Interview with Roger Clegg

Clegg, Roger ; McKiernan, Stephen

Roger Clegg is the President and General Counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity. He was the Deputy Assistant Attorney General for both the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations. He specializes in legal issues arising from civil rights laws including immigration and bilingual education. Clegg received his Bachelor's degree from Rice University and is a graduate of Yale University Law School.

2009-12-10

In Copyright

2017-03-14

McKiernan Interviews

160:15

McKiernan Interviews
Interview with: Roger Clegg
Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan
Transcriber: REV
Date of interview: 10 December 2009
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(Start of Interview)

SM (00:00:04):
Testing. One, two. I was not checking. First off, thank you very much for participating in this project.

RC (00:00:21):
Sure.

SM (00:00:21):
First question I would like to ask is, when you think of the (19)60s what is the first thing that comes to your mind?

RC (00:00:29):
I think of unrest, I guess. The protests, the anti-war protests, civil rights movement, riots, a very unsettled time. I think of the politics. I think of it as being a very political, politicized decade. I should say that I was born in 1955, so by the end of the (19)60s I was certainly politically aware, and was becoming interested in following politics. I was only five or six years old, so less so.

SM (00:01:32):
How did you become who you are? I have been asking this probably for the last 50 people that I have been interviewing. How did you become who you are as a person? Was there some magic moment in your life when you were in high school, college where you kind of knew the direction you were going, or the thought you had? Was there anything during that time when Boomers were young, and you were right in the middle of the Boomers in terms of (19)55 because it goes from (19)46 to (19)64.

RC (00:02:07):
I think in terms of my professional life and what I decided to do as a career, I have always been interested in politics, in history. I do not think that there was one particular moment where it dawned on me that this was something interesting. This is something that I have always been interested in. I think that I have always been a conservative with a libertarian streak. That is been true for a long time as well. And so, you put those two together and I am now a conservative lawyer. I do not think that there was a particular defining moment. That was something that was part of my makeup early on. I did not always want to be a lawyer. I tell people that the course that I took in college that persuaded me to be a lawyer was biochemistry. Up until then, I was thinking also medical school. I just decided, this is my junior year, that I really was more interested and more comfortable, better at political science and history, and things like that. That made the decision for me that I was going to go to law school.

SM (00:04:15):
Did you have role models when you were young?

RC (00:04:18):
I was going to say that it will be interesting to see if you have other people that give you this answer. For conservatives of my generation, I think that a lot of them had to have been influenced by Bill Buckley. He was a hero of mine. At that time, I think that there were not a lot of prominent popular culture conservatives. He was really it. Even if there had been others, he was clearly I think a star. I early on starting reading him, subscribing to National Review, watching him on Firing Line. I think he was a very influential person for me. Later on, I read other conservatives too. When I went to law school, one of my professors was Robert Bork. I was older then. This was the late (19)70s by then. When I was coming of age, Buckley was I think the person who was most influential. Obviously, in my own family, I do not want to ignore my parents. My grandfather was somebody who was also... He was not a lawyer, but he was very interested in politics and I had a close relationship with him. In terms of people outside my family, I would have to say it was Buckley. In fact, I remember when not long after I had come to work here, a guy who was also here left to go to work for National Review. I called him and said, "Look, I would love to shake hands with Wayne Buckley. Do you ever see him? It does not have to be a dinner or anything like that. I just want to meet him." He said, "Well, Buckley is getting older now. He does not come to Washington a lot, but he is going to be in Washington for this event at..." We were talking about ISI before and he was going to be I think honored at some ISI event. He said, "I can introduce you there." I got there and it was this huge event. This was before cellphones and all that. Stupidly, I had not arranged ahead of time where I was going to meet my friend. Anyway, what I decided to do was, everybody had to come through this one entrance and get checked in on the guest list. I got there early so I thought, well I will just hang out here and keep my eye peeled. Sure enough, Buckley came by. And so, I just kind of got in line behind him. At some point he turned around and I stuck my hand out. He was so... This was very not characteristic of him. He was so gracious. I said, "Hi, Roger Clegg. I write for National Review," which I was. I was a contributing editor for National Review Online. He just said, "Oh, hello Roger," and stuck out his hand. "It's good to see you. Have you met my wife? Here is my wife. Have you met my son?" Chris Buckley was with him too and everything. Anyway, that was my big moment, meeting my [inaudible]-

SM (00:09:03):
He came to Westchester University. We had him there, and we had him in Phillips Library for the lecture. He was a cool speaker. He was fantastic. He was very tired though. The issue that we had was the auditorium was very hot. It was before they did those renovations. During the program he said, "Can you turn the heat down?" Because it was really affecting him because you could see his face was getting red and everything.

RC (00:09:28):
How old was he?

SM (00:09:30):
We're talking mid (19)90s. Mid (19)90s, and he was a major lecturer there too. He was fantastic. When you think of the Boomer generation, what are some of the characteristics, the positive or the negative qualities, when you look at this 74 million population group?

RC (00:09:51):
Obviously, a group that big it is dangerous to generalize. There is all kinds of people in there. Yeah, when people think of the (19)60s and the Boomers, they think of I guess hippies, and the people who stuck out more. Obviously, not all Boomers were hippies and protesters, and things like that. That is what first comes to mind. I do not know whether it is fair to make generalizations like this. Obviously, we are thinking out loud here. Of course, the events that helped I think sort of shape that generation was the Vietnam War. And of course, a lot of people were understandably skeptical about the war, particularly when it was their own life that was going to be at stake. I think that for technological reasons, with the invention of the pill, the sexual revolution was something else that happened then. For some reason, drug use became more popular then too. These were all things that I associate with the Boomers, and these are all from my perspective are all negative things. I think that the sexual revolution was bad, drug use was bad. I think that the Vietnam War was badly run, but not a, I think what Reagan said, a noble cause. I think that a lot of the anti-war movement was very noble. As I say, all of those are making generalizations about a generation which are generalizations. There were obviously lots of people whom did not participate in the sexual revolution, who did not buy into the counterculture, and it is drug use and all that, and who served honorably and uncomplainingly in Vietnam.

SM (00:14:04):
Some people criticize the Boomer generation as they say that only 15 percent of that generation were involved in any sort of activism. 85 percent were not. I have read in books. When you figure that there is 74 million and 15 percent were involved in some sort of activism in some way, that is a lot of people.

RC (00:14:26):
Right.

SM (00:14:28):
I think sometimes when it is brought up, it is brought up in a way to make it look negative as opposed to looking at the final numbers of those individuals. You are right, other people have told me that it is very hard to generalize 74 million. When you could have 20 people in the room and two are really involved in activism [inaudible]. One of the interesting things that came out, I know when Newt Gingrich came into power in 1994, I read some of his things, speeches and so forth, he made some pretty sharp attacks on the (19)60s generation, the Boomers generation, is a lot of the reasons why we have a lot of problems in our society was a breakdown of the family, the divorce rate, the drug culture, the lack of respect for authority. Even going into the area of victimization. I am not saying he said that, but other people. Then George Will, whenever he gets a chance in his newspaper articles or [inaudible], I have got his books. He will have these little commentaries about this generation in which he is a part, and really make it kind of the same way, that there is more negative than positive. When you hear people like Newt Gingrich, George Will, and others attack this generation for a variety of reasons, [inaudible] problems as they enter society, how do you respond to that?

RC (00:15:53):
I think that... I assume that they are talking not about every person, but about the sort of social trends that marked the (19)60s. It is certainly true that there are... It is sloppy to suggest, if it is being suggested, that... I will not say sloppy. I assume that that is what they are talking about, and I think that anybody would have to agree that there are problems with saying, "These are things that went on the (19)60s. There were a lot of people, Baby Boomers, that supported these things. Therefore, the whole generation should be criticized." There were lots of people who did not share the zeitgeist. Conversely, a lot of the people who were not Baby Boomers also share some of the blame. These folks are following... The hippies had their older role models, Noam Chomsky, or Herbert Marcuse, and people like that. They were not Baby Boomers.

SM (00:17:43):
[inaudible].

RC (00:17:45):
Yeah, so... Norman Mailer, so forth. These people were not Baby Boomers, so you have got to blame them too. On the other hand, I guess that you cannot let people off the hook just because they themselves maybe were not direct participants. Edmund Burke, I think, said that "All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for a good man to do nothing." If your friends are using drugs or protesting, or draft-dodging or whatever, and you do not condemn them or ostracize them, or if you smile and nod, well you are part of the problem. The other thing that is going on though is that people like to simplify history, and put things in categories. That is just part of what... This is very pleasing to think of history in terms of decades and generations. We have the (19)20s, and we think of it as being... Everything that happened in the (19)20s has to fit into this model of the Roaring (19)20s and the (19)30s, and so forth. We do that for the (19)60s too, even though there were things going on in the (19)60s that maybe do not really fit in with that model. And by the same token, we do the same thing with generations. We have the Greatest Generation, we have the Boomers, we have Generation X, and so forth, even though those kinds of generalizations are dangerous too. One thing about the Greatest Generation which gets very good press these days is they delay... Well, if you buy into this, you have got the Greatest Generation, and then you have these no-count Baby Boomers. Well, who raised the Baby Boomers? It was the Greatest Generation. So, if you buy into this they... One thing about the Greatest Generation is they must not have been very good parents, or there was some kind of failure there. Anyway.

