We hear that we are no longer a united country.  We hear that the American people have lost trust in their government leaders.  This is all true.  But is that a bad thing?

If we had great and benevolent leaders in government, then maybe it would be good to have some trust in them.  If we lived in a free society where virtually everyone recognized the rights of others, then perhaps it would be good to have a united country.

But we don’t have those things.  We will probably never have great and benevolent leaders.  We are lucky to get 1 in 100.  The best we can hope for is that the politicians at least pretend to favor liberty and somewhat reflect the will of the people because the people demand liberty.

Compared to What?

There are some good people out there who say we need to unite the country and that we need to restore trust in our elected officials.  They say this because they want things to get better.  It is understandable.

But given our situation, we should have a loss of trust in our government.  Think about the COVID lockdowns and vaccine mandates.  Think about how often we get lied to when it comes to starting a new war.  After the 9/11 attacks, we had a very united country.  How did that work out?

We shouldn’t trust these people at all.  In fact, you should almost assume the opposite until you can personally verify the truth.

As long as we have government officials who lie, then there should be a lack of trust.  What is the alternative?  There is no alternative of having a steady stream of honest politicians.  The only alternative from what we have now would be to just go ahead and trust the politicians.  In other words, you would have to deceive yourself and believe the liars for the sake of trust and unity.  But that doesn’t seem like a good path forward.

The government has continued to grow, but at least we have people questioning the narratives now.

If you go back 30 or 40 years, you had to mostly rely on 3 or 4 television networks to watch the news.  You relied on the establishment newspapers for the articles that got printed.  Your only choice was to believe them or not believe them.  Most people believed them.  It was very difficult to find narratives that strayed far from the establishment narrative.

Now you can find information everywhere with many differing opinions and takes.  Sure, many people live in their own bubble and only read the sources they choose.  But at least everything is out there for people who are curious.  It is hard to plead ignorance these days.  With some curiosity, you should be able to see many different viewpoints on various issues.

Give Us More Loss of Trust

If we want to regain liberty and shrink the size and scope of government, then we need even more of a loss of trust of our government officials.  It can’t just mean a loss of trust in one party or the other.  It needs to be an across-the-board lack of trust.

This delegitimizes government officials, whether they are elected or not.  The state relies on our consent to survive.  If they lose the consent of a large percentage of the population, then they ultimately lose power.

This is how we move in a direction of greater liberty.  The state relies on propaganda to get the consent of the people.  If the propaganda stops working, they lose support.  This means that we gain liberty over time, regardless of who gets elected to office.