Should any of us be flattered?  We learn from a report in the Palm Beach Post (via Drudge) that President Obama wants us to think of the federal government not as government, but as family.  Yes, one big, happy, sprawling family.  Sure, we all have Uncle Sam, but do any of us really want the rest of our dear federal family?  

Evidently, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is one of Mr. Obama's enablers in getting Americans to accept the family tag for government. 

This from the Palm Beach Post's story:

The Obama administration didn't invent the phrase [federal family] but has taken it to new heights.

"Under the direction of President Obama and Secretary Janet Napolitano, the entire federal family is leaning forward to support our state, tribal and territorial partners along the East Coast," a FEMA news release declared Friday as Irene churned toward landfall.

The G-word - "government" - has been nearly banished, with FEMA instead referring to federal, state and local "partners" as well as "offices" and "personnel."

Who needs the fatherly Barack Obama borrowing battleships full of money and running up the nation's  - err, family's - credit cards like there's no tomorrow?  Momma Michelle might be really well intended with her campaign to put salads front and center in every public school cafeteria in America, but maybe Momma Michelle's energies would be better spent getting the kiddies to learn how to read and write.  Seems literacy in too many public schools (Detroit and Newark, for example) is more deficient than nutrition. 

And let's not forget all our cousins in the federal family bureaucracies; those souls who live to promulgate rules, regulations, mandates, and anything else that increases their authority and mucks up our free enterprise system. 

Had enough?  Or should we say something about our aunts and uncles in Congress? 

The Founders are about the only "fathers" worth recognizing when it comes to the nation's system of government.  Then again, the Founders considered government a servant of the people, and bureaucrats were once termed "civil servants."  But these days, bureaucrats bridle at being called servants... just too darned demeaning. 

But let us free Americans insist that government is a servant, and not family... and never our masters.