Retired general and former Democratic presidential candidate Wesley Clark has caused a stir with an interview with MSNBC in which he appeared to call for the establishment of World War II-style internment camps to be revived for “disloyal Americans.” Clark used the infamous American internment camps for Japanese, German, and Italian Americans as a model: “if someone supported Nazi Germany at the expense of the United States, we didn’t say that was freedom of speech, we put him in a camp, they were prisoners of war.”
Clark offered little insight into how he would designate certain people as disloyal for purposes of internment. He simply said “If these people are radicalized and they don’t support the United States and they are disloyal to the United States as a matter of principle, fine. It’s their right and it’s our right and obligation to segregate them from the normal community for the duration of the conflict.”
It is not clear how Clark rationalizes his recognition of a protected right with internment for exercise of that right. He seemed to go further in stating that “We have got to identify the people who are most likely to be radicalized. We’ve got to cut this off at the beginning. I do think on a national policy level we need to look at what self-radicalization means because we are at war with this group of terrorists.” He also seemed to encourage the same measures throughout the West: “not only the United States but our allied nations like Britain, Germany and France are going to have to look at their domestic law procedures.”
Clark’s chilling comments bring back painful memories of the internment camps and the shameful role of the Supreme Court in allowing such internment in Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214 (1944). The Justices voted 6-3 to allow the internment of these citizens.
As always, in this concurrent, Justice Felix Frankfurter seemed eager to surrender authority of the judiciary:
According to my reading of Civilian Exclusion Order No. 34, it was an offense for Korematsu to be found in Military Area No. 1, the territory wherein he was previously living, except within the bounds of the established Assembly Center of that area. Even though the various orders issued by General DeWitt be deemed a comprehensive code of instructions, their tenor is clear, and not contradictory. They put upon Korematsu the obligation to leave Military Area No. 1, but only by the method prescribed in the instructions, i.e., by reporting to the Assembly Center . . .
The provisions of the Constitution which confer on the Congress and the President powers to enable this country to wage war are as much part of the Constitution as provisions looking to a nation at peace. . . . Therefore, the validity of action under the war power must be judged wholly in the context of war. That action is not to be stigmatized as lawless because like action in times of peace would be lawless. To talk about a military order that expresses an allowable judgment of war needs by those entrusted with the duty of conducting war as “an unconstitutional order” is to suffuse a part of the Constitution with an atmosphere of unconstitutionality. The respective spheres of action of military authorities and of judges are, of course, very different. . . . If a military order such as that under review does not transcend the means appropriate for conducting war, such action by the military is as constitutional as would be any authorized action by the Interstate Commerce Commission within the limits of the constitutional power to regulate commerce. And, being an exercise of the war power explicitly granted by the Constitution for safeguarding the national life by prosecuting war effectively, I find nothing in the Constitution which denies to Congress the power to enforce such a valid military order by making its violation an offense triable in the civil courts. . . . To find that the Constitution does not forbid the military measures now complained of does not carry with it approval of that which Congress and the Executive did. That is their business, not ours.
It was Justice Murphy who correctly called the camps as part of “the ugly abyss of racism,” and an example of “the abhorrent and despicable treatment of minority groups by the dictatorial tyrannies which this nation is now pledged to destroy.”
Clark seems to view this history as worth repeating even though we would be interning people for what he calls the exercise of their rights. The “disloyalty” shown in the exercise of free speech would presumably be the basis for internment since any actual disloyal acts would likely be crimes punishable in their own right. It is an unsettling recognition of how extremists like those in ISIS can radicalize those who fear or hate them. The sad truth is that our greatest wounds as a nation have been self-inflicted. It is the very danger described most famously by Justice Louis Brandeis in Olmstead:
Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.
Let us start by putting Clark and all the disloyal Democrat in that interment camp and then not feed them like what happen to the Japanese Americans in WWII.
Blaming a race is condemning everyone to a paranoid hatred of your neighbor or even your own family members.
A woman moved into a neighborhood then tried to get people who lived there long before kicked out by phony calls to the police. She is now under many law suits and her ex husband no longer has to pay her alimony. She also got rid of him the same way.
Chronic hatred of others is harmful to everyone and lies by the Democrats have caught their ass too.
Imprisoning the whole country to win the Office of the President a new low even for the Democratic party.
Imprison Clark first then all his followers. Allow him to know what prison is like.
