Wouldn't this be cool?

What a great centennial honor this would be ... the USS Robert A. Heinlein. What better way to commemorate Robert Heinlein's birth centennial than naming a major new US Navy ship after him? The ultra-sophisticated DDG destroyers (Zumwalt class) are something straight out of science fiction themselves, and there's never been a better ship to name after an sf writer, futurist and proud Navy man. We'll have more here soon about the USS Heinlein campaign and how to make it happen, but for now, here's the scoop from our event coordinator, Tim Kyger: The U.S.S. Robert A. Heinlein Campaign For all but a very brief period at the beginning of our history, the word ship will mean space ship. [1] Many will be named “Robert A. Heinlein.” Only one will ever be the first. We have the chance to name that very first one. [2] This coming July 7, 2007 is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Robert A. Heinlein. That day would be a perfect opportunity for the Secretary of the Navy to announce that ship DDG-1001 (or another early hull number) would be named the U.S.S. Robert A. Heinlein. How do we make it happen? We write the Secretary of the Navy and ask him to! The Secretary of the Navy has the authority to name the ships of the U.S. Navy (he is the only one who can). (H/T to Ry in today's H&I Fires) As a huge fan of Heinlein's works, I'd love to see this happen. Heinlein's Starship Troopers had a clarifying effect on my viewpoints regarding the military when I read it the first time, and it is the one which I re-read most often. Phil at Pacific Empire pulls a quote from Starship Troopers that has an uncanny resemblance to our current day situation... “If you wanted to teach a baby a lesson, would you cut its head off? Of course not. You’d paddle it. There can be circumstances when it’s just as foolish to hit an enemy city with an H-bomb as it would be to spank a baby with an axe. War is not violence and killing, pure and simple; war is controlled violence, for a purpose. The purpose of war is to support your government’s decisions by force. The purpose is never to kill the enemy just to be killing him…but to make him do what you want to do. Not killing…but controlled and purposeful violence. There is an old song which asserts that “the best things in life are free”. Not true! Utterly false! This was the tragic fallacy which brought on the decadence and collapse of the democracies of the twentieth century; those noble experiments failed because the people had been led to believe that they could simply vote for whatever they wanted… and get it, without toil, without sweat, without tears. Emphasis added by me. Good time to remember that Freedom Isn't Free. UPDATE Make sure you visit the Castle and read / take part in the comment conversation on this idea. Very Interesting!