Heinlein and the Radicals
I did an interview for an online magazine where I said Heinlein would not win an award from the modern World Con, because World Con had been taken over by social justice warriors who disdained Heinlein’s unique brand of ‘rational anarchism’ (which looks remarkably like what we would call libertarianism), and his attitude toward the war between the sexes — and I was astonished to read social justice warriors stoutly defending their loyalty to Heinlein, and belittling my remark.
This was not one man saying he himself was a fan of Heinlein, he merely denied that there have been loud and repeated public statements by his faction denouncing Heinlein for thoughtcrime.
Heinlein was a stinging gadfly. He wanted to startle the reader out of any complacent laziness of thought, and to question any fundamental assumptions that had not yet been questioned.
This is the mere antithesis of a social justice warrior approach. They hate questions.
Now, there is one exception that proves the rule: The socialist insists only on using skepticism to destroy the moral authority of the institutions he wishes to destroy (namely, Anglo-American Law, Greco-Roman philosophy and science, Judeochristian morals and theology, or, more briefly, the socialist wants to destroy monotheism, monogamy, marketplace).
Note that Heinlein, in his famous (or notorious) STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND, mercilessly mocked monogamy and monotheism, preaching free love and Gnosticism with an appalling innocence about the real world effects of such lifestyles and ideas.
But since he did not preach for the abolition of the marketplace and the political freedoms needed to support them, this man, who was in the forefront of introducing minority characters as heroes and heroines in science fiction (Podkayne of Mars, Juan Rico of the MI) is denounced as a racist.
The argument given by the Left is that the Arachnoids in STARSHIP TROOPERS are a ‘dog whistle’ or ‘stand-in’ for some other race, such as the Japanese, who likewise fought in tunnels during World War Two, and therefore the use of the word ‘Bugs’ is a racist slur against — uh — someone or other.
Let us look to that unfailing weathercock of Leftist thought, Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_A._Heinlein#Race):
Some of the alien species in Heinlein’s fiction can be interpreted in terms of an allegorical representation of human ethnic groups. It has been suggested that the strongly hierarchical and anti-individualistic “Bugs” in Starship Troopers were meant to represent the Chinese or Japanese…”
The argument is too idiotic to bear repeating or refuting: the Bugs in TROOPERS are communists. That is as obvious as being hit by a brick between the eyes. Mr Heinlein was not enamored of being subtle or delicate in his use of symbols.
Outside of the limited and one-sided use of skeptical inquiry meant only to undermine Western institutions, the social justice warrior condemns skepticism as a moral failing, indeed, as a heresy and a thoughtcrime.
Merely to question, for example, the proper role for male and female, to question the alleged scientific evidence of Global Warming (or is it Global Cooling this fashion season among the Smart Set?), the biological sense of same-sex mating rituals called marriage, or the morality of plunder and redistribution of the wealth rightly belonging to other men, will be greeted with Odium Theologicum, that particular venomous hatred theologians have for heretics.
This is because Leftism is a religion. Leftism is merely an atheistic and materialistic religion, or, in other words, a stupid form of religion that contradicts itself at the outset.
It is the ingratitude of the Left toward one of their foremost standard bearers — Heinlein had me convinced of all the basic talking points of leftwing sexual morality in my youth and early manhood, and certainly shored up my faith, or faithlessness, in atheism — that I find so breathtakingly shocking.
Gratitude, the sensation of getting a grace one does not deserve, is the secret to happiness. Ingratitude, the sensation of being cheated of one’s own, is the key that unlocks the smoldering furnace pits of hell, and opens nothing but a fall into misery without a floor.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
