John 15:13

When I was a sophomore in college, I changed my major from Architecture to Political Science. Architecture was not me. And I was deeply interested in what was happening on the world scene. Part of the draw to Political Science was that in some ways, the Oregon campus provided a front row seat. Every so often, we would hear that Oregon’s Senator Wayne Morse was on campus. After dropping in virtually unannounced, he would let the word out that he was going to speak in the big PLC lecture hall. I always skipped class to hear him. Senator Wayne Morse, the Tiger of the Senate was the most electrifying speaker I has ever heard. They do not make orators like him any more.

It was a very unique time. The Vietnam War had escalated to 500,000 troops, President Nixon’s plan to get us out by escalating was not working, and campuses like Oregon were becoming very volatile.

It was reason enough to be excited when a U. S. Senator came to speak, but this was not any U. S. Senator. A little bit of history is in order here. President Johnson got us deeply committed to the war by passing through the Congress and Senate the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. It was the “line in the sand” that Johnson drew to establish our presence there. It passed the Senate 98 – 2. The two “no’s”were Senator Wayne Morse and his sidekick Earnest Gruening of Alaska. Please note that when it came to the Vietnam conflict, 98 Senators were for it before they were against it. Senator Morse was a brilliant constitutional scholar. His reasons against it were not political. They were based on his firm belief that our presence there was unconstitutional. By the early ‘70’s, most everyone was against it too, and they all were now listening to him. After hearing him lecture for 90 minutes, everyone within ear shot was against the war, too.

My term project that year was to make sense out of the validity (or nonvalidity) of the war. So, my skipping class and listening to Senator Morse was “research.” Besides, most of the Political Science Professors were there, too. No Poli Sci prof wanted to be conspicuous by his absence at a Wayne Morse event.

Well, actually, there was one professor who was not there. His name was Joseph Fizman. Old Joe seemed to be barely tolerated by the younger Poli Sci profs. He was kind of a throw-back. He dressed “old world” and had an Eastern European accent that I couldn’t place. I had to take a course from him that quarter, because it was all that I could fit into my schedule. I remember very clearly, one day, when Professor Fizman glared at us through his thick glasses and said “You think that getting marijuana legalized is politics?” Then he shouted, “That is shitty politics! I will tell you politics.”

Then he proceeded to tell us over the next 90 minutes how thirty years before, he hid under the floorboards of an old house in Poland as Nazi’s searched the house above him. He described how he ran for his life, and how some in his family did not make it. It was then that I got the accent and the look. He was Jewish. Then he explained that he is alive today, and living in America because Americans came and fought and died to stop the slaughter of his people. He was not the orator that Senator Morse was, but with an emotional voice, sometimes booming, other times weeping, he helped us understand that to him, politics that matter are life sacrificing, life taking, and most importantly, life giving.

In that one class, my position on the Vietnam War was severely challenged. Senator Morse’s argument against the war was unshakable. It was not legal. But so what? Our world would not be the same unless there were people, countries, and armies that would stand between those who would commit genocide and those they wanted dead. I needed to come to grips with the reality of what Professor Fizman had told us. I tried to rewrite my paper to explain that even though the Vietnam War was illegal, it was, in some very crucial ways, right. I think I got a C. But I learned that politics is not just about what is legal. After all, what is legal is simply what the last judge or jury says it is. It is necessary to take the side of what is right. I ended up feeling that way about Vietnam.

I took some heat from my friends for thinking that way. The common feeling was that protecting the Vietnamese was not worth the lives of our people. I lost some friends in that war and I sometimes agreed with those feelings, but the friends I lost would not have. And there was the feeling that when we left Vietnam, things would settle down soon, anyway. I graduated from school and wasn’t around Professor Fizman when the last of our troops pulled out of Vietnam. My brother-in-law saw first-hand from the deck of his ship, the unreal chaos surrounding the final withdrawal. I often wondered what Professor Fizman told his new classes after up to 5 million Vietnamese and Cambodian people were then slaughtered by the Communists. I am sure he was angry, and I am sure he also wept as he told them. And . . . I am sure he remained unpopular with the other professors.