"The average American just does not associate with civil disobedience," said former Senator Albert Gore (D-Tenn.) at an informal discussion with 20 people sponsored by the Harvard Young Republicans.

Gore said that although last week's march on Washington had been very effective. he was convinced that the civil disobedience planned for this week would destroy any good will created by the march.

He linked this distaste for civil disruption to his defeat last November. "I have felt the sting of the moratoriums. I was identified with those people carrying Viet Cong flags. My patriotism had been questioned, and that makes people reluctant to vote for you," he said.

In the last election, President Nixon marked Gore and former Senator Charles E. Goodell (R-N.Y.) as prime targets in the Administration's effort to gain seats in the Senate.

Gore was subsequently defeated by William E. Brock III (R-Tenn.), Nixon's personal choice to run against Gore.

Gore said his opposition to the Vietnam war also contributed to his defeat. He called the Vietnam war the "worst tragedy in this country since the Civil War."

"We have suffered a serious erosion of national morals as a result of the war. The past two presidents [Johnson and Nixon] have tried to find moral justification for a war which has no justification," he said.

Presently working on a book on Southern polities, Gore is visiting Harvard until May 8 as a Fellow of the Kennedy Institute of Politics.

At an earlier meeting with the Young Republicans in the Harvard Union, Gore said that the "Southern strategy" used to defeat him was not confined to Tennessee.

"It [the Southern strategy] is not only geographical, it is attitudinal. It was used effectively in the 1970 campaign in Connecticut and Indiana as well," he said.

Gore said, however, that Nixon's Southern strategy would lead the Republicans to defeat. "The race question is nearer to a solution in the South than anywhere else in the country. Don't be surprised if a decade from now, liberalism and progressive thought is the hallmark of Southern politics," he said.