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Can Americans trust their government officials?
Results so far:
| Yes | 15% | 17 votes | Total: 110 votes | |
| No | 85% | 93 votes |
Yes
by Vishrut Srivastava
Created on: April 25, 2009
Before directly answering the question, we must first look at the function of government, in particular the American democratic system. The representative government's function is to put into action the voice of the public, who ideally have the ultimate say in what policy is put into practice. By electing the officials in office, the public actually determines the kinds of people who make the decisions. So, we can move forward from the idea that, if democracy is working, the officials in power are only in their positions because the public has asked them to step up.
Another point that needs to be made is that progress is inherently a product of trial and error. Assuming that all the decisions made by an individual will be perfect is requiring a level of perfection that is impossible. The democratic system puts into place officials that are qualified to make educated decisions, so it is the responsibility of the American public to give them the freedom to exercise the faculty that we elected them to use. Trust, used here as a way of saying, "You are in a position of power, now do something meaningful," is what truly enables an official to make any significant changes, and therefore progress. Because fundamentally, it is public support that drives policy making. The current Obama administration has recently been making this more and more relevant, like with the prosecution of officials involved in torture used in the Bush administration.
Answering "no" to the question of whether we should trust our government officials is inherently counter-productive. The very people that don't trust the people in power are implying that they want change, but to bring about change officials need the support of the public. This cycle can only be broken by trusting the system, and letting democracy work. Only when the cycle is broken can problems be solved, the very issues that the non-trusting citizens complain about.
Naturally, trust should only go so far. I am not saying that we give complete trust to the people in power. That in itself would defeat the purpose of democracy, in which each citizen must be critical of the administration. We must trust our officials enough that they have free reign to make significant changes, but not to the point that they can do anything they want. In this case, it is most appropriate to assume the good intentions of our officials. While this is not saying that officials are inherently good, but it is saying that we have an historically effective system of checks and balances at work which, coupled with a constituency that intelligently trusts its administration, allows for positive progress over time.
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No
by Jimmy Flatbush
Created on: March 04, 2011 Last Updated: March 05, 2011
Violent protests in countries throughout the Middle East accentuate an underlying antipathy that has smoldered for decades. Governments in Egypt, Bahrain, and now Libya, topple from the pressure of people who have decided to draw a line in the sand and confront their dishonest leaders. Americans may yawn away the revolutions as another chapter in the Middle East maelstrom. However, the protests happening in Arabia will inevitably foment in the United States. What has commenced under the rotundas of state capitols shall morph into mass unrest against the federal government. At the heart of the growing unrest lies a fundamental truth: Americans can no longer trust their government officials.
The tipping point for the breach of trust came in the immediate aftermath of America’s financial meltdown. Politicians from both major political parties, and politicians at all levels of government, pushed bailout schemes that they promised would stem a financial catastrophe. Conspiring with their allies in the mainstream media and academia, politicians claimed banks were “too big to fail.” The bailout legislation swindled over $1.5 trillion from the American economy, thus enriching the thieves from Wall Street and their benefactors in Washington. Banks received their life support from the creation of the fiat money fraud run by the Federal Reserve System. Banking fat cats accrued additional wealth at the taxpayer’s expense.
Government officials have misled us ever since the Republic’s inception. Abraham Lincoln manipulated the gullible populace into believing that slavery incited the Civil War. The Federal Reserve System and federal income tax code were two pieces of legislation that government officials surreptitiously wrote and passed into law without any debate or public scrutiny. Franklin Roosevelt and his henchmen knew about Pearl Harbor several days in advance, yet they used the bloody “surprise” attack as a pretext for war. The most egregious example of a breach of trust occurred immediately after the Civil War, when the federal government violated virtually every component of the United States Constitution during the reconstruction era.
President Obama promised to rescind the Patriot Act. Instead, the monumental usurpation of civil liberties has gained more provisions. George W. Bush lied about weapons of mass destruction, and his father conned us with the infamous “No new taxes” pledge. Bill Clinton sits on the King of Deceit throne. Ronald Reagan’s administration undermined public trust by clandestinely waging a war against Nicaraguan rebels. Gerald Ford pardoned a cabal of criminals headed by perhaps the most corrupt President in American history. The list goes on and one and knows no generational boundaries.
Social Security provides one of the best exhibits as to why Americans should not trust their government officials. Created as a retirement safety net for millions of American workers, Social Security has become an open vault for politicians and appointed government officials to raid for political gain. Adding insult to the blatant theft, the same group of corrupt government officials either claims the social Security fund is solvent, or they instruct their friends in the media to ignore the wanton financial abyss. The mishandling of public funds is not exclusive to the federal domain. Turn on your nightly newscast for a reminder of how local government officials skim money off funds meant for construction projects and pension funds.
By now, sane people have taken all they can from the corruption that slowly erodes government efficacy. The issue is not whether we trust our government officials; a vast majority of the electorate does not. The issue is how to change the current slide of public servant morality. Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, some people continue to buy into the media and academia led myth that we can change government by holding our public officials accountable for their actions.
This myth only leads us down a familiar path where government officials continue to plunder the people they took an oath of office to represent. We must pull back from our current system and develop mini-systems that do not rely on government support. We should barter for goods and services and refuse to pay into the illegal federal income tax extortion scheme. We need less government, not more layers of ineffectual legal mumble jumble that acts as a shield to protect corrupt federal, state, and local government officials.
Thomas Jefferson said, “Every generation needs a revolution.” We have missed our calling by at least three generations.
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