Hate-crimes" are defined as violent acts motivated by prejudice based on race, gender, disability or sexual orientation. A senate staffer told the Washington Times that one purpose of the bill was to place the weight of the federal government on the side of the homosexual lifestyle.
But as Paul Craig Roberts elaborated further,
There is nothing new in politicians pandering to special interests. However, "hate-crimes" bills pander in ways that violate the 14th Amendment by creating unequal standing in law.
Hatch’s bill assumes that women need protection from men’s hatred, blacks need protections from the hatred of whites, the disabled require protection from being hated by the able-bodied, and homosexuals need protecting from heterosexuals.
The effect of Hatch’s bill is to divide the population into a victim class and a perpetrator class: White, heterosexual, able-bodied males (WHAMs) are the perpetrators, and everyone else their victims.
If a homosexual is assaulted, a hate-crime will have been committed in addition to the crime of assault. But if a heterosexual is assaulted, it will merely be an act of assault. Similarly, if a black is assaulted, robbed or murdered, a hate-crime charge will be added if the assailant is white. Rape itself can become a hate crime.
Hate does play a role in some murders, but usually it is hatred of a person, not of a race or gender or sexual orientation. Most cases of assault result from the workings of alcohol or from anger. Robbery results from a desire for money, and rape is driven by lust.
A Hate-Crimes bill would be problematic because once it is instituted then it will sooner or later it become a platform in the future to charge anybody who dare think outloud saying "I hate these deaf and dumb people." Or say "Fairies can go to hell" Or say "I hate Spics". The slurs are bad enough and even dumb to say them in first place but to be charged with a hate crime is going too far. Ridiculous even. But a police did arrest a person for saying a slur word but it was a private conversation to begin with. A Michigan housewife, Janice Barton, was jailed when a deputy sheriff overheard her using the word "spic" in a private conversation with her mother.
Mrs. Barton was arrested for using the word "spic” in a public place. Hearing some people talking Spanish in a restaurant, she said to her mother - not to the people
speaking Spanish - "I wish these damned 'spics' would learn to speak English."
One of the Spanish-speakers could understand her, though. She was an off-duty Sheriff's Deputy named Caroline Benitez. She followed Mrs. Barton outside, took down her license number, and complained to the local police.
Two weeks later, Mrs. Barton was arrested under a local ordinance forbidding "insulting conduct" in a public place. Judge Brent Danielson found Mrs. Barton guilty, and sentenced her to 45 days in jail, of which she actually served four. How reassuring that is when you relate similar jailing charge with Jack Kevorkian.
To give some perspective on this 45-day sentence, contrast it with the sentence in a contemporaneous Michigan case, in which mass killer Dr. Jack Kevorkian pled guilty to assaulting police and resisting arrest on the occasion of dropping off the body of his latest - at that time - victim, approximately his 120th, at the ER in Royal Oak.
The judge gave him a $900 dollar fine, and let him go, even though Kevorkian himself wanted to go to jail, and even though he was practically certain to kill again if he were released. (He did, of course, and by a strange coincidence, he’s now in a maximum-security facility near Manistee.)
What's next? Thought police cruising blog sites and whatnot looking for slurs or inflammatory articles where bloggers can be charged with a "hate crime"? A Hate-Crimes bill would lead nothing but more trouble. It is one-sided benefitting only to a certain group. A Hate-Crime bill is nothing but a license to practice a double-standard because it would be applied unequally to everybody. Had there been a fictional book detailing a story on ways to kill President Bill Clinton, (as it did with President Bush with a book called "CheckPoint") I'm sure Liberals would have gone ahead and instituted a nation-wide Hate-Crimes bill. But when Liberals do it, they say it's "Freedom of Speech." Even if it means joking about ways to kill the President over a radio station.
Simply put, these people are twisted.
UPDATE: This is where we're headed where by making gestures (not obscene) will be a crime:
Last week, Spain's Anti-Violence (reads..anti-hate crime) Commission fined two fans 6,000 euros ($9,860 Cdn) and banned them from entering sporting grounds for five months for making monkey chants against Barcelona's Cameroon star Samuel Eto'o during a league match. The fans of the club Albacete were identified by police after other spectators complained about their behavior.
Well, I'll be a monkey's uncle. Anybody who does that to me doesn't deserve a response from me. Just doing the monkey thing makes you look silly anyway that commensurate with your intelligence to that of, well, a monkey. Now, they're handing out kids gloves in the name of protecting people from being "offended" and who have no self-control over their emotional, tantrum outbursts. Thought police are next. Just watch.
8 comments:
Interesting post/article. Racial slurs, I'm not quite so sure what my stand is on that.
However, like the ADA, the Hate Crime Law has a lot of loopholes. There's just too many laws here and there when they're "practically" the same. In Texas, police can arrest you for "cussing" in public because that would be disturbing the peace. Yet, it's RARELY enforced...unless, the cop is pissed off and decides to use it.
I have to disagree with Amy that "non-colored" people are federally protected. We just need the law to work for us as well and if hate crime is a start, then we'll take that because obviously the other laws aren't working for us and yet work well for WHAM's.
You mentioned the private talk about "spics". I agree that's not necessarily a hate crime but rather an example of ethnocentrism. I am a Deaf Hispanic and I hear that all the time..."these spics should learn English and stop speaking Spanish", etc. First of all, America doesn't have an official language, even though it's obvious that English is used by the majority. Secondly, aren't we supposed to be a "melting pot" nation?
Like you wrote at the beginning of your post, hate crimes are violent acts... So, speaking about someone isn't a violent act. Yet, I know there are people out there that will bend this law at an odd angle to use it against someone, that said offensive stuff and hasn't done anything violent. At the same time, judges are responsible for meting out judgments.
I better stop now before going on endlessly.
I'd like to correct myself...Amy said "non-white", not "non colored".
There are entries in blogdom that does not DESERVE to be commented at all.
Such as this one.
R-
R, who gives a fig? But keep coming back. :)
Larry, the moment we start "regulating" hate crimes is the moment we start regulating freedom of speech by virtue of invasion of privacy. To say "spic" in another person's face (an Hispanic) does not warrant a violent act (e.g. killing, injuring) anymore than a person to say into my face that "you're deaf and dumb" for me to strike him in the face. I'll argue or walk away than to try and reason with an idiot who like to do slurs.
Unless we can go out and arrest every Liberal bloggers out there for inciting hate against Republicans and Conservatives whether it's on blog sites, radios, television, or books.
Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me. Common sense should prevail, but, alas, most of them are in the gutters.
BTW, Larry, even though America is a "melting pot" and the English language is not the official language, you still have to know the English language in order to become a citizen of the United States when you take your Citzenship test. :)
I beg to differ.... America WAS a "melting pot". The government started cutting down on the immigration. It has been that way since mid-70s. I don't think it's because of overpopulation. Perhaps, they're afraid of becoming a minority in good ol' USA.
kmccaul, if you actually LOOK at the immigration data ( http://www.demog.berkeley.edu/~jrw/126/immigration.pdf ) and the ACTUAL history they will tell you that the immigration rate has been on the increase ever since the mid-1940s after the Depression and after WWII. Immigration rate peaked to a near 2 million a year around 1992 or 1993, and compare that around the turn of the century (1900) when it peaked to 1.3 million.
And the U.S. continues to maintain a rate of about 900,000 immigrants admitted into the United States every year. Double what it was over the 1970s! Not down....but up, doubly.
The "melting pot" has actually increased. Each of the respective ethnic population has gone up.
And it all has to do with economics and politics (read - security) rather than race-based.
radical Deaf militants...
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