Word: war
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...voice is still firm, though; and when he begins to talk about the war and the draft, his boundless energy comes through. Gruening first denounced the war on the Senate floor in April, 1964, and has been attacking in tirelessly ever since. In all his conversation, he constantly comes back to the war, explaining his ideas over and over again to anyone who will listen. The words flow out easily, in an even, forceful voice. A disaster, he says continually. The worst disaster in the country's history. We are the aggressors in Vietnam, he says. The spectre...
...become commonplace to note that the Senate could not afford to lose a man like Gruening. In reality, it probably won't make that much difference. The Senate long ago learned to ignore his simple, earnest pleas. His condemnation of the war was too unreasonable: he denounced not only the policy employed, but the very goals that the policy sought to achieve. You can deal with a man so long as he's willing to state his position within the terms that you lay out for him; but if he refuses to do that, there's nothing left...
Gruening still spends most of his time in Washington, doing whatever lobbying he can against the war, the draft and the arms race, speaking to peace groups, and writing his autobiography. His papers fill eleven filing cabinets, and he has just begun the task of sorting out the accumulation of his long life...
Throughout it all, Gruening has remained a liberal. His analysis of the causes of the Vietnam war goes no deeper than the personality of President Johnson: he sees the war and all the other disasters of American foreign policy as errors that could have been avoided by wiser leaders. His approach to politics is largely unanalytical and moralistic: his radicalism, if it can be called that, is of a traditionally American sort. What distinguishes Gruening from his liberal colleagues in the Senate is not his ideology, but his extraordinary courage and vigor. He spoke out against the war...
...tells us why this is so. "I think a loss of national memory has something to do with it [dissent]. After four decades, the Depression has become something to read about in textbooks. . . . World War II, and the great need to prevent an aggressive tyranny from expanding beyond control, is a topic for old movies and not an aching personal fear replete with lessons for the present time...