++ Relapsed Catholic ++ religion politics culture blog

"In the future, everyone will be Hitler for fifteen minutes." I wish I could take credit for that gloss on Andy Warhol's dictum, but it's from Jeff at Beautiful Atrocities, who compiled a list of "X is Hitler" outbursts from across the political spectrum. This odious, not to mention intellectually lazy form of argument is nothing new -- Leo Strauss felt compelled to coin the phrase "reductio ad Hitlerum" back in the 1950s. It's especially prevalent in Web forums and chat rooms, so much so that someone passed a "law" against it. In 1990, attorney Mike Godwin formulated the following adage: "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." Godwin recalls:

I seeded Godwin's Law in any newsgroup or topic where I saw a gratuitous Nazi reference. Soon, to my surprise, other people were citing it - the counter-meme was reproducing on its own! And it mutated like a meme, generating corollaries like the following: * Gordon's Restatement of Newman's Corollary to Godwin's Law: Libertarianism (pro, con, and internal faction fights) is the primordial net.news discussion topic. Any time the debate shifts somewhere else, it must eventually return to this fuel source. * Morgan's Corollary to Godwin's Law: As soon as such a comparison occurs, someone will start a Nazi-discussion thread on alt.censorship. * Sircar's Corollary: If the Usenet discussion touches on homosexuality or Heinlein, Nazis or Hitler are mentioned within three days. * Van der Leun's Corollary: As global connectivity improves, the probability of actual Nazis being on the Net approaches one. * Miller's Paradox: As a network evolves, the number of Nazi comparisons not forestalled by citation to Godwin's Law converges to zero.

Simply put: In settings where internet etiquette is strictly observed, breaking Godwin's Law shuts down the conversational "thread", and the perpetrator automatically "loses" the debate. (Not everyone agrees; see How to post about Nazis and get away with It".) Anyhow: For some time, we've needed a similar law against another overwrought cliché. Last month, I was inspired to give it a name. In his review of Andrew Sullivan's new book The Conservative Soul, New York Times columnist David declared:

"I have a rule, which has never failed me, that when a writer uses quotations from Jerry Falwell, James Dobson and the Left Behind series to capture the religious and political currents in modern America, then I know I can put that piece of writing down because the author either doesn't know what he is talking about or is arguing in bad faith."

Hallelujah! Why are critics of the "Religious Right" so obsessed with Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and Jim & Tammy Bakker, anyway? You'd think people trying to make a 21st century point could cite "villains" of more recent vintage. It's worse than Brooks thinks: I'm actually impressed when "theocracy" alarmists mention James Dobson of Focus on the Family, or the apocalyptic Left Behind stories, but many of them haven't updated their frames of reference since 1987. Oddly enough, these folks like to call themselves "progressives". Anyway, I came up with a dictum of my own: "The first one to mention the name of a prominent 1980s televangelist forfeits the argument. Menioning James Dobson out of context earns a caution." I was calling it Brooks' Law, but it turns out a tongue-in-cheek Brooks' Law already exists ("Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.") So I'm calling it Brooks' Rule instead. Our first official violator is UCLA student columnist Katie Strickland, who wasn't even born when Falwell was at his most powerful:

...the Republicans will probably make all porn illegal, cut down every tree in America, and force every citizen to pay a tithe to Jerry Falwell.

At least she's being over-the-top sarcastic on purpose, but using "Jerry Falwell" as your default boogeyman, especially when you're too young to really know much about him, still counts. It's like when bad impressionists imitate other Humphrey Bogart impersonators rather than Bogart himself. Our second offender is presumably old enough to know better, but he's a Marxist, so...

"In order to do this the real historical Jesus and his teachings (peace not war, forgiveness not vengeance, love and respect not hated and contempt-- i.e., Martin Luther King not Jerry Falwell or Pat Robinson) had to be replaced with an unreal Christ beyond history."

Again, I have to ask: what year is it? Does anyone else hear "Hungry Like the Wolf" playing in the background? Anyway: what with the new allegations against Rev. Ted Haggard, I expect I'll be handing out plenty of Brooks' Rule citations in the coming weeks... UPDATE: thanks to the loyal RelCath reader who noticed that the Marxist didn't even get Pat Robertson's name right.