Enraged Defenders of the Status Quo

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I just got an email helpfully alerting me to a “Hands Off My HealthCare” rally this Saturday during the president’s visit to Grand Junction, Colorado. Conservative activists will be gathering “to protest Barak Obama’s socialized medicine proposal” and have been asked to wear solid red, white, or blue clothing so they won’t be mistaken for purple-clad SEIU counter-ralliers.

Someone will surely correct me if I’m wrong, but I can’t remember another time when enraged citizens rallied their pitchforks, raised effigies, and screamed at their representatives all to express their total satisfaction with the status quo. Especially when that the status quo is a pretty crappy health insurance system. Looking at the faces of the men and women showing up to these town halls, it’s clear their rage is very real. They’re mad as hell…and they intend to take it for the rest of their natural lives, so get your daggum hands off their crappy health care if you know what’s good for you! If there’s a precedent for this sort of furious defense of the almost-uniformally unpopular status quo, I can’t think of it (maybe the brief period when Americans were urged to consider switching over to the metric system…) Readers?

PREEMPTIVE UPDATE: Of course, movements of social change–civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights–have been met with furious resistance. But I’m talking about rabid support of something very few people believe operates smoothly or effectively or in their interest.