I thought that Verhoeven's parody of Heinlein was actually quite effective--that the central story was the transformation of Johnny Rico into the human equivalent of a bug warrior: someone who fights and dies, and is good at fighting and good at dying, without even being capable of asking "why are we doing this?" or "is this something that we should be doing?"
And the book was similarly over the top: the denial that humans have any rights whatsoever, the denial that governments are instituted to secure (non-existent) human rights, the denial that humans have any rights whatsoever vis-a-vis the collectivity, and the claim that only such a fascist system can survive the Darwinian struggle against other similar fascist systems--in this case the bugs--was enough to make the book a parody of itself...
Also the contrast between the members of the herrenvolk--Carl, Carmen--for whom Federal Service is a development and exercise of their herrenvolkisch capacities to command, and non-herrenvolk Johnny for whom Federal Service is an opportunity to obey and, with very high probability, die...
Brad DeLong