SM (00:20:51):
Yeah, especially one of the qualities that WWII generation supposedly had was to make sure their sons and daughters were not lacking for things, because they went through the Depression, they went through a horrible war, and they did not want their kids to go through what they went through. They gave them everything, but they still rebelled. They did not rebel in the 1950s, but we are going to get into that a minute, the (19)50s. What are your thoughts on the movements? One of the qualities that is often defined when the Boomer generation is all the movements that were either started, or there was a carry-on mentality. Of course, the civil rights movement was already taking place in the (19)50s, and by the time the earliest Boomer is 46, they were like 18, 19. Many of them did go south though in the summer of (19)63. Talk about the anti-war movement, the women's movement, the gay and lesbian movement, the Chicano movement, the Native American movement, and the environmental movement. And I know there was even the disability movement was really starting to fledge around that time. Your thoughts on all these movements that came about during this time frame? These movements have been carrying on into today. Are these movements good, bad, or different? Your thoughts on the movements.

RC (00:22:12):
Again, I think you have to look at them individually, and you have to look at them over time. Some of the movements might have started out okay but then went off the rails, or developed splinter groups that were more problematic than the original movement. I am going to just give you a few examples. You have the anti-war movement, and they are... I guess I would be maybe the least sympathetic with it, particularly to the extent that it became Wallace and even revolutionary with the weathermen and the SDS, and so forth. That was the movement that I think was misconceived to begin with because I think that it was a poor... While the Vietnam War was not well-run, the basic idea of resisting communism was a good idea. Certainly, to suggest that people should dodge the draft, that not only was the war a bad idea, but that the Communists were right, and that it's an okay thing to hamper the war efforts in the United States, all of which is truly more extreme parts of the anti-war movement, I think reprehensible. The other extreme though, I think it is difficult not to be very sympathetic with the civil rights movement with respect to equality for African Americans fighting Jim Crow and segregation. I think that that movement and the Boomers who supported that, it is very... I think that they were right. That said though, some of the... There were excesses later on. Excesses is too gentle a word. The riots, the Black Panthers, things like that were reprehensible too. Feminism, I think it is more of a mixed bag. I think that changing the law so that women have more opportunities was a good thing. On the other hand, there were... I think that the feminist movement came to denigrate traditional female roles which I think that is not okay. There is nothing wrong with being a stay-at-home mom. I think that there are some feminists who suggest there is. You just sort of have to go through each of these movements. I think that some of the other ethnic movements, it's a bad thing for Chicanos to be discriminated against because they are Chicanos, just as it is wrong for African Americans to be discriminated against because they are African Americans. On the other hand, that does not justify violence. It does not justify quotas, racial preferences. Those things are bad. Gay rights, again I would be more nuanced than saying that well it was good or it was bad. I think certainly people should not be beaten up or brutalized because of their sexual orientation. On the other hand, I think that there is nothing wrong with individuals believing, as I do, that having sex with people of the same gender is immoral. That does not mean that we put those people in jail or beat them up, but it does mean that it is okay to say publicly "This is a bad lifestyle," and that it is okay to say that marriage is something that is between men and women, not between two people of the same sex. When you talk about was the gay rights movement justified or not, well it depends on what the specific aim of a particular part of the movement is at a given time.

SM (00:29:14):
How about the Native American movement, because that was really strong. It identified a lot with some of the more radical elements within the anti-war movement, because of Wounded Knee, and the takeover at Alcatraz, and Dennis Banks and Russell Means.

RC (00:29:33):
They actually killed people. I think that that is... I do not think that people should violate the law, and they certainly should not kill people, and they should not kill law enforcement officers, which the extreme elements of the Native American movement did. On the other hand, there's nothing wrong with consciousness rising and protesting. People are being mistreated because of their ethnic group, that is wrong. There is nothing wrong protesting that and trying to change the laws to reflect that.

SM (00:30:32):
In 1970, Earth Day happened, and that really put this environmental movement... Of course, we are talking about Copenhagen, and all these issues, Dennis Hayes, and Gaylord Nelson, the Senator, was linked to it. I did not know until I interviewed a guest last week that Dennis Hayes and Gaylord Nelson had to meet with the anti-war movement. They had to meet with the leaders of the anti-war movement before they had Earth Day to make sure that what they were doing would not take away from what the anti-war movement was all about. They were liberals both in terms of bringing this about. Just your thought on that because this has carried on, and this curated an unbelievable divide. Just your thoughts on it, because that really is directly related to a lot of Boomers.

RC (00:31:21):
Yeah, well once again, I draw this sanction between the vile and a law-abiding, or violent versus the non-violent, and the law-following versus the law-breaking parts of these movements. Killing people or threatening people, or blowing up things because you do not like their environmental policies I think is reprehensible. I think that the...

SM (00:32:18):
I am always checking to make sure, and it is.

RC (00:32:26):
Some of the aims of the environmental movement I am very sympathetic with. I think that there was too much pollution that was allowed, and that passing laws to restrict, that pollution made a lot of sense. On the other hand, I think that there are reasonable people who can differ about-

RC (00:33:03):
More people can differ about a couple of things. One is, how bad the pollution is and what its effects are. And then, also about what kind of government regulation makes sense. We cannot just ban all pollutions because a lot of people would starve to death if we did that, literally. The pesticides, and industrialization, and farming, this is how we feed people. And just a flat out ban on any kind of technology that changes the environment is clearly not something that makes any sense. So, it becomes a line drawing problem of where are we going to draw the line? How much pollution is too much? And, should the government be in the business of micromanaging the private sector or should they try to create proper incentives? And conversely, should they ensure that there are not perverse incentives where people are actually encouraged to exploit resources or pollute. And again, there is this whole managed working environment division of the Justice Department. And reasonable people can disagree about this, there's this whole tragedy of the commons and if there is a role for government. But, I think reasonable people can differ about what the role of the government should be.

SM (00:35:22):
One of the big groups that came out of this rule was Amnesty International. And boy, they will confront ships and they will try to stop them.

RC (00:35:29):
Maybe you mean Greenpeace.

SM (00:35:31):
I mean, yeah, Greenpeace. Excuse me, Greenpeace.

RC (00:35:35):
Right. Right. Yeah, right. Yeah.

SM (00:35:35):
They will risk their lives to save whales and things like that. But that came as a direct result of, I think of... This generation oftentimes thought themselves as the most unique generation in American history. Its uniqueness. I can remember when I was young in college, a lot of students felt that way because they were going to change everything. They were going to end war, they were going to bring peace, harmony, change the world for the better, and be different than any other generation that preceded them or probably will follow them. So, this uniqueness became a mentality within many of them when they were young. And many of them still have it as they approach (19)60 because of the times they lived in. I have noted that students that I have worked with over the years, whether they be generation Xers, or those born between 1965 and I believe 1992 or something like that, and now you have got the millennials, which is the younger group. I think they were born, excuse me, they were (19)82, excuse me, millennials yeah, until (19)82. And, a lot of the issues that generation Xers had with boomers is that they got tired of hearing about what it was like when they were young. Or, the other extreme, I wish I lived then because there were causes I could get involved in. You had a cause. We do not seem to have any. Now, that was a couple years ago. Your thoughts about this uniqueness attitude that many of the boomers seem to have.

RC (00:37:14):
Well, I am skeptical of that. I think that one thing that distinguishes liberals from conservatives is, and of course I am a conservative, so I am biased, but I think that conservatism is inherently a little more modest and constrained in its vision of how much any individual and how much any generation can know. And, how much we should be willing to say that, "Well, we do not care about how things have been done. We do not care about other people's opinion. We have figured this out and we know the right way to proceed." I think that that, yeah, I mean, Thomas Sowell has written about this-

SM (00:38:38):
I like him.

RC (00:38:39):
...in a book called, Conflict of Visions.

SM (00:38:39):
Yeah, I like him.

RC (00:38:42):
Yeah. And the whole point of that book is there are these two separate, two very distinct visions. And, it goes back, this is sort of a summary of Edmond Burke or Friedrich Hayek. And so, I think that for any generation to say that, "Well, look, we have figured this out. We're unique. Everybody before us, they had it wrong. Everybody that came after us does not know anything. And in fact, the people in our own generation who disagree with us, they are wrong too." I think that that is a very arrogant and misguided approach to making public policy. On the other hand, I think that it is certainly true that for whatever reason, they may have been bad reasons, but for whatever reason, there was more political ferment during the (19)60s. And so, it may have been true that there were more causes to get involved with back then. Now, I am not sure that it was a good idea because I do not think a lot of these causes were a good idea. And, this is something where I disagree with conservatives. Some conservatives say that, well, it is sort of, national greatness conservatives that, "Well, people need a cause. And, they need to believe in something bigger than themselves. And so, the government of the country should provide that." Well, I do not buy that. I mean, I think it is true that people do need to believe in something larger than themselves, but I do not think it's the role of the government to do that. As a Christian, my own view is that the main thing that you ought to believe in that is bigger than yourself is God and serving Him. But even if I were not a Christian, I do not think I would say that, "Well, it is up to the government to give people something to rally around" I mean, okay, if you want something that you want to fight for, well go ahead and do that. But, try to do it in a way where you are not bossing other people around. I mean, if you think that there is a lot of poor people who are suffering and who need to be helped through food or educational opportunities, or whatever, that is fine, go do it. And get together with your friends if you want, and raise money, and buy food for them, or volunteer and go into depressed areas, and help kids after school. That is all great. But, you do not need to say that, "Well, we have figured out that this is the most important thing that needs to be done and we are going to force other people who do not agree with us to give us their money so that we can go do this."

