I was a teenager in the '60s, and I was baffled by and conflicted about the Vietnam War.  On the one hand, I wanted to trust and support our political leaders, but on the other hand, I couldn't understand why our young men were dying on the other side of the planet.  I was on the fence. The best thing to ever happen to the left was the Vietnam War.  It taught them how to organize, mobilize, protest, and resist. But the worst thing to ever happen to the left also was the Vietnam War.  They learned the wrong lesson.  They thought they stopped the war by protesting it.  The truth is that they stopped the war by persuading fence-sitters like me to jump down off of the fence and support them in stopping a carnage that was more visible than any war in history.  Every time that I saw a protest on the news, I was encouraged and hopeful that the war might be stopped.  The protests gained support for the resistance. On November 8, I...(Read Full Post)