If you search Heritage Auction and Superior Galleries, you can buy a spacesuit or put one together.

Eh... Not quite. Only several portions of the Federal Service in Starship Troopers were considered "Military." They were the biggest portions, but not the only ones.

The gist of it is as long as you didn't do any of the "31 Crash Landings", they couldn't kick you out for anything. You might not survive your job, but they gave everyone every chance to earn their citizenship.

For example, there's an older man enrolled in the Mobile Infantry training in the book, Starship Troopers. In the course of training, he is seriously injured. The man refuses to take an Injury / Good Conduct Discharge which would have prevented him from earning his citizenship. When he eventually healed enough, they made him the training camp cook so that he would eventually (we assume) complete his term and become a citizen.

I don't know about that. I do grant that the historical facts are that Freed Slaves could vote until the so-called "Black Laws" of the 1830s took away their rights. Similarly, women in the 1830s did in both the UK and USA have some right to vote in local elections if they were property owners. However, just as often (UK) they were required to cast their vote in the name of a male relative.

Your knowledge of history is incomplete.

You took a hit on that. +1 back to 1 for speaking the truth.

+1 but not holding my breath. The best outcome is that people come to the book. The same is true of Atlas of course.

Dangerous to the statists doesn't concern me at this point. I agree that making something mandatory is an admission that the system is broken and biased to the extreme against liberty and free markets.

When was the last time you saw a textbook. I took college economics in 2006. Milton Friedman was the mainstream. Left and right (literally: facing page; opposite page) of him were Karl Marx and Ludwig von Mises.

"We... we... we..." is the wrong message, no matter who "we" are. Kids will find what they find on their own. See the Ayn Rand Institute "Essay Contests". Many of the winners come from Catholic schools. They surely are not getting "our" message there, granted that yours may not be exactly the same as mine.

The Dune works are my first favorite series (second favorite book after Starship Troopers). I just finished Children of Dune for the uncountable times, and will start the 4th one (again), soon.

Starship Troopers and Dune have formed more of my opinion about government than any other books out there. Atlas Shrugged basically agreed with my conclusions after.

Personally, I did not like Captain America: Winter Soldier as much as the first one. I fail to see how that movie actually un-programs anyone.

People un-program themselves. I know a narrative: The students in a psychology class slouched and looked away until their professor touched the knot of his necktie. Then they sat up and paid attention. They conditioned him. Once they told him, the habit disappeared, further attacking and discrediting "conditioning."

Personally, I believe that it is much more personal. Some people discover the truth; others follow the crowd.

Tell you what: You find me one person here who was a conformist before they read Atlas Shrugged. Even the so-called "conservatives" traditionalist as they are stand out head and shoulder above the mainstream.

Flag on the play! Voting was NOT limited universally to white males. Not at all! That is a modern liberal myth.

Voting was limited to anyone who could pass those tests, i.e. Land owners, and taxpayers... The vast majority of voters turned out to be white males because Women and Blacks were hardly ever land owners or taxpayers (at that time), but it is a damned lie that any races were excluded on the mere basis of race.

It was only much later at the concept of "Universal Suffrage" where "everyone" was given the vote without any sort of gate (owning land, paying taxes) did they start to explicitly exclude Women and Blacks, often in liberal democrat states and districts.

Me too!

Was Sixth Column a YA story???

Have Space Suit; Will Travel is wonderful and would make a great movie.

Jan

If robots are the models for ideal human behavior, then I Robot is not a good book. But I think that we are eventually going to be 'living on Solaria' (where the robots outnumber the humans ten thousand to one), in which social model robots are not idealized humans but are a type of product (/life) on their own. This leaves humans to be...well...human. Solaria is one vision of the post-affluent society, where all of your physical wants are taken care of and the question becomes, "What do you want to do with your life?"

Jan

We need to make brilliant movies, like Winter Soldier, that make it heroic to be competent and a proponent of freedom. If all a person has for their mental furniture is 'dystopias and socialism' they will not see welfare and the 'evil rich businessmen' as anything other than the mere nature of reality.

This is not tricking people, MM, this is 'untricking' them. We have to break their conditioning, and we have to do it within our own rules of appropriate behavior.

Jan

Certainly, if socialist philosophy is represented in textbooks, we should claim right to equal representation - this would be required reading (aka It's your Text Book). I think that people are only getting exposed to one side of the philosophical spectrum.

Jan

I hope he does this.

I hope it is great.

Jan

Various colonies had different restrictions: some required one to be a property owner, some required taxpayer, other allowed anyone who had been in military service to vote. Several colonies had religious restrictions; of course voting was universally limited to white males.

The religious restrictions were dropped fairly early, but many of the other restrictions remained up through the first quarter of the 19th century. And we all know how difficult it was to break the 'while male' rule.

Jan

Actually, some of his books written for young people (ex: Red Planet, Sixth Column) are among my favorites.

As Mike indicates, we have enough jobs that do not require physical stamina that we could be a lot more comprehensive about enlisting everyone who volunteers. I also think that officers should all come up through the ranks. Transparency declaration: I am a third generation maverick (only I never made it out of the enlisted ranks, so I was personally just a proto-maverick).

Anyone who wants to volunteer for the military should not be disqualified for physical weakness or religious preferences. If someone has a religious/philosophical problem with respect to being in combat, then they can work in a hospital or shuffle papers in Admin. Disqualification for mental or moral grounds should still be acceptable/encouraged.

Jan

While I think Moon is a Harsh Mistress may be the story with the most intellectually satisfying themes, I reread "Double Star" and "Door into Summer" about once a year. For some reason I keep coming back to "Have Spacesuit will Travel".

Writing about this makes me think that they are tied together with what Jan calls "competence porn". They are about competent people who use their skills and intellect to solve problems.

"Have Space Suit; Will Travel" was probably the second SF book I read. It is still one of my favorites.

Jan

The books themselves can be read by those people who want to read them, but what is the current alternative to the barrage of political correctness and social endowment that the texts discuss? It would be very refreshing for there to be a chapter on Heinlein in discussions of modern society.

Jan

Double Star was incredibly insightful. I picked that up in an airport (in Hong Kong) when I was about 15, and devoured it.

Jan

Heinlein is also one of my favorite authors - much of a bookshelf is devoted to his works in my library (though I have avoided some of his later works). He played around with many philosophies in his early stories and settings, but MIAHM is the most concrete depiction of his mature philosophy and storytelling. The themes of competence and freedom are strong in all of his stories...I think that his philosophy wandered around because he was using his writing to explore 'how best to achieve those goals'.

I find SM Stirling's "Island in the Sea of Time" series to be Heinleinian. (The Island of Nantucket ends up ~3000 years in the past. Cope with it.)

Back to Heinlein: Farnham's Freehold is probably my least favorite. I am quite fond of Tunnel in the Sky.

Jan

Well, I have to say that THIAHM is something far easier to make a movie of than Starship Troopers.

It might even wind up bearing a passing resemblence to the novel in the end.