Back in early May when the surge in Iraq was working and the erectile dysfunction of congressional Democrats was not so obvious, I took a shot at Captain Ed Morrissey for what I called his “beyond stoopid†assertion that if hate-crimes legislation was enacted to prosecute people for beating up gays then there would have to be laws protecting misogynists, short people, fat people and . . . you get the idea.
My unsolicited comment was offered in the context of the Great Protector himself threatening to veto any hate-crime legislation that protected people like Mary Cheney, the vice president’s daughter.
Captain Ed, who skippers Captain’s Quarters, one of the tightest ships in the conservative blogosphere, fired back and said that I had taken his remarks out of context, which in retrospect I do not believe I did, but . . .
Be that as it may, the Captain has put up a couple of more posts (here and here) on the hate-crimes issue and invited my thoughts.
For simplicity’s sake, I’m going to address only one of The Captain’s two posts — a commentary on a case in which two 16-year-old girls face hate crime charges after they allegedly handed out anti-gay fliers targeting a classmate at their high school. (One girl has been denied bail because of her lengthy juvenile record.)
The Captain said that:
This is the problem with hate-crime legislation — and perhaps with terrorist legislation as well . . .Both specifically criminalize motive, rather than leave them as a component of an objective crime itself. Beating up a gay person should carry the same penalties whether hate motivated it or not. Similarly, terrorism as a civil crime (ie, not in the context of foreigners attacking the U.S.) also creates a thought-police mentality that is pretty seductive to people determined to stamp out evil — in their subjective opinion of it.
He notes that the logical extension of such efforts is to punish people for their speech, adding:
What’s next? Do we incarcerate Jack Chick for his hate-speech fliers about Catholics? Do we arrest people and charge them with felonies for making supportive statements about al-Qaeda, even if they commit no other crimes in doing so, like financial support or passing along targeting information for attacks?
I’m starting to think that hate crimes and terrorism designators both take us down a dangerous road. If the criminal act doesn’t carry enough deterrent through normal penalties, then increase the penalties for everyone who commits them — whether it be battery, arson, or murder. Let the motivation prove the crime rather than become a crime in itself. Otherwise, we invite a thought-police mentality that will ensnare American liberty more than it does evil.
Touché, Captain Ed. At the risk of wearing out home run metaphors, the Captain has hit the ball out of the park this time by linking what seem to be two very different things and putting both in a perspective that I can endorse.