World War II

Grim, Tragic Anniversary: 70 Years Since Executive Order 9066 Forcing Japanese American Internment Camps

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Today is a grim, sad anniversary, 70 years since President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, forcing the internment of about 110,000 Japanese American men, women and children, two and a half months after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, bringing America into World War II.

This denial of the Bill Of Rights, one of the worst violations of civil liberties in US history, was imposed out of hysteria and panic after the Pearl Harbor attack, and very few people or groups denounced it, and it was later upheld as a necessary war action by a wartime US Supreme Court decision.

It is shocking in itself, but even more so when one considers the fact that first Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, highly disturbed by the decision of her husband, complained to him, and was angrily told never to bring up the issue again.

This shows how the Presidency can give one, even as outstanding in other ways as Franklin D. Roosevelt, a sense of cockiness and arrogance, that he can lose a sense of what is right and wrong, and what is necessary.

This is one of the most despicable acts of FDR in office, and compensation for the surviving victims came only in 1988, when President Ronald Reagan signed into law an apology, and compensation of $20,000 per survivor.

Meanwhile, the Japanese Americans who served in segregated units in World War II were heroes, who accomplished more than any other military units of that war, and were finally given recognition by the US Mint in 2011 with a special medal commissioned for public sale to commemorate their heroism.

Reality Of America’s Future: The Growing Role Of Asian Americans

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In the midst of “Linmania”, the rise of Jeremy Lin to stardom in the National Basketball Association, we are seeing people promoting humor about Asian Americans, specifically in the case of Jeremy Lin being Chinese, but we are also seeing the ugly tone of racism rearing its ugly head.

The fact that Asian Americans of all nationalities are high achievers academically is causing resentment among other racial and ethnic groups, which in itself is a sign of racism by people who have themselves experienced racism.

And of course, whites who are uncomfortable with the growing diversity of America’s population are alarmed at what this means, although hopefully, the number with such feelings is miniscule. But face the facts, that there are those who are nativists and racists and join paramilitary organizations determined to keep America’s white Christian population in control of the future.

But it must be recognized by all Americans that the growing role of Asian Americans of all backgrounds is the reality of the future in this nation.

While smaller in numbers than Hispanics and Latinos on one hand, and African Americans on the other hand, the Asian American population is rapidly growing, and will be an influential part of America long term.

The average American is certainly not aware that Asia is the largest continent with THIRTY percent of all land on earth; that Asia contains SIXTY percent of the world’s people; and that six countries have EIGHTY percent of all the population of the continent (China, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Japan); and that if Pakistan and Bangladesh had not separated in a civil war 41 years ago, the combined Pakistan would be larger than Indonesia.

The future of the world is in Asia, and the defense and economic growth of America is based on what happens in Asia, as well as the growing Asian population in America. No wonder Barack Obama has said that our focus must be on Asia in the future, not the Middle East as the priority, as it has been, even though much of the Middle East is actually in Asia. But he is referring to East and South Asia, where the major population countries exist, not West Asia, also known as the Middle East.

And remember that our wars in the past century have focused on Asia, with Japan the enemy in World War II; North Korea and China in the Korean War; North Vietnam and China in the Vietnam War; and the Soviet Union, a Eurasian power our enemy during the Cold War years. And wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are also Asian wars, although not technically in East or South Asia.

So we must as a nation learn more about and understand Asia, and specific nations and cultures in Asia, and understand the role and significance of Asian Americans in our country’s future.

There is no room for the kind of discrimination visited against the Chinese and Japanese in the past, as well as generalized nativism against Asians of all backgrounds that expresses itself even today, and even with the success of Jeremy Lin. It is time for enlightened understanding for our country’s economic future and security and safety!

Jeremy Lin And Racial Stereotyping: The Ugly Tone Of Racism Against Asian Americans Renewed!

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New York Knicks basketball player Jeremy Lin has become an overnight sensation, in just the past ten days, coming out of obscurity to lead the Knicks to seven straight victories. He is the sensation of the National Basketball Association!

