Here We Go Again
Mood:  don't ask

Once again the House of Representatives passed an insane piece of unconstitutional legislation. The recent "Hate Crimes" bill is another mind boggling attempt by the socialist totalitarian left to distort American society to a semblance of Europe. It is always saddening to encounter those who are so out of touch or bound by propaganda that they fail to see the full impact of the cattle logic that binds their minds.

Why would a conservative strict constructionist be opposed to a hate crimes bill? After all, isn't the 14'Th amendment all about protecting people in a certain subculture from oppression? Won't this new legislation protect people and foster a more loving and tolerant society? Don't we really support intolerance toward the intolerant?

That is the old fallacy of using a double negative to make a positive. It just doesn't hold together. But putting the lack of critical reasoning aside for the moment, let's examine the constitutionality of the legislation.

The fourteenth amendment of the United States constitution guarantees equal protection as well as due process to all residents in any state of the Union. The actual text is quite direct:

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

A Law, even a federal law which deprives members of a non-protected status group from protection equal to the members of the protected group is in direct violation to this amendment. For instance a bill which guaranteed a particular racial group greater protection from "hate crimes" would by definition be as illegitimate as a law preventing a certain racial group from voting or working. Any law which creates a special status, whether greater in protection or greater in disenfranchisement, is equally discriminatory and essentially an illegal law.

By creating special groups of people that get extra special protection from victimization, you create second class victims and citizens out of those who don't fall in a protected status. Worse, you create a defacto oligarchy where the protected have a greater opportunity to exercise their franchise and even to be elected to public office. This is the same crime for which the state of Arkansas was invaded by National Guard troops in the 1960's.

Hate crimes legislation is discrimination. The worst most insidious form of institutionalized discrimination is the kind that results in protected classes. This was the kind of discrimination that the Equal Rights Movement was formed to combat: subcultural, chauvinistic, preference. Chauvinistic -- Gender (even women only) only, Homosexual only or Race only policies when applied to protection from violent crime, harassment, freedom of speech and pursuit of happiness -- necessarily constitute a heinous constitutional violation.

Hate crimes legislation finds a new civil right never before found in the constitution or American Ideals, unequal protection under the law. It's as un-American as red coats, and Concentration camps. It stinks to high heaven and can only lead down the same totalitarian path as Left Wing, communist totalitarianism, or Right Wing, NAtional soZIalist totalitarianism.

Sich Heil, Commissar Kennedy.

.