Nazis are attacking Florida newspapers!


Well, of course that is not actually true. But it’s understandable why someone might think so, from the panicked headlines the St. Pete Times has been posting lately.

First there was Wednesday’s hysterically-titled blog post by Adam Smith, “Has Adam Hasner gone off the deep end?” in which he claims that Adam Hasner is comparing our government to the Third Reich.

Then, today, Daniel Ruth writes an op-ed, “Hasner mining for fear,” in which he says that Hasner was attempting to “link the nation’s economic woes to the threat Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich posed to the world.”

OMG! Hitler?



Hold on a second here. What exactly did Hasner write? Would someone who’s Jewish really be so careless with a Hitler reference?

What has the St. Pete Times’ panties in a bunch is Hasner’s July Fourth message. You can read the entire note here on his Facebook page.

Let’s look at the key language in the second through fourth paragraphs:






Hasner mentions Hitler once, and only once, and in a reference to the challenges that Franklin D. Roosevelt was facing on July 4, 1941. Sooo…let me get this straight…Hasner only mentioned Hitler as part of a reference to the President who fought the war against the Nazis.

If that’s “going off the deep end,” then I guess it’s also crazy to mention King George III if you’re talking about George Washington, or mention that Abraham Lincoln fought to free the slaves, or Ronald Reagan’s efforts to end communism. Take note, politicos: the St. Pete Times does not want you to discuss history! Only an extremist would reference American history and past struggles for freedom in a July Fourth message!


No, the exact opposite is true. Hasner said the “biggest threat” is not a foreign government, but abuses of power within our own government. And we’re not facing a threat from a dictator, but from our crushing debt. In other words, FDR fought Hitler and the Nazis, and Americans today are fighting something entirely different, “not a foreign government,” “not a dictator.”

Maybe Adam Smith and Daniel Ruth need to go take an SAT prep course and brush up on their reading comprehension. When someone says “we are not fighting X, we are fighting Y,” that is not “comparing” X and Y! That is saying that X and Y are different. It’s really not that complicated.


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