I guess there is still a little bit of a conservative type deep within me that comes out on rare ocassions. I just had an argument with a friend of mine about the draft, and a nation of laws, and that kind of stuff. He had agreed with me that McCain will probably win in November. He fears that means his sons and mine might wind up in Iraq one day if there were a draft, although he would take his sons to Canada to avoid it, just like I would – he said. I said, much to his surprise, that I wouldn’t.
I did not go to Canada in 1969, but was fitted for a green uniform instead. In my case I am not sure if I was making a moral decision, or a practical one. I wanted a legal career and draft dodging was genrally not the accepted road to bar admission. In the case of my sons I told me friend that the decision would have to be theirs. I would not encourage them, nor would I drive them to Montreal.
He angrily stated that he would not allow his sons to be drafted to fight in Mr. Bush’s illegal war. My attitude has nothing to George Bush, or the war in Iraq, or Afghanistan, or wherever he may take us before January, or wherever McCain may get us involved. It has to do with living in a country that is based upon laws, not one in which every citizen has the right to decide which law he will follow and which one he won’t. That’s my friend atitude. He does not believe he should be morally required to obey an immoral law or one he just thinks is wrong. And that’s where I think he is wrong.
If we want to live in a representative democracy we have to recognize that there will be laws we don’t like – laws we would rather not have to follow. I just don’t think we have the righ to make that deicsion. If Congress passes a draft, it becomes the law of the land, and until it is repealed, it is a law we are compelled to obey, like it or not. Fortunately during my time in the military I was never called upon to follow an order I felt was illegal or immoral. If I had been, I hope I would have made the right choice. But when it comes to legally and properly inacted statutes of the United States, this nation of laws, not men, we must do what we, as Americans, have always done. We question. We argue. We object. But we obey the law, or we risk taking the first step towards anarchy.