Americans, it seems, have lost the ability to be motivated in their actions by anything other than the love of money. Everything Congress or the President proposes is couched in terms of economics.

Citizens of Thomson, Illinois, support the transfer of Gitmo detainees to their community because doing so will create 3,000 jobs and bring billions of dollars to a 600-person town.

President Obama, speaking at a Home Depot store in my neck of the woods, explained that people should improve the weatherizing of their homes because it's sound economics, and saving money is "sexy."

A radical and probably irreversible incursion on the freedom of Americans is on its way to becoming law - "health care reform" - and the primary arguments in favor of this massive government takeover of 1/6 of the nation's economy entail that it will lower the deficit, lower insurance premiums, and allow everyone to have more money.

The nation's shoppers are dashing hither and yon to purchase Christmas presents for their loved ones, enticed to this or that store by massive price reductions in the hope that retailers can end the year in the black. Now we know what "merry" is all about.

Children attend school for twelve years, where they are shaped and prepared to become productive contributors to our getting-and-spending way of life. Then they head off to college for more "refinement" so that they can get the best job - the one that makes more money.

Americans have all become tired and weary dobbins, pulling the debt-laden cart of our economy, their eyes fixed on the dollar dangling before them, with blinders attached to their eyes, firmly installed by every information outlet and center of influence in the land, to keep them from thinking that anything else might be worth pursuing.

Where is all this heading? More prosperity? More happiness?

No: more evil.

T. M. Moore