Monday, September 28, 2009

The Birthers, the Deathers and the Tea-baggers.

The Birthers, the Deathers and the Tea-baggers. What do all three of these groups have in common?

They all invoke Godwin's Law in record speed.

This isn't just some fringe element associating themselves with these people invoking Godwin's Law so quickly. Think Progress has an article from the How To Take America Back right wing conference with speakers such as Rep. Tom Price, Michele Bachmann and Gov. Mike Huckabee.

Let me give you a rundown on what Godwin's Law is exactly, then you will see just how ridiculous these conservatives have become by embracing a faux pas bloggers almost unanimously make fun of.

According to Wikipedia, Godwin's Law is:

"is a humorous observation made by Mike Godwin in 1990 which has become an Internet adage. It states: "As a UsenetNazis or Hitler approaches 1." discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazi's or Hitler approaches one."

The problem is this, rather than waiting, (just for simplicity, I'll refer to The Birthers, Deathers and Tea-baggers as BDT) BDT'ers have decided to go full throttle Godwin on Obama and his administration right off the bat. As Godwin's Wiki entry states, Reductio ad Hitlerum refers to:

"The fallacy most often assumes the form of "Hitler (or the Nazis) supported X, therefore X must be evil/undesirable/bad. For example: "Hitler was a vegetarian, so vegetarianism is wrong." The tactic is often used to derail arguments, as such a comparison tends to distract and to result in angry and less reasoned responses."

The comparisons of Obama actions to Nazi action has turned into Reductio ad Hitlerum on steroids. Case in point. The previous Think Progress link I pointed to above, spoke of Kitty Werthmann, during her workshop, "How to recognize living under Nazis and communism, mentioned "They had Joseph Goebbels; we have Mark Lloyd, the diversity czar." This isn't the most obsurd claim. The BDT's have also pointed out similarities of his "indoctrination" of school children recently when he gave school children a speech on the opening day of school. The paranoia grew into a frenzy, even causing some parents pull their kids out of school that day.

Conservatives have managed to take one of the jokes of the internet and turn it into one of the driving forces to energize their base. I'm not sure exactly what that says about the conservative base.

I bet Mike Godwin never thought he'd be yelling Godwins Law every time he turned on the T.V. when a story about President Obama came up.

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