1NC VS JESSICAVINIT

KThe only ethical demand is one that calls for the end of the world itself – the system of violent antagonisms means solving for contingent violence only reifies white supremacy.Wilderson 10, Frank B Wilderson is a professor at UC Irvine, “Red, White, and Black: Cinema and Structure of US Antagonisms,” NN

Leaving aside for the moment their state of mind, it would seem that the structure , that is to say the rebar, or better still the

grammar of their demands —and, by extension, the grammar of their suffering—was indeed an ethical grammar. Perhaps

their grammars are the only ethical grammars available to modern politics and modernity writ large, for they draw our attention not to the way in which space and time are used and abused by enfranchised and violently powerful interests, but to the violence that underwrites the modern world ’ s capacity to think, act, and exist spatially and temporally . The violence that robbed her

of her body and him of his land provided the stage upon which other violent and consensual dramas could be enacted. Thus, they would have to be crazy , crazy enough to call not merely the actions of the world to account but to call the world itself to account , and to account for them no less! The woman at Columbia was not demanding to be a participant in an unethical network of distribution: she was not demanding a place within capital, a piece of the pie (the demand for her sofa notwithstanding). Rather, she was articulating a triangulation between, on the one hand, the loss of her body, the very dereliction of her corporeal integrity, what Hortense Spillers charts as the transition from being a being to becoming a “being for the captor” (206), the drama of value (the stage upon which surplus value is extracted from labor power through commodity production and sale); and on the other, the corporeal integrity that, once ripped from her body, fortified and extended the corporeal integrity of everyone else on the street. She gave birth to the

commodity and to the Human, yet she had neither subjectivity nor a sofa to show for it. In her eyes, the world — and not its myriad discriminatory practices, but the world itself — was unethical . And yet,

the world passes by her without the slightest inclination to stop and disabuse her of her claim . Instead, it calls her “crazy.” And to what does the world attribute the Native American man’s insanity? “He’s crazy if he thinks he’s

getting any money out of us”? Surely, that doesn’t make him crazy. Rather it is simply an indication that he does not have a big enough gun. What are we to make of a world that responds to the most lucid enunciation of ethics with violence ? What are the foundational questions of the ethico-political? Why are these questions so scandalous that they are rarely posed politically, intellectually, and cinematically—unless they are posed obliquely and

unconsciously, as if by accident? Return Turtle Island to the “Savage.” Repair the demolished subjectivity of the Slave. Two simple sentences, thirteen simple words, and the structure of U.S. (and perhaps global) antagonisms would be dismantled. An “ ethical modernity ” would no longer sound like an oxymoron . From there we could busy ourselves with important conflicts that have been promoted to the level of antagonisms: class struggle, gender conflict, immigrants rights. When

pared down to thirteen words and two sentences, one cannot but wonder why questions that go to the heart of the ethico-political, questions of political ontology, are so unspeakable in intellectual meditations, political broadsides , and even socially and politically engaged feature films. Clearly they can be spoken, even a child could speak those lines, so they would pose no problem for a scholar, an activist, or a filmmaker. And yet, what is also

clear—if the filmographies of socially and politically engaged directors, the archive of progressive scholars, and the plethora of Left-wing broadsides are anything to go by — is that what can so easily be spoken is now (five hundred years and two hundred fifty million Settlers/Masters on) so ubiquitously unspoken that these two simple sentences, these thirteen words not only render their speaker “ crazy ” but become themselves impossible to imagine . Soon it will be forty years since radical politics, Left-

leaning scholarship, and socially engaged feature films began to speak the unspeakable. In the 1960s and early 1970s the

questions asked by radical politics and scholarship were not “ Should the U.S. be overthrown? ” or even “ Would it be overthrown? ” but rather when and how —and, for some, what—would come in its wake. Those steadfast in their conviction that there remained a discernable quantum of ethics in the U.S. writ large (and here I am speaking of everyone from Martin Luther King, Jr., prior to his 1968 shift, to the

Tom Hayden wing of SDS, to the Julian Bond and Marion Barry faction of SNCC, to Bobbie Kennedy Democrats) were accountable, in their rhetorical machinations, to the paradigmatic zeitgeist of the Black Panthers, the American Indian Movement, and the Weather Underground. Radicals and progressives could deride, reject, or chastise armed struggle mercilessly and cavalierly with respect to tactics and the possibility of “ success, ” but they could not dismiss revolution-as-ethic because they could not make a convincing case —by way of a paradigmatic analysis—that the U.S. was an ethical formation and still hope to maintain credibility as radicals and progressives . Even Bobby Kennedy (a U.S.

attorney general and presidential candidate) mused that the law and its enforcers had no ethical standing in the presence of Blacks .1 One could (and many did) acknowledge America’s strength and power. This seldom, however,

rose to the level of an ethical assessment, but rather remained an assessment of the so-called “ balance of forces. ” The political discourse of Blacks, and to a lesser extent Indians, circulated too widely to credibly wed the U.S. and ethics. The raw force of COINTELPRO put an end to this trajectory toward a possible hegemony of ethical accountability.

Consequently, the power of Blackness and Redness to pose the question — and the power to pose the question is the greatest power of all — retreated as did White radicals and progressives who “ retired ” from struggle. The question ’ s echo lies buried in the graves of young Black Panthers, AIM Warriors, and Black Liberation Army soldiers, or in prison cells where so many of them have been rotting (some in solitary confinement) for ten, twenty, thirty years, and at the gates of the academy where the “ crazies ” shout at passers-by . Gone are not only the young and vibrant voices that affected a seismic shift on the political landscape , but also the intellectual protocols of inquiry, and with them a spate of feature films that became authorized, if not by an unabashed revolutionary polemic,

then certainly by a revolutionary zeitgeist . Is it still possible for a dream of unfettered ethics, a dream of the Settlement and the Slave estate ’ s destruction , to manifest itself at the ethical core of

cinematic discourse, when this dream is no longer a constituent element of political discourse in the streets nor of intellectual discourse in the academy? The answer is “no” in the sense that, as history has shown, what cannot be articulated as political discourse in the streets is doubly foreclosed upon in screenplays and in scholarly prose; but “yes” in the sense

that in even the most taciturn historical moments such as ours, the grammar of Black and Red suffering breaks in on this foreclosure , albeit like the somatic compliance of hysterical symptoms—it registers in both cinema and scholarship as symptoms of awareness of the structural antagonisms. Between 1967 and 1980, we could think cinematically and intellectually of Blackness and Redness as having the coherence of full-blown discourses. But from 1980 to the

present, Blackness and Redness manifests only in the rebar of cinematic and intellectual (political) discourse, that is, as unspoken grammars . This grammar can be discerned in the cinematic strategies

