Tournament: Samford | Round: 6 | Opponent: Alpharetta KK | Judge: Viveth Karthikeyan

1NC — Apocalyptic Thinking Critique

~THE FIRST/NEXT OFF-CASE POSITION IS THE APOCALYPTIC THINKING CRITIQUE~

First, the affirmative’s dramatization of impacts as existential risks replaces risk assessment with worst-case thinking.

Furedi 10 — Frank Furedi, Professor of Sociology at the University of Kent at Canterbury, holds a Ph.D. from the School of Oriental and African Studies at London University, 2010 ("Fear is key to irresponsibility," The Australian, October 9^th, Available Online at http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/fear-is-key-to-irresponsibility/story-e6frg6zo-1225935797740, Accessed 10-18-2010)
In the 21st century the optimistic belief in humanity’s potential for subduing the unknown and to become master of its fate has given way to the belief that we are too powerless to deal with the perils confronting us.
We live in an era where problems associated with uncertainty and risk are amplified and, through our imagination, mutate swiftly into existential threats. Consequently, it is rare that unexpected natural events are treated as just that.
Rather, they are swiftly dramatised and transformed into a threat to human survival. The clearest expression of this tendency is the dramatisation of weather forecasting.
Once upon a time the television weather forecasts were those boring moments when you got up to get a snack. But with the invention of concepts such as "extreme weather", routine events such as storms, smog or unexpected snowfalls have acquired compelling entertainment qualities.
This is a world where a relatively ordinary, technical, information-technology problem such as the so-called millennium bug was interpreted as a threat of apocalyptic proportions, and where a flu epidemic takes on the dramatic weight of the plot of a Hollywood disaster movie.
Recently, when the World Health Organisation warned that the human species was threatened by the swine flu, it became evident that it was cultural prejudice rather than sober risk assessment that influenced much of present-day official thinking.
In recent times European culture has become confused about the meaning of uncertainty and risk. Contemporary Western cultural attitudes towards uncertainty, chance and risk are far more pessimistic and confused than they were through most of the modern era. Only rarely is uncertainty perceived as an opportunity to take responsibility for our destiny. Invariably uncertainty is represented as a marker for danger and change is often regarded with dread.
Frequently, worst-case thinking displaces any genuine risk-assessment process. Risk assessment is based on an attempt to calculate the probability of different outcomes. Worst-case thinking—these days known as precautionary thinking—is based on an act of imagination. It imagines the worst-case scenario and demands that we take action on that basis.

Second, this causes serial policy failure — acting based on worst-case possibilities ruins decision-making.

Evans 12 — Dylan Evans, Lecturer in Behavioral Science at University College Cork School of Medicine, holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the London School of Economics, 2012 ("Nightmare Scenario: The Fallacy of Worst-Case Thinking," Risk Management, April 2^nd, Available Online at http://www.rmmagazine.com/2012/04/02/nightmare-scenario-the-fallacy-of-worst-case-thinking/, Accessed 10-10-2013)
There’s something mesmerizing about apocalyptic scenarios. Like an alluring femme fatale, they exert an uncanny pull on the imagination. That is why what security expert Bruce Schneier calls "worst-case thinking" is so dangerous. It substitutes imagination for thinking, speculation for risk analysis and fear for reason.
One of the clearest examples of worst-case thinking was the so-called "1 doctrine," which Dick Cheney is said to have advocated while he was vice president in the George W. Bush administration. According to journalist Ron Suskind, Cheney first proposed the doctrine at a meeting with CIA Director George Tenet and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice in November 2001.
Responding to the thought that Al Qaeda might want to acquire a nuclear weapon, Cheney apparently remarked: "If there’s a 1 chance that Pakistani scientists are helping Al Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response. It’s not about our analysis…It’s about our response."
By transforming low-probability events into complete certainties whenever the events are particularly scary
AND
the extreme but improbable risks and does a poor job at assessing outcomes."

Third, this is the most important impact — training students to make good decisions is debate’s fundamental purpose.

