Apocalypse Then

American Intellectuals and the Vietnam War, 1954-1975

Robert R. Tomes

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 1998
• ISBN:
  9780814783405
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Vietnam War
• Index: History

Prior to the Vietnam war, American intellectual life rested comfortably on shared assumptions and often common ideals. Intellectuals largely supported the social and economic reforms of the 1930s, the war against Hitler's Germany, and U.S. conduct during the Cold War. By the early 1960s, a liberal intellectual consensus existed.

The war in Southeast Asia shattered this fragile coalition, which promptly dissolved into numerous camps, each of which questioned American institutions, values, and ideals. Robert R. Tomes sheds new light on the demise of Cold War liberalism and the development of the New Left, and the steady growth of a conservatism that used Vietnam, and anti-war sentiment, as a rallying point. Importantly, Tomes provides new evidence that neoconservatism retreated from internationalism due largely to Vietnam, only to regroup later with substantially diminished goals and expectations.

Covering vast archival terrain, Apocalypse Then stands as the definitive account of the impact of the Vietnam war on American intellectual life.

1

A Long Time in the Comin’: American Intellectuals and the Cold War, 1945–1963

“It is one of the marks of a great power that it never admits a mistake or failure, and the United States is no exception.”¹ Carey McWilliams and the Nation’s editorial board were thus among the first American intellectuals to call attention to and protest American policy in Southeast Asia. Both the Nation and the New Republic repeatedly addressed similar concerns during the early 1960s.² That two of America’s leading intellectual journals would criticize a specific government policy at that time was hardly surprising, as both journals often featured political and social criticism. Their objections came from a liberal perspective, and a belief that more had to be done to fulfill the socially progressive ideals they felt would make America a better society.

More important than what these intellectuals condemned was the usually implicit, occasionally explicit content of what they supported. An understanding of the positive assumptions and ideals underlying the Nation and the New Republic’s rebukes of President Ngo Dinh Diem’s regime provides remarkable insight into the intellectual climate of the time, and serves as a useful starting point to survey American intellectual life in the days immediately preceding America’s longest war.

“How many warnings do we need?” the Nation continued in that January 6, 1962 editorial. Citing estimates that perhaps as many as forty thousand South Vietnamese political prisoners were being held under Diem, and feeling that the United States was losing both direction and control of its own policy by yielding to his whims, the Nation concluded, “You can’t fight Communists with Mandarins.”³ This underscores a key point; the dispute was not over objectives but over methods.

Within a few years intellectual protest of the Vietnam War swelled to colossal proportions, causing most American intellectuals to reevaluate and often redefine their entire outlook on American life. The implications of that reshaping process cannot be overstated. Yet, in the early days of protest, such far-reaching consequences were hardly predictable. Most intellectuals were simply concentrating their efforts on finding and supporting a method that would work in Vietnam. In 1961, Huynh Sanh Thong, a South Vietnamese intellectual, reported in the Nation: “At this very hour an alternative to Communist Dictatorship has yet to be found in South Vietnam. The reason is simple: no Democratic Experiment has ever been tried there since the day the United States decided to give allout support to Diem and his clan in 1955.”⁴

Both the Nation and the New Republic entered the beginning of the Cold War in the late 1940s with a legacy of Stalinism remaining from the 1930s.⁵ The New Republic completed the political transition from pro-Soviet fellow-traveling to support of the liberal bloc within the Democratic Party during the Korean War—an orientation which continued throughout the early 1960s.⁶ Under the editorial direction of Freda Kirchwey, the Nation’s affection for the Soviet Union was more persistent in the 1940s, subtly giving way to liberalism in the 1950s.⁷ Seeing McCarthyism as the beginning of totalitarianism in America, the Nation became anti-anticommunist in the 1950s, and a pronounced civil libertarianism dominated its editorial position into the early 1960s.⁸

The Nation and the New Republic’s criticism of Vietnam was pragmatic. Their main complaint was that current American policy simply could not work effectively—they warned that in the end it would enhance rather than stop communism in Southeast Asia. Because America was supporting a corrupt Diem, the Nation claimed, “The tide of war is running against us … we have everything on our side except the people who have no faith in the tyrannical regime.” It was agreed that the United States had a moral responsibility to actively oppose communism in Southeast Asia. The unfortunate paradox was that “Diem has ended up by copying [communism’s] worst features: rigged elections, a Puppet National Assembly, a muzzled press, arbitrary arrests, concentration camps [reminiscent of Mao Tse-Tung’s communes]…. [O]nce again, the extreme Left and the extreme Right meet.”⁹ The two major intellectual American concerns of the post–World War II period thus become evident: the affirmation of democracy and muscular opposition to communism. “Mandarins vs. Communists” agrees with a general policy, but reflects an agreement over values that was about to end. Indeed, references in this editorial to the ideal of democracy and the evil of communism reflect deeply imbedded intellectual assumptions that were about to be challenged and hotly debated. The bottom line was that American intellectuals were about to change their ideas and opinions about American democracy and foreign communism in response to the Vietnam War.

