Sure. When you look at polling, most people believe the government should be doing "dirty" things like starting wars, spying on its own people or playing espion

Sure. When you look at polling, most people believe the government should be doing "dirty" things like starting wars, spying on its own people or playing espionage/sabotage in foreign countries to protect the national interest and security. I.e.: whatever it takes to keep them, their jobs and their future safe and secure. This sentiment tends to transcend the rule of law itself in my opinion. Look at the snowden leaks for example, a lot of surface level stuff has changed but the NSA is back at it and is exponentially worse because now they know very well what they can get away with. I have had several conversations about this with people old and young who believed NSA spying on them or the whole "my FBI guy watching me" meme is totally fine because they are scared of ISIS or China or just "bad guys" in general. Even those who don't like it usually tend to think it is unavoidable. What I meant about college educated and urban, I guess I didn't want to say liberal because conservatives who distrust the government feel the same way too. But college education seems to be what drives the sentiment as well as living in an urban environment where seeing all kinds of people forces you to be less fearful of them and more fearful of a powerful government that can monitor and control what you do more easily due to how infrasrructure works in cities. Put it differently, there is a reason police reform for example is hard outside of cities and cities with a lot of college educated people. People who look the other way when cops get dirty are plenty so long as they believe their "group" isn't the target/victim.