Thirty Eight Years Ago Today

Kent State, May 4, 1970.

Thirty-eight years ago today, four students at Kent State University were gunned down by National Guard troops during antiwar protests held a week after President Richard Nixon announced plans to begin bombing Cambodia.

Only two of those killed actually participated in the protest.

Today, much of the National Guard is deployed in Iraq, and many of those fighting George W. Bush's war oppose it as much as many of us stateside do, so it's difficult to imagine a similar response by the U.S. military to a protest against the Iraq occupation. However, George W. Bush has assembled his own Praetorian Guard in the form of Blackwater, which seems to be subject to absolutely no authority under the law. Meanwhile, Rush Limbaugh's dream is for Kent State and Chicago 1968 to become a reality for today's young people as he vocalizes his "dream" of having riots take place at this summer's Democratic National Convention.

From the 1968 election through that in 1972, we were subject to cries of "America: Love it or Leave It" by conservatives who refused to believe that anything an American government could do could possibly wrong. Many of those conservatives, and also people like John McCain, believe to this day that we could have "won" the War in Vietnam just as they believe now that we can somehow "win" the "war" in Iraq.

Nothing ever changes.