Should we go to the "Starship Troopers" model for voting rights?

MSgt J D McKee — Sat, 01 Aug 2020 13:46:57 -0400

I.E. Veterans get to vote and to hold public office. No one else. Because they have paid for the privilege, and because no one should command troops who has not been a troop. Lets please don't get off on whether it's a right or a privilege, it is whatever Congress votes that it is.

Response by SSG Stephen Arnold made Aug 1 at 2020 1:55 PM

SSG Stephen Arnold — Sat, 01 Aug 2020 13:55:41 -0400

Interesting concept. I was prepared to disagree about the authority of Congress, then I realized that the Constitutional right is for citizens, and the latter term IS defined by Congressional Act.

Response by SSG Roger Ayscue made Aug 1 at 2020 2:19 PM

SSG Roger Ayscue — Sat, 01 Aug 2020 14:19:30 -0400

I believe that those that have NO skin in the game should not have a say as to how things are run.
If one had to EARN the right to vote, and Politicians could be prevented from becoming career politicians then we would be better off.

Response by SFC Casey O'Mally made Aug 1 at 2020 2:45 PM

SFC Casey O'Mally — Sat, 01 Aug 2020 14:45:39 -0400

So only able bodied people have a voice in your society? Those who can contribute MORE with their minds and voices don't matter because they cannot or will jot contribute with their bodies?

Response by SrA Private RallyPoint Member made Aug 1 at 2020 4:06 PM

SrA Private RallyPoint Member — Sat, 01 Aug 2020 16:06:59 -0400

Response by SSG Paul Headlee made Aug 1 at 2020 4:11 PM

SSG Paul Headlee — Sat, 01 Aug 2020 16:11:29 -0400

Taxation without representation...

Response by SSgt Private RallyPoint Member made Aug 1 at 2020 4:49 PM

SSgt Private RallyPoint Member — Sat, 01 Aug 2020 16:49:19 -0400

Bottom line up front, I only saw the movie; I never read the book. What Heinlein meant in Starship Troopers and what I got out of it might be different, but here goes.

In the movie, one government run by the military governs the entire planet. To maintain that control, that stratocracy has to create enemies. Otherwise, the public is going to figure out they don’t need the military junta to run things. In the movie, the bugs really weren’t bothering anyone. They’re bugs, doing bug things, propagating their species by launching spores into space. One of those spore meteors landed on Buenos Aires and earth went to war. The political system created the enemy to maintain power.

We started as a civilian-run government. If we insist that only veterans can vote and hold office, that service guarantees citizenship, we will have created Heinlein's paradigm. Probably. Without the bugs.

Response by Capt Gregory Prickett made Aug 1 at 2020 8:50 PM

Capt Gregory Prickett — Sat, 01 Aug 2020 20:50:36 -0400

No, it's a constitutional right. You'll have to get 2/3rds of the House and 2/3rds of Senate to agree, and then you'll have to get 3/4ths of the States to agree.

Good luck with that.

Response by LTC Jason Mackay made Aug 2 at 2020 2:27 AM

LTC Jason Mackay — Sun, 02 Aug 2020 02:27:40 -0400

MSgt J D McKee and SSgt Private RallyPoint Member
Looking at the world and society we live in, it would be dead on arrival, as it would cut out 99% of the population. Especially in the US where sufferage is a birthright unless you are a convicted felon.

The back story for this concept is explained in the book. The era in the book is decades down the road from an apocolyptic third world war. The governments collapsed. Soldiers from all the nations in the war were left on their own to find a way home. When they got there, it was chaos: lawlessness, ruin, etc. They were the ones who rose to forefront to put the world back together. So in a literal sense, they had earned the right to determine who and how they moved forward. This is where Heinlein plants the fundemental concept of the soveriegn franchise of citizenship is earned and not given. All others who choose NOT to serve are legal residents of their respective nation and the world. It dovetails with his non-fiction books and his personal theories on citizenship, democracy, and civic resposnibility. He was incredibly evasive in following years on what he meant in Starship Troopers. Especially since it was the only book he wrote like this and his other sci-fi was embraced by the counter culture. For a while he was a hippie guru of sorts. On the matter of conscription, he was dead set against on the record. to paraphrase: If no one feels strongly enough to volunteer, then we should let the whole damn thing fall.

Their system in Starship Troopers was also established to afford an opportunity to nearly all of it youth minus criminals or severely disabled. I find it untenable given our current society. I would love to see it, but it would never make it past all the non-serving legislators who would gasp in horror at its mere suggestion. We had a sitting representative try and bar recruiters from high schools and eSports this week because they were "preying" on potential recruits. The bill died yesterday, but that is who we would have to convince that this would be the way to go, and negate their ability to hold these offices.

