HITLER'S STILL ALIVE IN THE BUNKER

History reports Hitler died from his own hand in his Berlin Bunker April 1945. Ironically, only days after Roosevelt died from a heart attack in his Warm Springs vacation home. Sixty-five years later, both leaders find their name constantly placed after "just like..."

To be "just like Roosevelt" is usually a positive. To be "just like Hitler" is surely not. But while Roosevelt's name is conjured up mainly when addressing great financial & military crises, Hitler's name is there for virtually any and every situation that is wrong, evil or maniacal.

Germany's post-war generations have banished Hitler not only from their history books but from their minds. They have admitted his tyranny, but assert they wish to move on . To bring up his name in German politics is to risk immediate censure. On the other hand, there is no such compunction about comparing others, like George Bush, as being "just like Hitler."

OK, so far so good.

But it is not so good when the label Hitler becomes a misinformed commonplace for anything you oppose. After awhile, the label loses its sting when politicians from both left and right insist that what they oppose is "just like Hitler." At the current rate, everyone is "just like Hitler" from Bush to Obama...from Saddam Hussein to Ayatollah Khamenei...from Hugo Chavez to Donald Rumsfeld...from my last boss to my mother-in-law. [Let the record show that I still believe my mother-in-law was once a poster girl for the Nazi Party!]

Still, the mass tyranny and human evil of Adolf Hitler is not anything to be mis-used by being over-used. Perhaps, then, the best way to use this name of names is how Mel Brooks did in his Broadway hit: "The Producers."

He ridiculed and laughed him off the stage. With music, no less...!