QandO

Polemics are, of course, often useful, and I am a bit of a polemicist myself. But it does no service to history to counter a factually incomplete and politically correct historical understanding of the internment period with a book that is equally biased, although in the opposite direction.

I agree that I would prefer a factual and balanced book to a polemic. But I would prefer a polemic "biased in the opposite direction" to yet another polemic biased just like all the other current works. So I believe that Malkin's work does provide a service.

Back in my high school days (quite a while ago) I had a formal debate with a classmate about the WW2 Japanese-American internments. I was to argue in favor of the internments, even though that was not my personal opinion. I read a few books on the subject, all of which opposed the internments. I was able to gather a few facts from those books to use in my debate. I expected to lose the debate, given that I was not arguing my personal opinion and that the published works were overwhelmingly opposed.

However, I easily won the debate, since my opponent considered her case to be so obvious that she did not bother to gather any data. Most of the class agreed with her but had to admit that she relied solely on emotion and did not refute my facts. I was pleasantly surprised--many of my statements had simple refutations, which she would have known if she had bothered to do her proper work. Her popular but emotional bias led her to intellectual defeat.

I hope that Malkin's book (which I have not read) will stimulate good discussion on the topic--discussion based on data.

Posted by: Rory Daulton at August 17, 2004 08:02 AM

Good and fair review.

Posted by: John at August 17, 2004 10:25 AM