Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
The Reductio ad Hitlerum
The Reductio ad Hitlerum
Jun 19, 2025 7:52 AM

It looks to me like Obama has this election about wrapped up. Why?

Some of his opponents are resorting to the tired and fallacious reductio ad Hitlerum (aka argumentum ad Hitlerum).

Exhibit A is this video:

(The original context is this video.)

This stuff is just beyond the pale in so many ways. You can find all manner of other similarly odious political rhetoric at YouTube (just check out the “related videos” category). Also, in 2004 Joe Carter discussed what he called “The Hidden Danger Behind the Hitler Comparisons.”

In real Nazi-related news, today is the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Bishop George Bell, an ecumenist, politician, and friend of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who did his best to support the cause of the nascent opposition movements within Germany.

Previous Article：Birth of Freedom Shorts Series: Christianity and Human Equality Next Article：John Jay Institute, Acton Partner in Film Premiere
Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
If government can dream it, can it do it?
Oren Cass,author ofThe Once and Future Worker: A Vision for the Renewal of Work in America, has written a deeply confused response to Samuel Gregg’s essay ‘How Economic Nationalism Hurts Nations.’ Cass’s essay, “Comparative Disadvantage,” goes off the rails almost immediately after parative advantage: Comparative advantage allows trading partners, whether individuals or nations, to specialize where each has the lower opportunity cost, increasing total output and, through mutually beneficial exchange, leaving both with more to consume. The sooner that each...
NHS leader: Stop ‘prioritising’ your own health
A senior official in the UK’s single-payer healthcare system says that patients should stop selfishly putting their own health and well-being first in order to improve the funding and “morale” of the NHS. Jessica Arnold, who “has held a number of senior roles in the NHS,” argues in the Guardian that the National Health Service would be in fine shape if citizens were willing to suffer in silence until the service can tend to them. Arnold makes an impassioned plea...
As Germany slows, Europe should worry
In 2019, the mighty German economy, the economic powerhouse of the European Union, grew a mere 0.6 percent. That’s right. It grew just over half a percent. In 2018, Germany grew 1.5 percent. This is not a lot, but it was better than 2019. The German economy is Europe’s largest. Hence, when it goes wrong, things go wrong elsewhere in the EU. As reported in the Wall Street Journal: Germany’s weakness is bad news for Europe, and not just because...
The ‘great adventure’ of Sir Roger Scruton, RIP
“Real grief,” wrote Sir Roger Scruton in Culture Counts, “focuses on the object, the person lost and mourned for, while sentimental grief focuses on the subject, the person who grieves.” Bona fide grief attends the death of Roger Scruton, 75, from cancer on Sunday. The noted philosopher, expert on aesthetics, and intellectual architect of modern conservatism – who wrote more than 50 books – leaves behind his wife, Sophie, and two children, Sam and Lucy. Scruton, who had been fighting...
10 quotes: Sir Roger Scruton
Sir Roger Scruton, whom Acton Institute co-founder Rev. Robert Sirico once described as “perhaps the world’s leading conservative philosopher,” passed away from cancer Sunday at the age of 75. His profound intelligence probed every subject from aesthetics and sexuality to religion and the minutiae of governing. Below are 10 quotations that encapsulate his view of conservatism, culture, and the meaning of life. What is culture? A civilization is a social entity that manifests religious, political, legal, and customary uniformity over...
Why Scruton matters
The Marxist atheist culture, in particular, aimed to root out beauty, precisely because beauty was a spiritual force for contemplating the divine and for inspiring creative thinking beyond the mindless and mand-and-control mentality. Read More… The late Sir Roger Scruton, the eminent philosopher of aesthetics, politics, liberty, and culture, returned home to his Creator last Sunday. Scruton was famous, among other things, for running an underground university for Czechoslovakian dissidents during their munist regime while teaching them Western philosophy, history...
Acton Line podcast: Terror in New York: Is anti-Semitism on the rise?
On December 10, 2019, shoppers in a Kosher market in Jersey City, N.J., became the targets of anti-Semitic violence. A man and a women opened fire in the grocery store, killing four people. Just a few weeks later, a man wielding a machete broke into a rabbi’s home in Monsey, New York, and stabbed five people who were in the midst of celebrating Hanukkah. One victim, 72-year-old Josef Neumann, was the most seriously injured and currently remains in a. These...
Sir Roger Scruton on Wilhelm Röpke’s ‘Humane Economy’
This week, we received news of the unfortunate loss of Sir Roger Scruton, who passed away from cancer at age 75. As Rev. Ben Johnson wrote, Scruton was a “noted philosopher, expert on aesthetics, and intellectual architect of modern conservatism,” recently described by Prime Minister Boris Johnson as “the greatest modern conservative thinker.” Scruton is perhaps best known for his contributions on munity, conservatism, and conservation, but he also had plenty to say about economic life and the marketplace. As...
The apocalyptic style in 21st century environmentalism
We’ve just put online the Fall 2020 issue of Religion & Liberty, which looks at environmental stewardship and current problems in conservation from a number of aspects (get over to Acton’s Facebook page ment on the articles). In the cover story, I wrote about the demands for a “citizen’s assembly” to accelerate the agenda of the radical environmental organization Extinction Rebellion. Presumably, these new assemblies won’t involve elected bodies like the U.S. Congress or the Parliament of the United Kingdom:...
Hayek, Catholic social teaching, and social justice
Last week David Deaval, Visiting Professor at the University of St. Thomas and 2013 Novak Award winner, wrote a very thoughtful essay on Fredrich Hayek, the question of social justice, and Catholic social teaching at the Imaginative Conservative. Deaval begins by noting the increasing tendency among some in the American conservative movement to devalue and dismiss free market ideas: One of the places this e out most strongly lately is in the hostility directed at “libertarians,” “libertarianism,” and indeed “free...
Related Classification
RELIGION & LIBERTY
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
About
Terms and Conditions Privacy policy Cookie Settings Contact Us
Services
Login register
mreligion RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE RELIGION & LIBERTY
Links
zpostcode Recruit weather mreligion Yellowpages sport constellation shopping name game directory literature Word tour furnish Lottery tftnews lyrics News digital car dir Edu Finance
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved