have been thinking about the 2026 midterm results through a longer lens than the usual cable commentary. Gas prices, unfinished promises, and the ordinary friction of governing produced the predictable impatience. After years of one administration followed by another, voters again reached for change. That pattern is older than any modern party. It is the same motion described when the people of Israel grew weary of the judges and demanded a king so they could be “like all the nations.” God told Samuel, “They have not rejected you, but they have rejected Me, that I should not reign over them.” The request looked like a practical solution. In the text it is recorded as a refusal of direct responsibility under a higher rule.
The Oldest Fault and the Two-Year Cycle
The Book of Judges ends with the repeated observation that “every man did that which was right in his own eyes.” After Joshua’s generation passed, another arose that “knew not the Lord nor yet the works which he had done for Israel.” Moral memory thinned in a single lifetime. When the elders later came to Samuel complaining about his sons’ corruption, they asked for a king to judge them and fight their battles. Samuel warned them what a king would take—sons, daughters, fields, the tenth of the produce. They refused the warning. They received what they demanded, and the cost arrived on schedule.
I see a similar motion in the short electoral cycles we live inside. Victory is treated as earned rather than granted. Prosperity is counted as a right. When the visible results lag behind the slogans, the electorate does not primarily examine its own habits. It changes the personnel and expects the new set of rulers to supply what the previous set could not. Complaint requires no program. It only needs a grievance, and grievances are never in short supply. The founders understood that an appetite for perpetual complaint would outrun every institutional check. The ballot then functions less as an instrument of ordered liberty and more as a mirror of the nation’s current condition.
Self-Government Was Never a Promise of Human Self-Sufficiency
I do not believe the Bible promises that human beings are, in themselves, capable of sustained self-government. It records that God will work through them and that He will, at times, let them have what they insist upon so they can learn the difference between what they asked for and what they needed. Self-government, properly understood, meant people restraining their own desires because they recognized a higher judge. When that restraint weakens, the demand for someone else to manage the consequences grows. The people in Samuel’s day did not cry out for open tyranny. They cried out for relief from disorder and for the appearance of order that other nations already possessed. They received a crown, and with it the ordinary burdens that centralized power always extracts.
The same dynamic appears when national conditions improve for a season. Men forget the hand that gave the improvement. They grow proud in the prosperity and then discover that the habits required to maintain it are harder than the habits required to complain about its absence. Elections become referenda on whether the current arrangement still feels like blessing. When the answer seems negative, the people change the arrangement rather than the underlying pattern of heart and habit. That is not irrational on its own terms. It is the rational choice of a people at odds with the conditions that produced the earlier gains.
Moral Foundations, Property, and the Vulnerability That Follows
A nation that can no longer say “this is mine because a higher law forbids theft, and that is yours for the same reason” loses the practical tools of self-government. Intellectual property, ordinary property, and the expectation that contracts and work will be honored all rest on that older command. When the command is treated as optional custom rather than binding reality, people honor it only while it profits them. The moment it costs them, they abandon it. The result is not dramatic invasion from outside so much as internal erosion. External actors do not need to storm the walls while the people inside still fear the higher standard. They only need to wait until the internal memory of that standard fades.
I have watched cultural markers that signal the same thinning: the treatment of the body as a canvas rather than a trust, the preference for immediate sensation over durable capacity, the steady reduction of expectations for personal responsibility. These are symptoms. The underlying condition is the loss of the belief that ordinary people are accountable to something above their momentary preferences. Without that belief, the government that depends on them becomes fragile. Policy can redistribute resources or rearrange incentives. It cannot restore the moral memory that makes ordinary self-restraint possible.
Building the Wall Opposite One’s Own House
The only durable counter to this pattern is the slow work of building people up rather than waiting for the next set of rulers to manage the decline. Nehemiah did not argue the walls back into place. He took up the work and called every family to the section opposite its own house. Restoration is household-scale before it is national. Light does not debate darkness; it simply remains visible. A society that still honors work, property, speech, and the ordinary duties of family and community does not need to invent new mechanisms of control. It needs enough people who remember why those older restraints existed.
The 2026 results placed Democrats in a position where their governing choices will be visible without the prior administration as a permanent foil. That visibility is useful. It does not, by itself, solve the deeper habit. Every generation faces the same choice the generation after Joshua faced: whether it will know the works that produced its inheritance or whether it will treat the inheritance as automatic and then demand a different manager when the automatic supply slows. The text records that God sometimes grants the demand and then lets the consequences teach what the warning could not. I read the recent cycles in that light—not as proof that one party holds a permanent solution, but as evidence that the human tendency to self-sabotage success remains active whenever prosperity outruns the memory of what produced it.
The question is not whether men can function intellectually. It is whether they will remember why self-government under a higher standard is possible at all. That memory is rebuilt in ordinary places, opposite one’s own house, by people who still treat the older commands as real. Everything else is secondary.
Bibliography and Further Reading
• The Holy Bible, 1 Samuel 8 (the demand for a king and God’s response to Samuel).
• The Holy Bible, Book of Judges (especially the refrain that every man did what was right in his own eyes, and the account of the generation that did not know the Lord).
• The Holy Bible, Deuteronomy 17:14–20 (the provisions and warnings concerning a future king).
• Jonathan Edwards, various sermons and writings on moral government, the duties of rulers, and the conditions of a people under divine judgment (public domain collections via Christian Classics Ethereal Library and similar archives).
• Standard historical commentaries on 1 Samuel 8 and the transition from judges to monarchy (Enduring Word, various academic treatments of the theological ambiguity in the narrative).
• Contemporary election data and turnout figures for the 2026 midterms (Ohio Secretary of State unofficial results and major news compilations showing Democratic gains in governor and Senate races amid high midterm turnout).
Rich Hoffman
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About the Author: Rich Hoffman
Rich Hoffman is an author, political consultant, and strategic advisor based in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the creator of The Politics of Heaven—a unique framework that connects biblical theology, ancient history, and modern power structures to explain how moral alignment and spiritual forces shape global events. Blending real-world political experience with deep research into archaeology, UFO phenomena, and suppressed historical narratives, Hoffman offers compelling commentary on topics ranging from ancient civilizations and the Dead Sea Scrolls to modern populist movements, paranormal continuity, and leadership strategy in chaotic environments. As the author of The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business and the forthcoming Politics of Heaven, he brings a grounded yet provocative voice to media discussions, supported by firsthand experiences and a cross-disciplinary approach that bridges science, history, and theology. For interviews, speaking engagements, or expert analysis, visit richhoffmanbooks.com or contact directly by email at rhoffman@richhoffmanbooks.com. If you’ve seen the movie, Disclosure Day and want to talk about it and the implications of Presidnet Trump’s UAP disclosures, let me know and we can bring some color to your coverage. https://richhoffmanbooks.com/media-inquiries-broadcast-topics-and-contact-info/?frame-nonce=ad51e7ecba I do have a firsthand UFO encounter to discuss.
