Friday, October 7, 2011

Who Did We Use Before "Hitler"?

Godwin's Law notwithstanding, Hitler is often invoked when someone wishes to point out an evil, corrupt, and totalitarian act of leadership.

Who did we use before Hitler?

As this article explains, most often it was "Pharoah". Not a specific pharoah, perhaps, but the general, all-purpose, biblical ideal of pharoah. I like that. I'm going back to using pharoah.

As an exception to Godwin's Law I would like to submit Ernie's Corollary: It's not an invocation of Godwin's Law to refer to politicians as acting like Hitler when they are in fact doing what Hitler did.

2 comments:

Bluesgal said...

Ahh but Ernie... the problem is that too many people can't see or don't want to see what is going on. Same as in 1930's Germany..

One has to study history (as it is obvious you have done) to understand the parallels between 1930's Germany and these new US "laws".

More fascinating and frightening to me are the similarities to the fall of the Roman Empire...

People thkn we have believe we have a crystal ball and can see into the future. When in fact, we are merely applying the lessons learned from the past.

Wintersong Farm said...

You are so right about the parallels. That is why I am expecting a "crisis" soon, which naturally will require extraordinary measures by the government to fix. Of course, we the people will then have to give up a few more freedoms just to be protected. (sarc off)

When you see a government making SO MANY wrong decisions SO MANY times in a row, there are only two possible explanations: complete evil, or complete stupidity. Both must be resisted.