"A Government Free of Corruption"
Wouldn't this just be completely miraculous!
WE HAVE A DREAM:
- No lies and spin
- No deception and manipulation
- No public and private faces
- No collusion and cheating
- No hidden agendas and backroom dealings
- No hate, bias, and divisiveness
- No denigrating, name-calling, and character assassination
- No bribery and pay to play
- No intimidation, payback, and shadow government
- No self entitlement and self enrichment
- No fraud, waste, and abuse
Imagine instead, if integrity was the essence of good leadership.
Today, in synagogue, the weekly Torah portion was Genesis--where as we all know, G-d created the heavens and the earth.
Genesis 1:2 "Now the earth was chaos and void" (in Hebrew "tohu va-bohu").
The bar-mitzvah boy, in his speech, joked about how his first 13-years of life growing up was very much tohu va-bohu (chaos), but he was hopeful that with his wonderful parents guiding him, he would get on track and pay more attention to his schoolwork, all the details, and not rush through things.
I thought to myself, there are probably a lot of people even in their 30s, 40, and 50's whose life was still tohu va-bohu, but that doesn't mean we can't emulate G-d and still create something wonderful from all the chaos, right?
Similarly in the tohu va-bohu chaos of Washington politics, where nearly 80% of the electorate believe that we are going in the wrong direction, it's not too late to continue make something great that we can all be proud of.
In the Wall Street Journal today, Peggy Noonan described a recent focus group led by Democratic pollster, Peter Hart, where all 12 voters (Democrats, Republicans, and Independents) unanimously and sadly agreed that "America was off track."
In fact, one person wisely intimated that things seemed to go off track with 9/11 and "never quite recovered." Unfortunately, more than the World Trade Center came down in America that fateful day.
But it's not the first time in history that things have been tohu va-bohu, and perhaps it's okay...that why G-d teaches us things can change for the better...order and sense and progress can be made to rise from all the chaos.
The good news is still out there, "And G-d said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light." ;-)
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)