Egoism as a civil right - Edwin Vassallo
This is what one of my constituents told me as I was visiting one of our Nationalist Party clubs: egoism is a civil right. Faced with such a blank statement, I must admit that I found it difficult to answer. So I am going to give my answer in this article, hoping also to show where I stand on these issues.
In this day and age a trend has started to set in, in which individual interest replaces the common good. The end result is a culture summed up by what one constituent affirmed: “We only live once, what right have you as a politician to dictate how we do our things?”
I totally agree with your editorial ‘Opium for the postmodern age’ (November 9), which said: “Dr Muscat knows that, for many, it is money in the pocket that counts (opium) and not his governance.”
The introduction said: “It was Karl Marx who coined the metaphor ‘religion is the opium of the people’. Maybe, it applied to his times but, since then, religion and moral ethics have been delegated to the sacristy and a new god has emerged, called money.” It is spot on.
I would add that along with money, two other words, sex and power, have come to dominate our hierarchy of values, skewering it and turning it on its head.