Heinlein Juveniles

I've now read most of the Heinlein Juveniles to my children--or listened to audiobook adaptations of the books with them. Re-experiencing them through the minds of my kids has been a delight, one of the great joys of my life over the last few years.

The worldview they embody is the kind of conservatism which is hard for this liberal to argue with. Self-reliance, education, compassion, intelligence, dilligence, are rewarded, eventually.

Freedom may be hard won. Fighting is sometimes necessary, and sometimes unnecessary, and figuring out the difference between these situations is one of the great challenges of any era.

Governments and large corporations may not have your best interests at heart. They may be evil. Yet sometimes, dedicated intelligent civil servants save humanity.

Heinlein seems to delight in inverting his own premises in the juveniles. Government as useless parasite. Government as savior. Independence as virtue. Independence as sin. (Coventry.)

This is a work in progress; I'll keep working on this.