This weekend marks the 1½ year anniversary of VM, and right now I’m blogging from Chicago, the former stomping ground of our esteemed president. Cooool. Anyway, on to business ...
My next-door neighbor and I are pretty much alike. We’re both human. We both need to breathe air to live, as well as food and water. We both bleed when cut. We’re both male. We both have a wife and family. We both have college degrees. We both have jobs. We both own a home and a couple of cars. We’re both American citizens. We vote. We both like to sit on our patios and drink beer while talking about family, friends, music, and sports. We both (as far as I know!) haven’t ever been convicted of a crime and have done our part to contribute to the good of society.
We seem pretty alike, right? Two brothers in one big human family? Well, not according to our Democrat-majority Congess, we’re not.
Thanks to a bill that was just passed in the House, if, God forbid, someone murders me and someone else murders my next-door neighbor, the latter would be in more trouble with the law.
If, God forbid, someone murders my wife and someone else murders my next-door’s neighbor’s wife, the latter would be in more trouble with the law.
If, God forbid, someone murders my child and someone else murders my next-door’s child, the latter would be in more trouble with the law.
Why? Why should my life and my family’s have less value in the eyes of the law than my neighbor’s and his family’s?
Because my neighbor is black and I am not.
On Wednesday, the House voted 249-175 to expand the already existing “hate crime” law:
Current law gives national law-enforcement authorities jurisdiction over hate crimes only when directed at individuals on the basis of race, religion, color or national origin, and only when the victim is targeted because he or she is engaged in a federally protected activity, such as voting.
All right, while this part makes a little bit of sense, it still is discriminatory by placing a higher value on certain people’s lives than others’. That’s still wrong.
The new measure would expand protections to include gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability of the victim, and would expand help from Washington to local authorities to punish hate crimes.
Lemme get out my handy-dandy liberalese translator:
“Expand help from Washington to local authorities” = more 10th-Amendment-violating federal government overreach into state and local jurisdictions.
“This bill allows us to bring the existing federal hate crimes law, which was enacted nearly 40 years ago, into the 21st century,” said Democratic Majority Leader Steny Hoyer.
Right, Hoyer. Because making the taking of a life a vicious crime regardless of race, color, or creed is sooo 20th century. Discriminating against a victim based on race, religion, or orientation? Now that’s the direction we want for the 21st century. That’s progressive. Actually it’s regressive … like back to 1984.
What a mentally small man.
Not that it’s a consolation, but at least 175 Congressmen get it, including House Minority Leader John Boehner:
Republican Minority Leader John Boehner charged that the legislation “places a higher value on some lives compared to others.”
“All violent crimes should be prosecuted vigorously, including crimes in which victims are targeted because of their race, color, religion, or national origin.”
Andy at the Roman Around blog asks:
A hypothetical … If Person A murders Person B in cold blood but does not utter any kind of epithet or slur, how does it compare to Person C who badly beats up Person D (but does not kill him) while shouting out the nastiest, racist invectives imaginable?
Are they closer to eachother on the despicable meter because the latter has the tack-on “hate crime” component? […]
But Andrew, one won’t even need to prove in court whether any epiphets were uttered during the commitment of a crime. What if a heterosexual murders someone who, he finds out later, is gay? Boom, that murderer is now in bigger trouble than if his victim was straight.
Of course, President Hope&Change is all excited about the bill, which he plans to sign. Again, Andy asks:
Is the President aware that the murder of any innocent—gay, straight, black, green—is the ultimate violation of one’s civil rights? That beating a homosexual is a crime because beating up any innocent is a crime? […]
Now, Andy, why ask a question to you already well know the answer?
Here’s another question: What will happen if a black person murders a white person? Or if a woman murders a man? Or if a homosexual murders a heterosexual? Will these murders be classified as “hate crimes”? They should, but they won’t. Because the angle in these cases will be, “Well, the victim was an oppressor. He probably deserved it.”
Which begs another question. The passing of this bill suggests that this sort of crime is happening at an alarming rate. But really, how many so-called “hate crimes” are happening around the country to the extent that you need Congress to pass a bill to address it?
I’ll admit to not having the numbers, but I’ll bet it’s quite low. Assuming this is so, then the passing of the “hate crimes” bill is your typical liberal/Democrat way of combating the perceived rampant discrimination in this bigoted country of ours. Because in the minds of our Democrat president and our Democrat Congress, America is a vicious place where men are killing women, and whites are killing blacks, and straights and killing gays, and dammit they need to do something about it! But of course, that’s not what America really is. And so here you have from our Democrats in power another worthless—and, indeed, in and of itself discriminatory—feel-good bill that addresses a problem that doesn’t exist.
Here’s one final question: How does this bill address the real problem of black-on-black crime? Most black people are murdered by other blacks. Certainly the decent law-abiding citizens of the nation’s black communities would be open to “Washington’s extension of help to local authorities” on this matter.
Well, you can forget it.
It’s probably the case that most Democrats who voted for this bill did not even have the sense to think ahead to consider these questions. Because, as Dennis Prager has documented, liberals/Democrats never ask, “What happens next?” They never consider the long-term consequences of their feel-good actions. And that’s sad—especially for us, the American people, who have to suffer the consequences of their folly.
Let’s be perfectly clear: The hate crimes bill has nothing to do with civil rights—it is discriminatory on its face—and everything to do with further de-individual-izing us, compartmentalizing us into groups, and Balkanizing our country more and more.
Because only by viewing Americans as groups, and not individuals, do Democrats acquire and maintain power.
It also has to do with rewarding trial lawyers—a huge Democrat voting bloc—with an endless supply of new “hate crime” cases.
Welcome to the future, suckers.
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