"I don't have a bank account, because I don't know my mother's maiden name." - Paula Poundstone

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Someone: "Yeah when those Nazi propagandists portrayed Jews as filthy moneygrubbers and conmen in their textbooks, why didn't the Jews sue the Nazis in court? Why did they just keep silent and pray the Kaddish more? There was something basically wrong! Those Jews really had something to hide!"


Someone was telling me that you shouldn't use Nazi examples to make your points, since it tends to silence discussion. He then invoked Godwin's Law ("As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.") When I pressed him further, he admitted that similar comparisons, like with the USSR, should be avoided for similar reasons.

But then, the reason why extreme examples are used is not only (or not at all, even) for their emotional appeal, but to drive home the point one wants to make - when making analogies no one ever chooses examples which are milder, weaker or less extreme than what one is comparing them to, for that would be counter-productive.

Furthermore, extreme examples tend to have been heard of by everyone and so provide a common context which all participants in the discussion/debate/argument are familiar with. Citing the example of the Turkish genocide of the Armenians might simply fall through the spaces of your audience's ignorance, and whereas essentially everyone agrees that the Nazis were evil and it's undesirable and indeed dangerous to tend in their direction, apologists for the Great Leap Forward or Soviet Collectivization might still be found.

As long as comparisons are valid and faux [moral] equivalence avoided ("XXX has a moustache. Therefore he is just as bad as Hitler!"), there isn't anything wrong using the Nazis or some such as examples.


Someone: "the problem is in the infantile way people in the US use hitler to compare with anyone and anything they mildly dislike

Godwin's law is not a law of syllogism, but rather an observation of typical behaviour in american discourse"

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"Jews, for example, should not stable their cattle in a pundaq belonging to a Samaritan or a Gentile lest the beasts come to harm (particularly sexual harm)" (p. 14) - Hoho.

It seems that just as most of the people against abortion are men, most libertarians are all rich people.

2 people told me I look Hawaiian. Wth.

After a while cooking can get sian. Or maybe it's traveling and coming back and having to cook again, running out of ideas, having no space, having food rot and/or having so much pork floss left even though you're sick of it. Those who disagree, when pressed, are revealed to only cook infrequently - something like once a week. At that frequency, it's no wonder.

Someone said the whole of the 86 Oxford batch from Singapore is composed of fundies and/or party animals/light-headed people, and this shows the "decline of the enlightened and tational values of the 85 batch and before". Bah. I do agree though that the fundie cancer is spreading through successive generations.

I think that saying that people get the governments they deserve is similar to saying that women who get raped are to blame for it - in both cases the victims probably could have done something to prevent their misfortune (being gunned down by soldiers in the former case and carrying around pepper spray/not being consumed with guilt and self-loathing in the latter), but to throw the blame wholly or even predominantly on the victim is not only wrong but grossly immoral. I have slightly more sympathy to the school of thought that says that people deserve the governments they vote for - if someone wants to be raped repeatedly there's not much you can do to help them.

I wonder why apologists never mention the inconvenient tens of extant Gnostic gospels (considering many were destroyed by the early Church, more no doubt exist). Even in the rare cases when they're mentioned, they're summarily dismissed with a lame excuse (a la The Case for Christ).

I wonder if the old NKF would've been so free with its defamation suits if it had not been afraid of the truth getting out, or had nothing to hide.