AMERICA II
257
exhibit these virtues ; even the Nazi youth movement, especially those
influenced by the Stefan George circle, were not devoid of them.
The trouble with a movement drawn to absurdity is that it makes
its members more receptive to apologies for atrocities. The cult of irre–
sponsibility means indifference to consequences, including the conse–
quences of violence. The result is inconsistency and hypocrisy. Admirers
of Castro and Mao quite properly condemn the rioting of white racists
against Negroes despite the presence of the social determinants in their
environmental conditions which account for their prejudices and bestial–
ities. But they excuse the rioting of black racists and/or freedom looters
on the ground that their riotous behavior is determined by their life in
the slums. In other words, the white red-necks are morally responsible
for their conduct but the Negroes are like objects or things whose beha–
vior is a physical reaction to a stimulus, not a differential human re–
sponse that involves a responsible choice. But after all, not all Negroes
riot; most of them do not. There is more practical wisdom and sounder
philosophy in Roy Wilkins' observation that "there are white punks and
Negro punks" than in all the misapplied social determinism of the
New Left.
The events in Berkeley which mark the decline of the traditional
conception of the American university, however imperfectly realized, as
a community of scholars and teachers dedicated to the discovery and pub–
lication of the truth, have been widely misunderstood throughout the
country. All sorts of myths and legends have grown up, some of them
sedulously cultivated by the leaders of that group among the faculty at
Berkeley which misled the Academic Senate into giving what was
in
effect a vote of approval to the capture of Sproul Hall by the FSM in
November, 1964. I have elsewhere discussed the details at length ("Sec–
ond Thoughts on Berkeley,"
Teachers College Record,
October 1966)
and documented my charge that it was the faculty that bears primary
responsibility for developments at Berkeley, because of its failure, first to
check the Administration, and then to rebuke the excesses of the student
minority. Even today a considerable section of the faculty refuses to con–
demn the activities of those whose primary interest is to use the
Uni–
versity as a sanctuary for student and nonstudent "guerrilla warfare"
against society, to seize upon genuine or fancied grievances within the
University, and instead of seeking to redress them through the use of
the legal methods and procedures available to them, organize illegal
incidents in the eager expectation that this will bring the police on
the campus, and discredit the liberal administration.
Clark Kerr's position was already undermined by the actions of the
