EEE,

My point has been that, in spite of the personal motives of our founders-- and I dispute any blanket assertions that they were evil men--, the documents they passed on to us provide a system in which screams of persons against whom social crimes have been/are being commited are both listened to and acted upon in that glacial evolution of a perfect Union the path toward which this country has been on since its founding.

Witness, for example, the 1964 Human rights act. Much of the carnage, you speak of, ended with respect to the disrespect of African Americans and the way they had been treated.

I don't for one moment believe that discrimination, racism, and bigotry against certain of our citizens ended with that legislation, but it was proof that morality can be legislated.

The mechanism we inherited gave voting rights to women, as another example, but it takes people to run it, to implement it, first by persuasion of the population that something is wrong, eventually by filing lawsuits, then legislation prohibiting that wrong.

Above all, I praise the free speech we are guaranteed and the provision of forums such as this one in which to express our observations, our frustrations, and our hopes.