Glenn Reynolds links to the latest commentary from Canadian rightist Mark Steyn. Steyn mentions some Brit-twit writing in the UK's Guardian about his mother reading Mein Kampf to imply that George W. Bush will soon stop shaving the middle of his upper lip and hand out red armbands.

Now, of course the far left's appalling popular accusation is absurd on its face. But the idea is so easily refuted it demonstrates a startlingly complete ignorance of those parading it around. It so happens I've been reading William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich over the last few weeks. Adolf Hitler was, to put it mildly, very clear, from the beginning of his political career, about every single aspect of his categorized contempt and ludicrous plans for a dictatorial Fuehrerprinzip empire. That I knew; but did not realize its being spelled out in the single most authoritative book on the subject as clearly as the jacket title. One hardly need read forty or fifty pages to understand this uncategorically, Shirer a witness of Nazi Germany no less. There was no question as to Hitler's intentions, no bait-and-switch, as is necessary for extremists to analogize for political rags, commercials, films and empty space on websites. Anyone who peddles the "Bush is Hitler" hysteria in essence holds up a sign that says "I'm an idiot who is pretending to know history! Ridicule me!" Done and done.

WHILE WE'RE AT IT: Mein Kampf's first of two volumes was published in 1925, not, as the Guardian published in their failure to fact-check, "the 1930s." But then, who said leftism had anything to do with an accurate understanding of history?