This Is Not A Godwin’s Law Violation
It’s not a Godwin’s Law violation to compare someone to Hitler if they praise Hitler is it? A state senator in New Hampshire had an interesting conversation with a constituent advocating for mental health funding:
In light of this huge wave of cuts, Sharon Omand, a community health care center manager and resident of Stafford, New Hampshire, called her state senator Martin Harty (R) recently to request more funding for community mental health programs and for the homeless. Omand was shocked by Harty’s response. The state senator told her “the world is too populated” and that there are too many “defective people.” When Omand asked what should be done with these “defective people” that are mentally ill, Harty suggested sending them to Siberia, something that he said Hitler was “right” to do:
Barrington Republican Martin Harty told Sharon Omand, a Strafford resident who manages a community mental health program, that “the world is too populated” and there are “too many defective people,” according to an e-mail account of the conversation by Omand. […]
Harty confirmed to the Monitor that he made the comments to Omand. […]
Omand says Harty then stated, “I wish we had a Siberia so we could ship them all off to freeze to death and die and clean up the population.” Omand said Harty appeared to be serious. After Omand responded that his idea sounded like what Adolf Hitler did in World War II, Omand said Harty responded, “Hitler did something right, and I agree with (it).”
When the GOP Speaker of the House in New Hampshire was asked about these statements, he said this:
Harty has not apologized for making his comments. Republican State House Speaker William O’Brien said that “at Harty’s age [90 years old], he has earned the right to say what he thinks, but ‘he needs to appreciate that as a representative, he will be held to a higher standard.’”
It was actually Stalin that sent people to Siberia but the phrase “Hitler did something right and I agree with” is not a phrase that should be uttered by anyone, anywhere. It felt dirty just to type it.
As criticisms go, that’s weak. O’Brien thinks that when you’re 90 you’ve apparently earned the right to praise Hitler and advocate for eugenics, but you really shouldn’t. Just to remind you – the Holocaust Museum killer James Von Brunn was 88 when he took a weapon to the museum and killed a museum guard.
Tags: New Hampshire, Republican Crazy
It is nearly impossible to be shocked by how horrible modern Republicans have become, but this is shocking. I’ll say it again, the “financial crisis” brought about by Bush’s reckless tax cuts, two vanity wars, cowardly corporatist Democrats and gross bank fraud and malfeasance has given some closet teabagging fascists the right to reveal their core beliefs.
Harty suggested sending them to Siberia, something that he said Hitler was “right” to do
If these Nazis haven’t learned their lesson we are going to have to drop the atom bomb on them again.
Sorry, I totally bollixed the editing. It’s fixed now to make more sense.
I think the counterargument that “So and so violated Godwin’s law” is often used in misleading ways, primarily to avoid dealing with a perfectly valid point. The truth is that very often people do propose despotic and Hitleresque solutions to social problems and it is perfectly valid to point that out. To think that one can simply brush off that valid point by mouthing the Godwin’s law retort is naive and rhetorically cheap.
What needs to be developed is a set of criteria for when to validly employ the Godwin’s law counterargument and when not to. Surely, when someone who holds an overarching despotic point of view about political and social matters proposes a particular despotic solution to a problem, it cannot be invalid to point out the resemblance between the proposed solution and one proffered by a past despot like Hitler.
That the points of view of many people on the American right are subject to valid comparisons to despots like Hitler cannot be blithely dismissed by the Godwin’s law cliche. The use of the Godwin’s law cliche to give many members of the American right rhetorical and logical immunity is cheating, uninsightful, and intellectually lazy.
Damn, with this State Senators obvious mental illness, lets send him first. News on the net states that a group called: Restore America is really a white supremacist group calling themselves, Restore America Soverign movement. They are funding many of these “teabaggers groups”, while the Koch Brothers are being outed. Rick Santorum and Dick Army are behind it.
Dana makes plenty of good points.
Yet there are ample examples of despots ,dictators and tyrants in history without resorting to the H-man to emphasize your argument.
What’s the premise behind “old people have more right to self-expression than other people”?
Old people are so cute/awful.
Yeah — only Margaret Sanger (and her PP successors) gets to praise Hitler and/or advocate for eugenics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law
To “hereagain”‘s post: Because they have so much more experience and have learned life’s lessons, in other words the same logic that O’brien’s using to support his assertion that college students shouldn’t have the right to vote because they’re inexperienced, naiive, and they vote foolishly for liberals. All a bunch of tripe! Who are these people and how did they get into office?