{"id":76,"date":"2009-11-03T01:17:49","date_gmt":"2009-11-03T06:17:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/?p=76"},"modified":"2009-11-03T01:20:26","modified_gmt":"2009-11-03T06:20:26","slug":"conscientious-objectors-truman-and-true-bravery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/?p=76","title":{"rendered":"Conscientious Objectors, Truman, and true bravery."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>May 17, 1948<br \/>\n\u201cI\u2019ll admit that it is rather difficult for me to look upon a conscientious objector with patience&#8230;While your four sons and my three nephews were risking their lives to save our government, and the things for which we stand, these people were virtually shooting them in the back.\u00a0\u00a0 I ran across one conscientious objector (<em>Desmond Doss)<\/em> that I really believe is all man\u2026I decorated him with a Congressional Medal of Honor\u2026.the majority with whom I came in contact were just plain cowards and shirkers.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>(from\u00a0\u00a0 Eleanor and Harry, The Correspondence. 2002)<\/p>\n<p>This letter was addressed to Eleanor Roosevelt in response to her request\u00a0that he\u00a0reconsider pardons for COs. Letter was saved but not sent, and he later mailed Eleanor a copy of the Attorney General\u2019s statement regarding the report in question,\u00a0including a personal note that there\u00a0would be no review because the\u00a0report was complete and he approved it<\/p>\n<p>Doss was generally reviled during most of his military service as a medic because of his religious conscientious objection to killing. Even though there is absolutely no evidence that he ever failed to pursue his duties, he was generally considered cowardly simply on the basis of his anti-war beliefs. When he happened to be assigned a position of great danger and responded bravely, he became the public \u201cexception.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 Had his assignments kept him shipboard, he would surely have remained one of Truman\u2019s assumed cowards.<\/p>\n<p>It could be said that to \u00a0hold to your principles\u00a0when the world is against you is what\u00a0requires the greatest bravery.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>May 17, 1948 \u201cI\u2019ll admit that it is rather difficult for me to look upon a conscientious objector with patience&#8230;While your four sons and my three nephews were risking their lives to save our government, and the things for which we stand, these people were virtually shooting them in the back.\u00a0\u00a0 I ran across one [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-peace","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=76"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81,"href":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76\/revisions\/81"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=76"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=76"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=76"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}