Gopher Writes:
"
What's been lost in all this is the fact that the quest for human perfection is a Nazi ideal. And nobody exemplifies that crazed ideal more than does Coulter who hate filled rants have been excused for far too long by her allies in the extreme right."
From Wikipedia:
"The term
reductio ad Hitlerum (sometimes rendered
reductio ad Hitlerem)—whimsical
Latin for "reduction to Hitler"—was originally coined by
University of Chicago professor and
ethicist Leo Strauss. The phrase comes from the better known
logical argument reductio ad absurdum. It is a variety of
association fallacy and may also be described as
argumentum ad nazium, though some distinguish the latter as referring to Nazi actions or beliefs with
reductio ad Hitlerum being reserved for arguments involving Hitler himself. The relative frequency of such comparisons in
Usenet discussions led to the formulation of
Godwin's Law in
1990. The
reductio ad Hitlerum fallacy assumes the form of "
Adolf Hitler (or the
Nazi party) supported
X; therefore
X must be
evil/undesirable/bad, etc"; or, less commonly, "Adolf Hitler was against
X; therefore
X must be good, desirable, praiseworthy, etc." This fallacy is often effective due to the near-instant condemnation of anything to do with Hitler or the Nazis.
It is important to understand that those policies advocated by Hitler and his party which
are generally considered evil are all condemned by themselves, not
because Hitler supported them. In other words:
genocide and Aryan
white supremacism (for example) are not considered evil because Hitler advocated them, but rather Hitler is considered evil because he advocated them.
The fallacious nature of
Reductio ad Hitlerum is best illustrated by identifying
X as something that Adolf Hitler or his supporters did promote but which is not considered unethical — for example,
X = "building
expressways",
X = "painting
watercolors",
X = "owning
dogs",
X =
vegetarianism. It may also be refuted through counterexamples:"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_Hitlerum
What has been lost in the effort to make no one feel bad is to replace striving for excellence with striving for meritocracy.
