Never Yet Been Plumbed
This
is an excerpt from Concerning Stories Never Written: Postscript,
by Robert A. Heinlein. He placed the postscript at the end of his
book Revolt in 2100, copyright 1939, 1940, and 1953, and published
by The New American Library, Inc.
As
for the second notion, the idea that we could lose our freedom by succumbing
to a wave of religious hysteria, I am sorry to say that I consider it possible.
I hope that it is not probable. But there is a latent deep strain
of religious fanaticism in this, our culture; it is rooted in our
history and it has broken out many times in the past. It is with
us now; there has been a sharp rise in strongly evangelical sects
in this country in recent years, some of which hold beliefs theocratic
in the extreme, anti-intellectual, anti-scientific, and anti-libertarian.
It
is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its
creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow
it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the
minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground
all heretics. This is equally true whether the faith is Communism
or Holy-Rollerism; indeed it is the bounden duty of the faithful
to do so. The custodians of the True Faith cannot logically admit
tolerance of heresy to be a virtue.
Nevertheless
this business of legislating religious beliefs into law has never been
more than sporadically successful in this country Sunday closing laws
here and there, birth control legislation in spots, the Prohibition experiment,
temporary enclaves of theocracy such as Voliva's Zion, Smith's Nauvoo,
a few others. The country is split up into such a variety of faiths
and sects that a degree of uneasy tolerance now exists from expedient compromise;
the minorities constitute a majority of opposition against each other.
Could
it be otherwise here? Could any one sect obtain a working majority
at the polls and take over the country? Perhaps not but a combination
of a dynamic evangelist, television, enough money, and modern techniques
of advertising and propaganda might make Billy Sunday's efforts look like
a corner store compared to Sears Roebuck. Throw in a depression for
good measure, promise a material heaven here on earth, add a dash of anti-Semitism,
anti-Catholicism, anti-Negroism, and a good large dose of anti-"furriners"
in general and anti-intellectuals here at home and the result might be
something quite frightening particularly when one recalls that our voting
system is such that a minority distributed as pluralities in enough states
can constitute a working majority in Washington.
I
imagined Nehemiah Scudder as a backwoods evangelist who combined some of
the features of John Calvin, Savonarola, Judge Rutherford and Huey Long.
His influence was not national until after the death of Mrs. Rachel Biggs,
an early convert who had the single virtue of being the widow of an extremely
wealthy man who shared none of her religious myopia she left Brother
Scudder several millions of dollars with which to establish a television
station. Shortly thereafter he teamed up with an ex-Senator from
his home state; they placed their affairs in the hands of a major
advertising agency and were on their way to fame and fortune. Presently
they needed stormtroopers; they revived the Ku Klux Klan in everything
but the name sheets, passwords, grips and all. It was a "good gimmick"
once and still served. Blood at the polls and blood in the streets,
but Scudder won the election. The next election was never held.
Impossible?
Remember the Klan of the Twenties and how far it got without even a dynamic
leader. Remember Karl Marx and note how close that unscientific piece
of nonsense called Das Kapital has come to smothering out all freedom
of thought on half a planet, without mind you the emotional advantage
of calling it a religion. The capacity of the human mind for swallowing
nonsense and spewing it forth in violent and repressive action has never
yet been plumbed.
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