Sans Authoritas wrote:
Were we required to tolerate slavery because society tolerated it? Were we required to turn in Jews in Germany because society required it? Were we required to support the government putting people of Japanese descent in concentration camps in WWII because society accepted it?
No. You have every moral right on the face of God's earth to protect your God-given right with the abilities and tools God has made possible, anywhere ON the face of God's green earth. Anyone who wants to infringe this right does so not because it is morally justified, (it is, in fact, a most abominable crime against basic human freedom and rights) but because he has the power to do so. Period.
-Sans Authoritas
Service Soon wrote:
Can you provide evidence that "society" approved of slavery or of Japanese’s concentration camps?
Here's one representative of society, and I hear the same thing being spoken today about "Them illegals" by people all over: "They're takin'
American jobs."
From Wikipedia: (which cites the Saturday Evening Post) Internment was popular among many white farmers who resented the Japanese American farmers. These individuals saw internment as a convenient means of uprooting their Japanese American competitors. Austin E. Anson, managing secretary of the Salinas Vegetable Grower-Shipper Association, told the Saturday Evening Post in 1942:
"We're charged with wanting to get rid of the Japs for selfish reasons. We do. It's a question of whether the white man lives on the Pacific Coast or the brown men… If all the Japs were removed tomorrow, we had never miss them in two weeks, because the white farmers can take over and produce everything the Jap grows. And we do not want them back when the war ends, either."
The Saturday Evening Post was a very respected, well-to-do magazine. Whether the magazine agreed with this man's opinion or not, there is no doubt that, despite some opposition, there were enough people who worshiped the great savior F.D.R. (and still do) enough to go along with everything he decreed, rather than be branded as a "traitor" and "hater of America," as many are today, for opposing having U.S. military bases in over 100 countries around the world, and for opposing the invasion and occupation of certain countries, be they Somalia and Bosnia (as McCain opposed) or Iraq, (as McCain now supports.)
According to this researched article, the majority of newspaper Editorials and letters to the editor supported the corraling of Japanese in concentration camps. About two-thirds, to be exact. Letters to the editors were filled with racist virulence, and still allowed to be published.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3677/is_200204/ai_n9037368
As we all know, the news media may tend to be, well, "liberal," but perhaps in this case, they reflected a somewhat unbiased cross-section of society? In reading many of the comments, I hear a frightening, not-so-distant echo of what I am hearing today, concerning all Muslims, all Arabs, and anyone who doesn't support each and every policy of the God-created, red white and true blue United States Government.
Beginning in 1941, people on the West Coast were terrified by the prospect of the Japanese hordes swarming ashore, destroying their American, democratic way of life. Irrational fears? Certainly: but government propaganda certainly didn't lift a finger to allay their irrational thinking. On the contrary: those saboteurs and spies were
everywhere, just like the
terrorists of today. And just like the
terrorists of today, people don't mind if they're thrown into prison and forgotten. People want to feel safe, and if "feeling safe" requires torturing people from Afghanistan who were garnered in a "turn in your neighbor as a terrorist" bounty program, they don't care. I call that support. How about you? Such barbarities (though not currently recognized as barbarities by the majority) are being inflicted and touted again as "military necessity." Hopefully, in 50 years, people will wake up and recognize what bestial behavior they supported.
I might as well have said that during WWII, the U.S. society supported the incineration of tens of thousands of innocent people in Tokyo, Nagasaki, Hiroshima, Dresden and Hamburg. They did, and most Americans still believe the "bright, shining lie" that these acts of mass murder were of "military necessity," despite what MacArthur, Nimitz, Halsey, "Hap" Arnold, Eisenhower, and other war leaders said about it.
-Sans Authoritas
