The Price of Enlightenment

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This Frank & Ernest comic provides a perfect metaphor for what's going on in D.C. on many levels:
1. the electorate looking for change from the D.C. establishment
2. President Obama negotiating with John Boehner
3. Republicans expecting reason from the Tea Party whackos they embraced in 2010
4. Sen. Harry Reid trusting Mitch McConnell on anything
5. Congress giving money to the banks to help folks with mortgage problems
6. ...

The list is endless. What would you add?

There is a lesson to be learned from this, of course.

True enlightenment comes when one recognizes that believing those in power will place your interests above their own is, in fact, ignorance and that those we call leaders hold their position at our behest.

Thomas Jefferson declared as much during The Age of Enlightenment with these words:

...Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

The price of enlightenment is active involvement in holding one's leaders accountable when they fail to live up to the tenets of the organizations over which we have given them control.

When such a leader is the head of a church or social organization, we are free to leave and join another or none at all.

When the leader is a politician, we can, and we must, vote that leader out of office.

Failure to do so confirms our preference for ignorance and condemns us to climbing mountains in order to squander our most valuable possession on empty promises.