"Robert A. Heinlein - Take back your Government" - читать интересную книгу автора (Heinlein Robert A)

impending disaster. The civil service at all levels has grown well beyond
anyone's ability to predict in 1946. Government, in a word, has become very
big business indeed, while what we used to fear as "the big business interest"
has faded into the background. I could multiply examples endlessly, but
surely the point is made. Somewhere between 1946 and the present the
American democracy as Heinlein knew it disappeared, to be replaced with
our present system in which our local affairs are governed by Washington - a
city that can't govern itself, but has no qualms about telling the rest of us how
we should live.
The Opportunity
We have a new situation in this year of grace 1992 and of the
independence of these United States the 216th. To say that the American
people have come to distrust their government is a silly understatement. The
polls show that they hate our present political system. They're mad as Hell
and they aren't going to take it any more. There is a movement to take back
control, and it may work. For the first time in our lifetimes there is an
alternative. Millions of Americans, disgusted with politics as usual, have
turned to a man who, as I write this, is still legally only an "undeclared
candidate for President" - but who, as I write this, is the likely winner of the
Presidency. In the state of New Jersey both houses of the legislature went
from a majority by one party to a veto-proof majority of the other. As I write
this we can predict that there will be at least 100 new faces among the 435
members of the House of Representatives; and it is entirely possible that
there will be many more, perhaps even a majority of new faces.
There will be equally profound changes at the state and local level.
Everywhere there is an opportunity to, in the words of the old political rallying
cry, turn the Rascals Out. We can change the system. We very likely will.
With what, then, shall we replace the system of professional politicians?
It's no good "reforming" die system only to abandon it to a new crew of
professional politicians. That cure could easily be worse than the disease.
We must Turn die Rascals Out, but we must rebuild our system of citizen-
controlled government.
That, I submit, is the great value of this book. It's all in here. In this book,
Robert Heinlein describes, lovingly and in great detail, the system of
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government which worked for this republic for nearly two hundred years. This
isn't a blueprint, and it's not a treatise on political science. We will need those
and they will come; but this is a love story.
Jerry Pournelle Hollywood, California July 1992
Robert A. Heinlein


Preface
(In which the defendant pleads guilty to the charge of being a politician but
offers a statement in his defense.)
This is intended to be a practical manual of instruction for the American
layman who has taken no regular part in politics, has no personal political
ambitions, and no desire to make money out of politics, but who,
nevertheless, would like to do something to make his chosen form of
government work better. If you have a gnawing, uneasy feeling that you