George Washington was not the first president. In 1776, when we declared independence, Washington was a mere general. John Hancock was president of the continental congress, which voted for independence on July2, and accepted the text of the Declaration on July 3rd. A civil service clerk copied the text overnight, and it was distributed on July 4th when the principals had left town.

Later John Hansen was first president under the terms of the Articles of Confederation.

Yes, I care about those details. Better to leave out the question than to test for knowledge with a bad answer sheet.

I have never been anything but warmed by citizenship pictures. The problems with US residency and citizenship rules are as follows:

1. No special rules to permit quick entry to brilliant contributors such as Einstein or Von Karman.
2. Edward Kennedy’s 1960s changes to permit entry to all relatives of legal residents, and anyone who claims they might be a legal resident.
3. Immigration quotas for Mexico and other poor Latin American countries are too small.
4. Immigration lotteries to other countries not for merit, but just for getting lucky, are too large.

Starship Troopers was a good work of fiction. It was not fascism, as the state offered citizenship to anyone who wanted it (and agreed to pay the price of obedience for a set term). Citizens in that fictional state would know that there are consequences to the politican’s “We need to…”.

I saw Scott Ritter speak on his book tour a few years back. Like Glenn Greenwald, he had the zealot’s fervor of an angry conservative who is disgusted at what has become of his party, his movement, and the ideals he swore to uphold. And there’s no zealot like a convert.

In the *real* world, it comes down to money, power, social networks, and collusion between interests. The masses are kept quiescent with entertainment to prevent them actually smartening up and realizing how much power they’ve lost over their lives.

I see a lot of change on that front, though. Maybe it’s taken the horror of Bush to do it, but people are more galvanized and involved in politics now than at any time in my lifetime previously.

My Special Forces nephew swears by “Starship Troopers” (the book, not the movie).

God, we take citizenship for granted. It may be a cliche, but the vote is as powerful a weapon there is. Too often, though, we aim it straight at ourselves instead of our nation’s ills.

I think you meant “steeped in,” like a tea bag, but I think I like “stepped in” is probably more accurate….

Sometimes I think we’d be better off if we were like the fascist nation in Starship Troopers (the book, not the movie, where most of the “fascism works” message was purged and replaced with sex and violence), where you had to earn your citizenship and right to vote instead of being born to it

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"Very few Americans actually function as citizens anymore." Not only don’t most of us care to be reminded of what we don’t know about our government, neither have we much interest in acquiring that knowledge. Furthermore, "That foreign…