314
IRVING HOWl!
these modest hopes for a progressive coalition may be dashed, and on
this issue the new academic dissidence may be driven-or may drive
itself-into a hopeless isolation.
In
principle there is no reason why
those who oppose the Vietnam war and at least some of those who
support it should not be able to cooperate for desirable legislation and
action in domestic politics. Between opponents of the war and
some
of
its supporters there exists a common interest in not allowing the war
to become a pretext for cutting back or refusing to initiate necessary
domestic measures. Yet if the war in Vietnam drags on for months
and years, with one probable consequence a growing embitterment in
political and intellectual life at home, radicals will find it difficult to
maintain a balance between coalition on the domestic front and criticism
of foreign policy. For in the actuality of experience it is hard to keep
clear the distinctions that seem persuasive in the logic of discourse.
Whatever hope there is for a new political upsurge in the United States
-and by this I mean something more substantial than the outbursts
of student rebellion-largely depends on a quick solution to the problem
of Vietnam. That is hardly the main reason for wanting to see the war
end, but it is a reason.
Otherwise, the consequences could be disastrous, both for the poli–
tical life of the entire nation, perhaps again infected with a low-charged
version of the McCarthyite sickness, and for the still very weak and
insecure radicalism that has begun to appear on the campus. There is
already a tendency among academic protestors to fall back upon
postures of rectitude instead of trying to engage in the far more
difficult business of influencing the shape of politics, just as there is a
destructive and at times nihilistic fringe in the essentially healthy student
protests. But if the war in Vietnam continues, there may in conscience
be nothing left for its critics except postures of rectitude and declarations
of conscience-partly because of a tightening in the political atmosphere,
partly because of righteous misdirection in the protest movement itself.
What would then happen? Locked into isolation, academic protest would
risk the danger of becoming merely shrill, righteously impotent and
foolishly "anti-American"; some would be tempted-disastrously, I think
-to see themselves as shock troops of the campus waging a battle of
advertisements against U.S. imperialism in a way parallel to the war
of bullets waged by Castroite guerrillas in Latin America. And one
consequence of such a development could well be a wave of anti–
intellectualism in this country, a new attack upon the academy as the
reservoir
(the last reservoir)
of sedition. It is a frightful prospect.
There is nevertheless, a growing sentiment of moralistic radicalism,
attached to visions of apocalypse and the theory of mass society, which
