The problem with Kent State was that instead of firing at the leaders of the trouble-making rioters, the national guard fired over their heads striking bystanders in the background. Rioters are generally like packs of wild dogs - take out the leaders and the rest will flee.
I live very close to Kent State. It’s not a popular opinion with some around here, but I think the lesson learned at KSU was don’t throw rocks at people with guns!
Because we understand the issue better than you do, bonehead.
The students who were killed on May 4 gave the nation the gift of their lives, he said.
No, they didn't. They were useful idiots who bought an anti-American ideology and tried to implement their wishes like children throwing tantrums. The people giving their lives for our country are the men and women of the armed forces who volunteer for combat in the war against Islmaofascism, and who are killed in battle or war-related incidents. They are heroes, every one of them.
The students who died at Kent State were naive children and merit no commemoration from their nation.
Isn’t Ritter a kiddie diddler.
Did Scott bring his fourteen year old date with him. Probably had to bribe her with an offer for dinner at Burger King afterwards.
I’m not trying to defend the violent, moonbat anti-war (anti-American) protestors, but not everyone shot at Kent State was a protestor.
A male student shot was, ironically, in ROTC. He was in civilian clothes and watching the protest from the sidelines. One of the female students who was shot was walking by the area of the protests with textbooks under her arm....she wasn’t a protestor. Both of these students died.
The media at the time called another young woman....the one in the Putlizer prize winning photo.... a “co-ed.” This was the famous photo of a horror-stricken “co-ed” crouching over the dead body of protestor Jeffrey Miller. In reality, this “co-ed” was a 14 year old runaway, now a 52 year old woman.
Why the hell Scott Ritter is interjecting himself into this 38 year old tragic incident at Kent State, I have no idea. I guess he’s tired of protesting Iraq.
The truth is the lefties staged this whole thing hoping the guard would shoot, this was the ideal situation as far as they were concerned. Communists were running rampant at the time and using idealistic young idiots to help them in their cause of stopping a war against a communist nation. Among the active communist, of course, was John Frikin' Kerry and his ilk. ("You know what an ilk is don't you? Yeah, its a big deer." First prize to anyone who identifies the movie that was taken from).
The 60s were a bad time and the main reason we are in such trouble now is because the majority of the people, me included, didn't take these revolutionists for the communist party seriously. We need to do that now and fight back as hard as we can.
Was Mr. Ritter also in town for meetings at a local Burger King?
I was a freshman in college at a similar sized midwestern school when this happened. The anti war crowd that started all this foolishness had been on our campus a couple of days before, but found our student body to be too pacifist for their liking. The tried to hold a rally on the commons area in the center of the old campus, but most people just stopped for a couple of minutes and went on to class. I guess they found a more receptive crowd and KSU. It was Spring and the weather was absolutely beautiful that weekend so I imagine a lot of the students were just in the mood to be rowdy. There was some rioting and burning in town the night before, hence the calling in of the NG. Your description of the students as a bunch of hippies is really not very accurate. They were mostly small town college kids who allowed themselves to get riled up by some antiwar professionals and then found themselves staring down the barrel of a gun manned by a kid probably their age. To my knowledge there was very little if any rocks and bottles being throw on May 4 though there was a confrontation on campus. Some reports said a shot was fired at the NG, but nobody can confirm that.
Anyway the antiwar people got what they wanted in one sense, but not in another. They got “Nixon and his tin soldiers” as the song says to fire on and kill American college kids in the heartland, but instead of campuses going up in flames for the most part it was the death knell of the antiwar protest on most campuses. Protesting was a fun way to let off steam in the Spring time when know one was getting hurt, it was viewed very differently after May 4.
What did come out of the KS shootings was a change in the attitude of many parents and adults. All of a sudden the war and the protests over it were being brought home to them in stark terms. They started to ask more questions about the war and about America’s leadership. The Left picked up on that and with the help of the Media slowly, but surely turned the people against the war.
As I said I was a freshman in college at the time. I was not a member of the antiwar crowd, though I did believe we needed to change our tactics and start doing what was necessary to win the thing and get it over with. I lost 4 friends in Vietnam and went to all their funerals. What I remember most about that day was the stunned silence of those on campus as they heard the news. My girlfriend later wife and I were coming back from a walk. When we got back to the dorm everyone was just standing around whispering. She asked one of the grad students what was going on. He told her the NG had shot and killed students at Kent State that afternoon. We knew little about KS other than it was a school similar to ours and was in our athletic conference. My reaction, like I am sure many others, was “what do you mean they shot and killed kids at Kent State?” We then joined in that same wondering, questioning, soul-searching silence that was creeping across our small midwestern campus.
My mom and dad’s generation had Pearl Harbor, those between my parents and me had JFK’s assassination and for people my age, at least college kids my age, we will always remember where we were when we heard about Kent State.
Ritter & Murtha, “Dumb & Dumber”.
Semper Fi,
Kelly
People don’t show up on Memorial Day to honor our vets either. Why should they show up for this fiasco?
People don’t show up on Memorial Day to honor our vets either. Why should they show up for this fiasco?
Most of the "students" at that "protest" were not students at Kent State; they were professionally organized thugs brought there by SDA.
Remember that SDS was actually funded by a wing of the American Communist Party.
Nothing more than that.