Wealth doesn't make you moral

At a Democratic Meetup a couple of weeks back, a fellow Democrat who spends a lot of time in the company of Fortune 100 executives told me something surprising: top corporate executives think themselves moral because of their wealth! When you ask them why, they'll tell you that they are moral because they "create value." By this they mean they inflate the stock price of their corporation.

Just a few weeks before, in a discussion about "red state values," a friend suggested that conservatives think that wealthy people are moral, or at least that wealth is an indicator of high morality. I was very skeptical of her theory. Anyone who has read the New Testament knows that this is in total opposition to the teachings of Jesus. Besides, the wealthy villain is iconic in our culture. Who could possibly associate wealth with virtue? Wealth is obviously neutral.

Here's a related story plucked from today's headlines. See of you can spot the perversion:

Adelphia to offer hardcore porn movies
...
Five years ago, Adelphia dropped Spice, a soft-core pornography channel, from cable systems it acquired in Southern California because company founder John Rigas considered such programming immoral.

Since then, the company filed for bankruptcy protection in 2002 after Rigas and others were accused of cheating investors out of billions of dollars. Rigas and his son Timothy were convicted of conspiracy, bank fraud and securities fraud. Sentencing is scheduled this month.

According to nuts like Rigas: a) presenting, to consenting adults, movies of other consenting adults having sex is bad, b) showing countless instances of violence daily to all age groups is good, and c) stealing money is really good.

Actually, now that I think about it, (c) makes total sense to anyone who thinks that wealth makes a person more moral. For such people, the more you steal, the more moral you become and the more likely you are to make it into heaven.