Modern internment

If the Malkinites will permit us to move on from the historical internment debate and look at what John Leo suggests is the present one, I’d like to encourage people to consider the what is the fundamentally leftist notion of internment. First, does the following statement sound more characteristic of left-wing or right-wing thought:

We have to do something even if it won’t do any good.

You see, the technological imperative suggests that it will soon be impossible to prevent the damage wrought by a single individual, if it is not already. Whether it is a matter of nuclear miniaturization, biological weaponry or nanotechnology, the massive and powerful edifice of the central state is growing increasingly vulnerable to the actions of one man.

The only genuine defense against an unstoppable danger that is limited as to its area of effect is decentralization. But decentralization is also highly conducive to individual liberty, which is why the central state resists it even when its own survival is supposedly at stake. For example, if Leviathan is beheaded in Washington DC, the plan is not to turn power over to the 50 governors of the sovereign states, but to FEMA, an even stronger central authority than the current Federal government.

Internment will only be one of the many totalitarian solutions proposed, if not imposed, in the wake of a serious attack on the USA. I think it is a short-sighted and foolish betrayal of principle for conservatives to look to the state to protect them from something it manifestly has not been able to protect them and from which it will likely never be able to protect them.

The other possible defense against a threat from resident aliens lies in immigration controls and deportations, but since the global statists have latched onto flooding the population as an excellent method of destroying national sovereignty, this is not even up for mainstream discussion despite its Constitutional viability in comparison with internment. I can’t help but think what a surprise it will be to many conservatives when they finally realize that they are more likely to be candidates for internment than those they were envisioning would be the targets.