Stanley Migram on obedience to authority

The legal and philosophic aspects of obedience are of enormous importance, but they say very little about how most people behave in concrete situations.  I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist.  Stark authority was pitted against the subjects' [participants'] strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects' [participants'] ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not.  The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation.  Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process.  Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.

~ Stanley Migram, "The Perils of Obedience," 1974

Henry David Thoreau on disobedience

Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty.  The obedient must be slaves. 

~ Henry David Thoreau, “Thoreau and the Art of Life: Precepts and Principles,” p.23, Heron Dance Press, 2006

Henry David Thoreau
1967

Tom Woods on obedience to the scientific priesthood

So of course no expert can tell if the costs are worth the benefits because no expert can know your value scale. So when people say, "we need to listen to the experts," as they urge us to dismantle everything that makes a society function and brings people joy, they have no idea what they are talking about. This is a philosophical question, not one that a scientific source would have the standing to answer. Unfortunately science, for some people, is not an ongoing search for the truth, and whose findings can help us make good decisions, it's a kind of priesthood. And whatever scientists tell us about anything, no matter how far removed from their areas of expertise, these people will obey. And the dangers of that should be obvious.

~ Tom Woods, "The Fact-Free COVID Dystopia," 38:00 mark, Mises Institute speech in Jeckyll Island, George, October 8-10

Peter Hitchens on the authoritarian obsession with mask wearing

This obsession with telling us how to look, and turning us from normal humans into submissive, mouthless flock animals all decked out in a compulsory uniform is, in my view, part of an unprecedented assault on our personal liberty in general. Stay at home. Stop working. Don’t see your friends or relatives. Submit, submit, submit. Get used to being told what to do.

And we do it. I have begun to understand why the atrocious drivel of Fifty Shades Of Grey was so popular. It seems we really have become a nation of surrendered masochists.

~ Peter Hitchens, "We've All Turned From Normal Humans Into Muzzled Masochists!," LewRockwell.com, July 9, 2020

Leon Trotsky on what socialism means

In a country where the sole employer is the State, opposition means death by slow starvation.  The old principle: who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced by a new one: who does not obey shall not eat.

~ Leon Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed: What Is the Soviet Union and Where Is It Going?, 1937