Political Structure of the Confederation

I think it might be better if you would actually look at the progression of the thread you happen to be commenting on. There were a couple of throw-away lines about Bob's use of language, after this it sprouted into an entirely distinct conversation that had little or nothing to do with Bob.
 
Also, when accusing people of being anti-something, it's generally a good idea not to show how biased you yourself are.
"your wall of german derived linguistic ignorance"... huh?
"If we all stuck to the mono and bi sylabic germanic derived english"... wha?
Did you have some traumatic experience while learning German at school, or is this just one of those generic irrational dislikes of a randomly-chosen nation?
 
German

English is just one of the languages that are based on the German language. I think Spanish is also but I'm not sure.
 
The main Germanic Languages are:

German
Dutch
English
American

They're all based primarily on Anglo-Saxon, or Old English.

Then there are the Scandanavian Languages, which have more in common with the Germanic than the Latin and the Slavic Languages.

Then there are the Arabian languages, Arabic and Hebrew.

It goes on, thats all I'm reasonably sure of.

As to using flowery language, it is a way of articulating a point and there is no reason not to use it. Some people use it to avoid a point, if your good at this you can still win.
 
Wow, this thread has gone way off.

While it is true that using flower language (alone) can win arguments and that you can cover up your lack of a point by using flowery language, I am neither accusing anyone of such a thing or condoning.

Onto the real topic...
I still maintain that it's based on American democracy. And yes, American democracy and western democracy are based on the greek example, but I highly doubt that all the contributing writers to what has become the WC universe were thinking of the greek when they were writing.
 
Napoleon said:
Seriously Frosty, Loaf, and anyone else expressing this opinion grow up and discuss the ideas that bob used proper language to express rather than talk about "style over substance" when in actuality his diction wasnt that high level or flowery but rather was pretty straight and to the point.
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Circumstance dictates the system of measurement. For the purposes of a posting on an online forum about Wing Commander, he was pretty flowery. Now someone go get a fucking thesaurus and find an alternate word to use in place of "flowery" because it's getting tired.

Also, the next person to say "American Democracy" deserves a steel-toed boot to the crotch. A constitutional republic in which citizens occasionally vote is not a democracy, and you are quite clearly not conversant with the subject.
 
Going back to the topic, is the President considered President of the Confederation or simply of the Great Council (which would make Paladin the President in the case of WingIV)?

Also, a lot of the source material seems to indicate the Confederation is more similar to the Star Wars Republic than to the Federation ...
 
Correction, the EU will adopt a new constitution which will essentially create the USE, United States of Europe. Basically the member governments will become adminstators and little else.

Hell, they're banning sulpher tablets in Britain to bring us in line with the EU.

The main thing will be the loss of veto power.

As to America having a democracy, thats total bull, America has one of the most biased voting systems in the Western World, infact through there is not a single democracy on the planet.

In a democracy every decision has to be voted on and everyone has to vote, even if they simply abstain.
 
First of all, it's a representative democracy so every american does not vote on everything and they completely don't count. Anyone with a degree could've told you that.

Second, what I mean by American democracy is more along the lines of the structure of the gov't (as is the topic of the thread) and not how each citizen of the confed votes. Everyone else seemed to get that but oh well.

Was he too flowery for this thread? Considering he started, I will so NO.

Lastly, flowery? Yeah, definitely need another word. How about "wordy" language. It sucks, so someone come up with something better.
 
Would you people please stop this stupid stupid argument over "flowery language" already? :(
 
dextorboot said:
First of all, it's a representative democracy
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No, it is not, and that entirely fallacious notion didn't exist in anyone's mind until President Wilson (who was a total, unforgivable nimrod and had no idea what he was talking about) seeded into the public consciousness in the early 20th century.

Just because people continue to say it all the time does not make it true, it just makes them wrong.
 
BattleDog said:
Correction, the EU will adopt a new constitution which will essentially create the USE, United States of Europe. Basically the member governments will become adminstators and little else.
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Nah. As is usually the case in the EU, even the current watered-down draft constitution will be further watered down before everybody approves it. The EU will remain for a while longer in that strange, messy area halfway between independent states and a federation.


