More
Reasons To Oppose
Hate Crime
Laws
By Harmony Grant
5-8-7
- Last Thanksgiving, a
tenured math professor at an Arizona community college sent out an
email that could cost him his job. No, it didn't contain the n-word.
It didn't criticize homosexual practices or point out that Democrats
in Congress are trying to turn America into a police state. It was
simply George Washington's "Thanksgiving Day Proclamation of 1789,"
with a link to its location on Pat Buchanan's website, forwarded to
fellow teachers in honor of Thanksgiving. Within weeks, the
professor's free-thinking and patriotic colleagues complained of
harassment.
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- Come again? The instructors
of America's future leaders can't handle the historic words of our
greatest founding father or a link to a public leader's thoughts on
immigration!?
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- Washington's "offensive"
address describes the "duty of all Nations to acknowledge the
providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His
benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor." This
political giant prayed publicly "that we may then unite in most
humble offering our prayers and supplications to the Great Lord and
Ruler of Nations and beseech Him to pardon our national and other
transgressions, to enable us all, whether in public or private
stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and
punctually" and so on, in words that are no longer allowed at a high
school graduation, on a navy shipdeck or, clearly, between
full-grown faculty members at a community college!
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- For the crime of emailing
Washington's speech with a link to Buchanan's site, Prof. Walter
Kehowski was placed on forced administrative leave March 9; the
school chancellor recommends the governing board fire him. The
college accuses Kehowski of violating their non-discrimination
policy which promises "an environment for each Maricopa job
applicant and employee that is free from sexual harassment, as well
as harassment and intimidation on account of an individual's race,
color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, age,
disabled, or veteran status."
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- Hey, that sounds a lot like
the federal "anti-hate" bill!
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- As we've warned for months,
the federal hate crime bill is another big step toward a nationwide
speech ban on "hurtful words" against protected groups. It's
spearheaded and supported by the same people who support the speech
codes that shackle free thought at universities across our nation
and the workplace non-discrimination laws that do the same at
American jobsites.
-
- The appalling speech code
at Texas A&M, America's sixth largest state university, is another
example of these manacles on the mind. A&M "literally prohibits
hurting someone's feelings." It forbids students from violating each
other's rights to "respect for personal feelings" and "freedom from
indignity of any type." This vague, broad rule could be used to
punish all kinds of unspecified behaviors including protected
speech.
-
- Criminal law should (and
does) outlaw violent actions against the life and property of
others. But nowhere does the Constitution guarantee unhurt feelings!
My feelings are my own problem. Hate crime laws, however, invade the
shadowy private space of feeling, bias, and belief. In 2004,
Pennsylvania's hate crime statute was used to arrest and indict 11
Christians for the potentially hurt feelings of homosexuals at a gay
pride parade. The Christians' only crime was to witness and sing
hymns peacefully. They faced up to 47 years in prison.
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- These are Bad Laws, Period.
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- Many Christians and
conservatives understand hate laws' threat to the First Amendment;
we've written extensively about this reality. But there are also
non-speech-related reasons to protest hate crime laws. They are an
enormous threat to one of the essential girders of a free society:
clear, coherent and fair criminal law.
-
- <http://www.cato.org/testimony/ct-tl04172007.html>Timothy
Lynch of the Cato Institute testified April 17 against hate crime
legislation to the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland
Security. He argued that not only should the federal hate law be
voted down but that all hate crime legislation should be repealed.
He argued persuasively that a federal hate crime law is unnecessary
for the prosecution of already criminal acts of violence; violates
states' rights in law enforcement; will not deter real criminals any
more effectively than current laws; relies on vague, over-broad, and
subjective definitions; will heighten rather than reduce intergroup
conflict; and will lead to prosecution of thoughts and beliefs
rather than criminal acts.
