I Hate Using This Analogy But …

… I couldn't help noticing that the following Planned Parenthood tactic:

It's an ingenious idea. Create a no-win situation for anti-choice protesters — the more picketers who demonstrate outside a Planned Parenthood clinic, the more donations the Planned Parenthood clinic receives.

A number of Planned Parenthood affiliates have created different versions of this scenario. Here's how it works at Planned Parenthood of Central Texas (PPCT) in Waco, where the Pledge-a-Picket program is going strong: Each time a protester shows up at the clinic, a donation is made to PPCT. This campaign makes lemonade out of lemons by allowing Planned Parenthood supporters to pledge between 25 cents and one dollar per protester.

Despite the low pledge cap, which is designed to encourage donations, the money adds up, especially since the picketers never go away. Every month, participating donors get a short update on activities and a monthly billing for their pledge. It's like sponsoring a runner in a charity marathon.

Once a week, PPCT puts a sign outside its clinic that says, "Even Our Protesters Support Planned Parenthood." To date, the Pledge-a-Picket program has raised $18,000 for PPCT. While not a significant chunk of its overall revenues, Pledge-a-Picket contributes greatly to PPCT's patient assistance fund, which helps clients who don't have resources get the care they need.

resembles an earlier tactic by the Ideology That Must Not Be Named:

A point worth remembering in this regard is what happened in the Netherlands.  There were more protests by Dutch bishops than anywhere else in Western Europe, and as a consequence the Nazis came down really hard on the Jews in Holland (even those that were Catholic).  A larger percentage of Jews in Holland were lost than anywhere else in the West. Some 100,000, or 80% of the entire Jewish population in the country, were killed by the Nazis.

I suspect that the Nazis in the Netherlands were encouraged by the silence elsewhere in Europe. More recently, the Groningen protocol or the murder of Theo Van Gogh might have been based on the idea that “It shut 'em up last time …”