I’ll have a read of those later, I’ll just note that the post you quoted is from several years ago and this is new research.
Out of curiosity, what happens if you flip it around? Say that you’re the slave that someone else on the Underground Railroad is willing to help escape; or that you’re the endangered Jew in Nazi Germany, and someone else can get you out of the country. What’s your response?
Oh I doubt you’re going to like this.
He’s already answered this – he thinks that the only morally correct thing for a slave to do is to obey their master. Seriously. He really, actually said this. A human being on Earth in the 21st century said this: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=17715425&postcount=447
And I suppose that the only morally correct option for a Jew in Nazi Germany was to willingly march into the death chambers.
Sure, if the paperwork was all in order.
Even if your name is Tuttle?
There’s a certain strength in reductio ad absurdum.
Then you see cases like this.
Whenever you conclude slavery or marching Jews to death camps is morally superior to violating the law by logically following through on a premise, that should trip some major alarm bells.
Emerson was spot on that a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.
Well, Fascism wasn’t really much of a thing in Emerson’s time. If it had been, I’m sure he would have said: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of cowardly, fascistic, and idiotic minds.”
Smapti’s moral brokenness is analyzable in terms of Kohlberg’s stages of moral development. Kohlberg identified six stages beginning with the simplest pleasure-vs.-pain motivation of very young children and building up to universal ethical principles at the level of highest development.
Smapti is stuck at the fourth stage, where morality is identified with law and authority. Mature adults normally progress past this stage to higher levels of understanding of right and wrong. He’s hit a hard ceiling at the fourth stage. Not only that, he’s bolted iron plates into the ceiling joists to ensure he can never break through to a higher level of development.
He’s a little more complex than that, but not in a good way. In some instances he seems to regress to lower levels, where the motivation is to avoid consequences for oneself. This takes place when his usual fourth-stage morality runs into impossible contradictions, as it must at times.
I can’t speculate on what has caused such a hardened fixation at an immature level of development, but in Kohlbergian terms his problem is clear to see. It’s profoundly disturbing and I can only hope he somehow gets help for it.
Shit, that was one of the most sophisticated takedowns I’ve seen.
Dammit, Smapti, you were doing so well for such a long time. 
And they should be goose-stepping for good measure to show their patriotism.
coward, a fascist and an idiot
Your title is redundant.
And Smapti would have forced them in at bayonet point if they resisted.
Am I the only one who read this and heard it in the voice of Rimmer of Red Dwarf?
Article 90? “No officer will engage in sexual relations with an animal unless in possession of a veterinary waiver”? Are you entirely sure that is relevant, sir?
Ah, but suicide is also a big no no Smapti’s book. So there is quite the conundrum. If a person in authority commands you to kill yourself should you do it?
All those willing participants Milgram found have to be somewhere.
As Robert Anton Wilson suggested, take a private first class trained to unquestioning obedience to authority. Put him in front of two officers of equal rank, one ordering him to stand up and the other simultaneously ordering him to sit down. Wilson concluded that the subject would “wig out.” Can you picture Smapti in that situation?