America is like that from foundation! Distrust in the government is in this nation’s DNA! Right now Gov. Abbott is taking a major stand against Biden’s vaccine mandates.
I hear this a lot, but there's no reason why this has to be the case. The government has a lot to say in how much the people trust it. If they make the first move (and probably the second, and third, and fourth) in being trustworthy and trusting people with information, they can change this perception.
It would take decades at minimum, probably longer than our lifetimes, but this doesn't need to be a foregone conclusion.
One of the most frustrating things about this for me, is that this pandemic has highlighted just how important it is that the public have trust and faith in science, doctors, medicine, and in government agencies like the CDC. For far too long we've allowed private companies put their profits over human lives and it's hurt that trust. We have seen scientists taking money from corporations to publish bullshit studies for harmful products, doctors accepting bribes to give dangerous drugs to people who don't need them, regulatory capture weaken regulatory agencies and oversight, and time after time there are no meaningful consequences when it happens. It's hard to blame people for their skepticism. Yet even now I haven't seen a whole lot being done to change any of those issues. Instead it's immunity for the sackler family, dishonesty from the CDC, a doctor makes headlines all around the world for telling patients that their illness is caused by daemon sperm and alien DNA, but still has her medical license, etc.
This is some sort of sarcasm right? Arguing that the abhorrent actions of companies like Nestle, DuPont, Phillip Morris, DeBeers, and Purdue Pharma are anything remotely equal to setting federal safety standards while saying I'm guilty of "ridiculous rhetoric"?
The point of the comment you're replying to isn't that we don't just distrust the government now, it's that distrusting the government was expected of all citizens by the people who founded the country. We have an amendment that basically says "if the government becomes tyrannical, use guns to make them stop." Some people think that we are supposed to distrust them, always.
It's a governance technique meant to curb excesses of the ruling elite, informed by the historical frequency of ill behaved governing bodies and their miscellaneous maltreatment of the governed
What leads you to conclude that defending yourself with up to/including deadly force against an intruder with unknown (but quite reasonably presumed to be criminal) intent is unreasonable?
Breaking into an occupied residence is a quite serious crime and I don't think it's reasonable to require the inhabitants to sit down over tea and find out what the invader's intentions are before mounting a defense.
Don't want to get shot after breaking into someone's house? It seems like there's a pretty straightforward way to avoid exposing yourself to that risk.
Irresponsibility and negligence are certainly sad but not very good reasons why people should be stripped of the ability to defend themself and their loved ones
They are precisely the best of reasons why people should be stripped of such dangerous things. We don't let average people fly airplanes, neither should we let average people shoot firearms.
Right after evil, incompetence is the next worst thing for handling dangerous tools.
Though a bit of a tangent, it's quite reasonable to be able to use force against an intruder in your own house. At least in the US the police have no duty to protect or even respond, and depending on location may be many minutes or even tens of minutes away.
It's quite difficult to glean the (true) intent of an intruder, and the possibilities include burglarly, rape, and murder so it's quite reasonable to protect yourself.
The idea is that power corrupts everyone. Thus the system should be set up that no one person has too much power and the citizens should be constantly suspicious of those that hold power.
That's why I don't think it's possible. The priorities and operation of the government change whenever the administration/majority changes. Having decades of consistency like that just isn't going to happen.
That's a fair point. This isn't something that can really be legislated (at least not effectively), so you need successive administrations to be on the same page with this, which isn't likely.
