The Slippery Slope

I ran across this comment by "Manedwolf" over on THR, and felt it was worth repeating:

Do you think that one day in, say, 1935, groups of German villagers suddenly just woke up and said "Hey! I know! Let's be EVIL! That'd be cool!"

No. They followed a path from wanting security to giving up civil liberties to scapegoating to blind, nationalistic fervor and mob mentality excusing atrocities. It's a road to hell, and it's the duty of EVERY American to watch that we don't go down it...because it's a slippery slope, and by the time you'd noticed it had happened, most people either don't want to see it, while the others are helpless to stop it.