The statements condemning Miller, particularly Duckworth's, seem to treat "Hitler was right on some subject" as an assertion of fact that they dispute factually, and that's what I took issue with.
It's quite possible, even likely, that Miller chose to mention Hitler as a dog-whistle to the actively-racist segment of her audience, while hoping it wouldn't turn off the just-plain-conservative segment of her audience. (ilaine, the Hitler reference may well have been perfectly aligned with the overall message; I haven't read the rest of the speech so I don't know.) In which case I condemn it too, on those grounds, rather than on the nonsensical grounds that "Hitler was wrong about everything". Or maybe it just didn't occur to her that mentioning Hitler might offend anybody, in which case she's remarkably tone-deaf for a politician (but I'm not the one to throw that stone).
What I was calling a "cheap shot", albeit perhaps one that's unavoidable in a world of five-second sound bites, is accusing Miller of the wrong crime -- of saying Hitler was "right about one thing", which he obviously was, rather than of invoking Hitler's name to gain the approval of overt racists or of inventing a non-existent threat of "indoctrination by left-wing radicals".
In logic, as I'm sure you know, a proof can be criticized as invalid even if its conclusion happens to be true, because it broke rules of logic along the way. On the other hand, if you criticize a proof as invalid while pointing to a place that it didn't break the rules, you lose more credibility than the proof does. I guess that's where I'm coming from: the statements quoted above say more to me about Duckworth than about Miller. Reason number 79 that I'm a logician, not a politician....
And yes, I should probably make a point of re-reading extra times, and waiting longer than usual before posting, anything related to Jews, or for that matter any historically-oppressed group. Thanks for your patient and constructive criticism.
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It's quite possible, even likely, that Miller chose to mention Hitler as a dog-whistle to the actively-racist segment of her audience, while hoping it wouldn't turn off the just-plain-conservative segment of her audience. (
What I was calling a "cheap shot", albeit perhaps one that's unavoidable in a world of five-second sound bites, is accusing Miller of the wrong crime -- of saying Hitler was "right about one thing", which he obviously was, rather than of invoking Hitler's name to gain the approval of overt racists or of inventing a non-existent threat of "indoctrination by left-wing radicals".
In logic, as I'm sure you know, a proof can be criticized as invalid even if its conclusion happens to be true, because it broke rules of logic along the way. On the other hand, if you criticize a proof as invalid while pointing to a place that it didn't break the rules, you lose more credibility than the proof does. I guess that's where I'm coming from: the statements quoted above say more to me about Duckworth than about Miller. Reason number 79 that I'm a logician, not a politician....
And yes, I should probably make a point of re-reading extra times, and waiting longer than usual before posting, anything related to Jews, or for that matter any historically-oppressed group. Thanks for your patient and constructive criticism.