Der Fall Elizabeth May

I have been smiling about May's latest sermon. It did get more coverage than she hoped for, but did she realize that making analogies that involve Nazis is asking for trouble? Yes, even in 2007 it is not done. But is it out of line?

This is a description of what May said (Ottawa Citizen):

Green leader Elizabeth May is standing by her comments over the weekend that condemn Prime Minister Stephen Harper's stance on climate change, comparing it to "a grievance worse than Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of the Nazis.

Now this is what the Western Standard would like you to believe she meant:

Elizabeth May would rather have taken appeasement, and along with it a Nazi Empire spanning Eurasia unopposed by the world's major powers, if it meant less pollution and no Conservative government in Canada today.

Well of course, that's not what she said (or meant); it's the latest smear campaign of a neo-con magazine, trying to score cheap political point when their favourite party (bias of a magazine has never been so obvious) desperately needs some.

Let's get some free help from Wikipedia to define appeasement:

Appeasement is a policy of accepting the imposed conditions of an aggressor in lieu of armed resistance, usually at the sacrifice of principles.

Now let's change the wording a bit here:

The latest Conservative Green plan is a policy of accepting the favoured conditions of Big Oil (and other major polluters) in lieu of Kyoto, at the sacrifice of the environment.

Do Conservatives really think Chamberlain would have supported the murderous regime if he had known in 1938 what we know now? I like to think he wouldn't have, and that's exactly the point that May tried to make. "Appeasement" to economic pressures today can lead to horrors beyond our imagination. There is no third way when it comes to saving the world from major environmental disaster, so Prime Minister, get with the program (called Kyoto protocol) or, perhaps one day, you will be one of the Chamberlains of our time.

Call May's analogy unfortunate, even inappropriate; but she won't go down in history as Hitler's "smiling" Pope.

Footnote: Isn't it interesting that whenever a WWII related issue is in the news, there's always at least one Jewish organization that has been writing letters? I wonder how many Russian letters (Jewish casualties of war: 6 million - Soviet casualties of war: 23 million) have been received by the PMO.