Via Mediaite, Dr. Ben Carson–a best-selling author and Fox News contributor who’s hinting he might run for president in 2016–is once again comparing the United States to Nazi Germany.

Having previously said America is “very much like Nazi Germany,” Dr. Carson was asked about this by the Washington Post. Does he regret the comparison? The answer: No.

“You can’t dance around it,” he told the Post. “If people look at what I said and were not political about it, they’d have to agree. Most people in Germany didn’t agree with what Hitler was doing…. Exactly the same thing can happen in this country if we are not willing to stand up for what we believe in.”

So does Dr. Carson really believe that dispassionate people “have to agree” with him that America today is “very much like Nazi Germany”? This claim, having been stated and re-stated, is what you’d expect from a disoriented mind.

Just for the record, according to the widely respected Freedom House, on a scale of one to seven–with one being the best rating–the U.S. earned the highest rating possible in the three areas Freedom House examines: freedom status, political rights, and civil rights. So far from being very much like one of the most tyrannical and malignant regimes in human history, America is one of the freest nations on earth. Not perfect for sure; but not Nazi Germany, either.

None of this means, of course, that some things President Obama has done aren’t quite problematic. They are; and many of us have written repeatedly about them. Still, Dr. Carson’s rhetoric is unhinged. If he really believes what he says–if he can’t distinguish between Germany under Hitler and America under Obama–he’s not to be taken seriously. It would mean his sense of reality is massively distorted, that he’s living in a world of make-believe. And if he doesn’t believe what he says but is simply saying it to win the hearts of some on the right, he’s unusually irresponsible and cynical.

From my vantage point Dr. Carson seems to be trying to appeal to, and perhaps has had his attitudes influenced by, people on the right who routinely toss around words like “tyranny” and “police state” to describe America. There seems to be a competition in some circles to see who can employ the most extreme language to characterize America during the Obama years. This is a mirror image of what the left did in the 1960s and 1970s. Now it’s some on the right who employ this slander.

What we’re seeing is a species of Obama Derangement Syndrome. (Liberals suffered from Bush Derangement Syndrome in the previous decade.) It’s what sometimes happens when those belonging to a political party/movement become enraged by the actions of a president who is from the other party. Their rhetoric spins utterly out of control. In doing so, they discredit themselves and the movement they purport to represent.

Dr. Carson really needs to stop with America-is-like-Nazi-Germany comparisons.