Security or SECURE(minor)ITY?

What price would you pay for security? Is it more just to punish the innocent for the sake of the guilty or free the guilty for the sake of the innocent? Mankind has asked these questions since he first collected in social units. One of the oldest stories in the Bible shows Abraham literally haggling with God to spare the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah if but ten righteous people lived in the population. All societies struggle to find the best answer for these questions.

Michelle Malkin seems particularly interested in tackling these and similar questions in her new book In Defense of Internment, an investigation into World War II internment camps in America. I am very pleased to see the mainstream media posing questions about the balance between civil liberty and national security. We both desire to live in a country that is free and safe. Even more pleasing is her decision to investigate the American internment camps during World War II, a topic too rarely examined in the American consciousness. I sincerely hope that her book, and the facts that she presents, will spark a debate in the public forum on how and why we detain people during wartime.

I concede that the government was attempting to protect both their military assets and civilians on the west coast during this time. There were numerous attacks on the U.S. and Canadian homeland during the months after Pearl Harbor and leading up to the internment of Japanese and Europeans. The government feared imminent invasion of North American by the Japanese during 1942. However, I believe justice and personal liberty are among the most important and cherished values of our society. The Declaration of Independence states that "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." I also agree with Benjamin Franklin when he asserted, "that it is better [one hundred] guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer."

Innocent Americans, Japanese, and Europeans suffered during their relocation to American internment camps in World War II. Many lost property that was never fully recovered, if recovered at all. I want to live in a safe America just like Michelle Malkin, and I do agree that the government has a responsibility to protect its people, both from external and internal threat. I am also certain, though, that we can find alternative methods of protecting ourselves that do not require the government to suspend the rights that so many brave men and women have fought and died to secure for over two hundred years.