From: Randall Randall (wolfkin@freedomspace.net)
Date: Wed Feb 10 1999 - 23:36:45 MST
It's been rumored that on Wed, 10 Feb 1999, Billy Brown wrote:
>Randall Randall wrote:
>> It's been rumored that on Wed, 10 Feb 1999, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
>> >Why would the military go along with it?
>>
>> Because they're told it's their duty, and the first coupla
>> people to refuse get court-martialed?
>
>Actually, our military code of justice would *require* them to refuse to
>obey such an order. You could plausibly face a court martial for complying
>with it. The idea is that a soldier takes his oath to the Constitution, and
>this oath takes precedence over the orders of his superior officers.
That *is* the idea. It just isn't the real life. :( While I don't think
that the emergency will be widespread enough for the military to
be plausibly called out, I have no trouble believing that the
people I was in with (when I was in the US Army) would follow
these sorts of orders. The problem is that most soldiers believe
that their superior officers won't *give* unConstitutional orders,
so if they get an order, it must be Constitutional. Nor do they
habitually weigh each and every order, or even the unusual
ones, against the Constitution. Most soldiers do not have even
a good idea of what the Constitution *says*!
-- Wolfkin. wolfkin@freedomspace.net | Libertarian webhost? www.freedomspace.net On a visible but distant shore, a new image of man; The shape of his own future, now in his own hands.-- Johnny Clegg.
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