gh evidence for a criminal conviction. But the Guardsmen--even the one who confessed to shooting an unarmed demonstrator giving him the finger--were not deemed unfit to serve the State, even though they had fired indiscriminately into a crowd containing many passsersby and students on their way to classes. A civil suit brought by the wounded students and the parents of the dead ones deteriorated among infighting by the plaintiffs' lawyers. Unable to agree on a single theory of the case, they contradicted each other. The jury returned a verdict for the defendants. This verdict was overturned on appeal--the main ground was that the judge did not take seriously enough the attempted coercion of a juror who was assaulted by a stranger demanding an unspecified verdict--and a retrial was scheduled. On the eve of it, the exhausted plaintiffs settled with the state for $675,000.00, which was divided 13 ways. Half of it went to Dean Kahler, the most seriously wounded survivor, and only $15,000 apiece went to the families of each of the slain students, a pathetically small verdict in a day when lives are accounted to be worth in the many millions of dollars. The state issued a statement of "regret" which stopped short of an apology for the events of May 4th, nine years before. I write this just a week after the Kansas city bombing that appears to have taken 200 lives (the rescuers are still searching the wreckage) and the theme today is the same as 25 years ago. Hate was in the air then, as it is today. Admittedly, the First Amendment protects hate speech, whether it comes from the most marginal extremist or the highest public official. Demonizing someone else for their beliefs or their race, or even calling for their immediate assassination, is legal in America today and was twenty-five years ago. But the fact that something is legal to do does not make it right to do, or relieve the speaker of any moral responsibility for the consequences. Presi...
