Protests against the United States’ involvement in the war in Vietnam have been carried on with increasing intensity in recent months, dramatically disproving President Johnson’s claim for a consensus for his foreign policy. Still the war continues to escalate. Each day innocent peasants are being burned to death by napalm, their crops are destroyed and their hopes dashed. American men are giving their lives, American families are being shattered, to pursue a war that cannot be won, a war it was shameful for us to enter, a war we must use all our moral energy to halt, so that we might set about building the conditions of peace.
Americans have written to their Congressmen. They have marched upon our nation’s capital. They have paraded down Fifth Avenue. As C.O.’s they have refused to serve in the armed forces. They have demanded that our nation address itself to the real problems that beset critical areas. Yet the war in Vietnam rages on and the seeds of war continue to proliferate and grow in Latin America and elsewhere.
To intimidate and stifle the expression of protest and dissent, the Congress passed a bill—without debate—making it a criminal offense to burn one’s draft card, providing a five-year prison penalty and a $10,000 fine. On August 80, the President signed the bill into law.
In the words of Karl Meyer of the Catholic Worker in Chicago, printed in the Catholic Worker, October, 1965, explaining to his draft board why he destroyed his card, “If the penalty for damaging a paper card is so harsh, then the possession of the card becomes the universal act of fealty—incense on the altar of Caesar.” The grave crime, we are told, is not the destruction of life but the destruction of a piece of paper.
We cannot let this draconian law stand. Not only is the penalty provided outrageously disproportionate, but the very concept of the law indicates that the U.S. Government, albeit accidentally and in a moment of frenzy, has taken upon itself the power to consecrate a piece of paper, invest it with a quality it cannot have, and then exact obeisance for that piece of paper. I can no longer carry that card.
For a number of reasons, I am not eligible for the draft. I am thirty-one years old, married and the father of a young son. S.S. examiners would not accept me. I could let the war in Vietnam pass me by. But I feel that I must associate myself with David Miller, Steven Smith and Karl Meyer in the open act of destroying my draft card, not in the spirit of defiance for public authority, but as a plea to my government and my fellow citizens to turn away from the present course in Vietnam, to turn away from intimidation and the stifling of dissent and protest at home; and to call upon like-minded people to stand with David Miller and the others who have expressed so forcefully their dedication to the cause of Peace on Earth.
Many people have asked me how I can expose myself to such severe legal penalties when I have a wife and child to support. I can answer only in this way: fellow Americans, sincere and conscientious soldiers, leave their wives and families and go to Vietnam, subjecting themselves to the risk of their lives. We who have dedicated ourselves to the war upon war, to the development of nonviolence as an effective means to resist tyranny, cannot shrink from accepting the consequences of our conscientious acts. My family and I have faith that God will provide for us as long as we attempt to do His will.
(Thomas C. Cornell was formerly managing editor of The Catholic Worker and is currently publications director of the Catholic Peace Fellowship. This statement was made at the demonstration on Nov. 6 discussed in the accompanying editorial.)
