Why Do Conservatives Hate The Government But Not The Military?

Seems to be the cool new question, or at least the new-this-cycle question, so I'll take a stab at explaining it.  As, counter some claims, conservatives are not a hive-mind, other folks may have other reasons.

First: this question is very poorly phrased.  Conservatives do not "hate" government in most meanings of the word; government is a needful thing.  Think of it as being like fire: when under control and properly monitored, it's wonderful and needed for life as we know it.  Let it get out of control, and the phrase "at least one of your children survived that fire" becomes a good thing.

Government is needed because people suck.  If, magically, tomorrow everyone was such that perfect voluntary communism spontaneously arose, and you could leave a stack of money in the middle of New York while you go for a month-long televised trip, if you could not worry when you get sick because the neighbors you've never met will pitch in to nurse you through it, if everyone suddenly was willing to set down and work out a mutually beneficial solution to any conflict on a one-to-one scale, if there was no law enforcement because there were no criminals, then we wouldn't need government.  We have government to minimize the bad actors and get the heck out of the way of the good.

Conservatives realize government is made up of people, and is powerful; thus, government should not be trusted any more than any other stranger who has power.

K, so that's what is meant by "hate"-- "distrust the motives of"-- how about "government"?

To keep this from being as long as my arm, I'll limit this to Federal branches for the creation and enforcement of laws and regulation as it affects the average person in their day to day life, especially the unpleasant sort of way.

Thus, the FDA usually isn't too much of a worry, but mandatory public schooling is.  (A quick google should find you lots of posts like this.  And this.  Or this series.)

 Bureaucracies tend to have inertia on their side, and they tend to expand their authority while they're at it.  They also don't hold to their original intent. (Income tax--temporary and only for the rich, right?)

You can probably see where I'm going, here, so I'll get going already.

The military is paid by the Feds, but the services do not make or enforce rules for the average citizen.
 Additionally, the nature of the military as a go-and-kill-them sort of problem solver tends to attract different people than the let's-fix-the-world-by-organizing public service jobs, and military units, shops or offices tend to have a high enough rate of rotation that crystallized bureaucracies can't form very well.

Oh, and military folks that do things which result in massive damage to the US face trials at the least; their civilian counterparts, not so much.

 It's also worth noticing that while conservatives respect military folks, they also tend not to trust military bureaucracies any more than their civilian forms.  (Wasn't it the Chinese who have hell as a bureaucracy?  Or was that their afterlife, period?)   We've all been screwed over by someone chasing a higher rank, probably several times.

Conservatives tend to see the Government as cubical-office politics writ large, with even less of a personal touch.  Know how dangerously folks drive?  K, now imagine they have even less of a risk than "my car will be damaged, too" and putting your life at risk will get them home early.  Yeah.....


So...

Short answer: conservatives don't like big gov't because it is a threat; the military is not a threat.