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Friday, June 28, 2019
Shannon Casas Editor in Chief | 770-718-3417 | scasas@gainesvilletimes.com
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The First Amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right
of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
AOC right about
concentration
camps — even if
we don’t like it
I’m A-OK with AOC.
Sure, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.,
says wild and crazy things. In that regard, she is
a creature of the times and a perfect foil for a
wild and crazy president.
The 29-year-old freshman lawmaker is
wreaking havoc in the House of Representa
tives. She shows no fear, defies authority and
doesn’t flinch.
Those are good characteristics in a politician
— and in a journalist.
When you’re one of only a handful of Latino
syndicated columnists in the United States,
folks have rigid expectations, and they’re likely
to be disappointed. Fel
low Mexican Americans
accuse me of “acting
white” to be accepted by
the establishment, while
white folks worry that I’ve
gone native and become
too Mexican.
I recently disappointed
a reader who has been
sending me friendly
emails for more than 15
years. He demanded that I
write a “negative column”
about Ocasio-Cortez after
she said on Instagram: “The United States is
running concentration camps on our southern
border, and that is exactly what they are —
they are concentration camps.”
I responded that Ocasio-Cortez had Merriam-
Webster on her side. The dictionary defines a
concentration camp as: “A place where large
numbers of people (such as prisoners of war,
political prisoners, refugees, or the members of
an ethnic or religious minority) are detained or
confined under armed guard.”
That’s what is happening on the U.S.-Mexico
border. News reports have revealed deplorable
conditions in detention facilities housing hun
dreds of Central Americans who seek refugee
status — many of them children, who don’t
have soap, toothpaste or adequate amounts of
food and water.
That reality didn’t bother the reader as much
as AOC’s choice of words. Calling it “distaste
ful” and “outrageous” for anyone to “equate
the family separation to the concentration Nazi
camps,” he accused me of “basing (your) inde
pendent journalism on race” by focusing too
much on “the plight of the Hispanics.” He said,
“I thought you were above that.”
Baloney. People who read your words often
assume they know you. But I didn’t promise
anything or mislead anyone.
Note that while the definition also says that
the term is “used especially in reference to
camps created by the Nazis in World War II for
the internment and persecution of Jews and
other prisoners,” it does not say that the phrase
is exclusively used that way.
Indeed, as has been pointed out in recent
days, the Nazis didn’t invent concentration
camps. Weaponized incarceration predates
the Holocaust by nearly a century, and it was a
favorite tactic of colonial powers. The Spanish
used it to quell uprisings during the Cuban War
of Independence. The British used it in South
Africa during the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902.
Americans used concentration camps — i.e.,
mass incarceration of a particular group of
human beings without trial — in the mid-19th
century, when Dakota Indians were interned
at Fort Snelling in Minnesota. Most notoriously,
the phrase aptly describes what we did to Japa
nese Americans during World War II. The actor
and activist George Takei — who was a boy at
the time — recently tweeted: “I know what con
centration camps are. I was inside two of them,
in America. And yes, we are operating such
camps again.”
Testify, brother.
The U.S. Jewish community is split. Some
Jews are offended that Ocasio-Cortez used such
a loaded phrase, about which they can be terri
torial. But other Jews aren’t bothered, because
they think the term fits.
In an op-ed for Vox, Anna Lind-Guzik — an
attorney who has researched genocides, and
the daughter of a Soviet Jewish refugee —
wrote: “Applying the term ‘concentration camp’
to the indefinite detention without trial of
thousands of civilians in inhumane conditions
— under armed guard and without adequate
provisions or medical care — is not just appro
priate, it’s necessary.”
Meanwhile, conservatives who scoff at the
PC crowd for banning phrases like “illegal
immigrant” are livid over the phrase: “concen
tration camps.”
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy — a
Trump lackey who sold out his Central Califor
nia farmer constituents to back an administra
tion whose tariffs crush farming — said AOC
should apologize for using the phrase. The
freshman congresswoman angrily shot back
that it was McCarthy who owed everyone an
apology for rubber-stamping the internment
and mistreatment of infants, children and teen
agers being interned, neglected and mistreated.
