Shoot the hippies: Kent State's lessons in the age of Donald Trump.

• Author: O'Donnell, Michael
• Position: 67 Shots: Kent State and the End of American Innocence - Book review

67 Shots: Kent State and the End of American Innocence

By Howard Means

Da Capo Press, 288 pp.

When does harsh political rhetoric lead to violence? We live in an age of dangerously hot-blooded talking points, especially on the far right. The Republican presidential hopeful Ted Cruz described President Obama as the world's leading sponsor of Islamic terrorism. Donald Trump recently said, "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters." Ann Coulter mused about putting rat poison into the food of a Supreme Court justice she dislikes. A handful of Black Lives Matter protestors chanted, "Pigs in a blanket, fry 'em like bacon" at the police during a demonstration in Minnesota. All of these statements are protected by the First Amendment; they are legal. Nevertheless, they are foolish. In an era of mass shootings, such blood imagery is, at the very least, in poor taste.

A new book offers a famous case study on this problem. 67 Shots, by the journalist Howard Means, describes the nasty public commentary that accompanied the deaths of four young people at Kent State University on May 4, 1970. The shooting by Ohio National Guard troops followed a weekend of sometimes-violent protests against President Nixon's expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia. Three days before the shooting, Nixon famously described antiwar protestors as "bums blowing up the campuses." "No more appeasement," said Ronald Reagan, then the governor of California. "If it takes a bloodbath, let's get it over with." Ohio Governor Jim Rhodes promised to "eradicate" the problem of campus protest.

The aftermath of the Kent State shooting included some truly shocking invective. Means reports on it in detail, and it is the most revealing and disturbing section of the book. "There's nothing better than a dead, destructive, riot-making communist, and that's what your son was. Be thankful he's gone," read a letter to the parents of William Schroeder, one of the shooting's four victims. (Schroeder was active in ROTC and was not involved in the protest; he was walking between classes when a bullet struck him.) The sixteen-year-old sister of another student who was shot received a letter that said, "I hope your brother dies." A common refrain that bewildered youngsters reported hearing in May 1970 was, "They should have killed more of you."

After the shooting, at least one speaker may have had second thoughts about his tough rhetoric. Kent...