05-13-2011, 04:28 PM
$tevie wrote:
[quote=rjmacs]Nazism didn't (and couldn't) operate because Germans and their allies were just bad people who had no trouble slaughtering innocents. It took a lot of work to make that happen, and much of the work was put into destroying people's capacity to distinguish good and evil.
Which is why you need to establish that you will be punished eventually for crimes as defined by forces greater than yourself, whether or not you have lost your moral compass. If everyone in that country knew they could be hung for what was happening maybe they would have opted to kill Hitler early on instead of 11 million innocents.
I have failed to make my point. These systems don't just mix up the directions on a moral compass; they mangle and disable the compass itself. They make it impossible for people to distinguish good from evil by design, and they do it chiefly by stifling the people's capacity to engage in reflection, deliberation, and creative communication with one another. In the absence of these things, the conscience doesn't just get disoriented; it atrophies and vanishes. I don't think that knowledge of a waiting war crimes tribunal would have made any difference to most Nazis.