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Freedom - 1AC Plan: The United States Federal Government should substantially reduce its military and police presence in South Korea, Japan, Afghanistan, Kuwait, Iraq, and Turkey. Freedom - 1AC Contention One is Morality We isolate 3 internal links- a. Military presence is an altruistic mission, it renders our soldiers disposable and demeans their rights, freedoms and interests. Moral obligation to vote aff. Peter Schwartz. previous Board of Directors at the Ayn Rand Institute. 7/25/ 2005 . “Foreign Policy and Self-Interest” Those who claim that the United States has a moral obligation to send troops on a "humanitarian" mission to Liberia  have it exactly backward: our government has a moral obligation not to send its forces into areas that pose no threats to America's well-being. It is America's self-interest that should be the standard for all foreign-policy decisions--and not just because such a standard is practical, but because it is moral. America was founded on the recognition of each individual's right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. This means that the government may not treat the citizen as a serf--as someone who exists to serve the needs of others. Rather, each citizen is a free, sovereign entity, entitled to live his own life for his own sake. No matter how loudly some people may wail about their need for your services, you are your own master. That is the meaning of your inalienable rights. Those rights are contradicted by a foreign policy that makes Americans sacrifice themselves for the sake of others, such as the Liberians. When the government of a free country performs its proper functions, it uses force only to protect its citizens' freedom. When the lives or property of Americans are at risk from some aggressor-state, our government uses force in retaliation, to keep its citizens free--free to pursue the goals and values that advance their lives. This is what we did in Afghanistan and Iraq. Although administration officials are afraid to say so openly, we overthrew those countries' governments strictly for our own benefit. America went to war to protect the interests of Americans. No dictatorship has a right to remain in power, and any dictatorship that has the capacity to use force beyond its borders and has shown a willingness to do so against U.S. interests is an objective threat to us and is a legitimate target for our military. Osama bin Laden, as well as Saddam Hussein, posed dangers--to Americans. The soldiers we sent to those two countries were fighting to defend their own interests. (Obviously, others also benefited from America's actions, but that was a secondary consequence; it was not our primary purpose and should not have been the standard that guided our decisions.) Sadly, our policymakers are unwilling to defend the justness of a foreign policy of self-interest. Instead, they keep invoking selfless justifications. Our motive, they say, was not to keep Americans safe, but to help the oppressed Iraqis (the invasion was called "Operation: Iraqi Freedom") or to shield other countries from the dangers of bin Laden and Hussein. This altruistic premise is what makes the administration try to accommodate anti-Western "sensitivities" in Afghanistan and Iraq. This premise is what keeps the administration from using sufficient force to rid those lands of all remaining threats to Americans. And this premise is what leaves the administration philosophically helpless to resist the calls for becoming enmeshed in the problems of Liberia. We desperately need some courageous official who is willing to state categorically that a moral foreign policy must uphold America's self-interest--and that by shipping troops to Liberia, we are sacrificing our interests. We are telling our soldiers to risk their lives in a senseless attempt to prevent, temporarily, rival warlords from butchering one another. Contrary to the assertions of all who have suddenly become eager for a new American military presence abroad, offering ourselves as sacrificial fodder on "humanitarian" missions is not a virtue, but a moral crime. Where is the "humanitarian" concern for Americans? Why should Americans be urged to give away their money, their energies and their lives on a campaign that does not serve their interests? There are no rational grounds for asking Americans to suffer more, so that the Liberians may (perhaps) suffer less. When we are not being threatened, the government has no right to put American soldiers in harm's way. Our armed forces are supposed to be our means of self-defense--not self-renunciation. If the administration wants to help the Liberians achieve peace and prosperity, it can start by mailing them copies of the Declaration of Independence. But if we genuinely value our freedom, we cannot make America into the self-abnegating slave of the entire world. To send our troops into a battle in which they have no personal interest --to send them to fight for the sake of warring tribes in Liberia (or Rwanda or Somalia or Kosovo)-- is to negate the principle of individual liberty, upon which America is based. b. Rules of engagement are altruistic and morally repulsive- any international intervention prevents America from winning wars and more importantly, results in US casualties. Alex Epstein  **.