Who's doing the fearmongering here?

New York Post ^ | March 31, 2010 | Jonah Goldberg

[SmokingJoe]

So self-proclaimed militia leader Mike Vanderboegh (who runs an obscure blog out of Pinson, Ala. -- population 5,007) recently called on his fellow "sons of liberty" to break the windows of Democrats to protest health-care reform.

Start with the obvious: Vanderboegh is an idiot, and anyone who followed his advice is an idiot, too. Such behavior is simply wrong, reprehensible and clownish.

Equally wrong, reprehensible and clownish: the reaction to Vanderboegh and his alleged ilk.

The Daily Beast's John Avlon insists that Vanderboegh's rallying cry, combined with some threats and broken windows, make "the parallels, intentional or not, to the Nazis' heinous 1938 Kristallnacht . . . hard to ignore."

Actually, it's really, really easy to ignore the parallels. During Kristallnacht, Nazi goons destroyed not just 7,000 store windows but hundreds of synagogues and thousands of homes. Tens of thousands of Jews were hauled off to concentration camps by the Nazis, who had been in total power for half a decade.

This combination of state power and murderous, genocidal intent is nowhere on display in America today, not in the Obama administration (contrary to what some overheated right-wingers claim) and certainly not among out-of-power conservatives and "tea partiers."

A few fringe libertarians throwing bricks is not the same thing as the tightening fist of the National Socialist Third Reich. Indeed, it's an anti-American slander to suggest anything like it is going on here, and it cheapens the moral horror of the Holocaust.

Don't tell that to Democrats and their media transmission belt, who largely ignored partisan vandalism and extremist rhetoric against Republicans for eight years but now express horror at what they claim to hear from the right.

[SmokingJoe]

Columnist Paul Krugman, who encouraged liberals to hang Sen. Joe Lieberman in effigy, is concerned about right-wing "eliminationist rhetoric." The Washington Post's Courtland Milloy can't stand the incivility of the tea partiers, which is why he wants to "knock every racist and homophobic tooth out of their Cro-Magnon heads."

[DuncanWaring]

Actually, it's really, really easy to ignore the parallels. During Kristallnacht, Nazi goons destroyed not just 7,000 store windows but hundreds of synagogues and thousands of homes. Tens of thousands of Jews were hauled off to concentration camps by the Nazis, who had been in total power for half a decade.

The Won, by contrast, has only been in total power for a year.

[sergeantdave]

If I recall correctly, didn’t obuma bleat out something about “getting in their faces?” I forgot the context and setting.

[Kay Syrah]

Once again the metaphor rich but irony challenged left on display. This is why for the most part their jokes are so tiresomely unfunny, while they themselves are.