monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

Maybe so. But that has nothing to do with protesters who showed up and didn't march along with the Nazis chanting their slogans.

The man who pointed out that everyone compares everything to Nazis says it's OK to call alt-right protestors Nazis.

Mike Godwin formulated Godwin's Law more than 25 years ago. And it has become a foundational rule of the internet in the time since: as a discussion goes on, the likelihood of someone being called a Nazi becomes higher.

Some have added an extra part: as soon as someone is called a Nazi, they are probably wrong.

But Mr Godwin has said that the white nationalists who took over the streets of Charlottesville over the weekend can fairly be compared to Nazis, given that many of them openly voice support for a Nazi ideology.

"By all means, compare these s***heads to the Nazis," he wrote. "Again and again. I'm with you."

As to when the right time would come, later letters suggest Lee thought never. When a Gettysburg memorial association invited Lee to attend a meeting "for the purpose of marking upon the ground by enduring memorials of granite the positions and movements of the armies," Lee declined.

Perhaps expecting the general who lost the Battle of Gettysburg to want his army's movements marked in stone was asking too much, but Lee's refusal went further. Rather than raising battlefield memorials, he favored erasing battlefields from the landscape altogether.

"I think it wiser moreover not to keep open the sores of war, but to follow the examples of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife and to commit to oblivion the feelings it engendered," he wrote.

But that has nothing to do with protesters who showed up and didn't march along with the Nazis chanting their slogans.

His point was simple; because of the over use of calling everyone and anyone from the right a Nazi, when actual Nazi's showed up everyone was either hesitant to call them Nazi's or hesitant to actually believe that they were in Charlottesville. So, when it was reported that Nazi's were involved in the march people simply didn't believe them. I certainly didn't. It was another "There they go again" moment and a shrug.

There is just no way to watch footage of the events in Charlottesville, to see the photos, to see the videos, and come away with the impression that this was just a case of "the left" calling a couple of harmless conservative protesters "Nazis."

I'm sure there were conservatives who simply dismissed the headlines without even bothering to inform themselves about what actually occurred in Charlottesville, instinctively rejecting any kind of reporting that mentions the terms "right" and "Nazi" in the same context. In the most charitable interpretation, you might argue that this is understandable - that the overuse of this kind of terminology has created a climate where people don't even bother to get to the bottom of headlines they instinctively disagree with, whether they're factually correct or not.

Video guy argues that it isn't the fault of conservatives for ignoring or dismissing the reports of a Nazis rally that turned violent and ended in the murder of an innocent counter-protester. Rather, he argues, the blame for conservatives dismissing reports and headlines lies with "the left" for overuse of the "Nazi" terminology.

That's a ridiculous notion. Nobody on "the left" has prevented conservatives from forming an educated opinion, from actually obtaining facts about the situation before dismissing it out of hand, from reading past the headlines before rejecting any kind of reporting in its entirety.

"The left" didn't prevent you from obtaining more information, from actually seeking out and watching footage of Nazis and white supremacists marching and shouting Nazi slogans. Why should we expect less than that from other conservatives? Why should we make excuses for their willful ignorance? What happened to personal responsibility - why shouldn't we expect conservatives who want to comment on the events in Charlottesville to obtain at least the basic facts before weighing in on the debate? Why is it the fault of "the left" if conservatives chose not to do what you, were able and willing to do?

The letter from the journalists actually said:

"it’s all the more important that the magazine get on the right side of this story as it develops.”

Disgusting. Let's stop doing brilliant and accurate investigatory journalism, and make sure we're on the 'right' side.

I'm sure too that there were some self-described members of the Alt-right who didn't want their comrades who were on the scene confused with Nazis and KKK members...there is a difference, and it's too easy to lump everyone who was at the demonstration together.