As the 1960’s bled into the ’70’s music was the poetry that inspired listeners to feel, to hope, and very often to mourn.

Seemingly hours after four college students were gunned down by the National Guard on the Kent State University campus, Neil Young at the behest of David Crosby had written Ohio.

The song quickly became the anthem for young people seeking to bring an end to the Viet Nam war.

Four students dying during a protest on an American university campus within recent memory of the 1968 assassinations, reinforced the concept of America as a divided country.

There were other things that served to divide us but the war took center stage, and it appears that our nation has yet to restore the breach that was forged during those dark days.

I don’t remember hearing anything about the NRA back then. After all, lone assassins were responsible for three deaths. At Kent State, it was the National Guard who did the shooting. Today’s tragedies are quite a different story.

Despite the perceived mayhem of the sixties I never once worried about going to school.

I never worried about going to church.

I went to Times Square on New Year’s Eve and my only concern was that there might be a transit strike before I got home.

Today’s kids are not quite so lucky.

The reason kids today have much more to fear than I ever has nothing to do with Obama, Hillary, or Nancy Pelosi.

You can build the highest wall you want but it wouldn’t have protected the children in Parkland.

The wall would not have protected the worshipers at the Tree of Life Synagogue.

We can hide from the rest of the world but we cannot hide from the Second Amendment.

Shortly after Parkland, I was in an office volunteering and I was working with a woman of my generation (it’s a nice way of saying she was an old woman). I made a remark about the tragedy and she agreed that something had to be done…BUT I don’t want to take away the Second Amendment!

WHY THE FUCK NOT!

We’re not talking about the Eucharist or the Virgin Birth. We’re talking about the right to have a musket in your house on the prairie. Read the Federalist Papers. There is not one mention of an automatic rifle. I swear to God there is no mention of an AR-15 or an AK-47.

LOCK THEM UP!!!!

Too many innocent people are being killed. Too many live in fear. It’s time to have a rational gun policy and it’s time to LOCK THEM UP.

I know the NRA is scared of Nancy Pelosi. The Florida Republicans sure are as she is featured in every political ad buy for a Republican politician running scared. Just wait until next week when more women win their race and enter Congress in the new year.

We were a divided country in the sixties and seventies.

We may think we are a divided country once again. I don’t think we are. The news networks are divided. The White House wants us to be divided but Americans can see through all of that.

I can’t imagine any parent worried more about the second amendment than their child going to school.

Is anyone worried about a caravan?

The biggest threat to our democracy is the hacking of our computer systems. You can’t ever use Facebook anymore yet our government tells us to duck our head under our desk and that will protect us. We did that once before and thank God we never had to find out if it worked.

There are real dangers out there and they have absolutely nothing to do with mothers and babies.

More of us realize that all the hate that has been exposed in recent years is not American.

The thousands of Americans who have died defending the values espoused in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution did not make the ultimate sacrifice so that a bunch of skinheads and survivalists and nationalist can stalk Americans.

They died fighting people like that.

Americans know this.

They know the truth when they see and hear it.

Maybe we just need a good song to remind us who we are.

C’mon CSNY, play us a song like you used to.