Almost one million Americans, most of them of voting age, will receive undergraduate degrees this month. Clutching their BAs and BSs, they will go forth, in the commencement orator’s cliché, “to take their places as citizens.” Along with their sheepskins, what spiritual and ideological baggage will they take with them?
Three-fifths call themselves political liberals; fully 17% are self-proclaimed radicals. Approximately half can’t identify with either member of our cherished two-party system. Three out of four feel Marxists should be allowed to teach citizenship courses in the public high schools; almost half favor the socialization of all basic industries; seven out of ten want their country unilaterally to suspend atomic weapons development. 40% say American society is “sick”; just over half believe that organized religion is harmful or worse. Given the alternatives of war or surrender in a confrontation with the Soviet Union, 54% would have the United States surrender.
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