They say he was a self-made man.

Well, that should absolve the Creator of considerable responsibility.

I can’t locate the author of this wry remark, but it sounds like one of Abraham Lincoln’s one-liners. It surfaced as I was reading about Paul Ryan and Ayn Rand this week, wondering how different he was from me.  I don’t know much about Ayn Rand, but I know one thing: I can’t trust anyone who thinks he or she is a self-made man or self-made woman.

Humility is not a primary requisite to be a politician or an exceptional athlete or performer, but the illusion of self-sufficiency is not a luxury I can afford those who make decisions for me.  Such illusions have brought this country to reckless invasions and dizzying financial risks with other people’s money. These decisions are based on an attitude of invulnerability and so-called “exceptionalism.”  Ironically it also builds on a kind of  “entitlement,”  the assumption that we get what we earn in life.

Tell that to the martyrs, the casualties of war, the victims of congenital diseases, the victims of violent crime.  If these victims were “self-made,” their expiration date was premature.  They might have lived consecrated lives, but they did not receive their just desserts in this life.

We can either romanticize the lives of those unjustly sacrificed or we can learn what we owe the grace of God and the mercy of friends and strangers.  I want to be led by the latter, by those who know their debt and providence, those who know that a “hand up” is not a “handout.”

Power either corrupts or humbles. We have been fortunate to have been led most often by the humbled. I believe that most of our Presidents have left office with this disposition.  The staunchest conservatives, self-made men like Goldwater and Reagan, finished their terms with more compassion for the weak than when they entered politics. Like the aging King Solomon they accepted that “The race is not always to the swift.”  They knew the need for mercy by the sheer responsibility they bore with their political power.

In the campaign season we will likely hear a lot of humble rhetoric. Probably most of it is for show, so I will not judge candidates by their words. However, I will not vote for anyone who subscribes to the “self-made man” philosophy. I will vote for those who respect power as a vulnerability, not an entitlement.

God save us from the “self-made man” or “self-made woman.”