It’s great to hear that Star Tribune columnist Katherine Kersten once protested against an unjustifiable war. My only hope is that they returns to the frame of mind that she possessed as a freshman at Carleton College in the early 1970’s:
“You can imagine what Carleton was like at that time,†she says. “It was certainly a political hotbed. There was a moratorium, as you might remember, which was observed across the country when the Kent State and Cambodia-related issues kind of came to the fore in the spring semester. There was a great length of period when there were no classes at all. Classes were just suspended, and people met to talk politics on [the Carleton commons].
“Paul Wellstone was a relatively new faculty member. But he of course was very, very prominent in all this.â€
Being an eighteen-year-old at this point, she says, she wasn’t thinking of herself as deeply political, and certainly not as the free-market capitalist and purveyor of conservative social nostrums she would eventually become.
“Oh no. In fact, I remember writing home from Carleton,†she says, “asking that my parents send up some of my hard-earned waitress dollars so I could put it into an account for people who might need to raise bail after civil-disobedience actions. And I remember marching by the governor’s mansion.
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