Interview with Dr. Tony Campolo
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Contributor
Campolo, Anthony ; McKiernan, Stephen
Description
Dr. Tony Campolo is a speaker, author, sociologist, pastor, social activist, Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Eastern University and former faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Campolo was a spiritual advisor to U.S. President Bill Clinton. He has a Bachelor of Arts from Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary at Eastern College and a Ph.D. in Sociology from Temple University.
Date
1997-09-03
Rights
In copyright
Date Modified
2017-03-14
Is Part Of
McKiernan Interviews
Extent
113:55
Transcription
McKiernan Interviews
Interview with: Tony Campolo
Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan
Transcriber: REV
Date of interview: 15 July 2007
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(Start of Interview)
SM (00:01):
Dr. Campolo, the first question I would like to ask is in recent days, and in fact in recent years, there has been a lot of criticism of the Boomer generation in terms of blaming a lot of the problems of today's society on Boomers. Oftentimes we might hear a question, Newt Gingrich on the floor of Congress making generalizations about Boomers. George Will might write an article on the entire generation, blaming this group, that grew up in that era, for the problems of the breakup of the American family, including the divorce rate, the increase of drugs, the lack of respect for authority, and things like that. I would love to hear your thoughts on the Boomer generation and whether that criticism is a fair judgment of this 65 plus million.
TC (00:53):
I feel that the Boomer generation did rebel against authority. I think that it was a rebellion that perhaps was justified in some respects and in other respects it was not. The (19)60s, particularly, were a period where America was struggling to figure out what is right and what is wrong. [inaudible] Older people had absolute values of right and wrong when it came to personal behavior, and they were absolutistic about sexual activity, about what was right and what was wrong. They had absolute values about personal honesty. They had absolute values about respect, all those things that you mentioned. However, they abandoned any concept of absolute values and grappled with what, at the time, would have to be called situational ethics when it came to societal affairs. Case in point, civil rights, they would say, "Well, of course it is wrong to be discriminating against African American people." They would have said Black people, but it is not as simple as all of that. You got to consider the situation. We did not get into this mess overnight. We are not going to get out-out of this mess overnight. To expect immediate change, to expect that we are going to do everything right immediately on this issue is expecting far too much. We have to in fact be gradualists, very, very much into the situational ethic value system. The same thing can be said about the board in Vietnam. No one ever asked the question as to whether it was right or wrong. I do not think you could ask the older generation how we ever got into that war or what it was all about. There was a sense, however, that whether it's right or wrong, we need to stand behind our president. We have to stand behind our brave soldiers. Even if they are wrong, we must support them. And thus, the question was never, "Was the Vietnam War right, or was the Vietnam War wrong?" The question was always, "Are we going to stand behind the president and are we going to stand behind our soldiers, or are we going to be disloyal?" So, the issue was never phrased in terms of morality. It was phrased in terms of loyalty. This set up a conflict in which each generation accused the other of being immoral. The older generation said to the Boomers, "Look at you. You are smoking marijuana. You are sleeping around. You have rejected the sexual morays and values of our generation. You are libertine. You are immoral." The younger generation was saying to the older generation, "Look at you. You have maintained racial segregation. You oppress women. You propagate a war that is immoral without ever asking any questions about it." So that each generation was accusing the other of being immoral and there was a lack of respect across the line because neither group saw either the good or the evil, who never saw the good in those that stood against them, nor the evil in their own position. I do not think the older generation really understood the evil of maintaining a political economic system that fostered injustice, nor did the kids really understand the evil of deviating from moral patterns that their parents had established. There was a sense in which the kids saw the moral bankruptcy of the older generation on societal issues and hence felt that those people in the older generation had no moral authority with which to speak to them. To a large degree, I think that is right. I think that in fact, we lost our moral authority in their eyes because of our very refusal to deal with the social issues of our time in moral categories. We were very pragmatic, we were very realistic. We were very situational ethics oriented, and our kids lost respect for us, and that was the thing that gave them, I think, a sense that they had the right to create their own morality.
SM (06:33):
Very good. I got one follow-up. It is working. As a follow-up to this, if you were to look in 1997 at the Boomer generation, and Boomers are just hitting the age of 50, Bill Clinton is a forerunner of this. We also realize on some of the interviews that I have been doing that it is hard to define a generation, because people of 55 that I know in this process feel like they are closer to the Boomers than those that the younger Boomers might be, and Boomers being those born between 1946 and (19)64. If you are to look at the overall impact right now that the Boomers have had on America, could you give me again just a brief listing of the positive qualities of the Boomers, maybe some adjectives, and some negative qualities of Boomers, adjectives, knowing that Boomers are still right in their prime now and they still have many more years to live and produce?
TC (07:25):
I think the positive side was that they incarnated the best traits of liberalism. They were in favor of ending racism, sexism. They never really dealt with the gay issue in any significant way, although their openness to gay people was the beginning of the movement for gay and lesbian rights. They had a belief [inaudible] the government could be an instrument through which a just society could be created. They believed in the positive potentialities of political power. I do not think anybody believes in that anymore. I do not think we really see political power as something with positive potentialities. I think we almost see political power these days as a necessary evil that needs to be restrained and constrained. But in that era, they really believed that government could do things. They were the people who gave birth to the environmentalist movement. It's no surprise to me that a Gore and a Clinton should be such strong environmentalists, and an older man like Bob Dole does not quite get it. Decent to the core, but never really could grasp what all the fuss was on the environmental issue. I think that this generation, the Boomers also saw the evils that were inherent in corporate capitalism, and were suspicious of big business, and really raised questions as to whether or not we could have it just society unless big business was in some way constrained. Could we clean up the environment without restraining big business? I think of how they would have reacted if the information about the cigarette industry would have surfaced in the (19)60s rather than the (19)90s. There would have been an uproar on campuses. There would have been a furor that, beneath the surface, this is evil at its worst level. Corporate executives sitting around the table having concrete evidence that they have a product that is going to kill 450,000 Americans in any given year, and for the sake of profit repressing, suppressing that information. To me, the (19)60s, the Boomer generation, when they were in their collegiate years would have march, screamed, yelled, and would have, in fact, used that as a cause celebrity for bringing down the establishment. This is what American capitalism is about. I can just hear them. So, I think that that was their good side, that they saw the evils of corporate capitalism. They believed in government, they were idolists, and they really did believe that a better world was a social possibility. They believed they really could create a better world.
SM (11:28):
Negatives?
TC (11:31):
First of all, their values had no religious grounding. And I do not say that just because I am a religious person myself, but there was nothing beyond their own sense of right and wrong that legitimated their cause. They did not hear it. They did not hear a distant drummer. And so, when they marched out of step with others, they did so out of an existential decision, rather than out of a sense of oughtness from God. For instance, when I meet my friends from that generation, I recognize that many of them have given up and their response was, "You cannot change the system." And they gave up because their confidence was in themselves. And when they failed, there was no power to lean on beyond themselves. Religious people, on the other hand, I am talking about friends of mine like Jim Wallis.
SM (12:50):
He wrote a book.
TC (12:50):
Yeah.
SM (12:51):
On [inaudible], yeah.
TC (12:52):
The Soul of Politics
SM (12:52):
W-A-L-L-I-S. It is-
TC (12:55):
Yeah. But Jim is a guy who was active during the (19)60s. He is still active today. I would fall into the same category. It is an interesting thing, about a year and a half, two years ago, rather, it is a year and a half ago now, a group of us went down and protested the change in the welfare bill and were arrested in the capitol building. But the thing that was so interesting was that we were all older people. It was not the younger people that were there. There were elderly women given their... You went to court, as we had to explain why we did this, what happened? Why were not the young people there of this generation, number one? Number two is why we are the only people there to get arrested? Religious people, every one of us spoke out of a religious value system, so much so that the judge that hurt our case could say, "Instead of putting you in jail, I am going to ask you each to write an essay on why your religious convictions led you to stand against the government at this particular point." The fact that only the religious people are left, and the reason is that we recognize that the struggle is not a 20th century struggle, but the struggle is as old as the human race. And the calling to struggle is a calling from a God who transcends time and space. And hence we keep on struggling because we sense this higher calling and if we lose a battle and we lose more battles than we win, we lose battles in a cause that ultimately triumphs, which is what religion is all about. We do not have to see victory. I think the Boomer generation had to see victory. Victory would validate their efforts. And when they did not see victory, they did not have validation for their causes and hence gave up. And now they are selling stocks on Wall Street and have become part of that very establishment that they were so hard against. I think that the younger generation, that the Boomer generation to a large degree, was spoiled in the sense of being spoiled kids. In a sense, maybe more spoiled than this contemporary generation, because they were the last generation that knew that if they got a college education, there was a lot of money to be made after graduation. They never doubted that they were employable. They never doubted that the establishment would take them in on their own terms. This generation knows if they want to get a job, they would better play the ball game as the establishment prescribes it. I think another sense, I remember when the Cambodian invasion took place, there was a meeting at the Palestra at the University of Penn, and one student after another stood up and spoke against Nixon, the government, and all of that stuff, and a young man who is very religious but very radical stood, and he said, "How many of you believe in God?" Which seemed strange in the midst of this anti-war furor, and very few hands went up. He said, "We are the only ones who have a right to protest this war. And the reason is simple. If there is no God, then the highest law, according to the social contract theory, is the will of the people. Well, the people have spoken, they voted in Richard Milhous Nixon for a second turn. The American people want to pursue this war. We are a minority who oppose it. In a society like ours, we either have to win the election, which we did not, or go along with what the majority has prescribed. On the other hand, if you are religious, you never have to go along with the majority, because you are obligated not to the social contract, but to a biblical revelation." Strong point. And so, they were not grounded in anything beyond themselves. They were spoiled. They looked for, they had to succeed. They marched down to Washington like Joshua's army, marched around the city, blew their horns, and when the walls did not come tumbling down, they went home like spoiled little kids saying, "Darn it, they did not listen to us." So that is the negative side.
