Mike Godwin speaks out

[Cain]

http://letters.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2010/07/01/godwin/permalink/d9c9180de9d0fce57c2f3b5329785fbd.html

While it's correct to say that my original experiment in memetic engineering was intended to be humorous, it was not at all "lighthearted," as Glenn characterizes it.

It was, in fact, with a heavy heart, dismayed at how quickly the enormity of the Nazis and the Holocaust was being eroded in political culture, that I set out to inspire people to think more deeply about glib comparisons.

I've written about Godwin's Law on more than one occasion since formulating it. For example, I explained what I was up to in a 1994 article in Wired, "Meme, Counter-meme." More recently I reflected on the enduring impact of Godwin's Law in Jewcy.com ("I Seem To Be A Verb: 18 Years of Godwin's Law.")

People familiar with my work and writings will find plenty of ammunition there to use against those who would glibly shut down discussions. The purpose of Godwin's Law is to provoke remembering, not forgetting (and certainly not silence).

Said in response to this:

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/07/01/godwin/index.html

Responding to the neocon objections to my post on the universality of war-justifying propaganda, Kevin Drum writes that it's "time to repeal Godwin's Law" -- at least the distorted version which purports to prohibit all comparisons to German crimes -- labeling it an "an endlessly tiresome way of feigning moral indignation."  Kevin adds:  "WWII analogies are extremely useful because they're familiar to almost everyone."  I agree:  the very notion that a major 20th Century event like German aggression is off-limits in political discussions is both arbitrary and anti-intellectual in the extreme.  There simply are instances where such comparisons uniquely illuminate important truths:  recall, for example, Andrew Sullivan's consequential discovery of the stark similarities between the Bush/Cheney and Gestapo "enhanced interrogation" documents, both in terms of approved tactics and "justifications."  To demand that German crimes be treated as sacred and unmentionable is to deprive our discourse of critical truths.

But this prohibition is even more odious than that.  A primary point of the Nuremberg Trials was to seize on the extraordinary horror of what the Germans did in order to set forth general principles to be applied not only to the individual war criminals before the tribunal, but more important, to all countries in the future.

[Cramulus]

OW! MOTHERFUCKER!

Cain I am holding YOU responsible for how hard my palm just met my face

[Cain]

I was just amazed to see Mike Godwin on an internet comments section.  I wonder if he goes from site to site, correcting glib comparisons to Nazism?  And if so, would he ever escape once he found his way to the Teabagger's forum?