Daily Bell: Do you see the elites losing moral authority?
G. Edward Griffin: I definitely think the elites are losing, if they've not already lost, the moral authority with most thinking people. Now, how many are in that category? Let me think about that. People who really understand what's going on in the news I don't think have had much feeling about moral authority of the elites for a long, long time. But I think the great bulk of the people who are turning to government for salvation, for benefits, for leadership and all that sort of thing still have it somehow in the back of their minds that these political and financial leaders are looking out for their best interest, that large group of people, whatever size that group may be. I don't think they are losing moral authority.
I think it's like the situation described 100 years ago by Fredrick Bastiat in his book,
The Law. He said when you have a society where people expect the government to take care of them and to solve all the problems, then when things start go bad people blame the government for it. That doesn't mean the government loses moral authority; it means the people become angry with the government. They say, "This person isn't doing the job right so let's find another person who will" – essentially, let's start switching from one dictator to another. They all want dictators to run their lives for them so they give those people, those dictators, the moral authority to run their lives and they don't object to that but they get mad at them because they're not doing a good job.
For example, you see that in our election this year one candidate from one party is debating the candidate from the other party and they are talking about jobs. They say, "Vote for me and I'll bring jobs back to America," as though the president of the United States has any right or authority or power to create jobs. Who the heck expects the president to create jobs? If people expect the government or the president to do all these things for them and then they fail to do so, they get mad at the president or the dictator but they don't want to change the system. I am trying to make a distinction here between this moral authority, which I think a lot of people still grant to their leaders, and the fact that they become angry with them because their leaders don't give them enough benefits.