Hitler was not a leftist

[andym]

172. Conservatives in the US are redefining right and left using Reaganesque thinking.

Remember Reagan's the "government is not the solution, it's the problem." To some conservatives, the idea is that the strength of the central government characterizes whether a government is socialist or not.

So to them, any political movement that involves strong central authority is liberal or even socialist and
any movement that involves limited or no central authority is conservative. The Nazi's had a strong central government that dominated Germany, so by their reasoning are socialist, even though the Nazi's had no desire to achieve true socialist ends, such as promoting economic equality.

It actually sounds like conservatives have become fairly libertarian (at least economically), although I think it more reflects a sense that lack of regulations and limited federal authority of the Gilded Age is the ideal to which to aspire.