy and freedom. Autonomy is a constituent element of the good life. A person's life is autonomous if it is to a considerable extent his own creation. Naturally the autonomous person has the capacity to control and create his own life. I called this the capacity sense of autonomy, for 'autonomy' is sometimes used to refer to that capacity alone. That capacity, which involves both the possession of certain mental and physical abilities and the availability of an adequate range of options, is sometimes referred to as positive freedom.
FREEDOM / LIBERTY BAD

SURVIVAL IS A PRE-REQUISITE TO FREEDOM Martha C. Nussbaum, Professor at the Chicago School of Law, 2000. In Defense of Universal Values, IDAHO LAW REVIEW, 36 Idaho L. Rev. 379, p. np. In other words, we want universals that are facilitative rather than tyrannical, that create spaces for choice rather than dragooning people into a desired total mode of functioning. But understood at its best, the paternalism argument is not an argument against cross-cultural universals. For it is all about respect for the dignity of persons as choosers. This respect requires us to defend universally a wide range of liberties, plus their material conditions; and it requires us to respect persons as separate ends, in a way that reflects our acknowledgment of the empirical fact of bodily separateness, asking how each and every life can have the preconditions of liberty and self-determination. FREEDOM ISNT FREE, BUT A MASK FOR STATE VIOLENCE Deborah E. Cowen, School of Social Sciences, Atkinson Faculty, York University, May 1, 2006. Fighting for Freedom: The End of Conscription in the United States and the Neoliberal Project of Citizenship, CITIZENSHIP STUDIES, (10:2), p. 179. Perhaps even more urgent is that we acknowledge the very real existence and effect of this freedom, and understand its logic and operation. In other words, rather than suppose that this freedom is a mask of something else, we must attend to the positive dimensions of this forceful political concept. What does it mean to those who practice and preach it, and how has it come to be this way? As Foucault (1997) told us so eloquentlywe need to understand the violence and accidents of our past, because writing our past helps constitute our present and our future. FREEDOM IS A DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD: IT DENIES OPPRESSION BUT JUSTIFIES RACISM Shlomi Fish, Philosopher, Software designer, and Electrical Engineer, 2004 THE ETERNAL JEW, <http://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/the-eternal-jew/the-eternal-jew/freedom.html>, Accessed May 8, 2009. Freedom in Liberalist thought means freedom from oppression, not freedom from responsibilities. The only limitation on freedom is that an entity cannot perform initiatory force, threat of force or fraud against any other entity or its property. Other than that, everything is allowed. This is despite the many non-crimes propagated as "crimes" by many governments or religions. As such, freedom means the freedom to harm yourself, either by consuming harmful substances (like Alcohol, Sugar, Tobacco, or the currently illegal drugs), or by holding irrational beliefs. Freedom also means the freedom to hold racist views, and even to practice discrimination against others, as long as they do not involve force, coercion or fraud. FREEDOM IS JUST A FEEL-GOOD WORD. MOST AMERICANS ADVOCATE RESTRICTIONS Edward L. Hudgins, director of regulatory studies at the Cato Institute, July 4, 2001. Do Americans Still Value Freedom?, Institute for Health Freedom, <http://www.forhealthfreedom.org/ Publications/Monopoly/ValueFreedom.html>, Accessed May 8, 2009. Polls suggest that Americans still love liberty but with curious contradictions. Some 56 percent say they would favor smaller government with fewer services rather than larger government with more services. Some 65 percent believe big government will be the biggest threat to the country in the future. And 75 percent believe unemployed welfare recipients would find jobs if they were not on welfare. Yet 69 percent respond that they favor more government help to reduce poverty. For some, "freedom" is a feel-good word, like Mom and apple pie. Who can be against it? The seeming contradictions in Americans' attitudes toward freedom in part result from confusion created by those who would restrict freedom.
FREEDOM / LIBERTY BAD

