Anthony G. Martin

* Conservative Examiner

SubscribeSponsor an Examiner
View all of Anthony G.'s articles

*
*
* Print

The Progressives' sordid history of internment camps

* September 23rd, 2010 3:49 pm ET



As mentioned in the previous article, the history of the Progressive Movement in America depicts an ideology that is not at all tolerant of dissenting points of view. Two separate instances of the roundup and incarceration of citizens in internment camps occurred under two of the most 'progressive' U.S. Presidents--Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Woodrow Wilson perhaps represents America's closest brush with the liberty-crushing death-knell of Fascism. But he was at the time the world's best-known progressive. Accoding to Jonah Goldberg as quoted by 'The American Roots of Fascism':

"Under Woodrow Wilson, the first American president to embrace the new cult of pragmatism and power that had overtaken "enlightened" thinkers on both sides of the Atlantic (and the first American president to openly disdain the U.S. Constitution), the progressives unleashed a crackdown on freedom that makes the supposed fascism of the McCarthy era and the Bush years seem like a teach-in at Smith College. Wilson established the American Protective League, a group of domestic fascisti charged with crushing dissent, beating "slackers," and intimidating average Americans. Wilson's Committee for Public Information was the first modern propaganda ministry. Indeed, according to the late sociologist and intellectual historian Robert Nisbet, the "West's first real experience with totalitarianism - political absolutism extended into every possible area of culture and society, education, religion, industry, the arts, local community and family included, with a kind of terror always waiting in the wings - came with the American war state under Wilson."

And from 'Right Across the Atlantic' we find this disturbing fact about Wilson:

"Woodrow Wilson (Democrat) suppressed anti war protest and encouraged the round-up of dangerous foreigners and naturalized Americans deemed suspect – those of German and Irish ancestry were considered possible Central Powers supporters; various Eastern Europeans were seen as criminal anarchists"

These persons were summarily sent to AMERICAN concentration camps, implemented by the Wilson Administration.

The second American Progressive President to round up and incarcerate citizens was Franklin Roosevelt. Not only did Roosevelt round up Japanese citizens living in the U.S., but he also incarcerated AMERICAN CITIZENS who had been naturalized from Japan.

But Japanese-Americans were not the only target for FDR's internment camps. As this article states, American citizens of German and Italian descent were also rounded up and placed in the camps.

Thus, it is clear from the historical record that the Progressive Movement will tolerate dissent only to a degree. After utilizing the common methods mentioned by Cass Sunstein to manipulate and control the choices citizens are given, those who are still non-compliant will be punished. And the most common method used to punish dissidents by two of the most progressive Presidents in the Progressive Movement was to set up concentration camps for our own citizens.

They were simply rounded up and thrown into the camps WITHOUT due process of law or court hearings.

This is the Progressive Movement in all its glory. And it is not far-fetched at all to conclude that Americans are in grave danger today, given that Progressives run this government. From Barack Obama to Hillary Clinton, from Cass Sunstein to Vann Jones, from Harry Reid to Nancy Pelosi, the current crop of government elites subscribe to the philosophy espoused by the Progressive Movement of the late 1800s and early 1920s.

Could a roundup and incarceration of modern American dissidents be far behind?.T