Most readers have agreed that my “dumb emailer” was indeed dumb. But a few folks have accused me of violating “Godwin’s Law” which says that the first person to make allusions to or accusations of Nazi-like or pro-Hitler tendencies automatically loses. A few others said I’m simply wrong when I write that the “notion of ‘all morality’ being ‘relative to context’ is thoroughly and entirely consistent with Nazi philosophy.”

I plead not guilty on all counts.

First of all, Doug-the-dumb-emailer was the one who broke Godwin’s law from the outset by calling me a “closet facist.” [sic] I was merely pointing out the irony of his position.

Second, I’m not behind schedule on a book about fascism because I haven’t been doing my homework. Of course the notion that morality is contingent on context is central to Nazi philosophy. Johann Gottfried Herder, the intellectual father of Volkish nationalism (but a decent guy), argued that morality is geopgraphically and ethnically specific. When Alfred Baeumler adpated Nietzsche to the Nazi cause much of his argument hinged on the notion that Christianity wasn’t a “universal” faith but a “Mediterreanean religion of salvation” which was entirely “alien to and far removed from [Nietzsche’s] Nordic attitude.”

This is a point, by the way, I think Andrew Sullivan got wrong in his recent criticism of Michael Novak. And since it’s been bugging me, I’ll tell you why.

Sullivan argues that the appeal of Nazism and Marxism weren’t relativistic. But relativism doesn’t solely mean the individual defines his own truths. It also means that individuals and groups can disregard external notions of authority and universality — moral or legal — to further their own conceptions of good and evil. This is what Julien Benda was referring to in his Treason of The Clerks when he complained that for the first time in memory, philosophers had sided with Socrates’ killers.

The Communists believed that killing inconvenient peoples for the good of the party was entirely justified. The Nazis believed killing inconvenient peoples in the name of the volk was entirely justified. Both movements argued that morality for Communists and Nazis (“workers,” “the proletariat,” Aryans whatever) was different than morality for outsiders and therefore lying, cheating and stealing were justified by their group defined morality. How Andrew can call it a “big stretch” for Novak to suggest Marxism and Nazism were a product of the moral relativism of the late 19th and early 20th centuries is beyond me.