Blankley Going Where Wrong Men Had Gone Before
Washington Times Opinion Editor Tony Blankley gives a helpfully clear demonstration of how some conservatives are convinced that the War on Terror is only winnable if we enthusiastically scale back American liberties. Starting off, persistently enough, with a 21st century update to that world-beating war strategy, Japanese internment:
During World War II, the country was faced with the prospect of large numbers of people—again identifiable by ethnicity, not conduct—who were real or potential enemies.
The logic of the Supreme Court's opinion is applicable to the situation we face today. The court held that people ethnically connected to the war-makers are more likely to support them than are others—and our country at war has a right to protect itself from this presumed higher risk of danger.
This is true regardless of the personal innocence of particular individuals.
Next, Blankley pines for a Supreme Court that helps persecute the insufficiently patriotic:
Members of the Jehovah's Witnesses were prosecuted during World War II for refusing to let their children recite the Pledge of Allegiance.
Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, a liberal, wrote the majority opinion in the case. He upheld the school expulsions and parental prosecutions for violating compulsory attendance laws.
Justice Frankfurter observed that "the mere possession of religious convictions which contradict the relevant concerns of a political society does not relieve the citizen from the discharge of political responsibilities."
This is particularly applicable to the situation we face today.
And why is a terrible 60-year-old spasm of paranoid injustice "applicable," suddenly? Brace yourself for the illiteral historical analogy:
But back then, as now, we were a nation of newly arrived immigrants, threatened from abroad and bombarded with destructive ideologies.
Then, it was communism and fascism. Today, it is multiculturalism, political correctness and, among the Muslim population, radical Islam.
Italics mine. That's right, Tony Blankley (an immigrant himself, by the way) just committed the Mother of all Godwins by comparing the two most murderous political ideologies in modern history to fucking "political correctness."
I'm beginning to suspect that the phrase "let loose the dogs of war" was meant to refer just as much to the yapping loons on the homefront.
