Many readers may have heard of this flap by now but, for those who have not, what do you think of the two quotes below?
"Strength lies not in defense, but in attack."
and
"The great masses of people ... will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one."
They are both thought-provoking points of view are they not? The first would seem to be a good slogan for (say) a football team and the second could be very easily seen as a good summary of (say) the way many people believed John Kerry's claims about the brutality of American troops in Vietnam.
So does it matter that both quotes are from Adolf Hitler? Even a stopped clock is right twice a day, is it not?
If you have ever studied logic, who first said those quotes doesn't matter at all. One of the things you learn about in logic are fallacies. And one of the classical informal fallacies is the ad hominem fallacy. That is the fallacy of deciding whether or not a statement is true on the basis of the person who uttered it. Truth is judged by evidence for or against a proposition, not by who says it.
But in a New York School, they seem to be a bit weak on logic (no surprise there!). Two kids chose those two slogans to be displayed underneath their photo in the school yearbook. And you can guess the hysteria.
Must not Criticize the Great Leader
Shades of Stalin: Tony Blair must not be insulted.
"Police issued two stallholders at a farming show with 80 pound fines for displaying T-shirts bearing the slogan "Bollocks to Blair"....
the language was deemed to cause harassment, distress or alarm"
Source
"Bollocks" is a mildly derisive British term meaning "balls". The police are not backing down.
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