Fifty years.  Fifty years ago today, a group of National Guardsmen opened fire on students on the campus of Kent State University in Ohio.  Four students died, another suffered permanent paralysis from the waist down.  All the shooters were acquitted in a court of law.  It was an unspeakable tragedy.

     Oh, one might say, the guardsmen were protecting themselves from a potentially violent student demonstration, one of many that erupted around the nation over the news that then president Richard Nixon ordered American fighters to bomb Cambodia.  To the protestors, it was an unnecessary escalation in an already too much escalated conflict in a nation whose future, it turned out, had very little to do with American power and influence in the world.  For the president, it was an essential step to end prolonged fighting in neighboring Vietnam.  To the guardsmen, it was, although we may never know exactly how this happened, ensuring their safety and following orders.
     Regardless, four students died.  Four students who, as it turned out, were not even participating in the demonstrations.  They were caught in the crossfire or, as some of the more cynical might put it, became "collateral damage."
     Americans will probably argue about the virtues, or lack thereof, of the Sixties, forever to come.  As one who lived through that volatile time, I testify that, in the big picture, this debate is less important than the moral fragility of the worldview behind the shooting and the conservative response to it:  the sanctity of life means nothing to those striving to maintain power.
     Maybe Friedrich Nietzsche was right:  absent a God, all of which we humans consist is a "will to power."