It is important to remember that the 1960s and 1970s ushered in a very different era of American intellectual life from that of the pre-Vietnam period. The predominant liberal creed of the 1950s began to fragment and unravel; a new form of intellectual radicalism developed; and a new conservatism formed. For some intellectuals, these were optimistic years spent in pursuit of a new world order, but for most it was a painful period of disillusionment, despair, reassessment, and readjustment. Some intellectuals became activists and vied for political power, but most eventually resigned themselves to the acceptance of what they felt was their own political and social powerlessness. If the term “consensus” accurately describes the intellectual climate of the 1950s and early 1960s, perhaps “dissensus” fits the intellectual tone of the late 1960s and early to mid-1970s. That was a different mood, characterized by a new search for order and ideals.

The Liberal Consensus

As stated, the intellectual climate of the 1950s is best described by the term consensus, with liberalism the dominant political persuasion. Certain prominent intellectuals were far enough to the political left or right to be placed outside the consensus, but these were a distinct minority.

Liberalism contained a set of broad assumptions about political theory and philosophical principles which the vast majority of American intellectuals affirmed. These can be grouped around liberalism’s two fundamental tenets—civil libertarianism and international anticommunism. Whereas all liberals endorsed both, there was a polarization over methodology on each of these issues.

Civil libertarianism, originally expressed in the philosophy of John Locke, was first given its American definition in the Declaration of Independence and then in the Constitution of the United States.¹⁰ Initially concerned with defending individual property rights and the right to govern by consent, civil libertarianism was eventually expanded to uphold the individual freedoms of the Bill of Rights, such as separation of church and state, freedom of speech, and freedom of religion.

The state, viewed somewhat negatively in the eighteenth century as the primary transgressor of individuals’ rights, eventually took on a more positive role in defending and promoting American individual liberties, particularly in the twentieth century. In addition to individual civil rightism, then, liberal intellectuals of the 1950s also inherited a positive inclination toward the state’s potential role and a crucial affirmation of the rationale for the American system of government. They believed in its possibilities.

Although all liberals embraced civil libertarianism in theory, they were polarized over the question of how to achieve its goals.¹¹ On the right were consensus liberals, including Daniel Bell, Louis Hartz, and Daniel Boorstin, whose more conservative outlook downplayed conflicts and tensions. These intellectuals were impressed primarily by the unity of the American experience, and believed that individual liberties would best be served by the laissez-faire approach of allowing a natural historical momentum to run its course.

On the left of the controversy were the activist or New Deal liberals, such as Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Robert Dahl, and Henry Steele Commager. These intellectuals traced their lineage to the Progressive Era, specifically the intellectual tutelage of Charles Beard. They viewed American society and history as the products of conflicting social tensions and competing interest groups, and acknowledged the presence and active role of class structure in American life. Unlike the consensus liberals, these intellectuals saw politics and human effort in very positive terms, and favored active welfare statism over a laissez-faire approach as the means best suited to protect and advance civil liberties.

The other important common denominator of liberalism was international anticommunism. The fact was that all liberals opposed the spread of communism, particularly Soviet-affiliated communism, in the post–World War II international community. However, whereas all liberals recognized America’s responsibility to contain communism, controversy over how this could best be done formed the basis of yet another polarization.¹²

The globalist liberals stood on the right. Also described as anticommunist liberals and “hard” cold warrior liberals, this group included such intellectuals as George Kennan and the writers of the intellectual journal Encounter. Globalist liberals believed that the United States should actively oppose the spread of communism as fiercely as possible in all parts of the world.

Selectivist anticommunist liberals, also referred to as One-World liberals or “soft” cold warriors, were on the left. Some, such as Walter Lippmann and the New Republic’s writers, believed that the globalist approach was both irrational and too generalized to be practical. They sought to examine specific cases of communist aggression and determine appropriate American responses within more limited and focused contexts.

Liberalism wasn’t just a set of abstract axioms. It was a political philosophy that came to permeate most of the nation’s intellectual life in the post–World War II period. It came to represent a temperament, a mood, a style, a posture—indeed an identity—peculiar to its time. This unique identity, characterized by a strange blend of confidence and skepticism, was significantly shaped by specific historical events and circumstances, including the memory of the Great Depression; the experience of World War II; the apparent success of the postwar economy; the growth and presence of totalitarian communism in the international community; and, most of all, America’s newly found prominence in global affairs. All this was added to a tradition already steeped in a sense of idealism, mission, and exceptionalism.

Liberalism was more of a general persuasion than a specific political program, so that when it came to applying broad principles, such as the equality of all citizens before the law, to particular programs like civil rights legislation, liberals often disagreed among themselves. In fact, what is most striking is how often the same ideals were employed on contrary sides of the same debate in order to justify opposing conclusions. In the relatively placid environment of the 1950s, the result was often collegial academic debate. But the 1960s provided a more tension-filled atmosphere. Of course, it is important to note that the liberalism of the 1950s also contained inherent tensions, although these may not have been obvious at the time. But the pressures of war and the turbulence of the 1960s in general aggravated these tensions to such an extent that the principles of the philosophy itself came to be challenged and no longer agreed upon.

