War Handwavium

(Notice: this is a work in progress. It is taking way longer than I thought to write this, so until it is finished, text is subject to change without notice. I may edit/add/delete large chunks of text without warning.)

This is the war handwavium score for “Starship Troopers” the novel by Robert Heinlein.

Total score: +343 points

All War Hw Fiction Scores

!!!SPOILER ALERT!!!

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The Plot, such as it is, of Starship Troopers
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Looking at “Starship Troopers” purely from the point of view of storytelling, it isn’t a novel so much as a magazine serial that was put between two covers. There is no three-act plot that gives bones to the story. There is no initial ‘person, place, problem’ that is established within the first act of a novel. It was originally written as a magazine serial, and it reads like one.

The first chapter (and I assume the first serial in the magazine) jumps into the middle of the timeline with the main character, Johnny, in combat. I assume this was an attempt to start the story off at what Heinlein thought would be a more interesting point. Chapter two jumps back in time to when Johnny was in High School, and the remaining chapters follow chronological order after that.

The chapters show Johnny enlist, go to bootcamp, train as a Mobile Infantryman (M.I.), get assigned to a ship, go to Officer Candidate School, become a lieutenant in training and in combat, and then become an officer. Of the fourteen chapters, only two are wholly dedicated to combat scenes.

There is no up-down-up of the three-act play. Johnny is the person, in a place, but he doesn’t really have a problem. And nothing is resolved by the end of the story. The plot is entirely linear. Johnny’s development is entirely linear. Actually, that might be saying a bit more than Johnny deserves. Johnny doesn’t actually develop. Other than chapter two with a scene in high school, Johnny is going through some phase of military training. The only moment that might really qualify as “development” is on page 121, when Johnny is in boot camp and gets a letter from Mr. Dubois. At that point, Johnny realizes he’s gotten through the “hump”, the hard part, of bootcamp.

This lack of story telling structure would generally indicate bad story telling, but then Heinlein didn’t write “Starship Troopers” to tell a story. He wrote “Starship Troopers” as a polemic.

From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_Troopers

“According to Heinlein, his desire to write Starship Troopers was sparked by the publication of a newspaper advertisement placed by the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy on April 5, 1958 calling for a unilateral suspension of nuclear weapon testing by the United States. In response, Robert and Virginia Heinlein created the small “Patrick Henry League” in an attempt to create support for the U.S. nuclear testing program. During the unsuccessful campaign, Heinlein found himself under attack both from within and outside the science fiction community for his views. Starship Troopers may therefore be viewed as Heinlein both clarifying and defending his military and political views of the time.”

Two years after Heinlein wrote “Starship Troopers”, this happened:

In 1961, as Guest of Honor at the Nineteenth World Science Fiction Convention in Seattle, Heinlein would declare that with a certainty of 90% the future held just three possibilities: Russia would destroy us in a war; we would collapse internally and surrender to the Russians; or we and Russia would destroy each other, and China would be the victor. Whichever was the case, one-third of us would die. Heinlein advised his audience to build fallout shelters, stock unregistered weapons, and die gloriously.

http://www.enter.net/~torve/critics/HeinleinRoP/rahrop5.htm

Heinlein wrote “Starship Troopers” at a time when he thought with near certainty that the world as he knew it was about to end. He was so concerned with the coming apocalypse that he built a bomb shelter stocked with supplies and armed himself with weapons. It isn’t too outrageous to view “Starship Troopers” as a last ditch attempt to “straighten out” those peaceniks and prevent or at least delay nuclear armageddon.

When you dissect the book into its component parts, it becomes fairly clear that the point of “Starship Troopers” was the polemic. Below is a list of the fifteen chapters in “Starship Troopers”, and roughly what happens in that chapter. If the characters go off on long tangental conversations about politics for a length of time, it is indicated below with the word “polemic”.

Here is a chapter by chapter breakdown of the novel’s contents:

Chapter 1: flash forward to Johnny in combat
Chapter 2: Johnny kid in High School, polemic, enlists.
Chapter 3: Johnny’s first day of bootcamp
Chapter 4: Johnny at training
Chapter 5: Hendrick’s flogged and bad conduct discharge
Chapter 6: Johnny gets mail, polemics
Chapter 7: Johnny gets flogged
chapter 8: polemic. beat your puppy to train him.
chapter 9: Johnny gets in a fight on R&R, graduate
chapter 10: Johnny assigned a ship, Beunus Aries destroyed
chapter 11: Johnny signs up for OCS.
chapter 12: Johnny sees his Dad. Polemics.
Chapter 13: Johnny is a third lieutenant. Combat.
Chapter 14: Johnny is an officer. preparing to drop.

Of 14 chapters, 4 are dedicated almost entirely to providing a soapbox for Heinlein’s political polemics: talking *about* his worldview, why the world is the way Heinlein says it is, and why we must behave the way Heinlein says we must behave if we are to succeed in his world.

The remaining chapters split into two categories. Either they show Johnny going through military training preparing to operate in Heinlein’s worldview. Or the chapters show Johnny in combat against communist bugs which is Heinlein’s worldview given a narrative. Heinlein provides a mouthpiece for his worldview, and the rest of the story is provided as “proof” to reinforce that worldview.

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And what is Heinlein’s worldview?
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Heinlein’s worldview can be summed up with three statements, and every one of them is completely wrong.

First, Heinlein asserts that Federal Service is an indicator of moral character of the veteran, to the point that a former veteran can be trusted with the power to vote and the power to hold office, and their former veteran status is an indicator that they will not abuse or misuse that power.

Second, Heinlein asserts that spanking, flogging, and hanging will lead to good moral citizens. His “proof” for this is another assertion that you have to spank a puppy to house train them. Except you don’t. And countries that use harsh punishment don’t create good citizens, they create obediant citizens. There is a major difference between the two.

Third, Heinlein asserts “There is no such thing as a free lunch”. This reflects a worldview of scarcity. That the only way to get something is to sacrifice something. This scarcity view is probably why he nearly deifies the idea of sacrifice and duty. According to Heinlein, the only way to make the world a better place is through sacrifice. And this is just plain wrong.

