Hello again, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to another episode of Freedom's Creed. Happy Friday to everybody out there, and I hope you're having a wonderful conclusion to your work week and enjoying the prospects of the upcoming weekend. If you did not get a chance to listen to my last episode, which I refer to as Tolerating Tuesday, please go back and give that a listen. I hope you enjoy it, and I look forward to doing more episodes of Tolerating Tuesday as we go forward. Today I'm going to be talking about power and specifically unbridled power and what that does to people, what it does to those who are in positions of power, and what it does to those of us who are subject to those people who are in power. Certainly, looking back at history, we can all name a lot of people who were in positions of power. Some are remembered for their power because they're infamous, and others are remembered because of the benevolence with which they conducted themselves while in power. Here in the United States, we have a system of government in place, obviously, where there are checks and balances. And we have these checks and balances thanks to the founders who had all come from a very different place when it comes to unchecked or unbridled power. Our system obviously consists of the executive branch, the legislative branch, and the judicial branch of government. And in theory, and I think in practice as well, no one branch of the government can usurp authority over the other branches of government. And that's a very unique system that we have in place, unique, I think, only to the United States of America. Therefore, we should be thankful to the founders for putting this type of system in place in our government. Perhaps one of the things that the founders could not have imagined or planned for, I believe, is the size of unelected officials in our government. In other words, we have all of these alphabet listings of various branches of the government. They're basically unaccountable and unelected bureaucrats who obviously have a role to play in our government, but the size and the scope of our government to me has grown, I think, out of proportion to the way that it should be. And unfortunately, in our time, these unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats tend to be running the show behind the scenes. In other words, it seems to me that they are the ones pulling the strings. That's my opinion and my viewpoint about it. You may have a different opinion, you may agree, and that's just fine, either way. Now keep that in mind and think about this. Even with the checks and balances in place, what happens when we elect someone who then becomes corrupted? What's the procedure? How do we get them out of office? Number one, and number two, what happens when a corrupt electorate continues to vote for the corrupt leader? And as if that was not enough, number three, how do you get rid of corrupt bureaucrats? We tend to never hear about these folks unless there's some kind of hearing on Capitol Hill, and then they come out of the woodwork, and then we we hear about them through their testimony, through the testimony of others. But how is it that number one, here I go with the numbers again, but number one, how do we identify those corrupt bureaucrats? And number two, how do we get rid of them if the system underneath is corrupted and power has gotten to people's heads where they think they're somehow more important than regular folks? It becomes a very messy situation. It's messy, yes, but in many ways, as I said, most of us don't know about these folks until it comes to light that they're testifying for some reason or other on Capitol Hill. And that to me is a very, very slippery slope to be on. Essentially, we have unbridled and even unmitigated power in our system of government today because of the size of it. And it goes against everything that our founding documents espouse. It's what the people had been trying to escape under the monarchical system of government that they came from. Thinking about our system of government then, let's take a look at what are some of the reasons that people seek elected office. Now, each of us can come up with a ton of reasons, and perhaps there are unlimited reasons why people want to seek elected office or even work in the government as a bureaucrat. But I want to just talk about a few of these reasons. And again, this is no exhaustive list to be sure. So sometimes people run for office and they want to seek elected office because they want to make a difference, they want to be a positive difference for good uh in their community, amongst their constituency, and so forth. So that seems like a pretty good reason. Another reason, perhaps, is that people want to help the underrepresented in their community. Maybe there's a segment of the population that they believe or feel is not being represented fairly or wisely, or whatever the situation may be. But I'm one of these people where I don't think that someone has to have the same skin tone as me or be the same gender as I am to represent me. I think that if you get people who are really interested in making that difference in their community and helping everyone in their constituency, irrespective of their race or gender, then they'll want to do the things that are necessary that are going to help everyone and not just some people. Another reason why people may seek elected office is to position themselves to run for higher office. So someone who perhaps runs for governor or seeks to be a representative or a senator. There are certainly some people who moved from the congressional ranks to run for president, uh John Kennedy being one of them, Barack Obama being another. Some people may seek elected office so that they can have the power to make law. Maybe some people really have a great desire to be involved in the lawmaking process. It's a messy business and a messy process, but some people thrive on that kind of thing. Other people may run for elected office simply because they want to be a strong influence for whatever it is that they're advocating for. So instead of relying upon their representative, they want to run and be a representative themselves so that they can influence, perhaps we hope, for the greater good. But that is sometimes a very sticky thing to me, this idea of the public good. It sounds good on the surface, but in reality, I just don't know if it's very practical because we've heard people talk about the greater good, and then they do