A Conservative Conscience

Political Hate Speech
Is a criminal act worse when the criminal hates?

By Robert Kelly

T

he U.S. Supreme Court in 1992 and in 1993 ruled that state laws establishing hate crimes could be constitutional. (1)

Because of these rulings, a crime of murder, for example, becomes worse if the murderer hates the victim.  The ruling apparently assumes that some murderers are friendly chaps. 

And the law can also be applied against a person who is found innocent of the alleged crime, but is found guilty of the hate that motivated the non-crime.  Duh?

In other words, thoughts can be illegal -- you can be sent to the pokey because you hate me even though you have not been found guilty of hurting me.

Most states now have hate crime laws that have been carefully tailored to meet the politically correct tests that were imposed by the above-mentioned Supreme Court decisions.  The People’s Republic of Massachusetts, of course, is a leader in this respect with its hate crime laws that cover race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability and, presumably, the eating of sweet pickles.

When a crime motivated by hate is committed, it is true that hate speech is often the most important match that ignited the deed.  We see that example every day in the Middle East where endemic killing is fed by huge daily doses of hate speech in the media and, most importantly, in mosques. 

Young Muslims do not emerge from the womb as killers-to-be any more than do young Americans or Jews.  But after years of hearing hate speech they look at Americans and Jews with hatred so instinctive that it needs only the slightest excuse to explode into an orgy of killing.

But because hate speech can have such terrible consequences does that mean that it should be criminalized even when no provable criminal act took place?  Apparently the answer to that is yes and no.  It all depends upon who is doing the hating.

For example, the Congressional Black Caucus concluded its four-day, 35th Annual Legislative Conference in Washington on September 25, 2005.  In addition to the members of the black Caucus, Democratic Senators Clinton (NY) and Obama (IL) attended and heard (and did not disassociate themselves from) the remarks of Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) who, among other things, said that President Bush is the modern day version of Bull Connor (the poster-boy bigot from Birmingham, Alabama, who in 1963 turned a fire hose and attack dogs loose on a black protest march led by Martin Luther King, Jr.), and that being poor and black in the United States is “not an inconvenience – it’s a death sentence.”  (2)

 Rangel conveniently overlooked the fact that Bull Connor, two of the most racist governors of the time, Wallace (AL) and Maddox (GA), and Senator Robert Byrd (W. VA – with a Klu Klux Klan background) were all Democrats, or that the Civil Rights Act that gave political life to blacks would not have passed if Democrats of the day had their way. 

Rangel is a demagogue and a hypocrite.  And the congressional leaders who, by their silence, accepted Rangel’s distorted opinions regarding America and its president share his guilt.

Hundreds at the conference heard Rangel’s remarks plus, according to Caucus leaders, another 100,000 over a live Web cast.  Millions more became aware of his comments through the general media. 

Young blacks are listening to such demagogues – and reacting.  

Rangel and others have peddled racism for 40 years.  He and his ilk are a powerful deterrent to the progress of the people that they allegedly represent because they feed their trusting constituents a steady diet of hate speech.

And they are living insults to those who have through their taxes have spent billions to assist black Americans and who, through their generosity, are doing the same today in the hurricane-battered cities of the Gulf of Mexico.

Bur Rangel and other America-hating left wingers are not accused of hate speech.  How come?

Sources: 1) R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, 1992; Wisconsin v. Mitchell, 1993; 2) New York Sun, 9/23/05, Meghan Clyne, “President Bush is our Bull Connor …”