A witty insight into female psychology

I just came upon this quotation by Robert Heinlein:

If in an argument with your wife you discover that you are in the right, apologize immediately.

I think Heinlein is on to something. But the problem is, one would have to be a saint to practice his advice.

- end of initial entry -

February 5

Kilroy M. writes:

I’ve only read Heinlein’s Starship Troopers and found a very disconcerting feminist motif in the book, particularly the way he describes the role of women in the military. Near the end of the book, chapter 13, the main character describes himself as “the lowliest male” when illustrating an embarrassing dinner faux pas in the ship’s dining quarters. Heinlein seems to believe that traditional chivalry is entirely congruous with radical gender egalitarianism, which obviously is part of the ideological framework in the neo-Spartan universe of the “Terran Federation”. Earlier on in the same chapter he espouses the merits of females in the military as actually boosting male troop moral. I am not a military man, but I believe the exact opposite is in fact the case.

I don’t wish to trash the book, however. It is actually one of the most enjoyable “easy reads” in my library. Those who haven’t read it, I strenuously urge them not to give into the lazy impulse of watching the movie, which is banal, trivial and brain dead. The initially difficult relationship of the main character and his father, warmly presented in the book but completed omitted in the screen version of the story, is enough to buy a copy of the volume. Starship Troopers also contains quite a provocative critique of modern liberal mass democracy via the flash-back lessons of the main character’s high school teacher (which I find a little too nihilist, but nonetheless refreshing in the context of today’s treacle saturated sentimentalist politics).

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 03, 2012 05:22 PM | Send