How Come American Students Are Rising Up All Over Even Though There Is No DRAFT to Motivate Them, As Some People Cynically Claim Motivated the Anti-Vietnam War Student Protests?

Read why the answer to this question is extremely important

The massive uprising of students and faculty against the Israeli genocide in Gaza is both wonderful (although tragically misled) and reminiscent of the similar wonderful uprising of students and faculty against the Vietnam War decades ago. In both cases the driving force is pure totally justifiable moral outrage at obvious immoral violence. And do not overlook the fact that these students, like the earlier ones who protested the Vietnam war by actions such as taking over buildings, are risking expulsion from college, being blacklisted and thus denied future job opportunities, and other serious negative consequences resulting from their activism.

But notice this one big difference between the students protesting Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the students protesting the Vietnam War: the military forced conscription draft.

The draft was like a Sword of Damocles over the heads of all the young men (and indirectly their girl friends) during the Vietnam War, whereas there is no equivalent Sword of Damocles over the heads of the current student demonstrators. What is the significance of this fact?

It’s this. The fact that there is no draft—no Sword of Damocles over the heads of today’s student demonstrators that can be cynically cited to make the argument that today’s student activism is motivated by selfishness rather than genuine moral outrage at injustice—shows that student uprisings like the current one and the former one against the Vietnam War in the past are not and were not due to selfish motives; they are driven by genuine moral outrage.

So let us put to rest the cynical nonsense about how the anti-Vietnam War protests were just about young people trying to end the war so they wouldn’t be drafted to fight it, OK?

Let us acknowledge that the reason Americans did not protest World War II even though there was a draft was because they thought it was a just war against evil; whereas the reason people protested the Vietnam war when there WAS a draft and now protest the Israeli genocide when there is NOT a draft is because they know that these two things were (are) immoral.

Let us recognize that most people CARE very much about what is morally right and what is morally wrong.

Let us recognize that now and then moral outrage, that is initially only a personal feeling that does not lead to action, turns into massive collective action. What makes this change happen? I have discovered (and written about HOW I discovered it here), that what makes this change happen is this: The change happens when people learn that they are not alone in their moral outrage but are in fact joined by LOTS of other people.

Read here how YOU can help build the egalitarian revolutionary movement to transform moral outrage at how the rich treat the have-nots like dirt into a movement large enough to remove the rich from power.