Don't look down your nose at the Germans who followed Hitler, you may find yourself looking up instead

Somehow, this doesn't seem to be quite the right way to make a point.

Talk show host Jerry Klein decided to play a trick on his audience. In a discussion of the six Muslim clerics that were thrown off the US Air jet the other day, he proposed that all Muslims be forced to wear a crescent moon armband. He doesn't really believe that, but he wanted to see what would happen. Callers flooded the switchboard with demands that went well beyond Klein's proposal, including demands that all Muslims be tatooed with the crescent, that they all be locked up in concentration camps, or that they all be rounded up and shipped out of the country. At the end of the show he said:

"I can't believe any of you are sick enough to have agreed for one second with anything I said," he told his audience on the AM station 630 WMAL (http://www.wmal.com/), which covers Washington, Northern Virginia and Maryland.

"For me to suggest to tattoo marks on people's bodies, have them wear armbands, put a crescent moon on their driver's license on their passport or birth certificate is disgusting. It's beyond disgusting.

"Because basically what you just did was show me how the German people allowed what happened to the Jews to happen ... We need to separate them, we need to tattoo their arms, we need to make them wear the yellow Star of David, we need to put them in concentration camps, we basically just need to kill them all because they are dangerous."

Nevertheless, it does make a point. Lots and lots of ordinary Americans are ready to do exactly what the Germans did in World War II. It may even be a majority. I know some of them, and under ordinary conditions, they are normal, pleasant, well-meaning people. They've been whipped into this frenzy by the demagogery of Bush and his gang of storm troopers, just as the Germans were by Hitler before World War II.

It's truly unfortunate that we have so many Americans who are susceptible to this kind of stuff, but it's even more unfortunate we have a leader who makes use of their susceptibility this way.

One thing I do have to say to my Muslim friends abroad, some of whom I believe are readers of this blog. As much as I'd like to see you, please don't make any immediate visits to America unless you really, really have to. This is a dangerous place right now.