Thursday, June 13, 2013

In God we trust

The government? That's another story altogether.

I think the whole business with the NSA boils down to this: do we want a society in which limits on government intrusiveness in our private communications are almost entirely self-imposed, with the general understanding that the government can be trusted to handle the information responsibly; or do we want a society in which there are certain legal, categorical restrictions on the type of information that can be collected and analyzed by the government, in order to eliminate (or reduce) the risk that government - acting either officially as a matter of public policy, or unofficially in the form of renegade employees moved by ideological conviction or by purely mercenary considerations – might behave in ways that are inconsistent with, and injurious to, our American traditions of individual liberty(specifically with reference to the rights secured by the fourth amendment)?

George Will has written an interesting article on the issue of trust, shrewdly linking the NSA’s public relations crisis with the machinations of IRS bully Lois Lerner:
The case against the NSA is: Lois Lerner and others of her ilk.

Government requires trust. Government by progressives, however, demands such inordinate amounts of trust that the demand itself should provoke distrust. Progressivism can be distilled into two words: “Trust us.” The antecedent of the pronoun is: The wise, disinterested experts through whom the vast powers of the regulatory state’s executive branch will deliver progress for our own good, as the executive branch understands this, whether we understand it or not. Lois Lerner is the scowling face of this state, which has earned Americans’ distrust.
As to the level of trust that I, personally, have in the government, this photo summarizes my view neatly.

And I’m talking a low level of trust in both political parties, particularly in light of what is going on with the immigration bill winding its way through the Senate. The partisan intransigence of Democrats like Chuck Schumer and Harry Reid is a given, as is the increasingly invariable dunderheadedness of Republicans like McCain and Graham. But it has been a bitter disappointment to see Marco Rubio participate in the Gang of Eight, losing no opportunity to display the most contemptible disingenuousness in arguing for this legislative travesty; and now, even Rep. Paul Ryan appears set to soften up the House for a favorable reception of the Senate bill (see Ann Coulter, Jeff Goldstein, and Stacy McCain for important discussions of this vitally important topic).

9 comments:

JeffS said...

I had little trust in the government before these latest revelations. Now I have none at all.

SwampWoman said...

Hey, Paco, how close are you to retiring, and how far from the top of the civil servant ladder are you?

People out here in the hinterlands distrust the toxic civil servants as much as they do the career politicians. Tenga cuidado.

Paco said...

Swampie: I'm about four and a half years from retirement (to be precise, that's the minimum number of additional years I have to put in to qualify).

I'm not up there on Olympus with the big shots; still, if people ask me, "so, what did you do before you retired?", I might just make up something less obnoxious than being a bureaucrat - like, "I was in prison for twenty years".

Minicapt said...

I thought the recommended response was "Piano-player in a bordello"?

Cheers

SwampWoman said...

Your response, Paco, would be "I'm a fiction writer!", particularly considering that you probably write governmental-required reports.

Paco said...

Swampie: I've probably mentioned this before, but the first Detective Paco story was actually a noir version of a business memo that I wrote because I was bored.

Paco said...

Or rather, the noir memo gave me the idea for Detective Paco.

SwampWoman said...

Yep. And you iz a published writer, too.

Hmmm. I think I'll use that at parties and church gatherings.

"And what do you do, Miz Swampie?"

"I'm a writer."

"Oh, what do you write? Perhaps I've read something."

"Do you read sheep porn?"

Michael Lonie said...

LOL Swampie.

In my fictional world there are four tribes of Huns: the White Sheep Huns, the Black Sheep Huns, the Brown Sheep Huns, and the Nervous Sheep Huns.