@whknott @nyrath @futurebird Yes, Heinlein was an anti-democrat for that reason. He also had a vastly inflated opinion of his own infallibility (judging from his statements on technical subjects I actually know something about), so I never found his position on the desirability of rule by intellectual elites who resembled himself very convincing. And I say this as a fan of a lot of his writing.
It's an attitude that's very common in the science-fiction community, actually. I think it comes from the experience of being precocious kids who realized early on that they were smarter than a lot of the adults around them, which is something a lot of science-fiction fans have had. But it turns out this doesn't map very well to being fit to rule.