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Tom Hanks’ Rewrite of History
By Kyle | March 18, 2010
I watched the first episode of “The Pacific” and was primarily struck by how, in the first big motivational speech about defeating the tyrannical racist empire that had sneak-attacked American possessions all over the Pacific, the motivation for defeating Japan is primarily expressed in terms of racism. This seems to be the Big Idea of the series: That it was a racist war, on both sides. Victor Davis Hanson, at the Corner, goes on:
Tom Hanks said this to Douglas Brinkley in a Time interview: “Back in World War II, we viewed the Japanese as ‘yellow, slant-eyed dogs’ that believed in different gods. They were out to kill us because our way of living was different. We, in turn, wanted to annihilate them because they were different. Does that sound familiar, by any chance, to what’s going on today?”
Some of us dissected this nonsense point by point. In subsequent remarks Hanks did not back away from his theses that the Pacific war was predicated on racism (I wonder whether our WWII alliances with China and the Philippines, or our prior alliance in WWI with Japan, were as well?), and thus similar to our attitudes in the current war on terror. (Racism apparently explains the American effort to foster democracy in Afghanistan and Iraq, and save Muslims in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Iraq, Kosovo, Kuwait, and Somalia.)What was strange is the media’s reaction to the reaction. Why is being appalled by Hanks’s infantile philosophizing a “right-wing” or “conservative” reaction? Would not liberals as well be angry that in blanket fashion, Hanks had reduced veterans’ efforts in the Pacific after the surprise attack at Pearl Harbor (and to be followed by a magnanimous peace that fostered autonomous Japanese democracy) into largely a racist rage to annihilate?
Hanson takes apart Hanks’ argument here. You might say that Hanks and Hollywood are now in the post-”Letters from Iwo Jima,” moral equivalence phase of reading WW II — in which racist remarks on one side are equivalent to barbarian slaughter on the other side. Tell me, Tom: If Japan had won the war, would they (after a brief occupation) then have carefully re-established American independence and democracy? And done the same for all of the other countries they wished to vanquish? It’s even more bizarre that Hanks leaps from this reading of WW II to a similar reading of the war against Islamofascism — as if hatred of Muslims is the reason we have made such sacrifices to bring democracy to Iraq.
Now I sit back and wait for Patrick Goldstein to characterize the above reasoning as frothing-at-the-mouth nuttiness.
Topics: History, Politics, TV |
March 18th, 2010 at 11:09 am
Here’s what I don’t get. Who did more to annihilate racism than World War II veterans? The Japanese thought of themselves as their own master race, not just the Nazis. I didn’t see armies of Bohemians marching through Caan.
March 18th, 2010 at 11:11 am
What I find sad is that mostly conservatives are barking about Hanks’ comments. Should this go beyond partisan bickering? His facts are wrong. Period.
March 18th, 2010 at 11:13 am
Marxist class analysis worked great in Europe but in the US? Not so much. But substitute race for class and bingo, you get political traction here. That’s been so successful that a lot of people have adopted the idea for all history. Apparently Hanks is one of these people.
March 18th, 2010 at 12:43 pm
I have no doubt that any act of Imperial Japanese cruelty will be “balanced” in this series. We sure wouldn’t want what Stephen Holden had to say about “The Great Raid”: “Its scenes of torture and murder also unapologetically revive the uncomfortable stereotype of the Japanese soldier as a sadistic, slant-eyed fiend.”
March 18th, 2010 at 12:56 pm
Hanks is a leftist malcontent that hates America. WWII was the ‘good’ war to these nitwits because we were fighting the Nazis who were determine to destroy communism. The thing with progressives it that communism must be protected. The Japanese weren’t out to destroy communism, they were Imperialist and they were out to conquer the entire Pacific rim and make America live with their expansion. Since the only other country that hates communism is America. Hanks and his fellow cult members feel that America is the last great evil in the world. So since we are evil, we fought the Japanese not because they were communist but because they were slanted eye yellow pagans and we as a christian nation must destroy this nation and it is all motivated by racism. Now, if Japan was a communist country and we were fighting them as we fought in Vietnam, would the progressives of 1941 be burning draft cards?
