policy - The Black Vault

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Lipset's number of 30,000 may be too high. At Berkeley he estimates
that there were only 200 to 300 activists among 29,000 students.
Daniel Seligman notes that only .001 of American students paid dues to
the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). He quotes a 1968 Harris
poll that the activist population was somewhat less than two percent
of all those in college. The disparity may lie in the somewhat
dubious definitioi. of an "activist", for certainly the "activists"
gained many synpathizers.
32. Hughes, pp. 55-56 provides an important body of statistics
that merits detailed examination by military historians - and by
military recruiters:
One study suggested that the Vietnam War, over a period of
about ten years, may have created a new and pacifistic cohort
group. Whereas 72 percent of college students surveyed in 1962
thought that the "United States must be willing to run any risk
of war which may be necessary to prevent the spread of communism,"
only 25 percent believed that to be true in 1972. i'!Jre
significantly, in 1962 only 17 percent answered that it was
"cortrary to my moral principles to participate in war and the
killing of other people," whereas 49 percent of the college
students in the survey answered thus in 1972. The author's
argument that Vietnan may become for this age group what "Munich"
and appeasement became for the World War II generation, however,
needs more study--for instance, people of all ages were affected
by Vietnam, and it has not been proven that the Vietnam cohort
was especially affected.
In conclusion, however, it bears repeating that neither age
nor sex differences in attitudes should be exaggerated. They
generally prove considerably less important than educational,
social status, or racial differences.
33. Mueller, p. 125 and Table A-l p. 273. The opinion polls have no way of
measuring the attitudes of intellectuals as a group. However, through
examination of certain groups, some analysts believe that they have
uncovered important trends. Concerning this issue, John Mueller analized
the attitudes of Jews toward the war. Data indicate that while
the Jews supported the government's policies during the Korean War, as
a group, they were distinctly more opposed to the Vietnam War than the
general population. Taking the Jewish population as a surrogate for
g- the intellectual left, Mueller concludes that the pattern that is
, observable is that the Jewish vote represents the trend toward opposition
to the war that existed among intellectuals in the 1960's and
- 1970's.
A
34. Sandy Vogelgesang, The Long Dark Night of the Soul (N.Y.: Harper &
Row Publishers, 1974), p. 7.
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