Fleeing to Canada to evade the draft is not civil disobedience. Those who went to jail rather than be inducted were practicing civil disobedience.
If you want to defend draft dodging, that’s one thing. I might agee with you that it’s morally OK. But calling it civil disobedience is factually incorrect. You know that.
I think Carter did the unpopular and right thing. The Vietnam war and the draft had torn the country apart. Most men of my era avoided the draft–hiding in college, the National Guard or escaping to Canada.
Was running to Canada worse than getting a deferment to teach at a law school?
Had Lincoln lived, he might have granted amnesty to the South quicker and on better terms than actually occurred. And the country would have been better for it.
Yes. Without getting into the morality of the situation, the first was illegal, the second was not.
I disagree. Running to Canada is a perfectly valid exercise of civil disobedience. It’s a refusal to obey. Accepting (what they thought) was permanent exile from the US was accepting a greater consequence than a few months in jail and is just as legitimate a statement. don’t think it’s any different than slaves escaping the south.
It’s people who did stuff like using family influence to get themselves into the National Guard and then not bothering to show up for it (all while simultaneously campaigning politically for the war) who need to beg forgiveness and spend a few weekends in an orange jumpsuit picking up garbage from the side of the road.
This is morally equivalent to asserting that if I avoid a dark alley in a bad neighborhood, I should make atonement for the fact that someone else had to be mugged to finance some crook’s booze/drug/whatever habit.
“What is your definition of justice?”
“Justice, Elijah, is that which exists when all the laws are enforced.”
Fastolfe nodded. “A good definition, Mr. Baley, for a robot… A human being can recognize the fact that, on the basis of an abstract moral code, some laws may be bad ones and their enforcement unjust. What do you say, R. Daneel?”
“An unjust law,” said R. Daneel evenly, “is a contradiction in terms.”
–Isaac Asimov, The Caves of Steel
The legalities are just as vacant an argument with regards to draft dodging as they were to Jim Crow.
Laws are just laws. There are things which can, and should, superceed them. No one should be forced to fight or place their life in jeopardy against their will.
Enjoy,
Steven
The founder and most famous practictioner of modern civil disobedience disagrees with you:
The problem with your definition is that it includes bank robbers who flee the country to avoid arrest. “Hey, I don’t believe in private property!”
Again, I must stress, I do agree that an amnesty was perfectly justified. I just feel that something ought to have been required of those that avoided the draft, to earn that amnesty. And a community service program doesn’t seem so onerous a way to satisfy to earn that.
President Ford had it right.
He also had it right because he actually had a program for deserters as well. Carter never put a program in place for them.
Of course, some of us think that the service is honorable* because * it is dirty, dangerous and awful – and, unfortunately, necessary – work that most of us do not have the courage and/or ability to do.
If someone helps fight a pandemic by taking on the ugly and dangerous corpse-hauling task, I can’t imagine why you *wouldn’t *respect that. It’s damn near heroic IMO.
This is really just an appeal to authority but it’s also out of context. Gandhi was saying not to offer violent resistance. He was saying if the Man tries to arrest you, don’t fight back. he wasn’t saying you can’t haul ass before the Man gets there. I think that renouncing one’s citizenship and leaving the country is a perfectly valid expression of civil disobedience.
You can make this kind of disingenuous argument about any form of Civil Disobedience, but people who went to Canada were not running away from other crimes. Going to Canada was the “crime.” It wasn’t about avoiding consequences for something else, it was about refusing to participate as a citizen in an immoral war.
I think it’s absurd to say that amnesty for avoiding the draft is anything that had to be “earned.” The draft was wrong. No one needs to apologize for refusing to comply with it.
Which is not a logical fallacy when the person is an authority on the subject being debated. That’s also something you know.
Emphasis added. Yes, he was. What part of “volunntarily submit to arrest” includes running away? The whole **point **of civil disobedience is to get arrested when and if the Man tries to do so.
Incorrect. The crime was failing to register for the draft, or failing to report to the draft board when drafted. You don’t just get to avoid that law by being out of the country.
That’s a good point, Diogenes. Fleeing to Canada to avoid the draft can easily be considered at least a de facto renunciation of citizenship. And those seeking amnesty generally wanted to come back.
Why couldn’t full restoration of their rights as citizens have been made conditional upon the completion of community service and the taking of a loyalty oath to the United States (incidentally, the exact provisions of the Ford program.)
The foundation of the disagreement seems to be with the word “required.” If “required” actions are stipulated in exchange for the amnesty, it suggests that the government was ethically okay to be “requiring” service in the first place, by having the law in place. Most of those arguing for the propriety of the amnesty as issued do not appear to accept that premise.
So, are you saying that those who refused to report to the draft board were called and THEN fled to Canada should be treated differently than those who fled there before hand?
And is your position that all refusals to serve the country when called are justified and honorable? Or just those that pertain to the Vietnam War?
The distinction between following the letter of the law and the spirit of the law
was a distinction without a difference. Most of us were draft dodgers in spirit
and a few were dodgers in fact. This wasn’t a $25 traffic ticket, it was a matter of life and death.
I hid out in college for four years, then was drafted and served “honorably”, stationed somewhere other than Vietnam.
But my picture should be on the coward board. My conduct was disgraceful to me but not to society because most boys of my generation should be on the board as well. Our actions meant others died in our place.
Not so. It wasn’t your place to be dying, so don’t be hard on yourself. It wasn’t the others’ place to be dying either, but that’s not your moral failure.
And what did you do, in a tough situation, aahala? You did the best you could within the bounds of the law.
Other people made choices that put them outside of the bounds of the law.
I’m not trying to be hyperlegalistic here. If I were, I’d surely argue against any kind of amnesty at all. That clearly wouldn’t have been the best fit for this set of circumstances, though.
I am concerned, though, that allowing people to dodge the draft laws with no penalty being imposed at all went too far. If there are no threats of prosecution or penalty, what is to cause people to obey the law if a draft is ever required again? And before you dismiss the draft as an unmitigated evil, recall that a conscript force fought many of our “good wars” like WWII.