THE PUBLIC MIND: SO, MORALS ARE OUT AND `GAMING' IS IN

To the Editor:

I was there Tuesday night (May 25). I was among the some 300 who gathered to listen to proponents and opponents of riverboat gambling. I heard it. I am sure everyone there heard it too. Much to my horror somebody dared to say that the economy and jobs have nothing to do with morality. He said "gaming" was not a moral issue. We were told that when it comes to jobs, morality doesn't count. Is that true? After all, prostitution and drug dealing are "jobs." I could not believe that an intelligent, thinking person could utter such nonsense, such outrageous nonsense.

Are we really to believe that economic enterprise, whether productive industry or "gaming," can be carried on without reference to morality, bereft of conscience, with no concern for any standards of right and wrong? Apparently so, for so say the proponents of riverboat gambling. Frightening thought! Imagine a society or industrial enterprise operating under such anarchy.

Toynbee was right to say that by the 1950s, "the crucial questions confronting Western Man were all religious," because of the inevitable dependence of a society's actions on its beliefs, its moral and ethical underpinnings. Which is to say, everything a society's politics, economics, communities, families, etc. descends from a society's morals. It would appear that we are long past talking about "the good society", or, what is "good" for Cape Girardeau, for such a notion is moral by definition. And then, we are told about all the "good" that will come from "gaming": "good" jobs, "good" deeds, and charitable donations. But when the president of The Boyd Group has already admitted that morals have nothing to do with "gaming," one wonders what "good" means.

Our state officials have chosen to ignore the whole issue of their moral authority as well. So, morals are out, "gaming" is in. All of this is an effort to gain revenues for education. It is taxation by gambling for education. It becomes all too clear that someone needs an education, and we are about to get it. The tuition will be paid to an economic enterprise that claims to operate without reference to morality. The nightmares of the 19th-century French philosopher and politician, Frederic Bastiat, have come true: The law is perverted "into an instrument of plunder."

Wesley D Wright

Minister

Mt. Auburn Christian Church~

Cape Girardeau