- The Op/Ed Page of the Richmond Times-Dispatch published
a column on February 11th, 1994, headlined "Hate Crimes Can Be Punished
Without Suppressing Speech," by Mr. Craig Sumberg, director of the
National Capital Region of the American Jewish Congress, which supports
passage of Hate Crimes legislation HB 889, in Virginia.
- Webster's dictionary defines "hate" as a "strong
feeling of dislike for a person or thing." In effect, HB 889 is an
attempt to assign extra punishment for any "bad" feelings one
may hold about others, or about things which relate to others' sexual,
racial, ethnic, or religious identity.
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- Because thinking naturally evokes feelings, punishing
one for what one feels punishes one's thinking. This is the reason why
punishing "hate" -- or thought -- is an attempt to control and
suppress free speech.
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- Hate crime laws do suppress free speech.
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- If a man is given extra punishment because of his thoughts,
which may or may not have been motive for his crime, then pretrial discovery
must necessarily include finding "bad" speech to support that
extra punishment; it involves interviewing his friends and co-workers,
inspecting his library and video rental records, determining what newsletters
and magazines he likes and any organizations he belongs to, in order to
establish what he might have thought before and during his crime. It requires
Gestapo-like searches by Thought Police.
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- The eventual result of such legislation will be prosecutors
rifling the personal thoughts of any white suspect alleged to have perpetrated
a crime against a minority person.
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- Moreover, to be fair, it would necessarily demand that
minority suspects be investigated to uncover their "bad" thoughts
about whites, whom they may have targeted for assault, rape, robbery, or
murder--a far more prevalent array of "hate crimes."
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- A man may have no intention of harming another person,
but because he can't predict whether a situation might arise involving
an altercation with someone not of his sexual orientation or race or religion,
he would be imprudent to speak openly to friends and co-workers about his
politics; nor should he checkout library books or rent videos which might
give clues to his thinking; nor should he join any of the many organizations
which are sex-, race-, ethnic- or religion-based.
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- HB 889 is a thought-control bill, adding more punishment
for what one thinks and believes. What one thinks and believes may drive
one to break laws for the benefit of a perceived greater good--such as
men who claim to hate abortion-clinic killings of wombed babies; hate predatory
homosexuals' Man/boy clubs; or hate certain minorities' bad influence on
civil society.
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- In all three instances the perceived "hate"
is really political thought, which moral men might act upon. Where one
man sees bigotry another sees truth. All thinking must be protected from
punishment. If thinking prompts men toward unlawful conduct, then punish
them for what they do -- not for their thinking -- no matter how distasteful
the Thought Police find their ideas to be.
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- Thinking is the fundamental impetus for speech; ergo,
"bad" thinking -- spoken or written -- must be protected.
-
- If one's thoughts are linked to unlawful conduct, and
if extra punishment is meted out by the State for those thoughts, then
all thinking is at risk for control by Thought Police.
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- Their faulty reasoning aside, the Left's call for "love"--
which they claim motivates their Hate Crimes legislation -- is means for
disarming rational thought and advancing liberals' emotion-based agenda.
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- It is really tyranny.
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- Love untempered with reason is more often destructive
than constructive, as with the "love" that liberal enablers apply
in keeping America's poor dependent and chained to liberals' "help."
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- With their passage of hate-crime laws, liberals undermine
the Constitution and punish America with their Orwellian love.
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- -Founders' America
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