"Trust in government is exactly NOT what this country was founded on."

What's the matter with you Americans?

More years ago than I'll admit, I was a student in a class of the man who became my mentor, Tom Willett. The course was in economics and public policy, and the early part of the syllabus had us read on the nature of arguing about economics. One line that stuck out to me like nothing else was this: Saying "if you knew what I know you'd agree with me" is poor argumentation. I may know what you know, my professor argued, and yet find a flaw in your logic or add another piece of evidence that leads me to a different conclusion.

The notion that we know enough to know what is in someone else's best interest is evidence of this fallacy, and I have found over the succeeding decades there are many academics that fall into it. Applied in the political sphere, it takes the form of "why does the public not understand what we are trying to do?" We heard it in President Obama's State of the Union address last week in his claim that his failure on health care was "not explaining it more clearly to the American people."