Just when the debate about the proposal to build a mosque near Ground Zero seemed like it couldn't get any more fractious, enter Newt Gingrich. The former Speaker of the House of Representatives and putative 2012 Republican candidate for the presidency weighed in by saying the desire to build a house of worship in downtown New York was akin to Nazis wanting to put up a sign near a holocaust museum. Even in an era when so much political discourse is poisonous and perspective is often the first casualty in every argument, this was an especially specious comparison.

What does it say about the mood in America then that Gingrich mightn't even win the contest to find the most Egregious Hitlerian Metaphor of the Summer award? Certainly, he'd be run close in any public vote by Steve Schwarzman, the billionaire co-founder and chairman of the Blackstone Group, one of the world's largest private equity firms. "It's a war," said Schwarzman recently when discussing President Barack Obama trying to increase taxes on private equity firms. "It's like when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939."

Yup, that's exactly what it's like. The democratically-elected leader of a free country is trying to enact legislation to take money off one of the richest groups of people in the country in order to distribute it to those with far less. If that's not Hitler marching into Poland then nothing is.