I have to disagree. Certain reasons can lead to greater violence.
Self-defense is not a crime, even though the person is dead. Murder during, for example, a robbery is, even though in both cases it leaves someone dead. But we have to ask if the person defending himself is more or less likely to kill again compared to the robber?
Or, if you think self-defense shouldn’t be used as an example since it’s not a crime, let’s take stealing. If I stole because I want something and didn’t want to pay for it, should I be punished the same as someone who stole something out of necessity? Bread for myself cause I like bread, or bread for a starving family? I don’t think those things should be punished the same. If you ask people, most people would probably say the same thing.
I don’t believe in the whole “thought crimes” argument. Nobody’s punishing you for thinking certain things. However, once you commit an act that requires punishment, it is certainly within the rights of the state to look at why such an act is committed and how to prevent it. In most cases, deterrence is simply locking up the offender. We accept that random violence happens, that’s unavoidable. But we can prevent it, we should, and we do it with harsher punishments.
I’m not saying that we can legislate the hearts of racists into normal people. But just as murder is punished more harshly than jaywalking, we can and do classify crimes in an ascending hierarchy of severity. Racially motivated killings are, then, more severe than non-racial ones. Just as 1st degree murder where you plan it out is more severe than 2nd degree or manslaughter. In all cases, you have someone dead at the end of the day, but looking at your motives can speak to how likely the mistake is to happen again.
Aye, like if I kill a leader of a large segment of a population, hoping to incite that segment to riot and thus spur a class or racial “war”, that’s more reprehensible than just killing a random guy and IMO should be punished more severely.
Heck, without the reasoning behind hate crimes, we couldn’t punish terrorists more than a drunk idiot with a gun who shot someone.
We also differentiate murder in the first and second degree, based primarily on the thought process involved. We also punish those who kill police officers more than those who kill average people. One can question whether hate crime legislation is good policy, but there is nothing fundamentally different between it and other divisions in the law that are widely accepted.
I’m walking down the street and a guy pulls a knife on me. In fear for my life, I shoot him and kill him.
I’m hunting in the woods. I see motion in the distance that I think is a deer. I raise my rifle and fire, only to discover to my horror that I’ve shot another hunter and killed him.
I walk in on my husband as he’s molesting his step-daughter … my daughter. In a fit of rage I pick up a pistol and point it at him. He pleads for his life, but I pull the trigger, shooting him and killing him.
My friends and I disagree with the politics of the mayor of my city. While he’s shaking hands at a public gathering I walk up behind him, calmly put a pistol to his head, and shoot him and kill him.
All of these situations should be punished equally?
What exactly is stupid about social security? Wasn’t it Bush jr and Washington Republicans that wanted to dump social security money in the stock market less than a year before the market crash? Good thing liberals were there to stop it.
And who does “we all” mean in that second sentence? The stupidity in Obamacare is that Republicans were able to castrate it and remove most of the really beneficial stuff before it was passed.
No, because they’re not all the same crime. And mitigating circumstances, where present, are considered in both legal defense and sentencing regardless of whether the person who was killed was of a particular race, creed or sexual orientation.
Adding a few extra years because it was a “hate crime” is a meaningless bolt-on. In fact, it’s insulting to victims of non-hate crimes: if killing someone because of their membership in a “protected” group (e.g. they’re gay or black) is worse than killing someone because you have a personal grudge against them, doesn’t that imply that the person killed due to the grudge potentially deserved it just a teensy bit?
All of this is moot though; the OP says “idea of the day” and the day for the debate on hate crime legislation is long past.
That’s definitely the last zombie-themed party I attend then.
I understand the good intentions behind hate crime legislation; I just think it doesn’t work in practice. IANA judge but I would no more punish someone more for killing a gay man than I would excuse them from the act for suffering “gay panic”.
