We went from the season of peace and love to the season of war and hate in record time.

In Oregon, a gang of gun-brandishing vigilantes seized control of public land and dared law enforcement to take it back. A frozen bird sanctuary, of all things.

In Raleigh, a gang of paint-brandishing vandals defaced the graves of people who lived 100 to 150 years ago and who held beliefs we don’t hold with today.

Both the vandals and vigilantes hold that they are morally superior to the rest of us, so they can do whatever they want and express their beliefs however they choose. The hell with the respect for law and with the common decency that guide how the rest of us live our lives.

At the bottom of both, of course, is race. The vigilantes are white, they believe the federal government (read: President Obama) is evil and they believe they’re striking a blow against tyranny. The vandals could be black or white; we don’t know because they skulk around at night. But they no doubt believe they struck a blow against the past evils of slavery and secession and the continuing evil of racism.

Where do you stop once you start down this road? Where do you stop once you decide that you will be the arbiter of right and wrong? Where do you stop when you conclude that your right to decide outweighs everybody else’s right to live in a world of peace, order and mutual respect?

Well, history shows that people like that don’t stop. They have to be stopped.

Fortunately, our nation has always shown a genius for stopping that kind of thing, whether it was anti-government rebellions under President Washington, secession in the 19th Century, white supremacy at the turn of the 20th Century, Nazis and imperialists in the 1940s, McCarthyism in the 1950s and Jim Crow segregation in the 1960s.

Now we face a new test. And we face it in an election year that begins with one major political party teetering on the edge of race-baiting, demagoguery and anti-government defiance.

Ask yourself: Where will America be a year from today?