In watching the absurd reactions by right-wingers immediately after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, one has to conclude that our country has finally jumped the shark.
How else can you describe the spectacle of Americans protesting for their right to be ripped off by insurance companies and be denied coverage at the whim of a claims manager?
Are they so afraid of seeing health benefits go to the “unworthy” (read: not white) that they are willing to do without coverage themselves?
Are they that obsessed with a twisted version of “freedom” that they are willing to walk away from the whole notion of community, shared responsibility, and concern for others?
The answer is apparently yes.
Granted, nearly all the anti-“Obamacare” protests over the past couple of years have been ginned up by the usual right-wing political groups funded by the usual right-wing oligarchs. But the noisy defenders of the right of insurance companies to kill them represent an ugly strain in American politics.
Despite all the worship of “rugged individualism,” the truth is that the true philosophy that has bound this nation is that we are a commonwealth - that government is not a “them,” but is all of us, that there are certain things that belong to us all, and that government is the way that free people choose to come together for the greater good of everyone.
This is the American idea, the idea we celebrate on this July 4, the 236th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
However, for the rich and the powerful who are rapidly trying to turn our democracy into a permanent oligarchy, the idea of the commonwealth is just a myth, a figment of the imaginations of the soft-hearted dreamers who still believe that we all are our brother's and sister's keeper.
And for all the solemn worship of the Constitution by the far right, they usually gloss over the words that begin that document: “We the People.”
But those three words form the basis of how a civilized nation operates: all of us, joining together, to keep and maintain the common goods that belong to us all and to ensure they are there for succeeding generations to enjoy.
There is little room for selfishness or laissez-faire economics in our Constitution. But the people who sneer at the idea of the public good believe otherwise.
They have spent a lot of time and money committing themselves to the idea that government doesn't work and proving that point by pushing to elect public officials who have no interest in making government work for the common good.
The streak of selfishness and cruelty in our nation widens by the day. And the very people who benefit from that streak will discard in a heartbeat the Tea Party-types who are protesting against their own well-being. The Tea Partiers are the equivalent of chickens marching in support of Colonel Sanders.
The irony is that the legislation was designed to incorporate conservative models of health-care reform, to create bipartisan support for the common good for an unambiguous problem affecting millions of people in our nation.
In a sign of the utter irrationality trumping even healthy disagreement and debate, the very party that created the notion of the individual mandate - the requirement that those who can afford to pay for health insurance do so - disavowed an idea that is absolutely congruent with the small-c conservative ideal of self-reliance and personal responsibility.
And Mitt Romney, the Republican Party's presumptive presidential nominee - the very person who spearheaded the successful implementation of the individual mandate at the state level, in neighboring Massachusetts - disavows his formidable accomplishment.
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Yes, the health-care law that President Obama signed into law two years ago is flawed. Rather than take the simple and obvious step of turning Medicare into a program for all Americans, he and his staff created a convoluted law that expands coverage while enriching the insurance companies and drug makers.
But even this flawed law is better than nothing, and that's what those who hate government are afraid of.
If it works, like Social Security and Medicare before it, it will help kill the myth that the right loves to repeat endlessly - that government can't work.
Does the noisy claque of Tea Party protesters really want to propel our nation to a place where the law of the jungle replaces the Golden Rule, and if you are not fortunate enough to be white, male, heterosexual, Christian, and well off, you deserve to be poor, sick, and shut out of society?
By disingenuously concentrating on the costs of the legislation and not the problems that it was designed to fix - the enormous escalating cost of health care and the personal catastrophe of Americans who are caught in financial nightmares because of the cost of insurance, pre-existing conditions, unemployment, and more - the opponents of this legislation conveniently ignore the fact that it was designed to solve a runaway fiscal train.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that, far from being an out-of-control example of bleeding-heart spending run amok, the legislation will reduce the country's deficit by $210 billion over 10 years.
In a world where Republicans demonize government and Democrats seem too frightened to stand up for the principles that built this nation, a world where ideology collides head on with fact, it's hard to be optimistic.
But for the American idea to endure, we need more people willing to stand up for the common good.