What Is The True Interest Of Government?

The plowing forth of the path of liberty is not unto new ground, 

but upon a soil that does not tire or deplete;

the tilling of its understanding and then its defense generating its vitality once more—

Trodden first in the reading of the Declaration of Independence, 

closely thereafter in the recognition of the altruist selfless servants of liberty,

and finally, in the present, 

with our relentless defense of the same.

What is the true interest of our American republic as a constitutional representative government; that ordered array of elected and chosen of the people to care and protect the people as a nation of laws, according to its fundamental laws, and the laws created from these? How shall we order the interpretation of laws, guarding against self-interest, and the sleights that have characterized the few, or the majority to accumulate an imbalance of power, thus shifting the equilibrium of American government from serving all, to serving some? Who is responsible for rendering and enforcing the selfless distillation of equal justice? Unto whom is the duty to assure such a process maintains purity or the endeavoring to always approximate such exactitude of unvarnished justice?

In his youth, Frederick Douglass, as a slave, was purposefully bereft of an education, that in such condition, the ability to control his humanity and labor, would be easiest. That singular truth would bare the greatest epiphany for him as he struggled at first fitfully, and later eloquently, reverse engineering his understanding of that premise echoed from the lips of one of his slave owners against the slave owners wife, who had taken to instructing young Frederick in reading and writing. Coupled with his partial newfound liberty of being allowed to walk alone in the streets of Baltimore, and having heard here and there of the words ‘liberty,’ ‘abolition,’  and ‘slavery’ being used in junction with one another, Frederick brought together his separated grasps of intellect to understand that education was the path to the opportunity to possibly self-determine his life and bring a greater sense of courage, freedom, and dignity to his life.  In his first autobiography, he recounts that he wondered at their meaning, initially trying to push the outer reaches of his mind to comprehend, for as yet he could not simply enter a library, purchase a book, or partake in open discussion on the matters of interest to him, for he was a slave without human rights. Still, an innate, uninformed awareness grew within him; he, recognizing a yearning and onset of a wherewithal for the right to natural self-determination. 

Did the process itself of laying claim to the natural law of humanity and the promise of the ordered liberty found in the American Constitution signal hope for Frederick Douglass?  To stand still would have been as fire in his bones, and a dimming of his soul, though as of yet he had no words to describe such ideas or grasp such understandings. How could he? As has been said, reading and writing where purposefully kept from the ‘negro slave,’ that they may not encounter insights of their enslaved condition, nor a mind to ask, ponder, and rectify the course of their life. Knowledge and the application of knowledge, being a dormant and then active application of the shaping and refining of intellect; a power of the individual unto self-determination, was understood as the one thing that had to be kept from a slave, less they approach and understand that the American foundation of natural law was human right: that the human being aware of their individual human rights, be kept ignorant and distracted from laying claim upon these, and therein bring a defense of the same, --— was key to the slave owner’s design in maintaining the slave in an oppressed mode of servitude.

Is it not so that such a ‘process of searching, laying claim, and defense thereof’ IS the heritage and duty of human beings, and the true spirit of the formation and tradition of Americans?

Later on, as a critically thinking public speaker and writer,— in having pieced together that passion for self-determination through observance, analyzation, grit, tenacity, and an unrelentingness to sharpen his intellect as his best instrument, the American slave turned ‘man of the century,’ selflessly endeavors on a bold path never before trodden in the manner that he had uniquely set out upon it: as an outsider, born a slave, bearing the story of his humanity while laying claim on the word and spirit of a promissory note, the Declaration of Independence, and the ordered liberty of government of and for the people that is directed in our Constitution.

Somehow, Frederick Douglass had walked a path that is the only one of two ways to defend liberty: he had sought out the meaning of ‘liberty,’ and of ‘justice,’ had studied the function and express duty of the American government, had read the words of the Declaration of 1776, and the Constitution of 1787; and proceeded to lay claim on those liberties; from thenceforth with solemn self-determination,—defending his fundamental individual human rights and that of others, as written and intended in those documents, to the best of his altruist understanding, in the intention of the spirit that they were written with. That understood ‘spirit of intention’ of the founders and key defenders of that generation of 1776, informed a foundation of human equality in him that gave credence to his passion, and fueled his magnanimity of spirit to ‘plow forth’ in his work— long past mental and physical exhaustion.

Only a few others have walked such a path and seen it through to its end, finding themselves active players on an extraordinary stage, often times cold and fierce, yielding nothing, promising nothing, granting nothing. 

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What is the true interest of government then, and what is this call from so many  sentinels that have warned us that our liberty is always but one generation from being eradicated? 

“Those who are factious must have time to improve their sleights and projects, and disguising their designs, drawing in instruments, and worming out their opposites.”

from John Adams, ‘A Defense Of The Constitution, Letter VI’ (1788)

Is the interest of government exclusively beholden to the definition and interpretation of the holders of government office? In a simple democracy of minority or majority rule, are not the interests of the former and the latter factious?  Was not the founding interest of the American Republic intent on an government power balance equilibrium split into three branches with ‘checks and balances’ upon each other, —that the growth and longevity of self-interest groups (factions) with an “interest distinct from the true interest of the state” (John Adams, Letter VI, A Defense Of The Constitution), be stifled, rooted out, and ultimately, though it may convulse the nation, --not unsurp, nor supplant the original spirit and word of the law as an instrument of equal liberty and justice, and the foundation of the American republic as the true interest of all its people?  Therefore, for the American nation, presently in the 21st century, and having in existence such diversity of thought, varied ethnicity, religions, creeds, and walks of life, how is such interest rightfully addressed to include the complete number of all its people, and not only the desire and politic of a minority or a majority? Only the words and spirit of protection of individual liberty in our Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights immediately answers that, —with the division of our representative government into those three separate branches of power sustaining and bringing order to the integrity of that unity, founded on the all-inclusive, unalienable claim and awareness that the people are individual co-sovereigns in a nation of laws with a constitution that has brought order to that liberty, yet anchored in that spirit of individual right to claim equality of individual creation, equality of the right to life, liberty, the right to be safe and happy, and the right to assure that said government is maintained to be as such, through the guaranteed right to alter and/ or  abolishment of that government, --if it is found, that after a long train of transgressions, it has departed from that original intention.

