Lessons from History

John Hawkins latest article covers lessons we can learn from the rise of Hitler. Unlike Pat Buchanan, Hawkins seems to see Hitler as a bad person and something to be wary of. That said it's not hard to read his article as a suggestion that President Obama might be another Hitler, and, ironically enough, another Chamberlain. Take this section.

Take even non-reasonable claims seriously: Margaret Thatcher once said,

"It is one of the great weaknesses of reasonable men and women that they imagine that projects which fly in the face of commonsense are not serious or being seriously undertaken."

And of course conservatives are pretty convinced that Obama has repeatedly said that he wants socialism or communism or fascism. So I guess we should take those claims seriously?

And then of course Hawkins gives Chamberlain the same kicking he always gets.

So, when a belligerent nation or group benefits from its belligerence, it should surprise no one when it continues to be belligerent. That principle applied to Hitler and it most certainly still applies today.

Of course original appeasement involved actually giving Hitler what he wanted. Modern appeasement just implies not starting a war to invade another country.

Now in fairness to Hawkins he does have a paragraph about how everybody's not another Hitler, which would seem to protect him from the suggestion that he's arguing that Obama is another Hitler. Pity his examples come from the townhall disrupters.