The hippie warrior

A few days late, but a shout-out on the 100th birthday of Robert Heinlein. He is considered somewhat of a godfather of modern libertarianism, so it's approrpriate that he's remembered by Reason magazine:

Heinlein's novels and short stories reflected the rough-hewn anti-government but pro-defense message associated with Goldwater and the conservative movement he sparked. At the same time, his writings exuded the communal desire to live in blissful togetherness, ignoring the repressive sexual and religious mores of bourgeois America. With a libertarian vision that appealed to individualists of both the left and the right, Heinlein not only set the template for the American 1960s but helped create the looser, hipper, more pluralist world of the decades since.

Whether we're looking at post-Star Wars pop culture, post-Reagan politics, or the day-to-day tenor of our own lives in the Internet age, it's easy to see that while more literary novelists such as Philip Roth and Saul Bellow enjoy high-flying critical reputations, it's Heinlein's fingerprints that mark the modern world.

There is a great Heinlien quote in the piece: "I'm so much a libertarian that I have no use for the whole libertarian movement." I started reading him in high school before I even started thinking in political terms, mostly because Ray Bradbury had whetted my appetite for sf, and Heinlein was the next logical step. But a lot of his stuff resonated with me, so maybe there was a nascent libertarian in me.

A lot of people have struggled with the notion that the same person could have written "Starship Troopers," which some see as nearly fascist, and "Stranger in a Strange Land," almost a tribute to libertinism. The Reason article does a good job of explaining how both novels explored the twin concepts of duty and love and how both are necessary for the survival of the human race.