The book was not fascist. While there was not much mention of the economic model used, it would be natural that there would be defense contracts during war. Heinlein was always writing about rugged individualism surviving in a darwinian universe. The movies should have had different names. They bore NO resemblance to the book.

stim wrote: "Your three historical backings indicate that conscription can be USEFUL and EFFECTIVE, not that it is ETHICALLY right" This is my position exactly. In my opinion two things are true. 1. Conscription is coercion no better than slavery. 2. A free society that can muster enough responsibility and dedication in its citizens to defend itself without resorting to conscription is not destined to remain free for long anyhow. And actually, sadly, if you look at the examples given by Heavycamper you can see that in each case the society shortly underwent massive changes that led to greatly decreased individual freedom and liberties for the citizens. I'm not saying this will always happen, you can't draw conclusions from such a small sampling without a lot of supporting evidence. But empirically it appears to be true that societies which have to resort to mass conscription to defend themselves are not long to retain the freedoms and liberties they consider precious.

I need to restate that a bit. Heavycamper only gave one example where my statement is true, the French Levee en Masse. I was thinking he had used the American Civil War as an example also.

I quickly read Starship Troopers several years ago and am familiar with libertarian thinking (I majored in Political Science), but, with all due respect to Mike_Golf, I can not agree with him about conscription. I have not read all the threads on this subject, so please indulge me. If Mike_Golf doen't like the coersion of the draft, then what do you do about freeloaders? You can not expect a select group of people, whether they be patriotic citizen who serve or the top 5% of taxpayers (who are paying 50% of all income taxes), to keep on giving, giving and giving while others, who do not serve or pay taxes, reap equal benefits. This is an intollerable long term situation. From my quick reading of the book, I think that Heinlin was flat out stating that mass democracy will not last and does not always produce liberty. It's interesting to note that Heinlin's book identified "special/self interest" as a critical failing of mass democracy because "self-interest" is very much a libertarian virtue. I guess you can call me a grumpy conservative because I don't see the USA surviving the next century under the status quo. The balance between civic responsibility and self-interest has been lost, and I don't know how we regain equalibrium without a real change in societal attitudes or a change in political structure.

Hey x_marine, I understand what you are saying. I'm a history major myself, not poli sci. Looked at historically, what you describe, a small percentage of the citizenry that is active within the nation, the majority inactive and "free loading" is the norm, not the exception. Even in this country. I think my thesis regarding societies that adopt mass conscription and then go on to change as a society and lose a significant portion of their freedoms is fairly clear if you look at the American Civil War and its aftermath. Conscription during the Civil War is a real dilemma for me. I consider conscription immoral, but the destruction of the American experiment would have been just as immoral. On the other hand, state's rights is a rallying cry I can get behind. Unfortunately the right that was so near and dear to the South's heart was slavery. Serious dilemma for a libertarian. By the way, for any other libertarians out there, I'm a libertarian in the Heinlein mold, not the Ayn Rand mold. Rand missed the boat on the necessity of pragmatism over idealism.

warhammer "Starship Troopers" was published in 1959. Heinlein has some references to the Korean War in it, specifically as to the rumored American prisoners that Eisenhower left behind. It was not written as a commentary on WWII and Vietnam hadn't happened yet. Vietnam did get a reference in "Glory Road". The protagonist was a Vietnam vet sort of draftee that enlisted. His libertarian book was "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress".

Its on TV tonight, I'll watch it to see how "fascist" it is.

I think selective suffrage like in Starship Troopers eventually will lead to the supremacy of the vote-givers over non vote-givers. Voting is a power not a duty. Eventually politicians will make the progressions towards giving more rights and powers to vote-givers. Such as less tax (or no tax), priority in governmental issues, having right to have special properties. This will lead the non-citizens part of the society to want to be a citizen. But history shows us that power-holders are reluctant to share their power. For example in Starship Troopers only thae ones who serve in the military or government can be a citizen. We can assume that the opening positions in these are limited. Not everybody who wants to be a citizen, will achieve to be one. So in this kind of state there will be a struggle between citizens and wanna-be citizens. There will be a domination of citizens over non-citizens. The net result will be a struggle like patricians and plebeians in ancient Rome.

I believe the book is very explicit on citizenship. No one can be denied the right to enlist in the military or forced out of the military unless they voilate military law.

I have 42 credits of history, but it wasn't clustered properly to qualify for a minor or second major. Therefore I consider myself a somewhat (I mean that in a sincere way) knowledgeable person regarding history. Regarding Libertarians.... While I consider the Left the epotime of the broken clock (i.e. even a broken clock is correct twice a day), Libertarians tend to be (forgive the pun) in the wrong time zone. I like and respect Libertarians but think that self-interest will only take a society so far. Libertarians are fantastic in creating non-government centered solutions to issues, but I choke on the centrality of economics in its worlview; at times they sound like right-of-center Marxism. I do admit to being attracted to the Libertarian idea of smaller political units being (somewhat) culturally and and economically tied together (e.g. Hanseatic League or even the British Empire). It would certainly tame the excesses of chauvinistic nationalism and paternalistic/egalitarian government. But, even given this idea, how are the issues of collective defense andmonopolistic/corpratist/crony capitalism to be addressed? Explain the difference between Heineman and Ryn Libertarianism? How did you become a Libertarian? What era of History did you concentrate in? Do you suft the mises.org web site? It is a fantastic economic site.