Remember that famous test years ago wherein volunteers were to push buttons that supposedly caused other volunteers to experience pain? And they could hear the other “volunteers” screaming in pain, and still pushed the buttons?
Of course the “volunteers” experiencing pain were not volunteers at all, the only subjects were the button pushers.
Many people will do horrific things if they are told to do so by “authorities”. It takes strong moral courage to stand up against authority. This is something not valued in our current debased and debauched and greed driven society. We will see very bad results, even more than we see now, I am afraid.
This is an important point to remember.
Over on another thread, I was commenting positively on how Korean soldiers in Vietnam were among the most feared, and how they would do things that Americans could not or would not do.
My comment was here: http://freerepublic.com/focus/news/2878786/posts?page=53#53
The Koreans are the “good guys” and were fighting with us in a horrible war where the enemy routinely did horrible things so I give them a bit of a pass. Koreans fought in Asia against an Asian enemy using the methods with which Asian armies have fought for thousands of years — total war against an adversary who also practices total war.
Unfortunately, Asia also doesn't have a Judeo-Christian view of the “imago dei” — that the image of God is in all humans, even the enemy, and there are some things you just don't do to any human being. The concept of refusing unlawful orders because they violate the Law of a higher power who sees everything we do even if the sergeant or the commanding officer looks away is also not present in traditional Asian society.
That means really horrible things can happen.
We need to teach our young people that being conservative without being godly leads to an uncritical “just following orders, sir” approach. Liberals are anti-authoritarian because they want total freedom for themselves. Conservatives respect human authority, but understand it comes from a higher Authority, and there are times we not only can but must question human authority and refuse orders.