Internment for Americans?

Submitted by Brandon (United States), Jan 13, 2005 at 14:45

When a lunatic anti-choice activist aborts the life of a doctor at a Planned Parenthood clinic, should we intern all fundamentalist Christians? When Timothy McVeigh blew up a building, should we have created internment camps for the gun nuts in the NRA? No, because the actions of one person should not damn the entire population of that group. Even the actions of 100 members of a group should not damn the remainder of the population, or we'd have to have internment camps in Iraq for US Soldiers--I mean, they COULD all be Abu-Ghraib-style torturers. It's very easy to believe in collective punishment for "the other," as it couldn't possibly affect you. Do those of you who support this style of punishment believe that the Romans were correct in persecuting Christians? After all, many Christians actively sought the overthrow of the secular Roman government, which I'm sure the Romans considered to be terrorist actions.

Finally, I'd like to add one thing, as I'm assuming that most of you who support internment camps don't know any Arab-Americans--most of them are far more patriotic than you. They have mostly come from hellish third-world dictatorships, and literally worship the US as it has given them a life that they could never have had in their original country. Any decrease in this genuine patriotism is a direct result of the fascist behavior you promote.

Most native-born Americans are spoiled rotten and believe that patriotism means plastering their SUVs with five dollar flags from WalMart while screaming about a five dollar tax increase that would benefit the members of the nation for which they supposedly would do anything.

---

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".