Was the American Revolution legal? What if modern Americans decided that they were being improperly taxed by Congress, do they have the right to declare war, and start shooting at police? Would the authorities be justified in arresting and charging these Americans with crimes? These issues may sound obscure, however, every day Americans are divided against one another by controversies over crime. Most Americans don't understand the most basic history of their own country, or the evolution of its legal institutions. The over-simplified, biased and distorted version of American history taught in public school is a disservice to the American people, for it impels us to follow the politicians blindly, even as the politicians cause serious harm to the nation.

The Constitution of the United States has never been submitted to a free election of the people of America. All the state constitutions of the original thirteen states were proclaimed as being in effect. Some of the techniques used to obtain what approval there was -- from property owning white men -- included excluding royalists, to enable "rump" legislatures to enact "law" that otherwise would have failed to receive majority support. Furthermore, the principals who conducted these maneuvers did not do so in ignorance: many of the colonial rebels were lawyers.

Many people today are appalled to hear about illegal immigrants, who break the law by entering the United States without proper approval, or when they read that kids are shooting at police, but we forget that the Federal Republic had its origins in the wholesale breaking of the law, which today is whitewashed with terms of patriotism. It is ironic that we fill the minds of American schoolchildren with heroic images of the colonial Revolutionaries, and then we cannot understand it when they try to live up to those examples. The bottom line is that when "patriots" shot at public servants at Lexington and Concord, it was not legal. It was a violation of the laws of the constituted and established legal authorities, which if repeated today, would land one in prison.

The arrogance of the politicians is the leading cause of the breakdown of the American society, because they sincerely believe the law is anything they define it to be. The Constitution gave so much power to the politicians, that it exceeded the authority of King George III, who was actually bound to obey the law. Americans are at a disadvantage in understanding what law is because the school system deliberately over-emphasizes the Constitution, and plays down the role of custom and tradition, which are the cornerstones of the law. Unlike legislation of the Congress, custom is the practices of the people since time immemorial; it is the law made by the people themselves to fill their own needs, and as case law, it constitutes the basis of the "common law" (customs upheld as law by magistrates in court). This is very important, because it reflects the fact that law is independent of any institution, and that it is possible for a government to be illegal.

The first factor which casts a cloud of doubt over the legal claims of the United States to the land (as successor to the legal claims of Great Britain), is the manner by which the land was acquired from the previous possessors, the Native American people. As a result of misrepresentation, fraud, duress, bad faith, trickery, and murder, the Native Americans were systematically displaced, without recourse to law. The brutality of the English and the Spanish was only exceeded by the Americans, who were so convinced that they were a superior race that they flat out stole the land of the Indians, seeking to extinguish Native claims to the land by simply killing off the rightful owners. The Christian missionaries stole Indian children, to convert them; the U.S. Army gave the Indian tribes blankets infected with smallpox; and there were many documented instances of U.S. troops opening fire on villages, knowingly murdering women, children and elders in cold blood. Of course, the Government has always felt free to commit murder, starting with the American Revolution itself, the prime victims being American royalists, who were not merely "tarred and feathered," but who were "tried" in kangaroo courts, and often lynched, while their property was stolen and distributed as booty among "patriots."

A second factor which would seem to invalidate the holy nature of the violence of the Revolution was the strident extremism of its supporters. The "patriots" were not unbiased victims, only seeking reasonable redress; they were rabble-rousing demagogues with an axe to grind. Violence itself is a product of extremism; Sam Adams, a former tax collector, was instrumental in swaying public opinion in favor of his extremist agenda, deliberately inciting people to riot. The American people were far from united on the subject of independence. At least a third of the people whole-heartedly supported the royal government of the king; the likelihood is that the number was higher, but honest figures are lacking. Another third of the population have been defined as ambivalent, with no concern whatsoever as to whether the king's forces won, or the "patriots"; however, considering the violent reprisals the "patriots" visited upon any open supporters of the king, it probably worked against their own cause, literally driving "patriots" back into the Loyalist camp as a reaction. It is ironic that a nation that proclaims so loudly its love for freedom of speech and thought, came into being by the suppression of royalist thought, as well as the royalists themselves. The republic was born on the murder of royalists.

