“My mother said violence never solves anything.”
“So?” Mr. Dubois looked at her bleakly. “I'm sure the city fathers of Carthage would be glad to know that. Why doesn’t your mother tell them so? Or why don’t you?”
…
“You’re making fun of me! Everybody knows that Carthage was destroyed!”
“You seemed to be unaware of it,” he said grimly. “Since you do know it, wouldn’t you say that violence had settled their destinies rather thoroughly? However, I was not making fun of you personally; I was heaping scorn on an inexcusably silly idea — a practice I shall always follow. Anyone who clings to the historically untrue and thoroughly immoral doctrine that ‘violence never settles anything’ I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and of the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler could referee, and the jury might well be the Dodo, the Great Auk, and the Passenger Pigeon. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and their freedoms.”
--Jean V. Dubois, Lt.-Col., M.I, from Robert Heinlein, Starship Troopers (1959)
Starship Troopers should be required reading for every young person, and it is at several of the US service academies. It is also recommended reading in two of the military branches. Do not speak to me about any movies that may share the name. The book has never been made into a movie, and that point is not debatable. If you want to debate it, you have only demonstrated that you never read the book or, worse, did not understand it. But every young person should be required both to read and to demonstrate through recitation and examination that they understood the book. If we cannot require citizens to be landowners and veterans in order to vote, we might at least require that they read a shortlist of important works on moral, historical, and political philosophy before casting a ballot. Starship Troopers would be on that shortlist if I were allowed to contribute to it.
There are many important themes, compelling ideas, and memorable passages in Starship Troopers, arguably Heinlein’s greatest work. The above quotation, one of my favorites, is full of ideas to ponder and discuss. Does violence really resolve issues of conflict or only terminate them? Is violence a moral solution or only a pragmatic one? How might historical context inform political and moral philosophy? Should it? The book will entertain those who like action-packed stories, but if they are thinking people, they will find it far more than an entertaining diversion.
One of the ideas that should stand out in the above exchange is Dubois’s commitment to “heaping scorn on an inexcusably silly idea.” Notice that he is not mocking the student, though she may have felt otherwise at the time, and he was not belittling a silly but excusable idea. We have those all the time. Good teachers, like Dubois and Heinlein, help us discover our errors and repent of understandable but no longer tolerable silliness. But Dubois does not believe in giving deference to blatantly absurd, indefensible, and self-destructive ideas whether propounded by winsome wolves or puerile parrots. Neither should we if we wish to be moral people.
Granted, the cause of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness is not well-advanced by its advocates and defenders acting like jerks. But there is a big difference between respecting a person and respecting his or her ideas. The former is always appropriate; the latter sometimes is and sometimes is not. An SS officer of the Third Reich taken as a prisoner of war should be treated in accordance with the appropriate conventions of civilized warfare and given due consideration with regard to human rights. His arguments in favor of the Final Solution and his justification of genocide on the grounds of following orders should be summarily dismissed and treated with righteous scorn. It can be difficult to distinguish the person making an argument from his argument, but that it is difficult does not make it any less necessary.
If a person is sincerely convinced of even the worst ideas and is willing to reason, he should be given the benefit of the doubt and opportunity to learn better what he ought to think. I am happy to debate even the most perverse ideas if I am convinced of an opponent’s sincerity in dialogue. But if he is simply parroting ideological slogans that are without merit, demonstrating he neither has critical thinking skills nor cares that his views undermine his own existence, then he ought to be treated like the child that he is, morally speaking. He should be patted on the head (or more forcefully on the rear) and told not to think that way lest his moral and philosophical cancer become contagious. People like the student above are not engaging in rational dialogue. They are using a motto as a mantra, a motto which if ever taken seriously would destroy the civilized world.
No one in the modern world may without objection express the opinion that existence would be bettered by the absence of Jews, blacks, Muslims, or Englishmen. Why, then, is it virtuous to propose that the planet might be better off, if there were fewer people on it? I can’t help but see a skeletal, grinning face, gleeful at the possibility of the apocalypse, hiding not so very far behind such statements. And why does it so often seem to be the very people standing so visibly against prejudice who so often appear to feel obligated to denounce humanity itself?
--Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos (Penguin, 2018), 297
What kind of a world do we live in when the argument that human beings are parasites and a threat to the planet is treated with deference as academic and admirable, but arguments that an unborn child should be accorded human rights, including the right to life, are characterized as immoral and unworthy even of conversation? Our civilized society gives greater protection to sea turtle eggs than to a human fetus with fingers, face, and a heartbeat. Certain ideas are manifestly wicked and dangerous, whether the persons propounding them are or not. They may be simply naive or deceived, or they may be personally evil and a threat to society.
Many people have embraced the (foolish and demonstrably untrue) idea that the most important characteristic in human discussion is kindness. Hogwash. If a brown recluse spider is crawling up my neck, I don’t need a polite observation but a quick, strong, clear warning. As usual, Chesterton hits the nail clean and hard.
That peril is that the human intellect is free to destroy itself. Just as one generation could prevent the very existence of the next generation, by all entering a monastery or jumping into the sea, so one set of thinkers can in some degree prevent further thinking by teaching the next generation that there is no validity in any human thought. It is idle to talk always of the alternative of reason and faith. Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all. If you are merely a sceptic, you must sooner or later ask yourself the question, "Why should ANYTHING go right; even observation and deduction? Why should not good logic be as misleading as bad logic? They are both movements in the brain of a bewildered ape?" The young sceptic says, "I have a right to think for myself." But the old sceptic, the complete sceptic, says, "I have no right to think for myself. I have no right to think at all.
There is a thought that stops thought. That is the only thought that ought to be stopped.
--G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (1908)
