News Gloss

Citizen rule #1: never trust your government

I remember when Guantanamo prison was first in the news after 9/11, and I told some friends that secret prisons make no sense, under any circumstances. They said something like "but what if they are really bad people?" My response: "do you trust your government to determine that?" We all want to relax, live our lives and trust that those with power are "doing the right thing". Unfortunately, it's just never true. If you think of it positively, the government always needs help just to know what the right thing is. Because it's too hard to know it, from the abstract heights of power. The system doesn't just need small optimizations -- different levels of government in the US create deadly hardship for people, here and abroad, every minute of the day. Although it's tempting to simply eliminate the insanity of modern government, and start fresh, we will still always need some form of higher-level cooperation -- even the Spanish Anarchists developed syndicalism. So, Citizen Rule #2: always help your government to do the best job it possibly can, and modify its structure as necessary.

posted by Greg Bryant @ 11:05 AM