A Quote by Hermann Goring
The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders...tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.
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Naturally, the common people don't want war ... but after all it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.
Thomas Jefferson once said: 'Of course the people don't want war. But the people can be brought to the bidding of their leader. All you have to do is tell them they're being attacked and denounce the pacifists for somehow a lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.' I think that was Jefferson. Oh wait. That was Hermann Goering. Shoot." [Hosting the Peabody Awards for broadcasting excellence at the New York Waldorf-Astoria, June 6, 2006]
But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders.
I suffer the mortification of seeing myself attacked right and left by people at home professing patriotism and love of country who never heard the whistle of a hostile bullet. I pity them and the nation dependent on such for its existence. I am thankful, however that, though such people make a great noise, the masses are not like them.
Tell people that war is an evil, and they will laugh; for who does not know it? Tell them that patriotism is an evil, and most of them will agree, but with a reservation. "Yes," they will say, "wrong patriotism is an evil; but there is another kind, the kind we hold." But just what this good patriotism is, no one explains.
To abolish war it is necessary to abolish patriotism, and to abolish patriotism it is necessary first to understand that it is an evil. Tell people that patriotism is bad and most will reply, 'Yes, bad patriotism is bad, but mine is good patriotism.'
Being a correspondent at the Vietnam war for me was about exposing myself to danger but it wasn't completely self-serving. I felt that there were these dark places of the earth, were dark things were happening and people should know about them. Call it my moral obligation to go and see them and report them.
We're being attacked, Britain is being attacked, our allies are being attacked because we've installed and backed and implemented a set of policies in the Middle East for the last years or more.
It is not difficult to make microbes resistant to penicillin in the laboratory by exposing them to concentrations not sufficient to kill them, and the same thing has occasionally happened in the body. The time may come when penicillin can be bought by anyone in the shops. Then there is the danger that the ignorant man may easily underdose himself and by exposing his microbes to non-lethal quantities of the drug make them resistant.
If one's patriotism is merely instinctive it is irrational and irresponsible, and consequently a danger to one's country.
Tell the British people if the Iraqis are subjected to aggression or humiliation they would fight bravely. Just as the British people did in the Second World War and we will defend our country as they defended their country each in its own way. The Iraqis don't wish war but if war is imposed upon them - if they are attacked and insulted - they will defend themselves. They will defend their country, their sovereignty and their security.
People on the whole are very simple-minded, in whatever country one finds them. They are so simple as to take literally, more often than no, the things their leaders tell them.
The majority of the people in this country love America, do not dislike it, do not distrust it. The majority of people in this country do not want our culture further attacked and rotted away. The people of this country are sick and tired of not having any good-paying jobs anymore. The people of this country are sick and tired of being told that America's best days have already happened.
Patriotism which has the quality of intoxication is a danger not only to its native land but to the world, and "My country never wrong" is an even more dangerous maxim than "My country, right or wrong."
My goal, if I could have an ultimate goal, is to have new leaders emerge from within the Muslim community who are not defensive: who, day in, day out, are willing to denounce radicalizations, denounce the attempts by al Qaeda to go into their communities.
[The Republicans] are always asking the Muslims to denounce their extremists. And I agree with them. But they don't take that note and do it among their own. They don't denounce their own extremists.
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