Working-class War

...while the sons of workers did the fighting...

...The Vietnam Veterans of Credence Cassettes offers over fifty branch, and Pentagon families saw that their America reported that in March 1992, Merton tapes...

...PUBLISHING CQ 2 5 JEFFERSON AVE...

...the sentiment remains that we gave have his writings been issued and reissued, that the National Guard and Reserves were them a wall and some parades...

...What did City...

...dispatches American young people into a Without doubt, Merton was a most (Personally, I exclude here the relatively conflict, especially one that does not re- complex and compelling individual who few brave souls who became COs, or who quire equal sacrifices from our elite fam- chose an unusual path...

...Congressional, executive ordinately high...

...A recent catalogue from tus," notes Appy...

...in 1972, as Appy JAMES R. KELLY is professor of sociology ed in his critical evaluations and personpoints out, George McGovern received a at Fordham University...

...He had been there and ness as usual...

...And out against the war to a campus antiwar ment...

...professional biblical scholarship sweep-and-destroy missions, with a Purple Appy argues as well that this antagonism yet assuming no prior knowledge Heart, he was unable to comprehend the lay behind much of the fury that was ever- of the subject, Wright's Who Was Jesus...

...One day, after I had spoken from an unforgiving public and govern- Jesus actually stand for...

...The highly contestable personal judgments chief utility of redescribing them in terms about contemporary American religion of supply-and- demand principles is to give and its future...

...Yet his longings went to prison or into exile for their be- ilies, especially those who live or work in and his struggles were not foreign to a liefs, and willingly accepted the conse- Washington, D.C...

...class distinction" and not their support for Paper, $8.99 That "something," writes Appy, an as- a war they could barely understand that sistant professor of history at the Massa- aroused blue-collar disgust...

...Yet twenty-eight nothing about the sacrifices their children years after the dispatch of large numbers were forced to undergo...

...But it is Merton himself who presides 30: 23 April 1993 Commonweal...

...cising the "Vietnam Syndrome...

...it became clear that, as Christian G. Appy proposition that Andrew Levinson wrote This is a book to engage skeptic and believer alike...

...Then it was shrewder PATRICK JORDAN is managing editor of thought...

...and many of our disorders and diseases resulting from the "spiritual writings," introduced and secontemporary "chicken hawks" fled from spraying of toxic defoliants continue to lected by the indefatigable Lawrence S. military service but later, when they were wreak havoc...

...Leave It" banners or shouted down and rigorous historical assessment of He was neither hawk nor dove, but in time beat up protesting college students, a what the Gospels say about Jesus...

...have the virtue of drawing attention to is- some added weight to some plausible but sues of conscience and religious truth...

...If too old for the military, shamelessly backed Let us hope that care, great care, will it does not settle the matter of whether military interventions and a renewal of the be taken in the future before our new Merton is indeed a "spiritual master," it draft...

...into specific aspects of Merton's career and class in America...

...He came from an Italian-American their profound resentment of people who Barbara Thiering's Jesus the Man, A. N. Wilson's Jesus, and John working-class family, and his older broth- lived in suburbs, whose kids went to col- Shelby Spong's Born o f a Woman...

...He sons why so many working-class people largely because of her concern with human life was, in a sense, the Existential Monk as a pilgrimage from evil to good...

...El sizable number of his contemporaries, quences of their defiance...

...hardly benefited them despite what living- Theological Seminary...

...I remember him saying, the tension Romans, Jesus physically rose evident in his tightly drawn lips, that he er and blue-collar classes...

...MICR...

...Merton can be maddening for his selfNor for that matter have many ac- DIOGENES ALLEN has been an avid read- preoccupations, exhilarating for his selfknowledged or studied the complex rea- er of Iris Murdoch for over twenty years, knowledge and self-transcendence...

...This sort of controversial books about the by his anger, his intensity, his bewilder- comment, widely expressed, reflected historical Jesus, including ment...

...And cer- The price we exacted from our work- Like the proverbial Cheshire Cat, tainly few have explained at least to my ing class in Vietnam may be common Thomas Merton may have departed but satisfaction why public policy channeled knowledge, though few Americans or he keeps making appearances...

...As Appy concludes, "The critics president, who was a war protester, emu- will certainly help keep the question in and architects of the war did the talking, lates Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon and play...

...But even more: as his best-seller status indicated...

...bitter veteran saying, "It was a case of busiWhat did I know...

...Instead of everybody get- In this book noted scholar I hadn't...

...4950 these men-impotent in civilian life as sons Much of this is by now reasonably faof the lower-middle and working class- miliar, thanks in part to Lawrence Baskir had become cogs in the world's most and William Strauss's classic accounting Commonweal 23 April 1993: 29 in Chance and Circumstance (1978) of about a supposed "silent majority" yet say who went and who didn't...

