It's been a bit...

Since I've been over here, but I wanted to jot down a few political thoughts, so since I've gotten burned a bit on LJ, this is where I head for that.

I'm a radical middle-of-the-roader. Let me restate that. I'm a centrist. Let me clarify. I do not think either party has a lock on the truth and I don't think either party is going to be the salvation of FITB. There, do we have that?

Now, that being said, I hear a lot of folx complaining about the fact that the Dems are getting shut out of the political process. That's probably true, but part of it's their own damned fault. Dems are seen, rightly or wrongly, as anti-American, anti-military, anti-white-middle-classers, anti-anyone who's not on the handout bandwagon. Whether such a thing even exists is debatable, but perception shapes reality.

I don't vote a Dem ticket because I'm tired of being sneered at for being...oh...strapped enough to shop at Wal-mart, dumb enough to join the military (I got off active duty after 9/11 and joined the NG knowing I'd end up deployed), deluded enough to belong to a church that's older than most of the civilized world and conservative enough to make a Baptist blink. I'm tired of being told that I'm not part of FITB minority, and that I don't matter.

I don't vote a Republican ticket because I don't like the fear-mongering. I don't like my government trying to pass off gross violations of civil liberties as "necessary." I don't like being told that anyone down on their luck is just lazy or stupid, or whatever. I don't like being told that one of our Constitutional duties, to examine what our government does in our name, is siding with the terrorists, and that if I don't agree with everything the government does I'm un-American.

Please note that both these generalizations are gross stereotypes and not indicative of the true feelings of most of the Dems or Republicans in the real world.

Yes, helping other people out is a good goal, especially if they're in a position where they can't help themselves, and I'm all for a hand up. I'm all for making sure that schools in bad neighborhoods get the money they need and that parents who have at-risk kids get assistance. I think a lot of it should come from churches, and from private charities, though.

I think that people should be encouraged to assimilate into American culture, including discouraging ethnic enclaves that allow people to stay insulated and comfortable in a Little Havana or a Koreatown or wherever. And yes, that means that I think upper-middle class neighborhoods need a bit of a kick in the butt, too. There's more out there than your Mercedes-drivin' tennis-club buddies, Buffy, and they might have something to teach you.

Where in the world was I going here? Um. Right...AH!

One of the things that I disagree with my darling husband on is the amount of civil liberty I am willing to give up in order to be safe. I'm not willing to give up too much more than we've already given up, and in fact, I'd like to see some of the stupidity that started after 9/11 rolled back. I am not, in any way, shape or form, a fan of the Patriot Act. I'm not a fan of the TSA and I'm not a fan of the warrantless wiretapping. I don't care if I don't have anything to hide! I don't, btw. I'm just not thrilled with idea of being nibbled to death by ducks.

So, a night or so ago, we started talking about the internment camps for Japanese during WWII. I tend towards hyperbole when I get my dander up, and the internment of American citizens tends to get my dander up. So, publically, I'll apologize to John for inflating the numbers from around 120,000 to "millions." Um. Right. That was Not Cool. Sorry about that, honey.

Anyway, here are some of the "facts" from Wikipedia. (God, what did we do before the Wiki?)

Japanese American Internment refers to the forcible relocation of approximately 120,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans, 62 percent of whom were United States citizens, from the West Coast during World War II to hastily constructed housing facilities called "War Relocation Camps" in remote portions of the nation's interior. The American camps were only meant to isolate the Japanese, in contrast to the Nazi concentration camps which existed to eliminate their captives.

So, out of the 120,000 people relocated, over half of them were American citizens. Repeat after me. WTF?

Okay, so maybe there was a good reason. After all, that 40% might have had spies and sabateurs loyal to Japan, right? Er. Maybe not.

