“I am surprised any of Heinlein’s books made an NPR list, he did not care much for pansy socialist types.”
Did you know he actually ran for political office as a socialist ? He was also a staffer when Upton Sinclair ran for governor of CA on a socialist platform (although he ran on the Dem ticket) in 1934.
I’ve read everything Heinlein ever wrote and I was shocked when I found out he’d once been a socialist.
I wasn't. His understanding of freedom comes from having once believed in the other side's values and then thought about that belief system. Someone who has never been a socialist would not have as deep an understanding of its flaws as a convert.
Everything?
His hammering on a "world government" as a solution to all the world's woes and the assumption that it would cure all the ills of human nature by some sort of magic, mimics Socialism without explicitly asserting the obvious.
It's all collected by Heinlein himself, in Expanded Universe.
Did you know he actually ran for political office as a socialist ? He was also a staffer when Upton Sinclair ran for governor of CA on a socialist platform (although he ran on the Dem ticket) in 1934.
I’ve read everything Heinlein ever wrote and I was shocked when I found out he’d once been a socialist.
That political activism phase of Heinlein's life also resulted in his writing the non-fiction political activism "how to" book "Take Back Your Government". If adapted to modern technology, the methods he outlined would still be applicable today.