The folly of hate crime legislation

There's a very good article in Real Clear Politics by Richard Cohen addressing this problem. Here's an excerpt.

Almost as bad as hate crimes themselves is the designation. It is a little piece of totalitarian nonsense, a way for prosecutors to punish miscreants for their thoughts or their speech, both of which used to be protected by the Constitution (I am an originalist in this regard). It is not the criminal act alone that matters anymore but the belief that might have triggered the act. For this, you can get an extra five years or so in the clink.

. . .

The standard rationale for hate-crime laws is that hate crimes, to quote the proclamation Quinn and the police commissioner issued that day, "tear at the very fabric of our free society." To wit, if one gay man is mugged, other gays are intimidated. A whole class of people is affected. Maybe so. But if there is a rape in the park, women will stay away. And there are whole areas of town -- any town -- where I wouldn't go in an armored car on account of a fear of crime. Crime affects everyone.

The torture of those three men in the Bronx is amply covered by a plethora of laws -- assault, kidnapping, etc. The victims were not more or less victimized by their assailants' hatred of gays. Their torture was not more painful because their torturers hated them. It was the torture itself that mattered. And if the alleged gang members accused of the crimes either were not somehow aware that there are laws forbidding torture or didn't care one way or another, why do we think an additional law regarding hate is going to deter them?

Hate-crime laws combine the touching conservative belief in the unerring efficacy of deterrence (which rises to its absurd and hideous apogee with executions) with the liberal belief that when it comes to particular groups, basic rights may be suspended. Thus we get affirmative action in which certain people are advantaged at the expense of other people based entirely on race or ethnicity. This tender feeling toward minorities must account for why civil liberties groups have remained so appallingly silent about hate-crimes legislation.

The upshot combines Orwell with Kafka. What is the crime? Attempted murder? Or attempted murder on account of hate? Who does the perpetrator hate and how much does he hate him or her?

. . .

Prosecutors have vast powers. Most of them are decent, prudent people with a healthy respect for the law. But hate-crime laws arm the overly ambitious among them with permission to seek punishment for unpopular and often dreadful political views -- for thought.

There's more at the link. Very worthwhile reading.

I regard hate crimes legislation as just another excuse for statists to seek to govern every single aspect of our lives. Not content with criminalizing a given action, they now seek to criminalize the mental processes that might lead to the action in question. From there, it's a very short step to make those mental processes a crime in and of themselves, even though they may not lead to any physical action - i.e. actual crime - at all. (Remember the trials in the former Communist Bloc on charges of 'counter-revolutionary tendencies'? Yep. Thought crimes.)

It's a slippery slope, and we've already slid a long way down it. Can sanity be restored before we fall all the way down to that nightmare conclusion?

Peter