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Mr Dubois, or, “Heinlein’s Mouthpiece”
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By Chapter 2, thirty pages into the novel, we meet Lt. Col. Jean V. Dubois, Rico’s school instructor in “History and Moral Philosophy,” who tells us: (page 33) “Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than any other factor.” He then goes on to base his entire worldview on this point.

Heinlein’s mistake appears to be that he assumes that since someone could always pull us down to the level of animals, that we can be no better than animals.

(page 238) “Man is what he is, a wild animal with the will to survive… Correct morals arise from knowing what man *is*, not what do-gooders and well-meaning old Aunt Nellies would like him to be.”

Heinlein has committed the fallacy of mediocrity. This is the fallacy that assumes that any given member of a set must be limited to the attributes that are held in common with all the other members of the set. Example: “Humans are just animals, so we should not concern ourselves with justice; we should just obey the law of the jungle.”

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/mathew/logic.html#composition

Back to Heinlein, (page 32) “Anyone who clings to the historically untrue – and thoroughly immoral – doctrine that ‘violence never settles anything’ I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and of the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler could referee,”

Heinlein seems to look at the worst of humanity and argue that humanity can be no better than its worst. Heinlein sees Hitler and says we can never be better than Hitler.

Or, at the very least, Heinlein says we must always be prepared for the next Hitler. The thing is, according to Heinlein, there is always another Hitler waiting. We must always be at war. Always.

(page 126) “Maybe someday they’ll get everything nice and tidy and we’ll have that thing we sing about, when “we ain’t gonna study war no more.” Maybe. Maybe the same day the leopard will take off its spots and get a job as a Jersey cow, too.”

Peace, according to Heinlein, is impossible. So we must always be prepared for war. And when do we go to war? Heinlein ponders this question as well, and it seems that Heinlein does not agree with the “Just War Theory”:

(page 228) “is one prisoner, unreleased by the enemy, enough reason to start or resume a war? … Yes, sir! … It doesn’t matter whether it’s a thousand or just one, sir. You fight.”

His informal “proof” of this is “Men are not potatoes”. He might as well have concluded with “San Dimas High School football rules!” He then leaves it up to Johnny as a homework assignment to prove it formally, which is convenient handwaving.

From a psychological point of view, Heinlein’s assertion that it is morally acceptable to thrust two whole nations into all out war over a single man appear to be nothing more than a worldview based on a hierarchy of power. And the enemy, according to Heinlein, is not allowed to have any power over you. And holding even a single prisoner is holding power over the other nation, and cannot be tolerated.

Heinlein again takes the fallacy of mediocrity, the law of the jungle, and applies it to his “moral code”:

(page 149) “man has no moral instinct. … We acquire moral sense…. What is moral sense? It is an elaboration of the instinct to survive…”

This is nothing more than “survival of the fittest” turned into a morality. We should obey the law of the jungle. To survive is to be right.

(page 238) “does Man have any ‘right’ to spread throughout the universe? …. The universe will let us know – later – whether or not Man has any ‘right’ to expand through it.”

The universe will let us ‘know’ if we have that right by killing us all off or letting us live. This is pure animalistic notions of morality. Law of the jungle. Those who survive are “right”.

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An Infatuation with Hierarchy of Power
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So Heinlein embraces this law of the jungle in what I would call an infatuation of the hierarchy of power.

Infatuation is defined as “to inspire or possess with a foolish or unreasoning passion”. And Heinlein is infatuated with hierarchy of power because he forwards the idea of a military utopia, a world where only people who have served in the military can vote or hold office and in Heinlein’s world, this results in utopia.

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Federal Service is Military Service
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In “Starship Troopers”, Heinlein refers to “Federal Service”, which primarily refers to military service.

When Johnny tells his father he is going to sign up for “just a term of service” (page 28) and “certainly not the infantry” (page 27), Father says the following:

(page 30) “We’ve outgrown wars. This planet is now peaceful and happy and we enjoy good enough relations with other planets. So what is this ‘Federal Service’? Parasitism, pure and simple. A functionless organism, utterly obsolete, living on the tax-payers.”

If we’ve outgrown wars, and “Federal Service” includes jobs like firemen and mailmen, then Father’s argument is complete nonsense. But if Federal Service is primarily a military job, then the fact that there are no wars would question the need for a military.

To get to vote, you must wager your life in defense of the state.

(page 235) “We ensure that all who wield [sovereign franchise] accept the ultimate in social responsibility—we require each person who wishes to exert control over the state to wager his own life—and lose it, if need be—to save the life of the state.”

The mailman doesn’t wager his life, the garbage man doesn’t wager his life.

(page 266) “But all “soft, safe” jobs are filled by civilians”

Mailman and garbageman qualify as “soft, safe” jobs.

(page 231) “And you have forgotten that in peacetime most veterans come from non-combatant auxiliary services and have not been subjected to the full rigors of military discipline; they have merely been harried, overworked and endangered—yet their votes count.”

Read that carefully. In *peacetime*, most veterans come from non-combat personel. That language implies that in times of *war*, most veterans come from combat personel.

The words of “Starship Troopers” are tightly bound to “Federal Service” being strictly limited to military service.

There’s an entire paper that goes over the argument as to whether Heinlein’s “Starship Troopers” says that Federal Service required to get the right to vote meant military service or just any kind of civilian service like being a mailman. If you think Heinlein included mailmen, go read this:

http://www.nitrosyncretic.com/rah/ftp/fedrlsvc.pdf

In summary, Federal Service refers to military service. And in the military, there are jobs that Johnny’s friend Carl will get to work with electronics. But that would be something like aircraft maintenance or missile maintenance or something like that: working on electronics that is for military hardware. And in all likelihood, Carl went to some form of military bootcamp and had at least minimal training with some weapons.

In the United States Marine Corp, there is a saying “every marine is a rifleman”. It doesn’t matter what you do in the Marine Corps, whether it be electronics or cook or barber or mailman or fireman or whatever. A marine is first and foremost a rifleman. And a marine cook is trained in the same bootcamp that a marine rifleman is trained in.

Heinlein himself was a graduate of Annapolis and worked in the Navy as an officer… in electronics. He worked on early radar systems. While an officer in the navy. So, Heinlein knew Carl would be *in* the military even if Carl was working on electronics.

Everything in “Starship Troopers” points to military service being the measure of citizenship not civilian service in non-military jobs. While some jobs in the military are not combat, all jobs in the military require the person to be trained in weapons and combat so if things really go bad, they can pick up a rifle and “wager their life” to “save the life of the state”.

Now, some of you are going to *insist* that Heinlein meant that Federal Service included mailmen and firemen and various other civilian jobs. And most likely you are insisting that because you agree with other aspects of what Heinlein suggested and don’t want the ugliness of a military-only citizenship to spoil the view.

But here’s the thing: whether Federal Service refers to military or military/civilian service, Heinlein still gets it all wrong, on the deepest and most fundamental level.

More on this in a moment.

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Military Utopia
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So, Heinlein presents a military utopia. A world where former military veterans are the only people who have the right to vote or serve in office. And this design, according to Heinlein, results in what we would call Utopia:

(page 232) “Our system works quite well… personal freedom for all is greatest in history, laws are few, taxes are low, living standards are as high as productivity permits, crime is at its lowest ebb.”

Heinlein does not like full democracy where all are created equal and all have a right to vote.

(page 232) “I have never been able to see how a thirty-year-old moron can vote more wisely than a fifteen-year-old genius… but that was the age of the ‘divine right of the common man.’ Never mind, they paid for their folly.”

They paid for their folly, because in Heinlein’s future history, the democracies of the 20th century all collapse. All of them.

(page 143) “Mr. Dubois was talking about the disorders that preceded the breakup of the North American republic, back in the XXth century. … The Terror had not been just in North America- Russia and the British Isles had it, too, as well as other places. But it reached its peak in North America shortly before things went to pieces.”

Heinlein takes “All men are created equal” and turns it into the insult that is the “divine right” of the common man. And he thinks that Democracy based on all are equal must neccessarily collapse.

But Heinlein just so happens to have a solution which just so happens to line up with someone who just so happens to have an infatuation with hierarchy of power. Only former military people can vote.

(page 233) “Under our system every voter and officeholder is a man who has demonstrated through voluntary and difficult service that he places the welfare of the group ahead of personal advantage.”

The page before this, Heinlein is insulting Plato’s Republic.

(page 232) “some weird in the extreme such as the antlike communism urged by Plato under the misleading title “The Republic”.”

This is actually one of the funniest bits of accidental irony I’ve read in a book. Plato was in military service from 409 BC to 404 BC. When the Peloponnesian War ended in 404 BC Plato joined the Athenian oligarchy of the Thirty Tyrants.

So, Plato volunteered to military service, yet Plato proposed a form of government that Heinlein found to be weird, antlike, communism. And just for extra giggles, if you’ve actually read the Republic, it’s got quite a bit in common with Heinlein’s worldview that is a hierarchy of power.

Both Plato and Heinlein propose hierarchical power structures as the basis of government. Only some people get to vote, only some people get to hold power. For Plato, it is “philosopher kings” at the top, then warriors, then everyone else. For Heinlein, it is Warriors at the top, then everyone else.

And yet, just one page after Heinlein puts down Plato’s form of government, Heinlein argues that voluntary military service is what keeps his military utopia tracking to the best possible outcome for everyone, even people without the right to vote. And yet, Plato’s military service didn’t prevent him from proposing the Republic, which Heinlein found abhorant.

The basic problem here is Heinlein asserts that the reason his form of government manages to produce a utopia is because the rulers and voters are all ex volunteer military, and this according to Heinlein proves they put the good of the people over their own selfish desires. But his criticism of Plato should have immediately showed him that his assertion was disproven by example. Plato volunteered for military service and came up with a form of government Heinlein thought was terrible. So there is no reason to believe that former military folks in his utopia couldn’t end up with something terrible.

The reason Heinlein’s government achieves utopia is because “Starship Trooper” is a *polemic* piece of fiction. And Heinlein wants his fiction to prove by example. Except a fictional example isn’t actually an example. It proves nothing.

Military service does not guarantee anything about the quality of character of the person serving.

Read that again. That is the first fundamental error that Heinlein commits. And it doesn’t matter if Federal Service is military only (which is how he presents it in the novel) and it doesn’t matter if Federal Service includes mailmen, firemen, and other civilian jobs. Heinlein gets it wrong because Heinlein asserts that Utopia is achieved because prior Federal Service somehow magically reveals something about the character of the person who served. But it doesn’t.

Prior Federal Service reveals nothing about the quality of character of the person who served. Heinlein asserts that prior service is a litmus test that proves something about the person, proves that he can be trusted with the power to vote, proves that he can be trusted with the power of political office.

Ronald Reagen was in the army. Jimmy Carter served in the Navy. Completely opposite political views. George H.W. Bush served in the Navy. George W. Bush served in the Texas Air National Guard. John Kerry served in the Navy. John McCain served in the Navy. All these politicians had prior military service, and they cover every extreme of the political spectrum, they often ran in complete opposition to each other.

And if that isn’t enough to show you that military service is no guarantee of political utopia, then how about this:

Richard Nixon was a Lieutenant commander in the navy during World War 2. And Nixon’s time in office certainly isn’t remembered as bringing us closer to Heinlein’s utopia.

And if that still doesn’t disprove Heinlein’s assertion of military service as a litmus test of character, then here’s an article from 2007 saying that the US military is allowing more recruits with criminal records to enlist to make up for dwindling volunteers during wartime.

http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-201_162-2474041.html

The Army granted more than double the number of waivers for felonies and misdemeanors in 2006 than it did in 2003.

This doesn’t mean people in the military must be bad. But Heinlein is trying to say people in the military can be trusted to vote and wield political office and do so in such a way as to *cause* utopia to occur. And that is just flat out wrong.

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A Historical Example of Heinlein’s Utopia
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In describing how Heinlein’s Utopian “Federation” came about, he says (page 229) “with national governments in collapse at the end of the XXth century, something had to fill the vacuum, and in many cases it was returned veterans.”

Then he gives a specific example of the future history of how we transitioned from a collapsed government to a utopian federation.

