OpinionJournal - The Real Lottery Scandal

Holman W. Jenkins lays it on the line. The real scandal involving Harriet Miers' work as a Texas Lottery Commissioner isn't any sweetheart deal to which she was a party. The real scandal is the lottery itself, and the very concept of using a government lottery to pay the government's bills.

Any serious student of the Bible could have told him that. In plain, non-Latinized (or Hellenized) English, a Christian's advice is simple: Don't bet on it. Gambling, by its very nature, substitutes blind chance for Divine planning--or, as in this case, for the making of hard calls about what a government ought, and ought not, fund.

Jenkins lays the blame on transfers of wealth--by federal taxation and largesse--from one region of the country to another. But that's only part of it. The other part concerns government trying to do things that are beyond its sphere and belong properly to the individual citizen, householder, parent, and so on. Such programs undermine the very fabric of our republic and turn us into a nation of thieves--an outcome against which Alexis de Tocqueville warned us.

So to all you who live in states that don't have government lotteries, and are thinking of using them as some kind of cure-all: Don't bet on it. Chances are, it won't work anyway--and even to the extent that it did, it could never solve the basic problem.