Glenn Beck's insult to Norway

This is personal, folks. Glenn Beck said on his show that the youth camp on Utoya island in Norway where scores of young people were slaughtered by a madman last week was a camp that “sounds a little like the Hitler Youth or whatever.”

Unlike Beck, Norwegians actually know what real Nazis were like. My mother, may she rest in peace, was a Norwegian who spent her teenage years under Nazi occupation. My grandfather was a member of the Labor Party that ran the camp on Utoya, and he put his life on the line in the underground fighting against Nazis during World War II.

Whether I would agree with his politics today is irrelevant. My grandfather is my hero. He was arrested by the Gestapo more than once and tortured. Once he was turned in by a member of the Mormon congregation over which he was branch president. But he never gave up the fight.

He wasn’t alone. Scores of patriotic Norwegians and their children were tortured, sent to frontlines as cannon fodder or executed by Nazis during those years. To even raise the name of Hitler in this manner during the aftermath of the biggest tragedy in Norway since the war years is not only insulting, it’s painfully ignorant.

But here’s the best part. Glenn Beck asks, “Who does a camp for kids that’s all about politics? Disturbing.”

Turns out a tea party group in Florida sponsors just such a camp for kids. Read about it here.