Steve H. compares Abu Ghraib to Delta House

Steve H. is a Miami lawyer with a blog. Yes, that must already be two-and-a-half strikes against him without even trying. In spite of that, he's one of the funniest commentators in the blogosphere and this entry is both brilliant and amusing.

When confronted with a moral problem, nine out of ten people will look around to see what nine out of ten people are doing, and they will follow suit without further deliberation. It's amazing how powerful the herd instinct is, in creatures as intelligent as human beings.[. . .]

The herd instinct helps frat pledges discard their common sense and self-respect, and it's also what drives frat brothers and prison guards to perform acts of sexual sadism. For that matter, it explains how Hitler got the Germans and Poles and other Europeans to load Jews into cattle cars and send them to the gas chambers.

I have always had problems with the herd instinct. I am not a joiner. I don't like discarding my own judgment when someone less intelligent than I tells me to do something I think is wrong or stupid. To a certain extent, that makes me defective, and in other ways, it's a virtue. On the whole, I'm glad.