Principles and Heresies

The committed revolutionists on the campuses are, by all reliable estimates, a very small minority. Yet they succeed in effectively mobilizing much broader support—not certainly anything like a majority of the millions of college students, but an impressive number. Nor do 1 mean only on specific issues like Vietnam or the draft or various domestic problems on which so large a part of the intellectual community, young and old, is alienated from the views and attitudes of the American people at large. Rather I mean the more pervasive, less specific, general attitudes which can best be summarized as an over-all hostility, not just to the values of American civilization, but to the values without which civilized life itself cannot subsist.

Granted the responsibility of the liberal teaching of two generations in creating a fertile field for the revolutionists, through the abrasive criticism of tradition that is characteristic of modern liberalism. By itself, however, this is not enough to explain what is happening today. Liberalism with all its negativity always gives lip service to the tradition of reasoned discourse, and sometimes truly respects it. If what is happening today is to a degree the responsibility of liberalism in its corrosion of settled tradition, that is not the conscious goal of liberal thought and action.

FS

About the Author

Frank S. Meyer

Frank S. Meyer was a senior editor of National Review.

Featured Tags

The committed revolutionists on the campuses are, by all reliable estimates, a very small minority. Yet they succeed in effectively mobilizing much broader support—not certainly anything like a majority of the millions of college students, but an impressive number. Nor do 1 mean only on specific issues like Vietnam or the draft or various domestic problems on which so large a part of the intellectual community, young and old, is alienated from the views and attitudes of the American people at large. Rather I mean the more pervasive, less specific, general attitudes which can best be summarized as an over-all hostility, not just to the values of American civilization, but to the values without which civilized life itself cannot subsist.

Granted the responsibility of the liberal teaching of two generations in creating a fertile field for the revolutionists, through the abrasive criticism of tradition that is characteristic of modern liberalism. By itself, however, this is not enough to explain what is happening today. Liberalism with all its negativity always gives lip service to the tradition of reasoned discourse, and sometimes truly respects it. If what is happening today is to a degree the responsibility of liberalism in its corrosion of settled tradition, that is not the conscious goal of liberal thought and action.