Posted By Joshua Keating
Tuesday, July 27, 2010 - 5:31 PM
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U.N. Dispatch's Mark Leon Goldberg, reporting on today's House subcommittee hearings of the U.N. Millennium Development Goals, quotes a very strange argument made by California Rep. Dana Rohrabacher:
Does progress on the Millennium Development Goals enhance American national security interests? The Obama administration apparently thinks so. They even included the MDGs and other development themes in their recent National Security Strategy...
Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, who is the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights, and Oversight apparently disagrees with this premise. At a subcommittee hearing on the MDGs that I attended this morning he railed against the very idea that security threats could emanate from poor countries. After, all, he said, "Adolf Hitler came from a developed country!"
Rohrabacher, who earned a spot on our "worst predictions" list last year by forcasting the ChiCom domination of the Panama Canal, has brilliantly elevated Godwin's Law to previously unknown heights. He's not even comparing a policy he doesn't like to Nazism, he's arguing that a policy should be opposed because it wouldn't have prevented Nazism. (Put aside, for a moment, the fact that the 21st-century developing world is not exactly devoid of muderous dictators.)
With the rise of the Tea Party, it seems that American conservatives have opened up a healthy lead in the use of Hitler-related rhetoric -- Sheldon Whitehouse, notwithstanding. Clearly, what the Democrats need right now to regain the rhetorical upper-hard are more Hitler-related arguments. Here are a few suggestions:
-- The START treaty: You know who else didn't honor his agreements with Russia? Hitler!
-- The National Endowment for the Arts: You know what happens when aspiring artists can't support themselves? Hitler!
-- Cap and Trade: You know who else didn't believe that global warming was caused by human activity? Hitler!
I look forward to the day when all U.S. policy debates will be conducted on the basis of what hypothetical Hitler would think.
Feel free to come up with your own Hitler arguments in the comments.
SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images
Defense budget Cuts
Do you know who had a big military? Hitler
Coal vs clean enegy
Do you know what fuelled Hitlers war machine? Coal
Increased Border Control and drug law enforcement
Often done by cops with dogs, German shepherds! who owned German shepherds?Hitler
Shooting wolves from a helicopter
Do you who would have loved that ? Hitlers friend Goering
.. bringing Hitler up seems a litle far fetched, don't you think?
Ringo Leicht Abnehmen
Gee, thanks for that brilliant observation, Einstein.
My new T-Shirt: "WWHD?"
Who else wanted to see Russia from his back yard?
And let's not forget the closet homosexuals that were instrumental in his initial rise to power, but weren't allowed to marry, either.
Who else depended upon secret prisons, unlawful detention and torture to get intel and still ended up on the trash heap of history? Oh, wait, let's not get ahead of ourselves, that's coming...
Let's see...Hitler had a thing for his niece, and Newt Gingrich's first wife was old enough to be his mother, his second wife was a gal from Youngstown, Ohio described as "everybody's big sister", and he started seeing his third wife back during the Monica Lewinsky days when she was young enough to be his daughter...OMG...Newt - Gingrich - is - HITLER!
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every day that conservatives and conservatism in general are on the crazy train to kookoo town.
Whenever conservatives regain power, liberals will once again start up with the Hitler comparisons; until then, they're just racists or whatever nonsense the left can come up with...
Well, currently the "conservatives"...
...are technically "out-of-power". That having been said, if you simply run a search engine (I refuse to call it, "google" - it lends an awkward if not deviant feel to the discourse, not unlike a grown man allowing other grown men to call him "Scooter"...) for current "Nazi" or Hitler references the sources almost exclusively trace "Conservative" or Republican, with most of the lone "liberals" cited quoting "Conservative" or Republican sources.
I find about a fifty-fifty on the use of the term "racist" with the left mostly citing specific statements or actions and the "Conservatives" predominantly using it as an adjective, or morpheme much the same way a table of adolescents squeal "in bed" at the end of a fortune cookie message in some cheap Chinese restaurant.
Do liberals in US really make comparison to hitler ?
I thought they were more based on English liberalism tradition.
Bentham, Mill and company ?
I'd like to see a little more context before you rail on the Congressman, because frankly, his basic premise is correct, security threats don't just emanate from developing countries. Besides, after 8 years of BusHitler cracks from the left, you're just now discovering Goodwin's Law? And also, WTF is up with the gratuitous Tea Party reference? How does that have anything to do with this story?
-Shack
Animal rights: you know who else was a vegetarian? Hitler!
Nutty birther theories: you know who else lead a country he wasn't born in? Hitler!
Sean Penn: you know who else has been spotted in Venezuela? Hitler!
Climate change denier, aid denouncer, champion of austerity
If you regularly attend HCFA hearings, then you know that Rep. Rohrabacher will always denounce any initiative of this type because it ultimately results in "borrowing more money from China to fund our enemies and make our young people pay it back for the rest of their lives." I think young people, including myself, are sick of this demagoguery. He can't seem to wrap his head around the idea that countries targeted by the MDG's - if aided effectively - could represent the largest emerging market for US goods...not to mention the moral imperative to assist those dying of malnutrition.
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