McGrath - Ha! Ha! You are absolutely right. The time to keep foreigners out of America was from around 1492 to maybe 1600. After that it was a moot point, and fankly, unachievable, despite the efforts of genuine American patriots like Pontiac, Tecumseh, or Crazy Horse. Bravo for your comment!

Troll - Okay, I get your drift now. Interestingly enough, Joan Baez, whom I greatly love and admire, was in agreement with you...she wanted those opposing the war to remain in the USA and go to jail if necessary. I kind of got the impression she married her husband mostly because he did just that, and she was in love with the politics so much that it made her think she was in love with him. On the other hand, maybe she really did love him regardless...

At any rate, I think myself that it was a quixotic and futile gesture for a small number of men to offer themselves up as martyrs to the entire machinery of the US "justice" system. I did not agree with Joan on this one, and would instead have advised them to leave the country, and continue a productive life somewhere else, then maybe return later.

Here's some interesting background on Matthew, the smartest draft dodger I ever met. While in University in the late 60's he became a major antiwar protestor and organizer on campus, and worked personally with Jerry Rubin, Abbie Hoffman, and most of the other people in the Chicago seven.

He was hugely motivated in that sense, and through his activities he attracted the attention of the FBI, needless to say. They put him on a top priority list of subversives that they badly wanted to incarcerate.

May I add to this that all of Matthew actions were entirely nonviolent. He is and was a pacifist, like Joan Baez.

After the Democratic convention in '68, the FBI was closing in fast on Matthew and many of his friends in the protest movement. He was expecting to be arrested and charged at any time. Accordingly, he went on a little visit to Canada, and didn't come back. He became a guitar teacher for the most prestigious guitar academy in all of Canada, Eli Kassner Guitar Academy in Toronto. I had the incredible good fortune to take my first guitar lessons there, with Matthew as my teacher. One of the other young students was Liona Boyd, now a famous classical guitarist with a huge career.

Matthew taught classical guitar and folk guitar, and some other styles as well.

Matthew was a big Bob Dylan fan, and it was he who first made me really aware of Dylan's body of work.

He was also a true renaissance man in the real sense of the term...a remarkably bright, likeable, and capable guy. I never heard a single mean word come out of his mouth toward anyone.

No surprise that this guy would be opposed to war.

You say that somebody else had to take his place in the front line, as it were. Well, true enough, there is always someone else, isn't there? There's always someone else who will work for the mafia if you don't, there's always someone else who will kill for their country if you don't. So what?

What does that have to do with anything? No matter what the role in life is, someone else will always step in if you don't, but it is your own conduct you are responsible for, not theirs. If Matthew had gone to jail, someone else would still have gone to Vietnam, and Matthew's great gifts to the people around him would have been entirely wasted. If 500,000 American boys had refused to go, the USA would have gotten out of Vietnam.

I agree there are some draft dodgers who were just looking out for themselves, but Matthew was not one of those...he had deep political convictions, and worked damn hard in nonviolent protest for as long as he was able to, in order to end that war and bring Americans home.

Now, as to your comment: "BTW, I think you'll find that the vast majority of the world does not agree with your "one people, one big nation" idea. It isn't the governments and it isn't just bigots who believe this, although it's a good way to demonize and discredit those who don't agree with you.

Most of the wars being fought right now in the world are being fought because one ethnic or tribal group doesn't want another ethnic or tribal group running their lives and telling them what to do. This is not because they fear them because they don't know them. It's because their sense of identity is bound up in their ethnicity and they want that preserved.

If this is not valid, then you should be working to get Native Americans to assimilate as quickly as possible and become part of the "one people" instead of a distince group.

I agree entirely. Individual people are as much to blame for human disunity as are their governments, and their governments are usually the ones they deserve, in the final analysis, because the government rises out of the consciousness of the majority of its public.

Human brotherhood does not require assimilation, it simply requires acceptance of those who are different. I call that "unity in diversity". I believe that we can be very different, and still be one humanity. The differences are what make life rich and beautiful.

So, yes, I am well aware that the majority of people in the world do not presently agree with my idea of humanity as "one people". When they do agree with it, then we will have peace. Majorities can be wrong, and frequently are. More frequently than not, in fact. Just look around you. How many Gandhis or Buddhas or Jesus Christs do you run into at your local supermarket? Yet those are the enlightened ones, and they offered real solutions to human disunity...but how many really listened or had the guts to even try what they offered? What use are our aims, if we do not aim for the highest?

Peace on Earth.

- LH