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A Review of Fault Lines — A History of The United States Since 1974
50 years ago today, what had begun as a set of peaceful anti-war protests on the campus of Kent State University ended tragically with the National Guard firing on protesters, killing four and wounding nine others. In a set of events that seems to repeat ad-infinitum, the state used its monopoly on violence to murder and wound innocent Americans exercising their right to assembly and freedom of speech. But the nation was deeply divided across political lines in opinions about the event itself. As Richard Perloff notes:
The May 4 shootings were viewed very differently by conservatives and liberals; most conservatives endorsed the National Guard’s actions and at best wrote off the shooting as a tragic accident, at worst as the protesters’ just desert — a position that liberals and the left found unimaginable.
Half a century later, America is arguably even more divided. A history of these turbulent decades and the fractured state of civil discourse has long been a favorite course of students at Princeton University titled “The United States since 1974.”
