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The Genesis of Thought Crime
To elaborate on that
observation, a motive cannot be a crime, but an action founded or based on
it can be a crime. In a court of law, a motive can explain an action, but
can no more be punishable than denying the existence of God, or man-caused
global warming, or the link between actual violent crime and simulated
violence in television programming and in movies. In a court of law governed
by objective law, determining a motive for a crime is merely a means of
explicating the otherwise inexplicable. A competent trial lawyer can establish a
motive and link it to evidence of murder, assault or even fraud (and this
can include intent or conspiracy to commit it), but his key task is to prove
a defendant’s criminal actions, not his motivation or character. He would
not end his summation to a jury by asking it to find a defendant guilty of
committing murder because he hated the victim’s looks or religion or odd
behavior, but rather by asking it to find the defendant guilty of murder,
based on the evidence he has presented to the court. Under objective law, a prosecutor must prove
the initiation of physical force. In the end, for the jury to
decide on the validity of the evidence that the defendant was responsible
for proven actions, the motive as established by the prosecution should be
contributory for context setting purposes, but remain extraneous to the
verdict. One may feel the same level of contempt for a
person who has committed a crime based on his hatred of his victim’s race,
gender, religion and so on, as one might feel for someone who has not
committed a crime but who holds the same irrational premises. Objective criminal law, based on proving the
initiation of force, is the best guarantor of justice. Although it was long
in coming, stalled in part by the news media’s encouragement of lynch mobs
and giving free publicity to notorious advocates of hate crime law, the
exoneration of the three lacrosse players in the Duke University rape case
in North Carolina is an instance of reason and reality trumping emotionalism
and wishful thinking. Former District Attorney Nifong should not only be
disbarred, but he should be indicted for conspiring to frame innocent men
for political "hate crime" reasons. On the other hand, remember what happened to
Imus, the radio personality, who made some disparaging remarks about a
women’s basketball team, remarks that hate crime law advocates blew out of
proportion to their significance and, also with the cooperation of the news
media (which played them on air repeatedly), made them a national issue. I
am no fan of Imus, and I doubt that either I or the members of the
basketball team or the nation would have known about his "insulting"
remarks, had not some aspiring gauleiters decided to test the waters. This commentary will examine the phenomenon
of "hate crime" a little more closely. The first and most crucial thing to grasp
about what can be deemed a "hate crime" is that it is, essentially, a
political crime. If this country were still ruled by objective law; if
Congress fulfilled its proper role as a protector of individual rights; and
if the Supreme Court acted to uphold the legitimate individual rights-based
philosophy of the Constitution; then pressure and special interest groups
would have no chance of having laws enacted that favored them at the expense
of others. In short, they would have no political power to instigate the
passage of fiat legislation. The only crime that could legitimately be
called "political" would be treason, that is, actions taken to aid and/or
comfort the enemies of the United States. But every piece of "public policy"
legislation in this country, from Social Security, to Medicare, to banking
laws, to disability laws, to anti-discrimination, racial and gender quota
laws – the list is long and growing longer – is a consequence of political
pull and a measure of the corruptive influence of collectivism. George F. Will, in his May 13th column in
The Washington Post, "No end to hate-crime laws," observed: "The federal hate-crime law, enacted in
1968, enhanced punishments only for crimes against persons engaged in a
federally protected activity, such as voting. H.R. 1592 would extend
special federal protections to persons who are crime victims because of
their race, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender,
gender identity or disability." Will goes on to cite a statistic: "Hate crimes are seven one-hundredths of
one percent of all crimes, and 60.5 percent of them consist of vandalism
(e.g., graffiti) or intimidation (e.g., verbal abuse)." Will does not dwell on it, perhaps because he
does not see it, but in that statistic lies the peril. Given the rate of
disintegration of objective law, what is to stop pressure groups and
legislators from extending the range of "hate crime" from the vandalism of
graffiti on the door of a synagogue or church, and intimidation by "verbal
abuse," to unflattering or disparaging portrayals of "protected" groups in
movies or on television, and to intimidation or disparagement of them in the
printed word? What will stop the blurring of distinctions
between disparagement, defamation, slander and libel? What federal, state or
local judge will uphold the conceptual lines between them at the risk of
being politically incorrect and inviting the wrath of the liberal left and
pressure groups? Well, nothing and no one. Rational
jurisprudence is unraveling apace with freedom of speech. Fox Television’s "24" toned down its
anti-jihadist plots at the behest of CAIR. No major American newspaper or
public figure came to the defense of the Danish cartoonists. And Dr. John
Lewis last month was subjected to actions of intimidating thugs at George
Mason University for daring to criticize Islamists. Do not forget that other
courageous individuals, such as Daniel Pipes, Steve Emerson, Ayaan Hirsi
Ali, and other critics of Islam, can appear at universities and other public
forums only after the most stringent security measures have been taken. All this occurred while H.R. 1592 incubated
in the House. But Muslims would not be the only
beneficiaries of H.R. 1592. What rankles conservatives more than its
potential to further abridge the First Amendment is that it singles out for
special protection homosexuals, the "trans-gendered," and "cross-dressers,"
all "sinners" by conservative moral criteria. Do not expect conservatives to
defend the First Amendment with any important, fundamental arguments. For example, the possibility that H.R. 1592
would have any connection to the abridgement of the First Amendment is
nowhere mentioned in George Will’s column. He skirts the issue – "Hate-crime
laws…mandate enhanced punishments for crimes committed because of thoughts
that government especially disapproves." In fact, Christian activists no more like
seeing God’s or Christ’s name besmirched or hearing it taken in vain than do
Muslims Allah’s or Mohammad’s. It is a certainty that they, too, will avail
themselves of the power of H.R. 1592, if it becomes law, to punish or gag
anyone who dares offend their religious feelings or sensibilities, as well. And if you bruise the feelings or "violently"
injure the "self esteem" of the obese, the elderly, the disabled, the
under-achievers, the Indians, the "challenged" of any persuasion, or of any
of the other gangs of protected ciphers and manqués, they would have the
"right" to take a crack at you, too. In the film "Twelve Angry Men" (the superior
1957 version), one of the deliberating jurors, a last holdout against
acquittal, is certain that the young defendant (of apparent Hispanic origin,
there is a single brief shot of him in the whole film) brutally murdered his
father, because such behavior, he asserts, fits "his type. You know. Their
type." Most of the other jurors turn their backs on him in disgust. Half a century later, the implicit moral code
of those fellow jurors has undergone an inversion. The revolting
irrationalism of the racist juror may be legislated into a federal code that
explicitly sanctions the primacy and supremacy of a score of "types" – of
every "type" but the individual. If H.R. 1592 is made law, mind what you say
about anyone. Better yet, don’t even think of saying anything, lest you risk
the accusation of thought crime. It would be a political crime,
whether or not you ever acted on it. That is thought control. Exercise your First
Amendment rights as a private individual or as a public commentator at the
peril of committing a crime. I, for one, will not submit to it. Edward Cline is the author the Sparrowhawk series of novels set in England and Virginia during the Revolutionary period, the detective novel First Prize, the suspense novel Whisper the Guns and of numerous other published articles, book reviews and essays.
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In
discussing the invalidity of the notion of "hate crimes" in "The Democrats’
Assault on Freedom of Speech" (May 10), in connection with the Local Law
Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2007 passed by the House of
Representatives (H.R. 1592), I remarked: "A motive is not a crime, but an
action is."