ABSTRACT
The tone of certitude is sometimes ideologically derived—as in the doctrine of national liberation wars itself. Morality is implicitly cognate with Marxism-Leninism. The view of mankind is Faustian. The human spirit is premised as basically unflawed. “In general,” Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote, “morality may be compared to the consonant; prudence to the vowel. The question has a bearing on the competition between American purposes and Communist aspirations epitomized in the problem of so-called national liberation wars. A proponent focuses on a single value, to him the touchstone of morality and justice. An opposite kind of argument focuses on means exclusively and thereby puts aside all consideration of ends. A factor in the situation in the United States is a consensus that presents rates of diversion of resources to the public sector is relatively fixed. The prospect augurs increasing difficulty for the maintenance of an adequate national defense.
