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OCR Page 1 of 49THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON
November 25, 1969
MEMORANDUM FOR
THE PRESIDENT
In the 1967 Phi Beta Kappa Oration, about which you wrote me
such a pleasant note, there was a passage which came to mind this
morning as I read the transcript of Mike Wallace's interview with a
young infantryman who a year and a half ago took part in the massacre
at Mylai.
Liberals have simply got to restrain their enthusiasm
for civilizing others. It is their great weakness and ultimate
arrogance. Bertrand Russell suggests that the great
Albigensian heresy, with its quest for personal holiness
and cult of poverty, was due at least in part to "disappoint=
ment at the failure of the crusades. 11 Very likely it will
be the success rather than the failure of our crusades that
will most repel youth. Nathan Glazer has suggested that
this generation is already marked by the belief that its
government is capable of performing abhorrent deeds.
Many times over I have stated, in public, that Vietnam is the
war of liberal anti-communism. I have done this largely because as
it has become obvious that we cannot "win" the war, and that those
who persist in prosecuting it are likely to "lose" at home, there has
been a considerable effort by liberal politicians to disengage. This
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