Freedom - to enable people to freely pursue their interests.

It should be,
"Facilitate", or if you like "To Serve".

But now days its "Control".

I agree. In England at the time of the American Revolution, virtually all property was owned by the Crown and granted to the nobles, who then sold rights to use that property to individuals, but retained "title" to the property, and were thus called the "titled class". That is still true today, except that instead of selling long term (100 year) leases to property rights, now the rights to use the property are sold in perpetuity, and the owner of those rights may re-sell those rights. Pennsylvania was "granted" to William Penn, who was sole ruler (subject to the King's rule) of Pennsylvania. He chose to sell title to the property he had been granted. The same thing happened in other colonies, and the US system of deeds was born. However, even in the US, the government has the right of eminent domain, and can "take back" any land it needs for public use, provided it pays full market value to the title-holder.

...and the irony is that the Constitution gave George Washington more power than King George had at the time.

Control is the purpose government sees for itself, but that is not the true purpose of government, unless you mean control of anything that threatens individual rights (including property rights), threatens the external use of force against the people, or that internally threatens force against the people, or that threatens the commerce and business undertaken by the people.

Property rights are among the rights I called "individual rights."

I agree with rockymountainpirate and Ranter. The single word that best describes the purpose of government is 'defend'. Our rights (to life, liberty, and property) are absolute without reference to government. 'Protection' connotes proactive use of force (as in Chicago-style protection). Government's only purpose for existing is to 'defend' our rights to life, 'liberty' and 'property' from the initiation of force or fraud by all bad actors,foreign or domestic. It's only legitimate 'power' is such constitutionally delimited power as is necessary to defend us against the initiation of force or fraud. Government should never have the power to initiate force or fraud.

Yes, and if we had a modern George Washington we would have a president to celebrate and support.

Instead we have his polar opposite

I agree, Solver. That was the one word that came to me.

True enough by the founding documents. Unfortunately corruption has turned power into the purpose of the people running the government. In pretty much every country.

So I will stick with my first answer.

The only purpose you see them pursue is Power.

Serve

Order

Oppression.
Well... that is what its purpose has become. We, are all to become good little vassals.

Yes. Sadly it's been that way for a long time. It will be a never-ending battle.

I think the single proper purpose of an uber-government, such as the federal government is: Coordination.

Many of the other purposes, such as defense and liberty and rights can be the prerogative of state governments or even county militia. In order to be able to defend against a common foe, though, someone has to be able to coordinate all of these units together. Similarly, when a child is kidnapped across state lines, there has to be some way of not dropping the search for the child. Water and power that pass through several states also need a coordinating body. (Though in fact this need, like the others, has been leveraged for Power rather than power.) The EU has had to cobble itself together in an attempt to meet the clout of the US, which it cannot attain as separate nations.

So I think it is up to the people to value Liberty and Rights and up to the States (or locals) to train for defense...but it is actually useful to have a government that puts this all into a whole and which has a single great Constitution we all respect.

Jan, long-winded and in much more than one word

Force

Re-election

Yet it is becoming more of a protection scheme.
"Pay up or we take your rights, freedoms and property."