Nixonland: America's Second Civil War and the Divisive Legacy of Richard Nixon 1965-72

by Rick Perlstein

Two Students, Two Guardsmen Dead, the local paper reported. Those two students had it coming, much of Kent decided. A respected lawyer told an Akron paper, “Frankly, if I’d been faced with the same situation and had a submachine gun…there probably would have been 140 of them dead.” People expressed disappointment that the rabblerousing professors—the gurus—had escaped: “The only mistake they made was not to shoot all the students and then start in on the faculty.” When it was established that none of the four victims were guardsmen, citizens greeted each other by flashing four fingers in the air (“The score is four / And next time more”). The Kent paper printed pages of letters for weeks, a community purgation: “Hurray! I shout for God and Country, recourse to justice under law, fifes, drums, marshal music, parades, ice cream cones—America—support it or leave it.” “Why do they allow these so-called educated punks, who apparently know only how to spell four-lettered words, to run loose on our campuses tearing down and destroying that which good men spent years building up?…Signed by one who was taught that ‘to educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.’” “I extend appreciation and whole-hearted support of the Guard of every state for their fine efforts in protecting citizens like me and our property.” “When is the long-suffering silent majority going to rise up?” It was the advance guard of a national mood. A Gallup poll found 58 percent blam...