Heinlein wrote many stories from many different perspectives and resisted all efforts at being “pegged” as this-or-that. A lot of writers can’t lift themselves out of their belief system or personal perspective—or do it badly or superficially. Heinlein could and he did it well enough and extensively enough that he had critics believing all sorts of things about him that he’d deny when asked.
I find that it’s easier and more accurate to get an estimate of the man based on his non-fiction essays. I get the impression that he loved his country, appreciated the military, understood politicians, was extremely wary of government, and was an advocate of capitalism, reason, and individualism—though he wouldn’t call himself a ‘big L’ libertarian nor an Objectivist.
My notion that Heinlein had, at one point, been a socialist was based on his involvement with Upton Sinclair in the thirties.
You may be right and Heinlein may just have had the ability to perfectly capture disparate perspectives. I almost hope not though. It would be absolutely remarkable to consider a writer doing this so well as Heinlein (if that is what he was doing) . . . but at the same time those parts of his works that speak so powerfully to what I believe in . . . well I’d rather like to think that those were sincere.
Perusing the essays is an excellent idea . . . I’m going to search a few of those out for sure.
From the fiction though it does seem that for much of his career he was strongly devoted to the principles of individual liberty, individual responsibility, reason and capitalism. And while I tend to agree that he probably was not an Objectivist (though I’m pretty sure he was at least an agnostic) some of his works (Rocketship Galileo/Destination Moon, The Man Who Sold the Moon and to a lesser extent The Roads Must Roll) seem aligned with a decent amount of Rand’s philosophy.