Do you find the "Good Germans" of today are more skeptical of their chosen "Authorities"?
Put in that context, yours is a perfectly appropriate comment. And, yes there is truth to the sterotype that Germans accept authority. Perhaps they merely accept the evidence of their own eyes. Relative to the rest of the world, their system has proven sucessful. Post war, Germany is a very congenial place, one can accept the advantages of their system, without necessarilly considering how America makes much of it possible.
My reaction was to a presumed attitude which is all too prevalent on these threads that Germany somehow poses a facist threat. There seems to be a cottage industy in America in places like Miami where The Herald sees a Nazi behind every bush here. That is what I meant by the last war. Germany's defalcation in the Irak War cannot be explained by Germany having gone too far right, but only by them having gone too far left.
Yesterday, no doubt after you had posted, I had a conversation with a 40 something female who has just returned from a summer holiday in Washington, New York and Boston. Obviously well educated, she delighted in telling me that the people she met in the States were not supportive of Bush. She opined that the Republicans and especially Bush, were (religiously) "intollerant." She had special scorn for Ashcroft as a religious fanatic.
I replied that it was not America which needed lessions in religious tollerance from the world but the other way around. I ranted awhile about James Madison etc. and why Europeans came to our shores. I refrained from pointing out that we American, who reside in the land of Neaderthals, were not putting people in ovens because of their religion only 50 years ago. I did unburden myself of my standard speech about how the left in Europe got it all wrong about Ronald Reagan and in doing so misled people like her.
But, believe me, it is very difficult to penetrate. Essentially, you are right, Germans see Government as their shield and protector and the source of their rights, not as a threat.
Like liberals in America, they simply come from 180 degrees.