after the war but beginning during the war, primarily by people like richard nixon's vice president, spiro agnew, there's a quite successful effort to demonize the antiwar movement and to reduce the most vibrant and diverse movement, antiwar movement in our history to this very nasty and reductive stereotype of a bunch of arrogant, elitist, unpatriotic cowardly campus-based draft dodgers who undermined the heroic and brave efforts of u.s. soldiers. that imagery, i'm afraid, has powerfully endured. and has served not only to stigmatize future antiwar struggles but has produced in us a kind of reflexive obligation to express our abiding gratitude for those who serve in the military that actually discourages all of us as citizens to asking the kind of critical questions about the wars they are being deployed to fight. what i most want to talk about today is a lesson or an example we can find in the g.i. movement. that is perhaps most relevant to our own time, and that is simply this. we need to remember people are capable of changing their mind on issues of fundamental importance, and not onl