Tin Soldiers and Nixon Coming, Four Dead in Ohio

By Jeralyn, Section Civil Liberties
Posted on Tue May 04, 2010 at 08:19:00 AM EST
Tags: Kent State (all tags)

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Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,
We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming,
Four dead in Ohio.

Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are gunning us down
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?

Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,
We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming,
Four dead in Ohio.

**********

An audio recording of the shootings 40 years ago at Kent State University includes the voices of Ohio National Guard leaders ordering troops to fire into a crowd of students, according to a man wounded in the shootings, who obtained a copy of the recording.

[More...]

Dead: Allison Krause - Age: 19, William Schroeder - Age: 19, Jeffrey Miller - Age: 20, Sandra Scheuer - Age: 20. They were the four students killed on the Kent State campus in Ohio on May 5, 1970, during a routine Vietnam war protest. The National Guard opened fire.

What were they protesting??

On Thursday, April 30, 1970, President Richard Nixon told the American people that we were sending troops into Cambodia. He had been elected on his promise to end the war. Rallies began around the country on May 1.

Some history

Some history And on why we shouldn't forget:

To forgive is a virtue, but forgetting is an indulgence we can ill afford. Our foreign policy establishment remains addicted to empire, and is possessed by a hubris that is arguably even greater than the one that got us into Vietnam. Until they learn the lessons that the anti-war movement tried to teach them, we can expect more Vietnams ahead of us.

I remember where I was that day....I had just returned home to New York from college in Ann Arbor to begin my summer job at the local record store. The news spread like wildfire, even without internet, email and cable tv. We all wore black armbands at work the entire next week and the music we played in the store reflected our anger. Four years later (36 years ago today) --May 4, 1974 -- I was sworn in as a lawyer to the Colorado bar and began my career as a defender of constitutional rights and the accused. Without a doubt, the draft lottery, the Vietnam war, LBJ, Hubert Humphrey and Richard Nixon were factors in my choice, and I'm proud to say I've never once looked back to question it.

May they rest in piece, and may we wisen up to recognize the continuous and even greater assault on our civil liberties and privacy rights that exist today.

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Tin Soldiers and Nixon Coming, Four Dead in Ohio | 40 comments (40 topical)

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40 years ago, actually -- (5.00 / 6) (#1)
by Cream City on Tue May 04, 2010 at 01:11:11 AM EST

and I always mourn on this date for any last trust in our government lost that day, forever, for many of us. Watergate would be just more of the same, more of what we already knew by then. . . .

So tomorrow, I go back to the campus that I helped to close down the next day in the national, general strike of students at more than 500 campuses.

Fyi, here is a good roundup story -- with a good video interview with Alan Canfora, bless him for his decades of dedication to telling the truth about Kent State. And now I begin the ten-day countdown to mark more murders at Jackson State.

Never forget.

Btw, another cx -- sorry, but (5.00 / 4) (#2)
by Cream City on Tue May 04, 2010 at 01:14:31 AM EST

not all of the students killed and injured (one still paralyzed) were protesting. Some were just walking to class -- including one of the murdered, an ROTC student, one of several shot. in. the. back.

The governor was complicit with the National Guard in this, as the campus was not warned that it was to be closed down. So classes were not canceled, students still were going to class, to dorms, to the cafeteria.

And even the protesters were at least 60 yards away. And the protest essentially was over. See the video at the link above; all this has been verified by the federal investigation.


A sad weekend all around (none / 0) (#5)
by jbindc on Tue May 04, 2010 at 08:49:53 AM EST

Mini riots in the streets, so much vandalism that bars shut down early on Friday night, the arson of the National Guard Building ( and the subsequent slashing of fire hoses and rocks being thrown at firemen trying to put out the blaze) and then the shootings.

I was only 3, so I don't remember that weekend, but it was bad all the way around.


None of which justified (5.00 / 3) (#6)
by Cream City on Tue May 04, 2010 at 08:54:22 AM EST

mass murder.


I didn't say it did (none / 0) (#13)
by jbindc on Tue May 04, 2010 at 09:58:42 AM EST

All I said was it was a horrible weekend with tempers on edge and lots of other things going on. The shootings weren't done in a vacuum. Lots of damage done - more than just the immediate damage. It still resonates today.


