At one point, Michelle Malkin was considered to be a person with strong Libertarian leanings. She has taken a principled stand on the drug war as well as an opposition to gun control. Unfortunately, any resemblance to a moral, decent human being ends there.
The following are a few cornerstones of her ideology.
On the ACLU and the use of torture:
The organization maintains dangerously absolutist positions against the use of torture to gather intelligence from al-Qaida terrorists, against the designation of enemy combatants apprehended on either foreign or American soil, and against common-sense profiling in wartime.
Malkin does not explain where the Constitution of the United States allows for the use of torture or the designation of enemy combatants by the President. I’m not against common-sense profiling myself but, with a book entitled “In Defense of Internment” under her belt, I’m not sure I trust her definition of “common-sense”.
She has never met a Patriot Act she didn’t love:
To civil-liberties alarmists, Viet Dinh is a traitor. To me, he is an American hero.
Dinh, 35, is widely known, and reviled, as the primary architect of the Patriot Act. Until May, he was an assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Policy in John Ashcroft’s Justice Department. (He stepped down to return to his law school post at Georgetown University.) Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Dinh told the Christian Science Monitor, “our nation’s ability to defend itself against terror has been not only my vocation but my obsession.”
This Fourth of July holiday, I will give thanks for those like Dinh who have worked tirelessly to ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, and secure the blessings of liberty that no other country in the world can match.
Never mind that nearly no Congressman or Senator actually read the Patriot Act before turning it into law.
Anyone who disagrees with the Patriot Act or the policies of the Bush Administration are “spitting on the graves” of those who died on 9/11. Here’s my favorite quote:
Your indignant local librarian will promote fear-mongering and misinformation about the Patriot Act.
Nothing she has written thus far has the ability to induce nausea like her current work of desperation “In Defense of Internment” I’ve already touched on this a bit here.
I have no idea what Malkin’s motives are in writing this vitriol. Is it important?
Today, for the first time, I really began to wonder. Eric Muller recounts a radio interview he was supposed to do with Malkin the other day. While waiting on the phone for his chance to talk, the radio host asked this of Malkin, on the air:
Smerconish: The bottom line here, Michelle, is don’t let your kids be taught that we did despicable things to the Japanese Americans during World War II, ’cause it ain’t true.
Malkin: That’s right, Michael.
According to Malkin and Smerconish, rounding up 120,000 human beings (2/3 of them American Citizens including infants and the elderly), evicting them from their property, freezing their bank accounts, stealing their possessions, denying them their rights to due process, forcing some to move out of the region (without compensation), interning the rest in concentration camps (all on the preponderance of secret evidence) located in the desert, not allowing them to speak Japanese or gather in large meetings, denying them the freedom to worship as they choose (unless they converted to Christianity), making them sign loyalty oaths and then having the gall to draft the males of military age to fight for freedoms they did not enjoy were not despicable things.
Is this how Republicans think?
Her position is further impoverished by this blog post:
The history curriculum in Bainbridge Island’s middle school dealing with the so-called Japanese-American internment has come under fire, according to this article in the Bremerton Sun.
Now the Japanese-American internment is “so-called”; as if either all conventional knowledge about it is wrong or it never happened. Nice.
The Bremerton Sun Article ends this way:
Mary Dombrowski, an island resident, shared letters she exchanged with Superintendent Ken Crawford and Sakai Principal Jo Vander Stoep. She argued the curriculum didn’t provide the historical context surrounding President Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066, which resulted in a war zone with a boundary line running through the middle of Washington and Oregon, along California’s eastern boundary and into the southern part of Arizona….
Dombrowski took issue with the curriculum’s attempt to link Japanese internment with today’s Patriot Act, saying it “rises to the level of propaganda.”
To which Malkin replied:
Good for Dombrowski.
Uh huh. Malkin’s sentiments might ring true if:
1. The provisions for internment were ever overturned by the Supreme Court.
2. Republican pundits didn’t make a ton of money writing books defending said internment and then insisting that her thesis makes a case for “common sense” racial profiling today.
3. John Ashcroft didn’t go around spouting his support for Internment Camps that would house “enemy combatants”. (see Camps for Citizens: Ashcroft’s Hellish Vision).
4. The President didn’t illegaly imprison American Citizens in violation of their Constitutional rights (Habeas Corpus, due process, etc…). What Malkin can’t seem to grasp here is the wilfull violation of one citizen’s rights is a violation of all citizen’s rights.
5. Republicans didn’t unquestionably eat this crap up.
