Posted by Graziano Carlon on February 08, 1999 at 13:24:49:
In Reply to: Re: Anyone else write like Vance? posted by Terry on February 08, 1999 at 09:59:59:
Why is Farnham Freehold racist? If anyone has any doubt that any nationality, ethnicity, religious persuasion, etc is capable of the most horrid crimes against humanity, the history of the 20th century should convince them otherwise. Think about the massacre of the armenians, the extermination of the kulaks, the nazi concentration camps, the Siberian Gulags, the Cambodian killing fields, the Hutus, the Tutsi, the Bosnians, the Serbians. I am sure I left out many, but I believe the point is clear: any human group that finds itself in a position of total power can commit unspeakable atrocities. By comparison, Ponse and his peers in Farham Freehold are almost humane. As for the practice of eating small children, Heinlein was following an essay over 200 years old, "A modest proposal" by Jonathan Swift, who also used that particularly disgusting behaviour to signify how barbaric allegedly "advanced" civilizations can be.