There is fear in this society, number 6.

People are afraid to name a wrong when it is committed by individuals belonging to certain special groups, and all those groups share one thing in common: they are all groups who have been very notably oppressed in our shared cultural past.

Women. Blacks. Native Americans. Jews.

These are all groups which I enthusiastically supported in my youth, hoping to see the day when they would achieve full equality.

I have not seen it.

What I have seen instead is a weird situation where the black community, though still suffering from many disadvantages in this society, has embraced in some cases an even more virulent form of prejudice than that practiced against them...where they can "pull the race card" and scream "racism!" in legal cases where it has nothing to do with the issue. Remember the O.J. Simpson trial? What a travesty that was.

What I have seen is a Jewish community so obsessed with its past victimhood that it feels totally justified now in victimizing others and terrorizing or vilifying anyone who calls that wrong.

What I have seen is some women with such a chip on their shoulders against men that they cannot see any situation involving a man impartially.

What I have seen is Native Americans who are more virulently prejudiced against whites than most whites are against them, and it's a terrible shame! I spent 30 years among Native Americans, attending powwows, going in the sweat lodges, practicing the Medicine Way, the whole bit...for my own personal reasons, which were entirely instinctive. I loved them just for who they were. I believed in the old ideals. But what I saw! The arrogance. The tacit assumptions of "victimhood" and the negative, crummy behaviour that arose out of that. The gossip and infighting amongst themselves. The presumptions of innate moral superiority over all who were not Native. The complete violation of the ideals of equality upon which are based true human brotherhood.

I saw the world of my young ideals turned upsidedown by people who had not the grace to rise above their tragic past, not the wisdom to find common ground with other people, not the humility to live and let live, not the vision to see beyond their group identity, and to judge the book by its contents, NOT its cover!

It's a bloody disgrace. The people I fought for in my youth have mostly fallen into the same kind of gross prejudice that their parents were trying to end!

That's what happens when you spend your whole life thinking "I'm a victim, they're all out to get me, but I'm going to get them instead. They'll be sorry!"

Yeah, I've seen it. And I know exactly what it is. It's the same twisted dark stuff that Hitler used to get the Nazis started in Germany.

Like the Who said, "I'm gonna get on my knees and pray...I don't get fooled again!"

When will the once oppressed have the decency not to become the new oppressors? That's what I want to know.