By Bruce Jay Wasser*
CHICAGO, USA | 25 January 2025 (IDN) — The return of Donald Trump to the presidency promises to be a time of significant national division and turmoil. He undoubtedly will pursue policies that reflect international bellicosity and a frightening dedication to xenophobia, misogyny, and intolerance.
I take him seriously when he promises retribution and punishment of his “enemies.” More than ever before, Americans of conscience will be forced to answer the question: what does it mean to be a responsible citizen?
Throughout our national history, Americans have had to come to grips with national leaders bent on suppressing dissent, punishing those who disagree, and harnessing the power of government to enact legislation designed to restrict freedom and diminish equality.
Citizens who find the moral courage to dissent, must ask themselves about the cost — professional, social, or personal—they are willing to pay. We know from bitter experience that silence in the face of evil aids the oppressor and neutrality often disguises indifference.
At its core, moral courage is the ability to stand up against wrong. Bayard Rustin said that moral courage happens when we speak truth to power, when we directly confront wrong, aware that our decision may result in harm to our personal wellbeing.
As the nation honored Dr. Martin Luther King on his birthday January 20, it is important to remember his exhortation to act with principle. He said that the time is always right to do right. And Susan B. Anthony comforted those who felt that the fight may be endless: “Failure is impossible.”
Quiet moral courage
Quiet moral courage may be invisible to many, unnoticed by louder voices, stridently demanding a stage for their protest. Moral courage does not belong exclusively to those with advanced degrees. As Bob Dylan noted, “You don’t need to be a weatherman / To know which way the wind blows.”
At its best, moral courage is an act of selfless love…a caring for community and an affirmation of the possibilities of a kinder, more compassionate world.
In my recently published memoir, 90: A Conscientious Objector’s Journey of Quiet Resistance, I try to describe how the moral courage I expressed personally ricocheted in larger arenas. Some fifty years ago, I had to face the prospect of fighting in a war I felt was morally repugnant.
Resistance to a terribly misguided national policy meant alienating family members and facing the fact that refusing military service would be disgraceful to my recently-deceased, beloved father. Then, as now, our nation was in a state of upheaval; the dislocations of the Vietnam War swirled in the tumultuous eddies of the Civil Rights Movement and the emergence of a rebellious counterculture.
I was only twenty when the United States introduced a lottery to determine who would be called to don the uniform of our military. I drew 90, a number that placed me squarely in the crosshairs of being drafted. Naïve, traumatized by the recent death of my father, and idealistic, I made the decision to resist the war as a conscientious objector.
I had little hope of gaining this status, as I didn’t belong to a religious sect that opposed all war and my draft board was in San Diego, California—a notoriously conservative, pro-war city. More and more, I became convinced that I would go to jail if the board rejected my application. This terrified me, despite knowing that scores of brave Americans have chosen prison as a means of expressing dissent.
Where did I find the moral courage to join some 170,000 other men who filed for conscientious objector status during the Vietnam era? I remembered my soft-spoken father whose example told me to never back down when faced with issues of right or wrong.
I recalled my grandmother Rose, who fled czarist persecution to find meaning in an American that would welcome all comers, especially the “wretched refuse…yearning to be free.” I sat in awe-struck admiration of the men, women, and children of the Civil Rights Movement who sacrificed even their lives for the ideals that America ought to represent.
Redefining
I had to redefine manhood, patriotism, duty, obligation, courage, honor—even when my definitions were bound to run up against opposition. Somehow, I had to summon the strength to follow Henry David Thoreau’s role model when he stopped paying taxes and was thrown in jail to protest slavery and an immoral, expansionist war that would expand that evil. He demanded, well over a century and a half ago, “Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine.”
I became a C.O. and learned to live with the consequences of that act of quiet resistance. For two years, in lieu of serving in the military, I worked as a laboratory glassware washer at the Palo Alto Veterans Administration Hospital.
My decision to protest an unjust war derailed my dreams of a career in the law but opened my eyes to other possibilities for honoring my need to serve America. More importantly, the most crucial lesson I learned was that a good American needs to obey the dictates of conscience rather than blindly follow the demands of his or her government.
*Bruce Jay Wasser, author of 90: A Conscientious Objector’s Journey of Quiet Resistance, graduated with high honors from Princeton University in 1971. A conscientious objector during the Vietnam War, Wasser performed alternative service as a laboratory glassware washer in the Palo Alto (CA) Veterans Administration Hospital. In the fall of 1973, Wasser began a thirty-three-year career as a junior and high school American history and English teacher in Newark, California. He received numerous honors during his tenure, including “Teacher of the Year” and California’s prestigious “Golden Bell” Award for helping create “Programs of Conscience,” a curriculum that brought students face-to-face with past and current injustices. Now retired, he lives with his wife, author Fern Schumer Chapman, in northern Illinois where he officiates four sports. [IDN-InDepthNews]
Photo: Protesters marched through downtown Raleigh on 20 January to protest Donald Trump’s return to office. Credit: Brandon Kingdollar