Gingrich Vows To Defund Planned Parenthood

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[quote name='Jesus_lol' timestamp='1327982510' post='2378100']
Its because sooner or later, every argument has someone reffering to hitler. Its a trope, a cliche, a cop out.

Its also incredibly insulting to compare every relatively minor evil to Hitler, as it diminishes how truly awful the Nazis were when they are compared to Homeowners Associations, overzealous small town cops, and nearly every politician alive.

there are situations where the comparison is apt, where either the scope or the specifics of the case line up with some part of Nazi Germany, but after seeing it so many times, its like those movies(all of them) about some white teacher making a difference in a ghetto through the power of dance/football/etc. Its been done before.
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I'm just curious...have you seen the movie [i]Downfall?[/i] It's an excellent protrayal of Hitler's last few days. It's also the only movie that attempts to protray Hitler is a realistic manner (instead of an over-the-top, cartoonishly evil monster). The reason I ask is, it does a good job of pointing out that Hitler is disturbingly similar to people we like to think of as decent folks. He was very endearing, had a dog, was in love with Eva.

Please don't get me wrong. Hitler did a lot of evil. But he himself wasn't an extra-super evil that the rest of the human race is incapable of. He wasn't unique. The only real difference between himself and millions of others who thought like him, was that he was incredibly talented in other areas. He knew how to work a crowd, he was handed a very gullible crowd on a platter, and he opportunistically took advantage of it. But he wasn't a monster. He probably wasn't close to being the most evil person ever. It's just that he made it to the top, whereas other people with similarly distorted hearts just got accepted into art school or something.

Second question: have you ever heard of the Milgram experiment? Long story short: some guy set out to discover why and how people justified killing so many Jews during the Holocaust. What he found was that the majority of people selected (consistently in the 60-70 percent range) were literally willing to risk killing in the name of advancing science. All they really needed was for an authority figure to tell them what to do, and they often stifled their consciences.

Poing being: we like to think that the Holocaust is something that happenes out there, something awful and a horrible part of human history. We don't like to think of it as something that happens right in our midst. The unfortunate and disturbing reality is that it's more than human history--it's human nature. We have billions of potential Nazis in the world, but for the grace of God. Or random chance. Both in my humble opinion. We shouldn't be surprised by how much reminds us of Nazi Germany.