Consensus for convenience

The rapid spread of legal gambling is not the result of thoughtful, reasoned arguments | Andrée Seu

WHEN I WAS A CHILD AND THOUGHT AS A CHILD, I believed that decisions were products of reasons. Now I know better: Reasons are often products of decisions. Case in point: No constitutional scholar ever sat down in 1950 and, searching his conscience, deduced that the Fourth Amendment had a "right of privacy" in it, which in turn had a "right to abortion" in it, and that it was high time some courageous public servant pushed to make abortion-on-demand the law of the land. Rather, the country backed into a "civil right" when, years later, hedonism forged a consensus for convenience—and then cast about for a whitewash to pretty it up.

The thinking behind gambling these days is like that which led to Roe vs. Wade, and you should see how fast a vice gets rehabilitated to a virtue when enough folks put their minds to it.