Gould,

Your interpretation of my post in no way reflects what I intended to convey.
I definitely did not intend to distort he truth. There were 1000's of
students. Some students were throwing rocks and bottles, many were yelling
at the Guardsmen. By no stretch of the imagination was this a peaceful
demonstration.

I must be a real wuss, if I was facing 1000's of students right after a
crowd of students had burned down the ROTC building, and attacked the
firemen who arrived to put out the fire, I would have been very scared.

The May 4 web site, conveyed to me, that this was a extremely tense
situation for all involved.

What I have a hard time believing is that any of the Guardsman fired on the
students because they were conducting an antiwar protest.

May 4. was tragic. Kent State and the Vietnam War are very sensitive to
anyone alive during this period. For Don said the Guardsman murdered the
students, that is as vile and as asinine as the protestors who called the
returning Vietnam soldiers "baby killers".


"Gould 0738" wrote in message
...
Gould,

You need to take a long breath and calm down, tell me where I used any
vile
or hateful words in my discussion of the Kent State tragedy? When did I
say
the Guardsman were acting in self defense? I said a bunch of scared

kids
made a tragic mistake. that is not vile, hateful or inaccurate.


Your exact words we
*
Harry are you talking about those bunch of scared kids who were surrounded
by 1000's of anger protestor throwing rocks and bottles? Unfortunately a
small group of the guardsmen feeling in danger of their life, freaked out
and shot into the crowd trying to disperse the angry students.

*
There are no "vile words" in the paragraph, only a vile distortion of the
truth. The statement "surrounded by 1000's of angry protestors throwing
rocks
and bottles" is by no means ambivalent, nor is it open to
subjective intepretation. You have stated there were at least 2 x 1000
protestors, surrounding the guardsmen, and throwing rocks and bottles.

The statement is hateful in that it dismisses an entire class of people
(the
protestors) based solely upon the isolated actions of a very few.
Thousands of
protestors throwing rocks and bottles is a far different scenario from one
or
two people in a generally peaceful crowd throwing a rock, or a bottle, or
even
tossing a fuming gas cannister back at the
cops. (That was SOP in the 60's. had to happen 1000 times in the space of
a few
years, and nobody else felt that it required
shooting Americans for exercising their first amendment rights).

It would be equally hateful for one of my liberal brothers to say, "The
KKK
lynched a guy down in Alabama, and thousands of local conservatives turned
out
to cheer that justice had been done." Maybe *a* conservative turned out to
cheer......but exaggerating the number for effect or to distort reality
would
be a hateful act placing political rhetoric above any attempt to live
harmoniously with folks holding different opinions.

You implied the Guardsmen were acting in self defense when you stated they
were
surrounded by thousands of rock and bottle throwing protestors. Any
reasonable
person would agree, that had thousands of
protestors surrounded the squad and proceded to pelt it with rocks and
bottles
some sort of response would be justified in self defense. *If*. But that's
not
the way it happened.

I appreciate that you have acknowledged your mischaracterization of the
events
at Kent State. As I said, a real man would do so- so congrats. :-)

Sorry if I reacted strongly. There's still a scab on a few wounds from
that
era. If you lived through it, you can understand why so many people are
nervous
about the current tone the divisive rhetoric is taking in America at this
time.
A busted country is serious schlitz, and extremist positions
from either side saying "it's my way or the highway", "you either support
the
president or you're a traitor", or "conservatives all think money is more
important than life or justice" won't do.
The situation is different now that it was this time last year. We are
more
polarized. The country is ready to come apart.

Now, about that "armed FBI informant" that the Guard Commander mentioned
in the
letter to the senator......coupled with the tough talk from the governor
the
night before I suspect the FBI was hoping to incite just the sort of
incident
that developed. "We'll show these liberal traitors that it doesn't pay to
question the president!" Kent State helped galvanize opposition to Nixon
and
to the war in Viet Nam, so I guess somebody showed somebody something.

We're lucky there weren't a lot more incidents of this kind. I can tell
you for
a fact that during some anti-war protests
in Seattle at that time, the FBI had snipers
on rooftops. Just in case, apparently. (My father had a job at that time
that
required him to provide the FBI access to the roof of some publicly owned
buildings.)

As two antogonists say at signoff.....

"peace be upon you"

and

"peace on you too" :-)