Remember Jackson State & Kent State

History's lessons

Maybe BillDayson wasn't around for the Vietnam trauma and did not lose any family or friends. Maybe he has no interest or knowledge of history. I'm just sayin' ......

However, it's true, we absolutely must study and learn from history. Western civilization, indeed, world civilization, is history of conflicts which we seem doomed to repeat. I guess the nature of human society is that we don't change in our needs. That's not a bad thing, it's just who we are. You know, human will vs. God's plan for us ......

BTW, did you know you can graduate from Harvard without a single required course in Western Civilization or U.S. History before 1900? It's true. Most of the Ivy Leagues are coasting on their former reputations for undergraduate education. Sadly, Harvard no longer educates undergrads, it turns them out like sausages without regard for a decent core curriculum, in spite of what they claim. The star professors, Nobel prize winners and top researchers rarely, if ever, can be bothered to teach undergrads. Why, that would cut into their research, grant writing and publication time.

What is this world coming to? It's far, far worse in the U of California system but that's another story ......

 

It might well be a moronic statement, but it seems to have originated with you. Nobody else in this thread said that.

If you want to engage me, then you need to reply to the point that I actually made. That was about reviving particular interpretations of carefully chosen historical events with rhetorical political intent, in hopes in this instance of making emotional fires of social anger and alienation burn more brightly.

 

You're right that we need to remember the past, we should remember how we abandoned our South Vietnamese and Cambodian allies and allowed them to be overrun by Communist insurgents. Many were killed and the remainder were sent to reeducation camps where they suffered years of torture and abuse. Talk to a survivor of those times and you'll find out what real torture is. People today want to consider waterboarding torture because the U.S. has been doing it. In Cambodia they ripped out fingernails with pliers and beat prisoners to death with clubs so as to not waste valuable ammunition. The end of the active U.S. involvement in SE Asia was the beginning of a nightmare for those who believed in democracy and human rights.

The incidents at Jackson State and Kent State, noteworthy because it affected young Americans, nevertheless pale in comparison to the magnitude of the carnage that took place in SE Asia after 1975.

 

And don't forget what the Commies in southeast Asia did to torture and kill pregnant women -- they tied them to a tree and slit the abdomen open, leaving the baby and woman to die in agony. How's that for torture? I remember it too well.

 

I guess that the U.S. antiwar crowd bears no responsibility for the tragic results of the American withdrawal from Southeast Asia.


Lost-Years-Vietnamese-Reeducation-Monographs

Prisoner-Word-Memoir-Vietnamese-Reeducation

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1308949/posts

http://www.cybercambodia.com/dachs/

 

That's correct.

 

Hmmm ..... complex subject

Considering this began as a remembrance of the students at Kent State and Jackson State, the entire subject of the Vietnam era is really huge. With time we gain perspective (I hope) so let's just say some of us still don't know if peacefully protesting at that time helped or hindered the war and our eventual withdrawal. One thing for sure, in the 60s and early 70s we didn't know the entire story of the politics behind how the war was waged. Remember the Pentagon Papers?

So, still mixed feelings about the war, continued trauma over so many events, so much regret ..... this thread brings back those terrible memories, those "iconic events."

 

And who are you, sir, to even begin to think that you can know my mind or my motives? What makes you think that this was anything other than a simple mention of an historical anniversary that is important in the history of my country?

 

Exactly.

Abner

 

And what exactly what were you motives, Ted Heiks, if they weren't to lionize some left wing student antiwar activists who defied legal orders to disperse? Are you claiming that you were just marking a historical anniversary in the history of our country? If you are making that claim it is laughable. How come you never posted on March 6 to commemorate the anniversary of the miscarriage of justice by the U.S. Supreme Court known as the Dred Scott Decision? It said that descendents of African slaves could never become U.S. citizens and had no rights under the Constitution. It paved the way to the American Civil War and approximately 610,000 military deaths on both side, more than ten times the number of U.S. casualties from the Vietnam War.

If you were trying to make a political statement then why parse words? Make the statement and have the stones to stick by it.

 

I'll just sit here with my guitar, playing the main riff and solo to "Ohio" by Neil Young.