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many conservatives. McCarthy, however, was not interested in the Cold
War but only in the dissatisfactions within America, including the
exploitable grievances of rising ethnic minorities. Today, in contrast,
the Kennedy Administration focusses much
if
not most of its attention on
the Cold War, and the very attractiveness and elan of this Administra–
tion tend to mute liberal and radical dissent. World Communism is a
real and not a factitious adversary, and perhaps it is easier to unify the
country against Communism abroad than against people who are ex–
travagantly alleged to be Communists at home. In any case, many
leading intellectuals have been hesitant to plumb the depths of their
own misgivings about the Kennedy Administration: in the nuclear
age their fears for the future have a nightmarish quality, and as the
Cold War consensus develops they are understandably troubled by the
prospects of becoming alienated and powerless. When the President ex–
presses their more utopian hopes, as he sometimes does, they are cheered;
when he moves in the opposite direction, they blame his advisors.
The young radical students, in contrast, are much more quick to be
alienated from an Administration that raised their expectations but, as
in Cuba and South Vietnam, appears to be rather more militaristic than
Eisenhower's. The older generation of intellectuals has suceeded almost
too well in dissecting and demolishing Communism and its fronts, and
liberal hopefulness and trust also, and many of the young students are
impatient with our prudence and historical awareness which they regard
as pussy-footing at best and witch-hunting at worst. The enormous
changes that have overtaken America in the last few years have
separated many young people from their elders rather more than
generations are usually divided, and each generation in the presence
of the other feels insecure and perplexed.
At the same time, the dominant academic liberalism of the major
metropolitan centers, combined with the vitality and activity of the
new protest groups, has helped bring into being the new organizations
of Right Wing students for whom in an earlier day college itself would
have been simply the dormitory and locale for their fun and games.
One could even argue that the change in the style of student Right
Wing activities reflects the increasing intellectual power of academic
liberalism. For in the past the Right Wing students tended to conduct
themselves in a prankish, mindless way, and some still do; but more and
more the Right Wing students are armored with facts and they throw
arguments in the way that the pre-War semi-Fascist hoods would throw
punches or in the way that Southern segregationist mobs will still shout
"nigger lover." (To be sure, there are still plenty of less articulate Right
