According to RawStory.com, here’s what Sen. Rick Santorum said in a Senate speech:
And we shouldn’t go mucking around in this institution and changing the way we’ve done things, particularly when it comes to the balance of powers between the three branches of government. And the independence of one of those branches of the judiciary. We must tread very carefully before we go radically changing the way we do things that has served this country well, and we have radically changed the way we do things here. Some are suggesting we’re trying to change the law, we’re trying to break the rules. Remarkable. Remarkable hubris. I mean, imagine, the rule has been in place for 214 years that this is the way we confirm judges. Broken by the other side two years ago, and the audacity of some members to stand up and say, how dare you break this rule. It’s the equivalent of Adolf Hitler in 1942 “I’m in Paris. How dare you invade me. How dare you bomb my city? It’s mine.” This is no more the rule of the senate than it was the rule of the senate before not to filibuster. It was an understanding and agreement, and it has been abused. . . .
A CNN story confirms at least part of the quote: “The audacity of some members to stand up and say ‘How dare you break this rule’ . . . . It’s the equivalent of Adolf Hitler in 1942 saying, ‘I’m in Paris. How dare you invade me. How dare you bomb my city? It’s mine.'”
The precise nature of the equivalence with Hitler, I regret to say, escapes me. And in the absence of such equivalence or at least a very close similarity, it seems to me to be both unfair and in bad taste to compare your adversaries to Hitler, even when the analogy — a rather weak analogy, as I mentioned — is simply to his hubris (or assertion of entitlement to supposedly ill-gotten gains) rather than to his atrocities.
Thanks to reader Victor Steinbok to the pointer, and to Mike Godwin for helping us understand all this.
UPDATE: Just to make clearer what I hoped was clear at the outset — of course I see the purported analogy, rather a strained one: It’s that both groups insist on keeping what (in Santorum’s view) they’ve acquired by fiat only recently, and that they’re not entitled to. What eludes me is the supposed equivalence.
One can analogize anyone to Hitler. Some people wear mustaches. Others are charismatic political leaders. Others invade countries. Others disapprove of homosexuality. (I set aside here the debates about homosexuality among the Nazi elites; I refer here to the Nazi government’s actions with regard to homosexuals.) But I take it that if a Democrat said about the invasion of Iraq — or for that matter of Afghanistan — “It’s the equivalent of Adolf Hitler in 1939 saying ‘I’ve got military power; I’ll invade some countries,'” Santorum would rightly fault the speaker (as he apparently faulted Sen. Byrd for his Nazi analogies on the other side of the debate).
When you link someone to a person who is famous for mass murder, your argument will carry the rhetorical connection to mass murder (or at least to deadly megalomania) even if you purport to be drawing a much more limited analogy. (Compare the Judge Calabresi incident from last year.) I take it this must be the intention, since otherwise why analogize to Hitler, rather than to one of the many other people who have had more than their share of gall? And this, I think, is indeed unfair and in bad taste.
Thanks to reader Ken White for the Santorum/Byrd pointer.
FURTHER UPDATE: Sen. Santorum now says the statement was a “mistake.” Indeed it was. (Thanks to Michelle Dulak Thomson for the pointer.)
Comments are closed.