March 2, 2006

Both Blaine Young and Roy Meachum just don't get it.

Unless Lenny Thompson is stripping developers of all of their rights, confiscating their property, and sending them to concentration camps, it is out-of-bounds to compare any of his actions to Adolph Hitler's.

Hitler and Nazism are unique for their barbarity and pure evil. It both trivializes Hitler and his crimes as well as escalates an argument beyond hyperbole to compare a democratically elected politician operating by democratic means to Hitler.

To compare Mr. Thompson in any way to Hitler is either to be ignorant of the extent of Hitler's crimes (which I could believe of Mr. Young, but not Mr. Meachum) or to be cynical in the use of an analogy that is far too extreme to be useful.

We have too much of this type rhetoric from boobs like Rush Limbaugh and Michael Moore on the national level. We don't need it locally. If Mr. Meachum wants to lower himself to the level of Blaine Young, so be it. But both Mr. Meachum and Mr. Young owe Commissioner Thompson an apology.