All of the best ideas come from science fiction novels: disintegration weapons that leave no mess behind, faster than light travel in spaceships with big-ass television screens and sex with aliens.

I was reading “Starship Troopers” by Robert Heinlein because a friend said the movie sucked but the novel was excellent.

This guy thinks Arnold Schwarzenegger is the greatest actor since Lionel Barrymore. I am usually not inclined to follow his advice on which media events to attend.

I like to use his opinion as a reverse barometer. If he says a book is boring, I think “too much talking and not enough killing.” If he says a movie is awesome, I know the special effects cost more than the military budget for Guatemala.

He sees Jackie Chan movies like some people see Woody Allen films. He likes to discuss the complex plot structure over dinner at Elaine’s and then head down to the Village for some jazz. “He does all his own stunts, you know?”

But I was intrigued. Lots of things got blowed up real good in “Starship Troopers: The Movie.” But when he tells me that a movie with lots of killing and explosions isn’t as good as the book it was based on, my ears stand up like a German shepherd’s.

Heinlein is more philosophical than most science fiction writers, and this book focused on themes which don’t seem to matter to people much these days: patriotism and citizenship.

We laugh at the idea today. Patriotism seems as old-fashioned as the ox-drawn buckboard, the butter churn and the hunter-gatherer society. While citizenship conjures up unpleasant images of McCarthy hearings, lying, flag-draped politicians and the draft.

But the truth is that we have had our heads seriously screwed with by someone, probably the man. Somewhere along the way we let others redefine patriotism as something we found distasteful. We let the hard-core hawks tell us that if we believed in some of the most precious principles of our country that we were not by their definition patriots.

They forced on us the notion that if we didn’t support authority in its many, unlimited forms and internalize their enemies as our own that we were not patriots.

So many of us became fed up that we began to buy it. We said that if your idea of loyalty to this country means that I have to hate who you tell me to hate, then I spit on everything patriotic. And who can blame them. It is pretty damn hard to hold onto something intangible.

I remember how during the Gulf War, the mind-game players had it figured out that in order to be patriotic, you had to support our troops —and that somehow meant being in favor of that conflict. The spin doctors go to work for the doves and decided to make bumper stickers of their own, which read: Support our troops, bring them home.

It was nice to see the power of words working for peace.

In “Starship Troopers,” Heinlein created a world in which military service was mandatory for citizenship. You did you time in the military and you could vote. Everyone else was a civilian. Now, this is pretty extreme, but I have never been more swayed by a piece of militaristic propaganda in my life.

The basic premise is that anyone who is willing to place their life on the line for the body politic has by their actions placed the welfare of their countrymen before their own. That kind of commitment should be rewarded. This is pretty extreme and contrary to democracy, but mandatory military service isn’t.

It probably seems like anathema for me to promote joining the Army as a condition of citizenship, especially if it were mandatory. But I think it is actually pretty reasonable, and the benefits would far outweigh any inconvenience.

The greatest benefit I can think of would be that nobody would ever be able to shove their military service in your face. A guy who served in Nam or WW II has the right, but some guy who did kp? Peeling potatoes for four years does not make you a super-citizen.

The guys I really like are the ones whose fathers or grandfathers fought for freedom, and so they inherited the right to tell every “scum-sucking liberal” how wrong they are. You don’t inherit the right to be superior unless you are rich, chief.

Everybody does two years. Gay/straight, male/female, attractive/butt-ugly. If you can’t shoot a gun, you can clean trash cans or ride a desk.

Military jobs could be done in offices, garages, airplane hangars. It isn’t all about killing. It isn’t about feeding the war machine; if anything, this helps to downsize it by reducing the number of career military while guaranteeing that our nation’s defense is at the ready.

Belgians, South Koreans and Norwegians do mandatory time in the military, and it doesn’t seem to harm them. Most Norwegians are pretty liberal compared to Americans, so I don’t even think that a couple of years of military service would negatively affect an impressionable mind.

Familiarity breeds contempt, and nothing would make you hate war more than preparing for it for two years.

But more than anything else, giving up two years for the body politic would mean that no matter what your political views, your patriotism would be non-negotiable.

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Greg Jerrett is a graduate student in English from Council Bluffs. He is opinion editor of the Daily.