Regarding "Hate" Crimes.
I don't believe in the concept of "hate crimes."
There are precious few crimes, especially murders, that are "love criimes."
In my opinion, the psychological intent or the mind state of the person committing the murder is already summed up in degrees (first degree, second degree, manslaughter, etc).
The reasons for premeditation are immaterial. If the person intended with forethought to visit bodily harm resulting in the death of an innocent person for reasons not related to self defense, that perpetrator committed murder. Period. It is immaterial whether the perp is a racist or whether the perp is Mother Teresa.
To assign an instance of the wanton deprivation of another's life as more or less severe simply because the perp was a racist or did it out of racial spite is superfluous. Premeditated murder is premeditated murder.
When society assigns the gravity of premeditated murder as dependent on the mind state of the perpetrator, you are now jumping into the realm of THOUGHT CRIMES.
Do we really want to go there?
Unfortunately, there are many on the left who do.
As the George Zimmerman-Trayvon Martin case clearly illustrated, those on the left are more than happy to fall all over themselves in immediately assigning motives of racism and "hate crime" (read: THOUGHT CRIME) status when a fellow-traveller is on the receiving end and a white person (even a ginned-up "White Hispanic" person) is on the giving end.
When one or more of their own is on the giving end, however, not so much. Rare indeed is the case when black on white violence ends up being prosecuted as a "hate crime."
Which leads me to believe that to a critical mass of our population (not at all exclusively black, mind you, but exclusively "progressive" at any rate), the whole concept of "hate crime" is not borne out of a thirst for blind justice; rather, the concept of "hate crime" seems to serve as a tool to exact revenge on those progressives identify as enemies of their ideology at worst, or as tools to advance their sense of ideology and/or personal political agendae at best.
There are precious few crimes, especially murders, that are "love criimes."
In my opinion, the psychological intent or the mind state of the person committing the murder is already summed up in degrees (first degree, second degree, manslaughter, etc).
The reasons for premeditation are immaterial. If the person intended with forethought to visit bodily harm resulting in the death of an innocent person for reasons not related to self defense, that perpetrator committed murder. Period. It is immaterial whether the perp is a racist or whether the perp is Mother Teresa.
To assign an instance of the wanton deprivation of another's life as more or less severe simply because the perp was a racist or did it out of racial spite is superfluous. Premeditated murder is premeditated murder.
When society assigns the gravity of premeditated murder as dependent on the mind state of the perpetrator, you are now jumping into the realm of THOUGHT CRIMES.
Do we really want to go there?
Unfortunately, there are many on the left who do.
As the George Zimmerman-Trayvon Martin case clearly illustrated, those on the left are more than happy to fall all over themselves in immediately assigning motives of racism and "hate crime" (read: THOUGHT CRIME) status when a fellow-traveller is on the receiving end and a white person (even a ginned-up "White Hispanic" person) is on the giving end.
When one or more of their own is on the giving end, however, not so much. Rare indeed is the case when black on white violence ends up being prosecuted as a "hate crime."
Which leads me to believe that to a critical mass of our population (not at all exclusively black, mind you, but exclusively "progressive" at any rate), the whole concept of "hate crime" is not borne out of a thirst for blind justice; rather, the concept of "hate crime" seems to serve as a tool to exact revenge on those progressives identify as enemies of their ideology at worst, or as tools to advance their sense of ideology and/or personal political agendae at best.
