-- At 10:06 AM 3/1/2001 -0800, Tim May wrote:
I believe there are many valid ways to refer to the Nazis and Hitler without some knee jerk invocation of Godwin's Law. (I haven't talked to Mike in several years, but I expect he would agree that Godwin's Law is often, even usually, invoked in a knee-jerk way.)
The twentieth century taught us many enormously important lessons about human nature, social organization, and economics. Some people are very unhappy with those lessons, so they spin them, or find reasons to ignore them. "It was not socialism, it was state capitalism" Most invocations of Godwin's law are excuses for not remembering. When someone spins the lessons of nazism in a misleading way, other people usually do not invoke Godwin's law, instead they respond with the opposite spin. Most of the time when Godwin's law is invoked, it is an inappropriate response to an appropriate invocation of the lessons of the twentieth century. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG RCoqtjZH3uUscZtSOD+ypJ18lnwRKVrrCiCJ4BK 4oaDXQkf2S0RFEwGNPUi8f/2ccMiadE+oSllluHeY