Can governments make us good ?

was one of the set questions
asked by Sophie de Grouchet, Marquise de Condorcet,
at one of her salons de conversation.
- Or do they merely enforce obedience ?

Newly-liberated Americans,
fearing that there was no such thing
as good government,
declared that the foundation
of government is fear,
but this did not answer Sophie's question.

Over 200 years later I think we can say
that governments can seem to make us better,
if not good, and they do this not through government
but through a new barbarity:
representative democracy,
which has insisted on the exclusion
and/or punishment
of those who transgress the totalitarian
rules of Christian charity.