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sam0345 comments on Science Doesn't Trust Your Rationality - Less Wrong
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I defend kilobug here; It's not as bad as it looks. Each unnecessary Hitler reference is fractionally as bad as the previous, as Godwin's law is about the subject arising in the first place.
What's more, Vladmir_M referenced Hitler in an argument that something bad wouldn't be repeated until Hitler. That's not hypothetical, that references a terrible thing in the technically true rhetorical construct of "X is/was the worst thing since/until Y" where Y is/was worse than X, possibly by orders of magnitude, but the brain associates X and Y as similar regardless, in a way that is inappropriate.
kilobug only mentioned Hitler as a most extreme example of bad character, but it was clearly hypothetical. It's a cheap rhetorical move, maybe, but I think it's worse to say something is the "worst thing since.until Hitler", even if true, if that thing is orders of magnitude less bad (for several reasons), since it's not taking a hypothetical extreme case.
I think Hitler's killing program was much worse than Revolutionary France's for several reasons. First, quantitatively, hundreds of times as many innocents were killed. Second, France's was a case of willingness to convict nine innocents lest a guilty person go free, while a significant part of Germany's was gratuitous - this is a qualitative difference.
The news media love to use the "since" construction to inflame things and exaggerate importance, i.e. "This is the worst economic slowdown since the Great Depression" may mean "This economic slowdown is slightly worse than the one in the 1970's that you remember and have in your mind as a close comparable and that by all rights we should be comparing it to, also we either forgot 1937 or include it as part of the 'Great Depression'".
Every totalitarian terror state has been consciously inspired by the French Revolution and Red Terror - Marx invokes the red terror as a good idea, though perhaps not carried out with sufficient thoroughness.
While "X was the worst thing until Y" can inappropriately associate X and Y, there are in this case many connections and similarities between X and Y.
Critics of the French Revolution foresaw twentieth century totalitarianism in its actions and ideology:
Joseph de Maistre foretold:
Since reference to Hitler automatically provokes irrationality, I would have said, and come to think of it I did say, that the French revolution prefigured the totalitarian terror regimes of the twentieth century.
That's the phrase you use to avoid provoking the irrationality that comes from referencing Hitler?
People are well trained to go instant frothing at the mouth crazy at such words as "Hitler", "Nazi", and "fascist". Four legs good, two legs bad.
But such words as "totalitarian" and "terror" instead provoke the anti anti communist reflex and the anti Islamophobia reflex, where with great sophistication, calmness, maturity and civility they assure us that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.
Downvoted: If you know these words provoke irrational responses, then that's all the more reason that you shouldn't have used them. We're a forum that seeks to promote rationality, not irrationality.
Every democratic and freedom-loving state has also been inspired by the ideals of the French Revolution and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.
Also everything good and everything bad in the Western World since the Rise of the Roman Empire, has been influenced from the Roman Empire. This includes the czars of Russia being called "Czars" (from Caesar), and the Senate of the United States being called a "Senate".
Saying that a world-smashing thing helps inspire subsequent things, both bad and good, isn't a testament to its badness -- it's a testament to its importance.