SM (00:42:04):
You raise a good point, because the people I admire the most are people that oftentimes do things and they do not want publicity. I can remember, and I am not going to put this in the interview, but Charles Barkley, regardless of whether you like or dislike the man and what he has done on TV, and his gambling and all the other stuff, he has given thousands of dollars for scholarships to kids that do not have it. And he said, "I am doing it, but you do not let the word out." He gets very upset. "I am doing it because I want to do it. I do not want to have an article in the newspaper." Now obviously, someone found out about this and they have written things on Charles because he wants to be the Governor of Alabama one day. But, that is an interesting point there. I like the fact that when people do things, it is not because they want the world to know they have done it. It's, they do it because they want to help people.

RC (00:42:57):
Right. Right.

SM (00:43:00):
Again, what do you think are the... What was the watershed moment... Want to make sure we do not go over. Yeah. I am almost done with the first half of the tape. What do you think was the watershed moment when the (19)60s began, and the watershed moment when it ended?

RC (00:43:20):
Well...

SM (00:43:24):
Let us see here. Do I have to change this tape? Let us see. We have got about a minute I think left, then I will stop.

RC (00:43:37):
Okay. Briefly, I think you could mark the beginning of the (19)60s in a couple ways. You could say that, well, it is maybe with the civil rights protests that began in Montgomery, which we put it in, actually, the (19)60s, starting in the mid-(19)50s. Or, you could start it with the escalation of the war in Vietnam, which would put it in the (19)63 or (19)64, or something like that. I think the end of that, most people would say it is probably the end of the Vietnam War, or the end of American involvement. I think the Peace Accords in Paris were signed in, I think January (19)73, something like that. So, I think those are sort of how I would bracket it. I mean, clearly, the zeitgeist in the (19)60s lasted a little bit beyond 1969 because you had Kent State and the invasion of Cambodia, and all that stuff. I think that was actually in the (19)70s.

SM (00:44:39):
Yeah, it is interesting because there is a lot of activity through (19)73, and then all of a sudden, in the fall of (19)73 it just... So, (19)73 is a big year because that is also, we got out of Vietnam, and the activism started to really drop, and a lot of things were happening. In fact, I have written in my little segment, the introduction, that I felt it ended when streaking happened, and that was 1973 in the fall. And someone said to me when I was working OU, "Come to Ohio State." I said, "Why? Is there a protest? 'Oh, no. It is something new called streaking.'" I am going to switch the tape first. If I were to have 500 people, you may respond the same way about generalizing about boomers, too. But, if I were to have 500 people in an auditorium that were, let us say, the first half of the boomer generation, those born between (19)46 and say, (19)56, the one event that had the greatest impact, single event that had the greatest impact on their life, what do you think they would say? And when I say young, I mean really, when they were in elementary or secondary, or college, basically.

RC (00:46:25):
Well, of course everybody always says that you remember where you were when Kennedy was assassinated, something like that. And then, that may be true, but I am not sure if that really influenced people's lives that much. I think that the things that probably you had a direct impact on people's lives was becoming 18 years old and eligible for the draft. I think that that is probably really affected people, because I think that probably affected a lot of people's political outlook. I do not want to be unduly cynical here, but if you were not wild about the idea of going to Southeast Asia and maybe getting shot at, then it is very easy to want to come up for reasons why your reluctance to do that is justified. And so, you are going to be sympathetic to the anti-war movement. And, as you have sort of indicated, a lot of these movements, they were all interwoven. And so, if you buy into the anti-war movement then you also buy into a lot of these other movements. And, just generally buy into the whole left-wing agenda. And, I think that that probably happened to a lot of people.

SM (00:48:23):
It is interesting though, I know when I interviewed Ed Foner and Dr. Lee Edwards, Dr. Lee Edwards was adamant, the fact that the Young Americans for Freedom were a conservative organization who was as anti-war as the SDS. And they were conservative, diehard conservatives, and no one has written on it. There has been one book written about this particular group. I have had a lot of reactions. Some people do not remember them, but they have been left out of the history books. But, they were big-time anti-war. And they were to the right, and they were conservatives. I remember Bill Buckley even mentioned it in one of his books about the Young Americans for Freedom. So, there were conservatives who were against the war.

RC (00:49:11):
Oh, absolutely.

SM (00:49:11):
Yeah. Yeah.

RC (00:49:12):
That is true. That is true. And there has always been a strain within the conservative movement of people who, they're anti-Communist, but they are also isolationist, or they are very skeptical about foreign involvement by the United States. We see that even today with Ron Paul, for instance, that kind of, well, with Libertarians and also, people like Russell Kirk, I think, and others like that. And, I am sure it's true. Lee Edwards and Ed Foner were much more familiar with these groups than I was, because it was really a little bit before my time.

SM (00:50:02):
And Ron Robinson, who I interviewed, was one of the student leaders in that organization, now heads the Young America's Foundation with Pat Coyle. And, he did not even know the extent of what Lee was talking about. Lee's the historian, and he knows. And I said to Lee, "Why do not you write a book?" He has writing too many other books.

RC (00:50:25):
Yeah, he writes lots of books.

SM (00:50:26):
But anyways, I want to throw that in. I want to read this one. There were two basic issues I want to concentrate on in this book besides the general questions I have been asking. And then, I am spontaneously going in a different direction. The issue of healing and the issue of trust, which I personally have defined as part of this generation of issues that are affecting them. And, I want to read this. I want to start out by saying that when I was at Westchester University, I took a group of students to meet Senator Edmund Muskie about a year and a half before he passed away. I knew Gaylord Nelson, and Gaylord was able to secure nine meetings with nine senators, because we had brought him to the university. He was such a nice guy, and what a senator he was. He was a statesman. And so, we worked it out so that we met these senators. When we took the students to see Edmund Muskie, it was one of the best student groups we ever had. In fact, three of them have gone on for their PhDs by now. And, I had really picked them because we were going to ask some questions about the (19)68 convention, the tremendous divisions in the country, and all the things. We asked the question, and everybody was excited because this is the one question we wanted to ask them. And the question was this, and this is the way we read it, "Do you feel the boomer generation is still having problems from healing from the divisions that tore this nation apart in their youth? Divisions between black and white, divisions between gay and straight, divisions between those who support authority and those who criticize it, division between those who supported the troops and those who did not?" And then, I throw in something here about what role has the wall played in partially healing the veterans and the generation. "Do you feel the boomer generation will go to its grave, like the Civil War generation, not truly healing? Am I wrong in thinking this or has 40 years made the statement, time heals all wounds, the truth?" When I ask him this question... And, I know two of the closest students. One just became, I am throwing this in here. I am not going to have an interview, he just became the Director of Admissions at Southern Illinois University. I am so proud of him. He is 38 years old, and he is now been the director of admissions at three schools. PhD. But, when we asked him this, we were expecting the 1968 convention, and he did not even mention it. He had a melodramatic pause. He had, looked like a few tears in his eyes, and he said, "I just got out of the hospital. I have been pretty sick, as you might know. And, I just saw the Ken Burns series on the Civil War." And he recommended that if we did not see it on PBS, that we get the tape. He said, "We have not healed since the Civil War." And then, he went on to talk about the reasons why the 400,000 men who died on both sides, the lost generation of children that we never had, almost a lost generation compared to the numbers we have today. But, that was his response. I thought about it because I know veterans come back to The Wall, and I know that non-veterans come back to The Wall. And, some probably feel guilty that they did not serve when their kids asked them, "What did you do in the war, daddy?" Just your thoughts on whether you feel we have an issue with healing within this generation of 17-some million. I know you cannot break it down, but do you think it is something to be concerned about?

RC (00:54:09):
Well, I think that people who were on opposite sides during a big conflict probably do have a challenge to overcome that later on in life. And I suppose, that the more dramatic and important the conflict, the greater the challenge is. I mean, being on opposite sides of the barricades in the Civil War, knowing that somebody was shooting at you or shooting at your friends, yeah, that is probably something that is difficult to overcome. The (19)60s were not as dramatic but it is, I guess, more dramatic than whatever divisions there were, say in the (19)80s. There were people that like Reagan and people that did not like Reagan, but we were not shooting at one another the way we were in the Civil War. And we were not even throwing bottles at one another the way we were during the (19)60s. On the other hand, I think there are people who do not like people who disagree with them in any generation. And, they do not like people who disagreed with them... They do not like people who disagree with them now, even if they were in agreement 20 years ago. So, I think it can be over overstated. I mean, I am thinking in my own life, how would I feel about somebody of my generation that I disagreed with back in the day, back in the (19)60s? Well, I do not think I would view that as unforgivable. I do think that I would think that they were wrong, and there might be still a little distress there.

SM (00:57:55):
The Wall itself has done a pretty good... Jan Scruggs of the book, To Heal a Nation, obviously it has been a fair... You cannot heal a lot of veterans because the wounds will always be there for a lot of the vets. It has done a lot to help veterans and their families remember those who died and those who served. And so, I have been there for the last... I know how important it is to that side.

RC (00:58:18):
Yeah-yeah.

SM (00:58:19):
I have seen it. I have always wondered though, I guess, I even asked myself, I did not serve, and I was a college student from (19)66 to (19)70, then I went on to grad school. And, I could not go because I had asthma. Then, I had been in an automobile, not automobile, I was in a very bad accident at my house. And so, I can always say, "Well, these were my reasons." But, I know a lot of vets will look at you with an eye. When they hear asthma they, "Eh." Bronchial asthma, yes. Asthma from weeds because some people went in and were veterans who had problems with weeds like grass. So, I do not know. I just ask this. I have been asking to everybody. It's, "Ah, it's no big deal." And others say, "Yeah, you might have something there." Everybody has to heal on their own. So it's individual, so to speak. But The Wall has done a tremendous job. What do you think when you look at the Vietnam Memorial in Washington? And obviously, you have been there. What did it do for you, and do you think it has gone as far as Jan Scruggs says in his book, To Heal a Nation?

