The day after Senator Robert F. Kennedy was felled by an assassin’s bullet, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. delivered himself of the following portentous indictment of the American character in the course of an address at the commencement exercises of the City College of the University of New York on June 6, 1968:
[Americans are] a violent people with a violent history, and the instinct for violence has seeped into the bloodstream of our national life. . . . We are today the most frightening people on this planet. … It is almost as if a primal curse had been fixed on our nation. . . .
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