LATEST DISGRACE

Posted at 2:05 p.m. ET

Another sickening example of what some people will say in politics.  Tom Bevan, at Real Clear Politics, reports on an exchange on Larry King's show:

ST. PAUL - On the heels of Robert Wexler and the Obama campaign pushing the Nazi smear on Sarah Palin, the Nazi talk strikes again. Last night on Larry King, Dee Dee Meyers described the theme of last night's convention program - Country First - as a "very exclusive message" that she interpreted as meaning "basically either you're a Republican or you don't love your country."

King used Meyers' response as a segue to his other guests, Jesse Ventura and DL Hughley, and this is what they said:

KING: Yes, wasn't that surprising, Jesse, even though you didn't see it, that the theme was "we're the patriots"?

VENTURA: Well, you know, the Republicans have been pushing really Hermann Goering on us, the Nazi, since 2001. I mean, you know...

KING: Hermann Goering?

VENTURA: Yes. He said that it's easy to take a country to war. You have to convince them they're under attack. Denounce the pacifist for being unpatriotic and also for putting the country into danger. And yet, Thomas Jefferson said dissension is the greatest form of patriotism.

I like to follow the teachings of Thomas Jefferson a little bit more than Herman Goering.

KING: D.L., are you...

HUGHLEY: To follow...

KING: I'm sorry.

HUGHLEY: To follow up on what Jesse was saying, it did remind me -- I promise you, the first thing I thought when I saw those "Country First" signs, it reminded me of Nazis. It really -- I mean they just seemed so, you know -- that seemed to be a country that I don't recognize.

I didn't hear a single word at the Republican convention claiming that only Republicans are patriots.  Not one word. 

The term "McCarthyism" is flung around quite loosely, especially by the left.  McCarthyism, a somewhat exaggerated concept, consisted of a number of offenses, one of which was labeling someone a Communist based on a vague suspicion, or on something the person had done many years earlier.

Today, most McCarthyism is practiced on the left.  You see it in the discussion we've just reprinted.  Republicans - all Republicans - are essentially labeled as Nazis. 

Some conservatives have raised questions about Barack Obama's past political associations, and most of those questions, since they deal with working associations, are legitimate.  Yet, the mainstream media refuses to look into any of these concerns, apparently believing that to do so would be a kind of McCarthyism.  But referring to Republicans as Nazis elicits hardly any condemnation.

Double standard?  Of course.  Harmful to the country.  Well, was McCarthyism harmful to the country?  Almost two generations have been taught that it was.  Maybe those who teach should speak out today, and condemn the new McCarthyism.  I hear only silence.

September 3, 2008.