"Heinlein, Robert A - Take Back Your Government" - читать интересную книгу автора (Heinlein Robert A)

Politics is a tag for the way we get things done, socially; many of them have only an academic knowledge of how we, the American citizens, conduct our affairs.
"Science" is a word with a definite meaning. It refers to a body of organized knowledge derived by a particular method. In brief that method consists of observing specific, individual facts, trying to find relations between them, setting up hypotheses, then checking those hypotheses by observing more pertinent facts. Under this method of investigation all scientific knowledge is founded on field work and laboratory work.
In some fields the basic facts can be observed on the campus, as in physics or chemistry. In others the scientist must regularly go to where his phenomena exist, because they can't be carried to the campus, as in geology and stratospheric research - if he is to learn anything new about his subject and not simply chew over what other men have said.
Is it not obvious that in order to study politics scientifically it is necessary to spend a lot of time where politics is going on?
I have at hand a letter from a friend of mine who is a professional political scientist, with all that years of post-graduate training in one of the most famous schools can give him. However he has had no experience in active politics. He writes:
"Do you think experience or practice in politics essential to an improvement in political interaction? I am a believer in empiricism in most things but believe that much more can be accomplished by scientific methods than by experience in government. That is, I feel that a man might be an effective partisan all his life, but end it with no greater ability to accomplish desirable political changes than in the beginning."
The above paragraph exhibits such complex confusion that I hardly know where to start. Let us begin by conceding that a man may be a very effective field worker in politics and still not do any good in the long run if his work is not enlightened by information and
understanding in current affairs, history, economics, sociology, and many other things. Politics is the broadest of human subjects and we have dealt only with one narrow field of it herein.
But how can a man hope to "accomplish desirable political changes" if he is not experienced in the mechanisms by which political changes are brought about? For that matter will he know a desirable political change when he sees one, unless he has rubbed shoulders with the crowded millions off campus?
But note the orientation, note how he contrasts "empiricism" and "experience" as being the opposite of "scientific methods." The sad fact is that all of his degrees and training have not exposed him to the basic idea of the scientific method. All scientific knowledge comes from experience, experience as concrete as careful observation, careful measurements, and careful experimentation can make it. "Empiricism" is a word with several related meanings; in scientific methodology it is usually used to refer to an early stage in an investigation when the observer has too few facts too inaccurately observed to permit him to make more than rough generalizations as his hypothesis. Politics is largely at the empirical stage because of its extreme complexity. Empiricism is appropriate to politics; no other scientific approach is possible.
Unfortunately, other approaches are possible; one is the method of armchair speculation of the philosopher. It is the classic method in this field, used by Plato, Aristotle, Spencer, and Marx - and the work of each is vitiated by it. They might as well have spent their time debating how many angels can dance on the point of a needle. But the method is still popular!
Is it too much to hope that some day someone will found a school of government which will include as one of its required laboratory courses active field work in at least one campaign? And then perhaps to require something as strenuous and unacademic as serving a term in a county committee, or running for office, or managing a campaign, or undertaking to lobby a bill through a state legislature, before awarding graduate degrees which entideaman to refer to himselfasapotitical scientist?
I feel wistful about it. Honest-to-goodness trained men could do so much good in public life if only we had a few more of them. Afterthoughts and Minutiae:
Don't put campaign literature in mailboxes other than through the matis. Postal regulations forbid it.
There is a small duplicating set available suitable for postal cards, which costs about a dollar. Sears Roebuck used to have them and probably does now. It uses mimeograph ink and a hand roller. Gelatine duplicators, hectograph-type process, and looking like a child's slate, may be had for three or four dollars in sizes which will take either postal cards or standard business stationery.
Unpredictable coincidences can play hob with a carefully planned campaign, leaving you nothing to do but laugh it off and forget it. I happened to pick the year to run for office that found the Nazi Sudetenland Fuehrer in the headlines; his name differs in spelling from mine by one letter!
In making a committee report it is diplomatic to say "your committee" instead of "the committee."
The difference between a caucus and an ordinary majority action is parallel to the difference between the Constitution and the laws which are made under it. A constitution is an agreement-to-agree-in-the-future, along certain lines and to serve certain known ends. So is a caucus. This may make it easier for you to explain it to the uninitiated.