Washington, the man, was so harsh as Commander-in-Chief of republican forces, that he personally caused a deep antipathy in Americans, against a mandatory draft. In his historically accurate novel on Aaron Burr, Gore Vidal relates that George Washington wanted to be addressed as "His Mightiness." (His Mightiness had a penchant for lynching "deserters"). Apparently, it was dangerous to be against the Republic in 1776.

In our rush to love the Republic, we overlook what it mean't 200 years ago, when white men talked about "taxation without representation." Taxation is ALWAYS imposed on property, and in 1776 the majority of the "patriot" leaders owned human slaves, the ancestors of the modern American black community. The "Old Money" Americans drool over, by definition, was built on the backs of enslaved human beings. Possessing property for status predisposed early American society to use the number of slaves a man owned as a measure of his worldly success, and in the purist Protestant sense, as a sign of divine favor. It was the preservation of this colonial privilege that motivated the lawyers who set up the Federal Government, and who are venerated in all of its shrines; not any idealistic vision of popular freedom.

Slavery is one of the most horrific institutions known to humanity. The single paragraph most schoolbooks devote to slavery, in public schools, wherein slavery is justified historically as a universal practice "of that time" (and therefore not that unusual), downplays the actual gruesome reality of human enslavement. The over-riding consciousness of the slave was that he was not allowed to own himself, and that he would be punished if he attempted to act even remotely independent. The slave's survival depended on his complete subservience to his master, his ability to hide his true emotion of hatred, to only tell his master what his master wanted to hear. After 400 years of being bred for strength, and bringing up generation after generation of children in slavery -- many the actual children fathered by the slavemaster -- the psychology of slavery was firmly imbued into the black people. This psychology is the real basis of the social tensions of the urban centers of America.

At the very root of the slave psychology is violence, and black people know this far better than the white people, who don't see the Republic as the yoke which the black people still see it as. The spirit of the United States Constitution is in the clause requiring its officers to return "fugitive slaves" to their "owners," for this represented the real view of its authors about human life. Every statement justifying or downplaying this clause, is only an apologetic; it does not alter the true intent or content. These fugitives were flogged mercilessly and suffered every indignity known to man. However, slaves did not have to go so far as to try to escape to suffer under the hand of a harsh master.

The background for the Constitutional Convention was a polarized society, in the aftermath of the suppression of the Shay's Rebellion, a rebellion by farmers whose farms were being seized by the government to pay taxes to repay the loans extended by the rich to pay for the Revolution. A Revolution most of the people wanted nothing to do with. At the time of the Revolution, there was genuine fear on the part of the poor that the rich would enslave them using the control of the government. The people were actually paranoid, and whole regions were hostile to Washington and his band of rebels. The cities loved entertainment, and the same New York City crowd that showed up to cheer Washington, showed up to cheer a British leader, with complete ambivalence. The re-creations we see on television, and in the movies, of Valley Forge, or of Paul Revere's ride, are complete fictions, portraying an image of popular support that simply did not exist.

One of the most significant causes for the American Revolution was the desire of American debtors to repudiate their debts to their creditors in London, some of which may very well have been incurred for the purpose of purchasing slaves. When language of freedom and equality was used, it was deployed deliberately as propaganda, for the Founding Fathers were openly hostile to democracy, and had no intention of encompassing the freedom of women, Indians, African-American slaves, or white indentured servants. In fact, the Founding Fathers lived in mortal fear of slave revolts, for they were far outnumbered by their slaves. (To illustrate the mortal fear of the slavemasters, when Nat Turner, leader of a slave revolt in 1831, was captured and executed, his body was reduced to fat, to completely eradicate his memory, as if he never existed).

The primary concerns of the Founding Fathers revolved around the accumulation and protection of wealth, even if they were not all adept at achieving it on a personal level. (Even with 150 slaves, Jefferson died a bankrupt). The law, on the other hand, tended to perpetuate the rights of people on an equal standing, so that institutions were obliged to respect their individual rights; even the king was obliged to honor the rights of the commonest person in his realm. But this was disagreeable to the Founding Fathers, because they imagined that they could increase their profits by seceding from the British Empire. They knew that AS the government, they could set the law aside at their pleasure, and make it appear as if the very displacement of the law itself was "legal". When America's secession from the British Empire became effective, commerce came to dominate the priorities of the new Republic, and we now live at the end of a 200 year old nightmare, bearing witness to a Government that has consistently relieved industrial businesses from all legal and financial liability for polluted land, sky, rivers, water tables, oceans and landfills. American people perish from poisoning from industry, or military testing, and the Republic turns its back on the victims, even blaming them for being victims; but when corporate America's oil was threatened in Kuwait, the Republic fielded a half a million man army to protect it, for billions of dollars.

