A new front in the war

Radicalism | Moving from the politics of corporate America to the politics of academic America, and trying to publish so as not to perish. Part eight of a pilgrim’s slow progress | Marvin Olasky

Illustration by Krieg Barrie

At the end of segment seven (Aug. 29) I was 31, upwardly mobile, and deciding whether to accept a promotion at the DuPont Company. I was troubled by the company's success in deflecting press attention from cases of chemical-caused bladder cancer at a New Jersey plant, juxtaposed against my father's coming down with . . . bladder cancer. But more than that was going on.

Opening up before me was a vista of the good life. The triptych in one of DuPont's central buildings—left panel, past poverty; middle panel, the god of chemistry; right panel, future prosperity—could become my own story. Had I been a chemist or engineer I could have fulfilled my calling at DuPont, which indeed made better things for better living. Sure, we all sometimes make those things rather than God the center of our lives, but that's a problem deeper than any corporate wizard can solve.