The same argument happens in Robert Heinlein's "Solution Unsatisfactory."
Proposal: a global democracy monopolizing the most destructive weapon.
Objection: Internationalists are soft-headed or ignorant. A world-wide electorate would comprise millions, many semi-civilized, with no understanding of democracy and also with a lot of hate.
Reply: Personal abuse of the objector.
When I first read this about 1970, I like the proposal, was concerned about the objection and disappointed in the reply but then I realized that Heinlein had written an authentic political argument, combining ideas, analysis and emotions.
What does anyone else out there think of world government?
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
A world gov't for Earth? A POSSIBLY good idea in theory, but something which is not likely to happen any time soon and almost certainly not by means you would like. I remember how the Ythrian "editor" of the THE EARTH BOOK OF STORMGATE described the rise of the Solar Commonwealth: "To curb these inordinate privileges of a few [powerful nations], whose quarrels and mismanagement threatened to lay waste their native planet, the Commonwealth was finally established, as a nation of nations. This did not happen quickly, easily, or rationally. The story of it is long and terrible" (Anderson, THE EARTH BOOK OF STORMGATE [Berkley: 1978], page 34). Meaning, at best, Anderson did not think any kind of world federation will arise "easily, quickly, or rationally."
The US might still be easily the single most powerful nation in the world today, but it faces powerful rivals and threats. Such as from the ambitions nursed by mainland China. And the permanently latent threat everyone faces from an Islam which preaches jihadism and the rightness of a world wide Sharia law theocratic regime is another huge problem.
No, I don't see any kind of reasonably tolerable world gov't arising any time soon. Unless some Napoleon type emerges who manages to conquer the entire world.
Sean
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