With Elections Near, We Should Remember That the Greatest Danger of Getting Elected
is getting elected, and coming to believe that one is vastly more important than one is, and then losing one’s soul by allowing vanity, rather than God’s Commandments, to become the operating doctrine. The most common single cause of public officials’ souls being consigned to eternal pain comes from willfully violating the Commandment “Thou Shalt not Bear False Witness”
That violation usually happens exactly like this: In the United States, an elected official takes the following oath:
“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.”
Any time that an elected official votes to spend money not authorized by The Constitution, the Oath of Office that includes “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend The Constitution of the United States ” is automatically broken. Since most funding proposed by special interests is not, by any reasonable stretch of the imagination, justified by The Constitution, the souls lost by willfully disregarding what they have solemnly sworn to uphold comprise a very large percentage of elected officials.
This, of course was meant to be. When people asked God for the government they wanted, from Kings to democracies, to rule by various “committees”, He gave them that for which they asked, as Mencken said in a slightly different context, “good and hard”.
Those who wish to personally profit from the political process are adept at finding ways to justify enforced taxation that benefits favored projects and people. Especially if there is a clear, repeated, unrepentant pattern of confiscating money from neighbors to help friends and relatives, and if this is done outside the clear limits imposed by The Constitution to which obedience has been sworn, damnation is the clear and unavoidable end.
We have a duty to let them know of the risks they run, explaining that by violating their Oath of Office they are automatically breaking the Ninth Commandment. It will do little good, but at least we will avoid the punishment reserved for those who do not love their neighbors enough to warn them of the fiery pit to which their vanity blinds them and into which they’re about swagger.
