heinleinblog

Dwayne A. Day’s July 2 article for The Space Review:

With these concepts in mind, it is worth looking at a rather amazing memo that Heinlein wrote in 1945 advocating a rigorous American missile and space program. Heinlein wrote it soon after the United States dropped the atomic bomb on Japan. He argued that the bomb had changed the world and he believed that intercontinental rockets would also have a major effect on warfare. He wanted the United States to get out in front of this new development like it had with the bomb.

There are many interesting aspects to the memo, but what is unique about it is that it occupies a point precisely in the middle of the overlap between science fiction and current reality. Although Heinlein thought that he was discussing the world as it was-or was about to be-his own interests in rockets and spaceflight were biasing his projections. He was advocating solutions to current problems that were far more fantastical than practical. Heinlein was certainly not alone in this. Many people looked at the atomic bomb and made dire predictions that fortunately proved false. But Heinlein believed in rocketry and spaceflight so fervently that it led him to conclusions that were not well-grounded in the actual technical realities of his day. That is worth considering today, six decades later, when Heinlein is still held in such high esteem as a prophet for the NewSpace movement.

I am continuously amazed at how RAH is revered as a guru in the worlds of fiction, politics and science.

[tags]Heinlein,Robert A. Heinlein,space flight,rockets,Space Review[/tags]

There’s the beginnings of a good discussion on that question in alt.fan.heinlein.

Commenters insist the book is shock full of examples of characters in the Federal Service without being in the military. However, James Giford writes (PDF format) that there is no specific example of someone being able to earn Citizenship except through uniform-wearing military service. Gifford cites examples of clerks, technicians, scientists who clearly were “civilians” even though they worked for the military. And the novel clearly states that civilians did not earn the right to vote.

I am going to have to re-read the book and keep a highlighting pen handy. But Gifford seems to make a few good points here. It seems to be that there are examples of people who could not serve as fighting soliders who were instead given jobs within the military. That doesn’t imply they didn’t get uniforms or weren’t made subject to military discipline. Again, a critical reread on my part is necessary.

It’s an ipmporant question because the premise of the book is that only veterans were allowed to vote. It’s this premise that leads critics to incorrectly conclude that Heinlein was a “fascist.” It’s important to remember that Heinlein wasn’t necessarily advocating anything other than government comprised of people who understood and were accustomed to taking responsibility. Heinlein saw that personality trait among those who proudly served their country in war. There’s nothing fascist about that.

This charge was made in the 1960s, when anything to the right of center was dismissed as reactionary and being in the military meant you were a baby burner. Political opinions forged in that crucible do not die easilly. That is why this specific slur against Heinlein refuses to die.

NOTE: Of course, I might have to wait until I finish up Charles Sheffield’s “The Nimrod Hunt.” I haven’t figured out who the heros and villains are yet. And I have been wanting to delve into Spider’s “Time Pressue,” which I found in a box after I moved.

NOTE 2: I read the book again tonight. It’s still moving and thought provoking. And I used a highligher to mark every single passage in which the nature of Federal Service is discussed. While enlistees often though non-combat jobs, and enlistees who wanted to fight often found themselves serving in non-combat roles, there is NO PASSAGE anywhere that says you could enlist in Federal Service and be considered anything other than military.

So, I think we can put to bed the myth that it’s a myth that only military veterans had the right to vote in “Starship Troopers.”

Government employment is often permanent employment, and the quality of service from civil “servants” is about what you expect from someone who cannot get fired. Heinlein didn’t think any more highly of workers sucking at the government teat any more than do most libertarians of today. “In a mature society, ‘civil servant’ is semantically equal to ‘civil master’,” Lazarus Long said in Time Enough for Love (1973). Lazarus spoke highly of Ira Weatheral’s method of governance on the planet Secundus: Ignore problems until they go away.

Ira says a good leader “keeps a sharp eye out and his ear turned for signs that subordinates are doing too much unnecessary governing. Half of my time is used in the negative work of plucking such officious officials and ordering that they never again serve the public in any capacity.”

“No matter how lavishly overpaid, civil servants everywhere are convinced they are horribly underpaid-but all public employees have larceny in their hearts or they wouldn’t be feeding at the public trough,” said Marjorie Friday Baldwin in Friday (1982).

