To my fellow Americans, and other interested parties: Civil Wars It is a scar that defies healing. The "South will rise again” is hardly an empty shibboleth, and the southern States have not surrendered their manners to the uncouth and toxic north, an oft-repeated articulation of the US Civil War. The current north-south divide, a racial one between whites and blacks that still seethes underneath American society, is manifest in a discord between civilian and police force. A suspected shooter who blames officers of the Dallas Police department on a domestic just got himself killed in the process! The defense of the police blossomed, until immediately post-WWII, a haven of "whites". A result of the country’s budget poured on military spending, we now have local police equipped with tanks, leftovers in Pentagon’s deceptive arsenal-for-peace, against the nation’s requirements of health, education, and welfare, an embarrassment. Civil wars result from conflicting vested interests, e.g., the genteel plantation of the south versus the toxic industrial north in the U. S. “Civil war” is an oxymoron. To be “civil” precludes conflict, the essence of war. Couched in ideological terms, it is now in the US reduced to a confrontation between socialized equity in the means of production and the communal distribution of benefits vs. free flow of capital in open markets, coded as free enterprise, spreading wealth on a 1/99 divide. Conflicts are not always ideological. Ethnic-based struggles often define attrition, especially when powerful personalities are involved. Multifaceted trouble brews in Afghanistan even before Russia's bear in hammer and sickle descended. Neighbors Albania and Macedonia skirmish with each others' minorities, Cote d’ Ivoire has Muslim north vs. Christian south, Iraq spawned ISIS in the Tigris-Euphrates and the Levant, Darfur's refugees in Sudan, Chad vs. Sudan, Palestine's Fatah-Hamas-Yisra'el destructive roulette, Mexico's drug cartels, Libya's rebels, Mali's assertive Tuareg, and Syria's multiparty fiasco. We will skip on-going conflicts that include the Moro Liberation and insurgency in the Philippines. The United States holds dear ownership of guns from the 2nd amendment of the Bill of Rights, to wit: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” The US Supreme Court took the second amendment as a guarantee of individual right to bear arms. There are more private owners of arms in America than the the rest of the world combined! While the US protects its citizens' right to bear arms, the United Nations aims to have free education to 12th grade globally by 2030. Mayhap, it is time for the planet and the United States to explore the implications of Civil Peace! The Peace Corps (FSM's Pohnpei just got a bunch) is an attempt at people connections. It is time for another amendment, mayhap to read: “A well promoted education, necessary to the well-being of a free State, the right of all people to 12 years of free education shall not be infringed.” That's one "war" we do not mind waging. j'aime la vie All that was, thanks; all that will be, yes; all that is, let it be!