This volume is intended to demonstrate how opposition to the war in Vietnam, the military-industrial complex, and the national security state crystallized in a variety of different and often divergent political traditions. Indeed, for many of the figures discussed, dissent was a decidedly conservative act in that they felt that the war threatened traditional values, mores, and institutions, even though their definitions of what was sacred differed profoundly. To an extent many of the dissenters treated in this volume were at one time Cold War liberals. During the course of the Vietnam War, they came to see the foreign policy which they were supporting, with its willingness to invoke the democratic ideal and at the same time tolerate dictatorships in the cause of anticommunism, as morally and politically corrupt. Most dissenters increasingly came to perceive cold war liberalism as a radical departure that threatened the fundamental ideals of the republic.

"The war in Vietnam was, like the Civil War, one of the formative, tragic events in American history. This splendid collection tells the important story of those in Congress who launched a brave, and at first lonely, effort to end the conflict that they believed was corroding America's finest values." Ronald Steel, University of Southern California

"Highly recommended." Choice

"Vietnam and the American Political Tradition is a work of importance to historians and political scientists." The Journal of Interdisciplinary History