think that there maybe a fundemental disaggreement about exactly what a modern western State is. From my perspective, the state is the people. or at least the will of the people who decide to live in it.
The state is supposed to reflect the will of the people, yes. It is supposed to protect their rights from usurpation and work for their defense.
However, that does not mean that the State will
always reflect this will. Power corrupts, and as has been proven, even a society such as our's can have public servants who betray the public trust and act to further their own interests. Thus, it is important to delineate what the state can or cannot do.
Harming the state, or engaging in activities that harm the state, is the same as harming the people in my eyes.
Only in certain cases. If the State is violating the public trust and treading on their rights, the People have the right to "harm" it, and overthrow it if necessary.
When someone granted the powers of the state unjustly abuses thier powers, its still harming the people and hte state.
It's harming the State's reputation, but could very well do no harm to the State as an apparatus.
You talk about tyranny. The US government is tyrannical and dictatorial in many regards. In many regards its much more dictatorial than the UCF.
LOL, considering the UCF executes people on the night of their convictions without the possibility for appeal, strips the vote from those who don't serve in the military, and makes it harder for them to obtain certain jobs and have children, I find that hard to believe.
IN the US, people are forced to be citizens if you choose to live here, in the UCF noone is forced to be a citizen.
That's because there's nowhere to move outside of the UCF. You don't hear of any nations on Earth or other human worlds that aren't in the UCF, do you? Just "Mormon Settlers".... who were quickly slaughtered by the Arachnids. Or so they said.
You seem to think that the UCF engaged in intense indoctrination.
Think? No. I'm sure of it. Likely off-screen, but I highly doubt that the State is going to pass up the opportunity to instill at least
some "good principles" in it's potential citizens.
I didn;t see any indoctrination occuring in the military training in the camp. Seemed to me to be quite like every other western military training facility, with very little (if any) indoctrination going on.
"It wasn't on-screen, so it doesn't exist." Nice logic. Or not. That's utterly stupid.
In case you didn't notice, my argument includes the position that the UCF, as portrayed, is unrealistic and completely disloyal to reality. If you seek to bring a system into reality, as you have recommended, then we must examine it and find if there is any apparent characteristics inconsistant with a realistic progression of the system in question.
Indoctrination will happen. The modern military indoctrinates people, it trains them to follow orders, it completely undermines one's feelings of self-worth and individuality, breaking someone down and rebuilding him into a military man. The vast majority of people do
not leave military training and service thinking the same way they left. It's a fact.
So I don't see your point.
Willful blindness on your part does not constitute an error in argument on my part.
I figure that patriots/dissentors have an equal skew when going into military training.
The problem is what they're thinking coming out of military training. Does, this statement is moot.
At my college, liberals and conservatives were equally as likely to join the military, as shown by our campus surveys.
Irrelevent to the matter at hand.
So basically what yhou are objecting to, is that there will be a group of people, who inherently don't care much about the state, or hate it will be disenfranchized from passing harmful polices to the state (for which they won't even fight for), which is the body politic? That sounds like a good thing to me.
Because you're an idiot.
And, that's a bit of a Strawman distortion there. How is refusing to serve in the military make one "not caring" in regards to the nation, or make one actually hate it? I don't plan on serving in the military, but I care for my country greatly and I obviously don't hate it.
Faulty logic on your part. Moving on...
Now looking at the citizen vs non-citizen rights in the UCF, it didn't appear the Citizens had anymore freedoms than anyone else.
They could vote. They could hold public office. They were given preferrential treatment in other areas of society, such as applications for having a child. That's just what we know.
Rico's parents didn't want him to become a citizen, and thought very lowly of it, as if it weren't essential. That it didn't matter. It obviously didn't preclude the enjoyment of life to live as a civilian or the capacity for prosperity.
Or as if they were morally opposed to the military. That, and they were pretty damned wealthy, I'm certain they could line a palm here and there to get a bit better treatment than your joe-schmoe non-citizen.
That, and, if you really think critically of it, they loved their son. They didn't want to see him throw two years of his life away, and go through the harsh ordeal of military training and service, simply because of his lust.
From what I saw, citizenship was an enabling experience, so that even the poorest people could use it as stepping stone, to say higher education. You really can;t condemn that, since even the US does that with military service.
The modern US military trains people in technical skills for it's usage, and as a recruitment tool. It is not necessary to serve to gain citizenship. This point is irrelevent anyway.
