VP: Liberty - VC: Social Contract... posted by Josh Nadal
“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” These are the words of Benjamin Franklin, and for this and other reasons, I stand firmly against the resolution: That the restriction of economic liberty for the sake of the general welfare is justified in the field of agriculture.
1.
Restriction
“to confine or keep within limits, as of space,
action, choice, or quantity.” – Random House Webster’s College Dictionary
2.
Justify
“1 To prove or show to be just, or conformable to law, right, justice, propriety or duty;” – Noah Webster’s 1812 American Dictionary of the English Language
3.
Agriculture
“The science or art of cultivating the soil and its fruits especially in large areas or fields” – Ballentine’s Law Dictionary, 1969
Value Premise Definition: According to John Locke in his Second Treatise of Government, “liberty is to be free from restraint and violence from others . . . a liberty to dispose and order as he lists his person, actions, possessions, and his whole property, within the allowance of those laws under which he is, and therein not to be subject to the arbitrary will of another, but freely follow his own.”
Value Premise Justification: Liberty, and in this case
economic liberty, should be the first thing we value, for without liberty
nothing else matters.
Criteria: The criterion that we will
use to uphold liberty is the social contract.
Criteria Definition: The social contract that
Locke gave us is based on the idea that we give up our ability to infringe on
the rights of others in order that those rights may be protected for us as
well.
Criteria Justification: By using the social
contract, liberty is protected because under it others are restrained from
making actions that would infringe on your liberty, such as making you their
slave or maiming you.
Thesis: The negative holds that a restriction of economic liberty is not
justified because not only does it sacrifice a greater value for a lesser one,
but it is counter-productive to the lesser value as well. Trying to uphold the general welfare over
economic liberty will achieve neither.
Designative Issues
Contentions Points to correlate facts presented to the value and to apply the value.
Third, liberty has intrinsic value
in and of itself. Henry Shue, a
philosopher, said in Basic Rights,
1980, “Certainly there are many liberties
the exercise and enjoyment of which are valuable in themselves - and are for
that reason very valuable indeed”. So
liberty has worth in itself. For all
these reasons the value of economic liberty is the most important value in this
debate round.
Now
let’s look at how this applies to the
field of agriculture. Under communist
rule in Russia, economic liberty was greatly restricted and the general welfare
perished. This restriction of economic
liberty was a disaster; and the regime that instituted it ultimately fell. So here we see an excellent example of the
negative position in this round: that restricting our economic liberty for the
sake of the general welfare is like shooting yourself in the foot – no, more
like committing suicide. Upon the
sacrifice of economic liberty, chaos ensued; and when the smoke cleared
Benjamin Franklin’s words came to life, for they had “neither Liberty nor
Safety.” For this one reason alone, we
should reject the resolution. But let’s
move on and look at the affirmative case.