Not everyone is willing to be a public servant. Of all the things from Starship Troopers, that is something I liked. I’m a fan of granting a free college education to public servants, military or govt employees after four years of service.
Citizenship isn’t a perk of military service in the United States, you don’t have to be a citizen to serve but you still earn the benefits.
Too bad the movie just glossed over the whole “Anyone can be a citizen, no matter who you are or what you can do physically” so they could make a satire on military fascism instead.
The conversation Rico has with the “anti-recruiter” is the only point you need to show how ridiculously out of context the movie was, it clearly demonstrates not just a lack of nationalism but its opposite. A concerted attempt by the state to stop getting people to sign up because they don’t have the resources or need for the amount of people that want to join.
It was a clear indication that Heinlein understood the dangers of the ever growing military industrial complex, and how a reliance on it economically will result in constant warfare to justify its existence.
No one cares though, they just quote propaganda that wasn’t even in the book (since it doesn’t fit with the book’s theme at all) and pretend that Heinlein was absolutely devoted to the ideas presented in the novel. The dude wrote about so many different kinds of societies that it’s almost impossible to define what his actual beliefs were.
