Revisiting 'Nazi'

Given that today, January 27^th, is National Holocaust Memorial Day, it is perhaps appropriate to re-run a Madison Conservative blog in its original form, from October, 2011. The hyperbole in the wake of the election has done nothing to dampen efforts from all political quarters to blather on about ‘Gestapo’ tactics, or warn that political actions are best acknowledged in the context of being “like the Nazis”.
 

The names and contemporaneous content of the arguments are irrelative to bigger point about the nature of political discourse and should bear witness of a needed reminder.

To wit, as originally written:

As has been previously mentioned, there occurs from time to time an event that does not specifically deal with issues directly tied to the intent of the Madison Conservative, but nonetheless demand to be addressed in the form of a personal commentary. This week is just such an instance.

The actress Susan Sarandon this week referred to the Pope as ‘that Nazi’. While indeed a wholly inappropriate and insipid statement, the widely held principle of “I may hate what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it” must be adhered to. Ms. Sarandon has the right to express herself in any manner that does not put the public at large in danger – the “you cannot yell fire in a crowded theater” limitation on free speech.

This week also saw the death of Libyan dictator Muammar Kaddafi, one of the few remaining despots in power. Kaddafi was in the mold of previous mass murderers who ascended to power for personal glory, wealth and power and saw their people as merely tools to maintain their stranglehold on that power.

Kaddafi was a heinous human being who slaughtered tens of thousand, but he was no Nazi.

In recent years, President Bush has been labeled as Hitler, and President Obama has been displayed in caricature with a Hitler mustache. Opposing members of both political extremes have labeled their opposition as using ‘storm trooper’ tactics, or using “Gestapo” type methods in attempting to push through a specific piece of legislation.

This is beyond absurd and borders on the sickening; if we do not learn the lessons of history, we are sadly bound to repeat them.

General Eisenhower, when entering liberated concentration camps, allowed the press to take as many pictures as needed and forced the inhabitants of the neighboring towns to come through the camps to see what had occurred directly in their midst. He did so with the specific intention of forcing history to acknowledge what had happened, so that no one could ever claim the camps had not happened, or were not as bad as had been claimed.

He was a man wise beyond his time.

The Nazis collectively descended to the lowest form of humanity; they created the methodology of the furnaces to help exterminate an entire race and any person they felt was an undesirable was sent to their death in the hope of ‘cleansing’ the state. Hitler had people executed slowly and films taken of the torture so that he could watch them at his leisure. The Nazis and the Gestapo in general, created a wave of fear and oppression not seen previously for millennia.

They butchered human beings for sport; they desecrated the human body under the guise of ‘medical experiments’.

One may disagree with another’s politics or feel the need to make some manner of political statement, as in Ms. Sarandon’s’ case, but can the case of equity be made that President Bush or President Obama have done anything to warrant the comparisons to the Nazis?

Language is a delicate thing and those in a position of using it to a mass audience must be wary of how they use it.

We as a people must speak out against the flip manner that elected officials disparage each other; we can disagree on policy but how does one walk back a comparison to a Nazi with the full understanding of what that means?

Imagine the current “ Occupy Wall Street” protests under a Nazi regime. The protesters would be carted away and butchered for the ‘good of the state’.

Freedom comes with responsibilities and we must hold people accountable for their actions and their words.

We owe our posterity no less and must accept no less from ou