It's Our Goverrnment That Makes America Exceptional

C_R_eature at Wonkette, on how the government shutdown is destroying science:

Do you know something that makes this country exceptional? It’s not Exxon, oil companies are transnational. It’s not Goldman-Sachs, because there’s shady folks pushing piles of other people’s money around in every nation. It certainly isn’t trust fund fascists, since oligarchs are everywhere too. It’s our government’s agencies and the people who choose to work at them that’s exceptional.

Over the years this country has existed, we have painstakingly assembled a network of excellent institutions that has ensured our success. Our federal laboratories and institutional research partners are the envy of the world. This is our birthright and our true national treasure. Federal Agencies, and the federal employees who work at them, manage our resources, look after our health, see that our food is safe, maintain our security and keep our rivers from exploding into flame. They’re the folks that rush in with supplies and money when they’re hit by disasters. They watch out for storms, volcano eruptions, earthquakes and tsunamis. They scan the skies for asteroids that could wipe out our civilization. They’re the real Atlases that hold our society up and they take a torrent of abuse from misguided, ungrateful people who don’t think the jobs they do should exist at all.

It isn’t a popular viewpoint these days, but I think that it’s patriotic to be proud of our institutions and grateful of the work our Federal employees do. It should be patriotic to let them do their jobs. It should be patriotic to value their work, not to invent conspiracies to discredit it. It should be patriotic to pay them, at the very least.

It should be patriotic to want our government to work, not work to make our government fail.