Leo Strauss had Donne Trotter’s number. Strauss was the University of Chicago professor who coined the term reductio ad Hitlerum. It’s a rhetorical gambit also known as “playing the Nazi card.” In an ...

The great French free-market economist Frederic Bastiat (pictured above) was considered by many to be the master of the reductio ad absurdum approach that he used quite effectively to expose the ...

When I was at the Register last week, I wrote a blog on Beatle Paul McCartney and global warming. He had compared global warming skeptics to Holocaust deniers. I made a mistake. I wrote about it as a ...

A conclusion that doesn’t follow from or is a negation of its premise is an example of reductio ad absurdum, be it in logic or in discourse about democracy. In social constructs such assertions are ...

In teaching logical fallacies as part of persuasion and public speaking courses, I sometimes refer to a half-serious one called "Reductio ad Hitlerum," or "playing the Hitler card." Debaters who use ...

Writing at Townhall.com, Kevin McCullough, in a piece inventively titled "Obama as Hitler," argues that the president is exterminating babies like Der Fuehrer and that his opposition to a recent Bush ...

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. From Mr Neil Jeffares. Sir, The downgrading of a dozen UK deposit-takers (“Moody’s hits 12 British lenders with ...