A Country Ripe for Change

Clearly there is a mounting conviction among large numbers of Americans that major social and political changes are needed. The publication of the Pentagon Papers is certain to reinforce this conviction. A variety of polls testify people feel the country has been adrift and their anxieties grow over the possibility that it is somehow cracking up or coming apart.

Partly this sense of worry is a legitimate response to the events of the past decade. Partly it is the result of the enormou...