Many have already commented on the outrageous comments that appeared recently from Congressman Keith Ellison (D-Minnesota). To refresh your memory, here they are: On comparing Sept. 11 to the burning of the Reichstag building in Nazi Germany: "It's almost like the Reichstag fire, kind of reminds me of that. After the Reichstag was burned, they blamed the Communists for it and it put the leader of that country [Hitler] in a position where he could basically have authority to do whatever he wanted. The fact is that I'm not saying [Sept. 11] was a [U.S.] plan, or anything like that because, you know, that's how they put you in the nut-ball box -- dismiss you."
Of course, it's an outrage to draw comparisons between the Bush administration and Nazi Germany in and of itself. But another reason to be outraged is Congressman Ellison's ignorance of history. Let's examine how ignorant it is: 1] The Reichstag fire occurred in February 1933, around a month after Hitler and the Nazis had come to power in Germany. The fire was almost surely set by a single Dutch communist, Marin van der Lubbe; Hitler however immediately assumed that the entire Communist Party was behind it (though he had little evidence for that). 2] In 2001, however, no one denies that President Bush was correct to blame 9/11 on Al Qaeda and Islamofascism in general. Hitler created a threat for which he had little evidence. Bush didn't. 3] Hitler did indeed use the threat of communist terror to gain broad new powers. He was able to get the German legislature (the Reichstag) to pass a bill called the Enabling Act, which basically suspended the constitution and civil liberties. But 4] say what you will about the Patriot Act or other anti-terrorism legislation sought by the Bush administration, the fact remains that the Constitution has not been suspended and neither have civil liberties. And the raging antiwar blogosphere, which probably helped give Congressman Ellison ideas for such a remark as he made, is proof of it. More details here.