Many of the concepts that Heinlein plants in the plot, were really just social commentary on the era he was living in. The book was published in 1959. As a genre, it was actually adolescent sci-fi. One could imagine that he was trying to talk to the youth of the country. Some highlights in no particular order:
- In the 1950s and 1960s, numerous works on psychology and child psychology were published. Several influential ones proposed that corporal punishment was not only in effective, but harmful. Coupled with a percieved spike in juvenille delinquency, Heinlein not only legitimizes corporal punishment and makes it a civil obligation. He further paints a law and order Utopia.
- In similar works, violence is attacked as a means to solve personal, criminal and global problems. Heinlein takes the opposite view and plants in the history and moral philosophy class passages that violence indeed is the great equalizer, definitively solving problems permanently. So much so that he portrays it as a matter of logic, capable of proof like a geometry problem.
- The Left latch on to this as a facist treatise. What they glaze over is that it is not compulsory military service, but rather voluntary FEDERAL service. There are other paths mentioned in the book as Rico considers his alternatives, but ultimately his machismo and crush on a woman drives him to the Mobile Infantry. Each legal resident has the CHOICE to serve. Many would also crow that the Heinlein utopia was supremist, missing the plot evidence of characters developed. Heinlein's world of the future was plural and global. Johnny Rico was Fillipino and spoke Tagalog. Zim was a Turk. Rico's basic training unit was a melting pot from all over the world. Muslims were part of the society as well as agnostics. Women played a critical role in operational combat as being genetically predisposed to be commissioned starship pilots, though some men also made the cut periodically. There was no Mobile Infantry if you could not get there. Disabled people were leveraged to contribute within their abilities. While it is a plural and inclusive society, Heinlein unlike Paul Verhoven, does not put women in the Mobile Infantry. Heinlein was more utilitarian and proports that they are too important as pilots to put on the ground as Infantry. Or perhaps shared the traditional view at the time (USNA Class of 1920 mind you) that women should not be in ground combat. Sorry guys, no literary version of the shower scene.
- As a Naval Academy Graduate, he was chaptered out of the Navy for TB in the 1920s. He spent the 1930's in political runs and various jobs. He tried everyway he could to re-enter for WWII and was denied. So no surprise Disabled Veterans play valuable roles in the book to free up able bodied men. Even the Corvette transport is named for WWII Medal of Honor Recipient Rodger Young, who was rejected as medically disqualified. Depending on which printing you have, there is a page dedicated to Rodger Young in the Back.
- Numerous cracks are made at the Department of Defense (no Department of Defense ever won a war as an example), as the National Security Act of 1947 launched the DoD in addition to the CIA and the USAF. In Heinlein's recent history, he had witnessed the victory of WWI and WWII followed by the stalemate of Korea. The Domino Theory and the Bi-polar world of competition with proxy wars was roiling as he wrote this.
- Heinlein is forward thinking with the concept of Joint War Fighting. The Navy transports the Infantry and is an integral part. Other supporting arms (Intelligence and Engineers are tangentially mentioned) are glossed over as they only "...hand you the saw". One can not be a Sky Marshal unless they had served as a pilot and a Mobile Infantryman. Similar in concept to what would become law in Goldwater-Nichols Act in 1986 where no one could serve as a general officer without serving in a Joint billet assignment. No, Carl doesnt show up like Doogie Houser in his psuedo SS coat at the end. Carl gets smoked by a bug raid on Pluto during Basic Training while researching electronics.
- Heinlein was critical of tooth to tail and what he saw as bloated formations. The Mobile Infantry featured a Battalion Commanded by a dual hatted Company Commander and dual and triple hatted staff to make smaller agile formations. Everyone Drops and Everyone Fights. These were the ground warfare arguments in the 1950s. Contractors also accompanied troops as they did then and do now and will likely do until the sun runs out of hydrogen.
- The role of Nuclear weapons and the obsolescence of ground forces was a major subject of the era, especially after the revolt of the Admirals and other post 1947 security decision making. Heinlein was of the mind, from what he wrote in Starship Troopers, that you could pulverize and even atomize a planet, but it did not matter unless you put boots on the ground and physically controlled it. You cant use a planet if you crack it in half. There are further sequences in the book detailing in traditional infantry combat with hand to hand, bayonets, and rifles despite the exclusive use of Powered Armor and other futuristic weapons. So if all they had was a bayonet, they could still fight.
- Heinlein wrote about fighting spirit of free men, fighting for their girl, mom and apple pie which would have been the attitude in the post war America.
- The basic training sequences in the book tie to the 1950s contemporary experience of the draft and service. An incident of notoriety influences Heinlein to address the fine line between abuse and hard, realistic training. The 1956 Ribbon Creek Incident shook Marine Recruit Training to the Corps. So much so, the Commandant personally halted basic training until he could get it fixed. A drill sergeant, some reports say he was drunk, the prosecution alleges he was a sadist, drowned 12 men in a swollen tidal creek on a punitive night march. There were also reforms made to improve bleak conditions Drill Instructors at Parris Island faced for years on end. This explains Heinlein writing that Drill Instructors were highly skilled technicians, and what they did was to train the soldiers and not for their amusement. Intensive screening and training is applied to Drill Instructors to finely tune their recruits. This comes up during the Court Martial of one of the recruits at Camp Curry and a few other times.
- The OCS sequences in the book are reminiscent of Naval Academy life as it was something Heinlein was familiar with.
- The role officers are expected to perform in combat and in a unit reflected the collective experiences of the time. As did the "From Here to Eternity" type NCOs that were the gritty glue that holds combat formations together.
- The Treaty of New Delhi was mentioned in the plot as the instrument that ended WWIII but left all the soldiers and POWs twisting in the wind. They had to find their own way home. This is reflective of the 1952-1953 stalemate in Korea over Prisoner Exchange. Chinese soldiers, many who were Nationalists forced to fight as punishment from their recently concluded civil war were refusing repatriation. The newly formed UN was prohibited from returning POWs that faced death upon return or voiced a preference NOT to return. The PRC wanted them all back so they could be dealt with. So a committee was formed of "Neutral Nations" (a prominent member being India) to interview all POWs and ensure the western nations werent "brainwashing" them (which the Chinese were). All the while, the bloody fighting rolled back and forth on the 38th parallel. Allegedly, forgoing prisoner exchange was on the table to end the war. Finally resolution. Prisoners were exchanged. Ironically 13 or so US POWs and several Brits refused repatriation and stayed in China. So Heinlein's writing would indicate that 1 man left behind is too many and wars should continue until we bring them all back. A sentiment he expresses through Rico in OCS H&MP.
- The Arachnid threat, aka the bugs is a race inpentrable to human comprehesion or understanding. No basis to communicate or negotiate, it is kill or be killed against hive animals. They are the stand-ins for the communists. The Galaxy is a metaphor for the planet Earth. The hit and run operations of the corevette Rodger Young is metaphor for the proxy wars and whack-a-mole fights with global communism of the era.
- The bar fight with Merchant Mariners reminsicent of the refusal to recognize merchant seamen as essential federal service, causing friction betyween them and veteran groups at the time, despite the sacrifice and risk.

