Very few foreigners know the United States, though many know some prominent people in New York, Washington and Los Angeles, and imagine that the Americans are cousins of the British and that the US is somewhat like the United Kingdom only larger, richer, less cultured, more materialistic, and more socio-economically fluid and meritocratic. Americans speak English and practice a version of the common law, but barely one fifth of them are descended from the English or Scottish. The US is a proudly revolutionary, relatively libertarian, and very rough, gun-toting society in constant fermentation. The America of Norman Rockwell, Walt Disney, and Grandma Moses exists; almost everything exists in that vast country of a third of a billion people, but it is a public relations snow job. America is a land of intense competition and tremendous achievement in almost every field, but it is also a jungle, and like all jungles it is run by the 30-foot constricting snakes and the 700-pound cats, and t...