Where do these cooks come from?

When I was in college, doing some visiting at UT, I remember knocking on the door of this apartment to only to be drug in (literally) by an irate man who appeared to be in his fifties. This man (who never gave us his name) went on to describe to us in bitter tones how we were responsible for all of the evils in the world. He literally told us that we were murderers of millions who were in some way personally responsible for all of the poverty of Africa. That through ignorance we had weaned all of the evils in the world. At the time I was working with underprivileged kids at the Boys & Girl's Club, when I asked him what he did for a living, he just told me "I sell roses."
Fortunately, I haven't personally run into any more rose-sellers since then. I have, however, run across slews of them on the Internet. Do a search on 911, the Iraq war, or many other political hot topics and you will find a slew of them. The conspiracy theorists, the hate-mongers, the bitter, those who refuse to see America as anything positive. I have to scratch my head sometimes and wonder, where do these people come from?
I wasn't alive in the fifties, but everything I have read about it suggests that the left in America was unabashedly socialist and pro-communist. I wasn't alive in the sixties, but everything I have read about it seems to suggest that the left, or at least the student led left, were violently anti-war to the point where they claimed that Americans were responsible for the deaths of "millions" of Vietnamese.
I think the scariest thing about the situation is that these are the people who are now running the democratic party. Not their middle leaning base, those who represent the common people who believe in the system of government laid down by our founders, but the people who think America needs to be radically changed. Make no mistake about it, Barack Obama is as left leaning as ever a political candidate was. Not even Wallace, the secretary of state under Truman who ran under a "progressive" banner at the beginning of Mcarthy's reign, was as openly liberal as Mr. Obama has been.
When normal Americans here opinions like that of the rose-seller, they scratch their head and ponder. When Mr. Obama hears these opinions, I can't help but think he sees supporters.