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of the overriding need to improve the school system of the country by
laying down national guide-lines or of reconstructing our cities or of
devising workable strategies of implementing civil rights legislation, or
of establishing birth control clinics-even of developing art centers in
all cities-would be foolish to refuse a genuine opportunity offered by
the government to further his ideals merely because he disagrees with
its current foreign policy-provided, of course, he does not surrender
his freedom of publicly dissenting from that policy. I can conceive a
situation in which the only honorable thing for any person to do would
be
to refuse to serve a government in
any
official capacity-for example
if the regime were totalitarian. But those who classify the American
regime today in such terms are guilty of an irresponsibility from whose
consequences they escape precisely bcause their charges are so absurd.
For a number of reasons I could not bring myself to vote for
Johnson in the last elections, and when it was overwhelmingly evident
that Goldwater didn't stand a ghost of a chance of being elected, I voted
for the least objectionable of the opposition parties I could find-the
Socialist Labor Party. But
if
there had been any danger that Goldwater
would be elected, I would have voted for Johnson. The statement that
those who voted for Johnson might just as well have voted for Gold–
water because the former adopted the program of the latter is another
piece of irresponsible nonsense. Goldwater was and is bitterly opposed
to almost every aspect of the Great Society program as well as to the
measures taken to strengthen civil rights. And with respect to foreign
policy he would have obliterated the whole of Vietnam instead of
restricting the bombing to military installations and supply centers, ancl
probably attacked the Chinese nuclear bomb sites. Under Goldwater the
United States would probably have been engaged-alone-in total war
unless North Vietnam had capitulated to a threat of such war.
5. Despite charges to the contrary it seems to me incontestable that
the Johnson administration would like to bring hostilities to an end in
South Vietnam and permit its people to determine their own destinies
whatever government they chose. I believe that our involvement in
South Vietnam under French influence was a great mistake. But the con–
sequences of that mistake cannot now be rectified by withdrawal before
certain minimal conditions have been met by North Vietnam and the
Vietcong. In the absence of these minimal conditions such withdrawal
would be a greater mistake.
Were the United States to accept the conditions laid down by the
North Vietnamese and the Vietcong, it would mean abandoning close
to 900,000 refugees from North Vietnam to indiscriminate slaughter as