Response by SFC Private RallyPoint Member made Aug 2 at 2020 2:48 AM

SFC Private RallyPoint Member — Sun, 02 Aug 2020 02:48:34 -0400

I would love to see a world where the people who get a vote are the people who have served their community in some way. If you've read the Starship Troopers book you will instantly realize it was written by a Vet. The moment in the book that the Supply SGT in their Boot camp says, "We have two sizes, too big and too small" I knew this guy had been in the military

But now that we are the minority, if we control access to public voting that makes us no better than the aristocrats of yesteryear. Only a minor percentage of our population has served. It would be fascist to funnel all votes through one place like military service where they could be indoctrinated.

Some things brief well but don't apply well in reality

Response by CW4 Keith Dolliver made Aug 2 at 2020 5:46 AM

CW4 Keith Dolliver — Sun, 02 Aug 2020 05:46:25 -0400

No, but I wouldn't be opposed to making it a requirement to serve as President. That being said though, there are more ways than just being in the military to serve your country and community. If something like that were to be in place I think it should be expanded to include service in any of the Uniformed Services (not just military), as well as Law Enforcement, Fire, or Medical service.

Response by SFC Michael Hasbun made Aug 2 at 2020 7:47 AM

SFC Michael Hasbun — Sun, 02 Aug 2020 07:47:43 -0400

No. If we did that, everyone would flood the Air Force so they could "serve" without really serving in the actual branches. Even in the book they mentioned how all the soft services became the destination of choice, with actual service in the Combat branches being look at as "low brow".
(Reference: The conversations Rico was having with the desk Sergeant and the placement officers at MEP's).

Response by 1SG Private RallyPoint Member made Aug 2 at 2020 1:18 PM

1SG Private RallyPoint Member — Sun, 02 Aug 2020 13:18:41 -0400

"Would you like to know more?"

Response by SFC Eric Harmon made Jul 31 at 2021 11:23 AM

SFC Eric Harmon — Sat, 31 Jul 2021 11:23:35 -0400

It is an idea that has merit.