Watching the latest devastation from the tornados in Oklahoma, I am reminded of the proverb from Hosea, “For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.”. No, I am not insinuating that this bout of tragedy is indicative of God’s outraged judgement on our decadent nation; nor am I making the case that a cyclical weather pattern that occurs annually is suddenly to be attributed to man-caused global warming simply because we all have smart phones and can take pictures of what has always been. Both anecdotal positions are equally absurd.
Rather, I am reminded by the fury and devastation of the imagery that was the proverb’s intent. Just as you can’t actually “sow the wind”, you also aren’t to be said to be “reaping the whirlwind” because you get caught in one. The reference is rather of someone sowing something they think useful, and generally harmless, but reaping something unintended, uncontrollable, and devastating.
We are beginning to see in Washington the harvest of the plantings of central planning, big government. We are reaping the consequences of power, and absolute power, which Lord Acton reminds us are corruption and absolute corruption. What begins with words like justice and fairness, sown in the garden of concentrated power, inevitably leads to realities of injustice, cheating, and tyranny.
My very first blog on this site almost two years ago (click here) spoke of how bullying and cheating are the inevitable result of investing too much power in one central locus. What was once considered to be an act of public service, with little reward except the satisfaction of duty to country, elected office in Washington has become a high stakes, winner takes all game… no, not a game at all, a war. And war is Hell. In Hell there are no rules. Good guys finish last, the ends justify the means, and to the victor go the spoils; all the power, all the money, all the future. Honor, virtue, following rules, all have no place in Hell, no place in war, no place in Washington, unless you are a soldier in a larger war, that of Good and Evil.
IMHO: The scandals in Washington all show one common thread, the abuse of power. Like the One Ring in the Tolkien tales, it is a power so absolute that it can’t be used for ultimate good, no matter the wielder’s intention. The duties of government are necessary, we are not anarchists, but they work best diluted and localized. Perhaps the IRS would be a good place to start. Would it not be possible to transition to a system whereby the states are responsible for the collection of revenues by whatever tax or system they deem appropriate, and then make a contribution based on census data to the running of the Federal Government? It would be good to to turn the paradigm around and make Washington beholden to the States, rather than the other way around. No tyranny gives up power voluntarily, ultimately a greater power would need to rise up, a power not so easily corrupted, because we are many… We the people.
You bring a nice blend of balance, analysis and insight to your writing. We are indeed sowing seeds in the garden of good intentions that will be reaped in the harvest of bad consequences. Our political leaders invite us to live in the land of promises, but in the end outcomes and reality always trump rhetoric. There will be a cost to be paid and we will all bear it.
Your latest blog triggered some thoughts which I did not express as clearly as I would have liked. What came to me as I was reading your thoughts on sowing the wind and reaping the whirlwind, was the kind of behavior that seems to be manifesting itself so frequently in the political realm. What seems characteristic of liberal thought in our time is the tendency to measure effort by the yardstick of good intentions rather than by its outcomes or results. As long as the intentions were good, the effort is treated as responsible, despite the results. This is a prescription for disaster. It is in that sense that I spoke of our proclivity for sowing the seeds of good intentions and reaping the harvest of unintended consequences. The refusal to reflect upon possible outcomes in advance of their occurrence is only matched by the tendency to deny responsibility for the consequent failure of these initiatives. Thus, our politics are mired in the twin qualities of blind activism and plausible denial. We are living out the fable of the Emperor’s New Clothes and until enough of us see that our leadership is naked, there is little prospect of change. We will remain blinded by the supposed powers of the Wizard of Oz— the president is to be given complete trust, the government is our best friend, the IRS will administer health care equitably and we will all live happily ever after. Believing that, we will surely reap the whirlwind you so aptly describe.