{"id":28336,"date":"2016-05-24T14:26:02","date_gmt":"2016-05-24T18:26:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=28336"},"modified":"2016-05-24T14:26:02","modified_gmt":"2016-05-24T18:26:02","slug":"where-are-we-going-as-a-country","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=28336","title":{"rendered":"Where Are We Going As A Country?"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Sunday, Glenn Reynolds<\/a> posted an article in USA Today<\/a> entitled, “When leaders cheat, followers…follow.” That is not good news considering the current state of affairs in America.<\/p>\n

The article reminds us:<\/p>\n

I wonder more when I read things like this<\/a>\u00a0report from the Washington Examiner<\/a><\/em>:\u00a0\u201cThe CIA’s<\/a> inspector general is claiming it inadvertently destroyed its only copy of a classified, three-volume Senate report on torture, prompting a leading senator to ask for reassurance that it was in fact \u2018an accident.\u2019\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a hint:\u00a0It very likely wasn\u2019t.<\/strong><\/p>\n

…Then there\u2019s Hillary\u2019s email scandal<\/a>,\u00a0in which emails kept on a private unsecure server \u2014 presumably to avoid Freedom of Information Act<\/a> disclosures \u2014 were deleted<\/a>. Now emails from Hillary\u2019s IT guy, who is believed to have set up the server, have gone poof<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cDestroy the evidence, and you\u2019ve got it made,\u201d said an old frozen dinner commercial<\/a>.\u00a0But now that appears to be the motto of the United States government.<\/strong><\/p>\n

So this leads to the question:<\/p>\n

So why do the rest of us bother to obey the law? And, yes, that\u2019s an increasingly serious question.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The article describes America as currently a high-trust society. Glenn Reynolds defines that as a place where people extend trust to strangers\u00a0and follow rules for the most part even when nobody is watching. He defines a low-trust society as a place where trust seldom extends beyond close family, and everybody cheats if they can get away with it.<\/p>\n

The article concludes:<\/p>\n

High-trust societies<\/a> are much nicer places to live than low-trust ones. But a fish rots from the head\u00a0and the head of our society is looking pretty\u00a0rotten. As Lira (Gonzalo Lira<\/a>, an American novelist and filmmaker) says, \u201cI\u2019m like Wayne Gretsky: I don\u2019t concern myself with where the puck has been \u2014 I look for where the puck is going to be.\u201d Where will our society be in a decade\u00a0if these trends continue? And what can we do to ensure that they don\u2019t?<\/strong><\/p>\n

If the coming Presidential election is won by a Republican, will the IRS<\/a> scandal, Fast and Furious<\/a>, the email scandal, the Clinton Foundation<\/a>, etc. be investigated? I don’t know, but an honest investigation might restore some of the trust in our government.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Sunday, Glenn Reynolds posted an article in USA Today entitled, “When leaders cheat, followers…follow.” That is not good news considering the current state of affairs in America. The article reminds us: I wonder more when I read things like … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[6325,270,10001,2720],"class_list":["post-28336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-clinton-foundation","tag-fast-and-furious","tag-gonzalo-lira","tag-the-washington-examiner"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28336"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28336\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28337,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28336\/revisions\/28337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}