9/11 Debacle Spurs Blind Trust in Government

[Jim Bovard]

Matt:
Thought you might get a laugh out of the following piece.
FreeMatt's Alerts have been probably the finest source of news & 
ideas I have seen since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. You have been 
putting out great stuff!

take it easy,
Jim

Investor's Business Daily
October 2, 2001

Government Trust Grows Despite Its Inability to Protect

by JAMES BOVARD

Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, Americans' trust in government is
soaring after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The number of people who
trust the government to do the right thing has doubled since last year, and now
is more than three times higher than in 1994. According to a 
Washington Post poll
released on Sept. 27, 64% of Americans now "trust the government in Washington
to do what is right" either "just about always" or "most of the time."

Ronald Brownstein, a Los Angeles Times columnist, declared on Sept. 19: "At
the moment the first fireball seared the crystalline Manhattan sky last
week, the entire impulse to distrust government that has become so central
to U.S. politics seemed instantly anachronistic." Brownstein's headline - "The
Government, Once Scorned, Becomes Savior" - captured much of the
establishment media's response to the attacks.

It is puzzling that trust in government would soar after the biggest
intelligence/law enforcement failure since the surprise attack on Pearl
Harbor. At least in the first weeks after the attack, the federal
government's prestige appears higher than at any time since the start of
the  Vietnam War.

The Post poll also revealed that the disastrous attacks of Sept. 11 greatly
increased Americans' confidence that government will protect them against
terrorists.  From 1995 through 1997, the results consistently showed 
that only between
35% and 37% of Americans had "a great deal" or "a good amount" of  confidence
that the feds would deter domestic attacks by terrorists. In hindsight, the
public was far more prescient than were the Washington policy-makers who
chose not to make defending against such attacks a high priority.
In the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, confidence in government's
ability to deter terrorist attacks has soared - clocking in at 66%, 
almost double
the percentage in the most recent previous Washington Post poll on this
question in June 1997.

The bigger the catastrophe, the more credulous many people seem to become.
The worse government failed to protect people in the past, the more certain
most people become that government will protect them in the future.

Prominent liberals are capitalizing on the new mood to call for razing the
restraints on government power. Wall Street Journal columnist Al Hunt says
it's "time to declare a moratorium on government-bashing.... For the 
foreseeable future,
the federal government is going to invest or spend more, regulate 
more and exercise more
control over our lives," he rejoices.

"There is no real debate over expansion (of government power) in general."
Washington Post columnist Jim Hoagland snipped, "Ideologues on the right
saw government as an evil to be rolled back." In a breathtaking leap of logic,
he reasons: "The terror assaults on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon
... should profoundly shake the less-is-more philosophy that was the
driving force for the tax-cut politics of Bush and conservative Republicans."

But there is no evidence that Osama bin Laden targeted the U.S. because of
ire over George Bush's proposal to reduce the estate tax. Hoagland's effort
is reminiscent of liberal efforts after the assassination of John F.
Kennedy to paint right-wingers everywhere as unindicted co-conspirators in
Kennedy's killing.

It is difficult to understand how the failures of the CIA, the FBI, and the
Federal Aviation Administration could generate a blank check for all other
federal agencies to exert more control over 270 million Americans. The
success of the disastrous attacks of Sept. 11 were due far more to gross
negligence and a shortage of competence than to a shortage of power.
The federal government needs sufficient power to protect Americans against
terrorist attacks and to harshly punish the perpetrators of the 
recent attacks. But
such power shouldn't place a golden crown on the head of every would-be
bureaucratic dictator, from the lowest village zoning enforcer to the most
deluded federal agency chieftain.

The blind glorification of government, now popular, puts almost all
liberties at grave risk. At least for the time being, people have lost any
interest in government's batting average - either for actually protecting
citizens or for abusing power. The best hope for the survival and defense
of liberty is that enough Americans will recall the type of history lessons
that public schools never teach.

At this time of national crisis, we must forget neither our political
heritage nor the inherent limits of any governmental machinery.
Government has a vital role in defending Americans from deadly foreign
threats. But nothing that happened on Sept. 11 or since changed the
fundamental nature of American government.

James Bovard is the author of "Feeling Your Pain: The Explosion & Abuse of
Government Power in the Clinton-Gore Years"(St. Martin's Press, 2000) and a
policy advisor to the Future of Freedom Foundation.

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