All I Ever Really Needed To Know About Citizenship, I Learned From Starship Troopers

Conservatives often complain about the uninformed youth of America and the susceptibility of the citizenry.  One of my personal solutions has been to have my students read a phenomenal book by sci-fi guru Robert Heinlein.

by Michael Naragon

Ask most people about Starship Troopers, and, if they recognize the name at all, they’ll link it to the over-hyped 1997 film directed by Paul Verhoeven.  This is unfortunate, as the film did no justice to the Heinlein text.  My first acquaintance with the book came in 2003 when I found a 1959 copy in a flea market in Indian Springs, GA for the tidy sum of $5.

I’d never read the book before buying that copy, but I consumed it in a day.  The writing was aimed at a young adult audience, but its themes resonate today, regardless of age.

The book, like the film, focuses on the exploits of Juan “Johnnie” Rico, a young high school graduate who decides to gain his citizenship through Federal Service.  Heinlein’s post-20th century world is governed by a military republic where citizenship is attained through some form of service, primarily in the armed forces.  Rico finds himself funneled into the Mobile Infantry, where he is trained to be a cap (capsule) trooper.  During his training, the Earth enters a war against the “bugs” and the “skinnies,” two alien races.  The book chronicles Rico’s journey from his entrance into Federal Service through his rigorous training and his time in officer’s school.  Unlike the film, much of the book is set in Rico’s various classes throughout his training, most notably his courses on History and Moral Philosophy, which discussed the reasons behind conflict in general and the organization of the government in Rico’s time.

Heinlein’s book, which won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1960, was both praised and criticized by the science fiction community.  Some argued that Heinlein, who was a 1929 U.S. Naval Academy graduate, was recruiting for the military.  Along those lines, others claimed that Heinlein glorified the military lifestyle and glossed over the ugliness of war.  However, Heinlein’s narrative rings with the voice of one who understands the military life.  So much so, in fact, that Starship Troopers is included on the reading lists of both the United States Marine Corps and the United States Navy.

I will be using Starship Troopers as my summer reading requirement for incoming AP U.S. Government and Politics students, primarily high school juniors and seniors.  The reason for this is the book’s true genius: the explanation of the human condition and the failings of American society beginning in the FDR era.  Heinlein wrote the book just a few years following the end of the Korean War, when the country was ill at ease and the military draft was law.  Heinlein envisioned an all-volunteer army constructed in order to make the rights to vote and hold public office more valuable to those who exercised them.

The world in Starship Troopers is multi-racial–Johnnie Rico is a Filipino, and he comes into contact with soldiers of various nationalities throughout the narrative–but not what one might call politically correct or diverse for the sake of “celebrating diversity.”  Characters are valuable in that world because of their willingness to work and sacrifice, not because of their race, creed, or ethnicity.  While some have labeled Heinlein as a fascist because of this theme, his vision is, I believe, more in line with what the Founding Fathers envisioned for America–work hard, value your freedom and your rights, and defend them with your life, if necessary.

In one passage, Rico’s H&MP teacher Mr. Dubois discusses that “pompous fraud Karl Marx” and the definition of value:

“‘Value’ has no meaning other than in relation to living beings.  The value of a thing is always relative to a particular person, is completely personal and different in quality to each living human–’market value’ is a fiction, merely a rough guess at the average personal values, all of which must be quantitatively different or trade would be impossible… This very personal relationship, ‘value,’ has two factors for a human being: first, what he can do with a thing, its use to him… and second, what he must do to get it, its cost to him.  There is an old song which asserts that ‘the best things in life are free.’  Not true!  Utterly false!  This was the tragic fallacy which brought on the decadence and collapse of the democracies of the twentieth century; those noble experiments failed because the people had been led to believe that they could simply vote for whatever they wanted… and get it, without toil, without sweat, without tears.

“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.  As it is, with some of you, I pity the poverty of your wealth.”

Heinlein wrote these words thirty years after the beginnings of the New Deal and fifty years before universal health care.  I wonder how he would have felt if he had lived to see a day when nearly a majority of the populace paid no taxes at all.  His stark predictions for the collapse of the “twentieth-century democracies” are coming to pass, it would seem.

Like Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, Starship Troopers is a must read book, I believe, for anyone who has interest in citizenship and what makes, or made, our government work.

Starship Troopers is currently in print and is available at Amazon.com for $10.20.