Leftist Hysteria and Their Language Rules

Written by Laurie Higgins

An illuminating tempest in a polluted teapot churned up at the end of last week when 10 “progressives” in Springfield took umbrage at an article written for Illinois Family Action (IFA) by Teri Paulson that compared the sickening, vigorous, and enthusiastic anti-life position of the Democratic Party to the sickening, vigorous, and enthusiastic anti-life position of the Nazi Party.

Somehow Chicago Sun-Times writer Tina Sfondeles got wind of their umbrage and wrote an article that quoted one of the indignant lawmakers, State Rep. Kelly Cassidy (D-Chicago) who can be counted on to cheerlead all the worst legislation to emerge from the Springfield swamp. Cassidy said,

[IFI] is a group promoting violence and hate speech and they have people on the payroll wearing badges bypassing security [at the Capitol] walking in and out of this building every day. And I think that should be examined.

Cassidy, not surprisingly, lied in asserting the Illinois Family Institute (IFI) promotes either violence or hate speech, and these bald-faced lies will go unmolested by the Leftist press.

In response to the outrage of those ten “progressives,” I wrote and posted this on IFA’s Facebook page:

Quote ‘o’ the Day comes from lesbian and feticidal maniac State Rep. Kelly Cassidy in response to an IFA article suggesting some points of correspondence between the Democrat-endorsed holocaust and the Nazi Holocaust:

“[IFI] is a group promoting violence and hate speech and they have people on the payroll wearing badges bypassing security [at the Capitol] walking in and out of this building every day. And I think that should be examined.”

A maniac is “a person who has an excessive enthusiasm or desire for something.” Cassidy has a clearly demonstrated and arguably excessive enthusiasm and desire to promote the legal right of women to exterminate their unborn children (i.e., feticide) without restriction.

To be clear, the person on IFI’s payroll to whom she is likely referring is our lobbyist who is among the gentlest, kindest men I know. Cassidy should be ashamed, but she’s proven time and again that she’s shameless. I’m sure she would like IFI’s lobbyist out of Springfield. No need for diversity in Madiganistan.

Just wondering, who is more likely to endorse violence and toward whom is this violence directed: an IFI employee toward a lawmaker or a Democratic lawmaker toward an unwanted or imperfect human in the womb?

The expression of moral propositions with which State Rep. and demagogue Cassidy disagrees does not constitute an act of violence or hatred of persons no matter how many times she says it does. And a party that endorses feticide and infanticide for any and no reason shares some troubling similarities with other genocidal movements.

Against the implied charge of being a genocide supporter, the lady Cassidy doth protest too much, methinks.

Because Paulson, a suburban mother of two, expressed the view on IFA that the slaughter of 61,000,000 innocent humans who were deemed undesirable is analogous to the Nazi Holocaust of 6,000,000 innocent humans who were deemed undesirable, ten Springfield lawmakers think that IFA’s lobbyists pose a violent threat to lawmakers in Springfield?

Of course, they don’t think that. This is yet another attempt to use the force of government to silence the expression of views that Cassidy, Feigenholtz et al detest. (Cassidy and Feigenholtz are spearheading the two new abortion expansion bills that even the liberal Chicago Tribune Editorial Board opposes.)

Shortly after my FB post, Sun-Times writer Sfondeles revised her article, oddly deleting the quote from Cassidy. Sfondeles wrote,

Members of the Illinois Legislature’s Jewish caucus have asked the Illinois State Police to investigate an anti-abortion group for “a pattern of hate speech” after the Illinois Family Institute posted an article comparing Democrats to Nazis.

State Rep. Sara Feigenholtz, D-Chicago, on Friday, said she had personally called Illinois State Police Director Brendan Kelly to ask for an investigation into Illinois Family Action and its parent organization, the Illinois Family Institute.

…

“We consider an attempt to use Nazi imagery and a genocidal equation on matters regarding a legal right to health care service, clear-cut hate speech,” Feigenholtz said in a statement.

State Rep. Yehiel Kalish (D-Skokie), a member of the Jewish caucus, also used Feigenholtz’s grotesque euphemism, calling feticide “reproductive health care.”

Do the ten lawmakers who object to comparing the abortion holocaust to the Jewish Holocaust not see the irony in their reference to the legalized slaughter of humans in the womb as “health care service”? Do these lawmakers trivialize the horrors of feticide by calling it “health care”? Do they trivialize the horrors of feticide by claiming that the killing of 61,000,000 innocent humans bears no moral resemblance to the killing of 6,000,oo0 innocent Jews?

