Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Solon who wrote (23317)	8/20/2001 2:08:18 PM
From: The Philosopher	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

We will disagree here. What you are saying is that if two cars of teenagers go looking for trouble, and each one commits a random drive-by shooting, they should be punished differently if in one car they said "let's off the tenth person we see" and in the other car they say "let's off the tenth honkey we see." I don't think society is better protected by having differing standards for this. And the hate crime theory is a dangerous one to try to exploit. If you read the US press, you can't have missed the huge fuss over the "black church burnings" a few years ago. They were almost universally accepted to be connected, to be the work of anti-black groups or individuals, to be classic hate crimes. The follow-up story was much less widely covered: that after the FBI intensely investigated all these burnings, they didn't find any racial pattern in them; that there was no evidence of any spate of hate crimes, that both black and white churches were burning, that many of the fires turned out to be accidental, a few arson for various non-racial reasons, etc. I don't recall exactly, but I don't think they came up with ANY that were true hate crimes -- that is, black churches being targeted because of the race of the parishioners. There's no question that hate is a negative influence in a society. But once we start to punish thought, or enhance punishment because of the philosophy of the perpetrator instead of the deed itself, I think we go down a very dangerous road. We're back, IMO, to Bonhoeffer.