The intellectual spectrum became increasingly dominated by civil libertarian and anticommunist concerns as time went on. No field of intellectual life remained unaffected; theologians, philosophers, novelists, playwrights, artists, scientists, and anthropologists all joined the liberal chorus. But it was the social scientists, particularly historians, political scientists, and sociologists, who played leading roles in analyzing and extrapolating the body of key liberal ideas, not only promoting and proselytizing them, but defining them in scholarly terms. Most political issues were viewed in the context of their historical background, and many social scientists saw American identity, history, and experience as part of an almost teleological process. American exceptionalism, for better or worse, seemed obvious to many.

The first intellectuals to describe a liberal consensus were historians. Louis Hartz’s The Liberal Tradition in America was pathfinding work.¹³ Hartz viewed American political history as a continuum of unfolding liberal values rooted in eighteenth-century England and expressed succinctly in both the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. Although dissidence and diverse opinions often played a part in the shaping of American history, most agreed with the basic constitutional principles of individual liberty, the sacredness of property rights, and the validity of the republican form of government.

Hartz characterized American political history as basically unified, using the term “moral unanimity,” and emphasized the significance of achieving a democratic society and form of government without violent revolution. He dwelt upon two primary reasons the United States was able to accomplish this: first, the absence of a “feudal tradition,” that is, established nobilities or churches which democracies usually have to displace or overthrow, and second, the presence of the so-called “liberal idea,” which had been quickly accepted by the majority and legally enshrined by what Hartz termed “sacred constitutionalism.” While other countries had to contend with the burdens of their past in the struggle to develop modern and liberal forms of government, he said, America was blessed by a unique beginning in a new world. Because there were no “feudal reactions” to contend with, America never developed a strong or distinctive radicalism or conservatism, and a huge and victorious middle class reinforced the political situation in socioeconomic terms.

Richard Hofstadter also felt that unity was the central theme of the American past. Hofstadter analyzed reform movements from the angle of realpolitik. In his two classic works on the subject, The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It, and The Age of Reform, Hofstadter saw in the cyclical thrusts toward political reform not so much a desire to create a new America as a drive to preserve the old.¹⁴ Accordingly, the “old” America was defined by constitutional principles similar to those outlined by Hartz. For example, in certain ways the New Deal was an effort to preserve the system rather than to radically alter it, though it was also somewhat of a departure from established tradition.

Whereas Hartz and Hofstadter were cautious of the consensus and feared the possible shortcomings of strict majoritarianism and conformity, Daniel Boorstin voiced no such concerns. His famous trilogy, The Americans, celebrated the theme of unity throughout America’s social, cultural, and intellectual history, and said that unity seemed to flow into America almost by way of natural selection, through institutions. In an earlier work, The Genius of American Politics,¹⁵ Boorstin described American politics as pragmatic, flexible, and nonideological, thus creating a state of “givenness” much like Hartz’s “absence of feudalism,” that is, a naturally occurring set of favorable circumstances unique to the American environment.

Some scholars took American exceptionalism for granted and saw boundless opportunity in seizing the moment. Often their fears that America would become “soft,” “weak,” insufficiently educated, or lazy as a result of economic affluence betrayed deeper utopian yearnings.¹⁶ For example, in 1954 Jacques Barzun wrote God’s Country and Mine: A Declaration of Love Spiced with a Few Harsh Words.¹⁷ In this book, a prodigious scholar, the dean of faculties and provost at Columbia University— a man well-respected for sophisticated and influential writings in intellectual history—called for the full actualization of America’s intellectual and cultural potential. As the title suggests, the work also constituted an appeal to patriotism and a thinly veiled resurgence of cultural nationalism.

Progressive historians like Samuel Eliot Morison, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., and Henry Steele Commager joined the consensus in validating the liberal achievements of the American past. Perhaps their most ambitious project was the ongoing New American Nation Series, begun in the 1950s. Edited by Richard B. Morris and Henry Steele Commager for Harper and Row, each volume featured leading historians’ analyses of specific periods and aspects of the American past, consistently emphasizing the progression and development of liberal ideals. George Mowry and Arthur Link contributed volumes on the Progressive administrations of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, and William Leuchtenberg wrote the volume on Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal.¹⁸ Viewing conflict between interest groups as the dynamic for change, these historians saw in the cyclical nature of American political reform the persistent development of civil libertarianism. The term progressive reflects the intellectual traditions of the Progressive Era expressed by scholars such as Vernon Parrington and Arthur Schlesinger, Sr., that many of these scholars revered.

Several important generalizations can be made about both consensus and progressive historians. First, they assessed the American past as essentially positive, and often wrote about it in triumphant or celebratory tones. They measured America’s greatness by the advance of a civil libertarian tradition and the success of institutional mechanisms which provided peaceful and rational means for improvement. Disdaining the nineteenth-century notion of moral progress, consensus and progressive historians considered political values like participatory democracy and the protection of civil liberties the empirical ingredients of success. These historians tended toward the liberal notion of the positive state, giving the Progressive Reform Era and Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal far more favorable ...