Ken Nelson

My favorite Drudge moment yesterday was in the article about the kid who wore this shirt to the talk Obama gave at his high school:

It took balls for the kid to wear it. And it took some open mindedness on the part of the school to not eject him, as I’m sure they were tempted to do.

Then my Dad sent this article from The Economist, about how social animals make collective decisions:

DICTATORS and authoritarians will disagree, but democracies work better. It has long been held that decisions made collectively by large groups of people are more likely to turn out to be accurate than decisions made by individuals.

It ends with this line:

But it does indicate the importance of recruiting active leaders to a cause because, as the ants and bees have discovered, the most important thing about collective decision-making is to get others to follow.

And I think that is the crux of the matter. It all starts with a good speech. Hitler did give entrancing speeches. He knew his audience and he played them masterfully. Stalin gave good speeches, as did Fidel Castro.   As did Ronald Reagan.

So we REALLY have to keep an eye on good speech givers. They can be super dangerous.  Especially during crisis when our normal protections might be lowered.

You know… like now.

Obviously it is way early to compare Obama to Hitler.  But I’m not going to rule him out.   He gives good speech, he has a crisis or two to work with, and he has no effective opposition.

Sound familiar?