Nat Hentoff, who is a liberal but somehow remains unhypnotized on life issues and free speech, can’t believe that the press and the ACLU aren’t making a peep while Congress and the Obama administration are pushing through hate-crimes legislation that will “make it a federal crime to willfully cause bodily injury (or try to) because of the victim's actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability’”. ("Hentoff: 'Thought crimes' bill advances"):
The extra punishment applies only to these "protected classes." As Denver criminal defense lawyer Robert J Corry Jr. asked (Denver Post April 28): "Isn't every criminal act that harms another person a 'hate crime'? Then, regarding a Colorado "hate crime" law, one of 45 such state laws, Corry wrote: "When a Colorado gang engaged in an initiation ritual of specifically seeking out a "white woman" to rape, the Boulder prosecutor declined to pursue 'hate crime' charges." She was not enough of one of its protected classes.
Corey adds that the state "hate crime" law - like the newly expanded House of Representatives federal bill - "does not apply equally" (as the 14th Amendment requires), essentially instead "criminalizing only politically incorrect thoughts directed against politically incorrect victim categories."
Whether you're a Republican or Democrat, think hard about what Corry adds: "A government powerful enough to pick and choose which thoughts to prosecute is a government too powerful."
But aren’t Conyers, Leahy, and Feinstein already doing this by claiming Department of Justice lawyers have broken the law by forming opinions on the definition of torture that the Democrats don’t like?
By extending an extra layer of legal protections to the specified victim classes, it also leaves the rest of us with lesser protection. I’m old and a person of color (white), so you can beat the hell out of me without it being a hate crime.
I have to wonder why the usual protections for age have been left out of this turkey? Maybe someone figured out they can’t have some cranky geezer who’s being denied Obama’s rationed health care saying he’s a victim of a hate crime. And since willfully causing bodily injury to an unborn or recently-born child because he’s “unwanted”--and a huge inconvenience because of his age-- qualifies as a hate crime, what could that do to the Roe v Wade regime?
I hear you T.R.
ReplyDeleteThe Framers of the Bill of Rights recognized it was incapable of creating rights. Rights and liberties are presumed to be preexisting.
Obama is attempting to endow a select group of the population with extra rights and liberties at my expense. I thought his infringing on my paycheck was painful. I had no idea it could get worse.
We here in Canada are still stuck with the "hate crimes" nonsense described in this post. All I can urge you folks south of the border to do is to fight this with everything you have! Once politicians and bureaucrats start defining "hate crimes" and "human rights", the whole thing gets tilted against white people who are seen as the source of all evil through the distorting lens of Political Correctness. Fight this before they make it law!
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