RC (00:59:37):
Well, I think that memorials do have powerful symbolic value. I mean, that is why we have them, right? And, maybe there is something uniquely powerful and healing about that particular memorial because of the fact that it was a controversial war, and because of the structure of it itself, and that you have all these individual names written on it. That, that helps the recognition. And maybe, veterans of that war are particularly grateful to have that recognition given the fact that it was controversial. Yeah. I mean, I think that that is... I do want to say one thing though. That I think that some of the emotion though that you are talking about, people might feel even without the context of a war. I mean, for instance, I turned 18 in April, 1973, and the Peace Agreement had been signed in January, 1973. And of course, the draft had ended even a year or two before that. So, I was never somebody where going to Vietnam was a real possibility. And then, the next war that the United States was in, I guess was not until Grenada, right? And by that time, I was through law school and in my mid to late twenties. And of course, there was not a draft. There has not been a draft since then. And yeah, I mean, I will tell you, the one regret that I have in my life is that I never wore a uniform. And I look back, and I do not know when I would have... I mean, there was not really a logical time for me to stop what I was doing. I mean, I could have gone into the army or into the service after college, or after law school, or something like that, but there was-

SM (01:03:19):
I think you can go in right up to 40.

RC (01:03:23):
Yeah. But I never did, and I regret that. I regret that. So anyway, I mean, I feel that even though I was not somebody who was not serving when other people were being drafted, or when there was a big war going on and I was sort of on the sidelines, and I did not have that, and yet I still have this regret.

SM (01:03:48):
Yeah. I do not know why I always ask this question. I have asked it to everybody and I have had some interesting responses. Gaylord Nelson was, in his own unique way, always responding in Gaylord Nelson way. And that is, he said, "I do not walk around Washington DC with lack of healing on their sleeve." He said, "But it did affect the body politic. And that is where the effect has been. It is the body politic. You keep bringing it up in just about every war." And we have even, as we are getting later on, when Ronald Reagan said, "America's back," it was back from the (19)60s. And then, George Bush, senior, saying, "Vietnam syndrome is over." Oh, boy. Because, some people really reacted to that, even more than Ronald Reagan. But, I have a question here. The second area is trust. Boomers, in their lives, saw a lot of leaders that lied to them. I am sure the leaders have lied throughout history, but when boomers were young and in college, they saw a president lie to them about getting involved in Vietnam with the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. And, anybody who was up on what was happening knew that was a lie. There were things already written about it. If you were cognizant, and when you were in fifth or sixth grade like I was when President Eisenhower on TV said that, "The u2, Gary Powers was not a spy." I remember him on TV saying that, and then he lied. Why? And, I like him. And then of course, Watergate with Richard Nixon, and the list goes on and on. College students and the people of the (19)60s seen... The Vietnam generation did not trust anybody in position of power or authority, whether it be university or president, college administrators, ministers, rabbis, priests, politicians, heads of corporations, anybody in the leadership role, you cannot trust. And so, I am wondering if this is an issue that we define this generation as a very non-trusting generation. That it might have-

SM (01:06:03):
It is a very non-trusting generation that might have passed this on to their kids and their grandkids. I preface this again with a question that political science majors, of which I was a history major in political science, is that it is healthy. Political scientists always say it is healthy to challenge government and to not trust government, because that is what a democracy is. Keeps them on their toes. So you have got that extreme, but just your thought on the effect that these leaders have had and their lack of trust in so many leaders when they were young and the effect this may still have on America today. When I say this, I am not only talking about the activists. I am talking about the hundred percent, because subconsciously they all experienced the (19)60s.

RC (01:06:50):
That is a very interesting question. I do not know the answer to that. It would be interesting to try to figure out if people a hundred years ago were more or less trusting of these various leaders than they are now. I mean, again, there is a danger that each generation thinks that it's experiencing everything for the first time. That, oh, well, nobody else, no other generation has been disillusioned the way we are or is skeptical the way we are or whatever. Of course, it is not true. Each generation thinks that they are the first, but it is really not. Now we think that, oh gosh, the United States is polarized in a way that is never been polarized. There is a lack of civility, et cetera. Well, yes and no. You go back and you look at political campaigns that were run a hundred or 200 years ago, and they were pretty uncivil. I suspect that Southerners, prior to the Civil War were pretty skeptical about President Lincoln and did not trust him, thought he was a liar. I remember my grandfather, he certainly was not somebody... I mentioned him earlier, he was very skeptical about the veracity of different leaders. So, I think that skepticism about politicians maybe is something that is not brand new. Maybe the numbers are much bigger now. Maybe 50 years ago, 10 or 20 percent of the people thought that FDR was a liar, but now 80 percent of the people think that whoever is the president is a liar. So, maybe it has gotten worse. I just do not know. These other leaders that you talk about, the clergy, businessmen, so forth, well, again, I am sure that there were lots of... the whole populous movement was based on skepticism about the good faith of American corporations and businessmen. So, I do not think that they thought that John D. Rockefeller could not tell a lie. I do not know.

SM (01:10:23):
I know. As follow up, because I can remember Teddy Roosevelt when he was president and served two terms, he was very supportive of William Howard Taft taking over, but he came back in 1912 because he said Taft was a liar.

RC (01:10:39):
Yeah.

SM (01:10:40):
Lied. "He said he was going to follow through on my policies and did absolutely nothing." Friends to bitter enemies.

RC (01:10:47):
Right. Yeah.

SM (01:10:49):
So there is a lack of trust there. I think of examples, I always think of how the population responds, whether they respond... The activism in the thirties was something also like the (19)60s. I want you to respond to, what do these things mean to you? They do not have to be very lengthy or anything, but you have already mentioned what the wall means to you.

RC (01:11:13):
Yeah.

SM (01:11:13):
So what does Kent State and Jackson State mean to you?

RC (01:11:19):
Well, I remember more about Kent State than about Jackson State. I have to say that my recollection of Kent State was that it may well be that... It was a tragedy, clearly. But I remember when I was in the Civil Rights Division, learning that I think the Justice Department Civil Rights Division prosecuted the guardsmen there. I was very skeptical about that. I am not an expert on the facts, but this was a protest. Things were being thrown at these guardsmen. My instinct is to be sympathetic. Now, if the bottles had been thrown five minutes ago and the protestors were a different group of protestors and they were 300 yards away, well that is different. I just know about the facts, but that is my recollection, is that well, it was a tragedy. It was real wrong that these guardsmen did what they did, but the protestors should not have been throwing bottles at the guardsman either or whatever they were.

SM (01:13:01):
Watergate.

RC (01:13:06):
Well, I think that Nixon lied. He covered up. He abused government authority, abused trust, all of that. Was it an impeachable offense? I do not know. Again, I would have to go back and look at it. I mean, I remember the response of a lot of people was that, well, look, yeah, all what Nixon did was wrong, but it is not particularly new. These were things that other political leaders had done, and that to a substantial extent, this was an excuse that was seized upon by Nixon's political enemies. Example was a popular button at the time was, I was for impeachment before Watergate. Well, I mean, it was meant to show how right the person was. But I remember, I think it was Bill Buckley saying, well, exactly. That is the mindset, and that makes us skeptical about whether impeachment really makes sense here. I mean, I do not want to be a Nixon apologist. I did not like Nixon. In 1972, I was not old enough to vote yet, but we had a mock election at my high school. I supported the third party candidate then. John Schmitz was his name. Nixon was not a particularly conservative president, and there were a lot of things that he did. So, I am not a great fan of Nixon, but I think that I like Nixon's enemies even less. I am open to the suggestion that Watergate was seized upon by Nixon's political enemies to get rid of him. All that said, though, the way he handled Watergate was wrong not only politically, but also morally.

SM (01:16:04):
Goes right into enemies list. That was my next-

RC (01:16:07):
Yeah.

SM (01:16:08):
Just your thought on his enemies list. It is a long one.

RC (01:16:12):
Yeah, it was a long one. I think that it was described as being put together and that the machinery of the federal government was going to be used to screw, and those were his words, our political enemies. Well, that is wrong. I cannot do that.

SM (01:16:31):
How about Woodstock?

RC (01:16:32):
It was a bunch of stupid hippies. That would be my two-word response. I think there was some good music there. But was it a great moment for a Western civilization? No, I think it was probably not.

SM (01:17:03):
Going to have to put the Summer of Love in there too, which was (19)67.

RC (01:17:07):
Yeah. I mean, again, I think that I do not like the counterculture. I like the culture.

SM (01:17:17):
That is the next word. It is counterculture, because Theo Roszak wrote that very historic book called The Making of a Counterculture. He just retired. I am going to interview him. He just retired from the University of California at Hayward. He has written a brand-new book now on the Boomers in old age, some of his projections. I am not reading it until I interview him, but just the term counterculture.

RC (01:17:45):
You know what I said. I do not like the counterculture. I like the culture. The culture that was being countered was, I take it Western civilization and American culture in particular. I think that American culture is good and does not need to be countered. It can certainly be improved. To the extent that the counterculture was about getting rid of racial discrimination or stopping the dumping of poisonous chemicals into the water, our rivers, yeah, that is fine. But if it is about using drugs, having promiscuity, rejecting religion, no, I think that the culture is much better than the counterculture.

SM (01:19:17):
Two different groups, but the Hippies and the Yippies. The Yippies were Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and the Youth International Party.

RC (01:19:25):
Right.

SM (01:19:26):
Different.

