Honesty Is Still The Best Policy

I'm a Lincoln buff. Truman comes next. One was a Republican, the other a Democrat. Neither were particular religious, in the traditional sense of the word. Both, however, had high moral values. Lincoln was a political pragmatist determined to free the slaves and preserve the Constitution. Which, incidentally, was a tough row to hoe considering that our Founding Fathers were no Martin Luther Kings—that’s for sure. Truman, honest as he was, kept a sheet of stamps in his desk in the Oval Office to use for personal correspondence.

You ask, what’s all of that got to do with the price of tea in China? Well, nothing, except unlike Diogenes of Sinope, I think I have found a couple of honest men—and, imagine, both were politicians! Wouldn’t that be a marvelous discovery today?

Right now, in Dallas—my stomping grounds—the FBI has swooped in on a Country Commissioner who among other things paid out thousands of dollars from his campaign fund to buy Kwanzaa celebration gifts for some cronies of his. Of course, none of this is illegal under current campaign laws. Which is in my way of thinking just another illustration of the irony of our silly political system.

But, like Winston Churchill is reported to have said, “It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.”

So, I guess I'll just have to be satified until Jesus returns and straightens the whole mess out.