"THe vehemence is because what you posted was the most disgustingly racist post I have ever seen in here and that is saying a lot. "
Well, this statement was from thenoted author Jerry Pournelle. If you look him up at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page, you might find he is very accomplished and not racist at all.
Here is an excerpt:
In a 1997 article Norman Spinrad wrote that Pournelle had written the SDI portion of Ronald Reagan's State of the Union Address, as part of a plan to use SDI to get more money for space exploration, exploiting the larger defence budget. [2] Pournelle wrote in response that while the Citizens’ Advisory Council on National Space Policy "wrote parts of Reagan's 1983 SDI speech, and provided much of the background for the policy, we certainly did not write the speech ... We were not trying to boost space, we were trying to win the Cold War". [3] . The Council's first report [1980] became the transition team policy paper on space for the incoming Reagan administration. The third report was certainly quoted in the Reagan "Star Wars" speech.
Pournelle opposed both Gulf Wars, maintaining that the money would be better spent developing energy technologies for the United States. He is quoted as saying "with what we spent in Iraq we could build nuclear power plants and space solar power satellites and tell the Arabs to drink their oil." His web site is critical of the Iraq War, but demands support of troops committed there. "Once you send the troops in, you have no choice but to give them what they need until you bring them home."
Pournelle is also known for his Pournelle chart, a 2-dimensional coordinate system used to distinguish political ideologies. It is similar to the Nolan chart, except that the X axis refers to your feelings toward state and centralised government (farthest right being state worship, farthest left being the idea of a state as the "ultimate evil"), and the Y axis refers to your belief that all problems in society have rational solutions. (top being complete confidence in planning, bottom being its total lack).
Pournelle has popularized a "law", which he calls Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy. This law "...states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: those who work to further the actual goals of the organization, and those who work for the organization itself. Examples in education would be teachers who work and sacrifice to teach children, vs. union representatives who work to protect any teacher including the most incompetent. The Iron Law states that in all cases, the second type of person will always gain control of the organization, and will always write the rules under which the organization functions." His "blog", "The View from Chaos Manor", often references apparent examples of the law.
Recurrent themes
This is a list of some of Pournelle's pet themes that recur in the stories.
Welfare States become self sustaining. In fact, eventually the officials of a Welfare State, perceiving that their jobs require a supply of "clients" needing State aid, eventually become adept at making sure that there are always people in need. To do this, they either adopt policies that promote poverty and dependence, or stretch existing classifications to bring more "clients" into the Welfare system.
Building a technological society requires a strong defense and the rule of law. Even if large scale war is not a threat, many small scale conflicts can disrupt a society, especially if encouraged and supplied from outside. Even a country such as Sweden, which combines a high level of technological achievement and liberal social policies, maintains a strong military that uses Swedish-manufactured technology.
"Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it." Pournelle uses history as a source of warnings about the consequences of certain policies, and of examples of effective military organization and tactics.
