Thielicke lived through the Holocaust
...in this book, he is asked about his experience with the Nazi government...HIS WORDS GIVE US REASON TO THINK STRONGLY ABOUT OUR REACTIONS TO THE CURRENT POWER STRUCTURE! PLEASE READ WHAT HE SAYS BELOW!
"As a representative who has gone through these truly apocalyptic experiences, one can only lift up his voice in warning and say to his friends in this far more fortunate country: Take care that mere good manners, the simple slogan "be nice to one another," is not the ultimate determinant of your relationship to your fellow human beings...all this "niceness" can become merely tHE expression of a pragmatic doctrine of optimal manners and etiquette. Then one is no longer "nice" because one has respect for human dignity, but rather because one desires merely for very practical reasons to eliminate as much as possible all friction from social intercourse...THIS PRAGMATISM, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, WILL NOT STAND THE TEST IF EVER RULERS SHOULD APPEAR WHO BRING TO YOU A DIFFERENT SET OF VALUES.
Then people would not even recognize their dreadful consequences, for they can have a very pleasing exterior. These demonic figures would not have the appearance of criminals with piercing eyes, a brutal jaw, and unshaven faces. They would be pictured patting the heads of little children and fondling their dogs. They would quote Bible passages and disseminate stories of how they cannot sleep at night for concern over their people. They would come before the public as men of responsibility and moral conviction. Only one thing in them would be a littele different than before: they would have a somewhat different scale of values."