Don’t tread on us: New roar from the right is disturbing

The hysteria and histrionics started soon after Obama was elected president.
“The government is going to take my money and spend it on other people!”
“The government is going to take away my guns!”
“The government is the enemy!”
But it’s getting even more serious than those tired old complaints.
A few months ago in Texas, a guy killed himself and two others when he crashed his plane into an IRS building because he didn’t want to pay his taxes. He left behind a long letter, which was basically an anti-government screed.
The recent passage of the health care bill that forces people to get insurance through private companies (a real Bolshevik plot if I’ve ever heard one) has resulted in politicians receiving death threats.
In Columbus, Ohio a few weeks ago, a Tea Party protester berated a man with Parkinson’s disease who was calmly sitting on the ground holding up a sign espousing his own pro-reform beliefs. The Tea Party protester mockingly threw money at him and said, “Here’s your handout.” You Tube it and see for yourself. The Tea Partier eventually apologized and said he’d never attend another rally.
Throughout the incident, the Tea Party crowd chanted, “Kill the bill!”
When the bill did pass, the moronic bimbo queen of the Republican Party, Sarah Palin, said it was time to “reload.”
The most disturbing event happened earlier this week right here in Michigan with the arrest of the Hutaree, the Christian militia that plotted to kill law enforcement officers downstate. I cover the police beat here at the News Advocate, and spend a fair amount of time with the good men and woman who put their lives on the line to keep Manistee safe. These people should never be a target.
But they are because they wear a badge, which makes them part of that evil regime: The Government.
This new roar from the right is imbued with a violent rhetoric that is downright disturbing.
Many of them come from a “fringe” element. It’s not fair to group them in with all conservatives and Republicans in the same way that it’s not fair to say every Democrat is a drug-toking, whale-saving, bearded Trotskyite. Or, a baby-killer, which is what Rep. Randy Neugebauer, R-Texas, yelled at the anti-abortion Michigan Congressman Bart Stupak after the health care bill vote.
Still, limited government to downright anti-government is what the right wing’s always talking about.
They want to exist on an island, which we know from John Donne, no man can. They see themselves as pioneers/patriots who just need their plot of land to live, which they will do peacefully as long as the government stays out of their way.
Just don’t expect any services like schools, water or protection from theft, fire or your personal well-being.
What anti-government people want isn’t so much a lack of a government, they just want a government that allows them to stay separated from doing any kind of business with people they don’t want to: the poor, the tired, the huddled masses.
The truth is, you are the government and the government is you.
We’re all in this world together.
If you don’t want government, move to Mars. But, if more than a few people join you, some sort of organized government would form because it is a natural human enterprise.
Because if there is no common good, no social contract between us, we’re nothing more than animals.