There are certain historical ideas and precedents that we probably shouldn’t embrace if we want people to take us seriously. For example, we shouldn’t describe a solution to a problem as the “final solution.” Likewise, no one should ever say anything resembling “slavery was good for the blacks because…” (I’m looking at you, Pat Buchanan), or if someone within ear-shot begins to say “that Bin Laden guy was right about one thing…” please feel free to karate chop them in the throat.
If you find yourself inadvertently traveling down such a road, you’d better slam the ejector-seat button and get the hell out as best you can. But if you choose to deliberately ignore this basic rule, I don’t even want to know you.
Take Bill O’Reilly for example. Last week on his show, he went there. During a segment in which he chatted with guest Karl Rove about the immigration situation, O’Reilly suggested that it’d be a fantastic idea to build a wall along the entire length of the U.S.-Mexico border — just like the Berlin Wall.
If O’Reilly was a normal human being on a collision course with sounding like he’s about to positively invoke the Berlin Wall, he would’ve aborted long before the words “Berlin Wall” gurgled out of his face-hole. Sadly, O’Reilly isn’t a normal human being, and so, like Charles Krauthammer before him, he clearly sees the Berlin Wall as a masterstroke of genius to be borrowed and duplicated, rather than a ghoulish symbol of totalitarian oppression — a shameful relic of history to be avoided at all costs… CONTINUE READING