wage's law

I would like to propose a complement to Godwin’s Law aimed particularly at conservative rhetoric that involves Marx instead of Hitler. I am not sure which form it should take, though, so here are a few stabs:

The number of times that “Marxist” is used as an epithet by an author is inversely proportional to the likelihood that they have ever read any Marx.

The invocation of Marx should be taken as an indication that the author has no substantive economic or social critique to make.

I dunno – I’ll consider it a work in progress. In the meantime, today’s offender is Terry Frank, who not only invokes Marx without context, but also misquotes him. Great work!


Comments

KatherineMay 02, 2006 at 17:24 · reply

It looks like she just took a pullquote from any one of the “looksmartandgetcherquotehere” websites.

You could develop a similar rule for anyone using “liberal” as a perjorative, it seems.

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