Returning to Bob's topic now.

Communication in the Confederation would be much less of a problem than it was in 18th or 19th century America - by the time of WCP, interstellar communication seems to be virtually instantaneous. So, a tightly-knit federation like the USA is possible, and probably does exist - but maybe not for long. What little we know about WCP-era politics indicates that there is some tension when it comes to where and how the Confed budget is spent (see SO news articles). I'd guess that in the future, parts of Confed would either follow the Landreich and BW out the door, or Confed itself would adopt a more de-centralised system to persuade members not to leave.
 
Actually, that does make them right. It's a new word for a pre-existing idea. Just because it had a name before doesn't mean it can't change. If the public in general decides that they will call a certain thing a name, then that makes it right. There are many examples this. "Reverse psychology" doesn't really mean anything in real psychology and what we believe it means actually has another name (escapes me, someone is bound to know it), however it is correct to say it because that's what people mean by it, and it's accepted as such even though it is literally wrong. To put it another way, if the entire english speaking world decides to call a rose a "shitbomb" tomorrow, and it's used that way and the rose is forgotten, then it would be correct to call it a shitbomb, even though it is neither shit nor a bomb. Dig?
 
Frosty said:
No, it is not, and that entirely fallacious notion didn't exist in anyone's mind until President Wilson (who was a total, unforgivable nimrod and had no idea what he was talking about) seeded into the public consciousness in the early 20th century.
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Hehehe ... "We're fighting to save democracy!"
 
dex, I'm not going to be baited into an argument over the relativity of meaning. You can believe things your way forever but that won't make them true. Truths are concrete, that's what makes them truths, and they don't change simply because a lot of people believe something else. Those people are just incorrect.

So you can play your little mind-bending game just like BattleDog did with his "Flowery language is equivalent to correctness" trip, but I'm not joining.
 
Wow, what the hell happened here? I can't help but blame everyone but me. Lets get back to the original topic.

Going back to the topic, is the President considered President of the Confederation or simply of the Great Council (which would make Paladin the President in the case of WingIV)?
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President of the Confederation is separate from head of the council. Paladin was given his position in the senate by other senators (WC4 novel); the president is elected by the citizens of the Confederation (as per Action Stations).

(Sidebar -- we really should nail down the 'proper' name for this branch of government. It's certainly not 'Great Council'... Wing Commander IV calls it the "Great Assembly", whereas other sources have less 'flowery' (hah!) terms: 'Terran Confederation Congress', in Academy and a few other places, the 'General Assembly' in Secret Ops... and of course 'Terran Confederation Senate', derived from the fact that it has senators and there's a 'Senatorial Medal of Honor'. So... discuss amongst yourselves.)

Communication in the Confederation would be much less of a problem than it was in 18th or 19th century America - by the time of WCP, interstellar communication seems to be virtually instantaneous. So, a tightly-knit federation like the USA is possible, and probably does exist - but maybe not for long. What little we know about WCP-era politics indicates that there is some tension when it comes to where and how the Confed budget is spent (see SO news articles).
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Ehh, that's quite a leap -- I'm sure every legislative branch in the world spends a heck of a lot of time arguing over budget issues... and I don't see myself needing a passport to go to New Jersey any time soon (G)

There's some indication that communication isn't necessarily that quick. As you get further and further from developed space -- from where they've built comm arrays and jump buoys and such -- the lag is going to get higher and higher. Blair notes that getting news reports that are a few days old is unusual on Nephele, and it usually takes a week or more.
 
First off, I'm not trying to bait anyone into anything. You disagree OK. I respect your point of view. I'm not shouting and saying "DUDE YOU SUCK." I'm simply stating that you're wrong. Nobody is playing mind games. Just because YOU believe things doesn't make them true either. We're not talking about "truths" we're talking about terminology. These things change every day.

Yeah, that Battledog thing was wierd. But then, I nor anyone else agreed with that so...

And just by posting that, you DID join in.
 
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