The Republic is a house of cards, which from day one was designed to punish Americans, to manipulate and coerce not some enemy, but our own people. Whenever the people finally suffer enough to build up the courage to approach the most sinister and exalted man on Earth, the President of the United States, within four years another man will replace him, and the requests and petitions from the people are lost in the shuffle, unaddressed, ignored and rebuffed.

When the colonials began stockpiling arms, one envisions homicidal fanatics, like the arms laden cult the ATF annihilated with the help of the FBI, at Waco, Texas. (We all know that the same fate, or worse, would befall any group that intended to use force to overthrow the Federal Government, for the United States Government possesses an undisputed monopoly on lethal power -- the power to murder -- which it is capable of projecting anywhere in the world). In order to abruptly set aside the monarchy in America, in favor of the musical chairs approach to government, wherein NO ONE is held responsible for anything it does, the Founding Fathers had to break the law, and break with tradition. The Revolution was not a polite discussion over the necessity of American independence and the Committees of Correspondence were not debating clubs. There was nothing friendly or cooperative or delicate about the coercion used by the Continental Association, formed to punish "lukewarm patriotism". The Committees of Correspondence blatantly usurped the functions of the royal government, and virtually ran off the legitimate government of the king, with mobs and violence. When royal governors returned with British armies, it was in reaction to the colonials, who initiated the violence.

The colonials were not victims. The British did not oppress the Americans. The whole of American complaints are dry, legalistic grievances over trade and taxation, having to do with the resistance of Americans to pay anything for the expensive war the English fought for the purpose of American security. After waging a war against the French, to oust them from North America, to stop the constant danger they posed to Americans along the northern frontier, the Americans showed their gratitude by shooting at the public servants who gave them that security. Americans not only refused to pay a fair share of the cost of the war, but they sought to murder the very people who actually fought in that war, and then labelled this as a "patriotic act". Is it any wonder why children of 13 or 14 years of age are hard pressed to live up to the examples of Washington and Jefferson, without serious contradictions?

The legacy of the Revolution is a legacy of mindless resistance to authority, an emotional knee- jerk reaction, unrestrained by any serious thought, because in retrospect the so-called "patriots" were wrong to go so far as to violently attack men in public service. The release of India, in the 20th century, from the British Empire, as a result of passive resistance, is clear- cut evidence that violence was not the only means for a nation to establish its independence. An obvious way to perceive this is to recognize that one of the principal means for apologizing for the more disgusting traits of the Revolutionary generation, is to justify them as a peculiarity of a distant era, as if the laws governing reason were different in the 1700's (inferring that we are progressive and that the 20th century enjoys all the benefits of this progress). The problem with this outlook is that it is inaccurate, because slavery, racism and violence were recognized by the more intelligent people -- even in 1776 -- as unprogressive, mean-spirited, and evil.

After violently and systematically annihilating the Native Americans in acts of genocide that rival the Nazi Holocaust, the Anglo-Americans brutally forced the French to retreat back to Europe, to then turn on their own, the royalist Americans. Perhaps this tendency towards violence did derive from a background of pioneering raw land, but it is important to recognize that it was in us then, and it is in us now, and some of that tendency rests in the influence of our institutions. Slavery was upheld by LAW, and Christian ministers would wax indignant when slaves revolted, and the Government was slow to protect the good white Christian folk. Many a sermon thundered that slavery was righteous before God, and that it was actually a benefit to the "ignorant" black people, quoting the Bible to support this Godless opinion. (Many, many Christian churches upheld this position well after the Civil War, and will not be allowed to forget their true past simply because it was undefendable, and inconvenient in light of the modern drive of Christians to discount and deny the violent history of Christianity).

Once independence was secured, and the vision of riches did not come true, largely because the outlaw-bandit U.S. Republic was rejected by the world community of law-abiding states, the American economy had its first depression. This led to regional rebellions, the most impactful of which was Shay's Rebellion, wherein farmers actually seized control of the courts, to stop foreclosure actions on their farms, for backtaxes. This caused the propertied class to become unhinged, and energized the call to "amend" the Articles of Confederation, to increase the power of the government to punish, what else, Americans.

