[snip] > Virtues produce wealth for > individuals as well - working hard, delaying gratification, > self-discipline - all of these are virtues and virtuous behavior, and, on > the whole, those people who display them are well off, and those > who do not > are not. Virtue, it is often said, is its own reward.
Er, surely you can see that you have utterly contradicted yourself. The meaning of "virtue is its own reward" is to say that one cannot expect material reward for one's virtue. In other words, exactly the opposite of the argument you are making. Those five words would be an appropriate rebuttal to Friedman's piece. Nick Me: Had you mustered the rather trivial academic honesty of quoting me in context, you would not have altered my point. People say that. It's not necessarily true. Whether it is or is not, it is nonetheless true that virtuous behaviors have _real_ rewards that make them worthwhile whether or not you believe in the afterlife. People (like you) who claim otherwise have done more harm to the poor and disenfranchised over the past 25 years than any group in the United States, by justifying the attractive but eventually self-defeating self-pitying belief that one is not responsible for one's own life. I shall respond in more detail later to your other posts. Gautam
