Bush-Hitler Comparisons Are Uncanny and Frightening

"While he could be an opportunist when the occasion required, he saw himself not as a Machiavellian but as an instrument of God. He believed in his ideas. And most important, he established his government on the basis of those ideas. Indeed, seldom in history has the theory of government been so ruthlessly consistent with its practice; never have ideas been more fully implemented in a society. His ideas on racism determined the laws, the art, the education....they determined that physics in the universities must be taught without Einstein, and psychology without Freud."

"Leaders of Western democracies in the 1930s underestimated Hitler disastrously and misunderstood him almost completely because they thought (quite rightly) that his ideas were ridiculous and beneath comtempt. They failed to realize that Hitler believed in those ideas. They greatly overestimated his opportunistic and manipulative side, and underestimated his commitment to ideology."

--- pages 74-75, "Adolf Hitler: The Psychopathic God" by Robert G.L. White, 1977

Substitute the word religion for the word rascism, and please explain to me how George Bush is different from this description of Hitler.

Here's more, this time from pages 76-77.....

"The essence of Hitler's political thought was distilled in one speech delivered at Chemnitz on 2 April, 1928....

'The first fundamental of any rational Weltanschauung is the fact that on earth and in the universe, force alone is decisive. Whatever goal a man has reached is due to his originality plus brutality...All life is bound up in these three theses: struggle is the father of all things; virtue lies in blood; leadership is primary and decisive.'

Struggle was indeed 'the father of all things.' His memoirs repeat the refrain:

'He who wants to live should fight, therefore, and he who does not want to battle in this world of eternal struggle does not deserve to be alive...this is the way things are...victory is forever contained only in the attack.'

From a speech in Munich on 21 November 1927....

'Man is the most brutal, the most resolute creature on earth. He knows nothing but the extermination of his enemies in the world.' "

Remember the loyalty agreements campaign rally attenders had to sign before they were allowed into Bush election events? Have you heard about the new unconditional loyalty contracts required of all Bush second-term cabinet members?

From pages 80-81...."An important way of connecting the people with their leader was to require that they swear direct personal oaths to him....When the boy grew up, more oaths comfirmed his boyhood experience. If he became an educator, he joined all other teachers in Nazi Germany in swearing to be 'loyal and obedient to Adolf Hitler.' Similarly, every member of the German armed forces was required to take an oath unique in the history of national armies in the modern era---

'I swear by God this sacred oath, that I will render unconditional obedience to Adolf Hitler...and will be ready as a brave soldier to risk my life at any time for this oath.'

And then there's the subject of the political use of fear and terror, page 87...."Hitler relied primarily upon terror and propaganda to gain control over others. He had a remarkably keen understanding of the psychological mechanism of terror and realized that it was politically effective when it evoked insecurity, fear and anxiety. These politically desirable feelings could be achieved by making terror indiscriminate and irrational. Uncertainty was essential. "

This early section of the book ends thusly, "Such, in the main, were Hitler's ideas: exultation of the Fuhrer and the degradation of democracy; militarism and war; conquest of Lebensraum and the enslavement of other people; anti-Semitism and racism; propaganda and terror to force a nation to do the will of one man."

Again, substitute "ultra-conservative evangelical Protestantism" for "anti-Semitism and racism" and the comparisons are uncanny between present day George Bush and the Hitler described in these passages.

And I haven't yet gotten to the concentration camp comparisons....Abu Gharaib, Guantanamo, many others in Iraq, Afghanistan and beyond, to Hitler's hideous torture, humiliation and death chambers.

So as a result.....I'm checking this book back into my local library. It's giving me nightmares. And a frightening, historically-based reality check.