The very serious Thomas Sowell:
At about the same time, during the worldwide Great Depression, the German Reichstag passed a law “for the relief of the German people.”
That law gave Hitler dictatorial powers that were used for things going far beyond the relief of the German people — indeed, powers that ultimately brought a rain of destruction down on the German people and on others.
If the agreement with BP was an isolated event, perhaps we might hope that it would not be a precedent. But there is nothing isolated about it.
But don’t forget, someone compared Bush to Hitler in the comments of a Daily Kos diary in 2005.
Eric U.
I wish the video that compared Bush to Hitler had won the Moveon contest it was entered in instead of being deleted.
valdivia
And: apparently infrastructure projects are just like Auschwitz.
warning: National Review link
sherifffruitfly
Is now a good time to recall Greenwald’s reporting on the asymmetric Anti-Defamation League (IOKIYAR-esque, naturally) treatment of such things?
Or does that make me anti-Semitic?
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2007/10/08/adl_response
handy
Thomas Sowell wonders out loud whether the US is on a “slippery slope to tyranny.” Now. One of the biggest apologists for the Cheney power grabs the last eight years has the courage to ponder that right now. These people are shameless.
flukebucket
@handy:
Yeah. As Radley Balko pointed out this morning Thomas Sowell was a torture apologist
El Cid
Well, you libruls don’t want to admit it, but he has a point. One time Robert Mugabe said he was doing stuff because of an economic crisis, and Obama said he was doing stuff because of an economic crisis, so obviously we’re on a slippery Limpopo to becoming Zimbabwe.
jrg
Is Sowell criticizing a sitting president during wartime AND during a national emergency? Boy, he must really hate America. /2003
Redshirt
You know who else spoke eloquently? Satan, that’s who.
beltane
I once inadvertently read one of Thomas Sowell’s books. Had it made any sense at all the book would have been offensive, but it failed to achieve even this distinction. Sowell likes to rely upon stereotypes. Unfortunately for him, the stereotypes he relies upon are not the same ones shared by the general public. This makes him a kook.
kommrade reproductive vigor
First they came for the multibillion dollar oil companies, and I said nothing because …
QuaintIrene
Hmm, I would guess that was due more to the allied bombing raids.
r€nato
@beltane: a useful kook, since he is a ‘black conservative “intellectual”‘.
beltane
@Redshirt: Satan is quite the charmer. David Brooks claims the oilpocalypse was the result of progressives making a Faustian deal with the devil. Since we have this incredible power, let us use it to its full extent.
Asshole
Obama and Hitler both drew large crowds when they spoke in Berlin, so I can see where he’s going with this thing.
Lab Partner
Sowell’s got a problem: he can’t go a week without linking Obama with Hitler. This sort of willful ignorance of the facts isn’t cured by reading history books. It requires professional help.
SpotWeld
Once again I pause to find myself wondering, if I were to step back to the 1850s, the 1950, or the 1970 would I be seeing political commentary this utterly wacked out?
Or is it the usual selfishness of the now that makes our current situation magnified beyond that of other generations.
Who am I kidding, the Texas GOP just called for gays to be thrown in jail. The right wing is devloving before our eyes.
kay
I think business interests are worried about setting a precedent.
Not a legal, enforceable precedent, but a public expectation precedent. They’re afraid that the next time they are negligent or reckless and do massive public damage, the public will expect them to take responsibility for that, without a court order. Because what did we learn from the Valdez spill? A judge can just set aside damages, if they drag it out long enough, and all of those “small people” who have to make a monthly debt payment go under. They drown. They disappear. Problem solved!
That’s why I love the BP deal. It’s consensual, but it sets an expectation of decent voluntary behavior that must scare the hell out of them.
The absolute irony of our “moral betters” on the Right objecting to voluntary responsible action is just icing on the cake for me. How long have they been wagging their finger at us insisting that no one really regulations (or a court order)? Here we have an entity that were shamed into behaving like they should anyway, and conservatives object!
beltane
@QuaintIrene: This means that Churchill and Roosevelt were more like Hitler than the actual Hitler was. This would somehow make Dwight Eisenhower the most Hitlery Hitler of them all.
