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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Pivot of Civilization by Margaret Sanger: hesitated to voice any public protest against the campaign to crush us
which was inaugurated and sustained by the most reactionary and
sinister forces in American life. It was not inertia or any lack of
interest on the part of the masses that stood in our way. It was the
indifference of the intellectual leaders.
Writers, teachers, ministers, editors, who form a class dictating, if
not creating, public opinion, are, in this country, singularly
inhibited or unconscious of their true function in the community. One
of their first duties, it is certain, should be to champion the
constitutional right of free speech and free press, to welcome any
idea that tends to awaken the critical attention of the great American
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