By Bobbie Kirkhart

We Amer­i­cans har­bor a huge dichoto­my in our atti­tudes toward our coun­try. We dis­play our patri­o­tism in bor­der­line chau­vin­is­tic man­ner, play­ing the nation­al anthem before every major sport­ing event, and church ser­vices fre­quent­ly include impas­sioned praise of our nation and some­times pro­mote the idea that loy­al­ty to god must include equal loy­al­ty to the country.

We Amer­i­cans, myself includ­ed, love our coun­try. It’s sur­pris­ing that many of my fel­low cit­i­zens hate our gov­ern­ment. It’s a pejo­ra­tive to call some­one a politi­cian. Can­di­dates for office who have no gov­ern­ment expe­ri­ence proud­ly run as ‘out­siders’ and often eas­i­ly win a seat. Amer­i­cans do not rec­og­nize pop­u­lar pub­lic pro­grams as gov­ern­ment cre­at­ed and spon­sored by Wash­ing­ton. I’ve heard more than once the demand, “Keep gov­ern­ment out of my Medicare,” which is, of course, a gov­ern­ment pro­gram. Pres­i­dent Ronald Rea­gan was cheered when he told us, “Gov­ern­ment is not the solu­tion to our prob­lem, gov­ern­ment is the prob­lem.” Amer­i­cans per­ceive cor­rect­ly that the gov­ern­ment does not rep­re­sent all the people.

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