RE: Y2K: Am I paranoid?

Billy Brown (bbrown@conemsco.com)
Thu, 11 Feb 1999 07:44:37 -0600

Randall Randall wrote:
> 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*!

I know. :(

The important people in this equation are the mid-level officers. Battallion and division-level COs are a lot more prone to independent thinking than individual riflemen, and a lot more likely to worry about this kind of consideration. Even then they'll probably let a lot of things slide - but if you tell them to lock up the local government and disarm the police, they aren't going to do it.

Billy Brown, MCSE+I
bbrown@conemsco.com