The deaths of six young, militant activists in Boulder a half-century ago — who evidently blew themselves up by accident with time bombs they intended to plant and set off — were of course sad.

Not because they died for a noble cause. They did not.

But because, as with any untimely passing amid the bloom of youth, they likely could have amounted to much more in life. If only these self-styled warriors of that era’s Chicano movement had given themselves a chance to mature, to put their political passions into broader perspective. Instead, they cut their own lives short in a misguided crusade of violence.

Fortunately, the fledgling terrorists — suspected in other local bombings besides the two that took their lives — didn’t wind up harming others. It could have turned out much worse.

All of which could be regarded as no more than a morbidly interesting if obscure page from Colorado history — if today’s political opportunists didn’t insist on turning them into martyrs.

Last week, amid the 50th anniversaries of the May 27 and May 29, 1974 botched bombings, the city of Boulder dedicated a memorial to the culprits. They now are lionized as “Los Seis de Boulder,” by the way. There’s also a memorial to The Boulder Six nearby on the University of Colorado-Boulder campus — in front of the building authorities believe the six had hoped to blow up — and a scholarship at CU has been established in the bombers’ memory.

Yes, really.

That the “Six” put the lives of untold innocent bystanders and passersby at grave risk — presumably, to make some sort of statement about society’s inequities — doesn’t seem to matter. Indeed, only the Six’s incompetence prevented dozens, maybe hundreds of casualties.

But then, this is an era in which our current crop of political radicals turned a blind eye to the mass-murder of Israeli civilians by Hamas terrorists last Oct. 7 — reserving months of noisy protests, office occupations and campus campouts for when Israel tried to bring the terrorists to justice.

In other words, perpetrators are being recast as victims, and true victims are ignored.

It might warrant at most an eye-roll — just another case of Boulder being Boulder — if it didn’t serve to distort history for future generations of Coloradans, as well as to reaffirm ongoing efforts by our state’s policymakers to turn justice upside down.

Colorado’s Legislature has sought to let successive waves of criminal suspects and convicted criminals off the hook on the preposterous premise they can’t get a fair shake in our justice system. Our lopsidedly Democratic Legislature has cut sentences, eased parole and curtailed cash bail in the name of “justice reform,” releasing dangerous lawbreakers onto Colorado’s streets and driving the state’s crime rate into the stratosphere in recent years.

Boulder’s posthumous tribute to terror perpetuates the absurd notion that our civic institutions — from district court to higher ed — are “systemically racist” and oppressive. That they routinely deprive people of rights, real and imagined. That violent criminals who prey upon innocent people are in fact the real victims or, as in the case of The Boulder Six, even folk heroes.

The irony of Boulder’s memorials is they actually insult the very people they purport to honor. Of all the milestones in Colorado’s Hispanic history and all the noteworthy accomplishments of Hispanic Coloradans, Boulder chose to commemorate the misdeeds of violent lawbreakers — and inept ones, at that.

They owe all of Colorado, especially Hispanic Coloradans, an apology.