Power corrupts

Boy, does it ever. Kevin D. Williamson looks at the monstrous Hillary Clinton. Here’s a quote that all politicians should remember, if only for the care of their own souls:

Those addicted to political power do not usually wind up living in the streets, but they suffer a parallel dehumanizing abasement: There is nothing left in them, in their minds or their souls, that transcends the pursuit of political power itself. As with de Sade’s protagonists or the defeated drug addict, the relentless process of subtraction from the human sum has left only a single exotic appetite.

I work for the government and I see the same phenomenon playing out in microcosm every day. It is bad enough when we contemplate power-addiction among actors on the national stage; when we see bit players far removed from the immediate neighborhood of the Eye of Sauron in thrall to the same drug, prosecuting their little turf wars and furiously jockeying for position on their insignificant sand hills, the spectacle becomes maddeningly ludicrous – but not necessarily less dangerous to the body politic. The president may eliminate another layer of freedom with the stroke of a pen, but the efforts of thousands of bureaucratic Lilliputians , driven by the same lust for power and tirelessly weaving an infinitude of bonds for the restraint of a free people, can have the same enervating results.

Meanwhile, let us join Paul Mirengoff for a walk down memory lane, as he reminds us of Hillary’s earlier problems with missing files.