SM (18:03):
It is interesting and just a commentary for you in the next question, why is it? You know, I am of that generation, and I know that night when Nixon gave that-
TC (18:10):
Yeah.
SM (18:11):
...speech on Cambodia because it was April 30th, 1970.
TC (18:12):
That is right.
SM (18:14):
And I broke my arm that night. It was my senior year at SUNY Binghamton, and it was two, well, weeks away from graduation. And I was in the operating room at the point that that invasion was taking place. And our campus was just being torn apart before graduation. And I will never forget being in the hospital a couple days later, the doctor, I was in a terrible accident, who saved my arm, and I had the magazine that my parents had brought in of the girls sitting over the Jeff Miller, and the doctor saying, "I wish they would kill all those damn students." And this is the doctor that saved my arm. And it was at that juncture that I knew I had to get in higher ed because of the lack of communication.
TC (18:54):
But I think that Cambodian invasion showed both the best and the worst of us. We stood against injustice and the obscenity of bombing people who wanted nothing more than the right of self-determination. It also revealed the phoniness of us. I was at Penn teaching on the faculty there at the time. They called off final exams. They probably did at your school as well.
SM (19:20):
They did.
TC (19:21):
And the purpose of calling off final exams was that students could participate, so that they could talk over the issues, so that they could develop a strategy for changing America. That was the lofty reason for calling off the exams. If you remember, the day they called off the exams, everybody got in their cars and drove home.
SM (19:42):
I was in the operating room.
TC (19:43):
Yeah. Well, that is what happened.
SM (19:44):
Yeah.
TC (19:44):
That is what happened. The discussion ended at that point, and they shouted and said, "How can you have final exams when we must deal with these issues? How can you have final exams at this time of crisis?" And so, the administration's capitulated and said, "You are right. You are right. We must, in fact, call off exams so that the students can come together and talk, and discuss, and come up with a strategy." They called off exams and the next day everybody was gone, which said beneath this veneer of concern was really not as deep a commitment to social justice as appeared on the surface.
SM (20:20):
See, some of the individuals that interviewed, just your thought on this that when the draft, because one of the big things was to end the draft, and again, Boomers, when they felt that that they had one on that issue, that there were no other issues. And even though knowing that, at this particular juncture in time, in 1970, the evolution of the women's movement, the gay and lesbian movement, the Native American movement, well, Latino Chicano movement, they were all around that timeframe.
TC (20:49):
There is no question that it diffused a lot of the concerns, but I have to say that the anti-war movement predated the initiation of the draft. The anti-war movement, if you trace it out historically, basically before they were ever drafting for Vietnam in any way, there were strong protests emerging on campus. The teach-ins started very, very early on, I would say late (19)50s, early (19)60s, the teach-ins were already taking place. So, when the draft was instituted, that stimulated concern, because all of a sudden, "This is going to involve us." But even then, in the early stages of the draft, there was no real problem for students, because students were exempt, as you may recall.
SM (21:45):
Students.
TC (21:46):
And yet, even though students were exempt, the protest movements against the war were still in pretty high gear. When, of course, the lottery was introduced, then it took on higher proportions. There is no question that the lottery, and which brought in the drafting of young people who were in college threw fuel under the fire, but it was pretty intense opposition to the war long before it. As a matter of fact, one of the reasons for the lottery, intriguingly enough, if you go back and trace it, was that the students themselves were calling for it. They were arguing that the war was incredibly racist because the white students were away at the universities and exempt, leaving the inner-city Blacks as the only people left to draft. And so, there was a strong protest theme that the draft has to end because it is a genocide. Instead of them ending the draft, Nixon said, "You are right, it is racist. Therefore, we will start drafting college students, too." It was not exactly the result of the protest that they-
SM (23:05):
Todd-
TC (23:05):
...imagined.
SM (23:05):
...Gitlin did not say that.
TC (23:06):
What is that?
SM (23:07):
Todd Gitlin did not say that when I interviewed him. He would not, probably. He got a-
TC (23:14):
What would he say?
SM (23:14):
You know Todd Gitlin?
TC (23:14):
Yeah.
SM (23:15):
Because he still is a firm believer that any of those individuals that were in the movement on the left were right on everything.
TC (23:25):
Well, they may have-
SM (23:28):
And he has not changed at all. But you-
TC (23:30):
That is interesting.
SM (23:31):
...raised a good point because, you see, what you are bringing up something that someone else has not said, and that is great about this project, is that, you know, we are getting different perceptions on-
TC (23:40):
Hmm.
SM (23:40):
...different questions. If you were to look at the issue of healing, now, one of the concerns that I have seen at the Vietnam Memorial, I have gone down there the last five, six years at the Memorial itself, and tried to get a grasp on whether there has been healing within the Vietnam veterans, and maybe even the people who come to the wall who are not veterans. I would like your thoughts on the Vietnam Memorial that was put together in that was opened in 1982, your thoughts on its impact on America, whether the job that it has done with respect to healing within the Vietnam veterans themselves and in the Boomer generation.
TC (24:19):
Well, on a psychological level, I am sure that the wall in Washington has had-
SM (24:28):
Would you like some water?
TC (24:29):
No, thanks.
SM (24:29):
No?
TC (24:30):
... has had very positive therapeutic effects. To see these veterans that are weeping at the wall, leaving their medals there, in many instances, reaching out and touching the names of their comrades, all of this has had tremendous therapeutic value on a psychological level. I am sure there are social consequences for that. But I would dare say there is no healing on a societal level about Vietnam, that those who are convinced it was right are more convinced than ever. And those that are convinced it was wrong are more convinced than ever. A good example of this is the whole attitude system towards Bill Clinton, who opposed the war on moral grounds. Once again, the question is not whether was he right? Was he wrong? The question was he was not a loyal American. That is what the American Legion says about him. The question is not morality, the question is loyalty. And he was not "a loyal American." And they are still couching it in those terms. The fact that the President of the United States opposed the war on moral grounds, he was not draftable anyway, he was at Oxford. He was a student. He did not avoid the draft. People seem to forget that he did not do anything different than any other college student in America did. But in the midst of all of that, he said, "I am not going, but because I am not going to be drafted." But, on the other hand, and this is the big issue, "This war is wrong." And I find that all across America, the conservative political establishment still says, "We do not care whether it was right or wrong." We just know that you were over there at Oxford and you criticized the US government." That is where we are. And I do not know that there is going to be any social healing on this issue. And there can be no healing for the same reason why, on the individual level, there can be no healing until there is confession. If you're psychologically messed up because of something that happened 20 years ago, you got to get that out on the table. You got to talk about it. If you did something wrong, you got to repent of it. You got to set things right. You cannot simply repress the past. You have repressed Vietnam. I could go out there tonight and ask a very simple question of all your students. "Can anybody tell us what the Geneva Accord of (19)54 said and how that became the basis for war in Vietnam?" And there will not be one out there that will know, not a one. And these are educated people. We have done what the Japanese have done, we have written out of history those things that we would as soon forget. And so, you look at a Japanese textbook for a high school student, and you are amazed. They were the victims of America. They do not acknowledge the fact that they bombed Pearl Harbor. They do not acknowledge the fact that they invaded. It is all forgotten. And history is rewritten in such a way that they repress these things. And only recently, there are those in Japan who are saying, if we are ever going to heal the wounds of World War II, we have got to face up to our responsibility as a nation. Well, what we are saying, it is about time that Japanese do. My response is it is about time that America does, that we, in fact, still suffer from a guilty conscience because down, deep inside of people, there is an awareness that something went on there that was terribly wrong. We dropped more bombs on this little country than was dropped on all the rest of the world during all of World War II. We used chemical warfare, Agent Orange. We devastated the land. For what? What was the point? And if you were to go out there and say, "Did you know that the whole war was about trying to keep a free election from taking place?" Which is what it was about. The Accord of (19)54 guaranteed a free election in (19)58, and the people in Washington at that time knew that there was a free election in Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh would have been elected overwhelmingly. And so, we went to war to save people from voting, because if they voted, democracy would end. The incongruity of that. And if you went out there and- [inaudible]
SM (29:53):
Out there and asked the students.
