Governments, composed of people and appointed by people, should serve the people. Those who serve are neither better nor worse than the people they are part of, and shouldn't look down at them or abuse them more than the law, enacted by a body representing the people, requires.
The people, who at least a portion of which compose the government and appoint them, shouldn't fear the government and should have no reason to fear it. They shouldn't look down at civil servants as serfs, nor should their first thought be that they're oppressors.
Yet in many cases, right and left, black and white and other, this is exactly the case. In some cases, group boundaries unrelated to law are involved. In others, different community norms and standards are in play. In others, the laws or the regulations enforcing them are extreme.
In many cases, whether it's an EPA official, a police officer, a case worker at a social service agency, or an IRS agent, the underpinnings of the dysfunction lies in the human psyche: Those who want positions with authority are usually those who most want to be able to wield it to serve their own emotional, intellectual, financial, or political needs. These are not civil servants, but mini-despots on the public payroll, who often view themselves as mini-messiahs and the actions done by others they coerce as their own actions and virtue. "I've done good ... I forced somebody else to do what I think is right, and the credit for their actions is my own."
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