With his surge in the polls I've been trying to get a handle on the philosophy of Newt Gingrich, and after finally seeing signs which should have been obvious all along and confirming them with a bit of research, I realized what I should have caught on to long ago, that Newt Gingrich is a Robert Heinlein Republican.
Like many in my generation I grew up reading Robert Heinlein's Science Fiction novels almost religiously. Heinlein's dystopian vision of the future and his romantic obsession with man as superman was enormously appealing to a teenager growing up in the space age. The Heinlein man could perfect himself and conquer the universe singlehanded by sheer determination and willpower. Heinlein's theme was the triumph of the individual over time in Methuselah's Children, over space in The Man Who Sold the Moon, over conventional morality in Stranger in a Strange Land and over the governments of lesser men in Farnham's Freehold. Heinlein's political philosophy of Rational Anarchism is summed up by the Professor Bernardo de la Paz in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress:
"In terms of morals there is no such thing as a ‘state.’ Just men. Individuals. Each responsible for his own acts. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free, because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything that I do."
Heinlein's muscular, militaristic individualism carried with it a deliberate intention from the very first to influence politics. After World War II Heinlein experimented with direct involvement in politics, served in elective party office in California and ultimately campaigned for Goldwater in 1964 and may have ghostwritten ads and speeches for his presidential campaign. In this period Heinlein had a friendship and rivalry with fellow writer L. Ron Hubbard. They supposedly had a long standing bet to see who could start a religion which would change society. Hubbard's answer to this challenge was the creation of Scientology. Heinlein's answer came through his writing and the ideas expressed in some of his bestselling novels of the late 1960s and its ultimate product seems to be Newt Gingrich.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - El Bicho
I grok this article. Really well done
2 - Glenn Contrarian
Aaaaaarrrghhh!
Dave, how dare you! Robert A. Heinlein and Newt Gingrich in the same article is bad enough, but to compare the two???? That's like comparing Babe Ruth to a somewhat talented Little League player!
Initial outrage aside, you know that as libertarian as Heinlein surely was, I'm still a fan of his - to this day I still quote and to some extent even live by many of his proverbs from Lazarus Long! But I strongly feel he would have rejected Newt Gingrich out of hand. Why? I think I can boil it down to one word: HONOR. The western ideal of honor - romantic and otherwise - permeates his works...and honor is something that Gingrich doesn't have. Whether or not ne would have agreed with the individual mandate, Heinlein would not have respected someone who stood so strongly for the individual mandate and then flip-flopped a full 180 against it. Same thing goes for cap-and-trade. And Heinlein would have been flatly disgusted with Gingrich for how he treated his first wife when she needed him most, and the more so he would have vilified Gingrich for his attacks on Clinton for his imaginative use of cigars!
Furthermore, I think Heinlein would reject the idea of a moon base today for the simple reasons that (1) it would bring less of a benefit than our current (if underfunded) efforts towards Mars and beyond (and eventually to Titan and Europa), and (2) we now know how long-term low gravity affects humans, and a moon base would be hideously expensive to support (unless we have an honest-to-goodness space elevator made of buckyball rope, I think you'd agree).
No, I really think Heinlein would have supported Obama. Not because of what he would have seen as Obama's big government or financial irresponsibility or foreign policy, but because Obama - unlike any of the current GOP candidates - has zero problem with accepting scientific fact such as anthropological global warming and evolution and stem-cell research.
Heinlein - like Goldwater - would not recognize the Republican party of today...and they would reject Gingrich out of hand just as Bob Dole (for whom I have real respect) did yesterday.
3 - roger nowosielski
You're showing a philosophical side of you, Dave, I was unaware of before. Good job.
It should infuse your writings more often.
4 - Dave Nalle
Glenn. I never said Heinlein would support Gingrich, just that Gingrich is influenced by Heinlein. Not the same thing at all.
If Heinlein were alive today and politically active I doubt he'd endorse Gingrich. But he certainly wouldn't support Obama either.
The closest candidate to Heinlein's actual positions is probably Gary Johnson, or maybe Ron Paul.
