What's a fact? I think I don't understand what you mean here.MooCow wrote:Anything outside of the hard sciences would by it's nature be an opinion since it can not be proven. That said, it's a fact.
At this point there's several tangents in the original discussion, and none of which I see those remarks being terriblely useful for. That's, of course, opinion.Which is what?
Except mine are of course the only ones that matter.Those are your principles; theirs were different.
That people who don't stand their ground when their principles are challenged have no principles.What's a fact? I think I don't understand what you mean here.
32 argued they were acting in accordance with their principles, and I argued that isn't so because failing to stand your ground in the face of a challenge to your principles nullifies any claim to having said principles.At this point there's several tangents in the original discussion, and none of which I see those remarks being terriblely useful for.
Draft dodging isn't cowardice. It's not fighting for a cause that's all about making rich people richer. That's not being a coward, it's common sense. Also, what tells me war pisses more people off than what you've percieved as being a coward, is that there's a fuck load of war protests, and pretty much no draft dodging protests.Gillian's Willy wrote:How do you know that war pisses more people off than cowardice?
I'd say its common sense. If I had these three choices:WillyGilligan wrote:Or it pisses off more people iwth time on their hands.
As for draft dodging being cowardice, I'm agreeing with Moo that people who didn't want to fight had an option to go to jail, and avoidance of that choice is, I believe, cowardice.
That's not what your mom says.Psychotic Poofta wrote:Or, Willy is a fucking idiot.
That'd be a good trick.3278 wrote: I find avoiding the consequences of my actions to be quite in accord with my own principles.
I don't get that. I can understand how people might say that refusing to fight was cowardice, but why is leaving the country more cowardly than going to jail? Some kind of "take your punishment like a man" attitude?WillyGilligan wrote:As for draft dodging being cowardice, I'm agreeing with Moo that people who didn't want to fight had an option to go to jail, and avoidance of that choice is, I believe, cowardice. You may say that it's a lot more sensible to run away and live in exile than to waste a chunk of your life in jail, but the same can be said for a lot of actions that we deem cowardice.
Choices have consequences. Making a choice is a brave thing. Letting someone else choose for you is not. Leaving the situation entirely because you don't like your alternatives doesn't improve the situation for anyone else and just serves to keep your happy ass from dealing with the consequences of your choice.I don't get that. I can understand how people might say that refusing to fight was cowardice, but why is leaving the country more cowardly than going to jail? Some kind of "take your punishment like a man" attitude?
So doing what is in your best interest and fuck the rest is cowardice? Shit, all this time I thought it was human instinct.WillyGilligan wrote:Choices have consequences. Making a choice is a brave thing. Letting someone else choose for you is not. Leaving the situation entirely because you don't like your alternatives doesn't improve the situation for anyone else and just serves to keep your happy ass from dealing with the consequences of your choice.I don't get that. I can understand how people might say that refusing to fight was cowardice, but why is leaving the country more cowardly than going to jail? Some kind of "take your punishment like a man" attitude?
Why are you putting such as high value on resolve and bravery? If we put more value on intelligence and self preservation maybe we'd have less needless wars and young impressionable kids being sent off to get shot.WillyGillian wrote:I'll put it this way. Telling your asshole boss to fuck off is a brave thing. Telling him to fuck off as you're walking out the door to start a new job outside of their influence is not a brave thing. It's not necessarily a bad thing, mind you, in fact it's quite human to do it this way. But it's certainly nothing to write home about or to which monuments should be erected. In the case of protesting the war, going to prison would suck, but it would demonstrate resolve. Waves of draft protestors going to prison to protest an unjust war would send a helluva stronger message than waves of hippies going to live in Canada until the whole thing blows over. Hell, it might have ended things sooner as the nations prisons became overcrowded with non-violent offenders....ok maybe that's pushing it. But the fact is that the civil rights movement never got where they are today (at I believe a fairly astonishing level of equality considering the timescale involved) by running to countries where the race relations were better, or even back to Africa. That would have done nothing for the American race problem. In the same way, draft dodgers showed more self-interest than moral resolve in choosing exile over prison.
Or you'd simply realize that the people who don't like draft dodgers aren't so hopelessly brain dead as to think protests are worth wasting time on - particularly to oppose a few irresponsible individuals with no reason to care about the opinion of some sign-carrying speed bumps.Anyway, if draft dodgers are more hated than war, or even on par, you'd at least expect some protestors.