(lighting, camera angles, image composition, and acoustic strategies/design), even when the script labors for the spectator to imagine social turmoil through the rubric of conflict (that is, a rubric of problems that can be posed and conceptually solved) as opposed to the rubric of antagonism ( an irreconcilable struggle between entities , or positionalities, the resolution of which is not dialectical but entails the obliteration of one of the positions ). In other words, even when films narrate a story in which Blacks or Indians are beleaguered with problems that the script insists are conceptually coherent (usually having to do with poverty or the absence of “family values”), the non-narrative, or cinematic, strategies of the film often disrupt this coherence

by posing the irreconcilable questions of Red and Black political ontology—or non-ontology. The grammar of antagonism breaks in on the mendacity of conflict . Semiotics and linguistics teach us that when we speak, our grammar goes

unspoken. Our grammar is assumed. It is the structure through which the labor of speech is possible. Likewise, the grammar of

1

political ethics —the grammar of assumptions regarding the ontology of suffering — which underwrite Film

Theory and political discourse (in this book, discourse elaborated in direct relation to radical action), and which underwrite

cinematic speech (in this book, Red, White, and Black films from the mid-1960s to the present) is also unspoken . This

notwithstanding, film theory, political discourse , and cinema assume an ontological grammar, a structure of suffering. And the structure of suffering which film theory, political discourse, and cinema assume crowds out other structures of suffering, regardless of the sentiment of the film or the spirit of unity mobilized by the political discourse in question . To put a finer point on it, structures of ontological suffering stand in antagonistic, rather then conflictual, relation to one another (despite the fact that antagonists themselves may not be aware of the ontological positionality from which they speak). Though this is perhaps the most controversial and out-of-step claim of this book, it is, nonetheless, the foundation of the close reading of feature films and political theory that follows.

Blackness is always already hyper visible – the affirmative misses the point – some bodies will never have the access to anonymity because of the black aesthetic – the affirmative allows for whiteness to remain invisible and renders blackness as an attractor to violenceYancy 13, George Yancy is a professor of philosophy at McAnulty College who focuses primarily on issues of social justice, “Walking While Black in the ‘White Gaze’” http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/01/walking-while-black-in-the-white-gaze/?_r=0, NN

My point here is to say that the white gaze is global and historically mobile . And its origins, while from Europe, are deeply seated in the making of America.∂ Black bodies in America continue to be reduced to their surfaces and to stereotypes that are constricting and false, that often force those black bodies to move through social spaces in ways that put white people at ease. We fear that our black bodies incite an accusation. We move in ways that help us to survive the procrustean gazes of white people. We dread that those who see us might feel the irrational fear to stand their ground rather than “finding common ground,” a reference that was made by Bernice King as she spoke about the legacy of her father at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.∂

The white gaze is also hegemonic, historically grounded in material relations of white power: it was deemed disrespectful for a black person to violate the white gaze by looking directly into the eyes of someone white. The white gaze is also ethically solipsistic: within it only whites have the capacity of making valid moral judgments . ∂ Even with the unprecedented White House briefing, our national discourse regarding Trayvon Martin and questions of race have failed to produce a critical and historically conscious discourse that sheds light on what it means to be black in an anti-black America. If historical precedent says anything, this failure will only continue. Trayvon Martin, like so many black boys and men, was under surveillance (etymologically, “to keep watch”). Little did he know that on Feb. 26, 2012, that he would enter a space of social control and bodily policing, a kind of Benthamian panoptic nightmare that would truncate his being as suspicious; a space where he was, paradoxically, both invisible and yet hypervisible.∂ “I am invisible, understand, simply because people [in this case white people] refuse to see me.” Trayvon was invisible to Zimmerman, he was not seen as the black child that he was, trying to make it back home with Skittles and an iced tea. He was not seen as having done nothing wrong, as one who dreams and hopes.∂ As black, Trayvon was already known and rendered invisible . His childhood and humanity were already criminalized as part of

a white racist narrative about black male bodies. Trayvon needed no introduction: “Look, the black; the criminal!”

Blackness operates on an ontological register – it is impossible to make blackness acceptable within civil societyYancy 08, George Yancy is a professor of philosophy at McAnulty College who focuses primarily on issues of social justice, “Black Bodies, White Gazes: The Continuing Significance of Race “ https://books.google.com/books?id=VQAfAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA21&lpg=PA21&dq=%22On+the+elevator,+my+Black+body+is+ontologically+mapped,+its+coordinates+lead+to+that+which+is+always+immediately%22&source=bl&ots=11lq3QEyJG&sig=m116eKlVHrBtPWmV9AOYb9v0fZU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCAQ6AEwAGoVChMI7u-OluGUxgIVhz2MCh0F3gf2#v=onepage&q=%22On%20the%20elevator%2C%20my%20Black%20body%20is%20ontologically%20mapped%2C%20its%20coordinates%20lead%20to%20that%20which%20is%20always%20immediately%22&f=false, NN

On the elevator, my Black body is ontologically mapped , its cordinates lead to that which is always immediately visible: the Black surface. The point here is that the Black body in relation to the white gam appears in the form of a sheer exteriority , implying that the Black body "shows up," makes itself known M terms of its Black surface. There is only the visible, the concrete, the seen, all there, all at once: a single Black thing, =individuated, threatening, ominous, Black. The white woman thinks she takes no part in this construction: she acts the name of the serious... She apparently fails to see how he identity is shot through in terms of how she construe. me. This failure is to be expected given how white privilege renders invisible, indeed, militates against the recognition of various whitely ways of being-in-the-world. Sullivan notes that the 'habits of white privilege do not merely go noticed . They actively thwart the process of conscious reflation on them, which allows them to seem non-existent even as they continue to function..l.