Thinking about Sowell’s writing makes me want to go read some WG Sebald just to purify my brain.
artem1s
OK, I take it all back. Now I WANT Obama to start seizing BP assets.
6 months reviewing safety so we don’t completely kill the Gulf = appropriating property (at gunpoint) from segregated and minority classes so you can pay for the invasion of Poland? really?
Once again I thank Jeebus that the Great Lakes Consortium exists and has banned slant well drilling. Of course I better be quiet cause the oil industry will probably be suing them next.
Brachiator
Let’s see, now. Sowell claims,
The preamble to the Constitution begins,
Ipso facto, the Founders were Hitler.
MattF
Sowell is one of a number of ‘conservative intellectuals’ whose wackiness has been gradually revealed over the years. Bork is another. Wingnut Welfare is involved in some way, I’d guess, but whether it’s cause, effect, or just correlation… one may wonder.
Calouste
The law that gave Hitler his dictatorial powers, the Enabling Act formally known as the “Law to Remedy the Distress of the People and the Nation”, was passed in reaction to a terrorist attack on a national symbol, not in reaction to an economic crisis.
Draw any parallels you would like. As well as any conclusions about the intellectual honesty of Thomas Sowell.
beltane
@Brachiator: So many Hitlers, so little time.
cleek
Sowell knows his audience: conspiracy-minded morons who can’t get enough of the sweet sweet demagoguery.
JGabriel
DougJ:
Hell, I’ll do the same thing here. While Bush never engaged in anything on the same scale of production line murder as the Holocaust, the Big Lie technique perfected by Hitler was certainly an inspiration for the techniques used by Bush & Cheney to get the US population to support an invasion of Iraq.
The point being that, while not terribly useful for improving the political tone, comparisons of the GOP to fascists is educational and not inaccurate.
.
dj spellchecka
does sowell think that our CURRENT congress would pass a bill that give obama hitler-super powers? hell, they won’t even extend unemployment at the moment…something that WOULD be “for the relief of the people.”
Sly
You know what else Hitler did? Fire Generals.
Asshole
You know who else had partisan, wingnut-welfare pseudointellectual fluffers ready to decry his political enemies as treasonous extremists in the most acrimonious terms possible? Hitler, that’s who.
Bob
Let’s not forget that BP could have told Obama to stuff it and Obama could not have done anything to make them cough up their $20 B.
It was public opinion that made them pay the $20 B, Obama just used it to our advantage.
Zifnab
What will be absolutely awesome is when we’ve got President Palin running the show in 2012 and she orders the firebombing of “7th Generation” while claiming President Obama really did this exact same thing just two years earlier.
So I can sympathize with people suggesting that Presidential Powers need to be constrained. So long as said people were in comas all during ’06-’08, when Bush continued his reign of lawless asshattery and the Democrats didn’t do a fucking thing to stop him.
All this constitutionalist bullshit has always been about conservatives claiming they can do whatever the hell they want without obstruction. I just wish the Democrats would finally stop letting their opponents play by their own made up set of rules time and time again.
kay
And how far does this new conservative principle go?
I’m curious. Can you turn yourself in? When you ding your neighbors car so he can’t drive it to work can you write him a check to repair it, voluntarily, because you know you did it and you know he can’t pay for it, or do you have to wait for him to sue you?
I feel like this is so reveals how they actually think, apart from all the pious posturing about “responsibility”. When it gets down to it, they won’t pay, barring an order.
Comrade Javamanphil
Normally this would get some news coverage but the media has its hands full today assessing what Obama means by choosing the tie he did for his news conference. Palin’s twitter feed needs monitoring. Also.
A Ghost To Most
@MattF:
Sowell is one of a number of ‘conservative intellectuals’ whose wackiness has been
gradually revealedpainfully obvious over the years. Bork is another. Wingnut Welfare is involved in some way, I’d guess, but whether it’s cause, effect, or just correlation… one may wonder.ftfy.
