Richard Nixon’s vice president, Spiro T. Agnew, assumed the role as the administration’s chief attacker of the antiwar movement and the supposedly liberal media for its bias against defenders of conservative values. Using colorful language, he called his political opponents “pusillanimous pussyfooters” and “nattering nabobs of negativism.” In a 1970 speech, he explained that his concerns went beyond the war and included efforts to undermine patriotism and traditional education.
Sometimes it appears that we’re reaching a period when our senses and our minds will no longer respond to moderate stimulation. We seem to be reaching an age of the gross, persuasion through speeches and books is too often discarded for disruptive demonstrations aimed at bludgeoning the unconvinced into action. The young—and by this I don’t mean any stretch of the imagination all the young, but I’m talking about those who claim to speak for the young—at the zenith of physical power and sensitivity, overwhelm themselves with drugs and artificial stimulants. Subtlety is lost, and fine distinctions based on acute reasoning are carelessly ignored in a headlong jump to a predetermined conclusion. Life is visceral rather than intellectual. And the most visceral practitioners of life are those who characterize themselves as intellectuals. Truth is to them revealed rather than logically proved. And the principal infatuations of today revolve around the social sciences, those subjects which can accommodate any opinion, and about which the most reckless conjecture cannot be discredited. Education is being redefined at the demand of the uneducated to suit the ideas of the uneducated. The student now goes to college to proclaim, rather than to learn. The lessons of the past are ignored and obliterated, and a contemporary antagonism known as “The Generation Gap.” A spirit of national masochism prevails, encouraged by an effete core of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals.
Source: “Vice President Spiro Agnew Speech, Houston, Texas, May 22, 1970,” The Pacifica Radio/UC Berkeley Social Activism Sound Recording Project, http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/pacificaviet/agnewtranscript.html.