Okay yeah, he's absolutely and clearly talking about the military drafts, he literally says it in his talk. Loosely quoted, "if we look at conscientious objectors for military drafts for all wars during the 20th century, it's always about a quarter of a percentage"...

Then again, reading your source, I get the impression that the vietnam war had an especially and notably high level of public disagreement [emphasis mine]

> The Vietnam War, as it is popularly called although war was never officially declared by the United States, produced a very organized network of draft resisters and supporters [for more information about the history of the Vietnam War, click here]. Rejection of conscription stemmed from opposition to militarism and war itself, to disagreement with the United States' foreign policy in Indochina, and/or to the belief that the draft epitomized injustice as it was weighted heavily against African Americans, the poor, and the less educated. Whatever the reason, a sizable contingent of young men declared that this armed conflict at least had no claim on them. During this time, draft counseling services expanded sizably, and groups were formed all over the country to provide support for draft resisters. As dissent spread, it polarized new constituencies among professionals, civil rights groups, and women's organizations. Massive anti-war rallies were held, as well as rallies in which hundreds of young men turned in or burned their draft cards. GI resister groups spread, so that dissent was coming from the armed forces as well as those not yet in the military.

WWII, same page

> During WWII, the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 dictated the terms by which more than 34 million American men, ages 18 to 44, participated in the war effort. Of the men who registered for the draft, there were 72,354 who applied for conscientious objector status. Of those, 25,000 accepted noncombatant service in the army, agreeing to work for the medical Corps or in anything that did not involve actual combat. Another 27,000 failed the basic physical examination. In the end, 6,086 C.O.s (4,441 of them Jehovah's Witnesses) went to prison for refusing to cooperate with Selective Service. Another 12,000 men entered Civilian Public Service (CPS), a program under civilian direction designed to accommodate C.O.s by having them do "work of national importance." [cf. Keim]

That is, 72,000/34,000,000 ~= 72/34,000 ~= ... 0.2%

... Buut if we read on, post-vietnam war

> Draft registration was reinstituted in July 1980; from then until 1985, over 500,000 men refused or failed to register.

It's hard, because I have to estimate the amount of people that were eligible for draft, but let's say the ratio is about the same as it was in 1940

in 1940, there were ~130mln people in the US ~= 65mln men, 34mln draftable, 34mln/65mln = 52% of men were draftable, so say about a fourth of the population

In 1985, there were ~238mln people in the US, so about 60mln men draftable.

500,000 / 60,000,000 = 0.83%, which is still low, but considerably higher than 0.2%, it's closer to 1%. [[edit: and I just noticed that the 500,000 includes failed to register, whereas the earlier statistic doesn't. This would lower the estimation by quite a bit, I'm not going to redo it. But I guess it'd be around 0.2-0.3% again]]

So oddly enough, I think you're right, Alan seems to be off with his statistic. The only thing that comes to mind quickly is that he's not talking about the US population, but rather the world population, but even then it's a bit weird, because he's specifically talking about conscientious objection in 20th century.

Then again, even if the total and average amount of conscientious objectors was as "high" as 1%, his point would still stand, 99% of people aren't against killing if the culture allows it. Even a jump of an entire order of magnitude isn't enough to make his point any less valid, imho.