Our present cultural landscape suggests we live in a period of profound corruption, in which the only value honored is that of money -- its earning, spending, making.
Ultimately, Mr. Abdullah dropped out of the race, but not before he accused the Karzai government of profound corruption and electoral fraud, a complaint he has continued to voice.
"How could there not be?" And, despite some improvements in the quality of life of the people of Sierra Leone, it still lacks effective ways to address chronic and profound corruption, poverty, unemployment and substandard health care.
KABUL, Afghanistan Afghanistanan's last presidential challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, dropped out of the race on Sunday, accusing the government of profound corruption and electoral fraud even as the Obama administration rallied around President Hamid Karzai.
And all this, you have to remember, takes place against the profound corruption of Pakistani society, from the shoe-shine boy to the president, Asif Ali Zardari, Benazir Bhutto's widower, whose own venality is so legendary that only rarely does it cause discussion.
But for our Founders, like classic Republicans since Athens, a more profound corruption was the greatest threat to the survival of the Republic.
More troubling than its cost, however, is the profound toll corruption is taking upon the country and its more than 1.2 billion citizens.
And while Tom Daschle and Nancy Killifer have been castigated for errors in tax reporting and essentially barred from serving their government, a deeper, more profound structural corruption has fixed itself in the superstructures of government that is drawing almost no attention.
Concerns were also expressed about profound and widespread corruption in Afghanistan.
In May, soon after the pope made an address on the priesthood, chastising those who sought to stretch the church's rules and calling for "radical obedience," Vatican gendarmes arrested Benedict's butler on charges of theft after a tell-all book appeared, based on stolen confidential documents detailing profound mismanagement and corruption inside the Vatican.
That same regime has been guilty of profound economic mismanagement and corruption.
