They might say something like, ‘Well, of course the Nazis are terrible, terrible people, but you know, you must credit them with their good points.’
And you wanted to say to them: ‘But don’t you see, if you start granting them a good point here, a good point there, eventually you will concede everything to them.’ Which is exactly what happened.
Seems they had nothing substantive to criticize, so they had to go with the Ad Homin(um)! Really annoying/frustrating.
This makes me think of Elizabeth Anscombe’s pamphlet regarding the use of the atomic bomb. Though it came out of different circumstances, I find the logic unassailable.
It’s like he read That Hideous Strength and thought N.I.C.E were the good guys
This quote has felt so prescient lately: “I first thought of the rhinoceros image during the war (World War II), as I watched Romanian statesmen and politicians and later French intellectuals accommodate themselves to Hitler’s way of thinking.