Reform is just reactionary conservatism – their unwillingness to accept that systemic antagonisms cannot be fixed means their project is permeated with whiteness and reintrenches white civil societyHaritaworn et al. 14, Haritaworn is an assistant professor of sociology, “Queer Necropolitics,” http://www.deanspade.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Necropolitics-Collection-Article-Final.pdf, NN

Critical race theorists have supplied the concept of 'preservation t hrough∂ transformation' to describe the neat trick that civil rights law performed in this∂ dynamic (Harris 2007: 1539-1582; Siegel1997: 1111-1148). In the face of∂ significant resistance to conditions of subjection, law reform tends to provide just∂ enough transfonnation to stabilize and preserve status quo conditions. In the case∂ of widespread black rebellion against white supremacy in the US, civil rights law∂ and colourblind constitutionalism have operated as formal reforms that masked a∂ pe11wtuation of the status quo of violence against and exploitation of black people.∂ Explicit exclusionary policies and practices became officially forbidden, yet the∂ disu·ibution of life

chances remained the same or worsened with the growing∂ racialized concentration of wealth in the US, the dismantling of social welfare, and∂ the explosion of criminalization that has developed in the same period as the new∂ logic of race neutrality has declared fairness and justice achieved. Lesbian and gay∂ rights politics' reproduction of the Inythology of anti-discrimination law and the∂ non-stop invocation of'equal rights' frameworks by lesbian and gay rights politics∂ marks an .investment in the legal structures of anti-blackness that have emerged in∂ the wake of Brown. The emergence of the demand for LGBT inclusive hate crime∂ laws and the accomplishment of the Matthew Shepard and james Byrd, Jr. Hate∂ Crimes Prevention Act as a highly lauded federal legislative 'win' for lesbian and ∂ gay rights offers a particularly blatant site of the anti-blackness central to lesbian∂ and gay rights -literally an investment in the expansion ofcriminalization as a core∂ claim and desire of this purported 'frecdom'. 9 In the context of the foundational∂ nature of slavery in US political formation, it is perhaps not surprising to see a∂ political formation of white 'gay and lesbian Americans' articulate a demand fOr∂ fi-eedom that is contingent on the literal caging of black people.∂ The fantasy that fOrmal legal equality is all that is needed to eliminate∂ homophobia and transphobia is harmfUl not only because it participates in the antiblack∂ US progress narrative that civil rights law reforms resolved anti-blackness in∂ the US (thus any remaining suffering or disparity is solely an issue of 'personal∂ responsibility'), 1IJ but also because it constructs an agenda that is harmful to black ∂ queer and trans people and other queer and trans people experiencing violent∂ systems mobilized by anti-blackness. Formal marriage rights will not help poor∂ people, people vvhose kids will be stolen by a racially targeted child welfire system∂ regardless of whether or not they can get married, people who do not have∂ immigration status or health benefits to share with a spouse if they had one, people∂ who have no property to pass on to their partners, or people who have no need to∂ be shielded from estate tax. In fact, the current wave of same-sex marriage advocacy∂ emerges at the same rime as another pro-marriage trend, the push by the right wing∂ to reverse feminist wins that had made marriage easier to get out of and the Bushera∂ development of marriage promotion programmes (continued by Obama)∂ targeted at women on welfare (Adams and Coltrane 2007: 17-34; Alternatives to∂ l\!larriage Project 2007; Coltrane and Adams 2003: 363-372; Feld, Rosier and∂ Manning 2002: 173-183; Pear and Kirkpatrick 2007; Rector and Pardue 2004).∂ The explicitly anti-black focus of the attacks on welfare and the mobilization of∂ racialized-genclered images to do this go hand in hand with the pro-marriage gay∂ rights frame that similarly invests in notions of 'personal responsibility', and∂

racializecl--gendered family formation norm enforcement. The articulation of a∂ desire for legal inclusion in the explicitly anti-black, anti-poor governance regime∂ of marriage, and the centralization of marriage rights as the most resourced equality∂ claim of gay and lesbian rights politics, affirms its alliance with anti-blackness.∂ It is easy to imagine other queer political interventions that would take a∂ different approach to concerns about parental rights, child custody and other∂ family law problems. Such approaches centre the experiences of queers facing the∂ worst violence of family law, those whose problems -will not be resolved by samesex∂

marriage - parents in prison, parents facing deportation, parents with∂ disabilities, youth in foster care and juvenile punishment systems, parents whose∂ children have been removed because of 'neglect' clue to their poverty. The choice∂ of seeking marriage rights, like the choice to pursue hate crime laws rather than∂ decriminalization, the choice to pursue the Uniting American Families Act 11∂ rather than opposing immigration enforcement and the war on terror,

the choice∂ to pursue military service rather than demilitarization, is a choice to pursue a place∂

fOr white gay and lesbian people in constitutively anti-black legal structures.

Our alternative is to enter an unflinching paradigmatic of the black positionality to render civil society incoherentWilderson, ’10 [2010, Frank B. Wilderson is an Associate Professor of African-American Studies at UC Irvine and has a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley, “Red, White & Black: Cinema and the Structure of U.S. Antagonisms,”]

STRANGE AS it might seem, this book project began in South Africa. During the last years of

apartheid I worked for revolutionary change in both an underground and above-ground

capacity, for the Charterist Movement in general and the ANC in particular. During this period, I began to see how essential an unflinching paradigmatic analysis is to a movement dedicated to the complete overthrow of an existing order. The neoliberal compromises that the radical elements of the Chartist Movement made with the moderate elements were due, in large part, to our inability or unwillingness to hold the moderates' feet to the fire of a political agenda predicated on an unflinching paradigmatic analysis. Instead, we allowed our energies and points of attention to be displaced by and onto pragmatic considerations. Simply put, we abdicated the power to pose the question—and the power to pose the question is the greatest power of all. Elsewhere, I have written about this unfortunate turn of events (Incognegro: A Memoir of Exile and Apartheid), so I'll not rehearse the details here. Suffice it to say, this book germinated in the many political and academic discussions and debates that I was fortunate enough to be a part of at a historic moment and in a place where the word revolution was spoken in earnest, free of qualifiers and irony. For their past and ongoing ideas and interventions, I extend solidarity and appreciation to comrades Amanda Alexander, Franco Barchiesi, Teresa Barnes, Patrick Bond, Ashwin Desai, Nigel Gibson, Steven Greenberg, Allan Horowitz, Bushy Kelebonye (deceased), Tefu Kelebonye, Ulrike Kistner, Kamogelo Lekubu, Andile Mngxitama, Prishani Naidoo, John Shai, and S'bu Zulu.

