11/14/2003
When Republicans get into power they lose their principles.
Federalizing crimes is a Republican taboo, because it encroaches on the rights of states, clogs federal courts and conflicts with the courts' traditional functions. And it can result in double jeopardy and duplicate punishments.
These sound arguments are now being abandoned as Republican Senator Orrin Hatch joins with Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy to expand the federal government’s power to prosecute "hate-crimes."
"Hate-crimes" are defined as violent acts motivated by prejudice based on race, gender, disability or sexual orientation. A senate staffer told the Washington Times that one purpose of the bill was to place the weight of the federal government on the side of the homosexual lifestyle. [Hatch joins Kennedy to push hate-crimes bill - November 13, 2003 The Washington Times]
There is nothing new in politicians pandering to special interests. However, "hate-crimes" bills pander in ways that violate the 14th Amendment by creating unequal standing in law.
Hatch’s bill assumes that women need protection from men’s hatred, blacks need protections from the hatred of whites, the disabled require protection from being hated by the able-bodied, and homosexuals need protecting from heterosexuals.
The effect of Hatch’s bill is to divide the population into a victim class and a perpetrator class: White, heterosexual, able-bodied males (WHAMs) are the perpetrators, and everyone else their victims.
If a homosexual is assaulted, a hate-crime will have been committed in addition to the crime of assault. But if a heterosexual is assaulted, it will merely be an act of assault. Similarly, if a black is assaulted, robbed or murdered, a hate-crime charge will be added if the assailant is white. Rape itself can become a hate crime.
Hate does play a role in some murders, but usually it is hatred of a person, not of a race or gender or sexual orientation. Most cases of assault result from the workings of alcohol or from anger. Robbery results from a desire for money, and rape is driven by lust.
Once the new law is on the books, there will be demands that it be enforced. In the majority of cases, prosecutors will have no basis but presumption for the hate-crime charge. If the victim is in a "protected category" (blacks, females, disabled, homosexuals) and the perpetrator is a WHAM, a hate-crime can be presumed.
This pattern is already established. Prosecutors did not presume a hate-crime when two black males raped and sodomized two white couples, afterward shooting each in the head. Neither were two homosexuals charged with hate-crime when they sodomized and killed a 13-year old boy, nor were the black gangs that, acting out rap lyrics to "beat a white boy into the *#!*# ground," attacked and brutalized white University of Virginia students.
However, Lonnie Rae, a WHAM, was charged with a hate-crime in Idaho when his temper got the best of him and he used the n-word when confronting the black male who assaulted his wife. White Michigan housewife Janice Barton was jailed when a deputy sheriff overheard her using the word "spic" in a private conversation with her mother.
The Hatch-Kennedy bill will set the double standard in federal concrete.
The Hatch-Kennedy bill means that WHAMs will have to suffer abuse, verbal or otherwise, from "protected categories." A WHAM who stands up for himself or his wife risks being charged with a hate-crime. WHAMs who cannot accept the double standard will end up in jail.
Before senators legislate into law the liberal myth that white men are the source of hatred in society, they might visit the Violently Racist Music website and ponder black rap lyrics:
Sodomizing white women is another popular theme. See Eminem’s About Me, where the victim is Vice President Cheney’s wife.
Black rap has a number of white apologists, but any white who sang about "killing niggas" would be arrested along with the recording studio.
In defense of his bill, Senator Hatch says: "nobody should be discriminated against." Trouble is, his bill discriminates against white Americans.
To his credit, Hatch tried to limit somewhat the scope of federalized crimes and to raise the bar of proof that a crime was motivated by hate. Hatch, however, is smart enough to know that his efforts are pointless. Prosecutors compete to find more expansive ways to interpret any law, regardless of what the statute says.
Just as the application of asset freezes has expanded far beyond the Mafia and asset forfeiture has expanded far beyond drug dealers, the brand new Patriot Act is already being used to prosecute crimes that have nothing to do with terrorism. Likewise, the Hatch-Kennedy bill will be used to find hate wherever prosecutors want it to be.
Swedish socialist Gunnar Myrdal destroyed the equal protection clause of the Constitution when he convinced white liberals that democracy could not remedy racial segregation, because all whites are racists by definition. As Lawrence Stratton and I show in our book, The New Color Line, Myrdal’s assertion is the basis for 50 years of federal court decisions and civil rights laws that have institutionalized the presumption of white racism in law.
Senators Hatch and Kennedy’s reinterpretation of ordinary felonies as manifestations of the racist impulses of whites is the natural consequence of the Myrdal legacy. White Americans have become second-class citizens in their own country and are set up for persecution under hate-crime laws.
COPYRIGHT CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
Paul Craig Roberts is the author with Lawrence M. Stratton of The Tyranny of Good Intentions : How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice. Click here for Peter Brimelow’s Forbes Magazine interview with Roberts about the recent epidemic of prosecutorial misconduct.
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