Remember the Sermon on the Mount?

As it approaches the estimable age of 2000, the Judeo-Christian ethic seems to be going all soft and senile. A noisily Christian portion of the Virginia electorate is prepared to send a former felon to the Senate on the grounds that he never cheated on his wife. In Haiti, born-again ex-President Jimmy Carter invited torture master Raoul Cedras to teach Sunday school, apparently because his wife is slender and his shirts are well pressed. Everywhere, private virtue -- or the successful simulation of it -- seems to count more than public morality, and material wealth more than anything else. In the...

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