When Rick’s older brother chose to go to jail rather than be drafted, Rick confronted him angrily: Why did Howard do it? Didn’t he care that he hurt his parents and Rick? Didn’t he know people would say he was a coward? And now he even seemed proud of it! But when Howard left the house, Rick tried desperately to understand why his brother had done such a terrible thing.
Rick found some of his brother’s anti-war friends, and when they heard Rick’s story, each one answered him, not with arguments or polemics, but with a true story of conscientious objection out of America’s past. Each tale—from the first one, about a young Indian’s defiance of the harsh code of his forefathers, to the dreadful report of the Ludlow, Colorado, mine massacre when government troops shot striking miners and their families—provides a convincing argument that honorable dissent is among the noblest traditions of a free people.
Annabel and Edgar Johnson, the authors of the highly acclaimed Count Me Gone, The Grizzly and many other books, have written a remarkable account of vital moral dilemmas that are especially pertinent today, and of how our forefathers faced them and dealt with them courageously.
When Rick’s older brother chose to go to jail rather than be drafted, Rick confronted him angrily: Why did Howard do it? Didn’t he care that he hurt his parents and Rick? Didn’t he know people would say he was a coward? And now he even seemed proud of it! But when Howard left the house, Rick tried desperately to understand why his brother had done such a terrible thing.
Rick found some of his brother’s anti-war friends, and when they heard Rick’s story, each one answered him, not with arguments or polemics, but with a true story of conscientious objection out of America’s past. Each tale—from the first one, about a young Indian’s defiance of the harsh code of his forefathers, to the dreadful report of the Ludlow, Colorado, mine massacre when government troops shot striking miners and their families—provides a convincing argument that honorable dissent is among the noblest traditions of a free people.
Annabel and Edgar Johnson, the authors of the highly acclaimed Count Me Gone, The Grizzly and many other books, have written a remarkable account of vital moral dilemmas that are especially pertinent today, and of how our forefathers faced them and dealt with them courageously.