In To Sail Beyond The Sunset (1987), Maureen Johnson recounts her father’s opinion of public employees: “There is a ready solution for anyone on the public payroll who feels that he is not paid enough; He can resign and work for a living. This applies with equal force to Countermen, Welfare ‘clients,’ school teachers, generals, garbage collectors, and judges.”

You don’t have to be a libertarian to oppose gun control, but libertarians are strong defenders of Second Amendment rights.

RAH shared this libertarian perspective. According to letters included in Grumbles from the Grave (1989), the original draft of Red Planet (1949) included a lecture on the evils of gun registration. Heinlein’s editor balked and insisted on a rewrite.

He rewrote the passage into a lecture from father to son on the need for gun safety. Heinlein explored the possibility a world with absolutely no gun control in Beyond This Horizon (1942). In this tale, any person can go armed. Duels are a fact of life and are not considered crimes — as long as the other person was also an “armed citizen.” In other words, it the only gun control was self control and personal responsibility.

Horizon is not considered Heinlein’s best work, by far. Yet it introduced a favorite quote among libertarians: “An armed society is a polite society.”

Some believe that Heinlein’s views shifted to the right. Isaac Asimov — a close friend when RAH was married to first wife Leslyn — blamed this shift on the influence of Virginia Heinlein, his second wife.

The problem is that Horizon establishes Heinlein’s pro-gun viewpoint during a period in which Heinlein’s latter-day critics contend he was a liberal. This lends credence to the contention of Heinlein scholar Bill Patterson and others that Heinlein’s core beliefs shifted little or not at all, while the popular definition of “liberal” drifted far to the left, leaving Heinlein to be labeled a conservative.

 

 

In his own words, Heinlein found common ground with those at the forefront of modern libertarianism.

“I would say that my position is not too far from that of Ayn Rand’s; that I would like to see government reduced to no more than internal police and courts, external armed forces — with the other matters handled otherwise. I’m sick of the way the government sticks its nose into everything, now,” he said in The Robert Heinlein Interview And Other Heinleinana by J. Neil Schulman.

Heinlein was much more colorful when expressing the thoughts of Jubal Harshaw, Heinlein’s thinly veiled surrogate in Stranger in a Strange Land (1961) - “Government! Three-fourths parasitic and the rest stupid fumbling –Oh, Harshaw conceded that man, a social animal, could no more avoid government than an individual could escape the necessity of bowel movements. But simply because an evil was necessary was no reason to term it good. He wished that government would wander off and get lost!”

These thoughts also saw light Podkayne of Mars (1962). “…Think about it,” says Poddy’s Uncle Tom, himself a former politician. “Politics is just a name for the way we get things done… without fighting. We dicker and compromise and everybody thinks he has received a raw deal, but somehow after a tedious amount of talk we come up with some jury-rigged way to do it without getting anybody’s head bashed in. That’s politics. The only other way to settle a dispute is by bashing a few heads in… and that is what happens when one or both sides is no longer willing to dicker. That’s why I say politics is good even when it is bad… because the only alternative is force — and somebody gets hurt.”

In 1946, Heinlein wrote TAKE BACK YOUR GOVERNMENT: A Practical Handbook For the Private Citizen Who Wants Democracy To Work. It was published after his death. In it he wrote:

“From politics I have come to believe the following:

(1) Most people are basically honest, kind and decent.

(2) The American people are wise enough to run their own affairs. They do not need Fuehrers, Strong Men, Technocrats, Commissars, Silver Shirts, Theocrats, or any other sort of dictator.

(3) Americans have a compatible community of ambitions. Most of them don’t want to be rich but do want enough economic security to permit them to raise families in decent comfort without fear of the future. They want the least government necessary to this purpose and don’t greatly mind what the other fellow does as long as it does not interfere with them living their own lives. As a people we are neither money mad nor prying. We are easygoing and anarchistic. We may want to keep up with the Joneses — but not with the Vanderbilts. We don’t like cops.

(4) Democracy is not an automatic condition resulting from laws and constitutions. It is a living, dynamic process which must be worked at by you yourself — or it ceases to be democracy, even if the shell and form remains.

(5) One way or another, any government which remains in power is a representative government. If your city government is a crooked machine, then it is because you and your neighbors prefer it that way — prefer it to the effort of running your own affairs. Hitler’s government was a popular government; the vast majority of Germans preferred the rule of gangsters to the effort of thinking and doing for themselves. They abdicated their franchise.

