Via Atrios…  Four decades of post 60s movement conservatism in a nutshell:

Anti-tax ‘tea party’ could draw crowd to downtown Syracuse

Joanne Wilder has never protested anything in public before. She’s never boxed with City Hall, let alone Washington.

"I’ve been a quiet little person my whole life," she said.

But today in downtown Syracuse, the 60-year-old great-grandmother will lead a Tax Day Tea Party protest against the spending policies of the Obama administration and Congress.

Well good for you Ms Wilder!  We Americans should all roll up our sleeves and get our hands dirty in the nuts and bolts of making representative government work for us.  After all…it Is our government.  Of the people, by the people, and for the people. 

Common, average, everyday people…like the Heritage Foundation, FOX News, Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck…

The protests are being coordinated by a coalition of national conservative groups and promoted by celebrity conservative commentators such as Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh.

But they’re being carried out across the country by new grass-roots leaders like Wilder, who are upset that the government seems to be bailing out everyone but them.

Everyone but you, eh?

After a lifetime of working, paying taxes and raising three children on her own, Wilder is struggling.

She said she retired on disability from M&T Bank three years ago after undergoing knee replacement and back surgeries. She lives on her Social Security and disability benefits. Last year, she petitioned the bankruptcy court for protection from creditors.

She said she did not have to pay federal income taxes last year because her income was too low.

"I don’t want to see this country turn into a welfare, nanny state, where we stand in line for groceries, and we’re in welfare lines, and in socialized medicine lines," Wilder said.

Okay…let me get this straight.  You’re living on social security and disability benefits and you want the government to get off the backs of the rich, cut taxes and put an end to entitlement programs.  I have a question: who pays your health care costs m’am?

Tool.

I actually know someone in a similar situation.  Lives on disability (it’s legit…trust me)…lives in one of the most upscale counties in the nation and gets section 8 housing because he has no source of income…medical and health care costs all paid either by the state or the feds, which yes, he really needs or he’d have died long ago.  Oh…and smokes pot like a goddamned chimney.  Liberal socialist communist hippy freak?  Oh mes non…  Loyal Republican.   Listens to Rush…watches FOX…just can’t stand what the liberals are doing to this country.  Like…oh…putting food in the stomachs of people who can’t work and giving them a roof over their heads and some semblance of human dignity instead of tossing them into the street to beg…which is exactly what would happen if the right had its way.

If it amazes you how so many people whose lives have been made better by American liberalism have turned against it with a snarl you aren’t paying attention.  This isn’t about policy.  Digby’s right…the issues are fungible.  This is about tribe.  The folks saying now that the republican party needs to move beyond the culture war if it wants to survive, seem not to have got the point of the last few decades.  It was always about the culture war.  The social issues aren’t tangential, they’re the bedrock.