Is the decent practice of representative self-government the most precious collective possession of the American people—our common good? The shared preoccupation of the framers of the U.S. Constitution was to sustain the practice of self-government, through institutions that respect its requirements, while producing results consistent with the aims of all good governance (“to provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, …etc.”). Since it is the sworn duty of every public official to safeguard the Constitution, respect for the requirements of self-government, in principle and practice, ought to be an ever-present characteristic of their thought and action.

Ideally, good government is the aim of politics, and of each citizen’s participation in public life. But in our times, as in other eras of human history, the things people competing for government power rely on to motivate political participation and action have more to do with selfishness than self-government. This is so much taken for granted that politics is now generally understood as nothing else than the arena in which selfish interests compete for the prize of power. In line with this understanding, the prevalent American Founders’ preoccupation with rightful liberty (“Justice is the end of government; it is the end of civil society; it has been and ever will be pursued until it be obtained or until liberty be lost in the pursuit.” James Madison, Federalist #51) has been replaced with non-political notions of freedom, understood as the power to pursue, without let or hindrance, the lifestyles inspired by whatever happen to be one’s dominant passions or delusions.

The problem is of course that politics, defined as the competition of selfish passions, however delusional, includes no idea of justice beyond the crude distribution of wins and losses. Whatever formal oaths they take the main business of politicians (and for this purpose all those formally involved in government affairs are politicians) is to organize and manage the competition, so as to win the allegiance of enough people to guarantee their hold on power. Cut through the euphemistic verbiage and this simply describes a war of all against all, in which coalitions and alliances form and dissolve depending on circumstances and perceptions. In this war, there is no persistent community, no lasting common identity, no shared meaning apart from the shifting ground of grasping ambition and temporarily satisfied passion.

Where this is the meaning of politics, the only reason to participate is to achieve the satisfaction of selfish passion, or defend it against all newcomers. The question then arises: What if each individual could accomplish this without active political participation, by simply accepting benefits from a dominant power willing to accommodate selfishness so long as every recipient contributes, in return, what is needed to safeguard their satisfaction? By carefully ascertaining, engendering and manipulating the prevalent passions of individuals, such a power might achieve a dynamic equilibrium among selfish interests. This would obviate the need for competition. It would, in effect, eliminate politics from government by preemptively guaranteeing to all individuals what would otherwise be the defining objective of their political involvement.

The result might be a peaceful society where freedom, as they understood it, would be enjoyed by all through the mediation of a common power, a power accepted without resistance because of the satisfaction it provides to everyone. However, it might also be a state in which conniving elites had divided and subdued the people by manipulating their passions and conditioning their expectations. Instead of self-governing citizens, they will be the self-indulgent subjects of a pervasive, all-powerful government administration that encourages and caters to their vice-ridden lifestyles until they lose all sense of common identity —which is to say, humanity— be it their own or that of others.

In general, human experience suggests that the more malevolent of these possibilities is also more likely. To be sure, by defining freedom in terms that correspond to the selfish passions of individuals, contemporary politicians win popularity and support. By offering government funds as resources for the pursuit of selfish interests, they build majorities to consolidate their hold on power. But since this consolidation also involves the generalization of that power (i.e., extending it over what were private enterprises and spheres of life) what assurance is there against the likelihood that their ultimate intention is to abuse it? After all, people will have become so passive, self-protective, and inwardly isolated from one another, that they won’t have the energy to even realize that they are being abused, much less to conceive of resisting that abuse.

In a world where freedom is understood as the capacity to satisfy selfish passion, doesn’t the greater power of politicians simply imply greater scope for their pursuit of their own selfish aims? But the selfish competition for power implies no standard of justice, which is to say of right and wrong. So why should we expect that, as their power increases, its selfish abuse will be constrained by any sense of conscience? As more and more people subside into the role of passive subjects of government control, what energy will remain to provide against the absence of conscience?

In Federalist No. 1, Hamilton observes that “of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people: commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants.” All signs point to the fact that American politics corresponds to this strategy for the elimination, of republican self-government. Freedom itself has been redefined, so that under the guise of supporting the concept of free government, politicians can slyly encourage the enslavement to passion, which induces people not just to abandon liberty, but to forget it altogether. It is no coincidence that, at the same time, we see, systematically uprising, a general assault, poised to sweep away the religious tenets that America’s Founders’ knew to be citadel of liberty, preternaturally fortified against this subversion. As in 2008, amidst the overacted celebration and dismay over “change,” Americans should deeply ponder the possibility that its true character and intention have not.