NAZI POST. That's what it says. At the end of our street, there is a shiny new National Post vending box. In and around Toronto, there are many such gleaming and golden boxes, these days, because the Post is selling a lot more copies than it used to. Unless you own The Globe and Mail or the Toronto Star, that's good news.

The bad news, meanwhile, is readily seen by anyone strolling by on sunny Queen Street East. On the front of the Post's vending box at the end of our street, someone has used a thick black marker to neatly deface the newspaper's name. It now reads: NAZI POST.

Language is regularly denuded of meaning, as everyone knows -- by technology, by popular culture and by the pervasive data smog that suffocates all of us every day. It happens. Language changes, like the seasons. What is de rigueur one month is passe in the next.

But when considering Naziism and its murderous symptom, the Holocaust -- an ideology, and an event, which recall evil for which no serviceable explanation has been devised -- is it appropriate to use any of it as a rhetorical club, to advance a wholly unrelated argument? Has language lost so much meaning -- has it become so hollow, so empty -- that it is now, at long last, acceptable to make genocidal analogies to advance to the Debate Club finals?

I am being deliberately rhetorical, but this much is true: in our enlightened era, to call someone who is not a "Nazi," or to liken something that is not mass murder to the shoah, is now so commonplace that we barely notice. In the Internet ether, in the blogosphere, we even have a name for it: Godwin's Law. Named for Mike Godwin, the lawyer and Yale fellow who originated the term in 1990, Godwin's Law holds that "as an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one."

It happens all the time, and not just online; spend a few moments in Google, and you will find no shortage of examples from home and abroad. A few weeks ago, British pop singer Morrissey announced that his world tour would not include any Canadian dates, to protest the annual seal hunt. Said the former Smiths singer: "Construction of German gas chambers also provided work for someone -- this is not a moral or sound reason for allowing suffering." The reaction? Not much. A damning editorial in the Post, but little else. Morrissey's new album went to number one on the U.K. album charts.

In the 2006 federal election campaign, Liberal MP Jean Lapierre was upset that the leader of his former party, the Bloc Quebecois, wanted Liberals to "disappear" from Quebec. Said Lapierre: "That kind of language, where you say you want to make your opponents disappear, there's a little bit of a Nazi tone in that." The Canadian Jewish Congress deplored Lapierre's words, but he was re-elected anyway.

Well before that, another Liberal MP, Andrew Telegdi, went even further. Defending a member of a National Socialist death squad who had lied to gain entry to Canada, the Kitchener-Waterloo politician denounced Canada's effort to deport his constituent, saying: "Canada is acting like a Nazi-style regime ... That's what Hitler used to do." Telegdi was subsequently re-elected twice, handily.

It goes on and on. The Canadian Taxpayers Federation's Saskatchewan director referring to, and minimizing, the deaths of Kristallnacht to make an obscure point. Pam Anderson's favoured advocacy group, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, running an advertising campaign about "Holocaust on your plate." Marc Emery, the so-called Prince of Pot, describing Irwin Cotler as a "Jew Nazi." The pro-NDP Web site, Rabble.ca, regularly comparing Gaza to the Warsaw Ghetto.

Finally, incredibly, there was the leadership forum of the Liberal Party's Ontario branch last Friday, wherein candidate Bob Rae likened the Prime Minister's softwood lumber deal to the Munich Pact -- the notorious agreement between Adolf Hitler and Neville Chamberlain that carved up Europe. (Acting Liberal leader Bill Graham did similarly a few days earlier on CTV's Question Period.) Rae's comment attracted attention on a blog or two, but not in the media; his campaign did not respond to a request for comment. Rae remains a front-runner in the Liberal race.

We could go on, but the point should already be made. Analogies to the crime of the Holocaust -- and to its perpetrators, the Nazis -- are more than an inappropriate use of language. They are a gross, vile insult to the actual suffering of millions who perished at the hands of the Nazis: Jews and non-Jews, rabbis and priests, communists, gays, Jehovah's Witnesses, gypsies, trade unionists, non-whites, dissidents and disabled persons. Messrs. Morrissey, Lapierre, Telegdi, Emery, Rae, Graham et al. should apologize.

And to the fool who wrote "NAZI POST," here's some language for you to chew on: Grow up, then read up on history. You might learn something.

- Warren Kinsella blogs for the Post and at www.warrenkinsella.com.

© National Post 2006