We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason if we… remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes which were, for the moment unpopular.

Edward R. Murrow delivered this warning during the height of Cold War anti-communist hysteria in the United States, when Senator Joseph McCarthy’s investigations and blacklists were chilling speech and association. Murrow, then the most prominent figure in American broadcast journalism, had recently used his CBS program “See It Now” to scrutinize McCarthy’s methods (notably in March 1954) and to defend due process and civil liberties. The quoted lines come from Murrow’s televised “See It Now” broadcast on March 9, 1954, in which he responded to McCarthy’s attacks and urged Americans not to surrender reasoned judgment and constitutional freedoms to fear.

Murrow argues that fear—especially fear of political enemies—can erode rational public discourse and democratic norms, producing “an age of unreason.” His remedy is civic memory and moral courage: Americans should recall a national inheritance of dissent, open debate, and principled association, even when causes are unpopular. The line reframes patriotism as the defense of liberties rather than conformity, implying that suppressing speech and punishing association betray the country’s founding ideals. In the McCarthy-era context, Murrow’s point is also professional: journalism and citizens alike must resist intimidation and insist on evidence, fairness, and the right to disagree.