"...The advancement of Agriculture, Commerce and Manufactures by all proper means, will not I trust need recommendation. But I cannot forbear intimating to you the expediency of giving effectual encouragement as well to the introduction of new and useful inventions from abroad, as to the exertions of skill and genius in producing them at home; and of facilitating the intercourse between the distant parts of our Country by a due attention to the Post-Office and Post-Roads.

Nor am I less persuaded, that you will agree with me in opinion, that there is nothing which can better deserve your patronage than the promotion of Science and Literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness. In one in which the measures of Government receive their impression so immediately from the sense of the Community as in ours it is proportionably essential. To the security of a free Constitution it contributes in various ways: By convincing those who are intrusted with the public administration, that every valuable end of Government is best answered by the enlightened confidence of the people: and by teaching the people themselves to know and to value their own rights; to discern and provide against invasions of them; to distinguish between oppression and the necessary exercise of lawful authority; between burthens proceeding from a disregard to their convenience and those resulting from the inevitable exigencies of Society; to discriminate the spirit of Liberty from that of licentiousness, cherishing the first, avoiding the last, and uniting a speedy, but temperate vigilance against encroachments, with an inviolable respect to the Laws..." 

  - President George Washington, the first State of the Union address, January 8, 1790

 

On the contrary, it would seem today that anything other than the dubious benefits of congenital myopia would require a very stern recommendation indeed.

Our country may at least have been great in one crucial respect: for a time, until quite recently, our leaders aspired, at least publicly, to do more than simply defraud, enslave, or murder the population; a pretty good run, some would say, by historical standards. 

It is precisely the loss of distinction between the "necessary exercise of lawful authority" and genuine oppression that has led to the present crisis of leadership. At the same time many people in our country and around the world seem to have endured a similar loss of fine-grain distinction between genuine liberty and the inevitable "licentiousness" that results when duty to society and the bonds of human affection become severely distorted by the relentless demands of the profit-seeking motive.