The World's gone crazy

The protests of the 60's were nothing compared to what is happening today. These days, people are angered mostly over health care proposals and bailouts of companies and banking institutions. In the 1960's, it was mostly young people with holding signs or burning their draft cards protesting the war in Viet Nam. This was a place where their counterparts were losing lives at an astonishing rate, and no one could actually explain why we were fighting that war, except to say, "We need to stop the advance of communism". That war in Southeast Asia finally ended in 1973, after America had lost over 58,000 of it's troops, and almost a decade had passed.

The protests then were conducted largely by college students with long hair. Today, the protesters are mostly gray-haired middle age suburbanites or senior citizens. They seem to be just as afraid as the college students were 40 years ago. But, unlike those students who demonstrated peacefully, a new element is creeping into the modern day protester - some are showing up with loaded weapons at events where the President of the United States is nearby.

Just a couple days ago, as President Obama addressed a crowd of people indoors at one of several Town Hall meetings - this one in Phoenix - several people (as many as a dozen) were seen brandishing weapons in the area directly outside the hall in which our President was speaking. Law officials could do nothing because these individuals were "not breaking any laws". The second amendment has trumped common sense and lessons we should have learned in the assassinations, and attempted assassinations, of past Presidents and other political figures.

As a senior in high school, I remember well the day President Kennedy was killed in Dallas. Everyone who was alive that day can tell you exactly where he/she was when they heard of his assassination. In 1968, I also remember the murder of Martin Luther King. And then, just a few months later, Senator Robert Kennedy, for whom I did volunteer work on his campaign.

Here we are, some 40 years later. A new President, trying to make changes like JFK, or Dr. King did, or what Bobby was attempting to do, from the way things were. Someone who got elected because he excited enough people to vote him into office.

Will he triumph over the crazies out there? Or will we once again fall victim to unbridled rage and untempered hate? Can it really be true that common sense can be cast aside in allowing people to carry loaded weapons near the President of the United States when we know what has historically happened?

Let us pray that someone from the opposition comes forward and says, "Wait a minute, it's fine to take issue, but tune down the rhetoric. Leave the guns at home. Be respectful."

This needs to happen now.

Old Fart Mike