pop morality

[downbeatplumb]

Here's the problem with your "moral anchor..."

The German removal of empathy was systematic over a period of 20+ years in that the were being forced to pay for damages cause by WWI that would take them way beyond their life times. Alot of the figure heads/the people that were blamed were the Jews. Because they held pominate positions that did not seem affected. They were not made to endure such hardships.

Now imagine if 'we' were made to feel greater than our great depression level economic down turn brought on by a terrorist act.. Like for instance a nuke was detonated in NYC and the city was uninhabitable. this would destroy our economy. and it would be decades before we recovered.

Imagine your level of 'empathy' after say 25 years of standing bread lines for food, watching your children starve to death and die, poison in the air and water all because of "Radical Muslims".. How long would you have empathy for them? What if DC was next? The maybe LA... How many cities? How many lives would it take before you understood that your 'terrorists' were attempting genocide on people like you?
Now what if as with 9/11 the Muslim community as a whole did not condemn these acts or again as with 9/11 it took years for any of them to say anything condemning?
What then would you say when you found out in the Koran it is permitted to them to condemn and deny their faith and pledge alliance to a foreign government as a means of infiltration?
or never mind all of that,
Let's say you suffered only as much than the typical German citizen after WWI, due to a religious act of terror, do you still think your empathy would be intact?

You can only judge the Germans because you have no Empathy for them. Now who's the sociopath?

I have already conceded that empathy can be undermined by experience and propaganda. It is still the guiding force behind morality.
Further than this,
I fail to see your point. And as to me judging the germans, I can use my empathy to place myself in their position at that time and can see how the constant lowering of how jews were seem coupled with fear of what would happen if you went against the authorities would make them act in a way that I judge with my own unwarped empathy as evil without them necessarily being evil people themselves. You seem to think I was demonising germans en masse, but that is far from the case. British people went along with the Nazis in Jersey, even building their own concentraton camp so it can happen anywhere. I fear that the fear mongering from the right wing evangelicals is going to bring on just this sort of evil in the US.