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: The Philosopher who wrote (24856)	8/26/2001 7:36:45 AM
From: Solon	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 82486

You keep bringing up irrelevant examples. Nobody is talking about the normal criminal activity where the motivations are too subtle for the system to make reasonable distinctions. We are discussing HATE CRIMES, Christopher. We are not chawing over the milions of crimes that merely involve hatred. These are not hate crimes. Now, if you are given the choice of having one of two people released into your community: either the aged mother who killed her drunken husband after years of abuse (with a 30 ought six), or a Manson type of person with a vicious hate filled mind--who would you choose? Early inn this discussion you seeemed capable of discerning motivational differences in crime. However, you have become selectively more selective. You seem to be having a difficult time understanding why the community feels more threatened by some types of cime than by others, and why it wishes to exercise a greater caution in protecting itself from the mindless hatred of virulent racists. If you do not remark a difference at a personal level (for example, which type of person you would want your daughter dating), then I suppose it is futile for me to expect your discernment at the community level. HATE CRIMES, Christopher, are crimes committed by people who represent an extraordinary danger to society. For a person to earn such a categorization, it needs to demonstate an alienness to what a community needs to value in order to ensure her survival. Someone who merely hates ONE person (as in your example) is no longer a danger (on that basis) to the rest of the community. However, someone with a malignant hatred for an entire class of people, and who has comitted a so called "hate crime", is deserving of the more intense scrutiny that he is likely to receive from the courts. There is nothing difficult to understand in this. It is natural for a community to attempt to preserve the safety of its members. Justice considers the potential danger and risk to a community when the feasibilty of parole is being considered. This risk is something that is also considered before sentencing. If you are unable to see this, it is because you do not want to.