Then you must remember (5.00 / 1) (#15)
by Cream City on Tue May 04, 2010 at 10:16:21 AM EST

the catalyst for the rise in protests again that weekend: Nixon admitting to having secretly expanded the war into Cambodia.

We were desperate; 10 percent of the men of my generation were dying in Vietnam, and the war was supposed to be winding down.

And more names still are going on The Wall every year, even now -- more still dying, directly attributable to that war, which in 1970 had been taking American lives for a quarter of a century.

And yet it still had five more years to go.


Being on edge is one thing (5.00 / 1) (#26)
by jondee on Tue May 04, 2010 at 01:02:40 PM EST

firing M-16s into a crowd of people, most of whom were no closer than a hundred yards away, is another case study for Dr Milgram.

Of course, we dropped more bombs than we dropped in WWII on a country the size of Massachusetts on the other side of the planet that wasnt threatening us in any way, and some prominent neanderthals here are still complaining because we didnt drop more..So I guess we should be thankful that there weren't more Kent States.


Btw, I ought to have added (5.00 / 1) (#30)
by Cream City on Tue May 04, 2010 at 02:18:53 PM EST

apologies for misunderstanding your comment.


Interesting (none / 0) (#17)
by squeaky on Tue May 04, 2010 at 10:49:07 AM EST

Your apologist reflex for law and order started at a very early age.


Sure (5.00 / 1) (#29)
by Spamlet on Tue May 04, 2010 at 02:12:52 PM EST

Your apologist reflex for law and order started at a very early age.

Like your personality disorder.

"Evidentially."


: OK Doc (none / 0) (#37)
by squeaky on Tue May 04, 2010 at 03:55:48 PM EST

We'll just call you "Sybil" from now on... lol

You have this right (5.00 / 1) (#28)
by Spamlet on Tue May 04, 2010 at 02:02:09 PM EST

My sister was on the scene, and I was nearby, watching the news and reading the local papers.

And I understand that you are not saying that the shootings were justified. It takes a stretch to draw that conclusion from what you said.


No (5.00 / 1) (#36)
by squeaky on Tue May 04, 2010 at 03:52:45 PM EST

It just takes knowing that the commenter almost always favors law enforcement over those that allegedly break the law.

Had the commenter either never, rarely or infrequently defended law enforcement over alleged lawbreakers, you would have a point.

But that the commenter has a long history of pro law enforcement comments at TL, your point is either reflexively defensive of someone whose views you share, or you are not aware of the commenter's position on crime.


I can read (5.00 / 1) (#38)
by Spamlet on Tue May 04, 2010 at 03:58:00 PM EST

And, to adopt your formulation, let me just add that

either your point is __ or you are __.

My choices for the those blanks would be "compulsively antagonistic" and "not very bright," in that order.


: I See (none / 0) (#39)
by squeaky on Tue May 04, 2010 at 04:02:26 PM EST

Guess it is the reflexive option.

And what may be surprising (none / 0) (#16)
by Spamlet on Tue May 04, 2010 at 10:28:57 AM EST

to people not there at the time is that the "man in the street" in northeast Ohio (and, needless to say, the rest of Ohio) thought the National Guard's actions were justified. That certainly was the point of view expressed by the bloviators on the local newscasts (Cleveland). I remember writing an angry letter to one of them.

My sister was a KSU student at the time. Her roommate was Alison Krause's best friend. She was not political, and it could just as easily have been my sister shot dead while walking between classes. I remember my mother in the kitchen, sobbing with relief when she found out that my sister was not one of the students who had been killed.

What may also surprise people not there at the time is that KSU was just about the last place in the world where anyone would have expected an antiwar protest, or a protest of any kind at all. I hate to say it, but once in a blue moon all the talk about "outside agitators" is true. (Not that there's anything wrong with "outside agitators," just the reflexive lying about them on the part of "the authorities" when some notorious tinderbox finally blows for good reasons of its own. KSU was not such a place.)


Well, "outside agitators", (none / 0) (#18)
by brodie on Tue May 04, 2010 at 11:34:35 AM EST

if you mean agents provocateurs, there probably were a few in the various demonstrations at Kent as there had been at other campuses. Other than that though, I suspect KSU's demonstrations were largely organic and native.

