RE: [Leica] Terror

["Alexey J. Merz" <alexey@webcom.com>]

On Wednesday, September 12, 2001, at 11:03 , Leica Users digest wrote:

> Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2001 19:55:32 -0400
> From: "Austin Franklin" <darkroom@ix.netcom.com>
> Subject: RE: [Leica] Terror
> Message-ID: <NABBLIJOIFAICKBIEPJJGEAPLJAA.darkroom@ix.netcom.com>
> References:
>
>> And the US imprisoned Americans of Japanese extraction.
>
> So?  At the time, that was probably a very smart thing to do.  Easy to
> second guess at this point in time.

Sorry to respond in such a way at such a time, but that's bullshit.

Did we imprison and steal the properties, funds, and liberty of first- 
and second-generation GERMANS at the same time?

These were *precisely* the sorts of retrograde actions that we must be 
vigilant to prevent now. When we deny the fundamental liberties to any 
sector of our population we betray the ideals that are the bedrock of 
our freedom and the foundation of our democracy.

- -Aex Merz

ps-
By the way, the quote in my signature below was written by the great 
French historian Marc Bloch. Bloch wrote it while he languished in a 
Nazi prison, where he was held for his role in the French Resistance, 
and where he would die in captivity before the war's end. Bloch 
understood that liberty has a price, and that it is often more important 
to pay that price than to void our claim to liberty.
..........................................................................
Alexey Merz • alexey@webcom.com • alexey@dartmouth.edu • 603/464-6840 
http://www.webcom.com/alexey • PGP public key: http://pgp5.ai.mit.edu/

              A democracy becomes hopelessly weak, and the general good
              suffers accordingly, if its higher officials, bred up to
              despise it, and necessarily drawn from those very classes
              the dominance of which it is pledged to destroy, serve it
              only half-heartedly.   - Marc Bloch, _Strange Defeat_, 1940