(Okay, random question: is there a way to get rid of the row of emoticons immediately above the text box? The repeating animations distract me while I'm typing and I wish I could hide them.)
Eh. I could accept that if it was merely an off-hand notion or something quickly put into place by the Chancellor.
However, the portion of text I quoted earlier notes that this particular move to ensure greater rights for the servitors, has been building for almost a decade. It's a significant step toward positive change in the greater make-up of Capellan society.
That doesn't sound all that whimsical.
Given enough time, I would say, popular movements will have an effect in any state: even the Draconis Combine, or a similarly repressive state. That is not the issue. Rather, it's whether the structure of the state allows those movements to have an effect.
Please, who doesn't lie to their enemies, particularly if it will cause them to drop their guard or loosen their grip.
It's this sort of thing - the brazen admission that the Confederation does not consider itself bound by any treaty it signs - that makes me wonder why anyone is ever stupid enough to make any agreement with the Confederation at all. Isn't this practically the textbook definition of a rogue state?
If you don't give them anything, they really aren't leeching. Just because someone lives next door do me doesn't mean they are taking anything from me, nor does it mean they are providing me with anything. They are simply worthless neighbors, essentially.
They are taking up space. They are
de facto owning land. They purchase items from domestic markets, and sell their labour in order to be able to do so.
The fact is that servitors don't exist in a walled off bubble from the rest of Capellan society. They live in it every day, use and consume the resources of the state (for presumably you would say that all the land within the Confederation is ultimately the property of the state), and contribute to the societies they live in. It is impossible for it to be otherwise.
The Confederation does not provide a servitor with a thin yuan.
It is demonstrably true that servitors, purely by living in the Confederation, make use of resources that you would consider to be the property of the Confederation.
Doesn't really bother me any. If they wanted society's help they should have contributed. There's no free lunch in life.
Question: so you deny that there any human rights or civil rights? Would you argue that there are no rights of any sort, outside of those created by social convention, and which may therefore by denied by social convention to any arbitrarily selected sub-set of the populace?
It most certainly does. By refusing to coddle these miscreants, we've set the example that nothing is free. Society simply doesn't have to put up with and provide for you. A better society comes from those in it giving back to it. By not wasting resources on those who don't wish to participate, we provide a better life for those that do.
As above: things are free. Servitors do use the resources of the Capellan state. Even on the most basic level imaginable, purely by existing servitors have received a great deal of benefit. A servitor who lives on a Capellan world makes constant use of public resources: he or she lives on a planet that was terraformed and colonised, in a society built and administered by the efforts of countless others, and so on and so forth. Servitors use public goods every time they walk down a road, sit on a park bench, or see by the light of a street-lamp. This strange idea that somehow servitors receive nothing from the state and have no relation with the state is, to be frank, entirely asinine. And turning it around the other way, servitors do contribute to society as well, simply by working and being able to purchase the necessities of life.
At any rate. You mention 'participation'. That's the word that really worries me. Becoming a citzen means participating in a series of approved activities. These activities are selected and judged on the basis of political orthodoxy, and with an eye to indoctrination. While civil rights can be stripped in other states, this only occurs on the basis of criminal, i.e. grossly anti-social, behaviour, which can be judged with a far greater eye to objectivity. (See p. 109-113 of the 3025 HLSB. I consider it valid, as we are not simply discussing the Confederation of 3067, but the Confederation in general. The much more recent HB:HL, even though it's from a pro-Liao source, still admits to this. P. 114 notes programmes of 'social and political indoctrination', and that failure to meet the citizenship requirements is considered evidence of 'a lack of sufficient moral character'. The citizenship criteria, and the Confederation education system, are specifically designed to indoctrinate Capellans with a specific value set: that is, fanatical loyalty to the state and House Liao. See p. 116: it is education 'designed to serve and empower the state'.)
I would view this as quite unacceptable. That is: in the Capellan Confederation, basic civil liberties are contingent on one's ability to internalise and repeat a state-imposed ideology. I find it doubly unacceptable that the said ideology is one of fanatical devotion to the state. The Confederation, I would argue, is in this way openly hostile to any attempts by its people to define the values and directions of their own lives.
What is a person? Just something that wants. Something that wants as much as it can get.
...I was going to go with 'a miserable pile of secrets' myself, but whatever floats your boat.
Both House Liao sourcebooks spell it out pretty clearly. Initially as a young Capellan, becoming a Citizen requires a service to the State, your community. A simple example given would be joining the Capellan Star Scouts. Other similar options are likely volunteering to clean streets and public buildings, caretaking local libraries, helping out at the local retirement home, producing a mural exalting the Confederation, or other such acts of merit. All of these are extremely simple tasks I wouldn't consider beyond the capabilities of any motivated individual.
And yet, spelled out pretty clearly by both House Liao sourcebooks, the servitor caste is the largest caste in the Confederation by a comfortable margin.
Either there are a hell of a lot of lazy and unmotivated individuals out there, or things aren't quite as rosy as you make them sound...
I think you completely missed the point. Citizenship is about living for a higher purpose than yourself.
And that purpose
is the state.That's the major issue, I think. I fully approve of living for higher purposes. It is merely the case that the Confederation decides what that purpose is and tells you what it will be.
If the CC were "misunderstood", it would be doing whatever it is they do in a manner that looks disgusting, but actually helping. Instead, the CC reminds me of the kids that would make every effort to rub others' noses in it while they had power, but calling for the teacher the moment that power shifts.
*shrug* Pretty much.
I don't see how that's possible, when the most power the Confederation ever had over other nations was to have its leader be nominally in charge of a completely throw away international body with no real power which existed for a purpose it fulfilled under his watch. Sounds pretty straight to me.
I wonder how many non-Capellans would agree with that assessment of the Star League.
