So, democracy is the best form of government (that we know of, so far) for protecting individual rights. But I've always thought that maybe not everyone should be able to vote.

I haven't forgotten. It simply hasn't been a factor. I have not, so far, put any restrictions on what profession a potential hegemon would need to have practiced before taking office. Unless you know of some reason he would have to be a politician, I will continue to not consider his former profession.

I will, however, add the conditions that a potential hegemon must be willing to live by any law he passes, and must be reasonably honest.

>#2). You're assuming our leaders are
>Capable of such efficient actions, when, by
>and large, they are not. They have to read >the poles first

quote:

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"Starship Trooper" is a book of irony. The society that they have it in is BEING MOCKED for its rigid authoritarian values.

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Jeez, just cause they're different doesn't mean they're crazy.

I've never met such a thing in my life....

Where do u get your ideas from????
I think the blame rests completely on things you were forced to permanently learn in childhood that have screwed up your thinking completely...

How can we have a democracy when our kids are taught by pro-dictatorship teachers that do anything they feel like doing and try to beat things like math into your head....

Plus, I've noticed that people who don't know me have been treating me very oddly ever since I got a minor cold a couple of days ago. That's the entire thing.... can't you guys ever tell the difference between emotional and physical stuff? It's really silly when people start imitating little physical things.....

That's a thing that's really good about those more environmental-type societies... They're smart enough to tell the difference between emotions and just little physical things....

I've noticed that Irish-Chinese-British type people treat me completely differently than non-those types of people. Other people see certain things and they just think it's "cool".... those more environmental-ish type people actually get the difference between emotional actions and pointless mockery-type little physical things.

I've never seen a british/irish-ish/whatever type person do any of those silly imitations... cause they understand that's it's just a little physical thing that I have to do even though I don't really think about it and there's no emotional attachment to it...

Whereas other people will mock things over and over again without learning a damn thing... plus, those other people don't understand a single thing I do...

Cause to them, there aren't ever emotional reasons for doing things....

That's wrong though, cause emotional things can be connected to the real world very easily.... That's why britain was such a strong empire for a while.... and that's also why the original protestant Americans came from Britain...

And there's still a lot more to it.........
A lot of stuff that normal people just discard as crazy cause it hasn't been proven yet.......

Where to begin?

To start, I never said military service was the best way of determining citizenship. If I took the time to think about it, I could probably come up with several better ones, starting with just a test to see if the potential citizen has even the slightest clue.

On the issue of handicapped persons being able to obtain citizenship...I have a physical disability, so I'm speaking from experience when I say that this is not an insurmountable barrier.

Mental disabilities are another matter. My stepbrother's mom had pneumonia while she was pregnant. Given a choice between her dying or her child having severe birth defects, the doctors chose to save her life. As a result, my brother's brain stopped developing near the end of the first trimester. He honestly wouldn't know or care whether he was a citizen or not.

On the other hand, 50% of the population has below average intelligence. Most of these are OK people who are just a bit dim. There certainly has to be a point where you say, "You must be at least this smart to vote", but we could probably agrue all day about where that line should be drawn.

If education was inteligence, a test would be great for determining who could vote. But it isn't. It can aid the inteligent, it can help inteligence to grow, but without inteligence, it is nothing. The reverse is not true. There are highly inteligent people, who would make fine voters, who have been educated far less than you or I, or at least comletely differently.

About the thing for veterans only voting, I think you are missing its point. Military service would not determine intelligence in any way. It would determine the value the person places on the privilege of voting. A non-citizen, in Heinlein's book, has all the rights under law that a Citizen would have except the right to vote and the right to hold public office. Theoretically, then only one who places the future of his nation higher on his list of priorities than his personal life and liberty would determine the future and leadership of that nation.

What are the problems with this? First, as Reed Richards stated, there is no 'risking life and limb' if there isnt war. Heinlein says that the majority of recruits would not even be soldiers but have some equally dangerous and unenviable duty for their right to vote. That, to me, makes no sense. We really cannot make torture camps(not really, but what else would you call them) just to verify that certain individuals really think that voting is important. Such a government could even go so far as to engineer a "xenomorphic" race so that potential voters have someone to fight...

