Following orders

Today, June 1, in 1962, Adolph Eichmann was hanged after having been found guilty of crimes against humanity. He remains the only civilian executed in Israel, which has a general policy against using the death penalty. Since his death, some argue that Eichmann was unfairly tried and condemned because he was only following orders. But I think, given what we know about Eichmann, and others like him, everybody is capable of committing horrendous crimes under the appropriate set of circumstances. In this instance, it was the German governments policy to eradicate Jews from Europe by any means possible. And in doing so, Eichmann was following the law. What hasn't been adequately address is how people allow the enactment of these laws. In every instance where the German population acted as a group to stop the slaughter, the SS backed down. Of course, in those instances, German citizens believed that THEIR rights were bring trampled, because there was little hue and cry when the Nuremberg Laws were enacted in 1935. We do the same thing in the United States. In our misguided attempt to protect ourselves, we allow our government to abrogate our rights, believing that somehow when the threat eases, the government will back off. Of course, the threat never eases and the government never backs off. Worse, we assume that the laws do not effect us because we are not identified as "the other."  Once you allow  the government to listen to the conversation of others, you invite scrutiny of your activities because who is to guarantee that what is legal today will be legal tomorrow? It has never been against US law for any citizen to be a member of a political party, including the Communist Party, and yet under McCarthyism citizens were deprived of their right to work simply because they were a member of the Communist Party or, if not, knew someone who as. And this happened on the heels of World War II when we should have known better. We are all in danger when the government decides that it can determine who is and who is not an enemy combatant and who can be incarcerated indefinitely without being charged. If we are not willing to protect our own freedoms, then we must accept what follows, and if we accept what follows than we are all guilty of what happens next.