Violence in America stems from (1) diversity, which contributes to alienation instead of community; (2) individualism, which fosters a competitiveness that identifies 'winners' and 'losers,' with rage and despair fostered among the 'losers;' (3) racism, whose brutalizing distortion of the rights of blacks has a continuing legacy in the alienation and violence of inner cities; and (4) the frontier legacy of violence as the means of establishing dominance. The root cause of violence, however, is the deterioration of the Judeo-Christian ethic that has formed the moral consensus for behavior. This ethic mandated internalized personal and social controls that fostered a sense of duty regularly performed through self-denial and compassion for the weak and oppressed. Our value system is now based primarily on self-fulfillment, which so easily slides into selfishness, hedonism, and materialism. In the absence of strong moral influences to condition and constrain behavior, the only recourse is the use of police power. The news media portrays the violent behavior spawned out of moral decay, and the entertainment media reflect and reinforce the values that either foster violence or fail to hold it in check. Ideally, those responsible for the entertainment media should adopt a higher vision for their role, but unfortunately, leaders in the industry are also driven by a competitive ethic of materialism which holds little commitment to the values required to halt the spiral of moral decay.