Random Destiny How The Vietnam War Draft Lottery Shaped A Generation

This book provides a concise but thorough summary of how the selective service system worked from 1965 through 1973, and also demonstrates how this selective process, during a highly unpopular war, steered major life choices of millions of young men seeking deferrals based on education, occupation, marital and family status, sexual orientation, and more. This book explains each category of deferral and its resulting “ripple effect” across society. Putting a human face on these sociological trends, the book also includes a number of brief personal anecdotes from men in each category, told from a remove of 40 years or more, when the lifelong effects of youthful decisions prompted by the draft have become evident. There are few books which address the military draft of the Vietnam years, most notably CHANCE AND CIRCUMSTANCE: The Draft, the War and the Vietnam Generation, by Baskir and Strauss (1978). This early study of draft-age men discusses how they were socially channeled by the selective service system. RANDOM DESTINY follows up on this premise and draws from numerous later studies of men in the lottery pool, to create the definitive portrait of the draft and its long-term personal and social effects. RANDOM DESTINY presents an in-depth explanation of the selective service system in its final years. It also provides a comprehensive yet personal portrait of how the draft and the lottery steered a generation of young lives into many different paths, from combat to conscientious objection, from teaching to prison, from the pulpit to the Canadian border, from public health to gay liberation. It is the only recent book which demonstrates how American military conscription, in the time of an unpopular war, profoundly influenced a generation and a society over the decades that followed.

Beliefs, superstitions and tales about luck are present across all human cultures, according to anthropologists. We are perennially fascinated by luck and by its association with happiness and danger, uncertainty and aspiration. Yet it remains an elusive, ungraspable idea, one that slips and slides over time: all cultures reimagine what luck is and how to tame it at different stages in their history, and the modernity of the ‘long twentieth century’ is no exception to the rule. Apparently overshadowed by more conceptually tight, scientific and characteristically modern notions such as chance, contingency, probability or randomness, luck nevertheless persists in all its messiness and vitality, used in our everyday language and the subject of studies by everyone from philosophers to psychologists, economists to self-help gurus. Modern Luck sets out to explore the enigma of luck’s presence in modernity, examining the hybrid forms it has taken on in the modern imagination, and in particular in the field of modern stories. Indeed, it argues that modern luck is constituted through narrative, through modern luck stories. Analysing a rich and unusually eclectic range of narrative taken from literature, film, music, television and theatre – from Dostoevsky to Philip K. Dick, from Pinocchio to Cimino, from Curtiz to Kieślowski – it lays out first the usages and meanings of the language of luck, and then the key figures, patterns and motifs that govern the stories told about it, from the late nineteenth century to the present day.

Based on more than one hundred interviews with participants and accompanied by nearly forty photographs and maps, Battle Green Vietnam tells the story of the 1971 antiwar protest by Vietnam veterans that resulted in the largest mass arrest in Massachusetts history.

As the twenty-first century unfolds society is confronted with the normalization of warfare and political violence and their growing allure for the young. Current global political events highlight the extent to which young people have become the target of both State and non-State actors in the prosecution of war and terror. The conduct of what we can refer to as "social war" has increasingly come to target the young through media (social media, the internet and video games) and more directly through acts of violence (the massacre of children, the reliance on child soldiers, and the use of children in martyrdom operations) as legitimate forms of conduct. The appropriation of the young as political and military materials through the processes of both radicalization and militarization warrants close examination. Drumbeat examines these issues within the context of the ongoing process of militarization and the establishment of a state of perpetual warfare. The book distinguishes between radicalization, which refers to the application of propaganda and ideological methods by non-State agents, and militarization, which refers to the application of propaganda and ideological methods by State agents in order to effectively prosecute war. The focus of this book will be an examination of the mechanisms through which forms of media and other digital and web-based artefacts – social media, video and video games - assist in the militarization and radicalization of the young. There is a growing body of evidence which points to the effectiveness of various forms of media in both the recruitment of young people and the promotion of ideological frames. For example, non-State actors (extremist religious groups and the Alt-Right) have been highly effective in appropriating new media to project their propaganda messages and their appeal to young people. The book also argues that militarization has become a powerful societal force, which is re-configuring the daily conduct of life in the West. Just as radicalization seeks to prepare the young for the conduct of war, militarization also functions to position the broader society for war. This is a new form of the "civilizing process" to which Norbert Elias referred. In this context new media provides the conduits through which this process is legitimized, celebrated and promulgated.

This true coming of age story that shares the humor, drama, and romance of a forty-year love affair that begins with me being picked number one in the Vietnam War draft lottery. Some have compared this story favorably with Forest Gump or The Wonder Years.Winning the lottery shaped and molded my life. No, I didn't win the Power Ball or some other Million Dollar prize. On July 1, 1970, I won the Vietnam War Draft Lottery when my birthday, July 9th was chosen number one. I Won a Life in the Lottery - The Vietnam War Draft Lottery, chronicles the true-life adventure that resulted from being drafted during the Vietnam War. This dramatic yet humorous adventure began with marrying my sixteen-year-old sweet heart and moving her across country from her family and everything she knew to serve at the United States Army Intelligence School. This couple of naïve teenagers not only faced the realities of the war, but medical emergencies, encounters with cults, and being able to assist Interpol with drug smugglers. They together faced life threatening emergencies, heights of winning "Soldier of the Year, and surprises of sitting in the dugout during the World Series at Dodger stadium in Los Angeles. Most importantly this young couple learned they could handle anything if they stuck together, counted on each other, trusted in the Lord, and let their love grow into a forty-year love affair. Winning the draft lottery gave them a life worth living, a life of true adventure filled with laughter and tears. This humorous heartfelt story is inspired by the unexpected opportunities provided after my birthday was the number one pick in the Vietnam War draft lottery.

The history of the draft in the United States.

Activists have long claimed that “the personal is political”, but this book posits the converse: that the political is personal. The United States today is bitterly divided. It is less an aspirational melting pot of immigrants and more a salad bowl made up of distinct, often clashing flavors. The successive elections of two divisive presidents—one committed to the perennial leftist dream of “fundamental change” and the other to a conservative vision of “Making America Great Again”—have exacerbated what is arguably the greatest rift in politics since the election of Abraham Lincoln. Taking inspiration from Coleridge’s belief that all humans are temperamentally destined to follow the path of Plato the Idealist or Aristotle the Realist, this book examines the political divide in terms of these temperamental differences. Liberals’ and conservatives’ views of human nature have a large bearing on the political policies they espouse, but their temperaments and personalities have the most significant impact. This book analyses the personality traits of liberals and conservatives in terms of the “Big Five” model—openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Conservatives are found in almost all studies to be more conscientious, agreeable, and extroverted, while liberals are found to be more open to new experience and neurotic. The political divisions I explore in this book are all essentially fueled by personality differences. There is a deepening divide between liberals and conservatives in the battle for America’s soul: one side seeks to steer the nation sharply to the left into socialist selfdom, whereas the other side desires a wealthy and free America under the watchful eye of God’s providence. A preponderance of academic texts belongs to the liberal tradition. Conservatives have long lacked a comparable intellectual tradition of their own, although an incipient one is now beginning to form. This book, while maintaining a measure of scholarly distance, is unashamedly written from a conservative point of view.