Saturday, May 12, 2007

George F. Will on Hate Crimes

The House passed a bill this week extending the protection of hate crimes legislation to homosexuals, and I feel the urge to “vote for it before I vote against it.” I oppose any hate crimes legislation on principle – namely, the principle that the content of our thoughts is beyond the legitimate scope of government regulation. But so long as we have these shameful laws we ought at least to extend their benefits to the relevant groups; when the initial laws were passed, it was obvious to everyone that sexual minorities were deliberately excluded from protection.

And as with the legislation, I’m ambivalent about George Will’s column on the matter, which simultaneously contains interesting, principled points and creepy insinuations of white victimhood (dressed up, as they usually are, in the demagogic conceit of the “double standard”).

Basic truth:

Laws hold us responsible for controlling our minds, which should control our conduct. But government increasingly wants to inventory and furnish our minds, removing socially undesirable desires. Law has always had the expressive function of stigmatizing particular kinds of conduct, but hate-crime laws treat certain actions as especially wicked because the actors had odious (although not illegal) frames of mind.

Interesting, probably apt suspicion:

Local law enforcement organizations favor HR 1592, which promises money….Hate-crime laws are indignation gestures. Legislators federalize the criminal law in order to use it as a moral pork barrel to express theatrical empathy.

Gross overestimation of George W. Bush’s commitment to principle:

If the bill makes it to the president's desk, he probably will veto it because it is moral exhibitionism by Congress with no constitutional authorization.

Cloying, surreptitious, and weird suggestion that well-fed white people can’t get fair shake in modern America:

When in 1989, a gang of black and Hispanic youths went "wilding" in Central Park, raping and savagely beating a white jogger, was this considered a hate crime? No, because the youths also assaulted some Hispanics, so their punishment was not enhanced….Complications multiply, protected categories proliferate. Next? People who wear fur or eat meat? Some writings by the killer at Virginia Tech expressed hatred of the rich, but they are not a category protected in this year's hate-crime legislation.

Hmmm. Well, you tackle bad laws with the allies you have, not the allies you wish you had.

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