TC (29:54):
They would not know that. And yet, that is history. So, we really have to say that, in that sense, these things, there will not be any healing. The healing will not take place because America is not ready to face up to what it is done. And I think it cannot face up to what it's done for a very important reason. A generation or two will have to pass away before we can face up to it. Senator Kerry gave a speech before the US Senate hearings on Vietnam when he was-
SM (30:38):
Senator from Nebraska?
TC (30:39):
No, the senator from-
SM (30:40):
Massachusetts.
TC (30:40):
...Massachusetts.
SM (30:40):
Okay.
TC (30:41):
...when he was the leader of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and he was still in his uniform, he was still a soldier. I think he never has reached the pinnacle of greatness in that speech which will go down in history as one of the great speeches of history, as he said to the US Senate committee hearing, "How do you tell the last- "
Peggy (31:06):
"How do you ask a man to be the last- "
TC (31:06):
"How you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam?" That is a good question. "How do you say to the families of 50,000 men who lost their lives there, 'It was a waste.' How do you tell them that? How do you tell them that they gave their lives, not only for nothing?" Which I think they are beginning to realize now. "Hey, our sons died, and what happened? Nothing." "But worse than that, your sons went over and died in order to perpetuate injustice. How do you tell American? How do you tell hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people who gave their finest and their best to this country they believed in, that not only was it in vain, it was worse than that, that their sons became the instrument of death for three million innocent people? How do you tell them that? That is the truth and how can there be healing when nobody faces the truth?"
SM (32:23):
You look at the Vietnam War, why did it end? How important were students on college campuses? How important was Middle America witnessing the body bags coming home on national television? Jack Smith said the reason why the war ended was because middle America finally saw what was happening. That was his thought. I interviewed him. But I have had different thoughts.
TC (32:46):
I do not know why it ended. I think that the American people, of course, demanded that it end, that, at a particular point, even Richard Milhous Nixon was trying to figure out how to end the war and he was the one that ultimately did. But let me just say that when I look at the end of the war, it never really ended. It just petered out. They closed in on the embassy, and we got on our helicopters, and we flew away, and there were nothing left. Nobody wants to face this. The war ended for one primary reason. We lost it.
SM (33:31):
[inaudible] that.
TC (33:32):
You do not ask the German people. "Why do you think World War II ended?" The answer is, "The Russians entered Berlin and the Yankees met them on the other side. It was over because we were destroyed." Please understand that the last image that I have of the war in Vietnam is a helicopter taking off and people hanging onto it, trying to get out, the Marines making their last escape. It was not like Hong Kong, where the British pulled down the flag, saluted, turned the country over. We left in the context of sheer chaos, and defeat, and confusion. The very fact that you asked the question is evidence to me why there will not be any healing. We have not faced the fact that not only were we involved in something that was totally immoral, but we are refusing to face the fact that we lost it. We are still kidding ourselves to think that we had a ceremony in which we decided to walk away. There was nothing left of us. They wiped out everything. They closed in, it was over.
SM (34:47):
Yeah. It is-
TC (34:48):
Then, when you ask, "Why do you think the war ended?" Answer, "We lost."
SM (34:54):
You are the first person to say that in 41 interviews.
TC (34:56):
Stop to think about it. Did not make any difference whether you were for the war or against the war. Ford was the President when it finally all fell apart. And when it happened, he introduced into Congress a bill to make another effort. And even the right-wingers voted him down. "We are out of there. It is over. It is done. It is kerplunk." What is it about this country, that we cannot face the fact that we sin and that we lose? Must we always be righteous and must we always win?
SM (35:40):
I want to get back to something. When I was young and a lot of people late (19)60s and early (19)70s, the Boomers who protested against the war, those got involved in many of the movements, used to always talk amongst ourselves, that, "We are the most unique generation of American history. The most unique generation of American history." As a person, I still feel we were personally, that is just-
TC (36:00):
Because you were.
SM (36:00):
...my feeling. But your thoughts on that kind of an attitude, that many of that generation of our generation felt? And then you look at as they have gotten older, and you have already made some commentary about the idealism of their youth waned because they wanted to make money on Wall Street. So, your thoughts on, well, we have had some people who said that, "World War II was the most unique generation of American industry. They fought a war. They won a war, they beat Hitler."
TC (36:30):
Yeah.
SM (36:30):
So, it is just your thought.
TC (36:30):
I think it is wonderful. But we won other wars before. Up until the Vietnam War, and the Vietnam War was the climax of something that began during Eisenhower's years. Peggy and I are old enough to remember something you do not remember. It was the U-2 episode. You have no idea what the U-2 episode told us. President of the United States said, "We do not spy. America does not spy." Can you imagine that? Can you imagine a president standing up and saying, "We do not spy. The Russians spy. We do not have spies." And guess what? We believed him. All of America believed Eisenhower when he said that. And the thing is that they dragged out Powers. We will always remember him. And they stood him up in front of the camera, and they said, "What were you doing?" "I was flying a spy plane." Think of the naïvete that we had, that we, as Americans, did not spy. I remember being in school in U-2, when they said, "Do you know what? People in places like Russia, when they read the newspaper, they cannot be sure that what they're reading is true. Aren't you glad that you live in a country where, when you pick up the newspaper, everything you read is true?" You refuse to believe that. But that was not just Peggy and me, that was all of America. We were the nation that did not lie. We were the nation that did not spy. We were the nation that did not commit sins. "America, America, God shed His grace on thee." We were the new Israel. We were the City on the Hill. We were the best hope for democracy. We were the people who were the free. America was the kingdom of God realized in history, and we believed it. We really believed it. And starting with Eisenhower, the disillusionment began to set in. And then beyond that, the cracks began to occur. "Was Jefferson really the wonderful man we thought he was, or did he have slaves? And was Washington really all that good? And what about Lincoln? Well, he abolished slavery. Did not you really believe in the inferiority of Black people?" And suddenly, Eldridge Cleaver wrote a book, Soul on Ice, that was crucial, in which he said, "The heroes of America are falling. We do not believe in them anymore." These heroes played the roles role of saints. They were the embodiment of all that was good, and true, and wonderful. Suddenly they were not that wonderful. Suddenly American was a spying nation, just like the Russians. And suddenly we realized that our newspapers lied to us. We could not believe what we read. And the disillusionment began to set in. And Vietnam was the clash between one generation that was the end of an era, the end of the age of innocence. I am not the first to coin that phrase. The end of the age of innocence. And the (19)60s and the Boomers were the beginning of the age of cynicism. And that was the clash between the two. This generation that came along called the Boomers just did not believe. Think of the songs. (singing) Do you know that song?
SM (40:24):
Mm-mm.
TC (40:29):
See, I do not think you can understand this here unless you understand music. I think Pete Seeger, Tom Paxton, Joan Baez defined the age, the transition came with The Beatles, who made social revolution into a private thing. "You got to get your own head together." That was their message. "Forget the world, get your own head together." But here were the songs of the year. (singing) See the cynicism right at the end? (singing) The cynicism right at the end. (singing) And this song by Tom Paxton. (singing) I remember this song.
SM (41:32):
That is my [inaudible].
TC (41:32):
You remember that song?
SM (41:35):
Yes.
TC (41:36):
"But you must teach me, Sergeant, for I have never killed before." Ooh. "Tell me about the hand grenade. Does it tear a man to pieces with its ... " And people were singing those songs. Bob Dylan singing, "The times- "
SM (41:54):
They are a-changin'
TC (41:54):
" ... they are a-changin'." Your sons and your daughters are beyond your control. There is a new value system out there, a new way of looking at things. We do not believe in you anymore. We do not believe in what you are teaching us. We do not believe in your sense of American history. We are not even sure we believe in American anymore.
