"Faith in a greater system"

Today I started the time-consuming task of archiving my stacks and stacks of newspaper clippings that have accumulated over the past several years, mostly columns by Dave Barry, Cal Thomas, and Kathleen Parker. I came across a column by Thomas that dealt with the controversy earlier in this decade about the display of the Ten Commandments at an Alabama courthouse. In the penultimate graf, Thomas references an AP story from some 30 years back which mentions a Democratic Senator from Iowa leaving the Senate to become a "lay Christian worker." Senator Harold Hughes, in Thomas' words, "..realized after a successful political career that government has the lesser power. He once told me: 'I'm not leaving the political structure because of a lack of faith in the political system. I'm leaving because of faith in a greater system.'"
These days, it's fashionable to run for President on a platform that you are the Messiah and that if you are only elected then you shall make an end to all injustice and ensure equality and happiness for all (ahem, Obama). "We are the change we have been waiting for," his campaign and enthralled fans like to proclaim. "Hope we can believe in," they say. The problem, though, is that government cannot correct vital flaws that are permanently embedded in human nature.

(sidenote: There will never be across-the-board equality in a democratic free-market society such as ours, depending on how you define equality, because in a market where people are free to succeed and fail, there will be winners and losers no matter what. Of course, if you wanted to "fix" the system in the same way that the Mafia can "fix" the outcome of the World Series, you could have government come in and take over the economy, but 1) it's been tried before (it's called Communism) and failed miserably, causing mass starvation and economic disaster, and 2) when government forces everyone to be paid the same wage and what have you, that completely removes any incentive to succeed, because the system punishes success and encourages sloth. The Marxists like to say that under their system, the big guy can't screw the little guy, but what they never mention is that the big guy and the little guy both get screwed by the even bigger guy of the government. I guess government can't solve all economic problems.)

"Change" and "hope" are both nebulous terms that have no substance whatsoever in today's context, except that they sound good to people who are disgruntled, so people jump on the bandwagon and eventually a narcissistic orgy of self-aggrandizing and New Age positivism occurs. The people need a secular Savior, so they turn to the guy who markets himself as one. Interestingly, these people go all gung-ho about hope and change and a brighter future, but all this positive talk is rooted in a very strong pessimism about the current state of affairs and an abiding hatred for the current President.
"Hope you can believe in." What hope? Hope that Obama will accomplish all of his goals when he gets elected, like turning tail and running from the fight in Iraq, having tea with Jew-hating tyrants, and socializing health care? Hope for a brighter future and a happier nation? Can Obama personally guarantee life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for the price of a vote to the starry-eyed groupies that comprise his supporters? Government can do a lot of things, but it can't provide the kind of meaning that this crowd is needing Politics of meaning, folks. It's been tried and being tried, and it's a failure.

I don't believe that government can provide integral meaning to our lives any more than it can make the trains run on time, all else being equal. For true hope and change, I believe in a greater system, one that is not dominated by imperfect human beings like me. Until we realize that government ultimately holds the lesser power, we're going to keep throwing ourselves at the feet of jokers like Obama, looking for value and worth that can't be got by any other means. I'm sorry, but I'd rather not follow a Messiah who's been democratically elected.