Now here we are at the end of 2009, nearly a year into our new age of hope, post-partisanship, and change we can believe in – but the “with us or against us” dichotomy has found new life, this time in the minds and actions of the same Democrats who epitomized it as that which was wrong with our country for the last two-terms.

Though the sentiment has gained steam throughout the entire healthcare debate, we’ve reached a boiling point as Joe Lieberman threatens to vote against Harry Reid’s healthcare bill. In the Washington Post, Ezra Klein goes so far as to say:

At this point, Lieberman seems primarily motivated by torturing liberals. That is to say, he seems willing to cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in order to settle an old electoral score.

It seems we’ve reached a point where being opposed to healthcare isn’t simply wrong, but is instead, effectively, genocidal. Disregarding the fact that a dozen Democrats in the Senate have expressed concern about Reid’s legislation, what the left is doing – in no uncertain terms – is further polarizing this country by branding both moderates (Lieberman is not a party-line anything) and conservatives as the enemy.

In George Bush’s case, the black-and-white claim was at least logical – either you support terrorism or you don’t.  In the current manifestation, the shades of grey that have been eliminated represent nothing more than the desperation of a party too incompetent to get the job done.