Today's Must-Read: Using Monsters for Rhetorical Effect

Victor Davis Hanson has a piece up on the Progressives' nauseating habit of equating political opponents with the twin devils of the 20th century, Hitler and Stalin. Having read extensively on these beasts (apparently those who throw their names around so flippantly have not), I can assure you that the lesson their wretched lives has left us is not 'conservatives are evil'. If there is a lesson, it is this: When the interests of any collective group such as the race, the nation, or the party, are elevated above the interests of the individual, then life becomes expendable. This doesn't mean that a law that, in your view, is retrogressive re: civil liberties is an indication that your opponents are monsters. There are avenues to protest the Patriot Act, if you wish to do so, as a pertinent example.

It remains a truism that any society that allows dissenters to label it as 'fascist' is by definition cleared of the charge. Had the Internet existed during the reigns of Stalin and Hitler, you may be sure that the citizens of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia would not have had the freedom to dissent, or even to read the blogs of those who did. Don't tell that to the columnists of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, however, who continue their inexplicable attack on Power Line and add Little Green Footballs into the mix, for good measure. Thank God we have the responsible MSM to show us the way...