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From: cjh@csin.UUCP (Chip Hitchcock)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Re re carrying sixguns
Message-ID: <386@csin.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 4-Oct-84 13:35:26 EDT
Article-I.D.: csin.386
Posted: Thu Oct  4 13:35:26 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 6-Oct-84 01:48:19 EDT
Lines: 8

This is a delusion that Heinlein is very fond of---that an armed society is a
polite society. In practice, of course, such a society readily stratifies; you
are polite to anyone who could be as good as you are, obsequious to those
certainly better, and brusque (at best) with those worse than you (for "good",
read "good at the popular weapons form"). Shakespeare catches this perfectly in
the swaggering bravos of ROMEO AND JULIET, and Heinlein himself half-admitted
it in BEYOND THIS HORIZON, the first of his works to deal with an armed
society.