Mark Moyar

Again, I think

a lot of it too was naivete um you know i mean you have uh george mcgovern is the presidential campaign and presidential candidate for the democrats in 1972 and he's saying ho chi minh is the george washington of asia and you have just incredibly i think misguided notions that these vietnamese communists are nice people of course after the war they do all sorts of terrible things to to clearly show that's not who they are

It did cause some.

And if you look at the numbers, the lower classes are disproportionately represented.

You do have some of the upper income classes are contributing.

But actually, there's a big regional divide.

So from the southern and western United States, you'll have people of all classes signing up.

In the Northeast or the upper Midwest, that's where you tend to find a lot of the more affluent people

are finding ways not to go into the military.

And that does, I think, certainly cause a lot of friction and distrust and anger, which I think in some senses is still with us.

If you look at

The group of Americans from the baby boom who did not go to Vietnam, most of them ended up on the political left and came to dominate the media, academia, play a very important role in our politics.

Yeah, and that's why it was so problematic that Lyndon Johnson is not out there explaining to people.

And a lot of his own aides are saying, look what Franklin Roosevelt did in World War II.

He was out there telling people why it's important for our sons to be going over there and risking their lives.

And that did a lot to help sustain morale because—

I mean, it's an enormous risk any family takes or any young man to go put your life at risk.

So it should be something that the people understand and understand its importance.

Now, when Richard Nixon comes in, he does address this problem and he gives his famous silent majority speech where he does make a real effort to explain the war to the people, which should have been done

long ago.