Because resolve and bravery get stuff done, while cowardice and self preservation keep the status quo. Ghandi had resolve and he had bravery. Thoreau talked about resolve, and he went to jail a few times in protest of unjust law. Martin Luther King did the same. He got shot, but he got stuff done. Bravery is not all about rushing the machine gun nest, although we prize bravery in others because we hope that we can rely on them to rush that nest if the need comes and we can't do it ourselves. Intelligence coupled with resolve is a good thing. Self-preservation just means you want to keep shoveling food and pushing shit for one more day on this god-forsaken mudball and keep complaining about how everything is always getting worse. I'm all for less needless war, and self-preservation has it's place. But bravery gets stuff done.Why are you putting such as high value on resolve and bravery? If we put more value on intelligence and self preservation maybe we'd have less needless wars and young impressionable kids being sent off to get shot.
Fuck off bravery is what gets stuff done. Greed and self interest gets shit done. For every political freedom fighter that was brave there are a hundred thousand scientists and entrepreneurs that improved the lot of everyone immesurably because they wanted the benjamins or scientific recognition.WillyGilligan wrote:Because resolve and bravery get stuff done, while cowardice and self preservation keep the status quo. Ghandi had resolve and he had bravery. Thoreau talked about resolve, and he went to jail a few times in protest of unjust law. Martin Luther King did the same. He got shot, but he got stuff done. Bravery is not all about rushing the machine gun nest, although we prize bravery in others because we hope that we can rely on them to rush that nest if the need comes and we can't do it ourselves. Intelligence coupled with resolve is a good thing. Self-preservation just means you want to keep shoveling food and pushing shit for one more day on this god-forsaken mudball and keep complaining about how everything is always getting worse. I'm all for less needless war, and self-preservation has it's place. But bravery gets stuff done.Why are you putting such as high value on resolve and bravery? If we put more value on intelligence and self preservation maybe we'd have less needless wars and young impressionable kids being sent off to get shot.
Don't you have to deal with the consequences of your choice to go to Canada? It seems to me that you are looking at it form within a very narrow framework, where the only options that matter are war and prison.WillyGilligan wrote:Choices have consequences. Making a choice is a brave thing. Letting someone else choose for you is not. Leaving the situation entirely because you don't like your alternatives doesn't improve the situation for anyone else and just serves to keep your happy ass from dealing with the consequences of your choice.
I would call that stupid and rude. If that's bravery, I have a hard time seeing it as a virtue. OK, I can see what you mean, "I ain't afraida nobody." That's the standard, is it?I'll put it this way. Telling your asshole boss to fuck off is a brave thing.
You might make a satisifed comment in your LJ, though, and your friends would be happy for you. It's a question of scale. And I guess you are no friend to draft dodgers.Telling him to fuck off as you're walking out the door to start a new job outside of their influence is not a brave thing. It's not necessarily a bad thing, mind you, in fact it's quite human to do it this way. But it's certainly nothing to write home about or to which monuments should be erected.
In the context of social injustice, or the percieved wrongness of the Vietnam war, please tell me how greed and self interest could have stopped the war (since I've been sort of assuming that we're talking about somebody who hated war, specifically the Vietnam War, and chose to run away rather than stand up when their draft number was called and say "this is wrong and I want no part of it".)?Fuck off bravery is what gets stuff done. Greed and self interest gets shit done. For every political freedom fighter that was brave there are a hundred thousand scientists and entrepreneurs that improved the lot of everyone immesurably because they wanted the benjamins or scientific recognition.
In this context, they are the only options that matter. The consequences for living in Canada are...what, exactly? Cold weather, funny money, and possibly losing connection with family and friends. I call that minor inconvienience when you're running away from war. This is the price paid for saving your own skin, but not a price paid in service to a higher idea. Being part of the peace protests back then was sort of risky, as well. Much more than today. You risked jobs, family, friends, and possible incarceration. More to the point, or at least I feel it is, you are trying to make the situation better. The Dalai Lama is in exile right now and I don't count him a coward for that. The difference, I feel, is that he is doing more for his country outside than he could have if he'd stayed. I have yet to hear of anything done by draft-dodgers living in other countries during the war that was in any way meant to help the situation. They may have, but I haven't heard of anything. If you could point me in the direction of anyone who was doing something on the outside, I'd appreciate that.Don't you have to deal with the consequences of your choice to go to Canada? It seems to me that you are looking at it form within a very narrow framework, where the only options that matter are war and prison.
