Standing up to big government when there was 'the draft' was pretty ballsy. Whether or not you agreed with him. A a libertarian, I do think the the draft was government coercion, as a minimum. I would have gone, and volunteered, but my disability prevented me. One of my best friends was a conscientious objector - I wrote a letter supporting him to his draft board. Seemed counter-productive to force folks when others wanted to go...
I got my draft notice and got the Navy to backdate my paperwork... There was a rush every year when the lottery numbers came out. Anybody with a number lower than 50 was guaranteed to be drafted!
My recollection was it ran up to 150, more-or-less. My high school buddies had single digits. Mine was 300+.
I had been planning on enlisting after leaving school, but by that time I realized that the politicians had screwed things up royally, had no clue what the hell they were doing, but were certain that they were all geniuses in micro-managing a war. By then, I had read my way through most of several libraries, and military histories was one of my areas of interest. I had little interest in fighting for a cause that they had no plan of winning. When they defunded the South Vietnamese 5 years later, that confirmed for me that the Democrats had no intention to ever stop, or harm, any communist/socialist expansion. Their micro-managing was intended to keep us, and the South VN, from stopping the North.
Standing up to big government when there was 'the draft' was pretty ballsy. Whether or not you agreed with him.
ReplyDeleteA a libertarian, I do think the the draft was government coercion, as a minimum.
I would have gone, and volunteered, but my disability prevented me.
One of my best friends was a conscientious objector - I wrote a letter supporting him to his draft board.
Seemed counter-productive to force folks when others wanted to go...
gfa
Quibble: Ali was a draft-resistor. He wouldn't go and he was prepared to take the consequences of that refusal.
ReplyDeleteDraft-dodgers were those who used deferments, political connections and such to avoid going: Bill Clinton, Dick Cheney, and so on.
Guffaw, I don't recall people flooding the enlistment offices to go serve in Vietnam.
ReplyDeleteI got my draft notice and got the Navy to backdate my paperwork... There was a rush every year when the lottery numbers came out. Anybody with a number lower than 50 was guaranteed to be drafted!
ReplyDeleteOld NFO:
ReplyDeleteMy recollection was it ran up to 150, more-or-less. My high school buddies had single digits. Mine was 300+.
I had been planning on enlisting after leaving school, but by that time I realized that the politicians had screwed things up royally, had no clue what the hell they were doing, but were certain that they were all geniuses in micro-managing a war. By then, I had read my way through most of several libraries, and military histories was one of my areas of interest. I had little interest in fighting for a cause that they had no plan of winning. When they defunded the South Vietnamese 5 years later, that confirmed for me that the Democrats had no intention to ever stop, or harm, any communist/socialist expansion.
Their micro-managing was intended to keep us, and the South VN, from stopping the North.