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I think we have a misunderstanding here. By stating that natural order is the foundation, I do not mean that everything built on it must follow its form. We simply need to be aware of what naturally tends to occur in the absence of forces to counter it.

The distinction between interspecies and intraspecies relationships doesn't exist in this case. Nearly every species fights among its own kind for one reason or another. In many it is to establish dominance, the strongest contender usually winning, barring fluke occurances that alter the natural trend. Whether it's a lion taking down a gazelle, two males fighting over mating rights, a pedestrian facing a mugger in an alley, or two corporate excutives trying to swindle one another; the rules are the same.  He who is stronger (within the context of their form of "combat") is very likely to be the victor.

Again making everything a question of distribution of wealth. Karl Marx would be proud.

That's exactly the point. Law only exists because humans agree that it does, therefore when one human decides not to follow it, it has no hold on him. The bear doesn't know, the man doesn't care. The result is the same: the "prey" can only fight or flee.

I think that every time they speak

When did I ever assert that rich people were superior to poor? What I am saying is that within the natural order, the weak are always prey to the strong. The only "right" they have is to fight for survival, but because they are weaker, they usually lose. Law exists to mitigate that tendency, but does not negate it. If you are walking through the woods and a bear attacks you, you have no "right" to safety, all you can do is fight or run. Replace the words "woods" with "city" and "bear" with "criminal" and the essential dynamics of the situation are the same. The philosophical constructs of civil society don't exist.

"Liberal contamination" implies that I view liberalism in any form as bad, this is not so. Liberalism has been an important part of Western Civilization, though modern liberals often attack that civilization even though it is the basis of their existence. Liberalism, like any philosophical framework, is not inherently good nor bad. I tend to see liberalism in general as a kind of political steroid: taken in controlled doses it makes our society stronger, but if you use too much your balls shrink and you get cancer. We're getting to the "no gonads, rotting from within" stage right now.

Of course, todays "liberals" are in many ways not liberal at all. Of the ten most irrational and intolerant people I know, eight consider themselves liberals. Of the other two, one is a very militant Baptist and the other is a skinhead. Neither of them make the top five.

Ah, there is hope! I am astounded by how many people on this board are so dead-set against law abiding citizens owning weapons. If someone wants to kill people, particularly people who live in a pressurized dome, you don't need a weapon as such. It's always good to see that there are a few people in here who recognize that weapons are not inherently evil, but merely tools.

Now before everyone gets all riled up, I'm not defending the bombing of women and children. However, the culture of Japan needs to be taken into account. Hitting a purely military target probably would not have been enough to force a surrender, the japanese military fought tenaciously against hopeless odds on several occasions throughout the war. Also, since we only had two bombs, we were forced to make them count.

To us, Tokyo would be a logical target, but then who would surrender? There was a very real and justifiable concern that any surrender not endorsed by the Emperor would not be honored by the Japanese military. Unfortunately, we had to demonstrate that we were willing to utterly destroy the nation of Japan and that we had the capability to do it while still leaving the leadership intact to surrender.

All these "Martian Constitutions", while interesting at times, are kind of a pointless exercise. Mars colonies will need some form of backing on Earth just to get the funding, whether it be government backing or corporate funding. In either case, the colonists will have large parts of the constitution written for them as a condition of that funding. No one is going to fund a Mars colony just for the hell of it; they'll want some return and a fair amount of control.
Eventually the colony will throw off the old and devise a government of their own, in which case any Terran-written constitution would be meaningless. Current planning for Martian government should probably be limited to basic principles rather than actually writing out a legal framework.