SM (42:12):
I know Country Joe and the Fish was another group that sang, and in fact, country, Joe and the Fish did an album recently on Vietnam.
TC (42:20):
Yeah, it was an incredible era in which the music called everything into question. "Little boxes on the hillside, little boxes made of ticky tack." You remember those?
SM (42:37):
Mm-hmm.
TC (42:37):
The suburban dream that we all had. World War II, we were all going to buy a house in the suburbs. And suddenly, as Pete Seeger says, "What is this suburban community? Little houses on the hilltop, and people made of ticky tack and they all drink their martinis dry."
SM (42:54):
You made a very good observation, because most Boomers, and I being one, and others feel that the beginning of the change in the attitude of Boomers was assassination of John Kennedy. A Camelot, the idealism, "Ask for not what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your country." And you make a very good analysis here by saying, "A lot of the things in terms of cynicism started with Eisenhower."
TC (43:16):
Yeah.
SM (43:17):
The lies. And again, of course the free speech movement really began on the Berkeley campus in 1963. And they saw authority, just, they were not allowed to do something on a college campus. It spread nationwide, and young people got involved, freedom summer of (19)64 and so forth. But your thoughts, you have already talked about Eisenhower, but if you were to pick one major event that you think had the greatest impact on Boomer lives in their youth, what is that event?
TC (43:46):
Martin Luther King's death, maybe, if they were old enough to remember that, had America going up on flames. It had to be a defining moment.
SM (43:58):
We will finish up. It is 7:30.
TC (44:00):
Yeah.
SM (44:00):
I got a lot of questions, but I am at fault because you got our communication [inaudible 00:].
TC (44:04):
But I think that would be a key thing for me, was the death of Martin Luther King. And the reaction to that was not a reaction of, "Let us go on from here and carry out his ideals." The reaction to that was total frustration, the total polarization of the Black and white communities. Up until that time, we were singing Black and White (Together). You remember that song?
S
M (44:33):
Mm-hmm.
TC (44:35):
(singing)
Peggy (44:35):
[inaudible] we shall overcome.
TC (44:36):
We shall overcome, yeah. Suddenly, it was Black separatism, power now, and the Black people basically moved on the scene. This was the era when Muhammad Ali suddenly emerges on the scene and says, "I am not going to fight this war in Vietnam. So I got nothing against those people." You know?
SM (44:58):
Mm-hmm.
TC (45:00):
"And why should I fight to protect this America, this white America, that has trashed me and trashed my people? And we listened to him because there was a sincerity about him that could not be ignored. All of America saw a sincerity. Even those that despised him, despised him because of his sincerity. But I think that the death of Martin Luther King was the watershed for most young people, in which they had the sense that there would not be a peaceful, democratic solution to the agonies that were tearing this country apart.
SM (45:44):
This leads me into a question dealing with the issue of trust. Do you think we will ever be able to trust again? Now, you made reference to Eisenhower, and certainly, we know what happened with Watergate, and we saw what McNamara did, and the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, President Johnson was not really honest with the American public. So, we had a succession of leaders not being, and just basically-
TC (46:07):
Bipartisan.
SM (46:09):
... crooks. And as young people, as growing up, they see this. And certainly, maybe the first lies we are seeing with Eisenhower lying to the public. Just your overall thoughts about trust, and then, most importantly, when we look at today's young people, the people that you are going to be talking to tonight in this audience, I do not think they trust. And so, where have the Boomer parents been, raising their kids?
TC (46:31):
My argument would be that cynicism had its raise in [inaudible] the (19)60s, but cynicism has now taken on a life of its own. Cynicism is cool. It was a cheap excuse for ignorance. Namely, you have students in a campus who want to look sophisticated. They have not read anything. They do not know anything. But if they walk around with an air of cynicism, it will be a cheap duplication of intelligence. "But I do not believe in politics." "Why," should be the question. "Because they are all a bunch of liars." "Oh? What is the empirical evidence that you have rounded up for that?" They have no reason for their cynicism? It is cynicism without a hook to hang it on. And it's part of the cultural milieu. It is part of what goes with being cool. And if you want to be cool on Westchester's campus, you better act cynical. And if you cannot explain the faces of your cynicism, that is all right. You can put people off simply by using obscenities like, "It's all a lot of bullshit." That is their word, bullshit. Everything's bullshit. And they sound like they have been there, and back, and they know it all. They have read it. They have experienced life. They know what life is all about. The truth is they do not know anything. It has become part of a garb that displays itself as intelligence when in fact it is just a cool way to be. And when cynicism is admired, the cynic should always be cynical, with tears in his eyes, not with the sneer on his lips. The cynic says, "I cannot believe in America anymore." And the tears are running down his cheeks because he cannot believe anymore. But to do it with an arrogant sneer, that, of course, is unbefitting any human being.
SM (49:07):
I am going to close over this question. The final question was going to be actually asking you a lot of names, here, and just getting your response, but I think the basic thrust of what I am after is in the meat of the interview in the beginning. I want to get into your thoughts on the concept of empowerment. Going back again to when Boomers were young, there was a feeling, a sense that, "We can be the change agents for the betterment of society, that we could possibly be the ones to end the war, that we could be the ones to bring Black people and white people together," you know, "because we see the injustices in- "
TC (49:38):
Mm-hmm.
SM (49:38):
" ...society, the injustices against women, injustices against gay and lesbians," all that whole period. Just your thoughts on this concept of empowerment that supposedly so many Boomers had as when they were young, and what has happened with a concept of empowerment today as they have gone into adulthood.
TC (50:01):
Well, I think that the best example of that may be with Bill Bradley, who still believes in the ideals of the (19)60s. I think he is really the best example of the answer to your question. He thought if he went to Washington and became a senator, and maybe even president, he could change things from the top down. He has not given up the idea of empowering people. "But you do not empower people," he is concluded, and I have talked to about this, "by seizing control of the government and doing what is right from the top down. Empowerment begins from the bottom up." And so, he has now gone on to identify with the communitarian movement. "And what we need to do is we need to people together on the grassroots level. We need town meetings. We need to gather people together in a given neighborhood, and have them exchange ideas, and determine what is best for their neighborhood. We need to stop looking to Washington for the answers and start looking to ourselves for the answers." And there is the initiation, I would say, of a whole new politic in America, that maybe is going to be led by the Boomers, who said, "We took a shortcut. We really made a mistake. We said, 'The way for you to have power is to elect me, and I will make the decisions.' No, the way to make power is for me to step out of office." That is why I say Bill Bradley, as a model, is me to say, "The answer is not you elect me. See, you have power, now. No, you do not have power. If you elected me, I have power. And all you have done is given me power." I love Bradley's comment, "People do not live in a democracy just because they are able to elect their kings. If the person up top functions like a king, the fact that he got the crown through tradition and inheritance or that he was elected king makes no difference if he functions like a king." And so, you have a Bill Bradley that said, "I thought that the way for people to be empowered is for them to elect me. I now see that the way for the people to get power is for me to give up my office, and go back, and organize grassroots meetings to get people to seize control of their destinies. And if they cannot do it on a national and international level, at least they can do it on the community level." That is why organizations like Habitat for Humanity are thriving, because the X generation has picked up that theme. "We, too, want to change the world, but we're going to change it from the bottom up, not from the top down. We are not going to go to Washington and ask them to put in a new government housing program. We are going to build a house up the street and we're going to do it ourselves. And when it is done, we are going to look at it and say, 'See, we did not change the world, but there's one family now that has a house.'" And Habitat for Humanity now is picking up momentum. And I was on the executive committee of Habitat for Humanity in its earliest stages of development. And we thought it was great when we completed 1,000 houses a year. Now we're completing 50,000 houses a year across the country. It is picking up momentum all the time. And there is a bottom up change. And so when you go to Washington and hear the State of the Union address, there is Newt Gingrich wearing a Habitat for Humanity button on his lapel, and there's Bill Clinton wearing his Habitat for Humanity button on the lapel. Both of them are committed to Habitat for-
SM (54:09):
Democrat-
TC (54:09):
...Humanity.
SM (54:09):
... nd Republican alike.
TC (54:10):
Yeah. So whatever is going on up here, there is a sense that real power and real change is going to take place from the bottom up and not from the top down. And I think that is the great discovery of the X generation as opposed to the Boomers.
SM (54:24):
Well, thank you very much.
TC (54:25):
Okay.
