I don't know how to read this

"[The French Revolution] was a secular revolution on which we relied on the goodness of each other. This is the left's view of where America should go. And of course where did France go? To the guillotine. To tyranny. If there are no rights that the government needs to respect, then what we see with Obamacare is just the beginning of what government will do to you."
— Rick Santorum

I really don't know how to parse this. Who is the 'we' in the first line, we as individuals, we as government, we as the American people? I think his analogy is more than a little far-fetched.