Here's something to consider. The threat that the US faces regarding a potential nuclear attack comes not from advanced countries (with the exception of China, which itself has limited capability), but primarily from small, under-developed nations with extremely limited nuclear capability. From a practical standpoint missile defense can be made to work against such a threat because they simply do not have the capability to overwhelm the system. If it can hit two or three missiles that's probably enough, considering the nations that are likely to try to launch something at us.
Now why would they try to launch at us? It makes no logical sense from our perspective, but then I'd imagine things might look different from Baghdad or Pyongyang. The United States is by far the most powerful nation on Earth, and nuclear weapons are on a whole different plane from conventional weapons. Governments of these countries tend toward a regional view, they aren't as global-minded as America and our allies.
In short, the (dictatorial) governments of smaller nations that have recently achieved nuclear capability (by buying much of the needed material and know-how abroad) may not understand what they are dealing with. It seems plausible that, just maybe, these governments look at nukes in a grossly simplistic manner as merely bigger bombs, lacking an understanding of what their full effects are, their actual destructive capability, and the level of response their use would draw from the major powers.
Considering what the US is preparing to do to Iraq for simply trying to build one, imagine the response if Iraq used a nuke to rid themselves of the American aircraft carriers in the Gulf, for example. And that could be justified as a purely military use! If they took out an American city. . . Then everyone would understand the magnitude of what they're dealing with.
Okay, I'll quite rambling now.

Since I have no desire to get mired in this mess, I'll make this brief. The workability of various economic systems aside, the concept of "equality" keeps popping up and this is what is going to make or break any of these ideas. To those seeking a system with equality of opportunity, I'm with you one hundred percent.
Now, some seem to be after equality of outcome. Bad idea. While saying so is heresy in some circles, PEOPLE ARE NOT EQUAL! All individuals are not the same, all individuals do not have the same abilities. To act otherwise will require imposing punishments on anyone who rises above the mediocrity of the mass, (which destroys any pretext of equality anyway!) A better future is something we should strive for, but chucking reality because it doesn't fit with our vision will not help anyone.

Given that the United States was built on broken treaties, I hardly see any reason to worry too much about the Outer Space Treaty. If we decide to go to Mars, we're gonna go. If we decide to develop it, we'll do it. The rest of the world may voice some opposition, which will no doubt initially be addressed with much more concern than it it really merits, but in the end a thousand screams of protest from the UN won't mean much. Mars is going to belong to whoever can get there and "occupy" it.

Not exactly. If they have an army massed and moving to attack the base (which I'd imagine would be quite an undertaking) then the threat is credible. If they simply announce their desire, or even intention, to attack it is not. If their potential to attack or desire to attack is considered enough to justify retaliation it establishes a dangerous precedent. Can we then imprison someone for expressing a desire to rob a bank, for example?

The government of Afghanistan aided and harbored those that attacked us, therefore we are justified in removing that government. The American campaign has, as much as is practical, avoided bringing harm to the civilian population. That is the difference, the Terran example is directed against a government, your Martian example is directed against the entire population.

The primary purpose of a government is to protect the people it governs.

No. If a government must shut down life support, and it can be justified by the extreme danger of the situation, it is acceptable. However, government should not be granted the power to do so before hand. Is it clean and simple? No. But it makes the decision to shut off the air harder and riskier, as it should be.

The Commander wrote... "Even if a Martian Authority mandated it, anyone intent on defying the Authority's laws would disable it long before they took any other action."

To which Clark replied,

No, it's not irrelevant. It is, in fact at the very heart of the matter. If a system is in place for a central Martian Authority to shut off life support, it CAN and WILL BE disabled by those it would be used against. Disabling it would be a prerequisite for taking any threatening action. Therefore, while giving the government authority to shut of life support will not prevent a single criminal act and will not allow a resolution to a single conflict, what it will do is establish a precedent that the government can use whatever means it wants to get its way, assuming it can scare people into believing it's actions are necessary. I'm a confessed Fascist and I know that's wrong!

Economic embargo's simply kills innocent people, leaving the criminals to run the country and live like kings- yet we accept that action as legitimate and "humane". How is that any different?

On the first point, I agree. Economic embargos are ineffective and they harm the population, not the government. If there's one hotdog in Iraq, Saddam's eatin' it.
On the second point, it can be justified if the government doing the bombing is acting to protect its people. But, for the record, we don't do much bombing of cities anymore.