( ) Global econ is resilient

FSB ‘14

The Financial Stability Board (FSB) is an international body that monitors and makes recommendations about the global financial system – “FSB Plenary meets in London” – 31 March 2014 http://www.financialstabilityboard.org/press/pr_140331.htm

The global economy has been improving, and monetary policy in the US is in the early stages of a

normalisation process, after an extended period of exceptional accommodation. A comprehensive programme of regulatory reforms and supervisory actions since the crisis has made the global financial system more resilient . Currently, European authorities are putting in place a comprehensive set of measures to strengthen further the

region's financial system. Emerging markets have coped relatively well to date with occasional bouts of turbulence, in part reflecting the positive impact of both past and more recent reforms.

( ) Economic decline doesn’t cause warBarnett ‘9

(Thomas, Senior Strategic Researcher – Naval War College, “The New Rules: Security Remains Stable Amid Financial Crisis”, Asset Protection Network, 8-25, http://www.aprodex.com/the-new-rules--security-remains-stable-amid-financial-crisis-398-bl.aspx)

When the global financial crisis struck roughly a year ago, the blogosphere was ablaze with all sorts of

scary predictions of, and commentary regarding, ensuing conflict and wars -- a rerun of the Great Depression leading to world war, as it were. Now, as global economic news brightens and recovery -- surprisingly led by China and emerging markets -- is the talk of the day, it's interesting to look back over the past year and realize how globalization's

first truly worldwide recession has had virtually no impact whatsoever on the international security landscape. None of the more than three-dozen ongoing conflicts listed by GlobalSecurity.org can be clearly

attributed to the global recession . Indeed, the last new entry (civil conflict between Hamas and Fatah in the

Palestine) predates the economic crisis by a year, and three quarters of the chronic struggles began in the last

century. Ditto for the 15 low-intensity conflicts listed by Wikipedia (where the latest entry is the Mexican "drug war" begun in 2006). Certainly, the Russia-Georgia conflict last August was specifically timed, but by most accounts the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics was the most important external trigger (followed by the U.S. presidential campaign) for that sudden spike in an almost two-decade long struggle between Georgia and its two breakaway regions. Looking over the various databases, then, we see a most

familiar picture: the usual mix of civil conflicts, insurgencies, and liberation-themed terrorist movements. Besides the recent

Russia-Georgia dust-up, the only two potential state-on-state wars (North v. South Korea, Israel v. Iran)

are both tied to one side acquiring a nuclear weapon capacity -- a process wholly unrelated to global economic

trends. And with the U nited S tates effectively tied down by its two ongoing major interventions (Iraq and

Afghanistan-bleeding-into-Pakistan), our involvement elsewhere around the planet has been quite modest ,

both leading up to and following the onset of the economic crisis: e.g., the usual counter-drug efforts in Latin America, the usual

military exercises with allies across Asia, mixing it up with pirates off Somalia's coast). Everywhere else we find serious

instability we pretty much let it burn , occasionally pressing the Chinese -- unsuccessfully -- to do something. Our new

Africa Command, for example, hasn't led us to anything beyond advising and training local forces. So, to sum up : No significant uptick in mass violence or unrest (remember the smattering of urban riots last year in places like Greece,

Moldova and Latvia?); The usual frequency maintained in civil conflicts (in all the usual places); Not a single state-on-

state war directly caused (and no great-power -on-great-power crises even triggered ); No great

improvement or disruption in great-power cooperation regarding the emergence of new nuclear powers (despite all that diplomacy); A modest scaling back of international policing efforts by the system's acknowledged Leviathan power (inevitable given the strain); and No serious efforts by any rising great power to challenge that Leviathan or supplant its role. (The worst things we can cite are Moscow's occasional deployments of strategic assets to the Western hemisphere and its weak efforts to outbid the United States on basing rights in Kyrgyzstan; but the best include China and India stepping up their aid and investments in Afghanistan and Iraq.) Sure, we've finally seen global defense spending surpass the previous world record set in the late 1980s, but even that's likely to wane given the stress on public budgets created by all this unprecedented "stimulus" spending. If anything, the

friendly cooperation on such stimulus packaging was the most notable great-power dynamic caused by the crisis. Can we say

that the world has suffered a distinct shift to political radicalism as a result of the economic crisis? Indeed, no. The

world's major economies remain governed by center-left or center-right political factions that remain decidedly

friendly to both markets and trade. In the short run, there were attempts across the board to insulate economies from

immediate damage (in effect, as much protectionism as allowed under current trade rules), but there was no great slide

into "trade wars." Instead, the W orld T rade O rganization is functioning as it was designed to function, and

regional efforts toward free-trade agreements have not slowed. Can we say Islamic radicalism was inflamed by the economic

crisis? If it was, that shift was clearly overwhelmed by the Islamic world's growing disenchantment with the

brutality displayed by violent extremist groups such as al-Qaida. And looking forward, austere economic times are just as likely to breed connecting evangelicalism as disconnecting fundamentalism. At the end of the day, the economic crisis did not prove to be sufficiently frightening to provoke major economies into establishing global regulatory schemes, even as it has sparked a spirited --

and much needed, as I argued last week -- discussion of the continuing viability of the U.S. dollar as the world's primary reserve currency. Naturally, plenty of experts and pundits have attached great significance to this debate, seeing in it the beginning of "economic warfare" and the like between "fading" America and "rising" China. And yet, in a world of globally integrated production chains and interconnected financial markets, such "diverging interests" hardly constitute signposts for wars up ahead. Frankly, I don't welcome a world in which America's fiscal profligacy goes undisciplined, so bring it on -- please! Add it all up and it's fair to say that this global financial crisis has proven the great resilience of America's post-World War II international liberal trade order. Do I

expect to read any analyses along those lines in the blogosphere any time soon? Absolutely not. I expect the fantastic

fear-mongering to proceed apace. That's what the Internet is for.

