Am I saying that the writer should be—I hesitate before the horror of it—political? Yes sir, I am. Yes ma’am, I am saying exactly that. And what do I mean by “political”? We’ll get into it.

By “political” I mean involvement, responsibility, commitment: the writer’s duty to speak the truth—especially unpopular truth. Especially truth that offends the powerful, the rich, the well-established, the traditional, the mythic, the sentimental. To attack, when the time makes it necessary, the sacred cows of his society. And I mean all sacred cows: whether those of the public-lands beef industry or the sacred cows of militarism, nationalism, religion, capitalism, socialism, conservatism, liberalism. To name but a few of our prevailing ideologies.

For instance: Motherhood. I am not alone in recognizing that the time has arrived (in view of the ongoing overpopulation catastrophe) to subject the idealization of Motherhood to a certain degree of intellectual pressure. But also its countercorrelative, Feminist Maternity: since motherhood really is a full-time, difficult, highly skilled and essential human occupation (I speak from personal experience), women who do not wish to be mothers should not have babies. Or consider the interesting question of immigration, race and culture: if we who still form the majority in America really care to preserve our democratic traditions, derived in the most part from our European heritage and ancestry, then we must be willing to reevaluate the possible effect of differential breeding rates and mass immigration from Latin American, African and Asiatic countries upon those traditions. Touchy delicate explosive questions, I agree; even to mention them exposes the writer to abuse of the harshest kind. But the willingness to risk abuse for the sake of truth is one of the writer’s obligatory chores.

He who sticks out his neck may get his head chopped off. Quite so. Nevertheless it remains the writer’s moral duty to stick out the neck, whether he lives in a totalitarian state or in a relatively open society such as our own. Speak out: or take up a different trade.

Somebody has to do it. That somebody is the writer. If the independent author will not speak truth for us, who will? What will? Do we get truth from politicians? From the bureaucrats of big government? Or local government? Can we expect to hear truth from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Teamsters Union or United Technologies? Do we get much truth from Time or Newsweek or CBS or ABC or NBC or the daily press? From the TV evangelists of bunkshooter religion? Do we even get much truth from science and scientists? Well, as to that, we get some but not enough: most scientists are specialized technicians, each wedged into his niche of study, few of them capable of looking at life as a whole. Most scientists—in the East as in the West—sold their souls to industry, commerce, government, war, long ago. And what’s the difference, anyway, among those massive and interlocking institutions? They form a monolith. A monolith in the shape of a pyramid. Whether laboring to launch our pharaohs safely into eternity or our astronauts into space, the fellaheen of the world have achieved little progress in modern times. By modern times I mean of course the last five thousand years. That trivial blip on the video screen of human history.