Eddington's comparison with the Borg was silly. The U.F.P. does not force planets into it's membership, and the Borg also assimilate on an individual level, not a democratic one.
If I be a member of a planet that votes to join the U.F.P., but I be personally against it, then it is my government who forces me, by the principle of majority rule, or not. — The U.F.P. in many cases, despite the Borg being called collectivist, is actually quite collectivist in it's dogmata. In particular it's “first contact” rules which allow for contact with a “civilization” that has achieved f.t.l., but no definition of what a “civilization” may be, and an assumption that all species have such a thing. Some Vulcans landed on Earth and exposed humans to the knowledge of interstellar life because one man had achieved f.t.l. capacity in a world without a central government. One can debate such actions, if supposedly it be such a grave sin to expose a species to that knowledge which has no such capacity.
That being said, Sisko's reaction was even more comical. He first asked Eddington why he did it, and when he received an answer he said he did not care. — A man so very often does not care for the answer he does not like, it seems.
To be clear, "Accession" stated that caste-based discrimination goes against the Federation Charter. It's not really reasonable to assume that this is the only topic that the Federation Charter deals with. Charters like this are comprised of dozens of articles and many chapters, with various obligations for its members.
Kor
And just as in the real world, such charters are useless show and air, for the U.F.P. itself has a caste-based discrimination system based on genetic engineering and pœnalizes it's citizens for how they were born, or altered after their birth without their consent
Really, the U.F.P. is no different from real life countries, international agreements, and charters in how much of the idealism exists not to protect anyone's rights, but for politicians and citizens to pat themselves on the back about how enlightened they are, and D.S.9. did expose some of that.
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