SM (54:25):
I will let you get some-
(End of Interview)
Interview with: Tony Campolo
Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan
Transcriber: REV
Date of interview: 15 July 2007
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Start of Interview)
SM (00:01):
Dr. Campolo, the first question I would like to ask is in recent days, and in fact in recent years, there has been a lot of criticism of the Boomer generation in terms of blaming a lot of the problems of today's society on Boomers. Oftentimes we might hear a question, Newt Gingrich on the floor of Congress making generalizations about Boomers. George Will might write an article on the entire generation, blaming this group, that grew up in that era, for the problems of the breakup of the American family, including the divorce rate, the increase of drugs, the lack of respect for authority, and things like that. I would love to hear your thoughts on the Boomer generation and whether that criticism is a fair judgment of this 65 plus million.
TC (00:53):
I feel that the Boomer generation did rebel against authority. I think that it was a rebellion that perhaps was justified in some respects and in other respects it was not. The (19)60s, particularly, were a period where America was struggling to figure out what is right and what is wrong. [inaudible] Older people had absolute values of right and wrong when it came to personal behavior, and they were absolutistic about sexual activity, about what was right and what was wrong. They had absolute values about personal honesty. They had absolute values about respect, all those things that you mentioned. However, they abandoned any concept of absolute values and grappled with what, at the time, would have to be called situational ethics when it came to societal affairs. Case in point, civil rights, they would say, "Well, of course it is wrong to be discriminating against African American people." They would have said Black people, but it is not as simple as all of that. You got to consider the situation. We did not get into this mess overnight. We are not going to get out-out of this mess overnight. To expect immediate change, to expect that we are going to do everything right immediately on this issue is expecting far too much. We have to in fact be gradualists, very, very much into the situational ethic value system. The same thing can be said about the board in Vietnam. No one ever asked the question as to whether it was right or wrong. I do not think you could ask the older generation how we ever got into that war or what it was all about. There was a sense, however, that whether it's right or wrong, we need to stand behind our president. We have to stand behind our brave soldiers. Even if they are wrong, we must support them. And thus, the question was never, "Was the Vietnam War right, or was the Vietnam War wrong?" The question was always, "Are we going to stand behind the president and are we going to stand behind our soldiers, or are we going to be disloyal?" So, the issue was never phrased in terms of morality. It was phrased in terms of loyalty. This set up a conflict in which each generation accused the other of being immoral. The older generation said to the Boomers, "Look at you. You are smoking marijuana. You are sleeping around. You have rejected the sexual morays and values of our generation. You are libertine. You are immoral." The younger generation was saying to the older generation, "Look at you. You have maintained racial segregation. You oppress women. You propagate a war that is immoral without ever asking any questions about it." So that each generation was accusing the other of being immoral and there was a lack of respect across the line because neither group saw either the good or the evil, who never saw the good in those that stood against them, nor the evil in their own position. I do not think the older generation really understood the evil of maintaining a political economic system that fostered injustice, nor did the kids really understand the evil of deviating from moral patterns that their parents had established. There was a sense in which the kids saw the moral bankruptcy of the older generation on societal issues and hence felt that those people in the older generation had no moral authority with which to speak to them. To a large degree, I think that is right. I think that in fact, we lost our moral authority in their eyes because of our very refusal to deal with the social issues of our time in moral categories. We were very pragmatic, we were very realistic. We were very situational ethics oriented, and our kids lost respect for us, and that was the thing that gave them, I think, a sense that they had the right to create their own morality.
SM (06:33):
Very good. I got one follow-up. It is working. As a follow-up to this, if you were to look in 1997 at the Boomer generation, and Boomers are just hitting the age of 50, Bill Clinton is a forerunner of this. We also realize on some of the interviews that I have been doing that it is hard to define a generation, because people of 55 that I know in this process feel like they are closer to the Boomers than those that the younger Boomers might be, and Boomers being those born between 1946 and (19)64. If you are to look at the overall impact right now that the Boomers have had on America, could you give me again just a brief listing of the positive qualities of the Boomers, maybe some adjectives, and some negative qualities of Boomers, adjectives, knowing that Boomers are still right in their prime now and they still have many more years to live and produce?
TC (07:25):
I think the positive side was that they incarnated the best traits of liberalism. They were in favor of ending racism, sexism. They never really dealt with the gay issue in any significant way, although their openness to gay people was the beginning of the movement for gay and lesbian rights. They had a belief [inaudible] the government could be an instrument through which a just society could be created. They believed in the positive potentialities of political power. I do not think anybody believes in that anymore. I do not think we really see political power as something with positive potentialities. I think we almost see political power these days as a necessary evil that needs to be restrained and constrained. But in that era, they really believed that government could do things. They were the people who gave birth to the environmentalist movement. It's no surprise to me that a Gore and a Clinton should be such strong environmentalists, and an older man like Bob Dole does not quite get it. Decent to the core, but never really could grasp what all the fuss was on the environmental issue. I think that this generation, the Boomers also saw the evils that were inherent in corporate capitalism, and were suspicious of big business, and really raised questions as to whether or not we could have it just society unless big business was in some way constrained. Could we clean up the environment without restraining big business? I think of how they would have reacted if the information about the cigarette industry would have surfaced in the (19)60s rather than the (19)90s. There would have been an uproar on campuses. There would have been a furor that, beneath the surface, this is evil at its worst level. Corporate executives sitting around the table having concrete evidence that they have a product that is going to kill 450,000 Americans in any given year, and for the sake of profit repressing, suppressing that information. To me, the (19)60s, the Boomer generation, when they were in their collegiate years would have march, screamed, yelled, and would have, in fact, used that as a cause celebrity for bringing down the establishment. This is what American capitalism is about. I can just hear them. So, I think that that was their good side, that they saw the evils of corporate capitalism. They believed in government, they were idolists, and they really did believe that a better world was a social possibility. They believed they really could create a better world.
SM (11:28):
Negatives?
TC (11:31):
First of all, their values had no religious grounding. And I do not say that just because I am a religious person myself, but there was nothing beyond their own sense of right and wrong that legitimated their cause. They did not hear it. They did not hear a distant drummer. And so, when they marched out of step with others, they did so out of an existential decision, rather than out of a sense of oughtness from God. For instance, when I meet my friends from that generation, I recognize that many of them have given up and their response was, "You cannot change the system." And they gave up because their confidence was in themselves. And when they failed, there was no power to lean on beyond themselves. Religious people, on the other hand, I am talking about friends of mine like Jim Wallis.
SM (12:50):
He wrote a book.
TC (12:50):
Yeah.
SM (12:51):
On [inaudible], yeah.
TC (12:52):
The Soul of Politics
SM (12:52):
W-A-L-L-I-S. It is-
TC (12:55):
Yeah. But Jim is a guy who was active during the (19)60s. He is still active today. I would fall into the same category. It is an interesting thing, about a year and a half, two years ago, rather, it is a year and a half ago now, a group of us went down and protested the change in the welfare bill and were arrested in the capitol building. But the thing that was so interesting was that we were all older people. It was not the younger people that were there. There were elderly women given their... You went to court, as we had to explain why we did this, what happened? Why were not the young people there of this generation, number one? Number two is why we are the only people there to get arrested? Religious people, every one of us spoke out of a religious value system, so much so that the judge that hurt our case could say, "Instead of putting you in jail, I am going to ask you each to write an essay on why your religious convictions led you to stand against the government at this particular point." The fact that only the religious people are left, and the reason is that we recognize that the struggle is not a 20th century struggle, but the struggle is as old as the human race. And the calling to struggle is a calling from a God who transcends time and space. And hence we keep on struggling because we sense this higher calling and if we lose a battle and we lose more battles than we win, we lose battles in a cause that ultimately triumphs, which is what religion is all about. We do not have to see victory. I think the Boomer generation had to see victory. Victory would validate their efforts. And when they did not see victory, they did not have validation for their causes and hence gave up. And now they are selling stocks on Wall Street and have become part of that very establishment that they were so hard against. I think that the younger generation, that the Boomer generation to a large degree, was spoiled in the sense of being spoiled kids. In a sense, maybe more spoiled than this contemporary generation, because they were the last generation that knew that if they got a college education, there was a lot of money to be made after graduation. They never doubted that they were employable. They never doubted that the establishment would take them in on their own terms. This generation knows if they want to get a job, they would better play the ball game as the establishment prescribes it. I think another sense, I remember when the Cambodian invasion took place, there was a meeting at the Palestra at the University of Penn, and one student after another stood up and spoke against Nixon, the government, and all of that stuff, and a young man who is very religious but very radical stood, and he said, "How many of you believe in God?" Which seemed strange in the midst of this anti-war furor, and very few hands went up. He said, "We are the only ones who have a right to protest this war. And the reason is simple. If there is no God, then the highest law, according to the social contract theory, is the will of the people. Well, the people have spoken, they voted in Richard Milhous Nixon for a second turn. The American people want to pursue this war. We are a minority who oppose it. In a society like ours, we either have to win the election, which we did not, or go along with what the majority has prescribed. On the other hand, if you are religious, you never have to go along with the majority, because you are obligated not to the social contract, but to a biblical revelation." Strong point. And so, they were not grounded in anything beyond themselves. They were spoiled. They looked for, they had to succeed. They marched down to Washington like Joshua's army, marched around the city, blew their horns, and when the walls did not come tumbling down, they went home like spoiled little kids saying, "Darn it, they did not listen to us." So that is the negative side.
