I completely agree with Alex.

The difference is that the Bush/Hitler comparisons were not supported, either implicitly or with silence, by Democratic Party leaders.

Can you say the same about the Obama/Hitler comparisons? Thought not.

When someone compares someone they disagree with to Hitler, it makes me feel that it waters down how truly reprehensible the man was. It's kind of like the Soup Nazi joke. Yes, the joke is funny but what the Nazis did was not. So, yes, it doesn't matter who is compared to Hitler. If it's Bush or Obama or Clinton... not cool.

This is good. I just find it frustrating when, on whichever side of the aisle you are on, comparisons to Hilter/Stalin/Pol Pot/dictator du jour are fine when pointed a the other side.

I personally think they are ridiculous and serve no real purpose, but also find them more harmful to the side making such accusations than to the side being accused.

:snap: :snap:

I'm glad to see that there is a broad consensus on the idiocy of Hitler comparisons. Their ridiculousness is self-evident, and anyone who stoops to such cant should feel a twinge of pathetic shame.

On the other hand, if people feel that their government is doing evil, they should say so.

I honestly feel that the W administration perpetrated evil stuff - possibly with noble intentions, possibly not, I sure don't know. I'm happy to hear out those who would defend enhanced interrogation, warrantless wiretapping, dissembling about WMDs and all the other well-known and much-criticized actions of that recent era. So far, no one has convinced me that those actions and others were justified, I remain horrified by them, but I've managed to have plenty of civil conversations about it. I don't need Hitler as a touchstone. I can give perfectly good reasons why I think those things were fVcking evil without resorting to Godwin tactics.

So far, I can't see any justification for calling Obama evil. He hasn't really done anything much at all yet. (He sure as heck isn't the liberal Messiah some thought he would be.) The accusations against him seem to be based on presumptions about what he is going to do (even though he says he isn't), or about his nefarious origins or his hidden Islamic agenda, etc. In other words, the conversation right now isn't about things he has actually done, things that can be analyzed and disagreed about in the way that the Bush actions can. (It's still early, though.)

To be fair, similar stupid predictions were made about W. Some of my leftier friends were CERTAIN that George was going to cancel elections and declare himself leader over a martial state "until the crisis is over," which would mean never. I didn't buy this scenario for a second, even though, to those who didn't like him, it sounded plausible.

Also note - when comparisons of GWB to Hitler WERE made, it was because of actions he had actually taken. I repeat, I didn't then and don't now like the comparisons, but they did come about as a result of things Bush and company actually did do, rightly or wrongly.

So, to the reasonable conservatives we are lucky enough to have here, I hope that their objections to Obama will be over things he has actually done, or very clearly intends to do. (Like spending ginormous amounts of money, or levying a penalty on the uninsured - hey, even I can understand why people have concerns, really.)

In truth, the conversation here is nearly always leaps above that I've seen anywhere else on the interwebs.

Took me about 3 minutes to find that Robert Byrd, in his book Losing America, compared Bush to Hermann Goering. Sounds like a Nazi comparison to me.

Since that took 3 minutes, I'm sure I could find others.

The comparison was grossly inapt. Goering was an art lover.

On the other hand:

My (Jewish) father, who was born in Berlin in 1924, told the story of how not long after the Nazis took power, he was in a crowd with his father watching a Nazi motorcade pass by. When Goering drove by, all fat and adorned with too many medals, my father pointed at him and laughed loudly. My father's father promptly slapped him in the face out of concern that such obvious disrespect would draw the attention of the many armed soldiers in the area.

Cf. Bush's mouthpiece, Ari Fleischer (bad Jew), post 9/11: "People need to watch what they do, watch what they say."

Can you give me a quote? Or at least which chapter it is in? I'd like to see the context.

Regardless though, comparing him to Goering is not the same as comparing him to Hitler - which is what we were discussing. Close, but not quite.

Given that pretty much everyone here agrees that such comparisons are vile, why do you feel a need to?

Calling out hypocrisy is an easy game, and a boring one, whichever way it swings. None of us compared Bush to Goering. Why don't we talk about actual issues instead?