In Defense Of Chris Berg And “The Big Lie”

The problem with allusions to Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, especially on the internet, is that they’re often overwrought and not very pertinent to the subject at hand. These allusions on the internet are especially bad, with everyone on every side of an argument always seeming able to discern some Hitler or Naziesque properties in their opponents.

What’s more, even if the allusion to Hitler/Nazis is pertinent (they are, after all, an important part of the history of the world and represent plenty of historical lessons we should learn from), they speak to such emotional and hurtful things that invoking them is sure to drive any debate off the rails and obscure your original point.

This happened to my good friend Chris Berg last week during his show which airs at ValleyNewsLive.com. Berg was covering Pam Gulleson’s recent assertions that Social Security “isn’t broken.” Berg disputed that notion, quoting Hitler’s words about “the big lie” in the process.

You can watch his original video here. His analysis was spot-on accurate, as far as I’m concerned. But because he referenced the Nazis/Hitler in the context of talking about a politician, and because in politics point-scoring matters more than intellectual rigor, Gulleson’s supporters attacked his video and he was forced to apologize for it Friday night:

“In the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods.”

That’s Hitler, writing in Mein Kampf alluding to the big lie. And if it sounds exactly like what Democrats and other apologists for the solvency of this nation’s out-of-control entitlement programs are doing, you’re right. They’re telling a big lie, one that far too many Americans want to believe. It doesn’t mean that Democrats are anti-semitic or support genocide. That wasn’t Berg’s point. Berg’s point is that the Democrats, who aren’t stupid people, know full well that Social Security and Medicare are insolvent and represent almost unpayable levels of spending obligations going forward. Yet they carry on as if all were well, because that’s what is most politically convenient for them.

Democrats, of course, don’t like it when you talk about that, so they glom on to any handy distraction. Like suggesting that a perfectly acceptable historical allusion is somehow accusing them of being murderers.