InherencyUSA Freedom solves – it allows security interests while balancing privacy concerns.Stone ‘14

Geoffrey R. Stone is the Edward H. Levi distinguished service professor of law for The University of Chicago. “President Obama Is Trying to Tame the NSA” – Daily Beast, 3/27/14 - www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/03/27/president-obama-is-trying-to-tame-the-nsa.html

President Obama announced this morning that he will propose legislation calling for significant changes in the NSA’s telephone

metadata program. This is good news, indeed. The enactment of these proposals would strike a much better balance between the interests of liberty and security. They would preserve the value of the NSA’s program in terms of protecting the national security, while at the same time providing much greater , and much needed, protection to individual privacy and civil liberties. The proposals are based on recommendations made by the president’s five-member Review Group, of which I was a member. To understand why we came up with these suggestions, it is necessary first to understand how the program operates. Under the telephone metadata program, which was created in 2006, telephone service companies like Sprint, Verizon and AT&T are required to turn over to the NSA, on an ongoing daily basis, huge quantities of telephone metadata involving the phone records of millions of Americans, none of whom are themselves suspected of anything. The metadata at issue includes information about phone numbers (both called and received), but it does not include any information about the content of the calls or the identities of the participants. Once the NSA has the metadata in its system, it

retains it for five years, before destroying it on a rolling basis. Under rules governing the program, the NSA is authorized to access the telephone data whenever its own analysts find that there are facts giving rise to a reasonable, articulable suspicion (“RAS”) that a particular telephone number (usually outside the

United States) is associated with a foreign terrorist organization. In 2012, the last year for which there is complete data, the NSA “queried” 288 phone numbers, known as “seeds,” each of which was certified by NSA analysts to meet the RAS standard. When a seed phone number is queried, the NSA derives from the database a list of every telephone number that either called or was called by the seed phone number in the past five years. This is known as the “first hop.” For example, if the seed phone number was in contact with 100 different phone numbers in the past five years, the NSA would obtain a list of those 100 phone numbers. The NSA then seeks to determine whether there is reason to believe that any of those 100 numbers are also associated with a foreign terrorist organization. If so, the query has uncovered a possible connection to a potential terrorist network that merits further investigation. Conversely, if none of the 100 numbers is believed to be associated with possible terrorist activity, there is less reason to be concerned that the potential terrorist is in contact with co-conspirators inside the United States. In most cases, the NSA makes a second “hop.” That is, it queries the database to obtain a list of every phone number that called or was called by the 100 numbers it obtained in the first hop. Thus, if we assume that the average telephone number calls or is called by 100 phone numbers over the course of a five-year period, then the second hop will produce a list of 10,000 phone numbers (100 x 100) that are two steps away from the seed number that is reasonably believed to be associated with a foreign terrorist organization. If any of those

10,000 phone numbers is also thought to be associated with a terrorist organization, that too is potentially useful information. In 2012, the NSA’s 288 queries resulted in a total of twelve “tips” to the FBI that called for further investigation. Although this information has sometimes proved useful, there has been no instance in which the information obtained through this

program has directly prevented a planned terrorist attack. At the same time, though, it is certainly possible to imagine a situation in which the program might produce highly valuable information that would, in fact, help

prevent such an attack . Our Review Group was appointed by the president last August to advise him on these and related issues. I am pleased—indeed, delighted—to report that the proposed legislation tracks almost perfectly the Review Group’s

recommendations. As the president’s proposed legislation suggests, three specific changes in the telephone metadata program are necessary. First, the NSA will no longer itself hold the vast store of telephone

metadata. This is essential, because one of the most serious concerns about this program is that, in the wrong hands, access to this information can wreak havoc on the privacy and civil liberties of Americans. Even though the program to-date has functioned properly, history teaches that there is always the risk of another J. Edgar Hoover or Richard Nixon. It is essential to limit the potential for abuse. As the Review Group recommended, the proposed legislation would leave all the metadata in the hands of the private telephone companies, rather than allowing the government itself to collect and store it in bulk. This is a critical safeguard. Second, when the government wants to access the metadata, the proposed legislation would require the NSA to obtain an order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, rather than being able to

access the information whenever NSA analysts decide that RAS exists. It has long been understood that when government officials who are engaged in the enterprise of ferreting out criminals are given the authority to decide for themselves when to act, their judgment is likely to be affected by their own priorities. For that reason, it is essential for a neutral and detached judge to make the

decision whether any particular query is warranted. Third, instead of requiring the metadata to be retained for five years, the president’s proposed legislation would compel the telephone companies to hold the data for only 18 months. This makes great sense both because the older data is less likely to be useful and because, by limiting the amount of data available , the risks of abuse are limited as well. The president should be applauded for supporting these reforms. I can say that it was not at all obvious or inevitable that the White House would come to this point. During the course of the Review Group’s deliberations with the White

House, serious opposition was raised to these recommendations. It is to the great credit of President

Obama and to his senior advisers in the White House that we now have the opportunity to take this critical step forward.

(Note to students: the bill referenced in this article is the USA Freedom Act)

IndiaHack won’t work – India’s cyber-defenses are strong and improving. Times of India ‘10

(Internally citing senior military officials - “Cyber war: Indian Army gearing up” - Times of India - July 19, 2010 – http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/tech-news/Cyber-war-Indian-Army-gearing-up/articleshow/6187297.cms)

The Indian Army is fighting attacks in the cyber world with electronic warfare capability of the "highest standard" , say officials pointing out that virtual strikes have shot up from hostile quarters in both sophistication and frequency. "The army is cognisant of the threat to its cyber space from various state and non-state actors. But our network is well secured in compliance with the highest standards of cyber security," a senior official in the military headquarters

told IANS on condition of anonymity. The official said the army has established an "impenetrable and secure wide area network exclusively for its functioning". Officials in the 1.3 million force privately admit they are facing "next generation threats" and are rather worried over the complex world of cyber warfare amid reports of Chinese and Pakistani spies targeting the Indian military establishment via the internet. Though attacks from hackers - professional or amateur - can come from anywhere in the world, cyber onslaughts have been more frequent from China and Pakistan, which have reportedly been peeking into India's sensitive business, diplomatic and strategic records. As per reports from the cyber industry, China and Pakistan hackers steal nearly six million files worldwide every day. A report in the US-based Defence Systems magazine found that there were 25 million new strains of malware created in 2009. That equals a new strain of malware every 0.79 seconds. The report underlines how the current cyber threat environment is dramatically changing and becoming more challenging as the clock ticks. Howevever, the Indian army is

confident. Revealing that secret information had been secured with unhackable electronic passwords , the official said various "cryptographic controls" have been incorporated in the wake of a significant number of viruses, worms and other forms of malware. To address cyber defence, which is also under threat from terrorist outfits that have their own trained recruits, officials said the army frequently upgrades its comprehensive cyber security policy to pro-actively deal with and anticipate these threats. The force has established the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) to respond to attacks targeting the army's critical systems and infrastructure. Another official said the army has its own cyber audit process conducted by cyber security personnel. "The audit is conducted in accordance with established security standards such as ISO 27001. Audit of the network is a continuous and active process which helps identification and mitigation of vulnerabilities in a network to counter latest threats as also check the network for cyber security policy compliance," he said. However, the official admitted there was no room for complacency in

times of rapid technological change. "In the area of cyber space, the battle between hackers and defenders is

an ongoing process, influenced by latest technological developments. Due to the dynamic nature of threats, the army is constantly upgrading its network," he said.

