Star Trek through a Conservative lens

National Review has a number of articles involving Star Trek up. Now don't turn up your nose because they're conservatives. They're Trek fans. Read on and enjoy.

Growing Up Star Trek

the show’s creator, Gene Roddenberry, reintroduced the series as a vision of the future in which in humanity has transcended its pettiness and imperfections, taming its baser instincts so that it might teeter on the edge of Utopia. Taking place in a moneyless, peaceful, egalitarian society, it announced triumphantly that man, through socialism, can do all — and that when we do, we’ll be lead by a tea-drinking, smartypants Frenchman named Jean-Luc.

Who's Better than Trek?

The Federation is, for the most part, viewed as a benign United Nations in space (just look at the emblem of the United Federation of Planets), which competently brings peace and reconciliation to the galaxy and succeeds through the selfish devotion of Star Fleet personnel to its ideals. The implication, of course, is that we are children and the Federation represents us when we’ve grown up. There will continue to be children, like the Klingon Worf, but they will be educated by Philosopher-Kings like Picard and their space therapists like Troi. It is no coincidence that in the best Trek episodes, the Federation is either irrelevant (Cause and Effect), left behind (the Klingon arc, most notably Redemption), or revealed as incapable (Best of Both Worlds). When the writers finally felt open to explore the realities of the Federation, after series creator Gene Roddenberry’s death, it was revealed to have a secret dark side in a compelling Deep Space Nine story arc. The background improved immeasurably as a result.

The Sources of Klingon Conduct

This is an excerpt from a classic essay first drafted as a memo to Federation Headquarters by an anonymous Vulcan diplomat and published in Interstellar Affairs in its Stardate 1114.3 issue. The essay had an enormous impact on the decision to pursue a confrontational policy toward the Klingons. Its author was later revealed to be Kennok, who would spend the balance of his career disavowing much of the intragalactic policy that was made partly as a result of it.

A Conservative Trek

But some people only understand a photon torpedo up the dorsal vent port, and we’d best be prepared to deal with them. The Federation, after all, had something called General Order 24, which called for the total destruction of a planet’s surface if the civilization was considered a threat to the Federation. As Vader might have said: Impressive.

Kirk actually invoked General Order 24, in “A Taste of Armageddon.” He used it as a threat, and didn’t carry it out. You can imagine his relief; the paperwork alone would have been a nightmare. But he would have done it if he had to, and not just for the reputation you get back home at the Officer’s Club. Not for Kirk the niceties of diplomacy: If he had to violate a treaty, he’d do it. If he had to save a civilization from the lifeless machinations of an ancient operating system, he’d harangue its computer until it smoked and crashed. In “The Arena,” Kirk didn’t win the battle against a rubber-suit Gorn because they hammered out a six-point Roadmap to Peace. Granted, he got the thumbs-up from the League of Judgmental Effeminate Aliens because he didn’t cave in the Gorn’s head with a stone. But prior to that, he nailed him in the chest with an improvised cannon that shot diamonds. In a cannon-free zone, no less.

Mamas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Federation Tax Collectors

The Federation is not just “socialist” in the sense that some conservatives denounce any big-government policy as “socialistic.” It’s socialist in the classic sense of the word: government control of all or most major economic activity. In the absence of a currency and price system, central planning seems to be the only way to coordinate a complex economy to even a limited degree. Moreover, virtually all large-scale Federation enterprises in the Star Trek universe seem to be government-owned: from space stations to research facilities to mining operations. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that the Federation is communist; we don’t see much evidence of class struggle (though maybe that’s because all of the bourgeoisie have already been safely packed off to Gulag planets) or of a monolithic one-party state. But it at least has some form of kinder, gentler non-Marxian socialism.

The Needs of the Many Outweigh the Needs of the Pelosians

The situation with the Romulan Empire is rapidly becoming the defining crisis of our age.

Over the course of this magazine’s four centuries (not counting the Great Interegnum during the Eugenics Wars, when conservatism was deemed a mental defect) National Review has always endeavored to chart a course balancing idealism with realism. Even in its infancy, facing the first great existential crisis of Old Earth, we argued for challenging aggression, whether in the form of the Soviet threat or the violence done to humanity through hubristic tinkering with the genetic code. We are proud to say that our opposition to the Soviets played its part in the prevention of one nuclear holocaust and saddened that our warnings fell on deaf ears before as so many of us were marched off to reeducation camps on the Mars colonies. After the Interregnum we counseled a different course when making first contact with the Klingons and the Romulans than that chosen by Starfleet Command. History has vindicated us on both scores, which is small comfort given the terrible price we all paid for Starfleet’s stubbornness.