User blog comment:Bookworm1138/The Federation: Good or Bad?/@comment-1340488-20090924231801

One would think that the Federation would be open to all new-comers "as they are", however, that is hardly the case. Yes, they're more than willing to let outsiders practice their customs to their fullest, but to those who want to be part of the Federation, they force them to abandon their ideals and adopt the pro-human ideas of the Federation

(yes, I did say pro-human. Because no matter how much it is preached in Star Trek that all races are equal, there is definite inequality. For instance, from TOS onward, you can see that, whenever there is a conflict, it is 9.9 times of 10 the fault of the alien. if what you said, that 'the virtues of man are all based on sin', is true, then, because the people of Star Trek have thinking, logical minds, they are imperfect, sinful beings...and yet how can something imperfect be right all the time when it comes to a human-vs-alien crisis? that smacks of perfection.)

Here are some prime examples to the non-accepting nature of the Federation: though there are members of the Ferengi and Klingon races who are members of Starfleet, an adjunct of the Federation, as a whole, in Star Trek canon, they have been denied entry to the Federation: why? It is because their cultures have been deemed as "adverse" to the ideals of the Federation. Though both races have their faults (the Ferengi's greed and the Klingon's blood-lust), which they have cleverly intwined with their own respective cultures, there are also many virtues that both races possess (the keen mind to seek potential profit, or the bravery of a hundred lions) which would be an infinite boon to the Federation, and yet the two races are NOT part of the Federation: because their ideals (free enterprise and the pseudo-feudal-Japanese warrior society) are considered second-rate compared to those of the Federation.

In the DS9 episode For the Cause, the character of Michael Eddington made a valid point: "Why is the Federation so obsessed with the Maquis? We've never harmed you. And yet we're constantly arrested and charged with terrorism. Starships chase us through the Badlands and our supporters are harassed and ridiculed. Why? Because we've left the Federation, and that's the one thing you can't accept. Nobody leaves paradise. Everyone should want to be in the Federation. Hell, you even want the Cardassians to join. You're only sending them replicators because one day they can take their "rightful place" on the Federation Council. You know In some ways you're even worse than the Borg. At least they tell you about their plans for assimilation. You're more insidious. You assimilate people and they don't even know it."

Bookworm1138 23:18, September 24, 2009 (UTC)