And then there’s “The Party of Lincoln” codicil…

Hitler comparisons are popular because, after 65 years of books and movies on the subject, the history of the Third Reich is one subject just about everybody knows. Even better, it’s a subject so vast that it allows everyone to know (or to imagine he knows) something the others don’t.

Two people who want to fight must find some common meeting ground. What better place than history’s most famous and heavily traveled path?

No doubt, if there was an entire cable channel dedicated to the Thirty Year’s War, we’d all be on here accusing each other of being Count Pappenheims or something like that.

Clinton and the Democrats “gained control of the presidency” without winning a majority in both 1992 (43%) and ’96 (49.2%). And almost 10% fewer people voted in ’96 (94.5 million) than when Clinton was first elected in ’92 (102.7 millions). Not meaning to pick on Clinton, but Hitler’s chancellorship was just as legal as Clinton’s presidency.

@29 – Exactly – it’s calling for personal enforcement of morals as law.

The 5th platform of communism – a central bank, is not challenged by our two party system, except for the few like Ron Paul, who tells the truth, even though it is not what people want th hear. Those that exchange safety for liberty, end up with neither and pull us all into the corruptive and tyranical system. If you look at how many times democracy has failed over history, it is the lack of knowledge as to what individual rights are and the moral foundation that enbraces the protection from the majority, to the minority and individual. Communist beleive that the individual has a moral obligation to the state and the majority, they say they are protecting and that my friend is the ultimate lie as it is an eroneous argument that someone can know what is in the best interests of another.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0674076087/theagitator-20/

It’s puts things into proper perspective in that “communists” made the “nazis” look like the Keystone Cops.

You write that “all of [Hitler's] actions as chief executive were 100% legal under the laws enacted by the German legislature”. The same applies down the line: all of the official actions carried out by the German military were 100% legal under prevailing German law. A bit later, you write “At Nuremberg, Western society established the legal precedent that “I was only following orders” is not a valid defense against wrongdoing”. “Wrongdoing” as defined by external powers, after the defeat and dissolution of the German government.

You allude to this in your discussion of legality vs. morality, saying that a moral person should refuse to carry out legal-but-immoral actions. The problem is: who defines morality? Why is one person subject to another person’s interpretation morality? First example, consider abortion: both factions are convinced of their own morality, and of the immorality of the other side. Example 2, consider Islamic fundamentalists: they are morally convinced that unbelievers should be killed, while unbelievers have a rather different view.

The aftermath of World War II was the first attempt to formalize war crimes trials. In previous wars, the victors simply took the losers aside and executed them, perhaps after a little rape, pillage and torture. Nuremberg was an attempt to put a civilized face on this. Nonetheless, prosecuting losers according to the victors’ rules has little to do with the objective application of justice and a whole lot to do with revenge.

Let’s come back to the real point of this post: police enforcing laws that may be considered immoral. The question is, once again: whose morality? Politicians passed those laws, and they have political support from some groups when they do so. Those groups quite apparently consider the laws – and their enforcement – to be moral. Take the “War on Drugs” – while I may personally consider these laws to be immoral, the older generation of my family has exactly the opposite view. Whose morality should take precedence? What are you asking of individual police officers? That each should selectively enforce the laws according to his or her individual morality? Be careful what you wish for…

Hitler himself never won an election at all. At the time Germany had a head of state, President Hindenburg, who got to pick the head of government, the Chancellor, who actually led the government. Because other Chancellors had failed in the role some political elites decided to convince Hindenburg to make Hitler the Chancellor because they thought he would be forced to settle down and moderate in the face of actually having to govern. (And they thought, since the Nazis weren’t a majority in the Reichstag, he wouldn’t have enough support to do anything without those elites).

Plus, they thought he was dumb and weak and they could control him. Hindenburg picked Hitler to be Chancellor because of internal politics, and not through any sort of open and democratic electoral process. Hitler and the Nazi Party weren’t even that popular at the time and most historians believe that, had Hindenburg not been persuaded to make Hitler the Chancellor in January of 1933, that there is little chance the Nazis would ever have won a majority in the Reichstag nor come to power.

In other words, the Germans decided they liked Hitler after Hindenburg gave Hitler to them. They never, as a nation, chose Hitler nor the Nazi Party.

This is all to say that, at least in terms of how Hitler and the Nazis came to power, it was so extraordinarily unlikely and idiosyncratic that it isn’t really all that useful as a comparison to other situations. It’s very dangerous to generalize from how the Nazis came to power. It didn’t happen the way many think and the main lesson (I think) we can take from it is to never appoint an extraordinarily evil person to power in the hopes you can control him. Since we don’t appoint our head of government in the US (we elect him, he’s the President) like they did in Weimar Germany, that same set of circumstances can’t really happen here.

(Which is not to say that some fascistic autocrat could never get power in the US, only that it wouldn’t happen the way it did in Germany when Hitler came to power).

(Which is also not to say that, as noted in the original post, lots of other valid comparisons can’t be made between the Nazis and things that have happened and are happening around the world today… the Nazis weren’t some historical anomaly that could never happen again… but they did come to power in a sort of unique way, is all I’m saying).

Genocide existed in the ancient world and comparisons with more recent genocides can easily be made (lots of people have).

Likewise, slavery exists in a relatively small way now but as a thriving industry in times which can hardly be called ancient.

This kind of thing highlights the wider principle that Godwins Law makes more specific. People who use analogies because they are lurid rather than because they relate to the matter at hand are too stupid to reason with.

Yes. It’s dangerous to think that such evil could not manifest itself again. Complacency grows as time moves on. And that’s when it creeps in again. And that’s what it usually does – creeps. It slowly moves in so that the masses don’t even realize it until it’s too late.

Yeah, and on the cops “just following orders” thing – spot on. It is a complete abdication of moral authority and moral responsibility. Most departments have become militaristic (like the Gestapo), reject any responsibility (just following orders[just like the Nazis]), and treat themselves as above the law (just like the Nazis).

Not quite.

What was established (and continues in the UN Charter) is that “following orders” is not necessarily a stay-out-of-jail-free card.

The gating principle is whether the actor can relatively safely refuse. No ethical system requires that one must save the life of a stranger even at the cost of one’s own life, or the life of a spouse, child, sib, or parent. And similar balancing applies at other levels of harm.