SM (18:03):
It is interesting and just a commentary for you in the next question, why is it? You know, I am of that generation, and I know that night when Nixon gave that-
TC (18:10):
Yeah.
SM (18:11):
...speech on Cambodia because it was April 30th, 1970.
TC (18:12):
That is right.
SM (18:14):
And I broke my arm that night. It was my senior year at SUNY Binghamton, and it was two, well, weeks away from graduation. And I was in the operating room at the point that that invasion was taking place. And our campus was just being torn apart before graduation. And I will never forget being in the hospital a couple days later, the doctor, I was in a terrible accident, who saved my arm, and I had the magazine that my parents had brought in of the girls sitting over the Jeff Miller, and the doctor saying, "I wish they would kill all those damn students." And this is the doctor that saved my arm. And it was at that juncture that I knew I had to get in higher ed because of the lack of communication.
TC (18:54):
But I think that Cambodian invasion showed both the best and the worst of us. We stood against injustice and the obscenity of bombing people who wanted nothing more than the right of self-determination. It also revealed the phoniness of us. I was at Penn teaching on the faculty there at the time. They called off final exams. They probably did at your school as well.
SM (19:20):
They did.
TC (19:21):
And the purpose of calling off final exams was that students could participate, so that they could talk over the issues, so that they could develop a strategy for changing America. That was the lofty reason for calling off the exams. If you remember, the day they called off the exams, everybody got in their cars and drove home.
SM (19:42):
I was in the operating room.
TC (19:43):
Yeah. Well, that is what happened.
SM (19:44):
Yeah.
TC (19:44):
That is what happened. The discussion ended at that point, and they shouted and said, "How can you have final exams when we must deal with these issues? How can you have final exams at this time of crisis?" And so, the administration's capitulated and said, "You are right. You are right. We must, in fact, call off exams so that the students can come together and talk, and discuss, and come up with a strategy." They called off exams and the next day everybody was gone, which said beneath this veneer of concern was really not as deep a commitment to social justice as appeared on the surface.
SM (20:20):
See, some of the individuals that interviewed, just your thought on this that when the draft, because one of the big things was to end the draft, and again, Boomers, when they felt that that they had one on that issue, that there were no other issues. And even though knowing that, at this particular juncture in time, in 1970, the evolution of the women's movement, the gay and lesbian movement, the Native American movement, well, Latino Chicano movement, they were all around that timeframe.
TC (20:49):
There is no question that it diffused a lot of the concerns, but I have to say that the anti-war movement predated the initiation of the draft. The anti-war movement, if you trace it out historically, basically before they were ever drafting for Vietnam in any way, there were strong protests emerging on campus. The teach-ins started very, very early on, I would say late (19)50s, early (19)60s, the teach-ins were already taking place. So, when the draft was instituted, that stimulated concern, because all of a sudden, "This is going to involve us." But even then, in the early stages of the draft, there was no real problem for students, because students were exempt, as you may recall.
SM (21:45):
Students.
TC (21:46):
And yet, even though students were exempt, the protest movements against the war were still in pretty high gear. When, of course, the lottery was introduced, then it took on higher proportions. There is no question that the lottery, and which brought in the drafting of young people who were in college threw fuel under the fire, but it was pretty intense opposition to the war long before it. As a matter of fact, one of the reasons for the lottery, intriguingly enough, if you go back and trace it, was that the students themselves were calling for it. They were arguing that the war was incredibly racist because the white students were away at the universities and exempt, leaving the inner-city Blacks as the only people left to draft. And so, there was a strong protest theme that the draft has to end because it is a genocide. Instead of them ending the draft, Nixon said, "You are right, it is racist. Therefore, we will start drafting college students, too." It was not exactly the result of the protest that they-
SM (23:05):
Todd-
TC (23:05):
...imagined.
SM (23:05):
...Gitlin did not say that.
TC (23:06):
What is that?
SM (23:07):
Todd Gitlin did not say that when I interviewed him. He would not, probably. He got a-
TC (23:14):
What would he say?
SM (23:14):
You know Todd Gitlin?
TC (23:14):
Yeah.
SM (23:15):
Because he still is a firm believer that any of those individuals that were in the movement on the left were right on everything.
TC (23:25):
Well, they may have-
SM (23:28):
And he has not changed at all. But you-
TC (23:30):
That is interesting.
SM (23:31):
...raised a good point because, you see, what you are bringing up something that someone else has not said, and that is great about this project, is that, you know, we are getting different perceptions on-
TC (23:40):
Hmm.
SM (23:40):
...different questions. If you were to look at the issue of healing, now, one of the concerns that I have seen at the Vietnam Memorial, I have gone down there the last five, six years at the Memorial itself, and tried to get a grasp on whether there has been healing within the Vietnam veterans, and maybe even the people who come to the wall who are not veterans. I would like your thoughts on the Vietnam Memorial that was put together in that was opened in 1982, your thoughts on its impact on America, whether the job that it has done with respect to healing within the Vietnam veterans themselves and in the Boomer generation.
TC (24:19):
Well, on a psychological level, I am sure that the wall in Washington has had-
SM (24:28):
Would you like some water?
TC (24:29):
No, thanks.
SM (24:29):
No?
TC (24:30):
... has had very positive therapeutic effects. To see these veterans that are weeping at the wall, leaving their medals there, in many instances, reaching out and touching the names of their comrades, all of this has had tremendous therapeutic value on a psychological level. I am sure there are social consequences for that. But I would dare say there is no healing on a societal level about Vietnam, that those who are convinced it was right are more convinced than ever. And those that are convinced it was wrong are more convinced than ever. A good example of this is the whole attitude system towards Bill Clinton, who opposed the war on moral grounds. Once again, the question is not whether was he right? Was he wrong? The question was he was not a loyal American. That is what the American Legion says about him. The question is not morality, the question is loyalty. And he was not "a loyal American." And they are still couching it in those terms. The fact that the President of the United States opposed the war on moral grounds, he was not draftable anyway, he was at Oxford. He was a student. He did not avoid the draft. People seem to forget that he did not do anything different than any other college student in America did. But in the midst of all of that, he said, "I am not going, but because I am not going to be drafted." But, on the other hand, and this is the big issue, "This war is wrong." And I find that all across America, the conservative political establishment still says, "We do not care whether it was right or wrong." We just know that you were over there at Oxford and you criticized the US government." That is where we are. And I do not know that there is going to be any social healing on this issue. And there can be no healing for the same reason why, on the individual level, there can be no healing until there is confession. If you're psychologically messed up because of something that happened 20 years ago, you got to get that out on the table. You got to talk about it. If you did something wrong, you got to repent of it. You got to set things right. You cannot simply repress the past. You have repressed Vietnam. I could go out there tonight and ask a very simple question of all your students. "Can anybody tell us what the Geneva Accord of (19)54 said and how that became the basis for war in Vietnam?" And there will not be one out there that will know, not a one. And these are educated people. We have done what the Japanese have done, we have written out of history those things that we would as soon forget. And so, you look at a Japanese textbook for a high school student, and you are amazed. They were the victims of America. They do not acknowledge the fact that they bombed Pearl Harbor. They do not acknowledge the fact that they invaded. It is all forgotten. And history is rewritten in such a way that they repress these things. And only recently, there are those in Japan who are saying, if we are ever going to heal the wounds of World War II, we have got to face up to our responsibility as a nation. Well, what we are saying, it is about time that Japanese do. My response is it is about time that America does, that we, in fact, still suffer from a guilty conscience because down, deep inside of people, there is an awareness that something went on there that was terribly wrong. We dropped more bombs on this little country than was dropped on all the rest of the world during all of World War II. We used chemical warfare, Agent Orange. We devastated the land. For what? What was the point? And if you were to go out there and say, "Did you know that the whole war was about trying to keep a free election from taking place?" Which is what it was about. The Accord of (19)54 guaranteed a free election in (19)58, and the people in Washington at that time knew that there was a free election in Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh would have been elected overwhelmingly. And so, we went to war to save people from voting, because if they voted, democracy would end. The incongruity of that. And if you went out there and- [inaudible]
SM (29:53):
Out there and asked the students.
