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From: geb@cadre.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.auto,net.legal,net.politics
Subject: Re: Laws Nobody Obeys ARE NEEDED
Message-ID: <87@cadre.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 20-Nov-84 16:53:02 EST
Article-I.D.: cadre.87
Posted: Tue Nov 20 16:53:02 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 22-Nov-84 06:35:53 EST
References: <84@cadre.UUCP>, <1207@dciem.UUCP>
Organization: Decision Systems Lab., Univ. of Pgh.
Lines: 32
Xref: genrad net.auto:5316 net.legal:1192 net.politics:5945

My point about Nazi Germany was not that the Germans
were somehow specially evil, as some seemed to have
believed, but that indeed they are not special, and
that what happened there could happen in the US,
Great Britain, Israel, etc. (and maybe it does
to a lesser degree).  Some have disputed
whether or not the majority of Germans wanted Hitler.
It is true that he didn't get elected fair and square,
but I think most Germans did want him by 1937.  Of course,
if they didn't want him they couldn't have gotten rid of
him very easily by then, or later during the war when
they certainly didn't want him any more, but he was riding quite
high when he first pulled Germany out of the depression, and
built it up militarily and economically.  I happen to 
believe that many of the bloodiest dictators have been
personally popular enough to win election were one to
be held once they were established in power.  I think
that in a fair election Castro, Stalin, Hitler, and
Franco could have been elected with a large plurality.
Certainly the populace of Rome went right along with
establishing Augustus and later his sucessors as a
dictator and giving up their republic.  Of course, later
when they had bad ones like Caligula (very popular when
he was first named emperor) it was too late to go back.
My point is still valid: just because something is law
doesn't make it right.  There are circumstances in which
it is immoral NOT to break the law rather than follow it.
This was to rebut the naive view that once a society has
decided on making something the law our thinking has been
done for us and we should all follow like good little sheep.

As Emiliano Zapata said: Great people need no leaders.