Godwin's law on the campaign trail

Godwin's Law as defined by Wikipedia:

Godwin's Law (also known as Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies)^[1] is an adage formulated by Mike Godwin in 1990. The law states:^[2][3]

"As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one."

And from John McCain's prepared remarks today,

I guess he believes if a lie is big enough and repeated often enough it will be believed.

Which is variation of a quote famously attributed to Nazi Joseph Goebbels, "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it."*

Godwin, meet McCain. McCain, meet Goodwin.

Of course, built into Goodwin's law is the idea that the first person to invoke a comparison to Nazi's automatically looses the argument.


* (even though Hitler put the idea forward first as the "big lie" and was referring to Jews, and Goebbels was referring to the English, the quote is used today to describe Nazi propaganda)