Trust is the currency of civilization. Without it you can’t leave the house. For that matter, unless you trust your housemates, you don’t leave your bedroom. It is the basis of all communal living.
To ride a bus or a taxi, you must trust that the driver is skilled, and the vehicle is safe. To eat restaurant food, you must trust that the kids flipping burgers won’t spit on the grill or give you Botulism. To send your kids to school, you must trust that the school will not fill their minds with lies or undermine your parenting. To take medicine, you must trust that the drug is effective and safe and that your doctor abides by the Hippocratic Oath. Absent such trust, industries close, parents keep their children home, doctors are ignored.
Such trust cannot come from coercion. It comes from culture. It comes from each person’s commitment to do the right thing even when no one is watching. Cultures die when self-restraint is lost. Citizens conditioned to do whatever they can get away with make for a toxic environment. Absent self-restraint, there are not enough policemen in the universe to keep the peace.
Our generation is the beneficiary of parents and grandparents who made such unsupervised virtue a widespread habit. The more widespread the habit, the more freedoms we enjoyed. Conversely, when self-restraint is lost so, also, is freedom. For this reason, trust is truly a currency. It has real value—monetary value.
Every unseen, virtuous act over America’s history has been a deposit in the bank of civilization. Together, our forebears built a great deposit of public trust. The monetary value of the United States of America is not measured only in natural resources, workforce, or technological knowhow. It is measured primarily in the public trust built over decades.
There is a reason why international businesses prefer to write contracts in English and file them in New York rather than Beijing. It’s not because Central Park is a lovely place. It is because people the world over trust American courts to administer equal justice under the law. If that virtue is lost, America loses her national treasure.
For this reason, every private act of self-indulgence and every secret vice squanders the public trust that has been accumulated over decades. And what is true of private vices is equally true of public crimes. Any breach of law that is ignored, any law that is unequally investigated, prosecuted, or punished is massively destructive of civilization.
Public servants from school board members to the president are constantly tempted by Nietsche’s “will to power.” The acquisition of raw power to get one’s way despite any law, any principle, or the ongoing consent of the governed has become the philosophy of too many godless elites.
Daily we are treated to revelations of corruption at the highest levels of government, media, and corporate America. Government agents have forged documents and lied to congress without consequences. News organizations have wantonly lied without retraction. Social media giants have passed off political hacks as “fact-checkers.”
All of this is squandering the public trust. Public trust in institutions, from congress and the FBI to corporate news and corporate board rooms, is at an all-time low. It is enough to cause people of good will to throw in the towel and adopt the unprincipled ethics of the worst public actors.
That would be a mistake. For Solomon says, “Every one that is proud in heart is an abomination to the LORD: though hand join in hand, he shall not be unpunished… It is an abomination to kings to commit wickedness: for the throne is established by righteousness” (Proverbs 16:5, 12, KJV).
It is a time to reinvest in the currency that built our nation--one deposit at a time. You are not powerless in the face of overwhelming evil and corruption. Rather, each act of personal integrity is infinitely powerful. Evil is defeated when you do the right thing while nobody’s watching. Dragons are slain when you stand for truth rather than for self-preservation.
Such actions will not only restore the trust of your family and neighbors, they will also make you intolerant of people who flagrantly drain the public trust. No matter whether they are hiding behind a label of red or blue, black or white, you will demand the same integrity from people in positions of public trust that you demand from yourself.
As you treat others fairly, you will demand equal treatment under law from your government. As you refuse to tell a lie, you will also refuse to accept lies from propagandists. Acting together, Americans of every stripe and every persuasion can restore our lost public trust. We can, and we must.
"Squandered public trust can be restored"
ReplyDeleteGiven time, assuming parousia doesn't come for another eon or so.