History and Moral Philosophy

The American Illness

The tile above refers, as some of you will doubtless be aware, to Robert Heinleins’ novel Starship Troopers. History and Moral Philosophy is a compulsory element of every stage of education the protagonist of the novel undertakes and is basically a course in militarist, right-wing brainwashing.

At this particular moment, two ideas from that course are kicking around in my mind:

“…their citizens (all of them counted as such) glorified their mythology of ‘rights’ . . . and lost track of their duties. No nation, so constituted, can endure.”

And:

“Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and their freedoms”

Unless something is going on that I can’t see, these two ideas have been deeply internalised in the entire history (all five minutes of it) and culture (in the loosest sense of the word) of America. Heinlein may have verbalised them more neatly than most, but it seems to me that they have been there since 1776 and are still there among the flames and the virus consuming America as I write.

When the Founding Fathers broke away from England and set about forming their Republic, every document and proclamation from the Declaration of Independence to the Constitution spoke extensively of rights. One hears these being…