'Stop with Holocaust Comparisons'

One horrific detail at a time, North Carolina Biblical Recorder Editor Norman Jameson shows that Southern Baptist Convention ethics chief Richard Land was wrong to apply holocaust metaphors to the health care debate.

For example, Jameson writes:

I refer to the holocaust, the one in which German Nazis created and documented the stone cold slaughter of 11 million to 17 million people, including six million Jews. Inured to their victims’ pain or their own emotions they experimented on people, including children and especially twins as if they were lab rats. They tested the rate of death under an assortment of circumstances; the ability to survive poisonous chemicals smeared into wounds; whether it was possible to change eye color with injections into the eyeball.

. . .


It was explained to me in the somber halls of Yad Vashem, the premier memorial in the world to the Shoah, that “holocaust” is too broadly and casually utilized to any longer reflect the singular horror of the Nazi actions.

After Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, compared aspects of nascent health care reform bills to the holocaust, other religious leaders said, “enough.”

Land's disingenuous failure to acknowledge real error in his apology is overlooked. Similarly, Jameson is focused on Land's abuse of the facts and Nazi imagery in a Sept. 26 speech to the Christian Coalition in Florida, and overlooks the October barrage of counterfactual claims which attended Land's Louisiana references to Nazi practices.

Fair to a fault, Jameson gives Land credit for having said health care reform is needed, and for supporting the state of Israel before concluding that "the holocaust are so unimaginably horrible, it is not appropriate to compare them with anything since." And for that he draws immediate dissent a pro-life commenters who suggests that it is appropriate to compare abortion to the Nazi industrialized program of eradication of entire cultures.

Land and his peers are resistant to logical/historical persuasion such as Jameson offers, possibility because their goals are not logical. They may seek to reignite the culture-war hysteria whose fade toward calm has drained away much of their political power.

Ethics Daily calls Richard Land out on his unapology

Contributing Editor Brian Kaylor in the Baptist Center for Ethics' Ethics Daily, writes:

One week after apologizing for comparing Democratic leaders to the Nazis, a prominent Southern Baptist leader has reneged on his promise to stop using such comparisons.

Land is president of Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC).

Nice name, but what's in a name?

Land pseudo-apologizes to ADL for Holocaust references [Addenda I & II]

The president's healthcare advisor Ezekiel Emanuel was given the "Josef Mengele Award" by Land. (photo courtesy Center for American Progress)

In a chummy, self-aggrandizing letter to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), Richard Land expressed some regret for accusing the Obama administration and congressional Democratic leaders of attempting to do with health-care reform "precisely what the Nazis did."

In the paragraph devoted to apology, Southern Baptist Convention Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission czar Land wrote:

. . . I deeply regret the reference to Dr. Josef Mengele. I was using hyperbole for effect and never intended to actually equate anyone in the Obama administration with Dr. Mengele. I will certainly refrain from making such references in the future. I apologize to everyone who found such references hurtful. Given the pain and suffering of so many Jewish and other victims of the Nazi regime, I will certainly seek to exercise far more care in my use of language in future discussions of the issues at stake in the healthcare debate.

Thus Land disingenuously fails to acknowledge real error, instead offering bloodless amends for hurt feelings.

We dealt yesterday with the barrage of other counterfactual claims which attended Land's Louisiana misuse of Holocaust images and references to Nazi practices. That piece was a followup to a review of Land's abuse of the facts and Nazi imagery in a Sept. 26 speech to the Christian Coalition in Florida.

Land's disregard for the facts and use of Nazi imagery are of one piece. His summary intentions were well-explained by professor of history emeritus at Indiana State University Richard V. Pierard, who wrote in response:

To evoke images of Hitler or the Holocaust to thwart health-care reform is a brutal insult both to the victims and survivors of that Holocaust. We must proclaim as widely as possible that the term 'Nazism' and images of the swastika have nothing to do with the issues at hand. Any such comparisons are false and are intended only to frighten and confuse people.

Pierard's warning is as important as Land's pseudo-apology is vacant.

Addendum: Land's just another echo

As a member in good standing of the Religious Right, Land is just another echo of the Religious Right Party Line.

For another party-line variation on Land's Obama = "end of Christian civilization" line to the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary Founders' Day audience, watch Pat Robertson and Bill Donohue discuss how liberals are trying to "tear down society:"

Addendum II

Kudos to the Associated Baptist Press for unflinching coverage of the pseudo-apology. Although the ABP story may owe more than it acknowledges to Sam Stein's blog at Huffington Post.

UN President skips Holocaust Memorial after Jewish leaders threaten walkout

Facing a possible walkout by Jewish leaders, General Assembly President Miguel d'Escoto skipped U.N. Holocaust Memorial this morning. According to Harretz:

D'Escoto, who has repeatedly made virulently anti-Israel statements, was to be the event's host by virtue of his official position and was scheduled give the opening speech.

Last year, the General Assembly president likened Israel's actions in the West Bank and Gaza to "the apartheid of an earlier era," and tried to ban Israel's envoy to the UN from speaking at a ceremony to mark 60 years since the institution adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

AJC Executive Director David A. Harris told Haaretz that d'Escoto had chosen not to attend the event because he knew "he did not belong" there. Harris said D'Escoto also mostly likely understood that "his presence would have insulted the event because of his viscious attacks on Israel.

The U.N. General Assembly set Jan. 27 was set as International Holocaust Rememberance Day in 2005. It is to honor the victims of the Nazi era and is the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi death camp. The associated U.N. resolution rejects denial of the Holocaust, and condemns discrimination and violence based on religion or ethnicity.

Professor Gabriela Shalev, Israel's ambassador to the UN, said in her speech to the assembly:

To remain silent and indifferent to the horrors of the Holocaust is probably the greatest sin of all, let alone denying it. We have a responsibility to act against the forces of anti-Semitism, bigotry and racism in any form."