As I suspected, Congressman Paul Broun has earned himself the title of the first victim of Obama Derangement Syndrome:
We all remember “Bush derangement syndrome” — defined by Charles Krauthammer as “the acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal people in reaction to the policies, the presidency — nay — the very existence of George W. Bush.”
We already need a name for the reverse disorder.
Rep. Paul Broun, R-Georgia, recently said that he fears President-elect Obama may create a security force akin to the Gestapo to impose a Marxist dictatorship.
“It may sound a bit crazy and off base, but the thing is, he’s the one who proposed this national security force,” Broun told The Associated Press. “I’m just trying to bring attention to the fact that we may – may not, I hope not – but we may have a problem with that type of philosophy of radical socialism or Marxism.”
In July, Broun explained, Obama spoke of creating a civilian force so as to help the military shoulder some of the nation’s national security burden..
“That’s exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany and it’s exactly what the Soviet Union did,” Broun said. “When he’s proposing to have a national security force that’s answering to him, that is as strong as the U.S. military, he’s showing me signs of being Marxist.”
Ed Morrissey seems to concur in the diagnosis and cautions the right against falling into the same trap that the looney left did during the Bush years:
Nothing in that speech hints at a Gestapo-like organization at all. I’d agree that we have to remain vigilant at all times to ensure that the government doesn’t try to impose such a regime upon us, but this is an extremely thin reed to grasp for such a conclusion. Although I supported a freer hand at the NSA in monitoring communications with one end in the US for possible terrorist activities given the dangers we face in this era, it’s far easier for the government to turn that into a Gestapo than what Obama proposed. That’s why I understood the Left’s opposition to it (as well as a small minority of conservatives) and thought reasonable safeguards against potential abuse were appropriate, as the eventual compromise in Congress provided.
If we plan to offer a rational alternative to the coming debacle of the next two years, then we’d better stick to facts and eschew hyperbole. We need to oppose the reality of the radical agenda proposed by Obama and the Democratic majorities in Congress, not fantasies spun out of context-free snippets of speeches. The more critics invoke Hitler and Stalin instead of Jimmy Carter and Lyndon Johnson, the better the reality of Obama, Reid, and Pelosi will seem in 2010.
Call it a more broadly applied political version of Godwin’s law.
Morrissey is right about one thing — the right isn’t going to succeed if it responds to every proposal coming out of the Obama White House with cries of “Hitler,” “Stalin,” or “socialism.” The American public just isn’t going to take them seriously.
