I'm no fan of playing the Hitler card or throwing around the word "fascist" without knowing what it actually means, but, unlike Jerusalem Post (and Townhall) columnist Caroline Glick, I don't react to that sort of thing by saying stupid things that turn logic completely on its head:

...Expressing the view of his 200 fellow demonstrators, Nick Giannone told the Crimson that having Cheney speak at the Harvard Club was, "the equivalent of Hitler coming back to life and coming to Boston." Giannone continued, "This guy's a straight-up fascist. I also find it pretty appalling that someone would pay… to sit in a room with a war criminal." ...

In calling Cheney a Nazi, a fascist and a war criminal, the leftist protesters in Boston silenced debate about the nature of fascism, genocide and war crimes by claiming that those who fight these scourges of humanity are morally equal to those who commit them....

(Emphasis mine.)

You heard it right, folks: Mutter the word "Fascist!" and you silence everyone else in the free world. You're the abuser of power. (Note that the protesters didn't prevent Cheney from speaking -- and, by the way, also note that we have only Glick's word that the protesters would all use the same language as Giannone to describe Cheney.)

This keeps coming up -- the notion that resistance to authority is itself a totalitarian abuse of power. Write a left-wing blog, support a primary challenge to a pro-war senator, protest a TV movie, and you wear the jackboots. It's a scary argument because it turns the delegitimization (or outright denial) of your rights into a defense of freedom. Of course, that's the perfect right-wing argument for the times, isn't it?