When political leaders set a negative example, professional commitments to just practice become more important. It is hard to subvert a rule-of-law state without lawyers, or to hold show trials without judges. Authoritarians need obedient civil servants, and concentration camp directors seek businessmen interested in cheap labor. From On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century (p. 38) by Timothy Snyder.
Snyder points out that Hitler often assigned lawyers too oversee occupied regions and evacuations, assisted by civil servants; business men to run factories with slave labor; doctors to perform “medical experiments” in concentration camps. To quote Snyder again:
If lawyers had followed the norm of no execution without trial, if doctors had accepted the rule of no surgery without consent, if businessmen had endorsed the prohibition of slavery, if bureaucrats had refused to handle paperwork involving murder, then the Nazi regime would have been much harder pressed to carry out the atrocities by which we remember it.
Professions can create forms of ethical conversation that are impossible between a lonely individual and a distant government. If members of professions think of themselves as groups with common interests, with norms and rules that oblige them at all times, then they can gain confidence and indeed a certain kind of power. Professional ethics must guide us precisely when we are told that the situation is exceptional. Then there is no such thing as “just following orders.”
Are you involved in a professional organization? Does your business or profession have a code of ethics? If so, you may want to get involved.
Living ~400lbs 