himself a Democrat in 1954. The Heinleins formed the Patrick Henry League in 1958, and they worked in the 1964 Barry Goldwater presidential campaign. Heinlein's response ad was entitled "Who Are the Heirs of Patrick Henry?". It started with the famous Henry quotation: "Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!!". It then went on to admit that there was some risk to nuclear testing (albeit less than the "willfully distorted" claims of the test ban advocates), and risk of nuclear war, but that "The alternative is surrender. We accept the risks." Heinlein was among those who in 1968 signed a pro–Vietnam War ad in Galaxy Science Fiction. Heinlein always considered himself a libertarian; in a letter to Judith Merril in 1967 (never sent) he said, "As for libertarian, I've been one all my life, a radical one. You might use the term 'philosophical anarchist' or 'autarchist' about me, but 'libertarian' is easier to define and fits well enough." Stranger in a Strange Land was embraced by the 1960s counterculture, and libertarians have found inspiration in The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. Both groups found resonance with his themes of personal freedom in both thought and action. Race Heinlein grew up in the era of racial segregation in the United States and wrote some of his most influential fiction at the height of the Civil Rights Movement. He explicitly made the case for using his fiction not only to predict the future but also to educate his readers about the value of racial equality and the importance of racial tolerance. His early novels were very much ahead of their time both in their explicit rejection of racism and in their inclusion of protagonists of color. In the context of science fiction before the 1960s, the mere existence of characters of color was a remarkable novelty, with green occurring more often than brown. For example, his 1948 novel Space Cadet explicitly uses aliens as a metaphor for minorities. In his novel The Star Beast, the de facto foreign minister of the Terran government is an undersecretary, a Mr. Kiku, who is from Africa. Heinlein explicitly states his skin is "ebony black" and that Kiku is in an