Instead of rejoicing over the first basketball player of Asian heritage, specifically Chinese from the island of Taiwan, to become a big success story, instead of just “Lin Mania” occurring, we are also seeing the ugly tone of racial stereotyping rearing its head, including some African Americans ridiculing or rejecting his success. Hate mail and Facebook and Twitter expression of racism is showing how far we have to go, even in 2012, to overcome the ignorance and jealousy of many.

Asian Americans in the past have been victims of discrimination, racism, and stereotyping, with the infamous anti Chinese riots of the 1870s and 1880s and the internment of Japanese Americans in World War II just the best known examples, along with the banning of Chinese immigration from 1882-1943 and of Japanese immigration from 1924 to 1965.

It seems the more we see great accomplishments by an ethnic or racial group in this great country, there always has to be a backlash by people who themselves are often the victims of racism previously.

When will we finally accept people for their accomplishments and celebrate their ethnicity without jealousy or resentment by others of other racial and nationality groups? Obviously, it is a long time in the future, despite the education and progress that has been made from the great depths of darkness of the past!

Meanwhile, congratulations to Jeremy Lin, and all of us should be very proud of his accomplishments!

The 130th Anniversary Of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Birth: The Sustained Republican Attack On The New Deal’s Survival!

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Today marks the 130th anniversary of the birth of our second greatest President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who served 12 years and 39 days in the Presidency, and took America through the Great Depression and most of World War II.

Rated the greatest President in most polls of scholars and experts after Abraham Lincoln, FDR personified the growth of big national government, including the recognition that the federal government was needed to deal with the crisis presented by the depression, the worst economic downturn in American history.

Now in 2012, we are being told by the opposition Republicans that the answer is to revert to the philosophy of Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover, and keep the federal government out of the economy as much as possible. Mitt Romney can be seen as the new Herbert Hoover, aloof, imperial in nature, unable to relate to ordinary people’s problems and daily struggles, extremely rich, and believing that the private capitalistic system without government interference is the best for America’s future.

Even Herbert Hoover started to abandon that belief in laissez faire, and is called, therefore, the “forgotten progressive” by Joan Hoff and others. And maybe Mitt Romney, due to his past reputation of being a moderate to liberal as Governor of Massachusetts, might back away from his present promotion of a conservative image.

But the Republican Party, whether Romney, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Ron Paul or anyone else as the nominee, has fundamentally declared war on the New Deal!

The GOP wants to privatize Social Security and Medicare, and gut as many government departments and agencies as possible, along with destroying labor unions and showing lack of concern for the environment, all major tenets of the New Deal. When Republicans can claim that the New Deal was “socialism”, as some of them do, they are being ridiculous and setting out to end the laws and programs that have advanced America and helped to create the middle class!

Conservative scholars and propagandists have been advocating negatives about the New Deal as part of their aim to destroy the good programs that Barack Obama has achieved, and to go back to the mentality of the 1920s era and the Gilded Age of the late 19th century.

We can be sure that if FDR was alive today, that he would be on the attack against the Republican Party and their aims of destroying his New Deal, and it is therefore the job of Barack Obama to go out and assault, rhetorically, those who wish to destroy not only the New Deal of FDR, but also the Great Society of Lyndon B. Johnson, and the other progressive, human oriented programs of Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Harry Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton.

This is the time to defend big government and FDR, not shrink from the challenge!

Presidential Power Growing: Inevitable Trend Unless Ron Paul Somehow Were To Win White House!

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One of the key criticisms of American government has always been the growing power of the Presidential office.

But what it really comes down to is NOT the issue of Presidential authority per se, but rather the ideology and goals of the particular President.

Many have been condemnatory of Barack Obama for using his powers to employ drones against enemy combatants; allowing the killing of an American citizen (Anwar Al Awlaki) by missile strike for terrorist activities; increasing the number of Presidential aides in the White House; changing social policy by executive order; using signing statements to express reservations on bills passed by Congress; extending the Patriot Act and expanding the authority of the US government to monitor its citizens and arrest them; and employing US troops overseas without Congressional authority with his authority as Commander in Chief.

But except for Ron Paul, all of the Republicans competing for the Presidential nomination would use the same strategies and tactics, but maybe in a way that many who support Barack Obama would not approve.

The office of the Presidency has been growing in power by leaps and bounds for a century now, starting with Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, and expanding greatly starting with the Great Depression and World War II under Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Cold War under Harry Truman and all of his successors, and then the War on Terror from Bill Clinton on to Barack Obama.