Strait and Wallace 8 — L. Paul Strait, Ph.D. Candidate in Communication at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California, and Brett Wallace, M.A. Candidate in Security Policy Studies at George Washington University, 2008 ("Academic Debate as a Decision-Making Game: Inculcating The Virtue of Practical Wisdom," Contemporary Argumentation and Debate, Volume 29, Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via EBSCOhost Communication 26 Mass Media Complete, p. 3-6)
Practical Wisdom
Since the inception of modern academic debate, much of the praise it has received
AND
the highest government officials to the most inconsequential members of society, uses.
Aristotle (c. 330BCE/1941a) argues that this decision-making process combines desire and reasoning in the act of deliberation focused on some end. The ability to make good decisions (and to follow through with them) is associated with the virtue of practical wisdom: ~end page 3~
Practical wisdom... is concerned with things human and things about which it is possible
AND
, and practice is concerned with particulars. (~231141b 6-16).
This underlies our contention that practical wisdom is the final cause of debate. Practical wisdom is broad, provides coherence and unity in a non-arbitrary way, and is value-neutral with respect to the growing divide between the policy-focused and the critically-inclined. Non-practical ends are not helpful – as Aristotle (c. 330BCE/1941a) argues:
The origin of action—its efficient, not its final cause—is choice, and that of choice is desire and reasoning with a view to an end... Intellect itself, however, moves nothing, but only the intellect which aims at an end and is practical; for this rules the productive intellect as well, since everyone who makes makes for an end, and that which is made is not an end in the unqualified sense. (~231139a32 – 37).
Practical ends that are not unqualified—e.g., Mitchell’s (1995)
AND
highest quality of skills, while at the same time preserving competitive equity.
The ability to make decisions deriving from deliberation, argumentation or debate, is that
AND
is considered the appropriate decision-maker(s) must be identified:
The appropriate decision makers are those necessary to the ultimate implementation of the decision. You may win adherence of fellow students to the proposition that the midterm exam should count less than the final paper in grading your class, but if the professor says no, little is gained... It is important ~end page 5~ for... ~arguers~ to recognize who the appropriate decision makers are. (Rieke 26 Sillars, 1993, p. 2).
Since policy debate aims at determining whether a particular course of action is expedient all arguments which misapprehend the appropriate decision maker(s) are red herrings and interfere with true rational deliberation.
Academics from outside the contest debate community make this argument in different ways in discussing
AND
success, and preparation for college and employment" (p. 49).

Finally, hyperbolic extinction impacts should be rejected. The alternative is to vote against the affirmative because their 1AC has made effective decision-making impossible.

Gross and Gilles 12 — Mathew Barrett Gross, New Media Strategist who served as the Director of Internet Communications for Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential campaign, and Mel Gilles, Director of Sol Kula Yoga and Healing, 2012 ("How Apocalyptic Thinking Prevents Us from Taking Political Action," The Atlantic, April 23^rd, Available Online at http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/04/how-apocalyptic-thinking-prevents-us-from-taking-political-action/255758/, Accessed 10-10-2013)
Flip through the cable channels for long enough, and you’ll inevitably find the apocalypse
AND
Nile virus, are the looming specter of apocalypse darkening our nation’s horizon.
How to make sense of it all? After all, not every scenario can
AND
rapid reversal of the world’s magnetic poles might seem terrifyingly likely and imminent.
The last time apocalyptic anxiety spilled into the mainstream to the extent that it altered the course of history — during the Reformation — it relied on a revolutionary new communications technology: the printing press. In a similar way, could the current surge in apocalyptic anxiety be attributed in part to our own revolution in communications technology?
The media, of course, have long mastered the formula of packaging remote possibilities
AND
. "They don’t teach that in Sunday school, but it’s true."
Nothing inspires fear like the end of the world, and ever since Y2K,
AND
an Arab terrorist poisoning that drinking supply, resulting in millions of casualties?
Yet not all of the crises or potential threats before us are equal, nor are they equally probable – a fact that gets glossed over when the media equate the remote threat of a possible event, like epidemics, with real trends like global warming.
Over the last decade, the 24-hour news cycle and the proliferation of
AND
flu, or swine flu also never lived up to their media hype.
This over-reliance on the apocalyptic narrative causes us to fear the wrong things
AND
the likely impact of the worst-case model of any given threat?

Tournament: Samford | Round: 1 | Opponent: Chattahoochee LN | Judge: Lane Bearden
1NC — Immigration Reform Politics DA

