Christina Stableford: Warning signs

Regarding the April 19 column “The most frightening lesson from the Holocaust”: Thank you for printing James Comey’s cogent and moving commentary on the Holocaust. It is encouraging to know that a man of such thoughtfulness and moral depth leads the FBI.

His commentary presents some chilling observations on how the willing “followership” of ordinary, well-meaning people enabled sick and vile leaders to perpetrate horrific evil on a massive scale.

Gene Nichol’s April 19 Point of View “Governing by mendacity,” which appeared on the same page, intensified the warning alarms embedded in Comey’s commentary. Nichol highlighted a long (and incomplete) list of regressive, reductive, punitive and fundamentally undemocratic state legislation that has been presented to the voting public by its Republican promoters in an insultingly transparent cloak of positive intent.

While there is no comparison in scale between the gradual and systematic dismantling of the democratic process by our state legislature and the massive human suffering of the Holocaust, there is a linkage worthy of note: self-aggrandizing leaders promoting a wholly false vision to an overly accepting public. Evil is evil and lies are lies, regardless of scale.

History has shown us the dreadful consequences of entrusting the commonweal to those who promulgate either.

This story was originally published April 25, 2015 at 4:00 PM with the headline "Christina Stableford: Warning signs."