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Libertarians: Trying to get people to
mind their own business since 1971.
The Freedom Files

Uhhh.....there already are laws that 'make it clear' that 'these attacks are not OK.'

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The law perverted! And the police powers of the state perverted along with it! The law, I say, not only turned from its proper purpose but made to follow an entirely contrary purpose! The law become the weapon of every kind of greed! Instead of checking crime, the law itself guilty of the evils it is supposed to punish! - Frederick Bastiat

Laws against things like harassment, assault, manslaughter, murder...

Maybe we should focus on simply enforcing the laws regardless of the victim. It's really STUPID to play this idiotic game of "Well, this person is more of a victim because he was killed for being queer" or "This person is more of a victim because he was beaten up for being black" or "This person is less of a victim because he was assaulted for refusing to give up his $300 sneakers."

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A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

Pretty sure that isn't in the Constitution.

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"Oh, bother", said Pooh, as he chambered another round...

You're right. The federal government is not supposed to be in the business of law enforcement. They are only authorized to prosecute three crimes - piracy, counterfeiting, and treason.

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Libertarians: Trying to get people to
mind their own business since 1971.
The Freedom Files

But he doesn't care about such details as whether the government is federal, state or local; he lumps them all together as one and the same.

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A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

I agree. Hate crimes are thought crimes, and they create a hierarchy of victims.

That said, as a tool for categorization and study, the concept of hate crimes is very useful.

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Libertarians: Trying to get people to
mind their own business since 1971.
The Freedom Files

Exactly.

As someone else has already suggested, local authorities should prosecute the underlying crime--assault, murder, or whatever--to the fullest extent of the law; and leave aside the idea of enhanced prosecution based upon the impure motives of the assailant. (For instance, the fact that someone was murdered just for being gay is morally indistinguishable--so far as I can see--from his being murdered for his pair of Air Jordans.)

If someone is killed simply because of who they are that is clearly on a different level than any other murder. You can see this in international law as well, with the differentiation between Crimes Against Humanity, which are defined as any large-scale act of persecution or large-scale atrocity against any body of people, and genocide (which is a crime against humanity), which is a systematic and deliberate attempt to wipe out a group of people. This is the same exact thing, but scaled down to individuals rather than entire groups.

If someone is murdered because he is gay, that is still a murder, but it is different from just a normal murder. Just like the Nazi Holocaust is different from the current situation in Darfur. The Nazis were specifically trying to eradicate the "subhumans," but the Sudanese government is perpetrating atrocities against the Darfurians (and South Sudanese) simply because they are in the way of natural resources and are occupying fertile farmland.

It is a different level of crime and should be treated as such. The problem is proving it's a hate crime. If a white guy kills a black guy or vice-versa, it isn't automatically a hate crime. I think all the murder cases should start out as normal, and if the victim is somehow in a different group than the perpetrator, then finding out whether or not it was a hate crime should be tied to investigation of the motive for the crime. If investigators can't find any other viable motive, or if they find evidence that the motive was nothing but racism/hatred, charges should be elevated hate crime charges in addition to the original murder charges.

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"Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states...Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds."



~Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I disagree with the idea of hate crimes. Yes, some crimes are motivated by hate; however, laws against murder and assault are already on the books. Creating different levels of victims just makes it unequal as if one person's life is worth more than another's. This is why, for example, I don't think the homicide of a policeman should be treated any differently than the homicide of a civilian. The policeman's life isn't any more valuable than a civilian's life, and the life of a victim of a hate crime isn't more valuable than the life of anyone else.

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"When the people fear their government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty." Thomas Jefferson

Walter Mondale: "George Bush doesn't have the manhood to apologize." George Bush: "Well, on the manhood thing, I'll put mine up against his any time."