Soon, fifteen million Americans would be organized (voluntarily, they call it) for Civil Defense.
A tenth of us regimented—willingly—for Civil Defense.
(Yet everyone who knows, proclaims there is no defense!)
The men without imagination have spoken.
We shall be ready to police and put out fires, to evacuate and rope off radioactive areas, to deal with gas, bacterial clouds, falling fungi and shots caromed off the moon.
In the name of courage, fifteen million of us will be, if possible, meticulously imbued with the latter-day alarms.
Who says now that we are even a little sane?
For a moment, my mind was blacked out by despair.
But again and still its show went on.
We, who did not have knowledge enough of ourselves to fight, when the time came, for liberty at its source—for freedom of knowledge itself—are day by day losing the rest of our freedom.