Do you trust the government?

If your answer is negative, then another question is warranted. If you don't trust the government, why are some of you continuing to support candidates and programs which give more power, more influence and more intrusion into our lives from that government?

If your answer is positive, the obvious question then becomes, "Why?"

Of course, some of you are much more nuanced, and will state, "It depends on which government and which governmental program."

In some cases this becomes not only problematic, but also logically confusing.

For example, there are many who did not trust President George W. Bush to run a war. There are others who didn't trust Dick Cheney to maintain constitutional rights. For some of these people, the solution apparently was not to curb the power of government, instead they wanted to put their own people into the place of Bush and Cheney and then give them even more power.

This reminds me of a cynical comment about government that states that patriotism is the preference of being abused by one's own kind instead of by strangers.

My own reaction is more consistent. I advocate not trusting any government. We should not trust governmental pronouncements, the statements of governmental administrators or their stated purposes and motives.

We should not trust governments to honor their own laws or to execute any governmental program.

The larger the government and the further it is from the average citizen, the less it should be trusted.

This reaction is based on experience. I grew up in northern Nevada where the majority of land is controlled by the federal government and where there are not enough people to influence a national election.

The European colonists treated the people of Africa with as much respect and consideration as the feds showed the citizens of northern Nevada.

This August, the federal government released its budget numbers announcing a deficit that will lead to the destruction of our currency and impoverishment of our children. Most of the numbers were fantasy, grossly underestimating actual spending. The reactions of our imperial leaders: They proposed more spending.

Decades ago, the feds looked at the future of Social Security. They admitted it was going broke. Their solution: increase the tax rate to build a surplus. What did they then do with the surplus? They spent it each year, pretending to reduce the deficit.

The government told the people of America three massive lies. First, Social Security was an unbreakable covenant with the American people. In fact, Congress can change any part of it anytime it wishes.

Second, it maintained that it could raise a surplus to offset deficits in the future. This was an outright lie both in practice and in theory.

Third, they used the second lie about Social Security to lie about the magnitude of deficit spending.

Even on a personal level, if you live in New Orleans or Cedar Rapids, do you trust the government to save you in an emergency? Do we trust the federal government to defend us against outside threats? Do we trust the state and local governments to save us from vandalism, robberies and even murder?

The nuanced people are correct about one thing. It is true that we can trust the government to raise fees, regulations and property and income taxes.

We can also trust our governments to provide second-rate services, to increase their power at every opportunity and to hold the average citizen in contempt.

Are governments necessary? Yes, they are, but they are like fire.

Controlled and restricted, fire can be a valuable servant and asset. It can cook our food and warm our houses. Uncontrolled, it destroys everything in its path.

We are rapidly approaching a governmental conflagration. Some seem to believe deliverance will only come from adding more gasoline to the fire. They couldn't be more wrong.