The Evolution of Godwin's Law

"As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one."--Mike Godwin, 1990

Godwin's Law originally applied to USENET, but now it's seen anywhere three or more people gather to discuss anything that could possibly be controversial. The argument grows warm, then hot, and before you know it Nazis are jackbooting across your screen.
Some online forums have a rule to the effect that whenever Adolf appears, the debate is over, and whoever brought him up is declared the loser. It's a good rule.

Of course, by the time Hitler comes up, I'm long out of the room with the door shut. Arguing's great, but arguing with a fanatic is pointless.

Ask my parents: I used to be about the most closed-minded, black/white, I'm-right-you're-wrong person on the face of the earth. It dawned on me one day that many other people are just as closed-minded, black/white, I'm-right-you're-wrong...and they see things differently than I do. From there it was a short (albeit painful) step to admitting that sometimes I'm wrong, and damned if I'm not wrong a lot these days. I'm a husband; it comes with the territory.

Anyway, I like to argue politics or philosophy or what have you: it exposes me to different ideas and ways of seeing the world, and that's always a good thing. I don't mind different thoughts, but I have a real problem with different thought processes. Which is why I distrust radicals of any stripe: you can't trust them to keep the argument rational. Sooner or later you're being compared with Hitler.

Or being threatened with jail for your "intergenerational crimes".

I lost what little respect I had for David Suzuki when he came out with that the other day.
Oh, I know how blasphemous that is, for a Canadian to suggest that David Suzuki is full of greenhouse gas...almost as blasphemous as suggesting that our health care system could use a major overhaul, come to think of it. Suzuki's everywhere these days, fancying himself some sort of expert on climate change. As if anybody is. Memo to Dr. Suzuki: you're a zoologist.

I SAY THIS THREE TIMES I SAY THIS THREE TIMES I SAY THIS THREE TIMES: I consider myself environmentally aware; I believe in global warming; and I also believe that we're causing this latest go-round with it to at least some degree. What I do not believe is that anybody can reliably predict the climate fifty or a hundred years out. Feed all the data you want into all the computers you can find: I contend there are way too many variables and things we simply don't understand right now for the output to be worth anything more than sheer kaka. Computer modelling looks like science, but it's just a bunch of people playing with very expensive toys.

"They" know this, too. Almost all climate change predictions are for a date so far in the future as to absolve their predictors from any responsibility.

For Suzuki the zoologist (Ph.D: University of Chicago, 1961) to suggest we should be jailing people who disagree with him on something as monstrously complex as climate borders on criminal itself, as far as I'm concerned. It's certainly un-Canadian.

But I won't say he's a Nazi. I won't.