(path 229) “The first known case, in Aberdeen, Scotland, was typical. Some veterans got together as vigilantes to stop rioting and looting, hanged a few people (including two veterans) and decided not to let anyone but veterans on their committee.”

This specific fictional sequence actually has an example in real world history:

A government collapsed leaving a power vacuum. Criminals ran rampant. War lords fought for power. Foreign countries supported various war lords and encouraged more fighting for their own nationalist gains. The country, what was left of it, was being destroyed.

A local political leader was abusing his power. He had some women kidnapped and was holding them captive and raping them.

A veteran who had fought for the country against a foreign invader years before it collapsed got some of his fellow veterans together. They went after the local politician, freed the women, and hung the politician. The veteran decided that he and other people with his views should rule the area.

This story actually happened in history.

It is the story of how the Taliban started.

And that is what hierarchy of power can look like. Might makes right. Survival makes right.

Mullah Mohammed Omar had fought against the Soviet Union for eight years in Afghanistan. He went on to form the Taliban.

Heinlein asserts that veterans becoming vigilantes against horrible criminals results in the Federation that he envisions as utopia. But what he describes are on many levels exactly the same steps followed by the Taliban, which resulted in one of the most brutal political groups in the world, recognized diplomatically by only three nations on the planet.

Or more succinctly, having a military is neccessary, but not sufficient, to create a utopia.

You need more than military force, you need more than the law of the jungle, you need more than might makes right.

You need human rights. Rights which Heinlein dismisses as nonsense. Rights which Heinlein says is the cause of the fall of the governments of the 20th century.

(page 151) “a human being has no natural rights of any nature.”

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You must beat your puppy to train him
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Heinlein spends almost an entire chapter of the novel forwarding the worldview that extreme punishment results in (page 232) “personal freedom for all is greatest in history, laws are few, taxes are low, living standards are as high as productivity permits, crime is at its lowest ebb.”

Chapter 8 is almost entirely polemic on why flogging and hanging will result in utopia, and why prison and attempting to reform criminals will cause the downfall of society.

(page 147) “Back to these young criminals- They probably were not spanked as babies; they certainly were not flogged for their crimes. … no punishment save rare dull-but-comfortable confinements. Then suddenly… this so-called ‘juvenile delinqunt’ becomes an adult criminal-and sometimes wound up in only weeks or months in a death cell awaiting execution for murder.”

This resulted in “wolf packs of children, armed with chains, knives, homemade guns, bludgeons” who would roam around and commit robbery, murder, drug addiction, larceny, assault, and vandalism.

Heinlein’s utopia knew better how to stop crime.

(page 143) “If a boy in our city had done anything half that bad… well, he and his father would have been flogged side by side. But such thing just didn’t happen.”

Mr. Dubois then goes on to explain why flogging is the morally right thing to do: because that’s how you train puppies.

(page 144) “When your puppy made mistakes, where you angry?” …. “He didn’t know any better.” … “What did you do?” … “scolded him and rubbed his nose in it and paddled him.” … “how could you be so cruel as to spank him? You said the poor beastie didn’t know that he was doing wrong. Yet you inflicted pain. Justify yourself! Or are you a sadist?”

Johnny gets very upset at this:

(page 145) “You *have* to! … you paddle him so that he darn well won’t do it again– and you have to do it right away! Even so, he won’t learn from one lesson, so you watch and catch him again and paddle hime still harder. Pretty soon he learns. But it’s a waste of breath just to scold him.”

The above is a fallacy called hasty generalization. Johnny and Mister Dubois assume that since *they* always trained puppies by spanking them that you must *always* spank them.

Turns out, Heinlein’s notion of puppy training is flat out wrong. It may have been accepted theory back in the 1950′s but dog training experts today say spanking your dog for mistakes can make things worse and that you can train your dog without spanking them.

http://www.cesarsway.com/tips/puppytips/Housebreaking

“Don’t punish your puppy for an accident or do anything to create a negative association with her bodily functions. Stay calm and assertive and quietly remove the puppy to the place where you want him to go.”

Heinlein proposes a utopian society is available if we just beat our children as soon as they make any mistakes. His “proof” for this is that we must spank our puppies to train them properly. But turns out puppy training doesn’t require spanking. Therefore, what exactly does Heinlein have to “prove” that you must beat children?

Nothing. The thing is, Heinlein *never* proved you could spank children to reduce crime. He simply asserted it, and handwaved a proof by way of a comparison to a flawed asssertion about how you must train your puppy.

This is Heinlein’s second fundamental error. He asserts that spanking, flogging, and hanging will lead to low crime rates that are part of his military utopia. He “proves” that harsh punishment leads to good citizenry by comparing it to how we must train puppies, which is to spank them. Heinlein spends an entire chapter talking about puppy training with spanking. And every word of it is wrong.

What harsh punishment leads to isn’t good citizens, but *obediant* citizens, *compliant* citizens. All we have to do is look at some of the harshest and strictest tyrannies in the world today and we will find that tyrants with total military control of their population use fear of death to force the population into submission. That doesn’t generate good citizens, it generates obediance.

This is Heinlein’s second major error in his worldview.

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Sacrifice and Scarcity, or, The Fallacy within Libertarianism
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Heinlein’s worldview at its core is one of sacrifice and scarcity.

(page 119) “the best things in life are beyond money; their price is agony, and sweat, and devotion… and the price demanded for the most precious of all things in life is life itself-ultimate cost for perfect value.”

(page 207) “That the part should be humbly proud to sacrifice itself that the whole may live.”

(page 151) “The heroes who signed the great document pledged themselves to *buy* liberty with their lives. Liberty is never unalienable; it must be redeemed regularly with the blood of patriots or it ALWAYS vanishes.”

The problem with Heinlein’s relationship to sacrifice is that it seems to be tied to his scarcity-based view of reality. And his scarcity-based view of reality is flawed.

“There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch” is a saying that came up in the 1930′s. Heinlein popularized this saying in another novel “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress”. But he invokes the idea in “Starship Troopers” as well.

