More government? Or less?

President Obama is to be commended for giving a good speech Monday after being sworn in for his second term, and it should be noted that he declared before the world that the oath he swore “was an oath to God and country, not party or faction.”

We hope and pray that he lives up to that oath, and we encourage all Americans to hold him accountable to make sure that he does. We have very serious challenges ahead as a nation and will more surely meet those challenges successfully if we can stand on common ground rather than on each other’s toes.

The president forcefully laid out a vision of America where government is a tool to be used efficiently and effectively to, as he said, make the “values of life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness real for every American.”

He spelled out any number of ways in which he wishes to harness the power of government to shape social institutions into something better — cheaper health care, better schools, less poverty, less discrimination, renewable energy, equal rights, even “peace in our time.”

It’s no surprise, of course, that the president envisions government as an agent for good, but it should also come as no surprise to him that many Americans view government with suspicion, fear and cynicism.

Indeed, the president was careful to note that Americans “have never relinquished our skepticism of central authority, nor have we succumbed to the fiction that all society’s ills can be cured through government alone.” Yet at the same time, he insisted that “preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action.”

That seems like a prescription for bigger government to us.

And though the president rejected the idea that we have become a “nation of takers,” he did not adequately explain how a growing panoply of entitlements will make us stronger either. Increasing dependence on government can only diminish the character of independence, ingenuity and individualism that has always been part and parcel of the American success story.

The president rightly asserted that no “single person” can “train all the math and science teachers” or “build the roads and networks and research labs” that our nation needs, but he should also remember that no “multi-tentacled government” could have created the iPad either.

If the president is right that “preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action,” he should also remember that collective action has the proven capacity to strangle individual liberty as well.

And it is that individual freedom to invest time and energy and, yes, money, which has kept America growing for more than 200 years.

The president’s fine words — no matter how eloquent they were — are no substitute for unleashing the power of American entrepreneurship to drive our economy once again in the right direction. And that won’t happen with more government, but by getting government out of the way.

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Editorials represent the majority opinion of the Daily Inter Lake’s editorial board.