everything that they can in their power to exact things that end up happening that are not for the greater good. So you can come to your own conclusions when it comes to that. Finally, people run for office because it's a family tradition, you know, like the Kennedys, the Bushes. I mean, dad did it, or brother did it, or son did it, so I gotta do it too. Certainly not the best reason I can think of to run for elected office, and perhaps I'm putting the words into somebody else's mouth by referring to it as a family tradition, but it sure does seem like that, doesn't it? Well, obviously there are many, many more reasons why people run for elected office or want to work in the government as a bureaucrat, but you understand that we're not going to get into all those reasons because we could be here for a long, long time. One thing we need to ask ourselves is this is power inherently bad? Does it mean that because someone seeks elected office or seeks some other position of power that somehow that power itself is inherently bad? In my view, I'd have to say, no, it's not inherently bad. But people can be inherently bad and do terrible and rotten and horrible things. And because of that, when they get in positions of power, it's often like a free-for-all that they feel as though they can do whatever they want to do without any repercussions or accountability, and that's not a good place to be. It's kind of like this idea of money being corrupt or money being terrible. But in my view, that's just not the case. The Bible actually talks about money a little bit, and one of the verses that I remember reading in the Bible is that the love of money is the root of all evil. It doesn't say that money is the root of all evil. It says the love of money is the root of all evil. So could we say that, and we could just attribute that to power as well, that the love of power could be the root of all evil? I don't know. Seems like it to me. It seems to kind of come down to where our heart is at, where our mind is. In other words, ladies and gentlemen, we have the power to do good, the power to be kind, the power to be friendly, the power to lead by example. And so it goes, ladies and gentlemen. All of us, each one of us has this power, and to me, that's not inherently bad. That's actually inherently good. And anything like that in life is going to be what we make it to be. If we choose to be good and strive to be good and to help other people, to be nice, to be friendly, to be courteous, that means that we are taking the power to do those things into our own hands, and we are the ones who have control over that. We're the masters of our own destinies, so to speak. The the outcome that we seek is oftentimes dependent upon the power that we give it. So if we decide we're going to be nice or kind or respectful, then in my mind we've made a decision not to be mean or unkind or disrespectful. I'm a pretty simple guy, so that makes sense to me, and I hope it does to you as well. Perhaps during the episode today, you have thought of a quote that I'm familiar with, but I wasn't familiar with where it came from, and that quote is that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Well, I didn't know where that came from, so I did a little research. It actually comes from a gentleman by the name of John Emmerich Edward Dahlberg, better known as Lord Acton, in a letter that he wrote to an Archbishop of the Church of England by the name of Mandel Creighton. For the complete historical context, if you want to look that up, feel free to do so. But I'll just say that the letter comes from Lord Acton, where he, his position rather, was that past or present leaders, whether in the church or not in the church at the time, whatever, they should be held to a universal moral standard. And the archbishop tended to lean towards moral relativism that was not critical of past leaders, and it's obvious, it seems to me, why he would have taken such a position. Well, in this letter, written in April of eighteen eighty seven, Lord Acton had this to say, and I quote Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority, still more when you add the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it. That is the point at which the end learns to justify the means. To me, that means that in many cases, it doesn't matter what the office holder does, but that the office sanctifies that office holder. And if that office holder is engaged in corrupt behavior, then it's terrible because we have this tendency to think that, oh yes, the office is uh sanctified not the office holder. When we when we try to intertwine the office holder and the sanctity of the office, that's a terrible thing to do, in my opinion, because then it causes people to look the other way because of the sanctity of the office. And somehow we think that the office holder is as sanctified as the office itself, and unfortunately that's just not the case. Now, please do not misunderstand. I'm not saying that every holder of a political office has nefarious intentions. I'm simply saying that they seem to be in 2021 few and far between. Or in other words, where are the people in elected office who just want to do the right thing, who want to make sure that their voice is heard and that they're speaking up for what is good and right in their constituency. Those people exist, I know this, but I simply wish that it was something that was more prone to happen than not. I'll leave it at that. I'd like to leave you with my positive quote for the episode, and this comes from a gentleman by the name of Scott W. Atlas. He is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He earned his B.S. degree from the University of Illinois at Champaign, Urbana, and his MD from the University of Chicago School of Medicine. I invite you to think about this idea of power and how power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. When I read this quote, think about the enormous power that government officials and even those in big corporations or big tech have over the people. Dr. Atlas had this to say earlier this year, quote, with social media acting as the arbiter of allowable discussion and with continued censorship and cancellation of those with views challenging the accepted narrative, the United States is on the verge of losing its cherished freedoms. It is not at all clear whether our democratic republic will survive. But it is clear it will not survive unless more people begin to step up in defense of freedom of thought and speech. End of quote.