Can we all please resolve to stop throwing "Nazi" references around every time we are ticked off about the behavior of a public official or someone whose views we oppose?

Those on the left and right both do it far too often, invoking uncomfortable comparisons with Adolf Hitler's band of Nazis on their sworn "mortal" political enemies whenever they do something distasteful in their eyes.

Just last week, that tendency surfaced again in a most unlikely place, a local meeting of the board of selectmen. The board controls no armies, and yields no weapons. So it was especially disconcerting to read about what was said during last Thursday's North Attleboro Board of Selectmen's meeting.

Selectman Michael Thompson, upset over the proposal by fellow Selectman Mark Williamson to place an article on the September town meeting warrant to expand the town administrator's authority, made this statement about Williamson's proposal:

"The only thing you're doing is throwing some more mud in to the whole mess, so the whole thing gets killed," he said, referring to the town council-mayor form of government proposal that the town meeting members are due to debate. "You want to go play Nazi Germany, go play it somewhere else. This is America, we don't do that." To be sure, the North Attleboro political situation has been most frustrating and disappointing for the last several years, but no one should suggest that the town's leaders are acting at all like members of the Third Reich.

But Thompson has hardly been the only one who has made that unfortunate slip of the tongue over the years. The infamous - some would say hysterical; others would say notorious - "Seinfeld" episode about a gourmet soup chef, who is so crazed about his creations that he turns tyrannical when it comes to deciding who is worthy of being served his soup, was dubbed "The Soup Nazi," and after that, it seemed as if whenever someone didn't like something, the Nazi terminology was used.

Those, for example, favoring a crackdown on smoking in public were dubbed "smoking Nazis." Those favoring more stringent control over food products were called "food Nazis."

Enough already!

The Nazis were not the bumbling likes of Col. Klink and Sgt. Shultz portrayed on the 1960s TV sit-com "Hogan's Heroes," who were always being outwitted and outsmarted by the superior American and British prisoners in Stalag 13. That only happened every Friday night. "Hogan's Heroes" became a favorite of the sons and daughters of many World War II veterans precisely because it made the Nazis seem something that they were not: harmless idiots.

Unfortunately, they were anything but. They were an example of cold-hearted bureaucrats turned monsters, who targeted just about everyone but members of the alleged "master" or Aryan (Germanic) race for extinction. And the Internet is full of reprehensible Web sites favored by neo-Nazis who regret that Hitler's plan for "The Final Solution" was ultimately foiled.

So, please: No more Nazi comparisons. The Germany that they populated was one of the most heinous regimes in history, and that period of time was so traumatic that it makes many of us who are related to Concentration Camp victims shudder. The Holocaust really happened, and Hitler and his Nazis came frighteningly close to carrying out their diabolical plans.

So, let us all resolve to oppose viewpoints without calling people names - and especially without calling people the ultimate bad name.

LARRY KESSLER is a Sun Chronicle local news editor. He can be reached at lkessler@thesunchronicle.com.