Politicians are generally born without a conscience. It is Nature’s obligation to ensure that no politician is born with a conscience. But sometimes Nature’s watchfulness slackens. Because of this slackness, a politician is born with a conscience. When he grows up and becomes politically active, he experiences that something is obstructing his activities. He cogitates and cogitates. Suddenly, there is a flash across the sky. The flash warns him: “It is your conscience which is blocking your way to glory.” The politician becomes furious and immediately gets his conscience surgically removed. From that moment onwards whatever he does is a brilliant success.
Plato declared that the world’s misery was a creation of kings and princes. He asserted: “Unless philosophers rule as kings or those who now as kings become philosophers there will be no respite for humanity from evil.” Obviously, the implication is that kings are conscienceless creatures whereas every philosopher has a gigantic conscience.
If the masses of a country keep dying of starvation, it is not the starvation which kills them. They die of starvation because the rulers don’t have consciences. A conscientious ruler would kill himself before starvation killed a citizen. Plato’s philosopher-king is a ruler with a great conscience. Under such a ruler, immoral politicalism cannot survive. If Plato were to revisit the world, the professional politicians would jointly assassinate him mercilessly. The professional politicians are modern versions of kings and princes.
An animal is an animal simply because it has no conscience. A genuine human being is a genuine human being only because he has a sensitive conscience. A man’s humanity is directly proportional to the quality of his conscience. The greater the quality of the conscience, the greater the humanity. When an animal looks at a conscienceless ruler, it enthusiastically proclaims: “Look, there is one of my human brethren.”
We desperately need a supreme leader. A supreme leader means a leader with a supreme conscience. God’s greatest gift to a nation is a supreme leader. Let’s keep begging: “O’ God! Kindly bless us with a supreme leader.” We must keep on begging and begging and begging till our supplication is granted.
Source: http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/Opinions/Columns/23-Jul-2010/Conscience-Conscience-Conscience
