The educated coastal public thinks that evangelical Christianity is America’s number one religion. They are wrong. It is the Worship of Unearned Riches, and Las Vegas is its holy city. The belief that it is possible to get something for nothing is more potent in our land than the belief that the Son of God will return to rescue mankind. The Religion of Unearned Riches was established here in the desert by organized crime. It has turned us into a nation of slobs, clowns, patsies, and cravens. Las Vegas is what we have become. Is it any wonder that the rest of the world despises us?
I live a few hours’ drive from Las Vegas. I share the author’s contempt for the place, right up until the last sentence where he suggests that there’s something uniquely American about irrational greed. Other countries don’t have casinos and lotteries?
Actually, anti-Americanism in other countries has a couple of causes:
- They want to divert attention from their own failures and we’re the most obvious scapegoat for everything that goes wrong in the world.
- Any admission that the United States provides uniquely positive military, commercial and diplomatic services to the rest of the world would raise the obvious question of why we’re not being paid for those services. Since no one intends to pay, no one makes the admission.