Are we becoming the land that is not so free and the home of the afraid?

On September 11 as I was preparing to work on a post about the 16th anniversary of the 9-11 attacks, I was interrupted by a knock on the door that as Turner Report readers will recall quickly ended up with me on the floor, the victim of a sucker punch from someone who was displeased with my reporting.

In addition to a messed-up face, I had a severely swollen knee area and made a subsequent visit to the Freeman emergency room.

A couple of weeks later, I received a statement from Freeman noting that the cost of that visit was nearly $1,400, not counting bills from doctors and radiologists.

Later that day, as I checked out the report on my insurance company's website, I discovered it had already received the bills from the doctors and radiologists, bringing the total bill to approximately $2,000 ... and every cent of it was covered by my insurance.

I had a hard time believing it and a short time later I shared my good fortune with my Facebook friends, thanking Obamacare at the end of my status report.

Many people were pleased that I was not going to be saddled with debt over an unprovoked attack, but other people had an entirely different reaction.

Those people made it clear that my Obamacare was stealing money from their pockets. They were having to pay for my health care. They related stories about having to pay incredibly high co-pays and deductibles, while I (and anyone else who had insurance under the Affordable Care Act) was a freeloader who deserved to go broke rather than to have my situation eased because of a government handout.

What in the world is wrong with these people?

Their first inclination is not to wonder what can be done to fix the system so they don't have to pay such high co-pays and deductibles, but to hope for an end to a program that has made it so people do not have to go into bankruptcy because they have a major disease. I shared my good news about insurance covering the cost of the emergency room visit because I did not expect that to happen and I thought people would be genuinely happy for me.

Not if it involved Obamacare. (I should mention that my insurance does not cover all costs. While it covered a large portion of the $200,000+ cost of my triple bypass surgery in April 2016, I am still working to take care of those bills.)

Many people have been conditioned to think that anything that is a good thing for society should be eliminated because it is taking something from their pockets.

The Affordable Care Act, flawed though it certainly is, has given millions of people affordable insurance for the first time, but instead of fixing those flaws, we have to get rid of it entirely. People who don't make as much money or who have pre-existing conditions do not have to live in fear or die early. But that makes no difference to those who think that something good for other people is being done just to hurt them.

An example of this mindset could be seen after John McCain announced his opposition to the most recent effort to repeal Obamacare. The comments on the KZRG Facebook page featured calls for McCain's death and expressions of sheer hatred and vindictiveness because he said he would vote against a bill that would have eliminated health insurance for millions of Americans.

Now that is the American spirit!

It is not just health care. Think of all of the convenient bogeymen that have been set up as villains.

How about those people who are on welfare or receive food stamps? You have people, many of them receiving millions of dollars a year to keep the people angry on radio, TV and in books, pushing the idea that the poor are stealing your money. They select the most egregious examples of people who are cheating the system and use them represent all of the people who receive assistance.

Most people who are forced to live on welfare or who receive food stamps would prefer to be in better situations where they would not have to rely on the government to exist from day to day. Instead of working on programs that would provide them with the opportunity to lift themselves into a better existence, lawmakers throw as many obstacles in their way as they can- drug test them, cut the number of weeks they can receive unemployment benefits, provide more ways to deprive them of those benefits- because people who cannot find work or people who do not make enough money are stealing from you.

Now that is the American spirit!

And Good Lord, don't ever mention anything about devising any type of sensible gun regulations. It is not an effort to save lives- it is depicted as an effort to come into our homes and take away our guns. How we will defend ourselves when it becomes time to overthrow the oppressive government?

After each mass killing, we hear the same refrains. It is too soon to talk about gun regulations. Let's have a moment of silence for the dead and maybe we can discuss it before the next time it happens.

People are ridiculed because they do not know the exact model and make or functions of a particular weapon.

It's not guns that kill people, it's people who kill people.

People kill people with knives and baseball bats. Are you going to outlaw them?

The same thing every time. And let me make this clear, if they ever create a bat that can kill 59 people in less than 10 minutes I will fight for Louisville Slugger control.

We cannot legislate common sense regulations about guns because somebody is taking away something that belongs to us- the right to own the biggest and deadliest weapons our Founding Fathers wanted us to have.

Now that's the American Spirit!

Division in America is a full-time job with people making millions of dollars from promoting it.

It is not just health care or guns, how about all of those African Americans and Hispanic people who are trying to vote illegally? If you believe these people who foment division, we have millions who are risking imprisonment or deportation to cast one vote in one election. It doesn't stand up to logic, but then fear never does.

A culture of victimhood has been created in which anything that is different is sinister and is here to take away what we hold dear and anything that is done to offer a helping hand is giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

If that truly is the American Spirit, then it is the time for the American Spirit to be redefined. When people spend every waking hour thinking that efforts to help those who are less fortunate, those who are different, those who have been a dealt a bad blow by fate, are somehow designed to take something that belongs to only us, then we are changing the very fabric of this nation.

How soon before we become America- the land that used to be free and the home of the afraid?