You wouldn't have to waste so much time posting if you didn't just get it over with and admit to yourself that you are already quite close to a being a conservative in the libertarian wing, and getting closer. It's only trying to square your right wing positions with liberal/progressive lip service that's difficult.
I love it. If I object to some of the fundamental ideas behind Capitalism in another thread, I'm accused of being a
Communist. I object to the idea of forced relocations in this thread, and I'm accused of being a Conservative. Brilliant.
I'm sorry, but are you seriously going to equate treason against the United States committed for the sole purpose of preserving the institution of slavery from a perceived abolitionist threat to the idea that governments don't have the right to engaged in acts of forced re-location against entire communities?
You're the one who thinks "communities" have the right to self-determination. That includes "communities" like South Carolina and Virginia who had their self-determination violated by force used against them by the federal government.
Um, no, because the states that formed the Confederacy didn't include their entire populations in making those decisions. Specifically, they didn't allow the persons who were held in bondage to vote for the elected governments of the states that seceded (nor, for that matter, the women of those states). As a result, one cannot logically argue that their rights to self-determination were violated, as it is not known what those communities'
actual choices would have been, only those choices of an elite segment of the population (white males).
If you don't own your own home, then where can you go that someone else doesn't have the right to control what you do?
Right wingers may rail against the power of eminent domain but it is a legitimate democratic principle. (And I speak as someone who had to move when eminent domain took my home. I have no sympathy for people playing the pity card.) However, even such a basic principle is irrelevant, because
equating an entire planet with the Maquis "home" is insane.
Then I respect you for intellectual consistency -- anyone who ends up a target of eminent domain yet still agrees with the principle is certainly no hypocrite. But you have not answered my question: If you don't own your own home, where can you go that someone else has no right to control you? Where can you go that is
yours?
Generally, it is the obigation of any state, not just the Federation, to enforce a peace treaty to the best of its ability. You are advised to study the Neutrality Act of the Washington administration. Later, when William Walker organized a filibustering expedition to Nicaragua (and tried to reinstitute slavery,) people like you however thought it was outrageous to suppress such activities.
Wait. Let me get this straight:
Because I agree with the idea that the Federation had a right to settle on unclaimed, uninhabited planets that weren't part of any state's territory, and that those settlers then had a right to retain their new homes and that the Federation had no right to force them to leave or renounce those territories if Federation communities were living there, and because I think that those settlers then had the right to use violence against the Cardassians to protect themselves after the
Cardassians started killing them first...
... that means that I must logically also approve of a racist, slaving imperialist whose goal in life was to use private armies to invade and overthrow foreign states and turn them into vassal states of a greater slave-holding empire?
In fact, you do not think it outrageous that the Egyptian government cooperate in the savage siege of Palestinians trapped in the Gaza strip after all. You do not think it outrageous that, even though the US cannot control its border, that countries like Syria or Venezuela should totally control its borders, even to the point of launching massive military attacks against opponents of an unfriendly regime with which those states are at peace.
Wow. So where do you get your psychic powers, there,
stj?
Here's a clue: My name is
Sci, and I am not some sort of living embodiment of political strawmen you don't like. I'm an actual person with my own opinions. I don't approve of the Egyptian and Israeli governments' actions towards the Palestinians, I don't think that it's fair to hold Syria or Venezuela accountable for every criminal or terrorist organization that manages to cross their borders (and for the very reason you cited --
we don't have absolute control of our borders, so how can we expect them to?), and you're making a lot of completely unfounded and inaccurate assumptions about my political opinions.
Trying to make a real peace would have been preferable to internecine conflict. Berman Trek, as exemplified in the Maquis, and you, as you admit here, disagree.
Pardon me, but who defines "real peace?"
I'm pretty skeptical of the idea that any compromise, any concession, to hostile states somehow constitutes appeasement. Certainly I've gotten into some heated debates with
Rush Limborg on that topic, as he seems to think any damn thing constitutes appeasement.
But it's my opinion that handing over those worlds to the Cardassians would not have yielded "real peace." In my view, it would only have emboldened an irrational, expansionistic, imperialist power and would have contributed to further war. And that, further, in doing this, the Federation violated the rights of its own citizens in return for nothing substantive or real -- a false peace.
