"Trust Me"....Sorry that's Un-American

When someone from the Bush administration says "trust me" I just laugh. The bush administration is one of the last power centers I would trust. Over at the Mighty Middle Michael Reynolds reminds us that it would no only be stupid to trust the Bush administration it would be un-American.

The United States of America was born out of a deep distrust of concentrated power. Ten thousand years of human civilization had made the case crystal clear for our Founding Fathers: governments can never be trusted.

Governments are certainly neceassary. Trusted? No. Read the Constitution.. What you see is an almost obsessive concern for breaking power down into controllable chunks. An executive with some power. But limited both by the voters and by Congress and by the Supreme Court. A Congress, split into two opposing bodies, then limited by voters, by the executive and by the Supremes. A Supreme Court protected, in a nice touch, from the voters themselves, and denied any executive function at all. And, if all that fails, here's a list of ten basic rights government simply cannot touch, starting with the right to a free press, the right to maintain churches, and just in case all that still isn't enough, the right to have guns.

The Founders were not trusting guys. And because they were suspicious, we've had the same government for more than two centuries. Deep-in-the-bone mistrust of government is why we have never had a coup, never had an election cancelled, never had an army leave its barracks to choose a president. One constitution, even through a civil war. One constitution built not on idealism but on mistrust.

We don't trust politicians in this country. We hogtie them and hold a gun to their heads. Then we still don't trust them.

Trust the government? You're kidding, right?

This is just another piece of history the right wing would like you to forget about.