"Sometimes we talk about why we're importing so many people in our workforce," the former Arkansas governor said. "It might be for the last 35 years, we have aborted more than a million people who would have been in our workforce had we not had the holocaust of liberalized abortion under a flawed Supreme Court ruling in 1973."
Though the claim that Jews are prime targets for Republican conversion is, to my ears, overstated, even if there were a grain of truth to it Huckabee is precisely the sort of candidate who would insure the Jewish vote stays safely Democratic. Strong social conservatism turns off most Jews anyway, but gratuitous Holocaust comparisons (incidentally, "Holocaust" is a proper noun, referring to a specific event, and should thus be capitalized. It is not a generic term to be applied to all genocides -- there are not "holocausts", just the Holocaust) are the fastest way I can think of to earn the ire of American Jews, and fast.
This isn't even the first time Huckabee has made such a "gaffe." Commenting on his noted weight loss, Huckabee remarked last year:
"I have just come from six weeks at a concentration camp held by the Democrat party of Arkansas in an undisclosed location, making a hostage tape. That's why I look that way."
Democrats are Nazis, and Dachau was just a proto-fat camp! Oh Huckabee, you charmer, you.
Seriously, though all props to Huckabee for really make a good push in the GOP field, don't think the Jewish community is going to let this sort of thing lie. If Republicans are serious about attracting our vote, they can't nominate candidates like this. And if they're not serious, well, then don't be surprised when we use whatever leverage we have in the political system to voice our discontent.
10 comments:
I've used the term 'holocaust' to refer to the ecological degradation that is leading to the loss of 10 million children a year. I believe that Huckabee was just wanting to bring attention to the sacredness of life...whether Jewish, American, third-world poor....what ever creed or race....life is sacred.
you're wrong about the word holocaust only being a proper noun. check any dictionary. eg,
http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/holocaust
I'm aware other people do use "holocaust" as a general term (and dictionaries reflect what people do, not what I wish they'd do), but Jews do tend to dislike when it is used as a generic term for "genocide." From the perspective of the Jewish community, "Holocaust" ought to be reserved for the specific extermination of European Jewry from 1933 - 1945 (see caveat below).
I will, however, carve out an exception for its original meaning, "sacrifice [of lives] by fire", since that pre-dates the Holocaust (capitalized). This would include the expression "nuclear holocaust." However, Huckabee's case of abortion doesn't fit within that exemption.
I did check a dictionary...
Genocide is likely a more apt term, however, when one is wanting to raise awareness of an evil act of terror...why not holocaust?
Truly, if others had not stood against that evil at that time...we'd all be learning a different history and we wouldn't be having this discussion. Can't we stand now against evil against any life...together?
From the perspective of the Jewish community, "Holocaust" ought to be reserved for the specific extermination of European Jewry from 1933 - 1945
I guess I knew that but what is the reason exactly?
Because we think it is a unique event, and not something rightfully compared to other historical catastrophes or atrocities. There are distinguishing elements of the Holocaust that make it different from other genocides (and there are distinguishing elements of other genocides that make them different from the Holocaust, and each other), and victims don't like the specificity of their oppression blurred into a generic category. Ownership of experience and all that.
One of my friends who is active in human rights organizations says that, in the circles he runs in, it's a general policy not to appropriate labels associated with one disaster to refer to another ("Gulag", "Apartheid", "Holocaust", etc.). The victims of the original event tend to get angry, and the discussion of the contemporary tragedy tends to get sidetracked into a debate over whether its really parallel to the first. This, needless to say, is just not productive, and needlessly antagonizing.
Doesn't it also honor those who we remember their sacrifice for the common good?
Er, how did Jews killed in the Holocaust "sacrifice their lives for the common good"? I suppose you could look at the post WWII support for a Jewish state as the "common good" that was achieved, but it's also kind of a disgusting way to look at it.
Note that Jews also distinguish THE Holocaust from centuries of oppression and murder, which activities usually fall under the general heading of "pogroms." What Huckabee and others who use the word Holocaust are trying to do is steal the moral authority of something that all decent people consider to be perhaps the greatest tragedy of the twentieth century, and turn it to their own causes on which there is less of a consensus.
I also find the idea that a woman who doesn't want to go through pregnancy and childbirth is the equivalent of a Nazi to be pretty screwed up. Women have abortions because they're trying to rid the world of ... their own descendants? What?
Once again, we see how shallow the Republicans' claim to care about pregnant women really is.
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