Daniel Palmer’s muddled arguments in his Jan. 18 letter, “Democratic hopefuls: Anti-Bush hate speech is malicious” would not merit response if not for several irrational and irresponsible myths he uses to support his arguments. He accuses “Democratic frontrunners” of referring to President Bush as a Nazi. While I can’t claim to have monitored every remark made by all eight declared candidates, I am quite sure none referred to Bush as a Nazi.
Palmer is likely referring to the recent contest held by MoveOn.org in which citizens submitted self-funded and self-produced 30-second Anti-Bush political ads. Of more than 1,500 submittals, two contained messages comparing Bush to Hitler. MoveOn.org issued a public apology for these two spots, although they had no part in their production or say in their content.
Palmer then goes off the deep end, stating flatly that Democrats deserve the designation of Nazi for their use of “their hateful rhetoric.” As proof, Palmer then invokes “three of the worst atrocities in recent American history” which according to him include “the slaughter of children at Waco, Texas,” the “consequent” Oklahoma City bombing, and “the Nazi-like abduction” of Elian Gonzalez.
Let me point out that responsibility for the deaths at Waco lie with David Koresh and his misguided followers, period. Koresh had ample opportunity to surrender and the well-documented problems of law enforcement leading up to the siege cannot begin to obscure that obvious fact. Oklahoma City was the isolated act of couple of anti-government fanatics (somehow I doubt either of them were Democrats). Finally, to imply that the return of Elian Gonzales to the custody of his father represents a greater atrocity than the deaths of over 3,000 Americans on 9-11 is not just ludicrous, but offensive.
Everett
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