> At 10:33 PM 3/1/00 -0500, Justin wrote:
>
> >The claim is only that whatever the other level of culpability of the crime, it is worse than an otherwise
> >similar crime if it is a hate crime.
You said:
> Justin, it sounds like casuistry to me, or at least imposing an expert
opinion on the motives of people who commit the dead.
It's a legislative judgment exactly on par with the legislative judgment that it worse to kill someone intentionally than negligently. Legislatures are the institutions that in a democracy are given the power to make these determinations. There is no special claim of expertise involved, although of course a legislature may hold hearings and hear from the experts.
But maybe you are worried that anyone should stand in judgment on another's beliefs. However, as I have been explaining, the mental state element is a constitutionally required element of a criminal act, and see no real difference, as far as that goes, between saying that the mental state is "intentionally" and saying that it is "hatefully."
> But it can be argued
either way, for example that hate motivated killing is more "humane" than
cold blooded killing, beacuse the former is motivated by a human emotion
toward the victim, whereas the latter is motivated by the total disregard
of the victim as a person.
Tell it to the legislature. This might be a reason to oppose hate crimes laws, on the grounds that hate crimes are less bad than other kinds of crimes.
Personally, I don't believe it. I think it would be scarier (and worse) if our 15,000 +/- handgun murders a year, most of which are crimes of passion (talk about human emotion!), were part of a systematic campaign by Ayran warriors to kill black people.
> Methinks that this whoe "hate crime" business is the abuse of the criminal
> justice system - specifically, using as as a ritualistic response to social
> problems, instead of solving them.
Well, the criminal justice system cannot solve any social problems at all, so you have a dead bang argument against ever punishing anyone.
Th eUS society is literally falling
> apart into haphazardly formed groups separated by income, status, age,
> geography, cultural identity etc.
As oppposed to our previous state of happy unity.
It is not white/black anymore but everyone hating
> evryone outside one's identity group: balcks, whites, gays, lesbians, bis,
> liberals, conservatives, christians, jews, immigrants, upperclassmen,
> underclassmen, liberals, conservatives, dummiecrats, repugs, yuppies,
> bohemians, city folks, suburban folks, country folks and so on and so forth.
See Tom Lehrer's National Brotherhood Week--there's nothing new here. Actually, as a trained social scientist (I am too, Michigan Ph.D in polisci), you should know that the evidence is that there is probably more tolerance now than at any time in US history, and that includes tolerance for previously utterly dispised groups such as gays.
Much of this is due, I think, to the "divisive" struggles for "special rights" (that is, equal treatment) that has constituted much of our politics for so long. Some of it has to do with things like hare crimes laws, that make it clear that we disapprive if beating on peopole because they are Blacks or Jews or whatever.
>
> And what is the response to that war of all against all? Ritualistic
> legislation - banning a problem in the futile hope it will go away.
Sure. Antidiscrimination law, also, doesn't immediately stop bigotry. But it does provide some of its victims with a remedy.
The
> precise same thing as the criminalization of drugs, unconventional sexual
> preferences or fire arms. A symbolic action -similar to magic rituals of
> "primitive" societies - to control something that for this or another
> reason is beyond control.
There is an argument to be made against symbolic legislation. I don't buy it myself, though. I think symbols matter.
The tribesmen could not control their
> environment because they di dnot have necessary technology - modern
> socities do not control their social environemnt because there is no
> political will to solve social problem. In both cases, legal rituals,
> curses, and divinations substitute real action.
Quite right. And if we want to get rid of crime, we will decriminalize drugs, ban guns, and provide everyone witha decent education and an opportunity to have a good job. Everybody knows this. The revolution will have to happen to make it come about, though. That does not mean that we should do nothing till the revolution comes.
--jks
> >
I had said:
No, but no defender of hate crimes laws thinks that hate crimes, even hate
> >murders, are the equivalent of intentional murder because they involve hate.
> >The claim is only that whatever the other level of culpability of the crime,
> >that is, whether it is, e.g., intentional, it is worse than an otherwise
> >similar crime if it is a hate crime. That is, if I kill a black person
> >intentionally because he, as an individual, dissed me, that is less bad than
> >if I kill a black person intentionally because I hate blacks. That, at
> least,
> >us the idea behind making group hate an element of a crime.