re: #5 Buck

Well, many (including Beck) think of Hitler as having more in common with Pol Pot, Stalin, Castro, Mao, Ernesto “Che” Guevara, Kim Jung Il and even Chavez than the “Less government, lower taxes, more freedoms” concept of the Right.

Well he doesn’t. There may have been a large welfare state in place in Germany during the Nazi era, but they didn’t create it. They used it to benefit themselves and the perceived master race at the expense of undesireables, who were conspicuously left out. This is one thing moronic books like Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism carefully omits.

Another thing Goldberg and his ilk of nitwits who propagate the notion that Nazis and fascists were actually leftists (perhaps in an attempt to show that the teabaggers carrying the Obama-is-a-Nazi signs actually had a point, and it wasn’t on top of their heads) is that fascism is highly militaristic and nationalistic (something leftists cannot be accused of), and often scapegoats and persecutes certain specific elements in society for the ills of that society, something some leftists cannot be accused of. Yes, Stalin, Mao, Castro, Pol Pot and others have a very high body count, but most of that was not directed at groups of people because of who they were and/or what they believed, and the evil they were believed to be propagating. It was directed at people who were believed to be enemies of the revolution, with members of their family thrown in for good measure.

This makes no difference to Beckheads, teabaggers, dittoheads, what have you. All someone needs is to be thought a “leftist” and they might as well be Stalin.