Nothing in reality is going to stop this trend, and the Supreme Court itself has rarely stepped in to limit executive authority, and this perfectly demonstrates that the Constitution has been widened in its meaning, even by so called “conservative” Supreme Court Justices who have no problem with the expansion of federal executive authority.

So instead of limited government, all of the GOP candidates except Ron Paul, believe in expansive government when it comes to executive authority.

The idea of limiting Presidential authority is just that, an idea. The key issue is not that, but who to TRUST with that authority, so as not to undermine our American system of government!

Barack Obama And Promotion Of Gay Rights Abroad: An Extension Of Jimmy Carter’s Human Rights Initiative!

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A few weeks ago, President Barack Obama took a major step forward in the promotion of human rights abroad, an expansion of the vision of former President Jimmy Carter in and out of office since the late 1970s.

Both Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced early in December that the American government would use all of the tools of American diplomacy, including foreign aid, to promote gay rights around the world.

This includes fighting efforts in other nations to criminalize homosexual conduct, and to abuse or overlook abuse against gay men, lesbians bisexuals, and transgender people.

Hillary Clinton connected gay rights to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by 48 nations after World War II. The goal is to stop nations from making it a crime to be gay.

Several nations have made strides in this regard recently, including South Africa, Colombia, Argentina, Nepal, and Mongolia. Much of Europe and China have taken being gay off the list of legal prohibitions.

But at the same time, many Muslim nations in particular still ban homosexuality and punish and discriminate against gays, including Pakistan, Afghanistan, Uganda, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia as leading examples.

And of course, Republicans in general attacked the idea of including gay rights as part of a foreign policy vision, and many of the potential nominees for the Presidency make it clear they would like to reverse the progress made in America in recent years.

So the battle for human rights for gays is far from over!

The Republican Attack On The Constitution: A Threat To American Democracy!

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The Republican Party loves to assert that the Democrats, and progressives in particular, are attacking the Constitution, and that they are the experts on the Constitution.

So therefore, in this Presidential primary season, and in the party membership in Congress, there are statements constantly attacking the court system, anytime that a federal judge or court issues a decision against the conservative view of the Constitution. There are condemnations and calls to change the court system on a regular basis.

One would think that the Democrats and their progressive friends have dominated the courts in recent decades, which, of course, is the exact opposite of the truth!

One forgets that from 1969-2011, there have been only 15 years of Democratic control of the Presidency, as compared to 28 years of Republican control.

The vast majority of federal judges have been Republican appointments, as a result, and Republican Presidents have made a total of 13 Supreme Court appointments over those years, and Democrats have made only 4, two by Bill Clinton and two by Barack Obama!

But now,. Newt Gingrich calls for judges to be required to testify before partisan Congressional committees, a violation of the separation of powers, and a danger to an independent judiciary!

What it comes down to is that Newt Gingrich and all of the Republican opponents, with maybe the exception of Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman, wish to create a court system that would move away from the path breaking changes that the Supreme Court brought about during the years of the Warren Court, Burger Court, and Rehnquist Court including:

Brown V. Board Of Education
Miranda V Arizona
Roe V Wade
University Of California V. Bakke
Lawrence V Texas

As it is, there are threats presented by the Republican growth of dominance on the federal courts to all of these issues–racial integration, rights of criminal suspects, abortion rights, affirmative action, and gay rights.

The Republicans will not be contented until there are reversals on all of these issues, and a return to the “good old days”, when minorities “knew their place”; police had unlimited rights over those they questioned or arrested; women had no control over their reproductive rights; minorities and women had disadvantages, as compared to white males, on educational and job opportunities; and gays were forced to remain “in the closet” and face open discrimination and hate without recourse!

So when the Republicans claim to understand what the Founding Fathers meant at the Constitutional Convention, they are forgetting that those esteemed leaders put into the Constitution the “Elastic Clause” to allow for expansion of the Constitution beyond the original document, in order to make the Constitution a “living document” adaptable to changing times.