TC (29:54):
They would not know that. And yet, that is history. So, we really have to say that, in that sense, these things, there will not be any healing. The healing will not take place because America is not ready to face up to what it is done. And I think it cannot face up to what it's done for a very important reason. A generation or two will have to pass away before we can face up to it. Senator Kerry gave a speech before the US Senate hearings on Vietnam when he was-
SM (30:38):
Senator from Nebraska?
TC (30:39):
No, the senator from-
SM (30:40):
Massachusetts.
TC (30:40):
...Massachusetts.
SM (30:40):
Okay.
TC (30:41):
...when he was the leader of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and he was still in his uniform, he was still a soldier. I think he never has reached the pinnacle of greatness in that speech which will go down in history as one of the great speeches of history, as he said to the US Senate committee hearing, "How do you tell the last- "
Peggy (31:06):
"How do you ask a man to be the last- "
TC (31:06):
"How you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam?" That is a good question. "How do you say to the families of 50,000 men who lost their lives there, 'It was a waste.' How do you tell them that? How do you tell them that they gave their lives, not only for nothing?" Which I think they are beginning to realize now. "Hey, our sons died, and what happened? Nothing." "But worse than that, your sons went over and died in order to perpetuate injustice. How do you tell American? How do you tell hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people who gave their finest and their best to this country they believed in, that not only was it in vain, it was worse than that, that their sons became the instrument of death for three million innocent people? How do you tell them that? That is the truth and how can there be healing when nobody faces the truth?"
SM (32:23):
You look at the Vietnam War, why did it end? How important were students on college campuses? How important was Middle America witnessing the body bags coming home on national television? Jack Smith said the reason why the war ended was because middle America finally saw what was happening. That was his thought. I interviewed him. But I have had different thoughts.
TC (32:46):
I do not know why it ended. I think that the American people, of course, demanded that it end, that, at a particular point, even Richard Milhous Nixon was trying to figure out how to end the war and he was the one that ultimately did. But let me just say that when I look at the end of the war, it never really ended. It just petered out. They closed in on the embassy, and we got on our helicopters, and we flew away, and there were nothing left. Nobody wants to face this. The war ended for one primary reason. We lost it.
SM (33:31):
[inaudible] that.
TC (33:32):
You do not ask the German people. "Why do you think World War II ended?" The answer is, "The Russians entered Berlin and the Yankees met them on the other side. It was over because we were destroyed." Please understand that the last image that I have of the war in Vietnam is a helicopter taking off and people hanging onto it, trying to get out, the Marines making their last escape. It was not like Hong Kong, where the British pulled down the flag, saluted, turned the country over. We left in the context of sheer chaos, and defeat, and confusion. The very fact that you asked the question is evidence to me why there will not be any healing. We have not faced the fact that not only were we involved in something that was totally immoral, but we are refusing to face the fact that we lost it. We are still kidding ourselves to think that we had a ceremony in which we decided to walk away. There was nothing left of us. They wiped out everything. They closed in, it was over.
SM (34:47):
Yeah. It is-
TC (34:48):
Then, when you ask, "Why do you think the war ended?" Answer, "We lost."
SM (34:54):
You are the first person to say that in 41 interviews.
TC (34:56):
Stop to think about it. Did not make any difference whether you were for the war or against the war. Ford was the President when it finally all fell apart. And when it happened, he introduced into Congress a bill to make another effort. And even the right-wingers voted him down. "We are out of there. It is over. It is done. It is kerplunk." What is it about this country, that we cannot face the fact that we sin and that we lose? Must we always be righteous and must we always win?
SM (35:40):
I want to get back to something. When I was young and a lot of people late (19)60s and early (19)70s, the Boomers who protested against the war, those got involved in many of the movements, used to always talk amongst ourselves, that, "We are the most unique generation of American history. The most unique generation of American history." As a person, I still feel we were personally, that is just-
TC (36:00):
Because you were.
SM (36:00):
...my feeling. But your thoughts on that kind of an attitude, that many of that generation of our generation felt? And then you look at as they have gotten older, and you have already made some commentary about the idealism of their youth waned because they wanted to make money on Wall Street. So, your thoughts on, well, we have had some people who said that, "World War II was the most unique generation of American industry. They fought a war. They won a war, they beat Hitler."
TC (36:30):
Yeah.
SM (36:30):
So, it is just your thought.
TC (36:30):
I think it is wonderful. But we won other wars before. Up until the Vietnam War, and the Vietnam War was the climax of something that began during Eisenhower's years. Peggy and I are old enough to remember something you do not remember. It was the U-2 episode. You have no idea what the U-2 episode told us. President of the United States said, "We do not spy. America does not spy." Can you imagine that? Can you imagine a president standing up and saying, "We do not spy. The Russians spy. We do not have spies." And guess what? We believed him. All of America believed Eisenhower when he said that. And the thing is that they dragged out Powers. We will always remember him. And they stood him up in front of the camera, and they said, "What were you doing?" "I was flying a spy plane." Think of the naïvete that we had, that we, as Americans, did not spy. I remember being in school in U-2, when they said, "Do you know what? People in places like Russia, when they read the newspaper, they cannot be sure that what they're reading is true. Aren't you glad that you live in a country where, when you pick up the newspaper, everything you read is true?" You refuse to believe that. But that was not just Peggy and me, that was all of America. We were the nation that did not lie. We were the nation that did not spy. We were the nation that did not commit sins. "America, America, God shed His grace on thee." We were the new Israel. We were the City on the Hill. We were the best hope for democracy. We were the people who were the free. America was the kingdom of God realized in history, and we believed it. We really believed it. And starting with Eisenhower, the disillusionment began to set in. And then beyond that, the cracks began to occur. "Was Jefferson really the wonderful man we thought he was, or did he have slaves? And was Washington really all that good? And what about Lincoln? Well, he abolished slavery. Did not you really believe in the inferiority of Black people?" And suddenly, Eldridge Cleaver wrote a book, Soul on Ice, that was crucial, in which he said, "The heroes of America are falling. We do not believe in them anymore." These heroes played the roles role of saints. They were the embodiment of all that was good, and true, and wonderful. Suddenly they were not that wonderful. Suddenly American was a spying nation, just like the Russians. And suddenly we realized that our newspapers lied to us. We could not believe what we read. And the disillusionment began to set in. And Vietnam was the clash between one generation that was the end of an era, the end of the age of innocence. I am not the first to coin that phrase. The end of the age of innocence. And the (19)60s and the Boomers were the beginning of the age of cynicism. And that was the clash between the two. This generation that came along called the Boomers just did not believe. Think of the songs. (singing) Do you know that song?
SM (40:24):
Mm-mm.
TC (40:29):
See, I do not think you can understand this here unless you understand music. I think Pete Seeger, Tom Paxton, Joan Baez defined the age, the transition came with The Beatles, who made social revolution into a private thing. "You got to get your own head together." That was their message. "Forget the world, get your own head together." But here were the songs of the year. (singing) See the cynicism right at the end? (singing) The cynicism right at the end. (singing) And this song by Tom Paxton. (singing) I remember this song.
SM (41:32):
That is my [inaudible].
TC (41:32):
You remember that song?
SM (41:35):
Yes.
TC (41:36):
"But you must teach me, Sergeant, for I have never killed before." Ooh. "Tell me about the hand grenade. Does it tear a man to pieces with its ... " And people were singing those songs. Bob Dylan singing, "The times- "
SM (41:54):
They are a-changin'
TC (41:54):
" ... they are a-changin'." Your sons and your daughters are beyond your control. There is a new value system out there, a new way of looking at things. We do not believe in you anymore. We do not believe in what you are teaching us. We do not believe in your sense of American history. We are not even sure we believe in American anymore.
SM (42:12):
I know Country Joe and the Fish was another group that sang, and in fact, country, Joe and the Fish did an album recently on Vietnam.
TC (42:20):
Yeah, it was an incredible era in which the music called everything into question. "Little boxes on the hillside, little boxes made of ticky tack." You remember those?
SM (42:37):
Mm-hmm.
TC (42:37):
The suburban dream that we all had. World War II, we were all going to buy a house in the suburbs. And suddenly, as Pete Seeger says, "What is this suburban community? Little houses on the hilltop, and people made of ticky tack and they all drink their martinis dry."
SM (42:54):
You made a very good observation, because most Boomers, and I being one, and others feel that the beginning of the change in the attitude of Boomers was assassination of John Kennedy. A Camelot, the idealism, "Ask for not what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your country." And you make a very good analysis here by saying, "A lot of the things in terms of cynicism started with Eisenhower."
