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 fittest.  If a selective policy is pursued in good faith and with sufficient intelligence, the nation will at least be learning from its mistakes.  It should find out gradually the kind and method of selection, which is most desirable, and how far selection by non-interference is to be preferred to active selection.