The legacy of Kent State

OPINION:

On May 4, 1970, a company of Ohio National Guardsmen fired 67 bullets into a crowd of protesting students at Kent State University, killing four and wounding nine.

The protest, like many others in colleges across the nation that month, was directed at the Nixon administration’s announcement a few days earlier that the United States was sending armed forces into Cambodia in an effort to stem the flow of men and materiel from North Vietnam through Cambodia into South Vietnam.

Immediately after the president made the announcement, campuses erupted in spasms of anger and protest, as the protesters believed (with some justification) that the incursion would have the practical effect of drawing Cambodia deeper into the conflict in Vietnam.

Students and faculty at more than 900 campuses launched a strike to protest the incursion.

One of these protests was held at Kent State, a relatively modest school not far from Akron, Ohio. This was not a school jammed with rabid collectivists, such as Berkeley or Columbia. For the most part, they were the children of the durable and reliable working class of Middle America.

That said, in the first days of that May, students joined others in town (and a handful of provocateurs) to vandalize and light fires in town. In response, the mayor asked the governor to send in the National Guard, which he did immediately.

Just after noon on that May 4, the protesting students, having lit the ROTC building on fire, got out of hand, and the Guardsmen — in many cases the same age and from the same places as the students, and who had come directly from dealing with a truckers’ strike in Ohio — had a breakdown of discipline and fired into a crowd that some of them considered a threat.

In the wake of the shooting — after the social dissolution and assassinations of the 1960s and in the middle of the most controversial and least successful war in our nation’s history — there were calls for more extreme measures on both sides of the divide.

Some wanted to crack down on the students. There was a not very thinly veiled call to violent revolution, by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young of all people.

However, most people, faced with the idea of killing their fellow citizens and their sons and daughters, decided that it was better to turn down the temperature a bit. President Nixon met with the protesters less than a week after the shootings.

Although some of the students were destructive (of physical property), most realized that they didn’t really want to kill their parents (as the Yippies advocated), nor did they want to participate in the violent overthrow of the United States.

Even the legal system seemed to understand that the times called for mercy more than justice. Neither any of the students nor the Guardsmen were ever found guilty of anything in courts of law.

It is easy to see, though, how things could have gone very wrong 56 years ago this month.

It seems relevant to our moment. We now live in a society where homicide is viewed as acceptable by more than just the perpetrators. Republicans and Democrats and corporate executives are all targets of mortal violence. This is in large measure because the tribunes of anger and discontent on all sides — unlike Americans in the wake of the 1960s and early 1970s — refuse to take the actions that are necessary for change.

If we are serious about changing our national culture, then we must first change ourselves. Guard against language that dehumanizes; let go of whatever anger we carry; see those on the other side as children of God; be as gentle as possible.

Don’t view everything that happens as an opportunity to score adolescent political points. Understand that God loves you and your “enemies” in equal measure. Stop taking cues from political “leaders” who have incentives to encourage conflict.

Our other choice — which will inevitably lead to violence, death and ruin — is to stay on the current path we are all traveling.

• Michael McKenna is a contributing editor at The Washington Times.