**  Analyst at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights. 9/27/ 2007 . “The Real Disgrace: Washington's Battlefield "Ethics"” Americans rightly admire our troops for their bravery, dedication and integrity. The Marines, for instance, are renowned for abiding by an honorable code--as warriors and as individuals in civilian life. They epitomize the rectitude of America's soldiers. But a recently disclosed Pentagon study--little noted in the media--has seemingly cast a shadow over our troops. The study of U.S. combat troops in Iraq finds that less than half of the soldiers and Marines surveyed would report a team member for breaches of the military's ethics rules. Military and civilian observers have concluded from the study that more and stricter training in combat ethics is urgently needed. But instead of reinforcing the military's ethics, we must challenge them. The Pentagon study provides evidence for a searing indictment not of our soldiers but of Washington's rules of engagement. Consider the waking nightmare of being a U.S. combat troop in Iraq : imagine that you are thrust into a battlefield--but purposely hamstrung by absurd restrictions. Iraqis throw Molotov cocktails (i.e., gasoline-filled bottles) at your vehicle--but you are prohibited from responding with force**.** Iraqis, to quote the study**,** "drop large chunks of concrete blocks from second story buildings or overpasses" as you drive by--but you are not allowed to respond. "Every group of Soldiers and Marines interviewed," the Pentagon study summarizes, "reported that they felt the existing ROE [rules of engagement] tied their hands, preventing them from doing what needed to be done to win the war." And the soldiers are right. In Iraq, Washington's rules have systematically prevented our brave and capable troops from using all necessary force to win, to crush the insurgency--and even to protect themselves. As noted in news articles since the start of the war, American forces are ordered not to bomb key targets, such as power plants, and to avoid firing into mosques (where insurgents hide) lest they offend Muslim sensibilities. Having to follow such self-effacing rules of engagement while confronting sniper fire and ambushes and bombs from every direction, day in and day out, must be utterly demoralizing and unbearable. No one should be surprised at the newly reported willingness of combat troops to defy military ethics, because such defiance is understandable as the natural reaction of warriors made to follow suicidal rules**.** When being "ethical" on Washington's terms means martyring yourself and your comrades for the sake of murderous Iraqis, it is understandable that troops are disinclined to report "unethical" behavior. It is understandable that troops should feel anger and anxiety **(as many do),** because it is horrifically unjust for America to send its personnel into combat, deliberately prevent them from achieving victory--and expect them to die for the sake of the enemy. It would be natural for an individual thrust into the line of fire as a sacrificial offering to rebel with indignation at such a fate. How can we do this to our soldiers? The death and misery caused by Washington's self-crippling rules of engagement **--**rules endorsed by liberals and conservatives alike-- are part of the inevitable destruction flowing from a broader evil: the philosophy of "compassionate" war. This perverse view of war holds that fighting selfishly to defend your own freedom by defeating enemies is wrong; but fighting to selflessly serve the needs of others is virtuous. It was on this premise that U.S. troops were sent to Iraq: Washington's goal was not to defend America against whatever threat Hussein's hostile regime posed to us, as a first step toward defeating our enemies in the region--principally Iran, the arch sponsor of Islamic totalitarianism**.** Instead the troops were sent (as Bush explained) to "sacrifice for the liberty of strangers"--spilling American blood and spending endless resources on the "compassionate" goal of lifting the hostile and primitive Iraqi people out of poverty, feeding their hungry, unclogging their sewers. The result of this "compassionate" war is thousands of unnecessary American deaths, and the preservation and emboldening of the enemies we most need to defeat : Iran and Saudi Arabia. We must put an end to the barbarous sacrifice of American troops, now. It is past time to abandon Washington's self-sacrificial rules of engagement, and its broader policy of "compassionate," self-sacrificial warfare. Instead of subjecting troops to more intensive "ethics" training, we should unleash them from the suicidal military ethics of self-sacrifice. c. Americans in uniform fighting in self-defense eliminates ethics as a whole and staying only further bankrupts our morality. The ultimate impact is troops being seen ones who exists for their disposability in the name of a collective. Yaron **Brooks**. Elan **Journo**. Ayn Rand Institute contributors. 