It was the summer of 1972. I had just turned 19. I had
dropped out of a large midwestern university the previous spring to hitch-hike
around the country with my old travelling partner, Crazy Steve, who had just returned from a long trip, thumbing around Europe and North Africa. To give an idea of where I was in
those days, consider our two main destinations that summer: Earth Peoples’ Park
in northern Vermont, a sort of gypsy camp in the woods, too anarchic
to be considered a commune, and the first Rainbow Gathering in Strawberry Lake,
Colorado, a “gathering of the Tribes,” as they called it, an annual encampment
of every variety of countercultural subsect, a custom that continues to this
day.
I had set out with high hopes, a naive romanticism, as well
as a certain shadow: my draft lottery number was five.
Five.
That meant certain conscription after my nineteenth birthday
in July. I had no intention of fighting in a war I had long and ardently
opposed, but was not clear about whether I would choose exile in Canada or life
underground in the States. I granted, with Thoreau, that the State had a right
to imprison me for my civil disobedience, but as a skinny kid with
long blonde curls, I did not grant it the right to sentence me to almost
inevitable rape. So jail was not an option.
I had recently ended my involvement with leftist politics,
an involvement which had evolved from pacifism in early adolescence to a more
revolutionary attitude after I had been radicalized by the shootings at Kent
State.
I remember the exact moment of my disillusionment: I was at
an antiwar demonstration in DC when I spotted a contingent of doctrinaire
Marxists—Trotskyites, if I recall—marching behind their leader, who was
shouting chants into a megaphone, chants they would repeat in unison.
“TWO FOUR SIX EIGHT!” (“two four six eight!”)
“REVOLUTION WILL SMASH THE STATE!” (”revolution … etc”)
As they got closer I got a good look at the leader, a little
steely-eyed, goateed man with wire-rimmed glasses. There was a fire in those
eyes, the cold fire of pure hatred. It hit me like a slap in the face: if this
guy came to power he would make Nixon look like a flower child.
I purged myself before he got the chance.
So in my travels that summer I was post-political but
pre-spiritual. I suppose I was in the first stirrings of a vague psychedelic
pantheism when I ventured off into the maelstrom that the counterculture had
become by 1972.
The summer was a disaster; the open road was now populated
by an assortment of speed freaks, petty thieves, junkies, burnouts and the
like. I sensed evil all around me, as well as in my own body, as I had
contracted salmonella, a nasty and sometimes fatal intestinal disease, drinking
from a stream in Vermont. I would seem to recover, travel some more, and suffer
a relapse. In the end I made my way home, having lost some thirty pounds off my
already thin frame, weak and disoriented, full of despair.
My folks, shocked at my appearance, took me in and got me to
a doctor. I slowly recovered and put the weight back on that I had lost. By
summer’s end I was sufficiently recovered to pass my preinduction physical. My
parents were hinting that it was time to get a job, and I was wanting to
get stronger. I thought I could do worse than finding work in one of the local
orchards, picking apples through the fall.
It was, after all, familiar work. I had picked fruit several
autumns in high school in the orchards that at that time dotted the hills south
of my small southeast Michigan town. They are mostly gone now, replaced by
suburban housing developments with streets named “Apple Blossom Way” and
“Orchard Hill Court” and the like. But at that time the orchards were still a
thriving part of the local economy and the orchardmen lived out their days to
the turning of the seasons, to the rhythm of blossom, fruit, harvest and
pruning, the cultivation of life-giving trees.
The care of trees is really a direct descendant of the
primal human vocation, if you think of it. Wasn’t Eden more orchard than
garden, in the description of Genesis?
And so I found a job working at Hilltop Orchards, just out
of town.
(to be continued)
—Daniel Nichols
Daniel Nichols writes: “I granted . . that the State had a right to imprison me for my civil disobedience”
Is this still your position? If so, why?
The draft was not enacted so as to protect the homeland, so why do, (or did), you consider yourself to be disobeying just civil authority? Wasn’t the civil government acting outside its purview?
Certainly people on the other side of the argument considered Marxism in SE Asia a threat to the US; don’t you remember the domino theory? At any rate one need not grant the justice of the law to acknowledge the State’s right to punish those who disobey; the punishment must be proportionate to the “crime”, however.
Daniel Nichols writes: “Certainly people on the other side of the argument considered Marxism in SE Asia a threat to the US; don’t you remember the domino theory?”
The domino theory is a self defeating theory for proving just claim to secondary title to war, (which is the only one that could possibly be claimed given the circumstances), because the theory grants that the aggression is not against the homeland except in some remote theoretical way, but against another State. And even second title to war cannot be claimed without aggression against the homeland. Which by the way is why even Bush’s secondary, and belated claim, to helping the Iraqi people as just cause for war is complete nonsense.
Daniel Nichols writes “one need not grant the justice of the law to acknowledge the State’s right to punish”
The State does not possess the authority to promulgate that which is unjust. And what is punishment except a method of promulgation since men act according to just law either through fear of punishment or because they see the law as a good in itself.
This is true for three reasons.
First because unjust laws are not laws absolutely speaking, but only have the character of law. And thus since they are not law, they cannot be justly promulgated.
Second, the right of the State comes to it by way of authority from God, but God cannot be the cause of evil, and thus there cannot be authority to make evil laws. And where there is not authority, there is not right to make law and to promulgate law.
Thirdly, right is nothing other than a duty to act according to justice, and where there is not justice neither can there be right.
Franklin- I was just telling a story; I will leave the political philosophy, and the syllogisms, to you.
I will note that Marxism certainly seemed to be aggressive in the 60s and 70s. I will assume good will on the part of those who thought the war necessary.
I haven’t changed my mind about the fundamental injustice of that war, though my reasons for opposing it certainly have changed; what I believed then is too embarrassing to relate. I do generally have mercy on the young, including my young self…
My draft lottery number was 19. That was as bad as any. I agree with the writer. I wasn’t about to engage in any war which I opposed on principle. Remember also that at that time we had no right to vote. My Canadian relatives offered my brother and me sanctuary, but we turned them down saying we’d rather stay to continue the struggle for freedom in our own country. I’ve lived long enough to second guess that decision.
Nothing lasts forever. Even the Pharaohs who thought their divine rule infinite finally failed. But their sway did last three-thousand years. No civilization, not even the Chinese, has matched that tenure. We, in the USA, in our hubris, dare to think that ours is the summit of human achievement. It will also fall in time. Nothing lasts forever.