Erode freedom and we are all less secure
Dennis Wyatt July 15, 2015 Manteca Bulletin
“Those who surrender freedom for security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one.”
— Benjamin Franklin
That quote can be found in a place that serves as a stark reminder of why
Americans are less secure with our infatuation with homeland security than we
were on Sept. 11, 2011.
The place is Manzanar National Historic Site in a desolate stretch of Inyo
County. It marks were 11,700 Americans were interned for the mere crime of
being part of an ethnic group at the wrong time in history.
They were forcibly sent there without due process out of fear they were
terrorists living among us in the aftermath of Japan’s sneak attack on Pearl
Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.
Some weren’t American citizens but many were.
Their crime was basically being Americans of Japanese descent. The fear that
gave President Roosevelt the authority to issue an executive order rounding up
120,000 Japanese Americans on the West Coast was based on the assumption they
were agents of espionage for Japan. Yet by the end of World War II not one of
them even had charges of espionage brought against them.
They were forced to abandon businesses, farms, homes, pets and virtually all of
their belongings. Those fortunate enough had neighbors who watched over their
property and took care of it while they were interned. Some lost everything by
the war’s end.
Manzanar stands as much as to the foolishness of suspending freedom in times of
fear as it does as mute testimony of what 120,000 loyal Americans suffered
while housed at 10 internment camps in desolate desert regions as well as in
swamps in the western United States.
The willingness of many of us today to suspend freedom and liberty in exchange
for the false sense of security belies the fact such a strategy can easily make
you the victim of some future mass hysteria based on ethnicity, beliefs, or
political views.
In a way, it is no different than those who opted to turn a blind eye to the
mass extermination of the Jews. They did so because they weren’t Jewish but it
ignores the fact that the target could be the Jews today and them tomorrow
The point is not to sit in judgment of what the United States did in 1942 after
Pearl Harbor. Instead it is to remember the truism that those who forget
history are doomed to repeat it.
We did not intern Americans of Middle Eastern descent after Sept. 11, 2001.
That said our treatment as a society as a whole and the government in
particular of those Americans who have ethnic ties to the Middle East hasn’t
exactly been stellar.
Years ago when I was still in high school in Lincoln, my group of friends got
into a discussion on religion. One guy believed Marvin Hata was a Buddhist
simply based on his ethnicity. He refused to believe Marvin when he told him
that he was a Methodist as were his parents and his grandparents. They were
parents and grandparents, by the way, that had been among the 120,000 internees
taken from their homes, farms, and businesses simply because they were
Americans of Japanese descent.
Fast forward to 15 or so years ago: An anonymous caller to the Bulletin was
“upset” that “Thomas” had bought the Texaco station at Powers and Yosemite
avenues here in Manteca. The caller said he was “one of them” referencing the
Iraqis that were “religious fanatics” that Americans fought in the Gulf War.
It turns out Thomas and his family are Christians that fled the Saddam Hussein
regime. The odds of them being executed for their faith if they had stayed was
extremely high.
We are never more wrong when we make blanket decisions based on a person’s skin
tone in regards to who they are.
America is supposed to value the individual yet as a society we spend most of
our time trying to pigeonhole people based on skin tone, religion, political
beliefs, sexuality, socio-economic background, and even the way they dress.
We still have the lingering attitude DNA that gave the Balkan States a verb —
balkanization. We need to work harder at stopping the tendency to make
wholesale judgments of groups of people.
Just because they watch the Dukes of Hazards doesn’t make them a racist nor if
they support abortion does it make them murders.
Yes, both statements are shaped by perspective. If every time you saw a
Confederate flag and you are black and you experienced racism, you may jump to
the conclusion — however wrong it might be — that the Confederate flag is
a sign of racism in all cases where you see it. By the same token not everyone
by a long shot agrees at what point life begins.
People don’t have to sacrifice their values and beliefs.
What they need to do, though, is to refrain from passing blanket judgments that
ultimately rob us all of freedom for a false sense of security.
America is only as strong as individuals banding together — not out of fear or
prejudice — but from seeking common ground.
And anytime we willing allow anyone’s freedoms to be sacrificed without due
process we all become a little less secure.