What we can learn from Hitler

In addition to providing endless slapstick humor and an easy Halloween costume, Adolf Hitler did us another favor - he provided an object lesson in how not to run a country. I this lesson is particularly useful for the modern American conservative movement. Specifically, he taught us:

Lesson 1: Don't attack everyone in sight, and

Lesson 2: Assimilate your minorities.

The first one should seem fairly obvious, but somehow groups of people in extremely powerful countries keep getting the notion into their heads that their one country can lick the world. They base this belief in their country's technological, organizational, and/or supposed racial advantages.

But it never works. Occupations are damned expensive. And going on a rampage tends to attract lots of negative attention; eventually, other powerful nations will band together against you, and their numerical advantages will overwhelm your organizational ones (and technology always diffuses, so that edge is lost as well). As for the racial advantages - the last refuge of would-be world-conquerors - here's a little hint: they don't really exist...

Bush reaffirmed the importance of Hitler Lesson 1. At first he depicted us as the global hegemon dealing with a few intransigent rogue states - the Axis of Evil. In fact, that's basically what we were in the 90s. But when other countries - France, Russia, Germany, China - started to band together to balance our new aggression the Bush administration started to rail against each and every one of them as well. Eventually, it became clear: the rogue state was us. If we look ineffectual on Iran, it's not because Obama is insufficiently willing to lambast other countries; it's because Bush was so excessively willing to do so that he left us an outsider, rather than a leader, in the international community, robbing us of much of our influence.

Hitler Lesson 2 is no less important. Had Hitler embraced Jews instead of packing them off to the slaughterhouse, his regime would have been strengthened immeasurably. He would have had atomic bombs, for one thing; he would have saved money on poison gas and barbed wire, for another.

In fact, even if Hitler just really disliked Judaism - Oh my God, they wear those silly hats! - embracing them would have been much more effective at eliminating that pocket of minority religion. As evidence, just look at America. As soon as Jews got to America, they pretty much lost interest in a religion that was mostly oriented toward surviving as a despised and segregated minority in European ghettos - and, predictably, they started mostly marrying non-Jews. Jewish culture survived, but in a less separate, less weirdly-different-from-everyone-else-on-the-block form. The same is true of pretty much every culture that washes up on our shores - after two generations, our ethnic heritages become little more than something fun to talk about at parties. Melting pot beats pogroms every time.

The lesson for modern American conservatives is clear. Exhausting our nation's strength trying to keep Hispanics out and keep blacks down is a massively losing proposition. If you want to create a nation of flag-pledging clean-cut kids who love apple pie - as I sort of imagine conservatives wanting to do - don't get out the billy clubs and beat up anyone in sight who doesn't already fit that model. Instead, accept them, embrace them, invite them in, give them a flag, and cook them some apple pie. This is why liberals, who in the past were thought of as burning American flags, have been so successful in getting Hispanics and blacks to wave them.

So I guess my message to American conservatives is: Don't be Hitler. Heh. But aggressive militarism and xenophobia have a way of creeping back into the national conversation. We will never have a "Final Solution" to those self-defeating impulses...we just have to keep reminding ourselves not to succumb.