Over the Top

[Annie]

The left is getting loonier by the day:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/commentary.html

Friday, June 11 2004
DO ME A FAVOR: No blog today, just a quick favor to ask. I'm sure you know we read a lot of articles here at RCP - actually, it's heck of a lot more than a lot.

Over the last four years we've seen just about everything under the sun, from the best of the best to the worst of the worst. I must say, however, I've never come across anything as repugnant as this:

Is U.S. like Germany of the '30s?
ANDREW GREELEY

BERLIN -- I can understand, my German friend said, why Germans voted for Hitler in 1933 -- though he did not receive a majority of the vote. The Weimar Republic was weak and incompetent. The Great Depression had ruined the nation's war-devastated economy. People were bitter because they thought their leaders had betrayed them in the war. They wanted revenge for the humiliation of Versailles. Hitler promised strong leadership and a new beginning. But why did they continue to support that group of crazy drug addicts, thugs, killers and madmen?

The historical question remains. I leave aside the question of the guilt of the whole German people (a judgment beyond my competence because I am not God) and ask what explanations might account for what happened. Hitler turned the German economy around in short order. He was crazy, of course, a demagogic mystic sensitive to aspirations of the German spirit. He appealed skillfully to the dark side of the German heritage. Anti-Semitism was strong in Germany, as it was in most European countries, but not violent until Hitler manipulated it. He stirred up the memories of historic German military accomplishments and identified himself with Frederick the Great -- thus placating the Prussian ethos of the German army. He promised glory to a nation still smarting from the disaster of 1918. Germany was emerging from the ashes, strong and triumphant once again. He also took control of the police apparatus. The military might have been able to dump him till 1937. After that he was firmly in power. The path lay open to holocaust.

Can this model be useful to understand how contemporary America is engaged in a criminally unjust war that has turned much of the world against it, a war in which torture and murder have become routine? Has the combination of the World Trade Center attack and a president who believes his instructions come from God unleashed the dark side of the American heritage?

What is this dark side? I would suggest that it is the mix of Calvinist religious righteousness and ''my-country-right-or-wrong'' patriotism that dominated our treatment of blacks and American Indians for most of the country's history. It revealed itself in the American history of imperialism in Mexico and after the Spanish-American War in the Philippines. The ''manifest destiny'' of America was to do whatever it wanted to do, because it was strong and virtuous and chosen by God.

Today many Americans celebrate a ''strong'' leader who, like Woodrow Wilson, never wavers, never apologizes, never admits a mistake, never changes his mind, a leader with a firm ''Christian'' faith in his own righteousness. These Americans are delighted that he ignores the rest of the world and punishes the World Trade Center terrorism in Iraq. Mr. Bush is our kind of guy.

He is not another Hitler. Yet there is a certain parallelism. They have in common a demagogic appeal to the worst side of a country's heritage in a crisis. Bush is doubtless sincere in his vision of what is best for America. So too was Hitler. The crew around the president -- Donald Rumsfeld, John Ashcroft, Karl Rove, the ''neo-cons'' like Paul Wolfowitz -- are not as crazy perhaps as Himmler and Goering and Goebbels. Yet like them, they are practitioners of the Big Lie -- weapons of mass destruction, Iraq democracy, only a few ''bad apples.''

Hitler's war was quantitatively different from the Iraq war, but qualitatively both were foolish, self-destructive and criminally unjust. This is a time of great peril in American history because a phony patriotism and an America-worshipping religion threaten the authentic American genius of tolerance and respect for other people.

The ''real'' America is still remembered here in Berlin for the enormous contributions of the Marshall Plan and the Berlin airlift -- America at its best. It is time to return to that generosity and grace.

The strongest criticism that the administration levels at Sen. John Kerry is that he changes his mind. In fact, instead of a president who claims an infallibility that exceeds that of the pope, America would be much better off with a president who, like John F. Kennedy, is honest enough to admit mistakes and secure enough to change his mind.

Jaw-dropping, no?

So do me a favor, email Andrew Greeley ([email protected]) and let him know what you think. Don't forget to copy Steve Huntley, the editor of the Sun-Times editorial page ([email protected]).

Be nice, be thoughtful, but please explain to the misguided Mr. Greeley why he's got it so terribly backward. - T. Bevan 7:05am Link | Email | Send to a Friend

 

[5stringJeff]

Ludicrous. Does he think his comparison is softened any by saying "Bush isn't Hitler... but close"??? What a moron.

 

[tim_duncan2000]

In fact, instead of a president who claims an infallibility that exceeds that of the pope, America would be much better off with a president who, like John F. Kennedy, is honest enough to admit mistakes and secure enough to change his mind.

But Kerry doesn't really do that. He backtracks and tries to make it seem like he has always felt the same way or has always said the same thing (like about the medals or ribbons or whatever he threw or didn't throw and about accusing the soldiers of atrocities). He tries to cover up these flip-flops and inconsistencies by giving all these long-winded, convoluted, doubletalk responses where tries to reconcile these various opinions he has had at one time or another.

