Trust

Trust me. We've all heard those words. We all have someone we trust, unconditionally. If they say they will do something, you can absolutely count on it. We've all had our trust taken for granted as well. Someone that we thought trustworthy let us down at a most inopportune time. It hurts. It is not so hard to build up trust, but it is extremely difficult to rebuild trust once broken. It's like bailing water out of a leaking boat using a bucket filled with holes. The only way to repair trust is to be trustworthy once again. Generally speaking, there is no way to rebuild it if it is broken a second time. The old adage, "fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me" comes to mind. 

What is trust? It has been defined as the assured reliance on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone or something;Confident expectation of something.

The question has been asked, repeatedly, do you trust the government. It was first asked, at least in a scientific poll back in November, 1958, during Eisenhower's second term as President. At that point, it was about 73% positive trust. It is currently(and I think optimistically) at 26% positive trust. What happened? With little exception, one being the Reagan era, the other being the post 9-11 patriotic surge in general sentiment, the rate of trust has hovered right around 30%. This graph appears in a Pew Research study on the subject[1]

What happened is that we have been inundated with so-called leaders that have shown themselves time and again to be untrustworthy. Moral character has not been a prevalent trait in our leaders for a long time. We have had scandal after scandal, abuse of power piled on top of itself, self-serving, liberty stealing individuals have dominated the national stage, and as such, public trust has plummeted. Is this a surprise? It shouldn't be. The government is not working that "fool me once/twice" game on us anymore, they are working the "fool me as many times as you can and dare me to do anything about it" game, and they have it down to a science.

Our founding fathers knew that our government's ability to defend and protect our liberty was dependent upon men of character being trusted with the task. They said so often. They knew, as wise men before them knew, that power corrupts. They argued about it, they debated the solutions and they wrote mechanisms into our constitution to battle such corruption. The problem we face, however, is that the corrupt have corrupted the process and found ways to ignore and supersede the protections. 

Alexander Hamilton, in January of 1790, said: 

States, like individuals, who observe their engagements, are respected and trusted: while the reverse is the fate of those who pursue an opposite conduct.

Fifteen years earlier, Samuel Adams said:

Nothing is more essential to the establishment of manners in a State than that all persons employed in places of power and trust be men of unexceptionable characters. The public cannot be too curious concerning the character of public men.

Notice who he charged with keeping an eye on these scoundrels? You and I. We are responsible. While 26% of us seem to think they are trustworthy, despite mountains of evidence to the contrary, 74% of us believe otherwise. It would be interesting to know the motivations behind those feelings of distrust. I suspect some of us "just feel" it. We need to be vigilant and stay on top of what is going on in Washington to the best of our abilities. We need to know how they have broken our trust. We need to share those reasons with others. We need to be careful though, we need research our facts so that when we are confronted, we can be sure about what we are saying. The danger of doing otherwise, is that we, ourselves, can become untrustworthy. For the sake of liberty, we need to be trustworthy. 

There is a reason for the motto, "In God We Trust". He is the only one worthy...