The new conservatives’ rallying cry is that government is the enemy. They mistake our government for the former Soviet Union, or confuse Ayn Rand’s fictional greed and selfishness as good moral values.

The government of the United States is us. It is not the enemy to be destroyed, it is government of, by, and for we the people.

The new conservatives want to return to the three historic embodiments of tyranny that the Founders identified, declared war against, and fought and died to keep out of our land. Those tyrants were kings, theocrats and feudal lords.

Kings would never be allowed to govern America, so the Founders stripped the president of the power to declare war.

Theocrats would never be allowed to govern America, because government support of church teachings would be a dangerous abuse of power. James Madison said, “the Rulers who are guilty of such an encroachment exceed the commission from which they derive their authority, and are tyrants; the people who submit to it are governed by laws made neither by themselves nor by authority derived from them, and are slaves.”

Feudal lords would never be allowed to govern America, feudalism being broadly defined as “rule by the super rich.”

The revolutionary ideal of America is that government can exist while drawing its authority from a single source: “The consent of the governed.” Conservatives want to change all of that.

New conservatives think corporations should control politics, control the commons, control health care, control our air waves, control the “free” market and even our vote. Conservatives suggest corporations can perform public services at a lower cost, ignoring the cost of huge CEO salaries, corporate jets, millions to bribe legislators and on and on.

Look at any American city and ask yourself how many businesses are locally owned? Every night a button is pushed and the local money is sent to corporate headquarters in some distant city.

The new conservative mantra is: “less government!” Every time government is pushed out of administering some part of this nation’s vast commons, corporations step in. By swamping America in debt with so-called “tax cuts,” they cede more of our commons to corporate rule, and ultimately a feudal state controlled by the largest corporations.

The new conservatives would trade our democracy for a corporatocracy, a form of feudal government reinvented by Benito Mussolini when he merged “business and state interests,” and called it Fascism.

Government’s primary mandate is to serve the public; corporations primary mandate is to generate profit. Our greatest hope for resurrecting the American Dream is to stop this assault on the commons and take back the people’s democratic republic.

Rodrik Brosten, of Bigfork, was an unsuccessful Democratic candidate for House District 9 in the 2012 election.