What is it with Republicans and Nazis? It used to be, several decades ago in hippie times, the word "fascist" was bandied about so often by lefties that it lost all meaning.
These days, seems like every time you turn around some GOP putz is calling someone a Nazi.
Teabaggers love calling President Obama a Nazi, oblivious to their own bigotry toward our Commander in Chief. Republican state Representative Brenda Barton is merely the most recent nudnik spouting this nonsensical cliche.
Now County Attorney Bill Montgomery wants in on the Nazi game, dropping a Hitler reference while denouncing a lawsuit by the ACLU of Arizona against an idiotic legislative ban on something that doesn't exist here in Sand Land -- women having abortions because of the race or sex of the unborn child.
The suit was recently dismissed by a federal court judge for lack of standing by the plaintiffs.
"No reasonable human being in this country," Monty told reporters during his regular Wednesday press conference, "even with the current state of the abortion case law from the Supreme Court, would ever with a right mind or a healthy conscience, find that that kind of decision making is appropriate.
"It reflects the same basic approach to eugenics that Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, developed back in the '20s. And that -- there's a Hitler reference for you -- that was later adopted by the Nazi regime as part of their efforts to create a master race. Margaret Sanger also was in favor of abortion in order to limit minority populations in the United States.
"So you can see the perverse closing of the circle here by the ACLU to then want to challenge this law and try to use members of the minority community to do it. It's unconscionable and it shows just what I would say is an unholy belief in abortion for any reason at any time and I don't think our society can bear that cost."
I called Bill Straus, the Anti-Defamation League of Arizona's regional director, to see what he thought of Monty's logic.
Needless to say, he was not amused.
"There is no excuse for the Hitler, Nazi, Holocaust comparisons to anything contemporary," he told me. "The Holocaust is so singular."
Sure, there are bad people and bad events in the world, he said, but none of them quite live up to Adolf and the Final Solution.
"I know that Bill Montgomery is very proud of his military record," Straus offered, "Number one, he is very intelligent, and number two, having served in the military, I would think that it would be very clear to him that these comparisons do nothing to further the goals of the person making the expressions."
The comparison is also ironic, considering that back in 2010, Monty received some very unwelcome support from a local contingent of the National Socialist Movement, which included future baby killing neo-Nazi J.T. Ready.
I reckon, Monty's got a point with Sanger, who like a lot of people of her day, bought into eugenics. And yeah, Hitler and the Nazis were the ultimate practitioners of eugenics.
That still doesn't make Sanger a Nazi, or turn folks who support the right of a woman to choose into swastika-lovers. Sorry, Monty.
As for the law itself, it's dumb and unnecessary, but those who oppose Roe v. Wade will do anything to push back on abortion rights. Arizona already has a law making it illegal to coerce someone into having an abortion for any reason, it doesn't need another based upon racial stereotypes and half-baked conspiracy theories.
The law's sponsor, for instance, suggested in a committee hearing that black fetuses are more likely to be aborted because abortion providers and others want to "reduce the African-American population."
Fellow brain surgeons in the legislature suggested that women coming to the United States from India and China would start a tsunami of abortions of girl babies.
You know, 'cause they're furriners and don't respect life like us 'Mericuns..
No wonder the plaintiffs in the suit are the local NAACP and the National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum.
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Who in Monty's eyes, must be akin to the SS and the SA, right?
As Straus indicated, Monty knows better. I can only gather the county attorney was looking for some attention, and so decided to drop the H-bomb.
By doing so, he demonstrates that he's seriously irony-deficient. After all, this is a guy who supported Arizona's racist law SB 1070, which has as its stated intent, "attrition through enforcement."
I mean, talk about your ethnic cleansing.
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