 

[Bullypulpit]

Originally posted by gop_jeff
Ludicrous. Does he think his comparison is softened any by saying "Bush isn't Hitler... but close"??? What a moron.

A gentleman who I cared for as a patient was, years ago, a member of the Luftwaffe in WW II Germany. He found found HItler's grab for power after the burning of the Reichstag to be very similar to Dubbyuh's grab for power after 9/11. Also, he noted that the powers granted Dubbyuh by the misnamed PATRIOT Act were far more sweeping in scope than those granted Hitler by the German parliment. The comparison is apt.

 

[Annie]

Sure, lots of similarities. Bully you've gone off!

http://remember.org/guide/Facts.root.solution.html

"Protective Custody" Rules
Hitler induced a confused and frightened Hindenburg to sign a decree euphemistically called, "For the Protection of the People and State," suspending all of the basic rights of citizens and imposing the death sentence for arson, sabotage, resistance to the decree, and disturbances to public order. Arrests could be made on suspicion, and people could be sentenced to prison without trial or the right of counsel. The suspension was never lifted throughout the entire period of Nazi rule, and the decree of February 28th destroyed fundamental guarantees under the Weimar democracy.
The Enabling Act
During the next few days, up to elections on March 5th, the Nazi Brown Terror broke loose. By making the trumped-up Communist threat "official," Hitler threw millions of Germans into panic. Arbitrary arrests multiplied while truckloads of Stormtroopers rampaged through the streets, broke into homes, rounded up victims, including many Jews, and took them to the S.A. barracks where they were beaten and tortured. The Nazis received 44 percent of the vote in the March elections.
On March 23rd, the last Reichstag met in an opera house, surrounded by S.S. forces and filled with Stormtroopers inside. Most of the Communist and a number of Socialist deputies had already been arrested. The votes of the Center Party were crucial for Hitler in getting the necessary two-thirds majority to pass an Enabling Act, and this they supplied, thus giving him the arbitrary power he craved. He could now use this power without the Reichstag, and ignore the Constitution. All opposition political parties were destroyed or dissolved themselves. Trade unions were liquidated. Opposition clergy were arrested. The Nazi party had, in Hitler's words, become the state. By August 1934, when Hindenburg died, Hitler also became commander-in-chief of the armed forces as well as President and Führer of the German Reich to whom every officer and individual in the armed forces pledged unconditional obedience."

 

[no1tovote4]

In order for Hitler to gain power, it was necessary to fully humiliate the Germans during WWI and make them pay ludicrous amounts at Versaille. This was done to the US when?

Where is the common enemy that Hitler used to galvanize and entrench the pride and nationalism? It isn't Muslims as we are told they are peaceful and we only fight the terrorists and those that support them.

We even have rules at airports that only two Muslims on any one flight might be stopped and questioned. Would that have happened in Hitler's Germany with any Jewish person?

Ridiculous comparisons can be made to nearly every leader in the world, but are they accurate?

So far almost every American except the Hate Bush First crowd realizes that these comparisons are inane and incendiary, working to cause a much larger rift in our society with no end in sight from short-sighted megalomaniacs working usually to undermine the US, not just Bush. The man is an idiot, I definitely will e-mail him to tell him he is a moron. Of course I must use much nicer terms or he will put any angry replies in his article of the future.

 

[OCA]

Originally posted by Bullypulpit
A gentleman who I cared for as a patient was, years ago, a member of the Luftwaffe in WW II Germany. He found found HItler's grab for power after the burning of the Reichstag to be very similar to Dubbyuh's grab for power after 9/11. Also, he noted that the powers granted Dubbyuh by the misnamed PATRIOT Act were far more sweeping in scope than those granted Hitler by the German parliment. The comparison is apt.

Not that you had any before but with this post you have certainly buried and sealed any ounce of credibility you had left.

Troll.

 

[no1tovote4]

Originally posted by Bullypulpit
A gentleman who I cared for as a patient was, years ago, a member of the Luftwaffe in WW II Germany. He found found HItler's grab for power after the burning of the Reichstag to be very similar to Dubbyuh's grab for power after 9/11. Also, he noted that the powers granted Dubbyuh by the misnamed PATRIOT Act were far more sweeping in scope than those granted Hitler by the German parliment. The comparison is apt.

After the Reichstag, Germany became a prison. There was no free speech, and no search and seizure protection at all. Here there still is. While shortened and easier there are still protections. Hitler in one overnight binge killed about 3,000 of his and his closest friends enemies. And the Stormtroopers that helped him to gain his power were also killed.

To actually believe this is raunchy and incendiary indeed. Nobody in Hitler's Germany could post this kind of stuff and actually expect to live. They went after persons and killed them for putting out newspapers for gods' sakes.