The other problem, of cripples, is a surmountable problem in our day and I forsee that it will diminish and then vanish as artificial limbs, eyes, ears, etc. are perfected. In Heinleins book, all or most desk jobs are performed by civilians or soldiers whose primary mission is fighting in some form, which makes sense. As for today, who says that a physically disabled person cannot drive a tank, fly a plane, shoot an artillery cannon, or some other non-infantry combat duty? I dont think blindness or deafness can be handled with todays technology, but then again I dont see the state Heinlein described today either.

Siece, how would you determine who is smart enough to vote and who isnt?

Also, how would a person that ignores public opinion be able to get and stay in power, short of military force?

"Next, he'll need an absolute respect for individual rights, but none at all for the law. All of the world's Great Leaders (Caesar, Lincoln, Washington, Churchill, etc.) became great because, when pushed, they were willing to tell the Constitution (or whatever law applied) to go to Hell, but at the same time, they had enough respect for the People that they did not become dictators."

You say 'smart' enough to vote. Right now, there is no 'smart' enough to vote. There is no IQ test, no literacy test.

Now, there used to be literacy tests, but those were repealed, and with good reason; they were basically a way to keep blacks from getting the vote, and that wasn't fair.

As I understand it, the veteran vote wasn't to ensure that they were 'smart' enough to vote, but, instead, that they were qualified to vote.

Yawn. I might as well ramble on about something. Ender's star, how are people (who are naturally wicked and cruel) pick a leader who is not? If they see someone who is not, why would they choose him? Absolute Monarchy traditionally is carried on by bloodline, so there is NO guarantee (or even favorable chance) that a King's son will be NOT wicked and cruel. So the only choices left are that the non-wickedcrueltype man will rise to the top naturally or some system of election.

In either system, the potential King must gain the favor, or at least support, of people with normal human nature.

(I have read the topic, so I wish to be smacked if redundancy is evident in my posting.)

So I ask this as a question, and not a tool of sarcasm: How would such a leader be moved to the top?

Actually, I was thinking more of an information check than an intelligence check. For example, in the last election here we had Measure G on the ballot. In the system I described, you could vote on Measue G if you knew what it was, as well as how approving it or not would affect the community.

It wouldn't take any particular intelligence. Around here, it wouldn't even take any extra effort, because the county sends out a voter's information pamphlet a few weeks before every election which provides a brief description of everything being voted on, along with essays from parties for and against each measure.

The test wouldn't need to be in any specific format, so accomodations could be made for the illiterate, those who don't speak the local language, and so on.

On the one hand, you wouldn't be able to vote on this issue.

On the other hand, if you don't understand the issue, if you did vote, then it would only be a crap shoot. You'd have a ((n-1)/n)% chance of screwing yourself over, where n = the number of possible options you can choose.

In a simple yes or no vote, this would be only a 50% chance. If the vote had three choices, the chances of screwing yourself jump to 66%. It would be a 75% chance of screwing up for four possible decisions, and so on.

My language sucks. First insulting Jesus and destroying a perfectly good thread that deserved to live, and now this.

"In the system I described, you could vote on Measue G if you knew what it was, as well as how approving it or not would affect the community."

These tests, while a good idea, could easily be rigged by the creators to make certain that only people in favor of the bill are allowed to vote on it.

"A Bill to Ban Abortion."

Multiple Choice: A fetus becomes a human when...
a) it is conceived
b) it's heart first beats
c) third trimester
d) birth

Sure. As long as you do it before the polls close.

suntranafs wrote:
>For example, "Whether you know what
>ammendment G is or not".
>What defines that? How do you test?

In the example I've been using, Measure G was a bond measure. If it passed (it did, in case you were wondering), Kern Country would sell $180 million worth of bonds, and use the money to improve and repair the facilities at three community college campuses around the county.

The downside of this is that everyone's taxes will go up by about $5.31 to pay for those bonds when they mature.

To see if someone "understands" what the measure is, they would basically need to be able to say what the money is being spent on, as well as how much of it is coming out of their own personal pocket to pay for it.

Steel wrote:
>Also, your odds do not account for a simple
>fact of democracy: there is no right
>answer. Saying that you have a 2/3 chance
>for self- screwage in a 3-option vote is
>not accounting for the fact that, in the
>world we live in, all of the answers may be
>correct.

