OPINION:
Political rhetoric is dangerous in the hands of careless writers and speakers. Reaching for Hitler as an analogy for contemporary villainy is particularly misleading. Hitler has been sui generis, one of a kind, since Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun, rivaled in modern times only by Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse-tung. Mullahs, evil as some of them may be, don’t count. They’re bush leaguers.
Or are they? The analogies of certain modern writers, speakers and politicians may not be so far out, after all, no matter how much they irritate the sensibilities of the righteous and pure of heart.
Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas and a current candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, raised eyebrows and hackles the other day with his remark that those who would enable Iran to build an Islamic bomb are “marching Israelis to the door of the oven.” He was roundly rebuked. Hillary Rodham Clinton called him “inflammatory,” Barack Obama called the remark “ridiculous” and the head of the Anti-Defamation League, who should know better, said the Huck was “out of line” and “unacceptable,” whatever “unacceptable” may mean. Should he be arrested and charged with disturbing the peace? Jeb Bush grumbled on his way to the bank that such language “is not the way we’re going to win elections.” What else is as important as winning elections?
Mr. Huckabee has the Baptist’s preacher’s gift for the memorable remark delivered plain, with the bark on, a gift no doubt sharpened and polished as a defender of the plain speech of the Gospel. The Huck destroyed one presidential campaign with his memorable quip that government big spenders “throw money around like John Edwards at the beauty shop.”
Politicians are nevertheless well advised to leave Holocaust references alone. The Holocaust was sui generis, too. But the governor rightly applies lessons learned in the Hitler time to see how the West must deal with Islamic belligerents and radicals who are spoiling for a fight. The mullahs in Iran repeatedly promise to “destroy” and “annihilate” the Jews in Israel, and to “wipe Israel off the map.” It may reassure the deaf, the blind and the weak of heart to imagine that the mullahs don’t really mean it. The world took such reassurances to heart once before. How did that work out for those who would not trust their own eyes and ears?
To hear Winston Churchill tell it, the terminally naive Neville Chamberlain said on his return from Munich, “you would think the Fuehrer wanted to kill every Jew in Europe.” How ridiculous. How inflammatory. David Lloyd George, the former British prime minister, called Hitler “a born leader, a magnetic, dynamic personality with a single-minded purpose to keep the peace.” Walter Lippman, the famous columnist who told the nice people the nice things suitable and appropriate to think, said Hitler was only persecuting the Jews to please the masses, and it was foolish to think he actually intended to kill them. How “out of line” that was. How unacceptable.
Good people naturally want to think that evil people don’t exist. C.S. Lewis, the Christian theologian and author of “Mere Christianity” and “The Screwtape Letters,” observed that Satan’s most powerful weapon is the popular and reassuring belief that he doesn’t really exist. You don’t have to be a believer to see the point.
Genghis Khan and Attila spread their greed and evil with spears, bows and the arrow. Hitler used the gun, the bayonet, the airplane and bombs. The mullahs will have The Bomb. That’s what’s unacceptable.
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