Zifnab
@Bob: Well, Obama’s hands weren’t exactly tied. The DoJ has already launched criminal investigations. The Interior Department is still in charge of leasing for future wells. Obama has a number of levers he could use to make BP’s life more difficult.
And if Congress felt it needed to change the $75 million cap law, it could roll that back retroactively. That’s what BP really wants to avoid. $5 billion / year for four years is an absolute steal for BP if it can avoid future damages and litigation.
El Cid
Anyone see the Competitive Enterprise Institute douchebag on the Daily Show last night on how Michelle Obama’s campaign to recommending healthier eating was just the first step on a larger project much like the pre-WWII Germany had the Nazis advocating against tobacco? And also how this anti-obesity mania made him think of George Orwell’s 1984 as a premonition of never-ending war?
No, I’m not making up any of that.
Josh
JGabriel: Goebbels, having studied U.S. p.r. theories, was the Big Lie advocate, not Hitler; Hitler might well have believed much of what he was saying. The comparisons of Bush to Hitler had to do with authoritarian government and, most significantly, preventive war.
gex
@SpotWeld: Correction. They threatened to have straights who help gays get married thrown in jail. I’m not sure if they’ve said what they will do to the gays, but one prominent Republican has said basically that jail is too good for gays…
cleek
@SpotWeld:
hell yes.
politics has never been a gentlemanly occupation.
geg6
OT, but TPM is reporting that Obama relieved McChrystal of his duty:
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/06/report-obama-relieves-mcchrystal-from-duty.php?ref=fpa
ETA: Patreus to take over.
Prezzie to go on teevee right now (1:30pm) to announce.
Mark S.
Well, maybe, but let’s see if Obama could get $20 billion from a company that didn’t cause a New Jersey sized oil spill.
Is it just me or has Sowell become really intellectually lazy the last couple of years. I’m not saying he was ever some modern day Aristotle, but the last few things I’ve read of his have had about as much depth as a dry riverbed.
Randy P
@geg6: And to be replaced by Petraeus.
Is that an improvement?
And a question to our military experts: Who would decide if McChrystal’s interview warrants a court martial on UCMJ Article 88 charges?
JGabriel
@Josh:
Thank you, Josh, for improving the analysis and strengthening the comparison between Bush and Hitler, with Rove & Cheney in the Goebbels role.
.
Midnight Marauder
@geg6:
ABC News is reporting the same news as official now. Also.
kommrade reproductive vigor
@El Cid: I hope he attributed the Healthy Eating Programs = HITLER theory to Jonah Goldberg.
Gus
Fixed that for ya.
Punchy
McChyrstal sacked.
JGabriel
@Randy P:
Doesn’t particularly seem like one, though, to be fair, my understanding is that at least Petraeus is completely on board with a mid-2011 Afghanistan pullout.
.
kay
@Bob:
Exactly. An ordinary expectation of BP acting responsibly.
Jeez. What if that takes off? No wonder conservatives are (laughably) pretending Obama called on some extra-constitutional power? What if huge business interests actually have a duty to the public when they harm people and places that isn’t court-ordered, but that the public recognizes, and comes to expect?
Scary stuff, if you’re an irresponsible actor.
James in WA
@Punchy:
Cue RedState frothy freakout in 3…2…1…
Indpls
Lemme see. Hitler had a birthday. I have a birthday. Connect the dots.
Dave C
I’m watching MSNBC’s coverage of the run-up to the rose garden speech. Why is Chuck Todd such a fucking moron?
geg6
@Randy P:
I am certainly not on the Patreus lovin’ bandwagon, but we certainly never heard of him being as bone-headed stupid and arrogant as McChrystal has shown himself to be nor that he is a proponent of torture and murder as a first option nor that he supported any sort of cover-ups (such as the Tillman case) like McChrystal.
Militarily, I don’t feel qualified to judge. But as far as ethics and understanding of propriety and chain of command goes? Yes, Patreus is a huge improvement.
