From a New York Times editorial yesterday:
After the attacks in Paris, the world is again challenged by fear. With every bombing, beheading and mass shooting, the dread spreads, along with the urgency of defeating this nihilism.
But no less a challenge for the civilized world is the danger of self-inflicted injury. In the reaction and overreaction to terrorism comes the risk that society will lose its way.
History is replete with examples of the power of fear and ignorance, to which even the great can fall prey. Franklin Roosevelt calmed a nation in bleakest days of the Depression, but he also signed the executive order imprisoning tens of thousands of American citizens for the crime of Japanese ancestry.
And an excerpt from Nicholas Kristof's column in today's Times:
Republican leaders say they simply want to tighten security to keep America safe. That’s an echo of what American officials claimed in the late 1930s and early 1940s as they blocked the entry of Jewish refugees.
Breckinridge Long, then a senior State Department official in charge of visas, warned that Nazi spies were trying to enter the U.S. as refugees. In the name of security, he established vetting rules so strict that few Jews could pass.
“We can delay and effectively stop for a temporary period of indefinite length the number of immigrants,” Long boasted in a 1940 memo. His callous security requirements led to the deaths of many tens of thousands of Jews.
Yes, security was a legitimate concern then, as it is now, but security must be leavened with common sense and a bit of heart.
To seek to help desperate refugees in a secure way is not naïveté. It’s not sentimentality. It’s humanity.