Scot McKnight delivers a startlingly cohesive meditation on how ordinary people navigate systems of power, weaving together a Girl Scout troop's 3D-printed wheelchair with the darkest chapters of Nazi Germany and the obscure etymology of a soccer trick. The piece is notable not for its disparate topics, but for its singular, piercing thesis: that history turns not on the grand gestures of leaders, but on the quiet, often frustrating choices of compliance or resistance made by everyone else.
The Architecture of Compliance and Resistance
McKnight begins with an uplifting anecdote about a Dorchester Girl Scout troop that spent nearly $200 in cookie profits to 3D-print a mobility trainer for a child in need. He uses this as a springboard to discuss the "comforting myth" that atrocities like the Holocaust were solely the work of "unprecedented evil men and women." McKnight argues this view is dangerous because it absolves the rest of society. As he writes, "The comparison isn't about Hitler or Himmler or Goebbels... It was carried out by lawyers who drafted the legal justifications, businessmen who used slave labor, bureaucrats who processed the paperwork, and neighbors who looked away." This reframing is powerful because it shifts the locus of moral responsibility from the singular tyrant to the collective bystander.
The author leans heavily on Hannah Arendt's concept of the "banality of evil" to illustrate how ordinary compliance enables mass horror. McKnight observes that we are witnessing a similar dynamic today, noting how "corporate America has quietly dismantled commitments it made in more confident times." While this parallel is compelling, critics might argue that equating modern corporate reticence with the machinery of genocide risks diluting the unique historical specificity of the Holocaust. However, McKnight's intent seems to be a warning against passivity rather than a literal equation of events.
The comforting myth of Nazi Germany is that it happened only because of unprecedented evil men and women. This myth is dangerous because it lets the rest of their society and frankly, the rest of us off the hook.
To counter the narrative of inevitable doom, McKnight highlights two specific instances where ordinary citizens defied the state: lawyer Hans Litten's 1931 cross-examination of Adolf Hitler in Berlin, and the "Rosenstrasse protest" in 1943 where non-Jewish Germans stood in the street to demand the release of their Jewish spouses. He notes that for those three hours, "an ordinary lawyer stood up to Hitler," and later, "ordinary citizens stood in the street, and their loved ones came home." These historical anchors ground his argument, proving that resistance is possible even under totalitarian pressure. The reference to Litten serves as a stark reminder that legal professionals have a duty to challenge power, a theme that resonates deeply when considering current institutional dynamics.
The Linguistics of Deception and the Loss of Patience
The piece takes a sharp turn into linguistics, exploring how the soccer term "nutmegged" evolved from a metaphor for deception. McKnight traces the word back to 18th-century traders nicknamed "Yankees," who were accused of selling fake wooden nutmegs. He cites Thomas Hamilton's description of these peddlers as "proverbial for their dishonesty," linking this historical trickery to the modern soccer maneuver where a player kicks the ball through an opponent's legs. McKnight explains, "That carries right into its usage... in soccer, with the kind of shrewd maneuver of outsmarting your opponent." This section serves as a clever metaphor for the broader theme of deception: just as wooden nutmegs hid among the real ones, bad faith actors can hide within legitimate institutions.
McKnight then pivots to his own struggle with reading classics, specifically Laurence Sterne's The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. He admits that while he once loved the greats, he now finds them "inexcusable" due to their verbose language and indecipherable plots. He quotes Nancy Yousef from Yale University, who explains that the challenge lies in the "thickets of syntax that might involve conditionals and conjectures." McKnight laments that he has lost the ability to read these books, a skill he attributes to a lack of practice rather than a change in the texts themselves.
The fantasy that students will become honest scholars while we refuse to impose honesty on them is just another adult abdication masquerading as humane insight.
This reflection on reading habits leads into a discussion on education, where McKnight cites Freddie DeBoer's argument that "Education is a form of coercion." He agrees with the notion that ethics and discipline are not magically summoned but must be cultivated under constraint. This connects back to his earlier point about resistance: just as students need structure to learn, societies need active citizens who refuse to comply with injustice. A counterargument worth considering here is whether this rigid view of education stifles the very creativity required for the kind of independent thinking McKnight champions in the Litten example.
The Erosion of Scientific Inquiry
The commentary shifts again to address the current political landscape regarding science funding, specifically targeting the National Science Foundation (NSF). McKnight notes that while President Harry Truman envisioned an agency guided by "the free intelligence of the scientist," the current executive branch seems determined to shrink it. He reports that the administration has proposed cutting the NSF budget in half and eliminating its Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences division. A White House spokesperson stated they are committed to innovation driven by "hard sciences, not in ideologically-driven 'social sciences.'"
McKnight highlights the danger of this move, noting that the administration fired all 22 members of the NSF's board without replacing them. He points out that experts reviewing social science grants have been reassigned, signaling a quiet dismantling of support for these fields. This section is particularly urgent because it underscores how institutional erosion happens not with a bang, but through bureaucratic maneuvering and budget cuts.
We are watching that compliance now. Some of America's most powerful law firms cut deals rather than stand up for the rule of law. The technology industry has increasingly restructured itself around proximity to power.
The author draws a parallel between the dismantling of social science funding and the broader theme of compliance he introduced earlier. By removing support for research that examines human behavior and society, the administration effectively silences a critical voice in public discourse. Critics might argue that focusing resources on "hard sciences" is a pragmatic response to global technological competition, but McKnight's evidence suggests this comes at the cost of understanding the societal impacts of those technologies.
Bottom Line
Scot McKnight's piece succeeds by connecting the micro-choices of individuals—from Girl Scouts to soccer players to readers—to the macro-dynamics of history and power. Its strongest element is the insistence that moral agency lies in the hands of ordinary people, not just leaders. However, the argument occasionally risks overextending the analogy between historical atrocities and modern political disagreements. The reader should watch for how institutions respond to these pressures: will they fold into compliance, or will they find their own "Hans Litten" moments?
The Holocaust was not carried out only by the truly evil and those who ran the death camps. It was carried out by lawyers who drafted the legal justifications, businessmen who used slave labor, bureaucrats who processed the paperwork, and neighbors who looked away.