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Mark Steyn continues to vie with Pat Buchanan as our most insightful modern columnist. Both of these men have pointed to the dangers of demographic decline and open immigration. Pat Buchanan has been an activist as well as a pundit and has won his spurs about a half century ago. Pat Buchanan's dire predictions have been so prescient and so terribly fulfilled that he becomes almost Churchillian in his warnings. Mark Steyn is clearly the more gifted writer and he is equally global in his grasp.

Not to detract from Mark Steyn's column but to simply request that we stop reaching for Nazi examples but for examples of heinous crimes arising out of the left. Surely Stalin offers a target rich environment for those who would summon the people to rally to liberty.

If one wants to compare the potential tyranny arising out of the homosexual movement with terrible examples in history one could consider the terror of the French revolution, the paranoia of Stalin's show trials, Chairman Mao's cultural Revolution, the excesses of the communists during the Spanish Civil War, or Castro's Cuba. The world is full of leftist examples of tyranny which have always been advanced under a banner of righteousness.

I make a suggestion because tyranny today is advancing from the left, not from the right. The examples in history should reflect that.

The Nazis, the National Socialists, were of the Left. See the Hayek quote on my profile page for a beginning on the reasons why. I’ve got a number of good links I can post later that explain why at length, better than I could.

I don’t disagree that examples from other totalitarians would be good.

I think Steyn wanted to address a continuum or progression of abuses and this was best done within the context of a single nation, e.g. USA vs. Germany. I do agree that it would be nice to have a change now and then, not always picking on the Huns.

Gotta disagree that comparisons to largely communist regimes provide a better approach.

While the use of comparison to Hitler and Nazism is well-recognized as what is often a desperate rhetorical crutch, I would (and will) argue that’s not the case with Steyn. Moreover, substituting Stalin and his ilk just sets one up for accusations of “neo-McCarthyism”, a reaction as knee-jerk as those engendered by bringing up the Nazi’s.

Moreover, once one hits the level of authoritarianism idealized by all these regimes, left/right distinctions pretty much fade away - granted, Hitler had a fondness for much that was traditional, but that didn’t include the Church (the Nazi’s gravitated to neo-paganism), and they were after all national *socialists*, albeit socialism that began more like the crony capitalism favored by our overseers rather than local soviets commandeering the means of production. At least for me, the heart of being a man of the right is a desire for less, not more statism - in that sense, Nazi’s and commies are virtually indistinguishable.

But the key distinction is that all the other examples of possible points of comparison involve regimes instituted by the sudden, drastic and generally violent upheaval of existing social structures. Steyn’s key point is that the horrors of Hitlerism came about through a steady perversion of the political and social structures then established. In about a generation, the Germans and Austrians went from the culture responsible for the “Ode to Joy”, Bauhaus, and sulfa drugs to the “Horst Wessel March”, Dachau, and Zyklon B - not in a dramatic overnight turn of events, but as the result of a steady progression (or regression) not just in the nature of the leadership, but in the national ethos.

If anything, Steyn doesn’t go far enough. In Walker Percy’s “Thanatos Syndrome”, there’s a short passage about a couple of Weimer-era doctors putting out a work on “The Defense of the Destruction of Life Without Value”. From intellectual positions like that, Walker implies, it’s only a short trip from the sterilization of the mentally defective to the systematic elimination of those judged to be the untermensch. In our country, where a regulation protecting the delta smelt can persist for decades in the face of a state-wide drought, while a regulation affecting an abortion clinic will get slapped down before the ink is dry those are lessons we probably should be noting.

“consider the terror of the French revolution”

That’s a rich subject right there. I think America may come closer to this than Weimer Germany’s slide into Nazism. One difference is America’s Left is headed by rich, white ‘bourgeoisie’ whereas France had economic collapse and a popular revolt against the aristocracy. But you can see where the American Left’s humanist demagoguery is driving them to attack each other -much like the Terror. When liberals start guillotining each other I’ll take another look.

Not to detract from Mark Steyn's column but to simply request that we stop reaching for Nazi examples but for examples of heinous crimes arising out of the left. Surely Stalin offers a target rich environment for those who would summon the people to rally to liberty.

Use both. Frankly, they're just variations of the same thing anyway -- and progressivism is just the "pragmatic" version of it.

Surely Stalin offers a target rich environment for those who would summon the people to rally to liberty.

I gained an interesting insight into the minds of those who embrace tyranny from a Russian I met on a drilling location. I asked him what he thought of Stalin, wondering how he would react to the mention of 'Uncle Joe' in the allegedly post-communist Russia. I was surprised when he gushed with praise for Stalin as having been 'the strong man who defeated Hitler'--all else forgiven.

Even allowing for education in State controlled schools with the full force of decades of editing/rewriting history, the point was clear: these people respect and revere a strong leader, despite all the crimes they may commit (so long as they are not the object of such attentions) maintaining that power.

So it is with anyone of totalitarian leanings--the ruthless exercise of authority is a plus, so long as their personal ox is not the one gored.

With today's misnamed "Liberals", who fancy themselves the victim of others (such victimhood real, imagined, or simply blown out of proportion) the idea of a standard bearer who will (in their minds) not only eliminate the reason for their grievance but somehow make things right by avenging past alleged wrongs appeals, even against those who had nothing to do with them.

The left has always used the manipulation of those who have grievances against those they place in the role of oppressors, and the attraction of turning the tables on the oppressors (real or imagined) guarantees the next aggrieved group. This can go on longer than any blood feud because there is a steady supply of newly oppressed people to set against a steady supply of newly minted oppressors, and those in power need only keep a finger to the wind, switch sides when appropriate, and expunge the history of references to any oppression they may have committed.

On the other hand, we have people who would accept progress toward universal and stable Liberty for all and the elimination of grievances as much as possible while safeguarding a few natural (unalienable) Rights as predominant and sacrosanct.

That the National Socialists were ever placed on the Right of the political spectrum has always seemed to be a mischaracterization to me. At the root of that philosophy is a totalitarian regime, the antithesis of Liberty.

"...simply request that we stop reaching for Nazi examples but for examples of heinous crimes arising out of the left. Surely Stalin offers a target rich environment for those who would summon the people to rally to liberty."

True ... true, NBF. However, I think the reason that he was using only Nazi examples was to show the hypocrisy of the liberal progressives. At least then they have to say "Well, it's different when we do it" with some embarrassment.

However, as the leftists truly don't believe that anything the Stalinists did was wrong, they don't have any way of differentiating that with what they are doing. They don't see it as hypocrisy. They don't see that there was anything wrong with it when Stalin or Mao did it.

It's too late. To those here who don't differentiate between "its" and "it's", between "your" and "you're", who apostrophize "get's" (sic), I am a 'grammar Nazi'. Not a 'grammar commissar', or a 'grammar Chekist" but a 'grammar Nazi'. Jonah Goldberg wrote book titled "Liberal Fascism". Why fascism?

Is the best we can do to repeat endlessly, and persuading no one out there, that the Nazis were Leftist? Yawn!

The Left controls the language and through it it controls perceptions and the culture. Don't look far, look to the posts on this very forum. Gaiety, choice, racism, etc, etc, the language of the Left. Sorry, but conservatives appear to be clueless in these matters.