So I was milling around the InterWebz yesterday and came upon a question … not a serious question, meaning “I don’t know the answer to this and need some help,” but rather a conversation starter tinted with a little curiosity, since the premise of the question itself is a little odd.

When they say, ” I want my country back,” what are they talking about?

The thread that sped off from this question at light speed ran the gamut from laugh-out-loud humor to on-target seriousness. Some of us, of course, thought that perhaps they meant a return to Hank Williams (Sr., not Jr.), Merle Haggard and Johnny Cash, or perhaps even new Garth Brooks music. In fact, quite a few of the commenters on that thread were up for that country.

Others wondered when it became “my” country and not “our” country, and plenty noted that they had, in fact, gotten their country back on January 20 of this year. I, naturally, surmised that

They are talking about that mythical time when the country was made up only of nice white, heterosexual people who went to work everyday, except for the women, of course, who stayed home and took care of the house and raised the babies. You know, back before the queers and the blacks and the Mexicans took over.

The conversation zipped along for a while, ranging from the serious to the absurd, with the conservatives on the thread — for this place was common ground for folks with a different interest, not politics — as well as the progressives/liberals behaving rather nicely.

But then it happened.

I want the country that was formed to protect individual sovereignty. The extreme left is attempting to force collectivism.

Ohmygod. You could hear the brakes screeching, accompanied by a loud, “collective” HUH? because up until that point, there had been no such “your side is forcing something on my side” comments. Then, crickets. But only for a moment. The conversation quickly returned to regularly scheduled programmng. I, on the other hand, was not one to let such a cockamamy statement go unchallenged.

No, the “extreme” left isn’t trying to force anything. But we do think that cooperation — not collectivism — is a much better way to live than every man for himself. Just sayin,

I said. I said that because it is total bullshit to claim that this country was founded on the idea of protecting “individual sovereignty.” In fact, the words “individual,” “sovereign” and “sovereignty” appear not once in the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. To be fair, neither do the words “cooperate” and “cooperation.” But phrases like “common good,” “public good,” “general welfare” and the like are all over the place in those docs.

Incidentally, in all the call to harken back to patriot days by this current crop of democracy haters, I’d recommend a close reading of the Declaration. See, the Declaration, it was the culmination of years, decades of complaint by the colonists here in what is now the United States against the government of Britain, which, as we all know, was headed by a hereditary monarchy. The opening lines:

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

That’s right before the “we hold these truths to be self-evident” part. The Declaration of Independence is a long laundry list of the despicable acts of King George III. And nowhere in there does it say “He has tried to pass a health care reform bill that the people who voted for him wanted,” because, you know, hereditary monarchs aren’t elected.

It does, however, say things like “He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good” (oooh looky — there’s that “public good” phrase) and “He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people” and “He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.”

I’m also really fond of the one that says the king was “obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither.” That one was particularly rich, I thought. There’s a long string, 27 complaints against the king, in fact. And right after the list it says:

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury.

Mmm. That doesn’t sound familiar at all, at least not recently. The modern way of handling disagreements with government is that when the people elect a president you don’t like, you immediately go insane and refuse to work with him for the common good, the public good, the general welfare or anything else that has to do with the entire country.

But hey, go ahead and wear your silly patriot costumes. We know you haven’t a clue what the folks who really dressed like that were going through.

But anyway, I said what I said because I knew damn well the United States of America were not formed — didja catch that word “united”? — for this mythological “individual sovereignty” thing that I think Hollywood invented back before it became all liberal and irrelevant and everything. And because I was also havin fun with the country music and the tattoos and the powdered wigs (don’t know how that got in there, but there it was), I kept it fairly light.

Then some other dude said something about the answer to the original question being something about this leftist government encroaching further into our lives and how George Orwell must be laughing his ass off, and I was like, Seriously? Yo, dude, let me know when gay men and lesbians can marry their partners across the country and can visit their partners in, say, the hospital if they’re incapable of OKing their presence. Encroaching into our lives? Mmmmm … there is that whole spying thing that Obama is continuing, damn him, but he sure as hell didn’t start it.

And then the original conservative poster was back with this directly to me:

I respect your choice to live cooperatively but this is a nation founded on the principle of individual freedom. I think it is cool when my friends form co-ops or communes, as long as they don’t attempt to impose their will on me.

It’s “cool” when her friends form co-ops or communes, but those dirty stinkin hippies better not try to make her do it! I took a deep sigh and ignored her after that, back to the free tattoos and quill pens (?).

There were, of course, the equivalency appeasers, who show up to say how the noise from the left and the right is all the same, just from a different ideology, and one commenter who asked if our conservative friend would be opting out of Medicare when she turns 65. Then she was back.

Do you folks ever listen to yourselves? You had an opportunity for dialog and you behaved in a small mean-spirited manner. Your loss …

While I was reviewing the conversation, unsuccessfully looking for examples of rudeness and mean-spiritedness and crafting a response because this time she annoyed me, she was still writing. So I didn’t see

I would very much prefer not to be on Medicare but I do not have a choice. Medicare is mandated. I would love to be able to go completely off the grid. I would never ask anyone to live for my sake.

while I was writing

Here’s the thing. I didn’t say anything about co-ops or communes. I said cooperation. When you trivialize what I said by misreading it, the conversation is over. I know then you won’t hear a word, and frankly, I’m sick of the freedom rules misinterpretation of our entire history. I have plenty of freedoms, except where conservative governments have expressly written discrimination into law. So don’t talk to me about freedom. Where does yours end and mine begin? Where you decide it does?

The beauty of life is that everything changes. The rules that applied to a bunch of white guys convinced of their Manifest Destiny to eliminate the natives and steal their lands and the resources under them don’t apply anymore. We live in a great big world now where we’re all connected instantly, if we choose to be, and that requires a whole new way of thinking and a whole new way of being. Change is gonna happen, whether you like it or not.

I did come back later to note that Medicare is not mandated by federal law. Some private insurers mandate it, however, but seriously, it was time for more fun things.

It seemed to me that this conservative, at least, only finds dialogue useful when the others involved agree with her premises. But when I’m talking about cooperation, the public good, the general welfare, and you’re talking about communes and co-operatives, how can we have a useful conversation? When you start off your part of the conversation with the “fact” that the “extreme left” is trying to force you into socialism (let’s dispense with the euphemisms), how can we have a useful conversation? When more than one of your premises are historical falsehoods and misrepresentations, how can we have a useful conversation?

And how, when you stomp off after being apprised of your inaccuracies, whining that no one will carry on a conversation with you, how in the hell can we have a useful conversation?

Of course, I’ve seen progressives do very similar things, and it’s just as wrong then.

But this is a much more common tactic from the modern conservative know-nothings. And it’s also a common tactic from people who have nothing to back up what they’re saying, as if, for example, they just heard somebody on television or the radio or in a church pulpit say it.

Individual sovereignty my ass. This country was founded to break away from the tyranny of a despotic and possibly insane king who ruled with an iron thumb from thousands of miles away across an ocean in an era without instaneous or even remotely fast communication. It was founded by groups of people, joined together in states, who then further joined together for the benefit of all.

The common good. The general welfare. The public good. The people. We the People.

Not me, the rugged individualist. That’s 1980s talk.

We. The. People.

Seriously, my friends. It really isn’t that difficult.