RC (01:19:27):
Yeah. Well, I did not like the Hippies, and I like the Yippies even less. I mean, I guess the Yippies are a more radicalized and politicized version of the Hippies. I reject their Yippies political agenda and the lawless means they would use to pursue it. The Hippies, I would define I guess as people who embrace the counterculture, particularly younger people who got into long hair and bell bottoms and drug use and promiscuity and all that.

SM (01:20:11):
We have already set a few things. Students for Democratic Society and the Weathermen, they were different.

RC (01:20:18):
Well, sure.

SM (01:20:20):
I know for a fact that many members of SDS, when the Weatherman started, they split. It is over. Wanted nothing to do with that. So, those are two unique groups, even though they are part of SDS. Just your thoughts on SDS from its beginning, Tom Hayden created with the Port Huron Statement. Just your thoughts on those two entities.

RC (01:20:47):
Well, it was very left wing from the start. As a conservative, therefore I was unsympathetic with them from the start. So long as the agenda was merely dissenting and not lawless and revolutionary and violent, I would be unsympathetic but tolerant. But once an organization starts breaking the law, killing people, blowing up buildings and so forth, then they should be treated as criminals.

SM (01:21:35):
How about Vietnam Veterans Against the War? Because they took over the anti-war movement when SDS died.

RC (01:21:41):
Yeah.

SM (01:21:42):
They were major.

RC (01:21:44):
Well again, I mean, would draw the same distinction. I was anti-antiwar, but so long as the... the parts of the antiwar movement that were simply dissenting, you have to tolerate dissent in a democratic society until it becomes violent or lawless. I do not know enough about the Vietnam Veterans Against the War. I guess my-my recollection, I do not associate them with the violence and lawlessness of, well certainly of the Weatherman.

SM (01:22:42):
What do you think were the most important books that were read? What did you read when you were young? What do you think were the most important books for the Boomer generation? What were people reading then?

RC (01:22:57):
Well, and I mentioned from my side of the aisle, I was a fan of Buckley's. Of course, Buckley was publishing books that I remember reading, books that were... I mean, a lot of them were compilations of his columns and other essays, but he also had some standalone books too. I think The Unmaking of a Mayor, which was his [inaudible] running for Mayor of New York City against Lindsay, Up from Liberalism, I think.

SM (01:23:39):
God and Man at Yale was classic.

RC (01:23:40):
Why, sure. Yeah. I think that was written in the early (19)50s, McCarthy is an amazing and so forth. So yeah, I think that Russell Kirk, The Conservative Mind, there were lots of... the whole staff of National Review, James Burnham, Whittaker Chambers. Goodness knows that was a little bit earlier, but I think that those were all important books for conservatives. For the left, I remember The Greening of America by Charles Reich, reading that. Garry Wills was sort of an interesting guy who started out as, I guess as a conservative and became liberal. I remember reading Nixon Agonistes and I am not sure-

SM (01:24:58):
Classic book.

RC (01:24:58):
Yeah. I do not know how I would classify that. I think that Wills may have written that when he was in transition. But I remember it was an important and much read and discussed book then. Well, and then from the Martin Luther King, Why We Cannot Wait, his speeches, those were obviously very important books.

SM (01:25:32):
Your thoughts on the music and the art of the era? Obviously, we are talking about rock music, Motown, folk. What was the music that really turned on you and some of the conservative Boomers of that period? I thought some of this music appealed to everyone.

RC (01:25:51):
Yeah, no, I think that is true. I think that is true.

SM (01:25:52):
They had so many social messages in their music too.

RC (01:25:55):
That is true. Although I do not know that there really were very many, that there was much conservative movement, conservative music, conservative, popular music back then.

SM (01:26:13):
Burl Ives.

RC (01:26:16):
I guess The Ballad of the Green Beret.

SM (01:26:19):
He was a liberal, man.

RC (01:26:22):
But I enjoyed that music. I tell you, I am Bob Dylan fan. I like him. Of course, a lot of Dylan's work it is hard to... it is not maybe as easily pigeonholed, particularly in retrospect, as people think. Dylan himself is an interesting character. I do not know if you have read-

SM (01:26:56):
Yeah, I have read quite a bit on him and actually about the song, Like a Rolling Stone. People have read the words. You take away different meanings.

RC (01:27:06):
Yeah. Yeah.

SM (01:27:07):
In fact, one person I interviewed said, "Listen to the words. He is very critical of the Boomer generation. Listen to the words on a Rolling Stone." Now that might not be what he was later, when he was with Joan Baez, but just listen to the words.

RC (01:27:24):
Yeah. Well, and his chronicles and his memoir, I mean I was sort of surprised, but he talks about that era. He thought that Goldwater was a great guy. He singles him out among politicians like, "Yeah, I read. Oh, you really made a lot of sense to me." I liked a lot of the (19)60s' movement. I would say that probably the more stridently political it was, the more problem I would have. But a lot of it, you can convince yourself to like it. I remember Emerson, Lake and Palmer, the song Lucky Man.

SM (01:28:16):
With the eagle or the swan or whatever it was, or a dove. It was a dove on the cover.

RC (01:28:24):
Yeah.

SM (01:28:24):
Yeah.

RC (01:28:27):
I guess their biggest hit was probably Lucky Man. Right?

SM (01:28:29):
Mm- hmm.

RC (01:28:32):
I am sure it is supposed to be very sarcastic in characterizing this guy who was killed as being somehow lucky. But you read it, I said, "Well, it would not be such a bad way to go," to live and die. But no, the Beatles obviously have great music. The Rolling Stones had great music. Rolling Stones is another group that is interesting, that they certainly were countercultural and not role models, but their music was not really very political.

SM (01:29:17):
Well, I got two more questions and then I am just going to read some names, just quick responses and then we will be done. The one question is, there were three... someone corrected me and said there are four, but I am going to continue to say there are three slogans that really defined the era. I would like the one that you feel defines the era more than the other or a combination. One of them was Malcolm X's By Any Means Necessary. Of course, that was on a lot of residence halls and colleges. The second one was Bobby Kennedy, who... actually, I think it was a Henry David Thoreau quote. He said, "Some men see things as they are and ask why. I see things that never were and ask why not." Then the third one was a Peter Max poster that was very popular on college campuses in the early (19)70s. On that poster it said, "You do your thing, I will do mine. If by chance we should come together, it will be beautiful." So those are three different slogans of an era, one being more radical, one more hippie-ish, and one sense of responsibility, the idea of making a difference in the world for other people. Your thoughts on those three? And again, I am going to make sure... this tape may be going to an end here. Yeah, I am going to... Okay, here you go.

RC (01:31:08):
Yeah. I was trying to think if I can recall other catchphrases from the (19)60s, burn baby burn, do not trust anybody over 30.

SM (01:31:31):
It was Cleaver [inaudible] kept saying that. I cannot remember what it was.

RC (01:31:37):
Yeah. Well, I guess of those, the one that... I guess the two that I would pick out as emblematic are the Bobby Kennedy and the Malcolm X one. Chronologically, the Kennedy one may have come after the Malcolm X one. I am not sure. But I think that the Kennedy one can unfortunately degenerate into the Malcolm X one. The reformist impulse that the Kennedy quote shows is everybody's in favor of reform. Nobody thinks that the status quo is perfect. I mean, Edmund Burke believed in reform. I think Burke said that when we change the existing institutions, we should approach the body politic as a son approaches the wounds of his father. You should be very gentle, very careful in the way that you treat those wounds and in the way that you try to make things better. The most important thing is to do no harm. When you start saying that, well, we're going to do things by any means necessary, that we have figured out what needs to be done and we do not care about process, we do not care about consensus, we do not care about following the rules in order to bring about what we think needs to be brought about, then you lose me. I think that you should lose anybody who is responsible. I think that unfortunately in the (19)60s, a lot of this understandable reformist impulse degenerated into the lawlessness and violence of by any means necessary.

SM (01:34:51):
What were the photographs or the pictures that stand out in your mind that really caught your attention during this time, that had the greatest impact on you? I have three that I will mention after you respond. And then there is a fourth that someone told me, "How could you forget that one?"

RC (01:35:13):
Well, I think that when I think of the (19)60s, I think of Vietnam. I guess the two photos of Vietnam that come to mind are the South Vietnamese official summarily executing the Vietnam guy and then the famous naked little girl running from the Napalm.

SM (01:35:45):
Kim Phuc. Yeah.

RC (01:35:45):
Yeah.

SM (01:35:46):
Mm-hmm.

RC (01:35:47):
I think those are the ones that come to mind about Vietnam. I think of, I guess maybe pictures of the Kennedy assassination, the still photos. I think of... I mean this does not really have anything to do with what we have been talking about, but the men walking on the moon. In terms of the Civil Rights Movement, I do not know. I can picture different photographs of Martin Luther King and other civil rights figures, but I cannot really think of a particular one.

SM (01:36:53):
There are, I think four pictures that are in the top 100 of the 20th century. One of them is the girl over the body at Kent State.

RC (01:37:04):
I could think of that one. Yeah. I was going to say that one.

SM (01:37:06):
That is one I was thinking of. That was Mary Ann Vecchio. Then the other one is Tommie Smith and John Carlos in the (19)68 Olympics in Mexico City with their fists up.

RC (01:37:15):
Right.

SM (01:37:16):
You hit the third one of mine. What was it now? Oh yeah, Kim Phuc, who we actually brought to Westchester University. But one that I was told that you cannot forget is the Mỹ Lai Massacre, dead bodies and I do not know.

RC (01:37:32):
Well, I was thinking about that, but I do not remember... I remember pictures of Calley, but I do not remember that photo.

SM (01:37:37):
Yeah, there are others. Yeah.

RC (01:37:39):
Yeah.

