Robert Heinlein: “Well, in the first place an armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.”
This is a quote from a science fiction novel about a utopian society and, in my opinion, taken very much out of context. Heinlein was saying that peace at the end of the barrel of a gun isn’t really peace at all. If the current state of affairs in the United States demonstrates anything, it is this: being the most armed nation per capita on Earth has done very little to deter violent crime. In fact, if one considers the number of mass shootings and gun deaths that occur in the U.S. with astonishing regularity, you can make a convincing argument that the number of guns in private hands has been a major contributing factor to the surge in violence in the U.S.
Kind of a funny thread bump here because I was searching for something unrelated, but both of these takes are not
exactly correct. Heinlein's full quote is:
Well, in the first place an armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life. For me, politeness is sine qua non of civilization. That's a personal evaluation only. But gunfighting has a strong biological use. We do not have enough things that kill off the weak and the stupid these days. But to stay alive as an armed citizen a man has to be either quick with his wits or with his hands, preferably both. It's a good thing."
-Robert Heinlein,
Beyond This Horizon, 1942 (character Mordan Claude)
The book is a "post utopia" work- that is, it explores and is skeptical to the issues that
might crop up if a society actually becomes a utopia (which is essentially is). Humans have been genetically engineered for many generations- lifespans have been fantastically increased, disease is minimal, most people don't want for much- natural selection via environmental and other natural factors has effectively gone to zero. In a world with long lifespans free of early accidental death, politeness has become essential (sine qua non), and dueling is a way in which this culture enforces polite behavior
and introduces some element of risk.
Heinlein is effectively saying that sometimes politeness must be enforced by violence (or the awareness that violence can occur as a result of impoliteness- which is why the line
"an armed man need not fight" is in the text here), because (to paraphrase a portion of the conversation on the rest of the page) 'human institutions are sloppy because we're essentially all monkeys.' I'm including the rest of the page, because this quote occurs within a long conversation between two characters discussing another character that will be involved in an upcoming duel he will almost certainly lose if it is carried out with firearms. That
should be important to the reader- because while violence may be essential, in this case the characters are trying to figure out another avenue for the duel (and end up deciding they can probably make a case for a fistfight).
Heinlein loved to explore how societies could be organized- Starship Troopers is well-known by many as exploring a sort of "Utopian fascist state," but throughout almost
all of his work there is a message that politeness is an essential condition to society- and that should really be the takeaway from this quote- politeness is
sine qua non of civilization. What's amusing (and often missed) is that during this era of writing science-fiction, many of these "books" were adapted from magazines, and ~150 pages was pretty normal- enough to explore a
handful of ideas and how they would impact society.
Ironically While
everyone in
Beyond This Horizon is armed, within the framework of the world Heinlein builds in
Starship Troopers only registered citizens can vote or own firearms.... so taking these quotes out of context or ignoring that many of these works were originally written as magazines to explore specific ideas or social issues of the time, well, is of dubious nature. I mean, for starters we
don't live in a world where most people treat politeness as essential. I honestly wonder what Heinlein would have made of the internet and the impact it has had on how we engage and treat one another socially.
