When you’re little, there are many old wives’ tales that you’re taught. Your parents tell you not to eat before swimming, not to read with the lights off and not to swallow gum, but ultimately, these lessons are urban legends. As we grow up, we realize that the lessons we were taught are the same exaggerations that their parents had taught them.

While most of these wives’ tales are inconsequential, one wives’ tale has stuck in my head recently. When I was going through school, I was taught that I lived in a country that was led by a government that cared about the people that it governed.

At first, this may seem to be a radical, anti-American statement, but that is not what I mean. I love this country, and I am proud to be a citizen of it. I truly feel that America has the potential to be the greatest and freest nation in the world. But that does not mean that I will blind myself to its follies and stand idly by as it diverts from its founding principles.

On Nov. 19, 1863, Abraham Lincoln gave an introductory speech to the commemoration ceremony for the national cemetery for the lives lost at the Battle of Gettysburg. In his address, Lincoln paraphrased what he believed the war was being fought over when he said that “government of the people, by the people and for the people, shall not perish from this earth.” In Lincoln’s eyes, the war needed to be fought because without it, our government would cease to represent the idealistic democratic freedoms that it had been founded on, and that protecting the survival of our government’s vision was worth the pain.

It is hard to argue with Lincoln’s point. Though it is reductionist to say the Civil War was fought solely because of slavery, the forced enslavement of people was a central issue. At first Lincoln did not set out to end slavery, but his Gettysburg Address and Emancipation Proclamation are what shifted the focus from reunion at any cost to one of rejoining the nation as a land made up of truly free people.

In this moment, our government proved to be one that cared, or at least one that, acting in its own self-interest, ended up helping millions. But since this high-water mark in the mid-19th century, our government’s focus has shifted away from a utilitarian-esque mindset and moved to one of inward focusing self-interest.

History is riddled with examples of times when the U.S. government has acted in a way that did not represent the lofty ideals this country stands upon. One example is Guatemala in 1954.

Under the guise of a homegrown revolution, the CIA and U.S. government armed and trained militants to overthrow a popularly and democratically elected government in favor of a totalitarian dictator. Just from this description alone, the U.S. would seem to be acting against Lincoln’s principles. The deposed government of Jacobo Arbenz held the support of the Guatemalan people, while the U.S.-installed government of Carlos Castillo Aramas was supported by the elite landholding class and foreign companies. Acting on the principles of economic self-interest, as there was a conflict between the Washington-connected United Fruit Co. and the Guatemalan government over an agrarian reform law that would have broken up the company’s monopoly on the land, the U.S. sided with economic principles over humane ones.

This view was something shared by Charles de Gaulle when he said, “The U.S. has no friends, only interests.” De Gaulle, who was jaded and suspicious of the U.S. when he said this, had a point. As the recent governmental forays into the territory of Super PACs show, which essentially allows for the most powerful single office in the world to be bought by its richest citizens, the government finds itself siding more and more with the wealthiest factions, benefiting the few at the expense of the many.

Juan José Arévalo, the Guatemalan president before Arbenz, said that while “moral values served as a motivating force in the days of (American) independence … the government descended to become a simple entrepreneur for business.”

Our country was founded on certain values. Those values were what led our nation to try to develop as a free and prosperous nation for all. But recently our nation has been led by people thinking about the bottom line of finances, and the easiest way for their own self-advancement, as opposed to the betterment of all.

The entirety of our government does not always derelict its founding duties, but the fact that it does at all is a disconcerting thing. We all want a government that cares and works for its people, and our government can still be that.

I find it hard to still think that the government cares, but that won’t stop me from wanting to believe this old wives’ tale.

— Preston Peeden is a junior in history. He can be reached at ppeeden@utk.edu.