But in the UCF, citizenship is more than just a the ability to vote, its a statement, its says, The well being of my fellow man, the freedoms that I and others enjoy mean more to me than my own life. I step forward voluntarily and offer my life in sacrafice if need be. That is the moral difference between the US definition of citizenship and the UCF definition.
That's the idealized version. In practice, it will quickly become a tool of control, to ensure that the voting public has been sufficiently indoctrinated with favored state ideals. Think Communism.
In the US, being born here is enough to be a citizen, because that's how American society thinks; open and available. You can easily move to another nation if you do not want that citizenship, and the perks of it far outweigh the slight potential for disadvantage (wartime Selective Service).
Finally, during peacetime, what good is a bloated military? It sucks up resources, it burdens the economy, it's no good. Unless you want a large military to protect yourself from the possibility of internal revolution.
The US definition is far more coercive, since it precludes any choice, since you live in the state, you have to be a citizen. Therefore you can be forced to die for a cause you don't beleive in.
Forced to die when? You act as if we're a garrison state constantly at war. The US has a wartime draft that, because of social developments, will only likely be enacted again in a situation of extreme national emergency.
As an American, I get instant citizenship, and at eighteen, I can fully exercise the rights and privileges of that citizenship, and if I don't like the nation, I can move to another one freely and become a citizen there. That is far superior to having to serve two years in the military.
All throughout the movie yo see people with different points of view, some completely juxaposed to what the state is saying, so its not like you can't say what state is doing is wrong.
And, again, the movie is an idealized version of the system, where all of the leaders have the "democratic" ideal at heart. In a realistic version, you're only a stone's throw away from the State deciding that an "emergency" has occurred and that free speech must be curbed.
In the US, about 48% of the peopel eligable to vote, do in fact vote. Of that maybe 30-35% (guesstimate of a 100% of people who vote) of that have served in the US military or some sort of paralamilitary acitivity. So what you have is about 30% of the electorate that votes, that would control the elections from this moment forward if the UCF were to be formed. Not too bad. You can say that 85% of the elecotrate is being ecluded, but most of the people in that electorate would be denied only the right to excerise the right, they forfiet routinely at every election anyways. So for most people there would be no change between this system and the old, except that perhaps now that citzenship is not just a matter of celebratgign your 18th birthday, but a matter of making a life long commitment to the state. The resulting electorate would be better informed, and more acitve than our current electorate and take its role more serously.
And where did you get the figures for the percentage of military-civil service voters in the main voting population? From your ass? That's merely a self-serving number you made up.
Our system, in theory, allows over 90% of the adult population to vote, and about half exercise the right in practice.
Your system, in theory, allows only service people to vote, and in practice you'll get, at the very very best (using your bloated figures and assuming all of the enfranchised vote), a third of the population voting.
Our system has greater coverage, thus it is superior.
Somehow if you were to lead a rag tag terrorist force against the UCF, you would get your ass kicked. The UCF doesn't joke around, they were completely hardcore. Guess what, in the UCF, your attempt to violently overtrhow the government would fit right into thier political philosophy of how things work. So you lose if you try, because you concede the point that only in violence can freedom and political order be mantained and sustained. You would be marked a hipocrit the first day you resisted, and made fun of.
Another strawman? Tsk tsk.
I never said that freedom can be maintained without violence. I have no idea where you got that idea from, but it's apparent that the illusion is pleasing to you.
And remember, one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. I would mostly be trying to appeal to the civilian masses to re-assert their rights. Undermine the UCF's propaganda. It would, obviously, be an uphill struggle, as there are no foreign free nations to turn to for aid.
The only way to defeat the UCF is through non-violent peaceful law abiding ways. If you were to make the statement that violence doesn;t solve anything, and just peacfully resisted, and kept on resisting peacefully, you would have made your point and defeated any violent tactics by the UCF by showing a different wqay. But you are too much of a jackass to realize this. As long as the world is violent the UCF wins.
Civil disobediience only works against civilized governments that care for the rights of the people. This might apply to your idealized UCF, but any realistic UCF will view a peaceful opposition as an opposition, and furthermore, a Catch-22 situation is created. If a Resistance uses any violence, then it is no different from the UCF in action, and that will be used against them. If the Resistance remains peaceful, then it is clearly unwilling to go the furthest in it's pursuit of it's goals, and will be ignored, or quashed quietly by the UCF (since it clearly isn't going to use force, it's members can be thrown in jail, handed down bloated prison sentences, and quietly murdered).