Nixon's televised announcement that the US would be invading Cambodia was a very big deal which greatly upset and angered many people in this country, including students all across the country, and not just at the usual elite schools. A huge number of students, and increasingly those previously on the sidelines, were involved nationwide in various protests as there was building momentum for a coordinated national student strike. People on both sides were in a revved up and confrontational mood. Both nonviolent and violent demonstrations (the usual property damage of a major bank for instance, or a ROTC building damaged) occurred after the speech at a number of campuses.

But in OH, you had a reactionary conservative governor who failed to take appropriate action to keep the situation under control (like making sure no live rounds would be chambered and used by the Guardsmen), and we all know what happened.

Not dissimilar, in fact, to what happened a year earlier in Berkeley at People's Park when the local police authorities crossed the line and began firing bullets and buckshot into another semi-roudy crowd, backed by a reactionary conservative Ca gov -- Ronnie Reagan -- who'd just about had it with long-haired hippie student agitators. One dead there, many dozens wounded by police gunfire.


I don't mean agents provocateurs (none / 0) (#23)
by Spamlet on Tue May 04, 2010 at 12:14:02 PM EST

if what you mean by that is the dictionary definition of someone (such as a government agent) employed to pretend sympathy with a group and incite its members to an incriminating action.

In the case of KSU, and specifically in connection not just with the on-campus protest but also the "unrest" in town for the nights preceding it, I mean white upper-middle-class kids from the more elite universities in the area (I was attending one of them at the time) who were protesting Nixon's invasion of Cambodia and looking for new venues to take the protest. (I agreed with what they were saying, by the way.)

Though I'm no fan of Governor James Rhodes, it should be noted that he may have been an idjut but for most of his career he was a fairly moderate Republican. It was only when Rhodes was running against Robert Taft in a U.S. Senate primary (an election Rhodes lost a few days after the KSU shootings) that he started talking like a warmongering clone of Richard Nixon.

I don't see any real grounds for comparison between KSU and People's Park, adjacent to the Berkeley campus, which had been a political hotbed at least since 1964 (Mario Savio and the FSM). Many kids went to Berkeley specifically because of its political atmosphere. Kids went to KSU because they came from working-class and lower-middle-class families, hoped to find better-paying jobs after graduation than those of their parents, and could not afford the travel expenses that would have come with attending an out-of-state school. Many of them, whatever their beliefs about the war, also could not afford to be arrested in an antiwar protest, for fear of losing the federal grants that made their college education possible at all. And of course not a few KSU students, along with the news media in northeastern Ohio at that time, also saw the antiwar protesters as "troublemakers."


One fact I wanted to highlight (none / 0) (#25)
by brodie on Tue May 04, 2010 at 12:42:13 PM EST

in my previous post was that Nixon's move into Cambodia really set off a firestorm of protest in this country which swept into areas previously not known for such. Like Kent State.

It may well be that some "outsiders" from elite schools came into Kent to organize and stir things up, but I suspect again that even if there is some truth to that, very little would have been needed to be done by way of convincing KSU students as of April 30, 1970 to finally begin protesting. And it could well be that enough Kent students had realized by then that it was the kids from their non-elite background who were getting drafted and doing a lot of the dying in VN.

Re Berkeley, I merely wanted to show how KSU, and especially the overreaction by reactionary political authorities, was not unique and had been almost prefigured a year earlier. Of course the two schools drew students from different economic and academic backgrounds. But it was interesting that even with their elite status in Berkeley, privileged white middle-class students there were not shielded from a brutal and violent shut down by the authorities.

And in CA, as with OH, we had a gov with eyes on another job, and who needed to show the grownup voters of the state that he could get tough with spoiled agitating student protesters.


Sure (none / 0) (#27)
by Spamlet on Tue May 04, 2010 at 01:58:42 PM EST

I understood what you were getting at and have no reason to disagree with most of what you said.

Where Kent State is concerned, however, that was a largely apolitical campus when it wasn't conservative. Those students didn't need Nixon's incursion into Cambodia to show them that people from their background were being slaughtered. They had known this for a long time. The problem was that in many cases the deaths of their brothers and friends increased their support for the war (so that their loved ones would not have died "in vain," as the saying went--and still goes today, with respect to Iraq and Afghanistan).

Sorry to go on about this, but I would bet a substantial amount of my own money on the likelihood that the news about Cambodia might not have registered with the great majority of Kent State students at all if the events of early May had not broken out in the town of Kent and on the KSU campus--events that most KSU students, if my anecdotal "research" at the time is any guide, resented as an unwarranted interference with their ability to go to their classes and frat parties. Unfortunately.