2009. “America’s Self-Crippled Foreign Policy” Remember that close to five thousand American soldiers —brave, heroic, patriotic soldiers—have died in Iraq. The same thing is happening in Afghanistan, and I think the casualties are going to mount. Because of Washington’s perverse strategy in regard to Islamic totalitarianism, we have suffered more casualties //since// 9/11 than on 9/11 itself. These casualties may be soldiers, but we must not think of them as “just soldiers.” They are American citizens who have died because of the corrupt foreign policy that placed their lives at the service of Iraqis, Afghanis, and our worst enemies— rather than in defense of the individual rights of Americans, which is what they volunteered to fight for and the proper purpose of our military. If anyone can claim genuine success in the shadow of Bush’s policy, it is the Islamist regime in Iran. Bush left it untouched, and, by the end of his term, had ramped up the offers of appeasement—an approach that Obama has taken up with zeal. And if any credit is to be given for the fact that there have been no more terrorist attacks on U.S. soil, it should be given to our intelligence services and the brave operatives who work for them. After 9/11, these agencies stepped up and made it more difficult for terrorists to inflict direct harm on this country. They have been continuously undercut by the Bush administration and now the Obama administration’s lack of a victory-seeking foreign policy. I worry that Obama’s systematic attacks over the past few months on the CIA, his attack on “extraordinary interrogation tactics” (i.e., “torture”)—on our ability to extract information from terrorists, his insistence on sending some of these terrorists back to the Middle East—and his general attempt to appease the Arab world will have a negative impact on the vigilance of our intelligence community. Many of our best people in the CIA are now afraid of legal prosecution, and many are leaving the agency. This is a huge injustice, and its effect will be to significantly increase the risk of another terrorist attack in the United States and to further embolden our worst enemies all over the world. ** CB :** The //Wall Street Journal// recently reported that General McChrystal’s strategy in Afghanistan “puts a premium on safeguarding the Afghan population rather than hunting down militants.” What do you make of that strategy? ** EJ **: This same strategy was at the heart of Bush’s policy—and it meant that U.S. forces were never allowed to fight all out to defeat the Taliban. The Taliban and its jihadist allies scattered, then regrouped, and now are fighting to control Afghanistan and also Pakistan. U.S. casualties in the first eight months of 2009 are already higher than all of 2008, and more than double the toll during the first three years of the campaign. A key point we make in //Winning the Unwinnable War// is that this “compassionate” policy is self-destructive of American lives and security. It’s central to what has made the war seem unwinnable. Now we’re seeing that policy being implemented to the nth degree, and many more Americans—on the battlefield, and perhaps at home—will pay the price for it. **YB**: In a chapter on “Just War Theory,” Alex and I discuss the moral ideas informing the policy you’re seeing unfold in Afghanistan. Those ideas—primarily the embrace of selflessness as a moral ideal —are why America today is unwilling to wage real war to defeat its enemies. Americans used to fight to win ; think of General Sherman during the U.S. Civil War or Patton or MacArthur in World War II. But our policy in Afghanistan— seeking to win the love of Afghanis, rather than defeating the Islamists—can only serve to further embolden our enemies. **CB:** With President Obama planning to pull most of our troops out of Iraq by next August and to increase the number of U.S. troops stationed in Afghanistan, politicians and pundits are mired in a debate as to whether or not this is the right course of action: Should we or should we not be pulling troops out of Iraq and deploying them to Afghanistan? How would you answer this question? **YB:** Just as Bush did on several occasions, Obama warns us not to expect “victory” in Afghanistan. And top U.S. military officials tell us the Taliban are winning. It is immoral to send any troops to fight in any war that our leaders believe to be—and through their policies have made—unwinnable. More broadly, it is outrageous that the mighty United States should find itself with two unresolved conflicts like these. In a sense we’re in an impossible fix, because neither option you mentioned is particularly good, nor is it clear which option is the least bad. This is precisely the kind of situation that our foreign policy should never get us into. As for Iraq, what purpose do American troops serve there today? In what way does their presence make Americans safer or help in winning this war? Leaving the Middle East today would be horrible—it would embolden our enemies and make it more difficult to deal with future threats. But staying only places our troops in harm’s way, with no real benefit to U.S. security. Altruism destroys the moral fabric of human life; existing for someone else’s purpose degrades us to mere slaves to a collective. Ayn Rand. (Author and Philosopher) 1962. (http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=objectivism_intro) My