While watching my laundry make endless revolutions through the front glass window of the washing machine and having nothing more important to do, I picked up the Wednesday, June 22, 2011, edition of the Daily Nexus.

Rather quickly, I reached the last page. Here, there was an article titled, “Professor Calls for Activism, Accountability and Love in Action.” This, I thought, might be worth reading. After all, that’s a lot of As with “Love” thrown in, and all in the same article.

This article begins with paragraphs describing some students marching here and there. But then again, isn’t that what students do? After all, it isn’t like they are out in the real world earning a living.

Then came a different thrust — why isn’t there enough money — for education, I assume.

Then, nimbly, the author quoted Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: “[the United States is] the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.”

I read this to be a condemnation of violence, primarily combining this statement with the subsequent statement about, “our  ‘peace-loving’ country currently in three wars that we know about … With a Pentagon budget that surpasses the military budgets of all countries in the world combined, don’t these ring true today? With the United States having more prisoners in the world than any other nation, don’t these words ring true?”

Just as an aside, it has been my understanding for a number of years now that the reason people are in prison is because they have broken the law. I do contrast this with defending our great nation from foreign enemies whose sole purpose in life is to kill you and me.

I admit, at this point, overcome by curiosity, I looked at the end of the article to see if the author was identified. Yes, a professor at UCSB.

Then back to the article. And again, the theme of students marching — this protest, that protest — relying on Woody Guthrie’s comments and the Good Samaritan’s actions to explain it all.

Then, in wrapping up, came a stirring call for student protesters to go to the barricades. “When will this happen? When will we stand up? When will we ‘rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful struggle for a new world?’”

Since I was now at the end of the article, I wondered about the logic of condemning war that defends Americans, because it is bad, and calling for war at the barricades, because it is good. Interesting dichotomy.

Bob Lynn