I've been away on a brief vacation, making sure to avoid all 24 hours of each day's 24 hour news cycle.  I did not care to know what was going on.  I (thankfully) missed all the reports about Glenn Beck.  I even stayed away from my daily morning dose of NPR.

In this absence of external input, a simple thought occurred.  It's not the government, it's our government.  

When I hear people complain about the government, it's as if the government was something that we have no control over, no say in, no voice.  

It's as if the words: We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.... were never written. 

It is our government.  It is ours for the taking.  However, it is also for the taking by corporations, as they are "people" under a perversion of the 14th amendment to the Constitution.  Corporations have had no reservations about it being their government.  They were willing to write the laws that govern them to their advantage.  They see fit to send their agents into their government, to get involved, to make things happen, to see that corporations have free access to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  And they have done a remarkable job of that.   

But when we the people (the flesh & blood types) try to do the same things that our corporate citizens do, somehow we are told that it is "the government", that government is bad and that our efforts to participate in the government is "evil socialism".  

We are told by the likes of Beck, Limbaugh, Ingraham and the rest that we should run from government, not allow it to protect our interests, and not use it to help insure our life, liberty, or pursuit of happiness.  We are told to be rugged individuals, free men and women, working on the prairie. 

Once on the prairie, of course, we discover that the patents on the seeds to grow crops are owned by Monsanto, the water has been contaminated by Halliburton and the skies are filled with acid rain thanks to Massey Energy.   Not a problem, say the Tea Party, the free market will being justice.  No government needed.  Yeah, and there is a bridge in Brooklyn that's for sale and I hold the deed if anyone is interested.  

Why do the voices of Talk Radio tell us to run from participation in our government? Why do they say that demanding that our rights be represented and protected  is evil socialism?  Could it be that Beck, Limbaugh, Ingraham and the rest are funded by corporations?  Follow the money and you will find the truth.  Corporations want it all for themselves and they pay men like Glenn Beck millions of dollars a year to lie to us - and he does, probably laughing all the way to the bank near his multi-million dollar home in New Canaan Connecticut.  

It is not the government, it is our government and it is time to take it back.