cthia wrote:Yes, I am applying a US centric view. This is Old Terra, and I may be incorrect in this assumption but I assume that the core of the US Constitution of today and its ideals were retained.
Like the cabinet position of
Prime Minister?
Snark aside, I agree and expect that the ideals of the Age of Enlightenment, which are present in the US Constitution, but also in the Bill of Rights 1689 in the UK and the Commonwealth, most of the French constitutions (particularly the republican ones), and in other countries. I also expect such a constitution to have started more modern, such as giving women the right to vote from the first day, not through an amendment.
Unfortunately, that also means that we can't predict what will be the moral norms in 1200 years. So it may actually be very different from what we expect of it.
That said, as the Honorverse is a work of fiction intended for
current audiences, we can and do project our current morality onto the characters. Moreover, since RFC is American and most of his audience is too, we can expect that this is the cornerstone of the ideals too. So yes, the ideals of the US Constitution should be evident... including where they're conspicuously absent. Here's a thought: the fact that the SL was corrupt and morally bankrupt, and its Constitution had to be rewritten and replaced, could be in fact a tell that it was
not following the ideals of the US Constitution in the first place.
Agreed. But, Manticore forcing the SL to change its Constitution is done out of no "moral right" (intended loosely) and it leads to it not being a good idea if its (c)onstitution lags behind. In fact, because of the foibles of man, if the two are exclusive, it is far worse.
Something does not need to be morally right to be a good idea. Committing a crime is legally wrong, probably morally wrong (if the law isn't immoral in the first place), but can still be a good idea if one isn't going to get caught or convicted. There's also the fact that "good idea" is in the eyes of the beholder, so very subjective.
That said, I disagree, and I think Manticore did have the moral right. See Joat42 and tlb's replies above.
Methinks that is why God, in his infinite wisdom, gives kids a much smaller body with much smaller muscles until their brain catches up to their (c)onstitution. Thus, giving parents a chance - obligation and moral responsibility - to mold that (c)onstitution. The parents failed to raise this big kid properly, and the big gorilla grew up to become a bully.
Indeed, so a bully needs to be called on their actions and probably punished, so their behaviour will change in the future. The parents of a bully child would set some parameters, for example grounding or curfew. So I fail to see how your analogy would apply to the SL.
But! When they helped found the SL, Beowulf and all members officially accepted the SL's Constitution, along with the responsibility of, and for, its (c)onstitution. It is a package deal. That is not to say that member systems officially agreed with any changes Sol made to its Constitution as you have pointed out. But remaining a member when shit is rolling downhill is literally accepting, perhaps even welcoming, the stink of the fallout.
I agree. As a member, each of those Governments and their populations should have striven to hold the SL Constitution up to its ideals (and I won't get into the discussion of originalism or not; "ideals" suffices here). So they
failed by allowing the League to become corrupt and fall short of the ideals.
And in having failed, should they not accept the consequences? And corrective measures?
If that is true then they were/are idiots. The SL Constitution can affect them much more than their own. And it can become very fatal to their health. Foregone conclusion.
We don't know that.
If the best analogy to the SL Constitution is not the US Constitution, but the Treaties of Rome and Maastricht, then the national Constitution affects the citizen far more than the supra-national one. The EU Commission has very limited powers, even less than the US Constitution originally granted the Federal government, even before the government itself started growing and granting itself more powers. And IIRC, many of its regulations must be individually voted into law in the member states to take force. There's an extremely large power of veto in the EU member states too, seeing as they did not accept the EU Constitution in the first place after one country rejected it; in the US it is very difficult to pass a constitutional amendment, but no single state has veto power.
However, that does not absolve them of keeping the bureaucrats in check, and the elected officials up to the ideals.
I agree if we limit that sentiment to rewriting it on their own terms, to suit their own agenda and needs. But not forced at gunpoint by their most hated and neobarbaric enemy!
Oh, I actually agree with that. That's just human nature: one may want to do something, but if they're told to do it by someone else, they may go on the defensive and protest doing it in the first place! So yes, rationally the citizens of the League may have agreed that replacing that Constitution was a good idea, but the moment that it came at the end of the graser mounts, they turn and start defending it.
But we go back as to what may be a good idea for Manticore and the GA. Is it better to force the rewrite right now, for a longer-term gain in spite of a short term reaction in public opinion, or is better to not do it? My phrasing here shows my bias, of course: I happen to think that it's best to take the hit right now, particularly when the SL can't do anything about it anyway.
I also think it was morally right to force the SL to fix its flaws.
And I am certainly not sure the SL's Constitution isn't personal to the old money and native inhabitants about Old Chicago, where galactic law was made and enforced for centuries.
That sounds a lot like "politicians and lobbyists." I'll readily agree that those stand to lose the most and therefore would be the most vocal opponents of any rewrite. They probably also have the means to influence public opinion in and around Old Chicago, probably throughout the Sol System ("Intra-Kuiper opinion" was the term, I think).
But the population outside of Sol is much larger. We never got official numbers for Sol, but I don't think it was above 50 billion, definitely not 100 billion (meaning we're still VERY far from Kardashev 2 scale). Compare that to the pre-war population of the League of at least 2 trillion. There was a point somewhere in the text that tells us that there are a couple dozen systems with populations above 20 billion. So even in a post-war SL 2.0, the population of the Sol System is unlikely to be near 10% of the full league. Even with its outsized influence in the government, they can't unilaterally do things without the agreement and consent from other members.
Particularly, that was one of the reasons for replacing the Constitution in the first place.
