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Nazis Not A No-No?

By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Dumb Things Said By Smart People

LA Times columnist Jonathan Chiat makes an interesting point about the use of Nazis in public discourse:

The main complaint against Hitler analogies in American political discourse is that they’re inherently hysterical, comparing run-of-the-mill conservatives or liberals with the most evil force in human history. And of course, it’s crazy to compare one’s political opponents to Nazis, unless they happen to be genocidal totalitarians, a category that’s fortunately very small in American politics.

But when Nazis are invoked, it’s often not to make a moral comparison but to establish a logical principle. That’s the main mistake made by those who decry Nazi allusions. They ignore, or fail to grasp, the distinction between comparing someone to Hitler and using a historical analogy that draws on the Nazi era.

Yeahhhhh….

I’m going to have to go ahead and completely disagree with you on that one Jonathan. ;-)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 15th, 2005 and is filed under Dumb Things Said By Smart People. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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