Patrick Henry League

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The Patrick Henry League was founded in 1958 by Robert A. Heinlein and his wife Virginia to support nuclear testing. Provoked by an advertising campaign by the National Committee for a SANE Nuclear Policy, whom Heinlein described as "communist-line propagandists", he mounted a petition drive to urge then President Eisenhower to resist pressure "to stop our nuclear weapons tests, turn our missile and space program over to the UN, and in other ways to weaken our defenses" and to oppose the proposal for a unilateral cessation of American nuclear weapons testing in 1958. The premise was based on both Patrick Henry's Give me liberty or give me death speech and the Soviet Union's poor record of promise keeping. President Eisenhower did initiate the ban, the Soviets did not reciprocate and went on to test even larger bombs.

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