Do the crime, do the time.
By http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=583
In February, a 22-year-old man accosted Elie Wiesel, famous http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=4083 and “Holocaust scholar,” in a hotel. The young man grabbed Wiesel’s arm to drag him from an elevator, then fled when Wiesel yelled for help. Police threw the book at the 22-year-old; they charged him with attempted kidnapping, false imprisonment, elder abuse, stalking, battery and the commission of a hate crime. This month he was found guilty of a felony and two misdemeanors. He could spend up to three years in prison.
Does prison seem a little extreme for an assault without physical harm to the victim? Maybe it’s because the court believes they know what’s inside his mind–and have the right to judge it.
“Crimes motivated by hate are among the most reprehensible of offenses,” District Attorney Kamala Harris said in a statement about the case.
So, apparently, crimes motivated by greed or sadism or jealousy aren’t as bad? If someone were to torture and kill my friend Dora, I wouldn’t care whether the thug was motivated by racism (she‘s black), hatred of women, or a crack cocaine high. Do the crime, do the time. I would be equally devastated–and so would everyone whose lives Dora touched–regardless of why the crime was committed.Harris’ office said the young man had written about Wiesel online, calling him a “genocidal liar” and describing his recent book as fictitious. Her office said this proves he stalked Wiesel in order to commit a hate crime. But so what if he was motivated by hate? Say Wiesel was the young man’s deadbeat dad, who abandoned him and left many bitter feelings. Say the guy wrote about this online, then tracked down Wiesel and tried to haul him off an elevator. Would that change things? Yeah, actually. He would probably be facing a lot less time, one misdemeanor and no felony charge. The court today is punishing his alleged “anti-Semitism,” not restricting their verdict to the act itself.
“Anti-hate” laws treat crimes differently based on the thoughts of the criminal. They treat crimes as more or less heinous based on politics. They also categorize crime based on social groups; their advocates claim that if you assault a Jewish person because he’s Jewish, you have assaulted the entire Jewish community and you should pay for that group crime. This distorts and undercuts the entire justice system, which should be based on recognition of individuals and their rights, not groups.
The dangerous idea of “group rights” is a grave threat to free speech, because it empowers those who claim to speak for their group. These leaders seek to secure their own power and incomes by complaining about the group’s “trauma” and “hurt feelings.”
In Europe, words alone–if spoken against certain protected groups–are crimes. They can lead to jail time or hefty fines. No one can escape Big Brother: Former actress Brigitte Bardot just had to pay $23,000 for “hate speech.” This is her fifth indictment for “inciting racial hatred” with criticisms of Islam and Muslims, and their affect on French culture. Bardot wrote a prominent politician demanding a law that animals be stunned unconscious before being slaughtered for a Muslim festival. Politically incorrect words in this letter led to the fine.
Nearby in Britain, a teen was arrested in May for protesting outside a Scientology “church” with a sign calling Scientology “a dangerous cult.” His description was so “hateful” the government needed to protect fully grown adults from its wounds.
As Americans grow increasingly aware of these Orwellian incidents, some shrug them off and feel unrealistically secure. A Texas editorial commented on this threat in Europe but then said reassuringly, “None of this could have happened in the United States, where the right to say what’s on your mind, no matter whose feelings it may hurt, is considered vital to the self-government of a free people.” If only that were true. We are about as secure as a happy bustling city built on a plain of cluster bombs.
As we have discussed in recent articles, the strategy of the Anti-Defamation League and homosexual anti-speech activists has been to establish state and local level bias crime laws. ADL boasts that 45 states have enacted their “anti-hate” laws, which supposedly outlaw only outright crime. But this criterion is broadened as state and local governments criminalize certain thoughts, emotions, and words — regardless of whether they motivate actual crime. (See, ‘Hate Criminals’ — With No Law Broken!) ADL has also effectively blanketed federal, state, and local law enforcement with their “anti-bias” and “sensitivity training” programs.
In her powerful book, The New Thought Police: Inside the Left’s Assault on Free Speech and Free Minds, feminist and free-thinker Tammy Bruce describes current threats to free speech. She has this to say about sensitivity training:
‘From my own experiences and from interviews I’ve engaged in with business and academic leaders, the drumbeat in a training session is that the participants are racist or sexist, and this fact needs to be “exposed” to them in the group. Participants are alternately cajoled, bullied, and pressured to accept that thinking certain ways or saying certain things is “insensitive” or otherwise “wrong.”’
Bruce likens sensitivity training to “cult mind control.” She herself is a self-proclaimed homosexual who nonetheless writes biting criticism of hate laws and the concept of “group rights.” As someone who stands to potentially benefit from hate laws–a member of a protected group–she recognizes that these laws threaten her rights as an individual in a free nation.
http://www.truthtellers.org/alerts/fitthepunishment.htm