You kill everybody who doesn’t want to see reason, people will get mighty thin on the ground mighty fast. — Harry Turtledove

As happened too often in politics, never turned out not to be so very long after all.

“Death is never dignified.” O’Doull spoke with a doctor’s certainty. “Never. Dignity in death is something we invent afterwards to make the living feel better.”

The party and the CSA could get by without a lot of fellows who brought only fanaticism. Losing somebody with brains would have hurt much more. Brains were harder to come by.