A reader wrote in on the last posting about the American public's trust--or lack thereof--in its government to point out that trust is multi-dimensional; it is, in large part, the product of experience, environment, time, and basic human nature (which might be the most important one of all).
And, of course, all things are relative, too. For illustration, this person suggests making a comparison with current-day Egypt. The inference seems to be that the trust Egyptians place in their government at this stage in its evolution is lower by orders of magnitude that it is in this country. In other words, sometimes we can't appreciate how good it is on our side of the fence until we take a look at what things are like on the other side. Makes sense to me.
What really caught my attention, though, was the part of the comment about basic human nature: Perhaps what we really don't trust--and maybe never will fully trust--is the inherent authority of government. Government is one of the few ultimate embodiments of authority. For most Americans, government is likely to be THE ultimate embodiment of authority. Nothing can surpass it for Americans, since we pride ourselves--as we have discussed before--as a nation of laws, and we see our fundamental legal structure as extending into the indefinite future, maybe even an unlimited future. By virtue of its laws, nothing can surpass its power, and by virtue of our outlook, nothing can outlast it.
All of which makes for a lot of authority.
Let's face it: Americans have issues with authority. Those issues are baked into our history and our heritage. As British colonies, we started out mostly as people escaping from established authorities. National settlement and expansion for the next three hundred years were prominently motivated by clashes with authority.
By the time we Americans got around to writing our Constitution in the late 1780s we were even more distrustful of government and authority than we were before the Revolution. The evidence is right there in the Constitution itself, and in the way that the Constitution survived its birth: The Constitution, as originally written, was dead-on-arrival, and required amending ten times before it was deemed viable. Those first ten amendments are commonly called the Bill of Rights, but perhaps they could also be called "Here's the Things That We Don't Quite Trust to a National Authority."
I'm going to read each of those ten amendments, and after each one ask myself "Does this sound like the words of people who are placing their trust in what they have just created?" I'll report the results in future writings.
2 comments:
Trust involves open, honest dialogue.
This is something that Republicans and Democrats seem to be incapable of doing when talking with each other.
If they can't work together, it makes it difficult to "trust" what they will do for us.
And, whether you are Democrat or Republican, it is invariably the "other party" who is at fault for the lack of dialogue. Without dialogue; without trust. What do you do with that stalemate?
I am grateful to live in our democracy, however our government has earned much of its distrust from its citizens. Ask the Native Americans about broken treaties, or those who suffered from McCarthyism. How about selective justice and the discrepancy in the number of incarcerated minorities. I am still furious over the "Weapons of Mass Destruction" debacle. Trust is earned, and like any relationship we could do well as a nation to be as open and transparent as possible.
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