This is an excellent article. Thank you.

A couple of things come to mind:

1. "Trust, but verify." It's not just for nuclear arms, but also for any community rebuilding attempts to redistribute wealth and opportunity to the 'lazy'.

2. In a culture of competition, we create a lot of resentments when trying to 'help' people or punish them. Everyone needs a common starting point (patriotism, community, disaster recovery, etc.), but far too many don't get a chance to even know where to look for that starting point. Most of all, they need time, but the busyness robs them of it just trying to eat or stay away from authority that doesn't need to be a threat as much as it is now, due to the resentments mentioned above.

"A society based on competition leads to fewer and fewer winners and more and more losers." -Wendell Berry

As you point out, there will always be problems and problem people, but we don't have to encourage them with things like fanatical competition over competing fanaticisms.

In general, we get the wolves we feed. Right now, we are getting drug and sugar-addicted, angry and sick wolves who resent facts, are suspicious of kindness and are sold the very latest technologies to sharpen their claws and teeth.