Government 102: We put the "us" in USA

In the United States of America, “government” has but one simple yet elegant function: it is how we do things together that we are unable to do by ourselves.

In fact, that is really the only motivating factor in the formation of our country. At the signing of the Declaration of Independence, John Hancock insisted that there must be unanimous support by the colonies’ leadership. It was then that Benjamin Franklin made this famous comment: “Gentlemen, we must indeed all hang together, or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.”

“Government” is how we all hang together. Government is our best effort to cooperate in seeing to our common good. It is how we build highways from Oregon to Georgia, how we educate and train adults to be able to earn a living and support a family, how we defend our land against those who would conquer it, how we assure safe living and working conditions for ourselves, how we protect the rights of the weak and defenseless and how we meet a thousand other needs and preferences we’ve defined in our laws and Constitution.

In the US, we use governments to light traffic signals and put out house fires. We use them to assure safe food and water and school buses. Through governments we provide humane care for the mentally ill and certify elevators and gasoline pumps. And we make sure our grievances can be heard and our worship is not denied us.

Is government perfect? Of course not. How could it be? Government is staffed by human beings, some of the most mistake-prone people on earth. They are just like the rest of us—who hire the governments’ leaders.

Government is us, imperfect, well-intentioned, diverse but unified, doing things together that we can’t do by ourselves.