ANN ALTHOUSE: “The cry of ‘eugenics’ always goes up, but what are the people who raise it really worrying about? Not the return of the Nazis. It’s all-too-convenient the way the Nazis pop up to assist in making the argument you already wanted to make.”

If the Nazis didn’t exist, it would be necessary to invent them.

UPDATE: Bill Quick responds, but if I understand his point correctly then I think he misses mine. I was commenting — as was Ann — on the trivialization of the Nazis: If everyone you disagree with is a Nazi, then no one is a Nazi. I think that Bill is charging us with trivializing the Nazis, or denying their evil, which is exactly the opposite of the point we’re making. But I’m blogging from an airport — a place that subtracts at least 20 IQ points on a good day — so maybe I’m missing something.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Bill says more in the comments to his post, but I think we’re still at cross purposes. Yes, there are Nazi-level horrors in the world now. But — as Ann notes — the actual topic under discussion, genetic choice in IVF, isn’t one of them. To be a Nazi kind of thing, the government would be making the decisions, and killing people who resisted. Thus, Nazi analogies in this context, though predictable, are also silly.