THE FEAR CAMPAIGN

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Bates has been pleading with his constituents to "unload your guns"—literally. Warren residents, predominantly of Eastern European and Italian descent, have been apprehensive ever since last year's uprising in Detroit. Yet Warren has had a decreasing crime rate, and Bates observes: "We have no problems with hippies, yippies or zippies." George Wallace draws strong support in Warren. Among Negroes in the surrounding area, the word is out that to get a flat tire or an empty fuel tank in Warren or neighboring Dearborn is to run a serious risk of physical assault. In upper-income Grosse Pointe, a matron laments about the Detroit area: "This place is becoming a jungle." She is considering moving to California. In suburban Los Angeles, Morris Boswell, 52, a bulldozer operator, says that Wallace will be elected. Then, he says, "the punks, the queers, the demonstrators and the hippies—we're going to put them on a barge and ship 'em off to China. Or better yet, sink it."

In Winnetka, a prosperous suburb of Chicago, Mrs. John A. F. Wendt reads the Chicago Tribune, has a son working in Viet Nam for the State Department, and views the home front with horror: "This great country, with the great people who are in it, to have these things happen, you get the feeling it was all planned, all stirred up. I definitely think this Negro rioting is tied into this Communist thing."

In cooler terms, Professor Philip Hauser of the University of Chicago analyzes what he calls the "social-morphological revolution," the changing forms within society. Its four elements, according to Hauser: the population explosion, the population implosion that has made for densely populated central cities, the mixing of diverse population groups, and the accelerated tempo of technological and social change.

Few laymen can separate things so neatly in their own minds. The elements of turmoil blend into an ill-defined whole. But the three main tributaries that converge to make the law-and-order issue so powerful are: 1) the revolt of youth, whether against the war, the draft or the social system as a whole; 2) Negro militance and ghetto rioting; and 3) the individual's intense personal fear of criminal attack.

The Young Radicals

The disorders of recent years have deeply offended the middle-class American's traditional values. Mrs. Wendt speaks for many millions when she talks about "this great country." For the majority, the U.S. has been and continues to be great in its bounty of personal freedom and material goods. And for the majority in recent years, there has been every reason to believe that good times were here to stay. Thus there is genuine outrage when protesters screaming "Liberty!" and "Justice!" defile an American flag that for most Americans has always symbolized liberty and justice. To most who have fought for that standard, the spectacle of youngsters waving Viet Cong flags comes as near-blasphemy.

Nor are the most visible young dissenters the recognizable types of 30 years ago—the trade unionists or the ideologues who peddled assorted versions of Marxism. They had specific programs and demands, many of which could be accommodated in relatively rational terms, and eventually were. With today's breed of kid revolutionaries, who would close a