Commentary by Jim Spence - Immediately after September 11, 2011 staunch progressive college professor Ward Churchill compared the victims in the Twin Towers to “Little Eichmanns.” It was a chilling reference to one of Adolf Hitler’s most notorious henchmen.
As the Democratic National Convention gets underway it is suddenly
fashionable for some 2012 progressives to compare their political opponents (Republicans) to Adolf Hitler and the Nazis.
Let’s see how this can be reconciled. Hitler took a duly elected government and gradually used intimidation, incarceration, violence, and other methods of brute force to transform Germany into a state of fascist tyranny. In his efforts to destroy democracy all over continental Europe, Hitler persecuted Christians, slaughtered over six million Jews, and attempted to solidify his power through the use of anti-Semitism. He promoted the idea that the Aryan race deserved to reign supreme over all mankind.

Compare that to the message at the GOP convention last week. There the concept of “freedom” was the most redundant message. Unlike Democrats, the Republicans argue the social safety nets are already spread wide. Republicans argue that the path to greater national prosperity lies more in policies similar to those of Ronald Reagan instead of Jimmy Carter. This provides fodder for a healthy debate. Or does it?
Now we have a new question. What does the name-dropping of “Hitler” or any of his cutthroat accomplices have to do with the nation’s philosophical debate over public policy? Is the shock value so prized because of the way the accusation energizes the base that the Dems are unwilling to disavow the use of references to Hitler in the debate dialogue? And if this is true, what sort of a base will get mobilized by accusations that people like Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Susana Martinez, Mia Love, Condoleeza Rice, and Artur Davis, are Nazis because they support Paul Ryan, and Mitt Romney.
It would seem that the Democrats are banking on widespread ignorance within their base. They must be hoping that their target voters know nothing about history. While the need for self-justification might be satisfied in some when they label the policies and/or conduct of their opponents as “Nazi-like; still, progressives who launch these charges do a horrible disservice to the uniquely evil spot in history occupied by the mass murderers that hijacked Germany.
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Herman Goering at Nuremburg |
The scandal in these hysterical comparisons is not that a crackpot or two in any political party might make an outrageous charge against opponents. The scandal is that from top to bottom, Democrats flatly refuse to quickly condemn this sort of thing. And accordingly, they find themselves openly tolerating an inappropriate invective that is insulting to history. Don’t they realize what the proper punishment was for Hitler and the other Nazis? Maybe they do.

Fashionable for DNC Delegates to Use Hitler Invection