In nothing we trust: and that’s the way it should be
Continuing on the theme that the media have abandoned the bandwagon . . . The National Journal’s Ron Fournier and Sophie Quinton have penned a description of Obama’s dystopian America. Its title ought to be “Midnight in America,” in order to highlight the contrast with Reagan’s 1984 campaign theme. Instead, the title is “In Nothing We Trust: Americans are losing faith in the institutions that made this country great.”
And that’s where the writers get it wrong. The institutions are not what made America great. The American people, who according to the Constitution were to be largely unconstrained by those institutions, are what made this nation great.
Over the years we’ve strayed from that notion. Fournier and Quinton include a graphic that shows how far Americans have lost trust in various institutions in the decade since 2002. Governmental institutions have suffered especially badly: police down 3%, Supreme Court down 13%, Congress off 17%, and what should be ominous news for Barack Obama, trust in the institution of the Presidency has fallen 23% since the early days of the Bush administration. The only institution with a bigger decline was banks, down 24%. But I have to wonder how much of that was people who lumped the central bank, the Fed, into their answer.
Alone among public institutions, the military didn’t fall in the public’s esteem. (It was off a statistically insignificant 1%.) But I’m here to tell you as a commissioned officer in the United States Army, that you have too much faith in that institution too. Americans have lost faith in the institutions of government. And that is a good thing.
The Federalist Papers, a series of essays written by the Constitution’s authors, explain the logic of that great document. They are as timely now as they were then. In Federalist 25 Alexander Hamilton succinctly encapsulates the rationale behind the Constitution:
“The people are always most in danger when the means of injuring their rights are in the possession of those of whom they entertain the least suspicion.”
The entire Constitution is a framework of checks and balances to ensure that no entity can ever be beyond suspicion. We’ve lost that since. The power of Washington was to be checked by the states. That disappeared with the 17th Amendment, and now today the states are hamstrung by unfunded mandates. The people were to be sovereign in their own homes. That went away in 1937 when the Supreme Court preposterously ruled that food that you grow for your own family is interstate commerce. And in 1920 the federal government began the practice of protecting the people from themselves, setting up a century of regulations that constrain everything we do.
Unlike Fournier and Quinton, I don’t fret that Americans have lost faith in their institutions. I relish it. For no one can save us as well as we can save ourselves. There is nothing that we should trust as much as we trust ourselves. That, and not our institutions, is the greatness of America.
UPDATE:
Thanks to Glenn for the link. He provides some additional reading material, including this 2010 piece from Walter Russell Mead, whose continuing coverage of the breakdown of the “Blue Model” is always informative and thought-provoking.
While you’re here, take a look around at a few recent things like: Government and Incompetence, Falling out of love with Obama, and the absurdity of banning squirt guns.
April 21st, 2012 at 7:59 am
[...] UPDATE: Related thoughts from Bob Krumm: In nothing we trust: and that’s the way it should be. [...]
April 21st, 2012 at 8:49 am
Hi Bob;
I respectfully disagree with this:
“In nothing we trust: and that’s the way it should be”
You are wrong and out national motto: IN GOD WE TRUST is just right:
We SHOULD put our faith in God and not humans and their institutions.
The motto is NOT:
“IN GOVERNMENT INSTITUTIONS WE TRUST”, for a good reason.
The Founders knew from the outset that the Creator endowed us with life and liberty and that our rights spring from the gift of life – and not a king or any government, no matter how duly formed.
The fact that this foundation is placed upon something eternal and transcendent makes it impervious to temporary cultural shifts, and human self-interest.
Without this faith, there is no basis for asserting out innate universal human rights.
Therefore, we must not withhold trust from everything, but be sure to place it where it belongs.
God.
Ed: I respectfully disagree with your respectful disagreement. God is not going to save us if we are unwilling to use the tools that he gave us to save ourselves.
April 21st, 2012 at 9:28 am
Some people say, “God helps those who help themselves”.
Others say, “God helps those who are helpless”.
In reality, these two ideas are the exact same thing: “God gives you everything you will need, but only when the things he has already given you are insufficient”.
Humans are made/have evolved to be great, but greatness requires constant expansion and improvement. The foolishness of the American people, and the reason we are failing so miserably now, is nothing more than the foolishness that has crippled the human race for our entire history-instead of choosing the path of greatness, we choose the path of ease.
In order to get back into that habit of pursuing greatness, I think that we need to start with the following;
1) Eliminate Medicare and Medicaid. Being healthy is not the same thing as receiving health care-if you want to avoid cancer, high blood pressure, obesity, and other such things, you need to start preventative maintenance early, and continue it for the rest of your life. Everything else is just an overly expensive “quality of life” treatment.
If you need health care and/or insurance, go buy a private plan, or join a group that provides it as part of a “necessity package”, like the military.
2) Make Social Security optional and personal. When a person hits 18, give them the following option (Which needs to be made immediately, just like registering for the draft at 18):
a–Start paying into it now, and whatever you pay is exactly what you get, after adjustments for interest rates, inflation, and whatnot. NOT ONE SINGLE CENT of anyone else’ money will be given to you; in other words, what you put into it is EXACTLY what you get.
b–Don’t pay into it, and while you will never have to pay into it ever again, you won’t get anything at all from the program.
