Nationals Topic Research

I am going to have a hard time arguing the affirmative, but that's the price one pays for being opinionated. Luckily there are great arguments on both sides that don't require me to practice my poker face.

The social contract is in in place to serve us, not to restrict us.The resolution makes it seem as though the affirmative is trying to take away freedom, and such a suggestion carries a range of logical and sensational reactions. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy best explains this distinction.

Economic freedom is an example of negative liberty, or a type of freedom that is granted merely by the fact that nothing stands in the way of you doing something. Negative liberty is implied solely by the lack of restriction. Positive liberty, however, is defined as to take control of one's life and realize one's fundamental purposes.

In other words, negative liberty allows opportunity by simply maintaining absence of authority, while positive liberty is process of using things like government to create opportunity, and therefore create liberty. You could think of it as progressive and regressive liberty.

This surprises people: anarchy is NOT a condition of maximum liberty. It is maximum liberty, and it is not the optimal level of freedom in a society. This is where I disagree with Ayn Rand and friends - when you allow complete economic freedom, you condone any private action (think monopolies) that results in the destruction of the free market, and therefore individual rights (see Ayn? we're cool).

There is another name for complete anarcho-capitalism: John Locke's 'state of nature'. The social contract exists because people chose not to live in such a state. Social contracts are really just lists of positive liberties that the people want to guarantee.

THE POINT - You can, and should, decrease economic freedom without suffering a net loss of liberty. The question then becomes: to what degree?

Heller raises Hell

It took over 30 years, but the citizens of D.C. managed to avoid being murdered in their happy joyful gun-free city just long enough to get their day in court.

Washington D.C. has done America a great public service, not specifically because of this ruling, but because their failed attempt at controlling gun violence is now the best possible evidence against handgun bans: a case study.

A few things have to be acknowledged to make this legitimate. There is not, and never will be, a causal relationship between gun restrictions and murder rates. Nor is there even a direct correlation. A negative correlation could be achieved if a significant number of guns were taken off the streets, but at this point in American history (those two words are enough) there are enough guns on the street to keep a black market alive forever. D.C's policy tried to exploit this correlation but was defeated by that little exception. As a result, the number of murders more than doubled, while their population continued to shrink. In the 1990s, D.C. officially earned the highest murder rate in the country.

So how do criminals keep their guns? The same way they buy crack - they break the damn law. People (especially those who are either too old or too high-class to remember what is practical for the average person) tend to vote for bullshit ideas that are designed to make them feel good. Politicians like Adrian Fenty know that. An effective plan would entail too high a cost and result in too much police power (you can go ahead and repeal the 2nd amendment at that point).