Comments | tongodeon: Comparing Hitler

tongodeon

Comparing Hitler

Mar 08, 2006 10:35

Jay Bennish, a Denver Colorado high school teacher, was put on administrative leave recently for inviting his students to compare George Bush's public statements to Hitler's. While Godwin's Law discourages trivializing the Holocaust with overreaching comparisons I think it's possible and fair to make qualified, nontrivializing comparisons between ( Read more... )

george w bush, nazi, politics, hitler

Leave a comment

Back to all threads

A somewhat scattered response creepyanonymous March 8 2006, 23:04:11 UTC

Any laws that slipped past - such as laws against torture - could be defused by the party leader with "signing statements" to announce that he wasn't going to actually comply with them, or novel legal arguments claiming that any restrictions of the president's power were prima facie unconstitutional.

Not that I particularly like the "signing statements" argument, but it's not clear that that particular tactic is going to, you know, work. The administration can make up ridiculous legal arguments all it wants to; it only gets really serious if the courts start to agree with them, and whether or not that will happen is still up in the air. This is not at all the same situation as Germany circa 1933. (Also note that the Nazis immediately outlawed rival political parties, and started imprisoning political opponents; as bad as Gitmo is, it's still orders of magnitude better.)

Also, your description of the SA significantly understates the extent to which violence was a part of their operational strategy. Political violence is delegitimized in the U.S. today in a way it wasn't in Germany in the '20s; the conservative blogosphere, for all its faults, isn't actually assaulting liberals and Democrats, and unless you credit the wacky speculation about Paul Wellstone's death, no Democratic politicians have been assassinated lately.

As for this: for all their faults Hitler and his generals were excellent tacticians, well, no they weren't. Hitler got lucky at the beginning of WWII, and there was substantial trepidation among the leadership of the Wehrmacht before the war began.

Re: A somewhat scattered response owenferguson March 8 2006, 23:29:24 UTC

"Also note that the Nazis immediately outlawed rival political parties"

The republicans have simply stolen control of the voting process instead.

Re: A somewhat scattered response creepyanonymous March 8 2006, 23:45:36 UTC

You know, I think that there are serious issues with voting procedures all around the country, and I think that current touchscreen voting machines are atrociously insecure, but I really don't think that comments like this help.

Re: A somewhat scattered response glaucon March 9 2006, 02:22:55 UTC

what do you think would help?

Re: A somewhat scattered response creepyanonymous March 9 2006, 02:42:59 UTC

Continuing to publicize just *how* insecure e-voting machines are, for example. This really shouldn't be a partisan issue; I understand why it is in the current environment, but I'm not convinced that that fight's completely lost just yet. Comments like owenferguson's, though, seem like a good way to make sure I'm wrong.

Re: A somewhat scattered response tongodeon March 9 2006, 08:46:26 UTC

It's not just that touchscreens are atrociously insecure - it's that polling irregularities have convinced me that those insecurities caused the 2004 election to be awarded to the wrong party. Apart from pointing this out I'm not sure how to "help".

Re: A somewhat scattered response creepyanonymous March 9 2006, 17:10:02 UTC

There's a big difference between pointing out cases in which electronic voting may have caused elections to be awarded to the wrong party, and saying "The Republicans have stolen control of the voting process". If you have any hope of making this issue non-partisan, you need to not alienate people who consider themselves Republicans.

But assume for the sake of argument that Republicans have in fact stolen control of the voting process, and have plans to award elections to Republican candidates no matter how people actually vote. Where do you go from there? Does it seem like trying to operate through the normal political processes is going to work at that point?

Re: A somewhat scattered response tongodeon March 9 2006, 01:13:45 UTC

Not that I particularly like the "signing statements" argument, but it's not clear that that particular tactic is going to, you know, work.

Fair enough. Then again, at least with the wiretapping situation, their tactic seems to be "we argue that these powers are already allowed and by the way we're going to pass this law formalizing our claim, which we don't have to do, because we already have these powers". For some reason that argument actually seems to be floating.

Re: A somewhat scattered response mister_borogove March 9 2006, 02:08:19 UTC

We would never ever ever consider thinking about wiretapping you but we have the authority to wiretap you and the laws against wiretapping you don't apply to the executive and congress authorized us to bypass the laws wiretapping you which don't apply to the executive anyway and also congress can't limit the executive in that way and shouldn't have passed the law.

Re: A somewhat scattered response creepyanonymous March 9 2006, 02:50:58 UTC

For some reason that argument actually seems to be floating.

For the time being. And you'll note that they're doing everything they can to keep the issue out of the public eye, starting with convincing the New York Times to sit on the story for a year. The issue's a loser for them, and they know it.

Back to all threads