The Anti-Americanism of Government Hatred

The Totalitarianism of an Unchanging Constitution

A law or set of laws, and the enforcement of those laws that are not allowed to change with time, new information, or maturity, is by definition - totalitarianism.  

If the Founding Fathers had intended the Constitution of the United States to be written in stone - forever and ever, amen - they would have simply installed a king to rule the land to enforce their awesome law-making ability until the end of time. 

The result of which would by no means be a democratic republic.

What they did instead is follow the example of the enlightenment philosopher John Locke and placed a system of checks and balances between the judiciary, executive, and legislative (federative) branches of the government.

Because the Founding Fathers were products of the Enlightenment, they did not profess to know what was best for all people in all times.  They set up the Constitution as a framework and they immediately set about both amending it and putting forth a process to allow the citizenry of the future to amend it as they saw fit.

The United States government in 2011 is my government— our government; not Thomas Jefferson's government.

Individual Responsibility of Community Contribution

Based on some, there appears to be a real anti-government, anti-tax sentiment amongst some of our local elected leaders (irony intended - like the old saying goes, some say that government doesn't work, and if you elect them, they'll prove it). What I would like to do is to try and make the case that there is an element of anti-Americanism in this view of our country.  

I recently stumbled across a fantastic way to communicate this in the origins of Thomas Jefferson’s ideas when writing the Declaration of Independence. According to Cynthia Stokes Brown in her book, “Big History,” much of our government is based on the enlightenment idea of philosophers like John Locke who argued that “men submit to government, not because the inclination to submit to an absolute leader is innately present in people, but because legitimate government protects their rights to property.”

When Jefferson put Locke’s ideas to paper in the Declaration, he substituted the “pursuit of happiness” over property because he was “broadening the base of what he considered legitimate voters. James Madison clinched the argument for Jefferson by asserting that, while property in one sense means land, money, and merchandise, in a wider sense it means free opinions and free use of one’s faculties as one chooses, concluding that ‘as a man is said to have a right to his property, he may equally be said to have a property in his rights.’”

The point I am attempting to make is that there is room for respect of government, especially in America where we are guaranteed our rights as individuals, and together form our government.  

For an American to hate his government is to hate himself.

Our unique government structure exists for our own benefit, like the military, or the water company, or the Food and Drug Administration, the police, the firefighters, and my personal favorite, our schools.  

Government is “not out to get us.”  We are our government. To be a good American, I contend, is to make our government better and more efficient, not to tear it down and make it ineffective, and yes, this includes essential funding in the form of taxes. The consequences of an ineffective government is an ineffective society.  

I am not naive enough to believe that our government is inherently good.  There are plenty of instances of inappropriate behavior of individuals in government, but all in all, it is our strong system of government that makes it work so much better than all of its predecessors.  

With examples like the abolition of slavery and women’s right to vote, it has gotten better over the last couple of centuries.  But, it didn’t happen out of the goodness of any one person’s heart. Many people died in the process.

We could always go back to the original Constitution's intent and count African Americans as three-fifths of a person and restrict the right of women to vote, but I think even a modern-day "Tea Partier" realizes the fallibility of that part of the Constitution. Or would that be giving them too much credit?

So, fight the good fight for sure, but don’t deny your roots in the process.  After all, what defines us as Americans is our system of government.  If not, then by what other definition would we exist?