The lawyers who wrote the Constitution knew full well that it would protect them from the poor, and they realized that the poor knew this too, and thus the Convention to write the Constitution was held secretly. This so aroused suspicion, that when the resulting document was voted on in Virginia, Patrick Henry openly accused its authors of engaging in a criminal conspiracy, and demanded an investigation. This investigation never took place because the document was railroaded through, with arm-twisting, and horse-trading of political favors.

The most effective strategy the proponents used in the state conventions to secure approval in the greater number of states where there was a genuine majority against it, was a trade-off of approval in exchange for an undefined "Bill of Rights" at some vague time in the future. The Federal Government actually came into existence without ANY limits on its power, which were added later, like an after-thought. A harness, but in reality a necklace, like an adornment. The proof of this soon came, for one of the first acts of the Washington Administration was to impose a tax on whiskey (a tax the states had considered within their domain). This caused an immediate furious reaction, for Americans were living under the notion that they had gone to war against their own Mother Country, precisely for the purpose of being free of arbitrary taxation. Alexander Hamilton and George Washington actually rode at the head of the troops sent to crush the rebellion that ensued; and the troops were accused of abuses along the line of the route. The fact that Americans were once again murdering Americans has been conveniently glossed over to put a positive analysis on the Whiskey Rebellion by modern apologists, posing as scholars. Thus a brutal act to suppress freedom is made out to appear as a progressive act to tax spirits for the benefit of the "government of the free." The fact that this same government accomplished this by murdering "the free people" who chose to exercise their freedom, is just not brought up.

The westward expansion of the United States is one of the most blood-soaked episodes of human history, which has only been outpaced by the bloodshed caused by the wars of the republics in the 20th century. The pioneers in search of gold and land, who collided with Native Americans using rifles and guns against bows and arrows, exposed the cold-blooded, callous nature of the European-originated values of the settlers. They had no use for anyone who got in the way of their search for wealth. The way of life of the Old West gunslinger, many of whom settled down into sedentary lifestyles after a wild youth, was a life of violence and death. Vigilante justice was swift and mean, and didn't take into account anything so delicate as proof or evidence. Once the Indians were reduced, in the first decades of the 20th century, the old frontier values lived on, in gunfights and showdowns, with Americans killing Americans.

The Civil War was the most destructive war since the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, in the history of all wars up to that time. One million Americans died in that war, which was the first industrial war. The idea that the Civil War was fought over slavery cheapens the real issues over which the war was fought, because the Confederacy itself freed the Southern slaves before the end of the War. The Civil War was fought solely for the purpose of the Federal Government establishing its supremacy over the states, in effect reducing them to the status of provinces. The truth about slavery as a commercial institution is that it is not very effective cost-wise, which even the ancient Romans realized. Slaves don't work very energetically, or eagerly, because there is no genuine return for the slave. (Jefferson tried to use his slaves in several money-making schemes, which failed). If peace had been valued to the extent Christians gave it lip-service, and the South had been allowed to peacefully go its own way, it almost definitely would have abolished slavery all on its own.

What did originate in the aftermath of the Civil War was the first bank robberies. After being trained to kill efficiently by the United States and Confederate Armies, and once the War was over, and the Armies de-mobilized, young veterans had a skill that private business had no use for. So these veterans went "free lance," much to the astonishment of those first bankers who suddenly found themselves faced by armed Americans, demanding cash at the point of a gun. Ironically, some of those bank robbers became folk heroes, because the general population felt like the victims of the banks, and of big business in general.

The biggest surprise of all came when the Civil War ended, and the black slaves were legally freed, but soon found that they were not much better off, for now they were the victims of naked racism, which would not allow blacks to advance, using social and legal devices. (The suffrage laws disallowed blacks from voting until the 1960's, with poll taxes, literacy tests, and "grandfather laws," all of which were outlawed; but voting has always been a token, for the Establishment completely controls ballot access, and therefore the content of what the electorate can vote on, and all power exists in the way the questions are formulated. This is the very essence of plebiscite representation).

Whenever a black man sought to advance himself, it was viewed as being "uppity". "Uppity" black people received midnight visits from hooded denizens, all of whom claimed to be good white Christian folk, murdering in the name of Christ. We will never know just how many innocent black people were lynched, because the white people don't WANT to know, it's just too gruesome; and it's too easy to write off as history.