I'm not going to deny that on occasion innocent people are convicted and sentenced to death. It is unfortunate, and there can be no compensation for it. This is a thorny issue for those of us who support the death penalty, but we have to be practical. At any rate, the flaw is not in the existence of the death penalty but in the judicial process that institutes it. (A judicial process making a mistake, imagine that...)
By the way, are you insinuating that executing a wrongfully convicted person is comparable to willfully killing the entire population of a city? You question whether it's acceptable to allow one person to be excuted wrongly, yet advocate the same for hundreds?

Does anyone even remember what this thread was originally about? If anyone would like to get back on topic, feel free. Clark and I seem to have driven everyone away with our ranting.

The credibility of the threat. A hijacked airliner can be flown into a building.  A dome is immobile, therefore to carry out a threat against another dome requires launching missiles, invading, or some other such undertaking. If that is a viable threat, whatever action is needed IS warranted. The question is whether the threat is credible (hijacked aircraft) or merely posturing (Saddam Hussein's "Mother of all Battles" rant comes to mind.)

It's a different argument. This isn't like bombing Afghanistan, a foreigh state that committed (or aided) an act of war against us. If American Dome-A was actually physically attacked by Afghan Dome-B, retaliation is warranted, preferably in a manner that minimizes civilian casualties, which the US campaign in Afghanistan has tried to do whenever practical.
One nation responding against another to an act of war is completely acceptable. If that is the scenario on Mars, we are in agreement.
If Dome-A and Dome-B are governed by the same body it's a different issue. Then a better analogy is "terrorists take over a building in Los Angeles and threaten to kill them if their demands are not met." Do we bomb the building they're in? Obviously not, because the prime responsibility of government is to protect its citizens and killing the hostages with the terrorists serves no purpose.
If we're dealing with hostile Martian states that are legitimate and credible threats, shutting down life support can be justified. Of course it won't be so easy, I won't let you have a switch to shut off my air and I'm quite certain you would have objections to giving me one. Even if a Martian Authority mandated it, anyone intent on defying the Authority's laws would disable it long before they took any other action.
If the threat is from criminals within the colony, shutting off life support simply kills innocent people while protecting no one (I'm assuming that any given area could be contained with pressure doors)

An option that doesn't make sense. When it is justified, it's unusable for reasons previously stated.

Because most criminals who commit capital offenses cannot be rehabilitated and keeping them in prison for life is a waste of resources.

There are two ways to do what you propose.
One: Dome-A threatens to destroy/secede/or takes hostages from Dome-B. Dome -B, after the vaunted "judicial review", shuts down Dome-A's life support. Unless every single resident of Dome-A is part of the plot, state murder of innocent people is the result. The comparison to a hijacked airliner is misleading in that an aircraft can be used as a weapon to kill far more people than are on the aircraft. You can't ram two pressurized domes together, anyone who takes control of one can only kill those inside. Shutting off life support kills everyone inside while preventing nothing, so what is being protected?
Two: In order to avoid killing innocents, police forces are sent in to evacuate them. In this case the whole argument becomes irrelevant because you already have cops on the scene. Apprehend the offenders, or if that is too difficult, shoot them. It's mundane and doesn't take advantage of the Martian enviroment, but it works and it doesn't needlessly kill bystanders.
Shutting off life support is not a logical extension of current methods of capital punishment and it is not a question of efficiency. Doing so is laziness at best and barbaric tyranny at worst.
Also, for the record, I strongly support the death penalty.

Even though I am one of those arrogant Americans that the rest of the world has grown to despise, I have reservations about America governing Mars. However, let's look at the options.
United Nations control: Since the UN has botched everything it has ever gotten its multinational hands into and has a web of bureacracy that dwarfs even the mighty US government behemoth, UN control is the worst possible outcome.
Second, we have independent Mars as Zubrin has advocated. Good, but how? No one is going to fund a colonization effort without expecting some return, meaning they will insist on a fair amount of control. For the short term, Mars for the Martians is not practical.
Finally, since America will almost certainly play a major in any Martian missions, and that the other two options are unworkable I, for one am forced to conclude that (in my best Senator Palpatine impression.) I'm afraid we're going to have to accept American control for the time being.