Thursday, October 22, 2009

FDR's GULAG

It is essential that there be definite limits to military discretion, especially where martial law has not been declared. Individuals must not be left impoverished of their constitutional rights on a plea of military necessity that has neither substance nor support. Thus, like other claims conflicting with the asserted constitutional rights of the individual, the military claim must subject itself to the judicial process of having its reasonableness determined and its conflicts with other interests reconciled.
Mr. Justice Murphy's dissent in Korematsu v. United States, a case that authorized one of the most egregious cases of Japanese American internment.

FDR was indeed a milder copy of Hitler and Stalin - he even had a GULAG-cum-Holocaust of his own (if you allow this metaphor for this much more moderate version of statism) - Japanese American internment camps.
Measures intended to protect the security of a free nation by violating individual rights are a clear logical contradiction, since one cannot protect a nation's freedom by destroying that freedom.

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