Robert Heinlein, Concerning Stories Never Written: A Postscript to Revolt in 2100

As for the second notion, the idea that we could lose our freedom by succumbing to a wave of religious hysteria, I am sorry to say that I consider it possible.  I hope that it is not probable. But there is a latent deep strain of religious fanaticism in this, our culture; it is rooted in our history and it has broken out many times in the past. It is with us now; there has been a sharp rise in strongly evangelical sects in this country in recent years, some of which hold beliefs theocratic in the extreme, anti-intellectual, anti-scientific, and anti-libertarian.

It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires  the political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics.  This is equally true whether the faith is Communism or Holy-Rollerism; indeed it is the bounden duty of the faithful to do so.  The custodians of the True Faith cannot logically admit tolerance of heresy to be a virtue.

Nevertheless this business of legislating religious beliefs into law has never been more than sporadically successful in this country – Sunday closing laws here and there, birth control legislation in spots, the Prohibition experiment, temporary enclaves of theocracy such as Voliva’s Zion, Smith’s Nauvoo, a few others.  The country is split up into such a variety of faiths and sects that a degree of uneasy tolerance now exists from expedient compromise; the minorities constitute a majority of opposition against each other.

 

 Could it be otherwise here?  Could any one sect obtain a working majority at the polls and take over the country? Perhaps not – but a combination of a dynamic evangelist, television, enough money, and modern techniques of advertising and propaganda might make Billy Sunday’s efforts look like a corner store compared to Sears Roebuck. Throw in a depression for good measure, promise a material heaven here on earth, add a dash of anti-Semitism, anti-Catholicism, anti-Negroism, and a good large dose of anti-“furriners” in general and anti-intellectuals here at home and the result might be something quite frightening – particularly when one recalls that our voting system is such that a minority distributed as pluralities in enough states can constitute a working majority in Washington.

 

I imagined Nehemiah Scudder [the first Prophet--DAC] as a backwoods evangelist...[who was left] several millions of dollars...on their wat to fame and fortune.  Presently they needed stormtroopers; they revived the Ku Klux Kln in everything but the name...Blood at the polls and blood in the streets, but Scudder won the election.  The next election was never held.

 

Impossible?  Remember the Klan in the Twenties--and how far it got without even a dynamic leader.  Remember Karl Marx and note how close that unscientific piece of nonsense called Das Kapital has come to smothering out all freedom of thought on half of a planet, without--mind you--the emotional advantage f calling it a religion.  The capacity of the human mind for swallowing nonsense and spewing it forth in violent and repetitive action has never yet been plumbed.

 

Written in October 1952