( ) Successful hack couldn’t create havoc – too much of India’s critical infrastructure is not yet online. Dedicated networks also check risk of an attack.

Shukla ‘13

Ajai Shukla is Indian journalist and retired Colonel of Indian Army. He currently works as Consulting Editor with Business Standard writing articles on strategic affairs, defence and diplomacy. He earlier worked with DD News and NDTV– “India's digital battleground” - Business Standard - June 21, 2013 - http://www.business-standard.com/article/current-affairs/india-s-digital-battleground-113062101013_1.html

India has been slow in fixing its attention on cyber security. This may partly be because much of the country's critical infrastructure - power grids, public transportation, nuclear power plants, defence systems - is controlled by manual systems , or by standalone computer systems that are not linked over the internet. In that respect, India's infrastructural backwardness has proved useful against cyber- attacks. "It is not unusual to find central ministry officials in New Delhi using unsecured email systems, sometimes even commercial email accounts

on public servers. But India's sensitive networks tend to be isolated, with no point of contact with the Internet that would render them vulnerable to online hacking. Several agencies have their own dedicated, secure fibre-optic networks, notably the military, Defence R&D Organisation (DRDO), and police's Crime and Criminal Tracking Network System," says Praveen Swami, strategic affairs editor of Network18.

( ) CMS surveillance is not a honeypot of privacy. Aff exaggerates how much content is truly being gathered.

Xynou ‘13

Maria Xynou is a Policy Associate on the Privacy Project at the Centre for Internet & Society. She has previously interned with Privacy International and with the Parliament of Greece. Maria holds a Master of Science in Security Studies from the University College London. “India's 'Big Brother': The Central Monitoring System (CMS)” – April 8th - http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/indias-big-brother-the-central-monitoring-system

Another cyber security expert argued that the idea that the privacy of our messages and online activity would be intercepted is a misconception. The expert stated that: ´The police are actually looking out for open source intelligence for which information in public domain on these sites is enough. Through the lab,

police can access what is in the open source and not the message you are sending to your friend.´ Cyber security experts also argued that the purpose of the creation of the Mumbai social media lab and the CMS in general is to ensure that Indian law enforcement agencies are better informed about current public opinion and trends among the youth , which would enable them to take better decisions on a policy level. It was also argued that, apparently, there is no harm in the creation of such monitoring centres, especially since other countries, such as the U.S., are

conducting the same type of surveillance, while have enacted stringent privacy regulations. In other words, the monitoring of our communications appears to be justified, as long as it is in the name of security.

Global Internet Freedom( ) Global econ is resilient

FSB ‘14

The Financial Stability Board (FSB) is an international body that monitors and makes recommendations about the global financial system – “FSB Plenary meets in London” – 31 March 2014 http://www.financialstabilityboard.org/press/pr_140331.htm

The global economy has been improving, and monetary policy in the US is in the early stages of a

normalisation process, after an extended period of exceptional accommodation. A comprehensive programme of regulatory reforms and supervisory actions since the crisis has made the global financial system more resilient . Currently, European authorities are putting in place a comprehensive set of measures to strengthen further the

region's financial system. Emerging markets have coped relatively well to date with occasional bouts of turbulence, in part reflecting the positive impact of both past and more recent reforms.

( ) Economic decline doesn’t cause warBarnett ‘9

(Thomas, Senior Strategic Researcher – Naval War College, “The New Rules: Security Remains Stable Amid Financial Crisis”, Asset Protection Network, 8-25, http://www.aprodex.com/the-new-rules--security-remains-stable-amid-financial-crisis-398-bl.aspx)

When the global financial crisis struck roughly a year ago, the blogosphere was ablaze with all sorts of

scary predictions of, and commentary regarding, ensuing conflict and wars -- a rerun of the Great Depression leading to world war, as it were. Now, as global economic news brightens and recovery -- surprisingly led by China and emerging markets -- is the talk of the day, it's interesting to look back over the past year and realize how globalization's

first truly worldwide recession has had virtually no impact whatsoever on the international security landscape. None of the more than three-dozen ongoing conflicts listed by GlobalSecurity.org can be clearly

attributed to the global recession . Indeed, the last new entry (civil conflict between Hamas and Fatah in the

Palestine) predates the economic crisis by a year, and three quarters of the chronic struggles began in the last

century. Ditto for the 15 low-intensity conflicts listed by Wikipedia (where the latest entry is the Mexican "drug war" begun in 2006). Certainly, the Russia-Georgia conflict last August was specifically timed, but by most accounts the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics was the most important external trigger (followed by the U.S. presidential campaign) for that sudden spike in an almost two-decade long struggle between Georgia and its two breakaway regions. Looking over the various databases, then, we see a most

familiar picture: the usual mix of civil conflicts, insurgencies, and liberation-themed terrorist movements. Besides the recent

Russia-Georgia dust-up, the only two potential state-on-state wars (North v. South Korea, Israel v. Iran)

are both tied to one side acquiring a nuclear weapon capacity -- a process wholly unrelated to global economic

trends. And with the U nited S tates effectively tied down by its two ongoing major interventions (Iraq and

Afghanistan-bleeding-into-Pakistan), our involvement elsewhere around the planet has been quite modest ,

both leading up to and following the onset of the economic crisis: e.g., the usual counter-drug efforts in Latin America, the usual

military exercises with allies across Asia, mixing it up with pirates off Somalia's coast). Everywhere else we find serious

instability we pretty much let it burn , occasionally pressing the Chinese -- unsuccessfully -- to do something. Our new

Africa Command, for example, hasn't led us to anything beyond advising and training local forces. So, to sum up : No

significant uptick in mass violence or unrest (remember the smattering of urban riots last year in places like Greece,

