[rlmorel]

I think this is very good overall, but I disagree very strongly with this statement: "...One of the factors that has brought about this change, with its highly corrosive consequences in the daily lives of Americans, was the fashionable ‘neo-liberalism,' which saw the business world as a self-regulatory power, able to override morality, religion, and culture and to dictate standards of conduct based on the supposedly miraculous power of market laws..."

Morality flows outwards from individuals, not the other way around. This is not to say that people don't engage in group mentality, but it all boils back down to the individual responsibility and the knowledge of right from wrong.

Just as you cannot legislate morality, business cannot provide moral structure. If people running a business have a moral compass, the business as a whole will have a good moral structure.

If those people do not have any moral compass, no business is going to supply one.

[trubolotta]

I guess I didn’t interpret that the same as you did. He wasn’t saying the business world provided morality, he said that neo-liberals believed it would, and of course, it didn’t. The belief became a convenient excuse to do as you please and then claim that market forces would impose an appropriate morality.

What you are saying I absolutely agree with and I don’t see Carvalho contradicting that.

[griswold3]

I heard Tom Wolfe say that we lost this country when we removed the Ten Commandments from the town square.
Since then we’ve become a society of lies.