We Really Need That Arizona Iced Tea Summit, Or The Nazis Win

Jonah Goldberg makes a really good point regarding the Nazi comparisons floating around about Arizona's new law against illegal immigrants...

In Nazi Germany Jews were not permitted to leave the country (at least not when it really mattered). Jews in fact begged to be deported or expelled. In Denmark Jews were deported — to Germany. So how does America end up the Nazi-like country here? If the Denmark example applies, it would make Mexico the Nazi-like country and America the modern-day Denmark. Except the illegals don't want to be deported and Mexico isn't killing its own repatriated emigrants.


...So other than meaning "really, really bad" what do people like Greenhouse and Cardinal Mahony mean when they invoke the Nazis? Is it just the image of cops asking for papers? I don't like that image either, but if we're reducing Nazism to checking paperwork we're really defining it down — particularly since legal immigrants have been required to carry around their paperwork since 1940, when FDR and the Democrats made it a law.

I think defining Naziism down is a function of liberalism in general -- liberals have been accusing conservatives of this for months, due to people calling Obama's policies fascist or socialist.  While I agree some of that criticism is over-the-top, in many cases it has an objective basis in fact.  Obamacare is objectively more socialist than the health care system as it existed.  Like Goldberg, I'm not sure how the new Arizona law equates to Naziism.  There's plenty to worry about regarding the Arizona law, but pretending that it creates an out-of-control police state basically means that you've given up on addressing the problems of illegal immigration and are interested in political points.  And that's before we get to the gratutitous violation of Godwin's Law, which means you're losing the debate already.