What we need is conservative filmmakers with the funding to film what really happen and we can show just how ruthless the Japanese were. I wonder if Tom realizes that in Iwo Jima when the food ran out for the Japanese inside Surabachi that they would drag in wounded Marines and they would slice their legs up and cook the flesh to eat. That isn’t racist, that was the evil Americans denying the innocent Japanese from ‘pursuit of happiness’ Like the rape of Nanking, the Bataan death march, the mass executions of all allied POWs and civilians all over the pacific rim then there was a little bridge over some river in Burma that the British were starved to death while building it. Liberalism is a mental disorder and Hanks has it bad and he gets to put his hate for America on TV for generations to digest without any other visual rebuttal. That is fascism.
March 18th, 2010 at 1:26 pm
Why do so many people not understand what he was talking about? He wasn’t saying that we got into these wars simply because we hated their race but that after pearl harbor and 9/11, race hate of every person who was either Japanese or from the middle-east became the popular thing to do.
How could anyone with basic reading comprehension look at Hanks’ comments and think that the point he was trying to make was that we just hated the Japanese and decided to go to war?
March 18th, 2010 at 1:30 pm
I did not see the racism being the reason in the inspirational speech.
March 18th, 2010 at 1:32 pm
It seems this will be another HURT LOCKER.
Where half the right says it was pro-troop (though maybe anti-war), while the other half says it was anti-troop.
March 18th, 2010 at 1:35 pm
How could anyone with basic reading comprehension look at Hanks’ comments and think that the point he was trying to make was that we just hated the Japanese and decided to go to war?
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Don’t you find it more than a little disgusting that when people like Hanks discuss Japan or 911 they DON’T talk about the racism of the enemy? It’s always about how we are the villains.
Tom Hanks is becoming like Matt Damon, Sean Penn, and others: spouting holy dipensations from their “vast” storehouses of knowledge and experience from atop the pedestals on which they have placed themselves.
March 18th, 2010 at 1:45 pm
Dima, what effing difference does it make? When you’re fighting a war - be it one against Japanese aggressors or Middle Eastern aggressors - you fight them, period. You do not sit around navel-gazing and worrying about their “humanity.”
Besides, you (like most liberals) grossly oversimplify both situations. So hating Japanese people was “the popular thing to do?” Why, then, did we allow Japanese Americans to fight in the ETO? Why did we allow Japanese American translators to work in the Pacific? Why did we put other Japanese Americans in camps because we didn’t trust them? Why didn’t we just exterminate all of these people or ship them off to Japan? And why did we help the Japanese rebuild their country and set up a democratic government after the war? Why didn’t we just, “I’m sorry, kill them all?”
And if race hate of every person who is from the middle-east is “the popular thing to do,” then why does the U.S. have one of the largest middle-eastern immigrant populations in the world? Why am I sitting here at a U.S. Government facility creating websites along with people named Mohammad and Javar and Hussein? And why, for that matter, are we trying to establish viable democracies in Afghanistan and Iraq if we hate them so much? Why don’t we just, “I’m sorry, kill them all?”
Liberals are massively hypersensitive about race. The slightest hint of racism makes them go completely off the deep end. They seem to equate any conflict involving people with different skin coloring with white sheets and lynching ropes. Sorry to disappoint you, Dima, but human beings have much more subtle minds than you give them credit for. We can hate one bunch of brown people without hating another. We can hate them one minute and be their friends the next. There is no slippery slope. And we don’t need liberals’ fearful carping about it 24/7. That includes Tom Hanks.
March 18th, 2010 at 2:31 pm
Hey Dima, what part of “We…wanted to annihilate them because they were different” don’t you understand? If we wanted to wipe the “yellow dogs” out of existence, we could’ve done so with a few more atom bombs. What we wanted to do was to destroy their ability and desire to wage war against us. We achieved that goal with their surrender. Then we went about rebuilding their country. Today, we’d go to war to PROTECT Japan. Hardly the behavior of a nation fueled by a racist desire to kill people who are different.
