Star Trek and Liberalism....
- Thread starter Warped9
- Start date
Chuckle.
In elementary school I was told to imagine the > or < as an alligator wanting to eat whatever he was pointing at because it was the biggest and the best.
So when I see your little cutesy thingy up there I just imagine an alligator eating freedom because its delicious.
I'm almost tempted to start a thread there for this. Obviously the Federalist is not a representative publication (I mean, is anything anymore?) but its viewpoints are ones I see scattered among my conservative friends on Facebook; mostly attempts to bag on liberalism without firmly planting themselves in the conservative camp.
Some of the viewpoints in this article disturb me.
I mean seriously, what's so wrong with "non-judgmental diversity"??
Any of the TNZers up here interested in taking it for a spin?
I hate math. And no, I can never keep the alligator thing straight either!
You're missing something.
The very fact that conservatism is so strong these days that it has largely controlled how liberalism is defined (they pretty much turned the term into an epithet). It helps prove the article's thesis.
Basically what he's saying is that liberalism lost its spine when it shied away from conflict at all costs. Conservatives don't shy away from conflict. If anything, they relish it, which is why we now have people like Donald Trump who has no platform other than pointing out all the things he doesn't like or respect, or a government that is willing to shut down at the drop of a hat rather than compromise.
Doesn't this contradict your thesis that liberals have no spine? It takes two to shut down the government.
Okay now I'm definitely going to start the TNZ thread!
Need to collect my thoughts tho.
Need to collect my thoughts tho.
His total misread of "Errand of Mercy" was where I stopped reading.
All I will say is this:
There's a little liberal in every conservative, and there's a little conservative in every liberal.
Also....today's liberals will be tomorrow's conservatives.
I am a (largely) conservative person with a few liberal traits...and what I've said above is not at all a slam toward either ideology.
There's a little liberal in every conservative, and there's a little conservative in every liberal.
Also....today's liberals will be tomorrow's conservatives.
I am a (largely) conservative person with a few liberal traits...and what I've said above is not at all a slam toward either ideology.
Yep.
Nope. Not missing a thing. What I said stands. I read the piece and that was what I came away with. As I said, nothing more, nothing less.
I agree. DSN was, IMO much more in tune with TOS philosophically than it was with TNG or any of the other latter-day Treks.
TOS gave us Kennedy-era liberalism where while being socially liberal, a strong dense was still seen as a necessary thing to have handy when you needed it.
TNG, on the other hand, came from the post-Viet Nam/post-Watergate era where the military was seen as something to be spurned/mistrusted if not just downright evil. DSN definitely pulled things back more toward where Kirk and his bunch existed. Sure war was something to be avoided, but when you gotta fight you do so with everything you need. and none of the Picardian angsty hand-wringing needed.
Also, I always appreciated the TOS/DSN view of the future as it was more aspirational than what we see in TNG/VGR. In those shows everything is perfect and nobody needs anything, blah, blah, blah. Meanwhile in TOS/DSN, things ain't perfect. Sure, they're better off than the past, but there's still some room for improvement and there are people like Kirk and Sisko who actively try to be better people and to make their society a better place. Much more interesting o watch than a bunch of smug know-it-alls like Picard and Janeway.
Kirk was clearly anti-Communist, sometimes self-righteously so, with the parallels to both the Klingons and the computer-run societies strong, but that doesn't mean the series supported such sentiments to the same extent, especially when they led to military conflict. "Errand of Mercy" and "A Private Little War" in particular portrayed armed responses and escalations as perhaps necessary but terrible and even evil, the latter episode as even counterproductive. I don't see why the writer doesn't consider the latter or "Space Seed" as relativism in the original series.
I also don't see how "The Conscience of the King" really sided with Kirk's perspective, portraying it as right let alone heroic.
The perspective in The Undiscovered Country is indeed somewhat inconsistent with the series, and it can be bothersome to have to forgive the unapologetic Klingons, but that's often necessary; in real life Kennedy and Nixon were anti-Communists who felt it was necessary to and took steps to find some cooperation and reduce tensions.
I also don't see how "The Conscience of the King" really sided with Kirk's perspective, portraying it as right let alone heroic.
The perspective in The Undiscovered Country is indeed somewhat inconsistent with the series, and it can be bothersome to have to forgive the unapologetic Klingons, but that's often necessary; in real life Kennedy and Nixon were anti-Communists who felt it was necessary to and took steps to find some cooperation and reduce tensions.
Which made DS9 more interesting than the first season of TNG. In fact, one of the most interesting scenes (DS9, "The Ascent") featured Odo and Quark ascending a mountain; this was the scene where they professed their hatred for each other.
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