Robert E. Heinlein and the hubris of the present

I think it is fallacious to judge deceased writers by the political fads and fashions of the modern era. Specifically, because judging a deceased writer as racist or misogynist or whatever very often relies upon three assumptions, all of them demonstrably falsifiable:

-That the political opinions of the 21st century are, in themselves, morally correct.

-That Americans of the 21st century are more morally advanced than those of the 20th, the 19th, and the 18th.

-That the moral progress of history has been linear – that is, the 21st century is more advanced morally than, say 19th century America or 2nd century Imperial Rome.

I recently read an article about Robert E. Heinlein arguing that while he included some “diversity” in his writings, his work wasn’t diverse enough, because he didn’t include adequate numbers of Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, disabled people, and other designated minority groups.  Or that while he had strong female characters,  his work was sexist, because he wrote in “Red Planet” that a girl old enough to cook and care for babies was old enough to be considered an adult. The protest isn’t that Heinlein was not liberal in his views – but that his fiction did not hew closely enough to the orthodoxy of 21st century Progressive politics.

One could debate, of course, whether 21st-century political opinions have intrinsic moral value.  Regardless, to judge previous generations for failing to adhere to the favored party line of the present is the height of arrogance. One might as well condemn Martin Luther and the Protestant Revolution for being insufficiently Marxist, or Alexander the Great for being insufficiently Muslim, or Arthur Conan Doyle for not supporting World War II.

If all fiction must be judged by the shibboleths of 21st-century American Progressivism and 21st-century political correctness, the world of literature will soon be a very dull place indeed.

-JM