Ezra Klein opines on positive agenda of Nazis?

This was news to me until The College Politico tipped me off to it:

Not everything the Nazis touched was bad. Hitler was a vegetarian. Volkswagen is a perfectly good car company. Universal health care is a perfectly good idea. Indeed, the Nazis actually did a pretty good job increasing economic growth and improving standards of living (they were, many think, the first Keynesians, adopting the strategy even before Keynes had come up with it), pushing Germany out of a depression and back into expansion. Unfortunately, they also set out to conquer Europe and exterminate the Jews. People shouldn't do that. (emphasis is mine)

In fairness, I'm sure Ezra Klein was just using his artistic license as a Jew (a la Mel Brooks) to make light of the Nazis -- while celebrating their do-gooder quasi-liberal statist policies!  Surely, that must be it!  How silly of us conservatives not to be enlightened like Ezra!  Hint to Ezra: if you're going to try to be cute and funny, you might want to be more like Mel Brooks so people have no doubt that you're being outrageously over the top to make a point AND to make people laugh.

But since Ezra has already tried to enlighten us as to the positive aspects of Nazism, maybe he'd like to try his hand at showing us how the Democratic slaveholders in the Confederacy were also well intentioned folks with a few good ideas.

I'll even help Ezra by pointing him towards the Federal Writers' Project archives of slave narratives (thanks to FDR and the New Deal!).

For example, how about this gem by former slave Ezra "Klein?" Adams:

You ain’t gwine to believe dat de slaves on our plantation didn’t stop workin’ for old marster, even when they was told dat they was free. Us didn’t want no more freedom than us was gittin’ on our plantation already. Us knowed too well dat us was well took care of, wid a plenty of vittles to eat and tight log and board houses to live in. De slaves, where I lived, knowed after de war dat they had abundance of dat somethin’ called freedom, what they could not eat, wear, and sleep in. Yes, sir, they soon found out dat freedom ain’t nothin’, ‘less you is got somethin’ to live on and a place to call home. Dis livin’ on liberty is lak young folks livin’ on love after they gits married. It just don’t work. No, sir, it las’ so long and not a bit longer. Don’t tell me! It sho’ don’t hold good when you has to work, or when you gits hongry. You knows dat poor white folks and ni***rs has got to work to live, regardless of liberty, love, and all them things.

Ezra Adams, 83, emancipated in South Carolina

Or how about this story of kind things masters did for their slaves:

Carrie Hudson recalled when slaves returned from the fields at night how they wanted only to rest. But Saturday nights were special because they were permitted to dance and play the banjo. Christmas, however, was the treasured time for children because, ... there would be plenty of fresh meat, and there was heaps of good chickens, turkeys, cake, candies, and just everything good."

Slaves celebrated the holiday by visiting one another's cabins, but when New Year's Day arrived they returned to work. Other pleasurable activities Carrie Hudson recounted were corn shuckings and cotton picking by torch light on fall nights, after which slaves were permitted to dance and eat well. Log rollings were her favorite, however, and again were marked by music, food, and also whiskey in kegs. Her master organized and provisioned those events, and gave a prize to the hand who picked the most cotton. 

So maybe Ezra can explain to us the virtues of the Confederacy and their kindly Democratic masters.  Personally, I come from the "Live Free or Die" camp.  Better to be free and dirt poor than a well fed slave.  Something I wouldn't think you'd have to explain to a Jewish man well schooled in the story of Moses and Exodus.

But then again, Ezra seems to have forgotten that long before Hitler set out to conquer Europe and exterminate the Jews, he first took away their freedom.  Would Ezra have preferred that Hitler had just been a kind master to the Jews like the Egyptians once claimed to be?

Exit quote:

"If you want total security, go to prison. There you're fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking... is freedom." - Dwight David Eisenhower