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

because you preferred to sit in the back seat and snooze. Because you
thought your taxes bought you a bus ticket and a guaranteed safe arrival,
when all your taxes bought you was a part ownership in a joint enterprise, on
a share-the-cost and share-the-driving plan.
But the crisis is more than usually acute this year, the traffic is thicker, the
curves more blind, the traffic signals less reliable, and there are a lot of
places where the pavement is out which have not been marked on any map.
More than ever your own welfare demands that you be alert and responsible.
Do you favour peacetime conscriptions? How did your congressman vote
on it? Have you got any sons under twenty-one? Should the budget be
balanced on a pay-as-you-go plan? If so, are you willing to vote to raise your
own taxes? Or would you rather cut the budget for the army, the navy, and
for veterans' benefits? Is there some other way to do it?
Should coal miners be forbidden to strike? Can you mine coal with
bayonets? What would your rent be in a free market? Or are you still sleeping
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on a borrowed couch? When will a home be built for you and your kids? Can
you afford it when it is built, if ever? Does your town have a building code
which prevents the use of new materials and new construction methods?
How do you feel about a loan to Great Britain? To France? To Russia? Are
you willing to go on rationing to keep Germans from starving? How long
should the occupation of Japan continue? Why? How did your congressman
vote on FEPC? Do you know what FEPC is? How does it affect you?
The Filipinos become independent this year - should we let Philippine
sugar in duty free? Do you live in the Colorado sugar beet country? Is a
Senate filibuster a legitimate defense of states' rights, or a piece of tyranny?
Should an oil man be in charge of military and naval oil reserves? Was
Secretary Fall an oil operator? Does it make any difference?
Should we insist that Russia give us free access and uncensored news
reports so that we will know what she is up to? Is it worth fighting about? How
about the Big Five Veto power? Does it make for peace or war?
Should Russia get out of Iran? Should Britain get out of Egypt? Should we
get out of Korea? Are the three cases parallel? Or very different? Is a
Manchurian communist the same thing as a Brooklyn communist? Why? Why
not? Should a sharecropper be a Republican or a Democrat? Should a
stockholder be a Democrat or a Republican? What is the American Way of
Life? Does it mean the same thing on the Main Line as it does on Skid Row?
Are you sure about that last answer? Aren't we all in the same boat? Will
an atomic bomb discriminate between bank account-or party labels?
Now we are getting down to cases. All the other problems were of the
simple, easy sort that we have blundered our way through, not too badly, for
the past hundred and seventy years.
We have a double-edged crisis this year, more acute on both its edges
than any we have ever faced before, more acute, even, than Pearl Harbor, or
the terrible War Between the States.
The first crisis is political and economic. Our way of life is being
challenged by a revolutionary upsurge in all corners of the globe. We can
meet it with hysteria, persecution, and a new isolationism, or we can define
our way of life in action and defend it by practical accomplishment. An
American who is well housed, well fed, and holding a good job is poor