Editor, Gazette-Journal:

“These are the times that try men’s souls,” wrote Thomas Paine, in “The Crisis, 1776.” Our Republic is again experiencing a time of pain and anger, as we contemplate what direction we need to go in “in order to form a more perfect Union,” as is stated in the Preamble of our Constitution.

I remember a similar time of emotions running high, the 1960s, indeed, much more turbulent than 2020. The hope of youth was found in John F. Kennedy, elected in 1960, only to leave our often, first-generation college students, in a state of despair in 1963. That was only the beginning of the havoc that encompassed life in the ’60s, though. Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. were also assassinated in 1968. Meanwhile the Vietnam War (1954-75) and the Draft, caused angst among young people, because many didn’t believe in that conflict that ended up taking 4,000-10,000 U.S. deaths, by various estimates.

War of any kind is not kind. Our Civil War lost the lives of 6...