hate crimes weirdness

Dace edace at flinthills.com
Wed Mar 1 17:48:48 PST 2000


I'm with Grinker. The principle that thoughts can be criminal is potentially quite dangerous and should not apply except in those situations where the presence of that thought makes the crime resulting from it more despicable. This would apply to the distinction made between first and second degree murder. But the difference between murdering someone with deliberate forethought and doing so in the heat of the moment is not equivalent to the difference between murdering someone because you hate the group they belong to and doing it because you hate that particular individual. Either way, the hatred could be irrational, or it could be justifiable. If Iraqis hate Americans, or blacks hate whites, that hatred certainly is justifiable. Is killing on the basis of this hatred then more heinous than killing someone for whom your personal hatred is wholly irrational? While hating a whole people seems worse than hating one person, in fact, it's equally wrong. In other words-- except to the extent that it's justifiable-- *it's simply wrong*, and there's no possible gradation within that wrongness. Collective hatred does not warrant either an escalation of punishment or an extension of the principle that thoughts can be criminal.

Ted


>O dear - bad mistake to mix it with the legal fraternity. I'm not a lawyer
>and I know precious little about the situation in the US. I think however
>that my point about the growing tendency to criminalise opinions still
>stands - certainly in the UK.
>



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