March 18th, 2010 at 2:32 pm
Bugs,
No offense, but some conservatives have shown themselves to be pretty thin skinned as well. Even the smallest critical comment about conservatism from a prominent person results in literally dozens of blog posts on Breitbart sites denouncing them.
I do have to take exception to one thing Kyle said. If Japan had somehow managed to win WWII (not likely given their disadvantages in troop size and resources), it’s not a given that they would have occupied one inch of land in the Continental US. It would have been more likely Japan would have controlled most of Asia with a decided defensive advantage.
March 18th, 2010 at 2:48 pm
Pete
Not thin skinned. Just fed up and speaking up and pushing back for a change.
March 18th, 2010 at 3:05 pm
7. Kit, I’m talking about the big speech on Guadalcanal, when the troops are dug in and waiting for the Japanese to land. Their commander condemns the Japanese with every racist term imaginable to get them pumped up.
March 18th, 2010 at 3:05 pm
Again, Hanks was just giving his opinion on one aspect of world war 2 he finds similar with our war on terror. No need to erase all the good things he’s done and start eviscerating him over one glib thing he said.
Sure there was some racism, but it was a completely natural reaction that a few people had in order to deal with all the anger. Hanks shouldn’t have overblown it and labeled it as a war of racism but hey I’m sure everyone else is perfect with words in every moment of their lives.
March 18th, 2010 at 3:09 pm
15-Dima, how is what Hanks said a dismissable, glib remark? He has been working on “The Pacific” for years. He is not likely to walk into a sit-down interview with Time magazine without a clear, thought-out idea of what he is going to say. It’s not like they caught him after five drinks as he was walking out of a restaurant. It wasn’t a momentary lapse. It is Hanks’ considered opinion after research and reflection that the US fought the Japanese “because they’re different.”
March 18th, 2010 at 3:11 pm
13. Yes, but pushing back in a way that occasionally is disproportionate to the perceived “offense”.
March 18th, 2010 at 3:15 pm
“Why do so many people not understand what he was talking about? He wasn’t saying that we got into these wars simply because we hated their race but that after pearl harbor and 9/11, race hate of every person who was either Japanese or from the middle-east became the popular thing to do.”
This response baffles me, not only because it’s entirely disconnected from reality, it’s also historically ignorant.
In _every_ war, you demonize your enemy. That’s part of how you win! You can’t win a war by pondering the decency and humanity of your enemy - in fact, you wouldn’t even be fighting a war against decent, humane people.
And the ‘racism’ wasn’t specific to, or specifically injurious to, the Japanese. Did you know that Japanese, Italians, and Germans were put in internment camps? Everyone thinks it was just the Japanese. Did you know that we called the Italians “wops”, that we called the Germans “krauts”, and so forth?
Left-wingers are just hilarious. You have a group of people who united to exterminate whole races of people and take over the world in a fascist regime, and you’re worried about the language used by the good guys who fought them? Great set of priorities you have there.
March 18th, 2010 at 3:17 pm
16. Kyle, respecfully, I’ll repeat something I discussed with Blackhawk last week. Even a cursory examination of WWII war proganda will show that racial rhetoric and images were much more prominent in anti-Japanese posters than anti-German or anti-Italian ones. In the European theater, the propaganda managed to make a distinction between the Italian/German *regimes* and the *people* in those countries. The Japanese war propaganda made no such distinction.
To deny that racial dog-whistling was component of our war effort against Japan is to deny reality.
Just for clarification, did people in this circle of bloggers blow the same gasket about Letters from Iwo Jima that we’re seeing here about Mr. Hanks?
March 18th, 2010 at 3:17 pm
Hanks shouldn’t have overblown it and labeled it as a war of racism but hey I’m sure everyone else is perfect with words in every moment of their lives.
——————
The difference being, most of the time, liberal are given a pass. Case in point: Sean Penn’s slobberfest over Chavez and wanting his critics to get cancer and Chavez’s critics jailed. I’m sure he was just being “glib.”
