Democracies are Efficient: As we demonstrated against the Axis dictatorships. Perhaps the controlling reason lies in the fact that the free speech of democracies results in criticism and correction, whereas in police states a mistake goes on indefinitely.
Can the Ordinary Political Volunteer Be Effective? Yes.
(a) Volunteers are trusted,
(b) Volunteers are promoted rapidly,
(c) Most important, all our political action and all elections, including presidential elections, are based on small, local organizations and on die followings of minor candidates, i.e., the natural field of die part-time volunteer. In a republic the local leader is die indispensable man, on whom the national political figures are utterly dependent.
(d) Who Guards the Guardians? Every corrupt machine reflects a body of citizens indifferent to, or even secredy proud of, their public scandals. The citizens are never helpless; the evils arise from inexcusable ignorance, smugness, laziness, and lack of personal feeling of public responsibility.
Personal Danger in Politics: Occasionally a volunteer suffers bodily harm because of his activity. The danger can be minimized through using your head but cannot be disregarded. The question is this: How does the danger compare with the dangers experienced by men in combat, fighting for the same ends? Or, which is better, to be slugged at the polls, fighting for your rights, or to be liquidated by a firing squad because you failed to protea your freedoms?
Political Scientists: This country needs many more men, in government and in teaching, trained in governmental matters by the scientific method. Regrettably, many "political scientists" are neither political nor scientific, having neither experience in politics nor training in the scientific method.
On Keeping Informed: The techniques expounded herein can make you an effective vote-getter; to be statesmanlike as well, you need broad information in social and economic matters. In addition to books about such matters, the following might be a minimum for current happenings - your own favorite daily paper plus its political opposite, the tabloid political papers of both parties, a national news weekly, and one of the publications which list key votes in Congress - and its local counterpart for your state legislature. It's a chore-but without such background you are merely a skilled ward heeler.
Keep Your Roots Down! Even though you rise to national party chairmanship, remain a doorbell-pushing precinct worker in some precinct somewhere.
Notes
Jerry E. Pournelle, Ph.D. Introduction to the Notes
One attempts to improve the work of a master with some trepidation; but the job had to be done. Mr. Heinlein wrote this book in 1946. We had just ended a great war, and confidently expected things to go back to more or less what they had been before the War and the Great Depression. Much had changed, and no one knew that better than Robert Heinlein; but not even he knew just how profound the change had been, and what changes were to come.
In 1940, Washington, D.C., was a small Southern Border town. There was no air conditioning, and Washington was uninhabitable in the summer. That didn't matter, because what went on in Washington wasn't very important to the average citizen. The political decisions that really counted were made in state capitals and city halls. Federal taxes were quite low, as were federal expenditures.
The War changed all that. The United States emerged victorious from World War II, but we found ourselves saddled with what seemed to be enormous debts, and we faced a devastated world. Money was needed. The Marshal Plan saved Europe, but it cost us. We had built a tax-gathering machine to finance the War; the needs of others kept that machine in place after the war ended. The result was a great increase in federal power, coupled with new international responsibilities. In the Far East, MacArthur rebuilt Japan from an aggressive empire to an unarmed liberal democracy. In Europe, General Lucius Clay in cooperation with democratic elements built West Germany into an armed liberal democracy. NATO became a permanent "entangling alliance."
We were not done rebuilding our former enemies when we found we were in a new war. The Cold War wasn't as bloody as World War II, but after Korea it was clear that it was bloody enough. It was also quite expensive. Instead of dismantling the enormous war machine we had created to beat the Germans and Japanese, we had to augment it. This required management, and Washington, swollen from the wartime expansion of its functions and equipped with new tax-gathering machinery, swelled again and again.
The Cold War brought about genuine divisions among the American people. While most (including Mr. Heinlein) saw armed militant Soviet Communism as a direct threat not only to world peace and stability but to the United States, many intellectuals thought the only threat was anti-Communist hysteria. Meanwhile, we had what appeared to be politics as usual, but with this difference: politics became more important than business; more important than the churches; more important than anything else we did. The growing tendency of political decisions to affect our lives inevitably attracted more professional politicians: the long era of amateur government was coming to an end.
That end came in the Johnson era. The Great Society programs were intended to make fundamental changes in the power structure of the nation; and they did. The changes wrought were probably not those intended. Then came the Watergate scandals, and a perceived need for reform.
The reforms deliberately crippled the party structure. Power was fragmented, doled out among the 435 representatives and 100 senators, divided among endless committees and sub-committees - but never returned to the people.
By 1975 the world described in this book had ceased to exist.
These notes have two purposes. First, they explain terms no longer in use, or used differently two generations ago. They also provide the opportunity to show where Heinlein was exactly right, or, more rarely, where he is known to have changed his views. Robert Heinlein began his political career as a moderate Democrat. His attempts at electoral office ended when he was defeated for the Democratic nomination to the California State Assembly by an up and coming Los Angeles Irish politician named Sam Yorty, who went on to win the Assembly seat, and later to become mayor of the City of Angels. Years later, Mr. Heinlein visited me when I was campaign manager for Yorty's successful bid for a third term as mayor. By that time, Heinlein had made many changes in his political philosophy, moving closer to the Libertarian position.
Thus the notes: the world changed a lot after this book was written, and so did the philosophical views of the author. I have attempted here to deal with both changes. Since this is a work on practical politics, I have tried to keep political philosophy to a minimum; but since the practical value of this book is as a manual of operations for a political system that doesn't exist, but which can be reclaimed, clearly we can't avoid the question. At the least we have to decide whether the system can be restored, and if so should it be.
On that question I feel comfortable: Robert Heinlein loved the America of this book, and would have loved to see it come back.
However: since we can't just turn back the clock, there will inevitably be questions about which changes to the system are acceptable and which are not. In some cases we know, from other works, particularly Expanded Universe, some of what Mr. Heinlein might have said. In others I can only guess, and rather than do that, I give my own opinion. So far as I know Mr. Heinlein and I were in agreement about most basic philosophical issues - hardly surprising given his influence on my life-but not on all. As an example, we disagreed profoundly about conscription. Ironically, when Heinlein wrote this book, he supported peace-time conscription (while recognizing that there were legitimate contrary views) and had absolutely no doubts about the necessity for the wartime draft; positions which I hold now, but which he rejected in his later years.