Can you Love America and Hate the Government?

Can you love your country and hate your government? Short answer is “yes . . . and no.” Yes, you can love your country, place and people and hate a corrupt, violent and lawless government. But there’s another sense in which the answer is “no.” Read on.

I started thinking about this love America/ hate the government dichotomy decades ago at the local Chief Joseph Days Rodeo in Joseph, Oregon. It’s an annual affair, “always the last weekend in July.” It’s a great old-timey small-town extravaganza: parades, dances, rodeo, pow-wow and people selling everything from face paint to fry bread. There used to be a carnival, but no more. While I’ve been to a couple other rodeos over the years, this is the one I’ve been to a lot. My Dad used to take tickets.

I first noted the love of country/ hate of government severance during the Reagan Administration, which is now pushing toward fifty years ago.

In those days there was a lot of waving “the Red, White and Blue,” lots of going on about “Old Glory,” and The Star-Spangled Banner (there still is). Great. Best part of the rodeo is the women riders doing the “Grand Entry” streaking around the arena at break-neck speed, flags unfurled and flapping. One hand on the reins, one hand on the flag. Awesome.

But when it came to the U.S. Government, the words were sort of spit out, using the pronunciation, “guv’ment,” as if cursing. America is great; our government is, if not outright evil, then certainly bad. Government and mothers-in-laws are the butt of most of the jokes from the announcers and rodeo clowns.

While Reagan looks pretty good now, and maybe was a useful corrective at points, he also got a lot of mileage out of saying, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language” are, “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.” You could tell Reagan loved saying that, and his audiences ate it up.

Well, yes, certainly there are times when the government and those who work for it have screwed up, sometimes intentionally, but probably more often unintentionally, or even with the best of intentions. Watch out for best intentions! The corollary of this, at that time, was private enterprise and business who could do no wrong. Those in the world of business, or so it was said, always worked hard, were smarter than everyone else, never screwed up or behaved badly. You believe that and I’ve got a bridge to sell you.

As the son of a devoted civil servant (Interior Department and Geological Survey) I wrote to President Reagan to object. I pointed out the importance of having a non-politicized civil service. Given where we are today, guess I was whistling into the wind. Shout out to those heroic civil servants who have quit rather than following illegal orders, as well to those that have stayed on and are fighting the good fight as best they can.

At the rodeo it only got worse in the Clinton and Obama years. W. got a pass. Forget it during Biden. We were in frothing-at-the-mouth territory. I stopped going to the rodeo.

But now the “love my country/ hate the government” thing is on the other foot, isn’t it? We of a more liberal inclination might now answer the question, “Can you love your country and hate the government?” by saying not just “yes,” but “hell yes!”

Let me suggest a slightly more nuanced form of the question. How about, “Can you love your country and hate your form of government?” To this one I think the answer, for Americans, has to be “no.” If you’re living in Russia or Iran, you may check “yes” for sure. But America? No.

What do I mean by “the form of government”? I mean the U.S. Constitution, including the Bill of Rights, as the law of the land and the operating manual for our governance. I mean the rule of law, applying to everyone, without exceptions or partiality. I mean the doctrine of the separation of powers — executive, legislative and judicial — and their co-equal power, a.k.a. “checks and balances.” I mean voting and abiding by election outcomes. I mean our Republic, which as Ben Franklin famously said when asked about what the Founders had come up with, answered, “A Republic — if you can keep it.”

The idea that you can love America and be a great patriot while being a know-nothing about our form of government or reflexively denouncing it is pretty much BS. That said, our current President thinks that not only do-able but — at least for him — desirable. “No one loves America more than me!” Watch me, or not, break the laws and rob the bank. Which of course gives others permission to indulge in the same duplicity and lawlessness.

It would be like some guy saying, “Oh, yeah, I truly, deeply, believe in marriage. It’s a wonderful thing, great institution, sacred, so special,” while at the same time having one affair after another, lying to his wife and beating his kids. It just doesn’t wash, does it? Saying you believe in marriage doesn’t necessarily mean you get being married 100% right all the time — no one does. But it does mean that there is some sort of alignment between aspiration and performance.

So loving your country does mean, at least to me, that you, one, have some clue about what the form of government is and how it is supposed to work, and two, doing your part to see that the thing does work. You can’t be a patriot while failing to vote, flaunting the law, cheating on taxes and bad/ foul-mouthing everyone with whom you happen to disagree.

In Christianity there’s a thing called “cheap grace.” It means a bastardized version of Christianity summed up by the 19th century poet Heinrich Heine (or maybe it was Oscar Wilde?) — “It’s my job to sin and God’s job to forgive. Really, the world is admirably arranged!”

One of my go-to lines as a preacher was “Grace may be free (it is!), but it isn’t cheap.” Something is expected of those to whom grace (mercy, forgiveness, another chance, blessings like good teeth or a knack for making money have been given).’‘

In somewhat the same way being an American is a gift. With the gift comes a task. So my thing at the present time is the idea that we birthright citizens should know at least as much about our nation’s history, form of government, and about the rights and responsibilities of a citizen as someone who has completed the process to become a naturalized U.S. citizen. I’m for citizenship classes for all, with a year of national service for everyone between ages of 18 – 26 to boot.

Citizenship may be free, but it isn’t cheap. Something is required of us.