From Mary Shelley's Frankenstein:

Then, in the flicker of the half-light, I saw the creature open his dull yellow eyes. A breath escaped his lips. His arms and legs moved. He was alive! Almost at once I began to cry. They were not tears of joy, though, as you might expect. No, I cried with misery and regret. "What have I done?!" I cried out. "What a disaster!" I had chosen his parts so carefully, but it had all gone so terribly wrong. How can I describe the horror I felt? I had seen him before I brought him to life, but I had not seen that he was so ugly. Now he was alive, and there was nothing more I could do but be sorry for my actions. ... I had spent two years building this creature. Now that I was finished, the glory of my dream disappeared like the light from my candle. My heart filled with horror and disgust. I could not bear to look at him.

When the monster stirs with life, Dr. Frankenstein finally realizes the danger of what he has done. He has created something without a soul, a creature too simple-minded to anticipate the consequences of its actions. The monster is reactionary, lashing out impulsively and violently, his only instinct to hurt as he has been hurt.

Dr. Frankenstein thought he was building something grand--a coalition of human flesh from disparate parts that would elevate him even above God. It was not to be, and when he denied the monster the things it wanted most, it turned on him, robbing Dr. Frankenstein of everything he valued.

People like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Michelle Bachmann, and Orly Taitz are building their own monster, something they hope will be big and powerful enough to strangle the Obama administration and progressive principles. Just as Dr. Frankenstein used bits and pieces of executed criminals to make his monster, they build theirs from the most extreme elements of hate in this country.

Right now, this putrid mass soaks in the brine of their creator's rhetoric. Every week, the creators, aided by a coterie of representatives from the republican party and conservative leadership, attempt to shock it to life.

They try to electrify it with talk of death panels, FEMA concentration camps, Nazism, socialism, communisim, and slavery, threats of Muslim conspiracies involving the president, and hyperbole about stolen freedom. At times, they ramp up the voltage, and talk about revolution.

The monster is slowly waking. It has opened one of its jaundiced eyes here and there, lifted an arm and started to identify its targets.

Unlike Dr. Frankenstein, these creators seem unaware that this thing is too ugly and too hateful to control. Will they recoil when it walks the countryside with deadly intent? Will they be shocked to see the destruction of the things all of us have long valued in this country?

Just as Frankenstein's monster framed an innocent woman for a murder he committed of an innocent boy--a woman who went to the gallows for the murder--their monster attempts to frame innocent people in the Obama administration for their own monstrous crimes.

What will "Dr. Bachmann" and "Dr. Beck" and "Dr. Limbaugh" say when the monster turns on them for not meeting its unreasonable and growing demands? Dr. Frankenstein's monster demanded an equal partner, one that would love and nurture it; the conservative monster in this country is demanding a legislative partner, one that looks back with the same evil yellow eyes, imbued with the same ugly "heart," sharing the same values.

What the monster does not understand is that the majority of the country looks on it in horror, our mouths opened, unable to believe extent of its ugliness. Like society rejected Frankenstein's monster, we reject this one.

In the end, the creator dies, hounded relentlessly by its creation. Only then does the monster realize the error of its ways--it has destroyed the only being capable of understanding it and possibly helping it. Alone, it promises to destroy itself.

I can only hope this monster is put down before it does real harm. The republicans--like Cantor and Boehner, Pawlenty and Perry--would be wise to quit feeding it. Make no mistake, something so filled with hatred will not hesitate to bite that hand.