Robert A. Heinlein's Legacy As they say on the moon, "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch!"
BY TAYLOR DINERMAN Thursday, July 26, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT
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Though he later became well known for his anticommunism, Heinlein in the late 1930s indulged in both leftist and isolationist politics. He sold his first science-fiction story in 1939 for $70, "and there was never a chance that I would ever again look for honest work." After Pearl Harbor, to his great disappointment, he was not called back into uniformed service. He ended the war at the Philadelphia Naval Aircraft Factory, working with fellow writers L. Sprague de Camp and Isaac Asimov.
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In 1958, in response to what he saw as a liberal effort to weaken America's military, he set aside the "Sex and God" book on which he had been working and wrote "Starship Troopers." This was probably his most controversial book. In it he imagines a future society in which the right to vote must be earned by volunteering for service, including service in the military. In response to claims that the book glorifies the military, he wrote: "It does indeed. Specifically, the P.B.I., the Poor Bloody Infantry, the mudfoot who puts his frail body between his loved home and the war's desolation--but is rarely appreciated."
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Heinlein's political beliefs were moving more and more toward the libertarian side of the spectrum. He supported Barry Goldwater in 1964, and in 1966 he published what many considered his greatest book, "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress," the tale of how penal colonists and their descendants on the Moon successfully revolt against their Earthly masters. The core of this book, which keeps it near the top of the libertarians' reading lists, is the speech by an old professor, Bernardo de la Paz, to the rebels' constitutional convention: ". . . like fire and fusion, government is a dangerous servant and a terrible master. You now have your freedom--if you can keep it. But do remember that you can lose this freedom more quickly to yourselves than to any other tyrant."
The professor explains: "The power to tax, once conceded, has no limits; it contains until it destroys. I was not joking when I told them to dig into their own pouches. It may not be possible to do away with government--sometimes I think that it is an inescapable disease of human beings. But it may be possible to keep it small and starved and inoffensive--and can you think of a better way than by requiring the governors themselves to pay the costs of their antisocial hobby." As they say on the Moon, "TANSTAAFL!": "There Ain't No Such Thing as a Free Lunch!"
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