I do not think that any reasonable person would see this as “placing an occasional bet on the ponies” is destructive to the family. Had I said “alcohol can be proven to destroy families” it would be clear that I was referring to excessive intake, not an occasional Margarita. The context clearly implied “excessive” gambling, which $8 million is reasonably construed to be “excessive”.
Whether $8 million is excessive to Bennet or not is another argument. Certainly $8 million would be enough to generate an easy six-figure per year amount that would feed thousands of people or pay the medical bills of hundreds of people without health insurance or build a very nice church or supply an entire village indefinitely with medical supplies, all of which would seem more in keeping with what most people consider “virtue”.
My father was an alcoholic whose addiction probably hastened his death. He never once drove a car while intoxicated, he never missed a day of work due to a hangover, he drank while on duty or put a strain on the family finances due to his alcoholism, so by your standards his alcoholism had no ill effect on his family and, since he could afford it and it did not affect him professionally, the fact that he often passed out at night did not mean he drank excessively.
Whether an extremely rich man who preaches Christian values is a hypocrite or not is for Great Debates. I would argue that it in fact is hypocrisy when you venerate a man who owned a coat (which was gambled for) and preached charity and is considered by Christians to be the most important figure in a text that has more than 3,000 references to the virtue of giving generously to the poor, but this thread is already hijacked enough.
