Is They Anything Dumber'n "Hate Crimes" -- Really Now

At First I thought it was a typo. Then I realized they were not establishing "Hat crimes," as in the wearing of gangster looking hats in churches during services, or some such other law we could probably find on the books in Georgia. Now big hair, that should be a crime, falling under anti-seventies legislation more generally. And this whole nose-ring thing is iffy at best. That just has to be some kind of jewelery hate. But this is not what they meant. They meant "hate" crimes, not hat crimes. "Oh," said I. "That's a whole lotta differnt." To be more precise, it is a different kind of stoopid (with two "o's").

Suppose a man commits a crime. He pulls a Cheney, aims at the nearest lawyer with a high-powered rifle and opens fire. Does it really matter what color the lawyer is (was?), or whether the guy who shot him hated people of that color, or just hated lawyers? What if he just hated trial lawyers, but not corporate litigators, and shot the wrong kind by mistake?

Here is another situation which shows the absolute silliness of this kind of law. The man who shoots the lawyer in this second scenario does it because he hates the guy standing just behind him. He doesn't hate the lawyer, but only the man standing behind him, who is let us say -- purple. The shooter hates purple people, and opens fire on the purple guy, killing both the lawyer and the purple guy he hated. The lawyer was killed indiscriminantly because the shooter was impatient as well. We need to ask,"Is this an impatience crime," and should we add more years to the stay in prison -- if we should even have prisons -- for his impatience in not waiting properly to shoot only the second guy?

And if we are going to do this, let us do it right. There must, just like murder, be DEGREES of hatred involved here. We need first degree hate crimes for those who hate like they mean it, and second and third degree hate crimes for the sluggards that just don't have it in them, but keep trying anyway. This will require police officers to administer hatometer tests, like breathalyzers, which measure your voice volume, muscle tenseness and the like, to get a fair reading on your hate level at the crime scene.

And why should hating lawyers be considered any more virtuous than hating people for whatever color or personal disposition they may have? Personally, I can't stand it when people take really huge bites of hamburgers and chew like cows in public.

That settles it. We need dining and anti-dining laws. And woe to the man who uses not his knife with his fork. That is knifism, and we simply cannot afford to tolerate this as a civilized nation. What next, napkin abuse?

Now according to hate crime laws, the shooter will get a lengthier or more severe sentence for shooting the purple guy rather than for shooting the lawyer. The deaths of the two victims -- given the whole point of "all men are created equal" -- should each merit the same sentence since their value as persons is not different one from another.

The two things which ought to matter when a judge issues sentence are

1. Actual guilt (Did he do it or not?)
2. Intent (Did he pull the trigger with a purposeful effort to harm the victim(s))

The motive standing behind the intent might be hate, maybe it was envy or jealousy -- though I suppose few are jealous of lawyers.

In order to be consistent in adding "hate" -- an elusive emotion -- as an aggravating condition to a crime, we would also need to have "greed crimes," "envy crimes," "lust crimes," and one wonders (at least this one wonders) whether just good old-fashioned stupidity should sometimes be sufficient to render a man culpable.

Just think of it this way -- If a man walks into a fast food restaurant and goes postal on everyone -- how could his premediated choice to open fire on innocents NOT be a hate crime already? All murders "with malice aforethought" -- the old-fashioned way of rendering the idea of premeditation in legal terms -- constitutes hatred. When man points a loaded weapon at people and gets busy, we do not need to ask his motivation. We already know. Premeditation is the legal point of interest, not hatred. Because the first established proves the second anyway. Even our legal language reflects this fact.

This shows that hate is not really the point of the so-called hate laws anyway. It is the alleged minority status of the victims -- not hate per se -- that makes something a "hate crime," meaning these should be called minority-related crimes. But this, of course, shows favoritism -- when justice is supposed to be blind in this regard -- to one class of person rather than another. The Bible forbids this. In jurisprudential matters, it specifically notes the tendency some will have to favor the poor in a legal action against the wealthy, and forbids this.

Hate is not a crime. Neither is irritability, untidiness, being a jerk (idiocy), acting with contemptuous pride ("contempt of court" does not name the emotion, but specific disobedience to a court order, or a violation of the court's code of conduct), coveting, staring at people with malice you don't like, or randomly despising people who wear green clothes.

Some people just hate everyone, and there is nothing you can do about it. But so long as this type of man -- we call them "misanthropes" - these are equal opportunity haters who do not discriminate -- does not put his hatred into action against innocent persons in unlawful ways, we don't (and should not) care. Jerks abound. Get over it, and grow up. Anyone who has a driver's license knows this. If you doubt this, then explain California.

