Response to Random Lengths News Editorial "The Déjà vu of American Politics and Empire"

In his latest editorial, James Preston Allen compares the internment of Japanese Americans with the ICE raids arresting and deporting illegal aliens.

That is deeply offensive.

The vast, vast majority of Japanese Americans in this country during World War II were in the United States legally. Most of them were natural-born citizens! Furthermore, they committed no crime, yet they were interned by "Progressive" President Franklin Delano Roosevelt via Executive Order 9066.

Conservatives like US Senator Robert Taft of Ohio vociferously opposed this vile abuse of power, but they had no power in Washington in those days.

Is Allen suggesting that the interned Japanese Americans were all criminals, then? Is he inadvertently justifying the violation of the rights of American citizens?

Progressives are always looking for ways to lock people up. President Woodrow Wilson incarcerated socialist Eugene V. Debs for his anti-war activities, and he cracked down on freedom of speech and the press when other American citizens criticized his decision to enter World War I. Conservative President Warren G. Harding pardoned Debs and reversed Wilson's cult of tyranny.

In another offensive comment in his editorial, Allen compares ICE raids to the deportation and extermination of Jews and other targeted groups during the Holocaust. This is obscene. Jews, gypsies, and other Slavic groups targeted by the Nazis were all citizens of their respective countries who committed no crime. To compare them with people who have entered our country illegally—and who have committed other crimes, besides—is the height of historical malpractice and highly unethical.