Past time to tone it down

Sunday, Oct. 18, 2009 | 2:06 a.m.

At the end of an interview with the Las Vegas Sun’s editorial board Wednesday, Abraham Foxman, head of the national Anti-Defamation League, asked a question of his own: “Are you worried about the mood in this country?”

Foxman expressed his concern, noting that the issues facing the country are “almost a perfect storm.”

“You’ve got the economic crisis, a lot of dislocation, instability, anxiety. You have the immigration issue … and the election of an African-American president,” he said before turning to the ugly tenor of the “debate” over the issues.

The country’s mood — angry and anxious — is fueled as much by the overheated and disingenuous rhetoric as it is by the issues themselves. Consider the debate over health care, which has been inflamed by reprehensible remarks made by commentators and politicians on the far right.

Glenn Beck, for example, urged his listeners to read Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” to understand President Barack Obama’s strategies on health care. Rush Limbaugh has made reference to Obama’s “brownshirts” and has talked about what he sees as “similarities” between Democrats and the Nazis.

Rev. Richard Land, the leader of the Southern Baptist Conference’s public policy group, outrageously said he was going to give White House health care adviser Ezekiel Emanuel the “Dr. Josef Mengele Award,” referring to the Nazi “Angel of Death” who tortured Jewish and Gypsy children in his efforts to create the Aryan “master race.”

To say that the president, Democrats or the health care overhaul legislation in any way resemble the people or policies that perpetrated the Holocaust is despicable. Not only is it a repugnant and dishonest comparison, but it also lessens the crimes of the Nazis, equating a domestic debate over health care to the systematic slaughter of 6 million Jews.

Land, unlike the others, apologized, saying he was using “hyperbole” to make a point. Unfortunately, such comparisons seem to be the gospel truth to many of the right-wing faithful.

And that’s why, to answer Foxman’s question, we are worried that such reckless rhetoric, left unchecked and allowed to fester, is only going to increase divisions in the country and stoke more hatred.