(page 118) “Nothing of value is free. Even the breath of life is purchased at birth only through gasping effort and pain… If you boys and girls had to sweat for your toys the way a newly born baby has to struggle to live you would be happier… and much richer.”

Reading this might invoke C3P0′s “We seem to be made to suffer, it’s our lot in life.” Or it might invoke an image of some old man saying how they had to walk to school in the snow, uphill, both ways.

Certainly, there are times when people sacrifice for others, but Heinlein’s view seems to go back to the law of the jungle.

Or more specifically, the law of thermodynamics. The law of thermodynamics says how the energy of a closed system is constant, and how objects tend towards thermal equilibrium, and so on.

But put more coloquially, the law of thermodynamics says: You can’t win. You can’t break even. And you can’t get out of the game.

If you were to look at a single molecule of refrigerant in a closed system in a vacuum, that molecule cannot speed up without losing energy somewhere else. To gain one thing, it must sacrifice something else. If we were to look at the molecule as a metaphor for an individual man, then that man can gain nothing for himself without sacrificing somewhere else. There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.

But if you put many refrigerant molecules together and make them part of a system, then you can do things with that system that no single molecule in a closed system could ever do. You can, for example, build a refrigerator, which is impossible with just a single molecule. If you put a large number of people together and put structures in place to organize them, they can form a system that no individual man can accomplish. They can form a society, an economy, a state.

The laws of thermodynamics are sometimes cited as a reason why evolution is impossible. The argument says that evolution and the creation of life would be a decrease in entropy, which violates the laws of thermodynamics. But the earth is not a closed system by itself. The sun is constantly adding energy. Therefore evolution doesn’t violate the law of thermodynamics. The problem is people attempt to constrain the system to be smaller than it actually is, and demand the laws of physics must hold true to that smaller system.

Put another way, it’s not entirely unlike saying that the laws of aerodynamics can’t explain how bees fly, therefore, bees can’t fly. The problem isn’t with the bees. The problem is with the person trying to insist that his limited understanding must somehow limit the real world. And it doesn’t work that way.

Heinlein seems to take the law of thermodynamics and similarly apply it to individual human beings and relate to them as separate closed systems. But this is similar to the mistake of looking at earth as a closed system and ignoring the sun. it is a failure of scale or perspective.

Heinlein zooms in on the individual, relates to them as a closed system, and then asserts that the only way for an individual to *gain* anything is if they *sacrifice* something.

This might be true of a single individual held in isolation. But this isn’t actually true in social systems. In social systems, there are scenarios that fall into a category known as “win-win”. If everyone does something minor, then everyone is better off than the minor effort. The simplest example is to take a planet populated by nothing but indivudal, self-sufficient farmers. You grow all your own food, make all your own bread, make your own clothes, make the oven which you use to bake your bread, make the steel which you will use to make the oven, perform surgury on yourself when you have an appendicitis, and so on. You are your own person, free and clear.

You’re also likely to be living in conditions comparable to lower class income or poverty level incomes compared to our current civilization. Simply by having people specialize, everyone wins. This is the inherent benefit of society itself. Society is a win-win scenario compared to independent and unconnected self sufficient farmers.

It isn’t magical thinking. Whether everyone is self-sufficient farmers or whether they are part of a collective society working together, they have 8 hours of labor they can work with. The difference is that if people work together in a society, they can specialize. And if people specialize, then 8 hours spent on a specialization can result in advantages that 8 hours as a self-sufficient and isolated farmer will never see.

But Heinlein’s worldview is focused on the individual. His worldview doesn’t see society as a whole, rather he only sees individuals who happen to be next to one another. To borrow another phrase, Heinlein can see the individual trees, but he is unable to see the advantage they have when they live together as a forest and an ecosystem.

There is such a thing as a free lunch, and the simplest example is society itself.

This is Heinlein’s third fundamental error in his worldview.

——————————————
Military versus Civilian snobbery
——————————————

Heinlein graduated from the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis in 1929, and served as an officer in the United States Navy. He was assigned to an aircraft carrier USS Lexington in 1931, where he worked on radio communications. His brother, Lawrence Heinlein, served in the Army, the Air Force, and the Missouri National Guard and rose to the rank of Major General.

Whether or not this military background instilled in Heinlein a sense of being better than the civilians around him, “Starship Troopers” presents quite a bit of animosity between military and civilians. In Starship Troopers, military people keep saying things that reflect an attitude that they’re better than civilians, and civilians quite often reflect an attitude that they’re better than being in the military.

The subtle difference seems to be that Heinlein seems to make sure that the military folks are often *demonstrably* better than civilians in his fictional world, whereas when civilians try to put down the military, they’re usually shown in Heinlein’s fictional world to be exercising an undeserved privilege, or a result of cluelessness, or both.

(page 29) Johnny’s father is trying to talk Johnny out of joining the military. Father is a successful businessman and offers Johnny a future in the family business. “you’re going to study business at Harvard; you know that… Then you’ll come home and go to work. You’ll start with the usual menial job, stock clerk or something, just for form’s sake – but you’ll be an executive before you can catch your breath… How does that strike you as a program? As compared with wasting two years of your life?”

Johnny is presented with either a life of a silver spoon or the military. In real life, people often join the military because they can’t afford to go to college on their own, or they just need a job. Heinlein presents a rigged choice to make the “civilian” choice for Johnny look like an undeserved silver spoon. On the next page, Father really lets Johnny know what he thinks about the military.

(page 30) “So what is this so-called ‘Federal Service’? Parasitism, pure and simple. A functionless organ, utterly obsolete, living on the taxpayers. A decidedly expensive way for inferior people who otherwise would be unemployed to live at public expense for a term of years, then give themselves airs for the rest of their lives.”

Within months of saying this, Earth is in all out war with the Bugs, showing Father the civilian to be clueless and naive. But it’s Heinlein’s world, and he can build up strawmen versions of civilians like Father, then build up a completely idealized version of the military, and let the reader decide that the civilians are clueless and naive. The problem is, again, Heinlein is using “Starship Troopers” as a polemic, as a way to make his argument. And one way he makes his argument, over and over, is to show civilians as clueless idiots and show the military as really knowing what’s the score. Real life has clueless military people as well as having civilians who really know the score.