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- Lynch's well-stated
arguments were informed by Hate Crimes: Criminal Law & Identity
Politics, by James Jacobs and Kimberly Potter. Their academic title
conceals a valuable extended argument against hate crime
legislation. Like virtually all academic studies of these laws, Hate
Crimes vastly understates both the creator role of the
Anti-Defamation League and other Jewish supremacist groups and the
threat of hate crime legislation to the First Amendment. But this
book valuably examines the way "identity politics" distort our
political landscape and the way hate crime legislation enshrines the
victim game into criminal law.
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- Earning Big Bucks at the
Blame Game
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- Jacobs and Potter define
identity politics as those "whereby individuals relate to one
another as members of competing groups based upon characteristics
like race, gender, religion, and sexual orientation." (Hate Crimes,
p5) In this political atmosphere, people get power from being
members of victimized groups; they lose by proclaiming success or
accomplishment. You win by whining loudest and demonizing others
most effectively.
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- Needless to say, this is a
really rotten way to generate more just laws, lower taxes, purer
culture or truer leadership. Hate crime legislation is based on this
game, on the identity politics we should discourage, not enshrine in
federal law.
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- Identity politics do not
unite Americans; they fracture us into ever more polarized groups of
blame-throwers. Rather than standing together as Americans against
foreign or domestic threats to our freedom and culture, we instead
disassociate into victimized racial and religious groups, as women
against men, or homosexuals against straights.
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- Today, our nation is
plagued by pundits and commentators who earn their keep by being
professionally aggrieved. Their fat paychecks come from promoting
and exaggerating the gripes of their victimized group. The worse
that racism or anti-Semitism is claimed to be, the more money and
power they receive. These false leaders benefit from generalizing
from criminals' mentality to the general population, saying that
because some thugs spray-paint bad words there's an epidemic of
racism in the general population-or from misrepresenting politically
incorrect but legitimate ideas as racism. Anything goes so long as
it serves to inflate the debt owed by society to the victimized
group.
-
- Hate laws crystallize these
social divisions into criminal law, classifying victims according to
their political status. "The very collection and reporting of hate
crime statistics encourages Americans to think of the crime problem
in terms of intergroup conflict." (p134) This view turns every high
profile case into a political competition rather than an opportunity
for the nation to unite against violent crime.
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- We'll Pick Your Prejudices
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- Hate crime laws thus do not
unite our nation into a less prejudiced society. Instead, they
highlight and exacerbate political and social divisions. By their
very nature, they also enforce specific prejudices. They proclaim
some biases bad and criminal, while others are just fine. This
involves the government in the creation of moral orthodoxy, deciding
which biases to prosecute and which to allow. "Creating a hate
crimes jurisprudence forces us to proclaim which prejudices are
worse than others, itself an exercise in prejudice." (p21)
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- The whole idea behind
"anti-hate" legislation is that racial, anti-gay, or other forms of
anti-group hatred are the very worst kind. But that's not the
government's call. Why is racial prejudice or "homophobia" worse
than other criminal motivations like greed, power, lust, spite, or
pure sadism? The authors of Hate Crimes raise this question and it's
a great one. Why should you receive a triple penalty if you bludgeon
a woman instead of a man? Why is it worse to rape a woman because
you hate her skin color than to rape her because you love to hear a
human voice scream in helpless pain?
-
- Progressive leftists
constantly accuse the religious right of wanting to legislate
morality. Yet they embrace hate crime laws that do exactly
that-these laws proclaim that certain kinds of criminal motivation
or prejudice are morally worse and more socially destructive than
others and should thus be prosecuted three times more harshly. Who
gives them the right to say that?
-
- Hate crime laws do not (and
never could) prosecute all "prejudice" and all bias. Plenty of
prejudices are in fact encouraged in our society and by big media
and advocacy groups. We're taught it's important to be prejudiced
against Nazis, for example (and also often against Christians,
especially Catholics). Hate crime laws legislate that only some
prejudices are evil.
