And thus you've confirmed your complete lack of literacy or ability to read the word Godwin in the original comment. <so lame>

Rule of the internet #173 <Godwin's law>- 'When a person invokes "Hitler" in a comment thread, they have lost the debate and conceded the point.'

Thanks for making it easy.

And proving Godwin right again:
"We are socialists, we are enemies of today's capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions." --Adolf Hitler
(Speech of May 1, 1927. Quoted by Toland, 1976, p. 306)

Wow, it took all of 90 seconds before the first speaker other than Cenk Godwin'ed.

Why do we have to listen to small minority on this anymore? They had their chance of refuting, they failed. We wont ever agree on everything anyway, that hasn't stopped us for making new rules that affect everyone. AGW supporters are overwhelmingly the majority. And don't start Godwining me, i'm talking about democratic process where majority rules.

I do understand that the purpose of Godwin's law is to reduce the worst kinds of hyperbole, and that's exactly what I'm trying to do.

Whatever you think about Israel's policies regarding the Palestinians, referring to it as extermination only shows that you haven't taken the time to understand anything about the current conflict and you are just reacting emotionally to the terrible horror of war. Extermination is the total elimination of a certain population by killing, and such an action is so far beyond the state of oppression we see in Gaza today that I just can't take your comparison seriously.

The only way you bother to support these outlandish statements is by telling me that death is death - no matter what the cause - as if that mindless tautology is enough to render two wildly different sets of circumstances and tactics equivalent.

Should we also call all murders murders and not bother to make distinctions between first degree, second degree, involuntary manslaughter, etc? Should we treat the serial killer the same as the drunken brawler who hit someone too hard in a bar fight?

Of course not. As thinking people we analyze factors such as intent, quantity, severity, remorse, and perhaps most importantly, we consider what measures can possibly be taken to correct the underlying cause. All of these elements are wildly different in the different degrees of murders, and having an honest grasp of these differences helps us understand how we as a society should react to each degree, both in terms of punishment and rehabilitation.

To similar ends, it is very important that we consider analogous distinctions in the different degrees of atrocities between nations or ethnic groups. The fact that it is obvious that I would much rather be in Gaza today than a concentration camp in 1943 is very much so relevant to this sort of analysis. The fact that there is no Israeli intent to exterminate the Palestinians is also relevant.

But if you want to leave the depth of your understanding at "dead is dead" then I guess that's your choice.

Is it nuance to be an innocent family on the receiving end of a high explosive round? Last time I checked, whether it's via gas or a shell, death is death. Do you think the Palestinians suffer less fear waiting to see if they are about to die? That you raise scale as a method of differentiation is laughable. Israel has has ~70 years of slowly whittling away at Palestine and it's people.

And the facile differentiation between a German concentration camp and Gaza is beneath you. You would much rather not live in fucking either, and neither would all of us if we were given a choice. That the Israelis are going about the business of eliminating Palestine slowly is more about international backlash. If they thought they could get away with it, they'd sweep them in to the sea and be done with it.

And in response to the invocation of Godwin's Law, you do understand that the purpose of the Godwin is to reduce/remove ludicrous hyperbole, not to shut down legitimate comparisons? Much as you could draw parallels with Idi Armin, Stalin/Russia etc, Israel is engaging in similar tactics. Fascism, racism, segregation, making war on civilians etc. That it isn't a 100% carbon copy is irrelevant.

I think both advices are terrible simply because they are very generalized and too unspecific. Sure, they're simple messages that sound uplifting and make sense at first glance but the same could be said about my horoscope in the daily newspaper.
Somebody surely told Rebecca Black to follow her dreams and the same must been told to all the casting show rejects that sucked hard enough to be put on the gag reel that makes up most of the ridiculing-others-part at the beginning of each season.
On the other hand I'm sure Bill Gates could've been a wonderful elderly care nurse but I prefer him super rich and very charitable. The same goes for topathletes and moviestars that spend bazillion dollars and their PR forces on charity.

Without sufficient data any advice except the really obvious ones (Don't eat spoiled food!) are nothing but a coin toss. You don't know if you need heads or tails until that coin has landed for good.
Jim's dad didn't follow his dreams and now we may have missed out on a great comedian. Hitler did and now we wish he hadn't. Who's got the last laugh now?
Godwin, that's who.

Seconding Artician. The brain evolved by natural selection, just like the rest of the body. It has built in biases and modules that vary genetically. Look at the wide variety of personalities in dog breeds, for example. In humans, the big five personality traits are estimated to be about 50% heritable based on twin studies.

Gattaca is a good movie and Brave New World is a good book, but they should not be taken as the ends of some slippery slope that any eugenic policy inevitably leads to. I think it's unfortunate that so much fear of eugenics is propagated by dystopian fictions like those. Eugenics can be done in a humane way that respects all individual rights. For instance:

1. a system of incentives for highly successful people to have more children or donate to sperm banks.

2. Universal single-payer healthcare, providing among other things free condoms and birth control pills to all, so that the use of contraception will not be so much inversely correlated with income as it has been from 1850 to the present when the poor often couldn't afford it (and it's a demonstrable fact that on average the poor tend to have lower intelligence partly due to genetics)

Even such modest, individual rights respecting policies, if phrased in terms of benefiting the gene pool, are political suicide because people are still afraid of imaginary slippery slopes leading to Hitler. Most of the US is still in denial of the implications of biological science, for reasons that speak well of them, but it's time to grow up and get over that habit of Godwinizing any attempt to improve the gene pool regardless of whether it infringes individual rights.

