I'll be the first to admit that after nearly a decade of wallowing in the swamp of right-wing political insanity, my sense of what constitutes "acceptable" rhetoric is entirely skewed, so much so that when I see things like these sorts of absurd assertions from the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission that health care reform would lead to a Nazi-like elimination of the elderly, I barely even bat an eye any more:
This is nothing less than state sponsored euthanasia. Hitler began his reign of terror by his application of the brutal, Darwinian ethic, “survival of the fittest.” He started killing the disabled and infirmed because they were considered to be a burden on the state.
Hitler rationalized the killing of innocent people in an effort to advance his fascist, national socialist agenda. In the name of doing what’s best for the good of society, Hitler trivialized human life. Ultimately millions ended up paying with their lives.
In the name of the public good, Obama and the Congress are on the same anti-Christian, pro-death path.
And the reason I don't even blink stems largely from the fact that this type of rhetoric is, in fact, perfectly acceptable to the Right - here's Rush Limbaugh yesterday:
They accuse of us being Nazis, and Obama's got a health care logo that's right out of Adolf Hitler's playbook. Now, what are the similarities between the Democrat Party of today and the Nazi Party in Germany? Well, the Nazis were against big business -- they hated big business. And of course we all know that they were opposed to Jewish capitalism. They were insanely, irrationally against pollution. They were for two years mandatory voluntary service to Germany. They had a whole bunch of make-work projects to keep people working, one of which was the Autobahn. They were against cruelty and vivisection of animals, but in the radical sense of devaluing human life, they banned smoking. They were totally against that. They were for abortion and euthanasia of the undesirables, as we all know, and they were for cradle-to-grave nationalized healthcare.
This is why I have always bristled when I hear people claim conservativism gets close to Nazism. It is liberalism that's the closest you can get to Nazism and socialism. It's all bundled up under the socialist banner. There are far more similarities between Nancy Pelosi and Adolf Hitler than between these people showing up at town halls to protest a Hitler-like policy that's being heralded like a Hitler-like logo.
As Glenn Greewald reminds us, just a few years ago when someone submitted an ad to MoveOn.org that compared President Bush to Hitler, MoveOn immediately removed the ad, everyone went completely insane. But now you have Limbaugh, the most influential voice of the Right in the entire country, literally comparing the Democrats to the Nazis and nobody says anything because this type of rhetoric is some utterly common that it is not even considered newsworthy.
I wonder what it would be like, seriously. I mean, if I could go, you know, to the speaker's shindig, wouldn't that be great? What would it -- oh, look, here she -- oh, she is -- wow -- you're so much prettier and flatter and shinier in the face than I expected. It's almost like you're two people at once.
So, Speaker Pelosi, I just wanted to -- you gonna drink your wine? Are you blind? Do those eyes not work? There you -- I want you to drink it now. Drink it. Drink it. Drink it.
I really just wanted to thank you for having me over here to wine country. You know, to be invited, I thought I had to be a major Democratic donor or a longtime friend of yours, which I'm not.
By the way, I put poison in your -- no, I -- I look forward to all the policy discussions that we're supposed to have -- you know, on health care, energy reform, and the economy.
Hey, is that Sean Penn over there? I know it cost me more than $30,000 to get in here, but hey. Hey, I think I see Ed Markey, the author of cap and trade, right over there.
Like I said, my own sense of what sort of rhetoric is "acceptable" from the Right is admittedly skewed , so much so that, quite frequently, I don't even bother posting certifiably crazy things precisely because they are so common as to not even warrant the coverage.
But even by my warped standard, this type of stuff from Limbaugh and Beck is completely insane.
And yet, at the same time, it is also perfectly acceptable.
All of which is pretty standard stuff from Limbaugh. But, just for old time’s sake, I thought I’d highlight this quote from him back in 2005 in which he literally screamed at Democrats to “shut up” about Bush’s Supreme Court nominees because, until they could start winning elections, their views didn’t matter:
I'm tired of these Democrats acting like they won the election. Somebody needs to stand up and say, "When you win the election, you pick the nominees. Until then, shut up! Just shut up! Just go away! Bury yourselves in your rat holes and don't come out until you win an election. When you win an election, you can put all these socialist wackos, like Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, all over the court, but until then, SHUT UP! You are really irritating me."
Remember last year when the hosts of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) decided not to give Ann Coulter her traditional speaking role at the event because, the year before, she had called John Edwards a "faggot"? Well, apparently, all has been forgiven
Coulter still spoke last year, of course, but was relegated to a back room where she was the guest of several of the conference's sponsors. And now, as the conservative movement tries to figure out its course of action under a Democratic president and Congress, it looks like CPAC organizers have decided to place her front and center once again by giving her, and several other right-wing blowhards, prime speaking spots at the event:
The latest schedule for the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C. late February: Possible presidential candidates include Rep. Paul Ryan (WI), speaking Thursday, Rep. Mike Pence (IN), speaking Thursday -- he's invited, not confirmed -- Gov. Mike Huckabee, on Thursday, Gov. Sarah Palin, on Thursday -- invited, not confirmed, and Rep. John Shadegg (AZ). On Friday, Sen. John Cornyn speaks in the early morning; Newt Gingrich hosts a screening of a movie about Ronald Reagan. Ron Paul and Mitt Romney speak in the afternoon. On Saturday, Rick Santorum begins the day and Gov. Tim Palwenty is an invites speaker. The lovely Ann Coulter speaks at noon. And Rush Limbaugh finishes the conference.
