Thoughts

In September of 2014, when Gallup asked a sample of Americans whether they trust the federal government to handle international and domestic problems, the number of people who marked "None at all" was at its highest point since May of 1972. Respondents even showed a decreasing tendency to trust themselves.* Such distrust goes back to this country's inception. Richard Hofstadter has shown that the Founders distrusted both a government too democratic and one too authoritarian. He perhaps best summarizes this sentiment with a quote from a clergyman named Jeremy Belknap: "Let it stand as a principal that government originates from the people; but let the people be taught...that they are not able to govern themselves."** Yet, many of us look to those in authority for security, and as examples of moral integrity. There is, I suppose, a danger in both too much skepticism and too little. For one who tends to trust easily, one danger--the least of them-- lies in a sti...

Using a favorite British accent, I led my social studies class on a pilgrimage yesterday around our school. At each stop, we talked to a pilgrim (actually, each was a music stand with different paper pilgrims taped to them), who told us about Thomas Becket, killed by four knights after angering Henry II. Among these pilgrims was a miller, whom we found assaulted by highway bandits. In fact, curious unaffiliated students began to walk away with the music stand displaying the miller as my class and I walked toward it. Alarmed, a student yelled that these boys were thieving the pilgrim, and so without preparation, my class and I gave chase. With a battle cry, all twenty-nine of us ran full speed toward these three lads, until the boys gently placed the pilgrim down and walked away. Alas, the miller did not escape unscathed. Slightly crumpled and missing a small section of his paper, he had--in our minds--lost a leg, and we vowed to avenge him. We would, in addition, not abandon the ma...