Bizarre, Politics, Society

Rep. Cohen Compares Republicans To Nazis and Calls Repeal Arguments to “Blood Libel”

It is beginning to seem like “blood libel” has become the contemporary term of art. Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) took the floor last night to compare the Republicans to Nazi propagandist Goebbels and their arguments to “blood libel.” Since Sarah Palin was just skewered over the use of the term, it will be interesting to see the reaction to this reference occurring just days later over national health.

Cohen stated “They say it’s a government takeover of health care, a big lie just like Goebbels. You say it enough, you repeat the lie, you repeat the lie, and eventually, people believe it. Like blood libel. That’s the same kind of thing, blood libel. That’s the same kind of thing,”

Cohen also noted:

“The Germans said enough about the Jews and people believed it–believed it and you have the Holocaust. We heard on this floor, government takeover of health care. Politifact said the biggest lie of 2010 was a government takeover of health care because there is no government takeover.”

Moving from the Holocaust to health care is a bit too much of a jump for many people. We have repeatedly seen objections to the use of Nazi references by politicians.

Here Cohen wanted to refer to the tactic of repeating a lie so often that it becomes accepted as the truth. He could have done that without the Nazi reference. The “blood libel” reference was just recently denounced by the the Anti-Defamation League in relation to Palin. One would think that they would have to do the same with Cohen for consistency purposes.

In the meantime, CNN has taken a commentator to task on the air for simply using the term “crosshairs.”

I am not sure that the mere reference to crosshairs deserves such a mea culpa on the air.

What do you think?

Source: MSNBC

Jonathan Turley

108 thoughts on “Rep. Cohen Compares Republicans To Nazis and Calls Repeal Arguments to “Blood Libel””

  2. Another point-would any of you want to have to run for a two year position and spend a significant part of your time trying to raise money/pander to special interests to be re-elected? That sort of excludes anyone with a brain as far as I am concerned. Definitely not what what “founders” envisaged.

  3. Mespo, Rafflaw and Buckeye and others commenting on the IQ decline in Congress:

    If you want a nudge into emigrating to another country, and if you know anything about finance, watch CSPAN coverage of the congressional hearings on financial issues. The hearing on the mortgage crisis was torture. None of them really knew what a mortgage was, let alone the problems with servicing defaulted loans in a securitized pool. I would think these people would at least have more familiarity with the law than the man on the street, but apparently not. And, they don’t seem to have anyone to help them understand the real legal issues involved. They don’t know what they don’t know and are too stupid/arrogant to ask for help from the experts-that’s the most alarming part.

    I was working with another lawyer on a bankruptcy case once where the judge was a total idiot. She called him “a monkey with a gun.” That’s what these people are. Very stupid and yielding tremendous power.

  4. Regarding the lack of “critical thinking”:

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/18/45-of-students-dont-learn_n_810224.html

    The research of more than 2,300 undergraduates found 45 percent of students show no significant improvement in the key measures of critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing by the end of their sophomore years.

    One problem is that students just aren’t asked to do much, according to findings in a new book, “Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses.” Half of students did not take a single course requiring 20 pages of writing during their prior semester, and one-third did not take a single course requiring even 40 pages of reading per week. (end excerpt)

  5. FYI:

    Rick Santorum Invokes Race In Attacking Obama On Abortion (VIDEO)

    In an interview with CNS News on Thursday, former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum invoked race in unleashing a questionable attack on President Barack Obama over the issue of abortion.

    A conservative Republican from Pennsylvania, Santorum has signaled he’s mulling a run for the White House in the next election cycle. During the interview, he voiced his staunchly pro-life stance, as well as his belief that when life begins “is not a debatable issue,” before going on to criticize the president.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/19/rick-santorum-obama-abortion_n_811391.html

  6. One point about Cohen, my Rep… he’s Jewish.

    If I recall correctly, he’s also faced opponents who have used borderline anti-Semitic attacks against him. One opponent ran ads saying things like: “Steve Cohen does not believe in OUR chuches and OUR God.”

