LETTERS
Michael Walzer is in error when he says, "The `Call to resist illegitimate authority' is . . . misnamed. It is a call to resist the immoral acts of legitimate authorities." I am astonished...
...Seventeen per cent of those sampled in the medical school and 22 per cent in the engineering college supported the stop-the-bombing letter...
...Since this is the kind of society I want to get to, I am pleased to join in the tactics of the Call to Resist IllegitimateAuthority...
...Naturally, as Americans we resist it—it is illegitimate...
...We hold that the actions of the Administration are illegitimate, usurping, and threaten the essence of the Republic...
...One final point...
...They also noted], Signers and supporters of a letter calling on the President to stop the bombing made up 35 per cent of the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, as opposed to only 29 per cent of the university as a whole...
...At best, it undercuts still further our readiness to believe the things we hear (and our commitment to believe the things we say): at worst, it inspires a variety of p'.litical adventures all based on the absurd proposition that governments that don't deserve popular support don't have it...
...Results were reported in Trans-action (November 1967...
...None of these conditions exist in the U.S...
...The survey, conducted by sociologists Howard Schuman and Edward Laumann, was made after one-fifth of the faculty had signed a letter calling for an unconditional halt in the bombing of North Vietnam...
...There has been a rout of resignations from the Cabinet, among the undersecretaries, and so forth...
...And underlying, of course, is the overwhelming influence of the military-industrial corporations who now for 30 years have been subsidized by scores of billions of dollars with check neither of Congress nor of the market...
...The draft calls would be reduced (Nov...
...it encourages civil disobedience, populist protest, and even fringes of violence...
...38 per cent of the faculty oppose the bombing and 50 per cent . . . support the bombing...
...I assume that Paul Goodman takes his Roman anplogy seriously) is a corrupt dictatorship...
...or that the great corporrtions don't have enormous influence: they do...
...Michael Walzer is in error when he says, "The `Call to resist illegitimate authority' is . . . misnamed...
...It is just one more piece of rhetorical inflation...
...And the continual concealment of the blackmail exerted by Ky and Thieu...
...or at least not to prevent it...
...Faculty Views on Vietnam A RANDOM Suxvnv of 300 faculty members at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, revealed that the faculty there is far from solidly dovish in its position on Vietnam...
...government meets the minimal standards of democratic legitimacy, th rt is, it is a government that governs with the consent of the people or of a majority of the people, in a society where the possibility of opposition exists...
...There are dozens of examples, I will mention a few...
...It is a call to resist the immoral acts of legitimate authorities...
...They are not merely immoral or unjust...
...In 1964, Johnson ran on the program of not escalating, though the plans for escalation were already drawn...
...Things are radically wrong with American democracy, at least so Paul Goodman and I believe, but calling the government illegitimate neither specifies what is wrong nor helps in righting the wrong...
...PAUL GOODMAN MICHAEL WALZER replies: There is too much self-serving rhetoric in the air these days...
...In general, if possible, tactics ought to be such as to lead to the condition of society that is desirable...
...For when we lose our respect for rational discourse and critical analysis—which is our special mark—we tend to sound hysteric:.l, as if the loss were also a loss of self-confidence, as I think it is...
...But these dissident officials do not come clean, so that a widespread public opposition can have leaders...
...today...
...All this adds up, in our opinion, to a situation very like the Roman Empire under Tiberius (past the stage of Augustus), in which the Senate was an image and the democracy was a brainwashed collection of clients...
...And on the Left, in a lesser way, the same phenomena, though without the same cool audacity...
...I am astonished that he thinks that political scientists and linguists like Raskin, Chomsky, Waskow, myself, etc...
...The case is that the government spends $425 million a year on news gathering and dissemination, a budget more than double that of the combined major news services, the three major TV networks, and the ten biggest newspapers...
...or that the mass media are equally available to the government and the opposition: they're not...
...So we are told by one political scientist that South Vietnam has a democratic government and by another that the U.S...
...We were not building bases in Thailand...
...A democratic government loses its legitimacy when it represses opposition...
...could make such a mistake...
...There has been sporadic talk of impeachment— which we do not press simply bec.;use the effort would be ineffectual, not because it is unjustified...
...But for the sake of clarity on the Left I want to say no the second time also...
...I want to say a much louder no to the first of these distortions than to the second, for the first is echoed by powerful men and widely believed, and the second isn't...
...Three out of four social scientists wanted the bombing stopped...
...There is no doubt the Administration has continually confronted the public with faits accomplis...
...The U.S...
...Schuman and Laumann concluded that: • . . by the most generous estimate...
...Political scientists and linguists working for the government coolly abuse the language for the sake of this or that political purpose...
...In my own opinion—I do not speak for my colleagues—our best Constitutional tradition has a weak concept of Sovereignty...
...The ship in the Gulf of Tonkin had not been in North Vietnamese territorial waters (as we know, there is doubt that it was seriously attacked...
...1967), whereas they have been increased...
...humanists tended to oppose the bombing, but by a closer ratio, and the natural scientists were the only group in which those favoring the bombing outnumbered those who wanted it stopped...
...The Administration has persistently lied, not for purposes of national security, but simply to deceive the American public and lead it down a garden path...
...They act like an undemocratic inner clique...
...The Congress has gone along with this, perforce...
...Thousands of Americans, with a Goodmanesque respect for authority, cannot believe that such distinguished men might possibly be mistaken...
...There were no peace-feelers at the time of the bombing pause...
...On a bigger scale were the continual assurances in 1963, '64, '65 that the end was in sight...
...Supporters of the bombing made up only 25 per cent of the liberal-arts faculty, compared with 28 per cent of the whole faculty...
...Under these circumstances, when the government lies, how is democracy possible...
...That's not to say that the President doesn't have too much power: he does...
...or, finally, when masses of men simply stop obeying its laws and no one or virtually no one rallies to its support...
...or when it is repudiated by a majority of citizens and fails to leave office: or when its policies are repudiated by a majority (or by the representatives of a majority) and then defiantly pursued...
...Although there are now very many doves in both Houses, nevertheless on actual votes on appropriations or the draft, there operates a steam-roller, with the same handful of negative votes...
...or that politicians are not pusillanimous: most are...
...It is so that law has always been made amongst us during critical periods, whether defying injunctions against picketing, or laws of trespass, or fugitive slave laws...
...Nevertheless, these news outlets predominantly also disseminate the government story...
Vol. 15 • March 1968 • No. 2
