Monday, April 19, 2010

Do you trust the Government?

In 1958, 73% of Americans said "yes."  Now, that number is down to 22%.

For a democracy - based on the consent of the governed - that is a very bad thing.
Posted by Peter Sean at 7:24 AM
Labels:

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Bad for the moment and bad for the government, but this fact can work to the people's advantage, and ultimately turn into a 'good' thing, no?

7:38 AM
Peter Sean said...

Unless it's systemic.

One of the good things about federalism - and Chestertonian subsidiarity - is that it pushes decision making down to lower levels where more decisions can be made and, perforce, more decisions can reflect what people affected by those decisions want.

Perhaps the centralization of decisions in the federal government has resulted in a majority of the people being constantly unhappy because decisions are either up or down, and as we have seen in the case of Health Care, they don't necessarily have to reflect even the desires of the majority, so long as on other issues, the ruling party can claim majority support.

Perhaps the answer is to revitalize federalism and devolve some federal responsibilities and programs down to the states again.

9:49 AM
Anonymous said...

Excellent point, PSB.

4:19 PM

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)
 
Who links to me?