From Greg Pierce's "Inside Politics" column over at the Washington Times...George Soros accused the United States of being a Nazi regime at the recent conference in Davos, Switzerland, and nobody noticed. That has Martin Peretz angry. The New Republic's editor in chief began his column by citing a New York Times report in which the billionaire liberal says: "America needs to follow the policies it has introduced in Germany. We have to go through a certain de-Nazification process."
"No, you are not seeing things. He said de-Nazification," Mr. Peretz wrote. "Even for Davos, this was stupid. Actually, worse than stupid. There is a historical analysis, a moral claim, in Soros's word. He believes that the United States is now a Nazi country. Why else would we have to go through a 'certain de-Nazification process'? I defy anybody to interpret the remark differently."
"Imagine the outcry if a Republican moneybags — say, Richard Mellon Scaife — had declared that Hillary Clinton is a communist or that Bill Clinton's America had been in need of a certain de-Stalinization process. But I hear no outcry from Soros's congregation. ... There seems to be a renaissance among liberals of the view that there are no enemies to the left. I hear no Democrats expressing embarrassment, or revulsion, at Soros's comment. Whether this silence is owed to their agreement or to their greed, it is outrageous."
Mr. Peretz then noted that Mr. Soros has experience with real Nazism, citing a 1998 "60 Minutes" interview in which the Hungarian-born Jew said he escaped the Holocaust by posing as a Christian and helping the Germans confiscate the property of Hungary's Jewish population. Mr. Soros said he had "no guilt feeling" over it.
"In the same conversation at Davos, Soros announced that he is supporting Senator Barack Obama, though he would also support Senator Hillary Clinton. So my question to both of those progressives is this: How, without any explanation or apology from him, will you take this man's money?" Mr. Peretz closed his column by asking.