October 7, 2014
Trust in Government is Pathological

By Christopher Chantrill

This last weekend the Sunday shows had a “trust in government” theme. Chuck Todd on "Meet the Press" asked Obama advisor Dan Pfeiffer why the government of the email-losing IRS, of no strategy on ISIS, of border mayhem could be trusted on Ebola.

On Fox News Sunday Chris Wallace threw a slow hanging pitch to George Will so he could hit it out of the ball park. Said Wallace:

[W]ith growing concerns over Ebola, the Secret Service and the VA and IRS scandals, can we trust the federal government to do its job?

Will replied that we have “much more to fear from excessive faith in government than from too little faith in government.” He got right to the point.

The distilled essence of progressivism is that government is a benign -- that is disinterested force, that's false. And, (b), it is stocked with experts who are really gifted at doing things.

That got me to thinking. I mean, who in the world would be dumb enough to have faith in government? It's not as if people have been faithfully believing in government down the ages. Charles Dickens let them have it in Little Dorrit with the government's Circumlocution Office, staffed with Barnacles and Stiltstockings and operating under the motto: How Not to Do It.

The answer is obvious, and Charles Dickens nailed it 150 years ago. The only people that have faith in government are the Barnacles and the Stiltstockings.

The Barnacles are the folks that have fixed themselves on the government teat. Whether they are lifer bureaucrats counting the days till they can retire on that government pension or single mothers on welfare or crony capitalists sucking up green subsidies, they have to believe in government. Otherwise they'd have to get a life. Then there's the liberal professor at a government university, or the diversity dean, or the trainers teaching men not to rape. Of course they all believe in government. They are Barnacles; they have to fix themselves to a host. Wikipedia tells it like it is:

Barnacles are encrusters, attaching themselves permanently to a hard substrate. The most common, "acorn barnacles" (Sessilia), are sessile, growing their shells directly onto the substrate. The order Pedunculata ("goose barnacles" and others) attach themselves by means of a stalk.

When you're a Barnacle, you have no choice. You must believe in your substrate, government.

Read more: American Thinker

"How soon we forget history ... Government is not reason. Government is not eloquence. It is force. And, like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."

George Washington

Quote: Cincinnatus wrote in post #3

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The Greeks had a word for this, hubris, and it inevitably led to tragedy for the individual who possessed it.

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