"Look across that generation gap now and see it as they see it—the young. Thirty two billion dollars into a civil war ten thousand miles from our shore to protect the freedom of the South Vietnamese and keep the Viet Cong from attacking San Francisco. That’s where we are told is America’s destiny—in the rice paddies of DaNang. And America’s youth—or at least a sizeable share of them—find this to be patently unbelievable. America’s destiny, in their view, lies on the streets of Newark, Miami, Chicago, Los Angeles and Harlem. That’s where we keep alive the dream. Not in Saigon. And certainly not at the cost of twenty-thousand dead American boys with a hundred-thousand wounded and a half a million civilians put to a torch. Again, the inconsistencies. The Hawks who bleat most loudly for our continuing participation in this war—these are the ones who’ve passed the propositions 14—and woe be unto the oriental who has the temerity to put a garbage can next to his. Again inconsistency. Those who shout loudest for fiscal sanity—an end to so-called federal handouts. Stop this nonsense about Federal Aid to education, federal housing, aid to cities. These are the gentlemen who watched us throw two billion dollars to help prop up the French Colonial Government whose good offices are indistinguishable from the North Vietnamese."
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Vietnam War
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