Cardinal Ratzinger told the bishops about a faculty discussion from when he was a university professor in Germany. The dispute was over "the justifying power of the erroneous conscience." One professor created a reductio ad absurdum using Nazi true believers. If we should follow our conscience above all else, he said, then we "should seek them in heaven, since they carried out all their atrocities with fanatic conviction and complete certainty of conscience."
The example seemed straightforward enough for most of the profs, but the absurdity was lost on one or two observers. In fact, one colleague piped up "with utmost assurance that, of course, this was indeed the case." Hitler went to heaven.
"Since that conversation," Cardinal Ratzinger explained, "I knew with complete certainty that . . . a concept of conscience that leads to such results must be false. Firm, subjective conviction and the lack of doubts and scruples that follow from it do not justify man."

But of course, the reductio was illegitimate b/c it invoked Nazis.

Oh, & Bandit -- recall that I'm "incapable of incoherent thought & expression," which is doubtless why I resort to "ad hominem attacks." There are plenty of appropriate pursuits for those who can dish it out w/out taking it, but political debate is not one of them.

If you ask me today the only change is I'd say "he was a bloated gas bag who made the world worse."

To my mind that's honesty and forthrightness. Saying one thing about a person the day before they die and something very different afterwards is being two faced and lying. There is no reason to speak well of someone after death when you would speak ill of them before hand.

He was no more or less human than the rest of us

Speak for yourself - I never wanted to see 6 million people sent to death camps or sided with anybody who did.

But for Hitler's wickedness to somehow make him banned from discussion

Who's banning him from discussion? It's perfectly OK to discuss him with Pol Pot, Basil, Stalin, Mao, Saddam, Castro and other genocidal maniacs. Just when people compare him to whomever they don't like, like my HS Social Studies teacher who was 6'2" and had a stupid mustache, it's proof that someone's incapable of rational thought. Godwin's Law in action.

For excellent reasons, the common evaluation is that Hitler was a wicked person. But for Hitler's wickedness to somehow make him banned from discussion is ... peculiar.

Especially if you're incapable of coherent thought and expression.

You might want to rethink that. Hitler is one of the few people on which there's universal consensus of evil / immorality (and to make use of Anderson's language, he is a limit figure: those that don't accept his evil are simply outside the boundaries of decency).

That's very useful in a discussion of morality. If someone says that possession of trait X is sufficient for someone to be morally good, Hitler's possession of that trait destroys the argument (which is what we call a "counterexample").

Hitler is useful as a limiting case.

Especially if you're incapable of coherent thought and expression.

Hitler is useful as a limiting case. Obviously, one need not refrain from criticizing Hitler when he dies. So Dodd's rule is not universally applicable. We can then debate where exactly the limit lies.

As for Dodd's ridiculous belief that sincerity covereth a multitude of sins, well, that's been adequately lambasted. I would note only what a bang-up job Allan Bloom did on the "sincerity" virtue in The Closing of the American Mind.

What Dodd ignores re: Falwell is that many, many people -- myself included -- considered him a deeply wicked person, one who did great damage to both America and the Christian faith.

(My contempt for Falwell was not merely partisan -- I did not much respect Reagan as a president, but whatever antipathy I felt was purely partisan and thus properly put aside on the occasion of his death.)

But the fact that I disagree with Falwell no more makes him evil (or inspired by bad motives)

I note here that you seem to have made "evil" and "bad motive" mutually exclusive concepts. My point is merely that one can be immoral for the policies one supports rather than solely for one's dishonesty. I take Falwell at his word, rather than ascribing some hidden motive to him.

And, for what it's worth, I completely agree with your disappointment with the tendency in discourse to demonize or otherwise ascribe something other than sincere motive to our opponents.

However, I don't think that's here or there in this case: I wasn't saying Falwell was intellectually dishonest. I fully believe that he believed that he was telling the truth. And he was all the more a bad person for it. Someone that thinks that death from AIDS is a just ending for another isn't someone that deserves the typical niceties of respect for the recently passed.

So, rather than finding the man dishonest or disingenuous, I think his positions utterly repulsive.

Re: Godwin: you're correct. But if Godwin's law is to be saved from being an arbitrary prophylactic rule, it can't rule out legitimate uses of Hitler (which is what the first comment did). Unless it can be used with that distinction in mind, it's just silly.

Two wrongs don't make a right, of course, but I think I'll save my disgust for the truly disgusting ( Republican presidential candidates championing torture for example, and disgracing this once great country yet again).

Incorrect. Godwin's Law states that 'as an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.' Thus, Mark was correct.

dubious proposition that sincere motivation warrants praise regardless of the awfulness of the policy positions taken

I don't think that that's a fair reading of the text. One of the biggest problems with our discourse these days is people's unwillingness to allow for the fact that most people who disagree with them do so for what seem to be good and proper reasons to them. It's so much easier to ascribe evil motives. With Hitler, the evil motives were manifest. But genuine evil is very rare; most people who disagree are nevertheless people of good will. And our discourse would be a lot less coarse if people would give others the same allowance for that fact that they surely want for themselves.

That is not to say that one need refrain from criticizing someone's policy ideas. And you'll note I didn't refrain from doing so with regard to Falwell's - half the post is devoted to it. But the fact that I disagree with Falwell no more makes him evil (or inspired by bad motives) than the fact that I disagree with absent observer about the utility and purpose of school vouchers makes him evil (but note, please, that he feels the need to ascribe ill intent to me: It can't simply be that I've looked at the evidence and come to a conclusion he disagrees with; no, I am being intellectually dishonest). The distinction between criticism of ideas and attacking the person who promulgates them isn't exactly a subtle one, yet the line has been largely erased in wide swathes of our society. That is the unfortunate phenomenom I'm decrying. Not that I'm surprised to see it in this comment thread; just disappointed.

Well, actually all of these are true, but inconsequential -- if you're a loyal Bushie.

I am certainly no "loyal Bushie," whatever that even means, but not all of these things are true (the last one is demonstrably false, for instance) or consequential (the first is just another ad hominem bogeyman). Of the ones you listed, only one even approaches influence on American law: ID in schools. Which has very little, if anything, to do with Bush since school policy is local, ergo your "Bushie" remark is inapposite.

Godwin's Law met after only one comment!

It's not Godwin's, which is triggered for gratuitous comparisons to Hitler; it's an obvious counterexample to the dubious proposition that sincere motivation warrants praise regardless of the awfulness of the policy positions taken. 'Courage in a murderer is no virtue' and such.