Spring Break
Don't fall to trappings of Godwin's Law
Bill Bradford
Issue date: 10/29/08 Section: Forum
But then he went a step further, once again invoking Godwin's Law:
Martin Niemöller once said, "When they came for me, there were none left to speak out." He was referring to the Nazi's ideology of selecting one group to persecute, and laid out the Nazi progression from Communists to Jews and finally to himself. The same logic should be employed when examining the class warfare of Obama and Biden: if we allow any to be exploited (wealthy or not), then we are allowing all to be exploited.
Whoa. Comparing the Obama tax plan to Nazi persecution is not only a very bad analogy, it is blatantly offensive to every Jew and Holocaust survivor. The very complaint Godwin makes against such analogies ("Reductio ad Hitlerium," he calls it), is that it trivializes the most despicable act in human history.
Plus, the class warfare analogy itself is entirely misleading. The conservatives launched class warfare against the liberals in the 1960s. Pat Buchanan and Newt Gingrich revived it in the 1990s under the new moniker of "The Culture Wars." Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly kept it alive into this decade, and Sarah Palin put lipstick on it during the Republican National Convention.
Recently it has been seen in John McCain's hysteria over The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. Republicans claim to be saving democracy from voter fraud. Actually, what ACORN is doing (if anything) is voter-registration fraud. Registering multiple times is not against the law; only your most recent registration is counted.
Here's a prime example. In Ohio, conservatives used the same hysteria, in part, to suppress or revoke the votes of nearly 200,000 low-income people of color in 2004. According to Representative Dennis Kucinich, "Dirty tricks occurred across the state, including phony letters from Boards of Elections telling people that their registration through some Democratic activist groups were invalid. "
From my perspective, it would appear that McCain is the one engaging in class warfare, reminiscent of 1933, when Joseph Goebbels...
Oh crap! Now I've invoked Godwin's Law! Actually, it is like a virus.
I beg of you, my fellow Baro writers, readers and pundits, cease invoking Godwin's Law. Go ahead and mischaracterize Obama as a "socialist" or a "friend of terrorists," if it turns your crank. But let's avoid the Nazi talk and Hitler analogies. It's bad form, and it weakens any cogent point you are trying to make.
Bill Bradford is a graduate student at OSU. The opinions expressed in his columns do not necessarily represent the opinion of the Daily Barometer staff. Bradford can be reached at forum@dailybarometer.com.
Martin Niemöller once said, "When they came for me, there were none left to speak out." He was referring to the Nazi's ideology of selecting one group to persecute, and laid out the Nazi progression from Communists to Jews and finally to himself. The same logic should be employed when examining the class warfare of Obama and Biden: if we allow any to be exploited (wealthy or not), then we are allowing all to be exploited.
Whoa. Comparing the Obama tax plan to Nazi persecution is not only a very bad analogy, it is blatantly offensive to every Jew and Holocaust survivor. The very complaint Godwin makes against such analogies ("Reductio ad Hitlerium," he calls it), is that it trivializes the most despicable act in human history.
Plus, the class warfare analogy itself is entirely misleading. The conservatives launched class warfare against the liberals in the 1960s. Pat Buchanan and Newt Gingrich revived it in the 1990s under the new moniker of "The Culture Wars." Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly kept it alive into this decade, and Sarah Palin put lipstick on it during the Republican National Convention.
Recently it has been seen in John McCain's hysteria over The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. Republicans claim to be saving democracy from voter fraud. Actually, what ACORN is doing (if anything) is voter-registration fraud. Registering multiple times is not against the law; only your most recent registration is counted.
Here's a prime example. In Ohio, conservatives used the same hysteria, in part, to suppress or revoke the votes of nearly 200,000 low-income people of color in 2004. According to Representative Dennis Kucinich, "Dirty tricks occurred across the state, including phony letters from Boards of Elections telling people that their registration through some Democratic activist groups were invalid. "
From my perspective, it would appear that McCain is the one engaging in class warfare, reminiscent of 1933, when Joseph Goebbels...
Oh crap! Now I've invoked Godwin's Law! Actually, it is like a virus.
I beg of you, my fellow Baro writers, readers and pundits, cease invoking Godwin's Law. Go ahead and mischaracterize Obama as a "socialist" or a "friend of terrorists," if it turns your crank. But let's avoid the Nazi talk and Hitler analogies. It's bad form, and it weakens any cogent point you are trying to make.
Bill Bradford is a graduate student at OSU. The opinions expressed in his columns do not necessarily represent the opinion of the Daily Barometer staff. Bradford can be reached at forum@dailybarometer.com.
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Viewing Comments 1 - 2 of 2
morgamic
Mike
posted 10/29/08 @ 8:10 PM PST
Good post, and I hope those other guys learn that when discussions, even when driven by an agenda, deteriorate completely when you jump to extremes to support your arguments. (Continued…)
Tim Foekema
posted 1/03/09 @ 9:38 AM PST
All true, but beware of the fact that i can now do anything as a Nazi would have. When commented on, i can just refer to godwin! Agreed, he does make a good point and in some cases (obama) discussions go waaay to far. (Continued…)
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