I am getting a premonition of how shocked and appalled “reasonable” people are going to be (and how Villagers will bleat that “no one could have predicted!“) when right-wing nutjobs take irresponsible, inflammatory rhetoric like this and decide to kill people in the name of defending the republic:

At a town hall meeting this week, “a partisan crowd of over 2,000 people” cheered on Rep. Wally Herger’s (R-CA) fear-mongering about the Obama administration and its policy proposals: “Herger did not hold back on his opinion of the health care plan and the administration’s appointment of ‘czars’ to head various departments and task forces. ‘Our democracy has never been threatened as much as it is today,’ Herger said to a loud standing ovation.”

It’s pretty simple: These nuts seriously believe that, under Obama, our democracy has never been threatened as much as it is today.

When a supposedly respectable Republican elected leader is effectively telling you that Obama is more dangerous to our country than even Hitler or Stalin’s communism were, how could you, as a red-blooded Real American™, NOT go out and kill the evil libruls that are out to destroy America?

I weep for our country when that day someday comes (again)…

Update: Frank Rich tears down some more inflammatory rhetoric spewed by GOP Senator Tom Coburn:

“IT is time to water the tree of liberty” said the sign carried by a gun-toting protester milling outside President Obama’s town-hall meeting in New Hampshire two weeks ago. The Thomas Jefferson quote that inspired this message, of course, said nothing about water: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” That’s the beauty of a gun – you don’t have to spell out the “blood.”

The protester was a nut. America has never had a shortage of them. But what’s Tom Coburn’s excuse? Coburn is a Republican senator from Oklahoma, where 168 people were murdered by right-wing psychopaths who bombed a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995. Their leader, Timothy McVeigh, had the Jefferson quote on his T-shirt when he committed this act of mass murder. Yet last Sunday, when asked by David Gregory on “Meet the Press” if he was troubled by current threats of “violence against the government,” Coburn blamed not the nuts but the government.

“Well, I’m troubled any time when we stop having confidence in our government,” the senator said, “but we’ve earned it.”

Coburn is nothing if not consistent. In the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing, he was part of a House contingent that helped delay and soften an antiterrorism bill. This cohort even tried to strip out a provision blocking domestic fund-raising by foreign terrorist organizations like Hamas. Why? The far right, in league with the National Rifle Association, was angry at the federal government for aggressively policing America’s self-appointed militias. In a 1996 floor speech, Coburn conceded that “terrorism obviously poses a serious threat,” but then went on to explain that the nation had worse threats to worry about: “There is a far greater fear that is present in this country, and that is fear of our own government.” As his remarks on “Meet the Press” last week demonstrated, the subsequent intervention of 9/11 has not changed his worldview.

Read the whole thing.