Ominous parallel: both Obama and Hitler harnessed rising swoons of emotionalism.

As Hitler wrote to Rauschning, quoted in Ominous Parallels by Peikoff: “At a mass meeting, thought is eliminated. And because this is the state of mind I require, because it secures to me the best sounding-board for my speeches, I order everyone to attend the meetings, where they become part of the mass whether they like it or not, ‘intellectuals’ and bourgeois as well as workers. I mingle the people. I speak to them only as the mass.”

“The masses are like an animal that obeys its instincts. They do not reach conclusions by reasoning.”

But for Conservatives to believe they are more principled and any less emotionally motivated than anyone else..now that’s “moonbat” if you want to call names, madmax.

On torture and Guantanamo: if the USA’s mission is to promote and defend the rights we hold so dear, how can we compromise those principles in the process? Torture is not necessary, and usually results in wrong information anyway. We would never torture our own people, and we can’t give any people a taste of Democracy by practicing it on others. Neither can we afford to compromise our principles when it comes to due process. I’m all for catching the bad guys–but bring them to trial. Otherwise we don’t even know we’ve got the bad guys.

If these are the few better points of Bush’s Presidency…good riddance. I will wager that Bush’s popularity even among the Right will not stand the test of time.

Yes you are. Anyone who even mentions Halliburton as a serious national problem is by definition an “emotional Leftie.” That Bush didn’t totally cave on waterboarding and other torture tactics is actually one of his positives. Torture of the enemy is sometimes necessary in war. At least Bush partially recognizes this.

Enron was as Ponzi scheme entirely the result of the massively regulated energy industry. Bush’s crime is that he – a former oil man – didn’t move to at least partially deregulate the energy sector. He basically caved to the Left which is the story of his Presidency.

Guantanamo is essentially a summer resort for enemies of America. And Liberals think it is the equivalent of the Gulag. The real crime is that it is so soft and that it isn’t a real hard labor camp for the enemies – especially Islamic enemies – that are waging war on America. Guantanamo is another litmus test – along with Halliburton – on whether or not a person is a leftist. The more anti-Guantanamo, the more of a Moonbat Leftist the person is.

Myrhaf’s point stands. The Left’s opposition to Bush was for all the wrong reasons. In fact, the Left almost always opposed the few better elements of Bush’s Presidency.

The WMD excuse was created by the Bush administration because it wanted the UN to endorse its invasion. They could not have argued, “The US has the right to destroy any dictatorship that threatens us.” This would not be altruistic, but would be asserting our national interest, so it was out. (Not to mention that the UN is full of dictatorships.)

Bush, like the rest of the world, including the Clinton administration, other arab countries, the President of France and perhaps even Saddam Hussein, thought Iraq had stockpiles of WMD’s. Turned out to be a mistake. It’s not a big deal.

The greater scandal is that Bush and our appeasing State Department felt the need to get UN approval of our invasion of Iraq in the first place. We should be able to fight back against countries that threaten us without begging for permission from the rest of the world. The biggest scandal of all is that the regime of the Mullahs in Iran still exists to threaten us after supporting terrorism against us for over two decades.

As I was reading this post, you started by attributing emotionalism only to the Left, and I thought, they are both pretty emotional; is this really a contest you want to start? Then you included the far right in the emotionalist camp as well–thanks for that. I see an awful lot of blog posts dredging up old quotes and clips of Obama that align him with Socialists and Communists, warning that we should all be very afraid. As if the recent bailouts aren’t already Socialist enough. Who should I really be afraid of?