AP:
Adolf Hitler's image has surfaced again in the White House race. President Bush's campaign is featuring online video of the Nazi dictator, taken down months ago from a liberal group's Web site and disavowed, in a spot that intersperses clips of speeches by Democrats John Kerry, Al Gore and Howard Dean.There's an element of irony to all of this. I suspect that Hitler, were he a Republican, would complain if people compared him to himself. The point is that: 1) Nobody directly compared Bush to Hitler, and 2) It is absolutely fair to raise concerns about the historical, slow, stealthy rise of extremism in Germany and how history can repeat itself in other developed western countries.
Are we so naive and egotistical as to assume that it could never happen here? Look what we did to the Japanese during WWII? Look what we're doing to American citizens who are named "enemy combattants" today? The anti-gay marriage amendment? The religious right's incredibl racist comments about American Muslims?
If we are so full of our ourselves as to consider ourselves exempt from history, then we surely are doomed to repeat it.
PS Perhaps my favorite part of Bush's action alert about his new Hitler ad - I got it by email today - was where he goes on about the 6 different ways lefties have compared him to Hitler, then Bush quotes someone talking about "the gulags." Last time I checked, Professor Bush, the gulags were in the Soviet Union.
