The Cruelest Thing You Can Do To A Congressman...

...is to trust him. I heard that line a long time ago in a speech by Dr. Mathew Sandel given to a Sons of Confederate Veterans meeting. Dr. Sandel was talking about how after we elect a Congressman he then goes off to Washington and forgets who is was that got him there. Dr. Sandel says that it's because we let him forget who elected him and what we expect him to do. I wish that I could remember the speech exactly. I'm afraid that I can only paraphrase that wonderful part where he says that the cruelest thing that we can do to a congressman is to trust him. Here is how I remember that portion of the speech.

We have to remember that a congressman is just another of God's fallen creatures. Many of them would like to do the right thing, but we don't tell them how. We need to be on them constantly and threatening them with political annihilation every moment of their lives. In the short story "A Good Man Is Hard To Find" by noted Southern author Flannery O'Conner, a mean, spiteful treats two robbers kindly in hopes that they will spare her life. After one of them shoots her, the other remarks "She was a good woman." "She'd-a been a good woman," says the other, "if there hadda been someone there to shoot her every minute of her life." THAT is how we should treat our congressmen. No one ever tells them what to do so they run off looking for the first person who will tell them. Then we complain that they would rather represent the folks in New York City and Washington DC than the folks that sent them.

I wish that I could remember the whole thing in all of its glory. It is a deeply inspiring speech, and quite funny at times. But overall it is like an arrow short right into the heart. It convicts us of the sin or trusting our representatives.