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From: slj@mtung.UUCP (S. Luke Jones)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc
Subject: Slimy Heinlein Smear Attempt
Message-ID: <777@mtung.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 12-Sep-86 13:25:33 EDT
Article-I.D.: mtung.777
Posted: Fri Sep 12 13:25:33 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 15-Sep-86 05:27:28 EDT
References: <1071@hoptoad.uucp> <776@mtung.UUCP> <977@whuts.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T ISL Middletown NJ USA
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This has long-since degenerated past the stage where it deserves to be
inflicted on net.sf-lovers, so please followup only to net.politics.

> > OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO      S. Luke Jones (...ihnp4!mtung!slj)

> I read Farnham's Freehold and it certainly seemed to me to be more of
> a paean to "survivalism" than to actions to stop a nuclear war in
> the first place.  The protoganist is praiseworthy for stocking up
> with everything from food to encyclopedias to prepare for the aftermath
> of World War Last.   His major concern is protecting his survivalist
> fiefdom from looting by others who are starving and so forth.

You guys crack me up.  First, you say that Heinlein has been advocating a
nuclear war, then when roughly a dozen refutations are posted, you change
your complaint.  The hero should have prevented the war from happening
rather than trying to survive it.

1.  Just how the hell is an individual supposed to prevent a nuclear war
    from happening?  Join Greenpeace?  Aside from making a boring book,
    it'd be a stupid way to prevent a war.  (Don't bother giving me that
    "100th Monkey" pseudoscience.  If it worked, you unilateral-disarma-
    ment weenies would already have delivered the rest of us to the
    tender mercies of smilin' Mike and his Gulag Gang.)

2.  You probably think it would be better if, given an inevitable war,
    the protagonist made a point of dying rather than trying to live.
    Why?  What would this prove, and to whom?

> "Farnham's Freehold" is hardly a realistic view of the effects of
> nuclear war whatsoever.  For example, because an all-out nuclear war
> would destroy the ozone layer, animals and humans without their
> eyes shielded would soon be blinded.  Then of course there is the 
> likelihood of the Nuclear Winter effect.  Heinlein could be excused

Speaking of pseudo-science, what Archangel handed you this privy
information about what would happen after an all-out nuclear war?
Would I be wrong to surmise the source's politics are to the left
of, say, Edward Teller?  Does he say "millions and billions" a lot
and publish most of his articles these days in that world-famous
technical journal called PARADE Magazine?

Besides, who brought up "all-out" nuclear war?  The reason that the
town in _Farnham's Freehold_ was plastered so heavily was because
it sat next to Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado Springs, home of NORAD.
I suspect anyone living next to Omaha bought it as well.  But those
places were almost certainly the exception rather than the rule.

> But then another effect should have been well-known to Heinlein which
> he never bothered to deal with in his paean to "survivalism".
> Namely the certainty than any all-out nuclear war would lead to
> massive firestorms, leaving those in shelters like "Farnham's Freehold"

This was in fact dealt with in the novel.  But your collection of
excerpts must have missed it.  Too bad.

> It has been a long time since I read "Farnham's Freehold" but I also
> don't recall much discussion of the pernicious effects of radioactivity-

Did you really read it?  Do you remember why there was no radioactivity?
Hint:  "the bomb shelter gets transported a long time into the future."
(If you read even the back cover, you'd be hard put not to learn that.)

> I would say that as I recall Heinlein's story in "Farnham's Freehold"
> that it more closely resembles Reagan's Undersecretary of Defense,
> T.K. Jones statement that 
> "we can survive nuclear war with enough shovels.  Just dig a hole
> a few feet thick and jump in it."
> than any statement by pacifists or even people like Eisenhower
> or Khruschev ('the living will envy the dead')

>                     tim sevener  whuxn!orb

As has been pointed out numerous times, your recollection is faulty.
Heinlein said that certain people under certain circumstances could
possibly survive a war with luck (time travel?  most survivalists
aren't banking on it) and EVEN THEN he goes out of his way to make
clear that the survivors aren't out of the woods -- the future holds
cannibalism and slavery in store for them.

-- 
       O            "I used to bull-eye Womp Rats in my T-16
   O  OOO  O         in Beggar's Canyon back home, and they're
 OO    O    OO       not much bigger than that."
OOOO  OOO  OOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO      S. Luke Jones (...ihnp4!mtung!slj)
 OOOOOOOOOOOOO       AT&T Information Systems
    OOOOOOO          Middletown, NJ, U.S.A.