I’m writing this on the eve of May 4, not a day that Canadians or many Americans for that matter, think of as very significant. But on May 4, 36 years ago, as historian William Manchester once wrote, having sown the wind, America reaped the whirlwind.

On this day, Ohio Army National Guard troops opened fire on unarmed (unless you count rocks) students at Kent State University, killing four and wounding nine others.

It was the day America killed its children, and many parents cheered.

From this point on, anything was possible from this government and society. We had slaughtered children by the score in Vietnam, but this was different. In response to the protests against the war and to the counterculture in general, the Nixon administration and that of Ohio Governor James Rhodes responded with live ammunition.

While many Americans casually dismiss Kent State as history, I cannot. I grew up just 15 miles from the campus and both my parents were Kent State graduates. And both of them thought Rhodes had done the right thing. In fact, I had the distinct sense my father wished the dead students could be dug up and shot again, just to make sure.

He wasn’t alone in those thoughts. Polls after the tragedy showed a whopping percentage of Americans thought the students had got what was coming to them. Polls also showed that a large percentage of student age citizens no longer wanted to protest or at least not in a confrontational manner.

A lesson had been taught and learned and its ripple effects explain much of the grumbling apathy and do-nothingness of Americans today when confronted by outrages and threats to freedom as problematic or more so than those confronted in Nixon’s time. The violence at the WTO protests in Seattle and Miami (against people without even rocks) was birthed at Kent State as was public acceptance and even commendation of such tactics.

In fairness, both Americans and American history books do an excellent job of forgetting. Mention the 1932 Bonus Army riots — where American “heroes” Douglas MacArthur and George S. Patton drove World War One veterans and their wives and children from the Anacostia Flats in Washington DC with tanks and bayonets — and you’ll get blank stares in return.

But Kent State, unlike 1932 Washington, was covered in living colour on television right into our living rooms.

It is worth remembering that no one was punished for the Kent State murders — an Ohio grand jury exonerated the troopers and indicted 25 others including the president of the student body, even though the so-called Scranton Commission, set up to independently investigate the killings, said that “61 shots by Guardsman certainly cannot be justified.”

Vice President Spiro Agnew called that report “pablum for permissiveness.”

George W. Bush would have liked that.

Praying for cheap oil

If you think Stephen Harper’s “get to used to it” remark about soaring gas prices wasn’t well received in Canada, imagine what the poor Americans are going through.

Oh, of course, gas is still cheaper here. We know that. But ask the average American why Canadians pay more for gas and they’ll go on about “paying for national health care” and other socialist plots against rugged individualism.

But the rise in price to around $3 an imperial gallon in many places has got to us. Oh yes indeed.

In fact things are so bad that like the multitudes stricken with bubonic plague in Jerusalem in the 14th century, Americans are now praying for deliverance.

No we’re not talking about things we could do that would probably be more effective but harder. Forget carpooling, taking public transportation, riding a bike, exploring other forms of energy, etc. Best to just give it up to God in prayer.

And that’s just what happened last week — on Thursday — at a service station in sight of the Capitol dome.

According to a United Press International report, various Christian clergy from around the country converged on a DC gas station to send a message to God.

The group, who also has space on a Pray Live group site has said many people are “overlooking the power of prayer when it comes to resolving this energy crisis.”

According to the UPI report, apart from sending a message to God, the rally had a message for humanity, said Wenda Royster, the group’s founder.

“It is our hope that seeing and hearing some of the nation’s most powerful preachers gathered around a gas station and the United States Capitol as a backdrop, will remind everyone who is really in charge of our world — God,” Royster said.

See, I have a problem with that. No, not the God part, the part about God waving a magic wand and creating more oil at cheaper prices. Whatever deity one prays to, we were given, whether we wish to believe it or not, a very finite gift of this precious oil and we are past the point of having used half of it, many geologists say.

But only Americans it seems, use God’s precious time and intercession for the benefit of wasting more of that gift for the sake of human commerce. Stewardship, as a concept, gets great lip service from the Christian right, but it is rarely put into actual practice as it would not be good for the economy.

You know, profit — the real God most on the Christian right really worship.

Keith Gottschalk

Keith Gottschalk

U.S. Keith Gottschalk has written for daily newspapers in Iowa, Illinois and Ohio. He also had a recent stint as a radio talk show host in Illinois. As a result of living in the high ground...