Saturday, April 18, 2009

A bit behind the times

"The reality is that the public is fast losing confidence in the entire political system," says The Daily Telegraph leader. "The danger is that public cynicism will become endemic, corroding faith in our institutions at a time when we need to recover trust in them."

Noooo … the reality is that the public already lost confidence in the entire political system - the cynicism is endemic, and justified. And one of the reasons is in the second sentence. There, the piece suggests that we need to recover trust in our institutions. The boot should be on the other foot. Our institutions need to recover our trust in them.

We do not owe them our trust. They owe it to us to be trustworthy.

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