...heroic to the most savage-in pursuit of a cause they could neither win nor idenMurray Polner tify nor embrace...

...As I wrote at the time, "I was struck who went into the military...

...B. FFRDMA_NS group for six years, was that many of of all the big shots who supported the war...

...rades: The Return of the Vietnam Veteran and but points out their most significant insights edited When Can I Come Home?, about draft No one then or now likes to talk about resisters, deserters, and exiles...

...In them REVIEWERS sible implications...

...ers had all served in the military...

...ally generous...

...What makes Working-Class War so worthwhile is that it looks into the so- N. T. WRIGHT met my first Vietnam War com- cioeconomic backgrounds of combat vetbat veteran in the mid- 1960s while erans as a way of making sense of their teaching in a community college military and postwar experiences, in- D id the historical person Jesus really regard himself some sixty miles from New York cluding the frigid welcome they received as the Son of God...

...molders of public opinion dwell on it very ter of a century since his death, not only We know, though we may no longer care, much...

...What more but he has been the subject of a steady draft havens, effectively closed to black ap- do they want...

...I remember At your bookstore, or call 800-253-7521 chusetts Institute of Technology who also one veteran, a self-described prowar vet, FAX 616-4596540 attended a weekly Vietnam-veteran rap once shouting at me, "Where were the sons 338 WM...

...He quotes one from the dead...

...writes in this definitive and engrossing about in Working Class Majority (1975), study of combat veterans and their economic that it was more often than not "class and ISBN 0-8028-0694-5 class, something was eating at his soul...

...for Nixon and his apologists to prattle on Commonweal...

...sons and grandsons were exempted...

...Today, with mil- IN BRIEF of troops to defend "freedom" in Vietnam, lions of once loyal workers transformed THOMAS MERTON: SPIRITUAL MASTER, the reasons for the intervention remain un- into the detritus of a mismanaged and THE ESSENTIAL WRITINGS, edited and inexamined at the highest political levels avaricious economic system, class still re- troduced by Lawrence S. Cunningham, other than occasional babble about exor- mains our dirty little secret...

...objected to my remarks about the war...

...ting drafted, people who could go to N. T. Wright considers these and many other questions From that moment on we talked regu- college often did...

...Cunningham, should be long in print...

...About man of paradoxes, if not contradictions, every step of escalation and who publicly one-third of single homeless males are vet- a hermit attached to place who died a long thirsted for more bombing and violence erans...

...Here he not only notes the larger percentage of worker votes than he MURRAY POLNER wrote No Victory Pa- contributions of others to Merton studies got from white-collar professionals...

...Cunningham is simultaneously sure-sightting out of Vietnam...

...shows convincingly that world he left behind in 1965 when he was present when workers flew "Love It or much can be gained from a drafted or the horrors he witnessed at war...

...El Who Was BLUE COLLARS & PURPLE HEARTS Jesus ?. WORKING-CLASS WAR lethal military machine and "committed Christian G. Appy acts and took risks they never imagined University of North Carolina Press, $39.95, themselves capable of-from the most 363 pp...

...from Merton's writings...

...S. E. I GRAND RAPIDS...

...Veteran suicide rates exceed those way from home, figuratively as well as4itmade sure that their male issue stayed of civilians while post-traumatic stress erally...

...In the quarpoorer kids into the military...

...Appy's conclusion is that Vietnam what are we to make of the group, a neatly dressed student approached was a class war which drew its troopers- early Christian conviction that, about 80 percent of them-from the poor- following his execution by the me...

...He is the seemed to support the war, a war that Stuart Professor of Philosophy at Princeton in an existential age...

...The present collection of Merton's home one way or another...

...Paulist Press, $14.95, 437 pp...

...As readers of and professional classes: Survey after sur- MOLLY FINN, a frequent Commonweal Commonweal have come to expect, vey showed that workers often favored get- contributor, lives in New York City...

...hawks, 19.2 percent or one in five imprisoned The century's most conspicuous and loneoconservatives, columnists, editorial criminals were veterans, a large majority quacious Catholic monk, Merton was a writers, and publishers who supported of whom are Vietnam-era vets...

...But the price for Vietnam stream of books, studies, dissertations, and plicants, "whatever their economic sta- veterans who could not adjust is still in- monographs...

...Christian Belief in a Postmodern World, and facets in his substantive introduction and Polls taken at the time revealed that work- Quest were reviewed in Commonweal's March in preludes to each individual selection ers reacted much as did the white-collar 8, 1991 issue...

...Just nine- lege rather than basic training, and who Written from the standpoint of ty days away from free-fire zones and eventually had better life chances than they...

...it was those who couldn't raised by the latest wave of larly...

...Nearly Few now want to own up to the unfair bur- half of the present volume is given over den placed on the working class and its pos- to autobiographical writings...

...His most recent books, Cunningham takes up Merton's many room heroes were repeatedly telling them...