I think its disingenuous to portray taxes as "wealth transfer". Taxes exist as a means to fund the government. The government exists to keep our society safe, free, and lawful, and to provide a safety net for it citizens for events beyond their control. (hurricanes, terrorist attacks, financial crises, economic dislocation). (Although at times this safety net seems to be applied more to our corporate citizens, than individual citizens.). Those citizens who say "I've never taken a dime from the government" are wrong. Arguably, every citizen benefits every day from the physical, legal, and economic infrastructure maintained by our government.
You can argue all you want about whether the government does a particularly good job at providing this societal framework at a reasonable cost, but the essentialness of the role of government to provide a stable society should not be questioned IMHO.
I think the most dangerous threat to a stable society is when the citizens believe that 1) the government cannot be trusted and/or is ineffective (these days, this sentiment seems pretty mainstream, universally shared by the left and right), and 2) the government is only effective ( or perhaps intentionally ineffective) when dealing with the wealthiest members of society. This perception is growing. There are definitely strains of it both in the tea party rhetoric, as well as the left's criticism of the current administration.
On the left, here is an interesting article by Stiglitz in Vanity Fair:
Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%
On the right we have these sentiments in the New American:
Ron Paul: Obama Is Another Corporatist, Not a Socialist