ON AUGUST 30, with the flood waters rising in New Orleans, Harrah's CEO Gary Loveman appeared on CNN to reassure a battered nation. "We hope to work with Gov. Barbour in Mississippi in particular to get at least temporary casinos open as quickly as possible and get everybody back to work," he said. When the chips were down, our gaming industry stood fast, ready to do whatever it took to keep America betting. Is this a great country or what?

Over the past 50 years, gambling has gone from sin to vice to guilty pleasure and has come, finally, to be simply another point of interest on the entertainment map. Today America has 445 commercial casinos and 411 Indian casinos acting as beacons to the lucky. In 1993, 11.6 million Americans visited commercial casinos; in 2004, 54.1 million--26 percent of all gaming-aged adults--hit the tables and slots. In 1993, commercial casinos had $11.2 billion in gross gambling revenue; by 2004 that number had risen to $27 billion. But even this staggering figure--last year Hollywood grossed only $10.2 billion at the box office and $25.95 billion from home video--is just one piece of the gaming pie. Throw in the Indian casinos, state lotteries and horse tracks and you get a gross total of $72.87 billion--before you count Internet gaming.

As gambling has spread, whatever taboos were left about it have fallen away. In a recent survey, 81 percent of Americans said that gambling was an acceptable activity, with 21 percent saying that in the

The extent to which gambling infiltrates nearly every aspect of American culture is hard to fathom--we are so pious and easily scandalized on other culture-war fronts--but easy to measure: Gambling is everywhere. Its sheer ubiquity has made wagering seem banal, a normal part of middle-class life--something that only a prude would object to. But is it really? Isn't there more at stake in the loss of this taboo than the pleasure of risking a little money on chance? Taken in all its forms, the American betting habit looks like a mild form of social pathology. It is certainly one of those nodal points in culture where commerce has trumped settled custom--and maybe even conscience.

We've gotten to the point where a conservative Republican nominee to the Supreme Court has as the apex of her résumé a stint as the head of the Texas Lottery Commission--and this is seen as a plus. Back when America frowned on gaming, the Christian objection was that partaking in games of chance was essentially testing God: demanding that he show his favor. So outdated is this view that now you can even buy "faith poker chips," with slogans such as "Jesus went all in for you!" Maybe gambling has become more acceptable because people aren't expecting to win as much as they're hoping simply to be amused. A trip to the casino today is like a trip to the Cineplex: You pay your money just to see the show.