Wouldn’t it be nice if conservatives were allowed to be glib?
March 18th, 2010 at 3:19 pm
18. Please provide some documentation that Italian-Americans and German-Americans were rounded up and thrown into internment camps without even establishing that they were guilty of anything. I mean, my grandfather was a German who emigrated to the US in 1929. He wasn’t rounded up and put into a camp. But if he had been Japanese, he would have been.
March 18th, 2010 at 3:28 pm
I’m with AtheistConservative. Who cares what people said about the Japs during the war? Yes, Americans hated on the people who sneak-attacked us and were killing their boys. So what? It annoys me to see Tom Hanks tutting from his place of safety at 65 years remove. It’s outrageous that he would draw a parallel between our motives for fighting and those of the Japanese, and I’m convinced it reveals a not-so-well-hidden distaste for our country.
March 18th, 2010 at 3:30 pm
There was a way Hanks could have better expressed his opinion and described it as just one aspect of the war that is discussed in the series instead of encompassing everything as a war of racism and using the words “…annihilate because they were different.”
Again, I’m pretty sure Hanks’ doesn’t think the only reason we fought the Japanese or are fighting the terrorists is because we are racists. So let’s stop being hysterical.
“Left-wingers are just hilarious. You have a group of people who united to exterminate whole races of people and take over the world in a fascist regime, and you’re worried about the language used by the good guys who fought them? Great set of priorities you have there.”
All we’re talking about is people going crazy over what Tom Hanks said, which I don’t understand. If you’re pretty much acknowledging what he said was true then why all the hatred towards him for just phrasing it poorly?
March 18th, 2010 at 3:35 pm
Yes, of course Krishke, anyone who still refers to the Japanese as the “Japs” 65 years after the end of the war clearly is equipped to understand just what Hanks was clumsily trying to say. Extra points for sticking in the obligatory assertion that anyone who doesn’t tow the line 100% in accordance with YOU clearly must hate the country.
March 18th, 2010 at 3:35 pm
Definitely agree with AtheistConservative and Pete on this one - it’s classic war psychology to demonize/dehumanize the enemy - in pre-PC times especially - Krauts, Japs, Gooks, Ragheads - helps a soldier not feel quite so much like he’s killing a person like him. Hanks certainly isn’t out of line to point that out in relation to World War II and the Japanese - and though it may have been far worse then than it is today, I’ve certainly observed an element of racism in the way the average person privately refers to the Middle Eastern “enemy” - it just isn’t nearly as much a part of public discourse anymore.
March 18th, 2010 at 3:39 pm
Oh, and I too watched The Pacific and I’m sure it will be just as great as Band of Brothers - I can’t say I was particularly struck by the amount of racism portrayed - certainly reflected my understanding of the times.
Kyle, I think it’s fair for you to perhaps take some issue in Tom Hanks’s comments, but there definitely wasn’t anything wrong about the show.
March 18th, 2010 at 4:16 pm
Kyle…
I didn’t get racist motivations from either speech within the episode….
The episode seemed to me to be a straight up telling of a story — nothing like Tom Hanks’ worldview. Animalistic comparisons of enemies is also common… it was more common in WW1 for Germans, but hardly limited to “other races”.
March 18th, 2010 at 4:41 pm
Pete — Italian and German naval vessels did not credibly threaten the West Coast (or East Coast) of America with invasion. Nor was there a large, and recent, set of Italian and German immigrant groups that spoke mostly Italian and German and closely aligned with both nations.
I’ll note that we firebombed Dresden, Hamburg, and many other cities in Germany, losing 50,000 men at least in the Air War alone.
Meanwhile, the only people fought in the Pacific were purely military — Navy and Army from Japan, until the final battle in Okinawa. There were no civilians in Pelilieu and Guadalcanal from Japan.
The Japanese starved and beheaded our own civilians including women and children interned in the Far East. As a matter of record.
The Japanese atrocities: Bataan, and in Guadalcanal (fake surrender, murdering the medical corspman sent) are a matter of record.
So too, are the language and behavior of the men who were there, and wrote of their experience. I read With the Old Breed. The men at Pelelieu and Okinawa were not slavering racists. They feared and hated the Japanese. Because the Japanese would not surrender, they fought to the last man, committed horrific atrocities on captured Marines, and sought to bleed the Marines into defeat.
I’ll add that the help and succor given to downed Japanese flyers in Hawaii by Nisei is also a matter of shameful public record, as is the numerous spy rings there. Overall, the Japanese in Hawaii (who were not interned) were ardently pro-Axis and a fifth column.
There were spy rings from Japan in the West Coast. How large, and effective is a matter of dispute. What is not is that internment ended the spy rings and their effectiveness in transmitting the movements of the US Navy, Marines, and Army / Army-Airforce.
March 18th, 2010 at 4:52 pm
Whiskey, so you felt that it was entirely appropriate to lock up 110,000 American citizens for no other crime than being Japanese?
March 18th, 2010 at 4:56 pm
When people ask to be provided with information, it’s not a serious request, because we all know you can Google these things yourself. You are actually putting off learning so you can continue to be comfortable in your ignorance.
However, I’ll humor you:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_American_internment
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_American_internment
I realize it’s quite the fad to claim shock and horror at these practices now, but as with most things there is a defense for them. There were very active pro-Nazi groups in America. There were very active pro-fascist groups in America. There were very active Japanese spy rings in America. You can certainly make a very effective argument against rounding them up and keeping them in prison in prison, regardless of guilt or innocence, but that’s a modern argument, made from the comfort of modern monitoring and processing technology - and even today we hear arguments against detaining people we KNOW are guilty of plotting against America.
As for the ‘racism’ angle - I stand by my point that we mocked everybody in the war on racial angles. If the Japanese received what you consider to be an unfair amount of such mocking, do you think it might at least partially have to do with the fact that the Japanese were the only members of the axis to actually attack us?
And again I have to marvel at this idiotic mindset. We were attacked by a country that was on a mission to take over the world. They committed uncountable war crimes against millions of people (why do you think the Chinese hate the Japanese so much?) And we’re wringing our hands over the NAMES we called them?
March 18th, 2010 at 5:01 pm
“you felt that it was entirely appropriate to lock up 110,000 American citizens for no other crime than being Japanese?”
This is rather like the argument against the death penalty: you take the position that lets you feel morally superior because the cost of your position is hidden.
We know of several attacks by Japanese spies on American soil during WWII. So we interned people of Japanese heritage. Is that the best solution possible? No. But pretending that it is entirely indefensible is ridiculous. And you’re only able to do it because you wouldn’t hear about the hundreds, or thousands, or however many people those spy rings could have killed if this hadn’t been done. Just like how it’s comfortable for people to be against the death penalty because they just ignore recidivism rates among the violent criminals who are released back into society.
Your position actually makes your hands bloodier than the alternative, but you get to feel good about it simply by ignoring the real-world cost.
And one final note on this: detention of members of an ethnic group has always been the practice during wars between ethnicities. America is not the only place to ever have done this, nor even the most recent. You really need to examine your priorities.
March 18th, 2010 at 5:05 pm
So,
11,000 Germans interred is the moral equivalent of 110,000 Japanese? Say, why do you suppose Ronald Reagan signed into law a reparations program for the Japanese interned, including a formal apology to them?
If you want to be picky, it was in fact the GERMANS who were trying to take over the world (and with their nuke program they damn near pulled it off). It was the GERMANS who set out to literally extinguish an entire race from the face of the earth.
March 18th, 2010 at 5:07 pm
27. So, after Oklahoma City would it have been appropriate to lock up all white guys in the country in order to “break up” other terrorist cells.
Your priorities are pretty obvious, you little fascist.
March 18th, 2010 at 5:10 pm
As for the death penalty, we execute the highest number of prisoners per capita in the industrialized world, yet that hasn’t dented the crime rate a whit.
March 18th, 2010 at 5:26 pm
Hanks is right. This country sucks. I’m moving to one where there have never been problems, bad decisions have never been made, there is no racism, everyone is totally happy with the way their government runs things.
Umm, which country is that?
March 18th, 2010 at 5:30 pm
Come now, Blackhawk…Hanks did NOT say “this country sucks”. I realize that the MO on sites like this is if a person deviates one iota from the level of USA USA USA flagwaving, the denunciations fly in fast and furious.
To be fair, there are some things the Allies did during WWII that probably were neither heroic or ultimately even necessary to win in the end. Pretending that the bad things didn’t happen doesn’t really honor the sacrifice of those who died doing the right things.
March 18th, 2010 at 6:15 pm
Pretending that the bad things didn’t happen doesn’t really honor the sacrifice of those who died doing the right things.
Yes, but painting the entire war effort as having been in the service of a bad thing (i.e. racism) actively dishonors the sacrifice of those who died defending us. Which is why people are upset, and not b/c, as you pretend, Hanks deviated an “iota” from USA flagwaving.
March 18th, 2010 at 6:16 pm
Liberals must be immune to hyperbole.
Hey Pete, I criticize this country all the time. In fact, I criticize this country more than I praise it. The difference is when I criticize this country I’m called a racist. I criticize this government for spending trillions of dollars, I criticize people for not paying attention and allowing Congress to bastardize the Constitution. I criticize corporations for looting our economy and using their political connections to keep small business from competing with them. I criticize the courts for legislating from the bench. I criticize trial lawyers for exploiting the legal system for profits and turning the practice of law into a truth pimping service. I criticize academics who value ideas over people. And I criticize people for just being a bunch of clueless do-nothing who allow all of the above things to happen. What I don’t do is impute simple-minded viewpoints onto people I don’t know in an attempt to try to score political points and produce a historically significant sound bite.
Also, when I critique aspects of this country I don’t like I get called a racist. So liberals don’t have the market cornered on misplaced persecution.
March 18th, 2010 at 6:18 pm
Hmmm, I said the racist thing twice. Well it needed to be said twice.
March 18th, 2010 at 6:26 pm
Well said Pete. Kyle and Vic Hanson are guilty of the same simplistic historical judgments they accuse Hanks of.
To believe our actions in Iraq, Japan, Kosovo, Somalia etc. are guided by anything as straightforward as a simple desire to spread democracy is asinine.
By that logic I guess we allowed Japan to keep its emperor because of our love of imperial power right?
And I guess we loved democracy so much we forced the French to vacate Indochina and allow the Vietnamese etc. to enjoy the greatness of democracy after they were “liberated” from Japanese occupation?
Surely it’s understandable that as a result of the attack on Pearl Harbor and the notorious Japanese atrocities, Nanjing, Bataan, etc., anger was inflamed and racist sentiment towards them reached an apex, but to deny it existed is simply wrong.
March 18th, 2010 at 6:33 pm
To believe our actions in Iraq, Japan, Kosovo, Somalia etc. are guided by anything as straightforward as a simple desire to spread democracy is asinine.
It sure is, which is why no one believes or says it.
March 18th, 2010 at 6:41 pm
Hey Paul, search all the comments. No one said there was no racism. What we are disputing is Hank’s claim that it was the principle motive for our actions in the Pacific. I guess if we weren’t such racists we would have just let Pearl Harbor go, but no, we had to go on a racially charged war march through the Pacific.
March 18th, 2010 at 6:48 pm
Japan was quite possibly the most racist country on earth during WWII and I’m including Nazi Germany here (read Iris Chang’s book about the Rape of Nanking sometime. The few Nazis on the scene were the *good* guys, that’s how bad it was.) Even today it remains a, shall we say, rather closed society to anyone who is not born in Japan of Japanese descent. To lament in sanctimonious tones the racism of 1940s-era Americans while ignoring and sliding over the way the Japanese thought of and dealt with the Chinese, the Manchurians, the Koreans, and basically everyone else who was not of their race makes Tom Hanks an ass. I’ll be passing on “The Pacific,” thanks.
March 18th, 2010 at 6:56 pm
Blackhawk, respectfully, may I ask you a question. When you said that you criticized the government for spending trillions of dollars, did that also include the time we spent trillions of dollars fighting a war in Iraq that we didn’t bother to fund? When you said that you spoke out against bastardizing the Constitution, did that outrage include warrantless wiretapping of American citizens?
The irony of conservatives criticizing those who value ideals over people is glowing neon yellow about right now.
I agree wholeheartedly that corporations do lobby Congress to prevent them from competition from small business. However, nothing in the current GOP framework indicates that’s going to change.
BTW, Blackhawk, I never called you a racist. I actually like debating you.
March 18th, 2010 at 7:11 pm
Pete
Actually yes. I have criticized conservatives for failing to stand up to the Bush administration and members of Congress on spending and the Patriot Act. I’m no Bush groupie. Bush wasn’t a conservative. I have also criticized conservatives who have no problem with using the power of the state to legislate social issues. I don’t like the idea of Defense of Marriage acts being forced through Congress any more than I like the idea of gay marriage being forced through the courts.
I see you are also fully on board with the left-wing lie that corporations are all right-wing. Wall Street gives 3-1 to Democrats because they have learned they can use the onerous tax laws that dems favor to their advantage. They can hire lobbyists to get favorable regulations written (actually, the lobbyists do the writing) and lawyers to get them around the tax laws. Small businesses can’t do that.
The Dems and the GOP are turning me into more and more of a libertarian every day.
March 18th, 2010 at 7:53 pm
If you truly think that you’re a libertarian, then you really shouldn’t give two whits about consenting gay adults being able to legally wed.
By the way, if not for the courts intervening in 1954, just how long do you think it would have taken for segregated schools to go away?
March 18th, 2010 at 8:11 pm
Pete, did I say I had a moral objection to gay marriage? No, you read what you wanted to read again. I objected to the process of forcing massive social change through the least democratic branch of our government.
And we can go on and on about the differences between segregation and gay rights. Gay rights is an issue that is best resolved at the state level. If New York or Massachusetts voters feel that gay marriage is a protected right they can express themselves through the ballot box. If California voters feel differently, they can do likewise. If you depend on the courts for social change then bench composition becomes to big a factor in what rights are protected under the Constitution. A protected right can be taken away if a subsequent case is heard under a different bench.
March 18th, 2010 at 8:51 pm
A true libertarian would want the government to stay out of marriage altogether.
Last weekend I listened to Captain Dale Dye, a military consultant on “The Pacific” and Oliver Stone movies, on the radio. The whole race issue didn’t even come up.
March 18th, 2010 at 10:25 pm
“Again, Hanks was just giving his opinion on one aspect of world war 2…”
Now I understand why it was okay for him to slander our parents and our nation.
Thank you Dima for explaining why we should not condemn him for his lies.
March 19th, 2010 at 12:24 am
Because, Dima, we’re listening to what Ton Hanks is actually saying, rather than projecting what we WISH he had said.
March 20th, 2010 at 9:52 am
Hey, AC, the difference between the Japanese internment and that of Germans and Italians was that all a Japanese had to do to be interned was to BE Japanese and live in the Western part of the US (those on the East Coast were not interned), versus the Italians and Germans who were interned, who had to show pro-Fascist sympathies or take pro-Fascist actions. To deny that racism played some part in this or the way the US egged its citizens on to fight “the Japs” is to deny reality.
Speaking from family experience, all of this is not to say that Italians (the example I’m familiar with) were not put on “extra secret probation” by their own government. My father, the child of Sicilian immigrants who only spoke Sicilian dialect at home until age 5, clearly remembers his grandfather (a local Italian community leader in a small town upstate) and his home being watched by people everyone in the community knew were Feds, all this despite, as may father (a normally gentle, jovial, jokester of a man) once remarked to me with uncharacteristic bitterness in his voice, “there being 4 stars in his grandfather’s window”, signifying my father’s four uncles fighting in the war. One of the few times I’ve ever heard him speak that way about anything, so it obviously made quite an impression on him, even at age 5 or so…..