Thomas Fleming
Thomas Fleming is president of the Fleming Foundation. He is the author of six books, including The Morality of Everyday Life and The Politics of Human Nature, as well as many articles and columns for newspapers, magazines,and learned journals. He holds a Ph.D. in Classics from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and a B.A. in Greek from the College of Charleston. He served as editor of Chronicles: a Magazine of American Culture from 1984 to 2015 and president of The Rockford Institute from 1997-2014. In a previous life he taught classics at several colleges and served as a school headmaster in South Carolina
Hot Springs is taking the dive. Oaklawn Casino is going up now, and I work about two blocks away. I’m really looking forward to when the riff-raff start invading our parking lot.
We’ve had casinos in our area for several years now. I’ve been inside of one, only once, for a work event. It was a sad, smoky scene. Overweight, chain-smoking, 60-and-70-somethings, stuffing their social security checks into slot machines. In addition to the general moral hazard, as a person who does not gamble, the additional moral hazards (and the crime against tax payers) are the double, triple, etc. bailouts that aid further malfeasance and will be required. So you lost your savings? Well, you still have your social security. Lost that, too? Well, we have welfare, food stamps and medicaid. Reverse-mortgaged your house and pumped that into the one armed-bandit, too? So sorry to hear that, but we’ve got public housing. I could go on.
“with apologies to Jimmie Rodgers.” Yes, a good, old Jimmie Rodgers’ song but that’s Merle Haggard singing it.
Like Tom I find it strange that government should be participating in the promotion of vices. A very different America today than the one I grew up in.
Yes, Roger, Merle, which is why I wrote “with apologies to Jimmie Rodgers.” Merle was perhaps his biggest fan.
You hit on a point I did not make emphatically enough. People on the frontier in need of a little fun or rich playboys on the Riviera don’t generally disturb anyone with their little vices, for which they are willing to pay, but for government to set up shop as pornographers, drug pushers, pimps, and croupiers is a bit much, and that no one can point this out without being abused as a Puritan highlights the futility of any public discourse–except here of course.
When are we going to do a podcast together?