Okay, so I suck at analogy. The point of that was this: it's brave to do what's right and take the consequences of being right in a world gone wrong. To offhandedly say that something is wrong, or here's what's right as you place yourself in a situation where the consequence won't touch you is not. All of this is coming from one simple idea. Draft dodgers did nothing worthy of a monument. Though it's unproveable, I also feel that most of them were saving their own hides, even if they phrased it as a protest at the time. That's my point.I would call that stupid and rude. If that's bravery, I have a hard time seeing it as a virtue. OK, I can see what you mean, "I ain't afraida nobody." That's the standard, is it?
That's, as you say, stupid. Large-scale protests like this are against the government; the US government wasn't supporting draft dodging. It is only counterculturalists who need to protest; when the vast number of people already agree with you, such a demonstration is unnecessary.Crazy Elf wrote:Also, what tells me war pisses more people off than what you've percieved as being a coward, is that there's a fuck load of war protests, and pretty much no draft dodging protests.
If the vast majority of Americans said fuck this for a joke and racked off to Canada or, if they couldn't get there, go to prison, the war wouldn't have happened. I'd say young people acting like sheep and going to war is what got them fucked,not the 'cowardice' of a few for doing the logical thing and chosing to improve their lot while avoiding the negative consequences of doing so.WillyGilligan wrote:In the context of social injustice, or the percieved wrongness of the Vietnam war, please tell me how greed and self interest could have stopped the war (since I've been sort of assuming that we're talking about somebody who hated war, specifically the Vietnam War, and chose to run away rather than stand up when their draft number was called and say "this is wrong and I want no part of it".)?Fuck off bravery is what gets stuff done. Greed and self interest gets shit done. For every political freedom fighter that was brave there are a hundred thousand scientists and entrepreneurs that improved the lot of everyone immesurably because they wanted the benjamins or scientific recognition.
No doubt. But your definition of bravery has fucked the world up just as bad. Those brave barbarians in that fought for their people and destroyed the Roman empire set the world back 500 years or so in terms of scientific development (except in a few areas). Bravery does sometimes do massively good things like the civil rights movement, but it also does things with massive negative consequences. Greed and self interest in our capitalist society generally improve our lot with a comparitively few negative consequences.As for greed and self interest improving the world: I believe that they have. They've also slowed progress in other ways, for a given definition of progress. It depends on what you're looking at. Greed and self interest have given us most of the drugs we use today to prolong our lives and pamper our already pampered asses (need I mention Viagra?) Is that necessarily progress? Self interest helping us live longer lives of greed? Or the Internet. Look at what greed and self-interest have done to the latest frontier on Earth. We took a new world where people from all over the planet could come together and share ideas, sort of like we're doing now, and it's 90% full of porn and lies. Ain't life grand?
Why on Earth would she, of all people, be introducing this legislation? I'm fairly confused now. More after I look into this, but I will say that I looked for something last week and only found reference to people protesting the re-instatement of the draft.It's been introduced to the Senate by Hillary Clinton. It may not be likely to happen, but the legislation is being written.
Because if it gets through she can oppose it in 2008 when she runs for President, hoping fervently that people are too goddamn stupid to remember that she started the damn thing.WillyGilligan wrote:Why on Earth would she, of all people, be introducing this legislation?It's been introduced to the Senate by Hillary Clinton. It may not be likely to happen, but the legislation is being written.
This reminds me of Kerry's quote, "And I will end the backdoor draft of the National Guard." In other words, he is claiming the National Guard is a draft, yet some Democrats claim Bush dodged the Vietnam draft by joining the National Guard. Interresting.Salvation122 wrote:Because if it gets through she can oppose it in 2008 when she runs for President, hoping fervently that people are too goddamn stupid to remember that she started the damn thing.WillyGilligan wrote:Why on Earth would she, of all people, be introducing this legislation?It's been introduced to the Senate by Hillary Clinton. It may not be likely to happen, but the legislation is being written.
Not that it matters, anyway. What's happening is that the draft board's terms are up, and they have to be replaced, as happens every (seven, I believe) years. Democrats insinuate that this is a precursor to the draft on college campuses to scare kids my age into voting for them. I heard this from a USN captain, so I'm pretty sure my information is accurate.
Notice how your sentence switches tense(not case!) half way through. Its just reality. During the vietnam war the national guard was a way to stay out of the war. Today it is a way to get into Iraq. The young george bushes of america are not joining the national guard today, it would be almost equivalent to volunteering for active military service. That is why there aren't long waiting lists daddy's friends can jump you to the front of.In other words, he is claiming the National Guard is a draft, yet some Democrats claim Bush dodged the Vietnam draft by joining the National Guard. Interresting.