SM (01:37:40):
Of course, Spiro. The last question before, I just get the names here now, and I just want to get back to the (19)50s. Now, you obviously are younger than I am. Of course, Boomers, the frontline Boomers start going into seventh grade around 1960, (19)59, (19)60. So the thing that always puzzles me, and I would like your feelings on it, what was it about the 1950s that shaped this generation? I know we had Eisenhower as a president. He was a gentlemanly old man, but he was war a hero. The kids of this era grew up watching Mickey Mouse Club. All the westerns on TV, my golly, all these westerns were always, the Indians were the bad people and the cowboys. You had Howdy Doody for the real young ones, Rootie Kazootie. You had The Ed Sullivan Show. You had the black and white TV, three channels. The list goes on and on, on the types of TV shows that were on in the (19)50s. But parents are trying to give as much as they could to their kids. Of course, we're not talking about all the African American kids or others, but even in that period, there seemed to be a more stable family unit, even within the African American community in the- Well, the family unit, even within the African American community in the 1950s.

RC (01:39:04):
It is true.

SM (01:39:05):
Much more stable unit with a mother and father. They may not have had a TV set, but there were a lot of things happening, and then you get into the (19)60s or the beginning of the (19)60s when President Kennedy became president, and I know the war and the draft and all these other things, but there had to be something as children are growing up, given all this stuff, and they were rebelling against their parents, the generation gap, and all the other things. How did this happen? And two things that I remember. I can remember as a little boy overhearing the McCarthy hearings on TV and this man screaming saying, "You are a communist," and all this. I can remember that, and obviously the threat of nuclear war and all the other things, but my friends did not never seem affected by that. And then, of course, the beat generation where anybody that knew about the beats, they were the first to rebel against the status quo. There is a lot of stuff happening here. Just your thoughts on what was it about the (19)50s that shaped the boomer generation? Forget the (19)60s and the anti, all this stuff. What was it about it?

RC (01:40:22):
Well, I think the conventional wisdom would be that, well, the (19)50s were very stayed conservative era and repressive. Repressive of women, repressive of racial minorities, and that the (19)60s generation got fed up with that and wanted to end repression and to have more freedom, more equality, so that is what the rebellion against the (19)50s was about. I am not a social scientist, I am not a historian, but I am skeptical of that view. I think that there certainly was discrimination in the (19)50s, but of course the discrimination against minorities and women was not new in the 1950s. It was in the (19)40s and the (19)30s and the (19)20s and so forth, too. So it is kind of unfair to single out the (19)50s. In fact, the (19)50s in some respects, starting to move in the right direction on these issues. I think that a more cynical explanation of what happened in the 60s would be this. It was not a rebellion against the 1950s at all. That what you had was a generation that was spoiled. As we discussed before, the greatest generation had gone through the Depression and they did not want their kids to suffer, and so they indulged them. So you had that, you had a couple of technological changes with the pill, which made it much easier and less risky to have premarital sex. You had a continuing decline in traditional morality and religion. Again, this was not something that began in the (19)50s, but I think it maybe was continuing in the (19)50s. And then, the catalyst was that you had the Vietnam War and people for largely self-interested reasons, rebelled not against the (19)50s, but against this war. And as a result of that, and as a result of the fact that the ideology of the anti-war movement was interwoven with a lot of other left-wing ideology, bought in to the rest of the left's agenda, which did include rejection of all that was bad and good about the 1950s and American culture generally. I think Midge Decter wrote a book, which I have not read, called Liberal Parents, Radical Children, which I think may talk about some of this.

SM (01:46:04):
Good. How many years ago was that? I probably have that book.

RC (01:46:09):
Yeah, she must have written that I think in the (19)70s.

SM (01:46:18):
We're at the end here in terms of just responding to some of the names, just quick response. They do not have be any kind of great detail. There might be a few smaller terms here too, but I am going to start out with just your thoughts. Jane Fonda?

RC (01:46:35):
What do you want from me, a thumbs up or a thumbs down?

SM (01:46:38):
Just your thoughts, just a few words, what you think of her.

RC (01:46:42):
Well, yeah, I did not like her. She was, if not a traitor, she certainly... And if not, she did not engage in treason, she certainly gave aid and comfort to the enemy.

SM (01:46:56):
How about Tom Hayden?

RC (01:46:59):
It was... At a minimum, I am very unsympathetic to his political agenda, and my recollection is that the agenda was not only objectionable, but advocated lawbreaking and... Well, I will not say violence in this case, but certainly breaking the law.

SM (01:47:46):
And a follow-up is his close friend, Rennie Davis.

RC (01:47:49):
I do not remember Rennie Davis.

SM (01:47:52):
How about Abby Hoffman and Jerry Ruben?

RC (01:47:55):
Well, again, they were certainly on the Wallace part of the protests. Whether they were... I think that they certainly tolerated violence if they did not engage in violence themselves.

SM (01:48:14):
Chicago Eight, or seven, when they took Bobby Seal away.

RC (01:48:18):
Well, again, I would put them in the same category. I do not remember how... I mean, I am sort of drawing these distinctions between dissent, lawless dissent, and then violent dissent.

SM (01:48:30):
Right.

RC (01:48:30):
And the Chicago Eight, that was a trial about Wallace. I do not know what it was about. Well, I guess, actually did not they blow up a monument or something? I cannot remember if that was part of the-

SM (01:48:45):
Well, I know they took over a monument, but that was a whole group of people, but they did not blow it up though.

RC (01:48:49):
Yeah. Oh, okay. Maybe-

SM (01:48:51):
I have not asked this before, but since you're a lawyer, what do you think of William Kunstler?

RC (01:48:56):
Well, again, I do not like him. I think that he abused the legal system, acted very irresponsibly.

SM (01:49:09):
The premier of his documentary is Saturday. There is a documentary coming. He and Leonard Wineglass worked together in Chicago.

RC (01:49:16):
Yeah.

SM (01:49:18):
Timothy Leary.

RC (01:49:23):
Irresponsible. Advocate of drug use.

SM (01:49:27):
Dr. Benjamin Spock.

RC (01:49:33):
He wrote a decent book on child-rearing, but was wrong about the Vietnam War.

SM (01:49:41):
How about William Sloane Coffin?

RC (01:49:44):
Also wrong about the war.

SM (01:49:50):
How about the Black Panthers? And I am going to list them because there is five of them that are well known: Bobby Seale, Huey Newton, Angela Davis, Eldridge Cleaver, Kathleen Cleaver. There is five of them. They were well known. The other one was murdered, Norman, in Chicago.

RC (01:50:07):
Well, the Panthers were not only dissenters, but they were lawless and violent dissenters, and they killed people. David Horowitz, I think, was well written about this. I cannot remember... I mean, well, I do not remember anything about Kathleen Cleaver. Angela Davis, I remember, and I remember that she was convicted of helping a... Oh, I guess then the conviction was overturned on basically a technicality, and now she is ironically a law professor. She is a devout Communist, so I do not like her.

SM (01:51:09):
Kathleen, by the way, is a law professor at Emory.

RC (01:51:12):
Is that right?

SM (01:51:12):
A very good law professor.

RC (01:51:14):
That is funny. Eldridge Cleaver, Huey Newton and-

SM (01:51:23):
Bobby Seale.

RC (01:51:23):
... Bobby Seale, I would have to read up on which did what. I think that Cleaver was actually convicted of rape at one point, in addition to what he did with the Black Panthers. I think that, I cannot remember if it was Huey Newton or Bobby Seale that was killed eventually in a drug related-

SM (01:51:58):
Huey. He ended up getting a PhD too.

RC (01:52:07):
Yeah.

SM (01:52:07):
He was a smart guy.

RC (01:52:08):
Yeah. Well, I think that he's the one that David Horowitz talks about in his memoirs the most. Yeah, being smart, but very dangerous.

SM (01:52:16):
How about the Betty Friedan, Bella Abzug, Shirley Chisholm, Gloria Steinem, the feminists?

RC (01:52:29):
I actually think of Chisholm more as, not principally as a feminist, but-

SM (01:52:36):
Black, female politician, ran for President.

RC (01:52:39):
Right. As I said, I think that the feminists, I sympathy with providing more opportunities for women, but not sympathetic with the denigration of traditional female roles, which should also be things that could be chosen. And I think some of them, I think had a sort of generally liberal agenda, and so I would disagree with her about that.

SM (01:53:40):
Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew.

RC (01:53:46):
Well, I think that both of them did a lot of... Really let down Republicans and conservatives through their law-breaking. In both instances, I think that there are those who would say that, well, the penalty that they paid was disproportionate to the laws they broke, but nonetheless, they did break the law and I think they let us down.

SM (01:54:47):
I did not mention two other Black Panthers, H. Rap Brown and Stokely Carmichael. They were big.

RC (01:54:53):
Yeah, yeah. And I put them in the same category. Advocates of violence. I think that Rap Brown is back in prison.

SM (01:55:00):
He is in jail. I think he is there for the rest of his life.

RC (01:55:08):
Yeah.

SM (01:55:11):
John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy?

RC (01:55:16):
Well, I think that John Kennedy is greatly overrated as a president, but is a much more conservative president than is remembered. He was strongly anti-communist. I think his views, he would have a very hard time getting nominated to anything in the Democratic Party these days. Bobby Kennedy, I think was also somebody who had, I think he was becoming more liberal as he got older before he was killed, but I think his... Both of them I think are more fondly remember today than they would have been had they not been tragically assassinated.

SM (01:56:43):
How about Teddy Stein?

RC (01:56:47):
Well-

SM (01:56:48):
Some people say he was probably the greatest senator during this timeframe in the (19)70s, when he became 62 to now.

