DES MOINES, Iowa – A billboard created by an Iowa tea party group that compares President Barack Obama to Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin is drawing sharp criticism — even from fellow tea party activists who have condemned it as offensive and a waste of money.


So it's strange that one tea party group is off base, or it's strange that one tea party group has condemned another tea party group as being offensive?

How can broad brushed labeling be effective if these darn groups won't all think alike? It's like they are individuals or using freedom of expression or something. How dare they?

Funny how ones personal bias colors their perceptions. I often am saddened by those who generalize by lumping all Obama followers, gun owners, welfare recipients, Mexicans, etc. into one pot. I do not believe broad brushed generalizations are the sole domain of any given political group, until you hit the far fringes. Then you get skinheads, KKK and such who hate all Jews, blacks, the educated, etc.
The Tea party has many fine folks, and some good ideas, but like any new group tends to attract haters and full on nut jobs too. If they aren’t vigilant to keep the nutcases out it will hurt them badly next fall.

There's the old adage about keeping one's mouth shut to prevent proving you're foolish. Obviously the sponsors of this billboard failed to heed that advice.

Hitler and Lenin are on extreme opposites of the political and ideological sprectrum. To try and lump them together in an attempt to disparage the efforts of President Obama shows not only an obvious disconnect with reality, but of history as well.

Some might consider them all assholes.

I mostly agree with you. I unashamedly have a left wing bias. But I do try hard to fight generalizations. And stand by the observation that generalizations are most definitely not any more common on the left than the right. To me huge sweeping generalizations seem much more common on the right, but that is simply my bias, just as your makes you say the left is guiltier of that. My point was and remains that we see things from our own perspective and that may color the truth.

While I do have my biases, I can see that nothing is all black or white.Two of my three best friends are very conservative. I respect thier opinions, but dont agree with much of what they believe. And you are not too bad at that either.

I know MSNBC is biased. And I know Fox is as well. Those who can’t see that are not willing to try to see any view but their own.

I don't hide it. I generally label all staunch Republicans as idiots.

"There's the old adage about keeping one's mouth shut to prevent proving you're foolish. Obviously the sponsors of this billboard failed to heed that advice.

Hitler and Lenin are on extreme opposites of the political and ideological sprectrum. To try and lump them together in an attempt to disparage the efforts of President Obama shows not only an obvious disconnect with reality, but of history as well."

Just a thought, both the Commies and the Nazis were/are socialist. It was Hitler’s idea to call his organization a right wing organization in order to differentiate his outfit from Lenin’s actually Karl Marx’s outfit). I guess the erectors of the sign are just letting the observer choose which brand of socialist he thinks Obama leans toward.

Phoenix,

I thought the Nazis were fascist, not socialists.

Sg

Right-wingers get all hung up on "Nazi" being short for National Socialist.

The reality is that most of 'em don't even know what true Socialism is.

FOX News and Glenn Beck throw the word around a lot and say it's bad... and that's good enough for them.

Then please explain to us why socialism is a good thing?

There are differences between the two but you don't have to look far to find many similarities between the two "isms" Sg.

Not that I have any ambitions to dive into this never-ending topic today but I'll offer the following;

Both seek to control the means of production through a strong central authority. Both reject individualism.

Economic fascism that was practiced in Germany in the 1920's and 30's allowed private property and private enterprise to exist but only if it was controlled by the state so that it would only "serve the public interest."

The philosophy of German fascism was expressed in the slogan Gemeinnutz geht vor Eigennutz, which means "the common good comes before the private good." "The Aryan," Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf, "willingly subordinates his own ego to the community and, if the hour demands, even sacrifices it."

Sounds real right-wing,...........doesn't it?

Democrats are just Socialist in slow motion, Communist are Socialist in a hurry.

Fascist is the Italian form of Nazi

Considering there's only a handful of true socialist countries out there, China is probably the most notable. Consider further that China holds much of the debt of the United States, ergo, it's pretty easy to argue that socialism is indirectly responsible for the continuing existence of the United States.

Socialism
Socialism is an economic and political theory based on public or common ownership and cooperative management of the means of production and allocation of resources.[1][2][3]

In a socialist economic system, production is carried out by a public association of producers to directly produce use-values (instead of exchange-values), through coordinated planning of investment decisions, distribution of surplus, and the use of the means of production. Socialism is a set of social and economic arrangements based on a post-monetary system of calculation, such as labour time, energy units or calculation-in-kind.[4]

Socialists advocate a method of compensation based on individual merit or the amount of labour one contributes to society.[5] They generally share the view that capitalism unfairly concentrates power and wealth among a small segment of society that controls capital and derives its wealth through a system of exploitation. They argue that this creates an unequal society that fails to provide equal opportunities for everyone to maximise their potential,[6] and does not utilise technology and resources to their maximum potential in the interests of the public.[7] Socialists characterise full socialism as a society no longer based on coercive wage-labour, organized on the basis of relatively equal power-relations and adhocracy rather than hierarchical, bureaucratic forms of organization in the productive sphere. Reformists and revolutionary socialists disagree on how a socialist economy should be established.

Modern socialism originated in the late 18th-century intellectual and working class political movement that criticised the effects of industrialisation and private ownership on society. Utopian socialists such as Robert Owen (1771–1858), tried to found self-sustaining communes by secession from a capitalist society. Henri de Saint Simon (1760–1825), who coined the term socialisme, advocated technocracy and industrial planning.[8] Saint-Simon, Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx advocated the creation of a society that allows for the widespread application of modern technology to rationalise economic activity by eliminating the anarchy of capitalist production.[9][10] They argued that this would allow for economic output (or surplus value) and power to be distributed based on the amount of work expended in production.

Some socialists advocate complete nationalisation of the means of production, distribution, and exchange, while others advocate state control of capital within the framework of a market economy. Socialists inspired by the Soviet model of economic development have advocated the creation of centrally planned economies directed by a state that owns all the means of production. Others, including Yugoslavian, Hungarian, East German and Chinese communist governments in the 1970s and 1980s, instituted various forms of market socialism, combining co-operative and state ownership models with the free market exchange and free price system (but not free prices for the means of production).[11]

Libertarian socialists (including social anarchists and libertarian Marxists) reject state control and ownership of the economy altogether, and advocate direct collective ownership of the means of production via co-operative workers' councils and workplace democracy.

Contemporary social democrats propose selective nationalisation of key national industries in mixed economies, while maintaining private ownership of capital and private business enterprise.

Given the above we a loooong ways from socialism. As used by many on the far right socialism means programs like Social Security. Many use the term like some sort of boogie man. But I see very little reason to think Obama is or wants to be a socialist. If he did the government would have retained ownership in all the companies they bailed out. Instead we have systematically divested ourselves of those companies.

Funny how many who decry our inexprable slide toward socialism sure don’t want their SS or Medicare cut.

Oh the outrage....



Funny, I vaguely remember the lefties constantly smearing Bush with all of the Hitler references.

What a bunch of bullshitt.







Arguing politics is like pissing against the wind.

Ah..................Ah............................well how dare you bring honesty into the conversation, I mean like you might as well require rational thought.......................