In short, Heinlein always has the best versions of military characters represent his worldview and the worst versions of civilian characters represent the worldviews that oppose him. It is not a fair representation of both worldviews. It is propaganda for his worldview. And within a couple of pages, we see Heinlein idealize the military path.

(page 32) “What is the moral difference, if any, between soldier and civilian? The difference… lies in the field of civic virtue. A soldier accepts personal responsibility for the safety of the body politic of which he is a member, defending it, if need be, with his life. The civilian does not.”

This idealized presentation of military service and completely strawmanned version of civilians essentially arises out of Heinlein’s worldview of sacrifice and scarcity. If we view the world through individual scarcity, we can only make the world better through individual sacrifice. And so Heinlein has an infatuated relationship with the idea of sacrifice. He holds sacrifice as ultimate. More importantly, he asserts that those who follow *his* worldview of scarcity and sacrifice are more virtuous than anyone else. If you don’t subscribe to the scarcity/sacrifice worldview, if you can see win-win situations where society can improve itself without individuals sacrificing, then Heinlein says you are not as good as his ideal. You have no civic virtue.

This gets into interesting territory a few pages later.

(page 36) “Because it has become stylish, with some people-too many people-to serve a term and earn a franchise and be able to wear a ribbon in your lapel which says that you’re a veteran whether you’ve ever seen combat or not”.

Heinlein graduated from the naval academy and was an officer on an aircraft carrier, but he never saw combat. I hope he kept his ribbons hidden.

(page 40) Johnny is talking to a civilian doctor and the doctor says to Johnny “military service is for ants.” this is another example of civilians lookign down on military service.

(page 109) More civilian snobbery looking down on military. “The only thing we lacked was citizenship and Father regarded that as no real honor, a vain and useless thing”

While Heinlein likes to show civilians looking down on miltiary folks and military folks looking down on civilians, Heinlein’s future history shows that it is the military worldview that is the correct worldview. This isn’t terribly surprising if one assumes that Heinlein endorses the military worldview and thinks the civilian worldview is rubbish.

(page 150) “These juvienile criminals hit a low level. Born with only the instinct for survival, the highest morality they achieved was a shaky loyalty to a peer group, a street gang. But the DO-GOODERS attempted to ‘appeal to their better natures’ to ‘reach them’ to ‘spark their moral sense’. TOSH! They had no better natures. The puppy never got his spanking therefore what he did with pleasure and success must be ‘moral’.”

Civilians, in Heinlein’s story, are ineffective do-gooders who bring about the fall of our democracies. And after the fall, when the veterans step in to save the world and restore order, the only civilians around apparently are really bad civilians:

(page 230) “Probably those Scottish veterans… decided that… they weren’t going to let any… profiteering, black-market, double-time-for-overtime, army-dodging, civilians have any say about it… and historians agree that antagonism between civilians and returned soldiers was more intense than we can imagine today.”

To quote Han Solo, “I don’t know… I can imagine a lot.”

But the point is, the reason the military utopia federation ends up with the rule that only veterans can serve and only veterans can vote is because when those Scottish vets start restoring order after the collapse of democracy, as far as they can see, every civilian they see is a profiteering, black-market, overcharging, army dodging civilian, and therefore, NO CIVILIAN would be allowed to vote or rule.

While the story shows military folk and civilian folk both thinking they are better than the other, Heinlein makes sure that his fictional future history that he created as a backdrop for this story showed that the military folk spoke the truth. In the future history of “Starship Troopers” as written by Heinlein, it is the failure of civilians that brings about the fall of twentieth century democracies. In the future history of “Starship Troopers” as written by Heinlein, it is the former veterans who pull the world out of chaos and establish the best society the world has ever seen.

So, while at first glance, it might seem that Heinlein presents a world where military folks are snobbish to civilians and civilians are snobbish to military folks and therefore it all balances out somehow, that’s only first glance. When looked at in detail, it becomes clear that Heinlein is presenting strawmen versions of civilian arguments while presenting military people cast in stories that Heinlein makes up to prove that they are correct.

This animosity makes perfect sense when “Starship Troopers” is put into historical context. Heinlein wrote “Starship Troopers” in response to an ad he saw calling for a unilateral suspension of nuclear weapon testing by the United States. Heinlein wanted to keep testing nukes. Heinlein *liked* nuclear weapons.

In “Starship Troopers” nuclear weapons are used repeatedly.

(page 14) “then my first rocket hit – that unmistakable (if you’ve seen one) brilliance of an atomic explosion. It was just a peewee, of course, less than two kilotons nominal yield.”

(page 19) “I let the rocket see it” (Johnny’s rockets are all tipped with tactical nukes.)

page 293, Johnny is on the surface of a planet with a “scale six” crater from a nuclear weapon. I’m not sure how big “scale six” is, but apparently its large enough to hold a spaceship.

(page 286) “The navy had plastered the islands and that unoccupied part of the continent until they were a radioactive glaze. We could tackle the bugs with no worries about our rear.”

And what kind of bugs was Johnny fighting? Well, they were big, ugly, and nasty. They gave Johnny the willies when he first saw them. They made the neodogs in the K9 units commit suicide the first time they saw them. And, they happen to be communists.

(page 194) “We were learning, expensively, just how efficient a total communism can be… The Bug commisars didn’t care any more about expending soldiers than we cared about expending ammo.”

By page 116, Heinlein is mentioning “Das Kapital” and Karl Marx, just to tell us how wrong it is.

Given Heinlein wrote “Starship Troopers” in 1959, when the Cold War was itching to go hot at the Cuban Revolution and the Bay of Pigs invasion (the Cuban missile crisis would be only two years later in 1961), and given Heinlein wrote “Starship Troopers” in response to a call to stop above ground nuclear testing, it isn’t terribly surprising that Heinlein shows nukes as handy as grenades, and the bug enemy as a swarming mass of communists.

And given that Heinlein wrote “Starship Troopers” as a response to the civilian call to limit nuclear weapons, it isn’t surprising that Heinlein shows the civilians in “Starship Troopers” as clueless and shows military folks as knowing what’s really going on.

