Threats

I could be wrong about this, but whenever I read words like these, I'm stunned:

"Over 75 years later, we are well past the initial capture of the trench. Materialist philosophies that treat human beings as machines or animals possess the high ground in our culture -- academia, the most powerful media and many of our courts."

Marvin Olasky and others like him who say things like this are, in my opinion, correct; they're just talking about the wrong people. Materialists with no regard for people, their goals and their dreams do possess the high ground in our culture: they're our elected officials and the heads of the most powerful companies in the world.

Olasky honestly believes that people like Peter Singer, who sit in their ivory towers in American Universities writing books that 6 people a year read, making $150,000 a year and failing to live up to the ethics they prescribe for other people, have a greater effect on our daily lives than, say, Donald Rumsfeld or Kenneth Lay or George W. Bush or Alan Greenspan. The last time I checked, Singer was responsible for the deaths of no one, and (though like I said, fails to live up to his own system) is probably responsible for saving many, as he gives 10-25% of his income to charity every year. Rumsfeld, justified or not, is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.

Every time a woman has an abortion it's a tragedy that should be prevented--granted. Abortion is ever before Olasky's mind, and I freely grant him that the American people are catastrophically failing to take care of the women who are forced to make these choices. But what is it every time an Enron collapses due to greed and theft and thousands of people lose their pensions, their life savings, and their careers? Nothing--the regrettable necessities of capitalism.