Tonight, the Democratic National Convention officially got under way – and the party of “You Didn’t Build That,” “We Made It Possible,” record food stamp enrollment, nationalized health care, and record deficits opened its gala with a video declaration that “Government is the only thing we all belong to.”

It’s not our culture that binds us together, nor our nationality, our freedom, our values, or our fundamental status and rights as humans – it’s our government that is “the only thing we all belong to.”

This isn’t surprising, of course – particularly given the Democrats’ removal from their official platform of references to “God” that had been there in years past. In any redistributive state, the government has to be the focal point of both public and private life. We saw it in Soviet Russia, and we’ve seen strains of it here in America – particularly with the recent Democratic pushback against the fact that inalienable human rights do (and must) come from “God and nature,” rather than from government.

That’s brazen. It’s not shocking, but it’s certainly eye-opening.

Update: Mitt Romney responds via Twitter:

We don’t belong to government, the government belongs to us.

— Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) September 4, 2012