the world's jetsam and flotsam has drifted to our shores and become part of our kaleidoscope schema.

Naturally, we like to make the most of the noble purity of our ancestors. We see them as moral zealots struggling for justice and freedom against religious tyranny and political oppression. However, not since the Crusades could one find a more opinionated band of bigots than the early colonists, who had no fundamental objection to despotism, so long as they were the despots imposing their oppressive views and values on others. Added to these dictatorial bigots were successive waves of klutzes, deadbeats and malcontents—the scum from all the slums of Europe. Throw in Africans dumb enough to get caught by slavers, Orientals shrewd enough to work forever for a pittance and some Indians who acquiesced in the longest-running real estate swindle of all time and you have the makings of the social handicap of which we are so proud. Stir a little and heat a lot, and you have a model of our faltering, sweltering pot society.

Although we do not brag about it, America was peopled by failures. Our ancestors came here because they were or anticipated being failures in the old country. Upon arrival, they failed in farming, mining, business and battles. Crackpots invented ships that would sink, shovels that would not dig and boilers that would explode. Builders constructed firetraps that were unsafe an any height. As development progressed, slums arose in the cities while in the country, land was cleared so that the topsoil could erode faster. Railroads to nowhere were constructed, with promoters then misleading the unwary into settling along the wrong-of-way so that they could be more easily exploited later on.

Thus, American stupidity cannot be truly appreciated as a stagnant, torpid force but must be perceived in the dynamic context of a linguistic current ever at odds with the realities of life. Much as our national character, composition and goals have changed throughout the life of the nation, so has our native stupidity devolved so that we might always have difficulty recognizing ourselves and meeting our challenges. To illustrate the point, we need only note that the patriotic rhetoric of 1776 was mostly about "Liberty". A bell was cast and promptly cracked to symbolize our qualified commitment to this ideal. Two hundred years ago, slave owners fought for their own liberty, and now the word is all but forgotten. The current watchword is "Equality", and the government conceived in liberty has been pushing equality on the country for more than a generation. In both cases, the catchwords motivated radicals and obscured

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