If you've been looking for justification for your feeling that government can be a positive thing, look at the Government Is Good website.
[W]hile most of us do not think of it this way, government is actually one of the main ways that we act as good people in the world. Our contributions to government in the form of taxes go to fund a wide variety of programs and services that have eliminated enormous amounts of suffering and vastly improved millions of people's lives. In this sense, then, one of the primary reasons that government is good is because it does so much good in society. Or to be more accurate: it is because government enables us to do so much good. Democratic government is in part a manifestation of our desire to be responsible moral people, and it is the primary institutional mechanism that we use to make the world a better place.
This site will not only make you feel better about government--it will also give you lots of ammunition to counter the anti-government propaganda the Right has been putting out.