The Liberal's Dilemma and the Anarchism of Youth. The sensitive individual in the Western world has nearly always been impelled to protest the injustices of. the political and social order in which he finds himself. For example, very early in life Stephen Spender observed that "to be born is to be a Robinson Crusoe, cast up by elemental powers upon an island," that "all men are not free to share what nature offers here … are not permitted to explore the world into which they are born." Throughout their lives they are "sealed into leaden slums as into living tombs." To this general awareness of the plight of the poor, the New Left in this country has added a sense of burning moral indignation that the colored minority has also been sealed into ghettos and deprived of civil rights and human dignity.

Of all of the activities in which the United States is currently engaged abroad, one of the few of which we can be unreservedly proud is the work of our Peace Corps. Tapping the idealism of the younger generation, disciplining it, directing it, and giving it concrete form, the Peace Corps has come to represent abroad something very near the best of American life and values and society. (I spent five weeks in the winter of 1966-1967 visiting Peace Corps volunteers in Latin America and came back a strong admirer of the Peace Corps, its philosophy and, most of all, of the volunteers.)