ABSTRACT
Consider this excerpt from Scenes from American Life (1970)1 in which a father and son, out for a sail, conclude an argument over the son’s decision to draft-dodge the Vietnam War:
FATHER: You have no idea what duty means. You have no conception of what the word duty means. We don’t just quit. We don’t desert the ship. Or scuttle it. Which is what you’re doing. When your mother got into that nonsense with Mr. Fiske, I stuck by her. I stuck by the rules. And so should you. Now stand up at that trial and take your punishment like a man. Do it. No arguments. Just do it.
