They have
implicitly accepted the idea that the public interest is to be asserted,
not merely by equalizing individual rights, but by controlling
individuals in the exercise of those rights. The national public
interest has to be affirmed by positive and aggressive fiction. The
nation has to have a will and a policy as well as the individual; and
this policy can no longer be confined to the merely negative task of
keeping individual rights from becoming in any way privileged.
The arduous and responsible political task which a nation in its
collective capacity must seek to perform is that of selecting among the
various prevailing ways of exercising individual rights those which
contribute to national perpetuity and integrity. Such selection implies
some interference with the natural course of popular notion; and that
interference is always costly and may be harmful either to the
individual or the social interest must be frankly admitted. He would be
a foolish Hamiltonian who would claim that a state, no matter how
efficiently organized and ably managed, will not make serious and
perhaps enduring mistakes; but he can answer that inaction and
irresponsibility are more costly and dangerous than intelligent and
responsible interference.
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