(6) Democracy is the most efficient form of government ever invented by the human race. On the record, it has worked better in peace and in war than fascism, communism, or any other form of dictatorship. As for the mythical yardstick of ‘benevolent’ monarchy or dictatorship — there ain’t no such animal!

(7) A single citizen, with no political connections and no money, can be extremely effective in politics.”

Heinlein has been accused of being a fascist or at least, hostile to democracy. Obviously, this was not the case in 1946, at about the time he was supposedly beginning his transition into an authoritarian and fascist.

Robert A. Heinlein met Virginia Gerstenfeld where they both worked at the Philadelphia Navy Yard during World War 2. They married her 1948. She, like her husband, was a former naval officer. By all accounts, Virginia was and still is a remarkable human being, as were most of the female protagonists in Heinlein’s fiction. “Ginny” learned the Russian language prior to the couple’s famous visit to the Soviet Union in 1960s. She helped him build their home in Colorado. Virginia not only nursed her husband a series of illnesses, she handled virtually all his correspondence and assisted him in writing and research. If not for her, there would have been no Stranger in a Strange Land, no Starship Troopers and no Moon is a Harsh Mistress, nor would there exist his profound influence on the entire genre. The world of science fiction owes her a debt of gratitude.

But there are those who believed that Mrs. Heinlein deserved more “blame” than “gratitude.” This group includes Isaac Asimov:

“… although a flaming liberal during the war, Heinlein became a rock-ribbed far-right conservative immediately afterward. This happened at just the time he changed wives from a liberal woman, Leslyn, to a rock-ribbed far-right conservative woman, Virginia… I used to brood about it in puzzlement (of course, I never would have dreamed of asking Heinlein — I’m sure he would have refused to answer, and would have done so with the uttermost hostility), and I did come to one conclusion. I would never marry anyone who did not generally agree ith my political, social, and philosophical view of life.” (From I, Asimov: A Memoir, 1994.)

Asimov is wrong on many levels.

His description of Heinlein as a “rock-ribbed far-right conservative” is incorrect. Many of Heinlein’s beliefs are shared with the right. There is no “right,” as far as liberals are concerned. “Far-right” is their term for anyone less liberal than they. Other of Heinlein’s beliefs would be described as left wing. Also, Heinlein’s politics never shifted that much, but the concept of what defines “liberal” and “conservative” did change. Asimov commits a mistake in reasoning, namely that if B followed A, then A caused B. What really caused a change in Heinlein’s political outlook was the development of nuclear weapons. He started writing cautionary tales almost immediately afterwards.

On a personal level, Asimov’s attempt to blame Mrs. Heinlein for her husband’s shift in politics is nothing less than an attempt to emasculate Heinlein. Democrats tried to do the same thing to Ronald Reagan when they blamed his change from a New Deal Democrat and leader of the actor’s union into a Republican.

Asimov’s ego just couldn’t handle the fact Heinlein dared to have strongly held opinions differing from his own. What did Asimov think Mrs. Heinlein was doing, rewriting his books to insert conservative dogma? Perhaps Starship Troopers was originally about a non-violent Galactic Peace Corps? Perhaps the revolutionaries of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress staged sit-down protests and hunger strikes? Bull! Heinlein was forcefull personality, unlikely to completely to be compelled by anyone to alter his way of thinking.

After her husband’s death, she edited several titles, including Tramp Royale (the story of the couple’s tours across the world) and Grumbles from the Grave (a collection of letters). Mrs. Heinlein is alive and well and resides on the Atlantic coast.

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress popularized the concept of There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch, or TANSTAAFL. (Actually, the phrase may have its roots in the writings of ethicist Alvin Hansen in 1952, only he used the phrase “there is no such thing as a free lunch” or TINSTAAFL.)

In Heinlein’s novel, citizens of the moon expected to pay for what they received, even the air they breathed. These hearty, self-reliant people cast off their repressive masters on Earth and established a a free society. This book is beloved by libertarians.

The point of the phrase is that people must be responsible for their own welfare, not the state. Heinlein literature abounds with comments and situations in which a lack of self-reliance has a degrading effect on the human condition. This is where the “no free lunch” comes into play.

Heinlein was deeply suspicious of state-sponsored altruism to help the poor. He believed it robbed them of their independence. In I Will Fear No Evil, Heinlein introduces Joe Branca, the wife of the novel’s heroine. Joe is the illiterate product of an alcoholic welfare mother. Branca is deeply embittered over the government’s continued subsiding of his mother’s alcoholism. The book’s is set in a future society wracked by lawlessness caused in part by a paternalistic government ruling over an increasingly illiterate population.

