Memorial Day 2014: Just Following Orders
Carl Herman ■ There is evil, and then there’s organized evil. This is a memorial outside the village where my brother lives in the south of France. It is a typical village, quite small, perhaps a few hundred residents. The memorial commemorates three young French civilians who were taken out and shot by Nazi soldiers, either for “crimes” of resistance or perhaps as a “lesson” to the restive civilian populace. The German soldiers who pulled the triggers were of course “just following orders.” [...] But to be part of large-scale organized evil, people need to surrender their autonomy under threat, and be ordered by a central authority.
Paul Craig Roberts ■ Lincoln forever destroyed states’ rights, but the suspension of habeas corpus and free speech that went hand in hand with America’s three largest wars was lifted at war’s end. However, President George W. Bush’s repeal of the Constitution has been expanded by President Obama and codified by Congress and executive orders into law. Far from defending our liberties, our soldiers who died in “the war on terror” died so that the president can indefinitely detain US citizens without due process of law and murder US citizens on suspicion alone without any accountability to law or the Constitution. As Alexander Solzhenitsyn said, “A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny.” - The conclusion is unavoidable that America’s wars have not protected our liberty but, instead, destroyed liberty.