And the VP Candidate Is - Not Newt!

The Donald finally did something smart and picked Mike Pence as his VP candidate. Fortunately, he didn't pick Newt Gingrich. This, a day or two after Newt, responding to the Nice Truck Massacre, said that we needed to interview every Muslim in America - he didn't indicate if that included American Citizens or just aliens - and deport every one that said that they believed/followed/had heard of Sharia Law.

Now, I like Newt. Not when he is a politician, but when he writes fiction. I loved his "Pearl Harbor"/"Days of Infamy" alternate history series, where he examined the "what if" of a Japanese Invasion of Hawaii as part of the Pearl Harbor Strike.

But that was fiction. Let's talk about the real world.

I get that people find terrorism scary. That's why it's called terror. But responding to it with proposals that tear down our Freedoms is just not the way to go. Terrorism is not an existential crisis for the United States.

Let me say that again in another way. We have been suffering from Middle Eastern terrorists since the 1970's. Look at the Islamist Terrorism Attacks Wikipedia page. Yes, it is long, bloody and painful. But the West is still alive and thriving. America is still kicking.

Back during World War II, America faced an existential crisis. We pulled a Newt stunt: we packed our Japanese up and sent them to immigration camps. When it was over, we came to two conclusions:

1. We lost the use of a number of our own citizens, both in the military (the 100th Infantry Battalion/442nd Regimental Combat Team) and in civilian labor forces.
2. The land, homes, and businesses that the Japanese (Isei and Nisei) were forced to liquidate was property that jealous whites had coveted and were able to grab at fire-sale properties.

While I suppose that some of the people that benefited from the WW II Japanese situation believed that the "Dirty Japs" didn't deserve their property, most Americans do, and believe that we did something wrong.

Why are we proposing the same types of things today, when our country is not faced with nearly the same type of threat?

Are we really scared of Islam and Islamic terrorists so much that we want to risk our Constitutional Rights of Religious Freedom and Citizenship?

Or is it that we respond so well to politicians that use the fear of others, outsiders? Are we hoping to find some group that we can hang for all the problems we see?

There were another class of politicians that did the same thing back prior to WW II. Does anyone remember Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin? They stoked the fears of their peoples with the outsiders, the others, the Jews. It worked pretty well.

When Newtie issued his call for interviewing all the Muslims, I wondered if he would be willing to just accept their denials of Shariah Law. I suppose he would require a lie detector test, something we reserve for guarding our highest secrets. (I didn't need to go on the box for a secret clearance.) Or maybe that wouldn't be good enough. After all, the Donald want's to bring back waterboarding, and things even tougher. Definitely brings to mind the Gestapo and KGB, and the way they interrogated suspects to ensure their "reliability".

People, get a grip! Show some faith! Our country has done well with our traditions and freedoms under our Constitution. It allows for a lot of different people to live and work together. If we start tearing it down every time one outside group or another starts bugging us, then we are truly lost. Let's show some resolve to ignore these crazy politicians that incite our fear to get what they want. Let's instead find people like Marshall, Eisenhower, Nimitz, and our grandparents, that go out and fight the problem to protect us as we are, not as we shouldn't be.