In TAKE BACK YOUR GOVERNMENT: A Practical Handbook For the Private Citizen Who Wants Democracy To Work, Heinlein’s observed: ” … I was surprised to find an amazing and almost unanimous similarity in viewpoint on the part of the elderly rich and elderly poor. Mellowed and altruistic interests in the welfare and future of the whole community? Far from it! The elderly poor wanted $200 every month, or some other pension which would pay them more income than they ever earned while working, and they didn’t give a hoot what it did to the country! The elderly rich wanted the highest possible return from mortgages, rents, dividends, or other investment incomes, and they didn’t give a hoot what it did to the country.”

Another phrase that pops up throughout Heinlein’s fiction and nonfiction is “Bread and Circuses.” It refers to how theancient Roman emperors appeased the masses by distributing food and spending money on entertainment. Of course, this caused high taxes and diverted resources away from more valid state functions.

“Bread and Circuses” is the result when voters don’t head the warning of TANSTAAFL. By prmosing to hand out more goddies than their opponent, oliticians use voters’ desire for a “free lunch” to retain power. But the voters end up paying for it anyway, with higher taxes and a population unwilling to take care of themselves.

“What is supposed to happen in a democracy is that each sovereign citizen will always vote in the public interest for the safety and welfare of all. But what does happen is that he votes his own self-interest as he sees it … which for the majority translates as ‘Bread and Circuses’,” said Jubal Harshaw in Stranger in a Strange Land).

Maureen Johnson uses the phrase in To Sail Beyond the Sunset (1987) when listing the reasons for the decline of American civilization before it became a religious dictatorship under the Prophet, Nehemiah Scudder.

“Consider these:

‘Bread and Circuses’;
The abolition of the pauper’s oath in Franklin Roosevelt’s first term;’
Peer group’ promotion in public school.

These three conditions heterodyne each other. The abolition of the pauper’s oath as a condition for public charity insured that habitual failures, incompetents of every sort, people who can’t support themselves and people who won’t, each of these would have the same voice in ruling the country, in assessing taxes and spending them, as (for example) Thomas Edison or Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Carnegie or Andrew Jackson. Peer group promotion insured that the franchise would be exercised by ignorant incompetents. And ‘Bread and Circuses’ is invariably what happens in a democracy that goes this route” unlimited spending on ’social’ programs ends in national bankruptcy, which historically is always followed by dictatorship.”

Libertarians believe in religious freedom — the right to worship or not worship. Organized religion has no role in U.S. government.

Heinlein agreed.

“It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics, ” Heinlein wrote in a postscript to Revolt in 2100, which includes “If This Goes On –”, a tale of how the United States fell into a religious dictatorship under the Prophet, Nehemiah Scudder.

“History does not record anywhere at any time a religion that has any rational basis,” said Lazarus Long, Heinlein’s surrogate in Time Enough for Love. “Religion is a crutch for people not strong enough to stand up to the unknown without help. But like dandruff, most people do have a religion and spend time and money on it and seem to derive considerable pleasure from fiddling with it.”

Heinlein’s most acclaimed work, Stranger in a Strange Land, deals with a man raised on Mars who returns to Earth and starts a religion based on his Martian teachings. Job: A Comedy of Justice, deals with a fundamentalist minister’s discovery that Heaven and Hell are not what he imagined them to be.

“The Bible is such a gargantuan collection of conflicting values that anyone can prove anything from it,” said Jake Burroughs in The Number of the Beast.

The Branch Davidians were a bunch of overly religious gun lovers. Libertarians say: So what? Our nation was founded by religious gun lovers. The massacre at Waco happened after Heinlein’s death. So any opinion on this event (which weighs heavily on the minds of libertarians), must be inferred. The deaths started because of the government’s made-for-media raid to deprive the Davidians of their weapons.

Because Heinlein did not live long enough to see the government siege at Waco, we have no way of knowing exactly what he would have said when the siege started or when the tanks rolled in. But we know he believed believed in private ownership of weapons, and in many articles (”Free Men” in Expanded Universe, Requiem) urged readers to stockpile supplies (including weapons) in preparation for a coming war between the U.S. and the communist nations that Heinlein at the time believed was inevitable. Please note that no one was more pleased than Heinlein that this open conflict did not occur. Heinlein also would have defended the right of the Davidians to believe whatever the Hell they believed.

