"Originality is something like a will-o'-the-wisp if it isn't based on steadfastness and fanatical tenacity. One can make world history only when one has a fanatical steadfastness, a power of belief that makes a person a warrior to the very marrow."
This quotation is an exact reflection of George Bush's ideology as applied to his failed war on Iraq. The quotation is from one of Adolph Hitler's speeches to his generals in the last year of his failed war on Europe.
There is a direct link that runs from George Bush through the Neo-cons to Leo Strauss to Carl Schmitt in the heart of Nazi Germany.
To see how George Bush as absorbed Nazi ideology and spouts it at every opportunity without even knowing what it is, we start with Carl Schmitt in the 1930s in Germany. Schmitt was a shaper of Nazi ideology, a leading Nazi philosopher of law. He was a member of the Nazi party, wrote that politics is about friends and enemies, that politics always involves life-or-death stakes, that politics demands annihilation, that unity can only be achieved by repressing dissent, even at the risk of violating the rule of law. George Bush has brought these very same ideas into actuality with his war on Iraq, his disregard for the deaths of innocent Iraqis and US soldiers, and with his latest dictatorial decree that a dissenter's property can be seized without due process of law. This is precisely how Hitler started the destruction of the Jews and now Bush has started it on us.
Neo-cons and conservatives have taken to this Nazi ideology whole-heartedly. Witness Ann Coulter as a prime example, along with Bill O'Reilly, Bill Kristol, the editors of the Washington Post and other main stream media pundits.
This Nazi ideology came to the United States in the form of Leo Strauss, the god-father of the Neo-cons. Carl Schmitt was a mentor and colleague of Strauss. Schmitt favorably reviewed some of Strauss' writings and in 1937 arranged a Rockefeller Foundation grant for Strauss at the University of Chicago. Strauss' philosophy blended elitism and mysticism. He was a believer in the ideology of the three most notorious shapers of the Nazi philosophy: Neitzsche, Heidegger and Carl Schmitt. He believed that the works of ancient philosophers contain deliberately concealed esoteric meanings whose truths can be comprehended only by a very few and would be misunderstood by the masses. This is the myth of secret knowledge only available to initiates. Of course, in finding these imaginary meanings between the lines, he placed himself among the very few.
Strauss blamed the Holocaust on the Jews in the liberal, democratic Weimar Republic that preceded Hitler's dictatorship. Apparently he felt that Hitler had nothing to do with it.
He believed that rulers have to deceive their own public, that those fit to rule realize that there is no morality, that the superior have the natural right to rule over the inferior, that secular society is the worst possible thing because it leads to liberal democracy and dissent. He believed in a totalitarian, authoritarian system that rejected universal law, absolute rulers who lied and deceived a foolish mass and use religion, that he called a pious fraud, and politcs that disseminate myths that keep the general population in clueless ignorance.
The people who studied under Strauss and have been influenced by his re-stating of Nazi ideology are the leading members of the Neo-cons. Some of his PhD students were Paul Wolfowitz, who shaped foreign policy at the Defense Department and Abram Shulsky, who was to head Rumsfeld's disinformation operation. Others who adhere to Straussian Nazi ideology are Justice Clarence Thomas, former Asst. Secretary of State Alan Keys, former Secretary of Education William J. Bennett, Allan Bloom, John Podhoretz, Wolfowitz's protege Scooter Libby, William F. Buckley and Francis Fukuyama who hasn't noticed that history goes on in spite of his declaring it ended. The analog to Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi master of disinformation (lies) is Karl Rove.
The Nazi ideologues are sprinkled here and there throughout the Bush administration, with headquarters at the American Enterprise Institute and have had an inordinate amount of influence in shaping Bush's substitute for thinking. Bush has adopted the new-age version of Nazism as propounded by Strauss and his acolytes in his administration without knowing anything about Strauss, Nazism or Hitler.
The similarities between Bushism/Neo-con ideology and Nazism are striking. Shock and awe is the same as Blitzkrieg, literally lightning war. Lying to the people to gain support for unprovoked, aggressive war is the same as Hitler's excuses for invading other countries. Authoritarian dictatorship is the same as unitary executive, executive privilege, unitary privilege or any combination Bush claims. Having only friends and enemies is the same as you're either with us or against us. All of the most perverse ideological beliefs of Nazism have been adopted whole by George Bush and his cabal of latter day Neo-con/Nazis and put into practice with his war on Iraq and on the people of the United States.
Bush and his Neo-cons do not have the historical knowledge and insight into it to see that Nazism destroyed Europe, brought the German people to disaster and left Germany a smoking ruin. Jim Jones, David Koresh and Adolph Hitler used the device of absolute, authoritarian rule to destroy their followers. The cult of Bushism with it's focus on absolute, authoritarian rule is in the process of accomplishing our destruction. With Bush declaring himself absolute ruler by decree and a congress that refuses to see the danger in store for the people of the United States unless they stop him immediately, there are only two ways left to put an end to Bushism/Nazism that has infiltrated our government. Either we the people will have to do it ourselves by any means necessary, or the civilized nations of the world must get together as the Allies did during World War ll and put an end to it. Bush right now is incrementally gathering power, one decree at a time, well on his way to becoming dictator, in the same way as Hitler did after he was appointed Chancellor of Germany.
When Bush is finally removed, we're going to need a de-Bushification program like the Allies de-Nazification program set up in Germany after World War ll. It would have been impossible to de-Nazify Hitler had he still been alive, just as it is impossible to de-Bushify George Bush, who will never be made to understand that it's even remotely possible for him to do anything wrong or make a single mistake.
At least Hitler recognized that he had failed and had the decency to kill himself, believing as George Bush does, that he was in the right to the very end. We cannot expect decency from George Bush.