-
- But that's precisely what
the government is not allowed to do. Legislating beliefs violates
the Constitution in multiple ways and lights a fuse of dynamite at
the very foundation of our free society. Hate laws prosecute the
beliefs behind crimes and enhance the penalties for these kinds of
bias. This is essentially the same as punishing the criminal for his
beliefs. (148)
-
- The world has seen plenty
of political systems that legislate the beliefs their citizens are
permitted. We usually use some pretty unpleasant adjectives to
describe those regimes. "Totalitarian" comes to mind.
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- My Stabbing Hurt Worse than
Yours because I'm Black
-
- Hate crime laws are really,
really dangerous and messy to use because virtually any victim of a
violent crime could arguably be the victim of some kind of hate or
bias. Think about it. Policemen could be shot because of anti-cop
bias. The adolescent thug might have robbed the Indian's 7-Eleven
because he hates Indians. Some really out-to-lunch feminists want to
say all violence against women everywhere is a product of misogyny,
which would make every man-on-woman crime a potential hate crime.
-
- See where this leads? Hate
crime laws have unlimited potential to fracture and confuse our
justice system. They're political tools used to make statements
about the value of certain groups and how much the government
dislikes certain beliefs. But political statements have no place in
criminal law, which should remain as clear, coherent, fair, and
coldly emotionless as it can be.
-
- Hate crime laws are neither
clear nor fair; they protect certain groups and classes of victims
but not others. When do we stop adding victim categories? If
everyone gets protected, hate crime is an empty category; it means
the same thing as generic crime. But if not all victims are treated
as victims of hate, then why some and not others? This privileging
is wrought with political prejudice.
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- Hate Crime Laws Aren't
About Crime
-
- When you think of a hate
criminal, who comes to mind? Major media almost invariably shows a
white neo-Nazi as the thug who needs hate laws to stop him from
beating up blacks or homosexuals. But the reality is pretty
different. Despite constant propaganda to the contrary, "hate
crimes" are not a nationwide epidemic demanding massive federal
intervention. Eighty percent of violent crimes involve victims and
criminals of the same race. "For the 20 percent of violent crimes
that are interracial, 15 percent involve black offenders and white
victims" (17) Only two percent are white-on-black.
-
- Mainstream media and
organizations like ADL focus searing attention on "white
supremacist" groups who advocate limits on immigration or glorify
western, Anglo-Saxon culture. This is because Jewish supremacists
desire to silence the ideas that come from conservative, far-right,
and Christian thinkers. These ideas subvert the drives for open
immigration, unconditional support of Israel, and sexual amorality,
among other things that are steadily corroding Christian America.
Ultimately, hate crime laws won't just be used to lock up skinhead
thugs. They were invented by Jewish supremacists who will use them
to prosecute Christian evangelism, opposition to social liberalism,
and criticism of Israel.
-
- Hate crime laws are
advocated by politicians who see them as an easy way to win points
with the homosexual and Jewish lobbies. Only this spring do we see
the emergence of a vocal "freedom lobby" composed largely of
concerned conservatives and Christians. It's been difficult for
people to even comprehend the way these laws have already been used
and will be used in the future-to jail innocent nonviolent citizens
for exercising freedom of speech. We are used to the seeming freedom
of American life, to easy traveling and outrageous (seemingly
uncensored) media and basic daily liberty. It's easy to forget that
the remarkable freedom and prosperity of the American experiment is
an aberration in the history of man. The overwhelming trend has been
toward censorship, oppression, politically imposed famines,
genocide, and lawlessness.
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- Any Way Back?
-
- Jacobs and Potter suggest
that hate crime reporting statutes should be repealed, and so should
hate crime sentence enhancements. Is this possible? Could this ever
happen? Yes and yes. It can happen if enough Americans are educated
about the reality of hate crime laws, and somebody gives the other
side of the argument.
-
- There's a Jewish lobby, a
homosexual lobby, and lobbies on both sides of the abortion debate.
