Baby Hitler, Jeb?

In an excruciatingly studied effort to show more passion on the campaign trail, Jeb Bush says he would have killed baby Hitler given the chance. Apparently the question is a thing these days thanks to New York Magazine, and Bush's response was a mild obscenity (wow, such authenticity) followed by "yeah, I would!" Phooey. If I might refer you to my Sept. 28 post on the apparent opportunity of Henry Tandey, VC, to shoot a wounded Hitler on September 28 1918, it's absurd to suppose that anyone could have known a corporal in the trenches of World War I would have turned into a successful genocidal warmongering maniac politician in the 1930s. It's not even a category into which that young soldier could fall.

As for the notion that you could identify a baby who would later certainly do great evil if you didn't slaughter it in its infant innocence, that you could determine scientifically its necessarily malignant influence on history and preemptively exterminate it with a clean conscience, let's leave that for Minority Report and stick with the fairly elementary fact that killing babies is wrong.

So is appeasing dictators, but that's a story for another decade.

As for politicians faking passion, it's always a sorry sight.