On The Horse’s Mouth last week, I wrote a post that criticized Nazi/fascist comparisons made by various public figures, including Sean Penn’s recent suggestion that fascism has come to America under President Bush.

In it, I specifically disavowed any equivalence between the importance of Penn and more powerful conservatives who used rhetoric comparing war opponents to Nazi appeasers, but pointed out that the principle is the same in both cases: “Penn is hardly as powerful or influential as the White House or O’Reilly, but this kind of rhetoric is destructive no matter who it comes from.”

Nonetheless, Eric Alterman slammed me for — guess what? — suggesting equivalence between Penn and his rhetorical counterparts on the right:

I am with Atrios on this. Absolutely, the left needs to police itself and I think I do as much of this as a person can, in my position(s). But this “the-left-is-just-as-bad-as-the-right” disease in a liberal publication that knows well the differences both in power as well as ethics between contemporary conservatives and liberals is beyond counterproductive. It’s downright destructive. What’s more, it’s sloppily done, as the commenters here, and on previous Atrios posts have demonstrated.

Meanwhile, George Soros, the liberal financier and aspiring public intellectual, has written a new book in which he compares President Bush to Communists and Nazis — here’s the transcript from CNN today:

BLITZER: Let’s talk about your new book, “The Age of Fallibility: Consequences of the War on Terror.” I want to read to you a quote that sort of startled me, I’m sure a lot of your readers, once they read it: “The Bush administration and the Nazi and Communist regimes all engaged in the politics of fear. Indeed, the Bush administration has been able to improve on the technique used by the Nazi and Communist propaganda machines by drawing on the innovations of the advertising and marketing industries.”

Now, when a lot of people hear comparisons between President Bush and Nazis and Communists, they’re going to say, George Soros, you’ve gone over the top.

SOROS: You actually picked up the most incendiary part of the book. And I am very careful to draw a clear distinction between the Nazi regime and our open society, because we are a democracy, but there are some similarities in the propaganda method, which I pointed out.

BLITZER: But, George Soros, you lived through the Holocaust. You know firsthand what the Nazis were doing. You lived through the Cold War, the worst of the Stalinist era. To make comparisons between the president of the United States and these regimes, a lot of people are going to say, what are you thinking?

SOROS: Well, that is unfortunate because I think there are some serious arguments about our open society being endangered by the policies followed by the Bush administration. The war on terror, which does not have an end, changes — it leads to an undue extension of executive powers. It has stifled debate. Criticizing the president is considered unpatriotic, and as a result, we have been following policies which endanger our position in the world.

BLITZER: A lot of people will agree with you on that but where they will starkly disagree is to then bring in the whole Nazi and Communist comparison.

SOROS: Actually, it’s a valid point, and maybe I did go over the line, but I think that on the whole, my assessment is a balanced one. And the fact that, frankly, when President Bush said, you are either with us or you are with the terrorists, that’s when I was reminded, but I should have probably kept it to myself.

BLITZER: Because I’ll read to you what you wrote in The Washington Post in 2003. You said, “When I hear Bush say, ‘You’re either with us or against us,’ it reminds me of the Germans. My experiences under Nazi and Soviet rule have sensitized me. Bush feels that on September 11th he was anointed by God. He is leading the U.S. and the world toward a vicious circle of escalating violence.”

That’s what you said then. Now I guess you acknowledge you went over the top.

I co-wrote a whole book about President Bush’s PR tactics, but comparing them Nazi or Communist tactics is way over the line. Even Soros admits he may have gone too far. So will Alterman “police” the left? Don’t hold your breath.