—————————————–
Thomas Jefferson Spinning in his Grave
—————————————–

Heinlein’s utopia is a society that has direct military rule. Only former veterans can vote. Only former veterans can hold political office. According to Heinlein, veterans have shown they have proper virtue.

(page 233) “Under our system every voter and officeholder is a man who has demonstrated through voluntary and difficult service that he places the welfare of the group ahead of personal advantage.”

Heinlein mocks the idea of civilian oversight, civilian control, over the military force. Civilians don’t know how to run a war according to Heinlein, and giving them such control will lead to a tragic end for all.

(page 159) Civilians “want to run the war–like a passenger trying to grab the controls away from the pilot in an emergency”.

I’m not sure if Heinlein is familiar with the history of Ancient Rome. But Ancient Roman history is pretty well known for having powerful Roman generals cross the Rubicon, march on Rome, and sieze power from the civilians, then declare himself emporer. It got to be so common that the Roman Senate passed a law making it illegal for a Roman general to cross the Rubicon river with his army. The river marked the boundary of Italy, and any Roman general bringing his army into Italy and towards Rome was generaly understood to be making a grab for power.

Heinlein’s military utopia of miltary rule by military veterans seems to do nothing but wish for a return to the Roman Empire, without the law against crossing the Rubicon. Not only is the power to vote in Heinlein’s utopia restricted to former veterans, the power to rule, to hold political office, is restricted to former veterans as well. Not only does the military in Heinlein’s utopia have no civil authority over them, Heinlein makes a point to *mock* the idea of civilians controlling the military as ludicrous and dangerous as a passenger trying to grab the controls of an airplane during an emergency.

And while Heinlein seems willing to invoke Jefferson when it fits his militaristic worldview:

(page 151) “Liberty is never inalienable. It must be redeemed regularly with the blood of patriots”

Or quote him directly:

(page 165) “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots. –Thomas Jefferson 1787″

Heinlein doesn’t mention that Jefferson was a stern advocate that the military be subordinate to civilian authority.

“The supremacy of the civil over the military authority I deem [one of] the essential principles of our Government, and consequently [one of] those which ought to shape its administration.” –Thomas Jefferson: 1st Inaugural, 1801.

“No military commander should be so placed as to have no civil superior.” –Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Smith, 1801. FE 8:29

“Instead of subjecting the military to the civil power, [a tyrant will make] the civil subordinate to the military. But can [he] thus put down all law under his feet? Can he erect a power superior to that which erected himself? He [can do] it indeed by force, but let him remember that force cannot give right.” –Thomas Jefferson: Rights of British America, 1774.(*) ME 1:209, Papers 1:134

It is no coincidence that the United States Constitution submits the military to civil authority. Jefferson saw the danger of direct military rule as advocated by Heinlein. History shows that military rule ends in brutal tyranny, not the utopia proposed by Heinlein.

———————————————–
Sexism?
———————————————–

Heinlein’s marriages:
Eleanor Curry, married 1929, divorced 1930
Leslyn McDonald married 1932, divorced 1947
Virginia Doris Gerstenfeld, married 1948

“Starship Trooper” was written in 1959.

The sexism in “Starship Troopers” is… I’m not sure what the right word is but “odd” comes close. Heinlein bucked the rigid rules of sexuality of the 1950′s. But sex is not gender. The way his female characters show up, and the way men relate to those characters, shows something that might be construed as a gender bias in Heinlein’s writing.

Starship Troopers says that most ship’s captains were women because their reactions were faster and they could tolerate higher gravity pressure.

Going outside of “Starship Troopers” and looking at other works by Heinlein, we find that in “Expanded Universe” Heinlein calls for a society where all lawyers and politicians are women, essentially on the grounds that they possess a mysterious feminine practicality that men cannot duplicate.”

Heinlein seems to subscribe to the notion that women have a certain ‘je ne sais quoi’ but he doesn’t know what it is. One thing Heinlein seems to think women are for, is for looking at:

When Johnny meets a beautiful female classmate of his and she’s joining the military hoping to be a pilot, Johnny says to himself:

(page 34) “little Carmen was so ornamental that you just never thought about her being useful”

Later on, Johnny gets some R&R and monologues in his head about women.

(page 159) “Girls are simply wonderful. Just to stand on a corner and watch them going past is delightful. They don’t walk. At least not what we do when we walk. I don’t know how to describe it, but it’s much more complex and utterly delightful. They don’t move just their feet; everything moves and in different directions… and all of it graceful.”

(page 180) “guard duty was a privilege… always warmly aware that any moment you might see a feminine creature”

(page 188) “after that masterful (or should it be ‘mistressful’?)… To *hot* pilot Yvette Deladrier”

Yvette saved their lives with her piloting skills and courage under fire and they refer to her a “mistress” and tell her she’s “hot”. They present her with a gift which causes her to cry and kiss the men.

And the men act rather young around women, even a career sergeant who presumably has been around the block a few times.

(page 188) “She got tears and kissed him-and kissed Jelly as well and he turned purple.”

(page 201) “it’s good to know that the ultimate reason you are fighting (women) actually exists and they are not just a figment of the imagination.”

Johnny’s father understands why Johnny joined the military. His mother, according to Father, could not understand.

(page 217) “I always understood what you were doing better than your mother did-don’t blame her; she never had a chance to know, any more than a bird can understand swimming.”

Apparently Heinlein is unfamiliar with waterfowl. And it would seem Heinlein thinks that women can’t understand Johnny joining the military by virtue of being women.

Women who open their mouths are generally clueless about the ways of the world.

(page 218) “Madame Ruitman… she chattered away and said ‘So, you’re really going out? Well, if you reach Faraway, you really must look up my dear friends the Regatos. I told her, as gently as I could that it seemed unlikely,since the Arachnids had occupied Faraway. It didn’t faze her in the least. She said ‘Oh, that’s all right-they’re civilians!’”

When Johnny’s father explains why he (Father) joined the military he says:

(page 219) “I had to perform an act of faith. I had to prove to myself that I was a man. Not just a producing-consuming economic animal… but a man.”

Women are better at piloting, but we never quite get explained to us why they go into the military. If men do it to prove they are a “man”, then why do women do it?

