Word: moralizers
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...regret the sternness of its tone." I do not care one way or the other about your tone: be as stern as your conception of yourself requires. I am struck, however, by the quite insufferable insensitivity and stuffiness of your letter. I do regret the sense of moral superiority that produces self-righteous judgments about student behavior in 1967 without serious acknowledgment of the possibility that the continued enlargement of the war in Vietnam might create deeply troubling moral and intellectual problems for this college generation...
...conceivable that concern over the incessant widening of this ghastly war amounts to something a little more than what you vacuously call "your son's moral objections to various features of our society?" Is it not barely conceivable that a war which posterity will very likely regard as the most unintelligible in our history might justifiably produce a certain mild disquietude on the part of those who may be called upon to fight...
...reasonably intelligent or humane man had written your letter, he would have begun with a generous and candid recognition of the stringent moral and emotional predicament created for young men today by the war in Vietnam. Recognizing this, he would then have moved on to the problem raised by the drummer from Dow. He would properly and vigorously have condemned the physical detention of this hapless individual. But he would also have distinguished, as your letter did not, between my son and many others, whose only offense was a subsequent expression of solidarity through handing in their bursar's cards...
...this organizational heresy at the highest level? "I don't quite know," says one of the listeners later. "I think I felt heartened to hear something said merely because it was felt. Still, I did find all that stuff about one's integrity a bit Nordic." Moral: people in this glass house shouldn't throw their inner selves around...
...scrubby wilds near Fort Lauderdale, he wanders untrammeled through woods and dunes, killing king snakes, munching Powerhouse candy bars. He regards mysteries of life with the eerie moral neutrality of boyhood. "Suddenly two of the birds rush at each other in the air. Quick as a wink, one of them is gone. Swallowed. A single yellow feather drifts down to settle on the moss. I laugh, delighted by the purity of it." In a familiar childhood rite, he discovers the intricate magic of a yo-yo that he has bought from two Oriental itinerant salesmen, and learns the various movements...