On a fundamental level, the birth of our new independent country was meant to be the birth of a country that would recognize by the operation of its government that the legitimate purpose of that government was to forever secure our unalienable rights which include life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, gifted to us by our Creator, and that this country would be in its structure, a county of the people, by the people, and for the people, and not a country that was controlled by a select few or ruled in such a manner as to deny its very people their God-given unalienable rights.
Many people say that the nature of any good government is to provide safety, security, jobs, education, infrastructure, welfare, justice, and so on and so forth, and while these things may all be worthy attributes of good government they are in and of themselves just attributes. What is important, more than anything, is to have a government that knows what it should be on the most principle of levels, and if that is right, the result of such will also be right.
A good government, must at its foundation, be about the discovery and dissemination of truth, for if the government does not know what truth is, or desires to deceive the public, or to hide important information from the public, or does not care to find out the truth of the matter, than this government, will not be a servant to the people, but will, in its essence, be structurally and operationally wrong.
A government does not and should not be in the business of indoctrinating its citizenry, though most do, but should instead, be desiring to create a band of citizens that recognize that the discovering of truth and then living up to that truth is the very basis for good government in the first place. This is why the most important question to seek the answer to is to figure out why and for what purpose we are here to begin with, and the answer to that question, takes principled reasoning, and should be thoroughly discussed and considered.
There is no higher value than truth, and that truth may very well be inconvenient, and may very well upset institutions of long standing, but inconvenient or not, upsetting or not, those that know the truth but purposely do not live up to it are doing themselves a disservice; and if it is the government that does not live up to truth, than that government is illegitimate morally, ethically, and in reality. For it is the government, that should structure itself so as to purposely desire to impress upon its citizens that the pursuit of truth, is the most important pursuit of them all, and that thereby one has no greater duty than to acknowledge this truth, and should therefore by their actions and accomplishments deliberately do so.
The real purpose of good government is to be an ever present help in increasing the good of that society, and in order to best perform such, that government must as its template, live truth, and thereby then do its best to affect this to its citizenry, for that is its duty, to be that good neighbor, to steady the ship, and to bring home all, safely.