The world that Dostoevski foresaw

Everything is relative, isn't it? Liars loans for mortgages, five or six "tax challenged" appointees by Obama only one month into his administration. Enron, WorldCom, Bernie Madoff, and now Allan Stanford charged by the SEC with an $8 billion dollar scam. While scams have been going on from time immemorial, anyone recall all of this really taking off with a vengeance around the same time liberals were telling us, relative to Bill Clinton's antics, that "ethics don't matter?"

I believe it was Adams who stated the American republic was meant for a moral and religious people, and it would suffice for no other. I hate to bring "religion" into the debate, but it is the sine quo non for a functioning democracy; without transcendent ethics, we are, by definition, only left with the reality that "whatever is, is right" (i.e., there is no possible way to step outside of what simply is, to objectively state something is right or wrong). Or, as Dostoevski once wrote, "If there is no God, 'everything' is permissible." Welcome to that financial world that Adams, Dostoyevski and a multitude of others have warned us about.

Jim Vanne

Aurora