Set in 1957 in the fictional coastal Maine town of Rockwell, director Brad Bird’s 1999 animated film “The Iron Giant” serves as an allegory for what can happen when paranoid governmental officials act on the assumption that every human’s moral compass invariably points downward.

In the film, a suit-clad federal agent named Kent Mansley — without evidence or provocation and motivated by threats that exist only inside his xenophobic, closed mind — pushes civilization to the brink of nuclear annihilation because he presumes that something he can’t understand (the Iron Giant) poses a threat to the United States. His default reaction is to assume that everyone and everything is an enemy until proved otherwise.

Using a non-human protagonist, the film poignantly unmasks the dehumanizing folly of Cold War isolation, militarism and intentionally exclusionary policy-making.

At its most basic level, “The Iron Giant” demonstrates that when government passes laws based on expecting the worst of humankind, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and diminishes society as a whole.

Based on Gov. Paul LePage’s obsession with eliminating welfare “fraud” and Republican legislators’ stated justifications for attempting to “reform” workers compensation, workplace safeguards and other safety net programs while making it more difficult to vote, Maine seems poised to plunge down that societal slope.

Despite lacking empirical data to demonstrate the existence of more than incidental abuse of unemployment benefits, public assistance and government-funded health care, LePage and Republican legislators shepherded through punitive revisions that will, in practice, protect the haves’ assets from the have-nots’ aspirations for a better life. A referendum and public pressure prevented similar erosion of voting rights.

Those changes, which erect obstacles for Mainers seeking to improve their circumstances, presume that cheating represents the preferred — perhaps only — path to betterment. They appear to be predicated on a deeply pessimistic view of Mainers’ moral and ethical foundations, despite ample testament to our strong character from inside and outside the state.

Where does such a distrustful thought process originate? Is it a deep-seated distrust of others? Is it a hoarding mechanism?

Does it reflect how those who advocate for a more suspicious government would react if they found themselves in need of aid?

Lowering expectations also lowers standards.

There will always be scoundrels who abuse the system and the honest people whose labors support it. But if we treat them as the norm, they will become the norm.

If we expect people to behave badly, they will. It becomes a defense mechanism, like in “The Iron Giant.”

State government can’t be naive, but it also can’t become so defensive that it strips trust, empathy, fairness and compassion from the list of attributes that have become known as Maine values.

In Maine, expecting our neighbors to be good citizens — not cheats — is the way life should be.

letters@timesrecord.com