HATE-CRIMES BILL: CYNICAL SYMBOLISM

It seems that on those few occasions that I stand up for congressional Republicans, they always make me eat my words. Last week, under cover of darkness, and with the anonymity of voice vote, the Senate passed the Hate Crimes Prevention Act.

I loathe hate-crime bills in general, but this one is particularly venal because it involves such an overreaching exercise of federal authority, as I will explain.

A similar bill failed to pass last year, but this time there was not even any vocal opposition to the measure. But that was before a series of highly publicized "hate-crimes" had been committed. Those included the dragging death of a black man in Texas, the fatal flogging of a gay college student in Wyoming and the recent shooting spree in Illinois and Indiana by a man allegedly part of a white supremacist group.

You'll recall that the mass murder in Littleton, Colo., served as a catalyst for ambitious gun-control legislation that almost passed, and still might, in the near future.

If Congress is so anxious to enact laws, perhaps, during a lucid interval, they should pass a bill preventing "remedial" legislation within one year of a high profile event that hijacks their emotions.

But in truth, the Democrats' emotions aren't remotely involved in the passage of such laws. They are completely rational when they use these types of events to energize legislation. In fact, Clinton admitted to the tactic during the gun control debates.

Republicans, on the other hand, may be operating out of an emotion: fear. When Democrats propose legislation promising to prevent future Littletons, racial beatings, or whatever, Republicans are scared to oppose it for fear of being falsely labeled as bigots.

Hate-crime legislation establishes stiffer penalties for violent crimes motivated by hatred against certain protected classes of individuals. Currently, federal law covers race, color, religion or national origin. The new Senate bill adds the categories of sexual orientation, gender and disability.

So if you criminally assault a person because he/she is a member of a protected class, you are not only guilty of assault, but of a hate-crime as well.

The title of the bill suggests that its purpose is to deter hate-crimes. But that is wholly unrealistic. Would such legislation have deterred that cretin from dragging to death the black man in Texas? No more than the new gun control measure would have prevented any deaths in Littleton! Besides, I thought liberals didn't believe in deterrence, or legislating morality, for that matter.

Hate-crime legislation is foreign to our system of criminal jurisprudence. Why, for example, is battery worse if motivated by hatred of one's sexual orientation than, say, his wealth. Is it more acceptable to beat a man because he is rich than because he is homosexual? How about a poor man? A stupid (but not disabled) man? The possibilities are endless.

Our criminal law punishes bad conduct, not bad thought. In the above example, the act is the same in both cases: battery. By enacting gradations of offenses based on the underlying motivation, we are criminalizing thought. That's even more destructive to our freedom than criminalizing constitutionally protected speech.

This bill is especially objectionable because it expands federal jurisdiction over criminal activity properly left to the states. Under current law, the federal government can prosecute hate-motivated violence if the victim was on federal property or engaged in a federally protected activity, such as going to school. The Senate bill expands that to cover any incident related to interstate commerce (which, according to the Supreme Court, is about anything).

The federal government has no business usurping state law in such matters. But liberals in Washington just cannot resist the urge to micromanage our lives.

The purpose of the Hate-Crime Preventions Act is not to prevent hate-crimes, but to enable its proponents to score political points with their core constituencies. No one believes that it will curb violence of the type it outlaws. Yet they cynically manipulate the legislative process with symbolism over substance.

In the name of color-blindness, they perpetuate color-consciousness. Ultimately, they exploit the very people they pretend to protect.

But the saddest thing about the legislation is not that it passed, but why it passed: an absence of moral courage in the face of political pressure.

As General MacArthur observed: "The world is in a constant conspiracy against the brave. It's the age-old struggle -- the roar of the crowd on the one side, and the voice of your conscience on the other."

~David Limbaugh of Cape Girardeau is a columnist for Creators Syndicate.