Americans are having an important discus
sion, even if it is uncomfortable. And Ocasio-
Cortez kicked it off. For that, she doesn’t owe us
an apology. We owe her our gratitude.
Ruben Navarrette writes for The Washington Post
Writers Group.
RUBEN
NAVARRETTE
ruben@
rubennavarrette.com
Candidates’ bad ideas revealed
So many people want to
be president. Unfortunately,
many have terrible ideas.
Sen. Kamala Harris wants
companies to prove they pay
men and women equally.
“Penalties if they don’t!” she
shouts. But there are lots of
reasons, other than sexism,
why companies pay some
men more than women.
Harris also wants govern
ment to “hold social media
platforms accountable for the hate
infiltrating their platforms.” But “hold
ing them accountable” means censor
ship. If politicians get to censor media,
they’ll censor anyone who criticizes
them.
Sen. Bernie Sanders wants the post
office to offer banking services. The
post office? It already loses billions of
dollars despite its monopoly on deliver
ing mail. Sanders also wants to increase
our national debt by forgiving $1.6 tril
lion in student loan debt.
He wants to ban for-profit charter
schools and freeze funding for non
profit charters. That’s great news for
some government-school bureaucrats
and teachers unions that don’t want
to compete but bad news for kids who
flourish in charters when government
schools fail.
Sen. Cory Booker once sounded
better about charters, saying, “When
people tell me they’re against school
choice... or charter schools, I say, ‘As
soon as you’re willing to send your kid
to a failing school in my city... then I’ll
be with you.’”
Unfortunately, now that Booker is
a presidential candidate,
he says little about school
choice. He also wants gov
ernment to guarantee peo
ple’s jobs and to pay more
Americans’ rent.
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand
wants to force everyone
to buy fertility treatment
insurance.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren
wants to impose a wealth tax
on very rich people. That
would certainly benefit accountants
and tax lawyers while inspiring rich
people to hide more assets instead of
putting them to work.
Warren also wants to ban all oil and
gas drilling on federal land, have gov
ernment decide who sits on corporate
boards and make college free.
The Democrat who leads the betting
odds, former Vice President Joe Biden,
also says, “College should be free!”
Free? Colleges have already jacked
up their prices much faster than infla
tion because taxpayers subsidize too
much of college. Biden and Warren
would make that problem worse.
The Republican incumbent has bad
ideas, too: President Donald Trump
imposes tariffs that are really new
taxes that American consumers must
pay. Trump says tariffs are needed
because our “trade deficit in goods with
the world last year was nearly $800 bil
lion dollars. (That means) we lost $800
billion!”
But it doesn’t mean that, Mr. Presi
dent. A “trade deficit” just means for
eigners sent us $800 billion more goods
than we sent them.
We got their products, and in return
they only got American currency, which
they’ll end up investing in the U.S.
That’s good for us. It’s not a problem.
Luckily, the president has good ideas,
too. He says he wants to shrink the code
of federal regulations back to its 1960
size. It would be great if he actually
did it. Trump slowing the growth of
regulation is one of the best parts of his
presidency.
Some Democratic candidates have
sensible ideas, too.
Cory Booker proposed legalizing
marijuana.
Mayor Pete Buttigieg criticizes his
opponents for their “college for all”
freebie, saying, “I have a hard time
getting my head around the idea that
a majority who earn less because they
didn’t go to college would subsidize a
minority who earn more.”
And all candidates could learn from
Hawaii’s Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who
served in Iraq.
“I know the cost of war!” she says.
“I will end the regime change wars
— taking the money that we’ve been
wasting on these wars and weapons and
investing it in serving the needs of our
people.”
Sadly, she wouldn’t give that money
back to the people. She’d spend it on
other big-government programs.
Politicians always have ideas other
than letting you keep your money.
I bet we’ll hear other bad ideas this
week when 20 of the Democratic candi
dates debate.
John Stossel is an author and columnist
for Creators.
JOHN STOSSEL
www.johnstossel.com
‘Luckily, the president has good ideas, too. He says he wants to shrink the
code of federal regulations back to its 1960 size. It would be great if he actually
did it. Trump slowing the growth of regulation is one of the best parts of his
presidency.’
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USA BENSON I Washington Post Writers Group
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DREW SHENEMAN I Tribune News Service
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