Do not forget the CCTV cameras in the shower areas so those Private Prison can sell the ‘GAY’ videos as they have labeled before. CCA Mississippi and Texas. Juvenile detention centers. 2000 to now.
Wesley says something very dumb. Wesley is a Democrat and all Democrats are targets on the Turley blog.
Now how about something on a Republican – just for a change of pace.
Saxby Chambliss former Senator (R-Georgia) says Snowden should be hanged on the public square as soon as we can get our hands on him.
Anybody still hungry for that juicy red meat?
BTW –
Turley is careful to note Wesley was a Democratic candidate for President. True. Just like Trump is a Republican candidate for President. Wesley made a short run in hopes of being nominated. He dropped out in a matter of months. I thought I’d point that out because I have every confidence that Turley low information readers don’t know that Wesley never came close to gaining the nomination.
I have another bone to pick with Clark. As the commander of NATO forces, he specifically targetted the TVand radio stations of Serbia. The Serbs had offered equal time on their stations, if they could get equal time on the BBC or other outlets. Instead he broke the normal rules of warfare in targetting correspondents and their media with bombs. He justified that by saying we do not have to let them have any say or tell their s of events So he is fairly consistent in restricting others political points of view.
randyjet – the commander of NATO has no more power over the BBC than ABC or NBC.
Sorry Rick, I’m a Christian Presbyterian. I do not dislike or even comment on other Christians, unless they are advocating for a Theocracy, like some Fundamentalists tend to do.
I. Annie
Well, all’s fair in love and war. Afterall we have to see daily diatribes ranting about the communists in someone’s head.</I.
Not nearly as often as the ranting about religious believers and supposed conservatives who want to lock up political opponents.
Jill, I’m doing no such thing. My video and my comment about communists was directed at forgotwhoiam’s daily rants. Today’s rant is @ 8:10 PM against the “communism” he thinks has taken over our country. I’m sure he sees Progressives as communists too. My comments regarding the statement of Clark are way upstream. I think I made myself pretty clear. If you however, agree with Mr.”Forgot” that our social safety nets are akin to communism, well more power to you.
I see that you refused to answer the question as to whether or not you support the Smith Act prosecutions of political dissidents.
@ Randyjet
I didn’t answer the question because…
1) you didn’t ask me a question. You pontificated. Which is fine. That’s what the internet is all about. Arguing and porn and games 🙂
2) I know jacksh*t about the subject and don’t feel like researching it right now. So I have no opinion.
3) I don’t have time or desire to research it as my husband and having just gotten up from a nice long cool nap and the temperature is blessedly dropping, we are planning to have one or three of those scotches on the deck….probably in our underwear or altogethers. Too much information?
4) And since I have NOT described myself as a Conservative with a capital C and consider myself more of a libertarian on many social issues, a progressive on some issues and a fiscal conservative who despises centralized big government and since I refuse to be pigeonholed or stereotyped…..I don’t owe you anything.
Annie, I guess I’m puzzled by blaming things on the self identified right wing. While I agree that Wesley and Obama are actually on the far right, they do not identify this way in public. Many people think that Obama is left wing, even a socialist. Yet he has taken as his right to imprison people without trial and to kill others on his own say so. Didn’t Clark present as a Democrat, the party many people think of as leftist?
Maybe I am misunderstanding your intent? It seems like you are trying to equate these terrible things with self identified right wingers. Instead, this is specifically not about Republicans or Birchers, it is about Democrats. Far be it from me to question that self identified right wingers will move in lock step with this type of thing. Bush’s fingerprints are all over gitmo after all. However, trying to pin this on the right while ignoring what lefties are up to seems like an intellectual mistake.
Jill – didn’t Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, etc., leftest all, imprison and kill their adversaries?
Well, all’s fair in love and war. Afterall we have to see daily diatribes ranting about the communists in someone’s head.
Rich Paul-Because virtually all of your posts take potshots at Professor Turley and this blog, perhaps you could start your own blog where you could enlighten all of us with your wisdom. Or is FFS just so slow you need to come and urinate on everyone here?
http://youtu.be/eCxi5VOYKOY
And on that note, time a musical interlude!
What a surprise. Since Wesley is talking about radicalized Muslims who want to kill Americans, I thought you all would be all over this. Who knew?
Of course, thanks to the sloppy misdirection of Turley’s post and the idiots refusal to learn anything they indulge in their craving for bloody red meat and get all crazed about interning the Tea Party.
