Politics in the Federation(Post-Typhon Pact Novels)

[Sci]

^And the way government should work is for people with those differing liberal and conservative views (and others in between) should work together to hash out compromises that balance both points of view as much as possible for the maximum benefit of the American people. Instead we have a system where the two parties just try to undermine each other and work against each other for the good of their own parties, rather than working together for the good of the people they're sworn to represent. An adversarial system can work if it's recognized as a means toward the end of achieving balanced solutions, but not if it's seen as an ideological war with no quarter given.

Which is fair enough, but the question remains:

What would it even mean to be liberal or conservative in a UFP context? We have what I think is a working definition of what liberalism and conservatism constitute in the modern context, but what would either term mean in the context of a society that has eliminated prejudice, classism, etc., and which has virtually unlimited resources?

 

[Christopher]

^Right. We can't assume that their society would even think of its politics in such present-day American terms as "liberal" and "conservative."

 

[Sci]

^Right. We can't assume that their society would even think of its politics in such present-day American terms as "liberal" and "conservative."

Exactly -- because at the end of the day, both views are ultimately about the question of how to distribute finite resources, which is a dilemma that doesn't apply to a society with nigh-infinite resources.

 

[Christopher]

^Right. We can't assume that their society would even think of its politics in such present-day American terms as "liberal" and "conservative."

Exactly -- because at the end of the day, both views are ultimately about the question of how to distribute finite resources, which is a dilemma that doesn't apply to a society with nigh-infinite resources.

No, that's hardly the only meaning of those terms, even in modern political discourse. They apply as much to social and philosophical issues as economic ones. But the social issues at play in the Federation would be different from ours as well.