As for corruption, I would beleive that the UCF would be less corrupt.
Again, because you're an idiot.
Time and time again shows that when governments fall from corruption when the peopel realize that obligation to vote in the best interests of the state is just stupid when it comes to realize just how easy it is to waste other people's hard earned money on yourself with some like minded indivivuals. The more someone has to sacrafice to become one of those people that have to vote, the state and thier comitment to its survival adn to the betterment of thier progeny, the less likely they will be corrupt. If you had to spend 2 years risking your very life for something, you wouldn't try to undermine with a stupid money give away program. Something given or forced upon you has no value. (generally, a few evolved indiviuals could appreciate it)
They're still human. They'll still be prone to temptations of power. Remember, power corrupts.
If the citizens can get benefits at the expense of the civilians, don't think for a moment that the civilians won't get shafted. Increased tax burden to support social care systems for citizens, the decreasing of the tax burden for citizens....
Some enlightened citizens might not vote for such measures, but it's only a matter of time....
We also have the concept of facism. Typically when you mean facist you mean 1 group uninpeachable rule. the UCF does have elections, therefore its not facist ujnder this doctrine. On the contrary its a meritocracy. Even the Sky Marshall is not beyond reprimand for bad performance.
The same was/is true in Fascist and Communist nations.
The term "fascist" is used because that's what it'll eventually evolve into. The party distinctions, if there are any at all from the beginning (like Communism, Heinleinist governments cannot function if there is the possibility of substantial government dissention, since that could very well lead to the citizenship limitations being lifted early in the life of the government), will blur and disintegrate. You now have a State-run authoritarian pseudo-democracy, where only those who serve in the military, and thus expose themselves to State indoctrination, can have a voice in government.
Communism is really facism with a socialist economic system. thats why communist states try moving to a free market economy, and later fail because they find out that they can't control it like they could under socialism
It's true that there are many similarities between the two systems, but keep in mind that fascist states weren't exactly capitalist meccas either, they usually became command economies as well.
But I don't see why this is relevant.
can democracy be Authoritarian? Yes. Is it facist? No. Why? Because the people make of it what they want. The people are the culture, amnd they chose in every election what government best fits thier culture. Since the Government recieves its mandate from the people, the government is legitimate.
And this is undermined when only a certain portion of the population can vote, and to do so they are exposed to an environment that indoctrinates those within it, and can be used quite easily to create a self-perpetuating system that is not run by the will of the people but the will of the leadership and elite class.
The UCF's government is not necessarily going to always have the mandate of the people. It's going to have the mandate of one thing and one thing alone; Force.
If the US and UCF were side to side next to eachother, they would most likely grow to be great friends, probably combine spacefleets and conquer bugs/arabs/whatever. Who would be most prone to internal collapse, the US would be. I thnk that over time the UCF would grow stonrger and stronger and become disproptionately stronger as it utilized its capital in a more efficent manner, since it would have the stupid regs that we have or cumbersome tax codes.
As long as the "enemy of my enemy is my friend" stays in effect. But for my scenario, I never intended for there to be a third party to provide the "alliance" option.
But again, you're using
your idealized version of the UCF, which is not realistic. A more realistic UCF will, over the years, have had enough unfair pro-citizen laws passed that you
will have emigration to the democratic nation in question (and it need not be the US). And if the UCF looses a fair share of it's intelligentsia (scientists, doctors, engineers), commercial leaders, and general bodies for industry, it is going to feel pressure to do
something to stop the flow.
And that something could very well spell the death of their system.
The UCF, like the UFP, is a system that as portrayed is
completely unrealistic, and in practice, would become something only kept alive if there were no viable alternatives.
well we wil see.....hopefully
Hopefully, you'll grow a brain and get off this right-wing authoritarian masturbation fantasy of your's. Didn't you consider that the reason the UCF seems "ideal" in the movie was because of Verhoeven wanting to make it seem that way to fit with his vision?
Finally, I'd probably piss you off if I told you that, as far as I'm concerned, the entire Bug War is nothing more than a "short, victorious war" gone bad, perpetuated by the UCF to have something to do with it's bloated military with no other enemies that had to be dealt with. Because the asteroid that hit Earth could
not have come from Klendathu in any reasonable amount of time, unless you can show me where it's FTL drive assembly is.
It was either a natural impact allowed to happen by the UCF, or the UCF purposely dragged the asteroid into position and let it hit, timing the strike to hit a major population center for maximum propaganda effect.
