"You are kidding yourself if you think the same thing will not happen again," Scalia told the University of Hawaii law school while discussing Korematsu v. United States, the ruling in which the court gave its imprimatur to the internment camps.That sounds more like a humble admission that (a) the court was wrong, (b) that wartime clouds minds/excites passions, and (c) that the same things will happen again.
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The local Associated Press report quotes Scalia as using a Latin phrase that means "in times of war, the laws fall silent," to explain why the court erred in that decision and will do so again.
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"That's what was going on — the panic about the war and the invasion of the Pacific and whatnot," Scalia said. "That's what happens. It was wrong, but I would not be surprised to see it happen again, in time of war. It's no justification but it is the reality."
I won't disagree or be angry with this honesty.
It may even be more likely to happen in this day and age. Note that liberals submitted petitions to Whitehouse.gov to have tea party conservatives prosecuted for treason. If liberals gained absolute control of the government, they wouldn’t hesitate. Internment camps would be the LEAST of our worries.
Are we not fighting the War on Terror still?
Put “war on” in the title pretext and you can get the sheeple to believe anything.
Scalia’s a good one. Definitely on our side of things.
There is a real important aspect of the WW II internments that has been mostly forgotten but was relevant in the extreme at the time. The Japanese internees were corralled by and large for their own protection. Many were not rounded up particularly if they had a farm, were more or less rural, and the neighbors vouched for them as being productive. I saw the protection aspect in my own family. While she had no grief with Japanese in particular my Chicksaw Grandmother would have killed the next one she saw if anything had happened to one of my uncles who were serving in the Pacific. In those years most Japanese still had connections in Japan, still spoke at least some Japanese, and were still more “Japanese” than “American.”
Scalia is absolutely correct that if America is once more attacked by a more or less homogeneous foreign group resident members of that group will very likely be rounded up. A whole bunch of Americans might lose their senses of humor after another such event and otherwise just start cleaning house.