FREEDOM IS CODE WORD FOR THE INFINITE EXPANSION OF DESIRE Katinka Hesselink, Theosophical Society in America (Adyar), February 3, 2009. Freedom - spiritual virtue, value or norm no. 1, ALL CONSIDERING, Accessed May 8, 2009, <http://www.allconsidering.com/2009/freedom-value/>. Is freedom a virtue? In a traditional religious setting taking responsibility would be considered a virtue. Freedom and responsibility cant be separated. Those who have freedom, have a lot of responsibility. With responsibility comes the freedom to make mistakes. Us modern people demand freedom. We demand the freedom to sin, to divorce, to change jobs and so on. Freedom is an aspect of modernity. Never before were people so free to fill in their own lives according to their own desires. Never before was there so little social pressure. And yet we dont feel free. AMERICANS HARDLY VALUE FREEDOM IN THE FACE OF WIDESPREAD RESTRICTIONS Edward L. Hudgins, director of regulatory studies at the Cato Institute, July 4, 2001. Do Americans Still Value Freedom?, Institute for Health Freedom, <http://www.forhealthfreedom.org/ Publications/Monopoly/ValueFreedom.html>, Accessed May 8, 2009. America is a unique country, founded on the principle that we are endowed with "certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness." Yet today, through taxes and regulations, government takes half of what each American earns. Government regulates what goods and services entrepreneurs can offer consumers, and restricts consumer freedom to buy many goods from other countries. Politicians currently are trying to restrict or ban what we can smoke, where we can use our cell phones, what we can view on the Internet, and which fattening foods we can eat. How is it that the people of a country dedicated to freedom put up with such restrictions from political elites? Do Americans still value freedom? DEMANDS FOR FREEDOM ARE UTOPIAN AND CONTRADICTORY Edward L. Hudgins, director of regulatory studies at the Cato Institute, July 4, 2001. Do Americans Still Value Freedom?, Institute for Health Freedom, <http://www.forhealthfreedom.org/ Publications/Monopoly/ValueFreedom.html>, Accessed May 8, 2009. Freedom from want implies eternal satisfaction with all desires met. That is a utopia. And that is impossible. Just ask the Russians. It's good that Americans value prosperity and want everyone to prosper. But it is the liberty to earn money by creating goods and services -- including houses -- that creates prosperity, not a license to steal from those who do the creating. FREEDOM IS ONLY GOOD IF WE TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR ACTION Katinka Hesselink, Theosophical Society in America (Adyar), February 3, 2009. Freedom - spiritual virtue, value or norm no. 1, ALL CONSIDERING, Accessed May 8, 2009, <http://www.allconsidering.com/2009/freedom-value/>. In short: while I think this value is one that many people embrace, I dont think freedom is all that interesting as a norm. While my life is full of freedom (it comes with the territory of being your own boss), it only becomes interesting when you take responsibility. Perhaps the (dutch?) saying the master shows himself in limitation [In de beperking toont zich de meester] is relevant here. A TRULY FREE SOCIETY WOULD BE UNRECOGNIZABLE TO MOST AMERICANS Edward L. Hudgins, director of regulatory studies at the Cato Institute, July 4, 2001. Do Americans Still Value Freedom?, Institute for Health Freedom, <http://www.forhealthfreedom.org/ Publications/Monopoly/ValueFreedom.html>, Accessed May 8, 2009. Yet another problem is that some Americans have difficulty imagining how a free society would actually work. Without welfare, Social Security, and Medicare, wouldn't we all be dying in the streets? Well, we weren't prior to any of those programs. If federal, state and local governments in America did not redistribute wealth, we would each have more wealth to purchase what we want, on our own terms, without government strings attached.
FREE SPEECH GOOD

SUPPRESSION OF FREE SPEECH FOSTERS OPPRESSION AND TYRANNY American Civil Liberties Union, 2005. "Free Speech Must Be Protected." OPPOSING VIEWPOINTS: CENSORSHIP, Ed. Andrea C. Nakaya. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2005. Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center. Thomson Gale It's vital to the attainment and advancement of knowledge, and the search for the truth. The eminent 19th-century writer and civil libertarian, John Stuart Mill, contended that enlightened judgment is possible only if one considers all facts and ideas, from whatever source, and tests one's own conclusions against opposing views. Therefore, all points of vieweven those that are "bad" or socially harmfulshould be represented in society's "marketplace of ideas." It's necessary to our system of self-government and gives the American people a "checking function" against government excess and corruption. If the American people are to be the masters of their fate and of their elected government, they must be well-informed and have access to all information, ideas and points of view. Mass ignorance is a breeding ground for oppression and tyranny. EMPOWERING THE STATE TO PUNISH FREEDOM OF SPEECH IS A DANGEROUS FAILURE Glen Greenwood, Staff Writer, January 15, 2008. Why Hate Crimes Laws are Dangerous, THE PROGRESSIVE REVIEW, p. np, Accessed 5 February 2008, <http://prorev.com/2008/01/why-hate-crime-laws-are-dangerous.html>. Empowering the State to proscribe and punish speech is not only the most dangerous step a society can take -though it is that -- it's also the most senseless. It never achieves its intended effect of suppressing or eliminating a particular view. If anything, it has the opposite effect, by driving it underground, thus preventing debate and exposure. Worse, it converts its advocates into martyrs. FREE SPEECH IS THE FOUNDATION OF DIGNITY AND VALUE TO LIFE American Civil Liberties Union, 2005. "Free Speech Must Be Protected." OPPOSING VIEWPOINTS: CENSORSHIP, Ed. Andrea C. Nakaya. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2005. Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center. Thomson Gale It's the foundation of self-fulfillment. The right to express one's thoughts and to communicate freely with others affirms the dignity and worth of each and every member of society, and allows each individual to realize his or her full human potential. Thus, freedom of expression is an end in itselfand as such, deserves society's greatest protection. THE ONLY ALTERNATIVE TO FREE SPEECH ABSOLUTISM IS TOTALITARIANISM Anindya Bhadra, Michigan University, November 19, 2007. How far can free speech go?, MICHIGAN DAILY, p. np. An absolutist point of view obviously means that people will sometimes be exposed to speech that has zero constructive value and whose sole aim is to spread hatred. Nevertheless, we must respect people's ability to weed out the nonsensical from the sensible and count on the well-meaning members of society to counter absurd arguments with logical ones. The alternative -- shielding people from ideas that might cause greater harm -- gives rise to an omnipotent thought police, and the result is an Orwellian society. We must realize that once we trust a chosen few to filter out unsafe information for us, we allow all of our thoughts to be shaped by them. Being exposed to stupid and at times dangerous ideas clearly seems like the lesser evil.
FREE SPEECH / 1st AMENDMENT ABSOLUTISM BAD

