TRUTH wrote:

"cjcampbell" wrote in
ups.com:


TRUTH wrote:

"Jim Macklin" wrote in
news:uX8Lf.104268$4l5.39451@dukeread05:


It was sad and never should have been allowed to happen.
Some people knew what was planned, many escaped, but the
world was unwilling to stop Hitler. Hope we don't make the
same error again.


Anyone here familiar with the Bush family/ Nazi connection???

Ah, at last. I hereby invoke Godwin's Law. "LIAR" loses the argument
and the thread is ended.





You don't have a clue do you? Another government controlled corporate
CNN/FOX brainwashed person'


Godwin's Law
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Godwin's Law (also Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies) is an adage in Internet
culture originated by Mike Godwin on Usenet in 1990 that states:

As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison
involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.

There is a tradition in many Usenet newsgroups that once such a comparison is
made, the thread in which the comment was posted is over and whoever mentioned
the Nazis has automatically lost whatever debate was in progress.

It is considered poor form to raise arbitrarily such a comparison with the
motive of ending the thread. There is a widely recognized codicil that any
such deliberate invocation of Godwin's Law will be unsuccessful.

Contents


* 1 Origin
* 2 Debate and controversy
* 3 Notes
* 4 See also
* 5 External links and references


Origin

Godwin's Law was named after Mike Godwin, an attorney who was legal counsel
for the Electronic Frontier Foundation at the time the law was first
popularized. He has since written a book about free speech and online privacy
called Cyber Rights: Defending Free Speech in the Digital Age in which he
discusses the origin of Godwin's Law.

Godwin established the law as part of an experiment in memetics, the study of
information transfer. On Usenet there was a trend toward demonizing opponents
in arguments by comparing the position they held to that of Hitler or the
Nazis, in Godwin's own words "a trivialization I found both illogical and
offensive." [1] So, in 1990, Godwin developed the law as a counter-meme and
began posting it in Usenet discussions after such a comparison occurred.

Richard Sexton maintains that Godwin's Law is a formalization of his October
16, 1989, post [2]:

You can tell when a USENET discussion is getting old when one of the
participents [sic] drags out Hitler and the Nazis.

Strictly speaking, however, Godwin's Law is different from Sexton's statement,
since it does not claim that such a reference or comparison makes a discussion
"old" or, for that matter, that such a reference or comparison means that a
discussion is over.


Debate and controversy

One common objection to the invocation of Godwin's Law is that sometimes using
Hitler or the Nazis is an apt way of making a point. For instance, if one is
debating the relative merits of a particular leader, and someone says
something like, "He's a good leader, look at the way he's improved the
economy," one could reply, "Just because he improved the economy doesn't make
him a good leader. Even Hitler improved the economy." Some would view this as
a perfectly acceptable comparison. One uses Hitler as a well-known example of
an extreme case that requires no explanation to prove that a generalization is
not universally true.

Some would argue, however, that Godwin's Law applies especially to the
situation mentioned above, as it portrays an inevitable appeal to emotion as
well as holding an implied ad hominem attack on the subject being compared,
both of which are fallacious in irrelevant contexts. Hitler, on a semiotic
level, has far too many negative connotations associated with him to be used
as a valid comparison to anything but other despotic dictators. Thus, Godwin's
Law holds even in making comparisons to normal leaders that, on the surface,
would seem to be reasonable comparisons.

Godwin's standard answer to this objection is to note that Godwin's Law does
not dispute whether, in a particular instance, a reference or comparison to
Hitler or the Nazis might be apt. It is precisely because such a reference or
comparison may sometimes be appropriate, Godwin has argued, that hyperbolic
overuse of the Hitler/Nazi comparison should be avoided. Avoiding such
hyperbole, he argues, is a way of ensuring that when valid comparisons to
Hitler or Nazis are made, such comparisons have the appropriate impact.


Notes

From a philosophical standpoint, Godwin's Law could be said to exclude
normative (emotional) considerations from a positivist (rational) discussion.
Frequently, a reference to Hitler is used as an evocation of evil. Thus a
discussion proceeding on a positivist examination of facts is considered
terminated when this objective consideration is transformed into a normative
discussion of subjective right and wrong. It is exacerbated by the frequent
fallacy "Hitler did A, therefore A is evil" (Reductio ad Hitlerum.) However,
as noted, the exceptions to Godwin's Law include the invocation of the Hitler
comparison in a positivist manner that does not have a normative dimension.

In general, Godwin's Law does not apply in situations wherein one could
reasonably expect Hitler or Nazis to be mentioned, such as a discussion of
Germany in World War II. Exceptions, of course, may exist and should be
obvious given the preceding discussion.

On December 12, 2005, Godwin's Law was the subject of a question in the UK
television quiz show University Challenge.


See also

* Benford's law of controversy
* Jargon File
* Reductio ad Hitlerum
* Wilcox-McCandlish law of online discourse evolution
* Adages named after people



External links and references
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* Godwin's Law FAQ
* Usenet posting: Mike Godwin restates the Usenet variant of Godwin's Law
(Aug 1991)
* Godwin's Law entry in the Jargon File
* Godwin's Law in Ursine's Jargon Wiki.
* Meme, Counter-meme, Mike Godwin, Wired 2.10, October 1994—Godwin
discusses his Law
* EFF page on Godwin's Law and reformulations
* ADL calls added definition of nazi offensive
* Mike Godwin runs a blog called "Godwin's Law."
* Usenet posting: Richard Sexton's original post (Oct 1989)
* Jurisimprudence: a listing of various fandom and Internet debate laws
similar to Godwin's Law
* Reason magazine, 14 July 2005. "Hands Off Hitler!: It's time to repeal
Godwin's Law".
* Breaking Godwin's Law
* Westgard's Law: a corollary of Godwin's Law regarding the First Amendment