Vietnam, Students and U.S. Failure
As of 1969, a massive movement spread like wild fire across the nation. Unrest, anger and fear filled the hearts of the young people, not against the “evil communists” lurking around the corner of which Joe McCarthy warned, but instead the evil fascists of the draft boards and progressive Johnson Administration.
“The Libertarian,” a pro-individualist newsletter, published in May of that year read, “the student revolution has spread to campus after campus, even to the most conservative and the most apathetic (Rothbard, 1969).” Their assessment? “These rebellions are spontaneous and spur-of-the-moment; they take inspiration and heart from rebellions on their fellow campuses, but they are in no sense manipulated by any arcane forces from outside. They stem from the deepest yearnings and values of the kids on campus (Rothbard, 1969).” The yearnings these “kids” felt are plain: self-ownership.
These students were not saints pursuing a selfless cause; they instead wanted the right to control their own destinies, preserve their own lives, and determine their own futures. Contrary to popular neo-conservative opinion (and L.B.J. was as much a neo-con as any Bush or Clinton), it is not wicked or vile to protect one’s own interests from being trampled upon for the “greater good,” particularly when that purported good is a foreign and illegal war.
This desire for self-preservation, coupled with the public’s distaste for war, went hand-in-hand with the 1968 victory of the reform candidate Richard Nixon, attributed most likely to his promise to end the war in Vietnam. Although it took him some time to accomplish this goal (and some speculate that he had little real interest in making it reality), the fallout of Lyndon Johnson’s war policy, such as the Gulf of Tonkin incident, contributed to a heightened distrust of American politicians both domestically and abroad.
Richard Nixon’s own transgressions and failure to withdraw from Vietnam in a timely fashion made up the minds of the American public. The Office of President received a permanent black eye thanks to the one-two punch of Johnson’s truth mangling and Tricky Dick’s power-seeking, deal-cutting ways. Public opinion of U.S. leadership hit rock bottom.
Johnson and Nixon were two sides of the same coin, not just for their faith in the Vietnam War (regardless of Nixon’s political propaganda and stumping) and preventing an imaginary domino effect in Southeast Asia, but also for their addiction to the welfare state. Johnson’s failed Great Society was buttressed and extended during the Nixon Administration (Besiger, 2006). Of course, Nixon didn’t just aid and abet L.B.J. in looting the American taxpayers’ savings with Great Society programs; he went several steps further, promoting corporate welfare, and, in his most wicked of sins, cut the tie between gold and the dollar.
Inflation resulted not only from the deficit spending of the warfare-state, but from the same in accordance with the welfare state. More dollars were siphoned out of the economy and into the government coffers. Then as the Federal Reserve generated more false currency and artificially low interest rates at the behest of both former Presidents, the economy tanked, the dollar started to crash and the prices of commodities rose at alarming rates.
During the Vietnam War students developed a healthy distrust of their contemporary administration, unfortunately, many did not embrace the truth, that governments are incapable of solving real-world problems because their only answer is to add more government. For example, race relations grew worse after interventionist judges. National security diminished with the declaration of the Cold War. American lives were lost for no reason in Vietnam and Korea (and Japan and Germany, but we’ll refrain from going into that). Inflation grew worse with the invention of the Federal Reserve. The New Deal extended the Great Depression. The list goes on.
Ideally, a people should learn from the mistakes of the past, but instead the United States has perservered in its pursuit of the welfare-warfare state and it finds itself now ensnared in another pointless, endless conflict and is ready to open the door to a new one. It has destroyed both the nation’s and possibly the world’s economies through endless government spending and loose monetary policy. In the end, of course, if the people have their freedom, and the government ever learns not to interfere, recovery could come quickly. Only time will tell.
“The Libertarian,” a pro-individualist newsletter, published in May of that year read, “the student revolution has spread to campus after campus, even to the most conservative and the most apathetic (Rothbard, 1969).” Their assessment? “These rebellions are spontaneous and spur-of-the-moment; they take inspiration and heart from rebellions on their fellow campuses, but they are in no sense manipulated by any arcane forces from outside. They stem from the deepest yearnings and values of the kids on campus (Rothbard, 1969).” The yearnings these “kids” felt are plain: self-ownership.
These students were not saints pursuing a selfless cause; they instead wanted the right to control their own destinies, preserve their own lives, and determine their own futures. Contrary to popular neo-conservative opinion (and L.B.J. was as much a neo-con as any Bush or Clinton), it is not wicked or vile to protect one’s own interests from being trampled upon for the “greater good,” particularly when that purported good is a foreign and illegal war.
This desire for self-preservation, coupled with the public’s distaste for war, went hand-in-hand with the 1968 victory of the reform candidate Richard Nixon, attributed most likely to his promise to end the war in Vietnam. Although it took him some time to accomplish this goal (and some speculate that he had little real interest in making it reality), the fallout of Lyndon Johnson’s war policy, such as the Gulf of Tonkin incident, contributed to a heightened distrust of American politicians both domestically and abroad.
Richard Nixon’s own transgressions and failure to withdraw from Vietnam in a timely fashion made up the minds of the American public. The Office of President received a permanent black eye thanks to the one-two punch of Johnson’s truth mangling and Tricky Dick’s power-seeking, deal-cutting ways. Public opinion of U.S. leadership hit rock bottom.
Johnson and Nixon were two sides of the same coin, not just for their faith in the Vietnam War (regardless of Nixon’s political propaganda and stumping) and preventing an imaginary domino effect in Southeast Asia, but also for their addiction to the welfare state. Johnson’s failed Great Society was buttressed and extended during the Nixon Administration (Besiger, 2006). Of course, Nixon didn’t just aid and abet L.B.J. in looting the American taxpayers’ savings with Great Society programs; he went several steps further, promoting corporate welfare, and, in his most wicked of sins, cut the tie between gold and the dollar.
Inflation resulted not only from the deficit spending of the warfare-state, but from the same in accordance with the welfare state. More dollars were siphoned out of the economy and into the government coffers. Then as the Federal Reserve generated more false currency and artificially low interest rates at the behest of both former Presidents, the economy tanked, the dollar started to crash and the prices of commodities rose at alarming rates.
During the Vietnam War students developed a healthy distrust of their contemporary administration, unfortunately, many did not embrace the truth, that governments are incapable of solving real-world problems because their only answer is to add more government. For example, race relations grew worse after interventionist judges. National security diminished with the declaration of the Cold War. American lives were lost for no reason in Vietnam and Korea (and Japan and Germany, but we’ll refrain from going into that). Inflation grew worse with the invention of the Federal Reserve. The New Deal extended the Great Depression. The list goes on.
Ideally, a people should learn from the mistakes of the past, but instead the United States has perservered in its pursuit of the welfare-warfare state and it finds itself now ensnared in another pointless, endless conflict and is ready to open the door to a new one. It has destroyed both the nation’s and possibly the world’s economies through endless government spending and loose monetary policy. In the end, of course, if the people have their freedom, and the government ever learns not to interfere, recovery could come quickly. Only time will tell.
REFERENCES
Bresiger, G. (2006). George W. Bush’s Nixonomics. The Ludwig von Mises Institute. Retrieved August 17, 2007 from http://www.mises.org/story/2172.
Bresiger, G. (2006). George W. Bush’s Nixonomics. The Ludwig von Mises Institute. Retrieved August 17, 2007 from http://www.mises.org/story/2172.
Rothbard, M. N. (1969, May 1). The Student Revolution. The Libertarian, p. 1-2.
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