Two centuries ago, the framers of the Constitution wrestled with the fundamental problem of government: how to balance the rights of individual citizens and minority groups against the need for order and defense of the society itself. One of the most obvious failures of this democratic system to proved equal rights for all of its citizens is evidence by the internment of Japanese-Americans and Italian Americans in detention camps during the period of WWII. Despite good intentions brought about by war fear, this imprisonment cannot be justified due to its impact on our American ideal of racial equality, the guarantee of civil rights to all citizens and the governments' requirement to apply federal tax money only in beneficial ways.
             On February 19, 1942, President Roosevelt signed executive order 9066, which forced all Japanese-American and many Italian-Americans, regardless of loyalty or citizenship, to evacuate the West Coast. No comparable order applied to Hawaii, one third of whose population was Japanese-American. "The Roosevelt administration was pressured to remove persons of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast by farmers seeking to eliminate Japanese competition" (National). Italian-Americans were forced to leave Pittsburgh after being branded a security risk. The fruitlessness of this method of selection is evidence even today. We have discovered that racial profiling has almost no effect on preventing crime or undesirable actions.
             Many of the detainees were forced to sell their property at an extremely low cost, or simply have it taken away. "Italian immigrants had personal items such as radio, firearms, cameras, and flashlights seized" (Rollins). Thousands of fishermen were forced to give up their boats. All of these are glaring examples of violation of civil rights of people who were predominately American citizens. How can a country that clams to be a democracy justify destroying...