Steven J. Kelman

Protest against the war in Vietnam became, along with marijuana and long hair, the symbol of the Revolt of Youth in America of the sixties. To be sure, the Revolt of Youth was far from a universal phenomenon among young people. Many millions continued going about the business of studying, staking out a life's work for themselves, launching a family-or fighting in the Vietnamese jungles. To a large extent, this was a revolt of the best educated, the most articulate, the most self-confident and self-conscious. In short, it was a revolt of the élite among youth. The rebels gained influence far beyond their numbers precisely because "The Establishment" was more interested in the escapades of élite youth than in the activities of, say, the blue-collar young. Youthful dissenters and revolutionaries benefited in this way from precisely the élite status they claimed to be rejecting.