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By Root 673 0

he was convicted of being in one of the areas restricted under the Civilian Exclusion Acts. In the appeal of his conviction, Korematsu v. United States (1944), the Supreme Court held that the government could ship Japanese Americans off to internment camps in the name of national security, and that protections guaranteed under the Constitution could be curtailed based on race—or perceived collective guilt—when national security was at stake. Along with Korematsu, more than 112,000 men and women were kidnapped from their homes and forced to inhabit concentration camps without due process of law, in reaction to the attacks on Pearl Harbor. The Court believed that “pressing public necessity may sometimes justify the existence of such restrictions.” In other words, during war—a “special circumstance”—the government can use an end to justify the means.

Justice Frank Murphy believed that no such vague showing of public necessity could ever justify government racism. In his dissent, he responded that “racial discrimination [by the government] in any form and in any degree has no justifiable part whatever in our democratic way of life. It is unattractive in any setting, but it is utterly revolting among a free people who have embraced the principles set forth in the Constitution of the United States.” Those principles are the Natural Law, and Justice Murphy was absolutely correct.

More “Covert” Freedom-limiting Rules and Regulations

Civil and economic liberties always suffer when it comes to the lengthening list of laws, regulations, and agencies implemented during times of war. From Woodrow Wilson’s Espionage Act of 1917 to George Bush’s Patriot Act of 2001 to the creation of the Department of Homeland Security to governmental business controls, the government continuously finds ways to violate our freedom under the guise of “it’s for your own security.”

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The government implemented the Espionage Act of June 1917 to silence critics of the draft. Penalizing willful obstruction of enlistment services with fines of ten thousand dollars and imprisonment as long as twenty years, the federal government stripped away civil liberties at the most fundamental level: Both freedom of speech and religion. The feds censored all printed materials, deported aliens, and encouraged warrantless searches and seizures. People were even arrested for reading the Bill of Rights and the Constitution in public.19

How far have we come since World War I? Not very far. Almost a century later, the Patriot Act creates some of the same consequences as the Espionage Act. It lets the government snoop around your private communications and personal records. It expands the size and power of federal agencies and allows searches and seizures of your property without a warrant or probable cause. It permits the president to detain you without counsel for indefinite periods. And all of this conduct can be accomplished without the scrutiny of a judge. Whatever happened to the freedoms the Constitution was written to guarantee?

Controls on business during both World War I and World War II also severely restricted Americans’ economic freedoms. The feds “nationalized the railroad, telephone, domestic telegraph, and international telegraphic cable industries,” asserting control over prices, people, and corporations.20 Regulations in the forms of manipulation of “labor-management regulations, securities sales, agricultural production and marketing, the distribution of coal and oil, international commerce, and markets for raw materials and manufactured products” highly constricted private enterprise and free market practices.21 These economic controls must not be disregarded as simply unimportant economic liberties (as opposed to civil liberties).22 The penalties for violation of economic controls were severe, ranging from fines to prison.

Moreover, unnecessary agencies are created during wars. Typically, they grow in size and lengthen the list of regulations under which we live. After war, some disappear, while others magically morph into the “solution” of other