Or maybe lots of people people don't actually believe that, but are reluctant to say otherwise: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0W9sSqeJnA

@lantern53
of course i do.
we all do.
but i do not condemn and THAT is a distinction your commentary is lacking.in fact,the majority of your examples are really just choices,loosely based on judgment.

i also never suggested that christians,or anybody else for that matter,applaud a womans decision to have an abortion.i merely suggested that the decision is hers and hers alone and it DOES have serious consequences that the woman will have to carry with her the rest of her life.

as for the nazi analogy...godwins law again,but might i suggest some more reading in that matter?you consistently get that history wrong.

judgment and condemnation are not the same thing my friend.though one may to lead to the other.

so while i may have disapproved of the decision those women made,i do not judge them nor condemn them.which is why i escorted them and helped protect them.

why?
because i am not them,so who am i to judge?
also,it was the christian thing to do.

i always assumed you were christian lantern,my apologies if my assumptions were incorrect and i proceeded from a false premise.

@lantern53

ah my friend.
you seem to have fallen into the propaganda trap.
allow enoch to chat with you for a bit.

are you comfy? need a drink? coffee? a beer?

ok,then let us begin

this is not a political ideology.
this is not right nor left.(seriously limiting terms anyways).

this is about the full picture.

so let us discuss WHAT propaganda actual is,rather than what we are TOLD it is.
propaganda is simply manipulated information presented in a way to appeal to our irrational and emotional response rather than our rational and reasonable.

when i use the term "manipulated" i am not inferring or implying an outright conspiracy (though often-times it may possibly be a conspiracy) but rather a set goal to illicit the desired response.

and there is always an element of truth in propaganda but the truth being presented is controlled and manipulated.which is apparent in your commentary.

corporations use this tactic and we call it mass marketing but the first usage was that of the state to control its own citizenry.america being the major and first to pioneer this tactic.see:edward bernaise and the council of propaganda (later changed to the council of public relations).

so let us break down your examples which i assume are an attempt by you to discredit the assertions in dr wasfi's speech in this video.

1.to point out the crimes against humanity is a straw man argument.
it is irrelevant.
it is a last ditch effort by the american government to excuse and/or validate an illegal war of aggression:
a.no weapons of mass destruction
b.no connection to al qaeda
c.almost 1 trillion lost (literally,they cant account for that money)

so the american government points to the atrocities of saddam hussein and says "look! look at what a bad person he is"!

SQUIRREL!

which brings us to your next point.

2.the atrocities you are referring to were well know when saddam was a paid participant by multiple government agencies.
let me say that again for you:
saddams atrocities were WELL known and was on the american government payroll.
did saddam gas the kurds?------yes
who sold him the gas components?---we did.

so when my government,in a last ditch effort to absolve its complicity in the wreckage that is iraq by pointing to the awful and horrific acts saddam perpetrated on his own people as somehow making the invasion of iraq a righteous act is utter..and complete..hypocrisy.

they KNEW what he was doing and did nothing because it was politically expedient for them to do so.they wished to corral iran and the ends justified the means.see:Zbigniew Brzezinski-the grand chessboard

there are many MANY accounts where the american government turned a blind eye to the suffering of other nation-states citizens because it did not align with our interests.

i find the whole situation morally repugnant and it angers me even further when i see the propaganda twisting my fellow countrymen into believing this is somehow a morally just way to deal with despots,tyrants,zealots.

when it was MY country who put them in power in the first place!

the rationalizations are so deeply cynical and hypocritical that it creates an almost vacuum of cognitive dissonance.

and this is my main point in regards to your commentary.
it is a rationalization given to you by those who wish to continue to oppress,dominate and control those who are powerless.

it gives a semblance of morality where there is none.

because if we took your commentary to its logical conclusion:that sometimes war is necessary to rid the world of "evil" (an arbitrary term based on perspective),then why are we not in those countries that ALSO oppress,kill,maim,torture and immiserate their citizens?

answer:because it does not serve the interests of this government.

so the only usage of emotional heart string pulling is to give americans a sense of moral superiority,while not dealing with the actual reality.

you are being manipulated my friend.
and they have given you a convenient myth to hold onto.

by my commentary i am not dismissing the great works of my country nor am i saying that my country is inherently evil.
i served my country and did my duty.

but i also will not turn a blind eye to the reality on the ground just because i find that information..uncomfortable.

many times the truth is uncomfortable and it takes courage to look at it with clear eyes and a critical mind.

i always stick to the axiom:governments lie

as for your nazi reference,
i invoke godwins law.
the death camps were not even a known reality till the war was almost over and were not the reasons for the war in the first place.
so the context is irrelevant.

as always,
eyes open...
and stay sharp.

@lantern53 keepin it frosty since 1982.stay awesome my man

and we've been godwin'd. Nope Chaucer isn't an extremist at all.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_Hitlerum

I thought that was hilarious.
I had to look Godwin up.
Technically I didn't make a comparison but rather a historical note that the Nazi's are associated with eugenics, but I didn't want that technicality to distract from your win. Nice. and again, Doh!

Godwin says you lost.