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.
The students that were killed were not imune from the NG. Were they too stupid to realize that they could not walk across a battlefield without risk of injury??? Even if they were innocent bystanders, anyone NOT part of the demonstrations should have stayed out of the area. Bullets don’t choose sides.
I have two kids in college right now and another to follow. They know enough to avoid the vicinity of such crimes as were committed by that crowd. They certainly know enough not to be Red revolutionaries attacking the National Guard or even rubberneckers (revolutionary is a LOT more likely description of the Kent State dead). If they don't have that sense, my emotional reaction would not make me right. See #40. As a basis of public policy, rationality beats self-centered blubbering every time. I put myself in similar circumstances in New Haven (see #40) at about the same time and, if I had been shot, I would blame no one but me.
The Kent State students stupidity or treason is not an excuse for guardsmen not to defend themselves when attacked. If you want to blame someone for the deaths of the Comrade Muffies and the Comrade Skippers, blame the mob for attacking the guard and regard the deaths as felony murders attributable to the mob and not to the guard just as though it were a bank or Brinks robbery in which a bystander was killed by cops stopping the robbery and the robbers would be charged. Not that I concede for a moment that the Kent State dead punks were innocent or had any legitimate complaint against the guardsmen. Also, stupidity is no more of an excuse than Marxism is.
BTW, what makes you think you are a conservative?