Andrew: with respect, I think that you're misreading Soros' comments. This, for instance:

"what Soros is calling for is for the Republican Party to be treated as the Nazis were following WWII, where they were generally not permitted to hold public office and the party itself was outlawed."

Soros didn't say anything about the Republican Party, and to my mind the most natural reading of what he said (at least, the bit that's been reported in the news) is that he was, as his spokesman later said, referring to "those responsible for taking America into this needless war." Not all Republicans are responsible for taking us into this needless war -- Chuck Hagel wasn't, Pat Buchanan, much as I disagree with him, wasn't, Brent Scowcroft spoke out against it -- there are lots of Republicans who didn't support it. And as I read through the Post pice and ask myself, is George Soros saying that we need to purge Brent Scowcroft from public life?, I can't see any reason for saying 'yes'.

What I do see him as saying is: those people who did get us into this war ought either to recognize their mistakes or not be let back into public life. And, to be clear: what I mean by "let back into" isn't "legally allowed to hold office", but "either voted in or appointed to any such office."

If the next President announced that s/he was going to appoint, say, Rumsfeld or Cheney to be Secretary of Defense, I would be completely appalled -- not just because I think they've been disastrous for this country, but also because they have absolutely failed to recognize, in any way that I can detect, what it is they did wrong. (In Cheney's case, it may go beyond that, if his comments about all our progress in Iraq are any guide.)

If our next President announced that s/he was appointing, say, William Kristol or Jonah Goldberg as a Presidential policy advisor of some sort, I'd be similarly appalled. As long as Goldberg (say) goes on talking as though he believed his Ledeen Doctrine, as though what we really need to to is invade every country on earth that we don't like, etc., I think he should be off the list for any political position, anywhere.

But that's completely different from saying: any Republican (or: every conservative, etc.) should be barred.

Fwiw, I also don't think it's at all clear that Soros meant a legal ban on anyone holding office, as opposed to what I described above: a consensus that no one who helped us make a horrible mistake should be appointed or elected to anything until it's absolutely clear that that person has exorcised whatever led him or her to get things so wrong. If he didn't, then it's not clear why this is different from saying: the people who helped bring on the Great Depression should not be appointed to economic policy jobs, or: the Watergate burglars should not be appointed to law enforcement positions.

All I can go by is what he said. And de-Nazification meant banning the Nazi party, not just making sure that Donitz and Speer weren't appointed to positions of power in future German administrations. It sounds to me like Mr. Soros is on the same page as Ted Rall.

Bravo, Andrew, an excellent post. The Founding Fathers recognized the totalitarian impulse in human nature, ergo, our wonderfully intricate system of checks & balances. I remember reading Eric Hoffer's "The True Believer" decades ago; he too was well aware of this tendency. What surprises me about the Red/Blue divide is how much we have in common. Ostensibly, we look and act much the same. But it doesn't seem that way to the combatants.

Andrew: when someone says that some group or party needs "a Counter-Reformation", they aren't normally taken to be calling for the Counter-Reformation in all its detail, complete with Saint Ignatius of Loyola, etc.; just saying that a swing away from orthodoxy having taken place, it's time for a swing back. So here: presumably, Soros does not mean that we need to undergo literal de-Nazification -- an exact replica of de-Nazification in every detail. (If only because the idea that there are, literally, Nazis in US political life, in enough numbers to call for de-Nazification, is absurd.)

Presumably, what he means is that we have to undergo something that is in some relevant respect similar to de-Nazification. What respect does he have in mind? You assume it's banning a party. I question the party part on the grounds that he said no such thing, but I also question the banning part, since it seems far more plausible to me that he meant: explicitly recognize a given set of errors as errors, and keep the people who perpetrated them from playing any public role in the future.

Part of what makes this more plausible to me is just that I think it's what most people would mean by that statement. But it's probably also relevant that Soros actually lived through the Nazi period, and has spent a lot of time and a lot of money combatting totalitarianism in all its forms; so the idea that he in particular would mean this seems to me especially far-fetched.

Thanks for the tip. :)

When someone invokes the Nazis, one tends to presume that there's a 'Nazi party' cognate somewhere in the analogy. And if you check out the Rall link, Soros wouldn't be the first to call for banning the Republican party. Maybe Soros wasn't calling for that; you're free to interpret his words however you choose, since I'm not aware of anyone getting him to clarify what he meant.

The Soviets fought Nazi totalitarianism and vice versa. Totalitarianism always looks better when you envision yourself on the top.

Without more context, it's difficult to know exactly what he intended, or even if he meant that statement to be taken entirely seriously. I assume that he didn't literally mean that the GOP should be banned in the USA (I assume Ted Rall was just toying with the idea as well -- in general, I think people take the Ralls and Coulters of the world way too seriously). But at the very least, it's not a helpful way for Soros to make his point -- whatever points of contact there may be are dwarfed by the differences. Nazi comparisons should be limited in application to other genocidal situations, period.

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