Writing for The Atlantic, John Paul Rollert describes the complex moral evolution of the concept of “greed” over three centuries, from Christianity’s unequivocal denunciation of self-interest to the present day, in which, Rollert argues, we have reached a kind of quiet but uncomfortable toleration of greed.
“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should conduct a happiness survey to make sure that at least 51 percent of people will be made ‘very happy’ by the decision.”
For anyone who watched CNN’s report on Ayn Rand (during “The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer” on October 11), there was a puzzling moment that I’d like to clear up.
Either Maddow has not read Ayn Rand — in which case she should not be reporting on the content of Rand’s works as if she had — or she has read Rand but utterly failed to understand her. Either way, she owes her viewers a correction and an apology.
POST byKeith Lockitch | View All PostsSeptember 17, 2009
The Wall Street Journal recently commissioned Karen Armstrong, author of numerous books on religion, and Richard Dawkins, author of numerous books on evolution and atheism, to answer the question: “Where does evolution leave God?” What I found most interesting about the exchange was an issue that neither discussed explicitly, but which lurked just beneath the surface of their answers: the fact that religion has co-opted the entire realm of the spiritual.
