Half of Americans feel directly threatened by government… but it should be far more

Half of Americans view the federal government as a direct threat to their rights and freedoms.

That’s according to a recent Gallup poll which asked respondents whether the federal government poses “an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens.”

The polling agency reports that the number of Americans who view government as a threat (today at 49 percent) has trended gradually upward since 2003, when just 30 percent of Americans felt their rights and freedoms were under government assault.

Americans’ reasons for feeling threatened by politicians and bureaucrats in Washington vary. An open-ended question about the ways in which Americans “see government posing an immediate threat” provides some insight:

• Government’s seemingly ever-expanding size was mentioned the most, with 19 percent of Americans saying that there are too many U.S. laws and agencies.
• Fifteen percent of respondents said they feel threatened by government officials who wantonly violate Americans’ personal freedoms and civil liberties with impunity.
• Increased gun control and political threats to the 2^nd Amendment gave 12 percent of respondents reason to fear government.
• Ten percent of Americans worried about government overreach said that the state is simply too involved in people’s private lives.
• Rounding out the top 5 reasons Americans fear government is some bad news for presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders: 6 percent said they are worried about government taking a turn toward full-blown socialism.

Reports of the National Security Agency’s spying, the IRS’s targeting of conservatives and countless other tales of government’s many unconstitutional and incompetent actions since 2003 certainly justify Americans’ growing distrust. But Gallup reports that there’s also a political component at play.

“The majority of those who today believe government is an immediate threat, and who answer the open-ended question, are either Republicans or independents who lean Republican,” the polling agency reported.

That explains why some of the above-listed reasons for distrust in government trend conservative.

Also, Gallup notes: “Democrats and Republicans … flipped in their probability of holding these views when the administration changed in 2009…”

So it’s probable that half of Americans actually fear the current administration at any given time more than they fear government as a whole.

Still, government’s role in the lives of Americans has been a central matter of debate in the U.S. since the nation’s founding— and the presidency has grown increasingly integral to that debate.

James Madison wrote in the Federalist Papers: “The accumulation of all powers, Legislative, Executive, and Judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”

That half of the nation doesn’t just disagree, but actively fears a presidential administration from the opposing party, is not insignificant.

The power of the presidency has expanded steadily for the past half century, picking up pace during the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama. (Coinciding, unsurprisingly, with Americans’ growing fear that government is a threat.)

With more presidential power on display than ever before, Americans have simultaneously played witness to congressional deterioration, leaving the body too weak-willed and dysfunctional to quell executive overreach. There’s also the problem of a judicial branch which has demonstrated that it’s apolitical only in theory.

Effectively, balance of power is more of a historical ideal today than it is an actual check on government authority. Considering the very important reasons the nation was originally structured around checks and balances, a more studied populace would probably sense government threats to freedom far more than half of the time.

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