Tea Party favorite Michele Bachmann, a member of Congress from Minnesota and a possible candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, has said a number of remarkable things in recent years. They range from the puzzling to the laughably ignorant to the flat-out false. (Other examples of her tenuous commitment to the truth can be found here.)
But this isn’t so amusing.
Bachmann on Saturday described the loss of “economic liberty” that young Americans face today as a “flash point of history” in which the younger generation will ask what their elders did to stop it.
In a speech to New Hampshire Republicans, Bachmann recounted learning about a horrific time in history as a child — the Holocaust — and wondering if her mother did anything to stop it. She said she was shocked to hear that many Americans weren’t aware that millions of Jews had died until after World War II ended.
Bachmann said the next generation will ask similar questions about what their elders did to prevent them from facing a huge tax burden.
“I tell you this story because I think in our day and time, there is no analogy to that horrific action,” she said, referring to the Holocaust.
She then proceeded to make precisely that analogy.
“But only to say, we are seeing eclipsed in front of our eyes [?] a similar death and a similar taking away. It is this disenfranchisement that I think we have to answer to.”
No, congresswoman. Whatever the outcome of the current debate over taxes, it will not in any way be similar to Nazi Germany’s systematic slaughter of six million Jews.
Holocaust abuse is not as bad Holocaust denial, and it comes in many different shades of egregiousness. But, intentionally or not, it’s always an insult to the memory of the six million.
