Everybody loves Nazis. Well, not exactly the Nazis themselves, nor the ideas that they extol, but instead, politicians and the media simply love to have Nazis to fall back on. Hitler's followers are akin to an acquaintance who no one's particularly fond of, but happens to own a pool, so when the heat rises, when the environment grows increasingly hostile, everyone's sifting through their contact lists trying to evoke the Nazi's name. They even have a diving board, for Pete's sake!
Nazis, and to a lesser extent, Commies, are the hail Marie's of political rhetoric. If you really have it out for an opponent, just surround him with fascist imagery, shoddily toss a swastika near him or beat around the bush by saying something like, "brown shirt."
Orly Taitz makes constant references to brown shirts in the media, Rep. Nacy Pelosi says that the protesters taking over town hall meetings during the congressional recess are adorned with swastikas (well, to be honest, some are) and Rep. Brian Baird is comparing the tactics of said protesters to the previously mentioned brown shirts. Not to mention Rush Limbaugh's announcement that "They accuse of us being Nazis, and Obama's got a healthcare logo that's right out of Adolf Hitler's playbook." With that said, let's examine the logo...
Let's look at some Nazi material now, shall we?
By merely suggesting that the logo was inspired by Nazism, Limbaugh made "Obama health care logo" the most searched term on Google for a while (after which the term "boobs" regained the title, I presume). Suggesting that ideas or images came from terrible folks, or demonized figures can be a very effective means of debate, though it accomplishes little. Let's expand upon the, "Obama's logo reminds me of Nazis, therefore Obama is a Nazi, and a socialist, which works perfectly because Nazis and Communists got along fabulously...it's proven because Obama is appointing Czars, who worked together with Communists to...wait a second..." logic.
Social Security
No one should have it. Why? Modern social security's roots can be found not in FDR's New Deal, but instead in the infant German empire in the 1880's, where Otto von Bismarck instituted a series of social insurances that included a rudimentary health care and social security system. Now I ask you, whose empire did we fight against in World War I? Bismarck's (Kaisers be darned, Bismarck brought the whole country together). And whose empire eventually became the host of the Nazi regime? Bismarck's. Therefore, any sort of government assistance to the aged or the ill is actually a tip to the hat to the enemies of America's past
Cars
Do you drive a Volkswagen or a Porsche? Then you might as well just slap a swastika right on your bumper sticker. Both had deep ties to the Nazi regime. In fact, Volkswagen was born from Hitler's personal insistence that Porsche create a "people's car." Toyota produced trucks for Imperial Japan, and Mitsubishi handled the empire's aircraft production. Zeroes weren't Zeroes, they were Mitsubishi Zeroes. At least Obama tried to cover up the tracks of his logo's history, what with the blue color tint and the American flag. These fascists keep their names to this day! Every time you drive one of their cars, you disrespect this nation and everything it stands for.
The Military
Given the incredible success of Nazi military tactics in the early stages of World War II, you'd think it would be okay to adopt some of their philosophies into the modern military, right? Wrong. Every time a general uses the term "shock and awe," he actually is just having a daydream about Blitzkriegs. And since said tactics originated in Nazi Germany, much of the U.S. military's playbook is Nazi propaganda.
Back to Seriousness...
Evoking Nazi imagery, arbitrarily tossing swastikas and Hitler mustaches onto posters, calling perfectly legally organized protests "brown shirt tactics," is argumentative infancy at its best, and a crushing sense of ideological inadequacy at its very worst. Incredibly relevant and pressing matters such as health care reform need to be handled not with heavy-handed stupidity and underhanded name-calling, but instead a realistic and balanced analysis of the arguments. I mean, c'mon. Just look at a new pamphlet being distributed by the LaRouche PAC...
It's like playing the six degrees of Adolf Hitler, trying to connect fascism to whatever policy you don't like the most. Aren't we better than this? Both sides of the debate are guilty of it, of having just enough condescension for the common man to think, "If I just hint my opponent is in any way similar to Nazis, voters will think they stomp on grandmothers in their free time." And the scary part is, it's probably working.