Thus, it is no surprise to see Gov. Meldrim Thomson of New Hampshire react with riot police, mass arrests and full-page ads in The New York. Times which decry anti-nuclear protesters as soldiers for an un-American way of life--neo-Communist purveyors of revolution. Perhaps for the first time in his life, he is right.

THE anti-nuclear movement, along with the entire environmental movement, is nothing less than a revolution. It is un-American in that it rejects America's credo since the Industrial Revolution--unlimited economic growth. In this way, the environmental movement threatens the very foundations of American capitalism. It proposes alternative values for America. And so, the environmentalists--once shunned and ridiculed by Americans--find themselves embroiled in a deadly serious political argument.

But no one has the time to argue about politics. New values, rather than political argument, will avert environmental disaster. In order to assure our survival, we need first to re-establish our proper place in the cycles of the environment. We must restore and replenish the environment which restores and replenishes us.

The commitment to the land ethic which Leopold, Rachel Carson and modern environmentalists recognized asks that we recognize ourselves as part of the land, not as master of it.

Whatever a man's politics, whatever a man's job, his existence is contingent on the same elements. The dying condition of the environment of which he is a part behooves him to take whatever steps he may to save that environment and thereby save himself.

It makes no sense to advocate economic progress if, in the same breath, we enact our own destruction.