The founders of our republic believed that successful representative governments
required the subordination of individual personal interests to the welfare of the
community. (Read the last sentence of the Declaration of Independence.)
They believed that the political process was all about identifying the common good.
It was not about competition and disagreement; politics was a process in which
rational voters and officials calmly sorted out what best served the entire community.
The end result was not one camp of winners and another of losers, but the entire
electorate united behind a common vision.
How far we have come from having a common view for the good of the republic. It is all
about me me me. Listen to politicians at every level and party, they start everything
with “I believe” or “I want to” or “My vision” with rarely any following relation to our
republic, but instead to some special group or interest or generically “the people”.
I am reminded again of Ronald Reagan’s speech...
It’s time for choosing...
our republic or our special interests:
“You and I are told increasingly we have to choose between a Left or Right. Well I’d like to suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There’s only an up or down: [up] man’s old — old-aged dream, the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order, or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. And regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would trade our freedom for security have embarked on this downward course....
You and I know and do not believe that life is so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery. If nothing in life is worth dying for, when did this begin — just in the face of this enemy? Or should Moses have told the children of Israel to live in slavery under the pharaohs? Should Christ have refused the cross? Should the patriots at Concord Bridge have thrown down their guns and refused to fire the shot heard ‘round the world? The martyrs of history were not fools, and our honored dead who gave their lives to stop the advance of the Nazis didn’t die in vain. Where, then, is the road to peace? Well it’s a simple answer after all.
You and I have the courage to say to our enemies, “There is a price we will not pay.” “There is a point beyond which they must not advance.” And this — this is the meaning in the phrase of Barry Goldwater’s “peace through strength.” Winston Churchill said, “The destiny of man is not measured by material computations. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we’re spirits — not animals.” And he said, “There’s something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty.”
You and I have a rendezvous with destiny.
We’ll preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we’ll sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.” — Ronald Reagan
Not true. The 'subordination of personal interests to the welfare of the community' is a collective concept and has NO place in a free Republic.
It will he remembered, that the object of the several states in the adoption of that instrument, was not the establishment of a general consolidated government, which should swallow up the state sovereignties, and annihilate their several jurisdictions, and powers, as states; but a federal government, with powers limited to certain determinate objects; viz. their intercourse and concerns with foreign nations; and with each other, as separate and independent states; and, as members of the same confederacy: leaving the administration of their internal, and domestic concerns, to the absolute and uncontrolable jurisdiction of the states, respectively; except in one or two particular instances, specified, and enumerated in the constitution. And because this principle was supposed not to have been expressed with sufficient precision, and certainty, an amendatory article was proposed, adopted, and ratified; whereby it is expressly declared, that, "the powers not delegated to the United States by the constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people."
View of the Constitution of the United States
Should that be the case, then you are correct.