At the same time, however, citizens use this belief to attempt to get as much as they can from the "system," exhibiting the same qualities that lead them to distrust the government.
There is also a deeper element to the problem, however, in what can most succinctly be described as the bastardization of the system of government and society envisioned by the revolutionaries like Madison, Washington, Jefferson, and Hamilton (Bellah, 250-6). The notion of democracy has come to be equated with individual freedom and truly rampant individualism, where the ability for each individual in society to protect their own interests is seen as the paramount effect of democracy. The framers of the Constitution and of American government and society as a whole, however, established a republic wherein the individual good was tied to the common good, and this was supposed to remain an explicit and conscious part of society...
Instead, "American culture has long been marked by an acute ambivalence about the meshing of self-reliance and community," and more and more this ambivalence has led to a government that gets less and less actually done -- the argument over individual vs. collective responsibility wages on, with neither side actually providing a manner in which the two can be seen as opposite sides of the same coin as the framers intended (Bellah, 256).
The end result is a government that at least appears to be made up of opportunistic and self-serving individuals who can't even agree on what the ideals of government would be if those ideals were actually put first. It is clear that self-direction and true individual freedom have become the predominant force in what can be termed the "American spirit," and there would be more trust in the government if this were approached in an open and direct manner.
