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I had a chance recently to talk with a pastor who's of the same era as Mr. Kerry.

In fact, he was a divinty student at Harvard in the late 60s

I teasingly called him a 'dope-smoking hippy', and he laughed and said, 'Oh, I was liberal, all right, but I was married and my wife was pregnant. We lived in married housing and you didn't have the same crowd in there you had other places on campus. We at least tried to be serious."

Again, I teased him and said, "Ah. No dope, OK. But you were a liberal, so you went to the demonstrations, right?"

"Yes," he said, "I went to some... but I'll tell you why I stopped going. There was this fellow who was all full of the anti-war vitriol, filled with the hate, and he'd get everyone all riled up and mad, and the sit-ins and all that. I was risking everything to be there- missing class, missing work, away from my wife- and I thought that it was worth it, that we were actually accomplishing something. Well, one time this guy had got the whole place riled up, it was madness! and I wanted to ask him something. And so I followed him, because he slipped out at the height of the frenzy. He was about 20 feet ahead of me, sprinting, and all of a sudden he jumps into this red sports car and zips away. And I watched him, and I thought, what the... this is nuts! This kid doesn't care about this stuff! He's on his dad's dime! I was so mad at him! And at myself for doing it!"

The pastor's face was creased with anger- still- at having been 'had' so many years ago.

"I tell you what I did do. Partly of shame, and because we were so damn broke. I joined the army, as a chaplain, that's how I paid the rest of school. And I feel like I did some good, especially with some of those kids who came home..."