Peoria Pundit

Adriana Colindres of GateHouse News service talked to Journal Star veterans who were present at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

I have several thoughts:

• Why am I not surprised that Tom Edwards, known these days for environmental activism, was an anti-war protester?
• Was it a police riot. Yep. Were they goaded by the protesters? Yep.

I would have opposed sending draftees to Vietnam to fight, too.

I wouldn’t have thrown golf balls at police officers. I wouldn’t have spit at police officers. Neither act had anything to do with ending the war or extending civil rights to minorities. It had everything to do with the most spoiled and pampered generation in the history of the human species showing its collective ass to the world.

It doesn’t justify the behavior of the police, but it explains it.

They revered Martin Luther King. They read Henry David Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience.” Yet somehow, they came away with the idea that attacking police officers would get their point across,

The only thing they accomplished was to guarantee the election of Richard M. NIxon. And the war continued.

Not that this post is going to change minds. I’ve yet to meet a veteran of “the Sixties” whose brain could grasp the concept that anything they did wasn’t the very height of moral behavior.

One of the Journal Star vets tried to explain away the behavior. Three of their leaders were assassinated, you know.

Someone shot Robert Kennedy, so naturally they spit and threw golf balls at police officers. I suppose if makes sense if you’re stoned.

This entry was posted on August 18, 2008 at 1:42 am and is filed under On the Media with tags 1968 Democratic National Convention, protestors, riot. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed Both comments and pings are currently closed.