Always ready to throw kerosene on a cultural blaze, Republican quote-meister Newt Gingrich has decreed that those sponsoring a mosque in lower Manhattan are like Nazis.
"Nazis don't have the right to put up a sign next to the holocaust museum in Washington," Gingrich insisted. So, explains Professor Gingrich (he used to teach at West Georgia College), the mosque should not be built.
Great stuff, eh? Muslims equal Nazis! So Americans are justified in hating Muslims, too! This is so liberating and empowering.
But wait. This analogy stuff is powerful. Gingrich knows that, which is why he uses it. Like any powerful tool, though, it can get away from even a seasoned practitioner of the analogical arts like Gingrich.
If al Qaeda were trying to put up a mosque in lower Manhattan, his analogy would be perfect. Then the people who viciously and unjustly caused widespread death and agony would be the ones creating a new building that seemed to mock the suffering of their victims.
But al Qaeda is not putting up the mosque. It's the Cordoba Initiative, a charitable organization which is dedicated to cultivating "multi-cultural and multi-faith understanding across minds and borders." Among its goals is to assist in the advancement of women in Muslim cultures
"Multi-culturual and multi-faith understanding" -- doesn't sound like the folks behind 9/11 to me.
So Gingrich's analogy is, well, completely wrong. But there is one that works.
Building the mosque in Lower Manhattan is like having a Lutheran peace group build a community center two blocks away from the Holocaust Museum. Any problem with that?
Gingrich needs to be careful. Like Glenn Beck, he could be coming down with a case of "Nazi Tourettes."
In that, he slammed anyone receiving any type of nutritional assistance, probably mainly Food Stamps. Apparently regardless of the recipients' circumstances, Mr. Beck -- who's a self-proclaimed person of God encouraging listeners to be Christ-like, stated the following:
"Maybe your churches will feed you, but we won't." -- Mr. Glenn Beck.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but such Conservatives' statements mirrors the situations of the starvation deaths that occurred at concentration camps under Nazi rule, Now, we have Mr. Gingrich accusing others of playing the Nazi Card. It's time numerous Conservatives save the "People Of God" speeches and preaching -- and start being true to actually being a "Nation Under God."
As some of us do, regardless of what it costs us personally.
I doubt fully that Christ would condone such starvation deaths of fellow human beings. So much for the Conservatives' banner-waving, as they claim to be the true representatives of a Christian nation. Or even a decent and good nation, for that matter.
I'll made a deal with Mr. Beck and others like him: I will give what little food I have to feed others, and do without myself. If that's what it takes. Living as a true person, instead of just talking about it.
For real.
Think about it. Horrible Germans! Living two blocks from the Holocaust Museum. German made cars drive every day in front of the very doors of it! That would clearly be an outrage.
It was Nazis who were marching against immigration this last weekend, right?
"We are socialists, we are enemies of today's capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions." --Adolf Hitler
(Speech of May 1, 1927. Quoted by Toland, 1976, p. 306)
Lies, damned lies, and Newt Gingrich.