Moldova and Latvia?); The usual frequency maintained in civil conflicts (in all the usual places); Not a single state-on-

state war directly caused (and no great-power -on-great-power crises even triggered ); No great

improvement or disruption in great-power cooperation regarding the emergence of new nuclear powers (despite all that diplomacy); A modest scaling back of international policing efforts by the system's acknowledged Leviathan power (inevitable given the strain); and No serious efforts by any rising great power to challenge that Leviathan or supplant its role. (The worst things we can cite are Moscow's occasional deployments of strategic assets to the Western hemisphere and its weak efforts to outbid the United States on basing rights in Kyrgyzstan; but the best include China and India stepping up their aid and investments in Afghanistan and Iraq.) Sure, we've finally seen global defense spending surpass the previous world record set in the late 1980s, but even that's likely to wane given the stress on public budgets created by all this unprecedented "stimulus" spending. If anything, the

friendly cooperation on such stimulus packaging was the most notable great-power dynamic caused by the crisis. Can we say

that the world has suffered a distinct shift to political radicalism as a result of the economic crisis? Indeed, no. The

world's major economies remain governed by center-left or center-right political factions that remain decidedly

friendly to both markets and trade. In the short run, there were attempts across the board to insulate economies from

immediate damage (in effect, as much protectionism as allowed under current trade rules), but there was no great slide

into "trade wars." Instead, the W orld T rade O rganization is functioning as it was designed to function, and

regional efforts toward free-trade agreements have not slowed. Can we say Islamic radicalism was inflamed by the economic

crisis? If it was, that shift was clearly overwhelmed by the Islamic world's growing disenchantment with the

brutality displayed by violent extremist groups such as al-Qaida. And looking forward, austere economic times are just as likely to breed connecting evangelicalism as disconnecting fundamentalism. At the end of the day, the economic crisis did not prove to be sufficiently frightening to provoke major economies into establishing global regulatory schemes, even as it has sparked a spirited -- and much needed, as I argued last week -- discussion of the continuing viability of the U.S. dollar as the world's primary reserve currency. Naturally, plenty of experts and pundits have attached great significance to this debate, seeing in it the beginning of "economic warfare" and the like between "fading" America and "rising" China. And yet, in a world of globally integrated production chains and interconnected financial markets, such "diverging interests" hardly constitute signposts for wars up ahead. Frankly, I don't welcome a world in which America's fiscal profligacy goes undisciplined, so bring it on -- please! Add it all up and it's fair to say that this global financial crisis has proven the great resilience of America's post-World War II international liberal trade order. Do I

expect to read any analyses along those lines in the blogosphere any time soon? Absolutely not. I expect the fantastic

fear-mongering to proceed apace. That's what the Internet is for.

Privacy ( ) Rights can’t be absolute – as they sometimes conflict with other “rights”. If some rights were absolute, privacy wouldn’t be one of them.Himma ‘7

Kenneth - Associate Professor of Philosophy, Seattle Pacific University. The author holds JD and PhD and was formerly a Lecturer at the University of Washington in Department of Philosophy, the Information School, and the Law School. “Privacy vs. Security: Why Privacy is Not an Absolute Value or Right”. San Diego Law Review, Vol. 44, p. 859, 2007. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=994458

It is perhaps worth noting that absolutist conceptions are not limited to privacy rights. Some people take the position that the moral right to life is absolute; on an absolutist conception of the right to life, it is never justified to take the life of a person—and this rules out not only the death penalty, but the use of deadly force in defense of the lives of innocent others from a culpable attack. Many people take an absolutist view with respect to something they call a “right to information,” holding that there should be no restrictions of any kind, including legal protection of intellectual property rights, on the free flow of information. As this view has most famously, and idiosyncratically, been put by John Perry Barlow, “information wants to be free.”5 When it comes to rights, absolutist talk among theorists, lawyers, and ordinary folk is not at all uncommon these days.

Indeed, some people seem to think that rights are, by nature, absolute and hence that it is a conceptual truth that all rights are absolute. Consider the following quote from Patrick Murphy, a Democrat who ran for Congress in 2006: I am also very concerned about the erosion of constitutional rights and civil liberties over the past few years. I taught Constitutional Law at West Point, and it makes me so angry to see our elected leaders in Washington—specifically the White House and the Republican leadership in Congress—pushing policies that erode the foundation of this country. The equal protection clause of the constitution is absolute. The right to privacy is absolute. The right to assemble is absolute. Yet time and time again, the administration has supported, and the Congressional leadership has supported nominees and policies that do not follow the constitution. With my background, I can add to this debate. And I’m not afraid to take a stand for what’s right.6 As Murphy explains it, every right in the Constitution is absolute and hence utterly without exception. As there is nothing in the Constitution or any legal instrument or norm that suggests or entails that constitutional rights are absolute, it is reasonable to think that Murphy believes, as many people do, that it is part of the very meaning of having a right that it can never justifiably be infringed. This is why debates about political issues are frequently framed in terms of whether there is some right that protects the relevant interests; rights provide the strongest level of moral or legal protection of the relevant interests. It is certainly true that rights provide a higher level of protection than any other considerations that are morally relevant, but it is not because rights are, by nature, absolute. Rights provide robust protection of the relevant interests because it is a conceptual truth that the infringement of any right cannot be justified by an appeal of the desirable consequences of doing so. No matter how many people it might make happy, it would be wrong to intentionally kill an innocent person because her right to life takes precedence over the interests of other people in their own happiness. As Ronald Dworkin famously puts this conceptual point, rights trump consequences.7 But this conceptual truth about rights does not imply rights are, by nature, absolute. The claim that rights trump consequences implies only that some stronger consideration than the desirable consequences of infringing a right can

justify doing so. This latter claim leaves open the possibility that there is some such consideration that would justify infringing some rights. One such candidate , of course, is the existence of other more important rights. It is commonly thought that at least some rights are commensurable and can be ranked in a hierarchy that expresses the relative weight each

right in the hierarchy has with respect to other rights. For example, one might think that the right to life is at the top of the hierarchy of commensurable rights, and that property rights are in this hierarchy also. This would explain the common intuition that one may use deadly force when necessary to defend innocent lives from culpable attack, but not when necessary only to defend property rights from violation. If, as seems clear from this example, it is possible for two rights to conflict and for one to outweigh the other, it follows that rights are not, by nature, absolute. What may explain the mistaken view that rights are necessarily absolute is confusion about the relationship of various terms that flesh out the status, origin, and contours of moral rights and obligations.