Brachiator
@r€nato:
One of the comments to Sowell’s column, from someone with the handle lillywhite, notes,
In other words, a “good” black intellectual is just about equal to an uneducated white guy.
And Sowell enjoys preaching to this crowd?
Redshirt
Gosh, I hope McChrystal goes on the Fox News Circuit to tell us all how terrible this all is, and how it portends things that happened in another country, at another time. IT COULD HAPPEN HERE TOO (under a Democract president, of course)!
mantis
And Louie Gohmert (R-Godwin) just approvingly read Sowell’s “Obama is double the Hitler that Hitler was” piece on the floor of the house.
We need more cane beatings in Congress.
Bulworth
Obama’s unConstitutional and unAmerican sacking of McCrystal is a Chicago-mob style shakedown. Discuss.
Bill Section 147
There really is no comparison between Das Decider and Der Führer. Hitler wasn’t a megalomaniac until his 20s and Bush never wanted to kill somebody for ethnic or race reasons.
Men. Demagogues. Right-handed. So I guess there are a few more similarities but really?
Obama on the other hand, well if he would have been in Germany in the 20s Hitler would never have come to power because Obama’s Chicago-style thug-fu would have gone all Chuck Norris on his ass and he would have turned Germany into Northern Peoples Republic of Kenya.
gnomedad
@Brachiator:
Yes, why couldn’t our first black president have been Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh?
James in WA
@Dave C:
Cottleston Cottleston Cottleston Pie,
Why does a chicken? I don’t know why.
Ask me a riddle and I reply
Cottleston Cottleston Cottleston Pie.
KG
@MattF: I think it’s partly due to wingnut welfare and partly due to the nature of the job. You have to say stuff that will get people’s attention and if you say the same thing over and over, people start to ignore you, so you have to up the ante from time to time. One of my favorite Sowell columns was a fairly recent one where he tried to argue against equality before the law by pointing out that Michael Jordan was better at basketball than he was, so therefore equality was dumb because he could never be equal to MJ. He never stopped to consider that MJ got good because he devoted himself to the game the way Sowell apparently devoted himself to economics, or that equal opportunity does not actually mean equal outcomes, just that everyone have a chance to pursue their life as they see fit. And I say this as someone who really wanted to be the next Magic Johnson, but who stopped growing at 6’1″ and couldn’t jump more than about a foot off the ground.
@Zifnab: This is nothing new at all. It started with Hamilton vs Jefferson (who changed his view just a bit when he was sworn in as president) and continued with Jackson and then both Roosevelts and Truman (Youngstown Steel is probably my favorite constitutional law case on executive power) and then really ramped up with the passage of the War Powers Act. I’m all for reining in executive power and have been for a long, long time, but that would require Congress to take more responsibility… and well, I just don’t see that happening. Plus, it would take quite a while to convince the American people that, no, really, the government isn’t just the president, that there really are two other co-equal branches.
AnotherBruce
@beltane:
I once inadvertently read one of Thomas Sowell’s books
Dude, that’s like saying you stabbed yourself to death with a plastic fork.
NonyNony
@SpotWeld:
Don’t kid yourself – for most of American history our political world has been wacky. Everyone wants to believe there was a “Golden Age” when our politics was driven by Pure Reason, but even in the days immediately following the Revolution there were many examples of opportunism and exploiting ignorance to be had.
Our political discourse is severely skewed by the WWII and post-WWII generations. Television and radio journalism changed the perception of newspapers in the US because the FCC controlled the airspace and required broadcasters via the Fairness Doctrine to be impartial politically and there were strict controls on ownership of those stations. That changed the political discourse for a brief stretch of time, but it was an artificial change. All it did was push the crazy away from the major news outlets. Until the 80s when that all changed.
