VOY: Remember

[Yukaphile]

Is it like the Muggle-born Registration Act on Harry Potter?

[clearspira]

Well, since clearspira brought it up, yeah some check against superpowers would be necessary but you have to make damn sure it's a Limited check. It would need some type of constitutional amendment in the United States for me to approve of it and only if the check was just some kind of registry like owning a firearm and whatnot. The mutant registration act was always portrayed as being the equivalent to the beginnings of the persecution of Jews in Germany with the stars on their clothes, though I may be wrong , I haven't done particularly in depth research on it. It's the slippery slope fallacy, this might be a gradual build up of persecution, it might not, you don't know.

edit: The U.K. is under parliamentary supremacy right? Does that mean that Parliament could pass really ridiculous extreme versions of this with just above 50%? I don't know how Parliament works so forgive my ignorance.

My argument against that argument is that Jews/gays/blacks etc. cannot walk through bank vaults, control people's minds, time travel or unleash miniature nukes from their fingers. How many people does Prof X accidentally kill in Logan again?

Its not quite as simple as that. Parliament is beholden to the Supreme Court like everyone else, and then of course there is the Queen, who does have the power to suspend Parliament if she so wishes. But yes, in technical terms, the British prime minister has more individual power than the US president. If May wanted to build a wall she would only need 51% approval which is why her having such a slim majority in Parliament is hurting Brexit.

[clearspira]

Is it like the Muggle-born Registration Act on Harry Potter?

Again though, that is simple racism. There is no actual pending need to register Muggle-borns. But there is with telepaths.

[Beelzquill]

My argument against that argument is that Jews/gays/blacks etc. cannot walk through bank vaults, control people's minds, time travel or unleash miniature nukes from their fingers. How many people does Prof X accidentally kill in Logan again?

Oh yeah I totally agree that is where the X-men are persecuted peoples metaphor falls apart. I mean Prof X almost killed half the planet in X2,? I think he forced all the governments to fire their nukes into space in Apocalypse. God that scene was stupid. He probably killed a hundred or so people in Logan.

Its not quite as simple as that. Parliament is beholden to the Supreme Court like everyone else, and then of course there is the Queen, who does have the power to suspend Parliament if she so wishes. But yes, in technical terms, the British prime minister has more individual power than the US president. If May wanted to build a wall she would only need 51% approval which is why her having such a slim majority in Parliament is hurting Brexit.

Fascinating. I didn't know the Queen still technically had that power, I thought Charles the first doing that type of stuff led to the English Civil War.

[SuccubusYuri]

Let's not pretend human beings aren't capable of this, though.

We have some immigrant camps in the states that say "Yes! ESPECIALLY the underage girls!"

Though in general to telepaths, the Federation is...really...REALLY comfortably fascist with their telepaths. That one telepath who is just ALWAYS "hanging around" in "The Drumhead". Picard's joking fondness for the Betazoid headmaster who read his student's minds to find out what rules they had broken. The whole "master race is Humans with ESP!" thing in TOS. And it's not technically telepathy but let's not forget how the Voyager crew treated "Memorial".

[Yukaphile]

OMG... so yes, that backs up my point.

That was "The First Duty!"

I think the B5 solution is the most realistic, sadly. If telepaths were real, that's what the government would do. Draft them, jail them, or suppress their powers - even if they've done nothing wrong. Though it's stupid in B5 how the latter causes them to lose their lust for life. Logically, it shouldn't.

[DAv]

Fascinating. I didn't know the Queen still technically had that power, I thought Charles the first doing that type of stuff led to the English Civil War.

The Queen has that particular power on the condition that she never uses it. One of those quirks of British government.

[Fianna]

I can perfectly believe that the Federation has no problem with telepaths casually mind-reading the people around them. They're supposed to have evolved past a lot of the irrational hangups that cause so much conflict in our times, after all; presumably that includes our desire for privacy (I believe in other threads we've talked about how there seems to be no such thing as doctor/patient confidentiality in the Federation).

However, there's clearly a distinction made between simply picking up on the brainwaves (or whatever it is) that people give off, and actively tampering with another person's mind.

[Darth Wedgius]

I can see some value to registering telepaths' DNA and keeping that in a database, then keeping telepaths away from some sensitive locations so they can't pull out classified data out of an admiral's or politician's head. Touch telepaths excepted. I think passwords and PINs might go the way of the buggy whip, though, except where combined with some other verification factor like a biometric.

[Yukaphile]

Fianna, I think you nailed it! Though remember Stubbs had a problem with it, though given he was presented as something of a social misfit, that makes sense. There'd still be people who deviate from the norm even in the future, though that was early TNG and by Voyager, that seemed to be forgotten.