In article <5ta3j0$dq4@engnews1.Eng.Sun.COM>,
Geoff Miller <geoffm@purplehaze.Eng.Sun.COM> wrote:
>
>In the Seventies, it was Archie Bunker.  Nowadays, it's Rush Limbaugh.
>(And needless to say, Herr Schickelgruber has always been available to
>fall back on.)   This approach is employed as a substitute for rational
>argument, and it goes to show how much importance liberals place on 
>emotional hot buttons in lieu of intelligent discussion.

Indeed.  How right you are.

>I've long
>believed that Godwin's Law should be expanded to include the gratuitous
>mention of such figures.

Peeve: Mike Godwin never said anything like what is implied above.  See
http://www.killfile.org/faqs/godwin.html

Therefore, I shall substitute the more correct term "Weasel's Law"
in the remainder of this article, in reference to the concept Geoff
mentions above.

Peeve: The acceptance and invokation of "Weasel's Law" by people who
should know better.

"Weasel's Law" amounts to nothing more than an excuse to avoid
intelligent discussion, not too unlike what Mr. Miller correctly
derides above.

For Example:

 Poster #1:  "Given that a neighborhood of Polish ghetto Jews were
 able to hold off an entire Nazi division for a month with a few
 small arms and limited ammunition, one might surmise that, had
 the German Jewish community (and German non-Nazis in general) not
 been systematically disarmed largely via "reasonable" gun-control
 laws passed during the Weimar regime, Hitler's regime would
 likely never have been able to carry out the Holocaust, and
 indeed his street-thug government might never have been allowed to
 rise to power at all."

 Poster #2:  "Nyah nyah, you said 'Nazi' and 'Hitler', so this
 thread is now dead according to Weasel's Law, and I don't have
 any obligation to respond intelligently to anything you said!
 Neener neener neener!!!"

Unfortunately, all too many Poster #2's respond as above, and
far too many otherwise intelligent USENET participants (though
by no means all) are thusly willing to let a thread die, rewarding
with a victory of sorts the pants-wetting histrionics of the
Poster #2's of the world.

"Weasel's Law" is censorship -- dress it up as "gentlemanly restraint"
all you like -- stinks just as strongly, and is invoked as a debating
tool (as opposed to more or less mentioning it in passing, as the
esteemed Mr. Miller has done above) by folks equally odiferous, or
by the simply credible.

-- 
Malcolm L. Carlock
<malc@voicenet.com>

> Peeve:  Mike Godwin never said anything like what is implied
> above.

=o= We may never know.  Godwin writes online messages like
Stephen King writes novels.  A few decades of R&D on search
engine technology might make it possible to do a comprehensive
search of his oeuvre. :-)

> "Weasel's Law" amounts to nothing more than an excuse to avoid
> intelligent discussion . . .

=o= Weasel's Law also explicitly and automatically excludes all
discussion of fascism and neonazis.  Gee, now who could possibly
benefit from such exclusion.  Who could it be, I just don't
know.  Could it be . . . SATAN?

ObPeeve: I had to say "Satan" because Weasel's Law inhibits me
from saying "Hitler."

    <_Jym_>