Dave
5 - Glenn Contrarian
Maybe Gary Johnson, but not Ron Paul. I don't think Heinlein would support someone who completely rejects evolution.
6 - John Lake
Rather romantic to think Gingrich's desire to colonize the moon stems from the Heinlein influence. I thought until your article that there might be some "big bucks" involved.
Perhaps the new breed government could come up with something with his 1940 "The Roads Must Roll" in mind. That was a unique venture into science fiction, the like of which hasn't been seen again.
7 - Zingzing
I haven't read any of heinlein's books, but I have seen Paul verhoeven's film version of starship troopers, which must be a parody. Verhoeven's a sneaky bastard. How he got heinlein's estate to sign off on that is beyond me. I highly suggest that if you're interested in entertaining, possibly profound trash, you watch a verhoeven flick. His run from 1987 to 1997 is all fucked up gold. A misunderstood genius, I believe.
Also, very good article, Dave.
8 - jamminsue
Thanks, Dave, for again writing in your lovely prose, some thoughtful ideas. I also am a fan of Heinlein, but not a libertarian. I lean more to the side of honor, respect and free will. I also like his firm writing on tolerance on sexuality. As others have said, and you agree, he certainly would not support Gingrich. I can see how you think Gingrich has read Heinlein. Which shows how once a text leaves the writer; it takes on a live of its own.
9 - Cannonshop
#6 John, remember, Newt WRITES science-fiction. Just because you find his politics repellent, doesn't make him a one-dimensional cardboard cutout made of money and image-buffers.
but as for Newt's desire to go back to the moon?
Watch your copy of the Apollo launches, and realize: we've lost the intellectual, material, and financial capital to ever do that again-it was squandered on lots of nothing over the last forty years.
10 - roger nowosielski
Besides, Newt is a futuristic thinker.
11 - Zingzing
Cannonshop, you do realize that science has developed to the point where we don't need men on the moon in order to study it, right? We have satellites and probes, etc., that are doing that on the moon and mars and various planets and their moons and we've reached beyond the edge of the know solar system and are gazing millions and billions of years into stellar time and space using technologies that would have been mostly unthinkable forty years ago. Going to the moon is the scientific equivalent of going to the shop on the corner.
12 - Zingzing
It's human frailty, not human intellect, that has curtailed our manned space adventures. You can't help that.
13 - Igor
Good article, Dave. Cogent, readable and interesting. I vaguely remember reading Heinlein when I was 18, but don't remember any specific impressions.
14 - Cannonshop
#11 Zing, with all due respect, why bother "Studying" something you're never going to visit/use/touch? Pretty Pictures have a limited span of interest. We were taking pretty pics before the Mercury programme launched, the Soviets even put a robot on it in the sixties-that roved.
there's no "Moon Men", nothing's likely to fall off and hit us, minus actually going for purposes other than stunts, for all the use 'studying it' from afar does, we might as well remain ignorant-which, by the way, we're already doing, thanks to the castration and marginalization of the manned programme at the hands of the "Study but don't touch it" crowd.
Pretty Pictures and untested theories are worthless without the desire, and means, to do something with them. There are cheaper ways to do performance art.
15 - Zingzing
You're really discounting what we can accomplish without actually touching a thing... think of what we now know about the tiniest blocks of matter we can't even really see, much less touch.
I'd love to see a station on the moon, but that's one of the least interesting parts of space in the end. Beyond that, the sheer scale of space... On a good day, Jupiter is almost 400 million miles away from earth, and you can't land on gas really.
And do you really think all we have is "pretty pictures"?
16 - GT
"... think of what we now know about the tiniest blocks of matter we can't even really see, much less touch."
ZZ,
Current nano technology allows us to see "touch" and even manipulate matter at the atomic level.
17 - zingzing
well, "see," "touch," and manipulate matter. that was kind of the point. we are able to do things without having an actual human presence at the point of manipulation.
18 - Ken
I haven't read any Heinlein, but now I want Newt to win more than ever!
19 - Cannonshop
#15 Zing, you're not asking "Why". The purpose of exploration is to GO, to get our eggs out of the one fragile basket before the next dinosaur killer hits.
