Negative Rebuttal

I'm going to condense the debate into four voting issues.

Voter 1: Values
First of all, my opponent never argued against natural rights, instead, she contended that freedom
upheld the other two. In essence, both sides have accepted that natural rights are the highest value, and
my opponent is simply contending that freedom is used to achieve the others; you could say that
freedom is her criterion for achieving natural rights.
Let us examine this. Can we achieve natural rights solely through freedom, or do we need all three?
We need all three for two reasons.
1. They conflict, and limit each other. My opponent argued that because natural rights may come
in conflict in some circumstances, they should not all be valued. On the contrary, that is why
we need to value all three. If we value any one of them too highly, we risk losing the others.
Do everything possible to protect people's lives, and you limit their freedom. Give them too
much freedom, and they will take each other's property, &c. My opponent's argument that
freedom limits itself falls flat. If we only valued freedom for ourselves and others, and didn't
worry about protecting their life or property, we would have chaos. Her analogy about
“swinging my fist until it hits your nose” is a perfect example. Hitting my nose is a violation of
my property. Rather than limiting abuses, freedom, unchecked by other values, encourages
them.
2. All three are ineffective on their own. To turn Dawn's arguments around: you can't take action
to preserve freedom unless you are alive, and you don't have the freedom to buy or sell if you
don't own property to exchange. She also contends that life and property aren't valuable
without freedom. This is true, but it holds in the other direction as well. What good is freedom
if you own nothing and you're dying? Freedom seemed more important to the people she
quoted because that was the natural right they were deprived of, but the truth is, none of them
hold up on their own. The three have a symbiotic relationship, they all act to improve each
other, and we need all three.
Therefore, because cooperation upholds all natural rights, and not just freedom, cooperation should be
valued above competition.

Joshua Mirth 1/4 Negative Rebuttal

PARADE for Dawn Manning
Voter 2: The Social Contract
My opponent had three responses: that the social contract exists for competition, that it needs to have a
goal of freedom, and that competition sustains the social contract. I'm dropping contention two as not
applicable. So three issues:
1. The idea that the social contract exists for the purpose of competing is thoroughly unsupported.
As I explained in the NC, the social contract is devised to protect people's rights. There's
literally no warrant to why people would form a nation so as to compete. Competition is what
they're trying to avoid by forming a society.
2. The goal of the social contract must be natural rights. Cross-apply my analysis from the first
voter as to why we need all natural rights, not just freedom. The Patriot Act, my opponent's
example, violates property rights, not freedom. Letting law enforcement search your telephone
records doesn't limit your freedom to communicate, but it takes away your right to that property.
So the social contract must uphold all natural rights.
3. Competition doesn't sustain the social contract. It can be used, but the natural rights provided
by the contract are directly the result of cooperation. There's no analysis offered for why a
competitive election is the best means of choosing a leader, nor of why a leader is even strictly
necessary. The social contract doesn't dictate that there must always be one head of state. The
second two objections my opponent had both talked about the breaking of a social contract. My
opponent agrees with me here that problems arise when that happens. In other words, we agree
that not cooperating is bad. For my analysis here, see what I say about my opponent's
contention 4. Let me just point out that even if competition has a part in sustaining the contract,
that is less important than the cooperation that initiates it.
I have shown that the social contract, enacted by cooperation, and with a goal of human rights, is the
best means of achieving those rights, while some competition may be useful, it is still inferior to
cooperation as a means of achieving natural rights.

Joshua Mirth 2/4 Negative Rebuttal

PARADE for Dawn Manning
Voter 3: Cooperation and freedom
This is taken from contentions two and three of the affirmative case.
1. Contention two can be crossed off the flow. My opponent admits that it has nothing to do with
cooperation, and also says that when there is no competition, freedom is taken away. So the
example refers to a world devoid of both cooperation and competition. Therefore, it cannot be
used to determine any aspect of either one, and should be ignored.
2. Certainly, cooperation and competition can coexist. We can cooperate without giving up
individual goals (this was dropped), and we can compete for group goals. Therefore, this
contention also is useless in the debate round. It was dropped that cooperation doesn't require
giving up individual goals, so the idea that cooperation fails because of that is false.
Communism may have failed for that reason (or it might not have), but that doesn't mean
cooperation does because there isn't a necessary link between cooperation and relinquishing our
individual desires.
3. Cooperation is voluntary. My opponent ignored my card and my analysis of this issue, referring
back to the fact that the definition doesn't specify. But the definition doesn't tell us everything
about cooperation. This is a second reason why communism's destruction of individual goals
has nothing to do with cooperation. Force is used for that purpose, but cooperation is not
forcible.
This means that neither of these contentions, or examples, give us any reason to prefer competition or
cooperation. They fail in their intended purpose, to show that cooperation takes freedom away, thus we
cannot take any conclusions from them.

Joshua Mirth 3/4 Negative Rebuttal

PARADE for Dawn Manning
Voter 4: Competition and Freedom
1. Conceded. Competition only works if we win. And that is its undoing. Success can only be
achieved on those occasions when we beat our opponent. The risk, or opportunity cost, is far
greater than my opponent admits, however. If we would have failed in the Revolutionary War,
we would have been far worse off. It is the most natural thing in the world for a government
that has been revolted against to put every possible restriction on those who revolted. The risk
is not, “fail, and return to how it was,” but, “fail, and be far worse off.” Cooperation, on the
other hand, if it fails, leaves us none the worse; there is no necessary loss.
2. Yes, cooperation was used to compete. But Dawn missed the important point: that it was the
only reason competition was successful. Not only can cooperation be used to compete, it must
be, if we are to hope to achieve anything. Competition is worthless without cooperation. The
reverse has not been shown. Therefore, cooperation is superior to competition.
3. Only half of this point was contested. A treaty at the end of a war is mostly a sign on
accomplishment, but it is an agreement, a cooperation. The important point, though, was to
show that (and I quote the NC), “When two nations talk and agree on a solution diplomatically,
war can be avoided.” This was ignored. Dawn does respond with the idea that “freedom is
never free,” but cooperation doesn't mean that no price is paid, just that the price is not war.
Frederick Douglass may say that “power concedes nothing without demand”, but that demand
can be worked out without competition. This contention flows negative, and shows you that
competition is not superior to cooperation, because they both achieve the same end.
4. My opponent may not be condoning all war, but she is condoning it as a means of achieving
freedom. However, as I showed in the previous point, war and competition are not necessary to
achieving freedom, cooperation can be used as well. And there are disadvantages to using
competition. Those problems are the death, injustice, limitation of human rights, and
perpetuation of violence that war brings with it. Rather than weighing these against the value of
freedom, they should be weighed against the side-affects of cooperation, for cooperation can
produce freedom. But there are no disadvantages to cooperating.
To conclude this point, cooperation and competition can both be used to produce freedom, but
competition only works when it is underlined with cooperation. And competition has risks associated
with it that cooperation doesn't. Competition risks worse treatment if a war fails, and it risks all the
dangers of war, which cooperation avoids. Therefore, you should vote negative, as cooperation is
superior to competition as a means of achieving freedom.

Joshua Mirth 4/4 Negative Rebuttal

PARADE for Dawn Manning