Legislative power ignorance remains

The recent rush to applaud Ian Clift for his condemnation of anti-hate crimes legislation reveals a disturbing ignorance of the true issues at hand. For instance, the charge that such legislation would merely punish intention is deceptive. At first reading it would appear to be a just and logical objection. However, upon further inspection, determining intention clearly is an important factor in convincing and prosecuting violent crime. It is what determines, for example, the difference between manslaughter and first-degree murder.

Such a misleading argument, then, appears to be a rhetorical slight of hand (and if, as Socrates said, rhetoric is the cookery of human logic, then Clift and his ilk are an army of Julia Childs). In fact, such mental prestigitation is a prominent feature of the argument against anti-hate crime legislation. The tangled line of reasoning assumes that these laws only protect "minorities" (such as women, African Americans, Jews or gays) and do not apply to, say, anti-white, anti-Christian or anti-straight violence. While such crimes are less common, they are certainly covered by anti-hate crime legislation that includes such broad terms as "race," "gender" or "sexual orientation." This underlying assumption that these laws only apply to "them," to other people, reveals that such objections are, in fact, simply raw exercises of power, an attempt by those who consider themselves the "haves" to defeat the efforts of the "have-nots" to secure equal rights and equal status in society.

Furthermore, this rhetoric ignores the basic realities of epithets that wound the human heart, of knives that slice human flesh and of bullets that splatter human brains. This shocking ignorance of the service of power must be confronted and eradicated or the future does not bode well for the civil rights of all Americans. Without anti-hate crimes legislation, we will all be "have-nots."

Scott W. Hoffman

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