The free sons of slaves were now "leased" the same land their fathers worked for generations, so that as "free" sharecroppers they continued to live in poverty. Suddenly, people of all races could be worked just like slaves, and once paid their pittance of a wage, the employer could completely disassociate himself from their needs. This historically documented early phase of the national labor market became the foundation of the current labor condition, in which the news is full of disgruntled employees reacting to their bosses by murdering them.

Many of our own parents remember the labor unrest which occured in the memory of their parents, and in their own childhoods and youth. The early union movement was not ideologically driven. It was driven by anger over abuses: too many hours, no time off, no safety precautions, no medical assistance, and no age limitations. The ideological overlay came from the bosses, so that they could justify to the masses their acts of sabotage and violence in breaking peaceful strikes for better work conditions.

The vitality of this popular movement -- which was constantly under violent physical attack by government and industry, united in a holy crusade to preserve the status quo -- was co-opted when FDR sponsored the National Labor Relations Act, and took control of the labor movement. Soon, the unions became a division of the very corporations whose employees they represented, in place to keep the assembly lines rolling, even if the employees ARE frustrated or angry over work conditions. The General Strike -- the complete and total shutdown of all industry -- the one tool of the middle class with any leverage, is thus made an impotent threat, disemboweled by the control of the unions by the Establishment. Our parents are glad that the violence of the labor movement is basically over, but they fail to see that the suppression of the people's voice has caused it to erupt in other more serious ways, like riots, and a suburban crime wave that is gradually bringing the Republic to its knees.

When freedom of choice entered the labor market, with the total abolition of chattel slavery, white employers realized that they did not have to hire or promote the black people, who had been kept ignorant on purpose to prevent slave revolts. So the new core of the modern labor market, which became the famous Middle Class, was caucasian and male. The black people were forced into an underclass of poverty, beneath the white poor people, because they suffered from the effects of racism, a holdover from colonial policy, which deliberately fostered hatred as a tool of state power. By giving the poor white people token status over the black slaves in the early colonies, as overseers and managers -- bolstered by misinterpreted Biblical passages, to attest to the "sacred" correctness of alleged white racial superiority -- the colonial elite guaranteed that their mutual hatred would forestall a combining of the slaves and poor white folk, to overthrow the colonial leadership. Of course, each side teaches the next generation how to hate, and who to hate, and until someone steps in to stop it, it goes on into the future, poisoning American life.

In the last decade of the 20th century, the violent legacy of America is shaking the Republic to its roots. The ghost of every murdered soul is wailing in our ears, as a million youth go to war in the streets. The Republic is dead. It was never alive; a Frankenstein's monster, that kills its creator. Ignorant housewives moan and lament that their children might read the word "damn", or see two people expressing affection for each other; and they compare this to violence! Violence is when your child is gunned down in the street, because law enforcement is sidetracked by breaking into bedrooms and parlor rooms, and giving speeding tickets.

School children are taught in schools across America to hate America's political enemies, enemies chosen by the politicians of the Republic. Our first enemies were the British; later, the Germans, the Japanese, the Russians. Peer pressure is used by adult teachers and administrators, on unformed children, who are all open to learning, and who all NEED attention and love; but what they get is a kind of boot-camp-for-kids experience, noteworthy only for its institutional harshness. The real lesson from the public school system is how to OBEY UNCONDITIONALLY, and to EXPECT punishment for disobedience. All other instruction is secondary, and is made to support this basic priority. This is what is mean't be the cryptic phrase: "The school is here to form you into a responsible citizen in a free society." By eliminating the individual's personal will to pursue his or her own identity, they can be trusted to behave "responsibly."

Of course, once taught how to hate, it's almost impossible for the politicians and institutions to control how that hate will be directed by the people they teach it to. Today we are forced to live with all that hate coming home to roost. When the Soviet Union collapsed, forty years of hate generated for Russians, was once again vented by Americans on Americans. About 26,000 Americans are murdered every year, by Americans. This is only outclassed by South Africa, and only because its approximately 20,000 annual murders reflect a 90% higher rate on account of the fact that South Africa only has about 21 million people.

