NEW YORK (PNN) - July 20, 2015 - The thought police are out in full force, and from both sides of the political aisle.
Say something radically different than the wishes of the president, and you belong in prison, according to retired general and former Democrat presidential candidate Wesley Clark.
On Friday Clark called for World War II-style internment camps to be revived for “disloyal Amerikans.”
He called for a revival of internment camps to help combat Muslim extremism, saying, “If these people are radicalized and they don’t support the (Fascist Police States of Amerika) and they are disloyal to the (Fascist Police States of Amerika) as a matter of principle, fine. It’s their right and it’s our right and obligation to segregate them from the normal community for the duration of the conflict.”
The comments were shockingly out of character for Clark, who after serving as supreme allied commander of NATO made a name for himself in progressive political circles. In 2004, his campaign for the Democrat presidential nomination was highly critical of the Bush regime’s excessive response to the events of September 11, 2001. Since then, he has been a critic of policies that violate the Geneva Convention, saying in 2006 that policies such as torture violate “the very values that [we] espouse.”
But on Friday, he was advocating the revival of a policy widely considered to be among the most shameful chapters in Amerikan history: World War II domestic internment camps. Aside from the inherent problems in criminalizing people for their beliefs, Clark’s proposal (which his MSNBC interlocutor did not challenge him on) also appears to be based on the concept of targeting people for government scrutiny who are not even “radicalized,” but who the government decides may be subject to radicalization in the future. That radicalization itself is a highly amorphous and politically malleable concept that only makes this proposal more troubling.
“We have got to identify the people who are most likely to be radicalized. We’ve got to cut this off at the beginning,” Clark said. “I do think on a national policy level we need to look at what self-radicalization means because we are at war with this group of terrorists.” He added, “Not only the (Fascist Police States of Amerika) but our allied nations like Britain, Germany and France are going to have to look at their domestic law procedures.”
Idiotic "thought police" attacks on the Constitution come from both the right and the left.
Wesley Clark, like countless Republican constitutional hypocrites, has just thrown his hat into the ring for perpetual war.
Don't like it? Then you belong in an internment camp until you do.
Is Clark's position any different from what happened in Nazi Germany? What about China, or for that matter ISIS?