And I don't disagree (none / 0) (#32)
by brodie on Tue May 04, 2010 at 02:50:42 PM EST

with most of your remarks. A few comments though.

I don't contend that Nixon's Cambodia announcement and the nationwide angry student reaction it caused involved a majority of KSU students going out to protest. So technically you may be right that the silent majority there just wanted to be left alone as before. I don't know the protest numbers involved as compared to the student body numbers overall, but I don't think having a clear majority one way or the other is as important as the fact that however many thousands of students on a once-apathetic campus finally showed up to voice their dissent.

Nixon's action, imo, most likely was the triggering factor in causing far more KSU students to voice protest than previously. And it's almost always true that it's a minority standing up to do the protesting, no matter the cause. This televised speech had an enormous negative and galvanizing effect nationwide, even reaching the previously insensitive nerve endings of many in Middle America who once reflexively stood up and cheered at the news of a president's hawkish war moves.

This time period following (and even before) the speech represented the apex of the antiwar movement, certainly in some of its somewhat violent outpourings of sentiment. It's likely that most public campuses nationwide, even in the flag-waving midwest, experienced some degree of student protest over Nixon and Cambodia, though well short of the extreme violence at Kent.


Yes, more than 500 campuses (5.00 / 1) (#33)
by Cream City on Tue May 04, 2010 at 03:08:13 PM EST

joined the general strike, the first general student strike, after Kent State (many already on strike before that, after Nixon's admission that he was expanding the war).

At a campus of about 25,000 then -- a campus more working-class than Kent State, and a computer campus -- many thousands joined our marches. Estimates by police (generally low) were as many as 5,000 of us. So still only 20 percent, but believe me, at a working-class commuter campus, that was huge . . . and especially in comparison to the numbers before, for years, at our antiwar protests. Even those generally drew hundreds, a feat at such a campus (with most students working more than 25 hours a week, too) -- but police, media, and administrators liked to dismiss our protests because they played percentages, much as did many politicians for far too long.

Never a good idea to dismiss dissent while it's growing -- in numbers and in frustration from being dissed. Did they learn their lesson? Did we as a country? No.


: This sounds like the situation (none / 0) (#35)
by Spamlet on Tue May 04, 2010 at 03:43:10 PM EST

at Cleveland State University, newer and more working-class than Kent State.

The events at Kent State, (none / 0) (#34)
by Spamlet on Tue May 04, 2010 at 03:36:21 PM EST

regardless of who instigated and participated in them, were precipitated by Nixon's actions in Cambodia, of course. But they can't be fully understood apart from the history of recent urban riots in Cleveland, in the inner-city neighborhoods of Hough (1966) and Glenville (1968).

Kent is only 40 miles south of Cleveland--it's effectively an exurban area of the city--and in May 1970 the large and violent Hough and Glenville riots were still fresh in the minds of Governor Rhodes, law enforcement officials, and most citizens.

In their minds, a riot was a riot was a riot, regardless of how it started, and any protest could easily escalate into a riot, so they were taking no chances.

I am not apologizing for Jim Rhodes. What the National Guard did at Kent State never should have happened. But it was basically a huge f^ckup that got four kids killed.

The elitist national "librul media" got hold of the story and correctly made a huge deal of it all. I was and am very grateful that they did.

But they have never managed to get the working class right, much less the lower middle class. Indeed, they really don't see a distinction, and neither do many of the middle- and upper-middle-class people who cherish the notion that the killings at Kent State occurred in response to an upswelling of long-dormant antiwar anger on the part of KSU students.

No. It just didn't happen that way.

Again, though, I'm glad the myth of Kent State is out there and not buried in the provincial lore of northeast Ohio, where the official story would be that nothing bad would have happened if those kids had stopped playing Communist and just gone to class the way they were supposed to. Count on it.


I was a senior in high school, (5.00 / 4) (#3)
by caseyOR on Tue May 04, 2010 at 02:22:38 AM EST

getting ready for graduation. I was stunned by what happened at Kent State. And yes, like you, CC, whatever trust of governmental authority I still had was wiped out that day.

I still mark May 4 every year. So much of how I view politics stems from Kent State and the thinking it forced an 18 year old me to undertake. Kent State radicalized me and ensured that I am always on the fringes of American political thought.