The United States now has more of its own people in prison than any other country on the Earth. Does that mean that the U.S. has more criminals than any other nation? Certainly not. It means we have a political system that is out of control. The violence going on in our streets, the streets of America, has more to do with what we ARE teaching people, and little to do with what we are failing to teach. By disinforming Americans when they're children, and following it up with manipulation throughout their adult lives, the Government and industry have exploited the American people, leaving them with a sense of cornered desperation. And cornered animals fight back. It may be hopeless, but they look to go out in a blaze of glory: a sentiment echoed by countless youngsters in gangs, who don't think that they're going to live long lives.

The police and the district attorneys thunder from their bully pulpits that there will be zero tolerance for teenage gangsters. The ironic thing is that the police and the DA's think that these kids care about what they have to say. The pleas of the people have always been ignored by the politicians of the Republic, and now the people are ignoring the dictates of the politicians, in a record breaking crime wave, starting with the most zealous and uninformed members of the society, the youth. The kids want to fight the government, because they see how unjust and unfair it is. But the parents are frightened by the rebelliousness of their children, having been brought up in the shadow of the U.S. Army, the one army harsh enough to unconditionally defeat the Nazi war machine!

The Republic is based on imposing consensus with force, to whitewash it afterwards; because it was an outlaw institution, it developed a crusader drive, to re-formulate the world in the image of the outlaw. This was the supposed "Shot Heard Round the World", which, like Manifest Destiny, characterized the aggressive nature of the Republic. This was not defensive; the Republic sought to attack, to overcome, to change, to defeat those who would not humble themselves to its leaders. This starts in the civil war, the war in the homeland to defeat the traditionalists, the royalists; then the hatred of the civil war is exported, in exploits in foreign nations.

The American Revolution led like a chain reaction to the French Revolution, as an inspiration, and as a literal fact, because the loans made by the French monarchy to the American republic bankrupted it, forcing it to convene the Estates General, to ask for new taxes. The elite lost control in France, and the mass state came into being, as the urban poor broke into the political system with violence, never to be closed out entirely again. By conscripting and arming the passive citizen, and developing the ideal of nationalism, as a kind of civic faith, the French Republic catalyzed the common man, and led to the development of the largest armies of all time.

The mass armies were armed peasant mobs, undisciplined, made furious with hate, and channelled en masse onto the battlefield. In one fell swoop, all the medieval concepts of chivalry and honor in warfare, of which there had been traces, started to disappear, as nations formed their own mass armies to counteract the mass armies of their enemies, to finally fade forever by World War I. Old generals complained that the enemy seemed to be a ghost of what it had been, whereby worthy opponents had been honorably defeated. The Republic thus became the vehicle for the creation of Total War, wherein the whole nation became involved in war-making: men, women and children.

The development of Total War -- impossible under the monarchies of earlier times -- had a direct impact on society, because suddenly women and children became viable war targets. The modern era, which purports to be the culmination of a long process of improvement, could be defined as the Era of the Republic, for by force and trickery, most of the main European monarchies are no more, replaced by "progressive" republics. Yet the legacy of this Era of the Republic, is that this mode of government is responsible directly for the death in war of over 100 million people.

The Republic has failed in the fundamental purpose of a government, of providing justice. Without a law that men abide by, which they cannot set aside by a show of hands, they have no law at all. They are lawless, and one look at the landscape of America today reveals the chaos of lawlessness. But the answer rests in the same place it rested in, in 1776. It rests in the restoration of the ancient legal institution of the Crown of America.

Americans don't trust the Federal Republic because its leaders have a demonstrated history of violating the rights of their own citizens, right down to using them as guinea pigs in military tests. They don't trust the political parties to be objective, because the parties would sabotage the nation to prove that the "other party" is not worthy of power. The American people KNOW that a neutral institution of leadership is desperately needed, but the word "KINGDOM" is taboo under the Republic. The unwritten constitution of Anglo-American law remains unchanged, despite the imposition of the written Constitution of the Republic; it lies just beneath the surface, in the Common Law of the United States, and it is the constitution of a kingdom, lacking only the king.

Soon, all legal discussions will be academic, because the impoverished and embittered are tearing the country apart brick by brick. The hatred sponsored by the politicians, and the institutions of the Republic, is now being focused upon them, and the self-destructiveness of hatred is becoming pathetically self-evident. If we ever honestly want to improve our homeland, enough to search out the true root causes of violence and crime in America, the ONLY way to find it is to follow the ancient Greek advice to: KNOW THYSELF.