I’d actually argue that overall it’s a good thing. The bad thing is that prior to WWII people knew and expected their newspapers to be full of propaganda and they adjusted accordingly. To a couple of generations who were raised to expect their media to be “unbiased” and to “report both sides” of any issue, the shift back to a biased news media as the status quo has been a jarring one. Hopefully one we’ll adjust to as the older generations die off.
mr. whipple
Ditto Tweety. What an ahole.
fucen tarmal
@Bulworth:
lets wait til fall 2011, in the lead up to the republican primaries when the issue can be fully considered as it relates to whether or not Mccrhystal is the the right man to be president.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Courtesy of Mantis @ 55:
Wow. Just. Wow.
ed drone
@Indpls:
Merkwurtig! Sie ist Hitler? Mich auch! Sehr merkwurtig!
Ed
(using up his tiny store of Deutschen sprache all in one comment)
SRW1
Can I just say that Mr Sowell is entirely correct.
There’s no denying that the Obamabots here are abusing real ‘muricans on a daily basis and in a manner that is no different from the way Hitler’s brownshirts abused their political enemies in the streets of the Weimar Republik.
OK, the brownshirts were a bit more ‘hands-on’ in their approach and cracked real heads instead of just rubbishing the opinion of their opponents on the intertubes. But other than that, there’s no difference, really. None at all.
Obama’s shakedown of BP is exactly the same as Hitler remilitarizing the Rheinland in 1936. Not standing up to Obama now will inevitably lead to the great appeasement of 2012: The reelection of Obama to a second term.
America awaken!
BC
I really don’t understand why the Republicans are so upset about this $20 B escrow account, other than it may mean that Obama wins and they can’t have that. They keep talking about the need for some court to determine damages, as though the only way we can pay compensatory damages is if a court orders it. But they also want to cap punitive damages when they put on their tort reform hats. If the trial lawyers weren’t so reliably Democratic, I would have to think they were trying to protect the trial lawyers. I have just about come to the conclusion that what has their panties in a bunch is that the people of the Gulf may be recompensed from a fund that no middleman has been able to rake some of the money from. The man in charge is, as I understand it, going to be paid for his services by BP directly and not from the escrow fund. (But if this escrow fund proves to be popular, the Republicans have another meme going that they thought the whole thing up and Obama stole their idea . . .)
Patriot 3
@SRW1: Sieg Heil, Baby! And now for one of the great show tunes of all time…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGp0hCxSg98
mantis
@BC:
I really don’t understand why the Republicans are so upset about this $20 B escrow account, other than it may mean that Obama wins and they can’t have that.
They aren’t really upset about it. Well, the idiot rank and file who believe every word they hear on talk radio might be, but they don’t actually think about what they believe or say. The ones telling them what to do aren’t the slightest bit upset about it*, but they are required to turn every event into an opportunity to attack the president. If BP had not set aside an escrow fund for those whose livelihoods are being destroyed by the leak, they simply would have attacked him for being soft on BP and screwing over the fishing and tourist industries. It doesn’t need to be consistent, or even make sense, it just needs to be an attack.
* This doesn’t apply to a few Republicans who only represent oil interests, not their constituents (Barton, et al.), and are simply looking out for their supporters. They know very well that when BP declares bankruptcy they will be off the hook for compensation, and they would prefer that BP get away without paying any damages whatsoever.
vtr
Sowell’s piece in Investors Business daily is just another psychotic episode. Do these people even know what an escrow account is?
Patriot 3
@mantis: “When Adolf Hitler” becomes “It was a dark and stormy night” there is no false equivalency for opening prefixes to good solid disinformation articles http://www.sadlyno.com/archives/31951.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+SadlyNo+%28Sadly%2C+No%21%29
Mark S.
@vtr:
One of the first things the Nazis did when they took power was . . .
SRW1
@Patriot 3:
“I was born in Duesseldorf and that is why they call me Rolf.”
Church Lady
Damn, those Kos Kids are everywhere on teh intertubes. Google Bush Hitler and you get over 6 million hits. Yeah, Doug, keep telling yourself that comparing a President to Hitler is something new. I take it you were in a coma from January 2001 to January 2009.
jrosen
If I remember my history aright, there was an article in the Weimar Constitution that gave the chancellor the power to govern by decree in grave emergencies. (I think it was Aritcle 47, but I haven’t time right now to chase down the reference.) Mr. Sowell (no surprise here) has his history wrong. The emergency invoked by Hitler was not the Great Depression (that was what helped put him in the Chancellor’s office, through a political deal) but the Reichstag Fire. The Constitution was never revoked, so as a legalism, Hitler actually governed under its provisions until the day he blew the back of his head off in his bunker.
