When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. - Hunter S. Thompson

23 June 2006

Speaking of Godwin's Law...

Mike Godwin, a net.legend, the first attorney hired by the EFF and a Usenet veteran, once made an observation once that has become a digerati formulation known as "Godwin's Law."

According to Wikipedia, this is the canonical version:
As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.[1]
With that in mind...

Who said it? Hitler or Ann Coulter?

I don't think the quiz is all that hard, actually; I got 11 out of 14 citations attributed correctly, and I am not personally familiar with the oeuvre of either writer, except for having read an exceprt from Mein Kampf for a college class almost 20 years ago and occasionally catching a Coulter column or one of her appearances on Bill Maher's show.

My position on Ann Coulter, by the way, is that her act is getting kinda stale and she desperately needs to eat a couple of bacon double cheeseburgers, but I will observe in her defense that this rather unsubtle quiz tries to elide a very key point: while every fascist rages against "liberalism," certainly not everyone who rages against liberalism is a fascist.

(Hat tip: Hit and Run)

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