On May 4, 1970, several thousand students gathered at midday at Kent State University in Ohio to protest the invasion of Cambodia and the presence of National Guard troops on campus. The demonstration followed several days of tension and violence on campus and in downtown Kent following President Nixon’s April 30th announcement of a major incursion into Cambodia by American and South Vietnamese troops. In the days leading up to May 4, riot police used tear gas to disperse demonstrating students, the ROTC building was burned down, and the governor of Ohio ordered Kent State to be occupied by Ohio National Guard troops.

By noon the National Guard commander had issued an order for the demonstration to disperse, and guardsmen began to use tear gas to break up the demonstrators (some of whom had been throwing stones or throwing the tear gas canisters back). Oddly, by the time the actual killings took place, many of the students thought that the main action of the afternoon was over and had started to walk to class. But about a dozen members of Troop G of the National Guard suddenly turned and fired into the crowd of student demonstrators. Many bullets met their mark; four students lost their lives, and nine more were wounded. The guardsmen later asserted that they felt threatened by a mass of protesters, and no one was ever punished or held accountable for the killing of the four unarmed students, all of whom were several hundred feet away from the guardsmen who fired.

The killings at Kent State galvanized a national student protest movement, with demonstrations and student strikes on hundreds of college campuses across the nation in the following days. And over time the public support for the war in Vietnam and Cambodia crumbled.

Today Kent State University is commemorating the 40th anniversary of the attacks. A New York Times reporter spoke to freshmen on campus, and found that many of them don’t feel a strong historical connection with what happened at their university forty years ago.

Fourteen of 15 freshmen interviewed on the campus said they did not feel any connection with the lives of the students who were protesting the United States’ invasion of Cambodia at the time.

The university requires first-year students to watch a historical video of what happened that day and the events leading to it: the violent confrontation between protesters and local police and the burning of the R.O.T.C. building near the Commons.

Freshmen attribute their lack of interest to the time span.

“Our generation doesn’t necessarily really care because it happened so long ago none of us were alive,” said Ethan Moore, a freshman majoring in nursing. “Though it definitely shouldn’t be forgotten because they were people, too.”

Of course, the opinion he expressed was not universal; another student that the reporter spoke to said that had she been there forty years ago, she would have been out there with the Kent State demonstrators. Nevertheless, I wonder if freshmen at Kent State (or at any university) can truly conceive of what it must have felt like to students and antiwar demonstrators all over the United States to know that soldiers had used live ammunition on their fellow Americans, leaving four unarmed people dead. The division between state and civil society must have felt complete and irreconcilable—at least, that’s what I always thought Neil Young meant when he sang “We’re finally on our own” in the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young song “Ohio.”

Forty years have passed since the day the National Guard gunned down the students at Kent State. And yet, eerie parallels exist between 2010 and 1970. Today the United States is engaged in two intractable and long-asting wars on the Asian continent. But where is the anti-war movement? While there was a mass uprising in 2003 against the war, it climaxed during the February 15, 2003, pre-war demonstrations. Ever since then, the anti-war movement has gradually but surely diminished.

Why has this happened? Journalist Chris Hedges, who recently participated in an anti-war teach-in in Washington, DC, at the Rayburn Building on Capitol Hill (an event that was co-sponsored by the Humanist magazine), believes that not enough anti-war liberals in the United States are actually affected by the wars. He writes:

The roots of mass apathy are found in the profound divide between liberals, who are mostly white and well educated, and our disenfranchised working class, whose sons and daughters, because they cannot get decent jobs with benefits, have few options besides the military.

In contrast to 1970, when young men were being drafted to serve in the front lines of Southeast Asia, today a very small number of Americans are being called upon to actually bear the burden of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And, as Hedges points out, many of those who do serve in the military come from the economic class that has less access to power, less visibility in the media, and less access to the institutions that can be used as a springboard into wider action against the war, such as universities. The result is a diminished anti-war movement.

I would suggest, too, that fatigue and confusion have both taken their toll. By fatigue, I mean that the war in Afghanistan has lasted nearly a decade, and the war in Iraq has lasted more than twice as long as American involvement in World War II. It is difficult to keep up the energy and momentum that the anti-war movement built up in its initial days for all of those years. And by confusion, I mean that the election of President Barack Obama has engendered a lot of bewilderment on the part of those who took strong stands against the wars over the last decade. After all, President Obama spoke out forcefully against the war in Iraq when he was a state senator in Illinois and the war was just on the horizon. He received the vast majority of the anti-war vote, and he promised to bring a more peaceful presidency. Yet even as we’re told that the war in Iraq is winding down, President Obama sent more troops to Afghanistan (an action that was also, contradictorily, part of his platform as a candidate). So the anti-war movement is left with a president who does not galvanize them like President Bush did, even as he takes actions that many still consider to be belligerent.

The anti-war movement today may be smaller, but that doesn’t mean that all hope is lost. For just one example of what we could be doing, right now, to make a difference, Representative Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), an outspoken anti-war member of Congress, made the call at the Capitol Hill event for a new series of teach-ins across the country to educate people about the wars and the need for peace.