Now little Johnny or little Susie - or hell, just a civilized grown-up not wanting to happen upon images of “Two girls; one cup” or “Goatze” - better steer clear of New York City’s libraries, because:
Now, having never been there, I have no idea whether the New York City library system segregates adult sections from areas open to minors, but if not - apart from the fact that the entire idea the the United States Constitution provides for publicly-funded (and publicly viewable) hardcore porn is an almost textbook example of liberal stupidity when it comes to rewriting the constitution - it would also seem that this practice should violate statutes outlawing the display of pornography to children.
The article does mention some sort of little partition that is supposed to keep the person sitting next to the pornscreen in question from seeing (but not from hearing) the action, but it doesn’t say anything about keeping these sights and sounds away from kids on their way to aisle 114 for a copy of “Bitches, Ho’s and Skeet: A Schoolyard Primer For Today’s English” or whatever else it is they’re reading these days. So who knows? Maybe they can see this stuff as they’re going about their libraryesque business of locating books or maybe they can’t.
Either way, it’s an utterly stupid idea that accomplishes nothing but to illustrate that censorship wasn’t such a bad idea after all, given that there’s apparently no limit to which [del]people[/del] liberal types, utterly incapable of ever saying ‘enough’s enough’, will not sink if given the opportunity.
Nominees for the postion of “Doper to whom Starving Artist will henceforth mail his posts before placing them, with power to permit or prohibit the same” line up to the left. I call first dibs unless someone else makes a better case.
The additional punishment is not for the killing, but for the threat and intimidation directed against others. You think that terrorism should not be considered a crime: fine, and good luck trying to convince anybody else.
No, the amendment is pretty clear. Increasingly, the conservative element of our society is conflating personal taste with universal truth. Unfortunately for them, the homies who wrote up the constitution and its appendices counted universal truth AS one of their personal tastes. I think it’s pretty clear they figured those who spoke freely AND wrongly would have that pointed out to them by the general populace. Funny, those who rant about Big Gubmint never seem to want to do away with the morality branch of the FCC.
I was under the impression that it was LIBERALS who wanted to find all sorts of hidden meanings in the Constitution, while good solid CONSERVATIVES could read a sentence like “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” and take it word for word at face value.
“Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech”. Now THERE’S a stupid Liberal idea.
The fact that Bill Donohue opposes something doesn’t actually make it liberal, you know. I mean, it might be, but you haven’t actually bothered to check, have you?
See, this is the problem right here. Watching pornogrophy isn’t “speech”. This is a clear perversion of the amendment’s original intent, which was to insure that people could practice their religion or speak out against the government without fear of arrest, and it’s a perfect example of how liberals in this country (and their willing lackeys in the judiciary) have indeed found hidden meanings in the constitution that were never intended.
For that matter, thanks to liberal stupidity (in keeping with the OP) the way that entire amendment has been interpreted would be unrecognizable to the people who wrote it. For example, another perversion is the religion thing, where simply keeping Congress from establishing a religion - like the amendment states - isn’t enough. Oh, no. We’ve also got to make sure that no religious imagery may be found or viewed upon government property. The amedment was intended to prohibit Congress from establishing a church-state government such as had existed in Europe, and had nothing to do with “Merry Christmas” banners hanging from a goverment building or keeping the word “God” from appearing on our money.
There must not have been much liberalism about in the days when the Bill of Rights was passed, as the framers were clearly unaware of the hoops liberal judges and Supreme Court justices would leap through to make the Constitution say what they wanted it to.
Yes, I’m already aware that people like you would like to see criticism of what you’ve wrought suppressed, in one way or another. And the fact that you can’t comes much closer to the original intent of the 1st Amendment than does the freedom to view disgusting sexual images in public venues where anyone can happen upon them. “Mommy, why is that man eating that lady’s poop and that other lady has his pee-pee in her mouth?” “Nevermind, dear, don’t look. Let’s just find your copy of ‘Cinderella’ and get the hell out of here.”
What’s next? Is jacking off is free speech? How long do you think it will be now until the New York Library system decides that jacking off to their computers’ hardcore pornography is merely another expression of free speech?
And then you people wonder how someone like Sarah Palin finds such a large audience. :rolleyes: