Deflection over Executive Order 9066

Today marks the signing of Executive Order 9066 in the United States. This order was signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and led to the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. In modern society, the internment camps are noted as a stain on America.

Actor George Takei was interned in one of these camps when he was a child; as a result, he is against anything that remotely resembles them ever returning. On his Facebook page, he often posts about the camps and why it is important for them to never re-materialize in any form. Any reasonable human being would agree with him.

Unfortunately, whenever the internment camps are raised in Internet discussion, there are some people who don't listen to the message that the camps were unacceptable and shouldn't return. These people instead use the camps to deflect from any terrible policies developed by today's Republican Party. Why? Because FDR was a Democratic president and in their eyes, this is enough to dismiss any civil rights progression the Democrats have achieved in the seven and a half decades since.

No one has ever argued that because a Democratic president issued an order to set up the internment camps that the camps were therefore okay. No one. In fact, that a Democrat did issue it is part of the reason why today's Democrats are vocal about how terrible the camps were and why they should never be seen again; the main reason, of course, is that it's morally wrong to isolate and segregate people based on their ethnicity. "A Democrat did it!" is just a childish deflection from developments in American politics today.

The message here? Yes, a Democratic president was behind the internment camps for Japanese Americans in the latter half of World War II but no one today says that it was acceptable because the president was a Democrat; the people who discuss the camps now are doing so to remind others that they were a dark part of American history and should remain in the past.