GOVERNMENT IS JUST A WORD FOR THE THINGS WE CHOOSE TO DO TOGETHER: Right name, wrong man: Knoxville veterinarian can’t get off no-fly list.

Dr. Patrick Stephen Hackett is a veterinarian — not a terrorist.

Try explaining that in the airport security line.

Hackett, a lifelong resident of the Knoxville-Oak Ridge area, was named Outstanding Practitioner of the Year in 1992 by the Tennessee Veterinary Medical Association. He serves as president of the Humane Society of the Tennessee Valley.

He’s on the no-fly list.

Hackett has never been arrested and never traveled to the Middle East or other centers of terrorist activity, but he found out more than a decade ago he’s on the federal watch list because he shares the same name as notorious Irish Republican Army terrorist Patrick Joseph Hackett, who was jailed in the 1970s for planting bombs in Britain.

The difference should be easy to spot. The terrorist is missing an arm and a leg — blown off when a bomb exploded prematurely — while the Knoxville veterinarian has all his limbs intact.

“I don’t know how I got on the list, and I don’t know how to get off the list,” Hackett said.

And nobody will ever pay a price for what’s happened to him.