Name that Hippie...

I love this snippet from a book that I started to re-read today:

"We have a condition now which is called "a national emergency." Though the legislators and politicians may rant at will, though the newspaper tribe may rave and spread hysteria, though the military clique may bluster, threaten, and clamp down on everything which is not to their liking, the private citizen, for whom and by whom the war is being fought, is supposed to hold his tongue....
I believe with John Stuart Mill that "a state which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes, will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished." I would rather my opinions and appraisals be proved wrong--by the emergence of a new and vital spirit. If it takes a calamity such as war to awaken and transform us, well and good, so be it. Let us see now if the unemployed will be put to work and the poor properly clothed, housed and fed; let us see if the rich will be stripped of their booty and made to endure the privations and sufferings of the ordinary citizen; let us see if all the workers of America, regardless of class, ability or usefulness, can be persuaded to accept a common wage; let us see if the people can voice their wishes in direct fashion, without the intercession, the distortion, and the bungling of politicians; let us see if we can create a real democracy in place of the fake one we have been finally roused to defend; let us see if we can be fair and just to our own kind, to say nothing of the enemy whom we shall doubtless conquer over."

The words are Henry Miller's, in his preface to "The Air-Conditioned Nightmare," circa 1940 or '41. Although history may have proved Mr. Miller's pre-WWII sentiments a bit off the mark, I don't think this section of the preface is a bad thing to ponder today.