And then, as CC has noted, Jackson State happened.

And some ten days later, (5.00 / 5) (#4)
by Spamlet on Tue May 04, 2010 at 03:04:02 AM EST

this at Jackson State College (now Jackson State University), a historically black college in Jackson, Mississippi:

Officers opened fire on the dormitory. . . . Authorities claim they saw a sniper on one of the building's upper floors, and were also being sniped in all directions, though only two city policemen and one state patrolman reported minor injuries from flying glass and an FBI search for evidence of sniper fire was negative. The students say that the officers were not provoked by them. The gunfire lasted for 30 seconds and at least 140 shots were fired by a reported 40 state highway patrolmen using shotguns from 30 to 50 feet. Every window on the narrow side of the building facing Lynch Street was blown out. The crowd [of antiwar protesters] scattered and a number of people were trampled or cut by falling glass. Phillip Lafayette Gibbs, 21, a junior, and James Earl Green, 17, a senior . . . at nearby Jim Hill High School, were killed and twelve others were wounded. Gibbs was killed near Alexander Hall by buckshot, while Green was killed behind the police line in front of B. F. Roberts Hall, also with a shotgun.

Read today that Gibbs' son (5.00 / 1) (#8)
by Cream City on Tue May 04, 2010 at 09:08:02 AM EST

now has graduated from Jackson State.

Wonder what happened to the child on the way -- and to Gibbs' wife, after this horrifying end to their young dreams.

Also just read an op-ed by the mother of one of the young men killed at Kent State. He would be my age now, but to her, he still is 20 and smart (all were outstanding students) and sweet, her baby boy.

: That op-ed (none / 0) (#40)
by Spamlet on Tue May 04, 2010 at 07:19:38 PM EST

is heartbreaking. And imagine the repeated trauma as that photo of her boy's body became iconic of the shootings.
Here is a chilling description of the times by someone who was fifteen years old on that day.

I was 12, and had a very good current (5.00 / 1) (#7)
by ruffian on Tue May 04, 2010 at 08:56:04 AM EST

events teacher at the time. The class had a few subscriptions to the Chicago Tribune, and we would study the paper together in small groups. For most of us the reaction was shock and confusion, and more than a little fear - was this what happened at college? We all remembered the name of Kent State though, even if we did not know exactly what was going on.

I think it did a lot to shape the world view of us tail-end baby boomers. There were not campus protests at all anymore by the time I got to college in 77. By then the government and media's association of protesting with DFHs was pretty much accomplished.

Help shaped the world view... (5.00 / 2) (#9)
by kdog on Tue May 04, 2010 at 09:25:04 AM EST

of my generation as well, right behind yours...elementary school in the Reagan years, the "police state babies".

Breaks my heart to say, but the bastards won...almost nobody in my generation would stare down guns for a cause, we feel like the man can't be beat, and that started at Kent State...the man will shoot you down, so get in line or get subversive on the sly, duck and cover mode.


Too true (5.00 / 2) (#10)
by Cream City on Tue May 04, 2010 at 09:31:57 AM EST

On the same campus where, forty years ago tomorrow, I was one of the students who went on strike, closed it down, etc., and after many protests -- none resulting in arrests then -- a recent protest resulted in 15 arrests and a lot of police brutality.

And what horrible cause are students marching for today? Affordable education. So criminalize 'em!


We need something to fear... (5.00 / 1) (#11)
by kdog on Tue May 04, 2010 at 09:44:00 AM EST

more than we fear the police...you guys had the draft, we have no pressing prospect more frightening than the chains and cages. I say pressing prospect because there are long-term prospects to be afraid of, to be sure, but they aren't immediate like being shipped to Vietnam...it makes it hard to see the point of getting locked up and/or roughed up.


Yep. "We're finally on our own" (5.00 / 1) (#12)
by Cream City on Tue May 04, 2010 at 09:56:54 AM EST

is all we needed to know.

I had "hope" for "change" I could believe in . . . but that was my '50s and '60s childhood optimism back for the first time in a long time.

I had to learn again that we're still on our own.


: Sh*t... (5.00 / 1) (#14)
by kdog on Tue May 04, 2010 at 10:07:09 AM EST

this overly cynical police state baby even got optimistic for a day or two...but it sure didn't take long for that bubble to burst..."on our own" is right.