RC (01:56:58):
Well, he certainly was an effective senator. I did not share his agenda, and I think that his significant faults were all whitewashed during the mourning over his death. And I think that some of that is understandable. When somebody dies, that is not the time to point out their faults, but he could be a very nasty politician as witness what he did to Robert Bork and had a personal life that was at least for long stretches, immoral, and even criminal.

SM (01:58:41):
How about Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern?

RC (01:58:47):
Well, I think that both of them are, unlike Kennedy, I think are personally very well-behaved, moral men. McGovern was a war hero, and I am not aware of anyone that is criticized their character. They are both political liberals, so I disagree with that, but I do not think that they had the personal failings that the Kennedy has had.

SM (01:59:40):
How about LBJ and Hubert Humphrey?

RC (01:59:45):
Well, very different. I mean, I guess, they had similar politics. Again, both of them, I did not share their politics. I think that Humphrey was someone, again, whose personal life and personal morality, I have not heard criticized. Johnson was a much rougher character.

SM (02:00:20):
Couple more here. George Wallace?

RC (02:00:28):
Well, he began as a racist demagogue and eventually became just a demagogue. I mean, think that he shed some of his racism. He is somebody who is political bottom line, I shared in many respects in terms of being more accepted in the civil rights area, but in terms of the war, the rejection of the counterculture, I was sympathetic, but he was, I think somebody who thinking conservatives were never entirely comfortable with.

SM (02:01:33):
Daniel and Phillip Berrigan, Catholic priests.

RC (02:01:37):
Yeah. I sort of have them same category as Sloane Kaufman. There were a lot of mainline clergy who were opposed to the war, and I do not remember... I did not share their rejection of the war. I do not think that... I think you can be a good Christian and also support the Vietnam War. I cannot remember whether to what extent they were not only dissenters, but also broke the law-

SM (02:02:35):
They did. They threw blood on nuclear weapons, and then they also destroyed direct records.

RC (02:02:40):
Yeah.

SM (02:02:42):
Barry Goldwater and Dwight Eisenhower.

RC (02:02:46):
Well, I liked Goldwater.

SM (02:02:57):
Yeah, it is the first time. I will turn this off.

RC (02:02:58):
I think Goldwater was hero to conservatives during the (19)60s, and I think Eisenhower was a president who for a long time was underrated, but I think there is now more recognition that he was a very effective and good president.

SM (02:03:22):
How about Harry Truman when boomers were babies?

RC (02:03:29):
Yeah. I think that in terms of foreign policy, Truman largely did a good job, domestic policy. He was a liberal, and I think less so.

SM (02:03:52):
Daniel Ellsberg, Pentagon papers.

RC (02:03:57):
Yeah. As I recall, he stole and made public classified information.

SM (02:04:24):
Right.

RC (02:04:27):
Which the Pentagon papers were, and you should not do that. Even if you think that... I mean, this again gets to this conservative point that even if you're convinced you're right, that does not mean that you break the law.

SM (02:04:54):
John Dean?

RC (02:05:13):
I know that he was an excellent White House official and was one of the first people to blow the whistle, to reveal what the administration had done with Watergate, but I do not remember much else about him.

SM (02:05:55):
Muhammad Ali?

RC (02:05:57):
Was a great boxer. I did not share his politics, but he was not a political philosopher. I guess the question is whether he was a draft dodger or somebody who, for legitimate religious reasons did not want to serve. I am more inclined to the former view than the latter, but I have no window into his soul.

SM (02:06:53):
Woodward and Bernstein?

RC (02:06:57):
Good reporters. I have no objection to reporters doing their job.

SM (02:07:13):
Yeah. You already responded to Woodward and Bernstein.

RC (02:07:18):
Yeah, I think they were reporters doing their job.

SM (02:07:22):
William Westmoreland, the guy who oversaw the-

RC (02:07:26):
Yeah. No, he was the general in charge for a lot of the time during Vietnam. I am not really in a position to critique-

SM (02:07:39):
The ERA and why it failed?

RC (02:07:42):
Well, I think it failed largely because of the efforts of Phyllis Schlafly. I think that she was right to oppose it. The problem with the ERA is that nobody knew, and nobody still knows, what exactly it would do. And it does not make sense to amend the Constitution for what was essentially symbolic reasons when you do not know with a fair degree of certainty what the actual effects of that amendment are going to be. We already have the 14th amendment, which makes it very difficult for governments at any level to engage in sex discrimination. Nobody is in favor of prohibiting sex discrimination to the same degree that race discrimination is prohibited; and yet, I mean, there is a good argument that the Equal Rights Amendment would do that. And so, does that mean that, for instance, the military cannot make any distinctions with respect to sex? That sexual distinction is not going to be allowed with respect to government jobs where it is a bonafide occupational qualification? For instance, hiring prison guards or things like that, medical research. I mean, it purports to be a categorical ban on sex discrimination. I think that nobody is really in favor of a categorical ban on sex discrimination.

SM (02:10:06):
Harvey Milk, because he is the epitome of the gay and lesbian movement.

RC (02:10:11):
Yeah. I just do not know enough about that. Again, I said at the outset, I think that gay people should not be beaten up or jailed or anything like that; but on the other hand, I think that objection to homosexuality is not the same thing as racial discrimination or gender discrimination.

SM (02:11:01):
Tet.

RC (02:11:04):
Well, I think that... I guess it is now pretty much accepted that while it was a military failure for the communists in Vietnam, the Tet Offensive was a political defeat for the good guys of Vietnam and that the media bears some of the blame for that.

SM (02:11:51):
I am down to the final thing, which is the final presidents that we are going to ask about, but since you were a lawyer, I cannot leave without asking you, just a quick thought on Roe V. Wade-

SM (02:12:03):
Just a quick thought on Roe v. Wade and the two civil rights bills that President Johnson signed in (19)64 and (19)65. We're talking about three major events. Roe v. Wade was in the (19)70s, but these are major decisions in boomer lives.

RC (02:12:18):
Yeah.

SM (02:12:18):
So just your thoughts on the two civil rights acts. I have not asked this to other people. I am only asking it to lawyers.

RC (02:12:26):
Well, I think that one point that I always make about the two pieces of civil legislation is that in both houses, the percentage of Republicans who supported it was higher than the percentage of Democrats who supported it. Both pieces of legislation, yeah. And that is something that is frequently forgotten.

SM (02:12:50):
Is that because Everett Dirksen was such a big supporter of it. Because Everett was a big supporter.

RC (02:12:55):
Yeah, he was. And that would explain the Senate. It would not necessarily explain the House. I think that part of it was because there were so many Democrats at that time, so the Democrats were opposed to it. Yeah. But anyway, it shows, I think the Republicans now do not get enough credit for that. I think that both bills obviously had much good in them and were certainly well-intentioned. I think that in both cases, the way that the bureaucrats and the judges subsequently interpreted and enforced them turned them on their heads to some extent, so that instead of prohibiting discrimination across the board the way they were written and intended, they now are interpreted to allow, and in some places require politically correct discrimination on the basis of race and ethnicity. The Roe versus Wade was a very bad Supreme Court decision. There is nothing in the Constitution, one way or the other, about abortion. And it was a classic instance of judicial activism for the court to read such a constitutional right into the Constitution. And it has had all kinds of bad consequences. Not only bad consequences in the sense that there are lots of dead babies because of it, but also bad consequences in that it has removed the whole abortion discussion from the political and legislative arena and put it in the courts, which are not really equipped to deal with those issues.

SM (02:15:09):
I am going to end with the Presidents, because we have already talked about many of them up to the 1970s. Just your thoughts on Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter.

RC (02:15:29):
Well, I think that Ford will be remembered positively for the role he played in the nation's healing. After Nixon, we needed a Gerald Ford. We needed a very down to earth man of strong, positive character who was a quite unpolarizing figure. Carter was one of the, I think, least successful Presidents of the century, partly because his policies did not make any sense, partly because of his own personality. And I think the failings of his personality have become more evident since he left office. It was just a very...

SM (02:17:12):
How about Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr.? Both of them. I am going to turn this-

(02:17:24):
Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr.

RC (02:17:27):
Well, I think Reagan will be remembered as one of the great Presidents, not only of the 20th century but also in American history, because of his leadership in bringing the Cold War to a successful conclusion, and also to returning the United States to free market principles at a time when we were headed away from them. And more generally, for a renaissance of conservative leadership. George Bush, Bush 41, I think that he was an unsuccessful President in terms of persuading people that he knew he was doing in terms of domestic policy. But I think that he may still be remembered well by historians because of his foreign policy.

SM (02:19:13):
The Gulf War.

RC (02:19:15):
Well, even before the Gulf War, he presided over the demise of the Soviet Union and the liberation of Eastern Europe. And that was a very critical period, and it could have gotten screwed up, but he did not screw it up.

SM (02:19:49):
The last two, obviously, Bill Clinton and George Bush. And I say these two gentlemen, because in some of my interviews people say these two gentlemen really define the boomer generation. And they give me their reasons. Even though they one was a conservative and one's ... I am not sure if Bill is truly a ... I think he is more center than what his wife's turned out to be. But what is it about them that people would say that both these men truly define the boomer generation? And then your overall thoughts on the [inaudible] Presidents?

