Podcast: Restoring the Constitution-First Amendment vs. Hate Crime Laws
This week, Federico Lines of States Rights Radio and I discussed the First Amendment.
The podcast (link here) can be found:
As everyone should know, the First Amendment lists five rights. Lines and my discussion focused on that second right listed which is: “Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech.”
“I may not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”—Voltaire
That Voltaire quote is the basis for the freedom of speech in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. To actually support free speech means supporting the right of people to say things you disagree with.
Unfortunately, in our tribalist political landscape, the First Amendment is under constant attack from both sides of the tribal factions.
Lines and I discussed various stories and topics related to this, one in particular being hate crime laws.
Hate crime laws was once primarily championed by the “left.” It was LBJ who signed the first federal hate crime laws in 1968. Today, the “right” also embraces these Orwellian laws that punish thought rather than crime.
As I’ve written in the past, Republicans in Florida and other states have drafted some of the most draconian hate crime laws in the nation under the guise of going after “antisemitism.”
https://sethhancock.substack.com/p/florida-republicans-target-the-first
https://sethhancock.substack.com/p/florida-gov-desantis-denounces-blogger
Because of such ridiculous laws, now the “left” is trying to use it against a teenager for doing a burnout on a sodomite pride mural painted on the streets of Delray Beach, Florida. Thank you, GOP, for giving the “left” a tool to use against the people.
Of hate crime laws, Michael Rozeff listed seven problems:
“(1) Proving that hatred is a motivation is costly and difficult.
(2) Attributing motivation to a specific emotion can be quite subjective. It allows a jury or a judge to penalize criminals on subjective grounds. This can be a source of injustice.
(3) Harm to others than the actual victim is not actually proven. It is presumed, and the criminal is punished for this unproven crime. This is unjust.
(4) The externality theory is faulty because all sorts of crimes may intimidate non-victims or potential victims. If people are to be punished using a theory of crime, that theory should be broad enough and accurate enough to be fair over all similar cases.
(5) Restitution to victims is typically disregarded by our criminal justice system. Hate crime legislation continues this feature. It adds to it by focusing on added penalties.
(6) Over time, as laws and cases multiply, people can eventually be accused of libelous or seditious hate crimes involving vehement speech when they are biased against a group or merely do not like it or its policies. People can eventually be accused of hate crimes when they use hateful speech. Hate crimes laws are a seed that can sprout in new directions.
(7) Perhaps hatred as a motivation will eventually be used as grounds for letting the criminal off the hook. Some clever lawyer will argue that the person’s hatred was uncontrollable or instilled by forces beyond his control.”
Rozeff added:
“Hate laws are a veritable Pandora’s Box. They can be used to tack on additional penalties or to gain leverage over suspects by threatening additional charges of ‘hate.’ It is rather easy to fake the appearance of a hate crime, apparently to gain sympathy for one’s group. The number of these incidents is on the rise. Should a columnist write a vitriolic essay against some figure, he might face not only libel charges but also hate crimes charges. Should someone make an obscene gesture toward someone else, the results may be hate crime charges. In one case in Philadelphia, Christians who were preaching to homosexuals at an outdoor homosexual event were arrested under the Pennsylvania hate crimes law. Suppose that Mel Gibson had taken a swipe at an officer, or suppose an officer had said that he had taken a swipe at him. This combined with Gibson’s remarks would have landed him in an even deeper hate-crime mess….
Hate laws are a patch. They do not really reform the law in favor of the victim as they pretend to. If groups that have problems want real and lasting remedies, they have to go about it in a different way than by hate laws. For example, if gays wish to marry, the long-term solution is to get the state out of the marriage business. Failing this, if the state confers tax or economic privileges on married people and won’t recognize gay marriage, then the solution is to push for civil unions that give couples the same privileges. Or perhaps smart lawyers can dream up contracts that create units with tax privileges. If any group is faced with hatred, it is extremely doubtful that hate crime laws will ameliorate the problem. Most hatred is not manifested by outright crimes. Such laws will not stop speech. But they are clearly a move in that improper direction.
Hate laws are not socially healthy. Hate laws institutionalize society’s divisions. They perpetuate the faulty system by which pressure groups obtain special interest legislation. They build upon faulty legal theories, and we surely do not need more of those. They exacerbate society’s ever-present divisions. They have a host of problems and potential downsides.
The criminal justice system is already an under-performing segment of our society, and hate crime laws promise to drag it and society down further.”