Hate Crimes

The "hate crime" is a ridiculous invention of the legislature. (You'd never find a so-called activist judge come up with that one.)

I think the designation "hate crime" is unconstitutional. The underlying concept is that the performance of a crime while thinking bad thoughts is a separate crime.

For example, shooting up a McDonald's is a crime (attempted murder, various firearms charges, whatever).

But shooting up a McDonald's when you're a black man and hate white men? Well, add another count to the indictment.

See what I mean here: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2000/03/01/national/main166708.shtml

Now, you'd think the First Amendment would protect speech, right? When your speech takes the form of a crime, it doesn't. Instead, it makes the crime worse.

That's fucked.

People should be allowed to express their thoughts. The decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court say so. The highest realm of speech, according to legal precedent, is political speech. The lowest is obscenity (whatever that is). Everything else falls somewhere in the middle. It's like Dante's circles of hell.

The there are hate crimes, where the perpetrator of a crime (i.e. something that's already illegal and punishable in some way) gets punished more than he might, just because he's thinking thoughts that are unacceptable to the legislature.

Get that--unacceptable to the legislature.

The legislature. The government.

Here's the government punishing you for what you think. No shit. It seems to have slipped under the radar of most people, even the Right. (Of course, the Right doesn't really believe in free speech anyway. That's why you're called a traitor if you question the government, when a Repub is running things).

The First Amendment was designed to protect the citizenry from the government's attempts to silence it. With hate crimes, the government is punishing people for expression.

Someone will read this and disagree.

But do you think that a black man shooting up white men is not a political act?

Let me put it another way. You can shoot up a McDonald's if you want, and pay the price. But I don't think you should have to pay a higher price because you hate the people in it than you would if you did it because your order was fucked up at the drive-thru. The act is the same. Laws should punish acts. Hate crime legislation punishes you for your thoughts, not your acts.

When the government is telling you what thoughts are appropriate, that's a problem for everyone.