You all are so easily played.
“So unless you state your opposition to such things, I will have to assume you support putting political opponents in prison. If not, then I am glad to hear that conservatives have learned from their past mistakes and will denounce McCarthy and his ilk.”
*****
Is there a rational person that doubts the dominion of the “dictatorship of the proletariat” in America. The rainbow coalition of striking teachers unions, fire, cop, government worker unions and the rest of the long suffering minorities, union thugs, welfare/entitlement recipients and recipients of “comparable pay” et al. With redistribution, control of industry, central planning, social engineering – that’s affirmative action, welfare, food stamps, social services, affirmative action education, affirmative action jobs, quotas, “Fair Housing” which unfairly confiscates private property and its enjoyment and disposition, “hate crime” as if there is “love crime,” rent control, forced busing, “low-income housing,” Medicare, Social Security, Obamacare, etc. – every principle of communism has been imposed on the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Conservatives didn’t make mistakes. Conservatives made America. Their names were Jefferson, Washington, Hamilton, Madison, Franklin, Mason, Adams etc. And those conservatives limited government to security and infrastructure with every other endeavor of free humans to be conducted in the private sector as free enterprise without governmental inference.
McCarthy was a hero who was subsumed by the radical extremists who manipulated the vote into electing redistributionist, collectivist communists to office. Obama is a community organizer who nationalized healthcare in conspiracy with his communist allies on the Extreme Court.
McCarthy and Whitaker Chambers exposed Alger Hiss who was convicted of spying and being a communist. Alger Hiss was an agent of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the de facto communist who implemented the communist institutions of Social Security, Medicare and the burgeoning welfare state that exists today. Roosevelt made enormous steps toward implementing Marxist principles.
Clearly the American Founding Fathers deliberately, specifically and in particular, excluded and omitted redistribution of wealth, in any and all forms, in the founding documents.
Karl Marx deliberately, specifically and in particular, included all forms of redistribution of wealth, known and yet to be developed, in the Communist Manifesto.
If you see redistribution anywhere in America today, it is raw, pure communism.
“From each according to his ability. To each according to his need.” Karl Marx.
No form of redistribution is constitutional.
The Founders limited government to Justice, Tranquility, Common Defence, Promote General Welfare (roads, water, post office),
and provided Americans with the “blessings of liberty” which are freedom and free enterprise
without interference by government.
Charity, as free enterprise conducted in the private sector by free Americans, is the only method of redistribution established as legitimate and legal by the Preamble, Constitutional and Bill of Rights.
Well, we already got internment camps for a lot of the ferals. We call them prisons. Only problem is, they come out worse than when they went in.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Have we forgotten Escape from L.A.?
There was a decent flick back in the 90’s called The Siege. Denzel, Annette Benning, Tony Shaloub[stole the movie] and Bruce Willis. This was obviously pre 9/11. In the flick sleeper cells terrorize NYC and the Prez opens up internment camps in NYC for all young Muslim males. Bruce Willis is the general who takes over the camps and policing of NYC. Must be Wesley’s favorite movie.
What Clark referred to, using the example of interning Nazi sympathizers during WW2, was an entirely different situation than now. The identifying of thugs as Islamic works against the eradication of these scum. Because a group of opportunists call themselves something means nothing unless the group with whom they identify embraces them. Regardless of the inaction of the world’s Muslim community, the world’s Muslims are no more aligned with these thugs than the Western nations. The vast majority of victims are, in fact, Muslims.
Creating camps for these thugs or wannabe thugs would only serve to provide them with an identity and cement them to their perverse ideals. They should be studied and eradicated when possible. An American or any other nationality found leaving their country and taking part in the thuggery abroad should be waxed. At the very least they should never be allowed back into their native or adopted country. In fact they should be given free airfare out with the door slammed shut behind them. They could serve both the West and their perverted ideals by carrying a marker for a drone strike.
These are thugs, nothing more and if camps are to be designed for them then there are a lot of models like Attica, Sing Sing, etc to use.
The key to this situation is to enhance the methods of eradicating them while denying them the identity they need. As long as a thug remains a thug they will be nothing more than a rabid dog. The moment they are given any other identity, they become part of the fabric. Regardless of their devotion to some mumbo jumbo, they are to be eradicated. If one wishes to believe in something, anything, no matter how ridiculous; that’s fine as long as human rights come first.
issac – the Allies did de-Nazify Germany after the end of the war. We could de-radicalize these students as well.