Heinlein clearly didn’t have much respect for anyone who professed to have the only inside track to God. But he did lack the arrogance, religious bigotry and self righteousness that made it possible for Bill Clinton and Janet Reno to order tanks to drive through a church on trumped-up pretense that children were in danger.

Republicans, Democrats and Libertarians all say they favor equal rights. And so did Heinlein, who believed in equality under the law, but possessed a libertarian distrust of affirmative action, set asides and quotas that perpetuate economic inequities and fosters continued animosity between the races.

Check out “Over the Rainbow” (1980) in Expanded Universe. Its hero is a black woman vice president who becomes president upon the death of the president (a character reportedly based on Nichelle Nichols, who played Uhura in the original Star Trek ). She was placed on the ticket simply to garner votes and no one in her predecessor’s cabinet has the slightest bit of respect for her skills and talents. She only becomes the best president the United States ever has, solving the problems of pollution and drugs in the military. She also gets mankind into space permanently. She unites the country by refusing to pander to special interest groups, including a group of black “leaders.” Heinlein did not suffer the delusion that all people are equal in fact, just equal under the law. Obviously, they are not; some people are smarter or stronger than others. Heinlein never believed such superiority or inferiority was based on the color of one’s skin. How un-fascist of him.

Heinlein believed race-based politics (as well as ethnicity-based, religion based, class-based, etc.) was divisive.

“What are the marks of a sick culture? It is a bad sign when the people of a country stop identifying themselves with the county and start identifying with a group. A racial group. Or a religion. Or a language. Anything, as long as it isn’t the whole population,” said Boss in Friday.

Heinlein was often coy with his readers when it comes to the race of his characters. Juan Rico in Starship Troopers is Filipino, but you have to read the book carefully to notice it. This gives lie to those who call Starship a fascist diatribe.

Dr. Richard Colin Campbell Ames in The Cat Who Walked Through Walls, is black, but this is revealed near the end of the book. Ironically, the cover of my paperback shows him as white.

Eunice, the main female character in I Will Fear No Evil, is also black, although this is revealed through had to notice clues.

“Stealth diversity” was common in Heinlein’s works. It was his way to get subversive material past editors and critics who might object.

In all honesty, some of his earliest fiction contained stereotypical characterizations and politically incorrect language (he refered to Kansas City’s “darktown society” in Requiem). But remember, his very early work was written when he was a liberal, before he became a “rock-ribbed far-right conservative” and “fascist.”

Libertarians believe it is not the place of government to provide goods and services that can be provided by the private sector. Examples are stadiums and other facilities that are used for professional sports. Libertarians believe the Social Security system can be overhauled so that investments are made in the private sector, which would provide a higher return and stimulate the economy.

Another potential target for privatization is the NASA. Libertarians believe the duties performed by this quasi-military organization could better be performed by the private sector.

Judging from his writing, Heinlein would have preferred this as well.

In The Man Who Sold The Moon (1950), entrepreneur D.D. Harriman raises the capital for the risky venture of sending the first man to the Moon. A similar private venture is described in his movie and novella Destination: Moon.

Both were written before man landed on the Moon by way of the NASA Appolo missions, all funded by the government. Heinlein was a television commentaror for the NASA missions and was honored by the space agency.

But in the end, he still favored private space efforts.

In To Sail Beyond the Sunset (1987), Maureen says this about Harriman: “The exploitation of space flourished unbelievably. Mr. Harriman’s decision to keep it out of government hands, let private enterprise go at it for profit, was vindicated.”

In the real world, so to speak, private enterprise was not allowed to “go for it” and no one has walked on the moon for 30 years.

NASA has virtually monopolized space travel in the U.S. Heinlein would be in a red hot fury over the sorry state of affairs at NASA, which acquiesced to delay after delay caused by our Russian “partners” in the permanently manned international space station.

Ironically, the former Soviets are decades ahead of us in creating economic reasons to venture into space: Advertising and tourism. Pizza Hut recently paid to have Russian cosmonauts on the international space station film an advertisement. An American millionaire recently stayed at the station in return for a huge fee paid the Russian space agency. Meanwhile, officials of the supposedly capitalistic United Stated of America clucked their tongues and bemoaned the commercialization of outer space.