ABSOLUTIST INTERPRETATIONS OF THE FIRST AMENDMENT JUSTIFY VIOLENCE Anthony Cortese, PhD, Professor of Sociology at Notre Dame, 2005. OPPOSING HATE SPEECH, p. 160-161. First Amendment absolutism is the prevailing structure of consciousness and authority that is used to uphold established social order. Law supported by the First Amendment, under the veil of neutrality and objectivity, actually determines how people submit to the authority of others. In the area of hate speech, we need a paradigmatic shift. Legitimation crisis refers to how commonly shared justifications for preserving the status quo become more questionable in the wake of exploding contradictions (Habermas, 1975). If First Amendment absolutism is the status quo, exploding contradictions include burning crosses, murder instruction manuals, hate radio, pornography, racial profiling, and discriminatory treatment and genocide instigated by hate speech. FREE SPEECH SHOULD NOT BE HELD AS ABSOLUTE Anthony Cortese, PhD, Professor of Sociology at Notre Dame, 2005. OPPOSING HATE SPEECH, p. 161. No longer should we trust in a rigid legal system or mathematical formulae to solve issues of inequality. Our notions of equality and freedom should be based on social responsibility; an open marketplace with which to communicate and express ideas, not abstract concepts of justice based on algebraic formulae. An equal treatment versus freespeech conflict should be resolved through role-taking, by examining the contextual infrastructure of the message; the relative social status of the messenger and the receiver; and possible violations of equal treatment, social responsibility, and respect for the dignity of all persons. ABSOLUTISM IS AN INEFFECTIVE APPROACH TO THE FIRST AMENDMENT Anthony Cortese, PhD, Professor of Sociology at Notre Dame, 2005. OPPOSING HATE SPEECH, p. 140. The wisdom of legal realism over the inflexibility of First Amendment absolutism parallels the wisdom of the U.S. Constitution's use of equity as fairness over the contextually blind, rigid, naive, and obtuse application of equality as "one size fits all." Usually, laws and social norms should be obeyed. However, when a law conflicts with a basic human principle, the Constitution calls for us to maintain the higher principle and eliminate or change the law. POWERFUL INDUSTRY LOBBYISTS BOLSTER FIRST AMENTMENT ABSOLUTISM Anthony Cortese, PhD, Professor of Sociology at Notre Dame, 2005. OPPOSING HATE SPEECH, p. 160. Hegemonic constitutional theory holds a sentimental, glamorized, or romanticized view of the First Amendment. Moreover, the most enthusiastic advocates of free speech are tobacco conglomeratesever anxious to have cigarette smoking and advertising considered constitutional rightsand pornographers, including film producers, Web site sponsors, and magazine publishers. Pornographers and tobacco firms are also the biggest contributors to the ACLU and other civil liberties nonprofit organizations (Delgado, 2000). THERE ARE ALREADY CLEAR EXCEPTIONS TO FREE SPEECH Meghan K. Gentile, Editor, 2007. Hate Crime Regulation and Challenges, THE GEORGETOWN JOURNAL OF GENDER AND THE LAW, 8 Geo. J. Gender & L. 185, p. np. Regulation of speech based on its biased content is presumptively invalid. Such content-based regulations on speech are generally prohibited, except when the speech is of such little social benefit as to be outweighed by interests in order and morality. "The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic. It does not even protect a man from an injunction against uttering words that may have all the effect of force." For example, the government constitutionally can regulate "fighting words"--words that by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace.
FREE SPEECH / 1st AMENDMENT ABSOLUTISM BAD

