* The proliferation of firearms and the habit of carrying them

* The political respectability of the radical right

* The nonexistence, publically, of a radical left

He concludes, "If there were a climate anywhere in America that permitted assassination to become conceivable, to be defined as something that might in fact be culturally legitimate, that climate existed in Dallas."

Dallas Reacts

Certainly the President's assassination jolted the overwhelming majority of Dallas citizens just as it did the rest of the nation. But the reactions of a few belied the deep strain of callous self interest that resides not far below the city's civic league surface. An audience of 1800 packed the Dallas City Opera the evening after the assassination to to applaud Verdi's Masked Ball. Citizens held indignant meetings to decide what to do about ministers who issued malicious statements about the city. The school board fired--later rehired--the teacher who reported her student's applause at the news of the assassination. And a taxi driver admonished the Boston Herald's George Frazier for leaving Dallas on the morning of Sunday, November 24th. "You might miss some excitement around here. After all, Dallas folks don't take kindly to having their city made to look bad by somebody from Ft. Worth." He wasn't mistaken.

From all reports, the FBI and the Dallas police were well prepared for the President's visit. For the past several years Dallas has been the center of the "Hate Kennedy Cult of Texas." A Republican pamphlet calling for a fund to retire all the Kennedys to rocking chairs in '64 was widely distributed. A couple of days before Kennedy's visit, fliers appeared in down-town Dallas with the President's picture and the caption "wanted for treason." On the morning of November 22nd, a full page advertisement in the News called Kennedy a traitor and a communist.