In an article titled, “Why Do Pro-Lifers Use the Holocaust Analogy to Abortion, ” Dr. Brian Clowes, director of education and research at Human Life International, writes,

There are many points of similarity between the Holocausts: 1. Deceptive language, 2. Ideology formed by doctors, 3. Speed of the murders, 4. Philosophical justification…

[T]he most striking similarity between German Nazis and modern pro-abortionists is their use of deceptive language to make the killing appear to be harmless or even beneficial to society.

…

The Nazis used a galaxy of soothing terms when referring to the extermination of Jews. These included “resettlement,” “evacuation of the infested area,” “cleansing,” “disinfection,” “special treatment” and “discharging.”

By comparison, current-day “women’s choice physicians” perform “evacuations of the uterine contents” or “voluntary interruptions of pregnancy” in “reproductive health centers,” and dispose of the “sub-human non-personhood,” “protoplasmic rubbish” and “human waste” in little ovens built for the purpose of disposing of late-term aborted babies.

Are the ten lawmakers going to contact the state police every time someone uses the term “abortion holocaust”?

Analogies do not suggest analogues are identical. Analogies suggest substantive points of correspondence. How are the torturous deaths of 61,000,000 innocent humans—including 793,000 post-21-weeks gestation—less ghastly or evil than the legalized slaughter of 6,000,000 Jews by Hitler? By what measure have Cassidy, Feigenholtz and their abortion-loving colleagues determined that comparing those two moral evils is a moral evil?

Historians, political leaders, and teachers rightly affirm the necessity of remembering the Holocaust so that it never happens again, but when someone sees similarities between the Holocaust and a contemporary evil, we’re ordered not to identify them.

How many of the ten lawmakers who want the state police to investigate IFA/IFI are pro-life? How many of them view the product of conception between two humans to be a human endowed by his or her Creator with unalienable rights? How many of them view 39-week-old humans with beating hearts, functioning brains, and suckling mouths as persons?

The ten object to comparisons of the Feticidal holocaust to the Nazi Holocaust because they have deemed a set of humans as devoid of worth. Word to Dems, no one is obligated to treat their ontological and moral assumptions as if they’re true.

The demagogic reaction to Paulson’s political commentary by Cassidy, Feigenholtz, and their legislative accomplices is predictable. While “progressives” claim to value diversity, tolerance, and free speech, they betray those claims by using any means at their disposal—including unethical efforts to enjoin the force of government—to silence the expression of political views and moral assumptions with which they disagree. To ask the Illinois State Police to investigate political speech is nothing short of intimidation and harassment. As state lawmakers, they should be aware that our speech is guaranteed by the U.S. Bill of Rights and the Illinois Constitution.

IFA views the legal right to dismember, stop the beating hearts, burn off the skin, or suck out the brains and crush the skulls of tiny humans in the womb for any or no reason to be an unmitigated evil, and we have the legal and constitutional right to express that view. Our expressions of political and moral claims about the evil of abortion and of public support for it no more constitute acts of violence or hatred of persons than do the political and moral denunciations of IFI/IFA or theologically orthodox Christians by “progressives.”

Take note, neither Cassidy, nor Feigenholtz, nor any of their compeers has addressed the substance of Paulson’s argument. Instead, they do what Leftists do best: hurl epithets and exploit government power to silence the expression of moral propositions they don’t like. That’s oh so much easier for the power hungry and morally vacuous.

Applying consistently the principles of the Democratic Party would mean that the gang of ten are precipitators of violence and consumed by hatred of theologically orthodox Christians every time they call them ignorant, hateful bigots for their beliefs about the sanctity of life (or marriage or homosexual acts), thereby attacking beliefs that are central to the identities of Christ-followers.

To be judged not hateful and not violent by the rules of “progressives” requires theologically orthodox Christians to abdicate their fidelity to the Word of God. In order to be judged sinless by the world would require rejection of that which is central to their identity. Even the power hungry and morally vacuous Leftists among us should be able to grasp what they are demanding. Only those with totalitarian impulses would use the force of government to demand such a thing. We’ve seen such impulses manifest before in history.

This leads back to the beginning. Are there no points of correspondence between the beliefs regarding human life of the Nazi regime and those of contemporary Democrats? If there are substantive points of correspondence, we must not whitewash those points. We will never make cultural headway in opposing those beliefs if we capitulate to the tyrannical temper tantrums, abuse of power, and language rules of “progressives” who don’t want anyone to see clearly the incomprehensible evil that they promote and celebrate.

In closing, here are Hannah Arendt’s words about language rules in Nazi Germany:

For whatever other reasons the language rules may have been devised, they proved of enormous help in the maintenance of order and sanity in the various widely diversified services whose cooperation was essential in this matter. Moreover, the very term “language rule”… was itself a code name; it meant what in ordinary language would be called a lie…. The net effect of this language system was not to keep these people ignorant of what they were doing, but to prevent them from equating it with their old, “normal” knowledge of murder and lies. ~ Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

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