Call in the National Guard?

History tells us it's not a good idea.

The Great Pants Walkout occurred in Plainview in 1969-if memory serves me correctly- to protest the banning of girls wearing slacks or jeans to school.

And just a year later, 54 years ago on May 4, 1970, when Plainview graduate and college student Jeffrey Miller was one of four students killed at Kent State.

Big difference between those two and a big difference between Kent State and the current ‘protest’ at Columbia University. What they DO have in common besides a confrontation on a college campus, is that they both protested a government position on world events.

But the big divide is one of race-baiting and race-hating, and today we are seeing it in huge numbers.

House Speaker Mike Johnson appeared on the Columbia campus today to ask for the resignation of the university president and demanded that President Biden take action and he did not rule out, sending in the National Guard.

The National Guard?

Kent State was not the first time law enforcement was called to a college campus.

Two years prior, on February 8, 1968, The ‘Orangeburg Massacre’ was a shooting of student protesters on the campus of South Carolina State College in Orangeburg. Three students were killed and 27 injured, most shot in the back by the state police, while involved in a peaceful protest. This shooting of Black students is left mostly to history and forgotten by most.

So, what to do at Columbia or USC?

I don’t think the protesters will vacate and, in our history, the Guard had been called in to ensure desegregation at Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas from 1957-58, desegregation of the University of Mississippi in Oxford, Mississippi in 1962, desegregation of the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, Alabama in 1963 and integration of Alabama Public Schools in 1963.

Options? I don’t know. Escort Jewish students? Clear the ‘tent’ cities? Expel students?

From a personal view, although free speech is guaranteed, intimidation, attacks, and violence by these misguided protesters are not free speech.

I do not support this hate. But usually, violence begets violence, and we are living in a country where the person who yells loudest is the one most heard.

I am proud to be an American. I am proud to be a Jew. I support Israel and its right to exist and defend itself. Genocide? Look at Hamas and a population that believes what they believe. We will not go gently into the good night.

There are no leaders on the ‘other side’ to lower the temperature so it may just get so hot, that it explodes. And that will be one for the history books!