Will we heed Rep. Kucinich’s call to challenge “the deficient orthodoxy that war is inevitable”? Let us rededicate ourselves to the idea that those four students gave their lives forty years ago today for a worthy cause, the cause of peace in this world, and honor their legacy by living our lives for peace.

[Rant & Reason welcomes new blogger Luis Granados, who also writes the blog God Experts. His bio is here.]

Talk about a made-for-blogosphere non-event. A cartoonist posts a clever take on the censorship of the South Park Muhammad-in-disguise episode (more on which you can see in my April 24 God Experts piece), showing entries in an imaginary “Everyone Draw Mohammed” contest. Next thing you know, someone picks up on it, and there’s a Facebook page with 8,500 members, all pledged to draw a picture of Muhammad on May 20, defying a Muslim ban on depictions of the prophet. Since every blogosphere action has an opposite (if unequal) reaction, there is soon angst and hand-wringing over such insensitivity to Muslims worldwide.

At least this has the benefit of smoking out muddleheadedness so it can be shot at. Leading the charge was the Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto, who compared the plan to “Everybody Burn the Flag Day,” suggesting that just because we have the freedom to express ourselves doesn’t mean that doing so is a wise idea. The obvious difference for me personally is, I don’t want to burn the flag—I’m rather proud of what it stands for. But the taboo against depicting Muhammad is intolerable. Granted, some religious rules happen to coincide with common-sense values—“Thou shalt not steal” is pretty non-controversial. But threatening to kill someone for drawing a picture of Muhammad, disrespectful or otherwise, is idiotic.  The bigger the outcry, the sooner this thuggery will end.

According to Taranto,

The problem with the “in-your-face message” of “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day” is not just that it is inconsiderate of the sensibilities of others, but that it defines those others—Muslims—as being outside of our culture, unworthy of the courtesy we readily accord to insiders. It is an unwise message to send, assuming that one does not wish to make an enemy of the entire Muslim world. 

The problem with this thinking is that it is essentially racist. The implicit assumption is that those brainwashed from birth into being Muslims, most of whom are black or brown, are incapable of responding to constructive criticism by changing their ways, so suggesting they do so lacks “courtesy.”

For almost all of Muslim history, a teaching far more central than the ban on depicting Muhammad was that of slavery. God commanded it repeatedly in the Koran, and Muhammad practiced it extensively throughout the body of traditions ascribed to him. Most black Americans are here today because their ancestors were captured and sold by Muslim slavers. In the Taranto view, criticizing slavery would be “an unwise message to send, assuming that one does not wish to make an enemy of the entire Muslim world.” In fact, the anti-slavery agitation of the 19^th century did make an enemy of large portions of the Muslim world: the Mahdi’s 1881 uprising in Sudan was largely sparked by Britain’s godless crackdown on the slave trade. If Taranto were king, our deep respect for the cultural sensibilities of others would have allowed slavery to roll merrily along.

By far the most effective way to undermine the moronic idea that visual depictions of Muhammad warrant violent reaction is to ridicule it. If that earns us as many enemies as abolitionists like Voltaire and Paine had in their day, we’re in good company.

Ann Althouse reserves her crocodile tears for innocent Muslims. “Depictions of Muhammad offend millions of Muslims who are no part of the violent threats. In pushing back some people, you also hurt a lot of people who aren’t doing anything.”

Now she’s done it. She’s gone and hurt my feelings. Here I am, all abuzz about participating in “Everyone Draw Mohammed Day.” I have my entry all planned out: not a caricature, but a tasteful, respectful, historically accurate tableau of the episode from the Sunna in which Muhammad personally beheaded 600 Jewish prisoners in the market square of Medina, while enslaving their wives and children.  (If I could actually learn to draw something like this between now and May 20, that would be a miracle.) I’m joining hands in fellowship with like-minded humanists in a common mission to preach the values we hold sacred: tolerance, freedom of expression, reason over revelation, and creativity. (And let me add, I don’t even like South Park.) Now Ms. Althouse bursts my bubble, telling me that I’m a bad person for putting into a picture what the sacred Sunna puts into words. I am hurt; I am offended; I may cry myself to sleep tonight. Ms. Althouse cares deeply about Muslim feelings—what am I, chopped liver?

What baffles me most about the whole South Park affair is why the person who threatened the show’s creators is walking free. This is America—the litigious society. Why is there no lawsuit? An American named Abu Talhah al-Amrikee (aka Zachary Chesser, a resident of Virginia) threatened violent death to Trey Parker and Matt Stone. In many states, the common law tort of assault is defined as “an attempt to menace (or actual menacing) by placing another person in fear of imminent serious bodily injury,” and victims are allowed to sue for damages. If al-Amrikee/Chesser wants to try his snarky defense that he didn’t mean to threaten or incite, just to warn of what some other mean-spirited Muslim group might do, let him. At the very least, having to defend a lawsuit would surely bankrupt al-Amrikee/Chesser and his little hate club. Of all people, you would think Mr. Wall Street Journal Taranto would know that, this being America, little guys can’t tweak giant corporations with impunity. South Park is indirectly owned by Viacom—where’s Goliath when we need him?