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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mannahnin" data-source="post: 9110316" data-attributes="member: 7026594">Heinlein definitely had some fetishes, and they came out more and more in his late stuff, but there's not much I would characterize as enthusiasm or relish in those parts of the book.  Nothing even vaguely on the level of Goodkind.  The characters in ST generally regard corporal punishment as effective but it's not described as in any way enjoyable, and the flogging is described as viscerally unpleasant.  For my part, Heinlein's failure as regards corporal punishment was to believe what he grew up believing- that it was effective and logical, and that advocates against it were wrongheaded and mistaken.The bugs are the ones coded as communists in ST.  The text relating to genocide in ST is all in relation to the bugs (though the principle universalized a bit) and of the "if it has to come down to us or them, I choose us", but with no assumption that it necessarily has to. Certainly not in relation to the Skinnies.  ST doesn't really discuss genocide or dig into those implications anywhere near to the level that, say, Card's Ender books do, but there's much more of an undercurrent of fundamental incompatibility between bugs and humans, which is part of the coding, as it's deeply steeped in Cold War context.</blockquote>