Founding Fathers’ Thoughts on ‘Hate Crimes’

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Nat Hentoff, World Net Daily, July 29, 2009

{snip} I have often praised Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., for resisting [the G.W. Bush] administration’s penchant for degrading the Constitution. But on July 16, he proudly watched as the Senate passed his “hate crimes” bill (the Matthew Shepard Act) that is the biggest expansion of federal hate crimes laws since 1968—providing extra prison time to committers of violent acts perceived to be based on sexual orientation, gender identity or disability (adding to the previous classifications of race, color, religion or national origin).

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Leahy’s bill, like the counterpart “hate crimes” measure of House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., that passed in the House this past April, violates the 14th Amendment’s equal protection under the laws for individual Americans by setting up a special collective class of victims whose assailants, when convicted, will be given extra punishment for crimes perceived to be based on gender identity, sexual orientation or disability, among other biases.

Those who attack the elderly, police or those of the poor who are not among the “protected classes” would not get lengthier “hate” sentences than the law provides for the act itself. Doesn’t this make lesser citizens of their victims?

Very late into the night on July 12, Democratic Senate leader Harry Reid slipped the Leahy “hate crimes” bill, as an amendment, into the $680 billion Defense Authorization Act. Leahy agreed with this avoidance of a full-scale floor debate. The amendment was approved by voice vote, following a 63-28 procedural vote that broke a Republican filibuster. All the 28 negatives were by Republicans. Harry Reid declared the vote “a victory for all Americans.”

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An editorial in the daily Free Lance-Star (Fredericksburg, Va.) in May warned: “Hate-crimes bill is an assault on the Constitution.” (Full disclosure: The editorial mentions content I wrote for the Cato Institute.) Unique among daily newspapers, this paper occasionally runs educational articles on the Constitution, very much including the Bill of Rights. I wrote one for it on the First Amendment. Too bad other papers don’t tell Americans who they are.

Trying to avoid criticism of the impending law by First Amendment protectors, Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., had submitted an amendment to the Leahy measure that passed and says this law will not infringe on freedom of speech “if such exercise of religion, speech, expression or association was not intended to plan or prepare for an act of physical violence; or incite an imminent act of physical violence against another.”

However, the bill still punishes a perceived hate crime.

That’s the kind of broad language James Madison did not intend to encumber the First Amendment with when he wrote it. The ACLU now insists the Senate bill include what it calls the stronger protection of free-speech rights in the House bill. But the White House website points out that the House bill cites a hate crime is based on actual or perceived hate against a victim. Both bills include constitutional violations of double-jeopardy prosecutions by making it easier for the federal government to prosecute a defendant in a hate-crime case when the state says it cannot convict or chooses not to prosecute.

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Almost as alarming as this invitation to state and then federal prosecutors to pursue “thought crimes” is a statement made by Leahy advancing the bill before the Senate Judiciary Committee, which he chairs. The list of supporters he cited is too long for inclusion here, but among them are: “26 state Attorneys general . . . the Federal Law Enforcement Association; the International Association of Chiefs of Police; the Hispanic National Law Enforcement Association. . . . The National Asian Peace Officers Association; National Black Police Association, National Center for Women in Police . . . 26 state attorneys general. . . . National District Attorneys Associations . . . and 44 women’s organizations.”

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How many Americans of all ages know of James Madison writing to Thomas Jefferson: We have “extinguished forever the ambitious hope of making laws for the human mind.” But here we now have added federalization of one way not even Bush and Cheney ever thought of to undermine the 14th Amendment’s “equal protection of the laws” for individuals, not protected classes.

Original article

(Posted on July 29, 2009)

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Comments

1 — burr hamilton wrote at 6:37 PM on July 29:

Free speech is not nice or polite but it is protected. Hate speech is a slippery slope to censorship If it’s not broken why fix it? And I can’t recall a violent crime being called a “love crime”

2 — Alexandra wrote at 7:37 PM on July 29:

Goes to show there’s no real difference between Republican and Democrat. “Both” sides are for free speech—so long as you agree with them.

3 — Zorba_the_Geek wrote at 7:57 PM on July 29:

I thank Mr. Hentoff, who is a dyed-in-the-wool liberal, for this article and for his tireless work in support of free expression for ALL points of view. It is time to realize however that our ruling class, traitors as they are to the interests of this nation’s citizenry, do not care a tinker’s dam what the Founding Fathers thought or would think about the Stalinist-inspired, totalitarian monstrosity of “hate crimes.” At best, the Founding Fathers to most of the people in government in the US represent proponents of restraints on governmental power that those people would rather ignore or rationalize away; at worst, they represent “racist slave-owning white men” whose views on anything are ipso facto tainted and suspect.

4 — Anonymous wrote at 7:57 PM on July 29:

“Those who attack the elderly, police or those of the poor who are not (white folks) among the “protected classes” would not get lengthier “hate” sentences than the law provides for the act itself. Doesn’t this make lesser citizens of their victims?”

A bit of water under the bridge isn’t it? His observation would be more relevant if written before the damn broke around the time of the 1950’s and 60’s.

5 — Simmons wrote at 9:30 PM on July 29:

And libs never cease to wonder why whites flee the “Protected” when it is obvious that these laws discriminate against whites, therefore making integration impossible. Even the libs do not want their children discriminated against. We now have our perfect weapon in rhetoric, “the children.”

6 — Skipper wrote at 10:59 PM on July 29:

“Thought crimes”!?!? 1984 and Big Brother have finally arrived. My contention is the radical left has used the phony racial disparities scam for years to advance its agenda, and it has now succeeded beyond its wildest expectations with the passage of this “hate crimes” bill.

With AG Eric Holder as the head of the Cheka (formally known as the Department of Justice) except to see prosecution of radio talk show hosts, bloggers, and writers based on an a party’s perception of a hateful message.

7 — Anonymous wrote at 8:19 AM on July 30:

These laws are unconstitutional and violate the principle of law that laws can punish actions, not thoughts.
At first, these laws ADDED punishment for “unacceptable” thoughts, when there was a crime. Then these laws were applied for the thoughts only, without any action.
Now that unconstitutional laws are widely accepted and enforced, the Constitution has been crippled.

8 — Whitey Ford wrote at 9:13 AM on July 30:

6-skipper wrote- With AG Eric Holder as the head of the Cheka (formally known as the Department of Justice) except to see prosecution of radio talk show hosts, bloggers, and writers based on an a party’s perception of a hateful message.

There won’t be a prosecution. One day they will just not be on the air, or their blog will have vanished, or their books will be gone, and they will have never existed.

9 — feller wrote at 10:01 AM on July 30:

Actually the first three presidents in their own way, including Jefferson, the “author” of the Bill of Rights, attacked newspapers and individuals who spoke out against them. Lincoln shut down newspapers and persons he said supported the Confederacy, without any trial. Truman pursued socalled Communists but really had his attorneys go after speech he didn’t like. The question is whether it is time for a new constitution, in which speech to defend one’s race is clearly protected, and where illegal immigrants and their kids, even if born in the US. are deemed immediately deportable without so called due process.u

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