George W. Bush had been a hate-crime criminal (indicated at http://andrewyu-jenwang.blogspot.com/2008/11/ge… “George W. Bush did in fact commit innumerable hate crimes”).

Bush was absolute evil.

George W. Bush is now like a fugitive from justice.

Bush will go down in history in infamy.

Submitted by Andrew Yu-Jen Wang
B.S., Summa Cum Laude, 1996
Messiah College, Grantham, PA
Lower Merion High School, Ardmore, PA, 1993

“GEORGE W. BUSH IS THE WORST PRESIDENT IN U.S. HISTORY” BLOG OF ANDREW YU-JEN WANG

George W. Bush had been a hate-crime criminal (indicated at http://andrewyu-jenwang.blogspot.com/2008/11/ge… “George W. Bush did in fact commit innumerable hate crimes”).

Bush was absolute evil.

George W. Bush is now like a fugitive from justice.

Bush will go down in history in infamy.

Submitted by Andrew Yu-Jen Wang
B.S., Summa Cum Laude, 1996
Messiah College, Grantham, PA
Lower Merion High School, Ardmore, PA, 1993

“GEORGE W. BUSH IS THE WORST PRESIDENT IN U.S. HISTORY” BLOG OF ANDREW YU-JEN WANG

Here! Here!

But cheer up this woman will appeal. The appeal will be heard by a left wing judge who then will reduce the sentence down to around 4-7 years and shes out in 16 months.

I'd like to emphasize your explanation of mens rea. I wonder how many anti-hate crimes people would maintain their opposition if they fully understood how central intent–what the actor is thinking–is to virtually every crime. (The only exception I can think of is statutory rape–a strict liability crime.)

How we judge the intent behind an act has significant ramifications to society at large. If we didn't look at intent, accidental deaths would be treated as murders and that would alter public behavior greatly. For example, people will drive a lot less or not at all, if hitting someone with their car accidentally will get them sent away for life like Charles Manson. I don't have a problem with hate crimes because assessing the effect on society/public behavior is always relevant in determining severity of punishment.

Hate crimes often instill fear in a group of people, a la terrorism. If we all seem to agree that terrorism is worse than ordinary murder because of its impact on society at large, why can't we agree that a race-motivated murder is worse than ordinary murder because of its impact on society at large? Is “Death to America” worse than “Death to Queers” or “Death to Jews”?

So . . . what he said (but more of it).

First, just to get this out of the way, Morrisey is ridiculously full of shit about judges not punishing left-wing violence. First, there is hardly any left-wing violence in the US, at least since the Wobblies kicked it. There was a brief spate of anti-war protest violence in the late 60s, most of it quite minor in objective fact, and most restricted to a few of the most radical groups. It coincided in time with (a) massive and often violent government crackdowns on liberal groups and causes of all kinds, ranging from infiltration of civil rights groups to agent provocateurism to outright murder, and, simultaneously, (b) almost complete immunity for widespread right-wing intimidation and violence, including epidemic-level lynching, intimidation and murder of voter registration activists and civil rights workers, and routine violence by white against blacks in and out of the civil rights movement, as well as commonplace police violence against gays, draft resisters, and other non-conformists. Today, there is a tiny “direct action” environmentalist movement by the ELF/ALF assholes, who are entirely unsupportable but have never killed or injured a human being. There is also a longstanding history of overt terroristic violence, murder, and harassment by right-wing groups of all kinds, ranging from abortion clinic terrorists to white-power militias to – as usual – systematized police brutality against minorities and liberal activists; all of these movements have resulted in murder and other serious crimes, and virtually never result in arrest or conviction. The overwhelming favoritism the law has always shown for right-wing violence against supposed liberal targets, and the overwhelming frequency of such acts as compared with leftist criminal acts, is impossible to mistake other than by deliberate distortion. (Note, for instance, that the FBI now officially classifies ELF/ALF as one of the US's leading threats of domestic terrorism, while they virtually ignored the organized abortion clinic terrorism network – responsible for literally tens of thousands of incidents of property damage, at least 17 attempted murders, 7 murders, 2 kidnappings, and many other crimes – for decades.)

