The Federation isn’t just socialist in the hyperbolic sense in which some conservatives like to denounce anyone to the left of them as socialist. It’s socialist in the literal sense that the government has near-total control over the economy and the means of production. Especially by the period portrayed in The Next Generation, the government seems to control all major economic enterprises, and there do not seem to be any significant private businesses controlled by humans in Federation territory. Star Fleet characters, such as Captain Picard, boast that the Federation has no currency and that humans are no longer motivated by material gain and do not engage in capitalist economic transactions.
The supposed evils of free markets are exemplified by the Ferengi, an alien race who exemplify all the stereotypes socialists typically associate with “evil capitalists.” The Ferengi are unrelentingly greedy and exploitative. Their love of profit seems to be exceeded only by their sexism—they do not let females work outside the household, even when it would increase their profits to do so.
The problem here is not just that Star Trek embraces socialism: it’s that it does so without giving any serious consideration to the issue. For example, real-world socialist states have almost always resulted in poverty and massive political oppression, piling up body counts in the tens of millions.
But Star Trek gives no hint that this might be a danger, or any explanation of how the Federation avoided it. Unlike on many other issues, where the producers of the series recognize that there are multiple legitimate perspectives on a political issue, they seem almost totally oblivious to the downsides of socialism.
You don’t say. That episode TNG did on cryonics was extremely off putting to me.
I’m not a huge fan of Ron Fournier, but I find little to disagree with in his take on Trump. Apparently this year’s race is between who is most indebted to Vlad Putin.
This article is typical of reportage on supersonic transports. The explanation of shock waves is terrible (subsonic aircraft compress air in front and reduce density behind as well), and the focus is on the boom, which ignores the cost elephant in the room, which is wave drag, which reduces range below the vital trans-Pacific market, and puts ticket prices through the roof.
No, it’s not “violent extremism,” or radical Islam, and it’s not Muslims per se: It’s Islam, and it has been since the formation of the conquering political ideology masquerading as a religion.
And when it comes to Islam, Western leaders are liars or idiots. Embrace the power of “and.”
This is an excellent example of how simplistic too many people’s (including medical professionals) view of diet, dietary fat and obesity remain. The simply notion that you are what you eat is stupid.
She became a senator from New York as a final tribute from a Democratic electorate to her husband. The man who preceded her in office, the great Daniel Patrick Moynihan, wryly saluted her “Illinois-Arkansas enthusiasm,” Hillary and New York being as much a marriage of convenience as Hillary and Bill. She was a legislative nonentity in the Senate, because she was running for president from the day she was sworn in. (A few of the 2016 Republican contenders know a thing or two about that.) When her moment came, she was outdone in the Democratic primary by an even bigger legislative nonentity in the Senate. It was funny, in a cruel way, and people laughed at her, in a cruel way.
Barack Obama condescended to offer her the scrap of a Cabinet position, which she botched, doing great damage to his administration and the country in the process. She was one of the most inept chief diplomats in memory. Bill Clinton had found a place on the global stage through his close relationship with Tony Blair while Warren Christopher and Madeleine Albright minded the shop. George H. W. Bush before him had in a moment of Middle Eastern crisis shown himself to be a true master of the game. Mrs. Clinton’s State Department had the nation, including its Democrats, longing for the steady-handed confidence of the Carter years. She was bad enough that John Kerry was considered an improvement.
When her moment came again, she was put through the wringer by a dopey socialist from Vermont whose young, idealistic partisans — the people people like Mrs. Clinton like to think of themselves as — still don’t want her. They’ll take her over Donald Trump, of course, and they’ll feel a little like the man who hears: “You’re responding reasonably well to the chemo.”
…the bureaucrats — allied with the press, of course — will do more to check misbehavior by Trump than they’ll ever conceivably do to check misbehavior by Hillary. And certainly much more than they’ve done with Obama, who has weaponized the IRS, the EPA, the Department of Justice, and a host of other federal agencies, all the way down to the Park Service, with barely a peep from within the bureaucracy.
So what people worry about with Trump has already happened under Obama. And that’s part of the problem. Obama broke down and devalued a lot of political traditions in this country, to very little objection from the parts of the political class that matter. That opened up a hole for Trump. My main positive expectation for a Trump presidency is that he will remind people of why those political traditions were important.
They only think they’re important when a Republican, even a faux Republican like Trump, is in the White House. Trump also has the potential to arouse Congress to finally exercise and defend its own prerogatives. The Founders didn’t put in the impeachment power with the idea it would never be used.