Sinclair Lewis (I believe) predicted that if fascism came to America, it would be wrapped in the flag and carrying a Bible. I’d amend that to say should that happen that “intellectuals” like Mr. Sowell will have played roles analogous to the likes of Spengler, Heidegger, and de la Garde (a name not known any more, but one of the intellectual pre-justifiers of Nazism).
Another role might be like that of the Communists, who attacked the fragile German democracy from the left as enthusiastically as did the Nazis from the right (in spite of Jonah Goldberg , they had different goals and different supporters, even if for a time they had a similar strategy), on the theory that “After Hitler, us”, according to the predictions of Marxism-Leninism as interpreted by Stalin.
They were right, of course, with the little matter of 60 million dead and Europe in ruins; seems like a rather high price to achieve the GDR and the Stasi. Analogies have limits…otherwise they would be identities. But the Firebaggers might give it a little thought. Personally, I am an immoderate moderate.
SRW1
@jrosen:
Actually, the article of the Weimar Constitution in question was Article 48 and the power was given to the German president, not the chancellor. The aptly misnamed “Verordnung des Reichspräsidenten zum Schutz von Volk und Staat” Sowell is refering to was enacted via exactly that article. In other words, in contrast to what Sowell claimed, the Reichstag passed shit,it was all Hitler and Hindenburg, the then German president.
mantis
@Church Lady:
Yeah, Doug, keep telling yourself that comparing a President to Hitler is something new. I take it you were in a coma from January 2001 to January 2009.
Tell us, how many congressmen compared GWB to Hitler on the floor of the House or Senate?
liberty60
@El Cid:
Too many others have pounded poor Mr. Sowell’s head into mush for supporting lawless torture, but being appalled at forcing a corporation to pay damages, so I won’t pile on.
I flagged El Cid’s reference to Orwell, since I keep hearing about how “historic” this is, the firing of a general (cue martial music) “IN A TIME OF WAR!” dum da dumm DUMM!!
We have entered into a period of never-ending war, a war we have lways been fighting, a war our grandchildren will be waging, listening to Erick Son of Erick Son of Erick proclaiming that Victory is achievable in 6 months, if only those libruls would stop writing bad things….
Somebody noted the other day about how the final straw for the Soviet Union was pouring massive amounts of money and resources into Afghanistan even as their economy was collapsing.
Hmmm…
kay
@BC:
They’re upset about it because it’s a huge company on one side, and individual’s harmed on the other, and for once, the individuals on the other side are likely to get a fair shake.
Isn’t it just incredible? This fund is going to be administered by a mediator. He’s going to hear claims and administer damages.
Conservatives have been jamming this same system down individual’s throats for the last 30 years. Except in that set-up, the consumer was “negotiating” with some huge lawyered-up entity, hoping for some crumb from the corporate table. .
They’re full of shit. On each and every issue, the stated “principle” magically disappears when a moneyed interest is threatened.
Dispute resolution outside of a court is just fine if some powerful entity holds all the cards. If it’s a level playing field? They don’t want to play. Too risky, for the oil company.
Mnemosyne
@Church Lady:
Take a look at this list of “Bush=Hitler” allusions that someone on the right came up with. How many of them came from American politicians who hold elected office?
Hint: Fidel Castro is not a member of Congress.
olo
That’s right & I’ll never apologize.
cwolf
@Mnemosyne:
Let me just say that for a Reich Wing site, that page has a shitload of good stuff.
Steeplejack
@beltane:
I love W.G. Sebald! My favorite is The Rings of Saturn (link), a weird, dream-like novel that is almost impossible to describe to people when I’m badgering them to read it. But I also like On the Natural History of Destruction (link), a collection of four essays that includes “Air War and Literature”:
Corner Stone
@olo: FSM bless you and yours.