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William Galston dissects our uniquely American relationship with government:

As schoolchildren, most Americans encounter the ancient maxim, “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty”. Within limits, it is. But taken too far, the spirit of vigilance yields what the late historian Richard Hofstadter termed the “paranoid style in American politics”. Most political observers dismissed last summer’s raucous town meetings and “Tea Party” demonstrations as an angry fringe phenomenon. That cannot be said today. In a CNN survey released two weeks ago, 56 per cent endorsed the proposition: “The federal government has become so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens”. This is deeply troubling. Moderate anti-statism helps preserve liberty. But extreme anti-statism undermines democratic self-government.

I appreciate Galston putting a pin on the map marking the decline of institutional trust. But where Vietnam, Watergate and the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal created legitimate concerns about government power and interest, it seems more likely that we’ve fallen into a sort of political self-fulfilling prophecy. There is an entire political movement and for-profit media enterprise built around the idea that government, as an institution, is not to be trusted. But instead of being rooted in legitimate disappointments from scandal, crumbling infrastructure, failing educational standards, war or a public displays of failure, today’s distrust seems to be firmly planted in fear-mongering and special interest favors. I simply can’t understand the logic of assuming a human institution like a corporation will be more benevolent than the human institution of government. It’s hard not to feel like any failure of government is anything more than our own failure of imagination and resolve.