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Trusting Your Own Government (or Not)
John Harvey * American Thinker
Earlier this month, Geraldo Rivera asked a caller: “How could you not trust your own government?”
Putting aside big and little episodes of untrustworthy government in the history of this country like the Trail of Tears, the internment of Americans of Japanese descent, Kent State, Waco, Fast and Furious, and the Benghazi Coverup, Rivera implies the burden of proof lies with the skeptical citizen when it comes to trust. But his question only diverts our attention. The issue isn’t the relative peace in the body politic at this instant. The question Geraldo asks really goes to the heart of the very nature of our government.
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History is full of governments that ran sufficiently amok that they become a mortal danger to their own citizens. Such governments did not last. Indeed, the last century was so full of episodes of different governments murdering their own citizens by deliberate official policy that it spawned a new word: democide.
Many in the media and academia who largely reject American Exceptionalism want us to believe instead that our government is exceptional in light of the history of governments. In how easily they dismiss the Second Amendment as being obsolete, they are telling us that there are no circumstances whatsoever in which some future American government would ever turn feral. They are willing to stake the lives of their children and grandchildren on that assertion.
Certainly people want a trustworthy and competent government. But it concerns me that more than one member of the president’s inner circle has publicly praised China’s Mao, a man responsible for the brutal deaths of over 40 million Chinese citizens. I am shocked that a close advisor to the president has favorably quoted Mao’s warning that [political] power comes from the barrel of a gun. It is chilling to see a Mao-themed ornament on a White House Christmas tree, or the number of supporters of this administration who also voice approval of the murderous Che Guevara. It is incongruous that a man who was a leader of a group of radical socialists who contemplated murdering 25 million Americans should they reject postrevolutionary ideological reeducation is now a frequent visitor to the White House.
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/01/trusting_your_own_government_–_or_not.html#ixzz2JaH3K4MO
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