Liberty Defined: 50 Essential Issues That Affect Our Freedom by Ron Paul

draft, especially when fighting in undeclared and unconstitutional wars. One of the best known to suffer prosecution for his beliefs and resistance was Muhammad Ali. Though he had joined the Nation of Islam and argued he was a conscientious objector, he was still arrested for refusing to serve and go to Vietnam in 1966. His summation of his beliefs as to why he refused became classic. Simply, he said: “I ain’t got no quarrel with the Viet Cong.” 1 No other American did either!
    Ali was found guilty in a Houston court in 1967, sentenced to five years in prison, and fined $10,000—the jury took twenty-one minutes. He lost his title and was banned from boxing for seven years. After five years, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in favor of Ali. He never served a day in prison but nevertheless paid a high price for his convictions.
    Sports writer Harold Conrad said after the conviction andsentencing: “He threw this life away on one toss of the dice for something he believed in. Not many folks do that.” 2 True, “not many folks do that,” but I disagree that he threw his life away. That fight, against the state, he eventually won, though at a cost, and history may show that it was the best of all his fights and the one that should have given him the greatest sense of dignity and pride.
    At the time, Ali’s resistance to war and the military draft was seen by a majority of Americans to be “unpatriotic.” But they did not understand that patriotism is the act of standing up to the government when the government is wrong, and at great risk stand firmly on principles that protect the freedoms of all people. Those who resist the state nonviolently, based on their own principles, deserve our support.
    The opposite approach to protest is the use of violence. Violence is a terrible agent of social change. Individuals advocating or participating in violence, on occasion, will associate with certain groups and falsely give the impression that they are acting as a bona fide member of the group. The media rarely have any desire to sort out the facts, especially if the group that is being wrongly blamed represents anti–big government views. FBI agents will infiltrate certain groups they deem dangerous. Government itself, spying on any private group, is dangerous to our Fourth Amendment rights, which is something people tend to forget. The argument usually is that it’s necessary to keep the American people safe. There have been many examples where the government official notonly urges the breaking of the law but participates in it so the suspects can be caught red-handed. It was this abuse of the law that led to the tragedy of Ruby Ridge (where the government killed a man’s wife in a pointless hunt in 1992 3 ) and the entrapment of various “militia” groups. It has been used in drug investigations as well. The use of government agents to encourage the breaking of laws in a sting operation represents government violence that can surpass the violence of the suspected criminals.
    I personally don’t know of any organized group that is calling for the violent overthrow of our government. There are many individuals demanding a more just system that doesn’t reward the well connected with bailouts, nor punish those who ask only to be totally self-reliant and not be forced to be a ward or victim of the state.
    The vast majority of Americans detest the mere thought of violence as a legitimate tool for bringing about political changes. Nearly everyone still believes that changes are available through the political process. Many who feel helpless working in the very messy political system still see the benefits of working to change attitudes through education and understanding. Others endorse the principle of peaceful civil disobedience as a means for bringing about political changes. This is a legitimate tool that was practiced by many in the civil rights movement in order to eliminate arcane laws that forced