Defending Internment and The Bee Analogy
Sep. 25th, 2004 09:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tabular_rasaWow . . . this is crazy. This is the first time I've ever read an article DEFENDING internment. It's amazing; it's nearly universally accepted that it was wrong and racist.
Yet now that we have an ethnic group to lock up again, I guess people are warming back up to the idea.
It's really a review of a book defending internment, discussing a few of its points. (Leo, John. "The Internment Taboo." US News. 27th September, pg 74.)
I'm open to the idea that there might be defendable points. I'll listen to them (read them?), at least. Actually, I'm quite happy. Controversy makes writing on it more exciting. Also, it gets me worked up. SHOOT-DOWN TIME!!!
They give the usual points, the security vs. liberty-- so already we're battling on different lines-- and they claim that there actually WERE espionage systems set up on the West Coast, and one of which was actually used in Hawaii.
Now, every book I've ever read has said there were no acts of espionage. Of course, that could just be because all of my textbooks-- AND personal reading-- are indoctrinated by the Commie teachers of the present-day schools (a lovely phrase I quoted from the AOL Hiroshima chatroom, lol ^_^).
It is also pointed out how the internees were allowed to simple move to the interior instead of being evacuated, and the camps were open, if they could find jobs in the area (in the middle of Nevada or the unhabited part of California . . . right . . . ). They gave them like a week's notice to leave, too, and of course a couple months after Pearl Harbor, everybody's going to be real keen on selling houses to a mass number of Japanese-Americans.
First and foremost: "Malkin's point is that if the threat to the survival of America is severe enough, some civil liberties must yield." (Right away, my defense goes up . . . civil liberties yielding to security . . . ). Just one BIG point, though . . . why pinpoint the whole group? Even if some were involved in spying, that's only a small number among bunches of innocents. That's a LOT of people being locked up for no reason. It's the same thing as Arabic-looking people in airports (an analogy, hey, that they use . . . ); they're pinpointed for their group.
Now, I notice we don't see a man run into a store and stick it up, and go, "Ahh! Men! We must lock up all men because that one man shot up a store!"
Dad just asked me if I was reading this article, and I was, and I said I was commenting on it in my journal, and told him my point. Of course, he disagrees (he's like me; he always has to disagree-- or at least argue the other side). He was like, "That time we were stung by those bees under the picnic table, did I go back out and track down the three bees that stung us? No, I went and killed the whole nest. You didn't complain about that, did you?"
Well, for one thing, I was THREE. I was also hyperventilating to the point of giving myself a fever (Mom thought I was allergic-- but I wasn't). I don't remember what I thought, but, actually, I'm quite sure it struck me that that was a little harsh. I told him, truthfully, that at least in hindsight, it was.
*Gets a vision of Dad attempting to "evacuate" bees from the hive without killing them.* Okay, it's foolish, but it's nice.
Hey, look at this, too: The bees that had stung us were probably already dead. Don't they die when they sting you? So they were like kamikaze pilots, dying for their cause. We couldn't have killed them ourselves anyway. So Dad going and brutally murdering the bee nest with spray or whatever it was, killing all of the innocent workers bee (who we can argue MIGHT have risen up to sting us, if they had the chance, but we don't KNOW that, do we?), and the little larvae and the pupas and the queen-- all the bees that wouldn't have done anything, or couldn't have. So, we can say, it's a bee's nature to sting. Yet not all of them did. I recall no great huge swarm coming after us. It was a select few bees taught to defend the hive. They did, and they died for it. All the peaceful and unborn bees died for their actions.
Damn, that's a great analogy. My Dad was the Enola Gay of the bumblebee world, bearing the bug spray that the poor bees had never seen before and had no way of fighting.
Actually, I think they were yellow jackets. They stung me in the forehead. There's nothing wrong with having a wound on the forehead. Couldn't it have scraped on my forehead, jagged-like, and then never healed? Lol . . .
Yet now that we have an ethnic group to lock up again, I guess people are warming back up to the idea.
It's really a review of a book defending internment, discussing a few of its points. (Leo, John. "The Internment Taboo." US News. 27th September, pg 74.)
I'm open to the idea that there might be defendable points. I'll listen to them (read them?), at least. Actually, I'm quite happy. Controversy makes writing on it more exciting. Also, it gets me worked up. SHOOT-DOWN TIME!!!
They give the usual points, the security vs. liberty-- so already we're battling on different lines-- and they claim that there actually WERE espionage systems set up on the West Coast, and one of which was actually used in Hawaii.
Now, every book I've ever read has said there were no acts of espionage. Of course, that could just be because all of my textbooks-- AND personal reading-- are indoctrinated by the Commie teachers of the present-day schools (a lovely phrase I quoted from the AOL Hiroshima chatroom, lol ^_^).
It is also pointed out how the internees were allowed to simple move to the interior instead of being evacuated, and the camps were open, if they could find jobs in the area (in the middle of Nevada or the unhabited part of California . . . right . . . ). They gave them like a week's notice to leave, too, and of course a couple months after Pearl Harbor, everybody's going to be real keen on selling houses to a mass number of Japanese-Americans.
First and foremost: "Malkin's point is that if the threat to the survival of America is severe enough, some civil liberties must yield." (Right away, my defense goes up . . . civil liberties yielding to security . . . ). Just one BIG point, though . . . why pinpoint the whole group? Even if some were involved in spying, that's only a small number among bunches of innocents. That's a LOT of people being locked up for no reason. It's the same thing as Arabic-looking people in airports (an analogy, hey, that they use . . . ); they're pinpointed for their group.
Now, I notice we don't see a man run into a store and stick it up, and go, "Ahh! Men! We must lock up all men because that one man shot up a store!"
Dad just asked me if I was reading this article, and I was, and I said I was commenting on it in my journal, and told him my point. Of course, he disagrees (he's like me; he always has to disagree-- or at least argue the other side). He was like, "That time we were stung by those bees under the picnic table, did I go back out and track down the three bees that stung us? No, I went and killed the whole nest. You didn't complain about that, did you?"
Well, for one thing, I was THREE. I was also hyperventilating to the point of giving myself a fever (Mom thought I was allergic-- but I wasn't). I don't remember what I thought, but, actually, I'm quite sure it struck me that that was a little harsh. I told him, truthfully, that at least in hindsight, it was.
*Gets a vision of Dad attempting to "evacuate" bees from the hive without killing them.* Okay, it's foolish, but it's nice.
Hey, look at this, too: The bees that had stung us were probably already dead. Don't they die when they sting you? So they were like kamikaze pilots, dying for their cause. We couldn't have killed them ourselves anyway. So Dad going and brutally murdering the bee nest with spray or whatever it was, killing all of the innocent workers bee (who we can argue MIGHT have risen up to sting us, if they had the chance, but we don't KNOW that, do we?), and the little larvae and the pupas and the queen-- all the bees that wouldn't have done anything, or couldn't have. So, we can say, it's a bee's nature to sting. Yet not all of them did. I recall no great huge swarm coming after us. It was a select few bees taught to defend the hive. They did, and they died for it. All the peaceful and unborn bees died for their actions.
Damn, that's a great analogy. My Dad was the Enola Gay of the bumblebee world, bearing the bug spray that the poor bees had never seen before and had no way of fighting.
Actually, I think they were yellow jackets. They stung me in the forehead. There's nothing wrong with having a wound on the forehead. Couldn't it have scraped on my forehead, jagged-like, and then never healed? Lol . . .
