'Government is Necessary, but Corruption is Inescapable'

I always enjoy when I find something in the Bible that I never saw before. I just saw something in Ecclesiastes that I never saw before, and I want to share the verses and the study notes in my Bible because I think they are very encouraging. "If you see the oppression of the poor, and the violent perversion of justice and righteousness in a province, do not marvel at the matter; for high official watches over high official, and higher officials are over them. "Moreover the profit of the land is for all; even the king is served from the field (Ecclesiastes 5:8-9). I gathered from this that the Preacher (Solomon, King David's son, they say, seems to be the author) is saying government is corrupt, but don't worry about it; it is inevitable. But I decided to look at the notes in my Holman Study Bible NKJV Edition (2013). It's getting pretty bent up, the thin pages are turned back like they always do and I have pretty much given up on straightening them out. I hate to buy a new Bible because old ones keep piling up and I hate to throw them away...(really only two, if this one falls apart). I thought these notes were helpful: "The Preacher tells us not to be surprised at political corruption. Layers of governmental bureaucracy are supposed to ensure that every official is accountable to someone higher and is behaving properly, but all these layers of government can make for more layers of corruption. If that is the case, should we abandon the idea of government and embrace anarchy? No. Government is not something we can do without. Verse 9 could be translated, 'And among everything a land's advantage is this: a king for a cultivated field.' That is, the king is a benefit to the economy. For example, the king protected his people from enemies, maintained irrigation canals, and settled property disputes. Government is necessary, but corruption is inescapable." (p. 1082) Next what comes to my mind is the following From Proclamation 5138- National Day of Prayer, 1984 "December 14, 1983 "By the President of the United States of America "A Proclamation "In 1787, a then-elderly Benjamin Franklin said to George Washington as he presided over the Constitutional Convention, 'I have lived, sir, a long time, and the longer I live the more convincing proofs I see of this truth, that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid?'" I had heard this before. I read an entire biography of Benjamin Franklin, and I urge every American to read about the great Founders of our great nation. They were very wise, and I have no doubt that because of the corruption that is natural to all people everywhere, it is nothing less than a miracle that we have survived nearly 250 years as a Constitutional Republic based on God-given rights and representative government. I am convinced, as well, that it is the responsibility of every citizen of this country to be diligent to study the Founding Documents and our country's history, in order to learn as much as possible about self-government and what our responsibility is as citizens of a free country, because most of us will have only gotten a smidgeon of it in school. I don't say this as criticism of our schools, because no matter how much we learn in school about this subject, we are probably only going to scratch the surface. I know that we only scratched the surface when I went to school many years ago, and that is still the case today. There is so much more to learn, and I think there is no time like the present to gain more knowledge and understanding of our government because, remember, it is supposed to be "by the people, of the people and for the people." And that means all of us.