But the psychological insight involved in this shift seems almost as feeble as the political analysis: A man can be passionate about the Middle” Way if he happens to believe that the truth is most often to be found somewhere near the center; that extreme tactics are rarely the way to “get things done,” as the popular rationale has it; and that a democratic society that falls into the habit of getting things done that way soon falls out of the habit of democracy altogether.

It would take a good‐sized, book—and an interesting one it would be— to examine this proposition that social justice has been advanced in direct ratio to the illegality employed, but even a quick glance, at some recent history shows glaring flaws in the theory. Watts and the ghetto areas of Washington look rather worse today than they did before the riots that tore them up a few years ago, whereas orderly court procedures have profoundly altered the school system of Arkansas, and, even more, the politics of Mississippi.

The first of last spring's antiwar demonstrations in Washington was a peaceable assembly, in the best tradition of lawful protest—and it was enormously impressive. The second, on May Day, was a grotesquely conceived effort to close down the capital of the United States; it achieved nothing but a few minor martyrdoms and theorenewed conviction among borderline observers that the peace movement was riddled with kooks after all.

Intellectuals can generally be counted on to produce out of their ranks a small minority for whom force and extremism exercise a perverse fascination. European fascist parties in the thirties had a good quota of leaders who had once been at the other end of the political rainbow. Indeed the campuses of Germany and Austria were fertile sources of Nazi manpower, both faculty members and students, and of Communist manpower as well.

What all these had in common was a scorn for the office‐holding bumblers in the middle, who couldn't enjoy the luxury of shrilly preaching the one and only truth because they always had to have an ear cocked on the uncertain voice of the people. Neither could the same bumblers force that voice to unanimity, because their very centrist principles took cognizance of human differences and the right to disagree.