Obama = Hitler?

It's been interesting noting how some conservatives keep trying to make a leap in logic and equate American left-of-center politics with fascism or Nazism. As I noted before, the mere fact that Obama is able to draw thousands of people to his rallies seems to make the Right down right hysterical. They know he's charismatic and a gifted speaker, and can draw in numerous people who could help him affect change. Obama is more Christ-like than Hitlerian, and not because he walks on water.

So, let's compare the leadership qualities of Barack Obama and Adolf Hilter. And who would know better about the latter than Joseph Goebbels, who wrote in a 1929 essay, Der Fuhrer, celebrating Hitler's 40th birthday.

"A leader must possess character, will, ability, and luck. If these four characteristics form a harmonious unity in a brilliant person, we have a man called by history.

Character is the most significant factor. Knowledge, book learning, experience and practice do more harm than good if they are not based on strong character. Character brings them to their best expression. It requires courage, endurance, energy, and consistency. Courage gives a person not only the ability to recognize what is right, but also to say and do it. Endurance gives him the ability to pursue the chosen goal, even if apparently impossible obstacles stand in the way, and to proclaim it even if it is unpopular, even if it makes him unpopular. Energy mobilizes the strength to risk everything for the goal and the persistence to keep at it. Consistency gives his eye and mind the sharpness of knowledge and logic in thought and action that gives truly great people the ability to reach the eternally wavering masses. These manly virtues together comprise that which we call character. Character, in short, is style and behavior in the highest form."

By any stretch of the imagination, to varying degrees, the above qualities could be attributed to any American figure from George Washington to Abraham Lincoln to Teddy Roosevelt to Martin Luther King, Jr. Or, diverse historical and contemporary figures such as Joan of Arc to Gandhi to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. What Goebbels is expressing is the romantic German leader, who possesses singular will, the will to triumph.

Once again, Goebbels:

"...The will distinguishes the man who acts from the man who merely thinks. It is the intermediary between knowledge and action. It is much more important for us to want that which is right than it is simply to know what is right. This is particularly true in politics. What good is it for me to know the enemy if I do not have the will to destroy him!"

Also, as Goebbels said, "Knowledge, book learning, experience and practice do more harm than good if they are not based on strong character." Obama seems by temperment an intellectual, albeit a practical and pragmatic one, and one guided and humbled by faith, that irrational quality of human existence that unnverves some people.

The mere fact that Obama sought to analyze lower-income whites as "clinging" to guns and relgion caused him to be charactrized as an "elitist." Often he was rerided as soft, a chump, not having the will to win simply because he adovocated a "different kind of politics," and in some cases, viewed by others, as emasculated by his wife.

Obama was recently recorded talking to David Cameron, the Tory leader, just on having the time to think and reflect. Now, one would think that is exactly the kind of quality one would want in a modern leader facing a complex world.

Here is a man in his prayer to God, pulled from the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, asking for the wisdom to do what's right and protect his family--not the self-centered motive to be the maximum leader.