Adolf Hitler epitomizes the most evil person to ever walk the face of this earth. If the standard to being compared to Adolf Hitler is that you have to murder over 40 million innocent people by exterminating them in gas chambers, then only one person, Josef Stalin, can be compared to Hitler. Following this logic, people like Pol Pot, Attila the Hun, and Osama Bin Laden should not be compared to Hitler because their casualty count pales in comparison.
Hitler comparisons are made all the time based on a person's beliefs, rhetoric, and actions. While there may be millions of "Good Germans" supporting a political party or political leader whose agenda parallels much of Hitler's warped Coulteristic religious fundamentalism, the only people who get labeled with the Hitler tag are the ones who give the orders, not the "Good Germans" who follow.
If the standard for comparing George W Bush to Hitler is that Bush has to murder 40 million innocent people, then Bush is no Hitler. But there are similarities.
We've seen people arrested for wearing T shirts, being near the Republican National Convention in 2004, having a sign on their front lawn, or holding a sign near a sidewalk.
We've seen individuals prosecuted by partisan Monica Goodling minded prosecutors when no crime was present simply because the individual was not a Republican.
We've seen people detained and kicked off airplanes because they donate money to Democrats and are on some secret no fly list. We've seen countless citizens have their personal belongings monitored by the government and illegally wiretapped even though these individuals have committed no crime and there is no probable cause to belief they are planning to commit a crime.
We've seen countless numbers of people all across the globe scooped up during the dark of night and thrown into some secret prison in Eastern Europe, Guantanamo Bay, etc... And contrary to the Magna Carta and our Constitution, the Bush administration opposes habeas corpus. And yet how dare someone say the name Hitler because these sins pale in degree to the sins of Hitler.
We've seen a nation invaded and over a million of its civilians killed because Bush wanted to ignore Osama Bin Laden and invade an oil rich country for his cronies to loot. Should I not compare Bush to Hitler because 1 million is less than 40 million?
The tentacles of the Bush Republican Party extend well beyond Iraq. Bush and Chevron provide financial aid to the murderous dictatorship in Burma, the ayatollahs of Saudi Arabia, and murderers in South America, Eastern Europe,and Africa. Should I not compare Bush to Hitler because the casualty count is less than 40 million?
When you put the jigsaw puzzle pieces of false arrests, lack of habeas corpus, political prosecutions, illegal wiretapping, partisan no fly lists, unreasonable searches and seizures, illegal detainees, lack of due process, ultra right wing judges, torture, kidnappings, rape, and murder together, then the Hitler reference become warranted even though the Bush mosaic still pales in comparison to the atrocities of Hitler.
We as a nation have never faced this dire situation. We have a sociopathic president and a soulless vice president who have murdered millions of people and committed countless other crimes all while stealing taxpayer dollars from their citizens. Bush and Cheney need to be put on trial in a courtroom in Washington, D.C. for their crimes and then put on trial at the Hague or in Nuremberg where impartial jurors can adjudicate the charges that have been made against both men.
The American people as a whole are good people. We have our evil among us, epitimozed by the likes of Coulter, O'Reilly, Hannity, Limbaugh, Malkin, Dobson, Savage, and their disgusting ilk. But we can overcome them because we are Americans, as cliche-ish as that sounds.
While Bush is no Hitler, Bush has done many of the same things Hitler did. That makes Bush evil albeit less evil than Hitler. Hitler murdered over 40 million people. Bush has helped murder a couple million. That makes Bush evil but less evil than Hitler.