XPost: rec.arts.startrek.current, rec.arts.tv   
   From: buckland@direct.ca   
      
   We have decried the way the finale (may the fleas of a thousand camels   
   infest the   
   appropriate regions of its writers and producers) ended without THE SPEECH   
   THAT THE WHOLE EPISODE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE ABOUT.   
   I have taken the immodest route, of writing the damned thing.  It is of   
   course   
   totally inhabited by my own ideas of how the present works and how the   
   future, specifically that of the Federation's universe, should work.  There   
   seems to be some confusion about what was being founded -- the episode   
   refers to the "Alliance," but canon says the Federation was founded in the   
   same year, 2161.  I've steered a middle road on this.  I've also taken the   
   liberty of assuming that WWIII grows out of our present long-term   
   confrontation between democratic systems and ones which are theocratic   
   or totalitarian.  Finally, I'm conscious that I've sort of stolen Abraham   
   Lincoln's Gettysburg opening.   
      
   Warning: those with a negative attitude toward the USA and all its works   
   may not find their latest meal sits well within them if they proceed   
   further.   
      
   =O =O =O =O =O =O =O =O =O =O =O =O =O =O =O =O =O =O =O =O =O   
      
   Earth has orbited its lone primary close to four hundred times   
   since some humans created a political entity called the United   
   States of America.  It was Earth's first such entity based,   
   not on tradition or territory or conquest or the force of   
   personality of a ruler, but on ideas.  In its founding document   
   those ideas were couched in terms then contemporary.  But   
   just short of a hundred Earth years later, the people of one of   
   the newer constituent states, called Nebraska -- people who could   
   be thought unexceptional, agriculturalists for the most part --   
   rephrased them, in words which leapt beyond their time, beyond   
   matters of gender or heritage or spiritual system, beyond for   
   that matter boundaries they could have barely glimpsed, of species   
   and planetary origin, words which I am proud to carry engraved   
   into a plaque mounted on the bridge of my ship:   
      
      All persons are by nature free and independent, and have   
      certain inherent and inalienable rights; among these are   
      life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. To secure   
      these rights, and the protection of property, governments   
      are instituted among people, deriving their just powers   
      from the consent of the governed.   
      
   You recognize, of course, the influence of these words and of   
   the ideas they embody on the Charter you have just adopted.   
   They are simple -- once they have been set down.  But they   
   have power.  The people of the United States of America realized   
   this and, uniquely at first for their species, took their great   
   oath, from their chosen rulers and from all who at any level   
   undertook public service or defense, not to persons or politics   
   or belief or territory, but to their Constitution and for its   
   protection.   
      
   In the succeeding hundred and eighty Earth years after the   
   Nebraska formulation, these ideas prospered until much of   
   the planet lived by them in superficially varied forms.   
    From a world almost entirely occupied by empires, even   
   later at the outset of our first great planetary war,   
   we progressed to one in which whole continents, and much   
   of what remained, lived under laws made with "the consent of   
   the governed."   
      
   Even in the awful aftermath of Earth's last great war,   
   a war in large part based on the confrontation of them by   
   opposing ideas, oppressive or atavistic, the ideas endured and   
   prevailed.  Buoyed by the optimism and expanded horizons that   
   followed our First Contact, with our first extraterrestrial   
   friends from Vulcan, they flourished into the basis of planetary   
   peace and prosperity and of Earth's worldwide government.   
      
   It is these, our ideas, that we humans have offered to you.   
   Notwithstanding over a hundred Earth years of human trade and   
   exploration in interstellar space, despite success in conflicts,   
   despite other contributions from human luck, perseverance,   
   scientific advance and creativity, they are really all we have   
   to offer that is unique and, we would hold, of sufficient value   
   to put before you.   
      
   Others have technology more advanced than Earth's.  Others have   
   stronger military traditions.  Yet before today, technology and   
   weapons had still left the planets and the empires to which many   
   of them belonged in a state much like that of the Earth the   
   Nebraskans faced, still divided, still threatened from without and   
   within, with prosperity hindered by boundaries, hampered by the   
   the lacing of strength with the weakness of fragmentation.   
   In this milieu, we of Earth survived and gave evidence   
   of how our values inspired our lives.  We offered our ideas   
   by trying to help, by suggesting, by acting on them, by replying   
   when asked what made humans different.   
      
   You have seen fit to accept our offer, and to launch upon the great   
   adventure of founding this Alliance with a core structured   
   upon those concepts which Earth held, and holds, precious,   
   which enriched us and once saved us, and with which we launched   
   into the Galaxy.   
      
   May they serve us, all our species from all our worlds, well.   
   May we all, as the Vulcans would say, live long and prosper.   
      
   And now where do we, the Alliance, hopefully to ripen very soon   
   into some kind of true federation, go from here?   
      
   The human who first achieved warp drive for Earth said to   
   seek out new worlds, new life and civilizations, and to go   
   where no-one had gone before.  And a human thinker who died   
   during the Earth generation before First Contact, looking   
   forward to a time such as ours, wrote that our future   
   endeavors should be inspired by two one-word directives:   
   "seek" and "hope."   
      
   I have one more human thought to propose -- let us make it so.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)