Dear Editor-

George Huguely, now convicted of murder, is as much a victim of the arrogant hubris of the many programs that molded him as is the tragically murdered Yeardley Love (Metro Jury saw a limit to Huguely's malice February 24). The tone of self-destructive hubris might be said to start with the patriarchal self-infatuation within the Huguely family, reflected in the almost endless succession of scions sanctioned under "George". From that beginning there seems to have continued a cascade of development in arrogant and unbalanced self-assurance that bode unexpected tragedy for one young lady and one young man, whom she thought to be her friend. 

George V was a product of our youth sport programs here in the U.S.A. where winning is questionably and consistently more valued than all the other features of sport, including that of sport for its own sake. The machismo swagger of men's lacrosse was then drilled into George V through the traditionally boastful zero-sum athletic programs of his high school and his university. 

And then most maliciously George V was also a product of and molded by the program of romanticized alcohol culture so pervasively championed by its industry. Tragically the industry and its culture is also benignly championed by government, whose greed is lucratively rewarded through alcohol consumption tax. There is little behavioral restraint in any of us when drunk, whether that be a young man under alcohol intoxication or a government made heady by the revenue of its tax-collecting on alcohol consumption.

The warning to George V of the impending threat of all this carefully cultivated hubris, to himself and most tragically to others like Yeardley Love, now sadly comes much too late.