It used to be in America that students would play tricks on the teachers. They might, for example, stick a snowball on the ceiling so when the teacher came in she would be dripped on as the snowball melted. Now the students may put poison in her coffee.

We have drive-by shootings during which youngsters in a car will attempt to kill opposing gang members. Sometimes there are random shootings in which small children are injured or killed with no motive of any kind except the desire to harm.

Sometimes young people who have not been invited to a party, or who have been refused admittance to a party, will spray the guests with automatic weapons, killing people indiscriminately.

There are instances in which young people have brought rifles to school and then have strafed their fellow students for no stated reason.

Lawsuits abound, some of them ridiculous, over matters that years ago would have been ignored as part of life or worked out between people.

The idea in America of today is cover your own back so you don't get stabbed. Blame everyone else for whatever takes place. Get what you can and enjoy it. Cheat, lie, steal, whenever possible.

The original concept of America was that of a melting pot in which the various races came together as one nation. Then the universities and public schools began to change the concept of the melting pot to that of the multicultural society in which the differences of the races were to be honored if not accentuated. This change from the melting-pot concept was introduced without any public mandate, as far as I know.

America after all is an experiment. It is the only nation (I think I am true in this) that is not also a race. Therefore we are free to be unkind to those of a different race from ourselves, it appears.

We now have racial hatreds coming to the front as various races seek to gain an advantage in money, in jobs, in positions of power. Asian fights African, African fights Latino. All are against the white race. Instead of accepting the genius of each nation, as for example the remarkable literary contributions of the English or the musical contributions of the Germans, the idea is that all literature is equal in value and all music is equal in value.

Underlying all of this ferment is malice, envy, pride, hatred, meanness, an absence of kindness.

I for one enjoy my own culture, the food, the literature, the music, the social customs. I thoroughly enjoy the people of other races, especially the Christians. We Christians of every race actually are bound together more closely to one another than to our own blood relatives. Nevertheless, while I find other cultures interesting and exciting, and not superior or inferior to my own, I enjoy my own and do not wish to have another forced on me.

I am sure those of other cultures feel much the same way.

Since the above is evidently true we are left with one conclusion. Either we of America learn kindness toward each other or else the great American experiment will founder as various interest groups produce a gridlock that makes healthy economic, educational, and military progress difficult if not impossible.

To be continued.