The ADL needs to get a clue: a holocaust is a holocaust is a holocaust
The Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith has issued a silly and presumptuous appeal for presidential candidate Mike Huckabee to stop referring to the massacre of the American unborn begun by Roe v. Wade as a "holocaust."
The Holocaust, ADL National Director Abraham Foxman complains, was
With all respect to Mr. Foxman, the ADL, survivors of the Holocaust, and the families and friends of those victimized by the Hitler regime, this is utter nonsense. To begin with- tragically- there is nothing unique about the Holocaust. As horrific as the crimes of the Hitler era were, the Holocaust is very far from being history's only example of genocide! Has Mr. Foxman ever asked himself the degree to which his claim of uniqueness for Hitler's crime against his people diminishes and trivializes the suffering of the victims of attempted genocide in Rwanda, in Boznia, in Tibet, in Darfur, in Armenia- and even of the Native Americans who were virtually exterminated by our own American ancestors? This page gives only an example of the frequency with which the crime of genocide has been attempted in history. As great a tragedy and as great a crime as the attempted- and very nearly successful- genocide of the European Jews under Hitler was, and as shocking a cautionary lesson as it remains for all of us, it hardly trivializes it to point out the rather obvious fact that it is anything but unique in the sad and sorry history of the human race. And that is an even greater tragedy than the Holocaust itself.
True, the scale of the Holocaust causes it to stand out as an especially heinous case. But scale cannot be the issue. It is wholly unreasonable to suggest that either the attempted genocide of the Hitler era or the suffering of those who were its victims is in any way trivialized by the realization that, whle Hitler killed an estimated 17 million innocent human beings(of whom some six million were Jews), since 1917 the Soviet regime murdered approximately 62 million of its own people, mostly during the Stalin era. Red China, mostly under Mao- probably the greatest mass-murderer in human history- deliberately butchered and starved to death some 77 million of its own citizens. How does acknowledging this fact trivialize the tragedy of the Holocaust?
Gov. Huckabee does not hesitate to use the word "holocaust" (lower-case "h") to refer to the killing of some 49 million unborn Americans since 1973- over eight times as many victims as the Holocast (with a capital "H") claimed. Those numbers do not diminish the sufferings of Holocaust victims or their friends and families. Rather they shame all of us- and especially those who would trivialize that tragedy and moral wrong, and even choose to assume with regard to them the shameful role of holocaust denier.
The Holocaust, ADL National Director Abraham Foxman complains, was
a unique tragedy in human history- an attempt by the Nazis to exterminate the Jewish people that led to the deliberate murder of six million people.
We find the use of analogies to the Holocaust to other contexts deeply painful, disturbing and offensive. Such analogies can only trivialize and diminish the horror, and cause further pain to Holocaust survivors and those who are alive today who lost friends and loved ones.
With all respect to Mr. Foxman, the ADL, survivors of the Holocaust, and the families and friends of those victimized by the Hitler regime, this is utter nonsense. To begin with- tragically- there is nothing unique about the Holocaust. As horrific as the crimes of the Hitler era were, the Holocaust is very far from being history's only example of genocide! Has Mr. Foxman ever asked himself the degree to which his claim of uniqueness for Hitler's crime against his people diminishes and trivializes the suffering of the victims of attempted genocide in Rwanda, in Boznia, in Tibet, in Darfur, in Armenia- and even of the Native Americans who were virtually exterminated by our own American ancestors? This page gives only an example of the frequency with which the crime of genocide has been attempted in history. As great a tragedy and as great a crime as the attempted- and very nearly successful- genocide of the European Jews under Hitler was, and as shocking a cautionary lesson as it remains for all of us, it hardly trivializes it to point out the rather obvious fact that it is anything but unique in the sad and sorry history of the human race. And that is an even greater tragedy than the Holocaust itself.
True, the scale of the Holocaust causes it to stand out as an especially heinous case. But scale cannot be the issue. It is wholly unreasonable to suggest that either the attempted genocide of the Hitler era or the suffering of those who were its victims is in any way trivialized by the realization that, whle Hitler killed an estimated 17 million innocent human beings(of whom some six million were Jews), since 1917 the Soviet regime murdered approximately 62 million of its own people, mostly during the Stalin era. Red China, mostly under Mao- probably the greatest mass-murderer in human history- deliberately butchered and starved to death some 77 million of its own citizens. How does acknowledging this fact trivialize the tragedy of the Holocaust?
Gov. Huckabee does not hesitate to use the word "holocaust" (lower-case "h") to refer to the killing of some 49 million unborn Americans since 1973- over eight times as many victims as the Holocast (with a capital "H") claimed. Those numbers do not diminish the sufferings of Holocaust victims or their friends and families. Rather they shame all of us- and especially those who would trivialize that tragedy and moral wrong, and even choose to assume with regard to them the shameful role of holocaust denier.
Comments
You do not offer an argument. And you completely miss the point- which is not a surprise, given where you're coming from. It is not at all to compare women who have abortions-or at least most of them- with Hitler.
There are those, it is true, who treat abortion as merely a form of birth control, and they're an exception. But most women choose to have their unborn children killed for reasons that bring them great personal agony. Most suffer psychological scars from which they never recover. Remorse is quite common. None of this, of course, changes the moral quality of what they do to their children, but I agree that a comparison of these women to Hitler would indeed be cruel and judgmental. The issue is the act, not the actor.
The issue is that in both cases we're talking about the wrongful taking of innocent human life on a scale that boggles the mind, enabled by a relatively small number of people whom ideology has blinded to the humanity of the victims. Pro-abortion rhetoric aside, poll after poll ever since 1973 has shown that those same large majorities of the American people who- apparently not familiar with the actual provisions of Roe v. Wade- say so overwhelmingly that they agree with it also believe that abortion should be legal in a small number of carefully defined circumstances. And something like two-thirds of them believe it to be morally wrong by it's very nature.
That is the issue- that, and the incoherence of the moral case the pro-choice folks try to make.
To imply that the unborn are sub-human entities not entitled to our moral concern is indeed to make an argument frighteningly like the one the Nazis made- not only in support of the Holocaust, but specifically in support of abortion and the euthanasia of "life unworthy of life." They used the very same arguments the pro-choice camp does, including the appeal to the burden not only the unborn but physically disabled toddlers and old people place on their caregivers.
If you're looking for something cruel, you might consider the chemical disintegration or the mechanical pulling limb from limb of one living member of the human race at the whim of another as a candidate. If you're looking for something judgmental, you might consider the dismissal of a member of species Homo sapiens with brain waves, already developing according to the same genetic plan that makes me bald and somebody else need glasses, in many cases fully capable of feeling pain and sometimes even, with medical help, surviving outside the womb being arbitrarily denied the moral protections accorded human beings because it doesn't fit the personal agenda of somebody else.