Government Is The People
… and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Abraham Lincoln
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
November 19, 1863
Nations have taken birth and have died all so swiftly in the little history we have known such vast lands as ‘nations’. Little did Lincoln or anyone for that matter, knew what type of people will rule the world years later than their times. They had no idea how massive nations and their governments could be. They couldn’t fathom the emotions of people for their motherland and its immensely complicated systems. Nor could they know whether the ideals they were laying back then, on minute fragments of will and belief, will hold the test of time. And that governments, shall in a very true manner, be able to help people as it shall have and gather the faith of all the people it has been made for.
People shouldn’t be afraid of their government. Governments should be afraid of their people.”
― Alan Moore, V for Vendetta
A dystopian novel set in a totalitarian world, first published in the year 1990, some 127 years after Abraham Lincoln gave the famous Gettysburg address, is afraid of what has/will happen to the concept of democracy, freedom and equality.
It simply reminds of a very essential fact about governments. That no matter how massive or complex a government becomes, it shall always have its citizens more massive than it.
That no citizen of a democratic government shall ever forget that his/her government is his/her own. The government that people have started to fear, is the people itself. The government was never meant to be outside of its citizenry. That it should never be government vs. citizens or that government is a servant to its citizens (Or vice versa even).
The citizens are ‘the government’. It is the people who rule themselves and decide the fate of themselves, nobody else.
And now, in these times, when nations are weak and extreme, when the citizens are battered and the ties are torn, and when foreign forces are seeming like a threat, the citizen of each nation must remember, that the government of the people, by the people, for the people — is the people.
