Instapundit had some thoughts on the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II and the patriotism of Muslim Americans now. I have strong disagreements with most of his post except for the following about a Pakistani American saving a synagogue from arson by a Bosnian:
And those who favor extensive profiling should note the photos of Ali — the hero — and Jakup — the alleged terrorist — and think about which one of the two would be more likely to come in for close attention under most profiling proposals.
So I was thinking was writing a post about it when I saw Jim Henley’s excellent post on the topic.
No, the wrongfulness in the World War Two internments was that they were based on the principle of collective guilt, and applied to US citizens, and the internees were dispossessed of all their property without compensation. I’m not sure what Glenn thinks would be “significant numbers” but it would still not be okay to rob the innocent Japanese-Americans of the bulk of their belongings, as the Roosevelt Administration allowed to happen as part of the internments.
[…]The wording [“there are American Muslims who are quite loyal”] implies that these wondrous creatures are prodigies, like saying “There are Snowy Owls as far down the Appalachians as Eastern Kentucky.” Gosh, but the surefire sign of disloyalty to the United States would seem to be committing terrorist acts against it and a bare handful of American muslims, almost none of them citizens, have tried to do that. As Gene Healy has pointed out, it would be a trivial matter for “significant numbers” of American Muslims to raise all kinds of caine around here. Doesn’t seem to be happening.
Go read his whole post.
NOTE: Thanks Jim for the link.
Japanese-American Internment: Continued
Commenting on the Instapundit post I referred to earlier, David Neiwert has this to say: In this post today, Reynolds tries to suggest that maybe there might be some rationale later on down the road for a blanket internment of…