Anti-handbill ordinances, anti-bill posting ordinances, and ordinances which forbid street-speaking and park-speaking without a permit should be opposed by all persons and parties devoted to democracy and freedom, as the avenues these ordinances close off are historically the only ones available at times to the poor and unpowerful. I am aware that it is a nuisance to have your doorstep littered with throw-away pamphlets, but it is still more of a nuisance to be thrown into a concentration camp. Democracy is worth a few nuisances.
Clubs should never have nominating committees; it is subversive of democracy. A motion to close nominations is never in order and should not be entertained. The proper procedure is to let a period of dead silence intervene, after inviting further nominations, then announce that they have closed. Be lenient in allowing laggards to slide home. Let them appeal to the floor if they wish.
Are you over thirty-five? Or under thirty-five? This is a touchy matter in volunteer politics for the old frequently work for the young, and vice versa. The power to keep things friendly lies with the leadership and the key to it rests in "face." When you are in a position of leadership to persons out of your own age group, whether younger or older, you will have no trouble if you go way out of your way to treat them with much more respect than you do persons of your own age.
Take a complete rest from people every now and then. Go away if you can. Being polite all the time is wearing.
On keeping oneself informed - of course you read a newspaper. But do you read the opposition newspaper as well? It is more informative in many ways. Both your state organization and that of the other party probably put out a little political newspaper; both are valuable to you. A free subscription to the Congressional Record may often be had for the asking; it is too long to read but it is well worth thumbing through for key votes and certainspeeches. Keeping track of voting records is essential to an enlightened politico; once, to my shame, I supported the wrong man all through a primary because I had taken another man's word as to the voting record of the incumbent. There are convenient summaries of all significant votes for both congress and state legislatures from several different sources-major daily papers, taxpayers groups, labor unions, the New Republic. It is not necessary to agree with the opinions of the source for these compendia to be useful to you. Keep them on file rather than trying to memorize them. File every copy of a platform, or a candidate's promise on issues. It is common credo that election promises are never kept and that platforms are mere bait; in my limited experience this cynical belief has been false somewhat oftener than it has been true. It is well to know the facts on individual cases.
My wife and I have found a delightful way to celebrate the Fourth of July; you might enjoy it. We read aloud the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. They are grand poetry of the Biblical style and it is well to refresh the memory.
Speaking of poetry, I wish that I had the capacity to write something like The People,Yes -, which I quoted from at the head of this chapter. I commend it to your attention. But there is music of the same sort in the sound of a thousand doorbells -
Ben Franklin pointed out to the benefit of all politicians that the easiest way to get a man to like you is to get him to do you a favor.
A lot of people want to get into politics but they want to operate on the "higher levels." I think of these high-minded but impractical people as "ballet" liberals because of an incident which took place in New York in 1942. A group representing all of the arts had met to see what the creative artist could do to help win the war. It developed that there was a strong bloc present which thought that the correct course of action was to demand that Congress subsidize a national ballet! I like ballet as well as the next but it seems a curious "secret weapon." If you want to enter politics don't expect to do so through organizations which are ordinarily non-political, women's clubs, church groups, fraternal organizations, professional groups, and the like. Or, at least, do not expect to be effective in bringing pressure on an officeholder by representing yourself as being influential in such groups. A man who has been elected to office is not likely to be a fool on the subject of votes. He knows the political feebleness of such organizations
- that they do not vote as a bloc no matter how their leaders may bluster. Your petition will be discounted accordingly. If you represent a precinct organization you won't have to tell him so.
Amateur pressure groups, such as neighborhood indignation committees, all too frequently go to see councilmen and such and adopt a belligerent tone which suggests the officeholder is a crook and that he can be frightened easily. Both assumptions are likely to be mistaken.
Let us now praise bureaucrats. Bureaucrats come in for a kicking around from anybody at any time. As a matter of fact they are a pretty good lot Try to imagine what a strike of "bureaucrats" would do to the country. No, don't-it's unthinkable, frightening.
