On an otherwise beautiful afternoon one fateful spring day, thousands of students went about their day-to-day tasks, whether it was listening to a lecture on molecular biology or spending a day in a warm bed.

Some students made a personal choice to publicly protest an immoral war, a wrong to be redressed — a right guaranteed to them by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which our founding fathers found so important to adopt at our nation's inception.

Sadly, these four former students cannot read this or any column today, because they were shot and killed at Kent State University in Ohio on May 4, 1970, amid a protest of the American campaign in Vietnam — more specifically Nixon's "surge" of the armed forces into another sovereign state, Cambodia.

On campus one week ago, hundreds of students similarly protested the fifth anniversary of the war in Iraq, focusing their collective voices on an initial supporter of the war, Rep. Mike Rogers. The peaceable MSU students protested in a decidedly much more comfortable environment than college campuses in the early '70s. No overzealous National Guardsmen met the 2007 citizens with a flurry of bullets or bayonets.

Minus the few who decided to ruin the event with unlawful vandalism, this otherwise peaceable protest is of the utmost importance in displaying disagreement in the direction our country is being taken by corrupt, incompetent leaders. Indeed, their views are joined with similar protests around the United States and more so around the world.

So why are these individuals protesting? Why go so far as to possibly inconvenience some students by making them late for class one day in March?

Because it is every American's duty to express disagreement with people who are elected to represent you, especially when they carry out plans of unbelievable carnage built on a foundation of lies, entrapped in a civil war, with no end in sight.

As Abraham Lincoln once said, "It is a sin to remain silent when it is your duty to protest." Without protest, there is no progress. Protests today mirror those years ago in favor of women's suffrage or perhaps the famous protests of blacks for their civil rights. Lest we forget, perhaps the greatest protest in American history was the American Revolution, the very war on which this great country was founded.

So instead of tacit acceptance of some government officials' potentially deadly rhetoric, some people chose to protest the wrongdoings of a preemptive war that has lead to perpetually endless bloodshed and loss of life. Even if it is from the comfort of college, protests send an important message to those who have the power to end it. Blind patriotism will lead to tyranny that we dismissed hundreds of years ago.

Both sides of the fence are marching, and both have a similar goal in mind. Both pose importance in our freedom — one side fighting for it, the other exercising their right to expression of opinion to bring our brave soldiers out of harm's way.

Revered soldiers deserve our gratitude, but on the same note, protesters do not deserve our shame. There is a certain irony in impugning the character of the protesters for exercising the very rights for which those soldiers fight. When our American soldiers fight for freedom — it means all freedoms — even the right to disagree and be noncompliant.

The protesters of Mike Rogers and his crusade add to an increasingly vital page in American history books. Those students who marched all the way to Congressman Rogers' office exercised a very important right — and in doing so, sent a message received loud and clear: Get Americans out of Iraq.

Ohio students decades ago did not die during a "childish" exercise, and those Spartans last week were not solely marching for no reason. Quite the contrary, I am sure those four Kent State souls would agree, with all-American smiles from beyond the pearly gates.

Michael Stevenson is an MSU political science freshman, member of MSU College Democrats and State News columnist. Reach him at steve391@msu.edu.