Gitmo is not a POW camp becasue we refuse to acknowledge what it is…GC or not. As a very young child, too young to realize what I had near me, there was a POW & Internment camp at the state fair ground near our house. Almost all Germans in there. That was during WWII. By-standers get swept up in war, it is one reason to not go to war if at all possible…I’d bet most of the WWII era citizens of Dresden would agree…better to be interned or whatever than blown to bits. My time in war didn’t clarify anything except that it is hell. Those “bystanders” in my day were people who wished we’d all ( the US forces, NLF, PAVN, & RVN ) go away. The infiltraters in the Han Estuary of Korea are a different matter…they’re deadly and are rightfully killed by ROK Marines on discovery…no “camps” for them. I agreed then and now on that concept. “By-standers” once in a while get caught up in that and it’s the luck of the draw…you broke curfew, you took the chance. ROK Marines don’t give 2nd chances. No sane ROK citizen would challenege them.
So unless you state your opposition to such things, I will have to assume you support putting political opponents in prison.
So, unless you state your opposition to putting puppies in a sack and drowning them, I will have to assume you support such actions. Really?
Unless you state your opposition to anything that I want to use as a strawman, then I will assume you are for the strawman. Child sacrifice. Female genital mutilation.
This is how you argue? Set up an accusation. Accuse people who have never weighed in on a topic…..cuz….not all of us are on here all the time ya know….lump everyone into one stereotype that you have in your fevered mind?
Then we have the FACT that all conservatives during the McCarthy era,….blah blah blah
ALL? Is that a fact, Jack? ALL? There is that broad brush again. Would that be ALL conservatives in Reno, Jacksonville, Helena……Did they survey ALL……Prove that ALL conservatives did whatever you said.
Perhaps you should make a list of your favorite strawmen topics and give us all a quiz. Nah. Nevermind. My time is to precious to waste.
Just got back from driving 180 miles to pick up some custom wheels that were supposed to be powder coated yesterday….. only to find that they didn’t do the job yet, didn’t bother to tell us that they were not done…. and we have to go again in the 105 degree heat tomorrow or the next day or whenever they get around to it. I’m hot, tired and p|ssed.
Unless you state your opposition to me maiming these incompetent inconsiderate powder coating dopes, I am going to assume you are good with me beating the snot out of them with a tire iron? Right?
At least we were able to go to Trader Joe’s and pick up some good scotch. 🙁
I see that you refused to answer the question as to whether or not you support the Smith Act prosecutions of political dissidents. For the record since you brought it up, I have some puppies of my ow who I love dearly So the answer is no to that one since you asked. Since you describe yourself as conservative, and I doubt that there is any serious person here who would deny that conservatives were the main force in pushing for imprisoning people for their politics, then it is up to you to declare your position on this since that is the topic of this discussion, unlike puppies. I think you have already had enough scotch.
Here’s a 2003 piece writeen by JT. It’s really worth reading. Here is one excerpt: “Camp Delta was originally justified as a holding area for alleged war criminals from the Afghanistan conflict. The administration now has broadened its use to include anyone whom it defines as a terrorist suspect or a person suspected of aiding or abetting terrorists. Of course, suspicion in the Bush administration is as good as a conviction because the vast majority will never be submitted to a tribunal, let alone a legitimate court of law.”
http://articles.latimes.com/2003/may/02/opinion/oe-turley2
DBQ On another topic on this site, I mentioned the fact that members of the SWP and CPUSA had been sent to prison under the Smith Act for political thought crimes, and about three consevatives here agreed with the US government doing that. Then we have the FACT that all conservatives during the McCarthy era, Republicans, and Dixiecrats all supported such prison terms for their political opponents and sent hundreds of them to prison. In fact, the attorney for the SWP defendants, Albert Goldman, was one of the defendants and was sent to prison, was disbarred, and lost his livelihood along with his freedom and most of his rights.
So unless you state your opposition to such things, I will have to assume you support putting political opponents in prison. If not, then I am glad to hear that conservatives have learned from their past mistakes and will denounce McCarthy and his ilk.
randyjet – I agree with sending the CPUSA members, both above ground and underground, to jail. I also agree with McCarthy. So did the Kennedys, who worked with and for him.
While the applicability of the GC is a subject of some dispute, Article 3 does apply to Guantanamo.