Government Corruption

So I was teaching in Uganda recently, and ended up having a very interesting conversation about politics with a group of men there.  They had recently had their presidential elections and some were not happy with the results.  (The incumbent president had been re-elected ... again.)  At any rate, they spoke in cynical tones about the level of corruption in their government. To them, it was, among other things, a sign that their country is not good place to be.

So we started talking about how corruption is defined. They surmised that the election process, for example, may have been corrupted by the report that an estimated 5,000 dead people cast votes in that election.  I pointed out that the international community watchdogs had investigated that claim and concluded that even if it were true, it would not have been sufficient to throw the results of the election one way or another.  But my Ugandan friends said despairingly, "How can any election process be legitimate with this corruption in it?"

Of course many of my friends' tirades ended with their referring to how lucky I am that I get to live in America --- where (they assume) we don't have such things as corruption.  It's fair to say that they were more than surprised when I explained to them that even America has its corruption in government. I explained how the federal agencies squander money studying the mating habits of insects.  I introduced them to the notion of "pork" in government spending - and explained that many of our Congressional representatives brag most about how much money they are able to bring back to their home state from Washington.  I told them about $1,800 hammers and $900 screw drivers.  They were stunned with disbelief.

Then they mused that surely Mr. Obama is fixing that.  So I told them about the time last year when Obama used Air Force One - a Boeing 747 to fly his wife to New York for a dinner date.  And we talked about how much money that dinner cost the American tax payers.  I told them how much money our government shovels into other countries --- and how billions of it got lost (literally) in Iraq.  We talked about how the national debt has spiraled out of control during the Obama presidency.  Suffice to say, there was no shortage of examples of corruption and poor leadership in American government.

Like I said, my Uganda friends were stunned.  They couldn't imagine such things.  For they had always assumed that Ugandan corruption was unique in the world. And this allowed us to have a conversation about the source of corruption.  It didn't take long for us to agree together that corruption is probably inevitable given that governments are run by imperfect, sinful humans.  Perhaps more importantly, it gave us the opportunity to recognize the fact that God is still in control of even corrupt governments. 

And finally, we were able to conclude this conversation by talking about the good that we have in our respective governments. 

We agreed that, as Christians, we can be thankful for the freedoms that we have.  We can pray for our government leaders.  And we can honor God by submitting to the authorities placed over us and being good citizens, modeling godly citizenship.  It's true that every country in the world is plagued with corruption.  But it is equally true that God can bless us beyond measure even in the midst of the imperfect governments that we serve under.

Failed Government?

Rush Limbaugh has been in the news this week, after making a speech where he said he hoped President Obama would fail. Of course, most people who heard his remarks found them offensive ... until we listened to the context he made them in. Then they seemed more sensible. But in general, I find Rush Limbaugh offensive and annoying. He rants and raves about things of which he seems to be largely ignorant. He strikes me as a man who leans mostly on his own understanding of things (which the Bible tells us is dangerous).

I think the issue I have with someone wishing failure on President Obama is the close irony that such thinking has with history. Remember the old adage about not remembering lessons from history --- and so being doomed to repeat them. Such appears to be the case with the United States of America and its precious democracy, filled with capitalism, freedom of speech and so forth. You see, some time ago, as I was figuring life out myself, I observed democracy in our country and how it dealt with the issues. I came to a thoughtful conclusion that man is too stupid to rule himself. That insight was given to me more than twenty years ago - and the evidence has consistently supported it. As it turns out, I was not the first person to arrive at such a radical conclusion.

About the time our original thirteen states adopted their new Constitution in 1787, Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh, had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years earlier: "A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government." He continued, "A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury." And he concluded, "From that moment on, the majority always vote for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loos fiscal policy, which is always followed by dictatorship."

Tyler said that the average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history has been about 200 years. In other words, most of history's great civilizations had a lifespan of about 200 years each. After that they would fail. Tyler explained that during those 200 years, those nations always progressed through the following sequence:

1. From bondage to spiritual faith;


2. From spiritual faith to great courage;


3. From courage to liberty;


4. From liberty to abundance;


5. From abundance to complacency;


6. From complacency to apathy;


7. From apathy to dependence;


8. From dependence back into bondage;

Professor Joseph Olson of the Hamline University School of Law in St. Paul, Minnesota has opined that the United States appears to be following a similar trajectory. He explains that we are now somewhere between the complacency and apathy phase of Professor Tyler's definition of democracy. But he adds that more than 40% of the U.S. population has already reached the "governmental dependency" phase. More are piling into that category every day too.

With everything from auto manufacturing to banking to pornography, to state governments, school systems, airlines, pension funds and other entities turning to the government for a bailout - they are sure to become beholding to that government which bails them out. Aside from the question or whether or not this government has the capacity to bail us out of the mess we're in, one has to consider what we are becoming dependent on ... and what kind of bondage could result from such dependency.

It would seem to me that Rush Limbaugh could get his wish. Indeed President Obama could fail. Moreover, the U.S. government seems perilously close to fiscal failure because we are dependent on foreign countries to fund us right now. Our government's treasury is provided by countries that don't share our values and in the past have been hostile to us. Our country's energy is provided by countries that don't share our values and in the past have been hostile to us. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to imagine what our bondage could look like.