TC (43:16):
Yeah.
SM (43:17):
The lies. And again, of course the free speech movement really began on the Berkeley campus in 1963. And they saw authority, just, they were not allowed to do something on a college campus. It spread nationwide, and young people got involved, freedom summer of (19)64 and so forth. But your thoughts, you have already talked about Eisenhower, but if you were to pick one major event that you think had the greatest impact on Boomer lives in their youth, what is that event?
TC (43:46):
Martin Luther King's death, maybe, if they were old enough to remember that, had America going up on flames. It had to be a defining moment.
SM (43:58):
We will finish up. It is 7:30.
TC (44:00):
Yeah.
SM (44:00):
I got a lot of questions, but I am at fault because you got our communication [inaudible 00:].
TC (44:04):
But I think that would be a key thing for me, was the death of Martin Luther King. And the reaction to that was not a reaction of, "Let us go on from here and carry out his ideals." The reaction to that was total frustration, the total polarization of the Black and white communities. Up until that time, we were singing Black and White (Together). You remember that song?
S
M (44:33):
Mm-hmm.
TC (44:35):
(singing)
Peggy (44:35):
[inaudible] we shall overcome.
TC (44:36):
We shall overcome, yeah. Suddenly, it was Black separatism, power now, and the Black people basically moved on the scene. This was the era when Muhammad Ali suddenly emerges on the scene and says, "I am not going to fight this war in Vietnam. So I got nothing against those people." You know?
SM (44:58):
Mm-hmm.
TC (45:00):
"And why should I fight to protect this America, this white America, that has trashed me and trashed my people? And we listened to him because there was a sincerity about him that could not be ignored. All of America saw a sincerity. Even those that despised him, despised him because of his sincerity. But I think that the death of Martin Luther King was the watershed for most young people, in which they had the sense that there would not be a peaceful, democratic solution to the agonies that were tearing this country apart.
SM (45:44):
This leads me into a question dealing with the issue of trust. Do you think we will ever be able to trust again? Now, you made reference to Eisenhower, and certainly, we know what happened with Watergate, and we saw what McNamara did, and the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, President Johnson was not really honest with the American public. So, we had a succession of leaders not being, and just basically-
TC (46:07):
Bipartisan.
SM (46:09):
... crooks. And as young people, as growing up, they see this. And certainly, maybe the first lies we are seeing with Eisenhower lying to the public. Just your overall thoughts about trust, and then, most importantly, when we look at today's young people, the people that you are going to be talking to tonight in this audience, I do not think they trust. And so, where have the Boomer parents been, raising their kids?
TC (46:31):
My argument would be that cynicism had its raise in [inaudible] the (19)60s, but cynicism has now taken on a life of its own. Cynicism is cool. It was a cheap excuse for ignorance. Namely, you have students in a campus who want to look sophisticated. They have not read anything. They do not know anything. But if they walk around with an air of cynicism, it will be a cheap duplication of intelligence. "But I do not believe in politics." "Why," should be the question. "Because they are all a bunch of liars." "Oh? What is the empirical evidence that you have rounded up for that?" They have no reason for their cynicism? It is cynicism without a hook to hang it on. And it's part of the cultural milieu. It is part of what goes with being cool. And if you want to be cool on Westchester's campus, you better act cynical. And if you cannot explain the faces of your cynicism, that is all right. You can put people off simply by using obscenities like, "It's all a lot of bullshit." That is their word, bullshit. Everything's bullshit. And they sound like they have been there, and back, and they know it all. They have read it. They have experienced life. They know what life is all about. The truth is they do not know anything. It has become part of a garb that displays itself as intelligence when in fact it is just a cool way to be. And when cynicism is admired, the cynic should always be cynical, with tears in his eyes, not with the sneer on his lips. The cynic says, "I cannot believe in America anymore." And the tears are running down his cheeks because he cannot believe anymore. But to do it with an arrogant sneer, that, of course, is unbefitting any human being.
SM (49:07):
I am going to close over this question. The final question was going to be actually asking you a lot of names, here, and just getting your response, but I think the basic thrust of what I am after is in the meat of the interview in the beginning. I want to get into your thoughts on the concept of empowerment. Going back again to when Boomers were young, there was a feeling, a sense that, "We can be the change agents for the betterment of society, that we could possibly be the ones to end the war, that we could be the ones to bring Black people and white people together," you know, "because we see the injustices in- "
TC (49:38):
Mm-hmm.
SM (49:38):
" ...society, the injustices against women, injustices against gay and lesbians," all that whole period. Just your thoughts on this concept of empowerment that supposedly so many Boomers had as when they were young, and what has happened with a concept of empowerment today as they have gone into adulthood.
TC (50:01):
Well, I think that the best example of that may be with Bill Bradley, who still believes in the ideals of the (19)60s. I think he is really the best example of the answer to your question. He thought if he went to Washington and became a senator, and maybe even president, he could change things from the top down. He has not given up the idea of empowering people. "But you do not empower people," he is concluded, and I have talked to about this, "by seizing control of the government and doing what is right from the top down. Empowerment begins from the bottom up." And so, he has now gone on to identify with the communitarian movement. "And what we need to do is we need to people together on the grassroots level. We need town meetings. We need to gather people together in a given neighborhood, and have them exchange ideas, and determine what is best for their neighborhood. We need to stop looking to Washington for the answers and start looking to ourselves for the answers." And there is the initiation, I would say, of a whole new politic in America, that maybe is going to be led by the Boomers, who said, "We took a shortcut. We really made a mistake. We said, 'The way for you to have power is to elect me, and I will make the decisions.' No, the way to make power is for me to step out of office." That is why I say Bill Bradley, as a model, is me to say, "The answer is not you elect me. See, you have power, now. No, you do not have power. If you elected me, I have power. And all you have done is given me power." I love Bradley's comment, "People do not live in a democracy just because they are able to elect their kings. If the person up top functions like a king, the fact that he got the crown through tradition and inheritance or that he was elected king makes no difference if he functions like a king." And so, you have a Bill Bradley that said, "I thought that the way for people to be empowered is for them to elect me. I now see that the way for the people to get power is for me to give up my office, and go back, and organize grassroots meetings to get people to seize control of their destinies. And if they cannot do it on a national and international level, at least they can do it on the community level." That is why organizations like Habitat for Humanity are thriving, because the X generation has picked up that theme. "We, too, want to change the world, but we're going to change it from the bottom up, not from the top down. We are not going to go to Washington and ask them to put in a new government housing program. We are going to build a house up the street and we're going to do it ourselves. And when it is done, we are going to look at it and say, 'See, we did not change the world, but there's one family now that has a house.'" And Habitat for Humanity now is picking up momentum. And I was on the executive committee of Habitat for Humanity in its earliest stages of development. And we thought it was great when we completed 1,000 houses a year. Now we're completing 50,000 houses a year across the country. It is picking up momentum all the time. And there is a bottom up change. And so when you go to Washington and hear the State of the Union address, there is Newt Gingrich wearing a Habitat for Humanity button on his lapel, and there's Bill Clinton wearing his Habitat for Humanity button on the lapel. Both of them are committed to Habitat for-
SM (54:09):
Democrat-
TC (54:09):
...Humanity.
SM (54:09):
... nd Republican alike.
TC (54:10):
Yeah. So whatever is going on up here, there is a sense that real power and real change is going to take place from the bottom up and not from the top down. And I think that is the great discovery of the X generation as opposed to the Boomers.
SM (54:24):
Well, thank you very much.
TC (54:25):
Okay.
SM (54:25):
I will let you get some-
(End of Interview)
Date of Interview
1997-09-03
Interviewer
Stephen Mckiernan
Interviewee
Anthony Campolo
Biographical Text
Dr. Tony Campolo is a speaker, author, sociologist, pastor, social activist, Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Eastern University and former faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Campolo was a spiritual advisor to U.S. President Bill Clinton. He has a Bachelor's degree from Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary at Eastern College and a Ph.D. in Sociology from Temple University.
Duration
54:28
Language
English
Digital Publisher
Binghamton University Libraries
Digital Format
audio/mp4
Material Type
Sound
Interview Format
Audio
Subject LCSH
Authors; Clergy; Sociologists; Political activists--United States; Campolo, Anthony--Interviews
Rights Statement
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Keywords
Generational gap; Ethics; Baby boom generation; Protest; Religion; Cambodian invasion; Vietnam draft; Lottery; Healing; Vietnam War; War photos; Richard Nixon; Gerald Ford.
Files
Citation
“Interview with Dr. Tony Campolo,” Digital Collections, accessed April 23, 2024, https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/892.
