> The government provides essential services (decentralized up to the district level) like education, water, streets, police, health care, social security for it's citizens.
I wonder if herein lies the fundamental difference. I would never put it the way you have.
The people form the government and pay them to administer infrastructure and services for them. That is massively different than the "government does for it's people" view. One is almost a royals-and-subjects view while the other says, well, government of the people, by the people and for the people.
In my model we hire the government to serve us. They are nothing more than our employees.
The other data point I have is that as a youngster my family spent quite a number of years in Argentina. Monkeys would govern that country better than nearly any administration they have had to endure. I have followed their politics on and off over the years. To this day they continue to be raped and pillaged by their government. The only way you can characterize them is thugs, thieves and gangsters. It is quite possible that seeing some of the things I saw there planted the seeds for not seeing government as part of the solution as an adult. I mean, look at Cyprus.