What Makes A Crime Of Prejudice Worse Than Any Other Crime?

By Charley Reese

[Reprinted from Issues & Views Fall 1997]

Passing ``hate-crime'' laws is a step toward totalitarianism. There are several reasons such legislation is a bad idea.

First, to make a distinction between crimes based on motive is nonsense and an injustice. People who are victims of violence, vandalism or arson are equally injured whether the criminal's motives are greed, general malice or prejudice.

To punish a crime of prejudice more than an otherwise identical crime of greed or general malice is a slap in the face to the victims of ordinary criminals.

Second, so-called ``hate crimes'' are a minor percentage of crime, and the government shouldn't be wasting its time trying to make the problem larger than it is.

Third, hate-crime legislation is just laying the groundwork for hate-speech legislation, which, indeed, is already on the books in some states. This is the step toward totalitarianism. This is a direct assault on free speech and should be vigorously opposed.

The First Amendment of the Constitution was not designed to protect safe or noncontroversial or politically correct speech or government-approved speech. Such speech needs no protection. You can speak of trivia and government- approved topics in a government-approved manner in any dictatorship in the world, current or past.

Remember that old Cold War joke in which an American tells a Russian, ``Look, I can stand out in front of the White House and call the president a warmonger, and nothing will happen to me. That's how free my country is.''

The Russian said, ``So what? So can I,'' and to prove it, he shouted, ``The American president is a warmonger.''

No matter how obnoxious or offensive we find certain speech, we must never consent to allowing the government to police it, for to police speech is to police thought, and that is the essence of the totalitarian philosophy.

And we have plenty of would-be totalitarians who are eager to brand as hate any speech that criticizes them or their sacred cows or just meets with their disapproval. In Canada and Germany it is considered hate speech to question even the details of the Holocaust. People in Germany have ended up in prison for doing nothing more than that. Since when does a fact of history need the police power of the state to protect it? No one who values liberty should ever allow a government to make it a crime to be wrong or to question the orthodox version of events.

Truth is often arrived at by argument and debate. Even genuine historians are continuously revising their histories as more information becomes available. As one wag put it, God cannot rewrite history, but historians can and do all the time.

Some people in this country seem to want to enjoy the privileges of the Communist Party as it was in the Soviet Union--to be completely immune from criticism and to make sure none of their ideas or policies, no matter how cockamamie, is questioned. Hence the eagerness to brand all their critics, legitimate or otherwise, as peddlers of hate speech, and to push the government into criminalizing it.

A free society, if it's to remain free, must leave even genuine hate speech free to be combatted by reason and education. The alternative is to move toward totalitarianism, in which thinking the wrong thoughts can land you in prison or in front of a firing squad.

Copyright 1997 © King Features Syndicate