I do think that a real peace is preferable to war. But I don't think that the simple state of "not fighting at the moment" is the same thing as a real peace.
Since you have vociferously argued that the Maquis were correct in thinking that war is preferable to peace, that is your position.
Actually, you might have noticed earlier in this thread that I argued that if the Cardassians had no started attacking them first, I would not regard the Maquis as having the right to go to war. This was exemplified where I said that in a hypothetical situation where the formerly American city of Rio Rico were handed over to Mexico but Mexico did not, y'know, start persecuting them, then the citizens of Rio Rico would have no right to use violence and would just have to abide by Mexican law unless they wanted to move to the U.S.
And since the Maquis as written in Berman Trek has been the basis for your position, then your claim that the Maquis were consistent with previous anti-war positions of Trek is not true.
This is only the least bit accurate if you disregard the idea that there is a such thing as a false peace. Again, the simple fact that people aren't shooting each other at the moment does not mean there's an actual peace to be had, and Neville Chamberlain's claim that Europe would have "peace in our time" is a prime example of that.
Real peace is preferable to war, but defensive war is preferable to a false peace.
They did not because the majority of the Federation wanted a real peace, albeit with sacrifices, over an endless quagmire.
Again, we do not know what the opinion of the general population of the Federation actually was.
Nonsense, the episode is playing rhetorical tricks by equating settlers with American Indians.
No, it's not. You know why it's not? Because the Native Americans didn't settle on someone else's territory, that's why.
The absurdity of a mystical attachment to a foreign planet is manifest by the first commercial break!
Yes, you've made the fact that you have no respect for other cultures' religious beliefs very clear.
However, the Nazi=Cardassian identification (so overwhelming in Duet, for just one place,) right there equates Bajor to Israel, as do a (Celestial) Temple, Prophets, the tefillim-resembling earring marker, etc.
No, it doesn't. You can't say that in one episode, Cardassia is Nazi Germany and Bajor is Victimized Israel, but in another episode, Cardassia is Victimized Palestine and the Maquis are Imperialist Israel. It's a completely inconsistent claim. Either Cardassia is the overwhelmingly powerful imperialist state, or it is the exploited and oppressed victims; it cannot be both.
This is also foolish, because Arabs in general are regarded as having a Nazi-like determination to exterminate the Jews.
... by
whom? I certainly don't hold to that.
No, it's based on the belief that both the Israelis and the Palestinians have legitimate historical claims to the area of land currently encompassed by the State of Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip (which I'll call "Greater Israel/Palestine" for convenience).
The Zionist claim to Palestine is based on religious superstition. The Romans terminated Judaean historical claims with extreme prejudice quite some time ago.
This is based on the presumption that if a nation is forcibly relocated from its country, yet retains both its national identity and knowledge of its original country, and indeed retains a small residual community within its original country, it has somehow lost its valid historical claim to that country.
I do not hold to that view, at all. In my view, both the Jews
and the Palestinians have valid claims to that country, and both need to compromise with the other.
This is based on the idea of national self-determination -- that is, that the French have the right to establish a uniquely French state, that the Germans have a right to establish a uniquely German state, that the Scottish have the right to establish a uniquely Scottish state, that the Turks have a right to establish a uniquely Turkish state, that the Tibetans have a right to establish a uniquely Tibetan state, that the Kurds have the right to establish a uniquely Kurdish state, that the Persians have a right to establish a uniquely Persian state, that the Jews have a right to establish a uniquely Jewish state, and that the Palestinians have a right to establish a uniquely Palestinian state.
Iran is not a Persian state. I suppose you're calling for a US/Israeli attack on Iran?
No, not at all. In fact, if the Israelis were to decide to attack Iran, I rather hope that the United States would threaten to shoot Israeli planes down to keep them from launching yet another war of aggression against their neighbors a la Lebanon.
In any event, this is bigoted nonsense, because "Jews" are not a nation that possesses the right to self-determination.
This is based on the definition of Judaism as a religion rather than as a national community. This is
not accurate.
The Jews (Hebrew: יְהוּדִים "Yehudim" IPA: jɛhuːdiːm), also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation.[6][7][8]
