Laudator Temporis Acti

It isn't unusual to find atheists quoting Scripture, but I was surprised to find Edward Abbey quoting a passage from the New Testament with such evident approval in Confessions of a Barbarian: Selections from the Journals of Edward Abbey, 1951-1989 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1996), p. 342 (February 19, 1988):

The splendid wrath of James, Chapter five, verses one through six:

"Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries...."

Greed, the profit motive, is the ugliest thing in America, the closest we've got to pure evil; even the nuke bomb, SDI, the arms race, are based essentially on greed — greed for money, greed for power.

SDI is the Strategic Defense Initiative. Here is the entire quotation, in the King James version:

[1] Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. [2] Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are motheaten. [3] Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days. [4] Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth. [5] Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton; ye have nourished your hearts, as in a day of slaughter. [6] Ye have condemned and killed the just; and he doth not resist you.

But perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised, given Abbey's hatred of the rich expressed elsewhere in his journals, e.g. (pp. 198-199):

On taking sides: Why have I always, instinctively, immediately, in every sort of social conflict, sympathized with the underdogs, the working or peasant class, the lower, weaker or oppressed side? Why do I tend to identify with them and not with the others — the powerful and rich, the established, authoritative, dignified caste?

Why? Well, partly the Socialist heritage bequeathed me by my father — because I come from the peasant class myself, and am still a member of the outsiders. Partly a sense of natural justice: let each pig have its turn in the trough. But mostly, because I hate the rich and powerful, and those who support them while not of them — servile and sycophantic natures: the servants, lackeys, court jesters. They [sic] I despise more than any other.

and (p. 282):

The rich, really, are not good people. They are selfish, spoiled, greedy, cliquish, clannish, mean-spirited. That's why they're rich. That's how they came to be rich.

Cartoon by William Gropper