philosophy, Objectivism, holds that: Reality exists as an objective absolute —facts are facts, independent of man’s feelings, wishes, hopes or fears. Reason (the faculty which identifies and integrates the material provided by man’s senses)  is man’s only means of perceiving reality, his only source of knowledge, his only guide to action, and his basic means of survival. Man—every man— is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others. He must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. The pursuit of his own rational self-interest and of his own happiness is the highest moral purpose of his life. Altruism inverts morality, promotes all forms of evil, and defies justice. Leonard Peikoff, professor of philosophy the founder of the Ayn Rand Institute and the legal heir to Ayn Rand's estate, 1991 , Objectivism the philosophy of Ayn Rand, page 282 There is no greater obstacle to such a process than the theory of altruism. First, altruism inverts moral judgment, teaching people to admire self- sacrifice and to belittle self-preservation as amoral or worse. Then, since the theory cannot be practiced consistently, it leads people to hate the very fact of moral judgment. Moral estimates, such people explain, are cruel; a good man is really not evil (“he couldn’t help it!” ”they don’t mean it “). At the same time, since morality cannot be avoided and since consistent altruism is impossible, the theory prompts people, when they do judge, to condemn everybody indiscriminately. All these policies-moral inversion, moral neutrality, and sweeping condemnation-defy the virtue of justice. All work to promote the evil at the expense of the good. It is no hindrance to the concentration camp guard and no solace to his victim, if one defines torture as virtue; or if one averts ones gaze; or if one criticizes both men alike as “gray,” insisting that there must be some virtue in the whip-wielding fiend and some vice in the body writhing at his feet. Altruism breeds self-sacrifice and makes us tools of a collective group; only adopting our ethics will create justice. Ayn Rand, Objectivism’s creator. “Faith and Force; Destroyers of the Modern World” page. 61. Published in 1982 What is the moral code of altruism ? The basic principle of altruism is that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the only justification of his existence, and that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty, virtue and value. Do not confuse altruism with kindness, good will or respect for the rights of others. These are not primaries, but consequences, which, in fact, altruism makes impossible. The irreducible primary of altruism, the basic absolute, is self-sacrifice— which means; self-immolation, self-abnegation, self-denial, self-destruction—which means: the self as a standard of evil, the selfless as a standard of the good. Moral law outweighs other considerations – integral to human nature. Taylor, professor of philosophy @ Princeton. 2003. Robert. “Rawl’s Defense of the Priority of Liberty: A Kantian Reconstruction.” Princeton University Press. Philosophy & Public Affairs 31, No. 3, Pg 13. Project MUSE. The Priority of Right over the Good and the Priority of Justice over Welfare and Efficiency are both expressions of our nature as reasonable beings, i.e., beings able to act in conformity with, and out of respect for, the moral law __.__ In Kant’s terms, to sacrifice justice for the sake of welfare or excellence of character would be to sacrifice what is of absolute value (the good will) for what is of merely relative value (its complements). Rawls himself makes the same strong connection between reasonableness and these two kinds of priority: But the desire to express our nature as a free and equal rational being can be fulfilled only by acting on the principles of right and justice as having first priority. . . . Therefore in order to realize our nature we have no alternative but to plan to preserve our sense of justice as governing our other aims. This sentiment cannot be fulfilled if it is compromised and balanced against other ends as but one desire among the rest (TJ, p. 503, emphasis added). Just as reasonableness is a key facet of our autonomy, so the priorities of right and justice are expressions of our reasonableness: we best indicate our commitment to guide our actions by the principles of justice by refusing to compromise those principles for the sake of our other ends. Altruism destroys the moral fabric of human life; existing for someone elses purpose degrades us to mere slaves to a collective. Ayn Rand. (Author and Philosopher) 1962. (http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=objectivism_intro) My philosophy, Objectivism, holds that: Reality exists as an objective absolute  —facts are facts, independent of man’s feelings, wishes, hopes or fears. Reason (the faculty which identifies and integrates the material provided by man’s senses) is man’s only means of perceiving reality, his only source of knowledge, his only guide to action, and his basic means of survival. Man— every man—is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others. He must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. The