Yesterday's post discussing a Liberal Avenger post has gotten some of the usual reaction over at Common Sense Political Thought as well as at the Liberal Avenger. These comments end up falling into two categories: the "you didn't get Laine's point" category and the "we've killed 655,000 Iraqis and taken away civil liberties!) category.
First, I got Laine's point and that's why I refuted it. That there is a segment of American society that thinks branding people so we can identify them is a good policy doesn't make us "like the Germans of the 30's and 40's." For one thing, the German fear of the Jews was irrational and not based in fact. That there actually are Muslims out there who celebrated the September 11 attacks and others who have called for Muslims to attack America is quite different from the Germans thinking Jews helped defeat them in World War I. So, while wanting to tattoo people is irrational and wrongheaded, suspicion and skepticism by Americans isn't. It is because we don't want to look like 1935 Germany that the government, organizations like C.A.I.R., Hollywood, and others are working so diligently to remind people that all Muslims weren't 9/11 attackers.
The second point, the one about civil liberties, is equally off the mark. I listed many of the actions by the German government to limit the freedoms of Jews during the 1930s. They included barring them from the professions (medicine and law), forbidding marriage between Jews and non-Jews, and banishing Jewish children from the schools. There isn't a single, solitary act by the U.S. government that comes anywhere close to any of these acts. That a few imams were removed from a commercial airline flight because of suspicious behavior which included making anti-American remarks doesn't compare with placing a "J" on one's passport or abriging the right to marry. In short, no one is being treated like 1930s Germany, even if a few nutballs call a radio talk show and condone outrageous tactics.
But the problem for the left is that virtually everything gets compared to the Holocaust. Here's a few examples from this piece in The Spectator:
--The actions of Serbs in Bosnia and Kosovo
--Tactics used in the war on terrorism are frequently compared to the Nazis.
--People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals compare meat to the Holocaust
There are other lefty examples, as well:
--Air America's Randi Rhodes compared the evacuations before Hurricane Katrina to the Holocaust
--Morrissey compared seal hunting to the Holocaust
Just to be fair and balanced, I'll point out that this isn't merely a leftwing phenomenon.
--Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee compared Democrats to Nazis.
--So did Rick Santorum
--Grover Norquist compared the estate tax to the Holocaust
--Glenn Beck compared Hillary Clinton to Hitler
This is a small and incomplete list of the various misuses of the Holocaust and Nazi Germany for political points.
None of this is to say we shouldn't be outraged at fear-mongering and religion- or race-baiting. But every political disagreement isn't Nazi Germany and every atrocity isn't the Holocaust. Can we please be a little more restrained in the rhetoric so that if (and I pray there isn't) there ever is another Holocaust we will be horrified and not desensitized to it?
Cross-posted at Common Sense Political Thought.
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