The real threat is not what the federal courts have done in the past sixty years! It is the attempt of conservatives and the Republican Party to negate the great progress brought about the Supreme Court and lower courts in the past sixty years, and revert back to the years after World War II, when all of these great changes started slowly to evolve through courageous judges and Supreme Court Justices, including Earl Warren, William Brennan, Hugo Black, William O. Douglas, Thurgood Marshall, Harry Blackmun, John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O’Connor, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer.

Reflections On The Pearl Harbor Anniversary

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The History Channel tonight presented an exceptional two hour program on the 24 hours after Pearl Harbor, and how Franklin D. Roosevelt learned about and handled the matter up to the declaration of war on Japan precisely a day after the attack.

It made this author wonder about how much is taught about Pearl Harbor in the schools of America. This is such a path breaking event, a turning point in our history, unmatched since the attack on Fort Sumter which stared the Civil War, and only matched since by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

How many students would know what Pearl Harbor represents, and would know that Japan was the nation which attacked us? How many would realize the importance of World War II, and know all the “players” in that war, including FDR, Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and Emperor Hirohito?

It is horrifying to think of the historical ignorance of America, not only of this event, but of all of the events and facts of American history and government which are needed for citizens to be knowledgeable enough to be good citizens and intelligent voters!

Education MUST be the prime way for this country to prosper and advance into the future, but instead, we are seeing educational cutbacks all over the nation!

This is, therefore, a time to mourn, not just for the victims of Pearl Harbor, but for ourselves as a nation which is poorly informed, which affects our politics and our hopes for a better America in the future!

70th Anniversary Of Japanese Attack On Pearl Harbor!

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On this day in 1941, the world changed forever for the United States, when Japan attacked our naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, killing about 2,400 military personnel and sinking eight battleships, and committing other major damage.

The attack took America out of its isolationist slumber, and brought us full scale into World War II. Looking at it then, it seemed close to impossible that the United States could defeat the forces of Fascism and Nazism represented by Imperial Japan, Fascist Italy, and Nazi Germany.

America had to adjust its economy, build up a war footing very quickly, and adjust to the reality that the war would take young and middle aged American men to overseas battle, with about a quarter of a million killed in the conflict that roared on for the next, nearly four years.

The war was a challenge to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and he faced tremendous pressure only matched, possibly, by Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War.

Today, the veterans of Pearl Harbor, and of the war itself, are diminishing rapidly, with the average living veteran being in his 90s, and the youngest probably 86 or 87, for those underage who looked mature and lied their way into the military services.

This was the GREATEST GENERATION as journalist Tom Brokaw has termed them, and we owe our freedom and liberty to their courage, their sacrifice, and their commitment to their country!

We can honor them by visiting the World War II Memorial in Washington, DC, and other memorials all over the nation, including the Pearl Harbor Memorial in Hawaii.

The war showed what could be done if only the nation was united, as it most certainly was, after Japan attacked.

Only the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, can be regarded as an equal moment of shock, and as a turning point in our history, in the sense of changing our view of the world forever.

So on this day, we should all express thanks for what was done by the generation of our grandparents and great grandparents, allowing us to have the blessings of liberty and freedom in 2011!

Finally, Congressional Gold Medals To Japanese American Veterans Of World War II!

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Seventy years ago next December 7, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, forcing America into World War II.

Among the victims of the Japanese attack were approximately 110,000 Japanese Americans who were placed into internment camps for the duration of the war, because of their ethnicity.

But their sons served honorably in World War II and contributed mightily to the victory over both Japan and Germany, with a segregated unit winning more medals, honors and awards than any other unit of World War II.

Now, Congress has seen fit, as of November 2, to honor the veterans who served and those who died through the awarding of Congressional Gold Medals in a ceremony in the US Capitol Visitor Center, presided over by Speaker of the House John Boehner, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

The most touching moment was the speech of Senate President Pro Tem Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, who has served longer in the Senate than anyone but the late Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia.

Wounded seriously in World War II, and recuperating in a hospital alongside former Senator Bob Dole of Kansas, Inouye went on to become the most famous Asian American politician in the history of Congress, and if he serves in office until June 29, 2014, he will have become the longest serving senator in US history, surpassing Senator Byrd.

On Veterans Day, it is appropriate that we honor and commemorate those heroic Japanese American soldiers who did their duty despite their families being interned, as they fought for freedom and democracy!