Note: A version of this article was published in the July 2011 issue of Tea Party Review magazine.

What if the federal government issued an order, and nobody obeyed?

More and more, it’s happening across the country.

The most apparent example is the state pushback on the individual mandate for citizens to purchase health insurance, a cornerstone of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare. As of this writing, 27 states, more than half of the Union, are suing the federal government for attempting to force Americans to purchase a product or service against their will.

In addition to suing the government, some states have enacted laws to prevent the implementation of some or all aspects of Obamacare.

Many states, emboldened by Arizona’s tough stance against illegal immigration and frustrated by federal inaction in this area, are passing immigration laws of their own without regard for the federal government’s admonition that they can’t enact such legislation.

Most recently, Indiana passed a law to defund Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider. Despite the Obama Administration’s threat to cut off the federal contribution to Indiana’s Medicaid program altogether unless the funding is restored, Indiana’s government says it intends to enforce the law. Other states are considering similar bills.

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Those politicians in Washington had better get down to business on the debt ceiling and the necessary tax and spending reforms needed to bring fiscal responsibility to the federal government. Forget the Tea Party – hell hath no fury like a mother scorned.

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It’s been a very busy and challenging week. Car breakdowns, a balky cell phone, a crucial job interview at Liberty University, and the post-holiday crush of tasks at work and chores at home have had me running constantly, and looking forward to catching my breath this weekend.

Unfortunately, I read the latest news from the campaign trail leading to the 2012 presidential election, and my weekend was blown.

Despite the headline, however, Michele Bachmann didn’t ruin my weekend.

Unless she read the book I signed and gave to her a few months ago, or remembers me standing behind her during a “Kill the Bill” rally in March 2009, I suspect she hasn’t a clue who I am. I don’t take umbrage – people who get bent out of shape because a politician doesn’t remember a fleeting encounter with them need to have their prescriptions changed.

No, I’m the one who ruined my weekend, because I’m the one who feels compelled to respond to an action Rep. Bachmann took which has everyone abuzz and, in some cases, inflamed. But there is a point to the headline, and I’ll get to it in a minute.

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President Obama’s reelection team has a daunting task ahead of it, and that is to accomplish what no incumbent president has done in 75 years. As stated in the New York Times, “No American president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt has won a second term in office when the unemployment rate on Election Day topped 7.2 percent.”

Since most believe unemployment will still be above 7.2% on Election Day 2012, the president’s team of advisers is scrambling to solidify their base. They know that independents, who broke for Obama in 2008, are deserting him in droves, and center-right voters are more energized than in 2008, meaning many, if not most, of the four million or so Bush voters from 2004 who stayed home in 2008 won’t do so this time around.

For this reason, the president has abandoned all pretense of being the president of all the people, and launched a divisive campaign designed to stir up enough resentment in the black and Hispanic communities to get them to vote in numbers as close to the records they set in 2008 as possible. He is engaging in class warfare on an unprecedented scale, prompting even a Time magazine editor-at-large to describe his behavior using inappropriate sexual slang. He is pandering to the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) community, speaking in favor of their “rights” while stopping just short of endorsing gay marriage – see blacks and Hispanics above to understand why he doesn’t go “all the way.”

But whither the young?

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This is the 51^st Independence Day celebration in my lifetime and, as I watched the fireworks over the Chesapeake Bay from a friend’s house, I found myself wondering how many more of these we will celebrate as the United States of America.

It has been my great honor over the past few years to be part of a grass-roots movement that took the nation by surprise, and has revived our institutional memory of what it truly means to be American. Long-forgotten words like liberty, faith and family are being spoken from lecterns at outdoor rallies, public libraries, churches, exhibition halls, gymnasiums or wherever Tea Party groups gather.

I have been invited to and welcomed with open arms to these gatherings, and I have broken bread and had meaningful fellowship with people all over the country who are bound by their devotion to the American ideal as it once existed. I have been blessed by their hospitality as they have opened their homes to me, given me a place to rest, and fed me from their bounty before I went on my way to the next destination.

And yet, I feel despair, and I feel anger.

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Dear MSNBC:

I noted that you reacted with extraordinary swiftness in suspending indefinitely senior political analyst and TIME Magazine editor-at-large Mark Halperin for using sexual slang to describe the president’s behavior during his press conference on June 29th.

I understand your response, even if it was aided by a call from the White House Press Office.

After all, Mr. Halperin, a political analyst and journalist of long standing, certainly has the vocabulary to find a single word to describe imperious, condescending, divisive, arrogant and lecturing without disrespecting the office with intemperate language.

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