In that sense, voting is a lot like taking tests in upper division college classes. All of the answers are correct, but one is more correct than the others. No professor I've ever heard of gives partial credit for a right answer that's not the one that's most right. So, too, in voting.

If you need examples of why the other right answers are wrong, take a close look at any of the laws passed in the U.S. to prevent descrimination. On the surface, they look like a pretty good idea, and they're a definite improvement over the way things were. In the long term, however, every one of those laws ends up having the exact opposite result of what it was intended to accomplish.

suntranafs wrote:
>Sorry Seice, I'm afraid Steel's right,
>tests are to easy to manipulate.

That's why you have watchdog groups.

>First, make a whole government agency based
>on fairly reporting the actions of the
>government.

How? You have the same problem here that you have in making the tests, only worse. With the test, a person can go out and get the information from multiple sources, and form their own opinion. When there's only one official source, the "truth" is whatever that source says it is. Kind of like a real life George Orwell novel.

>Second, rather than requireing that
>everybody pass a test, make a law that says
>people HAVE TO educate themselves about the
>government actions.

*laughs* I'm sorry, but life just doesn't work that way. There are already laws that say people have to get educations, and yet almost two thirds of high school graduates are still functionally illiterate, and even most college graduates aren't as well educated as someone who completed only the eighth grade before those laws were inacted.

Don't remember that rule... after all, Hitler is still a bad person, even though we already discussed him. For variety sake, I suppose, one might avoid mentioning something twice... but it doesn't invalidate an argument.

"That why you have watchdog groups."

Who would do what, exactly? Try to pass a test to pass a law changing the test requirements to pass another law? Excess red tape. And besides, they're already manipulating the tests; who's to say they won't manipulate the tests for the watchdog group?

"You can lead a student to knowledge, but you can't make him learn."

Bingo.

And, harkening to an earlier post,

"Voting is a lot like taking tests in upper division college classes. All of the answers are correct, but one is more correct than the others. No professor I've ever heard of gives partial credit for a right answer that's not the one that's most right. So, too, in voting."

Problem is: who's the professor? Who ultimately decides right from wrong? Who is empowered to say anyone's opinion is greater than mine, or greater than yours?

If one man or one organization is creating these tests, his veiw is undoubtedly the 100% "correct" veiw; I don't buy it. That man, that organization, eliminates the need for a vote. They have already determined what is "right". Why not cut out the middle man, eliminate the voter?

Because we live in a democracy. We vote because we beleive no one man has any greater say than any other, regardless of intelligence. In Florida, the voters decided it was wrong to separate a pregnant pig from the others. They were missing a key point, that pregnant pigs kill other pigs; regardless, just one sacrifice we make to live in free society. I was in the minority on that vote.

Who am I to say that the anti-pigpenning lobby is wrong? What makes my opinion more valid?

Nothing. A democracy is governed by numbers: by the majority. Who is to decide that one opinion, one group, is right and the others are wrong? I wouldn't give up that freedom, ever.

Siece stated: 'When there's only one official source, the "truth" is whatever that source says it is. Kind of like a real life George Orwell novel.'
I simply don't believe that. George Orwell's book gave me nightmares. Almost nothing gives me nightmares like that. I do not think it was realistic. Why should we even have this discussion if you don't have a little more faith in the human race(Either in its goodness or its extreme individual selfishness) than that? The media would still be there to express all the views of the world.

"How"?[do you make an institution based on fairly reporting the actions of the government]. Easy. You require that they report only the facts. They can bastardize news like "the cow flew off the roof", but let them just try to corrupt 2+2=4 without getting caught. There will be no headlines. No front page. No pictures. No humor. No opinions. Just what the government did that could possibly affect the lives of its citizens would be in one section, and extremely trivial ones in abother section. Nothing's infallable. They can still bastardize "possibly affect", but severe restrictions can be made, penalties can be made for errors/deceptions, and differenials from the facts can be made very small.

"you can lead a student to knowledge, but you can't make him learn."
OK, so I was wrong for once. There's rarely a positive effect of making a law that you're unwilling to enforce. I overlooked that, 'cause, damn, it sure would be nice wouldn't it? If we could just get them to read, they'd eventually understand. Actually the way I came up with that idea was in a government with a whole whole lot less people, where you actually could enforece such a law without abusing human rights..... maybe anything that's possible small scale is possible large scale.... that hasn't been very well demonstrated... YET.