This last weekend the Sunday shows had a “trust in government” theme. Chuck Todd on "Meet the Press" asked Obama advisor Dan Pfeiffer why the government of the email-losing IRS, of no strategy on ISIS, of border mayhem could be trusted on Ebola.

On Fox News Sunday Chris Wallace threw a slow hanging pitch to George Will so he could hit it out of the ball park. Said Wallace:

[W]ith growing concerns over Ebola, the Secret Service and the VA and IRS scandals, can we trust the federal government to do its job?

Will replied that we have “much more to fear from excessive faith in government than from too little faith in government.”  He got right to the point.

The distilled essence of progressivism is that government is a benign -- that is disinterested force, that's false. And, (b), it is stocked with experts who are really gifted at doing things. 

That got me to thinking. I mean, who in the world would be dumb enough to have faith in government? It's not as if people have been faithfully believing in government down the ages. Charles Dickens let them have it in Little Dorrit with the government's Circumlocution Office, staffed with Barnacles and Stiltstockings and operating under the motto: How Not to Do It.

The answer is obvious, and Charles Dickens nailed it 150 years ago. The only people that have faith in government are the Barnacles and the Stiltstockings.

The Barnacles are the folks that have fixed themselves on the government teat. Whether they are lifer bureaucrats counting the days till they can retire on that government pension or single mothers on welfare or crony capitalists sucking up green subsidies, they have to believe in government. Otherwise they'd have to get a life. Then there's the liberal professor at a government university, or the diversity dean, or the trainers teaching men not to rape. Of course they all believe in government. They are Barnacles; they have to fix themselves to a host. Wikipedia tells it like it is:

Barnacles are encrusters, attaching themselves permanently to a hard substrate. The most common, "acorn barnacles" (Sessilia), are sessile, growing their shells directly onto the substrate. The order Pedunculata ("goose barnacles" and others) attach themselves by means of a stalk.

When you're a Barnacle, you have no choice. You must believe in your substrate, government.

Then there are the Stiltstockings. Now, I don't know whether there have ever been special stockings manufactured for the convenience of circus performers on stilts. Probably not. But we know who human Stiltstockings are. George Will does too. They are the folks dreaming up all the stupid stuff so they can strut around on stilts.

It's fine-tuning the curriculum of our students K through 12. It's monitoring sex on campuses. It's deciding how much ethanol we should put in our gas tanks. It has designed our light bulbs and it's worried sick over the name of the Washington football team.

You know who the Stiltstockings are. Al Gore is a Stiltstocking. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a Stiltstocking. Environmentalists are Stiltstockings. Michael E. Mann is a Stiltstocking. But Harry Reid (D-NV) is not a Stiltstocking. Oh no. He's something else.

Every day in every way the liberal shills out on the midway invite Americans to become Barnacles and attach themselves to the free-stuff substrate. Every day in every way, in schools, universities, in TV and movies, liberals indoctrinate young skulls full of mush into believing that they walk on stilts, and should consider themselves rather above the ordinary run of racists, sexists, bigots and homophobes.

But liberals are liars and, worst of all, they are lying to themselves. Governments are not there to be trusted. They are simply armed insurgents occupying territory by force and taxing the inhabitants so they can reward their supporters. Governments naturally, by instinct, defend their territory against invaders and against domestic troublemakers. Some governments allow the rule of law to flourish, recognizing that settled law enables their subjects to create wealth that increases government revenue and increases government power. But mostly governments just like ordering people around while they totter around on their silly stilts. Because all power corrupts.

You would think that the authors of The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, would have classified “trust in government” as a mental disorder.

But why would they? The whole point of the modern social sciences are to help government understand people so as to control them. America's psychology professionals are Barnacles and Stiltstockings. They trust government – to provide them a living and give their lives meaning.

But the rest of us know where sanity lies. It lies outside of the temples of the state and the worship of government.

Because government is the name for things the ruling class does by force.

Christopher Chantrill @chrischantrill runs the go-to site on US government finances, usgovernmentspending.com. Also see his American Manifesto and get his Road to the Middle Class.