~THE FIRST/NEXT OFF-CASE POSITION IS THE IMMIGRATION REFORM POLITICS DA~

First, Immigration reform will pass — Tallent and Tea Party railing

Colarusso 1/7 — ~Laura Colarusso, freelance journalist based in Boston. She has previously written for Newsweek, The Boston Globe, the Washington Monthly and The Daily Beast, 2014 ("Is 2014 the year for immigration reform?," The Week, January 7^th, Available online at http://theweek.com/article/index/254743/is-2014-the-year-for-immigration-reform-http://theweek.com/article/index/254743/is-2014-the-year-for-immigration-reform, Accessed on January 8, 2014)~
With Congress back in session, lawmakers have a small window to pass a bill
AND
have hired unless he was ready to move some kind of legislation forward.
The second was Boehner’s mid-December rant against Tea Party types who had criticized
AND
pilloried by conservatives who equate a pathway to citizenship with amnesty for lawbreakers.
Two big questions loom on the horizon. First, it’s unlikely Boehner will embrace the sweeping overhaul passed by the Senate, but it remains to be seen how far he’s willing to go. Second, it’s unclear whether enough House Republicans can embrace even a modest reform package in an election year when many could face primary challenges from the right.
Moderate Republicans who see reform as critical to remaining competitive with Latino voters are said
AND
undocumented immigrants, which means Democrats will have a difficult time supporting it.

Second, The Cuba Lobby will destroy Obama’s agenda in response to the plan.

LeoGrande 12 — William M. LeoGrande, Professor in the Department of Government at the School of Public Affairs at American University specializing in Latin American politics and U.S. foreign policy toward Latin America, served on the staffs of the Democratic Policy Committee of the United States Senate and the Democratic Caucus Task Force on Central America of the United States House of Representatives, former Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow and Pew Faculty Fellow in International Affairs, holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Syracuse University, 2012 ("Fresh Start for a Stale Policy: Can Obama Break the Stalemate in U.S.-Cuban Relations?," Paper prepared for presentation at a conference in Cuba, December, Available Online at http://www.american.edu/clals/upload/LeoGrande-Fresh-Start.pdf, Accessed 09-26-2013, p. 14-16)
The Second Obama Administration
Where in the executive branch will control over Cuba policy lie? Political considerations played
AND
, whose views were more in line with the president’s stated policy goals.
At the Department of State, Assistant Secretary Arturo Valenzuela favored initiatives to improve relations
AND
to avoid the Cuba issue because it was so fraught with political danger.
When the president finally approved the resumption of people-to-people travel to
AND
exchange for him dropping his hold on the appointment of Valenzuela’s replacement.44
With Obama in his final term and Vice-President Joe Biden unlikely to seek
AND
restrictions on Cuban-American travel and remittances. ~end page 15~
Much will depend on who makes up Obama’s new foreign policy team, especially at
AND
rarely happen unless the urgency of the problem forces policymakers to take action.

Third, political capital is key to passage — yes top priority, no thumpers, and yes it will pass.

Associated Press 1/7 — ~Associated Press, 2014 ("Obama And Congress Give One More Push For Immigration Reform," Associated Press, January 7th, Available Online at http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/politics/2014/01/07/obama-and-congress-give-one-more-push-for-immigration-reform/-http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/politics/2014/01/07/obama-and-congress-give-one-more-push-for-immigration-reform/, Accessed on January 8, 2014)~
His agenda tattered by last year’s confrontations and missteps, President Barack Obama begins 2014 clinging to the hope of winning a lasting legislative achievement: an overhaul of immigration laws.
SUMMARY
It will require a deft and careful use of his powers, combining a public campaign in the face of protests over his administration’s record number of deportations with quiet, behind-the-scenes outreach to Congress, something seen by lawmakers and immigration advocates as a major White House weakness.
In recent weeks, both Obama and House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, have sent signals that raised expectations among overhaul supporters that 2014 could still yield the first comprehensive change in immigration laws in nearly three decades. If successful, it would fulfill an Obama promise many Latinos say is overdue.
The Senate last year passed a bipartisan bill that was comprehensive in scope that addressed border security, provided enforcement measures and offered a path to citizenship for 11 million immigrants in the United States illegally. House leaders, pressed by tea party conservatives, demanded a more limited and piecemeal approach.
Indicating a possible opening, Obama has stopped insisting the House pass the Senate version. And two days after calling Boehner to wish him happy birthday in November, Obama made it clear he could accept the House’s bill-by-bill approach, with one caveat: In the end, "we’re going to have to do it all."
Boehner, for his part, in December hired Rebecca Tallent, a former top aide to Sen. John McCain and most recently the director of a bipartisan think tank’s immigration task force. Even opponents of a broad immigration overhaul saw Tallent’s selection as a sign legislation had suddenly become more likely. Boehner also fed speculation he would ignore tea party pressure, bluntly brushing back their criticism of December’s modest budget agreement.
"The question is what are the core things that Republicans can’t move away from, what are the core things that Democrats can’t walk away from," said Republican pollster David Winston, who regularly consults with the House leadership. "You may have preferences and then you may have core elements. That’s part of the process of going back and forth.