BLINDLY USING THE BANNER OF FREE SPEECH JUSTIFIES SOCIAL INEQUALITY Anthony Cortese, PhD, Professor of Sociology at Notre Dame, 2005. OPPOSING HATE SPEECH, p. 140. Hate speechdisguised as free speechcan create, maintain, and justify social inequality. Not everyone has equal access to the creation of culture or the marketplace of free ideas. Some voices go unheard, having been silenced and marginalized. Stereotypical attitudes and bigotry preclude a fair assessment of all types of speakers, proposed policy, or ideas. Messages, ideas, manifestos, or communications that do not abide by the hegemonic paradigm are shunted off to the side. Economic inequality prevents equal ability to speakto be heardand get ideas out to a public audience. Clearly, the dominant paradigm renders minority viewpoints obsolete, untrustworthy, and pointless. THE FIRST AMENDMENT IS NOT ABSOLUTE. THERE ARE CLEAR EXCEPTIONS Christopher Heath Wellman, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Washington University in St. Louis, Spring 2006. A Defense of Stiffer Penalties for Hate Crimes, HYPATIA, vol. 21, no. 2, p. 74. At this point, a critic might respond that the First Amendment protects freedom of speech as well as freedom of thought, and since Jacks actions against gays can be construed as expressive conduct, it is constitutionally protected. This claim is easily countered, though, because the First Amendment clearly does not protect all potentially expressive activity. Just as the First Amendment does not cover obscenity, defamation, and fighting words, for instance, neither does it protect violent assault, no matter how expressive it might be thought to be. GOVERNMENT REGULATION OF SPEECH ALREADY HAPPENS NOW Meghan K. Gentile, Editor, 2007. Hate Crime Regulation and Challenges, THE GEORGETOWN JOURNAL OF GENDER AND THE LAW, 8 Geo. J. Gender & L. 185, p. np. The government also can regulate "true" threats, threats where the speaker "means to communicate a serious expression of intent to commit an act of unlawful violence to a particular individual or group of individuals," and intimidating speech, defined as a direct threat with intent to cause fear. However, although these categories of speech can be regulated under the Constitution, the government cannot discriminate between certain messages within each of these categories. This has been deemed impermissible viewpoint discrimination.

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LIFE GOOD (Sanctity)

LIFE GOOD (Sanctity)

LIFE GOOD (Sanctity)

A2: NO VALUE TO LIFE

A2: LIFE /SURVIVAL GOOD (Sanctity)

A2: LIFE /SURVIVAL GOOD (Sanctity)

A2: LIFE /SURVIVAL GOOD (Sanctity)

QUALITY OF LIFE GOOD

QUALITY OF LIFE BAD

UTILITARIANISM / CONSEQUENTIALISM GOOD

UTILITARIANISM / CONSEQUENTIALISM GOOD

UTILITARIANISM / CONSEQUENTIALISM GOOD

UTILITARIANISM / CONSEQUENTIALISM GOOD

UTILITARIANISM / CONSEQUENTIALISM BAD

UTILITARIANISM / CONSEQUENTIALISM BAD

UTILITARIANISM / CONSEQUENTIALISM BAD

UTILITARIANISM / CONSEQUENTIALISM BAD

UTILITARIANISM / CONSEQUENTIALISM BAD

UTILITARIANISM / CONSEQUENTIALISM BAD

SOCIAL WELFARE GOOD / SOCIAL CONTRACT

SOCIAL WELFARE GOOD / SOCIAL CONTRACT

SOCIAL WELFARE / SOCIAL CONTRACT GOOD

GOVT OBLIGATION TO PROTECT CITIZENS

PROTECTION OF RIGHTS GOOD

DIGNITY GOOD / DEHUM BAD

FASCHING: SACRED AND THE HOLY

FASCHING: SACRED AND THE HOLY

FASCHING: SACRED AND THE HOLY

FASCHING: SACRED AND THE HOLY

FASCHING: SACRED AND THE HOLY

INFINITE OBLIGATION TO THE OTHER GOOD

FREEDOM / LIBERTY GOOD

FREEDOM / LIBERTY BAD

FREEDOM / LIBERTY BAD

FREE SPEECH GOOD

FREE SPEECH / 1st AMENDMENT ABSOLUTISM BAD

FREE SPEECH / 1st AMENDMENT ABSOLUTISM BAD

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