President Trump...One Thing his Detractors and Supporters Should All Agree On

Ever since Adam and Eve reached out for that forbidden fruit in attempts to shed their human limitations and obtain divinity, mankind has been obsessed with power.  Be it emperors, popes, kings, dictators, or even celebrities the common thread in our history is fame, fortune, control, and ultimately power.  Sometimes it is more subtle, maybe something as simple as getting to stand in the VIP line.  However it materializes, it's hard to deny one of the greatest temptations for humanity is to be the envy of others.   Few things stroke the ego more than the idea of knowing others wished they were you.   

With this theme, we've watched over and over in history how the siren’s call of glory has led countless before us to their demise.   The famed phrase, "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely" may be more than a simple saying, it may as well be one of the universal laws of existence, on par with the law of gravity.  

Our founding fathers were on to something when they designed a governmental system that diluted the power of the individual by spreading it out among many, creating a structure where no one person could hold too much power and in turn use that power to control the masses.   History has clearly taught us that over time, man will drift toward oppression of one another if given the opportunity.  In a nation like ours in which the power is dispersed, the path to tyranny will be found in the slow consolidation of power, where over time fewer and fewer people hold it.  

This past election resulted in perhaps the most controversial president of all time, and while many love and hate him, what he represents is an undeniable break up of the consolidation of power that was quietly taking place, cloaked behind the curtain of party politics.  Had Hillary Clinton won the presidency, America would have been in a situation where out of 350 million citizens....4 of the last 5 of its presidents would have come from only 2 families.  Had Jeb Bush won it would have been even more pronounced.  

We must be careful America, for as much as we might like certain candidates, it's brand name political loyalty that could allow us to unwittingly grant greater and greater power to fewer and fewer people.  A pattern that began when Thomas Jefferson changed the rules of the vice presidency, having candidates choose running mates rather than the previous tradition where the loser of the election took the position of vice president, a decision ensuring parties would no longer have to work together they way they had in the past. 

If we look at the Bush and Clinton families together a concerning pattern will emerge.  George Bush Sr. became the vice president of the United States in 1981. If Hillary Clinton had won the presidency for a presumed two terms, taking us to the year 2025 then either a Bush or a Clinton would have held a position NO LOWER than Secretary of State from 1981 to 2025.  That is a 44 consecutive year period in a nation under 250 years old.   Basically 20% of the entire time America has been in existence!   

No matter your thoughts on our current president, his election may have unintentionally broken us from a very dangerous pattern that was taking place unnoticed right before our eyes, where the power of a nation was drifting into the waiting arms of only two families.  

We must always keep the future in mind when making decisions about our nation and if history has taught us anything it is that the greatest threat to freedom is the consolidation of power.  For if we allow power to be shrunk to a few....even if it’s a few we may currently trust...then we set the stage for future generations to shrink it even more until we have returned to the very thing mankind has proven over and over again it will do.....consolidate the power base setting the stage for a single tyrant to rise to power.  While who is in power might be concerning to some, how few are in power should be concerning to all.