“I don’t think so. Germans have a long history of following those who are in charge… not unlike the slave state of Russia. That is not true for Americans.”
Anecdote: I personally know one of the Durham Police officers involved in the investigation of the Duke Lacrosse case. I was told that Jerry Nifong was all that we thought he was, and more. I was told that the officers on the investigation did not like what they were doing, and thought the investigation was wrong, and the players innocent. Yet, I was told, they were given search warrants with a judge’s signature on them.
They served the warrants. They followed orders, even though they knew they were wrongly damaging innocent people’s lives.
Scientific: The Milgram Experiment, performed in the 1960s at Yale University, involved Americans as test subjects. I’m sure you’ve heard of it. If not, you should look it up.
People follow orders. No difference whether they are German, Japanese, Chinese, Rwandan, Pakistani...or American. No difference whether we agree with the orders or not. It is how we are psychologically wired.
When I was in law school, my Civil Procedure professor turned one class session over to a Holocaust survivor, who told us what he had to do to be the only member of his family to survive Auschwitz. At the end of the presentation Professor Harvey went to the podium and all he said was “Your duty as lawyers is to make sure this never happens again.” As the class left, I could hear my classmates talking. All of them said the same thing:
“That can’t happen in America.”
Yes it can. In fact, that attitude of denial almost guarantees that it will.
I never said that can’t happen in America. I maintain that IF Americans, particularly conservative AMericans, stand up BEFORE this all crumbles away, THEN we can give our children something of value.
In the US we are less likely to ‘follow orders’ since that is not our nature. It just isn’t. Even in the Stanford guard prisoner experiment some people refused, others did not participate at all. The bigger concerns I have you simply didn’t address.
I am less concerned about those who follow orders than I am about conservatives who put their heads in the sand and refuse to fight back. All those preppers and others who will not vote unless the PERFECT candidate comes along and they hide out thinking that will protect them.
I look to men such as Boenhoffer for courage and inspiration. The fact is until we STAND with courage we will be in for a very dark slide