    His last GOP opponent was a pure 100% TeaPublican who’s platform basically consisted of bringing God back in to gov’t.

    I would guess that given Palin’s comments, he’s probably feeling a personal anger about all of this and reacting to it. Does not excuse or support his comments but it might explain them. I know he faced some heated Tea Baggers bussed in to Memphis during the health care town halls so I can’t imagine (like many other Congressmen) that he’s missed some of the obvious parallels.

    Also, this area was subject to the threat from two neo-nazis who were preparing to go on a rampage killing blacks (and gays and jews?) on the way to Memphis where they were going to kill Obama during a scheduled visit.

    This area is in the heart of the Bible Belt and Cohen has always taken heat from the bible thumpers for facilitating Tenn. joining the lottery. He has had a number of run ins with GOP types here and on more than one occasion, they have attempted to set him up by trying to provoke him in to some alleged incident that they catch on film during the campaign. The last one occurred in his house when he was hosting some event.

  7. Gyges

    It isn’t how much you know as it is how much of that knowledge can be applied. Most of the advances since the 1700’s have been in scientific fields. No one can possibly know all of that which is why there are so many specialty fields.

    What the founding fathers were exposed to was a classical education which was rigorous and made for a disciplined mind.

    [The typical education of the time began at about age eight. Students who actually went to school were required to learn Latin and Greek grammar and, later, to read the Latin historians Tacitus and Livy, the Greek historians Herodotus and Thucydides, and to translate the Latin poetry of Virgil and Horace.

    They were ezpected to know the language well enough to trnaslate from the original into English and back again to the original in another grammatical tense. Classical Education also stressed the seven liberal arts: Latin, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music.]

    Philosophy, logic, political thought and rhetoric are esoteric studies today, but were requirements then. It seems to me they are more necessary than ever for a good leader’s understanding and ability to govern.

  9. I’ll agree with Gyges and Slarti with the following stipulation: it is possible to have multiple specialties, i.e. areas of knowledge with depth, but it is not possible to a specialist at everything – even within certain fields. This is no way diminishes the value of being a generalist in addition to a specialist. Diverse supplemental tool sets and knowledge can yield innovative results in an area of specialty.

  11. Buckeye and Lotta,

    Can I offer a different take? The amount of knowledge in the 1770s was minuscule to the amount today. It’s physically impossible for students today to learn as large of a percent of total knowledge as a student then could.

    I say that the breadth of knowledge required to function in modern society is so wide that the depth in any particular subject can’t be very deep at all.

  12. It seems only the ideologues want to serve in government. How to change things so competent people wish to serve, again, is the question.

    Hummm, how to make it safer for politicians to do their job?
    Not getting shot at or shouted down by an angry crowd at public meetings may help.

  14. rafflaw: “Lottakatz, I can’t agree with you entirely on your subject of the genetic damage over the past generations because that would include old guys like me!”
    —
    well, you know…wait what was the question?

    I know exactly how you feel 🙂

  15. Buckeye: “L K …It seems only the ideologues want to serve in government. How to change things so competent people wish to serve, again, is the question.

    I’ve often said we should have cloned Mike Mansfield while we still had him.”
    —–

    The level of discourse and thought has descended to such depths that I’d vote to clone William Buckley, and I was not a fan.

  17. I wish the GOP would stop lying, certainly.

    But this is not a very good way to call them out.
    ack

    sheesh (face palm)

  18. Buckeye:

    ” How to change things so competent people wish to serve, again, is the question”

    BINGO!!

  19. Lottakatz,
    I can’t agree with you entirely on your subject of the genetic damage over the past generations because that would include old guys like me!

  20. L K

    It’s possible that has had an effect; but I think the mental rigor of the education students in 1770’s had, has slid so far down to current times, that it only seems like they are less intelligent. It’s really that they are less educated.

    Probably there are some very well educated people around, some are at this site, but they are too smart to run for office. It seems only the ideologues want to serve in government. How to change things so competent people wish to serve, again, is the question.

    I’ve often said we should have cloned Mike Mansfield while we still had him.

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