Who Does the Government Serve When Citizens Stop Demanding Better?

In 2025, as long-standing federal programs are dismantled with the swipe of a pen and the role of career civil servants is fundamentally redefined amid widespread layoffs, a familiar American question has returned. But it is not a question for our leaders. It is a question for us: Who does the government ultimately serve—and when did we stop making it serve us?

I have recently heard it argued that federal leaders and rank-and-file government workers exist solely at the pleasure of the President. I disagree. They—and the President of the United States—serve at the pleasure of the People. That has always been the promise at the heart of self-government.

Yet as these shifts unfold, many Americans have responded not with engagement, but with resignation. We watch. We wait. We tell ourselves there is nothing to be done. Somewhere along the way, we grew comfortable in our complacency. We lost the spark that once allowed ordinary people to declare their independence—and to fight for their neighbors when it mattered.

America is only as strong as its people. Our history is not a story of passive consent, but of the governed rising to demand better from those in power. In 1776, Americans defied a king to insist that legitimate authority comes from consent, not inheritance. In 1861, the nation confronted a truth it could no longer evade: freedom could not coexist with slavery. In 1933, amid hunger and unemployment, citizens rejected the idea that suffering on that scale was a personal failing and demanded that government help stabilize lives and restore dignity to work. And in 1964, Americans pressed the country to live up to its promises, insisting that freedom protected in theory had to be protected in law.

None of this required unanimity. It never has.

What made those moments transformative was not shared ideology, but shared standards. Americans did not suddenly agree with one another; they insisted instead that disagreement remain bounded by dignity, accountability, and a responsibility to the common good. Progress came when citizens refused to accept cruelty as strategy or contempt as leadership, and demanded something sturdier in its place. Renewal, in other words, was never the product of harmony. It was the result of pressure—applied steadily, imperfectly, and often by people who disagreed deeply, but understood that democracy could not survive without limits on how power was exercised.

What it required, again and again, was a belief—sometimes fragile, often contested—that our neighbors mattered, even when we disagreed deeply about how the country should be governed.

Today, that belief feels thinner. Institutions once trusted to serve the public good are treated as expendable or suspect. Programs born of earlier national struggles are erased with little debate. Many Americans have not so much chosen this moment as drifted into it.

And we didn’t get here by accident.

Long before social media accelerated outrage, political leaders learned that dehumanizing opponents was easier than persuading them. In the 1990s, a widely circulated political memo urged candidates to describe their rivals as “corrupt,” “pathetic,” and “traitorous.” That language didn’t stay on the page. It changed how politics sounded—and then how it felt.

Over time, disagreement hardened into suspicion. Opponents became enemies. Neighbors became threats. Insults that once shocked barely register now. Political speech traffics in contempt more than conviction, and trust erodes—not just in leaders or institutions, but in one another.

What troubles me most is not that Americans disagree. Disagreement has always been the engine of democratic progress. What troubles me is how easily we have accepted language that strips others of dignity, how readily political identity has eclipsed our shared humanity. In doing so, we have narrowed our civic life.

Renewal has never depended on Americans agreeing with one another. It has depended on citizens insisting that disagreement remain bounded by dignity, accountability, and a shared responsibility to one another.

We did not insist on better.

Too often, it felt easier to stay silent than to speak up—even when we knew silence carried a cost.

As long as Americans refuse to hold their leaders accountable for their words as well as their actions, unity will remain out of reach. We cannot claim to believe the words of the Declaration of Independence—that all are created equal, endowed with unalienable rights—unless we are willing to feel them as more than slogans. Life. Liberty. The pursuit of Happiness. These are not abstractions. They demand that we recognize one another as equals, even in disagreement.

Those principles only endure if citizens treat them not as sentiments, but as obligations.

The Declaration reminds us that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. That consent is not passive. It requires attention. Participation. A willingness to demand not only the policies we favor, but the principles we share. Government is not a force that happens to us. It is a tool that belongs to us.

We are not enemies. We are Americans with different beliefs, different priorities, and different fears. That diversity—the many experiences and perspectives that make up this country—has always been a source of strength when paired with mutual respect.

America has faced darker moments than this. Each time, renewal came not from silencing disagreement, but from citizens reclaiming responsibility for one another. If we hope to rise again, it will take more than winning arguments or elections. It will take recovering the habit of seeing each other as human beings—and reclaiming our role as the ultimate authority in this republic.

Because as long as we allow ourselves to be divided and dehumanized, no one is truly free.

The Opinionated Observer

Watching closely. Saying it plainly. Published Thursdays at 6:00 AM.