pursuit of his own rational self-interest and of his own happiness is the highest moral purpose of his life. Freedom comes before all other impacts Sylvester Petro, professor of law at Wake Forest, Spring 1974, Toledo Law Review, p480 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 Hume’s 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. It’s our moral claims versus the current self-sacrifice ethics- the neg can only defend the status quo. Yaron Brook, president of the Ayn Rand Institute and Elan Journo, resident fellow focusing on foreign policy issues at the Ayn Rand Center, Spring 2007 , “The “Forward Strategy” for Failure, [] Our leaders insist that the forward strategy is indispensable to victory. They claim that only this strategy is noble, because it is self-sacrificial, and that only it is practical, because it will somehow protect our lives. We are asked to believe that in slitting our own throats, we will do ourselves no real harm, that this is actually the cure for our affliction. What the strategy’s advocates would like us to believe is that there is no alternative to the ideal of selflessness. But we are confronted by a choice—and the alternatives are mutually exclusive. The choice is between self-sacrifice—and self-interest. There is no middle ground. There is no way to unite these alternatives. We must choose one or the other. If we are to make our lives safe, we must embrace the ideal of America’s self-interest. Though largely unknown and misconceived, this moral principle is necessary to the achievement of America’s national security. Let us briefly consider what it stands for and what it would mean in practice.[|49] If we are to pursue America’s self-interest, we must above all be passionate advocates for rational moral ideals. We need to recognize that embracing the right ideals is indispensable to achieving our long-term, practical goal of national security. Key to upholding our national self-interest is championing the ideal of political freedom—not crusading for democracy. Freedom, as noted earlier, is a product of certain values and moral premises. Fundamentally, it depends on the moral code of rational egoism. Whereas the morality of self-sacrifice punishes the able and innocent by commanding them to renounce their values, egoism, as defined in the philosophy of Ayn Rand, holds that the highest moral purpose of man’s life is achieving his own happiness. Egoism holds that each individual has an unconditional moral right to his own life, that no man should sacrifice himself, that each must be left free from physical coercion by other men and the government. Politically, this entails a government that recognizes the individual as a sovereign being and upholds his inviolable right to his life and possessions. This is the implicit moral basis of the Founders’ original system of government as the protector of the rights of individuals. Their survival-based claims destroy any value to life. Daniel Callahan, Co-founder and former director of The Hastings Institute, PhD in philosophy from Harvard University, “The Tyranny of Survival” 1973, p 91-93 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 evil s 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. But it is not only in a political setting that survival has been evoked as a final and unarguable value. The main rationale B. F. Skinner offers in Beyond Freedom and Dignity for the controlled and conditioned society is the need for survival. For Jacques Monod, in Chance and Necessity, survival requires that we overthrow almost every known religious, ethical and political system. In genetics, the survival of the gene pool has been put forward as sufficient grounds for a forceful prohibition of bearers of offensive genetic traits from marrying and bearing children. Some have even suggested that we do the cause of survival no good by our misguided medical efforts to find means by which those suffering from such common genetically based diseases as diabetes can live a normal life, and thus procreate even more diabetics. In the field of population and environment, one can do no better than to cite Paul Ehrlich, whose works have shown a high dedication to survival, and in its holy name a willingness to contemplate governmentally enforced abortions and a denial of food to surviving populations of nations which have not enacted population-control policies. For all these reasons it is possible to counterpoise over against the need for survival a "tyranny of survival." There seems to be no imaginable evil which some group is not willing to in flict on another for 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 manipulatively 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. 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. 