The Dangers of Pride

Sunday’s readings are all about the importance of humility:

“My child, conduct your affairs with humility, and you will be loved more than a giver of gifts.
Humble yourself the more, the greater you are, and you will find favor with God.” (Sirach 3:17)

In today’s gospel Jesus relates the parable of the wedding feast where an attendee is embarrassed by having to move in order to make room for a more distinguished guest.  Jesus was Himself was humble, living the difficult life of an itinerant preacher and withdrawing from the crowds frequently to pray quietly and alone.  Humility is one of those virtues we hear very little about anymore.  In our secular society, pride is viewed as justifiable and deserved by those who have achieved a measure of success, or who hold public office.  Hollywood stars use their notoriety as a platform for expounding on everything from economics and the environment, to religion, politics, and science.  The one thing people have in common when exercising their pride, is the notion that they have answers for everything. Perhaps a good definition of pride is, thinking you know what’s best for everyone.   I have to admit, I am ashamed of the way I have allowed pride to creep into my life.  As the president of a small company, and on occasion the chairman of a couple non-profit boards, a lot of people kissed up to me, and I allowed it to get into my head at times.  In retrospect, not a pretty thing, and I regret it deeply.  Retirement has a way of helping me put things in perspective, but I still struggle with it.

When I look at the damage done to people, and to our entire country because of pride, I’m overwhelmed with grief.  Presidents and other politicians seem to think they are so smart and so wise that they can create a more perfect society, if they acquire enough power over the masses whom they assume to be incapable of managing their own affairs.  Based on the history I’ve been reading lately, George Washington was the exception to this, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, one of the worst offenders.  FDR’s first appointee to the supreme court was a high-ranking member of the Ku Klux Klan who wrote the majority opinion on a case that set the precedent for the current misunderstanding about the separation of church and state.  Since then, judges have used their discretion (thinking they know what’s best for everyone), to eliminate school prayer and any reference to God in public places.  FDR took a great many liberties with the constitution, increasing the power of the Executive branch and calling his plan the ‘new deal.’  He even proposed a second bill of rights in which every citizen would be guaranteed a home, healthcare, and financial security, sounding a lot like the promises of socialism in which the state promises to take care of everyone.  FDR set up a massive bureaucracy which, despite the myth that it overcame the Great Depression, actually delayed and impeded the economic recovery.  The bureaucracy FDR created is not only with us today, but has grown into a behemoth consuming trillions of tax dollars and producing reams of regulations that do much more to slow down progress and the economy than anyone realizes.

Currently there are more than 2 million people working for the federal government, not including the military.  Thinking they know what’s best for everyone, these bureaucrats produce between 80,000 and 100,000 pages of new regulations every year, a number that is increasing at an exponential rate thanks to recent healthcare and banking laws that have empowered the current administration to set up hundreds of new departments on top of the thousand or so that already exist.  The IRS alone plans to hire 16,000 new agents, just for the purpose of enforcing the new healthcare laws, even though the new regulations are far from being completed.  Thousands more are being hired at HHS where they will be cranking out new regs for years to come.  Guess who pays for all this?

Nobody seems to notice that for all this massive growth in our government, the poverty rate is as high as it has ever been, more people than ever are receiving food assistance, our economy is faltering, and our education system is failing miserably.  It is ironic that the same politicians who proudly assert support for ending poverty and discrimination, are the very people making both worse.  Case in point:  poor minority children in Louisiana benefit greatly from that state’s voucher program, enabling them to get a better education and having a choice of schools, but our federal government is attempting to shut down that program.  The result: poor kids continue to get a lousy education and the cycle of poverty continues among minorities.  Another example: Detroit which has been governed by Democrats for 50 years, is bankrupt.  For decades the city has promoted unions, imposed high taxes, and massive regulation, all of which has driven business and citizens away.  In fact over the past 30 years, the population of Detroit has dropped by over 60%!  Part of that also has to do with low birthrates, attributable the demise of marriage and families, abortion, and poverty.  No wonder the city is bankrupt.  By the way, city employees and retirees are now going to be getting their healthcare from Obamacare, at the expense of all the nation’s taxpayers.   It won’t be long before other big Democratic cities will be in the same boat, and look for the same bailouts to escape their healthcare and pension liabilities. 

Thinking you know what’s best for everyone is evidence of pride and I know I am guilty of it, even as I write this blog.  However, pride needs to be tempered by humility and guided by faith which asserts that there is much more to reality than this secular world.  Respect for the dignity of every person requires us to practice humility by listening more than we speak, and to respect the views and beliefs of those who disagree with us.  Humility also demands that we not force our beliefs on others, for this is the basis of tyranny.   Even God does not force anyone to do anything, but instead has given us a free will and intellect.  He has also given us the gift of time and the ability to reason.  Using our human intelligence, we are capable of observing and learning from the consequences of choices over time.  In doing so, we discover that God has revealed certain universal truths pointing us to the common good.  When we disregard these truths we put ourselves in peril of self-destruction.  This goes for personal decisions, such as how we care for our bodies and how we treat others, as well as the collective choices we make as a society.  Recent history, like the consequences Detroit is experiencing, should be a lesson to us about what happens when we make bad choices.  The consequences of Communism and Socialism are no less obvious, and should we a warning about what happens when personal freedom is abridged by government dictate.  We are very fortunate to live in a free country, founded on Judeo-Christian values.  If those values erode, and are replaced by secularism, not only are we likely to lose our freedom, we risk facing the same fate as other countries now on the verge of economic and social collapse.  Detroit, and other big cities where education is failing, crime is rampant, birthrates have plummeted, and the economy is being funded by debt, have lost their vibrancy and point to the failed policies of a secular worldview imposed by government fiat.  Perhaps what we need is leadership that will return us to the values and liberty our founding fathers envisioned when they wrote the constitution and established our “Republic.”