PrintHow does the Left know that Hitler is bad?
Recently, a high school student, seventeen—year—old Jeffrey Eden of Charlestown, R.I, Rhode Island won a prominent award, the 'Silver Key,' by constructing a diorama comparing President Bush and Adolf Hitler: ''Bush/Hitler and How History Repeats Itself.''
This raises a question for the left: on what basis do you judge that Hitler was bad?
After all, the left does not believe in Judeo—Christian morality, but rather embraces moral relativism. Moral relativism is a philosophy that holds there are no fixed values, that all value judgments on behavior have to be considered within the context of the culture of the times and the society in which they occur. No absolutes for them, as they ridicule George Bush and Ronald Reagan for using the simplistic and embarrassing term "evil" to describe foes.
"One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" is a typical leftist mantra reflecting this mindset. So, what moral or philosophical basis does the left have to prove that Hitler's storm troopers and Stuka bomber pilots who overran Europe were not "freedom fighters"? Wasn't Germany the victim of the Versailles Accords that ended WWI, with humiliating and punitive penalties placed on them just for losing the war? Shouldn't we be looking at the "root causes" of WWII, to use a favorite leftist term?
Last spring, at the Academy Awards in Los Angeles, the liberal left honored the memory of Hitler's favorite filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, as the camera scrolled down a list of departed film artists In Memoriam. After all, if Hollywood thinks The Triumph of the Will, a film celebrating a 1930s Nazi rally, is great, how bad can Hitler be to the left? To a typical 17 year old, Leni Riefenstahl could be the name of an NHL player from Eastern Europe, but the issue matters.
If the left is reluctant to say that cannibalism in New Guinea is morally wrong, then on what intellectual or moral basis do they condemn Hitler? He was wasting food by not eating people? Hitler was a vegetarian and a devoted animal lover, so meat was out of the question.
Invoking Hitler gets an (understandable) emotional reaction, yet if the left has no real moral basis to oppose him, then their opposition becomes merely an emotional statement of his unpopularity — Academy Awards celebration of Riefestahl aside. But popularity ebbs and flows, especially as history undergoes reconsideration by subsequent generations.
After all, Stalin, whom the left and the 1930s New York Times loved, killed 11 million Ukrainian peasants for political reasons, but was not compared to President Bush by the Rhode Island high school student. Communist Cambodian dictator Pol Pot killed millions of his own countrymen as well, but the left (and the Rhode Island student) don't compare President Bush to Pol Pot. Chairman Mao of China killed even more millions of his countrymen in politically—caused famines, not to mention firing squads. The left (and the Rhode Island high school) aren't as outraged about Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot — from a comfortable distance. To present—day leftists, these mass murders are consigned to George Orwell's memory hole.
I wonder if they taught the Rhode Island high school boy about the 1939 peace pact that Stalin signed with Hitler before invading Russia in 1941? Stalin stood by while Hitler gobbled up countries in Europe, making him an "enabler," to use the current pop psychology term, a passive ally of Hitler. I wonder if they taught this kid that there were Western arms inspectors in Germany in the 1930s who looked the other way while Hitler built up his army, navy and air force — a situation reminiscent of Saddam Hussein and his foiling Western arms inspectors as he built his military back up after 1991. I doubt that he was taught any of this at his high school.
Jack Kemp is a frequent contributor, who is not a former Congressman or football star.
