What Students Can Do for Peace

...If they find this annoying, as they sometimes have in the past, we can always recall for them President Nixon's words of last December 8, that "the people of the United States are entitled to know everything that they possibly can with regard to any involvement of the United States abroad...

...Some of us in the Senate get the feeling now and then that our message is not getting through to people on the other side of town...

...I hope and urge that the young people of America continue their protests against the war...

...Taken together, the right wing bias of our past, the intense, obsessive fear of Communism, the disruption wrought by thirty years of chronic war, the power of the military-industrial-labor-academic complex which chronic war has spawned, and our failure to come to grips with urgent problems at home—all these collectively have posed a great strain on American democracy...

...In any matter of justice or morality, the critical question is always: Who is to make the distinction between right and wrong, between progress and regression...

...They have seen these institutions misused and even corrupted in too many instances in recent years...

...Confronted with so great a concentration of forces on the other side, the extremists of the Left can have little hope of working their will on our society, but they could bring down on themselves a counterrevolution from the Right which would surely destroy their movements and possibly destroy democracy as well...

...Who wants to go down fighting when, with strategy and organization, you just might possibly win...

...The election of 1968 did not resolve the issue of Vietnam as we had hoped it would, and as it should have...

...Some of us in the Senate are trying to build support for the Cooper-Church amendment to the Foreign Military Sales Act, which would prohibit the expenditure of any further funds for the conduct of hostilities in Cambodia...

...it is also a reaffirmation of democracy, of youth's commitment to it, and of the desire of people of all ages to save American democracy from becoming another casualty of war...

...Professor Herbert Marcuse suggests that the man qualified to make this distinction for society as a whole is "everyone in the maturity of his faculties as a human being, everyone who has learned to think rationally and autonomously...

...We cannot escape them, much as we might like to, and, because we cannot, we do well to remember Judge Learned Hand's warning that "the spirit of liberty is the spirit that is not too sure that it is right...

...Ringing doorbells and passing out handbills are neither as dramatic nor as cathartic as a march on Washington or a student strike, but they speak the language that politicians understand: the language of votes...

...Active, organized dissent is the only reliable restraint we have on a leadership which seems bent upon a disastrous course in Indochina...

...The real impact of orderly, democratic dissent in America is not on the policymakers in Hanoi, as people who support the present course are fond of asserting, but on the policymakers in Washington...

...I am aware of the skepticism young people may feel when they are called upon to respect their country's institutions...

...He had a political incentive too, and I would hate to see that incentive taken away from him—all the more now when the Administration appears to have forgotten the fate of its predecessor, or else persuaded itself that it can pursue the same policies and still come out on top politically...

...you just might possibly succeed in changing some of the things that need to be changed in our society and saving the things that are worth saving...

...Perhaps, to cite another example, a student campaign might be organized to build public and Congressional support for a negotiated, compromise peace based on the principles of a sharing of power among the various South Vietnamese factions and the prompt, phased withdrawal of all American forces from Indochina...

...Radically different in motive and purpose though they are, the humanitarians of the New Left who would remake our society through social revolution share one common trait with the social scientists who think they can manipulate society with their computers, with the strategists who write about the "responsibilities of power," and with the theologians who construct ponderous theories of the "just war...

...We can, if we wish, undertake to restore the integrity of American democracy rather than compound the problem, as some liberals have done, by bestowing their benedictions on violence and disorder...

...Some of us are also engaged in an effort to repeal the notorious Gulf of Tonkin resolution...

...In broad terms, and for most purposes, I would rather be ruled by law than by conscience, because law,, imperfect though it is, is the only means we have of protecting ourselves from the arbitrariness, capriciousness, and susceptibility of our own human nature...

...I appreciate his effort, and I have noted his lack of success, and I do indeed regret the inability of some of us in the Senate to get our meaning across...

...Some months ago the Vice President paid me the compliment of saying that he had been "trying very hard for five or six years" to understand my positions but, unfortunately, "without any success...

...That is a disappointment, but there is no use crying about it now when our efforts can be put to more productive use in elections still to come...

...The problem for some of us in the Senate, as well as for people in the academic community, is how to get through to the country and to the President so as to bring an end to a stupid and indecent war...

...No one, however, is under any obligation to follow that example...

...Like it or not, there is one thing that even the most committed of social reformers share with the strategists and the moral crusaders: human nature and its susceptibilities...

