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 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".)?
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?
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.
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.
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?
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.