Why Is the Left Anti-War?

Two weeks ago, I discussed the change in the attitude of the left toward military action to advance or protect American interests in the world.  Prior to Vietnam, all the way back to our nation’s founding, the left was supportive; during and after, the attitude was negative.

What happened?

The superficial answer is that the World War II generation was supplanted.  But why did the new generation view American military action differently from predecessors?  During the mid to late Sixties, college campuses across America were sites of anti-war protests, some violent.  Surely a catalyst was the fact that the draft then in effect exposed many to compulsory military service they wished to avoid.  (Bill Clinton, for instance.)  So for some, opposition had nothing to do with opposition to American policy in Indochina but, rather, was motivated by self-interest.

But there was more.  The spread of mass media in the Sixties gave Hollywood and New York (long centers of liberal and leftist ideology) opportunities to affect popular culture which had not previously existed.

[The reason why such cities are centers of leftist sympathies is a topic for another time.]

Thus, when CBS anchor Walter Cronkite famously intoned on a nightly broadcast that the Vietnam War was unwinnable, the national consensus previously backing the war effort collapsed.

Hollywood reinforced the anti-war sentiment with such films as The Deer Hunter and Apocalypse Now.  (Green Berets, staring John Wayne, premiering in 1968, was an exception to the anti-war trend).

The hostility to the Vietnam War led not only to a distrust of the U.S. military but also to a suspicion of U.S. military intentions in the world more broadly.  Watergate, coming at the tail end of America’s involvement in the Southeast Asia conflict, heightened opposition to U.S. government activities in general.

 

For this generation of liberals, opposition to war entered the catechism of the left.  This attitude survived the end of the Vietnam conflict.

 

As time went on, the Sixties generation entered academia, the general media and Hollywood, reinforcing each other’s anti-war beliefs, conveying  suspicion of American military efforts wherever contemplated in the world.

 

As World War II generation cold war liberals such as U.S. Senators Scoop Jackson and Hubert Humphrey and columnists like Walter Lippmann passed from the scene, they were replaced by politicians along the lines of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and media types like Paul Krugman of The New York Times.

 

As a result, to be liberal in the twenty-first century is essentially synonymous with being anti-war.  This is so despite the lack of a philosophical or legal connection between a domestic agenda favoring the expansion of big government and a foreign policy opposing the employment of the government’s military arm.