Ugh, I hate the thought of (even minorly) quibbling with a Volokh, but here it goes. Today, Prof. Volokh, posted about Sen. Santorum saying "It's the equivalent of Adolf Hitler in 1942 "I'm in Paris. How dare you invade me. How dare you bomb my city? It's mine." Prof. Volokh proceeds to criticize the equivalence, which I think is not an unfair criticism, making equivalence to mass-murdering dictators is always unwise.
However, Prof. Volokh then says "The precise nature of the equivalence with Hitler, I regret to say, escapes me." I think the precise nature of the equivalence is not with Hitler individually, but would be with any individual who claims protection under a custom which they have abused. The equivalent custom with Hitler is a purported custom not to invade other countries. Hitler having invaded a country now claims protection under this custom not to invade. Note, my impression is that Hitler never claimed such a protection.
Santorum's point I think then is just that claiming the protection of a "redrawn map" is hardly valid after one just redrew the map. Unfortunately, and I think the reason Santorum used Hitler, is how many other invaders are we readily familiar with, I guess he could have said Stalin and Warsaw, or Hirohito and the Philippines, or Milosevic and Kosovo, but all those people were pretty evil in their own right.
Maybe the point is to not make an equivalence with evil people. Which seems fair, but "It's the equivalent of an invader at some point in time after they capture a city saying "I'm in this city. How dare you invade me. How dare you bomb my city? It's mine" doesn't quite have much rhetorical force.
Posted by Joel at May 20, 2005 07:36 AM | TrackBack