Yeah, Spaw -- lean on 'er a little...


Daylia:

There have been many collisions in the history of this country and they have often gotten violent. The collisions between the Irish gangs of New York and the Italians; the collisions between the Puerto Ricans and the Afro-Americans; the collisions between segregationists and integrationsits; the collisions between the labor unions and the owners of industry; the collisions between statists and Federalists. We were born out of a collision of deeply-held interest and belief. We have a tradition of being willing to fight. Quite so.

But that does not mean that every American is a violent person. Nor does it mean that we seek violence out. No-one in my immediate family has ever been involved in any violent activity, aside from a couple of minor schoolyard scraps. I know a few people who were violent as soldiers in various wars, whose tales could make your scalp crawl, but they were engaged in war against people who were equally if not more so.

When I look at the history of genocide in Africa and Yugoslavia, the insanity of war in Korea and Vietnam totally aside from the American part, the role of gratuitous violence in Germany's history, the statistics of Stalinism, and the sweeping chaos engendered by Pol Pot in Cambodia, I have to say I believe that your article is pointing to the wrong side of the equation. It is just possible that violence is a deeply rooted human aberration, and not an American trait in particular.

A