This was posted recently on my own blog, Wantsomewood.blogspot.com (sorry to keep relentlessly flogging my own blog, but I am trying to drum up some readership for it).
I've always hated those bumper stickers that say "I love my country but fear my government." I understand why people are cynical about government at times, but I hate the idea that the U. S. government is some sort of horrible alien force that we all should hate and fear, and that we have no control over anything it ever does, which is the idea behind this saying. Of course, this idea is usually promulgated by conservatives, especially libertarian conservatives, but I've also seen it popping up in liberal circles as well. I almost cried when I saw it used as a sig line on Daily Kos.
Franklin Roosevelt said it best when he said that the people are the government. Liberals should be working in that tradition, reminding people that the government need not be some kind of frightening alien force, but that it is there to do our work, and that it is a resource, not a threat. It may be useful to draw a distinction here between the Bush Administration, which has temporarily hijacked the executive branch of the government, and the government itself, which is as much a victim of the administration as any other American institution is. After all, the Bush administration, with its endless forcing of government workers to justify their continued employment (lest their jobs be contracted out) and its hostility to unions at the Homeland Security department (as if it is impossible to have unionized workers that cared about their jobs), is hardly a friend to the average government worker.
As part of this, I thought it would be great to have a bumper sticker to rebut the "love/fear" one. My idea is the title of this blog posting. Since it's not terribly catchy, I'd love to see some ideas here for better ones. I think it would be good to work with a public employee union (such as the National Treasury Employees Union, or NTEU) on this idea. Come to think of it, they could publish stickers or buttons that say "I love my country and work in its government," or "I love my country and I am its government."
The bottom line is that liberals, who believe in the possibilities of government (and therefore of democracy), need to be more careful when they criticize or denigrate the idea of government. That kind of thing comes naturally to conservatives, who want to drastically limit government (except when it is nosing into people's personal affairs). If this sounds like a limitation on what liberals can say or do, it shouldn't. In the end, people want to be inspired, and they want to feel like they are part of something larger than themselves, including the governing of their nation. Thus, in the end, it can only help us to remind people that the government is theirs, not the other way around.