0706 Hate Crimes Distortions
In the midst of the justified uproar from the private sector over the media-distorted issue of the illegal foreign incursion, an equally dangerous movement has gained a legislative foothold with hardly a whisper from mainline news outlets. In a giant leap and under circumstances insulting to the vast majority of Americans, the House of Representatives used the National Day of Prayer to pass a federal hate crimes bill (HR 1592). Once again, as with the most recent push for a 1986-style failed immigration “reform”, the liberal majority in Congress is being allowed to shame the federal law with barely a kick in the shins from so-called conservative counterparts.
The scam being perpetrated against the freedoms guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution’s first, tenth and fourteenth amendments is based upon three falsehoods; so-called hate crimes are on the rise, some American’s are more valuable than others and identical crimes should be punished differently. The same falsehoods are being used to justify the similar U.S. Senate bill, S1105.
Contrary to what liberal politicians and activists claim, so-called hate crimes against homosexuals are, according to FBI statistics, decreasing not increasing. In 2004 six one-thousandths of one percent of all murders were motivated by sexual orientation, zero percent of rapes were orientation motivated along with only, two one-hundredths of one percent of aggravated assaults. In 2005 those same categories were at zero percent, zero percent andseven ten-thousandths of one percent respectively.
According to the protections of the Fourteenth Amendment Section One, no American is so privileged as to deserve special legal protections above other citizens. Now, along with other transgressions, S1105 would create more classism by adding citizens living in sexual mis-orientations to the list of more valued civil groups who deserve special privileges of revenge when wronged.
Such a power grab not only mutilates Article 1 Section 8 and the Tenth Amendment but would have appalled James Madison. While writing to defend the U.S. Constitution during the ratification process,Madisonnoted in the Federalist No. 45 that “the powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.” S1105 would act in contempt of that principle.
But the most insidious characteristic of S1105, along with similarly established state statues, is the unavoidable attempt by the criminal system to prosecute the intentions of the heart separately from, or in addition to, actions. Of all the blessings which God has bestowed on mankind, the abilities of logic and personal conviction within the privacy of a person’s mind is among the most precious.
Analyzing and forming commitments are private matters and are the bedrocks for civil freedoms in a nation whose unalienable right is liberty and whose government is of the people. There is a natural wall of separation between the workings of the inner person and the manipulations of anything or anyone outside of him. To codify hate or any other prejudice as a special offense in criminal law necessarily attempts to breach that sacred wall and must do so at the expense of civil liberties.
For these reasons, just law addresses behavior, not the heart. For these reasons, popular acceptance of mythically special “hate crimes” and criminalized prejudices have splintered the fabric ofAmerica’s union. For these reasons any federal attempt to commandeer legal processes within the states through hate crimes legislation is a usurpation of states’ rights, violates the federal constitution and is an attempt by civil authority to increase punishments by judging the condition of the heart (hate) – a privilege reserved for God alone.