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 life—then 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. Yet it would be the defeat of all defeats if, because human beings could not properly manage their need to survive, they succeeded in not doing so. Nuclear war won’t escalate; the US could disarm any nuclear opponent before they could retaliate Keir Liber, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame, and Press Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania 2006 (Keir Liber, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame, and Press Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania, Spring 2006, International Security, //The End of Mad The Nuclear dimension of US Primacy// http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/isec.2006.30.4.7) For nearly half a century, the world’s most powerful nuclear-armed countries have been locked in a military stalemate known as mutual assured destruction (  MAD  ). By the early 1960s, the United States and the Soviet Union possessed such large, welldispersed nuclear arsenals that neither state could entirely destroy the other’s nuclear forces in a ªrst strike. Whether the scenario was a preemptive strike during a crisis, or a bolt-from-the-blue surprise attack, the victim would always be able to retaliate and destroy the aggressor. Nuclear war was therefore tantamount to mutual suicide. Many scholars believe that the nuclear stalemate helped prevent conºict between the superpowers during the Cold War, and that it remains a powerful force for great power peace today. 1 T he age of MAD, however, is waning. Today the United States stands on the verge of attaining nuclear primacy vis-à-vis its plausible great power adversaries. For the frst time in decades, it could conceivably disarm the long-range nuclear arsenals of Russia or China with a nuclear first strike. A preemptive strike on an alerted Russian arsenal would still likely fail, but a surprise attack at peacetime alert levels would have a reasonable chance of success. Furthermore, the Chinese nuclear force is so vulnerable that it could be destroyed even if it were alerted during a crisis. Deontology key to giving human life dignity. Kamm 92 [ FM Kamm is Littauer Professor of //Philosophy and Public// Policy, Kennedy School Non-consequentialism, the person as an end-in-itself, and the significance of status.”, Philosophy and Public Affairs, “ p. 390 JSTOR] If we are inviolable in a certain way, we are more important creatures than violable ones ;  such a higher status is itself a benefit to us. Indeed, we are creatures whose interests as recipients of such ordinary benefits as welfare are more worth serving. The world is, in a sense, a better place, as it has more important creatures in it .3' In this sense the inviolable status (against being harmed in a certain way) of any potential victim can be taken to be an agent-neutral value. This is a nonconsequential value. It does not follow (causally or noncausally)  upon any act , but is already present in the status that persons have. Ensuring it provides the background against which we may then seek their welfare or pursue othe r values. It is not our duty to bring about the agent-neutral value, but only to respect the constraints that express its presence. Kagan claims that the only sense in which we can show disrespect for people is by using them in an unjustified way. Hence, i f it is justified to kill one to save five, we will not be showing disrespect for the one if we so use him. But there is another sense of disrespect tied to the fact that we owe people more respect than animals, even though we also should not treat animals in an unjustified way. And this other sense of disrespect is, I believe, tied to the failure to heed the greater inviolability of persons. A utilitarian frame of ethics and ‘duty’ corrupt morality, reason, and reality. Only believing we have no ethical obligation to another can we conceptualize true morality. Ayn Rand. Author and Philosopher on Objectivism 1982. “Philosophy: Who Needs It?” One of the most destructive anti-concepts in the history of moral philosophy is the term “duty  .”   An anti-concept is an artificial, unnecessary and rationally unusable term designed to replace and obliterate some legitimate concept. The term “duty” obliterates more than single concepts; it is a metaphysical and psychological killer  : it negates all the essentials of a rational view of life and makes them inapplicable to man’s actions. . . .  The meaning of the term “duty” is: the moral necessity to perform certain actions for no reason other than obedience to some higher authority  , without regard to any personal goal, motive, desire or interest. It is obvious that that anti-concept is a product of mysticism, not an abstraction derived from reality. In a mystic theory of ethics, “duty” stands for the notion that man must obey the dictates of a supernatural authority. Even though the anti-concept has been secularized, and the authority of God’s will has been ascribed to earthly entities, such as parents, country, State, mankind, etc., their alleged supremacy still rests on nothing but a mystic edict. Who in hell can have the right to claim that sort of submission or obedience? This is the only proper form—and locality—for the question, because nothing and no one can have such a right or claim here on earth. The arch-advocate of “duty” is Immanuel Kant; he went so much farther than other theorists that they seem innocently benevolent by comparison. “Duty,” he holds, is the only standard of virtue; but virtue is not its own reward: if a reward is involved, it is no longer virtue. The only moral motivation, he holds, is devotion to