Posted by Juan Non-Volokh:
Nazi Germany = McCarthy Era = America Today?
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_06_19-2005_06_25.shtml#1119296350
At the end of a [1]long post on whether President Bush can be
impeached (in which he labels UNC Prof. Michael Gerhardt a "shill" for
the Bush Administration for his contribution to [2]this Salon
symposium) Brain Leiter offers this "somewhat tangential comment":
in every society of which I'm aware the vast majority of the
preeminent academic figures were, in general, cowards when it came
to their own regimes, and apologists for what later generations
would see clearly as inhumanity and illegality. This was clear in
Germany in the 1930s, as it was in America in the 1950s. There is
no reason to think the United States today is any different.
(Emphases in original).
While this statement might not equate Nazi Germany with the current
regime, it certainly suggests an equivalence between those who failed
to oppose Nazism, those who failed to oppose McCarthyism, and those
who do not oppose the Bush Administration. Haven't we had enough of
these sorts of comparisons?
References
1. http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2005/06/can_bush_be_con_1.html
2. http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2005/06/09/impeachment/index_np.html
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