...I am of the opinion that, at this stage of events, something more than rational argument is required—which is not to make a case for irrational argument, still less for violence and disorderly protest, which do far more to damage the cause of peace than to advance it...

...In this respect—if not in some others—I am inclined to agree with Vice President Agnew that ". . . perhaps it is time that the networks were made more responsive to the people they serve...

...How are we to select those special individuals whose maturity and capacity to think rationally and autonomously qualify them to make important decisions for society as a whole...

...I am not much alarmed by the "revolutionary" activities of our young revolutionaries...

...A reliable, undeluded, objective morality would be preferable to law if it were attainable, but I do not think that it is...

...The term "credibility gap" is a tame euphemism for the practices to which it refers...

...To be in a position to make moral judgments for society as a whole, one must possess power, and nothing distorts human judgment more certainly than the possession of great power...

...In so doing they are acting in the best tradition of representative democracy...

...I think particularly of those who became involved in practical political activities such as the New Hampshire primary...

...If there is any bias in our history and in the character of our society, it is not toward the Left but toward the Right...

...For what cold comfort it may have, students may be interested in knowing that the feeling of an unresponsive Administration is not confined to the nation's campuses...

...Who wants to be a martyr anyway...

...Discouraging though it has seemed at times, I believe that the years of dissent have had important, though insufficient, effect...

...Turning now to the means by which students can most effectively influence our Vietnam policy, I stress again reliance on the conventional, institutional procedures...

...we were deceived about the Dominican Republic in 1965...

...Can they really select themselves...

...I hope and urge that they sustain their protests until the last American soldier has been withdrawn from Indochina...

...If history has taught us anything about power, it has taught us that the corrupting effects of power are not confined to bad men...

...They are also acting as patriots ¦—-not in the jingoist sense in which the term "patriotism" is commonly misused but in the sense defined by Albert Camus, who said that the true patriot is one who gives his highest loyalty not to his country as it is but to his own best conception of what it can and ought to be, and also in the sense defined by Adlai Stevenson, who used to point out that the true patriot was not only willing to fight for principles but also willing to live up to them...

...good men are corrupted too, and the evil which they do in good causes is no less evil than the evil done by bad men in bad causes...

...Even if it were possible, and desirable, to overthrow the existing system, history suggests that what we would get would not be something better but chaos and disaster—as was the case with the French and Russian Revolutions, at least in their immediate aftermaths...

...I think our system is a good one, given the nature of our society, but even if one does not think so, there is an excellent case to be made for preserving it...

...It is difficult indeed to contain anger at such a time, but it is also essential—vitally essential —if the protests are to be effective in arousing public sentiment against the war, and not against dissent...

...and, as the special subcommittee headed by Senator Stuart Symington has shown, we have been deliberately and systematically deceived over the past several years about the extent of American military involvement in Laos...

...Some of our young people have said they are willing to pay the price of martyrdom, but there is more at stake than that...

...That common trait is a supreme confidence in their own capacity for moral choice...

...Instead of confining their expressions to mass demonstrations, the thousands of students who have come to the capital to protest the war are beginning to employ the technique that businessmen and farmers and labor unions have found so rewarding over the years...

...I venture to predict that, if American democracy is overthrown in our generation, it will not be by radicals flying the Vietcong flag but by right-wing radicals flying the American flag...

...Whatever the exact approach, organization and planning are required...

...It was not, I remind you, a purely intellectual p-ocess that led President Johnson to reverse his escalation policy in Vietnam...

...The violent oppression which violent dissent invites would not end with the martyrdom of a few university students...

...What Students Can Do for Peace by SENATOR J. W. FULBRIGHT We have had some shocks in recent weeks—few more shocking than the killing of four students at Kent State University and two students in Jackson, Mississippi...

...Cynical though it may sound, I have always suspected that Mr...

...Some of us in the Senate have shared that experience...

...There are ample possibilities for a strategy of dissent through the processes of American democracy...

...It is not just what one thinks but how one thinks that makes a person dangerous and destructive...

...With all respect for Professor Marcuse's significant insights into the nature of our society, I think that he begs the question of moral choice...

...That, no doubt, is why they object to dissent, and that is why those of us who oppose this war must sustain it...

...But I also stress the importance of strategy in dissent...

...it might well culminate in nothing less than the destruction of American democracy...