RC (02:20:27):
Well, they were boomers. And I guess they were the first Presidents who were boomers. And I suppose in some respects, they were on opposite sides during the (19)60s. Clinton avoided serving in the war and smoked pot, even if he did not inhale. He certainly seemed to have bought into the sexual revolution. And I think you are right that to call him just a liberal is maybe an oversimplification, but certainly more liberal than Bush. I actually think that it's more problematic to call Bush a conservative than it is to call Clinton a liberal. And of course, Bush was not exactly a war hero either, nor was he somebody who eschewed mind-altering substances. But I think it would be hard to argue that Clinton was an unsuccessful President. I mean, he was President during a period of peace and prosperity. And I think that the extent to which he deserves credit for either of those, it is up for debate. And you can argue that by not being more proactive with respect to terrorism, that he sowed the seeds for 9/11. So I do not think he will be badly remembered because of the substance of his presidency. I think that he will always be associated with Monica Lewinsky, which is too bad for him, but I think it is also too bad for all of us. Bush, I said that I am not sure that you really can characterize him as conservative. I think that in terms of domestic policy, there are many respects that he was not a conservative. He certainly was not a small government conservative. He cut taxes. I suppose that that is conservative. But he also increased federal spending in lots of ways. In my area, a mixed record at best in terms of civil rights. I think that history will judge him based on the War on Terror and how that turns out. That was certainly his top priority. And I do not know enough, and it may be that nobody really knows enough yet to know how successful he was, to what extent what he did is the reason why there were no subsequent successful attacks in the United States, whether the progress he made in fighting Al-Qaeda and killing or capturing its leaders made a big difference. We do not know yet. And of course, depending on how this President does, that will affect how he has judged.

SM (02:25:26):
A question I asked earlier about the trust factor, about how many boomers did not trust because leaders did things; well, as boomers’ approach senior citizen status, as the frontline boomers are now 62 years old, eligible for social security, the last two Presidents have also done things that are just the same old SOS, as they say. President Clinton being on television, "I did not have sex with that woman," and then George Bush, the weapons of mass destruction. As many people believe, there's two liars right there again. So it is just some people interpret it as such.

RC (02:26:04):
Well, I do not know. Of course, I am a conservative Republican, so maybe I have my own prejudices, but I think those are two very different statements. And I think that Clinton's statement that he did not have sex with Monica Lewinsky is either a flat-out lie, or what would in some ways be even worse, a sort of ... I forget how he worded it exactly, but something like, "Well, since I did not have actual vaginal intercourse, therefore I did not have sexual" ... you know. It would almost be better to lie, I think, than to mislead somebody and pretend that you're telling them the truth, the whole truth, which is what you would have there. I am not convinced, and I am not sure that anybody ... well, there probably are some people, but I am certainly not convinced that Bush, at the time he said that there were weapons of mass destruction, did not believe that there were weapons of mass destruction.

SM (02:27:38):
Colin Powell said it, and many people think that ruined his career.

RC (02:27:40):
Yeah. I mean, if you make a statement that turns out not to be true, but you thought it was true, that is not a lie.

SM (02:27:49):
Right. I agree.

RC (02:27:49):
You have made a false statement, but it is not a lie. A lie, there has to be intent. So if Bush knew that there were not weapons of mass destruction and was deliberately making a false statement, okay, well that is a lie. And truth be told, that would be a bigger lie than lying about sex, because the stakes are higher when you are telling a lie in order to justify getting the United States into a war as opposed to trying to save your own political high. But I do not think it was a lie.

SM (02:28:32):
I end by saying that President Obama's of course the last President of the boomers, and he is a boomer. He would have been two years old in the very end, but he still is a boomer. And of course, [inaudible] does not remember all this stuff, but it's too early to judge him overall. A lot of people want to judge him early. But-

RC (02:28:51):
Nobel prize.

SM (02:28:53):
Yeah. That really shocked me. But a lot of people that were involved in the anti- war movement, a lot of the liberals from that period, a lot of my friends feel that finally, after all these years, we had one of ours back in there. It was not Clinton. It is Obama. This is a man who really ... even though he was not in the (19)60s, is part of the (19)60s because of who he is, what he believes. Your thoughts on just the short term. And most of the times, when I interview people, I never get a chance to ask some of these questions here on the Presidents because I have sometimes only an hour, sometimes 30 minutes. So it is great. Just your thoughts so far on President Obama and what he really stands for. And to a lot of boomers, he stands for progress.

RC (02:29:40):
Well, I think that that is what a lot of conservatives are afraid of. They too think that Obama is much more left-wing than he ran as. And I think that there's a lot of evidence of that. And we will see. But of course, we elect Presidents. We do not elect kings. And that is relevant in two respects. Number one, no matter how liberal a president is, there are political constraints on what he can do. We have existing laws, we have courts, and we have Congress. Even though the Democrats do not control Congress, changing the laws, he has to go through Congress, and there are enough Republicans there to slow or even stop more radical kinds of change. On the other hand, when you elect a President, you elect not just the President, you elect a whole administration. I think on some issues, like civil rights, the President himself may have somewhat more conservative instincts than the people he is likely to appoint. But you are stuck with the political appointees, excepting the relatively rare instances where an issue gets [inaudible] away to the Presidents-

SM (02:31:52):
A lot of people believe that if Hillary had won and gotten in, there would be no difference. Just a different color. Because she is a liberal too.

RC (02:32:00):
Well, yeah. I think you have to ask, whatever they themselves think of these different views, they are going to be facing the same Congress, they are going to be facing the same constraints, and probably a lot of the people that they would have appointed would have been the same people. And so it is not a choice between King Barack and Queen Hillary. It is between an Obama administration and a Clinton administration. And there may not be a lot of difference between the two.

SM (02:32:36):
When the best history books are written, and they are normally written 50 years after an event ... a lot of the best World War II books are coming out now, and I wish my dad was alive to be able to read them, because he died seven years ago. But when the best history books are written about the boomer generation, maybe as boomers have passed beyond when they are alive, what do you think historians and sociologists will be saying about this generation? Because after all, the people that will be writing these books will not be boomers. They will be generation Xers who will be reaching old age, there will be millennials who will be in middle age, and there will be the following generation, generation Y or whatever it is called. What do you think they will be writing about this generation, and saying about it?

RC (02:33:30):
I do not think that they will be writing about it as a generation. Think about it. I think to some extent, this is a phenomenon of the fact that we are in it now, but 50 years from now, I think that most historians will write about individuals. Individual biographies and the individual issues and events and all that. And they may write about radicals in the 1960s, or conservatives in the 1960s, or civil rights leaders in the 1960s or something like that. But as we have discussed, I think that there is too much heterogeneity among boomers for it to be a useful analytical device for most history. And I think that it is rare to have history, I think, that focuses on generations. I think that most history looks at events and individuals and particular groups of individuals. Now, sometimes there are exceptions to that. And when we talked about the Civil War generation, that may be different. When you have a cataclysmic event like that, where literally a whole cohort of people are swept up and have to go off to war and a lot of them are killed, that may be different. And maybe even the greatest generation, with the twin events of World War II and the Depression, maybe you can treat that generation as... But still, when you think about it, when Brokaw wrote The Greatest Generation, this was something that was sort of new. People had not written about the (19)50s generation. Or I do not know what they would write about, but I think it is very novelty shows. This is not the way that history is normally written. And I think it will remain the exception, rather than the rule.

SM (02:36:40):
I cannot believe I did not ask you, just your quick thoughts on Martin Luther King Jr. He gave that great Vietnam speech, which set him apart from the other civil rights leaders, and he got criticized for it. But just your overall thoughts on him. You have already talked about Malcolm X. You have said some things about him. But Dr. King and his importance in this period?

RC (02:36:59):
Well, I think that King will be remembered. And the reason that we have a national holiday is because of his crusade for racial equality. And that was a literally heroic effort. I think the word heroism is overused these days, but in that time and place, he was putting his life on the line, and ultimately died because of the principle of racial equality. I think, unfortunately ... well, not unfortunately. In addition to believing in racial equality, he believed in economic redistribution and the anti-war movement and a lot of things like that, which are much more open to debate. But-

SM (02:38:13):
And he was a proponent that to get anything, you have got to agitate. You have got to continue to agitate. Now, he believed in the non-violent approach. He and Bayard Rustin were of the same realm, the non-violent approach. And that famous picture with Stokely Carmichael standing next to Dr. King. Dr. King had his arms like this, and obviously he was tense, because Stokely Carmichael was telling him, "Your time has passed." And he was telling him. And that is the same thing that Malcolm X did to Bayard Rustin in a debate they had at, I think, Columbia. "Your time has passed." Like James Farmer, Roy Wilkins, Whitney Young, Ralph Abernathy, Martin Luther King, Bayard Rustin, all that group. Jesse, even though he was younger. "Your time's passed. Black power now." So Dr. King had to put up with a lot. Some people said he had the heart of a 70-year-old when he died, because he was under medicine, blood pressure. Unbelievable stuff.

RC (02:39:19):
Yeah, yeah, sure. I am sure that is all true.

SM (02:39:24):
But I have asked you a lot. Is there a question I did not ask that you thought I was going to ask that you wanted to add?

RC (02:39:30):
No, I do not think so. I will think about it. If there is anything I want to add, I will send you an email or call you up.

SM (02:39:38):
I have a waiver here, which I am missing. If I can find it here ... oh, got it. I guess we have to make a copy of this. Would you be able to make a copy?

RC (02:39:49):
Sure.

SM (02:39:50):
And then you could sign it and you can read it and keep a copy to yourself. I wrote on this one.

RC (02:39:53):
Oh, okay. That is all right.

SM (02:39:57):
See, the first 50 people, I did not know I had to have a waiver. I was new to this.

(End of Interview)

2009-12-10

Stephen McKiernan

Roger Clegg

160:15

English

Binghamton University Libraries

audio/mp4

Sound

Audio

Lawyers; Center for Equal Opportunity; Clegg, Roger--Interviews

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