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Originally Posted by Brenda Archer  Well, that's what we tried to do here. That's basically what the late twentieth century project of progressive change was about.
But what it led to in practice was different political and social factions fighting over who gets to really say they are an American. The formal definition is very simple, but not everyone's heart is in that. |
Understood that that's the reality now. But I'm trying to define what we want, rather than what we have. And for me, a country should not be so much a geographical construct, as a population of people who have agreed on a set of principles by which the society is to be run. (Which incidentally is another reason I want to keep to a minimum set - to be able to actually agree on something.)
So, I don't care whether someone's heart is in it or not the minimum set of requirements are those things which one "signs up to" as a citizen in a country. If it helps, consider this discussion to be about setting requirements for a *new* country, rather than having to deal with the enormous practical difficulties of how we might move current RL countries *to* that minimum set.
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Originally Posted by Brenda Archer Only if you had a society relatively free of authoritarianism and caste, could you assume that people would even know what you mean when you say there is only one class of citizen - and it includes everyone. |
Leaving aside the difficult topic of immigration for a moment, I'm obviously missing something, as to me it seems relatively simple. "Born here" = "you are a citizen". Having multiple classes of citizens seems to be a more complex arrangement (and hence more difficult to understand) than having just one.
Are we on the same page here? In talking about one class of citizen, I'm referring to coverage by the minimal set of requirements. There will still be rich people, poor people, well-connected people, and people who are totally alone, etc, and maybe (?) that's the sort of thing you mean by caste, but these constructions will not be recognised in the set of minimal requirements, and hence the protections in the minimal set will apply even against the rich or religious (for example).
Drat. I don't think I've explained myself very well, and I still think I'm missing your point.
