Righteous Protesting

BACK IN THE NINETEEN SIXTIES, when I was a little kid, I secretly "rooted" for the Viet Nam War protesters. By "rooted for", I guess I mean I liked to see them on TV, raising as much hell as possible, angering the old establishment folks, and getting away with it, by which I reckon I mean not getting killed or going to jail, and, somehow, being vindicated, being proven right. For that, I had to wait a heap of years. I remember mentioning to my sister in 1981 that we (USA) lost the Viet Nam war, and her denying it. Fifty years on, I have no such resistance. Almost any half way reasonable American is willing to concede that Viet Nam was a mistake. At long last, coming clean, as a nation. I never met a protest I didn't like; suffragettes, MLK, anti war hippies, you name it, I support it. This especially includes yesterday's national high school walk out protest of gun violence in America, with an emphasis on mass murders in public schools. All across the fruited plain, tens of thousands of teenagers got up and walked out, just like the old days. God, do they ever make me proud to be an American! If we're lucky, these braber kids;'' keep at it, get the rest of us off our butts and out there with 'em, then, expand the protest into a neo occupy movement, let it spread to Europe and beyond, and.....well, not so fast. One sign atta time. Americans are great social protesters, always have been. Our great nation was born in protest, which became revolution. Something about living in a land of speech freedom. And usually its the young who have the gumption, energy, and percipience to protest, though not always. let's change that. Let's get everybody,all os us, out in the streets, demanding an end to this insanity, just like we should have, but didn't, all the other times. And, just like all other protesters, just like the women marching for the vote, blacks marching for freedom, gays marching for equality, these people are on the right side of history, these new, modern, latter day patriot protesters, their cause is just, verily, sacred.