You want to talk about patriotism? Fine. Let’s talk about patriotism.

Because somewhere along the way, we apparently decided that being a patriot meant picking a political team, buying the appropriate bumper sticker, and defending whatever ridiculous shit your side did this week because at least the other side is worse.

Fuck that.

I’m tired of red versus blue. I’m tired of Republicans pretending government is the problem right up until they’re the ones controlling it. I’m tired of Democrats pretending government is the solution right up until you ask why the damn thing is so expensive, inefficient, intrusive, and seemingly incapable of accomplishing half the things we’re told we need it for.

Maybe the problem isn’t the team running the machine.

Maybe the machine itself has gotten completely out of control.

We have built layer upon layer upon layer of government until most of us couldn’t even name all the agencies with authority over some part of our lives. We pay taxes when we earn money, taxes when we spend money, taxes when we own things, taxes when we sell things, taxes when we fuel our cars, taxes buried inside the price of products, fees, permits, licenses, assessments, registrations, tolls and somehow the answer is perpetually that government still needs more money.

At some point you have to ask: how much is enough? And where the hell is it all going?

I’m increasingly convinced that government has become an organism whose primary purpose is ensuring the continued existence of government.

Programs never die. Agencies rarely disappear. Budgets grow. Bureaucracies expand. Every failure becomes justification for another program, another department, another regulation, another billion dollars.

And the people making these decisions?

Some of them have been sitting in Washington so long they practically qualify as historical landmarks.

Term limits shouldn’t even be controversial at this point. Public service was never supposed to mean spending forty years accumulating power, favors, donors, committee assignments, lobbyists, and enough political connections to make yourself functionally impossible to remove.

Go serve. Do the job. Then go the hell home.

And while we’re talking about government power, maybe we should revisit this bizarre idea that every problem requires another federal agency to regulate it.

We have entire bureaucracies dedicated to interpreting rights that were supposedly written down specifically so government couldn’t fuck with them.

The Second Amendment is probably the most obvious example. People can argue about policy until everyone turns blue, but I’m increasingly skeptical of the notion that a constitutional right somehow requires hundreds of pages of regulations explaining when, where, how, and under what circumstances government will graciously allow you to exercise it.

That seems backward.

And before somebody starts screaming that this is a Republican rant, save it.

Republicans helped build this monster too.

They spend. They regulate. They expand government. They create programs. They run deficits. And then they hand favors to corporations and special interests.

Then election season rolls around and suddenly everybody puts on a cowboy hat and starts talking about small government again. Bullshit.

Meanwhile Democrats campaign on protecting ordinary people from giant corporations while happily building enormous government institutions that those same giant corporations can afford to navigate far better than ordinary people ever could.

Different sales pitch. Same damn machine.

That’s what makes me crazy.

We spend all of our time fighting each other while the institution we’re supposedly fighting over gets larger, more expensive, more complicated, and more powerful no matter who wins.

Maybe patriotism isn’t blindly trusting your government.

Maybe patriotism is being deeply suspicious of it.

Maybe loving your country and loving your government are two entirely different things.

I love the idea of America: individual liberty, free expression, private property, self-reliance, the right to defend yourself, the right to tell powerful people to go fuck themselves without disappearing into a prison somewhere.

Those ideas are worth defending.

But defending America does not require defending every agency, every politician, every program, every law, every tax, or every idiot with an office in Washington who insists that whatever new authority they’re asking for is absolutely necessary and definitely won’t be abused.

History should have cured us of that level of trust by now.

Government should be forced to justify its existence to us. Not the other way around.

Every agency should have to explain why it still needs to exist.

Every program should have measurable goals and an expiration date.

Every elected official should know there is a clock ticking on their time in power.

Every tax should have to survive the question: What exactly are we getting for this?

And every time government asks for another little piece of our freedom because it promises that this time … seriously, guys, it’s for our own good, our default answer should probably be: Convince me.

Because government is not our parent. Politicians are not our rulers. Bureaucrats are not our masters. They work for us.

At least that was the fucking idea.

And maybe the most patriotic thing Americans could do right now isn’t wave a bigger flag, scream louder at the other political party, or worship whichever politician happens to be wearing their team’s jersey.

Maybe it’s remembering that this country belongs to the people who live here.

Not Washington. Not the Republican Party. Not the Democratic Party. Not lobbyists. Not corporations. And certainly not career politicians.

Us.

And if demanding that government become smaller, simpler, more accountable, less intrusive, and a whole lot more afraid of pissing off the people who pay for it makes me some kind of radical?

Fine. I can live with that.

How’s that for a little fucking patriotism?