Disloyalty in wartime

[Eugene Volokh]

        Can this possibly be right?  I'd be happy to say that the government should
not have interned members of the American Nazi Party, or various Nazi
sympathizer organizations, during World War II simply on the grounds of
their organizational membership.  Does it really follow, though, that it
couldn't specially watch such people, or investigate their credentials more
closely when they apply for a sensitive military job, and in a close case
reject them partly based on their past sympathies with the Nazis?

        Eugene

Shubha Ghosh writes:

> Since presumably dissent even during wartime is
> protected speech, it strikes me that identifying
> loyalty and ferreting out disloyalty is not an
> appropriate task for the state to engage in, even
> during wartime.  The concern during wartime is conduct
> that can undermine the war effort by providing
> material resources to the enemy.  Ethnic identity or
> citizenship status (such as joint citizenship or
> naturalized US citizenship) is a poor proxy for that
> type of disloyalty.  If racial or ethnic identity is
> simply being used as a proxy for potential dissent,
> then the discrimination rationale could be used
> against a wide range of groups: members of the SDS,
> anti-war activists, etc.