Every single park ranger or any officer who participates should be held personally legally responsible for his or her actions with no legal recourse to a defense argument of simply following orders.
If they they really think that they’re doing the right thing, then go for it.
If they aren’t sure that they want to be held personally for, for example, forcing a busload of elderly sightseers to drive 2 1/2 hours on a bus with no restroom breaks, then they need to have the guts to say No.
These folks are showing character traits disturbingly similar to the guys who had what it took to load people onto cattle cars and to open the gas supply to group showers.
And if you don’t think that these same park rangers would load your butt and mine into a boxcar without batting an eye, you got another think coming.
I think we’re at that early point when government employees can assure themselves that they’re “just” doing such and such and so and so because they’re ordered to do so for show and it’s not going to do any permanent harm and they’ll get to keep their jobs and it will all blow over...
Would they go further? I don’t know. The Germans did, obviously. I think a lot of rangers - who really didn’t go into their jobs to be police in the first place - might slip away and not go along with the program. But probably most of the people who work for the government in any capacity will rationalize it and do exactly what most Germans did.
They learned to ignore more and more and simply focus on the mechanics of their job and never even think about what they were actually doing.
Obama’s constant references today in his faux press conference to the “Tea Party” as terrorists, revolutionaries, etc. is clearly meant to stir up hatred and fear and legitimize any future attacks on his enemies. I found it very frightening.
Worse, the “Tea Party” doesn’t actually even exist...there are some groups that share certain opinions and objectives, but there is no such thing as an organized Tea Party. So that means that anybody can be accused of being a “member,” because it’s not necessary (or even possible) to have an official membership but yet be accused of being a subversive or even a terrorist.
You are correct.