“In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.”

No, 'We' are the People, not the government.  We the People have chartered a government of laws not of men.

A republican form of government is strictly bound to a Constitution and a Bill of Rights that explicitly define limits to power.  The rights of the People are antecedent its government and cannot ever be legislated away.  The people elect their representatives in government.  So the government is subservient to the people. 

'We' are not the government; the People have created the goverment, and since the government has no jurisdiction over We the People, you can say we 'govern' ourselves by every individual governing himself/herself.  I govern myself; you govern yourself, and we respect each others' rights.  Thomas Jefferson describes a republican form of government:

“The way to have good and safe government is not to trust it all to one, but to divide it among the many, distributing to everyone exactly the functions in which he is competent ...

- To let the National Government be entrusted with the defense of the nation, and its foreign and federal relations ...
- The State Governments with the Civil Rights, Laws, Police and administration of what concerns the State generally.
- The Counties with the local concerns, and each ward direct the interests within itself.

It is by dividing and subdividing these Republics from the great national one down through all its subordinations until it ends in the administration of everyman's farm by himself, by placing under everyone what his own eye may superintend, that all will be done for the best.”

A republican form of government does not 'rule' the people; it provides a government of laws, not men, on the basis of Common Law, which has no statutes, only the rules for jurisprudence in which the inalienable and natural-born rights of humankind are adjudicated by a jury of one's own peers.  There are 3 distinct lawful jurisdictions in the USA — common law, commercial law, and admiralty/military law.  American governors and legislators have been given no charter to "rule" despite the common notion that they can make whatever rules they wish.  Power corrupts, and socialism is the theft of everyone's power to choose, put into the hands of a few or the one.

“History has taught us time and again that political power always raises its angry fist when timeless principles are lost. We know that without the scale of "self-evident truths" grounded in the "laws of nature and nature's God," every culture eventually finds itself subject to the rule of the gang or the tyranny of the individual. Recognizing this, scholars of all ages have confidently given their hearts and minds to the words, "You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.”
~ Everett Piper