SIVACRACY.NET

Dropping a "Hitler" or a "Nazi" ends the conversation, according to Godwin. Mike Godwin gets some righteous props in the Washington Post.

Jim Manley, spokesman for Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid yesterday provided a compilation that included, among other things, a statement from Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) last year in which he said the Kyoto Protocol "would deal a powerful blow on the whole [of] humanity similar to the one humanity experienced when Nazism and Communism flourished." Reid's office also charged that Inhofe and House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) had compared the Environmental Protection Agency to the Gestapo, that Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) had "linked stem cell research to Nazism" and that former Republican senator Phil Gramm "compared a Democratic tax plan to Nazi law."

All of this is consistent with the escalation of political rhetoric in general, says Deborah Tannen, a professor of linguistics at Georgetown and an expert on political discourse. She mentions the Senate debate over filibusters, in which the "nuclear option" loomed. And conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh, who rails against "feminazis." "It's all part of the same verbal inflation," Tannen says, adding that feminists generally refrain from torturing people.

There is a dictum in Internet culture called Godwin's Law (after Mike Godwin, a lawyer who coined the maxim), which posits that the longer an online discussion persists, the more likely it is that someone will compare something to the Nazis or Hitler.

I am most disquieted by the comparison because few things approach the level of Naziism. So most comparisons deny respect to those who suffered, died, and survived Nazi terror.

I made the same mistake a few weeks back with "Gulag" comparisons.

There is another danger. It can distract. For instance, Sen. Durbin did his argument no favors by allowing his opponents to shift the focus from torture to diction. We have seen it here on this blog.

Sen. Inhofe probably has some important things to say about the Kyoto Protocols. We will never know. He ruined his case by going Nazi on us. Sessions might have had a complex argument about stem cells. Gramm certainly had a lot to say about taxes.

It's about the action, people. Not the diction.