Comment by bigstrat2003 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bigstrat2003 | Hacker News Reader

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Nor was "you have to join the military to have basic rights" the premise of the book. One of the themes of the book (I wouldn't call it the premise, just one theme among them) was that to wield authority over others one must first demonstrate that they are capable of acting for the good of the whole even if it is not in his own personal best interest. Military service was one way, not the only way, to demonstrate that ability to act selflessly.

I think Heinlein actually has a very interesting point. To wield the power of the government (which is what voting is), it is important to be able to act selflessly. If someone can't do that, even for a couple of years of their life, why should they be able to wield that power over others? The universal franchise is not a religious dogma, it's good to ask these questions and think about whether our society could be better if we organized it differently. Unfortunately, a lot of people completely missed the point and just rounded it off to "Heinlein thinks the military should run society", which isn't at all true.

Heinlein isn't even saying anything completely new in starship troopers. It is in essence an evolution of the Active vs Passive Citizen distinction. Merely living in a society doesn't necessarily give all of the responsibilities of governing, aka voting. A citizen aught to have be an active citizen within the society to gain that privilege. The US Constitution was originally for only Land Owners (ignoring the other race and sex based stipulations). Heinlein is treating that active - passive distinction as being based on service instead of property.

> Nor was "you have to join the military to have basic rights" the premise of the book.

It was not even the premise of the film - only one right was conditioned on service, the right to vote (and possibly hold political office). I.e. actions that wield authority over others. I argue that is not "basic".

Fair enough - I've only read the book, so I wouldn't try to speak for the movie.

> Military service was one way, not the only way

In the book it was said that if a blind deaf person in a wheelchair volunteered for service, the state would find something for them to do. Maybe tediously counting hairs on a caterpillar, or testing chairs in Antarctica.

Now for me the asspull from Starship Troopers that I still think about every now and then was the notion of mathematical proofs of morality at a high school level (or any academic level, for that matter). This was a society that somehow discovered provable objective morality, and I really wish that idea could have been fleshed out more by Heinlein.

It was one of his juveniles (what would now be a "young adult" novel). I don't think it was ever going to get fleshed out.

You see him put much more thought into political systems and economics in other books like The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Stranger in a Strange Land, or For Us, the Living.

Absolutely.

This [1] lays out pretty conclusively that even though the book plays lip service to "federal Service", the entire rest of the book makes clear that it is only military that get the right to vote, not "government workers".

[1] https://www.nitrosyncretic.com/pdfs/nature_of_fedsvc_1996.pd...

I don't think that is correct at all. I read the book and it was very clear to me that it wasn't just lip service, you could do your federal service in many different ways.

I felt the opposite when I read it, which led me to looking around and finding that essay. It felt like he said you could do any federal service, but no federal service actual existed outside of the military. I personally think this is more of the case of the author intending one thing and writing another. Clearly Heinlein intended for it to be about Federal service, but over and over in the actual details, there just is not a Federal Service. It is only the military. That is my main issue with the book, it proposes one society, but it builds a different one. They tells us you can join Federal Service, but those people don’t exist anywhere in the text. Not current Federal workers or former ones, now citizens.

The military could not vote either. You had to _complete_ Federal Service before you earned the franchise.

The book also includes strong racist themes.

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