Hagee Claims That Holocaust Was God's Will

Recently, convervatives were climbing all over one another to criticize Barack Obama for not repudiating the support of his controversial pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

At the same time, they saw no problem with John McCain actively seeking the endorsement of fundamentalist preacher, John Hagee, who was known to have extreme anti-Catholic views.

It turns out that this was just the tip of a very dirty iceberg. A shocking 1990s-era Hagee sermon has recently come to light that underscores just how extreme Hagee's bigotry is:

I'll let Hagee's words speak for themselves:

Theodore Hertzel is the father of Zionism. He was a Jew who at the turn of the 19th century said, this land is our land, God wants us to live there. So he went to the Jews of Europe and said 'I want you to come and join me in the land of Israel.' So few went that Hertzel went into depression. Those who came founded Israel; those who did not went through the hell of the holocaust.

Then god sent a hunter. A hunter is someone with a gun and he forces you. Hitler was a hunter. And the Bible says — Jeremiah writing — 'They shall hunt them from every mountain and from every hill and from the holes of the rocks,' meaning there's no place to hide. And that might be offensive to some people but don't let your heart be offended. I didn't write it, Jeremiah wrote it. It was the truth and it is the truth. How did it happen? Because God allowed it to happen. Why did it happen? Because God said my top priority for the Jewish people is to get them to come back to the land of Israel.

This leaves me nearly speechless; there are not words enough to express just how deep my contempt is for Hagee.

Though McCain has rightly repudiated Hagee's support in light of this sermon, other conservatives have so far been strangely silent. Do I detect a double standard here?

Suddenly, Rev Wright doesn't seem so bad, after all.