I’ve been reading a bit about Jay Bennish, a Colorado history teacher who got into trouble for bashing George W. Bush. One of his students recorded his classes, and the recording got into the hands of talk radio hosts, and now Bennish is on administrative leave while administrators try to figure out how to not fire him but make it look like they’ve showed due concern.
’Cause that's all they can really do. You can’t fire a teacher for speaking his mind. You can try, but every civil liberties lawyer in the country will come after you, and you can’t win in the courts. The only way to fire a teacher these days is to catch him doing something illegal, and it’s not against the law to compare Bush to Adolf Hitler.
That’s the part that I find particularly stupid. Bennish compared the president to Hitler. Nothing makes people insane faster than when you refer to Hitler. You could compare the president to Satan and not get so strong a reaction.
But what’s so wrong with comparing people to Hitler? I could compare anyone to Hitler. I could compare Jesus to Hitler. Jesus loves the Jews; Hitler not so much. See? That’s a comparison.
But all someone now has to do is take it out of context, say, “Did you hear that Kent compared Jesus to Hitler?”, hand it off to talk radio, and get me excommunicated.
Bennish’s comparison was a valid one, in fact. Hitler believed he was right and everyone else was wrong, and that he should spread the German style of government everywhere. Bush believes likewise. I could find other things to compare: Hitler was against abortion; so is Bush. Hitler’s government built internment camps to house undesirables, and refused to put them on trial; so did Bush. Hitler’s troops tortured prisoners; so has Bush’s. There are lots of ways in which Hitler and Bush are unalike, but it’s the similarities that most of us find disturbing.
The reason people get so riled up about criticisms of Bush is that ultimately politics is their religion, Bush is their messiah, and criticism of him is blasphemy. Even totally valid criticisms, and totally valid comparisons with Hitler.