Rick Esenberg takes exception to a recent post in which the Brawler castigates Patrick McIlheran for saying Adolf Hitler was a leftist. The title of that post is, of course, "Journal-Sentinel's McIlheran: Hitler was a liberal!"
From Rick "Shark and Shepherd" Esenberg:
The Brew City Brawler is up in Patrick McIlheran's face for supposedly suggesting that Hitler was a "liberal," He burns down that straw man but can't quite avoid the temptation to say that, no, Hitler was sort of like an American conservative.
Patrick did not say that Hitler was a liberal. He suggested, in one sentence, that Hitler cannot really classified as being "on the right" as we use that term in the US in 2007, cited to a recent work that suggests Hitler bought the loyalty of Germans with an elaborate welfare state based upon plunder of the property of Jews and of occupied territories. ...
Of course, this doesn't mean that he was anything like an American liberal and Patrick made no such claim.
Patrick's point was that some people us the term "right" to refer to anything they don't like.
Now, Patrick's "point" was fairly silly in the first place, as the Brawler explained here.
But Esenberg disappoints when he says "this doesn't mean that [Hitler] was anything like an American liberal and Patrick made no such claim." (And it hurts all the more because Esenberg, like the Brawler, is a Washington Heights homeboy!)
"Made no such claim"? Let's review a few other things Patrick has said, originally in that post and elsewhere, that Esenberg chose not to share with his readers (Brawler's bold throughout):
Hitler, of course, is regarded as right wing though the party he headed was the National Socialists and, as is now being pointed out, built a welfare state to make any socialist proud.
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Those on the left in America tend to favor a stronger government that has a more central role in society. Communists do so, too, only to an enormous degree.
Those on the right in America tend to favor a more limited government and prefer its role in society be subsidiary to voluntary institutions, such faith or families. Nazi ideals held nothing of the sort, instead seeing such voluntary institutions as utterly at the service to the nation itself as embodied in the state. There is no continuum as there is on the left.
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To the best of my observation, the more ideological someone is about his leftism, the more totalitarian and anti-American are his views.
The more ideological someone is about his rightism, the more likely he is to want to privatize the traffic lights and to carry a picture of Ayn Rand in his wallet.
The one tendency produces people who want an unusually and arguably unrealistically low level of government. The other tendency produces people who make excuses for thugs like Castro.
So, apart from saying that "the left in America" (and the Brawler would say a fair translation of that phrase is "liberals") is on a continuum with the Nazis and that the "more ideological someone is about his leftism, the more totalitaritarian and anti-American are his views," McIlheran made no claim that Hitler was "anything like an American liberal."
Sorry, but the Brawler's sticking with his headline.
Moreover, the Brawler emphatically did not say Hitler was sort of like an American conservative. The Brawler did say this, apropos of a passage he was quoting from Richard J. Evans' "The Third Reich in Power."
The Nazi Party frequently condemned the elaborate welfare system that had grown up under the Weimar Republic as a bureaucratic, cumbersome and directed essentially to the wrong ends. ... (Brawler: Whoa! Not to say that sounds like the American right ... But that sounds like the American Right!)
So...American conservatives have never criticized social programs for being bureaucratic and cumbersome? I didn't say that made conservatives Nazis. Those sorts of critiques precede the Nazis by decades -- and they've been made by leftists as well, for Pete's sake. (Part of the Nazis' broader critique was race-based -- ie the programs helped the Jews -- and obviously I was not drawing any parallels in this area at all.) Indeed, the Brawler used an exclamation point to suggest he was being facetious and not intending to be overly serious. Were the Brawler serious, rest assured, paragraph after paragraph of platitudinous whinging would have ensued. If the Brawler's intent was not obvious, he apologizes.
The Brawler did also point out that while American's rightists allegedly support limited government, it's difficult to tell given their -- and McIlheran's -- support for things that most people would not construe as being symptomatic of a limited government.
The endless and expensive occupation of Iraq. The Patriot Act. The Bush Administration's effort to push black voters off the rolls. The Bush Administration's use of signing statements. And so on. I didn't say that this curious disconnect made American conservatives something like Nazis.
And, has been noted elsewhere, for all the talk of how it's leftists that call the conservatives Nazis, there's never been any shortage of rightists doing the opposite. Rush Limbaugh's charming word "feminazis" comes to mind. The National Review's Jonah Goldberg is coming out with the much-delayed and -derided tome Liberal Fascism in a matter of weeks.
Winston Churchill, reportedly inspired by reading Hayek, arguably got this ball rolling when he said, during the 1945 parliamentary election:
"No socialist system can be established without a political police. They would have to fall back on some form of Gestapo, no doubt very humanely directed in the first instance."
British voters kicked him out on his ass and voted in Labor and the National Health Service. (Of course, McIlheran, Sykes et al trot out a version of Winnie's argument despite the fact that no Gestapo, humane or otherwise, has emerged in the UK. If the government runs health care government will tell you what to do! they warn. McIlheran recently had a column on this, noting that New Zealand isn't too hot on fat immigrants coming in. Of course, private employers increasingly are cracking down on employees' fitness and health -- penalizing smokers, etc. -- and that's a trend that will only accelerate. Though that apparently is Ok.)
In addition to these luminaries, rightwing blog commentator John offers his crystalline analysis of the left-Nazi connection in comments at the Shark:
Hitler did not allow free-market capitalism. Hitler spent any monies he saw fit, for any purposes he saw fit. Liberals like to believe that Hitler and Mousolini were "right wingers". What they mean is that THEY view anyone who is not LIBERAL, as a TOTALITARIAN WHO WANTS TO ENFORCE CONSERVATIVE VALUES BY GOVERMENT FIAT.
Liberals believe that THEY are GOOD, and that THEIR AIMS are GOOD.
Liberals believe that because THEY ARE and THEIR GOALS ARE....good/pure, that THEY have a MORAL MANDATE to act.
They have decided that their goals are GOOD. THEY HAVE decided that anyone who disagrees is a RED NECK or FASCIST, and thereby not allowed to disagree. The MSM basically follows the aforementioned template. It becomes FACT and is DISEMINATED in Schools, the Media, and is accepted as FACT, by the liberal power structure. Most/nearly ALL of those who rely on GOVERNMENT for their paycheck, AGREE.
How surprising.
Recently, I had a gubmint employee tell me that her employemnt and benefits were justified, because, WE ALL MAKE CHOICES.
What liberals fail to consider is that, IF WE ALL MADE LIBERAL CHOICES, no one would be left to pay the bills and the MASSIVE government hand-outs, that liberals approve of.
In other words, liberals, and socialists, approve of spending, funding and paying for programs, that THEY DON'T PAY FOR.
John figured it out! (That's a joke!)
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