Distrust of the Federal Government

The Distrust of the Federal Government, a cause currently being championed by the right, has begun reaching critical mass. With the tea parties, 9/12 marches, and bloggers blaming all the worlds' ills on the Federal Government in general, and Obama specifically, something was bound to happen.

And happen it did, with the murder of Bill Sparkman, a Federal Census Bureau field worker, who was found strung up in a remote section of the National Forest in Kentucky, with the word "Fed" written on his chest.

Currently, people like Glen Beck are trying to fan the revolutionary flames, with his quoting of obscure provisions of the US Constitution, mis-interpreting what the founding fathers intended in States vs. Federal power, taking portions of our history and lamenting a golden age and laws that were in actuality not about States rights, but about continuing slavery indefinately. The founding fathers disagreed amongst themselves whether power should be centralized in the Federal Government or in the States, and they never specified which. We decided to mix them when we went to war with the South, prohibiting them from secession in order to keep the Union strong, which is why we won World Wars I and II, not to mention the Cold War. We wouldn't have been able to win any of them had we been a fractured nation of State-Countries with nothing more than a Federal Mail service for the president to preside over.

I only forsee more of this in the current political climate. While the anti-government sentiment is currently being sown by the Republican Right, it wasn't too long ago it was the Democratic Left when Bush was in office. Both sides are guilty, and both sides forget their own atrocities when the other is in office. The PATRIOT act, Gtmo, wiretapping, and extraordinary rendition are quickly forgotten by the right, while the left forgets it was Clinton who repealed Glass-Steagall, and it is them that currently is printing trillions of dollars to stop a recession and reinflate the bubble that burst last year.

This has got to stop. The Federal Government, for the most part, does what it is supposed to do. Looks out for the common good. It overreaches at times, and that's why we have checks and balances. But labelling someone as treasonous because they support one party or another is ridiculous, and it needs to stop. Otherwise, more people are going to get strung up on trees.