policy - The Black Vault

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THE BDM CORPORATION
A 1969 Fortune-Yankelovich survey suggested that behind the small
and highly visible activist minority of young adults was a much larger and
genera.ly "invisible" minority of students who held similar dissident
opinions and attitudes, but who as a rule did not act on these political
convictions. The survey indicates that members of this group may have
numbered in the range of 2.3 million out of a young adult population (aged
18-24) of 22.8 million. 32/ If these data are accurate, 10 percent of the
youth were responsible for the vocal opposition to the war that was heard
in the 1960's and that opposition was orchestrated by a small number of
political radicals.
2. Intellectuals
The opposition of some intellectuals to the Vietnam War policies
of the successive administrations drew strong public attention. This
section seeks to establish a context for assessing the composition of the
dissident intellectual group as a means of gauging its political strength.
The polling of Americans by Gallup concerning attitudes toward
the Vietnam War indicated that there was no strong correlation between
opposition to the war and the educational attainments of subgroups of the
population.
Figure 1-4 indicates trends in support of the Vietnam War
policies that were evident among three subgroups divided by education. 33/
In general,
intellectuals belong to the group of college graduates, but
definition of "who is an intellectual" and computation of their numbers is
a subjective task in which objective standards like academic degrees have
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little relevance. Relating the American historical tradition of intellectualism,
one author suggests the following as a description of modern
intellectuals:
Three related concerns have traditionally characterized
Western intellectuals: their espousal of moral
conscience, their obsession with their own identity as
intellectuals, and their relationship to power. All
three preoccupations have dominated the U.S. intelligentsia
since its emergence as a definable social
group late in the nineteenth century. 34/
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