The draft no doubt was a key (none / 0) (#19)
by brodie on Tue May 04, 2010 at 11:48:34 AM EST

motivating factor for many of the student demonstrators against the war, but by the time of Kent State, with the draft lottery in place and Vietnamization ongoing, only a small percentage of college students were being drafted to go to VN.

It was still fairly easy, iirc, to get a deferment (often playing the system against itself). Moreover, plenty of draft-immune female college students were taking part in demonstrations and risking themselves.

I think Nixon's dramatic and unexpected move into Cambodia -- seeming to widen the war and thus heighten the perception that he really wasn't going to be ending our involvement as promised -- shocked a huge number of people and previously somewhat disinterested MOR students, politicizing some of them for the first time and engaging them, if only for a short while, into finally joining the ranks of antiwar protesters. And this was probably so irrespective of the likelihood of the student being ultimately drafted.


: Good points... (none / 0) (#21)
by kdog on Tue May 04, 2010 at 11:54:50 AM EST

the sheer numbers of the anti-war movement were definitely a big part...the old safety in numbers thing...it's a lot easier to take risks when doing so in a large group.

: Exactly. It may be hard to imagine (none / 0) (#31)
by Cream City on Tue May 04, 2010 at 02:29:13 PM EST

a time when at least some Americans were motivated by concern for other Americans sent in their stead -- and for the Vietnamese we were killing as well.
We also were seeing, literally seeing on teevee for the first time as well as seeing in print, not only Americans and Vietnamese being killed but Vietnamese even killing themselves to try to get the attention of more Americans -- Buddhist nuns and priests in public self-immolations. Horrifying.
And by then, we all knew men who had died there, men who had come back broken -- high school classmates of mine, a cousin of mine, etc. At the same time, there was serious self-interested concern by many in college (women as well; these were our brothers and friends) as to changes in the draft. Remember, Nixon had tried to get the college deferment dropped all together, and had failed but still was pushing for it -- and we knew the draft could change again, as it just had changed. The lottery was new then and meant that many men were only one failed grade away from flunking out and being drafted.
I happened to be visiting Harvard the night of the first lottery draw, visiting a friend of my brother's, so there I was surrounded by Harvard men sweating it. Harvard men worried about flunking out and being draft fodder! So imagine the millions of men sweating it at schools like mine, working-class commuter campuses.
What I remember most about the lottery years, though, is worrying with my mother -- the mother of six boys, some already draft age and some close to it in a war that apparently was not going to end before they all were age-eligible. So I remember when some of my brothers' birthdays got drawn early, with high numbers.
And so, what I remember most is that it is a terrible government that gambles with its children's lives and makes mothers and fathers regret the day that their children were born.

Gracias (none / 0) (#20)
by Kevin Hayden on Tue May 04, 2010 at 11:53:29 AM EST

Thank you for recalling that and honoring the innocent citizens who died in service to our nation, Jeralyn. (Btw, you might revisit your closing 'piece' for a spelling correction).

Jeralyn, you had left Ann Arbor (none / 0) (#22)
by oculus on Tue May 04, 2010 at 11:55:10 AM EST

for the summer and we had just moved back to Ann Arbor. Sliding doors. Curious why you chose to take the CO state bar and locate in that state.

Point Counterpoint (none / 0) (#24)
by denise k on Tue May 04, 2010 at 12:17:52 PM EST

There is no doubt that War demonstrations and Kent State left an indelible imprint on the lives and futures of those of us who lived through those times. As someone still in grade school at the time, my understanding was more confused than the draft age kids', but no less impactful.

In retrospect, and the meaning of the title of the comment, is that there was an unquestioning consensus coming from the overwhelming unity of purpose and successful outcome in WWII that got us into Vietnam in the first place. Our parents told us (and truly believed) we could (and should) do anything we set our mind and our military to. This can-do, unquestioning patriotism that was brought to us by the "Greatest Generation" was the "Point".

By contrast, the Counterpoint, was the questioning of the real meaning of patriotism, the utter and complete failure in Vietnam and the divisions created culturally in the country, between the pro-military WWII era, "love it or leave it" folks and the DFHs that still plague us today.

This Point/Counterpoint came to a tragic head at Kent State and we will never be the same.

May the Kent State victims rest in peace.