ndividual, but on behalf of
equality and the average man.

Thus the Jeffersonian principle of national irresponsibility can no
longer be maintained by those Democrats who sincerely believe that the
inequalities of power generated in the American economic and political
system are dangerous to the integrity of the democratic state. To this
extent really sincere followers of Jefferson are obliged to admit the
superior political wisdom of Hamilton's principle of national
responsibility, and once they have made this admission, they have
implicitly abandoned their contention that the doctrine of equal rights
is a sufficient principle of democratic political action. 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. The practice of non-interference is just as
selective in its effects as the practice of state interference. It means
merely that the nation is willing to accept the results of natural
selection instead of preferring to substitute the results of artificial
selection. In one way or another a nation is bound to recognize the
results of selection. The Hamiltonian principle of national
responsibility recognizes the inevitability of selection; and since it
is inevitable, is not afraid to interfere on behalf of the selection of
the really fi