Why Don't I trust Government?

Why Don't I trust Government? The answer is simple. A large powerful government is not trustworthy. Power in the hands of a few is never safe or worthy; it is corrupt, and antithetical to liberty. Philosophers have recognized this for millennia.

“Our earth is degenerate in these latter days; bribery and corruption are common; children no longer obey their parents; and the end of the world is evidently approaching.” ~ Assyrian clay tablet 2800 B.C.

“The more corrupt the state, the more laws.” ~ Publius Cornelius Tacitus

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” ~ Lord Acton 1887

Modern communications and industry has allowed power to be concentrated into the hands of fewer people. The Ruler/Commoner ration has risen dramatically with the industrial age. The US has gone from about 1 federal ruler per 30,000 people in 1780’s to about 1 federal ruler per 600,000 people now. Power is 20 times more concentrated than when the country was started. It is plainly obvious that large modern governments with unlimited powers have been and are a far greater threat to people than virtually anything else. Never before in history have so few “elite” wielded so much power over so many people. At the direction of one man, actions can put into motion which will result in a nuclear holocaust that would destroy the majority of people in the world and possibly make the world un-inhabitable. The USA, Russia, and maybe China all have that huge concentrated power in a tiny number of people. The 20th Century is proof that concentrating more power into a tiny number of people is murderous to society.

The worst horrors of the 20th century were orchestrated by governments against their own people. The more concentrated a government power the more murderous it is. This technological concentration of power created a new historic phenomenon in the 20th century; Governments without limits murdering millions of their own people in pursuit of utopia. Pol Pot’s Cambodian genocide, Stalin’s purges and orchestrated famines, Mao’s own orchestrated purges and murderous Cultural Revolution, Hitler’s Holocaust, the Marxist Ethiopian regime’s orchestrated famines, the countless barbarities and mass murders of other post-colonial African dictatorships, not to mention hundreds of thousands killed by North Korea’s communists and by Saddam Hussein’s Baathists, along with many thousands murdered by Vietnam’s and Cuba’s communists. Governments in the 20th century killed more millions of their own peoples than all of man’s wars in prior history.
“The period known as the European Enlightenment was also known as the Age of Reason, a time when the full scope of human existence was carefully examined, with an eye toward trying to perfect human society as much as possible. It was felt that the full application of man's intellect could rescue society from the forces of despotism. Encompassing the years 1715 to 1789, the enlightenment was probably as important in America as was in Europe. In that age of classical thinking the European philosophers studied with great zeal the institutions of modern government with the same intensity with which scientists such as Newton had probed the mysteries of the universe and the worlds of physics and mathematics. . . The Enlightenment was important (in) America because it provided the philosophical basis of the American Revolution. . . While the locus of the Enlightenment thinking is generally considered to have been the salons in Paris and Berlin, the practical application of those ideas was carried out most vividly in the American colonies.” ~ Henry J. Sage

The one nation that created a government that guaranteed its citizens rights, including the right to arm themselves and overthrow the government if necessary, in a historically short period of time became the most powerful nation in the world. This Nation is the one that people from all over the world are willing to risk life and limb to come to. This nation is the one that privately provides more charity to the needy of the world than any other nation and has a vastness and diversity that no other nation can match. The United States, the most powerful nation in the world, did not murder millions of its own citizens like those totalitarian governments in the 20th century. It is different in that the power of its government is limited, dispersed, separated, and balanced. It is however deteriorating, the ideas and principles of enlightenment upon which it was founded on are no longer accepted or even talked about. The current president is usurping powers delegated to the legislature and judiciary at an alarming rate. We are, like the great totalitarian nations of the last century, allowing power to become more concentrated in fewer leaders. This is a recipe for tyranny as evidenced by history.

American Revolution was based on an enlightened concept of government whose most profound documents were the American Declaration of Independence and United States Constitution. The writings of Jefferson, Hamilton, Adams, Franklin, Washington, and those others committed to liberty, most of whose fortunes and lives were lost over signing the Declaration of Independence, all reflect the same enlightened ideology. That individuals prosper most, and society benefits most when people are self governed. They created a federalized republic with severely limited centralized power with a Bill of Rights which concludes with the promise that “all powers not specifically granted to the central government are reserved to the local state governments or to the people themselves.”

No provision was ever conceived or granted to the central government which would allow it to “spread the wealth” or force commerce on individuals. The central government was never instituted or purposed to provide for the needs of individuals. The federalist papers and the writings of early leaders (Including Davy Crocket) strongly proclaim that although difficult, charity should not come from the government but from the private sector and churches. Charity if allowed to be controlled and granted by the federal government would lead to tyranny and a loss of liberty for all. They’re predictions have proven to be accurate. Worse yet when Governments have concentrated power and near total authority in the name of providing the needs of and creating a better society, they have proven to be murderous and tyrannical beyond all historical precedent.

The atrocities of totalitarian governments like those listed above is proof, that we all need to fight for limited central government, with few powers, based on the self evident truth that all men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. A government instituted to supply the needs of all citizens, rather than to protect the rights of individuals, is a government instituted to the tyrannical control required to supply those needs. Such a government so conceived is not and cannot be trustworthy.