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To: JasonC
It's just true to life, that's all.

What's true to life? The usenet posting rule that says if people resort to calling each other Nazis after a long flame war, the discussion has outlived its usefulness? Or the idea that the Third Reich is off-limits in any and all discussion of politics and history?

As a rule of thumb in the world of internet flame wars, I suppose Godwin's observation (sorry, "Laws" do require authority if I'm going to abide by them) was accurate, if not redundant. As a mechanism to erase the lessons of the Third Reich from political discourse altogether, it's absurd and dangerous. I don't know if the latter was Mike Godwin's intent (knowing something about him might help in understanding that), but I know that's what it's become. In its present form, it's a specious trump card for terminally lazy cyberpundits.

Tell me, should "Godwin's Law" be invoked if someone makes the obvious analogy in a discussion about the Islamic Republic?

321 posted on 04/07/2009 7:37:14 PM PDT by WhistlingPastTheGraveyard
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To: WhistlingPastTheGraveyard
What is true to life is bankrupt moral idiots with no arguments or wit, will always reach for a rhetorical nuke of a ad hominem smear to make up for their own witless stupidity. We've all seen it five thousand times by now. And when conservatives do it, they don't do it any better. They just persuade bystanders that conservatism has no remaining rational arguments. Now, that is not the case; precisely why it is a mistake and a piece of stupidity to put up with it. We are better than this. Cut it out. Yesterday.
324 posted on 04/07/2009 7:40:24 PM PDT by JasonC
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