As for ELF, however, it appears this was not in fact treated as a “hate crime” – nor should it have been. And it was not treated as an ordinary arson – the central question being whether or not it should have been. The operative distinction here is not between arsons that are or are not politically motivated, but between arsons that are and are not terrorism. That seemingly-subtle distinction is in fact a major one.

The defendant here was prosecuted on charges of terrorism, not arson. If that is the correct charge, then the appropriate comparison regarding sentencing is to other similar acts of terroristic property damage – not to cases of simple arson. Terrrorism is usually defined as acts or threats of violence committed for their psychological impact upon third parties, not for their direct impact on the immediate victim. But terroristic acts can also have an immediate impact as part of their payoff. In the case of ELF, it is clear, from the symbolic nature of some of their targets (bombing the same SUV dealership that an ELF member was convicted for previously bombing), and the political messages and explicit warnings they often issue in conjunction with violent acts, that their intention is to scare people away from doing things the members of ELF disapprove of – and thus could be considered terrorism. But they also pick targets that have some obvious relation to the issue they are protesting – the obviously intend to damage whatever it is about their specific targets that they object to, in most cases, not just send a message. In Mason's particular case, it is hard to tell whether the act was “only” a direct act of violence intended for its immediate impact, or an act of terrorism intended to intimidate a large group of targets. (It doesn't help that, in addition to being a violent criminal, she was an incompetent dipshit as well: the crop she burned wasn't genetically modified, the institution she targeted doesn't do research with genetically modified crops at all, and the fire she started also killed organisms of endangered species.) But if it was terrorism in fact, it ought to be prosecuted and punished as terrorism, not as simple arson. In this case, it was prosecuted as terrorism, and that was the charge she was convicted on, so comparisons to “ordinary” arsons are irrelevant. (There are, of course, terroristic arsons – arson is a favorite tool of racist intimidation, as you note in one of your examples. But those cases ought to be punished much more vigorously, also.)

The outcome in this case may or may not be the right one – it was pretty harsh in any event, and I doubt most other non-fatal terror fires would result in such a sentence – but it has to be addressed on the right grounds. You can argue that she should have been charged only with arson, not terrorism, or you can argue that her sentence was too harsh because other terrorists got lighter sentences, but you can't argue that her sentence for terrorism was too harsh because regular arsonists got lighter ones. In the eyes of the law, at least, she wasn't a “regular” arsonist.

As to whether people should be prosecuted for “what they were thinking”, do keep in mind that very many crimes are defined by the actor's state of mind while committing them (and that mens rea – a state of “guilty mind” – has always been a pre-requisite for guilt in every crime, a fact which underlies the concept of being “not guilty by reason of insanity”). The difference between first or second-degree murder, and between murder and manslaughter, depend precisely on the intent of the killer, even where their actions may be identical in all cases. The same is true in countless other examples.

The problem with “hate crimes” legislation – if there is one – is that it infringes upon freedom of speech and of personal creed: some “hate crimes” consist of nothing more than saying something hateful, or of holding certain beliefs while committing a crime, which are liberties we want to protect no matter how distastefully they may be used. But the question of beliefs one holds while committing a crime has nothing to do with the issue of one's intended effect in committing the crime. Your specific purpose and goal, along with the actual outcome of your actions, are relevant to how serious the crime is. Burning someone's house down because you don't like them is one thing. Burning someone's house down because you don't like them because they're black is arguably worse, though prosecuting for that treads upon the freedoms of creed and association. But burning someone's house down in an attempt to scare all other black people out of the neighborhood is far worse, and for reasons that have nothing to do with your personal feelings and everything to do with the overt impact of the crime and the lack of any reasonable justification for deliberately harming innocent third parties. The first example given is an “ordinary” crime which affects just the direct victim; the second example is a “hate crime” which also affects just the victim but is motivated by prejudice; the final example is a completely different crime – the crime of terrorism, which affects many more people, (probably) much more seriously, which was in fact your intention in committing the crime (i.e., this is the content of your mens rea). Maria Mason was charged with terrorism, not a hate crime. They are not the same, and, whatever we may think of the idea of hate crimes, terrorism is a real and serious problem, and is rightly taken seriously by the courts.