I believe that Americans should be deeply skeptical of government power. You cannot trust people in power. The founders knew that. That's why they divided power among three branches, to set interest against interest.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Most Americans aren't the sort of citizens the Founding Fathers expected; they are contented serfs. Far from being active critics of government, they assume that its might makes it right.
The strongest continuous thread in America's political tradition is skepticism about government.
The founding leaders of our country believed in a three-part sharing of governmental power, with each branch jealously watching the actions of the other two.
Between 1776 and 1789, Americans replaced a government over them with a government under them. They have worried ever since about keeping it under. Distrust of its powers has been more common and more visible than distrust of the imperial authority of England ever was before the Revolution.
People don't seem to understand that the separation of powers is not about the power of these branches; it's there to protect individual liberty - it's there to protect us from the concentration of power.
The American people want to have trust in their leaders.
The founders had a strong distrust for centralized power in a federal government. So they created a government with checks and balances. This was to prevent any branch of the government from becoming too powerful.
I don't trust politicians. I think that by the time they've made it, with the concessions they've had to make in that position, I don't believe they still have the beliefs they had at the root.
Too many people in Washington care about power institutions, not caring about changing the lives of everyday Americans.
For all the huffing and blowing we get about rugged individualism, the American spirit and the American experiment always have had at their heart the notion that the government is all of us and that, therefore, the government may keep things in trust for all of us.