For example, you expatiate on individual social service as a duty, and on the cumulative blessings which would accrue therefrom. "Fine!" replies our man, and adds: "But how many are rendering that kind of service? How many besides those who make a 'soft' living at it, and those who first gouged and got theirs?" You declare that line of argument doesn't cover the question of individual responsibility; that it doesn't answer for a thief to point other social slackers. "All right," rebuts Thief, "but why ring all of the solemn bells on the retailers? Why not sound the curfew on a batch of the big bandits, and land them where you land hard-pressed 'pickers'?" It's waxing a bit awkward, because Thief's query plumbs to the crux of the question; a plumbing he cunningly elects shall put society on the defensive. That won't do, so you switch and let fall your king card in challenge to him to square criminous conduct with the enacting predicates of divine law. If he believes, after a fashion, in a Supreme Being, you have him there to a degree; albeit the belief seldom strikes deeper than fear of far-removed consequence, the sting of which he is led to depend upon earth-born vicars to draw. Finally to muss you up mentally, and in part to remove the moral stigma with which the Almighty stamps such as thieving, he will cite the twelfth-hour repentance and shriving of the thief on the Cross. Here, again, your counter attack won't carry, unless you can drive home the historical fact that the thief in question had thieved against his intrinsic grain; that he had several times started out to seek the Saviour to be shriven of the unnatural load he had borne; and that he was turned back by fear of fatal strokes at the hands of members of the capital band of murderous marauders with whom he had ridden. The crucial point to which we have been leading up is, of course, that America deserves the flippant, murderous footpad of all nationalities; first off because she has made no serious effort to understand what he is, and why he is what he is; and secondly, for the reason that she has failed miserably to match either the subjective or objective tools he has employed. Essentially, America has gone out of her way to make the master criminal welcome, and then to wash his blood-stained hands for him. More than that, she has insisted not only upon his being what he isn't, either mentally, morally or physically; but further upon attaching to him the least modicum of responsibility for his criminal acts. Having furnished him with the complete formula for anti-social thoughts and deeds, she naturally gets the one from his lawless tongue, and the other out of the muzzle of his automatic.