Hate crime laws will lead to totalitarianism
By CHARLEY REESE
Syndicated ColumnistPassing "hate crime" laws is a step toward totalitarianism. There are several reasons why such legislation is a bad idea.
First, to make a distinction between crimes based on motive is nonsense and an injustice. People who are victims of violence, vandalism or arson are equally injured, whether the criminal's motives are greed, general malice or prejudice.
To punish a crime of prejudice more than an otherwise identical crime of greed or general malice is a slap in the face to the victims of ordinary criminals.
Second, so-called hate crimes are a minor percentage of crime, and the government shouldn't be wasting its time trying to make the problem larger than it is.
Third, hat crime legislation is just laying the groundwork for hate speech legislation, which, indeed, is already on the books in some states. This is the step toward totalitarianism. This is a direct assault on free speech and should be vigorously opposed.
The First Amendment of the Constitution was not designed to protect safe or uncontroversial speech or government-approved speech. Such speech needs no protection. You can speak of trivia and government-approved topics in a government-approved manner in any dictatorship in the world, present or past.
Remember that old Cold War joke, when an American in Moscow tells a Russian, "Look, I can stand out in front of the White House and call the president a warmonger and nothing will happen to me. That's how free my country is."
"So what? So can I," said the Russian, and to prove it, he shouted, "The American president is a warmonger."
No matter how obnoxious or offensive we find certain speech, we must never consent to allowing the government to police it, for to police speech is to police thought, and that is the essence of the totalitarian philosophy.
And we have plenty of would-be totalitarians who are eager to brand as hate speech any speech that criticizes them or their sacred cows or just meets with their disapproval. In Canada and Germany it is considered hate speech to question even the details of the Holocaust; people in Germany have ended up in prison for doing nothing more than that. Since when does a fact of history need the police power of the state to protect it? No one who values liberty should ever allow a government to make it a crime to be wrong or to question the orthodox version of events.
Truth is often arrived at by argument and debate. Even genuine historians are continuously reviving their histories as more information becomes available. As one wag put it, God cannot rewrite history, but historians can and do all the time.
Some people in this country seem to want to enjoy the privileges the communist party as it was in the Soviet Union — to be completely immune from criticism and to make sure none of their ideas or policies, no matter how cockamamie, are questioned. Hence the eagerness to brand all their critics, legitimate or otherwise, as peddlers of hate speech and to push the government into criminalizing it.
A free society, if it's to remain free, must leave even genuine bigoted speech free to be combated by reason and education. The alternative is to move toward totalitarianism, in which thinking the wrong thoughts can land you in prison or before a firing squad.
There may not be a dime's worth of difference between Republicans and Democrats, but there is a gap light years wide between those who believe in freedom and those who believe in totalitarianism. If you find freedom offensive, perhaps you ought to emigrate.
The Athens News-Courier, Sunday November 30, 1997
Date: Tue Dec 02 12:57:22 1997
To: Frank Grose
From: Rob Weinberg
Subject: Hate Crimes
At 07:06 AM 12/2/97 0600, you wrote:
Comments on the Charlie Reese editorial encouraged.
I can agree with the fourth paragraph of the article as to the second reason why hate crimes should not be legislated: it may be a waste of time given the small percentage of hate crimes nationally. And I agree generally with the remainder of the article that hate speech or thought cannot be criminalized consistent with the first amendment.
Without advocating that such legislation should be enacted or is necessary, I do not agree with the first and third conclusions he draws. First, a person whose mailbox is vandalized does not suffer the same injury as a person whose mailbox is vandalized *because* the homeowner is a Jew. There's an intent to commit additional psychological damage there as well the physical damage to the property. I have no reason to think what happened to my mailbox was anything other than ordinary teenage vandalism; but if I suspected I was singled out because I'm Jewish, there is a more serious issue involved here. I'm sure you'd agree that the boy in Kentucky's crime is more heinous if the motivation was based on the religion of the victims. I have already cautioned you not to accept that conclusion as fact...yet. If true, there is a higher degree of intent, or scienter as it is called in the law, than just a random act of senseless violence. So, I do not agree that the injuries are equal as Reese suggests in the second and third paragraphs of the editorial.
Second, and while I agree with his analysis that hate speech/thought cannot be criminalized, I do not agree with his first and fifth paragraphs, his third point, that criminalizing the act "is just laying the groundwork for" criminalizing speech or thought. Those kinds of cases are very tricky to prove in the courts. The courts are careful not to allow convictions to be upheld on the basis that the defendant was a racist, but only on the basis that they committed a criminal act with racist intent. The courts are very vigilant in this regard, and I can get you cases if you're interested.
In the federal court system, as well as in state death penalty cases there is a concept I doubt Reese is familiar with: the idea of enhancement of penalty based upon aggravating circumstances. If a defendant is convicted of committing a crime that is accompanied by aggravating circumstances, in this case racist intent, the punishment can enhanced. Legislatures and the courts play around with the idea of whether aggravating circumstances should be an element of the crime to be proved as part of the guilt phase or a statutory enhancement to be proved at the punishment phase. That'll just depend on whether the jurisdiction employs a bifurcated approach to the crime involved: guilt/punishment. As a matter of proof and defense there'll be little practical difference.
We enhance penalties or create various degrees of offenses all the time. The differences between involuntary homicide, murder and capital murder is one example. the victim is still dead, but the intent of the defendant is different by degree. The differences between first and third degree robbery or theft or rape are examples where the legislature factors in distinctions based on the amount of damage, the intent of the defendant, or the condition of the victim.
Reese may be correct to caution vigilance that hate crimes do not become thought/speech crimes. But he's wrong to assume one necessarily follows the other. That's what the courts, the first amendment, and the ACLU are for. Indeed, when legislation looks like it's heading that way, the ACLU is the first to speak out against it. It's particularly true on the internet. The Simon Weisanthall Center wanted to criminalize nazi and skin head web pages; the ACLU and many others including (I think) the Anti-Defamation League (not to be confused with the Jewish Defense League) said "no." You counter speech with speech. Criminalize the act, not the thought or word.
Next question? ; )
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