Politicians Not Worthy of Trust

All ruling classes always maintain that what they are doing is for the common good.  They lie.  I recently posted a series of posts here, here and here to illustrate how rapidly our assumptions about the benevolence of government have crumbled. 

It really does matter who is in charge of the awesome power the government has, and the Obama administration has demonstrated what happens when bad people rule.  Washington has not just become the capital of Hunger Games, but the seat of corruption so vast that people are finally beginning to rebel.

Glenn Reynolds was one of the first to sound the alarm.  Obama's power grab

The NSA spying scandal goes deep, and the Obama administration's only upside is that the furor over its poking into Americans' private business on a wholesale basis will distract people from the furor over the use of the IRS and other federal agencies to target political enemies -- and even donors to Republican causes -- and the furor over the Benghazi screwup and subsequent lies (scapegoated filmmaker Nakoula is still in jail), the furor over the "Fast And Furious" gunrunning scandal that left literally scores of Mexicans dead, the scandal over the DOJ's poking into phone records of journalists (and their parents), HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius' shakedown of companies she regulates for "donations" to pay for ObamaCare implementation that Congress has refused to fund, the Pigford scandal where the Treasury Department's "Judgment Fund" appears to have been raided for political purposes -- well, it's getting to where you need a scorecard to keep up.

But, in fact, there's a common theme in all of these scandals: Abuse of power. And, what's more, that abuse-of-power theme is what makes the NSA snooping story bigger than it otherwise would be. It all comes down to trust.

The justification for giving the government a lot of snooping power hangs on two key arguments: That snooping will make us safer and that the snooping power won't be abused.

It didn't stop the Boston bombings, Major Nassan or Benghazi, although all of these event were preceded by the use of electronic communication.

Most Americans generally think that politicians are untrustworthy. So why trust them with so much power? The evidence to date strongly suggests that they aren't worthy of it.

I agree.