Fear of health.

Fear is a great motivator. Some can use it in a positive way, while others choose to use it to panic and violence.

Unrest over sweeping federal health care legislation has turned to vandalism and threats, with bricks hurled through Democrats' windows, a propane line cut at the home of a congressman's brother and menacing phone messages left for lawmakers who supported the bill.
The FBI is investigating the instances, which include shattered windows at four Democratic offices in New York, Arizona and Kansas. At least 10 members of Congress have reported some sort of threat as of Wednesday, and no arrests have been made.

Some narrow-minded people think that flinging bricks and screaming equals social commentary. And for some strange reason, those people are always on the side of the Republican right. Why do you suppose that is? Could it be that rage and violence represent their best ideas?

The brick flung through the window of a county Democratic Party office in Rochester, N.Y., over the weekend had a note attached: "Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice," roughly quoting 1964 Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater.
A New York congresswoman whose office window also was smashed with a brick accused the Republican leadership of failing to denounce attacks against lawmakers who supported the legislation. The vandalism was at Democratic Rep. Louise Slaughter's district office in Niagara Falls early Friday, two days before the House passed the health care overhaul bill.

My favorite part is when they invoke the name of their God...

Some of the anger over the bill spilled over in a flood of obscenity and threat-filled phone and fax messages to the office of Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich. His office released some of the messages it has received since the health care bill passed, declining to add further comment.
"I hope you bleed ... (get) cancer and die," one male caller told the congressman between curses.
A fax with the title "Defecating on Stupak" carried a picture of a gallows with "Bart (SS) Stupak" on it and a noose attached. It was captioned, "All Baby Killers come to unseemly ends Either by the hand of man or by the hand of God."

That's a useful piece of information to have. Of course, the good news is that if Stupak does indeed "get cancer" he will be assured of health care, so he has that going for him - which is nice.

"The tone is not surprising, but the aggressiveness is," Lyndsay Stauble, executive director of the Sedgwick County Democratic Party in Wichita, Kansas, said Wednesday. "I'm not shocked that people are not reacting well to a large piece of legislation passed by a president that they don't like."

I'm not shocked either, Lyndsay. They're just afraid. The trouble is that they don't know exactly what they are afraid of - other than something different. I only wish they were better at losing. Maybe we could take their names so that when they find themselves in need of health care and cannot pay for it, they would be left to do what they want the rest of us to do - die.