Following Orders

Any casual student of history should know that the universal defense offered for Nazi atrocities at Nuremburg was “following orders”.  Had there been a reckoning of the even larger number of crimes committed by Communists around the world, it seems quite likely that they, too, would have justified their willing and often enthusiastic participation in crimes against humanity by pointing to the fact that someone higher in the hierarchy told them to do it.

This defense did not work in Nuremburg, by and large.  We all know the basic difference between right and wrong.  We know it is wrong to kill innocent people, wrong to torture them by starvation or electrocution, or horrific living conditions.

But one can say this while also admitting that failure to follow orders in many of these regimes would have meant death or torture.  What one cannot say, in our present era, is that members of our law enforcement community face death or torture for failure to follow unethical orders.  The worst that can happen is they lose their jobs.

I often see people say that a totalitarian state could never be brought about in this country, as the enforcers would rebel.  Would they?  I wonder.

Consider this case.  You have harmless old ladies being tacitly threatened with guns.  You have conversations about what constitutes “recreating” that would be farcical, even comical, were the abuse of power not so blatant.

What is going through these Park Rangers minds?  Do they not understand that they are participants in a political theater that has as a large part of its aim the eradication of a fundamental American freedom, that of choosing how and when we buy health insurance? Are they stupid?  Unprincipled?

At what point do members of our military and LEO communities rebel?  Do they?  ARE THEY NAZIS?  Will they one day commit crimes because someone told them to?  I don’t know, but it is discouraging how many are following orders to do things which are patently wrong, and almost certainly illegal.