One of the few women where Heinlein shows us her doing something (rather than just having Heinlein *tell* us what she does) turns out to be just a secretary.

(page 241) “I would have trouble running this place without Miss Kendrick. Her head is a rapid-access file to everything that happens around here.”

But we quickly find out where Miss Kendrick fits in the hierarchy of power that Heinlein constructs:

(page 242) “She is not in the line of command and has no authority.”

Heinlein *tells* us that women are more dextorous than men.

(page 260) “Besides the obvious fact that drop & retrieval require the best pilots (i.e. female)”

But he doesn’t *show* a woman pilot doing her piloting thing. Instead immediately after telling us women are the best pilots, Heinlein reverts to women’s je ne sais quoi.

(page 260) “there is a very strong reason why female Naval officers are assigned to transports: it is good for trooper morale…” Women keep the troopers “constantly reminded that the only good reason why men fight” (i.e. women themselves) really do exist.

(taking longer than I thought. Saving. Will finish later)

http://www.warhw.com/warhw-in-fiction/

Chapter 1: flash forward to Johnny in combat

+1, page 14: shoot atomic rocket, 2kiloton
+1, page 14: flame thrower against a building
+1, page 14: two high explosive bombs
+3, page 15: killed “skinny” with flame thrower
+18, page 16: drop “fire pills” on half a dozen skinnies
+1, page 17: random/automatic y-rack bombing
+1, page 17: nuke a building
+10, page 19: twice, land in a group and flame them
+1, page 19: rocket a building
+10, page 20: talking bomb in a room full of skinnies
+1, page 21: much of the city was burning
+3, page 22: bomb a skinny
+6, page 23: a couple of skinnies flamed down
-3, page 23: “Dizzy” Flores died on the way up
—
54 total for chapter

Chapter 2: Johnny kid in High School, polemic, enlists.

+10, page 26: “ten lashes in the public square” endorses flogging
+10, page 33: moral difference between soldiers and civilians
+1, page 51: Johnny threatens “You want a mouthful of knuckles?”
—
21 total for chapter

Chapter 3: Johnny’s first day of bootcamp
“beat puppy” refers to beating a puppy to train them.
You don’t have to beat a puppy to house train them,
but Heinlein’s worldview and all of chapter 8
rests on the notion that you MUST beat a puppy to train it.
And therefore, any time a recruit is hurt in training,
it is Heinlein showing the puppies getting beaten to
be trained.
+2, page 56: Zim breaks Breckinbridge’s arm. (beat puppy)
+4, page 59: Zim knocks out two german boys (beats puppies)
—
6 total for chapter

Chapter 4: Johnny at training fatalities

+6, page 73: two boys died in bootcamp
—-
6 total for chapter

Chapter 5: Hendrick’s flogged and bad conduct discharge

+3, page 81: recruit grazed by a live round (beat puppy)
+3, page 82: one boy broke his neck (beat puppy)
+10, page 95: Hendrick’s gets flogged with 10 lashes (beat puppy)
—
16 total for chapter

Chapter 6: Johnny gets mail, polemics
+10, page 118: polemics “nothing of value is free”
+10, page 119: price demanded of the most precious thing is life itself
—
20 total for chapter

Chapter 7: Johnny gets flogged

+10, page 126: peace will happen when the leopard becomes a jersy cow (never)
+5, page 136: Johnny gets flogged with 5 lashes (beat puppy)
—
15 total for chapter

chapter 8: polemic. beat your puppy to train him.

+10, page 140: Dillenger hung at the gallows
+1, page 141: Johnny asks someone if they’d like a set of lumps
+10, page 145: polemic, must beat puppy to house train him.
+10, page 147: polemic, must spank children to discipline them
+10, page 151: human beings have no natural rights
—
41 total for chapter

chapter 9: Johnny gets in a fight on R&R, graduate

+9, page 156: two killed in training, one medical retirement
+3, page 161: Johnny and friends take out 4 civilians
—
12 total for chapter

chapter 10: Johnny assigned a ship, Beunus Aries destroyed

+10, page 169: polemic, civilian oversight of military is dangerous
-3, page 175: Dutch killed
+3, page 175: Johnny flames bug
-3, page 177: Kitten killed in launch
+1, page 180: Jelly gives Johnny set of lumps (beat puppy)
-3, page 182: Johnny’s mother killed in Buenoes Aries
-20, page 182: Bueneos Aries wiped out.
-4, page 183: two men wounded
-3, page 184: lieutenant killed
—
-22 total for chapter

chapter 11: Johnny signs up for OCS.

+10, page 192: Johnny has a fight with Ace
+20, page 195: Bug colony on Sheol wiped out
+5, page 202: marine/navy fight
+10, page 207: “sacrifice” polemic, have to be former veteran to vote
—
45 total for chapter

chapter 12: Johnny sees his Dad. Polemics.

-3, page 212: Al Jenkins killed
-3, page 223: Carl (Johnny’s high school friend) killed
+10, page 228: polemic Engulf two nations in war for one man
+10, page 231: military utopia polemic
+10, page 232: modern day democracies crashed because too democratic
+10, page 236: all morals derive from instinct to survive
+10, page 238: man is a wild animal polemic
-3, page 257: Birdie killed
—
41 total for chapter

Chapter 13: Johnny is a third lieutenant. Combat.

+20, page 286: radioactive glaze
-6, page 292: 2 officers killed (Captain Chang’s)
+10, page 316: Johnny flames a bunch of workers
+10, page 316: Hughes flames a bunch of workers
+3, page 319: Johnny kills warrior bug “I got him”
-9, page 319: I’ve lost three men
+9, page 319: Johnny grenades 3 bugs
+18, page 319: Johnny gets half a dozen bugs
-10, page 319: 2 dead, 2 hurt
+20, page 325: bugs were everywhere, then no more bugs (killed)
-12, page 325: 4 cap troopers down
+20, page 326: we hit them from behind (lots of bugs)
-3, page 326: roof falls on Johnny, taking him out
+18, page 327: three bug brains killed
—
88 total for chapter

Chapter 14: Johnny is an officer. preparing to drop.

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