duty for duty’s sake; only an action motivated exclusively by such devotion is a moral action. . . . If one were to accept it, the anti-concept “duty” destroys the concept of reality: an unaccountable, supernatural power takes precedence over fac ts and dictates one’s actions regardless of context or consequences. “Duty” destroys reason: it supersedes one’s knowledge and judgment, making the process of thinking and judging irrelevant to one’s actions. “Duty” destroys values: it demands that one b etray or sacrifice one’s highest values for the sake of an inexplicable command—and it transforms values into a threat to one’s moral worth   , since the experience of pleasure or desire casts doubt on the moral purity of one’s motives. “Duty” destroys love: who could want to be loved not from “inclination,” but from “duty”? “Duty” destroys self-esteem: it leaves no self to be esteemed. If one accepts that nightmare in the name of morality, the infernal irony is that “duty” destroys morality. A deontologica l   (duty-centered   ) theory of ethics confines moral principles to a list of prescribed “duties” and leaves the rest of man’s life without any moral guidance  , cutting morality off from any application to the actual problems and concerns of man’s existence. Such matters as work, career, ambition, love, friendship, pleasure, happiness, values (insofar as they are not pursued as duties) are regarded by these theories as amoral, i.e., outside the province of morality. If so, then by what standard is a man to make his daily choices, or direct the course of his life? In a deontological theory, all personal desires are banished from the realm of morality; a personal desire has no moral significance, be it a desire to create or a desire to kill. For example, if a man is not supporting his life from duty, such a morality makes no distinction between supporting it by honest labor or by robbery. If a man wants to be honest, he deserves no moral credit; as Kant would put it, such honesty is “praiseworthy,” but without “moral import.” Only a vicious represser, who feels a profound desire to lie, cheat and steal, but forces himself to act honestly for the sake of “duty,” would receive a recognition of moral worth from Kant and his ilk. This is the sort of theory that gives morality a bad name Utilitarianism fails to take into account prima facie rights– moral resolution of conflicts necessary. Raymond Frey. Author of the book “Utility and rights”. 1984 . “Utility and rights” p. 133 The theory of //prima facie// human rights that is outlined here is one in terms of //prima facie// rights, many of which are rights of recipience, in which the rights create obligations and claims that collide with one another and with the moral demands created by other values. Many of these conflicts are to be resolved without reference , or with only negative reference,  to consequences   **.**  When the consequences do enter seriously into the resolution of the conflicts, the solution arrived at is often very different from that which would be dictated by utilita rian considerations. The points made in the preceding section may be illustrated by reference to conflicts of //prima facie// human rights such as the right to life, viewed as a right of recipience, the right to moral autonomy and integrity- and values such as pleasure and happiness, and the absence of pain and suffering. A consideration of the morally rightful resolution of such conflicts brings out the inadequacy of the utilitarian calculus as a basis for determining the morally right response to such situat ions and conflicts. Deontology key to giving human life value. Kamm 92 [ FM Kamm is Littauer Professor of //Philosophy and Public// Policy, Kennedy School Non-consequentialism, the person as an end-in-itself, and the significance of status.”, Philosophy and Public Affairs, “ p. 390 JSTOR] If we are inviolable in a certain way, we are more important creatures than violable ones ;  such a higher status is itself a benefit to us. Indeed, we are creatures whose interests as recipients of such ordinary benefits as welfare are more worth serving. The world is, in a sense, a better place, as it has more important creatures in it .3' In this sense the inviolable status (against being harmed in a certain way) of any potential victim can be taken to be an agent-neutral value. This is a nonconsequential value. It does not follow (causally or noncausally)  upon any act , but is already present in the status that persons have. Ensuring it provides the background against which we may then seek their welfare or pursue other val ues. It is not our duty to bring about the agent-neutral value, but only to respect the constraints that express its presence. Kagan claims that the only sense in which we can show disrespect for people is by using them in an unjustified way. Hence, if it is justified to kill one to save five, we will not be showing disrespect for the one if we so use him. But there is another sense of disrespect tied to the fact that we owe people more respect than animals, even though we also should not treat animals in an unjustified way. And this other sense of disrespect is, I believe, tied to the failure to heed the greater inviolability of persons.