Fourth, Immigration reform is vital to sustain American hegemony — both hard and soft power.

Nye 12 — Joseph S. Nye, Jr., University Distinguished Service Professor and former Dean of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, 2012 ("Immigration and American Power," Project Syndicate, December 10^th, Available Online at http://www.project-syndicate.org/print/obama-needs-immigration-reform-to-maintain-america-s-strength-by-joseph-s—nye-http://www.project-syndicate.org/print/obama-needs-immigration-reform-to-maintain-america-s-strength-by-joseph-s~-~-nye, Accessed 02-08-2013)
The United States is a nation of immigrants. Except for a small number of Native Americans, everyone is originally from somewhere else, and even recent immigrants can rise to top economic and political roles. President Franklin Roosevelt once famously addressed the Daughters of the American Revolution – a group that prided itself on the early arrival of its ancestors – as "fellow immigrants."
In recent years, however, US politics has had a strong anti-immigration slant, and the issue played an important role in the Republican Party’s presidential nomination battle in 2012. But Barack Obama’s re-election demonstrated the electoral power of Latino voters, who rejected Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney by a 3-1 majority, as did Asian-Americans.
As a result, several prominent Republican politicians are now urging their party to reconsider its anti-immigration policies, and plans for immigration reform will be on the agenda at the beginning of Obama’s second term. Successful reform will be an important step in preventing the decline of American power.
Fears about the impact of immigration on national values and on a coherent sense of American identity are not new. The nineteenth-century "Know Nothing" movement was built on opposition to immigrants, particularly the Irish. Chinese were singled out for exclusion from 1882 onward, and, with the more restrictive Immigration Act of 1924, immigration in general slowed for the next four decades.
During the twentieth century, the US recorded its highest percentage of foreign-born
AND
US public favored allowing fewer immigrants, up from 39 in 2008.
Both the number of immigrants and their origin have caused concerns about immigration’s effects on American culture. Demographers portray a country in 2050 in which non-Hispanic whites will be only a slim majority. Hispanics will comprise 25 of the population, with African- and Asian-Americans making up 14 and 8, respectively.
But mass communications and market forces produce powerful incentives to master the English language and accept a degree of assimilation. Modern media help new immigrants to learn more about their new country beforehand than immigrants did a century ago. Indeed, most of the evidence suggests that the latest immigrants are assimilating at least as quickly as their predecessors.
While too rapid a rate of immigration can cause social problems, over the long
AND
few that may avoid demographic decline and maintain its share of world population.
For example, to maintain its current population size, Japan would have to accept 350,000 newcomers annually for the next 50 years, which is difficult for a culture that has historically been hostile to immigration. In contrast, the Census Bureau projects that the US population will grow by 49 over the next four decades.
Today, the US is the world’s third most populous country; 50 years from now it is still likely to be third (after only China and India). This is highly relevant to economic power: whereas nearly all other developed countries will face a growing burden of providing for the older generation, immigration could help to attenuate the policy problem for the US.
In addition, though studies suggest that the short-term economic benefits of immigration
AND
children of immigrants founded roughly 40 of the 2010 Fortune 500 companies.
Equally important are immigration’s benefits for America’s soft power. The fact that people want
AND
friends back home help to convey accurate and positive information about the US.
Likewise, because the presence of many cultures creates avenues of connection with other countries, it helps to broaden Americans’ attitudes and views of the world in an era of globalization. Rather than diluting hard and soft power, immigration enhances both.
Singapore’s former leader, Lee Kwan Yew, an astute observer of both the US
AND
its Sino-centric culture will make it less creative than the US.
That is a view that Americans should take to heart. If Obama succeeds in enacting immigration reform in his second term, he will have gone a long way toward fulfilling his promise to maintain the strength of the US.

U.S. leadership prevents global conflicts.

Felzenberg and Gray 11 — Alvin S. Felzenberg, Professorial Lecturer at The Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University, Presidential Historian and Adjunct Faculty Member at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, former Fellow at the Institute of Politics at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, served as Principal Spokesman for the 9/11 Commission, holds a Ph.D. in Politics from Princeton University, and Alexander B. Gray, Student at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University and the War Studies Department of King’s College, London, 2011 ("The New Isolationism," National Review, January 3^rd, Available Online at http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/print/256150, Accessed 01-03-2011)
A world in which the United States willingly ceded power and influence would both be
AND
American military presence on land, at sea, and in the air.