| We no longer look up with respect to our executive branch, with affection to our legislators, or with duty to our magistrates. A 2013 survey by the Pew Research Center reveals that only 19 percent of Americans trust the federal government to do what is right most of the time, and only 28 percent have a favorable view of the federal government. Views of Congress have reached a historically negative level with only 21 percent expressing a favorable opinion. The Supreme Court’s favorability is also down, as only 48 percent have a favorable opinion of the justices. |
|
A Gallup poll is even more admonishing, showing “a great deal of trust” in the executive branch of only 18 percent, 6 percent for the legislative branch and 13 percent for the judicial branch. Approval ratings in the single-digits and teens have not always been the case. For instance, erstwhile Gallup presidential statistics show average approval ratings of 65 percent for President Eisenhower, a Republican, and 70.1 percent for President Kennedy, a Democrat.
The current distrust of the federal government does not bode well for the country. Without a core level of public trust, democratic governments face pronounced difficulties carrying out their basic functions and are often unable to implement difficult economic and fiscal reforms.
So what explains this troubling trend? Individual rights are the organizing principle of the US political framework. We do not charge government with curtailing our rights, but with better securing our rights. Thus, at the most fundamental level, government must be judged by how effectively it protects and defends individual freedoms.
Political ideas are the application of philosophical ideas, and in recent decades, political action has become more about enacting social ideologies than responding to specific needs that threaten our rights. In particular, progressive thinking argues that the coercive power of government must be used to directly address social problems. Progressive activists in all branches of government seek to employ the weight of government to pursue their ideological agendas. But it is not often acknowledged that, by definition, an expanded government requires diminished liberty.
For instance, we all want to live in a just society, but charging government with bringing about a predetermined distribution of holdings, can only be accomplished by violating individual rights and continuously interfering with our liberties. If under the logic of some utilitarian felicific calculus, certain goods are to be guaranteed to some individuals, then other individuals must be coerced to pay for those goods.
This philosophical conception of rights is inherently discriminatory requiring that the state treat some individuals differently from others. Even if it were possible to achieve, for one instant, a desired distribution of holdings, such distribution would immediately begin to break down by individuals choosing to save in different measures, or to exchange goods and services with each other. Thus an enforced distribution of holdings is an unachievable goal.
In addition, if we do indeed need a large, intrusive, coercive, paternalistic state, what does that tell us about our capacity as individuals to take care of ourselves?
The US conception of a just society is one in which the citizenry is assured the freedom to choose how to shape their own future unforced by government interference. Our shared belief in equality should ineludibly lead us to a politics of individual, not collective, rights, since as individuals we do not accept on faith the superior wisdom of others.
Over the decades, as government has expanded, politicians have necessarily diminished our rights with every new government program, and they continue to do so. They have forgotten that the statesman’s task is not to drive society toward some particular ultimate end of their design. In the US tradition, the statesman’s task is to create and constantly sustain a space in which the citizenry may exercise their freedoms and enjoy the benefits of their labors.
If government exists to protect our freedom to choose, then our political class has failed us by seeking to gratify their ideological schemes at the expense of our rights. It is no wonder that they have lost our trust and respect.
Please let us know if you  this article. |
|
This article was originally published in English in the PanAm Post and in Spanish in El Nuevo Herald.
|
|
|
|
|
Mr Azel proposes that "government exists to protect our freedom to choose,” but then neglects to address the need for government to balance that basic protection with a clear regard for the “freedom to choose” of others. Government and later democracy were both outgrowths of a fervent hope that more efficient and more just societies could be achieved within mutual-interest-based populist communities. Fascist-based oligarchies and dictatorships that have relied on a single individual or on smaller supposed elite groups have tended toward more self-interest-based personal “freedom to choose,” and history has proved these to be less than desirable. Mr Azel's call for reduced government might thus be itself reduced to a return to some mixture of elitism, anarchy and jungle law, with a seemingly naive faith in an individual morality of such singular individuals.
ReplyDeleteMr Azel does correctly postulate that in this generation there is deep mistrust because many in “our political class have failed us by seeking to gratify their ideological schemes at the expense of our rights.” Yes, we can all agree that taking a trusting nation into a war that was based on falsehoods of “yellow cake” and an imagined “mushroom cloud” does breed mistrust. Such a needless war for personal gratification, does breed mistrust. The needless death of 4,500 of our trusting brave soldiers and the incurring 35,000 needless US casualties in such an enterprise does breed great mistrust. Saddling our nation with trillions of dollars in needless war debt in a wild goose search for not-an-imminent-threat and known at the time to be non-existent Iraqi WMDs, all at the expense of our rights, breeds mistrust. Yes Mr. Azel, ”It is no wonder that they have lost our trust and respect.” But, this lingering loss of trust and respect by the American people for their government has far more to do with the tragic results of such an egregious and tragic deceptions. And that trust will be difficult to regain until some candid effort at accountability is at least initiated. This has yet to happen and if Clinton, Trump, Cruz, or Kasich becomes president, it likely never will.
Furthermore, Mr. Azel points to the particularly low figures of trust in ou legislative brach. The recent years of inaction in our current Congress speaks for itself and within the current electoral process, that unfortunate paralysis, at the expense of the majority of hard working Americans may likely continue. However, “This current distrust of the federal government,” does have at its roots in the paralytic inactivity of our current GOP-controlled Congress and is certainly not the result of ”progressive thinking arguing that the coercive power of government must be used to directly address social problems.” Mr.Azel thus, has failed to candidly also recognize that, along with security and property rights, addressing social problems has been, in point of fact, one of the more essential purposes of our American, democratically elected government.