Webb: What makes — and keeps — America great? It's a long list, but at least part of it is good people willing to perform public service. I attended a candidate breakfast a few weeks ago and happened to sit at a table with three people from my own small community of Centerville. Debbie Randall, David Gutke and Paul Cutler are average folks with families, mortgages, jobs and all the typical challenges of life. But in one sense they're also very different because they've done something that few people, including me, ever do. They've voluntarily placed themselves, their good names and reputations, before their peers to be accepted or rejected in thousands of private, individual decisions at a special place called a polling place. In the case of these three, they were accepted by their peers, elected to represent me and the rest of Centerville on our City Council. It might seem like a small job, but they make a lot of important decisions, wielding the awesome coercive power of government in my community.

And what a ride it has been. In chatting with them at breakfast, I was reminded why I have so much respect for people, particularly at the local level, who voluntarily deal with myriad controversies and make tough, no-win decisions. They serve with little glamour, little pay, little publicity (unless they do something wrong) and at a lot of personal sacrifice.

Nothing energizes people like local politics; there's nothing like having one of your neighbors yelling at you over a zoning decision. They've just been through a divisive fight over UTOPIA, which toughened them up for a much bigger issue: Wal-Mart. Many good Centerville folks are up in arms over the possibility of Wal-Mart coming to town, and they expect Debbie, David and Paul to do something about it — or else.

My Centerville City Council members (also including Mayor Mike Deamer, Jack Dellastatious and Dean Layton), along with thousands of other local officials in Utah and around the country, are clearly part of what makes America great.

As we celebrate America's founding, its enduring government so brilliantly divided among national, state and local levels, and further divided among three offsetting branches (to keep that awesome coercive power under control), we ought to be grateful for those most local of government officials and the sacrifices they make for us.

I've mentioned previously that perhaps the most accurate description of an editorial writer or columnist is someone who comes down out of the hills after the battle is over and shoots the wounded.