You noticed that.
Actually, my definition of government is the public institutions we set up in order to protect us from the abuses of private enterprise.
This is very interesting, and would no doubt surprise the founders of this country and the authors of the Constitution. But it's probably a widely-held notion.
However, the rest of your post stands up pretty well. My worry has long been that the balance is tilting a bit too far toward the anti-private side, both legally and culturally.