And lastly-I would like to put this in box car letters- even if you become state or national chairman of your party, try to remain your own precinct captain, or some sort of a doorbell pusher. It will keep your roots to the ground. Even the Caliph of Baghdad made a practice of disguising himself and going out to talk intimately to his people.

CHAPTERXII
The American Dream
"It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced...."-A. Lincoln, Nov. 19,1863
What of the issues?
We have piled up a whole book discussing the mechanical details of field politics, as if it were an automobile to be taken apart and repaired, put back together and made to run. Some of the details must have seemed very fiddling and far removed from the clean heights of statesmanship. It has been a worm's eye view of politics.
The activities described in this book would be bare bones indeed if they were ends in themselves. If we are to win elections for the competitive pleasure of winning, it would be better to play golf or bridge. So what of the issues?
It is not necessary that I speak here of specific issues. Even if you have no clear-cut political opinions on entering politics you are bound to form evaluations about issues. Whatever evaluations you had before you entered politics are bound to change and you will wonder how you could have held them.
But if you enter politics with honesty, ordinary sense, and a hope in your heart that you can help out, I am willing to trust my own future and the future of our
children to the evaluations you will form and the actions you will take. Whenever the American people take their affairs in their own hands, instead of letting them go by default, I have no fear of the outcome.
We need never be afraid of the vote of informed Americans. It is only the ignorant voter we have to fear, ignorant politically, no matter how fine his house or how expensive his schooling. Such people have never experienced democracy; they have merely enjoyed its benefits. It is hard to explain what democracy is; it is necessary to participate in it to understand it.
The former Berlin businessman I referred to earlier told me that he blamed his own group, people with the time and the money and the opportunity to know better, for what happened to Germany. "We ignored Hitler," he said. "We considered him an unimportant fellow, not quite a gentleman, not of our own class. We considered it just a little bit vulgar to bother with him, to bother with politics at all."
They thought of the government as "They." The only possible route to a clear conscience in politics is to accept political responsibility, either as an active member of the party in power or as an equally active member of die loyal opposition.
An adult is a person who no longer depends on his parents. By the same token a person who refers to or thinks of the government as "They" is not yet grown up. There are many such in America, too many, but not too many I diink to prevent the adults from taking care of our joint welfare. I'm a believer and a hoper.
There is more cynicism in this country than there are things to be cynical about. The debunking exceeds the phoniness. There is more skepticism than mendacity. Dr. Alexander Graham Bell was sued for fraud because he claimed he could talk over the wires. The Wright brothers had to plead with people to please come look - we can fly! And none of the "smart people" believed that the pipsqueak "nation" of thirteen rebel colonies could ever hold together and form a living union. The spawn of the skeptics are still with us. "You can't fool me cause I'm too durn sly!" They are around us, busy belittling and sneering and grinning at every effort to make of this country what it can be. What it will be.
For you diere is the joy ofbeing in the know, of understanding the political life of your country, the greater joy of striving for the things you believe in, and the greatest joy of all, the joy of public service freely given, service to your fellow men without pay and without thought of pay. If you have not as yet experienced this joy, then there are no words with which to describe nor any way to convince you of its superiority to other joys; it is possible only to assure that it is so.
"War is an extension of politics by other means." - Von Clausewitz. And politics is an extension of war. The war did not end in August 1945; it goes on around you, around the world, in difficult guises. We are in more danger now than ever before in our history, dissension within, our ideas for which we fought subjected to many forms of attack, the peace we won whittled away, and over it all the menace of another war, a war that could strike in the night, defeat and utterly destroy America and the American Dream.
If we prevent that war it will not be by force of might, for we cannot expect time enough to bring that might into play. If we are to escape it, it must be by political action more enlightened and more nearly unanimous than any we have ever shown.
The "decadent" democracies showed on a hundred battered beach heads that free men could think, could lead themselves when their leaders fell, and could improvise with the means at hand. We face the new beach heads, we must face them witbeach heads, we must face them with individual responsibility, improvise and fight with the means at hand. I can hear the strange express-train roar of the jet planes passing overhead from the fields in the valley to the north. Soon it will be the blast of the great rockets. It is the end of an era.