...If many of our young people feel contempt for their country's institutions, it must be admitted that an example was set for them on the highest level...

...I mistrust too much conscience because it places too heavy a burden on human judgment, which we all know—or ought to know—is susceptible to distortions ranging from rationalization to total obsession...

...The problem is essentially one of political strategy, of campaigns, elections, and lobbying—of the bringing to bear of political pressures through the various channels open to us within the American political system...

...That case, quite simply, is that destruction of the system would almost certainly lead to something worse—and something quite different from the dreams of the revolutionaries...

...Discouraging though it may seem at times, peaceful political dissent at home is the most powerful incentive our policymakers have for bringing the war in Indochina to an end...

...In many if not most of the contests for the Senate and House of Representatives this year, the outcome might be significantly affected by, say, fifty or 100 efficient precinct workers seeking support for their candidates on the weekends preceding either primaries or the general election...

...It takes extraordinary restraint to contain anger and prevent violence at a time when so many young people are angry and disillusioned with a Government which appears to have turned its back on them, a Government in which prominent figures have shown themselves coldly unresponsive to the wishes and convictions of the young...

...It was not just the moral and strategic opinions of our leaders and their intellectual supporters that got us into Vietnam...

...The only people whose purposes are served by student violence are those who are ready and waiting for an excuse to suppress dissent by force...

...The students seem to be in the process of becoming lobbyists for peace, making their views known, in a concerted, persistent, but peaceful and orderly way, to their elected representatives...

...Much of the potential political impact of what these witnesses have had to say has unfortunately been lost, because the media have not seen fit to transmit some extremely interesting testimony beyond the Committee chamber, except in limited and fragmentary form...

...I am unattracted by that excess of conscience which leads individuals to invoke a "higher moral law...

...Students who wish to lobby for peace -—and, for that matter, non-students who wish to lobby for peace-—might find it worthwhile to commend this legislation to their representatives in Congress...

...It is always difficult to speculate on what might have been, but I strongly suspect that things would be even worse today if it had not been for the determination of students and other citizens who opposed the policies of the previous Administration...

...They do not appear to have the numbers, the resources, the ski'l—or, most important of all, the opportunity—to make a radical revolution, but they might succeed in bringing on something resembling a counterrevolution from the right, inflated by support from great numbers of honest and decent but frightened citizens...

...Dissent against this squalid war is more than an expression of democracy...

...The point can hardly be over-stressed...

...In addition to lobbying for peace through the legislative process, there is an obvious and promising strategy in this election year: to take to the political hustings and to work in an efficient and organized way for candidates who favor peace...

...To my mind it makes no sense at all, when we see our democratic institutions misused, to decide that we might as well go on to finish the job by destroying the institutions altogether...

...Who wants to go down to glorious defeat, or create a gallant legend—while the war goes on and the Philistines take over our country...

...Throughout the country students are protesting the invasion of Cambodia and the resumption of the bombing of North Vietnam in one of the most impressive, spontaneous, and—in Washington at least—peaceful displays of protest in our country's history...

...All decent Americans are saddened by these tragic and unnecessary deaths, just as they are saddened by the equally tragic and unnecessary deaths of other fine young Americans in Vietnam and Laos and Cambodia...

...Boring, repetitious, and simple-minded though it may seem, it is up to all those of us who oppose this war to keep on boring, badgering, and lobbying our leaders until they make peace...

...Now, by invading Cambodia and reescalating the war without notice or authorization, the Executive has deceived the Congress and the country once again, with consequences that cannot easily be foreseen...

...it was their arrogant certainty of the Tightness of their own predictions and opinions...

...Would any of us volunteer to disqualify ourselves...

...The "Red scares" of our past, from Sacco-Vanzetti to Alger Hiss to the "effete snobs" and "rotten apples" of more recent vintage, have never amounted to much as far as threatening our society is concerned, but the anti-Red reactions have amounted to a great deal...

...All of us are of course concerned now with the widening of the war in Indochina...

...For my own part, I have taken every opportunity I could find to bring authoritative and persuasive witnesses to the Foreign Relations Committee to discuss the war...

...Dissent, no less than war, requires a strategy if it is to succeed...

...In a manner of speaking, these students were casualties of war, and I regret very much that the President's response to the tragedies was lacking in compassion...

...We were deceived about the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964...

...Nixon did not put a stop to the Johnson escalation policy for purely philosophical reasons...