Will Goldman Sachs prove greed is God? | Business | The Guardian:
"People have to understand this Randian mindset is now ingrained in the American character. You have to live here to see it. There's a hatred toward 'moochers' and 'parasites' – the Tea Party movement, which is mainly a bunch of pissed off suburban white people whining about minorities consuming social services, describes the battle as being between 'water-carriers' and 'water-drinkers'. And regulation of any kind is deeply resisted, even after a disaster as sweeping as the 2008 crash.
This debate is going to be crystallised in the Goldman case. Much of America is going to reflexively insist that Goldman's only crime was being smarter and better at making money than IKB and ABN-Amro, and that the intrusive, meddling government (in the American narrative, always the bad guy!) should get off Goldman's Armani-clad back. Another side is going to argue that Goldman winning this case would be a rebuke to the whole idea of civilisation – which, after all, is really just a collective decision by all of us not to screw each other over even when we can. It's an important moment in the history of modern global capitalism: whether or not to move forward into a world of greed without limits."

I know some of these tea party types. Many are "Christians". This just reinforces the theory that the human brain is "designed" by and for hormones that drive its behavior. The very notion of a "self" is preposterous. We are dumb, stupid animals.