Critics of the exclusion argue that the military justification was unfounded, citing the absence of any subsequent convictions of Japanese Americans for espionage, as well as the fact that the Army resorted to falsifying evidence in order to bolster its case before the Supreme Court in Korematsu v. United States. In response, pro-internment author Michelle Malkin has argued that the absence of any esponiage convictions is immaterial because the government may have possessed unspecified secret evidence of espionage that it was not able to introduce in court; however, her argument has not met with much success among professional historians.^{[citation needed]}

Lieutenant Commander Kenneth Ringle, a naval intelligence officer tasked with evaluating the loyalty of the Japanese American population, estimated in a 1941 report to his superiors that "more than 90% of the Nisei [second generation] and 75% of the original immigrants were completely loyal to the United States." A 1941 report prepared on President Roosevelt's orders by Curtis B. Munson, special representative of the State Department, concluded that most Japanese nationals and "90 to 98 percent" of Japanese American citizens were loyal. He wrote: "There is no Japanese 'problem' on the Coast ... There is far more danger from Communists and people of the Bridges type on the Coast than there is from Japanese."

All in all, I'd have to say the interment was damaging to the United States.

I mean, even J. Edgar Hoover didn't think it was a great idea.

FBI director J. Edgar Hoover opposed the internment of Japanese Americans. Refuting General DeWitt's reports of disloyalty on the part of Japanese Americans, Hoover sent a memo to Attorney General Francis Biddle in which he wrote about Japanese-American disloyalty, "Every complaint in this regard has been investigated, but in no case has any information been obtained which would substantiate the allegation."

So, I'm not feeling it, and I think that it's a pretty clear case of abridgement of civil liberties and fundamental rights guaranteed to citizen amounting to...um...not so much.

Some present-day supporters of the internment have argued that some Japanese Americans were indeed disloyal, as seen by the approximately 20,000 Japanese Americans in Japan at the start of the war who joined the Japanese war effort, hundreds joining the Japanese Army. Additionally, two Japanese Americans on Niihau freed a captured Japanese pilot and assisted him in his machine-gun attack on Native Hawaiians there.[3]

Critics of this viewpoint note that it seems unlikely that Japanese Americans in Japan had any choice other than to be conscripted into the Japanese army, given (1) that it was near-impossible for them to return to the U.S. from Japan, and (2) that the United States had already classified all people of Japanese ancestry as "enemy aliens."

Some present-day supporters of the internment also cite the disloyalty of Tomoya Kawakita, an American citizen who worked as an interpreter and a POW guard for the Japanese army, and who actively participated in the torture (and at least one death) of American soldiers, including survivors of the Bataan Death March. Kawakita was imprisoned in Alcatraz Island for his treason.

Despite all this, it must be noted that the FBI had no documented proof of espionage or sabotage by any Japanese American or Japanese national in the United States, except for a small group of ineffective Japanese nationals who were arrested long before Pearl Harbor and were deported (the Tachibana ring).

I'd have to agree with the idea of the 20,000 Japanese Americans in Japan not being able to come home, and even if they could...why on God's green earth would they? They'd be stripped of their rights!

So, let's say, for the sake of argument, that there were 1200 sabateurs found. I'm still not thinking that a 1% return on the internment justifies it. I just don't.

And like I said, I think it damaged a whole lot more than the Japanese-Americans who were stuck in the camps. I think it damaged a whole lot more.

Some Japanese Americans did question their loyalty to the United States after the government removed them and their families from their homes and held them in internment camps, although such cases were isolated incidents and did not reflect the larger sentiment of the Japanese-American people, who remained loyal to the United States. Several pro-Japan groups formed inside the camps, and riots occurred for various reasons in many camps, most notably Tule Lake, which caused the WRA to move "troublemaker" internees to Tule Lake (see below). When the government asked whether internees wished to renounce their U.S. citizenship, 5,589 of them did so. Of those who renounced their citizenship, 1,327 were repatriated to Japan, although many of these deportees were not accepted by the Japanese Government.

So, even after being moved into these "relocation" camps, only 5, 589 (or 4.6575%) of the internees denounced their US citizenship, and of those, less than 1500 were accepted by the Japanese goverment. Evidently, Japanese with dual citizenship were asked to denounce their Japanese citizenship, but since they no longer had US citizenship, denouncing Japanese citizenship would have left them with no citizenship at all. That's a catch-22, by my definition. I might be wrong.

Drat. I've wandered off the path again. Right now, I have no clue where I'm heading with this.

Ah. Okay. Here we go.

This is to both parties:

Quit it. Quit pandering to the whackos on the far ends of the spectrum and figure out that most of us are stuck here in the middle. I don't like either of you demoninzing and lying and everything else you're doing. Knock it off.

Thank you.