For example, rights are frequently described as “inviolable ,” meaning that a right can never be justifiably violated. This, of

course, is a conceptual truth; to say that a right is violated is to say that its infringement is without justification. But this does not imply that rights can never be justifiably infringed; a person’s right to life can be justifiably infringed if he (they) culpably shoots at an innocent person and there is no other way to save that person’s life except through use of lethal force in defense of his life. Rights are also thought, by nature, to be supreme, relative to some system of norms—moral, social, or legal—in the sense that they cannot be defeated by other kinds of protections; moral rights are thought to be supreme over

all other kinds of considerations, including social and legal rights. But this does not imply that rights are absolute because it says nothing about the relative importance of one right to another; it simply asserts that, by nature, rights outweigh all other relevant considerations. Supremacy and inviolability are part of the very nature of a right, but these properties do not entail that rights are, by nature, absolute. Of course, the negation of the claim that all rights are absolute does not imply that no rights are absolute. The possibility of conflicts between any two rights does not preclude there being one right that wins every conflict because it is absolute, and hence, without exception. A moral pacifist, for example, takes this view of the moral right to life and holds that intentional

killing of a human being is always wrong. Moreover, if there are two rights that do not come into conflict with each other and win in conflicts with all other rights, those two rights might be absolute. One might think, for example, that the rights to privacy and life can never conflict and that both are

absolute. I am somewhat skeptical that any right is absolute in this strong sense, but if there are any, it will not be privacy. As we will see in more detail, privacy is commensurable with other rights, like the right to life, which figures into the right to security.

It seems clear that privacy rights and the right to life can come into conflict. For example, a psychologist might be justified in protecting a patient’s privacy interests even though doing so includes information that might prevent that person from committing a minor property crime of some kind, but she would not be justified in protecting that information if the psychologist knows its disclosure is necessary to prevent a murder. In any event, I will discuss these kinds of examples in more detail below.

( ) Why does the Debate community treat security interests as callous or mean ?Security interests are competing rights claims that impact serous moral questions.

Himma ‘7

Kenneth - Associate Professor of Philosophy, Seattle Pacific University. The author holds JD and PhD and was formerly a Lecturer at the University of Washington in Department of Philosophy, the Information School, and the Law School. “Privacy vs. Security: Why Privacy is Not an Absolute Value or Right”. San Diego Law Review, Vol. 44, p. 859, 2007. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=994458

At the outset, it is important to stress that security interests do not embrace interests not

immediately related to the survival and minimal physiological well-being of the individual. My interest in security encompasses my interest in continuing life, my interest in being free from the kind of physical injury that threatens my ability to provide for myself, my interest in being free from the kind of financial injury that puts me in conditions of health- or life-

threatening poverty, and my interest in being free from psychological trauma inflicted by others that renders

me unable to care for myself. My interest in security is a negative one in the sense that it is protected by a moral right constituted, in part,

by moral obligations owed to me by other people to refrain from committing acts of violence or theft

capable of causing serious threats to my health, well-being, and life. While it is difficult to draw the line between a serious harm and a nonserious harm, it will have to suffice for my purposes to say that a serious harm is one that interferes significantly with the daily activities

that not only give my life meaning, but make it possible for me to continue to survive. Significant trauma to the brain not only interferes with

many activities that constitute what Don Marquis calls the “goodness of life,”19 but also interferes with my ability to make a living teaching and writing philosophy—while a mildly bruised arm does not. Where exactly to draw the line is not entirely clear, but for my purposes I do not think much turns on it as long as it is understood that security interests do not include minor injuries of any kind. I imagine the boundaries of the relevant notion of seriousness are likely to be contested in any event, but all would agree that the interest in security, by nature,

protects only against threats of serious injuries. It should be abundantly clear that morality protects these interests in the strong est terms available to it . Unless one is a complete skeptic about morality and moral objectivity,

little argument is needed to show that we have a moral right to be free from acts that pose a high risk of causing either our death or grievous injuries to our bodies. Moreover, I would hazard that non-skeptics about morality would also accept that the moral right to physical security is sufficiently important that a state is, as a matter of political morality, obligated to

protect it, by criminalizing attacks on it, as a condition of its legitimacy. No state authority that failed to protect this right could be morally legitimate; at the very least no state authority that failed to do so could be justified in claiming a legitimate monopoly

over the use of force. Security interests are not, however, just about our own well-being; they encompass the

well-being of other persons whose activities conduce to our own physical security. We are social beings who live in societies in which

there is a pronounced division of labor that makes the security of one person dependent upon the security of other persons in a variety of ways—some more abstract, some less abstract.

( ) Assessing Utilitarian consequences are good. Putting ethics in a vacuum is morally irresponsible. Issac, ‘2

(Jeffery, Professor of Political Science at Indiana University, Dissent, Vol. 49 No. 2, Spring)

Politics, in large part, involves contests over the distribution and use of power. To accomplish anything in the political world one must attend to the means that are necessary to bring it about. And to develop such means is to develop, and to exercise, power. To say this is not to say that power is beyond morality. It is to say that power is not reducible to morality. As writers such as Niccolo

Machiavelli, Max Weber, Reinhold Niebuhr, Hannah Arendt have taught, an unyielding concern with moral goodness undercuts political responsibility . The concern may be morally laudable, reflecting a kind of personal integrity, but it

suffers from three fatal flaws: (1) It fails to see that the purity of one’s intentions does not ensure the achievement of what one intends . Abjuring violence or refusing to make common cause with morally comprised parties

may seem like the right thing, but if such tactics entail impotence, then it is hard to view them as serving any moral good beyond the clean conscience of their supporters; (2) it fails to see that in a world of real violence and injustice, moral purity is not simply a form of powerlessness, it is often a form of complicity in injustice . This is why, from the standpoint of politics-as opposed to religion-pacifism is always a potentially immoral stand. In categorically repudiating violence, it refuses in principle to oppose certain violent injustices with any effect; and

(3) it fails to see that politics is as much about unintended consequences as it is about intentions; it is the effects of action, rather tha n the motives of action, that is most significant. Just as the alignment

with “good” may engender impotence, it is often the pursuit of “good” that generates evil. This is the lesson of communism in the twentieth century: it is not enough that one’s goals be sincere or idealistic; it is equally important , always , to ask about the effects of pursuing these goals and to judge these effects in pragmatic and historically contextualized ways. Moral absolutism inhibits this judgment . It alienates those who are not true believers. It promotes arrogance. And it undermines political effectiveness.