>
Constructive feedback welcome.
April 21st, 2012 at 9:33 am
What are the Institutions? Family, church, social service, municipal council, police – without these we cannot have “Community.” Yet these are what we have lost faith in. They have become impediments to community, instead of their more proper role of Good Order. Political agendas and institutional power trips have voided our faith and, accordingly, the effectiveness of Institutions.
But sir, I disagree with you. We need institutions, but these institutions must be trustworthy. We will either fashion new ones, or we will dissolve as a society.
Ed: You miss Alexander Hamilton’s point. Institutions are made up of people. Therefore, they can never be trustworthy. So while the institutions you mention are indeed are necessary, they are not to be trusted. Their powers must be limited and checked or they will grow too powerul and become, in your words, impediments to community.
April 21st, 2012 at 10:45 am
WOW. YOU WROTE:
I respectfully disagree with your respectful disagreement. God is not going to save us if we are unwilling to use the tools that he (SIC: He) gave us to save ourselves.
WOW: A STRAW MAN ARGUMENT THAT’S ABSOLUTELY IRRELEVANT TO WHAT I WROTE.
Let me recap:
YOU: “Have trust in nothing.”
ME and the Founding Fathers – (who constantly spoke and wrote of PROVIDENCE):
“Have trust in God.”
Nothing I that I wrote or that was EVER expressed by the Founders can be rationally construed as a call to sit by and do nothing and let God sort it all out.
On the contrary, faith in God was used as the BASIS for fighting earthly tyranny.
Certainly God is powerful enough to do anything and everything, but e have to bathe and eat and comb our hair and brush our teeth.
And straighten out our own affairs – personal and public.
An abiding faith in eternal laws that originate with the Creator, and not a any particular human king or any particular culture, is what allowed us to have a republic to begin with and our Constitution.
Because our inalienable rights come from God, we are each sovereign over our own bodies and together we are sovereign over the republic.
WE THE PEOPLE.
If you have no faith in God, then there is no firm foundation for having faith in the Declaration and the Constitution.
And no firm basis for attacking those who see it as a living document that can shift according to the desires of the personalities of those in power.
REPEAT:
Without this faith, there is no basis for asserting out innate universal human rights.
Therefore, we must not withhold trust from everything, but be sure to place it where it belongs.
YOUR SNIDE EDITORIAL COMMENT ACTUALLY AGREES WITH ME.
SO YOUR “RESPECTFULLY DISAGREE” IS WAY OFF BASE.
And silly, if not dumb.
April 21st, 2012 at 11:50 am
Bob — Nicely done and worthy of the Instalaunch. I’m writing to ask you to explain your reference to the 17th amendment. As I sit here in the Florida Keys, those folks in Tallahassee look like the biggest bunch of snakes in the state. Why would allowing them to vote in the U.S. Senators improve things? Florida is the most safe when Tallahassee isn’t in session.
Re your cautionary note on the U.S. Military. The Navy has been a political football since the first six frigates touched water and it still is. The blue uniformed embrace of the “Green Navy” is embarrassing. Your Army has only to look at the untried Major Hasan to see problems. My Air Force has suffered death-by-drone, but the word hasn’t yet reached the brain. (you are allowed to snicker)
Well written stuff. I’ll have to bookmark you. But why, in your view, was the 17th Amendment so harmful?
April 21st, 2012 at 11:57 am
If the Founding Fathers wanted Americans to trust institutions, why did they limit their powers?
April 21st, 2012 at 12:51 pm
You are actually right onto the issue:
Institutionalization
What happens is more easily understood by comparison to the Guilds.
The instrumentalities and mechanisms developed to attain commonally determined objectives, as society evolves; for example learning for our young,becomes the institution of the “Education System” in which the objectives are determined by those with functions (operators) within the institution – the members of the Guilds.
April 21st, 2012 at 7:29 pm
Re: the 17th Amendment;
Before the passage of the 17th Amendment, the criminals in the State Capitol could be counted on to act as a check on the criminals in the Federal government, through their agents (the Senators). That they would do this in their own interests does not detract from value of system.
April 21st, 2012 at 7:30 pm
Dear Mr. Krumm: As a small correction, the WICKARD decision about wheat growing, came down from the Supreme Court in 1942, not 1937.
I’m with Fderfler: why is having the citizenry choosing its federal Senators worse than having the state legislatures do so? The notion that this will somehow empower the states versus the feds is opaque. The public employee unions in California and New York will determine who their federal Senators are in this scheme. Why does that not inspire confidence?
A better villain for you is the Sixteenth Amendment, which enabled govt of all brands to grow and grow. I’m lukewarm about Randy Barnett’s notion that state and local govt can counterbalance the feds. It may have been true at one time, but the Civil War put the states permanently under the shadow, if not the heel, of the feds.
Sincerely yours,
Gregory Koster
April 22nd, 2012 at 7:57 am
Institutions are relatively stable patterns of rules and structures intended to meet social needs. Human sociality is impossible without institutions. Therefore, your idea that individuals are somehow separable from the institutions that they create, and in turn are shaped by, is a form of magical thinking.
You can like your institutions weak or strong — you seem to like them very weak indeed — but as a conceptual matter suggesting that “the people “and their “institutions” are somehow separable and opposable is simply unserious.