All the pretty pictures in the world (or the Universe) are just navel-gazing without the why.
the entire PURPOSE of a "Space Programme" is to get people OUT THERE, and it's been abandoned to navel-gaze and be a weather service.
20 - Glenn Contrarian
For those here who haven't read Heinlein, he was a Naval officer turned author, and he is probably one of the three most-influential science-fiction author ever along with Isaac Asimov and Philip K. Dick. Heinlein was a Freemason (had to be - one of his stories is too close to Masonic thought), was quite libertarian in his views, tended to be uber-patriotic, but also deeply believed in what became in later years the Navy's core values of Honor, Courage, and Commitment. I might be far to the left of the political spectrum, but I was greatly influenced by his books which - in retrospect - were written for teenagers and young adults. But for any adults interested in his books, I recommend Time Enough for Love or Stranger in a Strange Land.
21 - Glenn Contrarian
Cannonshop -
I agree wholeheartedly that we need to get our eggs out of the one fragile basket they're in. I'm a big proponent of a very healthy space program. BUT a moon base ain't the way to do it.
Why? Because all the moon is, when it comes to leaving the nest that is Earth, is just another gravity well that's in the way. Humankind can't grow there, we can't prosper there. What we need to do - and what NASA is working towards - is (1) developing the technology for a 'space elevator' made from buckyball rope, (2) once that is done, putting way stations at our LaGrange points, (3) developing rockets with much higher thrust-to-mass ratios than the chemical rockets we now use, and (4) it's on to a planet that we might be able to someday, maybe, just maybe terraform - Mars.
The moon can help us in NONE of this...and that's why I don't think much of Gingrich promising us the moon.
22 - Cannonshop
#21 Materials, Glenn. Currently we import Ti from two places: totalitarian hellholes in Africa, and totalitarian hellholes in E.Europe/Russia.
The Apollo missions brought back a LOT of Ti.
(Titanium). thrust-to-weight ratios mean something even moving interplanetary where you can navigate with a stopwatch, slide-rule, good notebook and timetable/chart using a can of krylon for your propellant.
It's also an isolated area where you can do high-energy physics applications without risking large numbers of innocent lives and/or a planet-sized biosphere, and it works as a testing ground for survival gear...and it's nearby. It's INFRASTRUCTURE and raw materials.
Of course, we'd have to get rid of that idiotic 1967 Moon treaty first...
23 - Glenn Contrarian
Yes, the moon has lots of raw materials, but it's still a gravity well. It's the logistics of maintaining a moon base that make it a practical impossibility...and the same logistical support that would support a moon base would go a long way towards support a Mars base. And then there's the effect that 1/6 earth gravity would have on the bodies there rather than on Mars. The only way I could see us having a sustainable moon base is if our robotics ability were great enough to not only build shelters and mine materials but also have a self-repair capability...because such a location is not conducive to long-term human habitation.
24 - Zingzing
Cannonshop, you have to figure out how to feasibly do those things before you go do them. And if you're looking for a habitable planet, you have to find where that planet is and figure out how to get there. We've found some such planets, but they are lightyears away. I guess you could try to terraform mars, But that's a long and exceedingly dangerous undertaking given our current technology, and we're only beginning to learn some of the facts on the (Martian) ground. You seem to think that manned programs are up to this task, but the science and data aren't there yet. we don't even know how to land something as large as a manned spacecraft on mars. We need to study the atmosphere more before we'll figure that out. Studying makes these things possible... Sending manned spacecrafts out into the wilderness is kinda stupid before we know how to do it.
25 - Cannonshop
#24 Unless they can repeal the Lightspeed Limit, the survival methods needed to make a moon-base viable are required if you're going after habitable (outside the solar system) planets.
Just no way around it-if you can't survive on the moon, you won't survive a 50 or more year sublight journey to the nearest star, much less the trip to the nearest likely viable star.
You're not going to develop that by staring at pretty pictures in the university, and a surface-of-the-earth location isn't going to provide the necessary techniques either.
Plus, there is the little problem of the Gravity wells Glenn keeps on about-you can't reach orbit, forget the Stars.