Commentary: Follow Godwin's Law, not political correctness

In the unwritten rules of online political debate there is an axiom. It is called Godwin's Law and it states, according to Wikipedia, that “the person who first makes an unwarranted reference to Nazi Germany or Hitler in an argument loses that argument automatically.”

By any definition opponents of state Sen. Dewayne Bunch were well within their rights to invoke the rule during the senator's performance last week on the floor of the state Senate.

In his remarks in defense of his bill (SB0421), which would allow public school vending machines to sell 12 ounce beverage cans instead of the current eight ounce cans they are limited to, Bunch used the term ‘Nazi’ to describe those he believed to be overly concerned about conforming to the optimum nutritional standards for school children.

“[I]f you’re trying to be the nutritional Nazi police on school campuses, then we need to have someone there to keep them from buying more than one product if it’s eight ounces. If there’s an issue of nutrition, with buying two — they can simply buy two and circumvent that,” stated Bunch.

Examining the video from the proceedings, Bunch is clearly nonplussed by his own words. A colleague, however, Sen. Tim Burchett, seated behind him reacts and winces visibly when Bunch makes his utterance. Why? Was it his dismay at the debate tactics Bunch was engaged in? Was Burchett upset about the decline in the discourse?

No, the animated reaction by Burchett was because his colleague’s opponent in debate that day was Sen. Andy Berke, the chamber’s only Jewish member.

Of course, upon realizing that a gaffe was made, Bunch quickly asked forgiveness and apologized to both Senator Berke and the full Senate explaining that he had no idea that Berke was Jewish. Bunch assured folks that he was merely referencing the ‘Soup Nazi’ character from the popular television show Seinfield, not authentic National Socialists.

In the days that followed, Bunch was excoriated online for his verbal misfire in blog postings by progressive activists such as Mary Mancini and Sean Braisted, as well as the Tennessee Democratic Party chairman Chip Forrester, who issued a harshly worded press release denouncing Bunch for his flippant remark.

Now, Godwin's Law is certainly a well-crafted axiom. Trying to hang the noose of Nazism around political opponents is a truly tiresome tactic. That sort of hyperbole is the last refuge of a man with little to offer in terms of solidly grounded argument. Invoking Nazism in any modern political debate should earn the speaker a cornucopia of askance glances.

The problem in this case is that progressive activists and the state's Democratic Party did not turn their fire on Bunch because he resorted to amateurish and sophomoric debate tactics. Charges of Nazism and comparisons to fascists are all too common in modern political discourse, on both sides of the partisan divide. The word ‘Nazi’ is not what brought the media scrutiny to this party. It was the fact that Sen. Berke is Jewish.

Sen. Burchett did not reflexively recoil in horror because of his colleague's lazy rhetoric. It was because he had internalized our politically correct culture. He knew, whether Bunch intended any offense or not, his use of the word 'Nazi' against a Jewish legislator was going to catch him hell.

Now, should Bunch catch hell for comparing a colleague to a Nazi on floor of the state Senate? Absolutely. But it should be because in a deliberative legislative chamber we have higher expectations for debate among our elected leaders, not because one of the participants of the discussion happened to be of a certain religion.

The issue here was the shoddy and negligent practice of the rhetorical arts. The penalty for this should always be swift and serious, but Berke’s Jewishness or lack thereof should have nothing to do with the rightness and wrongness of what was done by Bunch here.

It was Godwin's law that was broken, nothing more.

Kleinheider is NashvillePost.com's political blogger. Visit Post Politics at http://politics.nashvillepost.com/