Dear Pericles,

Thanks for the compliment you paid me. However I would like
to remind you that the Vietnam war came to an end largely
as a result of the antiwar movement, a social movement that
consisted disproportionately of young people, including many
college students. When the antiwar movement first challenged
the war, it received little support from politicians or the
press, and its goals seemed almost hopeless.

But the tide of public opinion gradually began to shift.
In the 1968 presidential primaries in the US, an antiwar
candidate backed by student volunteers did unexpectedly
well and President Johnson decided not to run for
re-election. From that point on, political debate on the
war focused not on how to stay in it, but on how to get
out of it.

Through collective action, ordinary people with few
resources other than their own determination had changed
a national consensus for war to a national consensus for
peace.

A fundamental insight of sociology is that once people
no longer take their world for granted, but instead
understand the social authorship of their lives and futures,
they can become an irresistible force in history. We have
Poland, and the Baltic States in recent history
as one example - which ended up with the disintegration
of the Soviet Union and other Eastern European satellites.

Look at the current unrest in the Arab countries - we can
only trust that good outcomes will result there. As for China -
it is opening up more today - to Western co-operation - and
who knows what the future will bring.

As for our political leaders - past history has shown when
there is a need - somebody will take up the baton - and steer
the country in the right direction. And let's not forget
that so far the country seems to be doing moderately well
in comparison to some of the major world economies.