It is not lamentable that Americans lose faith in them when they do those things. What’s lamentable here is that some of our politicians lie, cheat, and steal. I suspect that if you asked a cross section of citizens, “Do you trust the concepts embraced by the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States?” you’d get a higher number than if you asked, “Did you trust Richard Nixon after Watergate?” or “Do you trust Bill Clinton when he says he’s faithful to Hillary?” If, after the experience of the last 30 years, Americans had lost no faith in government welfare programs, they would likely be diagnosed as possessing a prime symptom of clinical insanity: doing the same harmful thing over and over again and expecting different results each time.įew if any polls or surveys separate out what people think of the basic, original framework of American government from what they think of the characters who are actually doing the governing. Remember the assurances of how billions of tax dollars siphoned through the federal bureaucracy would solve poverty? The result would be laughable were it not so tragic, so obviously tragic that a president of the same party as Franklin Roosevelt signed a bill in 1996 to end the federal entitlement to public welfare. Politicians who promised the sky delivered the proverbial mess of pottage instead. The steep decline in trust in government since the mid-1960s is proof that large numbers of Americans are awake and learning something. To Abigail Adams in 1787 he wrote, “The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. Thomas Jefferson was especially noted for his desire to cultivate a healthy distrust of the state. They would have had to be deaf, dumb, and generally insensate not to lose faith.Īmerica’s Founders did not want a government in which the citizens placed blind confidence. When the British monarchy was perpetrating “a long train of abuses and usurpations,” sending forth “swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance,” it was hardly a lamentable fact that American citizens lost faith in King George. To put it bluntly, it’s just plain stupid to lament a decline in trust in government until you find out why it’s happened. If only 31 percent had trusted the government then, perhaps we wouldn’t have-30 years and endless alphabet programs and agencies later-a $5 trillion national debt with little to show for it but broken families, an eroded currency, and diminished liberties. The National Election Studies (NES) Trust in Government Index tells us that a mere 31 percent of Americans say they trust the government today, about half the 61 percent who said they did in 1966 when the Great Society was getting underway. (A poll conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press put the trust figure at 34 percent in February of this year.) A Peter Hart/Robert Teeter survey for the Council on Excellence in Government found that only 8 percent of Americans think the federal government “has enjoyed a large number of successes.” The same poll revealed that 47 percent think government “hinders the American Dream.” One from the American Enterprise Institute and the Roper Center showed that barely more than 20 percent of Americans “trust government in Washington to do what is right ‘most of the time’ or ‘just about always.’” That’s down from about three-quarters of Americans in 1963. They are busy writing columns and editorials about the need to “renew our faith in democratic institutions.”īut among those who understand the difference between government in the abstract and government in reality-between what America’s Founders had in mind and how today’s politicians actually behave-declining trust in government evokes a contrasting view: it’s richly deserved, long overdue, and we should pray for more of it.Ī number of recent polls testify to a fading faith in government. To some people, this development is lamentable. Who says FUN and RESPONSIBILITY can’t hang together? At SONIC Drive-In restaurants, you’ll have all that, along with great pay, flexible hours, a cool uniform and the camaraderie of fantastic co-workers.Īs a SONIC Drive-In restaurant Cook, you will oversee the Appetite Satisfaction Department, which involves operating the following stations: Food Production, Grill, Fryer and other tasks if applicable.With so much talk these days of scandal, incompetence, and failed programs, trust in government is on the ropes.
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