JEFFREY HERF
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well as regret. Though communism in Vietnam, and elsewhere before that,
has been a political and economic disaster, I remain proud that we in the
New Left said publicly, before most of the country did that the war in
Vietnam was a wrong and unnecessary war. To the extent to which our
early opposition helped to raise the political cost of waging the war, we
accomplished something posi tive. I think we did have something to do
with making this a more just and tolerant and less racist society. The sec–
ond wave of feminism and the gay movement both gained impetus from
1968 and they have fought a great fight to change this society immeasur–
ably for the better. The values of economic and social equality, and of a
more equal distribution of wealth and income that we advocated are espe–
cially necessary in our current gilded, and, as "welfare reform" is
indicating, often cruel age. So I remain a child of the sixties in these many
ways and am fortunate I came of age then.
By the early 1980s, I was ready to publicly criticize the Left in this
country and in Western Europe as it opposed NATO's deployment of
nuclear weapons. I believe that if the spirit of 1968 in foreign policy had
prevailed then, the prospects for reform in the Soviet Union would have
been reduced and the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact might still be
with us. Where the Left of the 1930s and 1940s was proudly anti-fascist,
the Left of the late 1980s still had difficulty grasping the need to confront
fascism in the form of Saddam Hussein's aggression against Kuwait. In the
1990s, a sixties veteran as president did not make good on his campaign
promises to intervene to stop mass murder in Bosnia-though another six–
ties veteran, then head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, opposed such
intervention. It has been hard for many 68ers to grasp that some interven–
tions of American power are essential for preserving the values we
championed.
But at the age of fifty-one I want to say to the younger historians here
who are and will be writing the history of our youthful years: pay atten–
tion to the dissenters, to those whose memories of 1968 do not always
accord with the master narratives of heroism and profound insight. Do not
dismiss the critics or abuse them, as some have, by calling them fanatics of
another stripe. Do not be intimidated into avoiding controversial paths of
research by efforts to discredit the messengers of dissonant memory.
Remember that we in the New Left were all very young. At times we were
very brave and politically astute and at other times we lacked good judg–
ment and common sense. And often the same person could go from good
to bad and back again in no time at all. Striking a balance between self–
reflection on youthful blunders and youthful accomplishments is difficult
both for a memorist and for historians. I think that is how it is and how
it should remain.
