Aug 17, 2009

Who Most Resembles 'Nazis'?

Joseph Farah
By Joseph Farah

This is going to be, shall we say, "a controversial column."

Outfits like the George Soros-subsidized Media Matters will have a field day with it – excerpting passages out of context, deliberately distorting the words I am carefully choosing and, in typical knee-jerk fashion, mocking its premise.

Cable TV propagandists posing as "newsmen" will hurl invectives and dub me as a villain for expressing my honest and candid opinions – all of which are based on reality and truth.

Lately, both sides of the political spectrum have suggested their political opponents resemble Nazis or fascists. Are both sides equally wrong?

Let's talk about "national socialism" – because that, indeed, is exactly what Barack Obama and his friends in the Congress are actively promoting and enacting in America today.

The very word "Nazi" is indeed an acronym for national socialism – the political and economic system Hitler infamously imposed on Germany in the 1930s. It was then and remains today, despite the denials of historical revisionists, a "left-wing" idea. All socialism is, by definition, a left-wing notion.

If the left-right political spectrum has any meaning, it is that those on the left tend to favor government intervention while those on the right favor non-government solutions to problems. That is the traditional and accepted definition – much as those on the left would like to blur that understanding.

National socialists, whether they seek to kill Jews or old people or the disabled or unborn babies, will always be national socialists – no matter what kind of lipstick they put on the pig.

Furthermore, people like our Founding Fathers, who sought to diffuse power because they understood its unchecked and unlimited centralization represented a grave threat to personal liberty represent the polar opposite of national socialists.

While it may be an overstatement to compare Obama with Hitler, it is even more far-fetched to characterize his political opponents as Nazis and fascists because they very clearly want to limit the size and scope of government – preferring that people be free to govern themselves to the greatest extent possible.

Obama has power. His opponents, for the most part, do not. Furthermore, Obama seeks to use his power to impose policies that have, like it or not, a striking resemblance to those Hitler promoted in the 1930s.

Like what?
  • Abortion
  • Infanticide
  • Government deciding life-and-death issues in dispensing medical care for both older people and those with serious illnesses;
  • Unfair treatment of Jews, in Obama's case, with regard to Middle East conflict;
  • So-called public-private partnerships – blurring the line between government responsibilities and the private sector. This is one of the definitions of fascism;
  • Picking winners and losers among corporations and the dispensing of government favors and punishments to them;
  • Hiring and firing of supposedly private corporation executives;
  • Attacking free expression;
  • Secrecy
  • Using taxpayer funds for the hiring of political partisans to "organize" communities and sign up new voters;
  • Demonizing political opponents;
  • Encouraging citizens to "rat out" friends, family members and others who oppose his policies;
  • Keeping tabs on political opponents;
  • Filling top government posts with like-minded political extremists who would normally be regarded as internal security threats;
  • Ignoring the Constitution;
  • Blaming his predecessor and the fundamentals of the American political and economic system for all the problems besting the country;
I mean, I could go on and on. George W. Bush and other predecessors in the White House had their faults. Some of them did terrible things, showed incredibly bad judgment, made horrible mistakes. But I can think of no precedent for someone in the White House doing all of the above at once – all of which bear striking parallels to the leadership of infamous fascists such as Benito Mussolini and Hitler.

Worse, the leaders of his party and his acolytes in the media can see no danger posed by any of these policies. In fact, like good Germans, they blame the opposition in the most disgusting, vile ways – often unfairly accusing them of doing what they themselves do.

Why is it acceptable for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to say American citizens attending congressional town halls are swastika-carrying thugs, but wrong for her political opponents to point out the similarities between her party's policies and those of Nazi Germany?

Why is it acceptable for Gary Trudeau of Doonesbury fame to compare those who want to see Barack Obama's birth certificate with Adolf Hitler, but wrong for his political opponents to point out the similarities between the way the president and Democratic Congress are attempting to squelch dissent and grab unchallenged, unchecked power and the way fascists of the past have?

Why is it acceptable to accuse Americans devoted to preserving their constitutional republic of resembling neo-Nazis, but wrong for those same Americans to point out the death-worshipping, eugenics-friendly notion of government health care rationing?

Am I calling Obama a little Hitler, a Nazi or a fascist?

I am saying American liberty faces very serious challenges from the country's own leadership – not from citizens who dissent against those policies. That's what happened in Weimar, Germany, too.

To ignore history would be to commit one of the same sins that was committed in the 1930s – and every time totalitarianism has reared its ugly head before or since.