On the afternoon of the event, I was sitting at a Knights of Columbus bar with a bunch of very Democrat tire workers who had just gotten out of work. IIRC, we were watching a Yankee/Red Sox baseball game. When the bulletin as to four dead at Kent State interrupted the game, the guy next to me said: Too bad it wasn't forty. The next guy: four hundred! The next guy: four thousand! And so forth. These were guys working one of the dirtiest jobs in America. Their hands were always grimy with black rubber that attached to their hands at work. They hoped for their kids to go to college and not have to work at tire factories. They were willing to pay tuition. They were not willing to subsidize ignorant rebellions against legitimate authority. They were, even as Democrats, thoroughly fed up with the New Left antics on campus.
Eventually, courtesy of the Demonrats' penchant for surrender to communist enemies, support for street crime, enthusiasm for killing innocent babies, glorification of lavender hoopla posing as "marriage", bizarre social behavior of all sorts, nutcase theories as to practically everything, passion for farming working folks to support the welfare state to assuage the social guilt of the leaders' wives in the corporations which employed them, and several other issues, those tire factory workers would become "Reagan Democrats."
4 killed and 17 wounded at Kent State got part of what the leaders of that mob action and their enthusiastic followers deserved. Weep no crocodile tears for any of them. Better to improve marksmanship training for the National Guard.
That anti-American trash like Scott Ritter goes to Kent State to blubber over the memory of those shot says it all just in case we are EVER inclined to forget the significance of that day.
Redangus: You are right I will always remember where I was when I learned that some justice was done on that field at Kent State,.
Of the four who were killed, two did not participate in the protest. One was on her way to class and another was an ROTC member.
Redangus: You are right I will always remember where I was when I learned that some justice was done on that field at Kent State,".
I'm not sure you would feel the same way if your son or daughter was shot and killed while innocently going to class and not being a part of the demonstrations at all.
That is what happened, you know.
Two of the four killed were students going about their legitimate business a considerable distance away from and not taking part in any demonstrations.
They had no reasonable expectation of survival?
Why not?
Based on your 'reasoning', what reasonable expectation of survival do you have when you sit safely at your computer and post drivel.
What else would anyone expect from a barroom full of guys full of beer and empty of facts? After forty years you still have the same attitude. Turn off the game and put down the beer. Your attempts to characterize others as commie sympathizers for stating the facts are slovenly.
“The punks who were killed were effectively playing in the highway at the very least.” Actually they were just kids going to class that happened to be in the way of errant bullets shot wildly by young, scared National Guardsmen.
“They were more likely active sympathizers” Again in actuality the weren’t even involved in the demonstration just going to class.
“The ROTC building at Kent State was burned the night before.” Most likely not by students at KSU and definitely not by the four student killed.
“That realization put an end to the campus revolution.” I will give you this one. Protesting had become a regular campus activity at many colleges. The death of these four students changed that.
And I fought that crap you’re buddies at the KofC hall were spouting all summer. Idiots saying they should have killed them all. That was a common attitude among townies. My dad and my friends dads were all factory workers and WWII vets, and while they were fed up with the campus protests they were all incensed by the shooting at Kent State. They were smart enough to understand that those four kids could have been their kid just minding their own business and walking to class. Attitudes like your friends are those of people who don’t think much about what they say they just throw out platitudes “like kill them all and let G*d sort it out”.
I guess we both remember where we were on May 4th 1970, but I guess that is where our memories take very divergent path. You seem to remember it as a glorious day in American history whereas I remember it as the day an American military unit opened fire on students exercising their constitutional right to protest. I did not agree with their stance on the war, agree order needed to be restored to the town and campus, but will always feel that opening fire with M-16s on unarmed protesters could not possibly have been the best course of action, but definitely the one the antiwar crowd was hoping for.