We need more distrust of government for the very good reason that government is pretty much an untrustworthy enterprise. If more Americans had been inclined to distrust the government five, ten, twenty, or more years ago, we might not be in the fix we are in today and our distrust might not be so bilious.

By Geoffrey Norman at American Spectator

There has been a lot said and written in the last couple of days about a new poll showing that only 20% or so of Americans “trust the government.” The news is being gravely received and treated as further and redundant proof that the country is in a bad way.

To me, though, it sounds like pretty good news. We need more distrust of government for the very good reason that government is pretty much an untrustworthy enterprise. If more Americans had been inclined to distrust the government five, ten, twenty, or more years ago, we might not be in the fix we are in today and our distrust might not be so bilious.

Wouldn’t it, for instance, have been a good thing if we had distrusted the entire Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac contraption which was the foundation of the housing bubble that, when it burst, led to the economic distress that has so many of us feeling distrustful and worse? If we had been a little skeptical of the government’s claim that Fanny and Freddy were not backed by the full faith and etc. of the government and would not be bailed out if they got into trouble, then they might not have grown so fat on preposterous mortgages that they had to be bailed out using the full faith and etc. And we might all have jobs and more money today. But the people who ran those Government Sponsored Enterprises — and got hog-rich doing it — assured us that all was well. And we trusted them.

FULL STORY

Help Make A Difference By Sharing These Articles On Facebook, Twitter And Elsewhere:

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
•