I take it your correspondent withdrew his child from school so that he could teach him or her this insane and malicious parcel of lies. America is going mad.

This is a very powerful piece, Caroline. Thank you for writing and sharing it.

Challenging Mr. Hartley is indeed futile. And, dismissal of such lunatics with a nod and a mildly sarcastic "yeah, sure thing, buddy" would be the right thing to do if there weren't so many of them.

The only killing of truth was that done by the national guard after the killings. The entire city of Kent was blocked off via checkpoints until May 8. Even small gatherings of young people were dispersed. The campus was completely shut down and any attempt to enter the campus - even by faculty meant arrest and a trespassing charge and possibly deadly force. Many campuses around the US also closed and students were banned from entering.

These sort of things seem to have been quietly removed from the history books.

The students nowadays are particularly clueless. Last year an article in the Kent State Newspaper, the author student likened the Kent State killings to the Virginia Tech shootings. She said the campus was closed for the rest of the year because of a well-meaning but excessive effort to allow bereavement time for the students. I'll try to find the article presently.

Unfortunately, the wimpering, "passivist" (not to be confused with "pacifist") actions of this oh-so-typical Unitarian church-going liberal will do NOTHING to effect real change. In fact, these action sabotage any prospect of change.

Change happens when people get angry and take effective actions that have a real on the ability of the powerful to pursue their agenda.

I did some research on Kent State a few years ago, and found an angle I rarely have ever seen mentioned in reports about the shootings. Those shootings took place just days before the election for Governor was to take place, and then Gov. Rhodes was in danger of losing to his Democratic rival. The student protesters were quite unpopular, and part of the calculus in bringing in the troops was political. (Those troops, by the way, were returning from a deployment to suppress urban rioting, and were not too happy over their Kent State detour.) Rhodes' strong stand against the protest gave him an up tick in the polls, and he was re-elected the following Tuesday.

For me, as a freshman in college that Spring, the sight of the body of Jeffery Miller in that iconic photograph was a part of a commitment to a life of political awareness and activism. He might well have been me, and I carry on partly in his memory.

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Oh my! It looks like Ms. Arnold has a "fan club" among the tea partiers. That part of Ohio is a pretty much dominated by the knuckle-dragging right. Glad I don't live there.

Sorry about my earlier comment. Anyone with enemies like Jeff Farmer is a friend of mine. Power to the People!

My then-young blue collar parents, neither of whom went to college, were precisely the kind of people that Nixon & Agnew and speechwriter Pat Buchanan determined to appeal to in 1968 and after, as they lay the blame for everything on spoiled students, and when the students were shot their feeling was 'Well, if they didn't protest, they would'nt have been shot, would they?' and I didn't question that till more thean two decades later.

We need to remember that the occasion for the protests was a continuing, seemingly endless war that Nixon was prosecuting even more ruthlessly than his predecessor had.

"The students nowadays are particularly clueless."

What about those Pitt students who got gassed and beaten during the G20?

These types of things are hate crimes. They send a message. "Don't protest!"

Let me protest the headline's seeming intent just a bit.

The truth was indeed murdered, as well as people, human beings - starting with people of Mr. Hartley's beliefs. He clearly is a murderer of truth, no wonder that is the charge he brings as distraction for lies rather than truth. Here we are 40 years on trying to get the truth into the record. That is 40 years of truth murder including the libel and defamation of the murdered humans.

I cannot imagine where Mr. Hartley or others get this nonsense anymore than the tea baggers make any kind of sense. And after watching so much obfuscating, lying and covering up I've reached the conclusion that these enforced lies make no sense even to the agents of the state who are lying. They too would be better off with the truth. But damn, they resist.

I remember 5/4/70. Dick Nixon had run for election promising to end the Vietnam war. After his election he expanded the war into Cambodia and the American people, especially our young students who were being drafted into that illegal meatgrinder, rose up against the war. But the Republican President and Republican Governor of Ohio denounced all opposition to their war. The slaughter of our innocent youth resulted. Which Republican State will be the next to slaughter it's unarmed people for corporate profit? Arizona perhaps.

Amerika isn't going mad, it is mad. I was a typical apolitical high school senior on May 4, 1970. The murders spurred me to investigate the history of the Vietnam War which led to my opposing it. My sense of political awareness began that awful day. The ensuing four decades saw a dumbing down of the population and a myth developed that Amerika was stabbed in the back by liberals and communists at home which resulted in the loss of the war. I can't believe how many people fell for this myth (including many who actually protested the war). Many times I feel we're doomed, but then I go to this website and my spirits improve. Keep the faith everybody.

I suspect the truth is the version that can be repeated most often by the most media outlets owned by the most obscenely rich.