GREEK ORTHODOX YOUTH OF AMERICA 935

the normal, acceptable solution for a problem.... A cardinal fact
about violence is that once initiated it tends to get out of hand. Its
limits are not predictable. "

A corollary conclusion is that violence rewarded breeds further
violence and perpetual violence ultimately produces a brutal counter-
reaction.

Civil disobedience, at best, is a dangerous policy, since it opens
the path for each man to be judge and jury of which laws are unjust
and may be broken. Moreover, civil disobedience leads inevitably
to riots, and riots condoned lead inevitably to revolution — which,
incidentally, is a word we are hearing more and more frequently
from advocates of black power.

We have also witnessed dramatic debacles such as the Poor People's
March, which sought an amorphous commodity, "a just share of the
wealth. " This is impossible for society to define or deliver. Utopian
purposes simply build frustration on all sides and tragically leave
all people worse off than they were before.

Capitulation to violence, either to keep the peace or from mis-
guided compassion, is suicidal for society. While hardening of at-
titudes and polarization is paralyzing, an acceptance of mass guilt
coupled with an abrogation of individual responsibility could be
disastrous for this great country of ours.

We seem to have lost all sense of proportion and perspective. En-
couraged and abetted by the mass media, we have embarked upon a
national whining catharsis. We're so fascinated scrutinizing our ex-
posed racism that we've forgotten the problems altogether. I think
we've followed this negative, moribund course to its natural dead
end — and it's time to play a new game called "What's right with the
United States. " The tragedy and in its way the greatness of the
Kerner report came in its embodiment of the group guilt thesis.
From the vantage point of a hundred years, I suspect it will be viewed
as a genre piece depicting the psychology of a nation strangling on
its own success.

The United States has come of age. Now we must decide whether
we are going to use our affluence and knowledge constructively or
destructively. Are we going to continue in the vigorous discipline
of individual opportunity and responsibility which brought us this
far, or are we going to surrender to the Bread and Circus destiny
that befell the Roman Republic? We are at this juncture now and