Robert Heinlein - Take Back Your Government!

There is nothing more temporary than the enthusiasm of a reform movement. Parties endure. Reform movements flare and vanish.

44. (Seepage 58) What Heinlein is saying here comes right out of old Boss Flynn's book You're The Boss, and it's spot on.

45. (Seepage 59) While most of us agree that divided government is not a good idea in theory, the Cold War produced some odd - we can hope unique - situations. The Left demanded a number of domestic political concessions, notably the Great Society, in return for allowing the Right to conduct the Cold War and continue building up defenses. The Carter presidency demonstrated that the Democrats were not optimum for handling the Cold War. By the time Reagan was elected, Congresscritters of both parties were the beneficiaries of such powerful incumbency advantages that it was impossible to bring in Republican control of the House. Whether having a Republican majority in both houses would have been a good thing is another matter, and one subject to legitimate disagreement.

However, Heinlein's principle is good. Divided government means no one is responsible.

46. (Seepage 60) Alas, most of this chapter, and the rest of this book, is obsolete. It doesn't have to remain so; but before we can return control to citizens in general, we must devolve many to most government controls back to local areas. It is fer more difficult to get people involved in politics when the decisions are made thousands of miles away; if they're made dose by, it's another matter.

I've always called that the horsewhip theory: if the important decisions affecting my life are made by people we can get at with a horsewhip, we're probably in good shape.

This chapter and those following are wonderful introductions to the arts of political doorbell punching, dub organizing, and general local politicking, and with luck and a lot of work these will become the most relevant chapters of the book; for the moment parts are more of academic and nostalgic interest.

On the other hand, if enough people pay enough attention to organizing political dubs, the problems of the country just might solve themselves. Meanwhile, Heinlein, like Dale Carnegie, gives timeless advice on how to win friends and influence people. His final chapter exhorting people to political action is both eloquent and important.

One could only wish that his advice had been taken before we lost control of the political process.

All the above was written at blinding speed: I only got this assignment a couple of days ago, and the book has to be typeset three days from now. This is as far as I got before the deadlines were called. That may be just as well. I began this hoping I'd make Heinlein's book more understandable. I may have done that. What I have certainly done is convince myself that we lost a lot when we lost the world Heinlein describes, and that getting it back may be the most important thing we can do for our children. If we do recover control of our country, we'll need new books, new manuals of operation; but I suspect this work will never quite be obsolete. Political organizations change rapidly. People change slowly. Politics is people, and whatever his other talents, Robert A. Heinlein understood - and liked - people.

I do hope he isn't too offended at having his book footnoted by a former professor of political science. Like him I've little use for the academic political theorist; in my defense I can say I've also seen the elephant.

Now let's go get our country back.

J.E.R July 4, 1992