“Greed has become respectable.” So proclaims right wing conservative William Safire, with a shout of triumph, in an article published last week in hundreds of newspapers. Like the homosexual emerging from the closet, Safire comes out from behind the camouflage of “profit motive” and “free enterprise” to announce that “greed turns out to be the best engine of development.” He bewails five millenniums of moral teaching which called greed a sin, and undertakes to sanctify the lust for wealth. He takes the motto of Rotary Cluns, “He profits most who serves best”, and turns it upside down to profane it to read, “He serves best who profits most.”
To support his contention he points out that greed has inspired the turn around from recession to what he calls prosperity in the last two years, as well as stimulate all economic growth in centuries past. He says that “greed” is derived from “hunger”, and is the greatest force to motivate mankind. He suggests that luxurious material possessions are the highest values known to man and greed for luxuries is the supreme virtue. Leave aside the fact that greed for luxuries and hunger for food are not the same thing. Leave aside the present mania for leveraged mergers which generate huge profits for speculators do not produce one bushel of wheat nor suit of clothes nor house or apartment. He overlooks a whole litany of troubles.
Greed is the driving force behind the drug traffickers, the Mafia, gang wars, embezzlers, crooked business operators in General Dynamics, General Electric, E.F. Hutton and hundreds of other dishonest enterprises.
Greed is the underlying cause of the warfare that threatens the existence of the human race and perhaps all earthly life. The struggle to possess the wealth of India and China precipitated World War I. The similar contest for the riches of China, Indonesia and the Middle East brought on World War II. At least fifty million persons were slaughtered needlessly to attempt to satisfy greed.
Greed results in acid rain in our water (as Haywood County is experiencing), poison in our air, and contamination in our food. The Reagan-Regan duo in Washington appoint a commission to study the effects of acid rain and then refuse to act on the recommendations of the report because such implementation will hamper the greed for profits. So much for the corruption which greed spawns.
We are grateful to Safire for one thing; he takes the mask off the pious faces of the right-wingers (including Jesse Helms) who he so vigorously represents, to reveal their basic motivation – naked greed.
What is most disturbing is the fact that some self-styled Christian preachers, flying the flag of “Moral Majority” have rallied around the right wing pirate banner of greed and find the two groups are brothers under the skin. It is a tragedy that the supposed disciples of Jesus Christ find their spiritual home in the temple of the worshippers of greed. They pass over the words of the Master, “You cannot serve God and Mammon” (Matthew 6:24), and Paul, “The love of money is the root of all evil” (I Timothy 6:10).
These Biblical statements are true, not because God dictated or wrote them. If God did dictate or write them, He did so because they are true. The battle between right-wing preachers and their political partisans on the one side, and the disciples of Jesus of Nazareth on the other side is made clear by William Safire.
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