We’ve heard eight years of “Bush is a fascist” and “Chimpy McHitler” comments coming from left-wingers. Heck, the same charges were directed against Bush 41 and Ronald Reagan – all without much evidence to support them.

So why the outrage from the ultra-leftists at Mother Jones over the scheduling of a conservative author on a conservative radio show where he intends to draw parallels between Obama and Hitler?

[Radio talker Michael] Savage is not breaking new ground by scheduling [author Hilmar] von Campe as a guest. But it's a signal the say-anything right is not dumping the Obama-as-Hitler argument. Von Campe, according to his publisher, will contend that the recent election is somehow comparable to Hitler's power grab. Will this stuff play even to the GOP base? (Forget about convincing independents with such rhetoric.) This sort of talk, if it becomes widespread in the months and years ahead, is more likely to separate the brimming-with-resentment conservatives from more responsible Republicans--which certainly won't make the GOP's repair job any easier. But politics aside, the continued use of this hysterical rhetoric raises this question: do these agitators who liken the historic 2008 election to Hitler's putsch hate America?

Oddly enough, Mother Jones magazine and its writers never got around to expressing this sort of concern over the rhetoric of the Left over the last eight years. Now, when someone who actually lived through the Nazi era in Germany talks about what he sees as parallels, they call such comparisons “hysterical rhetoric” and declare that the speakers “hate America”. That’s rich – after eight years of rhetoric that at times violently attacked America’s elected leaders, they now question the patriotism of those who would raise the same sorts of questions about Barack Obama!

I guess that the folks at Mother Jones now believe that dissent is no longer the highest form of patriotism – slavish worship of Obama is. Draw your own conclusions about the level of hypocrisy such a change constitutes, as well as any historical parallels to the cults of personality surrounding national and international socialist dictators of the twentieth century.

UPDATE: RightWingNews takes note of this phenomenon.

UPDATE 2: Looks like Joy Behar is now questioning the patriotism of those of us who would dare to put Barack Obama down. Gee, is she wanting to establish an affirmative action standard for our first black president? Or has she broken out Mo Dowd's presidential kneepads?