Fascinoma

I watched a few minutes of Olberman's mash-up of GlennBeck speeches at "Liberty"... um... "University" in the appropriately named Lynchburg, Va., and at the New Reich Association convention (no guns allowed!) and while I could only stand so much of it, I really did enjoy the Hitler like histrionics, especially when he was raging about being called a Nazi. Fairly quivering with indignation, stalking the stage like the Furhrer overmedicated, he roars, "The right in this country is small government. Nazism is Nationalist Socialist Workers Union."

Well actually it's 'worker's party' (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei) but don't expect Glenn to let the facts get in the way of a talking point, especially when it smears lefty institutions like unions.

But -- I digress. Elsewhere in the speech Glenn says the only things we can trust in today's society are "each other, the troops and the police." I'm not quite sure why we need so many police if we can trust each other (but perhaps he just means the white folks in the audience), nor am I so sure it's a good idea to trust the troops or the police, given the propensity of the former for shooting up innocent folks, and of the latter for tasing, beating, framing, bribe-taking and shooting up innocent folks. But anyway, that's it, in essence: the mantra of the small government Republicans and "Libertarians". When Beck and his ilk talk about small government they mean 'Cut everything that doesn't benefit me directly -- except armed forces , police forces, and prisons.' They don't really seem to grasp somehow that force is inimical to freedom. But they don't really understand or care about freedom anyway. Freedom to them is convenience, cheap gasoline, the remote control.

Those too stupid to understand the past will re-enact its atrocities.