No politician actually ascribes to the concept of “first: do no harm”

No politician actually ascribes to the concept of “first: do no harm”

The Hypocritical Oath

There’s always been a misconception the Hippocratic Oath holds the concept of “to do no harm as the first and guiding principle. It doesn’t. In fact the principle isn’t even part of “the Oath”. It’s noted in a segment of the Hippocratic monograph known as Epidemics; and even then isn’t noted until the fifth paragraph.



So, while reading the magazine The Weekly Standard I read William Kristol (editor extraordinaire) make note of the Republican Party’s need to “first do no harm” when considering tactical movement on the congressional battleground. This was mentioned while saying John Boehner should selectively accept a debt ceiling hike without debate (and Tea Party conservatives shouldn’t challenge the theory) to assure Republican senatorial campaign wins and awaiting the chance to attack ObamaCare successfully after the fact.

This seems acceptable except for the fact the process involves human beings, and they’ve a nasty ability to be self-serving and protective of their personal positions. This in itself can do harm to political strategies and the people they’re alleged to be supportive of: the electorate. No living physician takes the Hippocratic Oath as originally written in the native Greek. No politician actually ascribes to the concept of “first: do no harm” as much as they seem to accept the ideal: “do unto others before they do unto you”.



The elemental problem here is the one addressing the fact elected representatives, both in the House and the Senate, no longer accept the idea they’re elected employees of the people. In essence and in fact they’re hired hands sent to a central location to conduct “the peoples’ business”. These elected people feel they’re sent to Washington to gain as much influence and power as they may and if anything “trickles down” to the constituents back home, that’s all that much better.

If any president is recognizable as the self-aggrandizing, megalomaniacal scat-daddy he is, then we have to recognize all the howling, sycophantic clots on his side of the aisle and the contrapuntally challenged and non-harmonious wailing of the opposition party members looking to take his place. I use the term “contrapuntal (counter-point) challenged” because it means there’s really NO difference between the Democrats and the Republicans. It’s merely recognition they play the roles of the Jets and the Sharks of Westside Story with great fervor but don’t recognize their warfare is stupid, misdirected and counter-productive. They don’t recognize the real critique of their performance is found, not in the commentary of pundits and the professional observations of people employed to state their obvious ideological acceptance of the performance, but rather in the tsunamic (dramatic tsunami-like) tidal rise or fall of ticket sales financing future performances.

If Americans keep buying into this principle (the one stating we’re represented by and are indebted to the representatives we elect) then we’re lost. They’re the ones should be thankful for our patronage and acceptance of their stated drives to help us to the benefits of living in this great land and not the other way around. It’s they who should be grateful for our backing. They’re supposed to be representative of us. They’re supposed to speak with OUR voice and not based on what they paternalistically and egomaniacally believe to be the case and direction to follow.

We’re regularly told by the Obama administration we should tighten our belts and accept sacrifices to ensure those less fortunate may experience social elevation and equality through economic parity. The politically insincere verbiage hides the fact it doesn’t work any better than printing and injecting more paper scrip into an already damaged economy. If you keep financing failure you will only be successful at failing.

It’s been regularly stated the Republican Party and the Tea Party Conservative elements are involved in a circular firing squad. It’s obvious this is so. But is the party recognizing they have discord in their ranks based on insurgents’ self-serving attitudes or was the battery of weaponry loaded because the former armory attendants wasted ammo protecting their own agendas?

It’s more likely the ammo was wasted protecting entrenched self-service than because the new observations are wrong. And that’s where the hypocrites “first: DO harm”.