John Adams, ‘A Defense Of The Constitution’ (1788)

“The magnitude of territory, the population, the wealth and commerce, and especially the rapid growth of the United States, have shown such a government to be inadequate to their wants; and the new system, which seems admirably calculated to unite their interests and affections, and bring them to an uniformity of principles and sentiments, is equally well combined to unite their wills and forces as a single nation. A result of accommodation cannot be supposed to reach the ideas of perfection of anyone; but the conception of such an idea, and the deliberate union of so great in various of people in such a plan, is, without all partiality or prejudice, if not the greatest exertion of human understanding, the greatest single effort of national deliberation that the world has ever seen.”

It has only been in the words and sentiment of the Declaration of Independence that we have unanimous agreement, and because of the balance of government equilibrium of our Constitution that allows the people the correcting mechanism when deviation from the true interest of the government appears.

But is it not so, that in the writings of John & Abigail Adams, in the congressional work of their son, John Quincy Adams, in the exhaustive work of Frederick Douglass, and the altruist example of Abraham Lincoln that we, as studious readers soon find, that the work of liberty oft times pits the complete apparatus and resources of the adherents of the ‘status quo’ against such individuals,—because the self-interest of faction, the avarice, greed, and selfishness of some will seek to gain the powers of the office of government to exact their own purposes? Certainly, the command & control of enslaved human labor, or of manipulation of particular industries within our economies is an imposition on the self-determination of the people, of its trade & commerce, and of the true interest of the American constitutional republic, and as so, both, within and outside of government, the duty of responsibility exists to assure government is 'of and for the people,' and not according to the political desires of a minority or majority, of a political party, but instead, that the function of government constitutionally be unanimous in its process to serve all, without partiality, (see U.S. Supreme Court opinion of WEST VIRGINIA  v. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY, June 30, 2022, https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/20-1530_n758.pdf).

The true interest of government is then to serve all and to protect all, that the people be safe and happy to self-determine their life, and enjoy the effect of their labor, according to the word of law and founding spirit of that law that was employed in the deliberation and writing of our U.S. Constitution, without partiality to the ethnicity, religion, creed, walk of life, or politic of the individual, of the minority, or of the majority, free of factious spirit, and maintaining that unalloyed original spirit of liberty and justice that is the promised living heritage and true American tradition, first chartered in the proclamation of the fundamental, natural law of our Declaration of Independence that formed the first agreement of our nation in that generation of 1776, and later in that process of ordered liberty of the formation of our government: the Articles of Confederation (1777)  and finally the Constitution, (1787).

“Those who are factious must have time to improve their sleights and projects, and disguising their designs, drawing in instruments, and worming out their opposites.”

What duty do we, as a people, have then in bringing light unto factious construction in government and throughout our national community? Shall there be an exclusivity of people who define the true interest of government and make laws to establish curriculum to instruct the youth on such things in our American schools? Will they not grow up and consent, direct, vote, and manage the government in their generation? Unto whom is the solemness of heritage and duty to selflessly make such a diligent search and defense? Should Frederick Douglass not have begun his work, and instead rested on the wisdom of the U.S. Supreme Court and that of Congress, and the Presidency during the times of slavery? John Quincy Adams certainly rises to answer with a resounding “no”! The son of the second President, himself our 6th President, saw that the good beginnings and strength of the promise of the Declaration of Independence and the functionality of our Constitution as the founding documents of the American Republic did not in fact equate a perfection of the national reality at the time of the nation’s creation, but that a nation of laws, founded on a fundamental equanimity of individual liberty and justice for all, with a government split into a balance of three branches of governance (executive, judicial, legislative), all having a negative upon each other, even if it not be so at all times and across all situations and generations, that because we are a nation of just laws, our national political unity could withstand the discord of self-interested factious spirit that has plagued all governments across all human civilizations, and in time, we would surely have the means wherein the people could root out faction. 

To do so, should it be self-interested or selfless individuals who would needs be required to correct the interpretation, understanding, and direction of what the true interest of government is, that ultimately, the gentle promises of that equal liberty be justly safeguarded within each generation? What if a factious spirit has made its way into a political majority and the interpretation of the laws, and the government directives are unto centralizing a command and control of the American heritage narrative and the understanding of its traditions,— shifting educational curriculum away from shaping a financially independent, self-determined, critical thinking people and unto their own self-interested purposes distinct from  that originalist spirit of liberty and unanimous justice for all? The civil solution is to write and speak, to vote, and to initiate discussion.

It is the trodden path of John & Abigail Adams, of John Quincy Adams, of Frederick Douglass, of Abraham Lincoln, of the early work of Attorney Thurgood Marshall; it is the work of Martin Luther King, and, if you can withstand it,— it is the work of Ronald Reagan (Abortion & The Conscious of a Nation, 1983). The civil solution then, is in seeking to effect the correcting of our trajectory, while preserving the understanding of what our nation was founded upon, and how it has been inclusively defended without partiality,—for you and me.