Reductio Ad Hitlerum

People are pretty quick to call others Nazi’s or invoke the specter of slavery. Usually, the invocations are simply a modern form of name calling.

Protester: Bush is Hitler.
Why?
Protester: He got us into a war.
So is Lincoln Hitler? Roosevelt?

On the other hand, the Nazi’s were real people. Germany was the most advanced scientific society of it’s time. The German’s arguments for eugenics and racial hygiene were well accepted in the world community. Therefore, German experience has lessons for us. Unfortunately, attempts to inappropriately smear people with the Nazi label shuts down dialogue; and, when the Nazi reference is appropriate, people only see it as a smear.

I was in a dialogue with someone promoting eugenics. I had pointed out the past experience in the world with eugenics which included Nazi Germany. However, I also mentioned the American experience (unknown by most) as well as Germany. True to his progressive nature, a man beyond history, he poo pooed any reference to the past. After all he was too good and modern to make those mistakes even if he didn’t know what those mistakes were or realize that he was voicing the same old ideas which he now deemed cutting edge.

Over at Second Hand Smoke, Smith posts some thoughts about Nazi comparisons and includes some comments from a 1949 article in the New England Journal of medicine, by Dr. Alexander who served with the U.S. Office of Chief Counsel for War Crimes at Nuremberg. Alexander’s comments from the NEJM are well worth reading.