Well, it's time for our freedom lobby. It can grow as broad as the
beautiful land stretching from Oregon to Maine. All Americans should
rally against identity politics and the divisive, unfair,
anti-freedom orthodoxies of hate crime legislation.
-
- Let's quit allowing
politicians to score easy points with uninformed members of victim
groups, whose leaders harm them by emphasizing past grievances at
the expense of future success. Don't let your government legislate
your opinions, words and beliefs. Protest hate crime laws to your
Senator today and let President Bush know he must keep his promise
to veto the federal hate bill and also not sign a compromise bill.
Whatever happens to H.R. 1592, we must keep resisting and educating
against hate crime laws. It's time to take back America's criminal
law.
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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- Call the White House, and
say, "Thank you, Mr. President, for promising to veto the hate bill.
We expect you also to not approve a modified hate bill."
-
- Protest the Senate hate
bill! Call your senator toll-free at 1-877-851-6437 or toll
202-225-3121. Leave this message: "Please don't vote for hate crimes
bill S.1105. Hate laws have taken away free speech in Canada and
much of Europe. If you do vote for the hate bill, I and my friends
will never vote for you again." Send your senator and his 8-10
influential aides Rev. Ted Pike's powerful flyer "Anti-Hate Laws
Will Make You a Criminal." This flyer and names of aides are
available at <http://www.truthtellers.org/>
www.truthtellers.org .
-
- Come to <http://www.truthtellers.org/>
www.truthtellers.org
for the list of the crucial 14 Republicans who have voted for the
hate bill as well as 17 Republicans who are uncommitted. Call and
protest immediately.
-
- Let the Anti-Defamation
League of B'nai B'rith teach you how they have saddled 45 states
with hate laws capable of persecuting Christians: <
http://www.adl.org/99hatecrime/intro.asp>
http://www.adl.org/99hatecrime/intro.asp .
-
- Learn how ADL took away
free speech in Canada and wants to steal it now in the U.S.
Congress. Watch Rev. Ted Pike's <
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7217700265038533779
>Hate Laws: Making Criminals of Christians at video.google.com.
Purchase this gripping documentary to show at church. Order online
at <http://www.truthtellers.org/
> www.truthtellers.org
for $24.90, DVD or VHS, by calling 503-853-3688, or at the address
below.
-
- TALK SHOW HOSTS: Interview
Harmony Grant on current threats to our freedom of speech and
religion. Call (503) 631-3808.
|
Reproduced from
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Zionist Jews Pressure
Bush To Sign Hate Bill
By Rev. Ted Pike
5-14-7
|
Last week it seemed the federal
anti-hate bill S. 1105 was slated by Democratic leaders to move through
the Senate very rapidly, even to a vote by Friday. Now the opposite may
be true; pro-hate bill supporters may actually want to delay its
consideration in the Senate in order to have time to generate massive
pressure upon Pres. Bush to approve a "modified" hate bill or renege
altogether on his veto threat.
At the forefront of efforts to back
Bush down are Jewish activist groups nationwide. Forward.com today says,
"Jewish groups are gearing up to fight the president's expected veto of
a hate crimes bill opposed by Christian conservatives Jewish
organizations are playing a leading role in the coalition pushing the
bill, with almost all of them - except the Orthodox ones - taking action
to promote the passage of the measure Michael Lieberman, Washington
counsel for the Anti-Defamation League and chair of the coalition of 290
organizations supporting the hate crimes bill (says), 'We believe that
after the president sees the support this bill has in the law
enforcement community and with other groups, he will listen and sign the
bill'"
The Forward article continues:
"'People in the Jewish community have a strong memory and good
understanding of the impact hate crimes have,' said Hadar Susskind,
Washington director of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. The JCPA
mobilized tens of local Jewish groups to contact their congressmen on
the issue. In an effort to pressure the president not to use his veto
pen to block this legislation, Jewish groups are organizing letters and
meetings that aim to stress the importance that the Jewish community
sees in passing the bill. Other groups will take similar action:
mainstream Christian and other religious organizations, law enforcement
agencies and women's rights advocacy groups If this mobilization does
not manage to convince the White House, supporters of the bill intend to
attach the measure to a "must pass" piece of legislation, making it
difficult for the president to exercise his veto."
