On Dissent, Violence, and the Intellectual

If I have properly assessed the meaning of Dean Forrester's comments, he stated that: (1) America is now in the midst of an attempted revolution, an attempt to create a new society by force and violence; (2) war, race relations, poverty, environment, and the other festers in our society, while great problems, are not the real causes of the discontent; (3) the attempted revolution is the product of a generation of university teaching and writing which has created the intellectual atmosphere and the state of mind that sustain the conflict. I respectfully dissent while recognizing at the same time the soundness of his proposition that "all men and women of good will who are engaged in the opinion-making professions should stress the affirmative along with the negative in the day-to-day appraisals of our society and that we should endeavor personally to maintain and to strengthen the good things which we have accomplished while giving our very best efforts to correcting the negative conditions."