DAVID OCLANDER

Trust is the invisible glue that holds free societies together. It cannot be legislated, engineered, or bought. It grows — or withers — in the daily habits of how people live, work, worship, and govern themselves.

History offers us both a warning and a way forward.

The rise of trust

From Athens to Rome, trust extended cooperation beyond family and tribe. Athens taught citizens the habits of self-government. Rome scaled civic virtue through law and institutions.

Later, Hobbes warned that without authority, life would descend into a “war of all against all.” Locke shifted focus to natural rights — life, liberty, property — that governments must secure. Rousseau described how free people could bind themselves into a community through shared agreement. Together, these ideas

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