WHAT 'S HAPPENING TO AMERICA
The contributions printed here are in response to the follow–
ing questionnaire, which was sent to a number of people. Further com–
ments, including some by some of PR' s Editors, will be printed in the
Spring issue of PR, and our readers are invited to join in.
There is a good deal of anxiety about the direction of Amer–
ican life. In fact, there is reason to fear that America may be entering a
moral and political crisis.
If
so, the crisis isn't to be explained by any
single policy, however wrong or disastrous. There seems instead to be
some more general failure or weakness in our national life. The deteriora–
tion in the quality of American life during the last few years has been
made evident in several ways. The rhetoric through which issues are
created and argued and which seemed during the Kennedy years to have
some relation to the seriousness of the problems facing the country has
become jingoistic and question-begging. The economy seems to be out
of control. The civil rights movement has become more desperate as the
government has become more cautious and the white population less
sympathetic. U.S. foreign policy is becoming more and more indistinguish–
able from John Foster Dulles', if in fact it isn't even more an adjunct of
our military power. Throughout the country, there is a sense of drift
and frustration and confusion-and a growing sense of urgency.
Of course there are many people who don't think conditions are so
bad, who regard the idea that we are in some kind of crisis as extremist,
and who in any case feel sure that our problems can be solved within the
terms of our current methods and policies.
To give the discussion some focus, we suggest the following questions.
But you are free, of course, to approach the problem of what is happen–
ing to America in any way you choose.