Indeed, according to the schedule, Coulter and Limbaugh are slotted to speak in the Regency Ballroom, which is the hub of the entire conference, on the final day ... and Limbaugh is going to be awarded with a "Defender of the Constitution Award" to close out the whole event.
There's a long history in American politics of exploiting divisions and fanning bigotry to win elections. In recent decades those strategies were honed by Lee Atwater and Karl Rove. Now the torch has passed to Steve Schmidt, and he’s done just about everything possible to fan the flames.
Schmidt’s tactics and the right-wing echo chamber have convinced millions of Americans that the nation is about to elect someone who hates America and “pals around with terrorists.” Just take a look at this video of supporters outside a Palin rally:
In recent weeks, the right wing has grown even more frenzied as McCain and his allies pushed the ACORN voter fraud hoax. Not only is Obama a Manchurian candidate, the thinking goes, but his evildoer comrades at ACORN are trying to steal the election. It’s little wonder that some people are going berserk.
McCain, Palin, Schmidt, Limbaugh, Hannity and the rest of them have created something very powerful, but very ugly, and it’s grown too big for them to control. Here is just some of what happens when you train your pit bulls to fear and hate and attack, and then they get loose:
People For the American Way is tracking such incidents around the nation. If something happens in your community that people should know about, please get in touch.
Current New York Times best-selling author and proven liar Jerome Corsi has been lavished with attention by the likes of Fox News and Rush Limbaugh for his slanderous new book about Barack Obama.
But before Corsi put Obama in his crosshairs, he plied his wares in the GOP presidential primary. Fox and Limbaugh treat Corsi like he’s a legitimate political commentator, so we’ll trust they’ll have Corsi back on to discuss his groundbreaking work on McCain:
Ben Stein’s anti-evolution attack film, “Expelled,” has finally arrived, grossing $3 million over the weekend, thanks to a church-based roll-out by the marketers that brought you “The Passion of the Christ.” Critics have savaged the documentary—which claims widespread persecution of creationists in academia and warns of a direct link between the theory of evolution and the Holocaust—as a dishonest work of propaganda, but, not surprisingly, the movie has a lot of fans among the Religious Right.
“Expelled” has been promoted heavily in right-wing media this month. Stein appeared on Focus on the Family radio, where the movie received the “enthusiastic” endorsement of James Dobson. Producer Mark Mathis appeared on WallBuilders Live, the radio show of premier church-state integrationist David Barton, to discuss “the persecution of the many by an elite few.” Rush Limbaugh exuberantly promoted it on his show; apparently, the movie taught him that “Darwinism, of course, does not permit for the existence of a supreme being, a higher power, or a God.”
Stein was also interviewed by the American Family Association’s OneNewsNow, while executive producer Logan Craft hit WorldNetDaily. Baptist Press, the official outlet of the Southern Baptist Convention, featured an op-ed by Stein and a series of articles pushing the film. The producers gave a private screening to Brent Bozell of the far-right Media Research Center. (He loved it.)
“Expelled” is also featured by the late D. James Kennedy’s Coral Ridge Ministries, which offers its own product line equatingDarwinand Hitler. While some “Expelled” cheerleaders express sympathy for the “Intelligent Design” advocates who have been “persecuted” supposedly (the National Center for Science Education has their realistic back-stories here), most on the Right seem to be especially enchanted by the film’s reliance on a half-baked linking of evolution to Nazism and Stalinism.
“Expelled,” wrote World magazine editor and faith-based initiatives architect Marvin Olasky, “rightly equates Darwinian stifling of free speech with the Communist attempt to enslave millions behind the Berlin Wall.”
The real question is: Did Darwinism bulwark Hitlerian hatred by providing a scientific rationale for killing those considered less fit in the struggle for survival?
The answer to that question is an unambiguous yes.
Richard Weikart of the “Intelligent Design” group, the Discovery Institute, defended the Darwin-Hitler connection as critical: “[W]hat is most objectionable about the Nazis' worldview? Isn't it that they had no respect for human life?” Weikart, who wrote a book entitled “From Darwin to Hitler,” added, “the Nazis' devaluing of human life derived from Darwinian ideology....”
Given the worldview shift that has taken place in America, none of this is of any consequence. Evolutionary and atheistic assumptions are standard worldview thinking in every public school classroom in America. So then, why is it wrong with having forced sex with young girls? It’s evolution in action. …
The secularists should be proud of what these polygamists are doing. They are confirming the evolutionary thesis of Dawkins and his selfish gene hypothesis.
President Bush addressed the National Religious Broadcasters Convention and vowed to veto the Fairness Doctrine if it ever reaches his desk: "We know who these advocates of so-called balance really have in their sights: shows hosted by people like Rush Limbaugh or James Dobson, or many of you here today. By insisting on so-called balance, they want to silence those they don't agree with. The truth of the matter is, they know they cannot prevail in the public debate of ideas ... But I'll tell you this: If Congress should ever pass any legislation that stifles your right to express your views, I'm going to veto it."
After American Family Radio and Chuck Norris paved the way, the floodgates have apparently opened for religious-right commentators to blame the tragic mass shooting at Virginia Tech on their political bugbears, such as (in Norris’s words) the “secular progressive agenda.”
In an op-ed in the Greeley, Colorado Tribune, local pastor Steven Grant meditates on “the deeper questions and overall trend patterns” surrounding the shooting and traces the “[e]scalation of violence and a number of other social ills” to a single point: the 1961 Supreme Court case that banned government-run prayer in public schools. For evidence, Grant turns to David Barton, the GOP operative and crackpot pseudo-historian whom Grant laughably calls “perhaps the nation’s leading historian.”
