I am and always will be a conservative…but a conservative on my terms.

I’ve read about 20 books on the Bush era, more on Hitlers, authors from both sides of the fence, about 30 more than you. (Remember, you “don’t need some author to tell you what to think.” One of the funniest things I’ve ever read, and when I challenged you on it you stayed right there. Books are bad.)

Now, those Christians. Wanna talk about them when they get some power. I’ll start another thread and bring up Creationism, there’s a good one, abortion, death with dignity, and any number of items that Christians and Republicans love to dote on, and some they may not be very good at. Heck, I can go back to the horseback Crusades, not just George Bush’s, the Inquisition, the Pilgrims who didn’t run from those nasty Christians but did sail.

I’m willing. But then I think it’s always interesting to understand the point of view of those who were there. That’s usually reading a book, not a blog, reading more than one book with more than one point of view, not 20 blogs with the same point of view. (Who then give you the talking points which get trotted out here.)

Nope, TB, you remind me of a radio which plays whatever it is tuned to by the lord high overseers, Limbaugh et al. Some of us compose and play our own tune, injecting our own common sense, education, intelligence and experience into the equation. We aren’t “dittoheads”, nor do we march in lockstep with the PARTY leadership.

Discussing with you is like talking back to that radio. But some of us are dumb enough to do it.

Now, about those damn Christians trying to take over the country and wreck everything…

Oh, don’t forget those rotten bankers bringing us all down, too.

Hitler reached the “tipping point” as he got the power to do something. Bush reached the “tipping point” as he got the power. The Iraqis killed 4 American mercenaries and Bush leveled Fallujah, a city of about 350,000 people. The Brits killed Reynhold Heydrich and Hitler leveled Lidice.

Saddam was hanged for war crimes because he could be. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice weren’t hanged for even more grievous war crimes because they couldn’t be. But they all reached the “tipping point” when they had to power to carry out heinous crimes. All the time blaming the other guy for forcing them into crimes against humanity.

When weak egos get the power they tip. All that keeps America from becoming a Christian fundamemtalist state run on perceived Christian principles is the lack of the power to force the issue. Otherwise they’d cram the Old Testament into every orifice we have and they’d create a few. Look at the areas where they control a school board.

Hitler wasn’t uncommon, there have been recent Africans even worse. Hitler is simply continually publicized to maintain sympathy and support for Israel. Other races or nationalities have had it worse, much worse, and more recently.

We do know anti-Semitism was a very strong theme in European culture ever since the middle ages, he obviously took advantage of something for which there was already a strong predisposition. Whether it was part of his own psyche, or something he had been taught, or brought up with, or whether he just cynically devised it as a manipulative political tool, who knows? For all we know, maybe Hitler didn’t even hate the Jews, maybe he just thought they were convenient for his purposes.

Scapegoating is a consequence of many ideologies, not just the Nazis, but the Communists used it as well, and it also played a role in this country: blacks, Indians, immigrants, Jews, Catholics, the Irish, Mormons, Mexicans, the Chinese, just about everyone has taken their turn on the shit list at one time or another. Today, its the Muslims’ turn.

The term scapegoat comes from the old tribal custom of tying a goat up in a sack and having everyone in the village spit in it. The sins of the villagers were then transferred to the unfortunate beast, who was cast into a river or off a cliff, taking the collective sins and misfortunes of the village with it. It is sheer superstitious lunacy, but it is still employed today: “If it wasn’t just for [insert your ideological enemy here], all our problems would all just go away.”

It is pretty clear this is one of the founding philosophical principles of Christianity. Why should I be forgiven for my sins just because someone else is taking the rap for me? Even as a kid, that made absolutely no sense to me. But it guess it made sense to the Bronze Age mind.