The possible long-term effects of racism I haven't been following the Michelle Malkin business; I had vaguely heard of her book and its thesis (Japanese-American internment during WWII wasn't as bad as history thinks, racial profiling is sometimes OK), but when I saw her and her condescending ways on Bill Maher, I pegged her as an Ann Coulter type to ignore. But it turns out she actually has an idea or two that the blogosphere has decided is worth taking seriously. In a post by a blogger new to me, Orcinus, I found this paragraph:

Taken in isolation, these little acts of racial mean-spiritedness may have seemed of little moment. But in fact they had consequences that eventually exploded into the history books. In Japan, the public had been closely watching the passage of the Alien Land Laws with mounting outrage. And when news of the passage of the Asian Exclusion Act was announced, mass riots broke out in Tokyo and other cities. As Pearl Buck would later observe, the then-nascent movement for American-style democracy, which had been slowly gaining momentum in Japan, was effectively wiped out overnight. The military authoritarians who would control the nation for the next 20 years gained complete political mastery, and one of the cornerstones of their rule was a bellicose anti-Americanism that would finally reach fruition in late 1941.

Interesting, eh? I'm generally fascinated by this sort of wide-angle lens on history. Thought I'd share.
¶ 12:32 PM