I have makeshift maneuvers on the road for which I do not even have words. What WAS THAT? It was another jerk behind the wheel, practicing high-speed hate on the right shoulder.

All of these are sinful, but not every sin is a crime, nor should it be. The desire to regulate a person's inward attitudes and emotions is positively Orwellian in the worst sense of the word. It represents a somewhat goofy and mostly "right violating" effort to play thought-police. The founders of the U.S. Constitution would utterly have hated this kind of law. It represents just the kind of governmental tyranny they stood against so adamantly, and which moved them to extend a Bill of Rights to protect individuals -- not just the states -- from the overreach of the federal government.

Hates crimes thus constitute a class of laws not only UNconstitutional, but plainly ANTI-constitutional. And I for one hate them. This of course begs the question:

Is that a meta-hate crime? Should I be arrested twice for this? And so far as I can tell, were we to take hate crimes seriously, we would have our jails filled with dentists. These people can do real damage with very long needles. Children everywhere -- and most adults -- fear them. And they put mercurium in your teeth (fillings), a substance known now to present long-term health hazards. Mercury is well-known to be very poisonous to people. Do not eat thermometers.

Punchline: If I decide to hate all lawyers, that is MY BUSINESS and no one else's, certainly not the police's business. They simply have more important things to do, like catch people who, with real malice, perpetrate real crimes upon innocent persons.

Hate crimes are nonsense; they represent the very height of Draconian intolerance (which the groups that advocate them usually go on about at length), they imply the necessity of all manner of other crimes no one wants (envy crimes, gluttony crimes etc), and they are goofier than cat pizza.

Performance and intent are the two important features of sentencing. This is what the Bible teaches; and you will note that it avoids all manner of silly implication.

Don't hate me. I'm just a messenger. It's in the text. This is just one more modern instance of legal gobbly-gook one runs into by failing to appropriate as the final legal standard that law code which God has graciously given to us. The law of the Lord is perfect. Your law code? Not so much. And I really hate bad law. I was born that way. I can't help it; it's my orientation. And I can't wait for "intemperance crimes" to hit the market.

This refutation of silly ideas enacted into legislation has been brought to you by our non-Euclidean sponsors, who insist on coloring outside the lines just a bit.

Just for fun, here are a few other really stupid laws on the books in the good old US of A.

Thankfully, in Baltimore, Maryland, it is not legal to take a lion to the movies. Alpacas and dromedaries are iffy.

Here is one to raise eyebrows. In Oxford, Ohio, it is unlawful for a woman to appear in public while unshaven. This includes legs and face. Yes, ladies, be sure to keep those beards neatly trimmed or else.

Okay, okay. I'll quit picking on the U.S. Don't go all Cheney on me. Here's one from China. According to a law in China, you must be intelligent to go to college.

[Correct me if I'm wrong. But isn't that WHY people go to college, because they wish to improve their reasoning, math, study and other cognitive skills? And when you come out, if you are too intelligent, you cannot work for the Communist government; this is mostly because Communism appeals only to people dumber than a bag of cement].

Wait for it. Okay, here it is -- In Topeka, Kansas, servers are forbidden to serve wine in teacups. This seems to be a manliness law. Men must be manly, ergo teacups are right out. How can you be manly with a teacup in your hand, and a gun in the other. No one will take you seriously. And Smith and Wesson might sue you.

Or maybe this prohibition is supposed to prevent sissy-sized portions. It might be an anti- anti-hospitality law. No jipping the customers.

[Apparently, if you wish to get completely trashed in public, you must have a bigger cup. This only makes sense -- just like sobriety.].

In the fine state of Nebraska, it is not legal for a tavern owner to serve beer unless a nice kettle of soup is also brewing.

[But what really IS the meaning of "soup"? Does "stew" count, or is that an illegal substance alongside beer? This seems to be classed right alongside hate crimes, as an inhospitality law].

This brings a whole new set of questions to the fore. If you under-tip at a restaurant because a waiter is recognizably a minority, is that a pecuniary hate crime? But what if the defendant simply claims the guy's cologne was way too strong?

Some city's like Berkeley, which shall remain nameless, have outlawed public smoking because of the second-hand offenses associated with it. What? And not the overuse of cologne? This can take people down who have allergies. Cars must go too (too much second hand carbon monoxide -- we like it fresh not stale). But I can blog these later.

For your convenience, and exuberant, tear-tossing laughter, the dumb network has put together a fine collection of stupid laws on the books in all fifty states. Here is their
URL -- http://www.dumblaws.com/ Enjoy.