The reductio ad Hitlerum: a refuge of tired minds

 

Reductio ad Hitlerum-- a tired old insult

The link above is from a 2017 City Journal Article.

Quotes:

1.

"A specter haunts Europe—this time, not that of Communism, as the opening lines of The Communist Manifesto famously assert, but that of Adolf Hitler. Nearly three-quarters of a century after Hitler’s death, the mere mention of his name instills fear in disputants’ hearts and brings debate to a stop. The reductio ad Hitlerum is now the most powerful of rhetorical weapons; and the faintest, most far-fetched, or plainly false analogy of an idea or proposal to anything that Hitler said or did is often sufficient to discredit it."



2.

"The reductio ad Hitlerum can reach remote or arcane places. In 1999, Robert Proctor, a historian of science, published The Nazi War on Cancer, which raised the possibility that the man usually most credited with discovering that smoking cigarettes caused lung cancer, the eminent British epidemiologist Sir Richard Doll, had developed his ideas during a prewar visit to Nazi Germany, where the connection between smoking and cancer was first investigated scientifically.

It is likely that Doll feared that an early and frank acknowledgment of any inspiration that he might have drawn from work carried out in a similar field in Germany during the Nazi period would have discredited it; the reductio ad Hitlerum would have been brought to bear against it."



3.

"Recently, with Donald Trump’s election as president, the reductio ad Hitlerum has crossed the Atlantic. The comparisons of Trump with Hitler are (as I write) coming thick and fast."



Comment:



Starting with third quote, the comparison with Hitler has been going on for a long time. The election of Trump is no different from what has been done to others. Although President Carter didn't do it in his debate with GOP challenger Ronald Reagan, there was an attempt to tar and feather him as "dangerous". Reagan responded with " there you go again." This kind of thing isn't new. It is an old tactic.

As for the second quote, it does seem ridiculous to discredit something just because Hitler did it. That was also a way to discredit the practice of making fuel oil out of coal. This was something once considered here in the USA. It was argued against on the basis that Nazi Germany did it. As if that was a meaningful argument.

As for the first quote, it just says what "reduction ad Hitlerum". It is meant to ridicule the tendency to overplay the tactic of reducing everything to same silly argument.

The same silly argument is being used against Trump, but note that the danger to the republic is not coming from him. It is coming from his detractors. The Republic won't end if Trump is in the White House again. To the contrary, the country thrived with him in the White House, and it will likely thrive again if he returns.

The real danger to the Republic occurs when those who attempt to justify the use of a wrecking ball to the same in the name of saving it. If they succeed in "saving" it, one may hardly notice the difference between the new situation than the one that they were purportedly warning against. Like it was said of a village in Viet Nam in the sixties war: "We had to destroy the village in order to save it."

An increasingly insulated and isolated hive mind

 

A couple of links for thoughts to chew on:

The first one relates to the teaching of dialectics, and the Democrat's shifting coalition. This supports the recent post on that subject:

Not being educated but indoctrinated

That one is included so as to disabuse anyone of the idea that the thought was straight from the hip, so to speak. The next one supports the many posts with regards to the dialectic as it applies to political discourse these days:

Biden says maga gop'ers semi-fascist

Once again, there is support for the proposition that to use the term "right" in reference to oneself is a mistake. Not only a mistake, but wrong. When Biden accuses the MAGA people of being "semi-fascist", he is referring to the fascistic corporatist element, and THOSE belong to the Establishment--not MAGA. These are the people that Biden supports. Their brand of "republicanism" is more akin to corporatism, which the Democrat's ( communists) have infiltrated and made their own. They've turned the corporations into a hive of wokists.

I have long noted that the GOP gets the middle income people. The really rich and the really poor have tended to vote Democrat. If the coalitions are shifting, it may well mean that the Democrats are no longer getting support from the lower income people, but increasingly from the well-to-do. So the poor folks are semi-fascist? The middle income people are semi-fascist? Clearly, that cannot be correct.

Biden may be more semi-conscious that anything else. Maybe he reads his "thoughts" from a teleprompter. Evidently, he hasn't thought of what he says, nor has he compared that to the facts. He and the rest of his so-called highly educated supporters are in a bubble of their own making. Communists believe in the monolith. If that mind-control can be enforced, as it always is in communist-controlled societies, it results in a society-wide groupthink. These lead to bad outcomes, that are endemic to top-down control of collectivist societies.

FBI raid on Trump (updated and corrected)

Mar-a-Lago raid may not hold up

Can magistrate judges constitutionally issue search warrants?

According to the Constitution, judges must be appointed by the President. This magistrate judge is not. At least, that is how I am reading this article in the Federalist.

If this is challenged in court, how long would it take to make its way to the Supreme Court?

There isn't any opinion in the article about the possibility of challenging the legality of this search warrant in court.

Aug 10, 2022

This post comes as a consequence of a bit of sloppiness on my part. It is embarrassing to have to correct an error. Hopefully, there won't be more like it.

The FBI raid on Trump is all over the news. I thought I saw an angle to post on it, but there's where the error occurred. My reading of the news showed that this wasn't a Federal Judge, so I thought it was a State Judge. If I had double-checked, I would have found that a magistrate is a federal position. Therefore, I was wrong. If I hadn't been so eager to see what I wanted to see, I would have double-checked and found the error before I posted it.

The post was up for about 3 hours. I found the mistake and took it down. Since I believe that truth is all important, I decided to do this mea culpa for the sake of truth. There's a chance nobody saw it anyway. Why bother? That would be an equivocation of sorts. A lie, but a little one. Better to fess up to even little known errors than to commit even a small lie.

Perhaps it doesn't really matter. But what if people did that in general, as opposed to telling the big lies that seem to get told all the time?

It may not seem to matter because nobody saw it. But maybe just one person did. I'd rather not that something even so seemingly insignificant should happen. It does matter to me even if it doesn't matter to anyone else. Perhaps that is one thing I will allow for myself.

I will keep the original post with a couple notes within the text to cite the error. Other than that, it is the same.

I must be losing it. My apologies.

Note: This post has a factual error, so I took it down.

FBI raid on Trump ( will be corrected)

One thing that really stands out to me is this judge. The judge isn't even a Federal judge. He is a state judge. ????????? {Note: WRONG. No excuses for an error like this. I jumped to conclusions.}

You find speculation on whether this was about Federal records that Trump supposedly had, or it was about J6. Both of these were Federal in a Federal jurisdiction. Why ask a state judge to approve a warrant sought by a Federal agency in a state in another part of the country?

Sometimes something like this could be a courtesy in a routine case, but this is anything but. This is ground breaking. It is unprecedented. Why go to the minor leagues, so to speak, when it is a major league issue? It's like sending a minor leaguer up to bat in the bottom of the ninth with the bases loaded, and it is game 7 of the World Series. When the stakes are so high, why THIS judge?

Did the FBI choose this judge because he was the one most likely to grant their warrant? He is a Obama campaign donor for heaven's sake.

I'm no legal expert, but this alone makes me suspicious. Procedures and precedents matter. But they appeared to have busted through all that like it was nothing.

But do not get cocky says Steven Green on Instapundit

A swing to the right?

Is this good news or bad news? It depends upon what the word "right" means. For those on the left, it is bad. For those on the "right", who identify with that word, it must be good news. What DO these words mean? Let's go over the article first in order to try to answer these questions.

Excerpts:

----Morning Consult has five years worth of data with 8.6 million participants. These are registered voters. Trend is against the left over this time, according to their data.

--- Another phrase worth considering: "ideological spectrum". This phrase is used in the article, and it may have been used in the poll. But that is unclear. One thing IS clear--- Morning Consult is using the left-center-right Marxist paradigm. It is based upon the dialectic. Look that one up. Not going to discuss it here. Let's stick with the polls.

---The article identifies "right" with "conservative". Once again, this a point worth considering. Are the two terms synonymous? This isn't mere pedantry. What DO these words mean? For example, you couldn't be anti-Nazi if you are "hard right". Or could you? If so, then are "conservatives" pro-Nazi then? If "conservatives" ARE anti-Nazi, then are they communist? Those may seem to be silly questions, but in my opinion, this entire discussion is silly.

---The same goes with "liberal". The poll seems to be using this term too, with respect to the left. Are "liberals" leftward? They seem to be these days. But are they really "liberal"? Liberal means "free". Leftism isn't about freedom. It seems to be about "free stuff". There's something funny going on with the language. That's a whole different topic which has been discussed by many, including Dan Bongino and the late Rush Limbaugh. However, nobody seems to be willing to shed light on that topic. Especially poltical commentary like this article.

--- A discussion of the poll posits why, despite these trends, that the GOP doesn't run away with elections.

Comment:

Let me introduce my own theory why the GOP doesn't run away with elections. It is fuzzy thinking like this. If you don't know the meaning of the words you use, then how can you make the case that your party is better than the other guy's? The GOP is "right-wing"? Why would anybody think that this is a good thing? Didn't we fight a World War to beat those kind of guys? Hitler and Mussolini anyone? Is "left wing" good, then? Didn't we fight a Cold War to beat THOSE guys? Stalin and Mao anyone?

Another possibility is that the people who use this Marxist terminology are muddying the waters. A confused voter won't know one from the other, and maybe their voting patterns indicate that. It would seem a better way forward to clarify things, not to confuse things. But confusing things is what this poll does. Don't get cocky indeed.

NY Post --- The left's mask slips on brazen Trump bias

NY post article on Sam Harris, who lets left's mask slip

Excerpts:

--- about Harris: "liberal atheist public intellectual from LA".

--- left says that "Trump is existential threat to democracy", and a "moral emergency".

--- Harris was on British podcast last week

--- next stage of stigmatizing and dehumanizing Trump supporters.

--- Harris tries to justify the suppression of Hunter Biden's laptop story

Comment upon the story:

As I have written many times before, this is a Marxist tactic. Once you divide the public sphere into the left-right-middle dialectical model, all opposition to them becomes fascist. Trump is a real opponent to them, which they recognize. Therefore, he is "fascist". They do this to every Republican candidate. It is very foolish to adopt the left-right-middle dialectical model when that model forces you into submission. If you do not submit, then you are a fascist. No loyal opposition is possible.

Environmentalism a pagan religion?

Environmentalism a pagan religion?

Excerpts:

----Limbaugh once said that "modern enviromentalists worship the created, not the creator."

---Pelosi said after the environmentalist boondoggle was signed into law that "Mother Earth gets angry from time-to-time, and this legislation would help us address all of that."

--- The Inflation Bill will address neither inflation nor AGW (alleged global warming).

--- This Bill is a type of human sacrifice to the neo-pagan environmentalist god. It would sacrifice the economy in order to placate the angry god that Pelosi worships. If it kills people, all the better. The fewer people the better, it would seem.

--- Lowest income people would be hurt the most from Pelosi's envirormentalist sacrifice.

--- The public doesn't support radical environmentalist policies. Only 5% think AGW is the Number One problem.

What now?

Sundance at CTH is laying out the strategy of the UniParty. They are together on this anti-MAGA effort-- with the Democrats and "Decepticons" together on demoralizing the base, and bringing on a defeat in the upcoming election. The blame will be placed on MAGA, and the Establishment will be in control once again. That is the strategy.

The response shouldn't be what the Establishment wants. What they want is for the MAGA candidates to lose. Instead of giving them that, their candidates ( Establishment candidates ) should be the ones to lose. Somehow, we have to keep the MAGA candidates viable and get them on to victory, while at the same time, defeating the Establishment candidates.

That may be a tall order, but if they sabotage us, we have to stay together and sabotage them right back. If that means defeat at the polls in November, then that is the risk we have to take. Otherwise, they will get what they want.

MAGA has the people. The Estalishment has the money. The question is, can we win without the money?

I don't comment on CTH because CTH has too many hoops to go through. I'd write this on that blog if there weren't so many hoops.

The trouble is that this blog doesn't get that much traffic. A lot of the comments are of the wrong kind, in my opinion. There is a danger.

It is starkly clear what they are up to ( meaning the Establishment). If the MAGA base cannot respond appropriately, then the UniParty (Unitroids) will get what they want. MAGA must have an effective response.

Alexander the Great

You can learn a lot on the web. I read about Alexander the Great back in school. That was a long time ago. Maybe I'd forgotten this one thing that I'll mention here, having just watched the video.

Having read (and watched) about generals and battles, I am getting the opinion that the great generals win against the odds. Caesar did it. Aurelian did it during the years that he was putting the Roman Empire back together during the crisis of the third century. They could be seemingly outmatched, but once the battle starts, they find a way to win it. Alexander had no business defeating the entire Persian Empire. The odds were CRAZY against him, but he did it.

It's easier said than done. Just because it CAN happen that way doesn't mean that it WILL happen that way. For example, Hannibal lost to Scipio in the Second Punic War. Hannibal was a great general, but he didn't win them all. The only thing I'm saying is that, for some reason, the great ones can win despite the odds being against them.

This will be a short one. But it is worth noting.