…that isn’t happening:

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.” It’s amazing anyone needs to point this out, but a few fringe libertarians’ throwing bricks to beat back an expansion of government 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 the Democrats and their media transmission belt, who largely turned a blind eye to partisan vandalism and extremist rhetoric against Republicans for eight years but now express horror at what they claim to hear from the right.

Their libelous audacity and hypocrisy is breathtaking.

Heh.

But you see, it’s all right when Democrats put targets on their opponents, because unlike Sarah Palin, who actually hunts moose, and from whom this is a real threat, the pansy Democrats are afraid of guns, so it’s obviously just metaphorical. Or something like that.

Oh, and I won’t be suspending my respiration awaiting an apology from Paul Krugman.

Jonah Goldberg has some follow-up thoughts from his earlier post:

Which brings us to the first emailer, who sees eugenics as “social Darwinism” on speed. I think this a very common way of thinking about social Darwinism and eugenics, and I think it is entirely wrong. The salient point about social Darwinism, as laid out by Herbert Spencer, its chief author and the man who coined the phrase “survival of the fittest,” is that it was an argument for radical libertarianism. Spencer was a passionate foe of statism. He was precisely the “‘Laisser Faire’ individualist” Webb had in mind. This is why it is so infuriating when liberal historians and intellectuals blame Spencer for eugenics, Hitler, etc. Spencer would have been horrified at all that. Why it should continually be news to some liberals is beyond me: but the Nazis were not laissez faire.

The missing piece of the puzzle is what the historian Eric Goldman and others have called “reform Darwinism.” This was the view that Darwinism legitimized state interference on eugenic grounds. Holmes’s expressed desire to use the law to “build a race” was quintessential reform Darwinism. Buck v. Bell was reform Darwinism. Holmes’s ridicule of Spencer in Lochner was perfectly consistent with Holmes’s statism and his reform Darwinism. The problem we have today is that any concept of reform Darwinism has dropped out of the discussion. All people remember is the term “social Darwinism,” which is supposed to describe both Hitlerism (hyper statist) and radical laissez faire (the opposite of hyper statism). Social Darwinism may be bad on any number of fronts (bad politics, bad science, bad philosophy, bad morals, etc.) but it isn’t statist.

Leftists who attempt to distance themselves from Hitler like to emphasize the (trivial) differences between Hitlerism and Stalinism, while ignoring the much more important commonality — both were murderous totalitarianisms, and (as Jonah notes) hyperstatisms. The difference was pretty much transparent to the user. And the notion that Nazism was “right wing” doesn’t sit very well with the notion that libertarianism is. Something has to give in this mindless left/right taxonomy.

Found by Howard Fineman:

So, just to clarify, some Democratic senator admitted to Fineman that he thinks the bill is political suicide, raises premiums for his constituents and feeds public anger, but voted for it anyway out of personal and party loyalty?

Gee, why would he want to remain anonymous?

[Late afternoon update]

More thoughts from Allahpundit:

And so the big Democratic surge in enthusiasm, which nutroots pundits insisted made passing O-Care an absolute political necessity, ends up being less than the surge in enthusiasm among Republicans — as expected. In fact, the GOP actually picked up a point on the generic ballot after the bill passed. They lead 49/45 now overall and 53/35 among independents. And so, I wonder: Did the left ever really believe that the mother of all welfare-state incursions would produce a stronger reaction among Democrats than Republicans? Or was that cynical garbage they were pushing in hopes that some of the dimmer lights in the Democratic caucus would be scared by it? Let the debate rage.

It seems moot now. They die was cast, and they’ll suffer the consequences this fall. And for another decade afterward, because they’re going to also lose a lot of legislatures and governors in a reapportionment year. Good.

Some thoughts on this feature of many so-called “liberals.”

I wouldn’t compare them to psychopaths, though. More like sociopaths. Bill Clinton is a classic example.

[Update a while later]

Here’s some empathy for “liberals” from Frank J. — they’re mostly not exactly like terrorists:

For one thing, what do we do when we capture terrorists? That’s right: We waterboard them to get them to talk and tell us where their base is or what their secret plans are or what their favorite color is. Terrorists have information we need. With liberals, we’ll do anything we can to keep them from talking. They talk way too much as it is and often in venues where it’s completely unwelcome, and we’d just as soon waterboard ourselves as listen to them (which is the problem MSNBC has with ratings). Plus, it’s not like they have any secret plans we don’t know about. What are they going to tell us if we waterboard them?

“I’ll admit it! ObamaCare is the first step towards single-payer and a complete government takeover of health care!”

Who doesn’t know that? Liberals are too dim-witted and too arrogant to keep any of their thoughts secret. As we learned with Obama, if we want to find out what liberals really think of Americans, we just have to slip a tape recorder into a fundraiser with elites in San Francisco.

Another difference between liberals and terrorists are sleeper cells — terrorists could have infiltrated American society and be waiting to attack. Liberals, on the other hand, are completely incapable of associating with normal Americans. Remember when John Kerry tried to go hunting to appear like an American? If only terrorist sleeper agents were that obvious and awkward.

Now that’s what I call compassionate conservatism.

[Update mid morning]

This seems pertinent, particularly to the discussion in comments. Dennis Prager: Leftism as a religion:

Leftism, though secular, must be understood as a religion (which is why I have begun capitalizing it). The Leftist value system’s hold on its adherents is as strong as the hold Christianity, Judaism, and Islam have on theirs. Nancy Pelosi’s belief in expanding the government’s role in American life, which inspired her passion for the health-care bill, is as strong as a pro-life Christian’s belief in the sanctity of the life of the unborn.

Given the religious nature and the emotional power of Leftist values, Jews and Christians on the Left often derive their values from the Left more than from their religion.

Now, most Leftist Jews and Christians will counter that Leftist values cannot trump their religion’s values because Leftist values are identical to their religion’s. But this argument only reinforces my argument that Leftism has conquered the Christianity and the Judaism of Leftist Christians and Jews. If there is no difference between Leftist moral values and those of Judaism or Christianity, then Christianity is little more than Leftism with “Jesus” rhetoric and Judaism is Leftism with Jewish terms — such as “Tikkun Olam” (“repairing the world”) and “Prophetic values.”

But if Christianity is, morally speaking, really Leftism, why didn’t Catholics and Protestants assert these values before 19th century European Leftism came along? And, if Judaism is essentially a set of Left-wing values, does that mean that the Torah and the Talmud are Leftist documents? Or are the two pillars of Judaism generally wrong?

As a provisional atheist, I find this fascinating.