Some sound sense here.

Read the whole article.

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http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/is_it_time_to_euthanase_those_nazi_arguments

ZacAlstin| Friday, 11 May 2012


A certain kind of internet warrior would have us believe that making references to Nazism is verboten. As one variant of Godwin’s Law puts it: the first person to mention "Nazis" automatically loses the argument.

Surely I’m not the only one who finds such self-righteous attempts at censorship a little bit, shall we say, fascist? Hitler would love that kind of thing.

.........

The definitive moral significance of Nazism can be seen in other contexts as well. Many of us have at one time or another employed a crude but effective “Nazi heuristic” or rule of thumb, whereby a person’s moral and intellectual character are immediately cast into doubt upon their utterance of phrases such as: “You know, people don’t realise that the Nazis did a lot of good things…”. I still recall the surreal moment in which an acquaintance, over coffee, attempted to explain how “the Jews really brought it upon themselves”.

Heuristics (rules of thumb) are great; I even have a heuristic about heuristics. My “heuristic” heuristic states that heuristics can’t be trusted. Confused? The reason heuristics cannot be trusted is that they do not constitute actual knowledge. They are, by definition, only approximations, rough guides, educated guesses. At best they are an unconfirmed hypothesis; at worst they are an unexamined prejudice.

So even though, as a rule of thumb, you may close your eyes and visualise yourself floating away peacefully in a hot air balloon the moment someone starts saying that Hitler had the right idea about a whole lot of things (“Guy sure could build a fine autobahn!”) you still have to do the patient, careful work of turning the apparent crazy talk, and your instinctive rejection of it, into the kind of sensible argument that could be suitably explained to a five-year- old child.

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