Last week Republican Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania violated a major taboo. He was trying to argue that the Democrats had no grounds to complain that the Republicans were breaking Senate rules in their effort to ban judicial filibusters. His argument was that the Democrats themselves had broken the rules by filibustering judges in the first place.
Here's how Santorum put it: "The audacity of some members to stand up and say, 'How dare you break this rule.' It's the equivalent of Adolf Hitler in 1942 saying, 'I'm in Paris. How dare you invade me. How dare you bomb my city? It's mine.' This is no more the rule of the Senate than it was the rule of the Senate before not to filibuster."
The result was predictable. The media flayed Santorum for "comparing Democrats to Hitler," and cited his comment as an example of fraying civility in the Senate. Santorum quickly apologized. Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, scolded, "Once again, Nazi imagery was used in a political debate, where it has no place."
But why should Nazi analogies be verboten? If we thought about it sensibly, we'd realize that Nazi analogies have their place. If anything, our public discourse could use more Nazi analogies.
The main complaint against Hitler analogies in American political discourse is that they're inherently hysterical, comparing run-of-the-mill conservatives or liberals with the most evil force in human history. And of course, it's crazy to compare one's political opponents to Nazis, unless they happen to be genocidal totalitarians, a category that's fortunately very small in American politics.
But when Nazis are invoked, it's often not to make a moral comparison but to establish a logical principle. That's the main mistake made by those who decry Nazi allusions. They ignore, or fail to grasp, the distinction between comparing someone to Hitler and using a historical analogy that draws on the Nazi era.
The latter is what Santorum did. He was trying to make the point that Democrats had broken the rules (by filibustering judges) and then were complaining when Republicans merely tried to restore them.
To be sure, Santorum's point (like most of Santorum's points) was wrong. Democrats did not break the rules by filibustering a judicial nominee. The practice is well established, and Republican senators such as Majority Leader Bill Frist have participated in such filibusters themselves. Nonetheless, Santorum was clearly not trying to argue that filibustering judges is as bad as invading France.
