I don’t know whether Goldwater can be elected or not — or whether he can change things if elected. But I would like to see the United States make a radical change away from its present course. I’m sick of bailing out Kremlin murderers with wheat sold to them on credit and at tax-subsidized prices, I’m sick of giving F-86’s and Sherman tanks and money to communists, I’m sick of undeclared wars rigged out not to be won — I’m sick of conscripting American boys to die in such wars — I’m sick of having American servicemen rotting in communist prisons for eleven long years and of presidents (including that slimy faker Eisenhower!) who smilingly ignore the fact and do nothing. I’m sick of confiscatory taxes for the benefit of socialist countries and of inflation that makes saving a mockery, I’m sick of signing treaties with scoundrels who boast of their own dishonesty and who have never been known to keep a treaty, I’m sick of laws that make loafing more attractive than honest work.
But most of all I am sick of going abroad and finding that any citizen of any two-bit, county-sized country in the world doesn’t hesitate to insult the United States loudly and publicly while demanding still more “aid” and of course “with no strings attached” from the pockets of you and me. I don’t give a hoot whether the United States is “loved” and I care nothing for “World Opinion” as represented by the yaps of “uncommitted nations” made up of illiterate savages — but I would like to see the United States respected once again (or even feared!) … [sic] and I think and hope that the Senator from Arizona is the sort of tough hombre who can bring it about.
I hope —
But it’s a forlorn hope at best! I’m much afraid that this country has gone too far down the road of bread and circuses to change its domestic course (who “shoots Santa Claus”?) and is too far committed to peace-at-any-price to reverse its foreign policy.
Robert A. Heinlein, letter to Larry and Caryl Heinlein 1964-07-19 (quoted in William H. Patterson Jr’s Robert A. Heinlein, In Dialogue with His Century Volume 2: The Man Who Learned Better, 2014).
July 10, 2015
QotD: Robert Heinlein’s support for the Barry Goldwater campaign
Filed under: History, Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: BarryGoldwater, LBJ, RobertHeinlein, SovietUnion — Nicholas @ 01:00
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