"I hate the idea of causes, and if I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend I hope I should have the guts to betray my country." Th

"I hate the idea of causes, and if I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend I hope I should have the guts to betray my country." That's fine, and that is probably how most of us who aren't Ancient Romans think. However, that is also the way that swaths of the German judiciary and bureaucracy thought as it undermined the Weimar Republic, and that is also the way a lot of the hard-core Japanese militarists thought. Either of them would have said, I suppose, that they served the nation while betraying the state; but it comes down to much the same thing in effect.