The end of the world is nigh. It is this ultimate reality which should animate and motivate us. The devil might be able to hang us before he hangs himself, but he can’t deprive us of the resurrection which will separate us from his clutches forever.

Give the devil enough rope and he’ll hang himself. Give him enough power and he’ll hang us first.

These might not seem very reassuring words as many of us find ourselves facing pre-election stress syndrome. So much seems to be riding on this particular election that it’s easy to lose our peace of mind in angst-ridden concerns about the future of our nation and the world.

And yet it should be reassuring to know that the devil and those who are of the devil’s party are always in the process of destroying themselves, even if they are often destroying other things and good things at the same time. The lessons of history teach us that pride does indeed precede a fall.

Look at the French Revolution. It ushered in a new age of liberté, égalité et fraternité—or so the “victorious” revolutionaries believed. In reality, it ushered in what has become known to history as the Reign of Terror, a brief period of dictatorial debauchery in which the “enemies of the revolution” were executed and in which a policy of genocide was conducted against the people of the Vendée. Soon, however, the revolutionaries turned upon each other so that the very architects of the Revolution fell victim to the very Terror they’d unleashed. The devils had hanged themselves, though not before hanging many innocent victims.

Look at the Bolshevik Revolution, a crass reincarnation of the “liberty, equality and fraternity” of the Revolution in France, which would prove even more bloody than its prototype. Beginning with the hanging of their anti-communist enemies, the Bolsheviks soon started hanging each other. In purge after bloody purge, members of the communist party were thrown into prison or were executed on the orders of the Party itself. Eventually, though it took 73 years, the communist edifice collapsed under the weight of its own systemic corruption. Give the devil enough rope….

Look at the rise and fall of the Nazis. When Hitler’s brand of “national” socialism seized power in Germany, the Führer boasted of the establishment of a Thousand Year Reich. During the Night of the Long Knives, he ordered the murder of his own Party members, those who had been his closest comrades during his rise to power. Given enough rope, he hanged his allies before finally committing suicide himself. As for his Thousand Year Reich, it crashed to ignominious ruin after only twelve blood-drenched years.

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