Why is the Jewish community not
afraid that Jews might be victimized by the federal hate bill? Simple:
since the Jewish ADL sets up hate crimes bureaucracies and controls them
once they are established, Jews are virtually never indicted. Although
Jewish Talmudic literature defames Christ and Christianity and many
Jewish leaders fulfill every criteria of "hate speech," blaming
Christianity for anti-Semitism and the Holocaust, Jews in countries with
hate laws have little to fear from expressing public "hatred or
contempt" of Christianity. On the contrary, since 1971 when ADL created
Canada's hate crimes gestapo, outspoken members of the political right
and, more recently, Christians, live in dread of Jewish "professional
complainers," intent on catching them in a word and hauling them into
the hate crimes tribunal courts.
New Tactics
Clearly, pro-hate bill strategy
is shifting dramatically. When I called the offices of Sen. Gordon Smith
and Sen. Edward Kennedy this morning, gone was any hint of rapid
movement toward passage. Instead, they say it may be next week before
the Senate considers the bill. In fact, the Forward article says the
Senate Judiciary may still hold hearings on S. 1105.
What should be the response of
all who love freedom? First, we must call, email, fax, or write our
Senators demanding they vote against the hate bill. Tell them that if
they vote for it you and your friends will never vote for them
again. Send your Senator and their 8-10 legislative aides my powerful
flyer Anti-Hate Laws Will Make You a Criminal. (All this information is
available here at truthtellers.org.)
Also call the 14 Republican
Senators who voted for the hate bill in 2004, the 16 Senators who are
undeclared, and the 10 Democrats who are not co-signers. Tell all:
"Please do not vote for S. 1105. Hate laws have taken away free speech
in Canada and many European countries."
In mid-February I warned that
the Jewish community of America had mobilized to pressure members of
Congress to support the hate bill. I believe the President's threatened
veto has sent shock waves into the forces of Jewish activism as never
before - an alarm which could bring almost unbearable pressure upon
Bush. Realistically, it is virtual political suicide for him to
antagonize the Jewish community. Jewish power in this country and in
Congress is so formidable that it is almost a truism that what the Jews
want, they get. Christian/conservative resolve and activism must be even
greater, empowered not just by human energy and organization but by
faith in God and His power to deliver in this time of national crisis.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Rev. Ted Pike is director of the
National Prayer Network, a Christian/conservative watch dog
organization.
Call the White House as well at
202-456-1111.
Leave this message: "Thank you,
Mr. President, for promising to veto the hate bill. I expect you to also
reject any modified hate crime legislation."
Let the Anti-Defamation League
of B'nai B'rith teach you how they have saddled 45 states with hate laws
capable of persecuting Christians: <
http://www.adl.org/99hatecrime/intro.asp>
http://www.adl.org/99hatecrime/intro.asp .
Learn how ADL took away free
speech in Canada and wants to steal it now in the U.S. Congress. Watch
Rev. Ted Pike's < http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7217700265038533779
>Hate Laws: Making Criminals of Christians at video.google.com.
Purchase this gripping documentary to show at church. Order online at <http://www.truthtellers.org/>
www.truthtellers.org for
$24.90, DVD or VHS, by calling 503-853-3688, or at the address below.
TALK SHOW HOSTS: Interview Rev.
Ted Pike on the threat of hate laws, both federal and state. Call (503)
631-3808.
NATIONAL PRAYER NETWORK, P.O.
Box 828, Clackamas, OR 97015
<
http://www.truthtellers.org/
www.truthtellers.org
|
Reproduced from
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|